its a humbling feeling to find a game that feels bigger than you
i dont even know where to start describing it. at its core, its a game about not understanding. the gameplay revolves around trying in vain to learn about your surroundings - to piece it all together and find a solution to a problem - only to die not because of a lack of trying, but because we just dont have the time.
the beauty of Outer Wilds lies right there. its galaxy is small, yet feels huge and only gets bigger the more you dig. by all means it should feel like a hopeless venture to continue exploring, but its too engaging not to. there is no end goal, and it makes no promises other than the fact you will die.
and the magic is that we did anyway. even if i didnt know what for, i kept exploring its planets to find its secrets. i felt giddiness meeting every character and hearing their stories. i pat myself on the back after solving puzzles once i asked the guy at the starting campfire how to.
Outer Wilds - despite playing as an alien - is a deeply human game. a journey about facing adversity through sheer willpower despite not having all the answers, and knowing youre not alone in that.
i cant do this game a service with my $5 speak and someone else could do a much better job, and thats ok. because like i said, this game - like its setting - is big. theres so much to talk about, yet its message is so precise. its mysteries are so complex, yet so simple in retrospect. games like these remind me how special this industry is, and what kind of art it can produce. Outer Wilds is a profound experience i likely wont forget for a very long time.
i dont even know where to start describing it. at its core, its a game about not understanding. the gameplay revolves around trying in vain to learn about your surroundings - to piece it all together and find a solution to a problem - only to die not because of a lack of trying, but because we just dont have the time.
the beauty of Outer Wilds lies right there. its galaxy is small, yet feels huge and only gets bigger the more you dig. by all means it should feel like a hopeless venture to continue exploring, but its too engaging not to. there is no end goal, and it makes no promises other than the fact you will die.
and the magic is that we did anyway. even if i didnt know what for, i kept exploring its planets to find its secrets. i felt giddiness meeting every character and hearing their stories. i pat myself on the back after solving puzzles once i asked the guy at the starting campfire how to.
Outer Wilds - despite playing as an alien - is a deeply human game. a journey about facing adversity through sheer willpower despite not having all the answers, and knowing youre not alone in that.
i cant do this game a service with my $5 speak and someone else could do a much better job, and thats ok. because like i said, this game - like its setting - is big. theres so much to talk about, yet its message is so precise. its mysteries are so complex, yet so simple in retrospect. games like these remind me how special this industry is, and what kind of art it can produce. Outer Wilds is a profound experience i likely wont forget for a very long time.
I'm going to pretend I beat this game because I'm fucking scared of those fishes.
Outer Wilds is the only game I can think of where within its first moments, I knew I was in for something very, very special without really understanding why. The title screen is already so inviting, with its gentle acoustic glow fading in over a collage of shimmering stars. The game opens, I wake up on my back, looking up into the sky to see something explode in the distant orbit of a giant, green planet deep in space, and my imagination is immediately captured. I feel an intangible warmth as I speak to my fellow Hearthians and wander our village, a sense of wonder and anticipation as I walk through our peoples' museum, learning about things that I realize I will inevitably have to face or utilize in the adventures ahead. All this before even seeing my ship, let alone blasting off with it into the far reaches of space.
The expectations and tone of Outer Wilds are set up pitch perfectly in this opening. On the whole, the game captures the innate desire we all have to learn more, to reach out for what's next, even if we have no idea what it is we are searching for or why we seek it. It's the only thing Outer Wilds relies on to lead players forward. There are no objectives or goals, no waypoints to show you where to go next; there only those which you create for yourself. What drives us forward is the need to understand the world(s) around us, or at least attempt to understand. Is there a more human desire than that?
Outer Wilds is a masterpiece for its many balances: of warmth and intimacy with the melancholic loneliness of space; a constant sense of wonder with an equally constant fear of the unknown; its charming, colorful art style with its hard, scientific approach; its reverence for the teachings of both classical and quantum physics; its personal, micro-level character stories set against the fate of the universe. The list goes on. And that's without even mentioning the game's emotional linchpin: Andrew Prahlow's incredible score, a healthy mix of folk, ambient and post-rock that is a delicate tight-wire act in and of itself, managing to capture both the vastness of space and the intimate glow of a campfire without compromise.
Whatever feelings Outer Wilds brought out of me in its opening moments were only further heightened and more deeply understood as I began unraveling the mysteries of its clockwork solar system, spiraling faster and faster towards an ending that left me in awe of everything that came before it and soon yearning for other experiences that could fill the black hole that the game's sudden absence left in place of my heart. Outer Wilds is not only a perfect game, but also one of the medium's purest expressions of its most inspiring possibilities. If only I could breathe out a sigh of relief and wake up on Timber Hearth for the first time again.
The expectations and tone of Outer Wilds are set up pitch perfectly in this opening. On the whole, the game captures the innate desire we all have to learn more, to reach out for what's next, even if we have no idea what it is we are searching for or why we seek it. It's the only thing Outer Wilds relies on to lead players forward. There are no objectives or goals, no waypoints to show you where to go next; there only those which you create for yourself. What drives us forward is the need to understand the world(s) around us, or at least attempt to understand. Is there a more human desire than that?
Outer Wilds is a masterpiece for its many balances: of warmth and intimacy with the melancholic loneliness of space; a constant sense of wonder with an equally constant fear of the unknown; its charming, colorful art style with its hard, scientific approach; its reverence for the teachings of both classical and quantum physics; its personal, micro-level character stories set against the fate of the universe. The list goes on. And that's without even mentioning the game's emotional linchpin: Andrew Prahlow's incredible score, a healthy mix of folk, ambient and post-rock that is a delicate tight-wire act in and of itself, managing to capture both the vastness of space and the intimate glow of a campfire without compromise.
Whatever feelings Outer Wilds brought out of me in its opening moments were only further heightened and more deeply understood as I began unraveling the mysteries of its clockwork solar system, spiraling faster and faster towards an ending that left me in awe of everything that came before it and soon yearning for other experiences that could fill the black hole that the game's sudden absence left in place of my heart. Outer Wilds is not only a perfect game, but also one of the medium's purest expressions of its most inspiring possibilities. If only I could breathe out a sigh of relief and wake up on Timber Hearth for the first time again.
Outer Wilds made me less convinced of Games' potential as an art form. Im being provocative on purpose but How many goddamned times is the message of a game that is praised for its artistic merit be, to one degree or another "Memento Mori"? Spiritfarer, What Remains of Edith Finch, Persona 3, Pentiment, now Outer Wilds. I like all of these games to varying degrees but it just makes me hopeless if time and time again thats seemingly the only subject games are praised for tackling. "Your life is limited and you will eventually die" Yeah thanks game, I already knew that, I literally think about it every single goddamned day, to a degree that actively makes me miserable. I know its stupid but I cannot help it and no amount of whimsical space banjos is going to change that!
In fairness my main issues with Outer Wilds are personal. When you make a game such as this its going to be loved by some and utterly alienate others and that is fine. Outer Wilds is a game that requires patience, and I have none. Fuck it, this is already way too personal of a review : I'm 80% sure I have ADHD and am in the process of getting diagnosed. All of my academic pursuits thus far have been failures because I physically cannot pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes at a time and get extremely frustrated when things don't go my way. When I am forced to queue at the Supermarket I grit my teeth and subequently fantasize about bludgeoning the customers in front of me with my shopping so I can cut in line.
So whilst it was a valiant effort on the part of Outer Wilds fans to tell me to never look anything up because this is a game of information, it was never going to happen. I tried, believe me. I figured some things out and especially in the first few hours or so I had a great time just leisurely exploring stuff and reading text and trying to puzzle it all together. Unfortunately Outer Wilds is a game that is 90% failure and 10% victory/discovery. As much as there is no consequence for failure other than time, figuring out how to get to a place and having to redo the loop twice cause the autopilot killed you or a tiny mistake on your part is demoralising. And that is the word I would use to describe Outer Wilds, it demoralised me in almost every aspect.
Now, I did keep playing the game and finished it, which still puts it better than most games and for sure there is SOMETHING here I enjoyed. Once you get used to the slighltly clunky controls and learn to never use the stupid autopilot unless the planet is literally in a straight line from you with only empty space between its pretty fun to fly around and discover stuff. The couple of "Aha" moments I did have were gratifying but sometimes I had figured out what I had to do but hadnt quite figured out exactly what the game meant me to do (the detective game problem). The artstyle is quite good and the music is great.
The high points of Outer Wilds are high, but to me its low points are so low It just left me cold. The amount of times I left a play session after failing to do something and just feeling shitty for the rest of the day, I just dont play games for that man. I would still recommend Outer Wilds. It is better than Outer Worlds, but I would only recommend it to people who have a lot of patience.
SPOILERS
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
On a last note, I can see why people like the ending but I didnt. I was already just wanting the game to be over after the nightmare that was the Dark Bramble which I left for the end, and the dumb item gather quest I found irritating and after all that the ending is just a downer. Yes I know its on purpose blah blah dont struggle against the end etc but it just makes the quest seem kind of pointless to me. I think the Nomai writings about the Eye wherein one of the scholars wonders if the Eye of the universe actually didnt call the Nomai at all, they just ascribed it that significance and in fact the eye may not give any amount of shit about them was supposed to be metaphorical about religion and the indifference of the Universe towards us, as well as mirroring the player's own realization that the timeloop was just a coincidence. You were not on some supernatural quest to stop a supernova, you were coincidentally roped in to a system no longer manned or overseen by anyone. And I get it, but again I just don't like it, it bums me out. Idk, I have no better way to end this unhinged essay so heres a song I like : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzfoSLP_w1I
In fairness my main issues with Outer Wilds are personal. When you make a game such as this its going to be loved by some and utterly alienate others and that is fine. Outer Wilds is a game that requires patience, and I have none. Fuck it, this is already way too personal of a review : I'm 80% sure I have ADHD and am in the process of getting diagnosed. All of my academic pursuits thus far have been failures because I physically cannot pay attention to anything for more than a few minutes at a time and get extremely frustrated when things don't go my way. When I am forced to queue at the Supermarket I grit my teeth and subequently fantasize about bludgeoning the customers in front of me with my shopping so I can cut in line.
So whilst it was a valiant effort on the part of Outer Wilds fans to tell me to never look anything up because this is a game of information, it was never going to happen. I tried, believe me. I figured some things out and especially in the first few hours or so I had a great time just leisurely exploring stuff and reading text and trying to puzzle it all together. Unfortunately Outer Wilds is a game that is 90% failure and 10% victory/discovery. As much as there is no consequence for failure other than time, figuring out how to get to a place and having to redo the loop twice cause the autopilot killed you or a tiny mistake on your part is demoralising. And that is the word I would use to describe Outer Wilds, it demoralised me in almost every aspect.
Now, I did keep playing the game and finished it, which still puts it better than most games and for sure there is SOMETHING here I enjoyed. Once you get used to the slighltly clunky controls and learn to never use the stupid autopilot unless the planet is literally in a straight line from you with only empty space between its pretty fun to fly around and discover stuff. The couple of "Aha" moments I did have were gratifying but sometimes I had figured out what I had to do but hadnt quite figured out exactly what the game meant me to do (the detective game problem). The artstyle is quite good and the music is great.
The high points of Outer Wilds are high, but to me its low points are so low It just left me cold. The amount of times I left a play session after failing to do something and just feeling shitty for the rest of the day, I just dont play games for that man. I would still recommend Outer Wilds. It is better than Outer Worlds, but I would only recommend it to people who have a lot of patience.
SPOILERS
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
On a last note, I can see why people like the ending but I didnt. I was already just wanting the game to be over after the nightmare that was the Dark Bramble which I left for the end, and the dumb item gather quest I found irritating and after all that the ending is just a downer. Yes I know its on purpose blah blah dont struggle against the end etc but it just makes the quest seem kind of pointless to me. I think the Nomai writings about the Eye wherein one of the scholars wonders if the Eye of the universe actually didnt call the Nomai at all, they just ascribed it that significance and in fact the eye may not give any amount of shit about them was supposed to be metaphorical about religion and the indifference of the Universe towards us, as well as mirroring the player's own realization that the timeloop was just a coincidence. You were not on some supernatural quest to stop a supernova, you were coincidentally roped in to a system no longer manned or overseen by anyone. And I get it, but again I just don't like it, it bums me out. Idk, I have no better way to end this unhinged essay so heres a song I like : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzfoSLP_w1I
This is the one game that I would give to someone to explain the value of this medium.
It's story theme is perfect, made even more beautiful by the fact that this game, in it's truly unique nature, is impossible to experience again for a second time. This is it. The universe is, and we are. Be sure to enjoy this moment.
It's story theme is perfect, made even more beautiful by the fact that this game, in it's truly unique nature, is impossible to experience again for a second time. This is it. The universe is, and we are. Be sure to enjoy this moment.
Some games are recommended because they’re perfectly polished, others are recommended because they iterate on the systems people already like, but Outer Wilds doesn’t meet either criteria. There are times I got frustrated, times I tried correct solutions that didn’t work, and times I was pretty bored, but I still recommend it. The reason why is because of a third criteria that’s hard to find in large-scale exploration games: total originality. I value the experience of discovering Outer Wilds’ uniqueness more than I value the comprehensiveness of my recommendation, so to keep it short and spoiler-free, it’s a first-person spacefaring adventure about uncovering the cause of a natural disaster. You’re not given any direction on how to accomplish this, you just hop in your spaceship and head out to whatever planet looks best to you. There’s no hand-holding or patronizing tutorials, you’re expected to go and explore just for the joy of uncovering a mystery. All the triumphs, the beautiful moments, they’re all earned by your diligence, and success isn’t just handed to you. While being left to your own devices can make the times you’re stuck feel a little agonizing, the payoff at the end is easily worth it. If that sounds even remotely interesting, please give it a try. If there’s any game that deserves a chance to surprise you, it’s this one.
