The Logic of Return of the Obra Dinn - solving all fates 

Fantastic video! Very well put together, I watched the whole thing right after I finished the game. My mind was blown as soon as you started talking about the hammocks. Somehow I missed every one, would have saved a lot of guesswork. One thing, the term "chinaman" which you say once or twice is considered fairly derogatory. Although it sounded like you were just accidentally portmanteau-ing "Chinese topmen." Otherwise, though, no complaints. One question I had that you may or may not be able to answer, why does the game include many extra death options like "expired", "froze", "shot by arrow", etc. that are never used? I'm not even sure they count as red herrings since for most of them there is no point in the game where you would even consider them for a second.

Me playing this: That guy has a striped top so he must be French... no wait that's stupid it's too obvious 8 hours later and it's Charles Miner confirmed: I KNEW IT!

58:00 Fun fact: This is one of the cases where your decision affects the outcome of your final insurance evaluation, and thus the families of the deceased. As part of the claims, the Company gives bonuses and fines. Those who die taking heroic action or who suffer cruel fates through no fault of their own earn bonuses, paid by the Company to the deceased's next-of-kin. Those who commit crimes, anywhere from abandoning ship to mutiny to murder, get _fines,_ paid by either the survivors themselves or the deceased's next-of-kin. If you judge that Wolff and Shirley were "shot with a cannon by a terrible beast" or "blasted by an explosion", Abraham Akbar, the man who lit the cannon before the kraken grabbed it, is praised by the Company for his exceptional performance of his duties and his estate is awarded 25 Pounds (equivalent in 1807, the year of your investigation, to $2,791.58 modern dollars) in outstanding wages and bonus pay. If you judge instead that Wolff and Shirley were "shot with a cannon by _Abraham Akbar,"_ the Company, trusting in your judgement and having no further context, instead sends Akbar's family a _bill_ for his 40 Pound ($4,466.52) fine for the murder of two crewmen. Personally, "by Abraham Akbar" may take a bit more thought, but I feel like "by a beast" is _technically_ the _most_ correct of the options. And for a bureaucrat, "technically" is _the best kind_ of correct!

Cool video! One thing I wanted to note because I haven't seen it pointed out anywhere else: Captain Witterel says that Hok-Seng Lau was found guilty of murder "by self-confession." Why would he confess to a murder he didn't commit? He didn't -- Nichols had one of the Chinese topmen, Li Hong, in on the mutiny. Presumably, Li Hong was asked to translate Hok-Seng Lau's testimony and framed him.

Hamadou is also noticeably very tall, in the bitter cold you can see one very tall person REALLY weighing down a hammock, that's him

On Hok-Seng Lau's death, I actually got the cause of death by accident. I was playing through the game, and kept seeing the same seaman, Henry Brennan, come up. He attempts to mutiny against the captain at the start, he kills someone in the gun deck and at this point I'm starting to think that this guy is trouble and I'm starting to have a vendetta against him. So when I get to the scene where Hok-Seng Lau is executed, I see Brennan amongst the shooters and immediately think "Well, it's got to be impossible to tell who shot this guy, so I'm just going to have to pick one of them and hope that the game allows any of them as an option. Fuck it, I hate Brennan. I'm pinning it on him." And what do you know, it actually worked. I go back to the scene later to see if I can find any hints for others that are in the scene, and notice that only one shot actually hits, and it was none other than Henry Brennan's. I had a good laugh at how I picked him entirely based on a gut reaction, and I managed to get it dead on the money.

Figuring out the identities of the Chinese topmen was soooo satisfying. I felt like a genius.

The way I identified Henry Brennan is that in the few memories just prior to Thomas Lanke's death, he was going down the stairs with Hoscutt, so he's the one that Hoscutt would know for sure was nearby and would call out to

I am in deep shock after Finding out, that Olus Wiater's voice actor is Piotr Adamczyk. He's one of the most popular actor in poland. He actually played in Hawkeye about half year ago. I just love that guy

O'Hagan gets speared/spiked by a terrible beast through his neck. Galligan: "O'Hagan, are you still breathing? Can you row"". O'Hagan: ✖👄✖

Another death within the ship to help ID Wallace would be the killing of the cow in The Bitter Cold part three where Wallace can be seen cleaning up the bed after the corpse is moved out, a menial task one would not expect a doctor to do but the assistant.

