It’s not really the same, though. Yes, they are miniature planets when you’re flying between them in your spaceship. But when you get down into them, both in your ship and on foot, they’re surprisingly large. They’re not even remotely realistic size, but they’re large enough that you can easily get lost exploring them, with a lot of structures and places to explore.
I made a snide remark about No Man’s Sky earlier and I’d like to repeat that.
Yes the planets are small. By the very nature of the loop design you can reach basically every point in the star system in 5 minutes or less. But it is intentionally handcrafted and every planet has a large selection of very distinct story or world related content.
The entirety of Outer Wilds has less walkable surface area than a single No Man’s Sky planet. But almost every single of those those tiny Outer Wilds planets has more content, more diversity, more interaction and more -meaning- than the No Man’s Sky universe has in total.
In the spirit of balance to the previous replies (I have been avoiding the thread so as not to crap all over folk’s fun) I have a different take.
I found Outer Wilds to be shallow, tedious and with less than 1% of the fun or gameplay or meaning or exploring of No Mans Sky or any exploration game really.
So yes I would agree with your observation each world is tiny. The whole game feels cramped, small and tedious to me.
But I should note I feel that way about all hand crafted adventure games with puzzles like this one. So its definitely a taste issue, its not a bad game objectively (look at the many gamers of good taste here that are loving it), hope that perspective helps a little to determine if its for you.
I may of fundamentally misunderstood what this game is about, because while all I know about it is from this thread, I certainly haven’t gotten the impression it’s an exploration game.
The game plopping you down in the middle of a solar system with unknown moons and planets, then telling you to go find out WTF is wrong with it so that it doesn’t get destroyed, to me kind of implies there’s going to be a lot of exploration.
Plus the trailer tells you there’s going to be exploration.
Anyway, watching the trailer again I do see the resemblance to Myst.
A 20 minute game loop feels to me like a change in the core game mechanic that’s dramatic enough that it takes this a bit out of line w/ what is traditionally viewed as exploration games and pushes it towards a puzzle game as Rod mentioned.
If you went in expecting exploration you might have a similar reaction to his.
Not only is it an exploration game, I’m not sure I can think of a game that had a better sense of exploration.
So definitely not like No Man’s Sky, which felt more like exploring a sterile procedural generation algorithm to me (as someone elsewhere described it).
The 20-minute loop doesn’t change the exploratory nature one bit, I don’t think, and it certainly doesn’t magically transform it into a puzzle game. On each foray, you are building up your store of knowledge (represented in the ship’s log, which is persistent) by approaching an unexplored or underexplored area and trying to navigate it with a generalized set of tools and capabilities. Likewise, spacial limitations (and, again, this game is much larger than it appears on the surface, despite not adhering to our common expectations for space exploration games) has no impact on whether the game is exploration-based or not. The primary activity of the game is going to places you haven’t been before and familiarizing yourself with them, and understanding their hidden meaning. It’s an exploration game, first and foremost.
Well, you’d certainly know better than I, after all I’ve not played it, haha.
But I’m certainly keen to regardless how its described.
Okay, I’m nearing the end, but I’m a little surprised at this point that I’m not completely sure what I’m trying to accomplish with all the information I have.
- I’ve filled in most of the log, as far as I can tell. I’ve been to the Vessel, inside the comet (part way), and to the quantum moon (and met the Nomai there).
- Places I haven’t visited: The Ash Twin Project.
- Places that say I can still explore them: The Vessel and the comet.
- I can fire a camera into the last room inside the comet, but it doesn’t seem like I can actually get past the ghost matter to get in there myself.
- I’ve explored the main chamber of the vessel. There’s a control where I can input symbols. I’ve tried putting in the code from the probe cannon, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. There’s something that might be a slot for an object opposite the code control. It doesn’t seem to do anything. Do I need to plug something else in?
- When I view the Ash Twin site through one of the stone panel viewers, there are seven or eight masks, only some of them are lit up. Is lighting them all up a goal?
- If there’s a way to access the center of the Ash Twin, I have no clues to what it is.
- I’ve now forgotten where (the high energy lab?) but there was a place with several white and black warp cores and slots for more. For awhile I thought maybe I needed to plug in more of them, but I haven’t found a way to collect more. Maybe I need to take them somewhere?
Any useful nudge would be appreciated!
Are you sure you found the last room on the comet? I’m not sure which room you’re referring to, but could it be the room with a pit that’s full of ghost matter and a circular ledge surrounding it? If so, then look up above you.
For the Ash Twin project. How many towers are there on Ash Twin and what is their function? :)
Various nudgey hints:
– NuclearWinter pointed out the most likely, super easy to overlook path where you got stuck in the comet. It also has a frozen shuttle on the surface which you can recall somewhere else and read the log there.
– The Vessel bridge has an upper level with two big log walls and I think a floating recording device.
– In the vessel: do you know what you have to put in into the three sided device? Three alien symbols you gathered somewhere. If you have them they should be displayed in one of the corners, like the launch codes at the start of the game. If you don’t have them you need to find them somewhere. They relate to the main story and are at the end of a multi tiered puzzle in several locations on and around one planet. You have to do something else first for the code to be useful.
– The masks are the “return memories to the start of the loop” tool. You are one and Gabbro on Giant’s Deep is one.
– Reaching the Ash Twin project is mentioned most strongly in the Black Hole Forge. The basic principle is explained in the White Hole station and logs relating to the discovery and development of that tech. Unlike the provided ingame information you do NOT need to look a specific way, you just need to stand on the black hole device at the right moment when the target aligns correctly. Finding the where and when, and then how for the Ash Twin project is the puzzle.