"The pain of your absence is sharp and haunting, and I would give anything not to know it; anything but never knowing you at all (which would be worse)."
sexy mutyumu recommended this to me as part of this list thanks dude
possibly the greatest metaphor of life every time you get closer to the end of the world the game makes you embrace your death and still makes you willing to live those last seconds to the fullest
sometime ago i started outer wilds and dipped almost instantly when i got into the solar system gameplay because whatever i felt so overwhelmed that my most authentic reaction was to close the game and never touch it again
i booted it again some days ago and ended up addicted to it to the point that i would play it for hours and hours straight until i uncovered all the secrets of this stupid fucking solar system i cannot tell you how much cocaine they put in this game to get me THIS hooked honestly
outer wilds base premise is as simple as absolutely effective and wondrous . youre a space explorer from a little village in a small world you get to know its fellow inhabitants and begin to learn the characteristics of the world around you and whats incredible is the fact that all this actually acts as a tutorial for what youre gonna do for the rest of the game playing hide and seek with the kids helps you understand how to use the frequency sensor you can use a little space ship model that acts the same as your space ship you can go to the cave to help repair some parts of an inner equipment stuff that makes you accustomed to both zero gravity movement and your jetpack and how to repair your ship you can begin to use the multipurpose probe and translate some forgotten language stones and use the inside of the museum to get to know some particular stuff that you wont know until later how actually useful it is and this is only the BEGINNING of the incredible variety of stuff you get to do in this fucking game
the synopsis is this you go to the museum and the historian there introduces you to a lost civilization that disappeared some time before for some unknown reasons and also some other explorers of the space company who went missing for some other reasons and while you ask some other stuff you go get the codes to begin your trip in the outer space and when you do that a nomai statue at the entrance of the museum opens its eyes stares at you and you get back to when you wake up like it was all a dream
after this weird shit you get to finally begin this endless travel in your galaxy to discover the secrets of the nomai and where they have gone
now i will talk about some in depth not super spoiler heavy stuff and then some heavy story stuff so if you want to go completely blind stop now since i only talked about the beginning
MILD SPOILER AHEAD
as soon as you go travel and do your stuff you get to know your surroundings theres some different planets with different qualities and quirks and while you travel you understand something very grim as soon as you reach 22 minutes the sun goes supernova and will explode and gorge on every single molecule of the solar system causing your death and making you realize that youre in a neverending loop due to something out of your control you will always begin your travel again at the campfire and from there begin your exploration anew
understanding how the planets work is something so thrilling in this game i cannot even begin to tell you every single one is an incredible discovery i dont know the names in english so i will talk about them in italian sorry yall
cuore legnoso is the first planet you get to visit because its also the home of the teporiani and you will also begin to understand that this is also the only planet with some good atmospheric conditions for life to thrive and although its fairly resembling earth its actually full of geysers all around that conceal some incredible secrets too whats also cool is that some of these planets also got some satellites like cuore legnoso got sfrido where you can fine one of the stranded explorers and thats freaking fun i love these 2 planets
gemello cenere and gemello brace really push forward the concept that youll get to understand throughout the game some planets change aspect and theres some limited time events in these 22 minutes and no other planet has more drastic transformations than these 2 they basically become completely different due to the fact that most of the sand from one planet gets to the other one and whatever and yeah these two are basically interconnected and one is more of a cavern mass and the other is ruins below sands kind of vibe also love them
vuoto fragile is also kind of weird because its entirely hollow apart from the surface the center hosts a black hole that will eat whatever gets close to it and the near satellite will get some vulcano debris on it and slowly the surface of the planet will fall in the black hole in whatever other part of the galaxy also interesting
profondo gigantesco is full of tornados and islands getting thrown left to right and has a distinct thick atmosphere and has a electromagnetic core that also has some weird consequences to the entire planet
rovo oscuro is the most hostile of them all some intergalactic plant took control of a planets life and crushed it and now sits on the center of it if you enter youre gonna be welcomed by foggy environments spaces that have no sense and contrast the basic rules of space and time and some huge monstrous anglerfish floating around and giving you the worst panic attack on existence i kid you not
l’intruso floats around the galaxy and as the name implies its not really part of the solar system you can see that its orbit is actually off centered and is completely entirely frosted
believe me or not you will get to know the entirety of all these planets how their different gravities work and at some point youll begin to move so fast because youre going to travel to these places so many fucking times its gonna be implanted in your brain trust me
all these planets have some places of interest that can give you hints on some different mysteries youre gonna look for and the ship log is gonna help you with that
the ship is full of stuff like tutorials and different equipments and even this mythical ship log thats gonna give you a map of the stuff you have discovered or that you have yet to discover now my recommendation is just to go fuckinf blind and fail and die and do all your stuff until youre ready to get into some deep lore territory and also you have to understand how every planet works and how to exploit their characteristics to your advantage
the ship log got some different threads to let you know which one youre following like theres a log group for the quantum moon or a log for the eye of the universe or a log for the twin project so youre gonna know what to do next somehow i mean it can feel kind of daunting in the beginning but slowly you will get the hang of it because this game is designed to hell and back for fucking christ
before delving into spoiler territory some more stuff about the game
the fact that they managed to create a seamless miniature solar system in a game working in real time and with so many different aspects working at the same time is something i wont ever understand how they managed to do something like this is beyond me like theres some teleportations devices that work when some planets align like how do you even DO that its fucking insane what the hell
and yknow using the jetpack and the ship can feel pretty difficult to use but traversing the deep space begins to feel easier and easier after playing for some time so you dont have to worry about that
the puzzle designs of this game also took me by surprise im not a huge puzzle guy yknow that but i was astounded by the fact that they managed to put some great puzzles that dont go into the frustration territory but actually reward you if you get to explore a bit of the surroundings or if you have explored another planet before that actually got something to do with the puzzle at hand and somehow they dont feel overwhelming theyre the environmental kind of puzzles like idk portal or shit like that but they really make you feel good about doing them because you get to piece together some stuff yourself or get to know how precisely something works like probably the greatest example is the quantum moon which is by itself a big ass puzzle level and to complete it you have to get some intel about the quantum stuff from other planets and actually experiment with quantum objects yourself thats fucking clever kudos to you designers
the art design is kinda streamlined if you ask me theres nothing really outstanding about it apart from the individual character designs which actually feel intelligent and look really nice even though teporians look pretty different from your usual design for some obvious reasons again the art style is going for the kind of not too realistic kind of cartoony vibe and somehow really work with this over realistic solar system and then again the art style there is not about the art itself but how they space and use the different models and quirks of the planets to make them feel alive and breathing like theyre living beings in this galaxy too
SFX obviously got implemented to the story like a shining jewel it would not feel the same with the incredible work put in that department water sand fire every natural element is speaking to you and still as soon as you begin to translate the words of the nomai youre struck with sad fucking piano oooooooooooOOOOOOOO youre in for an emotional ride
and the music in itself is pretty scarce and simplistic but boy when it hits IT HITS the melody you hear whenever the sun is approaching its end is some of the most haunting beautiful tragic warm whatever other adjective tune you will hear in the entirety of the game and when you connect the fact that this is the tune of the end of the galaxy it gets so much more emotional thats basically the song of “thats it bro . youre dead accept your demise and try again next time” its absolutely beautiful and the fact that you can see the sun slowly dying and exploding is so beautiful that i would just sit and stare at the end of it all while there was a spectacle of colors eating the life out of the planets you cannot escape
some other music plays out in different points like when you discover some nomai settlements or read some very bad stuff on the walls or when you travel to some special locations really the music in this game really add to the atmosphere which is already pretty rich and particular really theres no game that made me feel like this like just wandering around the galaxy and either fear the endless void or just vibe with its beauty but nothing will ever beat the somber and emotional track that plays out right at home this is possibly the most powerful music in the game and it only gets even better when you just sit there in front of the campfire and taste some marshmallows or like when you get to the sun station and you realise the incredible jump you have to make to unravel its secrets and this plays out or the tune you get to hear throughout the game that really gives you the chills because it feels like home or like this fucking theme that plays out whenever something sad to the nomai happens and particularly i think about the scene where you get to the escape pod 3 in rovo oscuro and you find them just dead floating around looking miserable and the log turns into nomai grave and THAT THEME PLAYS and one of the most beautiful one of all the theme that plays when you get the last piece of the puzzle that is a remix of the theme of the sun exploding and thats pretty breathtaking if you ask me
last but not least the UI design in this game is absolutely incredible from the simple buttons you have to press to the detailed yet easy to use ship log to the different ingame aspects that reflect what youre doing like the light sticks (i dont know how to call them) of the ship lighting in the direction youre doing or your jetpack giving you some tridimensional arrows to tell you where youre going and what movement youre doing or like the different objects youre gonna use or even something so stupid as the nomai speech reading thats something that you will do for the entirety of the game and its pretty interesting how the nomai got this written form that develops in spirals or like even the fact that youre gonna use some scrolls or some plates to read what they are saying this game really is incredible what the fuck
and the fact that you make yourself this game you can take your time you can explore what you want in what order you want thats absolutely top notch game design no achievements no rewards no objects no new abilities no linear exploration NOTHING its just you the space around you and your neverending curiosity to discover whats happening to you and the world around you
ok anyway HEAVY SPOILER TERRITORY
getting to slowly understand the nomai whereabouts is absolutely terrifying and beautiful at the same time like theres this distant civilization that got a reading somewhere in the galaxy of an object that for them is like a god a supernatural being they really begin to do everything in their power to get closer to this thing that they also hypothesize it could not even care about them like it could be a random object that randomly sent a wave in their direction and they thought it was a message from a messiah or something like thats a banger incipit and all of this you get to know by reading their scrolls around the worlds
a thing that really got to me is when you see murals about how the nomai found a species of non intelligent beings in cuore legnoso and how theyre actually gonna develop into the teporians making you REALLY understand how distant in time these beings really are and slowly you will also get to discover and understand and also use their different constructions and devices since theyve been in this galaxy for a long time they actually left some many different scrolls around the planets even some villages and even constructed some hi tech stuff for the purpose of finding this fucking eye and yknow whats really incredible ?
the nomai wanted to send a probe through an orbital cannon into space to actually get to find this eye but since its an infinitesimal chance to find it in the outer space but to actually do that they actually created the twin project to send the result of the probe back in time of 22 minutes to reuse it an indefinite amount of time so to find this object in the outer space but the power that would take to use this device amounts to the power of a supernova and what the nomai wanted to do is actually cause a supernova so they tried to make the sun explode but were unsuccessful and then died out before the project could be set in motion and thats where you get back to the players time and now the 22 minutes rule all of the sudden makes sense because when the supernova happens the consciousness of the player is sent back in time for another probe to be shot out and as i was saying yknow whats incredible ? the fact that whenever you wake up you see the cannon in profondo gigantesco shoot the probe THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBKE PH MY GOFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD
due to the connection to the statues of memories the player and another guy are the only one that can actually remember what the shit happens in this time loop and thats also the reason for the player to understand how to stop this from happening and what better way to actually find the eye of the universe oh yes baby
DISCLAIMER if you arrived here you probably have finished the game or else youre fucking stupid so im not gonna talk about all the other plot points because it would take so much fucking time to tell you how massive this games story actually is but the segment in the quantum moon where you talk with solanum using plates due to language barrier is probably one of my favourite stuff in the universe and anyway every single thing of this game is incredible exploring the ghost cities the laboratories get to piece together clues to get to the eye UGH i love this
after exploring the twin project and the core of profondo gigantesco you will get all the stuff to actually make the right thing to close this incredible game thats right getting jumpscared in rovo oscuro by the anglerfish
after getting there and finding what remains of the vessel with which the nomai got into this galaxy you put back the battery to where it belongs and input the coordinates of the eye of the universe and let the vessel take the reins
you finally get to see the eye of the universe which is nothing more nothing less than a huge as fuck mass of quantum energy that actually looks like a black hole and thats the thing that the nomai actually chased after just an unemotional aseptic huge piece of molecules and thats it they died for this because they were convinced it was some kind of ungodly being wandering around the universe just giving important signals to space races for some whatever reason
i cannot understand how they managed to create such a powerful segment in the videogame media and just then followed it with some of the most haunting segment ever
you get to see your friends again or better the quantum version of your friends again and also understand that its not only your star that is dying every single star in the universe is dying and everything is going back to 0 and actually this is something you can see if you zoom in the sky during your playthrough theres an explorer you encounter that tells you he saw 2 supernovas in one day and if you actually look for yourself the sky is FULL of supernovas so thats whats gonna happen youre gonna search for your friends and regroup the band for the last time playing the jingle you know too fucking well from your countless loops and then you create a big bang giving rise to another univers
the fucking end
after the credits you can see that 14 billion years later a solar system similar with the one youre living in is thriving and new life forms are idling in front of a campsite
i dont know what happened in me but i just started uncontrollably crying after finishing this game i swear it was like experiencing something so grand and so incredibly profound that the only thing i could do was contemplate stuff and cry about it this is just how powerful the message of this game is im not joking this is so much more than a solar system simulator and a puzzle game and a flight simulator this is a larger than life tale with messages that resonate with every human being something like hope or lack thereof struggle or relief in front of your death the concept of time and space and what it means to break it how important it is to cherish life and not be sad about it ending because thats just what happens in this vast universe
this could be one of the greatest games of all times for themes alone the legacy of the nomai and the meaning they gave to a life towards something that was actually meaningless really hurts me to talk about and i cannot stress enough how everyone should push through this game and complete it blind you wont regret it
this made me actually less afraid of death said another comments and i can really relate to that
talking about how powerful this game is would not even give it 1/100 of the justice it deserves and what you really need to do is get it boot it up and experience it first hand this is an experience like no other i have ever had and im pretty sure this review didnt really put into words how monumental this game really is but i sure know in my heart what the truth is and the truth is life is meaningless i would love to have 4 eyes
SIDENOTES OR AFTERTHOUGHTS
I think its really cool the developers thought of other endings that are influenced by what you actually do and do not do in the game if you get the core our of the twin project you will not be connected anymore to the memory mask which means if you wait for the sun to explode you will be dead for good this time game over ending BUT if you instead get out of the galaxy because there's no loop you will get the isolation ending
you can even break space time with the scout and the black and white hole warps or you can jump into the black hole in the twin project when the sun explodes and talk to yourself in the next loop (and the character actually looks beefy take that suit off pardner) or even removing the warp core and bringing it to solanum on the quantum moon and just live there as a quantum being forever I swear to fucking god the developers of this game thought of EVERYTHING
I JUST FOUND OUT THE THEME THAT PLAYS OUT DURING THE 14 BILLION YEARS LATER SCENE IS THE SAME THAT PLAYS OUT WHEN THE SUN COMES UP IN CUORE LEGNOSO NOOOOOOOOO
its also interesting to say that for the most part of the game i skimmed through the ghost matter tutorials so i didnt know i needed to use my scout but i wanted to rely on nomai because they usually have the answer for everything but nowhere do they talk about ghost matter and then i realised that 1) they tell you about ghost matter in the first 5 minutes of the game and 2) the nomai could not tell me of the ghost matter because THEY WERE FUCKING KILLED BY THE GHOST MATTER IM SO STUPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID
just found out theres a meditate option to skip to the next loop and i just discovered it WHERE THE FUCK IS IT
the fact that theres laws of physics theres planets doing their thing theres spacetime paradoxes how can you even create something so beautiful and something that feels so alive
recently i had to process a loss in my family and as childish as it may sound like im really glad i got to play something like this that helped me an atheist to actually make some sense of life loss and love and i think i will take the messages of this game with me forever
sexy mutyumu recommended this to me as part of this list thanks dude
possibly the greatest metaphor of life every time you get closer to the end of the world the game makes you embrace your death and still makes you willing to live those last seconds to the fullest
sometime ago i started outer wilds and dipped almost instantly when i got into the solar system gameplay because whatever i felt so overwhelmed that my most authentic reaction was to close the game and never touch it again
i booted it again some days ago and ended up addicted to it to the point that i would play it for hours and hours straight until i uncovered all the secrets of this stupid fucking solar system i cannot tell you how much cocaine they put in this game to get me THIS hooked honestly
