Outer Wilds

[one-armed dwarf]

Spoiler

 

 

At the bottom of a slow drowning sandpit I found out that apparently a bunch of dudes might have found some forbidden technology which could end the solar system if used wrong. I tried to investigate further and called somebody's shuttle into orbit. Unfortunately I blasted myself off into space and died a very boring and slow death

 

Apparently i should investigate some ice comet, but now its 2 am.

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

So now that I've binned Death Stranding I'm giving this more of a fair shot. This game is really cool, it's just a clockwork universe where shit just loops through it's own life without you. Its the exact opposite of what I hated about Rdr2, where everything revolves around you and these 'spontaneous' interactions with strangers are anything but.

 

Whole thing is just about unlocking knowledge to further secrets of what happened.

Spoiler

Right now I am fairly sure one of the probe modules is buried deep in the impermeable core or 'current' of Giants Deep, but I must investigate in the observatory of Brittle Hollow how something could sink in there (so I can check it out)

If you've played the game please dont respond to that spoiler with your thoughts. But yeah its not just about solving puzzles before you die it's just about maximising your knowledge of each planets life cycle and rate of change leading up to the heat death of the universe. Dying is necessary

 

 

Apparently you should watch where you park on Brittle Hollow ?

 

Spoiler

 

Edit, oh man wtf is up with the platforming in this. I hate this now ?

 

If I see another black hole ??

[one-armed dwarf]

Man, I had a miserable time with this. Spent hours trying to get to the Southern observatory Did the worst platforming bullshit I've had to endure since the ps2 days. As Sonic would say, it was no good.

 

 

Then

Spoiler

Using the model in the observatory I found out how to use the cyclones on giants deep which move in a clockwise direction to 'screw' myself under the current of the planet.

 

I fucked up the electrics while down there, shit got spooky ??‍♂️

 

 

Edit,

Damn, holy shit. The way I found to get into the quantum tower ?

 

 

 

edit 2, I have a question for @Maf, is there an in game way to re-read all these Naomi translations or whatever they're called. Without revisiting all the original locations. Cause I keep forgetting all the aliens names.

 

They all have these different personalities and I feel like I'm missing out on interesting story here.

[Maf]

Not that I know of 

[one-armed dwarf]

I really wish the source code of this was public domain or something cause it's such a weird construction that it could be fun to look at how it ticks. Or just give me a no-clip camera mode after I beat the game just to watch everything unfold.

 

There's a thing it does which I can't tell if it's smoke and mirrors or a trick of perspective, but when you dock into a planet and start exploring deeper it's like Matryoshka dolls with how there's more behind every layer than appears at first glance. Like how the game fits entire networks of underground settlements and temples tucked into the corners and stuff. Planets which appear small and unpopulated have a huge trove of secrets that unwind off from each other the further down you go.

 

I think when you go inside planets it must be loading in a new instance behind the scenes to make everything appear much larger, because it achieves this weird feeling of feeling big one moment while you're in your ship to feeling like an insignificant ant that could get trampled. Which is a cool feeling. One they obviously tried to convey with how the universe just ticks along no matter where you are and can crush you without warning.

 

On a moment to moment basis though I can barely describe any of this as 'fun'. It feels more like frustrating work. Part of that is just how awful some of the platforming puzzles are, or the weird obstacle courses where one wrong move ends a loop and you have to go back out again. I wish the game managed to lean more into the existential dread of drowning in an alien environment and the moments of frightened discovery when you find out a new bit of story and work out what happened and why things are happening. The really annoying bits where you have to start again because you bounced off a wall into a pit of ghostly matter just really let things down. It just isn't good enough or polished in this respect

 

Outer Wilds 2, that will be some hot shit.

 

 

[Maf]

People keep mentioning the problems with the platforming and the ship/jet pack controls but I never had issue with any of that. I think it all works really well. The only problem I have is with the sand planet and how quickly it fills up.

[one-armed dwarf]

There are parts where the physics become unforgiving. If you don't judge your trajectory and bounce off a wall into ghost matter, or into a black hole (which takes ages to get out of)

 

I find myself wanting something more walking sim-esque, with elements of danger like

Spoiler

drowning in sand or getting pulled into the sun's orbit if you hang around the ice comet too long

. When it tries to implement platforming mechanics I think it can be kind of rubbish.

 

But I get also they wanted each biome to have unique environment properties, so maybe they felt they had to add this stuff in so you have to learn the mechanics and apply them differently each time

[one-armed dwarf]

Got my first, actual game over ?

 

Ok, I've actually beaten it now. Super cool construction with how it leads you through the story and doesnt hold your hand. Like how when you find a tool or piece of tech or a planet has a specific physical property which can be used to solve a puzzle, it doesnt just lay it all out for you. It's all written in a very good in-universe style as all these different furiously research different technologies and you trace the timeline of their

Spoiler

Extinction

 

and use the information to figure out the secrets for yourself. It's story driven puzzle solving or what if the text descriptions in Dark Souls had more of a gameplay function. Its very clever

 

But I found it too obtuse a lot of the time and thought it had too many puzzles which were platforming obstacle courses or required very fine motor skills. When skill became a factor of solving a puzzle it just ruined the experience for me.

