Return of the Obra Dinn

Here more than ever, in fact, it is difficult to separate the graphic aspect from the actual game, since those millions of dots on the screen build the gameplay. Far from the 32 million colors we are used to today, Return of the Obra Dinn focuses on chiaroscuro and, as in a charcoal painting, bases everything on the presence and absence of a single color (creating a unique and highly distinguishable " 1 bit "). The effect is extraordinarily rich and manages to stain the screen with a huge amount of small details, from gunpowder to splinters of wood to blood. If initially it might seem just an aesthetic gem, in reality Pope has managed to make this type of "coloring" relevant also in the gameplay itself.

Return of the Obra Dinn is a not too long investigative adventure (in less than 7 hours you will have safely seen all that the game has to offer), in which an expert is played with the task of investigating a series of deaths at the interior of a ship, the Ora Dinn, exploiting few clues. In addition to a stingy handful of documents with the names and faces of all passengers, the only tool available is a strange clock that allows the protagonist (and therefore the player) to relive the last moments of the life of each of the passengers (such as in Ghost Trick, but this time without being able to change anything, unlike Takumi's masterpiece).

We therefore find ourselves connecting for each corpse a name, a face and a cause of death (among a huge list of possibilities) simply by relying on deductive skills, and the game develops around this mechanic: from each corpse you can access any corpses present in the memory and from that moment also interact with them. It seems like a small idea, unable to bear the whole adventure, if it were not so well balanced between moments of investigation, moments of reflection and moments in which ... dots connect.

What makes the graphic aspect relevant in this speech is the fact that once a memory starts, only voices or sounds are heard, one imagines the scene in one's mind, and later on one starts moving in the I remember. Meanwhile, the scene has "stopped" at a precise frame in which the two-color graphics allow you to outline details and events in a very precise way, in addition to the new accessible corpses. Everything you see on the screen is potentially useful to the investigation and those moments inside the memories can last minutes and minutes while we take note of every detail: Return of the Obra Dinn is not lost in useless descriptions, in excessive information, nor in situations able to lengthen (and water down) the game. And it is not a trivial matter.

There are mainly two, in fact, the incredible aspects of Pope's work: Return of the Obra Dinn manages to gain strength on its essential and uncompromising construction, organizing an idea of interaction that cannot be separated from graphics or any other element of the game and at the same time manages to make the concept of investigation really sensible.

Moving away from more or less guided procedures to which modern games have accustomed us and from interrogations and clues of over twenty years of adventures, the investigation is completely left in the hands of the player who must put the dots together, look around, grasp small details (from the arrangement of the sailors in an illustration to roles, position of the cabins, type of hat worn, accessory elements and any small clue can be obtained from a scene). It is no coincidence that on more than one occasion I have found myself looking online for information on how to dress and on terms in certain languages to be able to narrow the field on some names. At one point, a man says "Verdammt", perhaps an indication of his German / Austrian origin, for example.

The game does not take us by the hand in continuing with the investigation, among other things, avoiding to tell us immediately if our deduction is correct or not: you can have some useful feedback only after three correct deductions, going to file any attempt to constant tests with the brain off. The sense of reward obtained once three "fates" have been resolved is perfectly calibrated, in an excellent balance between attempts, deductions and a feeling of success.

Right here, however, Return of the Obra Dinn shows the side of a small criticism that should not be underestimated. Sometimes, in fact, although it seems a hymn to rationality and deduction, we find ourselves (albeit rarely) attempting names hoping to guess, because maybe there are three Indian sailors who correspond to all the information that we have been able to find and slightly grope it is more efficient than looking for other evidence. However, it happens very rarely and is perhaps the only real accusation that can be made against such an original and courageous game.

A final mention of the technical aspect: the translation into Italian is excellent in all its aspects and the performance of the game is not least, very stable and completely bug-free, at least during my experience.

