Man of Medan Trivia Quiz

Answer: Neither

The story of the 'Man of Medan' starts with two U.S. soldiers, post-WWII, visiting a Chinese market somewhere along the edge of the South China Sea. Both men, drunk, receive their fortunes from a fortune teller before returning to their ship and getting into an altercation that puts both of them into confinement.

In the meantime, a series of mysterious boxes are dropped into the cargo hold of the ship, and when lightning strikes them in a storm at sea, something begins to leak from inside.

Joe manages to awaken in the sick bay and, after finding a corpse, he finds Charlie locked away in his room. The pair, hearing gunfire and finding bodies throughout the corridors, search for answers. All they manage to find is a trail of death and, in Joe's case, hallucinations. It all comes to a head when Joe, pursuing a young boy through the ship, dies of his curiosity. Charlie suffers a similar fate soon after. No matter the choices you make in the prologue, the pair are fated to die via some means or another.

The ship and the crew, presumably, are never seen again.

Answer: The Duke of Milan

In the present day, Brad and Alex, brothers, load up the Duke of Milan, their diving boat, with supplies (mostly beer). Preparing to set off from the dock, they'll chat before Julia (Alex's girlfriend), Conrad (her brother), and Fliss, the captain of the boat, arrive, rounding out the quintet as they psych themselves up for a day of scuba diving.

Out at sea, Fliss admits that she doesn't know of the wreck they speak of, but nonetheless, Alex is optimistic they'll find what they're looking for; Brad's never wrong. She also suggests calling it in, but more likely than not, the others will ignore the protocol in favour of a quick dive. Soon, they'll be prepared and Alex and Julia will take their first dive.

Answer: A downed WWII plane

While waiting for Alex and Julia, Brad nurses hangover and Fliss and Conrad watch on. During this waiting period, however, things get interesting as a speedboat approaches and the collides with the dive line. The drivers of the speedboat appear to be quite angry with the damage to their own craft, but they eventually leave.

Underwater, at the sunken plane wreck, Julia and Alex head in through the rear and explore...at least until something jostles the dive line. As they ascend to the surface, a couple things may happen. Firstly, if he feels emboldened enough to do it, Alex will propose to Julia and she can choose to accept or refuse. Secondly, an explosion on the deck of the Duke of Milan will prompt the pair to rush upward. If they go too fast, they risk getting The Bends. It won't be worth it though; the reason for the blast will be Conrad, attempting to get the grill working.

Answer: Brad

After reuniting over beers and telling ghost stories on the boat, the pleasure cruisers go through what was recovered from the wreck to find that they have a set of coordinates labeled for 'Manchurian Gold', something they all agree might be worth investigating since it's only a couple of hours away from their location. While Fliss tells the others off for removing anything from the wreck, her mood can be assuaged before they all head in for the night.

As a storm comes in that evening, none of the passengers realize that the ship has been boarded by the three men who had, earlier, collided with their dive line. The men will take them hostage, leading to some pivotal moments where they group can either try to fight or escape the Duke of Milan, but eventually, the fishermen will also find the information about Manchurian Gold, insisting that they all head onward.

The storm will intensify outside, and that's when coincidence will strike. The Duke of Milan, battered by the rain and waves, will run into a massive WWII freighter drifting in the South Pacific, and that's when things will get just a bit more complicated for everyone.

At this point in the story, several possible outcomes can happen for different characters. Not only could Julia be shot by the pirates, but Conrad could escape (or be killed) on their boat. Brad, meanwhile, could avoid being found entirely, remaining hidden under his bunk bed.

Answer: The distributor cap

When the pirates drive the ship over to the ends of the abandoned freighter they climb aboard and bring the others with them, collecting the distributor cap from the Duke of Milan to prevent any form of escape.

With that, the group will head in through the cargo holds, littered with WWII army bric-a-brac, and the men will place them into a secure, dark room until they think of their next course of action. Restlessly, the group will realize that they need to do two things, first of which is escape the room, and second of which is to locate the distributor cap, otherwise it's all for nothing. While some distract the men by barricading the door, Alex will destroy a vent on the wall, letting them through to an adjacent corridor. Whether or not everyone escapes the room comes down to choice, but in the meantime, it's a start.

Answer: Solarium

Regardless of how many of the group manage to escape into the bowels of the SS Ourang Medan, the experiences they have there will start to get more and more terrifying the deeper they go. Getting out of the locked room will start a series of events that will have each person seeing certain spectres, doppelgangers, and mysterious things. At least some of the group will navigate through the upper floors of the ship's interior, coming across a makeshift chapel and the spooky caskets within.