I just now realized that if Edward Nichols didn't try to steal the treasure, the entire story of the Obra Dinn wouldn't have happened, man his fate was way too kind for what he deserved

It was crazy how some of them became so obvious once you know it. Wallace always hanging out with the Surgeon, and Miner with the Bosun, both were ones I ended up getting through process of elimination and manipulating the rule of three, then getting mad once I realized how “easy” they should have been.

Then there's me playing the whole damn game without noticing the "x" in the dialogue text

Love the video, thanks so much. Am stumped that nobody has mentioned this, though; I identified Charles Miner in Unholy Captives. When the mermaid is being lifted up onto the ship it is done so by a line of seamen and one person directing the lifting of the mermaid that spikes Hamadou and Chioh Tan. In the background of the audio you can hear someone with a French accent shout 'HEAVE', 'HEAVE TOGETHA' "HEEEEAVE'. Once you notice that and see the vignette shortly after, it is incredibly obvious that Charles Miner is commanding the seamen to heave up the mermaid and that he is French, and therefore must be Charles Miner.

There's actually something really obvious you missed about William Hoscut: You can see him leaving the 1st Mate's cabin in Chapter IX during the Bosun's death.

The Bitter Cold scene where everyone one is sleeping had already been deemed useless by me when i figured out there are only faces of Indians and Russins that are shown. I couldn't identify people sleeping with their faces covered so i just gave up and started doing educated guessing. I have no idea you can confirm them with numbers, weapons, tattoo and even shoes. What an amazing video

I'd certainly like to see this game get a follow-up although not a direct sequel but more so just expanding on the world that these games exist in. Rather than re-using the sea monsters it'd be interesting to see other supernatural entities although you'd have to come up with another enclosed environment like the Obra Dinn so perhaps a prison or an island or something like that.

i’d be very interested in a sequel, something along the lines of “due to your exceptional work investigating the obra dinn, you have been tasked with [insert setting here]” maybe give that the pocketwatch is a unique artefact, something evans gave you because he wanted the full story of his ship without being arrested for treason after returning to investigate himself, and that the east india company has decided to put you on a particularly difficult case no other adjuster can even begin to decipher another ship would work, but also i like the idea of a poorly-managed, company-owned port coming under attack, and you have to assess both the damages from the final attack and make sense of everything in the weeks or months prior that went unreported and still needs to be settled. you’d have both recurring characters, (locals, people working the docks or a ship or two that come in and out often) and one-offs from ships passing through, which would be an interesting challenge

For Lewis Walker(Topman), there is a VERY easy way to id him. on the destroyed ship(not a memory) there is only 1 hammock left, and it is his. To me that's not stretching at all, it is the main and easiest way to ID him. we know the other 3 present there already too. (could be mixed with Brendon, but that's another easy ID so) You also have to think that most events happens on different nights, and on the day they take the hammocks down, and put them back up for sleeping. So the dead would not have theirs put back up after they died or disappeared. You never see hammock when they aren't sleeping, or even fighting. And since you see the ship as it was after the captain suicided(including the last 5 corpses not cleared from the ship and still present), you can also assume the hammock that was left up is one of the 4 man left alive, it can't be the captain's or the first mate, and we id Brendon elsewhere. so it has to be the unknown man. Same thing with Nathan. It's not a long shot, but the intended way.

For Zungi Sathi, the method to identify him is straightfoward, in his death you can assume that he was running away and wounded, and you can see the blood trail that he was leaving; you only need to follow him and the blood trail on the earlyer deaths (cronologycally) and you can see that he started just outside his office/room

Hilariously enough, I found the captain's body after I had gone almost completely through the ship. I saw the body in the bed the next room over and completely missed the one on the floor. xD

I thought I was crazy for trying to use the "shoes" method to differentiate between the Chinese Topman... I think I accidentally mixed up two of them doing this, so just assumed it was too much of a stretch and couldn't be the intended method. Good to know now that I'm not actually insane :)

Lol I figured out Davies only by exclusion. Would NEVER have guessed I needed to check which window he was leaning out of during Nichols's return.