MODUS OPERANDI
I played Return of the Obra Dinn on PC through Steam for 7 hours, in which I completed the whole game, finding out all the fates and names and completing the diary. I used a PC equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 1700 at 3.0 GHz, 16 GB of RAM, a 500GB SAMSUNG 960 NVMe SSD and a GeForce Gigabyte GTX 1080, connected to an Asus ROG SWIFT PG279Q 27 "monitor at resolution of 1440p.

The eponymous return of the Obra Dinn cannot be described as a happy reunion. The ship of the East Indian Trade Company disappears on a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in 1802 and only reappears five years later. As a ghost ship . Everyone on board is dead. Now we take on the role of an out-of-the-ordinary insurance agent trying to find out what the hell happened on the Obra Dinn.

Gameplay beats graphics

By art we don't mean the style of Return of the Obra Dinn. Sure, the monochrome retro look has its undeniable appeal aesthetically, but the highly stylized graphic is basically an eye-catcher, a matter of taste or maybe just a means to be different, to stand out from the crowd. The style is a minimalist allusion to old computer systems (with graphics options that simulate, for example, "Commodore 1084" or "Macintosh") and it is impressive how events, locations or characters come to life with so few pixels.

The art of Return of the Obra Dinn, which we mean, lies somewhere else - namely in the ingenious gameplay ideas that tell an exciting detective story in a daringly clever and refreshing way.

But first things first: after just a few steps on the deck of the ghost ship, we discover a skeleton, and as soon as we are in front of the remains, our insurance investigator pulls out his pocket watch. This tool is called Memento Mori and with one click its hands start to spin wildly. The screen goes black and we hear an argument.

Someone asks the captain to open the door to his cabin. The battle of words escalates and suddenly we are standing in front of a still image of horror : a man has fired a pistol, the bullet shreds the neck of his victim. Time stands still and we can move freely in this frozen scene.

Sherlock Holmes on deck

This is the first part of our investigative work: We use our watch to jump directly to the time of death of people whose remains or ghostly patterns we discover on the Obra Dinn. The second part of our detective work takes place in a book that we can open at any time by pressing a button. It is a protocol and a thriller in one. It initially includes ship charts, drawings of scenes on board, and a list of the crew and passengers. This is followed by blank pages that slowly fill with the incredible events on board the Obra Dinn as we progress through the game.

Our goal is to find out how the victim died for each death. Who killed whom and how? In the example given, the captain shot someone. We have to explain why in further scenes and with the help of our book. Does the victim wear a certain uniform or does it have a striking accent? In what environment is the dead person depicted on the drawings that have survived from the life of the ship?

With such details, we can use the passenger list to narrow down the possible victim. If we correctly state three deaths, i.e. select the right combination from a list of names and causes of death, this is a first stage victory, because then the relevant entries in the book change from handwritten notes to printing types. That means we were right and new fragments of history appear in the book.

Sudoku staged like a movie

The trick is that simple guessing doesn't get us anywhere . The choices and combinations for who, how and what are simply too many. We are forced to logically derive a chronology of events from the countless death scenes, compare identities, establish cross-connections and correctly interpret interpersonal dramas.

Detective work has rarely felt as authentic as here - also because we only get marginal tips. For example, the game shows us in the notebook how difficult it is to find out the identity of a certain person with our current level of knowledge. Return of the Obra Dinn is like filling out a Sudoku - only more exciting and with more suction.

This is mainly due to the twisty story that opens up fragment by fragment and casualty for casualties. We don't want to anticipate anything here, because otherwise the charm of Return of the Obra Dinn will be lost to some extent. Just so much: The story has some unforeseen (death) moments that made our jaws crack on the table and again and again turned our previous assumptions upside down.

These moments have also burned into our memories because developer Lucas Pope has shown tremendous sensitivity when it comes to music and sound design . The soundtrack swells up in dramatically fitting moments, the speakers go to great lengths (in English) and the placement of sound effects also contributes a lot to the dense atmosphere.

Congenial thriller

It takes six to twelve hours , depending on how quickly we combine, to solve all the deaths and the stories behind the Obra Dinn. During this time we were so immersed in the complex puzzle of the ship that we hardly noticed any defects. The navigation in the book becomes somewhat confusing with increasing complexity of the connections.