Return of the Obra Dinn - Plot Summary 

In short, it was basically Edward Nichols’ fault for practically 90% of the events that transpired

Only thing to add is that the self confession of Hok Sing Lau is likely a mistranslation done by Li Hong to cover his boss while trying to steal the shell.

I was seriously missing a "watch in order" function after the game's finale.

you forgot the cow

Man, Henry Evans just COULD NOT get a win during this cruise. Three people died despite the doctor trying to help them.

For some reason the sparkle, off in the distance, really haunted me. For 99% of the game I thought it just pointed to North, but realizing it was the mermaid, off in the sea, seeing the Obra Dinn home was a shock.

Although it accepts the answer "drowned by a beast" for Charles Miner, it's worth noting that the bosun is explicitly told by the 4th mate that he was torn apart rather than drowned.

I remember when I saw Winston Smith's death I thought, "hah, went out like a true American." Speared twice, held in claws that could probably sever his arms, but still got the shot off.

This video is hugely underrated. After finishing the game this was the exact thing I was looking for to help me tie it at all together, good job mate

No obnoxius intro, no over exaggerated voice, no ad spam, no stalling for time, good editing, good audio, clear explanation... I think we have ourselves an underrated channel!

you forgot to mention how nichols cowers in the rowboat to avoid the mermaids, that's how he survived

I love the cheeky pun that it's a literal monkey's paw that allows you to see what happened in the Lazarette

10:59 The little "dun!" discovery tune here had me wheezing. fucking hilarious little touch, thanks for that!

Just finished this game, it's so great and this summary is awesome Sharing a super small detail, I'm from Taiwan, which is the Formosa the game is referring to, so I understand the language they speak, our official Language is Mandarin which is the same with China but back in the days we speak Taiwanese, Which is the language they use in the game, it's a dialect similar to Chinese but quite different in many ways, in one of the scene when the mermaid spiked the sea man and the last Formosan on the Obra dinn, the way that Chinese guy ask the Formosan question were two languages mix together, specifically the word "All" is in Chinese and the usage of other indicate that he is not a native speaker of Taiwanese while the Formosans speaks fluent Taiwanese. This kind of attention to details is why I like about this game so much.

To add a beautiful bow tie to this game would have been to do like a 20 min cinematic… showing all the chapters in a chronological order … I know this would have cost a ton more budget but it would have been so sick to see the whole thing unfold after spending hours of investigation… regardless of that this game is super underrated and is going into my al time favorites

I HAVE A THEORY When Duncan McKay (purser), Alexander Booth (seaman) and Nathan Peters (seaman) are abandoning ship in "The Doom" part 1, i think mckay hired booth and peters to get him off the ship to safety. Because if you think about it, a purser is someone who handles money on a boat. And mckay was a coward, so he desperately wanted to get off the ship and go home. So I bet he stole all the ships money and offered booth and peters every last penny if they hauled ass back home. A valid reason is if you look closely at mckay in that scene, he's carrying all the ships documents and papers so it's very possible he had all the ships money as well. It's also pretty obvious lars linde (seaman) wasn't part of the deal. but truth be told I think if nathan didn't have it out for lars after what happened to his brother samuel, they probably would've let him join them on the boat trip home

Excellent choice using the discovery orchestra hits. Made the entire thing click for me. Kudos.

One thing I’d disagree with is that I don’t think the Memento Morten is an everyday device or even something normally used by the EIC. Instead, the letter /preface from Henry Evans specifically mentions it, along with the purpose of the book. Also what you provide the EIC at the end is not the book but a separate document. I think the watch is more likely a curio picked up by the surgeon (amongst his other eccentric accoutrement such as the monkey) which explains why he was smart enough to sacrifice his furry companion. His original intent was to find out what happened for himself - and he had done as much as was possible without access to the Obra Dinn itself, being limited to the deaths accessible within the Lazarette. If only the timeline with John Naple’s foot had lined up a little better, he might have had a better go of it, jumping from corpse to corpse via the seaman’s severed leg :D Since he knew what Martin had asked of the mermaid, he likely suspected that the ship would return someday and that he (or someone else) would be able to find out what really happened . This also explains why you, the insurance investigator, are still in possession of the memento mortuary at the end of the events, rather than having it in the possession of the EIC, or your employers (who surely would expect it back).

