Impossible to compress all the impressions this game gave me. Kotaku ranked it as #1 most important game of the past decade and I can't say I disagree. So many things come together, like this group of students who, over many years, manage to craft an indie title that would then develop into that hypebomb, rivaling some of the BotWs and Halos of that time.

Just like Subnautica, this game is best played without knowing anything.
Knowledge is Outer Wilds' main currency, so whatever you find out about the game might not just spoil the experience, but also give you an eventually unwanted advantage, especially as gaining these informations mark some of the greatest things about this game.

The only thing that might be of interest is, that people who don't like to read through text and need some martial action might not feel at home here. Genrewise this game might not fit in any drawer but the "Exploration" label might fit the best here. You could say its a very far descendant of the classic adventure game, but then again you can and will die a lot here and while the game revolves around solving riddles and combining informations, all of this basically happens for you to traverse that artificial galaxy and encounter all the wonders of that solar system.
And just letting the game guide you through its world and look at those creations through the eyes of that naive little alien-explorer can lead to some experiences that truly feel larger than anything I've ever seen and felt in any game before.

This feeling of total immersion is happening very rarely for me and from the game's side its built up through a ton of factors like world physics, which in Outer Wilds are the actual star of the show, an believable worldbuilding, backgroundstory, the understanding of why you are, where you are and what that place actually means to the game and so on. When all of that comes together and you suddenly get thrown into a situation, which in any other game would feel like "me, another crash, let's reload and try again", in Outer Wilds these things can leave you with your eyes wide open, your hands cramped around the joypad and the idea to start over again both exciting and nightmarish.

And there we are again. I'm wondering if just teasing some of those feelings might already have taken away too much but it's impossible to talk about Outer Wilds without mentioning how overwhelming this, generally very simplistic and most of the time very comical, setting can get.

Timeless piece!

Warning: This essay contains visceral descriptions of mental illness. What was initially intended as more of a critique of The Last of Us Part 2’s narrative became something much more personal, and I don’t want to give a false impression of what this is based on the website it’s posted to. To reiterate, this is intensely personal. Proceed with caution.

What would you do if your life’s purpose was pulled out from under you? How do we find solace in a world that seems to revel in taking everything it can from you? Is it worth living when stability is the only thing protecting you from cold uncertainty? Fundamentally, these questions define both The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part 2. While these extremely open-ended questions are answered in appropriately differing ways in both games, they are used as the backdrop to frame almost every character action in them. In the same way that Joel’s yearning to maintain the only thing that resembles stability in his life endeared many players to the first game, Ellie’s quest of seemingly aimless vengeance polarized many when playing its sequel. It tests players’ willingness to go through the same things its characters go through rather than taking more than a few safe roads. It helped me realize my own answers to the questions it asks of Joel and Ellie, and it’s difficult for me to go more than a day without thinking about them. I love The Last of Us, but The Last of Us Part 2 is bolder, more poignant, and unforgettable.


Despite this essay primarily being a gushfest about The Last of Us Part 2, I still believe the first game displays a large amount of character complexity, but I think the response to its narrative was born out of a character that one can easily relate to. The only thing that stands between Joel and his closest loved one is three people that are about to kill her. Would you not do the same to preserve the last person tethering you to sanity? Personally, I believe that there are very few people in the world who wouldn’t make the same decision in Joel’s shoes. This isn’t to say that this makes Joel’s character simple or easily read, it makes him painfully human. Through all of the murder and zombies, we all see a bit of ourselves in Joel. Framed ambiguously, this contributed greatly to the success of The Last of Us’s narrative with a wide audience. It was a perfect storm of relatability, shock value, fuel for disingenuous water cooler talk, and just plain good character writing. People talk about the negative effect that The Last of Us had on Triple A games, but as far as I’m concerned, studios should take more cues from its simple yet effective writing.