 

By the end I was just very annoyed with Dark Bramble in particular as well as constantly having to wait for Ash Twin to drain. I get that they want you to doze off or eat marshmallows or whatever but it is still annoying

 

There's one mechanic in particular with Ash Twin I had to spoil myself on cause it was top obscure and seemed to contradict the game's own rules a bit. I could have gotten it eventually I'd say, but some of the puzzles are not as well thought out as the story behind them

 

 I do want to go back to this though. Not to get trophies but to better understand the precursor race. They all have their own names and unique personalities and I'd like to understand the timeline of their extinction a bit better. There are certain parts I do understand, in terms of the broader picture of things. But there's an immense amount of stuff in there just to do with the different inter-personal (inter-alien?) relationships, motivations, insecurities and responsibilities to each other that makes the story telling very rich and rewarding. For such an isolating game it tells a very moving story about finding meaning and connections at the end of the universe.

[one-armed dwarf]

I'm going to be annoying and post a video at people to convince them to play this game

 

 

Probably not an original thought but it occurred to me that this game is what if you took BOTW's clockwork environmental mechanics and its player driven exploration and made a MYST game out of it.

 

Which is you know kind of the perfect game really

[Maf]

Man, it took you along time to get on this horse but now you’re on it bring more people your better at this than me 

[one-armed dwarf]

Now that's what I call a patch note

 

 

Guys they fixed the bug with singularities! Now is the perfect time to play! ?

 

I also struggled with Black Hole Forge cause I was dumb so maybe i should have waited ?

[one-armed dwarf]

Polygon's GOTY

https://www.polygon.com/2019/12/13/21011871/outer-wilds-goty-best-games-of-the-year

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

 ??

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

You're right. 

[Maryokutai]

Is this a roguelike or Groundhog Day in space?

 

I might give it a try if it was the latter but will keep avoiding if it's the former.

[one-armed dwarf]

It's actually hard to make the pitch for this without being super reductive or saying it's like X and Y meets Z.

 

But here's what it is: It's like Groundhog Day meets Dark Souls meets Breath of the Wild in a sort of MYST-like framework of an adventure game but also you have a bit of No Man's Sky in there too. But also it's nothing like that at all cause trying to break this down into constitute parts and sell it like this is missing the point of what makes the game kind of marvelous.

 

So I'll try my best, without spoiling. You're basically an space-faring archaeologist tracing the history of an ancient civilisation. It's got a really rewarding loop where learning more about the story (which is really fucking well written) tends to lead into other discoveries/hypothesis about things happening elsewhere, which leads to more story and so on.

 

It's also a game about observation. You land on a planet and spent 20 minutes being bewildered by (seemingly) random bullshit that changes the world around you. Where you are at a certain point will affect whether or not you can proceed ahead. Which is frustrating on the initial loops but makes sense very quickly. Each biome you visit has its own physical/environmental properties that affect how you explore/solve puzzles (ie, gravity being high or low). Also no matter where you are in the universe there are other planets and areas undergoing a rate of change that will occur whether you are there to see it or not, which actually gives you a kind of sense of fear and awe when you do see these things happen. It's hard to explain, but you'll know what I mean.

 

Mostly I think what makes it work is how the non-linear story funnels you from discovery to discovery but makes it feel like those discoveries are your own. It does have problems, like I mention above where some of those discoveries require a lot more deduction than I was good at. But lots of other players were less dumb than I am and made those links quicker than I did so there's that. 

 

There's also one platforming section I really really hated. Which unfortunately also leads to one of the cooler sections of the game. At a certain point you do really become a master of managing momentum of your ship, your jetpack and adjusting how much force you need for different types of gravity. So if you've got a good instinct here you might have a better time than I did, but it took me a very long time to get that stuff under control. But by the end of the game I was doing spacewalks outside my ship fixing the reactor which was seconds away from critical meltdown while in the knowledge that any minute a space monster could come and fuck me up, which felt very cool and badass. 

 

It is not a roguelike, I could tell you right now what you need to do to beat the game and you could beat it in one sitting and miss 99% of what this game has to offer as well as all the context needed to understand what the ending is telling you. Most of the time it's just about drifting around and learning things. It's all about knowledge.

[Maryokutai]

Yeah, it definitely sounds interesting. I've also skipped through most other posts in the thread because it sounds intriguing but I'm still unsure whether or not it's my cup of tea.

 

What happens when the Groundhog day kicks into effect - do you lose all your progress and start anew with only a tad more knowledge? Do you even have an inventory, a skill tree or something that could be erased or is the progress happening in the player's head? 

[one-armed dwarf]

What I mean by 'knowledge' is mostly knowledge and conclusions you yourself make.

 

But there is also a 'map' in the ship which records your findings and unlocks as you go. That retains state in each loop.

 

It doesnt really hold your hand, but it does try and repeat the same information more than once in different places to see that you notice. It also does this without being redundant about it

 

The only real 'reset' is you're back in the starting position each time. You arent unlocking items or skills or keys as such. The 'keys' are mostly environmental or these little translation glyphs on the ground

[Maryokutai]

Yes, the part about "knowledge" was clear. Sounds like I might like it, probably. Definitely very unique from what I can tell which is always a good thing as long as it doesn't feel forced.

 

I'll try to find some time and space for it at some point, thanks for the info dump.

[one-armed dwarf]

Obviously full of spoilers but Brad at Giantbomb here shares his favourite moments from the game

 

Spoiler

One thing that gets me about it is how the whole 22 minute cycle is basically a giant set piece where you can enter/exit at any point. When I went to the sun station I managed to escape it mere seconds before it got engulfed by an expanded sun. Brad just stayed inside and died a fiery death ?

 

 

Also Danny's  Outer Wilds doc is basically done, rough cut available for backers

 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/early-access-cut-32659228

 

I will probably back him to watch this