My personal favourite solve for me was Aleskei's pipe, but that's nothing compared to the way the Chinese Topmen are found out here, great video.

I figured out the survivors in Africa cuz I got frustrated and ended the game and got the letter from Jane saying "the 4 of us that escaped to Africa" and I was like oh, well just let me reload now! LOL

This is nice. Way less stressful than watching someone solve it in real time.

The wedding ring on Emily Jackson's left hand is also (and I think much more clearly) visible in Paul Moss's death scene (the one right before Volkov's). She's standing on the railing with her left hand clearly in shot holding on to a rope.

I would like to point out that there is one other scene where Finley Dalton appears that did not get mentioned in this video which could help you identify him as the helmsman, if his appearance in Abigail's death scene goes unnoticed. He also appears during Murder, Part 3 - the death of Scottish topman Timothy Butement. In this scene, Finley can be found wounded by a spear on the ground right next to the helm, undoubtedly caused by one of the mutineers. Additionally, the Russian Aleksei Toporov can have his identity deduced in that same scene. Using the logic of attributing the satchel and pipe on his hammock to him earlier in Part 1 of A Bitter Cold, Alexei can be seen lowering one of the life boats, with his satchel slung on his shoulder.

Another clue that George Shirley is friends with the chinese topmen and thus is likely to be the person sharing a drink with the last remaining one in Edward Spratt's death is that he's playing a dice game with them in the drawing.

At 30:18 the Bosun is coming out of the Bosun's store, which is another hint to point out he is the Bosun

1:00:25, in regard to the association with a gun stipulation. You CAN confirm that it is in fact Olus' gun if you look at the previous scenes in which you can see the lower deck, you can actually see him with the gun, holstered of course.

Something of note for anyone who may be struggling and may see this comment: you find Samuel Peters's corpse/ghost through a barrel in the back of the cargo hold. A stowaway hid in a barrel that fell on Samuel's head, but the barrel then hit the ground and the stowaway inside died on impact. After the scene, Samuel's ghost corpse is directly accessable, like with the other ghost corpses, after finding that chain of deaths. I was a little stumped trying to find it myself, so I though it was worth mentioning.

Another fun fact is that you can actually be a FEMALE inspector as well, it is randomly picked at the start. You can only hear it in the voicelines at the start. (as can be seen in this video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-51OYs3wtZ78.html ) Anyway thank you for this video, I would've never guessed the bit with the chinese topmen and their shoes I assumed you were just expected to guess, but from Uniforms to grouping up together in the Pictures to being, coming out of or fleeing to their respective rooms it has a lot of miniscule details that are very interesting to know and I would love another riddle like game like that, the Memento Mortem is a pretty cool concept. Maybe with some added variability to make replays more possible as if you played the Obra Dinn once, that's kind of it unless you want to revisit it for the great aesthetics. Lets see what Lucas Pope will cook up next, the Indi market seems to certainly have great gems.

Something I like about this game is that, while it does lean a little hard into ethnic stereotypes in spots, it does at least make sure that you can confirm them - e.g. with Omid Ghul's sword, you can make the assumption based on his ethnicity, but you can confirm it using evidence, even if most players probably wouldn't need to. To me the most frustrating thing about guesswork is not knowing how you were *supposed* to do the solve =/

For the people on the boat that leaves for Africa in escape there's another way to know where they're going, if you don't know what country Morocco is in. You can look at the ships journey on a map near the beginning of the book and at the start of every chapter. During the events of escape, Africa is the nearest landmass to the ship and the only feasible place you could escape to.

I'm glad that I finished the game before watching this video because it makes me feel like a genius for finding all the same clues.

Dude this is EXACTLY the sort of video I wanted to find now that I’m done with the game for the first time and can watch all the content about it. Thank you so much for taking the time to make this.

You can actually tell who the captain is just from his death scene, he refers to the woman as Abigail. There's no other crewmate or passenger named Abigail, and they both have the same last names. From that you can tell they're husband and wife or at the very least close to each other.

One thing you didn’t mention about the gunner’s death is that you can say he was shot by the beast. I just think it’s funny to say that he was “shot by a terrible beast”.