Alex and possibly Julia and Conrad will find themselves pursued by Olson who, wielding a sledgehammer, will take up chase, being pursued for quite a while before reuniting with anyone still left alive on the weather deck.

Answer: Dave

While some characters navigate the ship looking for an exit (and any captured companions), others will, by this point, be in the clutches of the pirates (Fliss, for sure, but also possibly Brad). Fliss in particular will be forced through the corridors of the ship by Danny, holding her at gunpoint. Danny will get more and more agitated and Fliss will, eventually, go it alone, wandering into a corridor where the door will slam shut behind her.

Brad will either be with Fliss when this happens or, if he hid on the Duke of Milan, he'll finally wander in to the ship, encountering his own terrifying things-- mostly WWII soldiers.

Fliss will start to hallucinate, encountering what she thinks is Brad, but will turn out to be ghosts. She'll come across a ballroom, but when she steps outside it'll actually be another cargo hold, clearly indicating that something is wrong with everything she's perceiving. She'll reunite with Brad (actually Brad, and not a ghoul), but depending on the state they're both in they'll either kill each other or manage to avoid being afflicted with hallucinations.

If they survive the ship's corridors, they'll possibly end up reuniting with Conrad, split off from the others if he's made it this far, and if he hasn't been killed by a ghostly woman in a sailor suit.

Answer: A chemical weapon

Everyone who manages to survive to the weather deck will take stock, explaining what they've encountered, and Fliss would be the one to reveal to the others that Manchurian Gold is a chemical stowed on the ship; it's actually a biochemical weapon leaking into Cargo Hold 2.

The group will make their way across the bridge deck to radio room and try to contact the military to save them, and some of their hapless choices to this point might lead to very different final outcomes. If, in their communications, they happen to have deduced the name of the ship (SS Ourang Medan), then the military will be on guard, otherwise they'll get their message out and help might be on the way.

They won't have complete confirmation though, since the power from the generator will be cut. At least one, but maybe two people will have to head into a hold into the engine room to restart it. There will be Manchurian Gold affecting what they think and see, naturally, but none of the really crazy stuff is real, even if it seems that way.

Answer: False

After the generator is restarted, whoever descended into the ship to fix it will come across Olson, interrogating Danny for the gold whether he happens to be conscious or not. What follows, regardless of how quiet the characters are, is a pursuit, and while they'll likely run and escape Olson, they'll head into Junior's clutches, arriving in a safer cargo hold to have a gun pointed at them. They'll have to choose their words carefully. Everyone in the room may survive or die depending.

What happens next is reliant on who went into the engine room. If Alex remained in the radio room, then he'll end up descending into the ship to pursue the gunshots he hears in that moment, leading to a chase after Olson for the Distributor Cap, ending with his heart attack in the kitchen and a series of hallucinations that will decide his fate.

If Alex went down into the ship earlier, then someone else will encounter Olson, leading to a tense sequence in which the cargo hold is flooded with water and in which the Distributor Cap needs to be collected nonetheless. This time, Olson will likely die either by being crushed in half or, similarly, from a heart attack caused by his fear.

In any case, either the Distributor Cap will survive intact or be destroyed, or your selected protagonists will survive or die. Your choices will boil down to something, but there are plenty of options.

As for the pirates, it's possible for Danny to be alive in the game's epilogue, though he'll be left behind under the effects of the Manchurian Gold and be a threat to anyone who comes along his path. Junior can survive as well if whoever encounters him last can prevent him from succumbing to the Manchurian Gold and committing suicide in the cargo hold. It is not possible for Olson to survive the story. If the playable characters don't put an end to him, he'll die elsewhere in the ship.

Answer: Yes

Choices do matter in "The Dark Pictures Anthology". Whether you collected the Duke of Milan's Distributor Cap or it was destroyed, whether you contacted the military on the radio with clear or incomplete instructions or not, whether some of your group died on the SS Ourang Medan or not, the story will come to an end.

There are a number of variations to the conclusion and this will vary depending on the number of survivors (and who), whether or not you can head out on the Duke of Milan, etc. In fact, if you happened to do everything right, keeping everyone alive, and telling the army that you're on the SS Ourang Medan specifically, everyone can still die-- the military knows the sensitive secrets of Manchurian Gold-- since the group will be shot from afar to keep the problem from spreading.

If they manage to get the Distributor Cap from Olson, tell some info (but not all) to the military, and avoid getting shot, sledgehammered, spooked hard enough by ghosts, or afflicted with the Bends, they'll get on Fliss' boat and ride off into the horizon where they'll manage to make it of their own accord or they'll get picked up and put into jail by the military.

Having some of the group perish in the story doesn't imply a loss; how you let the story unfold is up to you. That said, there's something to be said for getting everyone through.