Lucas Pope is one of the leading 'auteurs' of the games industry, particularly in the indie scene. His debut was the classic Papers, Please that got everyone talking about proper ludonarrative, and became one of the go-to examples of what the aspirational academics in the gaming world wish to see. His follow up was hotly anticipated, and he decided to attack a gameplay style that many had attempted before, but never quite got right: the detective game.
The issue with detective games is that it is hard to solve a mystery when game mechanics generally limit you to a small set of choices. It is easy, for example, to not have a clue as to how to solve a particular crime, but when interviewing a suspect, your choices as to what to say will inherently telegraph a solution. Games are not quite robust enough to handle complex, variant choices, and so often get around this by assuming you are on the right track, accidentally maneuvering you to the correct conclusion whether you've pieced things together or not. Return of the Obra Dinn tasks you with investigating the fates of the sixty individuals who set sail on the Obra Dinn, a ship that had been missing for four years. The time period is the early 1800s, and before you set off to the titular boat you receive a package with a book and a stopwatch from one Henry Evans. Mr. Evans writes in the opening of the book that he wanted to fill its contents out himself, but due to a sudden illness, requests you to do it in his stead. The book is divided into ten chapters, each with a particular event that determined the fates of several people on board the ship, and it is your job to figure out who they were, when they were last seen, and what befell them, with the exception of chapter eight which he says the events that transpired then he would like to keep to himself for now. The stop watch he gives you allows you to hear the sounds that transpired before a given person's death, and allows you to see the death itself frozen in time. You can explore the nearby area where they died and see who else was present at the death. How a person died, it turns out, is the easiest mystery to solve. To figure out what happened to everyone on the Obra Dinn, you will need to figure out who a person was, how they died (or if they disappeared), and, if applicable, who it was that killed them. The book will tell you correct deductions in groups of three, meaning you could have the correct information put into the book, but won't find out until three are correct.
Return of the Obra Dinn wants you to deduce who everyone is and what their fate was, using a long roster of sixty individuals as well as a couple sketches of the crew and the floor plan of the boat in order to identify everyone. The game is rather clever in how it approaches giving you the information, sometimes requiring you to see other people's deaths in order to see the blow that caused a previous death, or requiring attention to people communicating or coming and going from particular rooms in order to, at the very least, figure their job on the boat. There is hard evidence to everyone's identity on the ship, but finding that evidence isn't always required. One of the minor slip-ups to Obra Dinn's system is that the validating groups of three, as much of an endorphin rush as it may be when they finally click into place, allows for guess work to overcome the deduction or induction the game wants you to go for. For example, if you already have two you know for sure about, and one you have a few guesses on, it is easy to cycle through your guesses until they click, essentially robbing you of having discovered it yourself. It's a minor complaint, but one that will almost inevitably rob someone of discovering a particular identity, especially when you get closer to the end, and there are few choices to go between.
There's another undercurrent, this time to the game's design, that muddies the game's greatness. The game must be played like a game, over it being played like a mystery. What I mean is, in order to solve certain identities, and even a few deaths, you have to go with what makes likely sense rather than what is definite by the evidence. If the game says someone is from Persia, for example, then you can expect the game will somehow make this obvious, even if in real life this sort of detail can be much more ambiguous. There are no tricks in Obra Dinn, meaning if you are given information, you should expect this information to be expressed literally, rather than as a red herring or detail. What's frustrating about this may not be immediately apparent to someone who hasn't played the game, or for someone not accustomed to mystery stories in general. It takes some of the magic of discovering something for yourself when the answer is telegraphed in a gameified way rather than a realistic one. Another example is that there are three women on board, and so you can deduce who these women are partially by the way in which they are named on the roster. A woman with 'Miss' in front of her name is obviously going to be the younger of them, as 'Miss' generally designates an unwed woman in her youth. If you are saying to yourself that it doesn't have to mean that, then that is my point. The game expects you to think of it that way, that no information is wasted and whatever is presented to you will be used to deduce their identity. There is a man on the boat with tattoos over his shoulder, and through some of the death memories, I was lead to believe they were a french mate of another, but I was incorrect, because I was looking for subversion. The answer is much more obvious, so obvious it took me nearly half the game to get it right because I was expecting something more than identifying a man by his stereotype. It is another minor problem of the game, but one that feels, if more games where to copy Obra Dinn's design, that it will date poorly.
The aesthetic of the game is inspiring in a lot of ways, once again showcasing that great graphics are not nearly as impressive as great style. The dithered, old school look to the game is not meant to convince you this is playing at an older style, as the game is still fully 3D rendered, but meant to invoke a feeling that implies an older aesthetic. Essentially, it is invoking a multi-part emotional connection with past aesthetics and design. The dotted graphical style is meant to invoke older computers, something antiquated and, if you've ever played an older game like that, much more dry than modern games. This style in relation to a modern style has a feeling akin to an older art style from around the time Obra Dinn is set, that would have the artist carve a detailed stamp of lines and press it into paper, much like old sea art. It is remarkable that it was able to overlap an emotional resonance from two different styles, and invoke the emotion without any effort on the part of the player, but the art style tends to obfuscate some of the answers, particularly the deaths. There are numerous times when certain deaths may look to have an ambiguous, or multiple choice, answer to them. There is one death in particular that looks as though it could be stabbed (by one of two different sources, at that) or burned, and there is little to indicate one deduction over the other. Likewise, as the most minor of spoilers, there are two burning deaths that are hard to define as such due to the odd nature in which these people were burned. It's an extremely minor complaint, but it is there nonetheless.
Return of the Obra Dinn feels like it should be a classic. It has a unique aesthetic, a unique approach to a game mechanic just about everyone I can think of would love to be more common, and seems to innovate where others have failed. But there are a few things holding it back. The story, for one, is entertaining but hardly of any artistic significance, another minor complaint you can file away as being less important than it is nagging. The biggest criticism the game gets, one I'm not sure I'm on board with, is that the game can only truly be played once since every subsequent playthrough cannot have the same discovery you had on the first. To be honest, single-play games aren't such a bad thing. It isn't like I won't play Obra Dinn again, just that you only have one chance to truly experience it. It gives the game a mystical, ephemeral feel from an analytical standpoint, a weird oxymoron of a phrase, but one that feels true nonetheless once you've played it. Return of the Obra Dinn is magical in multiple ways, executed with a flair that makes it forever stand out among other games on the market. It stands tall next to contemporaries because it doesn't have many to truly contend with. Just about everything in this game feels unique, from its presentation, systems, to its astounding music that I didn't even find place to mention in the bulk of my review. Return of the Obra Dinn is a category of classic, one that garners its status through creating its own lane rather than perfecting or expanding on a lane that already exists. It feels like an exception, more than it feels exceptional, though that it isn't to say that it isn't. It's the kind of game I want more of, knowing full well that more means diluting what we have. Return of the Obra Dinn is going to be a major part of Lucas Pope's gameography, if you'll allow me to create a phrase, but its place in gaming history is more than likely going to be one of cult status, with remarks along the line of discussion for the classics.
9.0
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