Loved this game so damn much. I had the story pretty right in my head but when you put it all together it had me notice a couple things. One) I never realized that Beng was putting the shell INTO the liquid, that’s interesting, I saw the shell in the Pasqua murder but didn’t remember it after, I did notice the three mermaids were short one shell while attacking the rowboats. (I didn’t quite understand Beng and the captains steward died from having only their arm melted, but whatever) Two) I never realized that when Brennan asked “where are they?” And the captain says “at the bottom of the sea”…it’s a clever misdirect. You think at the beginning of the game he’s talking about the crew but in the end it was the shells, cool stuff

There be a special place at the bottom of the sea for people like Sir Nichols

Because of how game starts I was always assuming that 1st mate is one of the main villains on the ship. At one point it started to not make sense any more (e.g. helping Lanke), but this summary puts it all together - actually William Hoscut was quite a decent dude and even the last episode can be seen in somewhat different light. Thanks for the quality stuff!

I'd KILL for a sequel, where we play as a descendant of the Inspector and use the watch to investigate an even larger mystery. I don't know, say, another shipwreck, or a battlefield.

damn, i was like 'pffft 11 minutes how the hell are they going to condense that tangled knot of murder and intrigue into that?' and then I watched it and you just. did it. no beating around the bush, just the facts as we know them. mad props - i love this game, and while i like that lots of it is up to interpretation, sometimes its nice to have everything laid out. one thing is idk if the watch is like, a normal EIC thing. I think it's something henry evans specifically sends to you. plus you keep it. there's sort of a 'only we know about these spooky supernatural things' vibe. ik some people took the whole 'sending the eic a specific and detailed inventory of causes of death from inspecting an empty ship' bit of it comes across to some people as worldbuilding evidence for normal use of this kind of stuff, but it came across to be as bureaucratic neglect. like 'ugh that boats back again, ok we'll send a guy to see what's up and whatever they say we'll do' but i think it could be both ways.

I always assumed that the people riding the crab monsters were the two Russian guys that got pulled overboard during The Calling. It looked to me like the crabs were a sort of parasitic creature that took over the dead bodies. Did anyone else think that?

There needs to be more games like Return of the Obra Dinn.

One thing about the Murder chapter: in the memory, captain Witteral says "You have been found guilty by self-cofession", meaning they must have thought that Hok Seng Lau told them he was the one who killed Nunzio Pasqua. Obviously, we know that isn't true, so why would Lau admit to this? That's the thing, he probably didn't. If we move a little foward in the timeline to "the Calling", we see a Chinese Topman (Li Hong) in the boat together with the other mutineers. In fact, it is Hong who tellls Nichols that the Formosans are talking about monsters, before being the first victim of the mermaids. Why is this man here? It could be that they needed an interpreter for the Formosans, but I think there's more to it. Here's my theory: Li Hong is the one the crew asked to translate for Hok Seng Lau. Lau told him that he was knocked out by someone, possibly even by Nichols. Instead of telling the crew that, however, Hong told them that Lau had confessed to killing Pasqua. Whether he was doing this under orders from Nichols, or if he used this to strike a deal with Nichols later on, I don't know. But it is clear to me that there was more than one schumbag on board the Obra Dinn that day.

I was intrigued by the 5 men Nichols brought with him. Galligan was obvious as his steward. The two Russians may have been eager to cover their gambling losses in Bitter Cold 2. Li Hong would have been bought to mistranslate during Hok-Seng Lau's trial to "self confess". O'Hagan is the only one I can't justify bringing along besides Irish kinship to Galligan but that's a stretch. Regarding the mutiny: by the time Davies is being recruited by Wiater (davies is not yet part of the mutiny), Hoscut, Brennan and Walker are already party to the mutiny. The only crew not in on the mutiny were Volkov, who probably wasn't to be trusted given the other Russians were in kahoots with Nichols, and Lanke, who as a midshipman didn't need to be involved in a serious matter and probably would have been told to hide below deck until the fighting stopped - thus Hoscut's concern: Lanke wasn't an enemy. Davies was probably killed by Brennan because he thought Davies opposed the mutiny by killing Wiater. Escape 4 makes it sound like Davies would have joined the mutiny. The captain was probably given a heads up to the mutiny by Hoscut, which is why he let the 5 remaining civilians (including Moss) leave before that final showdown. As Volkov wasn't aware of the upcoming fight for the ship, he was aggressive in preventing the civilians leave on the last boat.