When I realized the hammocks were numbered, and it was a direct referral to the ship's charter, I knew the 2 main scene with the whole lot of them was the treasure trove of info to id just about everyone of them. I started looking at anything that differentiate each one, and it led me to checking shoes and socks. But it can be hard to see with certain color scheme... Still it worked for nearly all of them :D(along with the numbers gone between a bitter cold and the start of the doom, to eliminate names in between those two event..)

He’s so polite when discussing this. Like you can constantly hear him resisting the urge to call you an idiot like the whole time it’s hilarious

Dude, love the video! As far as the logic of the video, and of your solve, here were a couple things that I learned from Patrick O'Brian, that helped me in my (weak sauce) incomplete solve. 1) Charles Miner was bosun's mate, which meant that he would have been in charge of the physical discipline of the ship. That's why he's guarding the Formosans during the execution, and would not have been involved in slaughtering the cow, it just wasn't his role. Any bosun's mate was an enforcer, not a reedy midshipman. 2) The death of the midshipman who overhears the mutineers I smoked as a midshipman. Not only does the audio sound younger, but a midshipman would have been on the officers' side of such a conflict, not on the hands' side, leading to his singing canary. 3) Axes had multiple uses in ships of this era, but the only person who would be stereotyped with such a tool would be a carpenter or a carpenter's mate. The game drops you a good clue with that stereotype, as the carpenter's mate throws one at the crabrider.

There should be a sequel, and it should be Return of the Orient Express.

Part of my deduction process with botb Hamadou and Mabu was that both of them are not really involved with a group, are not interacted with and dont speak. I deduced that, taking the era in mind, noone either cared nor spoke their language and so they are isolated as the only ones of their respective homelands on the whole ship.

You can also say the gunner was shot by a cannon by a beast

Just finished Obra Dinn a few days ago (my last 12 or so fates determined by guess and check). This guide was fantastic for pointing out what I missed. Thank you so much for making this!

1 Miss Lim is also named in the execution scene when she tries to speak out. 2 Maba's biggest clue is that his face gets unblurred as soon as you see his death - meaning the tattoos are supposed to be a sufficient clue. 3 Lewis Walker is identified as a topman as early as his death scene - no other kind of crewman would think to get into captain's quarters by climbing down onto the balcony, and Walker is seen jumping or climbing in nearly all his scenes (this also identifies Brennen by process of elimination in the midshipman's death scene) 4 A bosun's job can be summed up as "shouting at seamen." If you look down during the lightning strike scene, the bosun isn't there, but Charles Miner is, and he's the only one not pulling the rope - presumably, he is the one we hear giving commands. 5 Apart from being named in the execution scene, the gunner can be heard commanding the cannon that he later dies from.

Thank you so much for making this video. It took all my self control not to watch it before I got the bargain 😅

I wish I could like this video more than once. Thanks for the amazing work!

It is well organized, Im impressed! Thank you for all the segmants in the video and your effort.

You can figure out that Thomas was knifed on his death diorama by the bloody knife right outside door in the pool of blood (it might also be there in the present as well)

Thank you for that, you must have put in an extraordinary amount of work! I really love this game and it's very satisfying to see it all laid out (and to see that some of my leaps of logic were actually correct haha)

Thank you. I was looking for a video like this

awesome video, you definitely put a lot of effort into this

I don’t think “Obra Dinn” should get a sequel necessarily but I do believe that the concept and gameplay loop of Obra Dinn would be really cool to see for another story or mystery

This looked like so much fun to play! I would love to get another mystery type game set in a different time period. I agree, the overwhelming majority of this catastrophe was Nichols' fault. Who would have died regardless? Rujab, Syed, and maybe Sam Peters.

This game deserves all the love it gets and more, and the same goes to this video, it's so fun as it's informative, i just hope more people play this game, it's really a master piece

This was a brilliant video! I finished the game and was so curious as to what clues I missed and how I was supposed to figure out certain people that I had guessed at. This is exactly what I needed. Thank you!

Great video! I just finished my (admittedly terrible) playthough of the game with like ~30% of the crew correctly identified, and, while I saw the amazing potential underneath, I knew right there and then that I'd get more frustrated than I'd enjoy finishing the game. After watching this, I know that there's a solid 25% of the crew I'd never have been able to get right, mostly because I don't like guessing at these things, and wouldn't have (although designed for that purpose) used/abused the "Once you know 2, guess at a 3rd" feature. Thanks again for not only giving the answers, but how to get there as well!

