Author of this article: Yunji
This time I finally mustered up the courage to open this old game. Although I have loved watching "Shelmes Detective Collection" and "Conan" since I was a child, I will have the attribute of automatic worship of people with high IQ and strong reasoning logic, it does not prevent me from still being a very amateur puzzle player, and then I go to "Return of the Obra Dinn". Of course, watching this game for a long time may cause dizziness to friends like me, but the game's free exploration and reasoning still makes people unable to stop. Now, let me tell you about my experience in playing this game.
technique: A classical mystery novel atmosphere, setting a flashback story with a fantasy color
The gameplay is like a third-person review of the scene, with flashback narrative techniques to cross-narrative. However, there is something that surprised me more about the opening scene here. The game randomly assigns male and female voice matching to our protagonists, which will not make people have an inherent impression of the game plot (who made the investigator the protagonist).
After the novice tutorial, we also started the free exploration mode. It will not be limited to you following the progress of the game step by step to reason about the dead in a fixed place, but let us reason from the death of the three captains in the final ending, use a skeleton pocket watch to discover the dead, and then consider the cause of death in the last scene, and then infer the identity of each person and the cause of the tragedy of the entire ship.
Here, the setting of the skull pocket watch is very magical, and it also lays the foundation for the overall length of the story. It will not be a direction that ordinary people can understand. But until all the clues of the whole story are gathered together, you may feel that everything becomes very reasonable again. Moreover, every voice conversation that appears behind the shady scenes contains a lot of information. Even if we don’t remember those contents at the moment, we can find the corresponding characters and clues again from the notebook, or use the pocket watch to trace back time to investigate again.
Interestingly, the final outcome of this game lays a very important foreshadowing. All of this is already in the notebook where Henry commissioned us to help investigate the incident, and there was a message as a clue. We can also not listen to his random solution to the judgment of everyone's cause of death, but with such an ending, we cannot open the last "transaction" chapter on the notebook. I think no matter who it is, we can't refuse the temptation that the truth is right in front of us.
However, not every time you go back to time, we will be lost on this ship because of the more and more dead people appearing later, as well as all the flashbacks of dialogues, which is also the biggest "fun" of the game. After all, the story of the game has already happened. We have no oppression from time, nor have we had the opportunity to ask ourselves why we did this in front of those people, let alone have the investigative means and technology that only detectives or police have. I can only rely on the pocket watch and notebook in my hand to guess the cause of everyone's death.
so the game chooses this way (classical novel narrative style) in terms of plot, which not only makes itself more mysterious in the game atmosphere, but also increases the difficulty of game reasoning. Even if the player finally clears all the truth, he may feel that his soul is still floating on the ship.
Visualization: The game screen is black and white, both a feature and a disadvantage
Next, let’s talk about the point that I like and feel helpless about this game, which is the game screen. The three-dimensional black and white style of the game creates a lot of bleak and dark atmosphere at the beginning, but after watching it for a long time, it is easy to feel dizzy for players who are not used to 3D. Fortunately, the game operation is not very difficult. When we operate the character, we pay attention to moving the mouse perspective, and we will not feel like we can’t find the key points (but it is recommended that friends who can’t hold on and don’t try it easily).
The historical stage of painting style combined with the reasoning story will also add a lot of impression scores to each other (after all, it is in a retro fantasy style~), and it also reduces a lot of storage space required for the game. In the game, players can also find the dead who promotes the plot through such obvious color difference comparison. It can be said to be a major feature of the game and a headache.
The truth: The story is a bit old-fashioned, but the process of finding the truth is very hard-core
If you are patient and find the corresponding characters and their own cause of death one by one, then the content of the entire story should have a rough prototype in your mind. There will be major accidents on ships at sea, either encountering extreme weather conditions at sea or being artificially affected. It is obvious that Oberatin in the game was encountered both things, which led to the end of only a few people who could have returned to the public safely. It also proves that human greed will eventually be the poison that will kill itself.
If you are still not very clear about the overall story of the game, you can divide these people into three factions, one is the upright faction (represented by the captain and the third lieutenant); the other is the blinding faction for money (represented by the second and first lieutenants); the third is the survivor faction (represented by the many dead and the doctors). Because the second mate had embezzled the treasures transported by the Taiwanese royal family and took people to the cabin to attack. Who would have thought that he would directly open the seal, causing the creatures and mermaids in the ocean to sense the chase and start killing.
Captain realized that something was wrong and could only go into battle to kill two mermaids before temporarily forcing the octopus that destroyed the ship. After discovering the problem, the third deputy, who was responsible and smart, quickly returned the conch and let the mermaid go, but died in the cabin of the Oberatin. In the end, the first mate who couldn't stand all this went crazy and wanted to continue to share the money and trigger a riot. The captain endured the pain of killing three people at this moment, and finally committed suicide by drinking a gun on a chair not far from his wife's bed.
In fact, when the second deputy did not let the royal family die, he could remedy it as long as he realized the problem. Otherwise, the third deputy would not have been accidentally killed by the mermaid for his fault, but because of this opportunity, the mermaid promised that the third deputy would let the Oberatin return to the harbor, and all the stories came to an end here.
story is that simple, but apart from those more chaotic narratives, we can find the effort the game puts in reasoning in many details. For example, because it is easier to identify our race , we can find the Formots royal family through the photos of everyone on the ship and identify the identities of the four people; by this, we can infer who the crew members with positions on the ship are, who is the only painter on the ship, etc. But I think the most impressive thing is Liu Fusheng's place, using ballistics to determine who is the real murderer.
So there are some reasoning parts that can be called the finishing touch. The old-fashioned story of the game is not a problem that can be said constantly. Especially when it is difficult to have excellent works for suspense and mystery stories at this stage, it is a hardcore masterpiece.
Summary
Although this old game has been used by many people for explanation and analysis, I still hope to use my own explanation to bring you a brief understanding of this hard-core reasoning work and let you judge whether this is the game you will like. If you are not familiar with the operation, you can try it slowly at the beginning. If you are stuck in the game, you can also try to eliminate it (or look at the guide, but if you use these two things all the time, it will greatly reduce the playability of the game). In short, for friends who like reasoning and are weird in details, this game is definitely a treasure that cannot be missed (it is more cost-effective to buy at discounts).