outer wilds base premise is as simple as absolutely effective and wondrous . youre a space explorer from a little village in a small world you get to know its fellow inhabitants and begin to learn the characteristics of the world around you and whats incredible is the fact that all this actually acts as a tutorial for what youre gonna do for the rest of the game playing hide and seek with the kids helps you understand how to use the frequency sensor you can use a little space ship model that acts the same as your space ship you can go to the cave to help repair some parts of an inner equipment stuff that makes you accustomed to both zero gravity movement and your jetpack and how to repair your ship you can begin to use the multipurpose probe and translate some forgotten language stones and use the inside of the museum to get to know some particular stuff that you wont know until later how actually useful it is and this is only the BEGINNING of the incredible variety of stuff you get to do in this fucking game
the synopsis is this you go to the museum and the historian there introduces you to a lost civilization that disappeared some time before for some unknown reasons and also some other explorers of the space company who went missing for some other reasons and while you ask some other stuff you go get the codes to begin your trip in the outer space and when you do that a nomai statue at the entrance of the museum opens its eyes stares at you and you get back to when you wake up like it was all a dream
after this weird shit you get to finally begin this endless travel in your galaxy to discover the secrets of the nomai and where they have gone
now i will talk about some in depth not super spoiler heavy stuff and then some heavy story stuff so if you want to go completely blind stop now since i only talked about the beginning
MILD SPOILER AHEAD
as soon as you go travel and do your stuff you get to know your surroundings theres some different planets with different qualities and quirks and while you travel you understand something very grim as soon as you reach 22 minutes the sun goes supernova and will explode and gorge on every single molecule of the solar system causing your death and making you realize that youre in a neverending loop due to something out of your control you will always begin your travel again at the campfire and from there begin your exploration anew
understanding how the planets work is something so thrilling in this game i cannot even begin to tell you every single one is an incredible discovery i dont know the names in english so i will talk about them in italian sorry yall
cuore legnoso is the first planet you get to visit because its also the home of the teporiani and you will also begin to understand that this is also the only planet with some good atmospheric conditions for life to thrive and although its fairly resembling earth its actually full of geysers all around that conceal some incredible secrets too whats also cool is that some of these planets also got some satellites like cuore legnoso got sfrido where you can fine one of the stranded explorers and thats freaking fun i love these 2 planets
gemello cenere and gemello brace really push forward the concept that youll get to understand throughout the game some planets change aspect and theres some limited time events in these 22 minutes and no other planet has more drastic transformations than these 2 they basically become completely different due to the fact that most of the sand from one planet gets to the other one and whatever and yeah these two are basically interconnected and one is more of a cavern mass and the other is ruins below sands kind of vibe also love them
vuoto fragile is also kind of weird because its entirely hollow apart from the surface the center hosts a black hole that will eat whatever gets close to it and the near satellite will get some vulcano debris on it and slowly the surface of the planet will fall in the black hole in whatever other part of the galaxy also interesting
profondo gigantesco is full of tornados and islands getting thrown left to right and has a distinct thick atmosphere and has a electromagnetic core that also has some weird consequences to the entire planet
rovo oscuro is the most hostile of them all some intergalactic plant took control of a planets life and crushed it and now sits on the center of it if you enter youre gonna be welcomed by foggy environments spaces that have no sense and contrast the basic rules of space and time and some huge monstrous anglerfish floating around and giving you the worst panic attack on existence i kid you not
l’intruso floats around the galaxy and as the name implies its not really part of the solar system you can see that its orbit is actually off centered and is completely entirely frosted
believe me or not you will get to know the entirety of all these planets how their different gravities work and at some point youll begin to move so fast because youre going to travel to these places so many fucking times its gonna be implanted in your brain trust me
all these planets have some places of interest that can give you hints on some different mysteries youre gonna look for and the ship log is gonna help you with that
the ship is full of stuff like tutorials and different equipments and even this mythical ship log thats gonna give you a map of the stuff you have discovered or that you have yet to discover now my recommendation is just to go fuckinf blind and fail and die and do all your stuff until youre ready to get into some deep lore territory and also you have to understand how every planet works and how to exploit their characteristics to your advantage
the ship log got some different threads to let you know which one youre following like theres a log group for the quantum moon or a log for the eye of the universe or a log for the twin project so youre gonna know what to do next somehow i mean it can feel kind of daunting in the beginning but slowly you will get the hang of it because this game is designed to hell and back for fucking christ
before delving into spoiler territory some more stuff about the game
the fact that they managed to create a seamless miniature solar system in a game working in real time and with so many different aspects working at the same time is something i wont ever understand how they managed to do something like this is beyond me like theres some teleportations devices that work when some planets align like how do you even DO that its fucking insane what the hell
and yknow using the jetpack and the ship can feel pretty difficult to use but traversing the deep space begins to feel easier and easier after playing for some time so you dont have to worry about that
the puzzle designs of this game also took me by surprise im not a huge puzzle guy yknow that but i was astounded by the fact that they managed to put some great puzzles that dont go into the frustration territory but actually reward you if you get to explore a bit of the surroundings or if you have explored another planet before that actually got something to do with the puzzle at hand and somehow they dont feel overwhelming theyre the environmental kind of puzzles like idk portal or shit like that but they really make you feel good about doing them because you get to piece together some stuff yourself or get to know how precisely something works like probably the greatest example is the quantum moon which is by itself a big ass puzzle level and to complete it you have to get some intel about the quantum stuff from other planets and actually experiment with quantum objects yourself thats fucking clever kudos to you designers
the art design is kinda streamlined if you ask me theres nothing really outstanding about it apart from the individual character designs which actually feel intelligent and look really nice even though teporians look pretty different from your usual design for some obvious reasons again the art style is going for the kind of not too realistic kind of cartoony vibe and somehow really work with this over realistic solar system and then again the art style there is not about the art itself but how they space and use the different models and quirks of the planets to make them feel alive and breathing like theyre living beings in this galaxy too
SFX obviously got implemented to the story like a shining jewel it would not feel the same with the incredible work put in that department water sand fire every natural element is speaking to you and still as soon as you begin to translate the words of the nomai youre struck with sad fucking piano oooooooooooOOOOOOOO youre in for an emotional ride
and the music in itself is pretty scarce and simplistic but boy when it hits IT HITS the melody you hear whenever the sun is approaching its end is some of the most haunting beautiful tragic warm whatever other adjective tune you will hear in the entirety of the game and when you connect the fact that this is the tune of the end of the galaxy it gets so much more emotional thats basically the song of “thats it bro . youre dead accept your demise and try again next time” its absolutely beautiful and the fact that you can see the sun slowly dying and exploding is so beautiful that i would just sit and stare at the end of it all while there was a spectacle of colors eating the life out of the planets you cannot escape
some other music plays out in different points like when you discover some nomai settlements or read some very bad stuff on the walls or when you travel to some special locations really the music in this game really add to the atmosphere which is already pretty rich and particular really theres no game that made me feel like this like just wandering around the galaxy and either fear the endless void or just vibe with its beauty but nothing will ever beat the somber and emotional track that plays out right at home this is possibly the most powerful music in the game and it only gets even better when you just sit there in front of the campfire and taste some marshmallows or like when you get to the sun station and you realise the incredible jump you have to make to unravel its secrets and this plays out or the tune you get to hear throughout the game that really gives you the chills because it feels like home or like this fucking theme that plays out whenever something sad to the nomai happens and particularly i think about the scene where you get to the escape pod 3 in rovo oscuro and you find them just dead floating around looking miserable and the log turns into nomai grave and THAT THEME PLAYS and one of the most beautiful one of all the theme that plays when you get the last piece of the puzzle that is a remix of the theme of the sun exploding and thats pretty breathtaking if you ask me
last but not least the UI design in this game is absolutely incredible from the simple buttons you have to press to the detailed yet easy to use ship log to the different ingame aspects that reflect what youre doing like the light sticks (i dont know how to call them) of the ship lighting in the direction youre doing or your jetpack giving you some tridimensional arrows to tell you where youre going and what movement youre doing or like the different objects youre gonna use or even something so stupid as the nomai speech reading thats something that you will do for the entirety of the game and its pretty interesting how the nomai got this written form that develops in spirals or like even the fact that youre gonna use some scrolls or some plates to read what they are saying this game really is incredible what the fuck
and the fact that you make yourself this game you can take your time you can explore what you want in what order you want thats absolutely top notch game design no achievements no rewards no objects no new abilities no linear exploration NOTHING its just you the space around you and your neverending curiosity to discover whats happening to you and the world around you
ok anyway HEAVY SPOILER TERRITORY
getting to slowly understand the nomai whereabouts is absolutely terrifying and beautiful at the same time like theres this distant civilization that got a reading somewhere in the galaxy of an object that for them is like a god a supernatural being they really begin to do everything in their power to get closer to this thing that they also hypothesize it could not even care about them like it could be a random object that randomly sent a wave in their direction and they thought it was a message from a messiah or something like thats a banger incipit and all of this you get to know by reading their scrolls around the worlds
a thing that really got to me is when you see murals about how the nomai found a species of non intelligent beings in cuore legnoso and how theyre actually gonna develop into the teporians making you REALLY understand how distant in time these beings really are and slowly you will also get to discover and understand and also use their different constructions and devices since theyve been in this galaxy for a long time they actually left some many different scrolls around the planets even some villages and even constructed some hi tech stuff for the purpose of finding this fucking eye and yknow whats really incredible ?
the nomai wanted to send a probe through an orbital cannon into space to actually get to find this eye but since its an infinitesimal chance to find it in the outer space but to actually do that they actually created the twin project to send the result of the probe back in time of 22 minutes to reuse it an indefinite amount of time so to find this object in the outer space but the power that would take to use this device amounts to the power of a supernova and what the nomai wanted to do is actually cause a supernova so they tried to make the sun explode but were unsuccessful and then died out before the project could be set in motion and thats where you get back to the players time and now the 22 minutes rule all of the sudden makes sense because when the supernova happens the consciousness of the player is sent back in time for another probe to be shot out and as i was saying yknow whats incredible ? the fact that whenever you wake up you see the cannon in profondo gigantesco shoot the probe THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBKE PH MY GOFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD
due to the connection to the statues of memories the player and another guy are the only one that can actually remember what the shit happens in this time loop and thats also the reason for the player to understand how to stop this from happening and what better way to actually find the eye of the universe oh yes baby
DISCLAIMER if you arrived here you probably have finished the game or else youre fucking stupid so im not gonna talk about all the other plot points because it would take so much fucking time to tell you how massive this games story actually is but the segment in the quantum moon where you talk with solanum using plates due to language barrier is probably one of my favourite stuff in the universe and anyway every single thing of this game is incredible exploring the ghost cities the laboratories get to piece together clues to get to the eye UGH i love this
after exploring the twin project and the core of profondo gigantesco you will get all the stuff to actually make the right thing to close this incredible game thats right getting jumpscared in rovo oscuro by the anglerfish
after getting there and finding what remains of the vessel with which the nomai got into this galaxy you put back the battery to where it belongs and input the coordinates of the eye of the universe and let the vessel take the reins
you finally get to see the eye of the universe which is nothing more nothing less than a huge as fuck mass of quantum energy that actually looks like a black hole and thats the thing that the nomai actually chased after just an unemotional aseptic huge piece of molecules and thats it they died for this because they were convinced it was some kind of ungodly being wandering around the universe just giving important signals to space races for some whatever reason
i cannot understand how they managed to create such a powerful segment in the videogame media and just then followed it with some of the most haunting segment ever
you get to see your friends again or better the quantum version of your friends again and also understand that its not only your star that is dying every single star in the universe is dying and everything is going back to 0 and actually this is something you can see if you zoom in the sky during your playthrough theres an explorer you encounter that tells you he saw 2 supernovas in one day and if you actually look for yourself the sky is FULL of supernovas so thats whats gonna happen youre gonna search for your friends and regroup the band for the last time playing the jingle you know too fucking well from your countless loops and then you create a big bang giving rise to another univers
the fucking end
after the credits you can see that 14 billion years later a solar system similar with the one youre living in is thriving and new life forms are idling in front of a campsite
i dont know what happened in me but i just started uncontrollably crying after finishing this game i swear it was like experiencing something so grand and so incredibly profound that the only thing i could do was contemplate stuff and cry about it this is just how powerful the message of this game is im not joking this is so much more than a solar system simulator and a puzzle game and a flight simulator this is a larger than life tale with messages that resonate with every human being something like hope or lack thereof struggle or relief in front of your death the concept of time and space and what it means to break it how important it is to cherish life and not be sad about it ending because thats just what happens in this vast universe
this could be one of the greatest games of all times for themes alone the legacy of the nomai and the meaning they gave to a life towards something that was actually meaningless really hurts me to talk about and i cannot stress enough how everyone should push through this game and complete it blind you wont regret it
this made me actually less afraid of death said another comments and i can really relate to that
talking about how powerful this game is would not even give it 1/100 of the justice it deserves and what you really need to do is get it boot it up and experience it first hand this is an experience like no other i have ever had and im pretty sure this review didnt really put into words how monumental this game really is but i sure know in my heart what the truth is and the truth is life is meaningless i would love to have 4 eyes
SIDENOTES OR AFTERTHOUGHTS
I think its really cool the developers thought of other endings that are influenced by what you actually do and do not do in the game if you get the core our of the twin project you will not be connected anymore to the memory mask which means if you wait for the sun to explode you will be dead for good this time game over ending BUT if you instead get out of the galaxy because there's no loop you will get the isolation ending
you can even break space time with the scout and the black and white hole warps or you can jump into the black hole in the twin project when the sun explodes and talk to yourself in the next loop (and the character actually looks beefy take that suit off pardner) or even removing the warp core and bringing it to solanum on the quantum moon and just live there as a quantum being forever I swear to fucking god the developers of this game thought of EVERYTHING
I JUST FOUND OUT THE THEME THAT PLAYS OUT DURING THE 14 BILLION YEARS LATER SCENE IS THE SAME THAT PLAYS OUT WHEN THE SUN COMES UP IN CUORE LEGNOSO NOOOOOOOOO
its also interesting to say that for the most part of the game i skimmed through the ghost matter tutorials so i didnt know i needed to use my scout but i wanted to rely on nomai because they usually have the answer for everything but nowhere do they talk about ghost matter and then i realised that 1) they tell you about ghost matter in the first 5 minutes of the game and 2) the nomai could not tell me of the ghost matter because THEY WERE FUCKING KILLED BY THE GHOST MATTER IM SO STUPIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID
just found out theres a meditate option to skip to the next loop and i just discovered it WHERE THE FUCK IS IT
the fact that theres laws of physics theres planets doing their thing theres spacetime paradoxes how can you even create something so beautiful and something that feels so alive
recently i had to process a loss in my family and as childish as it may sound like im really glad i got to play something like this that helped me an atheist to actually make some sense of life loss and love and i think i will take the messages of this game with me forever
This review contains spoilers
There's a lot to discover out there- or, there was, at one point, but it's all been discovered since, hundreds of thousands of years before you even hatched. Games like this can offer recluse from the harsh, pre-explored reality that we live in, so it's disappointing how often Outer Wilds shifts focus away from its naturally occurring astronomical mysteries and towards its ancient alien race that has already solved all of them. It's not about monitoring the cyclones on Giant's Deep and reasoning out that some push and some pull; it's about trying to get into an observatory that houses a model of the phenomenon. It's not about sending out a drone to take pictures of an angler and realizing that its eyes are glazed-over; it's about finding the skeleton in the Sunless City and the accompanying biologists' report that says that they're blind. Of course, you can figure out any of these things on your own, but the 22-minute timer actively discourages the extensive trial-and-error that's necessary to evoke a true feeling of discovery, effectively telling you to try visiting a different planet if you weren't able to make any progress on your last loop. The Nomai are undeniably essential as a way to tie all of the cool space stuff together, and their story is certainly worth telling, but I wish their findings weren't so well-preserved. There's an important distinction between discovering and just plain learning, best illustrated here by the Tower of Quantum Trials, which feels like the tutorial level of a Portal-inspired first-person puzzler rather than a part of a wider world. The gap between what's plainly written out for you (blind fish) and how you can use that information to reach your goal (move slowly) is pretty small, and it's only made smaller by the fact that your ship log neatly summarizes all of the important bits for you. What I crave most from a game like this is the feeling of being stuck, or, more accurately, of overcoming said stuckness, and Outer Wilds just doesn't deliver in that regard, and, as a result, I was never as into it as I would've liked. I kept waiting for it to stonewall me, for that moment where I felt like I'd exhausted every possible avenue, but it never came.
