Identifying Chinese topmen

[Bees?]

I finished the game, but I feel like the way I solved the Chinese topmen identifications was a bit brute force. I figured out which four people the Chinese topmen were, and how they died, but I couldn't figure out what the "right" way to distinguish them was, and I ended up just shuffling names around until they stuck.

What clues did I miss that would let me pinpoint exactly who the individual Chinese topman were?

[Infrabase]

I had a completely different method to tell the women apart from each other haha, in the scene where they get on the lifeboat, one of them says "Paul look out !" before Paul Moss is killed. Assuming that to call someone by his name you have to know him well, and that she's a passenger and Paul an officer, there was no other reason I was seeing for her to be that familiar with him unless they had a romance. So it made perfect sense to me why she shot the Russian afterwards : she was angry because her boyfriend had been killed. So the other lady who didn't say a word had to be the "Miss" one.

[glitterbear]

Wisnoskij eredeti hozzászólása:

This is just extremely disappointing. I would of been happier if the correct solution was just brute forcing it after you have the answer down to 2-4 possibilities. The solution being use an outside program (screenshot, alt tab, hope the user had two screens) so that you can tell 4 pairs of 10x10 pixel shoes apart in a scene 4 hours in the future is horrible. Not so much that it it too hard, I think that is a fair challenge, but that the solution is outside the game. The game was not meta until this challenge, it make no sense for it to suddenly become meta.

Screenshots are not at all necessary. I used a pen and paper, same as the actual investigator would use. (And this is certainly not the only thing I needed to take notes on.)

The shoes/socks and pants have clear differences. I easily described them with phrases like "shorter pants with stripey socks showing", "low-cut shoes with bright white socks", etc. Again, that's something the character we play as might do.

One of my favorite things about Obra Dinn is that you never need to guess.

[Ancalagon]

@Infrabase - I used similar logic to SUPER ANALYZE that scene and pin down their identities. But I ended up wrongly mixing up their identities. -_- Only realized at the end of the game when I noticed they hadn't been identified, AND after I had heard about the ring thing around here.

[robopecha]

i loved the detective parts! i totally got the different shoes thing . it made so much sense then how the formosa royalty picture was placed over the drawing! unfortunately i missed out on the wedding ring , but i was sure something like that would be there. did someone see the russian guy's pipe anywhere thats hanging from his bag? i gave up looking for it, but i was totally expecting him smoking the pipe in some scene .

[Silverust]

robopecha eredeti hozzászólása:

i loved the detective parts! i totally got the different shoes thing . it made so much sense then how the formosa royalty picture was placed over the drawing! unfortunately i missed out on the wedding ring , but i was sure something like that would be there. did someone see the russian guy's pipe anywhere thats hanging from his bag? i gave up looking for it, but i was totally expecting him smoking the pipe in some scene .

The pipe does show up! That's actually one of the tips I used to determine which russian guy was which. The pipe can be seen in the bit where the chest is taken out to sea. One of the men killed has the pipe, I can't remember if it falls out of his mouth or his bag. The pipe links the cot number of the Russian who owns it with the scene in which he dies. His name doesn't get said in that scene, I think, so you can use it to determine his identity . Anyways, it's these kinds of things that make me love this game so much.

[Pckables]

robopecha eredeti hozzászólása:

i loved the detective parts! i totally got the different shoes thing . it made so much sense then how the formosa royalty picture was placed over the drawing! unfortunately i missed out on the wedding ring , but i was sure something like that would be there. did someone see the russian guy's pipe anywhere thats hanging from his bag? i gave up looking for it, but i was totally expecting him smoking the pipe in some scene .

It's noticable in two significant places:
1. In the scene where they kidnap the Formosans, the russian can be seen holding his bag in the starboard rowboat.
2. The bag can be seen lying next to the russian in all of The Calling, as well as the pipe being in his mouth, falling out when he gets grabbed.

[Reinbert]

Infrabase eredeti hozzászólása:

I had a completely different method to tell the women apart from each other haha, in the scene where they get on the lifeboat, one of them says "Paul look out !" before Paul Moss is killed. Assuming that to call someone by his name you have to know him well, and that she's a passenger and Paul an officer, there was no other reason I was seeing for her to be that familiar with him unless they had a romance. So it made perfect sense to me why she shot the Russian afterwards : she was angry because her boyfriend had been killed. So the other lady who didn't say a word had to be the "Miss" one.

"Miss" would usually refer to a young woman, so I picked the younger looking one.

