Outer Wilds

[radiofloyd]

21 hours ago, Craymen Edge said:

I fizzled out on this after about 8 hours. I thought about going back to it in the last couple of months, but at this point I think I'd have to start all over again.

 

That’s why my friends’ average playtime on this game is only 9 hours... I’m at 20 hours and counting. 
 

Spoiler

I had a brainwave re: Brittle Hollow. What if you are supposed to go inside the planet in your ship? It might be the method to access the Black Hole Forge which is so high up. I gave it a go and tried to smash my way inside The Temple of Quantum Knowledge a couple of times. It didn’t work and I fell into the black hole. It might be possible but it’s hard to line up. I’ll try accessing the Black Hole Forge tomorrow.

 

I’ve been on a couple of trips to Giant’s Deep which is creepy as fuck too, seems like you can only get so close in your ship and then you have to swim the rest of the way. I’ve been on the Interceptor a couple of times but I haven’t found out how to get inside. One time I was on it it flew right up to the sun. But somehow I didn’t die.

 

I found loads of stuff on the Ember Twin and Ash Twin planets. It took me until this long to realise that not all Ghost shards are poisonous. Just have to avoid the ones that emit the green light. The Ember Twin, like Brittle Hollow has a shuttle that you can pilot. Usually I end up flying straight into the sun. I should practice the controls and see if I can make sense of it. The Brittle Hollow one goes to the Quantum Moon I assume. The Ember Twin one to the Sun Station? Maybe. I should fuck around with them. I haven’t found whatever I’m supposed to find in the Lakebed cave. I’ve been down there twice and walked around it but never found anything. You only have a minute or two before it fills up with sand.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Reading someone trying to figure this game out is fun.

 

 

As mentioned in a thread recently, this game needs the 'memory wipe' technology from MiB cause you can only play it once

 

[radiofloyd]

I just thought of something.

 

Spoiler

I tried my luck waiting until Brittle Hollow is in almost complete decay and flew around and inside the planet trying to find the Black Hole Forge or somewhere I could land near it (I mean I know where it is, but trying to access it is another story). No joy. But it suddenly occurred to me after I turned the game off. As I was flying around I could see the Tower of Quantum Knowledge completely exposed. It might be possible to simply jump off the planets surface, glide through the pillars and land on upper magnetic wall thing. If done at the right angle. Alright tomorrow I’m gonna go wingsuit diving lol.

 

[radiofloyd]

Big update!

 

Spoiler

I found my way to the Black Hole Forge! I was exploring Ash Twin and got warped (without planning to) to the Giant’s Deep. I realised that the towers were warp towers and that this must be the way to the Black Hole Forge, and the next tower I explored warped me to it (I had already raised it). Finally! I’ll have to see where else I can warp to from the Ash Twin. 
 

Other than that, yesterday and today I streamed a lot while I was playing it. I managed to land on the Orbital Cannon orbiting Giant’s Deep, and explored that. I explored most of Giant’s Deep. Just now I went to Bramble Island which had a note from Feldspar saying they had been to the depths below the current. They mentioned something about being struck by lightning which may or may not mean that I should try to get struck by lightning.

 

I explored the inside of the Interloper once. I came to the pit which seemed to lead to some kind of core but died from the ghost shards. I’ll have to go back. I went to Dark Bramble but was it was fucking terrifying. I floated at a snail’s pace to within about 200m of the distress signal but I ran out of oxygen. 
 

I tried to pilot the shuttles on Ember Twin and Brittle Hollow numerous times but failed miserable to achieve anything. And I tried to fly my ship to the Sun Station repeatedly for around 20 minutes...let’s just say, I didn’t come close.

Edit:

 

Spoiler

Oh and the last time I fell through the Black Hole, there was a huge ship floating nearby in total darkness near the white hole. It had numerous warp tunnel things jutting out of it but it was too late, it was the end of that loop and I didn’t get inside.

 

[radiofloyd]

Would you believe, I played this game in the middle of the night last night, forgot to set my alarm and slept in and missed work...successfully adulting.

 

I discovered a lot though.

 

Spoiler

I finally discovered how to access The Tower of Quantum Knowledge. It was something that had been staring me in the face the whole time. However my first trip there the game kind of glitched out and the tower went into a irreversible spin, so I couldn’t discover anything. I have to to back today.

 

I also went to the Quantum Tower and completed the trials on Giant’s Deep. That gave me the secret of Quantum Imaging. With that, I was able to visit the Quantum Moon and I found the tower that told me I needed to recall the rule of Quantum Entanglement and the rule of the sixth location.

 

 

[radiofloyd]

Finished it. According to Epic I played it for more than 2 days, but idle time would probably bring my playtime down to around 40 hours. Around half way through I started streaming it on Twitch and that (especially the help I got from Robotic Monkey) helped me to keep making progress and finish the game.

 

I loved it. It’s genius. It tells an amazing story. It makes great use of music. The concept and gameplay are very original. It can be outright terrifying, without being a horror game. It has one of the most impressive and immersive game worlds ever created. As an exploration/puzzle/adventure game, I can’t think of anything that tops it. It’s crazy ambitious. It’s brilliant.