And yet... the game just works anyway. Contrary to how dour that first paragraph reads, I do enjoy learning (albeit less than discovery) especially when it's done this well. Every loop brings a new revelation, and not a single fact about the universe feels forced or out of place. I'd go as far as to say this is the most consistent set of internal logic that I've ever experienced in a video game, and it knows it, considering how much joy it takes in hiding things in plain sight. Of course that fog planet you kept seeing was the quantum moon all along. Of course Ash Twin runs out of sand eventually. Of course the Tower of Quantum Knowledge can get sucked into the black hole. Of course you can't land your ship on the sun station, why do you think it's marked with the same pattern as all of the other warp spots? The amount of mileage it gets out of being a game where you can't interact, only observe (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) is staggering, and what makes many of these world mechanics effective is that they're decidedly un-gamey. Most other games would've let you know in some way when you're being properly shielded by a jellyfish in order to combat I-tried-the-right-solution-but-it-didn't-work-syndrome, but the fact that you don't get any feedback and just unceremoniously pass through the electricity barrier makes it that much more satisfying. It seems like it would be great fun to watch someone else play this game, smirking internally as they walk right past something that you already know is cosmically important, and laughing hysterically as they destroy their ship by ramming headfirst into a planet at 400 m/s. Because it's hard to imagine this game going anywhere without committing to the unforgiving physics of outer space- aside from the ship's autopilot system, arguably, no corners are cut here, culminating in an environment that feels appropriately cutthroat. Get too close to the sun and you're screwed, drift too far from your ship and you're screwed, forget to stop and refuel your jetpack and you're screwed. It's a nice reminder that we as humans (or as Timber Hearthians) have no real way to conceptualize true three-dimensional movement, and, as a result, arriving anywhere safely can often feel like a small miracle, which leads to the game's best moments. Carefully following the gravity crystals to reach the Hanging City for the first time, struggling to land on the quantum moon while simultaneously viewing a picture of it, and, of course, that final trek- replaying the end of loop music during was nothing short of brilliant. I'm much more mixed on that overly artsy indie epilogue, but getting to the Eye at last was the perfect capstone for an experience that deserves its reputation as a universal recommendation... even if my personal solar system wasn't as shattered as many others' were.
And yet... the game just works anyway. Contrary to how dour that first paragraph reads, I do enjoy learning (albeit less than discovery) especially when it's done this well. Every loop brings a new revelation, and not a single fact about the universe feels forced or out of place. I'd go as far as to say this is the most consistent set of internal logic that I've ever experienced in a video game, and it knows it, considering how much joy it takes in hiding things in plain sight. Of course that fog planet you kept seeing was the quantum moon all along. Of course Ash Twin runs out of sand eventually. Of course the Tower of Quantum Knowledge can get sucked into the black hole. Of course you can't land your ship on the sun station, why do you think it's marked with the same pattern as all of the other warp spots? The amount of mileage it gets out of being a game where you can't interact, only observe (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) is staggering, and what makes many of these world mechanics effective is that they're decidedly un-gamey. Most other games would've let you know in some way when you're being properly shielded by a jellyfish in order to combat I-tried-the-right-solution-but-it-didn't-work-syndrome, but the fact that you don't get any feedback and just unceremoniously pass through the electricity barrier makes it that much more satisfying. It seems like it would be great fun to watch someone else play this game, smirking internally as they walk right past something that you already know is cosmically important, and laughing hysterically as they destroy their ship by ramming headfirst into a planet at 400 m/s. Because it's hard to imagine this game going anywhere without committing to the unforgiving physics of outer space- aside from the ship's autopilot system, arguably, no corners are cut here, culminating in an environment that feels appropriately cutthroat. Get too close to the sun and you're screwed, drift too far from your ship and you're screwed, forget to stop and refuel your jetpack and you're screwed. It's a nice reminder that we as humans (or as Timber Hearthians) have no real way to conceptualize true three-dimensional movement, and, as a result, arriving anywhere safely can often feel like a small miracle, which leads to the game's best moments. Carefully following the gravity crystals to reach the Hanging City for the first time, struggling to land on the quantum moon while simultaneously viewing a picture of it, and, of course, that final trek- replaying the end of loop music during was nothing short of brilliant. I'm much more mixed on that overly artsy indie epilogue, but getting to the Eye at last was the perfect capstone for an experience that deserves its reputation as a universal recommendation... even if my personal solar system wasn't as shattered as many others' were.
I am so happy to say that I was able to witness a masterpiece before I died.
There is only so much that can be said about this game without straight up ruining it for blind eyes, but every minute detail packed into this work of art is crafted and intertwined with the most delicate touch to them.
There is nothing to do in this game aside from exploration and reading, yet you'll soon realize you're stuck in an incredibly enthralling mystery that fills you equally with warmth and dread. You will completely forget that the game never even gave you instructions aside from telling you to go fuck off into space and to never come back.
Finding one piece of the puzzle leads to dozens more and suffering through the pain of grasping the frustrating ship controls becomes a moment of euphoric accomplishment once you hit the ending and the mystery is completed.
This game sits in the back of my cranium constantly picking at it. I have thought about this game almost daily since finishing it and it's not really an exaggeration. I mourn the fact that I have completed this game and have done everything that I can in it. It's a very unique experience that shouldn't be explained, only witnessed. You'll understand later.
There is only so much that can be said about this game without straight up ruining it for blind eyes, but every minute detail packed into this work of art is crafted and intertwined with the most delicate touch to them.
There is nothing to do in this game aside from exploration and reading, yet you'll soon realize you're stuck in an incredibly enthralling mystery that fills you equally with warmth and dread. You will completely forget that the game never even gave you instructions aside from telling you to go fuck off into space and to never come back.
Finding one piece of the puzzle leads to dozens more and suffering through the pain of grasping the frustrating ship controls becomes a moment of euphoric accomplishment once you hit the ending and the mystery is completed.
This game sits in the back of my cranium constantly picking at it. I have thought about this game almost daily since finishing it and it's not really an exaggeration. I mourn the fact that I have completed this game and have done everything that I can in it. It's a very unique experience that shouldn't be explained, only witnessed. You'll understand later.
I can't remember a game (other than maybe the Mass Effect trilogy) that fed my inner space-nerd as masterfully, as Outer Wilds did. Whereas Mass Effect was a great story of humankind in the future, with familiar conflicts, characters and locations to explore, Outer Wilds throws all that away and gives you what space probably would feel like to us: hostile, unknown and incomprehensible. Who regularly reads recent developments in the understanding of our universe, will find many of that concepts in this game beautifully interwoven in a subtly communicated, but heavy weighing story of survival in a universe, that seemingly does not want you to survive. The game constantly wows you, with scenery and music coalescing into the best video game moments of at least the last decade.
It is rare to find titles in the medium that provide complete freedom to explore unbound by conventional means of progression. Rarer still are those that leave the player feeling that the world they inhabit outside of the game is a warmer, kinder place than the one they parted with at the door. These feelings have only grown stronger the more time has passed since my inaugural flight from Timber Hearth, where you inherit a rocket ship and the dreams of a space program birthed not as a military show of force, but out of a desire to understand the past and present.
The Outer Wilds is no mere puzzle game, its “solutions” betray the simplicity of the answers we expect to see when we march to GameFAQs in frustration. Nothing in the game just "is". You don't understand how to interact with something? The knowledge required simply lies somewhere else. Knowledge in this game is what items are in typical puzzle-adventure games, and the core of the gameplay is conducting science in tandem; experimenting, understanding and forming conclusions -even just tentative ones- to understand and experiment even more. There are few experiences as fulfilling in gaming to me, or in any medium for that matter.
-----
Originally submitted to u/Pangburn's S&S list
The Outer Wilds is no mere puzzle game, its “solutions” betray the simplicity of the answers we expect to see when we march to GameFAQs in frustration. Nothing in the game just "is". You don't understand how to interact with something? The knowledge required simply lies somewhere else. Knowledge in this game is what items are in typical puzzle-adventure games, and the core of the gameplay is conducting science in tandem; experimenting, understanding and forming conclusions -even just tentative ones- to understand and experiment even more. There are few experiences as fulfilling in gaming to me, or in any medium for that matter.
-----
Originally submitted to u/Pangburn's S&S list
more of whatever this genre is please
The final frontier
Many people wish they could forget the game to enjoy it once again, but I don't believe the game's appeal dissapears after just one time. The travelers will still be there.
I was this close of dropping it in more than one occasion, due to some obtuse as hell puzzles and conditions. I'm glad I didn't, because now my future second playthrough will be more manageable, more focused on the stuff that hit me: the connection, through music or tangled languages in walls.
The physics are omnipresent, space is insurmountable and worlds hold strange secrets. Whenever you may be lost, you can always tune to any planet and listen to someone. You'll talk to them, listen to a banjo 10k miles away from you, and you'll know you're not alone.
Many people wish they could forget the game to enjoy it once again, but I don't believe the game's appeal dissapears after just one time. The travelers will still be there.
I was this close of dropping it in more than one occasion, due to some obtuse as hell puzzles and conditions. I'm glad I didn't, because now my future second playthrough will be more manageable, more focused on the stuff that hit me: the connection, through music or tangled languages in walls.
The physics are omnipresent, space is insurmountable and worlds hold strange secrets. Whenever you may be lost, you can always tune to any planet and listen to someone. You'll talk to them, listen to a banjo 10k miles away from you, and you'll know you're not alone.
Somewhere between a roguelike and Majora's Mask, this game prides itself on making repetition beautiful. It's a unique experience that everyone should try.
But if you're not a giant fan of the repetitive nature of roguelikes in the first place, like me (or have a crippling fear of drifting through space, also like me), the game won't do anything so incredible as to overcome those issues.
But if you're not a giant fan of the repetitive nature of roguelikes in the first place, like me (or have a crippling fear of drifting through space, also like me), the game won't do anything so incredible as to overcome those issues.
The worst thing about this game is that I can't play it again
this game made me less afraid of death. there is no higher review i can give it.
the greatest game I have ever played.
might get a concussion just to play it for the first time again.
might get a concussion just to play it for the first time again.
Veredito: Vai direto pro pódio dos favoritos.
Eu gosto muito de falar sobre jogos, às vezes até mais do que gosto de jogá-los. Foram pouquíssimas as vezes que um jogo me deixou sem palavras, que hesitei em tentar explicar por que gostei dele, com medo de não fazer jus ao tamanho da foderosidade do que tinha acabado de jogar. Mas vou fazer um esforço aqui.
Outer Wilds é um jogo de exploração espacial - você é um astronauta alienígena conhecendo os planetas, luas e tals do seu sistema solar - mas é principalmente um jogo sobre o deslumbre com a descoberta. Sobre ir lá e ver o que tem depois da curva com seus próprios olhos, compreender como as coisas funcionam e ficar maravilhado com a sensação de 'ahá, agora eu entendi!'.
Ao mesmo tempo, é um jogo sobre sair da zona de conforto. Não só porque nunca joguei nada parecido antes, inclusive morrendo várias vezes até me acostumar com a física e controles esquisitos ('para onde fica a frente?' é o tipo de dúvida constante no começo) nem só porque ele jamais te pega pela mão: como disse o Errant Signal o jogo é uma via de mão única e jamais irá em sua direção, você é que tem que ter o trabalho de ir até ele. Mas porque você nunca vai resolver os puzzles e jamais vai entender a trama se não estiver disposto a pisar onde ninguém nunca pisou e ir onde você jamais iria normalmente. Pensar fora da caixa, ser curioso e querer de verdade entender o universo à sua volta são pré-requisitos pra se aproveitar Outer Wilds, tanto os puzzles e mecânicas quanto a história.
