Return of the Obra Dinn is a fantastic mystery puzzle game where you use subtle clues, close investigation, and insightful deduction to uncover the fate of every person who was aboard the Obra Dinn on its final voyage.
Unless, of course, you don’t do that.
In my playthrough of Return of the Obra Dinn, I did not realize that you could solve fates in the book. I saw the place where the fates would be written when solved, but I simply did not connect the dots that you could click on that space to enter a fate on your own. Because the rest of the game had required no significant interaction on my part – the book had been filling itself out without my contribution every time I discovered something new – I assumed that the fates would be updated by the game processes on their own once I uncovered enough information. I thought it a bit strange that I “didn’t have enough information” when I saw the man that I knew was the captain shoot himself, but I was patient, and assured that all would be revealed in time.
I don’t have the greatest attention span either, so I expected to soon be bored of this game where my only mechanics were walking, using my pocketwatch, opening doors, and reading a book full of unanswered questions. Instead, I played for three full hours without ever using the core mechanic of the game. I was strung along, fascinated, throughout the story, and I only stopped playing when I hit a roadblock that made me think I was missing a mechanic (which I was, but also the roadblock turned out to just be a well-hidden body). For three consecutive hours, I played through the game with the same repetitive find-body-and-click mechanic, waiting through each fifteen-or-so-second memory, with no puzzles or deductions to break the monotony, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I can hardly sit through a two-hour movie.
So why was Return of the Obra Dinn so entertaining without its core mechanic? Why was it able to hold my attention so well despite how I was playing it?
I think the answer to that question lies in the way the game draws out moments. Video games especially tend to be very dynamic experiences, with constant action and change to keep the player’s interest. Even puzzle games are often very dynamic, involving the player constantly moving things around and trying new things – games operate on flow states, and staring blankly at a motionless puzzle for long periods of time would drive the player to high frustration without reward and thus ruin their flow. But Obra Dinn intentionally draws out each memory so that the first time you see it, you have to: a) listen through all the sounds and dialogue with no visuals, b) explore the static moment with a limited range and no sound except for the memory theme, and then c) return to the memory after opening the journal to either trace another body or go through the door to the present. For the purpose of solving fates, this is very helpful – it gives you time to fully absorb all the details of a memory, catalog and investigate the different characters in the scene, and fit the new information you’ve gained into your working theory of the other fates. However, without the fate-solving goal, there’s not a clear objective inside the memories. The only real secret deep investigation reveals is the identities of characters, and I didn’t care too much about the exact name of each person – I was more interested in the overall story. And though the memories did slowly build the plot up, this was done within the first few moments of hearing the dialogue and then seeing the frozen moment. After I’ve heard a crewmate’s screams and seen the shot of him being crushed by a tentacle, I understand what has happened as much as I can, and further studying doesn’t add much. At this point, I can look around the scene a bit more, but it won’t reveal much new information or get me closer to my one objective of completing the story.
And yet, the extension of the moment does force me to appreciate every aspect of it. When I can’t leave the memory, and have nothing in specific to be searching for, I am free to roam about its limited space and take in every small detail. I’m compelled by morbid curiosity to examine the gore spraying from a dying person and the grainy arc of a spear as a mermaid launches it from the sea. I appreciate aspects of the lighting or the contrast of lines and points by the rendering method that I hadn’t noticed before. I think about the sheer terror of witnessing the crab riders mauling my crewmates, or the wrath of being the last mermaid in the lazarette watching my two companions die. Because I have so much time, no objective, and no action to take besides observation, I am forced to observe deeply and patiently, and it creates an unparalleled immersion in and appreciation of the game.