Great video, it took me 15 hours but i ended up deducing them all. I was so fascinated with the game i thought i'd check out your video to pick up any clues that i had missed. I had missed a few like the 4th Mate in the cabin when the 2nd mate gets shot.

I know that this is an old video, and that the hype of the game has been going on for years. But I also wanted to contribute my opinion about this story that has fascinated me so much this past week. For me, the biggest culprit in all this tragedy is Captain Robert. Not that I exclude Edward's guilt, but as I understand it, the only difference between these two is that Edward was active in the disaster, while Robert was initially passive and later became active as well. Taking out the first 3 deaths, which were but 1 fatality (the rope breaking) and 2 deaths from respiratory disease (which at the time had very few treatments - much of today's antibiotics are post-WWI), Robert could have prevented all of this. After all, Robert was the captain. Being a captain is not just about putting on a fancy hat, wearing a fancy outfit, and bossing everyone around with an aura of superiority. The captain's primary function is to ensure that the ship arrives at its objective intact with everyone in the crew alive, or at least with as many people alive as possible. Ultimately all deaths that occur on a ship are the captain's fault until proven otherwise. The first point at which the captain could have prevented this tragedy would have been during the execution of Hok-Seng. He had a murder occurred on his ship, by an alleged murderer who doesn't speak his language, and who magically decides to confess this "because he does" only to be met with a summary sentence of execution should have aroused suspicion, to say the least. This false confession was probably planted by Li Hong at Edward's behest, since Li Hong was together with Edward during the first riot, intentionally mistranslating what Hok-Seng was saying. There were three other Chinese on the ship, a separate translation of each would quickly reveal Edward's plan. Anyway, first missed opportunity. The second point comes after Edward's death, with the crew retrieving the mermaids and the chest. From this point on, Robert actively contributes to the disaster. Let's remember the scene, practically everyone who was in the first mutiny was dead or missing, with some bodies even multilayered, and the only one who could speak was Edward who was deservedly shot by Chioh Tan. In addition, 3 strange creatures were together on the boat apparently not moving. With all this, what does Robert do? He puts the creatures inside, and, not satisfied, even after a few minutes, not only is it revealed that the creatures were alive, but they also make dangerous mistakes, killing two crew members almost instantly. What does Robert do after this?Did he kill them and throw them into the sea? No, he had these creatures put inside the ship, the same mermaid that killed two people five minutes ago now killed the cook, even though it was tied up, and consequently also William during the fall from the ladder. At this point, Robert was worse than Edward, because Edward at least didn't know what he was really getting involved in, while Robert had more than enough information to come to the conclusion that the risk was not worth it. He even ignored Fillip, his own steward (and probably the only sane one at that moment) about the dangers the ship was involved in, calling him crazy and locking him up with the mermaids. Even though the game doesn't allow the player to read minds, I'm sure Robert was thinking something like this: "Thanks Edward for bringing me merchandise that is worth much more than this entire ship. Now not only will I be so rich that I can retire, but I will be famous all over the world for having captured a mermaid.Rest in hell, you imbecile". At least Edward was honest in his dishonesty, and exercised it through his actions. And with that, the rest is history (or tragedy would be more fitting) of what we have seen, with almost all the crew being killed by the sea soldiers or the Kraken. And Robert knew that it was all his fault, so much so that he killed the mermaids by demanding that they send the Kraken away; he let Emily, Henry, Jane and Davey take the last boat, telling Leonid to "let them go," even though this was considered mutiny, because he knew that the trust in him to run the ship had been broken. Looking at the big picture, I really have to agree with Olus (even though I disagree with the motive and methods): "Enough! Captain cannot be trusted.", because the captain traded the safety of the voyage for possible financial gain, and now, besides not having the money, practically everyone is dead, including his beloved, or abandoning ship. That is why at the end, he apologizes to Abigail for all that has occurred, with his voice now weak and melancholy, far from the strong voice of the beginning of the game, now with the blood of his own crew on his hands, with the blood of his friend on the deck floor with the gun he himself fired. Ultimately, Return of the Obra Dinn is a record of what an idiot captain who abandons his duties for sheer greed.

an amusing detail i found during my playthrough is that for wolffs death, the game accepts "shot by cannon by a beast". made me chuckle

INCREDIBLE VIDEO. THANKS.

