History VideoGame / Obduction

** If you can read Russian, the mindboggling black box in Kaptar will not seem quite so threatening: [[spoiler: the text on its back says "to engage in meaningless activity", which is what you will be doing if you try to solve it]].

* DoorToBefore: All over the place, especially in Hunrath. Some of these are necessary to the player, i.e. because they allow one to get to a room in a different way, which allows them to reconfigure the path they used originally and thereby reach somewhere new. In other cases, they just make it easier to get around within the area.

** If you can read Russian, the mindboggling black box in Kaptar will not seem quite so threatening: [[spoiler: the text on its back says "to engade in meaningless activity", which is what you will be doing if you try to solve it]].

* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver: The Mofang have this motif going. It's especially heavy in their homeworld, although that's largely because [[spoiler: it was recently burnt to a crisp]]. Strangely, the Mofang on the human side have orange or yellow skin, but what this means is not explained.

* ShoutOut: The white farmhouse and lantern in the initial area, to ''VideoGame/{{Zork}}''
** The initial scenario, an alien vessel appearing from the sky and whisking the player off to a strange world, is remarkably similar to ''VideoGame/TheDig''.
** There is also a ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'' book in Farley's vault. Instead of opening the front cover, the player opens the back... and most of the pages are cut away to hide video equipment for the linking panel. This is a shoutout to a fan who made a ''Myst'' book replica containing a computer that actually plays all five ''Myst'' games through a touchscreen where the book's panel would be.

* AlliterativeName: The current mayor of Hunrath is named Josef Jansen.

* GenocideDilemma: Happens in the backstory. [[spoiler: The Mofang decide that they'll be better off without any other races to compete with and decide to wipe out the inhabitants of the other spheres. Learning this from a few sympathizers, the other races sabotage their plans and kill off the Mofang. From Farleys' journals, it's clear there are severe misgivings on both sides about this scenario. In the end, Mofang extinction seems certain; there are a few defectors who were saved along with the humans, but not enough to repopulate their race.]]

It was released August 24, 2016 on PC with Oculus Rift compatibility released on October 31, with a Mac version forthcoming. A console port has been announced for 2017.

** This is implied to be [[spoiler:the state of the Mofang homeworld as well, and if Farley's theory about the purpose of the Trees is correct, the other two worlds are on the verge of extinction as well.]]

** Kaptar
** Maray

* AlliterativeName: The current mayor of Hunrath is named Josef Jannson.

* AllUpToYou: Cecil depends on the player to do all the legwork of getting all the spheres connected again, but there are good reasons for this: first, he's lame and can't move well, and [[spoiler: he thinks]] he needs to finish building his giant swapper to take Hunrath back to Earth. And in a slight subversion, if you never connect his battery despite numerous reminders, he'll eventually do it himself.

Like ''VideoGame/{{Myst}}'', the player controls an unnamed protagonist, with the exception that the character can be male or female. You start near a campfire by a lake in a forest, where paranormal streaks of light descend and dance in the sky. One of them slows down to approach you, resembling an acorn shaped stone. It opens up, and teleports you to a mysterious alien world.

* AfterTheEnd: [[spoiler: Earth as seen in the BadEnding.]]
** [[spoiler: This is implied to be the state of the Mofang homeworld as well, and if Farley's theory about the purpose of the Trees is correct, the other two worlds are on the verge of extinction as well.]]

** Mofang is on a sand-blasted dead world; [[spoiler:if you go up to the highest point of the sphere, you can see devastated roads and buildings - it's ''Earth'', and it's a ''big'' [[{{Foreshadowing}} hint]] that you ''don't'' want to go back there]].

* AlternativeCalendar: Because Soria, the planet that Hunrath's sky recreates, has no distinct seasons, the citizens use a system of just counting the number of days since they've been trapped there. For some reason, they chose to mark the election of Karl Hunrath as mayor as their zero point, so the calendar is divided into "BH" and "AH" units. The player arrives sometime in the 17150s AH, somewhere in the range of 50 years later.

* AlternativeCalendar: Because Soria, the planet that Hunrath is marooned on, has no distinct seasons, the citizens use a system of just counting the number of days since they've been trapped there. For some reason, they chose to mark the election of Karl Hunrath as mayor as their zero point, so the calendar is divided into "BH" and "AH" units. The player arrives sometime in the 17150s AH, somewhere in the range of 50 years later.

* TheComicallySerious: Judging from the contents of his office, Mayor Josef is taking the whole 'Mayor of Hunrath' thing far too seriously, with 'Vote for Josef' placards everywhere, and one of the first entries in his log is about how people think he's calling too many meetings.

* TheCameo: A number of Cyan employees can be seen inside Villein cryopods. Some of their voices also appear on Farley's tape recorder.

* CreatorCameo: Cyan CEO and ''Myst'' co-creator Rand Miller appears as one of the people preserved inside the Villein cryopods.

** [[spoiler: If you connect C.W.'s battery before destroying the Bleeder, his plan succeeds, circumventing the intentions of the BenevolentPrecursors and returning the four domes to their original planets, but when Hunrath is returned to Earth it's AfterTheEnd. Furthermore, most of the HumanPopsicle survivors didn't even make it back to Hunrath, leaving their fate unknown.]]

* PortalCut: '''''Everywhere.''''' The swappers exchange perfect spheres of matter, resulting in some very obvious cuts; every structure is on a perfect circle of ground from another place. The house and gas stations are on circles of asphalt, the train station is on a circle of concrete, the kitbashed swappers are on circles of grass or stone, all ''very'' noticeable in the bright red Arizona sand... late in the game you even find [[spoiler:a Mofang who was apparently attacking a swapper mid-swap - only the upper half of its body is inside the swapper]].

* AlienSky: One of the first unusual things you notice about Hunrath. Not only is the sky a strange color, there are floating rocks and three Earth-like planets unnaturally close to the one you're on.

* ApocalypticLog: The reason there are journals laying out in various places is that they were specifically placed their in case no one survived the conflict and someone came along later to wonder what had happened.
* BeautifulVoid: Naturally, although unlike most other Cyan games, there is a human being present in the game world that you can talk to anytime you want. He's just too surly to be of use most of the time.
* BenevolentPrecursors: Josef notes that whoever is responsible for engineering the trees, they made sure that those who get abducted have a renewable source of water in their new home. Farley goes even further, suggesting that every seed grabbed someone shortly before they were about to be wounded or killed. [[spoiler: The game's BadEnding implies she's right, with its glimpses of a ruined, dust-covered Earth. The GoodEnding makes it far clearer with all four of the regions in the game placed on a beautiful green planet without the domes keeping them in.]] However, there's an alternate theory that this generally benevolent process is entirely natural and not caused by a specific intelligence. The truth is not known.

* PoorCommunicationKills: Cecil [[spoiler: assumes the rest of the townfolk were killed, rather than just ask the player character, who has seen that they're all alive in HumanPopsicle form. He also assumes the earth will still be habitable when he returns to it, while the player, provided they got a good look around while on Soria, knows better. This hastens his resolve to complete the plan to swap Hunrath to earth when the trees mature, which proves to be a bad idea.]]

** There also more subtle references. The first thing C.W. says to us is "Who the devil are you?", the exact same thing Atrus says when he first sees the Stranger in ''Myst''. The garage contains bottles of "Moula Cola". MOULA is an acronym for ''Myst Online: Uru Live Again''.