It seemed to most people that The Last of Us Part 2 was a shot into left field compared to the first game, but where else could the series feasibly go? The events of its narrative are bold for high budget games, but I struggle to think of a more natural continuation from the first game’s story. Joel even foreshadows the events of the second game when he tells Ellie how broken he was after losing Sarah. We’re not privy to the 20 years between Joel’s loss and him meeting Ellie. The theme of retaliation against a brutal world is obscured by this time skip to show its evolution: finding solace in what little mercy the world has given you. In that way, both games in this series represent two sides of the same coin. There is solace to be found in Abby’s part of the game, and her story is kind of like an abridged version of Joel’s story in the first game. This time Naughty Dog even included the part where the character finds little meaning in a path defined by hate, almost to yell at the player what they were supposed to learn from Joel. There is much to be said about Abby and how her life is destroyed in different ways compared to Ellie, but honestly I’m not extremely interested in her as a character. I like it in the same way I like the first game, but it doesn’t affect me in a strong way. Ellie’s story wouldn’t work as well without Abby’s, but its value to me is almost entirely predicated on how it improves Ellie’s character.

Perhaps my initial response to this game was so different because of how I see Ellie. Ellie, in my experience, is the closest any fictional character has ever come to accurately portraying my mental illness. The willingness to go to great lengths to show people that the world can be just as grim to them as it is to you, even at the expense of your own wellbeing, hit impossibly close to home for me. My depression isn’t defined by withdrawal, but lashing out at others so they can feel the same pain I do. The fear that everyone will either abandon me of their own volition, or do so before I make peace with it is one that permeates my waking thoughts. I’m not proud of this urge, as it gnaws its way into the way I interact with others. It imparts a hostility to my interactions with others, as my inert response is that they will leave me or hate me. It doesn’t sit well with me when I gain a sick satisfaction out of pushing people away, and just ending it before I get too attached. The few people that I can’t push away despite my best efforts are the only stability I have, and I’m not sure what I’ll do when I lose them. So when Ellie returns to the world all the violence it has shown her because it took away her stability, it made more sense to me than anything anyone has done in any other story. It spoke to me like no doctor or therapist or counselor has ever come close to doing before. All I needed to know was that I wasn’t alone in what I felt; that all the emotions I feel so ashamed of were validated in a strange way, and done with so much uncomfortable accuracy. When the end of the game revealed its hand, and Ellie was left with exactly what she had feared the most, I felt more fear than I had in any enemy encounter. It was as if the writers of the game dispelled the facade with which they were communicating to me through, and told me the bitter truth of my life. This game’s narrative certainly didn’t fix me, but it allowed me to accept that I’m not the only person who bears this curse. It’s the curse of remembering people through their polar moments, only recognizing the best and worst that someone has shown you. It’s focusing on that bad until you lose them, and then reaching out desperately for the good that you ignored the whole way.

I’ve attempted to rationalize The Last of Us Part 2 being my favorite game through the lens of its holistic qualities, believing that its characters, themes, and gameplay were markedly better than many of its competitors. It was my attempt to bridge the gap between what I knew as the most profoundly touching piece of media I had ever consumed, and what most others saw as a solid third person action game. The truth is that for most people, that’s exactly what this game will be. Like most Naughty Dog games, its appeal comes from the combination of many things done well. There will always be a stealth game with more depth, a more complex character study, and a more focused narrative. It’s easy to be ashamed of a story you like almost strictly based on its emotional resonance with you. Recognizing that it’s that story’s ability to reach out and comfort you beyond the very text that contains it is when you let go of that shame, and it’s where that story’s true value lies. Allow yourself to love and be loved by the stories you read and the characters you meet.

What a game! It has absolutely fantastic level design, managing to feel massive without ever being overwhelming; it has a delightful, brimming confidence in its characters, which really pulls you into the story in spite of its ridiculousness (something which I also loved about RE7); and, most importantly, it has the stickiest, chunkiest, most physically palpable gunplay ever. (Sure, 7 had the same physics or close, but in that game you were popping amorphous mold monsters--in this game you're dealing with flying bat-things and massive dudes with hammers and zombies with swords and I-won't-even-say-what-else.)

And, without doing a spoiler, may I just say: fuck House Beneviento. I literally had to turn the volume all the way down and play Yakety Sax on my phone to get through that. REVIII as a whole is, thankfully, very tolerable in the horror department (for a certified weiner like myself), excepting... this one thing. Which is maybe the scariest thing I have ever seen in a videogame.