Going Platinum: Return of the Obra Dinn on PS4, One of the Best Games with One of the Worst Trophies

Platinum Trophy #17: Return of the Obra Dinn

Date Earned: 2nd November 2019

Dopamine Index:

I realise this entire series of features is all about the platinum Trophies I've collected over the years, but I must stress — and I've said this before — they are largely pointless.

I bring this up because I'm about to complain about one solitary Trophy, which feels like quite a silly thing to moan about when the game is one I truly believe to be a modern masterpiece.

Funnily enough, I've actually written about the topic once before, so compelled was I to highlight the tiniest personal gripe I had with, well, not the game, but its Trophy list.

Here's the thing: Return of the Obra Dinn is excellent. It's so, so good. I really think there's very little that could be done to improve it, save for some accessibility features that have become more commonplace in the years since its release.

If you've yet to play it, I would highly encourage you to do so, though it's a bit of a hard sell on paper. You play as an insurance investigator charged with determining what on earth happened aboard the Obra Dinn, a merchant vessel that went missing at sea and has suddenly reappeared.

You explore the ship and use a mysterious pocket watch to rewind time in specific spots in order to work out the identities of everyone onboard and how they met their demise. Once you think you've worked out who someone is and what happened to them, you note it in your journal, and only when you've successfully deduced three fates will the pages fill in.

The idea is that you use the limited information available to you to reach the truth, relying on your observational skills, deductive reasoning, and logic. Perhaps more than any other game of its ilk, Return of the Obra Dinn makes you feel as though you're terribly smart, and it's so satisfying to slowly fill the journal just from your own detective work.

What's more, the great puzzle game at the core of Obra Dinn is also key to telling a compelling, if tragic, tale about the ship and the people on it.

There are short sequences of dialogue and static dioramas depicting characters as they perish, but in learning the fate of the dozens of people aboard, you're also putting together the broader picture. You learn about relationships between characters, why they took certain actions, and what led to such a sorry end.

It's superb.

Now, then, that Trophy.

It's a hidden Trophy, so unless you reveal it, you wouldn't necessarily know what to do to get it. A lot of hidden Trophies might be earned without ever realising they're hidden, or you can infer what to do based on their titles.

Return of the Obra Dinn's Trophy 'Captain Did It' is unfortunately one of those that you would simply never naturally unlock without revealing what it requires.

To get it (and thus the platinum), you need to play through the game, and blame every death on the ship's captain.

It's a pretty funny idea on its own, but to earn the Trophy, you have to view every vignette and discover all 60 people, which is something you can only do over the course of hours.

It essentially requires a playthrough of the game all to itself, only instead of filling the journal properly, you pin everything on the captain, which is obviously not something any player would think to do without a nudge in that direction.

As I said earlier, Trophies are very trivial things and almost never worth getting upset about. I think this one irks me so much because the game itself is so special, and it goes against the grain of how you play so aggressively.

Despite my issue with this one Trophy (and writing a whole feature about it years ago), I did earn it, and I do have this platinum.

It's one I'm very glad to have in my collection. I think I've convinced myself to play this game again.

Cheers, Return of the Obra Dinn.

Do you have the platinum Trophy for Return of the Obra Dinn? Tell us in the comments section below.