– The energy lab explains the function of the devices. You don’t need to use the particular ones from there. The endgame solution is story/technologically related to them.
Unrelated general tips:
– Gabbro on Giant’s Deep shares knowledge of the loop. Eventually he can teach you a meditation ability. It’s a quick suicide when you want to do that.
– Chert on Ember Twin has different dialogue depending on how far the loop has advanced. Mostly concerning the cosmos at large. Only world building related, not important for any specific puzzle.
I really appreciate you guys spoiler tagging stuff because I do not trust my eyes, the little rascals.
One thing I notice and love every time I start a new loop is the inhale/exhale when you wake up and how it differs depending on your death. That opening moment is one of my favourite introductions to a game I think. So many thoughts within seconds of starting “Where am I?” “What’s that exploding up there?” “What’s that planet?” What’s that purple thing flying away?" “What’s that other really fast thing flying past?” “Wow” not to mention the rush of things to consider from the previous loop…
I meant to say, too, that Subnautica made me feel pangs of thalassophobia but Outer Wilds taps into other primal fears or at least makes me anxious about space-related things like the sun, giant celestial bodies, black holes, cosmic annihilation and floating off into space. I’ve had unique moments of legit panic playing this!
I couldn’t play in all the week, until today.
This is a strange game to talk in a forum.
Like, I don’t want to see any spoiler written above nor I want to spoil anyone what I saw.
Okay, I’m leaning on folks here pretty hard, but it feels like the difference between a lot of wasted time and actually making progress.
I’m now working a pretty long sequence of steps and I don’t exactly know if they’re right. Here’s what I’m doing:
My goal is the get the warp core from the Vessel (a thing I had missed was there before) and take it to the High Energy Lab on Ember Twin. There’s black/white holes there which seem like they could be plugged into the bigger warp core.
Is this a fool’s errand? The wrong thing to pursue?
Here’s what I’m attempting:
- Flying to Ember Twin, running through the tunnels to the city and then following the conduit to the High Energy Lab. Seems like this has to be the first step or the passage gets buried. The whole point is simply to open the exterior door so I can get in easily later.
- Flying to Dark Bramble and getting to the Vessel. So far I’ve only bee successful at this by going to the escape pod and then the nearby flower and launching my scout through it to pin down the Vessel location, but if I could get there more efficiently, it would definitely save time.
- At the Vessel, I’m grabbing the warp core and leaving immediately, heading back toward Ember Twin.
The most successful attempt I’ve done of this, by the time I landed on Ember, the sun exploded.
What exactly I’m going to get out of this, and how much time I’ll have to do anything else is a big question mark. Right now it seems like I want to bring the warp core back to the Vessel and plug in the probe destination in the computer and fly to the Eye of the Universe? Can the Vessel even leave Dark Bramble?
If someone wants to tell me this is the right or wrong thing to do, I’d appreciate it.
The other big unknown I have is getting into the heart of Ash Twin. I get all the signals they’re telling me that there are six warp cores and five destinations, but I can’t extrapolate any further. One set presumably goes into the Ash Twin Project, but from where? I’m sure there are hints, but I don’t know where they are.
Man, just reading the small fraction of the details about this game world that are written inside that spoiler tag underscores what a cool game this is.
UPDATE: Okay, that didn’t work because I was too late and the High Energy Lab was filled with sand by the time I got back.
It’s the right idea but the wrong direction.
The next required steps (without details) are:
– Reaching the Ash Twin Project
– Getting the core at Ash Twin Project
– Going to the vessel and entering the code
– Endgame
To reach the Ash Twin project (direct details, full spoilers):
Ash Twin has teleport towers. Each to a different location they are shape coded to the different planets. There is a double tower going to Ember Twin on one side and Ash Twin interior on the other. They are one of the first things uncovered by receding sand.
The Ash Twin side has a broken roof. The activation time is when Ember Twin and the sand column is directly overhead after the sand receded enough to uncover the floor black hole thingy.
To avoid getting pulled up by the sand you have to wait under the bridge until the “eye” of the column is almost directly above it, then go stand on the black core (jetpack thrusting downwards helps with avoiding the sand’s pull).
There is a good amount to read and depending on whether you managed to get the teleport on the first sand column pass or not time might be short for doing the endgame stuff. You might want to do one exploratory Ash Twin loop and one “doing the endgame” loop afterwards.
Okay, I’m glad I read that because I had tried that tower a bunch of times in a bunch of different ways, but wouldn’t have tried that. Is there some logic to that that I’m missing, or a clue that I didn’t find?
Thanks, Therlun! Home stretch!
I pushing slowly forwards, but it starts to get creepy for me. It feels claustrophobic exploring those planets, space. Everything is so dark! Not sure how far I can take it … I did maybe 10 loops
I normally feel a little wigged out by game like this, with lonely exploration in dark, unfamiliar places. Somehow I didn’t have that reaction at all with this (not that it would have been bad, exactly). Something about 1) there not being any enemies and 2) the knowledge that I can’t really lose a lot of progress and 3) the general light-spiritedness of the content on the home planet–it really set me at ease to just head out and see what I see. By the time I was deep in it, there were some things that were sublime to the point of being eerie, and some intense time-limited stuff (and a kind of enemy in one spot, it turns out), but by that time I was familiar with a lot of what was out there and so it never overwhelmed me. The tone of the game was really nicely managed for an exploration game, for my tastes.