Pausing on an important moment is no new technique; in fact, it is central to many different types of media and especially video games. But when a movie lingers on a shot, the viewer is waiting for the next moment. When a fighting game focuses on the killing blow, it is an emotional gratification for the player’s actions. Drawing out a cutscene is a tool of suspense or emphasis on some plot development in a game’s story. When I played Obra Dinn, however, the memories were just an appreciation of the game itself. I had no objective and did no difficult actions, so there was no gratification or sense of the moment being a response to my play. There was no emphasized progression of the game in many of the memories because they showed things not relevant to the plot – an unknown crew member being blasted by a cannon is a powerful moment, but has no significant impact on the story. I wasn’t waiting for any next moment, because the next moment would just be another memory where I was doing the same thing. All I had to do was appreciate everything about the game, from its visuals to its compelling narrative to the very feel of just moving, and the game’s processes forced me to do this throughout the whole game. And I enjoyed it, because to me the game was slowing me down for the sake of appreciation of the game itself, not of some individual aspect or moment. I was being forced to savor the game, and to be truly in it.
I think games have an interesting power in this regard. With other media, the viewer can usually choose how long they focus on it, either by fast-forwarding a scene or skipping a track or just walking away from a painting. The media can draw the viewer’s attention to certain things, but eventually it is down to how long the viewer looks at it. With games, however, rules and processes can be created that influence how and where the player devotes their attention in novel ways. Attention can also become interaction, and the player can create part of the experience by giving their attention and action in the game. There’s a myriad of new ways of collaborating with the player’s interpretation of the work that is very exciting, especially when you can make the “intended” object of their attention murky so that their attention shifts and changes.
All that being said, I still felt unsatisfied when I viewed all of the memories in the game. I wanted to complete the journal, which I knew was an objective from the beginning, and by this time I had learned how to solve fates but I didn’t want to go through each memory and meticulously figure out each identity one by one. So instead I looked up the fate of every single person and arduously entered them in for about half an hour. This rewarded me with the complete story and the 100% true ending scene, both of which I had already watched on YouTube for class. Knowing exactly what I would get, and with no original thought or gameplay of my own, I still took this strange route to completing the game. So whatever that says about me as a person, I think it also speaks to the unusual compulsion and power of games.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the description of your playthrough of Return of the Obra Dinn. It is a perfect example of how playing video games can be (and tends to be) a very personal experience, especially in single-player story-driven games. I also enjoyed your discussion of the ‘power’ of video games and the relationship between attention and interaction, but I would also suggest that as with other forms of media, if a videogame does not capture your attention enough, or is too ‘murky’, it can also be easy to step away from. This leads to my own playthrough of Return of the Obra Dinn, where I found being attentive to the game rather difficult. I didn’t particularly enjoy the structure, or lack thereof, and I found solving the puzzles only a little satisfying, particularly when they were not in chronological order. Personally, I didn’t find this game very compelling, but it’s interesting to see how other people played it differently, perhaps in a better way, and had a completely different experience!
I like your point about being able to step away from games. Other media like tv shows are portioned out in amounts you’re supposed to consume all at once — especially with intentional pacing like releasing episodes weekly or something similar — but with games you can usually pause at any time and choose exactly how much time to spend on it in one sitting. This can definitely increase the allure by not implying any obligations of how long you have to play ,but it also means that games have to work to be “pick-uppable” if they expect players to leave for long periods; a game that’s hard to hop back into after a week away will probably only be played in short bursts every once in a while. I also definitely see how you could lose focus with Return of the Obra Dinn — I think that if I weren’t watching it like a movie, I would’ve gotten frustrated very quickly by the difficulty and lack of reward associated with solving fates and quickly stopped playing.
I think your experience playing Obra Dinn in the absence of its core mechanics is incredibly cool! I agree that the ability to “explore the static moment”, as you put it, lends itself to greater observations of the details of the scene. While I also agree that different forms of media interact with the viewer’s attention in different ways, I disagree with your claim that non-videogame media, “can draw the viewer’s attention to certain things, but eventually it is down to how long the viewer looks at it”. I think it is actually the opposite, and that is what made your experience with Obra Dinn so vivid and engaging.