[CharlesDarles]

Bees? eredeti hozzászólása:

For the two Englishwomen, the way I distinguished them was to assign the younger looking one (who is positioned hiding behind the older one in their scenes) the name that started with "Miss"

I figured this out via the letter you recieve if you leave the boat as it is sent by Jane Bird, who was presumably close to the doctor. The woman who fires the rifle on the boat is obviously not Jane as she calls out the name of the man who is stabbed beside the boat

[Florien]

For Lewis Walker (english topman, number forty four), even the game doesn't tell you this, but you can technically solve him as soon as you've figured out Brennan by elimination, because his hammock is the only one left hanging due to him being one of the last to die.

[ErikH]

I solved the game but I was never able to identify any crew member by observing the sleeping crew. I totally knew that there is at least one hint (tattoo on arm) but could never map it to a person. I assumed the sleeping crew owns more than one set of cloths, so didn't bother any further about it...

[Nomis]

I'm not sure whether this is the best way to solve this problem, but I approached it as follows.

1. There are 4 Chinese topman in the game, one of them is kinda different. In Chinese characters, Li is basically the same as Lee, however, in some regions such as Hong Kong and Taiwan (i.e., Formosa in Obra dinn), the surname Lee is used (instead of Li). So I guessed that probably Wei Lee knows Formosa language and that's why he is standing close to the Formosa gang when captain is executing Lau.
2. From the sticking out feet in Bitter Cold Part I and the hammock number, we can get the identities of others.
3. Deduce the rest of the identities using rule of eliminations and the above two heuristics...

[Jackmerius Tacktheratrix]

Pckables eredeti hozzászólása:

Silverust eredeti hozzászólása:

That's really funny



I also managed to get one by incredible elimination. If you look at Bitter Cold Part 1, and list all of the people in the scene beside all the hammocks+people visible, you'll notice that there are four hammocks "In Scene" that count with tags you can't read. By elimination, I was able to piece together who those four hammocks belonged to, and that #44 was the last hammock number I didn't know (All the hammocks in the room go from 37 to 59 consecutively. If 44 wasn't there, that'd be too much of a coincidence). Then 44 was the last English topman for me, so that made it easy.

Anyways, I'm sure that's not how you were supposed to do it, but I'm just so happy that this is the kind of game where I could make that deduction and it was still valid.

I had the exact same process, but used it to find #48 (Nathan Peters).

44 Can be found by process of elimination of other topmen seen in the rigging at the start of Chapter V. The scottish topman can be found by his tattoo in his hammock, and Nicholas had his name called out in Chapter V. The rest of the topmen are asian, so he's the only one left (provided you don't confuse Maba for an englishman.)

I know this is a bit tangential, but since you brought him up, the key to solving Nathan Peters is The first chapter of Doom (I think) involves the Dane being killed by a man for "killing his brother". On the manifest, there are only two men with the same last name. When you finally get through Loose Cargo, you find the man killed was a stowaway. A stowaway would always be the last entry on a ship's log, therefore he must be Sam Peters, making the other, Nathan.

[BlueFenixR]

Lim-Dul eredeti hozzászólása:

A lot of people are sleeping in their hammocks in this scene, including the Chinese topmen and Indian seamen. The numbers on the hammocks correspond directly to their crew log entries. You cannot see the faces of the Chinese topmen but... THEIR LEGS STICKING OUT! They are very distinctive and should get you there. I made screenshots showing the the number and corresponding leg and went e.g. to the scene in the rigging (electrocution), where you can see a few legs. And so on.

This is also how you identify e.g. Timothy Butement since he has his arm with a tattoo sticking out.

Damn i was kinda noticing the tags in the hammocks and thinking "Ummm this actually have some information i'm wondering if its relevant or not", identifiying the Topmen and Seamen its one of the hardest deductions in this game lol

[Ancalagon]

I figured out the hammocks based on one of the hints in the game's tutorials. It says that the exact numbers in the log are significant or something along those lines. When I saw the numbers on the hammocks, it was INSTANTLY the first thing I thought based on that tutorial message.

[BlueFenixR]

I saw the numbers in the hammocks but i dismissed them because i though "If even the passengers are here in this list, why would the crew have these numbers on their hammocks? would it not change were they not here?" Sadly i missed the part that said the exact numbers where important and i didn't pick it up again until i saw the tip on the legs.

Also

What's that about the stowaway in the Ship list? It clearly says its a unidentified person that i think nobody even knew it was there since his body was still inside the barrel i think

But yes i agree that the game uses some clever hints to make you never have to guess who is who, just need to have a great eye for details, i'm ashamed that i had solved a few out of luck (2 mid-officers, 2 of the russians and 2 of the chinese topmen)