Even though the player in Outer Wilds is trapped in a time loop, they are not trapped in a clockwork solar system. This solar system is messy. Planets morph and change, and while one would expect everything to act the same each time through, it doesn’t. Oh the end result is always the same 22 minutes in with the sun going supernova, but there are always slight differences each loop. Upon waking, the probe seen overhead will shoot in a new direction and that’s just the beginning. Whether or not a player will enjoy their time with Outer Wilds is dependent on how curious they are about the extent of micro changes within a macro framework, and whether that level of curiosity and adventure is enough to propel them to find the answers to all of the games’ secrets and to sustain them as they work towards those goals. Based off the title of this video, you would be correct in assuming that my curiosity and sense of adventure was lacking as I made my way to the end of the game, and exploring the reasons behind this lack is what I’ll be addressing. I’ll begin by making some critical observations about Outer Wilds based on my time playing through it, and then in the second half of the video I’ll be examining my feelings of the entire experience more closely. Let’s get started.
My experience playing Outer Wilds
All progress in Outer Wilds is self-motivated. There are no markers to follow except the ones the player enables themselves. Every problem has a solution, and my mistake early on was thinking that I would find upgrades as I played. I mean developer Alex Beachum has talked about being inspired by The Legend of Zelda series (and I did just play through Bloodstained). I thought that my suit or ship would be enhanced, allowing me to walk through ghost matter, to withstand the electricity of Giants Deep, and to survive the Anglerfish of Dark Bramble. What I came to understand over many gruelling hours of trial and error, was that this is not the case. There is no upgrade hidden on a planet that the player will take back with them through the time loop. Well ok, there is, but it’s an abstraction. The upgrade is knowledge. The more the player explores, the more they follow the rumours on their ship’s computer, and the more Nomai writing they decipher, the more the world starts to make sense. The Nomai’s notes hint toward solutions that may require a leap in logic, but everything the player needs to complete the game is there from their first voyage out among the stars. For most of us, and for me especially, it’s just going to take dozens upon dozens of time loops before that knowledge seeps in.
Part of this learning is because of time. The Hourglass Twins and Brittle Hollow, the two planets that require the greatest exploration (as these are the planets that the Nomai built cities on) are changing over the course of each time loop. Sand from the Ash Twin is being sucked up over to Ember Twin, burying the planet’s secrets inch by inch. Meanwhile over on Brittle Hollow the volcanic moon is pelting down fire rocks on the planet’s surface, causing chunks to break apart and be sucked through the black hole at the planet’s core. While exploration of Ember Twin is time based due to the rising sands, Brittle Hollow’s destruction is random each time loop, meaning it can be a matter of luck whether or not the areas the player wants to explore will be accessible this time around. It took me a long time to learn that the greatest sense of accomplishment in Outer Wilds is achieved by setting a goal at the start of a time loop (often by reviewing the ship’s computer), and then working towards completing that goal. While the changing nature of some of the planets impeded such goals, slowly chipping away at what I wanted to accomplish until it was done was always possible, even when it felt like the simulation didn’t want to co-oporate.
Eventually I learned about the nature of the Ash Twin Project and what the time loop actually is. By linking with the Nomai statue at the start of the game all my space farer’s memories are being transmitted to the project, and when the sun goes supernova, the energy of the blast powers the project and sends all those memories back in time 22 minutes into the heads of those who are linked. My head kind of hurts wondering just how this works, because it doesn’t feel like actual time travel. I understand it as a straight line of consequence. Each new loop of the game, all the memories, all the knowledge gained is sent back, so my character wakes up at the campfire knowing everything that their previous incarnations went through, but that’s what confuses me. The final time my Hearthian wakes up, all the knowledge of the previous lives is dumped all at once. This would happen everytime of course, because it’s a linear process. It just feels like such a dump would send someone mad, especially taking into consideration all the memories of painful and horrific death. Perhaps Hearthians are just made of sterner stuff than us humans. They certainly have a flair for adventure and scientific exploration that I know I lack.
That’s a lesson that the game slowly taught me. A lot more slowly than it should have, but what can I say? I’m stubborn and it takes me a while to understand concepts. Seeing that my character can die and just start again, there’s no point whatsoever in being safe. The spirit of the Hearthians is that of adventure, and I needed to rise to meet that challenge. I can’t let a little thing like death stand in my way. Arguably this was a lot easier about two thirds through my playthrough when Gabbro taught me to meditate. It’s a lot less stressful to be able to peacefully reset the time loop then look for ways to end it violently. That spirit of adventure is what allowed me to access the Quantum Tower on Brittle Hollow, to reach the High Energy Lab, and to find my way to the core of The Interloper. I needed to boldly go where no Hearthian has gone before, and if that didn’t work, I could always just die, adjust my trajectory, and try again.