I just finished the game for the first time a few days ago and holy shit the level of dopamine I got from it was insane. It felt so good. You really had to use alot of deductive reasoning to figure out who everyone was but the neat thing was that alot of scenes, while not based on them, referenced the kind of jobs they had which saved me alot of time.

Another minor clue confirming the identity for the first mate, he is seen in the periphery of one memory exiting the first mate's cabin

I think you forgot to mention being shot from a cannon by the beast as a possible death cause for Christian Wolff, even though You listed it as George's Shirley's death. I think it's the most hardcore death cause in the whole game. I imagine someone reading it later and going "So those two were shot from a cannon by a fucking kraken!?" Also, being Polish I need to say a few words about Olus Wiater. When I played the game for the first time his accent didn't help at all. Partly because it was muffled as being heard from another room, and partly, because his accent is not really audible. And I think that this is because the actor they cast for his role is a prominent Polish actor, and his english is really good, even compared to other Polish actors. Funny thing is, at first I didn't even recognize his voice, and I was shocked seeing his name in the credits! And at first I thought it might have been just a coincidence. Only after replaying the game and listening very hard I noticed a hint of polish accent and realized it really did sound like him.

I loved reading the text you had on screen

That was a pretty good video, a bit on the long run, but you did go into a fair bit of detail for pretty much everyone, and mentioned stuff I probably wouldn't have even considered (the smoking pipe for one)

Me at the beginning of this video: I am pretty sure you row with two hands and try to do it simultaneously Me at the end: As you see, this man holds his hand in the pocket and is half turned to the Ship's captain and wears a triangular hat witch means his family name must be Stevens and by the way he shaves his mustaches I must say he probably prefers blonde's even though he does have a wife.

Actually you can attribute one of the cannon fire deaths to the doom (being vague for spoilers).

"Lascar houses" were specifically places where British companies could get cheap foreign labor. Even in their time they were criticised as very exploitative. No wonder Syed got sick.

I just completed this game again for the 2nd time. The last time I played it was 2 years ago so long enough that it was pretty fresh for me and I couldn't remember any of the names or fates. The 2nd playthrough just confirmed for me that the game's a masterpiece. Its a shame none of my friends would play it as they are put off by the graphics, but I'd take this over any of the CoD shite they play any day.

Excellent video, and as a little trivia, for a ship of its size, the Obra Dinn is actually very undermanned.

I just wrote that the captain ate everyone. Do I win?

Damn the hammock thing is way bigger than I thought. I found out about the hammock numbers throughout the game and actively used them but I didn’t catch that they were taken down after people died

I figured out Charles because in one scene (I can’t remember which one - one of the monster attacks on the lower decks) the Gunner throws a gun to him and the Bosun is running ahead - so I figured they must be a pair. I love how many subtle hints there are!

They're identified by name in the dialogue, but John Naples and Paul Moss do definitively sound Welsh like they're meant to be.

Addition: I believe you could explain Wolff's death as "shot with cannon by a _beast_

For Leonid, during the action on the gun deck in the Doom you can also see that his Hammock is still up and he is actually moving the cannon under the hammock

I watched a blind play through by a German RU-vidr many months ago. He found out all the fates correctly, but I still love to watch this explanation video, because he sometimes missed clues that I saw and now I am curious about what else he missed. Furthermore the accents are not very helpful, because in the German version they did not choose speakers with fitting accents, so you couldn't even base guesses on that.

What impressed me the most, was how close each character and their mate / stewards are

I actually found Hamadou Diom’s identity right away during his death scene because as I was looking through the manifest on him I saw that someone was from Sierra Leona was on the ship. It made me think of the song “Woman” by Little Simz where she mentions multiple African countries and the line “Miss Sierra Leona looking like a gem” got stuck in my head, so I clicked on Hammadou’s name and since I had two other fates correct it got typed into the book right away. Quite the lucky break for me

Can't just poor Edward take a poop in peace? Great video.