Just revisited this game and decided to search for someone elses take on the timeline (and the motivation of certain characters), and just so happens that this video was made just a few week ago, lucky. Helped clear up a few things, the ending (leading up to captain vs first mate + 2) was a bit hard to piece together, I remember that during my first playthrough I thought that first mate (and two friends that attacked the captain) had planned to mutiny with the other two (present at the bosuns death), but everyone seem to be acting more on instinct at this point, not so much planning as I first thought. great summary!

I watched this video right after I finished the game! Good work man, it helped me piece together some of the stuff I didn’t understand.

*Huge series of intricate and correlated events* Also, this guy was just struck by lightning in the middle of the ship.

Great explanation. There were so many plot points I didn't pick up on. My English teacher would be ashamed.

Excellent work! So THAT's what the monkey was for!

As a quick note the Memento Mortem pocketwatch was given to you by Evans, being in the same box as the book and being mentioned in the preface. Evans also most likely also had the pocketwatch while on the Obra Dinn, since while incomplete, to start making the book he would have needed information he woudn't have otherwise have had access to. So the monkey's death was most likely for him to able to see what happened in the lazarette, not the inspector.

It’s been on my back log for awhile and just recently got into and beat it. Great job and making a concise and entertaining timeline!

Just fully-finished the game, and I needed something like this just to make sure I understood everything correctly. The video was exactly what it needed to be and more! Loved the editing

Great video! Thanks for putting this together

Excellent summary. I didn't realize that the game accepts different answers for the crew's fates, really neat stuff.

What an absolutely fantastic synopsis. I did 100% the game but was quite confused about some elements of the story. This cleared everything up beautifully.

Pretty nice video, took me 10 hours to finish the game but i couldn't really piece everything together what happened, im glad a video like this exists. Just a thing i want to add, i believe the time watch was owned by the surgeon, instead of being a standard item given by the company, thats how he knew about it, when you firstly open the box containing the book thats where the watch is, in the end it also says you mailed the book but kept the watch.

If the crew had just looked at the rowboats, saw the mermaids, and decided "nope, not dealing with that" and tossed them in the water, the trip could have gone a lot better.

4:08 phillip dahl wanted to throw the creatures overboard to stop the curse, and with seaman john in his way (leg found beside the cage where he was guarding it) dahl attacked him.

I put Abraham Akbar as the shooter of the cannon that killed Wolff and Shirley. Then I felt bad when the insurance report had him as a criminal who murdered 2 people at the end when really he was KIA while dutifully fighting the monster :(. Wish I'd put the beast as who fired the cannon like you did, but i didn't even think of it.

Very good video, exactly what I was looking for

This was a great overview of the events of the game, I was a little lost myself on some of the plot points but you helped me put it all together. Thanks!

At the end of the game I kinda knew most of this stuff, but didn’t want to thumb through the entire book just to get the whole big picture summary. Thanks, man!

Great video, made me realise how much of the story went over my head as I played it...

Thanks so much for this, I needed this to piece it all together after my playthrough :)

Amazing video, i love it, thanks for the impressive summary !

Thank a lot for creating this amazing video! I had finished the game a couple of months ago, and just remembered that I understood the how, but not the why. I really hope that in the future more games like this one will be made.

This is such a great video! A perfect factual summary of the events as they played out- exactly the sort of thing I wanted to see after finishing the game. Great editing too. One thing I noticed/guessed that wasn't included is the Formosan guard's "self-confession". I think it's likely that one of the Chinese crewmates that joined Nichol's plot to steal the chest falsely interpreted Hok Seng Lau's testimony and told that captain that the man was confessing to the murder. The captain didn't question his crewman's translation and sentenced Lau to death, allowing the second mate to get away with it. At least until the events of 'The Calling' of course. We don't know for certain of course, but Lee was able to speak a little Formosan and translate for the remaining guard at the beginning of "Unholy Captives", so it's not unreasonable to think that at least one of the other Chinese crewman had some knowledge of the language as well.

It's nice to have the story together and concise like this. Cleared up a few things I didn't pick up from the game. Thank you.

Excellent video! Thanks!

Remarkably good video. Thanks for the summary.

Thank you so much for this!

Thanks so much for this. I was so confused even after finishing the game, this helped out :D

This is perfect! Great job

Thank you so much! I just finished the game and needed a summary of the events. You nailed it! Cheers!

Thank you for this.