The goal I thought I was ultimately working towards the whole game was to either stop the sun from going supernova, or to leave the solar system with all the Hearthians on board. I later learned that the only way out was to use the crashed Nomai vessel in Dark Bramble, and that I would be leaving all the others behind. This did not sit right with me. What I only learned later is that rescuing the others wouldn’t have made a difference. It’s not just this solar system’s sun that’s going supernova, it’s everything. Outer Wilds takes place at the end of the universe, and there isn’t a restaurant in sight. The only move forward is to use the warp core from the Ash Twin Project, power up the Nomai vessel in Dark Bramble, and use the coordinates from the probe to travel to the eye of the universe. This is where things got strange.
The Nomai theorised that something special might happen if a consciousness was ever to come in contact with the eye. I got the feeling that my character suddenly existed outside of time and space, outside the universe that was about to blink out of existence. Using the consciousness within it, all the Hearthian astronauts, and the last remaining Nomai were either transported to this place, or recreated. Whichever it is, they are here, and it’s time for a song. It’s time to create something beautiful out of nothing, and in this place, this communal act of creation not only results in music, but in a new universe. The credits roll after our character is obliterated by the big bang. After the credits, 14.3 billion years later, we see the beginnings of a new solar system, with signs of new life. The cycle continues.
Ultimately the game felt hopeful in spite of catastrophic calamity. The Nomai were wiped out by an errant comet containing the deadly substance ghost matter. Years later the Hearthians were able to use the Nomai’s research and technology to further their own understanding, allowing one Hearthian to flee the heat death of the universe. In this new space, with help from those who came before, the player succeeds in creating something new, something they will never live to see. The reason this touched me is that I’m feeling an overwhelming despair these days about the state of our world, and our future. I don’t see good times ahead, mainly because I don’t see us doing enough to solve the problems we’re facing as a species. I feel like we’re on a similar precipice as the character we’re playing. Like we don’t have long left. Maybe like a sun going supernova, our problems can’t be fixed. It’s little solace knowing that if we do not survive, perhaps in the future what we’ve accomplished as a species might help others create something new, but a little solace is better than nothing. Maybe that’s enough.
What I didn’t like about Outer Wilds
I’ve heard it said that the strength of a story is reliant on its ending, and for me the ending of Outer Wilds redeemed the frustration it took to reach it. Seeing how beloved the game has ended up being, that might be an odd statement, but I know that a lot of you clicked on this video to understand why I didn’t enjoy this masterpiece, and it’s time for me to get into my reasoning. To begin with, I am not scientifically minded. I can appreciate math in the abstract. I can understand the joy of problem solving, and I also share a curiosity for the unknown, but the concepts of math and science have never come easily for me. I think that I was not able to fully appreciate what Outer Wilds is and what it accomplishes because I was not understanding the level of accuracy that went into this solar system simulation.
A lot of the video essays on Outer Wilds gush about the physics of the game. How the orbits work, how gravity works, and how the game tracks and handles the quirks of all the planets no matter where the player is in the system. There’s the pocket dimensions of Dark Bramble, the random bombardment of Brittle Hollow, and then there’s the Quantum Moon (an off-shoot of the eye, where all the quantum rocks come from in the first place). Some concepts were more easily understood than others. For instance, landing on the Quantum Moon and travelling to its secret sixth location was a highlight of the game for me. I felt like I had understood the lessons taught about this scientific principle in a way that never really clicked with flying around the planets in my lander or with my jetpack. Luckily in those cases, hours upon hours interacting with thrust, orientation, and gravity taught me a lot about how such systems operate through game feel rather than understanding the science.
In my Witcher 3 video, I talked about how in order to not become overwhelmed by the scope of that game’s open world, focusing on one quest or one goal at a time, and enjoying the moment became the path to success. That is also true in Outer Wilds. Earlier I talked about self-motivation. When I decided on a course of action, I would often leave a gaming session with a happy feeling, like I had made significant progress. There were times when I had the wrong idea or had no idea how to proceed next, but as long as I had a question I wanted answered, and remembered to look at the rumour wall and map of the solar system to find out where I could find such answers, I was able to move forward. However, Outer Wilds doesn’t make this as easy as it could be.
I take responsibility for having to be pushed to be adventurous. It’s a personal problem. While I enjoy exploration in games, and I am curious about the world, I’m also scared of the unknown, of leaving my comfort zone and trying new things. You would think that after a lifetime of playing games, of understanding how easy it is to try again through lives, continues, or checkpoints (especially in a game with a time loop), that I’d be more disposed to throwing caution to the wind and trying something just to see if it works. That is not the case. Failure still terrifies me. It’s one of life’s hurdles that I have to keep working on overcoming, and yes, it easily seeps its way into playing videogames. I think part of Outer Wilds’ appeal is the mixture of self-motivated discovery and exploration paired with how easy it is to start again. How the little victories of discovering a new Nomai wall to translate can be just as satisfying as answering the big questions the game poses.