It took me longer than I’m willing to admit to realize the people playing poker in Chapter 2 were the Russians

Oh how interesting. You didn’t mention it, but for Wolff on my first play through I put his death down as shot with a cannon by a beast. Because I interpreted the situation as the kraken disturbed the cannon, and held it and him together. And kaboom. And it worked! Game has more options than even speed runners know about, it seems.

Neat video! I used some different information to unravel 8. Henry Evans, 21.Emily Jackson and 22. Jane Bird, so I thought I would mention it here, since it isn't mentioned in the video. All three ending letters mention Dr. Evans by name and are signed Jane Bird. In letter number 2 she writes that they are content with their situation in Morocco. This was how I deduced their location.

One other small thing for John Naples is you can hear he has a strong Welsh accent in the two or three lines he has in the cook's death scene

The quicksilver line (mercury, poisonous via inhalation or touch) from Filip Dahl is why I chose poisoned as his manner of death rather than burned for the other victims of the mystical box. I was delighted when it was accepted. Electrocuted is a fun interpretation though. I will say that both Li Hong and Wei Lee have white socks and black shoes with black soles, but similar to the deduction for Lewis Walker, Wei Lee is solvable first and Li Hong is left by process of elimination. I would love to play a sequel (or more accurately a prequel) - we know that the Chief Inspector has at least one other casebook on the shelf when she puts it away.

Nice video. I never knew that about the chinese topmen, I had to guess for them. With regard to 24: I believe there was a death scene involving him opening up the chest and lightning going out in all directions and hitting the merfolk. That's where electrocution comes from IMO.

5:00 "on NUMBERS of occasions" ;)

Just wanted to say how valuable I'm finding this video! (And don't be so hard on yourself in the comments!) I solved the game on my own, but going back to review all the clues I missed has been very illuminating. I totally missed many of them and was just guessing in a couple of places! Okay, but I've gotta ask -- how does one speed run Obra Dinn? Because shouldn't it be trivial to speed run once you know all the fates?

Very nice! 👍👍👍

Lewis Walkers hammock is also right above the gun he was manning on the deaths of Akbar and Wolff

The way i identified A. Akbar, Renfred Rajib, and William Wassim was by alphabetical order in relation to their positioning in the sketch. From left to right it's A. Akbar, Renfred Rajib, William Wassim. I also asssumed the top row of people in the upper sketch were all topmen, and was able to deduce Omid Gul's identity due to the fact that he was the only person in that row who resembled a Persian person.

Great video! The only clue I missed was that Lewis Walker's hammock is still up in present-day (though I got his identity by eliminating other topmen). A small note on figuring Alexander Booth's identity from Doom 2: you used his remaining hammock to distinguish him from Hamadou (which requires that he's one of the last guesses), but there's another similar way. Iirc, in the same scene the only hammocks that are up but empty belong to A. Booth, N. Peters and L. Linde - which happen to be the 3 non-special-role guys that are up and trying to escape in the previous scene. So if you figured out Nathan and Lars, you can get Alexander by elimination.

I found this video by trying to look up who shot Hok seng Lau, I was way off. I had also tried to piece together who Brennan was from just a dude in a cabin shouting for him to bring the surgeon's kit and expected to see someone running to the surgeon's place in that memory while the gentlemen near the stairs were having a row. - turning to where someone shouted while holding his club, cupping his ear. Me: "yeah... like Jason or Michael Meyers hearing their next victim" That's the moment I knew I was just gonna cheat. But thank you very much for leading us through the thought process it's much more satisfying (and frustrating sometimes) it was fun seeing how I reached some right conclusions by the wrong means.

I'm already disagreeing with you in the very first entry. The captain calls Abigail by name and refers to her as "my love". There's only one Abigail in the manifesto and she shares a surname with the captain, which is pretty conclusive to me. You should already have him identified by the time you get to this vignette though, from the very first one.

the way i figured john davies is a little bit different from you i identified the captain and the 3 mate by their name and i noticed on ship only captain and mates wear bicorn hat so the last one must be john davies, fourth mate but your solution is very amazing too, since i used to think the map is pretty useless in the game

There's another scene that determines that James Wallace was the sergeant's mate. In the artist's memory (I believe) where you see two seamen carrying a patient downstairs while Henry watches with a monkey on his shoulder, in the sergeant's room you can see Wallace preparing the bed.