Straightforward, pieced together in the perfect chronological order the game spends its entirety winding roads around. This was perfect, thank you. The little touches of detail like adding the blurb about Evans tossing the monkey into the Lazarette and the shell being put into the liquid portion of the chest during the Calling, those really tie up the details that make the imagination go a bit wild during gameplay. There is also Voose's video on every single clue/hint that is sneakily hidden in the game to help you deduce who people are. Combine it with this video, and the curse voyage of this doomed ship really comes together. Fascinating stuff.

Fantastic video, a very clear and concise summary of a great game.

I failed to piece together whole story, so content of this video was unexpected and pleasant surprice. Thank you!

Such an underrated chanel

very compact video! exactly what i need

Beautiful work, man! Thank you for your video, it increased my joy from this awesome game

I love this

This man is underappreciated for sure. Thanks dude

This is one of my favourite games and this video helped me understand it even more! Great video

Thanks for the easy play-by explanation of what happened. Perfect game imo.

Earned a sub with this. Immediately to the point. Explained it clearly with absolutely no filler. Great job! You need to do more of these for other games!

Incredible video. Just finished the game and wanted to watch a summary to get events in order in my head and I couldn't have asked for anything better than this. Concise, yet containing every important detail to the story. Thanks for this!

such a cool story, glad i completed the game and watched your video to have it all summed up!

I just finished this masterpiece. At the end you can choose "poison" instead of "burn" as the cause of the captain's assistant death. Good detail. Incredible video, btw. Inmense editing job.

Super underrated video, thank you for making this

Great summary, thanks!

You did a great job

The ending of the story contains a literal curled up monkey's paw. I wish there was more relevance to this in the wider story. Given the attention to detail throughout Obra Dinn, the paw doesn't seem like it is included idly, yet it seems to be a misfit. What wishes did the doctor make? What unintended consequences occurred which then resulted in the tragedy of the Obra Dinn? I doubt that will ever be cleared up.

THANK YOU SO MUCH

This really puts into context just how bad Dr. Henry Evans is at saving anyone's life.

I just finished the game including the bargain chapter and I absolutely LOVE the writing in the game and how the bargain chapter is such a good ending.

It's funny how the cutaways come off as comedic

Thank you for not making it an hour long video.

Thank you!!

I’ll admit, I couldn’t follow the story or make heads or tails of what was going on throughout most of it, so this video is a godsend 😂

Excellent video, really nice to get a sequential view of the events. I'm sure someone has already mentioned this but Davey James (7:46) is actually 4th Mate John Davies' Steward, not Perrot's. It is a little strange that he's with Perrot and not Davies, but seeing as Roderick is already dead and Davies didn't really need any help at the moment, I guess it makes sense.

I had to leave a comment for no reason other than to say thank you!! I had a general idea of the narrative after completing the game, but it needed a little piecing together which I don't have the brains for.

Not sure why this doesn’t have more views! Also, in that second floor where the guy gets stabbed for shouting of a mutiny, how did you know that the gunshot to the head was unintentional?

great content!

jesus you deserve much more attention!

Love this. I've noticed that some of these can be solved multiple ways. It seems spiked/speared can be used interchangeably. I wrote that one of my guys was crushed by a cannon, you wrote beast and the game accepted both. When it came to being blasted by the cannon, either putting the beast or Akbar as the entity responsible for the death works. Interesting enough, Charle Hershtik, the midshipman, can be written down as burned to death or spiked (I wrote down spiked and the game accepted it.)

Just finished the game and you did a great job on this. Hopefully someone didn’t stumble upon this before playing Obra Dinn lol good job on this vid

Great vid! Now I know how the captain killed all those people with an axe, it all makes sense now... 🧐

In the words of a wise Samuel L. Jackson: "This is some serious gourmet shit"

Great video

Watched this after finishing the game. Only realised now that there are alternative answers to some of the fates (I answered 'eaten by beast' instead of 'drowned by beast').

You're the best

Just finished this, great game! Somehow, some of the scenes were different for me, story played out the same but a lot of the stills here are different, such as the sparkle of the shells and some of the death scene stills. You've nailed this plot summary also, this would be a great movie if it were ever made.

I missed some details towards the end of the tale. I knew I had it pretty much together but the video helped clear things up that I had totally missed.

I still have no idea how the guy who threw the lamp onto the Crab Rider managed to get on fire himself?

well explained

Great video! Now how about the true ending plot overview where captain Robert witterel kills everyone?