Antes da 1ª decolagem vários amigos da sua vizinhança te contam anetodas sobre o sistema solar: uma corrente marítima esquisita e criaturas assustadoras em um planeta, um colega astronauta que desapareceu, uma estátua e uma pedra que agem de um jeito que ninguém entende. Tudo pra te deixar intrigado e curioso pra explorar. Se a exploração pela exploração e a descoberta pela descoberta não te enchem os olhos, se na escola você não gostava daquela sensação de entender algo que não entendia antes, talvez passe algumas horinhas com Outer Wilds, enjoe e resolva ir jogar algo melhor. Mas se te atrai a ideia de descobrir o que aconteceu com povos e espécies extintas, compreender como funcionam tecnologias que antes eram confusas, e principalmente ter um envolvimento emocional com o mundo à sua volta a tal ponto que você vai ousar fazer coisas por ele que jamais ousaria antes... Garanto que a viagem vai ser inesquecível. ❤️
Eu gosto muito de falar sobre jogos, às vezes até mais do que gosto de jogá-los. Foram pouquíssimas as vezes que um jogo me deixou sem palavras, que hesitei em tentar explicar por que gostei dele, com medo de não fazer jus ao tamanho da foderosidade do que tinha acabado de jogar. Mas vou fazer um esforço aqui.
Outer Wilds é um jogo de exploração espacial - você é um astronauta alienígena conhecendo os planetas, luas e tals do seu sistema solar - mas é principalmente um jogo sobre o deslumbre com a descoberta. Sobre ir lá e ver o que tem depois da curva com seus próprios olhos, compreender como as coisas funcionam e ficar maravilhado com a sensação de 'ahá, agora eu entendi!'.
Ao mesmo tempo, é um jogo sobre sair da zona de conforto. Não só porque nunca joguei nada parecido antes, inclusive morrendo várias vezes até me acostumar com a física e controles esquisitos ('para onde fica a frente?' é o tipo de dúvida constante no começo) nem só porque ele jamais te pega pela mão: como disse o Errant Signal o jogo é uma via de mão única e jamais irá em sua direção, você é que tem que ter o trabalho de ir até ele. Mas porque você nunca vai resolver os puzzles e jamais vai entender a trama se não estiver disposto a pisar onde ninguém nunca pisou e ir onde você jamais iria normalmente. Pensar fora da caixa, ser curioso e querer de verdade entender o universo à sua volta são pré-requisitos pra se aproveitar Outer Wilds, tanto os puzzles e mecânicas quanto a história.
Antes da 1ª decolagem vários amigos da sua vizinhança te contam anetodas sobre o sistema solar: uma corrente marítima esquisita e criaturas assustadoras em um planeta, um colega astronauta que desapareceu, uma estátua e uma pedra que agem de um jeito que ninguém entende. Tudo pra te deixar intrigado e curioso pra explorar. Se a exploração pela exploração e a descoberta pela descoberta não te enchem os olhos, se na escola você não gostava daquela sensação de entender algo que não entendia antes, talvez passe algumas horinhas com Outer Wilds, enjoe e resolva ir jogar algo melhor. Mas se te atrai a ideia de descobrir o que aconteceu com povos e espécies extintas, compreender como funcionam tecnologias que antes eram confusas, e principalmente ter um envolvimento emocional com o mundo à sua volta a tal ponto que você vai ousar fazer coisas por ele que jamais ousaria antes... Garanto que a viagem vai ser inesquecível. ❤️
I didn't love playing through it as much as some others, but I just can't get this out of my head for some reason. Genuinely a great game, the DLC is also scary as fuck. Recommended to those who like intricate puzzlers and existential dread.
Okay I get why no one wants to say anything about it because neither do I.
The first time PC gaming died, game design died with it.
In the early days of gaming, design was very heavily tied to technological limitations. Prior to the 7th generation of consoles, developers were often constrained with what they not only make a game look like but what they could also make a game play like. Because computers grealy outpaced consoles with their processing power, most PC games of the times were responsible for innovating and leading the frey. Myst. Doom. Deus Ex. The design style of these games was very heavily tied to the restrictions and limitations of the time. When PC gaming eventually faded away, the process of design innovation faded away with it. Players were no longer encouraged to rely on a sense of self-discovery. They stopped being forced to piece together information and figure out where to go next based on nothing but their own intuition and interest. Instead, unique systems and dynamic gameplay was replaced with a hodgepodge of overly-linear design, restrictive playstyles, and gaudy objective markers. A decade of silence, an industry infected with tepid rail shooters, unoriginal platformers, and droll action games followed. Eventually, hope arose again, and we return to the year 2019, a group of young developers living in Santa Cruz, and a video game born out of campfire stories and astral exploration.
Outer Wilds is a game where every bit of discovery is rewarded with more discovery. It's a game about learning and about growing, just like real life. We so often think of games as discrete structure that have to act and behave in a certain way--every bit of progress must lead to some elaboration on that progress, every trial must be rewarded with some goodie, almost as if the game is apologizing for making the player perform some action that causes them to slightly deviate from their mission. Outer Wilds has no such time for guilty apologetic niceties, instead acknowledging that the pursuit for discovery is its bread-and-butter and fully committing to these ideas. Video games are very afraid of satisfaction, which is why we often see games that have such concrete ideas of what their content is--something is either achieved and completed, or it isn't. You've reached the ending, or you haven't. You've 100%d the game, or you haven't. Fellow detective game Her Story by Sam Barlow is a unique game because it doesn't have an ending, and instead simply asks players to put down the game when they feel satisfied with the information they've procured.
Most of what Outer Wilds has to offer is necessary to reach the game's true ending, but even then there's a healthy slab of appetizers smattered around the solar system to satisfy your appetite beyond completion purposes. Some of my favorite moments in the game came just from seeking out something I saw in the distance that looked interesting, regardless of whether it was "useful" or not. Outer Wilds is a master of the callback, and there were many times where I'd spot something early on in my playthrough, think nothing of it, and then come to some significant revelation later on. I cannot describe these moments as being anything but incredibly refreshing and fulfilling. The game carries with it an aura of honesty and transparency that makes exploring even the most mundane areas in its toybox solar system a pure joy. It's a game about self-satiation and is probably one of the only games of the last generation without objective markers that actually rewards the player for exploring. In the last decade of gaming we've seen a vast degeneration of level and world design that has resulted in a complete loss of games attempting to stimulate player discovery. Some open-world games have managed to combat this but placing interesting-looking areas and structures throughout the world--like Breath of the Wild--but for the life of me I can't actually remember a single game that rewarded you with something other than a weapon or a collectible or a meandering side quest on the horizon. Outer Wilds rewards you with knowledge and there's almost no fat in the game, making every single discovery feel purposeful.
The game's solar system contains five planets (six if you count the Hourglass Twins as separate entities), three moons, three satellite stations, and a comet. That totals up to about a dozen distinct astral bodies. All five planets are necessary to move through the main pathway of the story, but pretty much everything else in the game has extraneous information. You can complete the entire game by just bouncing between Giant's Deep, Dark Bramble, the Hourglass Twins, and Brittle Hollow, but the game rewards you with additional information by challenging you to explore areas like the Interloper or the Quantum Moon. I generally despise games that hide their entire plot behind item descriptions and lore bits (like Hollow Knight) but Outer Wilds does so much more. It places you in the context of a universe that exists beyond your perception, not just in space but in time. It's a rich world that exists and changes not just for the 22 minutes that you repeat over and over, but also for billions of years. It's a world of isolation but not one of loneliness, but rather of solitude, as you explore the past of an ancient species that existed long before you. Outer Wilds is commonly labeled as a detective game but I think it's more of an archaelogy one, as you piece together the remnants of foreign societies, worlds, institutions, systems, sciences, and revelations. Despite never carrying a spoken word of dialogue, and actual conversation being incredibly sparse throughout the game's narrative, its story manages to contain some of the most moving moments I've ever encountered in a game, and these moments are communicated solely through your own emotions. It's the epitome of "one more time with feeling," as you skim through gravitational fields and into the vacuum of space, orbiting around gentle tunes that drift through the galaxy. In a game that constantly possessed with noise, there's no feeling more chilling than hurtling through the silence of space, isolated, the only audio being the rasped and weary sounds of your breathing humming through your suit as the last bits of oxygen move in and out of your lungs.
There's this bit in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe--the second book in his series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--where Zaphod Beeblebrox and Arthur Dent arrive at the site of this device called the Total Perspective Vortex. The general schtick of the Vortex is that, once entered, it exposes the subject to the true scale of the universe in comparison to their own small existence. The Vortex eventually was used as a form of torture or criminal punishment, as the true scale of the universe was supposedly so awing and humbling that it vegetized anyone exposed to it.
As I arrived near the end of Outer Wilds, I found myself thinking about this part of Adams' book, despite that it has been several years since I initially read the book. Outer Wilds is a very special kind of game and it's about acknowledging the size of the universe, forcing us to contend with the spaces and the world around us. It's a game about being in the right place and the right time--figuratively and literally. It's about coming to terms with your mortality, and coping with the states of perception, existence, and being that we shift and move through every day. It challenges the conceptions of how we move through our lives and challenges us not to think greater and bigger, but to think more truthfully and humbly. Art has tried many times to tacklle these ideas, but almost always their themes are dissolved into pessimism: the universe is bigger than we could possibly perceive or imagine, and if that's the case, then why bother living at all? Outer Wilds rejects this pessimism. You don't save the universe--you can't even save yourself. No matter how many times you tread through those loops, no matter how many times you endeavor once more into the breach, your fate remains the same. But that fate doesn't make the journey or life any less beautiful, and up until its final minutes, Outer Wilds is about enjoying life, finding beauty within the unknown, and appreciating the shared spaces and times that we inhabit with each other.
In the early days of gaming, design was very heavily tied to technological limitations. Prior to the 7th generation of consoles, developers were often constrained with what they not only make a game look like but what they could also make a game play like. Because computers grealy outpaced consoles with their processing power, most PC games of the times were responsible for innovating and leading the frey. Myst. Doom. Deus Ex. The design style of these games was very heavily tied to the restrictions and limitations of the time. When PC gaming eventually faded away, the process of design innovation faded away with it. Players were no longer encouraged to rely on a sense of self-discovery. They stopped being forced to piece together information and figure out where to go next based on nothing but their own intuition and interest. Instead, unique systems and dynamic gameplay was replaced with a hodgepodge of overly-linear design, restrictive playstyles, and gaudy objective markers. A decade of silence, an industry infected with tepid rail shooters, unoriginal platformers, and droll action games followed. Eventually, hope arose again, and we return to the year 2019, a group of young developers living in Santa Cruz, and a video game born out of campfire stories and astral exploration.
Outer Wilds is a game where every bit of discovery is rewarded with more discovery. It's a game about learning and about growing, just like real life. We so often think of games as discrete structure that have to act and behave in a certain way--every bit of progress must lead to some elaboration on that progress, every trial must be rewarded with some goodie, almost as if the game is apologizing for making the player perform some action that causes them to slightly deviate from their mission. Outer Wilds has no such time for guilty apologetic niceties, instead acknowledging that the pursuit for discovery is its bread-and-butter and fully committing to these ideas. Video games are very afraid of satisfaction, which is why we often see games that have such concrete ideas of what their content is--something is either achieved and completed, or it isn't. You've reached the ending, or you haven't. You've 100%d the game, or you haven't. Fellow detective game Her Story by Sam Barlow is a unique game because it doesn't have an ending, and instead simply asks players to put down the game when they feel satisfied with the information they've procured.
Most of what Outer Wilds has to offer is necessary to reach the game's true ending, but even then there's a healthy slab of appetizers smattered around the solar system to satisfy your appetite beyond completion purposes. Some of my favorite moments in the game came just from seeking out something I saw in the distance that looked interesting, regardless of whether it was "useful" or not. Outer Wilds is a master of the callback, and there were many times where I'd spot something early on in my playthrough, think nothing of it, and then come to some significant revelation later on. I cannot describe these moments as being anything but incredibly refreshing and fulfilling. The game carries with it an aura of honesty and transparency that makes exploring even the most mundane areas in its toybox solar system a pure joy. It's a game about self-satiation and is probably one of the only games of the last generation without objective markers that actually rewards the player for exploring. In the last decade of gaming we've seen a vast degeneration of level and world design that has resulted in a complete loss of games attempting to stimulate player discovery. Some open-world games have managed to combat this but placing interesting-looking areas and structures throughout the world--like Breath of the Wild--but for the life of me I can't actually remember a single game that rewarded you with something other than a weapon or a collectible or a meandering side quest on the horizon. Outer Wilds rewards you with knowledge and there's almost no fat in the game, making every single discovery feel purposeful.
The game's solar system contains five planets (six if you count the Hourglass Twins as separate entities), three moons, three satellite stations, and a comet. That totals up to about a dozen distinct astral bodies. All five planets are necessary to move through the main pathway of the story, but pretty much everything else in the game has extraneous information. You can complete the entire game by just bouncing between Giant's Deep, Dark Bramble, the Hourglass Twins, and Brittle Hollow, but the game rewards you with additional information by challenging you to explore areas like the Interloper or the Quantum Moon. I generally despise games that hide their entire plot behind item descriptions and lore bits (like Hollow Knight) but Outer Wilds does so much more. It places you in the context of a universe that exists beyond your perception, not just in space but in time. It's a rich world that exists and changes not just for the 22 minutes that you repeat over and over, but also for billions of years. It's a world of isolation but not one of loneliness, but rather of solitude, as you explore the past of an ancient species that existed long before you. Outer Wilds is commonly labeled as a detective game but I think it's more of an archaelogy one, as you piece together the remnants of foreign societies, worlds, institutions, systems, sciences, and revelations. Despite never carrying a spoken word of dialogue, and actual conversation being incredibly sparse throughout the game's narrative, its story manages to contain some of the most moving moments I've ever encountered in a game, and these moments are communicated solely through your own emotions. It's the epitome of "one more time with feeling," as you skim through gravitational fields and into the vacuum of space, orbiting around gentle tunes that drift through the galaxy. In a game that constantly possessed with noise, there's no feeling more chilling than hurtling through the silence of space, isolated, the only audio being the rasped and weary sounds of your breathing humming through your suit as the last bits of oxygen move in and out of your lungs.
There's this bit in Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe--the second book in his series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--where Zaphod Beeblebrox and Arthur Dent arrive at the site of this device called the Total Perspective Vortex. The general schtick of the Vortex is that, once entered, it exposes the subject to the true scale of the universe in comparison to their own small existence. The Vortex eventually was used as a form of torture or criminal punishment, as the true scale of the universe was supposedly so awing and humbling that it vegetized anyone exposed to it.
