Do you ever wonder about what happens when you're gone? And I don't even mean like, in the death way, but more just when you leave an area. Say, moving out of your home town (or death, if you want that existential dread). Has the thought even ever occurred to you?

The fact that things move on, they keep going, people grow and change and continue on, you are missed or loved or hated or whatever, the trees grow and flower and fall and die, the mountains erode and form once again, the sun sets and rises until one day, it doesn't. Of course, at that point we'll be long gone and the universe will be on it's way out.

But what happens after that?

It's a daunting thought, sure, and one that I know for a fact most of us are not equipped mentally to really think about. This idea of a legacy, what we leave behind or rather what is left behind after everything is gone. And that's what this game is all about.

As a Hearthian exploring the solar system you have called home, you come to the end of everything: your own sun going supernova, killing and destroying everything that you know.
And then you wake up.
And you learn, and explore, and find the legacy that the Nomai left behind, their secrets that you and your peers knew nothing about, even going as far as finding an echo of the Nomai and learning things straight from the mouth of these people who have enabled so much of your progress. You use everything that they made, they learned, and they did to get to the one thing they never could or would be able to get to: the Eye of the Universe. Along the way, you learn that not only are supernovae happening at an alarming rate, that your own sun is about to die, but that the entire universe is dying.

But instead of fading out into nothing, is where the meat of Outer Wilds is. You're given an option to use everything you've learned to create something new: get the band together, in a quite literal sense. The only thing is that you'll never see what happens and what comes as a result.

I've seen this game referred to as a horror game, a nightmare, a tragedy. It's about accepting your death, it's about the legacy you leave behind, it's about coming to terms with the things you can and can't change. I'm here to say it is really all of these things at the end of the day, but it's something more than all of that. It's really just, hope.

Hope that this isn't all that's left for us.
Hope that what we do will persevere long after we're gone.
Hope that, despite everything, we will be regarded not as icons or gods, but as simple people. That who we are will never fade.
Hope that those who come after us can forgive us, even if we don't think we need forgiving now.
Hope that the good that we know and love now, will continue on.

Moving on from where we are now is incredibly fearful and scary, and that's alright.
What we do now will be remembered and taken and built upon until we are surpassed, in the biggest and smallest ways. And that's alright.

That should be our goal. Our goal of peace, love, and hope spread down and down, further and further away from the source until it becomes one with everything - another facet of life that continues on, like a campfire to roast marshmallows by. A warm, comforting image that encapsulates that idea in the end credits.
Our names will not be remembered; we'll be lucky if they're even notable enough to mark it in any history. But our actions will be remembered. They will be explored, taken, misconstrued, built on, and made better.

And isn't that just a wonderful thought?

We can rest easy once we're done. Our actions will persist, the memory of us will persist, even when our buildings crumble and our words lose their meaning. Because there is the hope that they will. And it's, really wonderful.

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This game just... it's practically perfect. Echoes of the Eye will come later, but this is a perfect game. I have nothing else to say.