The time travel looping you’re experiencing is just one small part of the overall whole, and every planet has a part to play in the Nomai’s quest to investigate the Eye of the Universe. It becomes clear that the Nomai have turned the entire solar system into some kind of elaborate science experiment. And you’ll often discover the trick to getting somewhere many thousands of miles from its point of origin.Īt some point you start to draw connections, assisted by your ship’s cognitive map.
There will be bits of romantic emails interspersed with philosophical ruminations on the mysterious ‘eye of the universe’ that seems to dominate their literature and science. You’ll come across the ruins of a high tech research lab long before you find the escape pod that belonged to the Nomai when they first crashed on the planet. There’s something special about uncovering a story completely out of order. Outer Wilds instead gives you clues, like an Anglerfish fossil telling you the secret of defeating them.
Other games, like metroidvanias, will reward you with movement upgrades like a double jump to access places you couldn’t get before. Exploration for exploration’s sake is all well and good, but it feels more satisfying when you’re discovering something meaningful for your progress. What it does, brilliantly, is put ‘knowledge gates’ on certain locations. Outer Wilds embraces exploration, and lets you go to all of its planets and satellites in any order you choose. The way in which you unmask that mystery will be different for every player. And so you venture forth, again and again, learning more with every journey and trying to put together the larger mystery of what’s happening and why. The only thing you keep is the knowledge you’ve uncovered, which is handily recorded in your ship’s computer. Every death, whether from the explosion of the sun or otherwise, sends you to the beginning of the loop. The central gimmick of the game is that you’re stuck in a time loop. From the start of the game you have precisely 22 minutes until the sun erupts into a supernova and blasts the galaxy to pieces. But even if you play carefully, and don’t take any risks, you’re going to die anyway. was eaten by giant angler-fish and was crushed upon impact with the ground. The Outer Wilds are a dangerous place, and over the course of the game I suffocated, crashed into the sun.
You read their excited conversations about science as you delve through the ruins, trying to make sense of all the disconnected bits of information that come your way.Īnd then, you die. Your spacecraft is haphazardly cobbled together, standing in stark contrast to the mastery of quantum technology that the Nomai seemed to possess. The solar system is littered with the archaeological remnants of the Nomai, a species with technology that was far in advance of your own. There’s a planet slowly being devoured from the inside out by a black hole, an orb of water covered with tornadoes that periodically throw its few islands spiralling into space, and a menacing web of twisted branches called Dark Bramble, sitting eerily at the very edge of known space. You become exposed to a truly weird and wonderful place once you take off from your humble home of Timber Hearth. Outer Wilds is a game about exploring the solar system. Outer Wilds is a fantastic game and this article spoils major plot points. Special Spoiler Warning! If you have ANY interest in playing Outer Wilds, turn back now and DO NOT READ.
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