As I arrived near the end of Outer Wilds, I found myself thinking about this part of Adams' book, despite that it has been several years since I initially read the book. Outer Wilds is a very special kind of game and it's about acknowledging the size of the universe, forcing us to contend with the spaces and the world around us. It's a game about being in the right place and the right time--figuratively and literally. It's about coming to terms with your mortality, and coping with the states of perception, existence, and being that we shift and move through every day. It challenges the conceptions of how we move through our lives and challenges us not to think greater and bigger, but to think more truthfully and humbly. Art has tried many times to tacklle these ideas, but almost always their themes are dissolved into pessimism: the universe is bigger than we could possibly perceive or imagine, and if that's the case, then why bother living at all? Outer Wilds rejects this pessimism. You don't save the universe--you can't even save yourself. No matter how many times you tread through those loops, no matter how many times you endeavor once more into the breach, your fate remains the same. But that fate doesn't make the journey or life any less beautiful, and up until its final minutes, Outer Wilds is about enjoying life, finding beauty within the unknown, and appreciating the shared spaces and times that we inhabit with each other.
It's good. You know it's good. You know why it's good. It uses its medium to the full potential in terms of story, gameplay, etc. etc. It kind of makes most other games worse by proximity because they weren't as good at being games as Outer Wilds is. Also one of the few pieces of media to make me shed a few tears, even if after the fact.
Everything else to say has probably already been said so instead I'll bitch about something that doesn't matter at all: I see fans say shit like "u'll never experience it again u can never replay :(((" It's like, yeah, that applies to fuckin' everything! That's sort of a big contributing factor to why this is special! Experiences are always fleeting, positive ones moreso. Cherish your memories but don't wallow in them; move on in the hopes to experience even greater things, ya damn redditor.
I think it rubs me the wrong way cause gamers seem tired of how bloated, stretched out, and unoriginal modern games can be but then their first response to something new and exciting is "no replayability. too short. i want moree. sequel when?" Like, you're part of the problem! That type of feedback is why almost every good game this year has been a remake or a sequel, they're just giving us what we ask for which is more of the same. This is probably a human nature thing and I'm just as much of a perpetrator of this as anybody (Silksong when?).
Wait, what was I doing? Was this a review for something?
(Includes Echoes of the Eye DLC)
(Mastered because I got all the achievements)
Everything else to say has probably already been said so instead I'll bitch about something that doesn't matter at all: I see fans say shit like "u'll never experience it again u can never replay :(((" It's like, yeah, that applies to fuckin' everything! That's sort of a big contributing factor to why this is special! Experiences are always fleeting, positive ones moreso. Cherish your memories but don't wallow in them; move on in the hopes to experience even greater things, ya damn redditor.
I think it rubs me the wrong way cause gamers seem tired of how bloated, stretched out, and unoriginal modern games can be but then their first response to something new and exciting is "no replayability. too short. i want moree. sequel when?" Like, you're part of the problem! That type of feedback is why almost every good game this year has been a remake or a sequel, they're just giving us what we ask for which is more of the same. This is probably a human nature thing and I'm just as much of a perpetrator of this as anybody (Silksong when?).
Wait, what was I doing? Was this a review for something?
(Includes Echoes of the Eye DLC)
(Mastered because I got all the achievements)
If you were to ask me to pick a single game to represent each genre as a pillar of what that genre of game can accomplish, I’d hoist Outer Wilds up as the pillar of exploration games without an ounce of hesitation. Outer Wilds is a passionately made space-exploration game set in a fairly large solar system filled with several planets each with their own sets of secrets and mysteries that you are free to explore at your whim.
Outer Wilds is one of those games that you are best going in with as little knowledge as possible because ultimately this game is about the things that you learn in your journey exploring the solar system. However I think that I can still explain a little about the game's mechanics because as objectively good as this game is: the way it plays simply won’t be for everybody.
Outer Wilds does not contain any combat. It does not contain experience or skill trees. Hell, it doesn’t even have quests. Outer Wilds is entirely about exploration and 99% of your gameplay will be flying around to different planets, exploring on foot, reading logs and piecing together clues from environmental storytelling -all to further understand the mysteries that surround you.
So what even drives you in Outer Wilds? What are your goals? Well it’s simple: curiosity. Given a new spaceship and complete free reign to do whatever you want in the universe, it’s entirely up to you to decide what you want to do. There is no right path to take in Outer Wilds, no perfect guide or direction to follow. Just go wherever looks interesting and let yourself enjoy the journey.
There’s nothing else that I can really say and nothing else that you need to know. Outer Wilds is a love story to the mysteries of space and exploration. It is a love story to human curiosity and determination. It is the best exploration game I have ever played and perhaps ever will play. It is an absolute privilege to be able to experience this game, a privilege that you will only have once. This is an honest to god masterpiece and I couldn’t recommend it more if I tried.
5/5
Outer Wilds is one of those games that you are best going in with as little knowledge as possible because ultimately this game is about the things that you learn in your journey exploring the solar system. However I think that I can still explain a little about the game's mechanics because as objectively good as this game is: the way it plays simply won’t be for everybody.
Outer Wilds does not contain any combat. It does not contain experience or skill trees. Hell, it doesn’t even have quests. Outer Wilds is entirely about exploration and 99% of your gameplay will be flying around to different planets, exploring on foot, reading logs and piecing together clues from environmental storytelling -all to further understand the mysteries that surround you.
So what even drives you in Outer Wilds? What are your goals? Well it’s simple: curiosity. Given a new spaceship and complete free reign to do whatever you want in the universe, it’s entirely up to you to decide what you want to do. There is no right path to take in Outer Wilds, no perfect guide or direction to follow. Just go wherever looks interesting and let yourself enjoy the journey.
There’s nothing else that I can really say and nothing else that you need to know. Outer Wilds is a love story to the mysteries of space and exploration. It is a love story to human curiosity and determination. It is the best exploration game I have ever played and perhaps ever will play. It is an absolute privilege to be able to experience this game, a privilege that you will only have once. This is an honest to god masterpiece and I couldn’t recommend it more if I tried.
5/5
This game perfectly depicts both the horrors of space and the wonder of it. Luckily my wonder and curiosity for space is much bigger than the fear of it and the existential dread it makes me feel.
This is a fantastic game. It’s Majora’s mask but as a puzzle game, in space. I’ve never seen a game use its ideas so well. It’s like an escape room as a game, but instead of being trapped inside a room, you’re in space. Phenomenal game, I’ll beat the dlc eventually lol
I should love this game. I wanted to love this game. I tried to love this game. Even now I am disappointed—mostly in myself—that I did not.
I think it's a "me" problem, not a problem with the game itself. Most players don't seem to find Outer Wilds even half as frustrating as I did. I resorted to using a walkthrough pretty quickly, and even with the guide, I still almost gave up out of frustration. It's not just that the controls are tricky, but that the way to progress is often unclear, the puzzles are obscure, and the physics-based challenges are no cakewalk, either (%!$& that #$&!ing cyclone to the end of the universe and back). The moments of pleasure and discovery I had with the game, and there are plenty, were fighting a constant war with a horde of annoyances, and on many occasions the annoyances almost won.
The fact that they didn't is a testament to the game's many good qualities, which are real, so please believe all the other reviewers when they tell you about them. I just wish all the lovely parts didn't have to coexist with so much stuff that bugged the living hell out of me.
Oh, and while the game receives a lot of praise for its story, I found it...a bit less than revelatory? It suits the style of gameplay perfectly, but you more or less know the basic contours from the beginning, and there aren't many surprises along the way. I think part of the reason I didn't enjoy the game more is that I was playing mostly for the story and was impatient to learn more, which is the wrong way to go about it. Really Outer Wilds does not mix well with impatience of any kind. I think you are meant to explore haphazardly for the sheer fun of exploring, piecing things together little by little, in which case I can easily imagine this game lasting a good 30-40 hours or more. I don't think I personally would have had the endurance to play that way, but kudos to anyone who does have what it takes to get the most out of the experience.
I think it's a "me" problem, not a problem with the game itself. Most players don't seem to find Outer Wilds even half as frustrating as I did. I resorted to using a walkthrough pretty quickly, and even with the guide, I still almost gave up out of frustration. It's not just that the controls are tricky, but that the way to progress is often unclear, the puzzles are obscure, and the physics-based challenges are no cakewalk, either (%!$& that #$&!ing cyclone to the end of the universe and back). The moments of pleasure and discovery I had with the game, and there are plenty, were fighting a constant war with a horde of annoyances, and on many occasions the annoyances almost won.
The fact that they didn't is a testament to the game's many good qualities, which are real, so please believe all the other reviewers when they tell you about them. I just wish all the lovely parts didn't have to coexist with so much stuff that bugged the living hell out of me.
Oh, and while the game receives a lot of praise for its story, I found it...a bit less than revelatory? It suits the style of gameplay perfectly, but you more or less know the basic contours from the beginning, and there aren't many surprises along the way. I think part of the reason I didn't enjoy the game more is that I was playing mostly for the story and was impatient to learn more, which is the wrong way to go about it. Really Outer Wilds does not mix well with impatience of any kind. I think you are meant to explore haphazardly for the sheer fun of exploring, piecing things together little by little, in which case I can easily imagine this game lasting a good 30-40 hours or more. I don't think I personally would have had the endurance to play that way, but kudos to anyone who does have what it takes to get the most out of the experience.
'So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.’
– Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England, 731.
In order to ruin the pleasure of discovery as little as possible, this review, although spoilerless, is written in a slightly unusual way. It is an experience that does not deserve to be dissected too minutely, and I urge you to try it for yourself.
In his Ecclesiastical History of England (731), the Venerable Bede tells how Edwin of Northumbria decided to embrace Christianity in 627. This passage is well known and has been commented on extensively for its poetic qualities and as a commonplace in literature. After the priest Coifi has urged the king to convert, one of his advisers compares human life to the passage of a sparrow through the dining halls of the nobility: 'The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.' [1] This ephemeral nature of secular life is reflected in traditional historiography, which has long seen Edwin as an indecisive king, unable to make decisions for himself: indeed, paganism always resisted Edwin's half-hearted attempts at conversion.
A poetry of peace and disquiet
Just as the sparrow takes refuge in the warm halls of the thanes of old, the player begins the epic of Outer Wilds around a campfire. The crackling flames have a restful overtone, and the few marshmallows that burn so easily have a sweet, childlike nostalgic quality. The guitar notes, flowing like the village's great waterfall, accompany this dreamy atmosphere. But the horizon is elsewhere: the player understands that today is the day of their departure. They have been chosen as a pilot to explore the great void, as part of the Hearthians' space programme. Despite the warmth of the hearth, the spectre of the night, the cold and the otherworldly grips the player, who wants to take off and visit the planets they see dancing above their head. The preparations are in full swing and the whole community cheers the protagonist on in this rite of passage. But when the player is confronted with the Nomai bust just before leaving for space, a strange tension arises. It is at this point that Outer Wilds becomes a unique experience.
The rustic atmosphere gives way to something of a different dimension. Exploration is the anxiety of not knowing where one is going, not knowing how to get home. One thing leads to another and the player is tasked with gathering information, not really knowing why at first, apart from learning more about the Nomai. With each layer revealed, a few discordant notes are offered as a reward, wrapping the exploration in a rare poetic beauty: the search for truth promises no concrete gratification. The emotions it triggers are to be sought within. Outer Wilds is bathed in an aesthetic of apocalypse: not that of anarchic destruction, but the quiet but firm reminder of the grip of entropy.
The loneliness of space archaeology
In the course of the many loops the player goes through, in the course of the several minutes that pass again and again, the player's perception is altered by the various clues found. Even the most innocuous and comfortable things hide their secrets. Despite the fact that Timber Hearth, the protagonist's village, has been built as a tutorial, mysteries abound and give this peaceful haven, a kind of fantasised United States, a distinctive flavour. The player explores the solar system like an archaeologist, searching for documentary fragments that will allow them to better understand the surrounding world. Strange architectures and written sources are brought into play as support for memory. The various messages found throughout the solar system are not necessarily intended for the player. But they are understood as a witness to what has been, be it sorrows, joys, jealousies or angers. The artistic tradition has long been attracted to ruins, in which some seek to see a mirror of themselves. By observing the fragility of others, the traveller becomes aware of their own existence, hic et nunc, here and now: 'I live as you have lived'.
As each time loop returns the player to the initial state, the player is treated as a witness. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000) is cited as a direct inspiration for the game, but its approach to time regression was different: Majora's Mask focused on reaching fixed checkpoints before the moon crashes into Termina. To achieve this goal, a dungeon must be solved in the allotted time, and its completion remains even after the game is set back in time. In Outer Wilds, the experience is of a passenger nature. If, in practice, the result is similar to going back in time, the protagonist is never the same. They are always forced, in spite of themselves, into a world on the verge of collapse. Drawn by a consciousness almost stronger than their own, they keep moving away from the campfire into the dark oceans of space in search of new emotions. The exploration of Dark Bramble is one of the most striking passages, with such oppressive silence and only the sounds of the radar to guide the player through milky Escherian molasses, arguably the most dangerous place for them. Why would anyone go there? Majora's Mask was an experiment in empathy, a social tapestry with a colourful cast. Outer Wilds is a journey into loneliness. Not that there are no social bonds, on the contrary, but how relevant is that given the vastness of the universe and its entropy?
To live, die and know
Just as the Nomai statue absorbs the protagonist's memories, the player absorbs what happens on screen. Outer Wilds manages to immerse the player in a truly organic exploration. Each planet provides clues to other locations, as well as answers to some crucial questions. It is possible to learn the same secrets in more than one place, because the solar system was not created for the protagonist to discover its history, like Hop-o'-My-Thumb leaving pebbles to form a single line, but because individuals leave traces of their existence by necessity. The Projection Stones offer glimpses of distant places and, through repetition, reinforce some of the key points in the grand design behind the solar system. Even at the end of the journey, some ideas remain elusive, some questions unanswered. The traveller is a later witness to events, not the clerk of a galactic court. In Stanisław Lem's Solaris (1961), Kelvin's experiments and final exploration provide only incomplete answers about Solaris and its protoplasmic ocean. When the player finally discovers how some obscure rules operate within the solar system, there is a real sense of satisfaction. Why do these rules work on these particular objects? The question remains unanswered. The whole tragedy and beauty of Solaris and Outer Wilds is that Earthlings and Hearthians, although complex creatures, are not at the centre of the universe. They know too little of what came before or after them, only bits and pieces at best.