Cinema, for example, controls exactly where the viewer’s attention is. The viewer’s attention fits solidly within the frame of the camera shot. Unlike a videogame like Obra Dinn, where the player can walk around a scene and look at whatever they choose from whatever perspective they want, a film forces the viewer to focus on a single perspective. This is especially evident in many action movies where there are simultaneous parallel plotlines. Perhaps one person is sneaking into the bank vault while another is hacking the surveillance cameras. A film must alternate focus between these two plotlines, only taking a single perspective at a time (unless some unique movie has some sort of split screen effect, which I can’t really think of any at the moment).
What would happen if an action movie was converted into an Obra Dinn-style game (absent the core solving-fate mechanic)? As you highlight, in Obra Dinn you can inspect a gory death on one side of the ship and then walk over to the other side to find a mermaid launching a spear. I think this is what made you experience so interesting. You were able to experience a film-like story but could take in all the different moments happening in parallel time. How would one experience the large-scale battles in Avenger’s Endgame, for example, if you could freeze time and walk around the entire space?
I like your point and I definitely agree that different media can control the attention of the player better at times – although there are certainly exceptions to both cases. I also think, then, that it’s interesting to think about to what extent this claim is untrue for both media. For example, with the videogame side of the claim – “in video games, players have more control over where they direct their attention” – there are also limitations to how players direct their attention. There are locked-off areas, forced cutscenes, and other things that you just can’t do within the rules of the game. I think the freedom of action that the player has actually emphasizes noticing what they can’t do – especially in games with high player agency, the restrictions are far more noticeable because of the contrast from the many things the player can do. This can lead to a procedural-rhetoric argument of restrictions defining meaning, maybe, or even a perspective on how players operate within restrictions and how that shapes their interpretation of games.
I think that this is a great post that directly and greatly changes my view on the game. I have always considered Return of the Obra Dinn to be a game whose meaning is highly dependent on its mechanic and its design, given to the player by the designer and with little room for the players to create meanings for themselves. However, seeing you playing the game without even realizing its core mechanics and treating it almost as a visual novel definitely provides a counterexample to my view on Obra Dinn. In this sense, it makes me wonder if all games, no matter how restrictive they appear to be, always have interpretive space for the player to make their own meanings from the game. It reminds me of the views of symbolic interactionism, which would consider all games – and even other forms of media – to be entirely dependent on player definition and interpretation in the process of their own play to generate meanings and gear their actions towards the meanings they interpret and generate from the game.
I really like that idea of symbolic interactionism, and the potential extension into other media. Your point about how you originally saw the game as strongly defined by the mechanic and design John Pope created is interesting because it makes me think about the game designer’s perspective of players forming their interpretation of the game by play. Game design is often thought of, I think, as creating an experience for the player where the designer controls every moment and makes the player feel a certain way. However, I think the truth is more that the designer creates a space for experience, but that part of the experience will by necessity be controlled by the process of play. Designers have to work with the player, creating rules that can imply a meaning or experience in part, but are completed by the player’s role in the interaction.
It seems like each playthrough of Return of the Obra Dinn is personalized. I found it interesting that there is tension between player-mechanic interactions. Going through the steam forum of Return of the Obra Dinn, several distinctive player-driven dynamism exists between the game and its core mechanics and how players with varying degrees of experience interact or dance around the mechanics. I have seen players that claimed the mechanic of traveling between scenes of death a glorified loading screen simulator; I have seen players that never found out you can open the box and get your plot-essential items, refunding after around 30 minutes of playtime; I have also seen players passionately debating the optimal puzzle solving sequences and appreciating the games narrative-plot structure and spacial-narrative arrangement. Video games really do bring out the chaos inside all of us and from a designer’s perspective, utilizing procedural rhetorics and level designs to try to convey your idea or intended experience, only to find out that your players have either bumped into the first tutorial wall or carved their own path amongst your tightly structured narrative is truly a unique experience.