But accessing the answers to these big questions was often beyond my comprehension. I made it to the Quantum Moon by myself. I reached its sixth location by myself, but every other significant answer I had to Google. Sometimes I felt silly, like understanding how to warp to the sun station. The answer is so easy, and yet, I never would have thought to travel to the sun tower on Ash Twin before it’s excavated. Can you believe earlier on, I thought I might have to master jetpacking and fly through the cactuses? My attempts did not go well. Or how about how to get to the core of Ash Twin? The roof is broken so if the player walks onto the warp panel while the sandstorm in overhead, they get sucked up onto Ember Twin. I don’t think I would have ever figured out that all I needed to do was hold down the reverse thrusters on my jetpack to counteract the pull of the sand. Finally there was the Anglerfish on Dark Bramble. I thought I would have to do something special to get past them, and while that’s technically true, watching folks on YouTube speed through the mazes of the Bramble without issue was something that took many tries and far too much swearing to accomplish.
What this experience reminds me of is getting stuck while playing adventure games. Often upon looking up the solution to a puzzle, I will have a binary response. I’ll either say “oh, of course, it’s so simple. I’m an idiot” or, “I would have never figured that out”. Outer Wilds had me combining the two. I don’t think I would have worked out these solutions on my own (although who can say? Given enough time my brain might have stumbled upon what I needed to do), but when I found out what I had to do, I did feel like an idiot. Talking about adventure games, Outer Wilds made more sense to me when thinking about it as an adventure game, specifically the games of Cyan Worlds such as Myst, Riven, or Obduction. Those games are set in alien worlds with odd technology that the player needs to decipher over time. Usually the people who have come before have left notes, cluing the player in on how everything is supposed to work, and as the player explores, there’s puzzles that the player needs to understand how to solve before getting to the work of solving them. They’re also games where I love the worlds created, but don’t feel smart enough to make my way through them on my own. And while these games are static, the player moving slowly through them, Outer Wilds has the player dealing with its science first hand through space travel. It makes things more exciting but it also makes them more complicated.
Conclusion
Through its ending, and my research into the game afterwards, I have grown an appreciation of Outer Wilds that I did not have when I was in the midst of playing it. Not only do I feel that I lacked the sense of adventure required to interface with the game, but my understanding and appreciation of its science and simulation was absent. Throw in having to look up the solutions to two of its puzzles, and taking far too much time to work out everything else, and I walk away from Outer Wilds with it in that nebulous wishy-washy category of “this game is “not-for-me””. Despite what I said just before, even thinking of it as an adventure game doesn’t really work. When I’m stuck and frustrated in an adventure game, I consult a walkthrough and enjoy the narrative pacing. In Outer Wilds, discovery and understanding is the core of the game. Even when I looked up the solutions that were eluding me, I was close, only missing one piece of the puzzle, and I think that’s why I felt so foolish. If I had gotten to the ending with a guide, I think the power of said ending would have been dampened. It’s only through the hours of my fumbling, that the realisation that I wasn’t going to be able to save everyone, and the despair that resulted in, slowly built up, giving the emotional power of the finale signifigance. I just wish I could have had that sense of significance for my entire playthrough. Thanks for watching.
Questions, thank yous, and what’s next
But what do you think? Did you enjoy your time with Outer Wilds? What are your thoughts about the ending? Was I able to adequately explain my position? Let me know down in the comments. As usual, I would like to thank all the critics and journalists who helped inform this video. Noclip’s ‘The Making of Outer Wilds’, Gameskinny’s interview with Mobius Games, Thomas Jenkins’, ‘Why I can’t stop thinking about Outer Wilds’, Bryn Gelbert’s ‘Outer Wilds Helped Me Understand the Relationship Between Progress and Purpose’, Superbunnyhops’ ‘The Wild Astrophysics that Outer Wilds simulates’, Jacob Geller’s ‘Outer Wilds: Death, Inevitability, and Ray Bradbury’, and Errant Signal’s ‘How the heck do we talk about Outer Wilds?’. Links to all these works are in the description. So, what’s next? Well it’s time to start a project that will span over 3 videos, I’m starting a series on the Zero Escape trilogy, so the next video will be on the first game, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. I hope you’ll join me for that one. Finally, if you enjoyed the video, I’d appreciate a like, a comment, or sharing it with your friends, and until next time, I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.
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