Outer Wilds succeeds in communicating its intentions through an atypical artistic touch: the clay appearance reinforces the strangeness of the discoveries, while the musical moments always beautifully underline the player's journeys. They evoke the works of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, especially Orphée (2016), with the same sense of contemplation. As much as the exploration is organic and well thought out, with many details that the most attentive players will notice, some sequences make the subsystems interact in a rather unstable way. The player's mobility remains erratic, and some sequences that require precise movements can prove frustrating: this may or may not be a deliberate choice. While it reinforces the theme of the game, it may alienate some players.
Whenever the player wakes up, a satellite will fire a projectile into infinity against the backdrop of Giant's Deep. This blast destroys the satellite, which explodes in a cloud of purple energy. When the truth of this familiar and innocuous scene is revealed, a unique emotion arises from each time the same spectacle unfolds before the player's eyes. In 634, Oswald was crowned King of Northumbria and began anew the Christianisation of the region, aided by the indefatigable Aidan, who preached throughout the country until his death in 651. Although Edwin's experience was temporary, it served as a lesson and stepping stone for later attempts. Roman Christianity was endorsed at the Synod of Whitby (664) and the 'Northumbrian Renaissance' began, an exciting cultural development to which the Venerable Bede contributed. Existence is a beginning.
__________
[1] A. M. Sellar, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, George Bell and Sons, London, 1907, p. 117.
– Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England, 731.
In order to ruin the pleasure of discovery as little as possible, this review, although spoilerless, is written in a slightly unusual way. It is an experience that does not deserve to be dissected too minutely, and I urge you to try it for yourself.
In his Ecclesiastical History of England (731), the Venerable Bede tells how Edwin of Northumbria decided to embrace Christianity in 627. This passage is well known and has been commented on extensively for its poetic qualities and as a commonplace in literature. After the priest Coifi has urged the king to convert, one of his advisers compares human life to the passage of a sparrow through the dining halls of the nobility: 'The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.' [1] This ephemeral nature of secular life is reflected in traditional historiography, which has long seen Edwin as an indecisive king, unable to make decisions for himself: indeed, paganism always resisted Edwin's half-hearted attempts at conversion.
A poetry of peace and disquiet
Just as the sparrow takes refuge in the warm halls of the thanes of old, the player begins the epic of Outer Wilds around a campfire. The crackling flames have a restful overtone, and the few marshmallows that burn so easily have a sweet, childlike nostalgic quality. The guitar notes, flowing like the village's great waterfall, accompany this dreamy atmosphere. But the horizon is elsewhere: the player understands that today is the day of their departure. They have been chosen as a pilot to explore the great void, as part of the Hearthians' space programme. Despite the warmth of the hearth, the spectre of the night, the cold and the otherworldly grips the player, who wants to take off and visit the planets they see dancing above their head. The preparations are in full swing and the whole community cheers the protagonist on in this rite of passage. But when the player is confronted with the Nomai bust just before leaving for space, a strange tension arises. It is at this point that Outer Wilds becomes a unique experience.
The rustic atmosphere gives way to something of a different dimension. Exploration is the anxiety of not knowing where one is going, not knowing how to get home. One thing leads to another and the player is tasked with gathering information, not really knowing why at first, apart from learning more about the Nomai. With each layer revealed, a few discordant notes are offered as a reward, wrapping the exploration in a rare poetic beauty: the search for truth promises no concrete gratification. The emotions it triggers are to be sought within. Outer Wilds is bathed in an aesthetic of apocalypse: not that of anarchic destruction, but the quiet but firm reminder of the grip of entropy.
The loneliness of space archaeology
In the course of the many loops the player goes through, in the course of the several minutes that pass again and again, the player's perception is altered by the various clues found. Even the most innocuous and comfortable things hide their secrets. Despite the fact that Timber Hearth, the protagonist's village, has been built as a tutorial, mysteries abound and give this peaceful haven, a kind of fantasised United States, a distinctive flavour. The player explores the solar system like an archaeologist, searching for documentary fragments that will allow them to better understand the surrounding world. Strange architectures and written sources are brought into play as support for memory. The various messages found throughout the solar system are not necessarily intended for the player. But they are understood as a witness to what has been, be it sorrows, joys, jealousies or angers. The artistic tradition has long been attracted to ruins, in which some seek to see a mirror of themselves. By observing the fragility of others, the traveller becomes aware of their own existence, hic et nunc, here and now: 'I live as you have lived'.
As each time loop returns the player to the initial state, the player is treated as a witness. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000) is cited as a direct inspiration for the game, but its approach to time regression was different: Majora's Mask focused on reaching fixed checkpoints before the moon crashes into Termina. To achieve this goal, a dungeon must be solved in the allotted time, and its completion remains even after the game is set back in time. In Outer Wilds, the experience is of a passenger nature. If, in practice, the result is similar to going back in time, the protagonist is never the same. They are always forced, in spite of themselves, into a world on the verge of collapse. Drawn by a consciousness almost stronger than their own, they keep moving away from the campfire into the dark oceans of space in search of new emotions. The exploration of Dark Bramble is one of the most striking passages, with such oppressive silence and only the sounds of the radar to guide the player through milky Escherian molasses, arguably the most dangerous place for them. Why would anyone go there? Majora's Mask was an experiment in empathy, a social tapestry with a colourful cast. Outer Wilds is a journey into loneliness. Not that there are no social bonds, on the contrary, but how relevant is that given the vastness of the universe and its entropy?
To live, die and know
Just as the Nomai statue absorbs the protagonist's memories, the player absorbs what happens on screen. Outer Wilds manages to immerse the player in a truly organic exploration. Each planet provides clues to other locations, as well as answers to some crucial questions. It is possible to learn the same secrets in more than one place, because the solar system was not created for the protagonist to discover its history, like Hop-o'-My-Thumb leaving pebbles to form a single line, but because individuals leave traces of their existence by necessity. The Projection Stones offer glimpses of distant places and, through repetition, reinforce some of the key points in the grand design behind the solar system. Even at the end of the journey, some ideas remain elusive, some questions unanswered. The traveller is a later witness to events, not the clerk of a galactic court. In Stanisław Lem's Solaris (1961), Kelvin's experiments and final exploration provide only incomplete answers about Solaris and its protoplasmic ocean. When the player finally discovers how some obscure rules operate within the solar system, there is a real sense of satisfaction. Why do these rules work on these particular objects? The question remains unanswered. The whole tragedy and beauty of Solaris and Outer Wilds is that Earthlings and Hearthians, although complex creatures, are not at the centre of the universe. They know too little of what came before or after them, only bits and pieces at best.
Outer Wilds succeeds in communicating its intentions through an atypical artistic touch: the clay appearance reinforces the strangeness of the discoveries, while the musical moments always beautifully underline the player's journeys. They evoke the works of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, especially Orphée (2016), with the same sense of contemplation. As much as the exploration is organic and well thought out, with many details that the most attentive players will notice, some sequences make the subsystems interact in a rather unstable way. The player's mobility remains erratic, and some sequences that require precise movements can prove frustrating: this may or may not be a deliberate choice. While it reinforces the theme of the game, it may alienate some players.
Whenever the player wakes up, a satellite will fire a projectile into infinity against the backdrop of Giant's Deep. This blast destroys the satellite, which explodes in a cloud of purple energy. When the truth of this familiar and innocuous scene is revealed, a unique emotion arises from each time the same spectacle unfolds before the player's eyes. In 634, Oswald was crowned King of Northumbria and began anew the Christianisation of the region, aided by the indefatigable Aidan, who preached throughout the country until his death in 651. Although Edwin's experience was temporary, it served as a lesson and stepping stone for later attempts. Roman Christianity was endorsed at the Synod of Whitby (664) and the 'Northumbrian Renaissance' began, an exciting cultural development to which the Venerable Bede contributed. Existence is a beginning.
__________
[1] A. M. Sellar, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, George Bell and Sons, London, 1907, p. 117.
Una experiencia inolvidable sobre el universo y su eventual fin.
Outer Wilds es una de las obras que mejor evoca el sentimiento de descubrimiento, logrado por medio de un fuerte misterio y el entendimiento del medio. Jugablemente no suena como la cosa más interesante, solo exploras planetas y demás sitios de interés para encontrar estructuras y textos que te ayuden a resolver el misterio, pero lo interesante viene en como plantea varios de estos aspectos con sus elementos jugables: la complejidad de maniobrar tu nave, el aprovechamiento de las herramientas a tu disposición, tus necesidades de supervivencia en el espacio, los elementos de física cuántica que se vinculan a tu percepción y la forma en la que exploras, la información de los textos leídos que SIEMPRE te dan pistas e indicaciones sobre que más hacer y cómo hacerlo, los elementos y peligros únicos que diferencian a cada planeta creando desafíos interesantes de conquistar, etc. La obra saca el máximo provecho del escenario y las opciones del jugador para que el explorar este universo resulte interesante de inicio a fin.
Como es de esperarse de su premisa, el sentimiento de libertad está siempre presente, desde el inicio el orden de exploración y que misterio quieres resolver primero es una decisión dejada al jugador, y de hecho, el juego es tan abierto que lo puedes terminar cuando quieras (si es que sabes que hacer). Para que todo esto sea posible, la obra propone un bucle de tiempo que acaba en 22 minutos, luego de eso el juego termina y eres vuelto al inicio manteniendo contigo la información conseguida, esto le permite crear situaciones dirigidas por el tiempo en el que te encuentras e incentiva al jugador a ser veloz y enfocado, creando una base jugable que te permite dirigir el ritmo total de la obra y que resulta en un título que te atrapará y evitará que lo dejes hasta que hayas saciado tu curiosidad.
Y curiosidad no es lo único que sentirás al jugar Outer Wilds: la anticipación siempre presente en explorar y descubrir los incontables misterios que rodean al universo y la tecnología dejada por esta civilización extinta; el terror y miedo a lo desconocido de no entender a qué eventos, peligros o entes naturales te enfrentas, hasta la eventual superación de este temor; frustración al acabar un bucle y no haber logrado mucho, o satisfacción al haber conseguido bastante; etc. Esta es una obra que evoca múltiples sentimientos y emociones en el jugador, ya no solo por su jugabilidad, si no por su fascinantes e impresionantes visuales, y su curiosamente emotiva banda sonora.
Pero ahí no se detiene, y es que incluso en lo narrativo es sobresaliente: Outer Wilds cuenta con un intrigante lore y una historia llena de cuestiones interesantes sobre nuestro sitio en el universo, y la conexión entre los seres pensantes y la naturaleza, todo contado por medio de una narrativa de tipo arqueológica donde descubres más de lo ocurrido (y por ocurrir) por medio del escenario, los diarios dejados por los personajes, o las pocas conversaciones con NPCs. E incluso con una conclusión que pone en perspectiva nuestro tamaño frente al universo y lo fútil que es el oponerse a este, acaba en una hermosa nota positiva que demuestra la relación entre el cosmos y la vida misma.
Uno de las mejores obras independientes que he experimentado en mucho tiempo, un auténtico viaje del cual salí completamente satisfecho, y otro gran videojuego que demuestra que el potencial del medio es tan basto como el universo mismo.
Outer Wilds es una de las obras que mejor evoca el sentimiento de descubrimiento, logrado por medio de un fuerte misterio y el entendimiento del medio. Jugablemente no suena como la cosa más interesante, solo exploras planetas y demás sitios de interés para encontrar estructuras y textos que te ayuden a resolver el misterio, pero lo interesante viene en como plantea varios de estos aspectos con sus elementos jugables: la complejidad de maniobrar tu nave, el aprovechamiento de las herramientas a tu disposición, tus necesidades de supervivencia en el espacio, los elementos de física cuántica que se vinculan a tu percepción y la forma en la que exploras, la información de los textos leídos que SIEMPRE te dan pistas e indicaciones sobre que más hacer y cómo hacerlo, los elementos y peligros únicos que diferencian a cada planeta creando desafíos interesantes de conquistar, etc. La obra saca el máximo provecho del escenario y las opciones del jugador para que el explorar este universo resulte interesante de inicio a fin.
Como es de esperarse de su premisa, el sentimiento de libertad está siempre presente, desde el inicio el orden de exploración y que misterio quieres resolver primero es una decisión dejada al jugador, y de hecho, el juego es tan abierto que lo puedes terminar cuando quieras (si es que sabes que hacer). Para que todo esto sea posible, la obra propone un bucle de tiempo que acaba en 22 minutos, luego de eso el juego termina y eres vuelto al inicio manteniendo contigo la información conseguida, esto le permite crear situaciones dirigidas por el tiempo en el que te encuentras e incentiva al jugador a ser veloz y enfocado, creando una base jugable que te permite dirigir el ritmo total de la obra y que resulta en un título que te atrapará y evitará que lo dejes hasta que hayas saciado tu curiosidad.
Y curiosidad no es lo único que sentirás al jugar Outer Wilds: la anticipación siempre presente en explorar y descubrir los incontables misterios que rodean al universo y la tecnología dejada por esta civilización extinta; el terror y miedo a lo desconocido de no entender a qué eventos, peligros o entes naturales te enfrentas, hasta la eventual superación de este temor; frustración al acabar un bucle y no haber logrado mucho, o satisfacción al haber conseguido bastante; etc. Esta es una obra que evoca múltiples sentimientos y emociones en el jugador, ya no solo por su jugabilidad, si no por su fascinantes e impresionantes visuales, y su curiosamente emotiva banda sonora.
Pero ahí no se detiene, y es que incluso en lo narrativo es sobresaliente: Outer Wilds cuenta con un intrigante lore y una historia llena de cuestiones interesantes sobre nuestro sitio en el universo, y la conexión entre los seres pensantes y la naturaleza, todo contado por medio de una narrativa de tipo arqueológica donde descubres más de lo ocurrido (y por ocurrir) por medio del escenario, los diarios dejados por los personajes, o las pocas conversaciones con NPCs. E incluso con una conclusión que pone en perspectiva nuestro tamaño frente al universo y lo fútil que es el oponerse a este, acaba en una hermosa nota positiva que demuestra la relación entre el cosmos y la vida misma.
Uno de las mejores obras independientes que he experimentado en mucho tiempo, un auténtico viaje del cual salí completamente satisfecho, y otro gran videojuego que demuestra que el potencial del medio es tan basto como el universo mismo.
This review contains spoilers
At first, I was worried that the 22 minutes cycle would stress me out more than anything. But it turns out it was barely an inconvenience.
The first moments of Outer Wilds when you explore your home planet really set the mood for the rest of the game. From the get go, there were a lot of intriguing dialogues. The NPCs talk to you about this ancient civilization, the Nomai, from which you need to decipher their language. And you learn that some of your more experienced comrades are already wandering around the galaxy making their own researches.