[one-armed dwarf]

Well this is a thing I've tried out that's extremely excellent

 

https://github.com/Raicuparta/nomai-vr

 

All the wonderful horrors of suffocating in a black hole as a planet crumbles realised to its best effect

[one-armed dwarf]

If you've not already played Outer Wilds and have a VR headset I can't recommend strongly enough its VR mod. It's good and complete enough that it 'feels official', even tho it is not particularly performant (I think I could only get 60fps, which isn't a high VR framerate). But OW feels like a game specifically made for this kind of immersion, the game is all about using the universe's power to scare and humble you.

 

 

I just tried it out for a while and made a few discoveries I didnt' even make in my original game. I went on a particularly fraught spacewalk around the probe cannon to get into a room exposed to the vacuum of space, somewhere I never bothered to check originally. When you're bumbling around a massive zero g structure with 10% oxygen with the imminent heat death of the universe it's a very cool experience.

 

Aside from that it's also one of the coolest games from 2019 which I always argue is a year that stood out as having a bunch of great yet underappreciated stuff.

[one-armed dwarf]

2021 gaming is saved

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[radiofloyd]

Day one for sure. Outer Wilds is a modern classic.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think the VR mod will probably work with this, you can only experience this game once so I want it to be with the full terror of actually getting sucked into a black hole.

 

The devs should actually hire the guy(s) who did that mod. Question is what's the story with the dlc is it

Spoiler

nomai prequel, trying to find the eye of the universe or whatever. Does that mean there'll be lots of characters, cause you could end up with basically a sequel version of a DLC considering the amount of stuff that could go into it

 

[one-armed dwarf]

The DLC is out today

 

Apparently you can carry your ship log over or something, or your ship log from the main game can do something in the dlc according to mobius. Not sure what though

[radiofloyd]

Well, I started Echoes of the Eye. Oh boy.

 

Spoiler

So you get told to visit a radio tower on Timber Hearth which is collecting signals from a deep space satellite, and one of the pictures taken by the satellite shows something unusual. This picture is facing the sun and is taken at an angle of 40 degrees. So when you travel out to the deep space satellite, you can see the angle reading going up and up. I got into my ship and faced the sun and low and behold the anomaly that you see in the picture appears.
 

Travel towards it and blackness envelops you and you get taken to a mysterious kind of hangar area with alien ships and writing in an unknown language. At the back, there’s a kind of portal room that transports you to to the interior, an idyllic kind of planet with small islands and many wooden buildings. The water level rises but stops rising at a certain point. This planet is called Cinder Isles.

 

Luckily, from the map screen on your ship, you can set a course directly there and don’t need to go back to the deep space satellite any more. I’d forgotten how addictive this game is.:.

 

[radiofloyd]

Made some more progress.

 

Spoiler

I made a mistake, the planet is not called Cinder Isles, it’s called The Stranger. Cinder Isles is one of the areas. There seems to be three main areas, The Lowlands around where you come in, The Reservoir behind where you first come in, and the Cinder Isles downstream.

 

I wouldn’t say it’s terrifying like exploring the Dark Bramble but it still sets me on edge. The game has a warning to turn off frightening scenes before you play, so I’m expecting jump scares… So far it’s all gone very Midsommar. 
 

The planet has two environmental evens from what I can see. The first is the dam bursting causing the water level to rise. There’s a second later event that causes the water to rise again, not quite sure what causes it but possibly the same thing.

 

[radiofloyd]

There are a few things I’m trying to wrap up.

 

Spoiler

In the reservoir there is a vault with three seals. These seals seem to be linked with three towers around the island. In the base of each tower there seems to be some kind of ceremonial room but I haven’t found a way to do anything there yet. Probably doing something in the towers unlocks in the seals in the vault.

 

There are artifacts you can hold, the purpose of which seems to be to hold a special kind of green flame. I’ve found a room that appears to contain the mechanism to light these artifacts but the direct entrance is sealed so there must be another way in. These artifacts may also be linked to the three towers and opening the vault.

 

In the clifftop village area there is a contraption that asks you to line up six symbols vertically. This same contraption also appears in the reservoir and I had found the code already. Last night I made a note of the code and was traveling to the clifftop village to try the code there, but my game crashed. Today I did it, but the code didn’t work. Which means, the contraption requires a different code which I haven’t found yet, or that the same code does work but it resets every time loop and was therefore no longer the correct code.

 

Lastly (I guess), I discovered that there is a hull breach elsewhere on the Stranger. So I’ve spent the last while looking for that but I haven’t been able to find it.

 

[radiofloyd]

I’ve made a lot of progress since the last time.

 

Spoiler

The hull breach I referenced above allowed me to access the room I couldn’t find my way into before, and what you find there explains how to use the artifacts.

 

This is quite a big spoiler:

 

Resting in front of the blue/green flame at various locations in the game while holding the artifact transports you to a kind of ghost world or alternate reality, at which point the game becomes a lot darker and creepier (but as of yet there have still been no jump scares).

 

Anyone who watched my stream tonight will have seen the puzzle I’m currently stuck on but I’ll figure it out tomorrow.

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Next gen console versions of this launch today

 

https://www.engadget.com/outer-wilds-ps5-xbox-series-native-release-date-2022-191626093.html

 

Gonna get up on my soapbox again, this game (and pathologic 2 fwiw) is one of the few titles of the previous gen which I think you simply must play, or at least try out.

 

Having said that, still need to get back to the DLC at some point. I intended to play it in VR but it's a bit much in that format tbh.