It got me excited to start exploring the different planets straight away, to follow in their footsteps.
It took me a few minutes to have a good grip of the spaceship's piloting, but I quickly got used to it.
By the way, I had no idea about the death loop when I started the game, so my first death was quite surprising. It really happened out of nowhere.
The very 1st planet I visited was Giant's Deep. I had fun finding data left by the Nomai, inspecting the ruins and solving little puzzles, all while being soothed by the music and quiet atmosphere.
After that, I went to Dark Bramble. It took me a while to progress on this planet with all the deaths caused by the Anglerfishes, and all the crashes. So it was satisfying to eventually find my way through the fog and meet Feldspar. The space-bending properties of this planet were fascinating.
It's interesting how the rewards in this game are not bonus items or better gear to make you more resistant. The only things you'll ever find are data & recording left by the Nomai on each different planet. And there's no combat either. It's purely a game of exploration, investigation & puzzle solving.
And I have to say I got really engaged in the story after some point.
Earlier, I said that the cycle didn't bother me, but having to rush my way through Ember Twin before the sand engulfs everything was a bit underwhelming. Yet another mechanic that completely caught me off guard when I first visited this planet. Waiting for the sand level to decrease on Ash Twin was equally annoying.
I don't know how to put it exactly, but the atmosphere was somewhat unsettling at times. Being all alone in the quietness & emptiness of Space, finding vestiges of ancient civilizations, recollecting their memories through their texts & recordings, and learning about their tragic fate... You just feel like a powerless witness.
There's also the fact that most of the people you find are unaware of the time loop you're all stuck in.
I appreciated the scientific aspects in the gameplay. Whether it's the things shown in the observatory, like the explanations about supernovas and the tidal effect; the fact that you can communicate from one planet to another sending radio signals; the gravity being slightly different on each planet due to their mass; White Hole's teleportation violating Causality... It gave a sense of realism to the game which I found quite appealing.
It surprised me a lot when Brittle Hollow's blackhole sucked me in, and sent me at the other side of the galaxy. I was so confused for a few seconds. "This game even has wormholes? I love it!"
By the way, Brittle Hollow looks amazing, especially underground where you can cross bridges right above the blackhole.
There were many more beautiful places, like Brittle Hollow Southern Observatory; Interloper's ruptured Core; the Sun Station; or even the Quantum Moon sixth location. The game has a beautiful artstyle!
Some places were so well hidden, I really had to go out of my way to find some of the locations required to progress in the story. It took me quite some time to find the access to the Anglerfish fossil in Sunless City, or the Tower of Trials inside Giant's Deep huge cyclone.
The trials in Tower of Quantum were so fun to figure out. Having to use the camera to prevent the archs from teleporting was clever. There's also that little puzzle in Ember Twin's caverns where you need to turn all the lights off to be able to teleport with the quantum shards. I enjoyed those puzzles a lot.
Another fun moment is when you have to go through Interloper's core, going down those slides & dodging the ghost matter.
I loved the process to enter the Tower of Quantum Knowledge on Brittle Hollow. This was one of the last important locations I visited because I couldn't figure out how to enter it for the life of me.
30 hours into the game, I had an epiphany after watching the meteors crash on Brittle Hollow, and I finally understood that I needed to wait for the Tower to fall down in the blackhole and get teleported to the other side.
It was very clever, and it's one of the many moments where I was fascinated with how ingenious the game design is.
I was constantly rewarded for my curiosity, and it incentivized me to explore more & more. It felt rewarding to realize that there was indeed a hidden place inside Giant Deep's massive cyclone; inside the volcanos on Hollow's Lantern; or when I entered the Quantum Moon for the 1st time.
Fun fact: I landed on the Quantum Moon BEFORE finding the Quantum Moon locator on Ember Twin 😅
The exploration on Quantum Moon was captivating, the atmosphere is very eerie. It took me till the end-game to finally reach the 6th location. Finding Solanum was a shock, I was so surprised to meet a Nomai face to face. And I was happy to learn more about the Eye of the Universe.
At the end of the game, when you finally reach the inside of Ash Twin, all the informations are gathered together, and you finally understand the bigger picture.
It was so satisfying to solve those mysteries about the Nomai's extinction, the time loop and the Ash Twin project.
Removing the core tugged at my heartstrings. It was such a compelling adventure... I haven't played ANYTHING like Outer Wilds. It's so different from everything else. I had great moments with it, and I'll probably remember it for a long time.
----------Playtime & Completion----------
[Started on July 11th & finished on September 12th 2023]
Playtime: 40 hours
I got the first ending by removing the core inside Ash Twin Project, and I unlocked almost every log inside the space ship.
I still need to unlock the true ending by solving the mystery of the Eye of the Universe, but I'll do it later, along with the DLC "Echoes of the Eye"
The first moments of Outer Wilds when you explore your home planet really set the mood for the rest of the game. From the get go, there were a lot of intriguing dialogues. The NPCs talk to you about this ancient civilization, the Nomai, from which you need to decipher their language. And you learn that some of your more experienced comrades are already wandering around the galaxy making their own researches.
It got me excited to start exploring the different planets straight away, to follow in their footsteps.
It took me a few minutes to have a good grip of the spaceship's piloting, but I quickly got used to it.
By the way, I had no idea about the death loop when I started the game, so my first death was quite surprising. It really happened out of nowhere.
The very 1st planet I visited was Giant's Deep. I had fun finding data left by the Nomai, inspecting the ruins and solving little puzzles, all while being soothed by the music and quiet atmosphere.
After that, I went to Dark Bramble. It took me a while to progress on this planet with all the deaths caused by the Anglerfishes, and all the crashes. So it was satisfying to eventually find my way through the fog and meet Feldspar. The space-bending properties of this planet were fascinating.
It's interesting how the rewards in this game are not bonus items or better gear to make you more resistant. The only things you'll ever find are data & recording left by the Nomai on each different planet. And there's no combat either. It's purely a game of exploration, investigation & puzzle solving.
And I have to say I got really engaged in the story after some point.
Earlier, I said that the cycle didn't bother me, but having to rush my way through Ember Twin before the sand engulfs everything was a bit underwhelming. Yet another mechanic that completely caught me off guard when I first visited this planet. Waiting for the sand level to decrease on Ash Twin was equally annoying.
I don't know how to put it exactly, but the atmosphere was somewhat unsettling at times. Being all alone in the quietness & emptiness of Space, finding vestiges of ancient civilizations, recollecting their memories through their texts & recordings, and learning about their tragic fate... You just feel like a powerless witness.
There's also the fact that most of the people you find are unaware of the time loop you're all stuck in.
I appreciated the scientific aspects in the gameplay. Whether it's the things shown in the observatory, like the explanations about supernovas and the tidal effect; the fact that you can communicate from one planet to another sending radio signals; the gravity being slightly different on each planet due to their mass; White Hole's teleportation violating Causality... It gave a sense of realism to the game which I found quite appealing.
It surprised me a lot when Brittle Hollow's blackhole sucked me in, and sent me at the other side of the galaxy. I was so confused for a few seconds. "This game even has wormholes? I love it!"
By the way, Brittle Hollow looks amazing, especially underground where you can cross bridges right above the blackhole.
There were many more beautiful places, like Brittle Hollow Southern Observatory; Interloper's ruptured Core; the Sun Station; or even the Quantum Moon sixth location. The game has a beautiful artstyle!
Some places were so well hidden, I really had to go out of my way to find some of the locations required to progress in the story. It took me quite some time to find the access to the Anglerfish fossil in Sunless City, or the Tower of Trials inside Giant's Deep huge cyclone.
The trials in Tower of Quantum were so fun to figure out. Having to use the camera to prevent the archs from teleporting was clever. There's also that little puzzle in Ember Twin's caverns where you need to turn all the lights off to be able to teleport with the quantum shards. I enjoyed those puzzles a lot.
Another fun moment is when you have to go through Interloper's core, going down those slides & dodging the ghost matter.
I loved the process to enter the Tower of Quantum Knowledge on Brittle Hollow. This was one of the last important locations I visited because I couldn't figure out how to enter it for the life of me.
30 hours into the game, I had an epiphany after watching the meteors crash on Brittle Hollow, and I finally understood that I needed to wait for the Tower to fall down in the blackhole and get teleported to the other side.
It was very clever, and it's one of the many moments where I was fascinated with how ingenious the game design is.
I was constantly rewarded for my curiosity, and it incentivized me to explore more & more. It felt rewarding to realize that there was indeed a hidden place inside Giant Deep's massive cyclone; inside the volcanos on Hollow's Lantern; or when I entered the Quantum Moon for the 1st time.
Fun fact: I landed on the Quantum Moon BEFORE finding the Quantum Moon locator on Ember Twin 😅
The exploration on Quantum Moon was captivating, the atmosphere is very eerie. It took me till the end-game to finally reach the 6th location. Finding Solanum was a shock, I was so surprised to meet a Nomai face to face. And I was happy to learn more about the Eye of the Universe.
At the end of the game, when you finally reach the inside of Ash Twin, all the informations are gathered together, and you finally understand the bigger picture.
It was so satisfying to solve those mysteries about the Nomai's extinction, the time loop and the Ash Twin project.
Removing the core tugged at my heartstrings. It was such a compelling adventure... I haven't played ANYTHING like Outer Wilds. It's so different from everything else. I had great moments with it, and I'll probably remember it for a long time.
----------Playtime & Completion----------
[Started on July 11th & finished on September 12th 2023]
Playtime: 40 hours
I got the first ending by removing the core inside Ash Twin Project, and I unlocked almost every log inside the space ship.
I still need to unlock the true ending by solving the mystery of the Eye of the Universe, but I'll do it later, along with the DLC "Echoes of the Eye"
This review contains spoilers
Outer Wilds é um jogo sobre achar sentido nas coisas. Mais especificamente, é um jogo sobre criar sentido onde não há.
Os Nomai tomaram como o sentido de suas vidas e a missão de sua espécie encontrar o Eye of the Universe, interpretando seu sinal como um literal chamado e até atribuindo-lhe consciência. Mas o Eye apenas... Existe. Ele apenas é. Seu sinal é tão significativo quanto a luz de uma estrela ou as ondas magnéticas de um pulsar; e os fenômenos bizarros que acontecem em sua proximidade tão naturais (e misteriosos, como podem afirmar os astrofísicos de plantão) quanto a gravidade ou o eletromagnetismo.
O sentido que os Nomai deram ao Eye of the Universe foi puramente fabricado. Mas isso não significa que ele não tem importância. Pelo contrário, é graças a esse sentido que eles continuaram explorando, observando, criando e experimentando mesmo diante das inúmeras adversidades que encontraram ao chegar num sistema solar particularmente hostil.
Você, como jogador, também irá procurar em sua aventura um sentido que não existe — e provavelmente criar um. Afinal, as várias perguntas com que você se depara têm que ter uma resposta, certo? Por que o sol está explodindo? Por que você está preso num loop temporal? O que aconteceu com os Nomai? O que é o Eye of the Universe? Qual a relação disso tudo?
Por quê?
No final, várias respostas são encontradas. Mas, em vez de revelar um sentido, elas apenas o destroem. O sol está explodindo porque chegou ao final de seu ciclo de vida. Não há nada de malicioso por trás desse fenômeno: esse é o destino de todas as estrelas do universo. O loop temporal? Um mero acaso, uma coincidência. Uma tecnologia vestigal nomai que foi ativada com a explosão do sol. O destino dos nomai? Mortos pela explosão de um cometa não relacionado, que entrou na órbita do sistema solar. O Eye of the Universe? Um fenômeno natural que não vai salvar sua vida ou a do seu sistema solar, por mais intrigante que seja. A relação disso tudo? Aquela que você criar em sua cabeça.
Por quê? Porque sim.
Nada faz sentido. Mas nada precisa fazer sentido. E só porque as coisas não têm um sentido inerente não quer dizer que você não pode apreciar e se importar com as coisas que aprendeu, pessoas que conheceu e lugares que descobriu. Um dia tudo chegará ao fim. O próprio Universo está destinado a morrer. Mas, até lá, podemos apreciar a jornada.
O sentido da vida é dar sentido à vida.
Os Nomai tomaram como o sentido de suas vidas e a missão de sua espécie encontrar o Eye of the Universe, interpretando seu sinal como um literal chamado e até atribuindo-lhe consciência. Mas o Eye apenas... Existe. Ele apenas é. Seu sinal é tão significativo quanto a luz de uma estrela ou as ondas magnéticas de um pulsar; e os fenômenos bizarros que acontecem em sua proximidade tão naturais (e misteriosos, como podem afirmar os astrofísicos de plantão) quanto a gravidade ou o eletromagnetismo.
O sentido que os Nomai deram ao Eye of the Universe foi puramente fabricado. Mas isso não significa que ele não tem importância. Pelo contrário, é graças a esse sentido que eles continuaram explorando, observando, criando e experimentando mesmo diante das inúmeras adversidades que encontraram ao chegar num sistema solar particularmente hostil.
Você, como jogador, também irá procurar em sua aventura um sentido que não existe — e provavelmente criar um. Afinal, as várias perguntas com que você se depara têm que ter uma resposta, certo? Por que o sol está explodindo? Por que você está preso num loop temporal? O que aconteceu com os Nomai? O que é o Eye of the Universe? Qual a relação disso tudo?
Por quê?
No final, várias respostas são encontradas. Mas, em vez de revelar um sentido, elas apenas o destroem. O sol está explodindo porque chegou ao final de seu ciclo de vida. Não há nada de malicioso por trás desse fenômeno: esse é o destino de todas as estrelas do universo. O loop temporal? Um mero acaso, uma coincidência. Uma tecnologia vestigal nomai que foi ativada com a explosão do sol. O destino dos nomai? Mortos pela explosão de um cometa não relacionado, que entrou na órbita do sistema solar. O Eye of the Universe? Um fenômeno natural que não vai salvar sua vida ou a do seu sistema solar, por mais intrigante que seja. A relação disso tudo? Aquela que você criar em sua cabeça.
Por quê? Porque sim.
Nada faz sentido. Mas nada precisa fazer sentido. E só porque as coisas não têm um sentido inerente não quer dizer que você não pode apreciar e se importar com as coisas que aprendeu, pessoas que conheceu e lugares que descobriu. Um dia tudo chegará ao fim. O próprio Universo está destinado a morrer. Mas, até lá, podemos apreciar a jornada.
O sentido da vida é dar sentido à vida.