IMPORTANT NOTES! First of all, thank you so much for watching! This commentary critiques up to version 1.0.6. To my understanding, 1.0.7 added more information in the Black Hole Forge, which may have slightly altered my thoughts on the Ash Twin solution into the core but it still retains the same general sentiment. I'll be creating a follow-up DLC critique in the future, so subscribe and hit the bell if you want to be notified when that releases! Secondly, the ending of this video contains additional thoughts that aren't necessarily coherent but are worth thinking about, so I thought it's about time I revisit it here after someone left a comment on it. If you couldn't tell, this was edited some time later haha. So if you're interested, I've extracted the incoherent mess of a discussion into something tangible. I first want to reiterate that the topics discussed at the end of the video are a tough conversation with no real solution (as my co-host says). But I still think there's one solid design change (removing the ghost matter detection system), and one possibly solid improvement if dev time wasn't a factor and if there was a more reliable guarantee that it'd fit into the game's design space without a problem (last paragraph). I think one of the main takeaways is how the ghost matter crystals are obvious enough for us to never have to worry about carelessly running into the crystals, which unfortunately results in the player never being required or even expected to pay attention to potential ghost matter areas. One potential solution is to add more detail to the areas so that the crystals are more difficult to notice. The problem with that is the crystals aren't only in villages, so they'd have to add more detail everywhere (or at least just in areas that matter or are important in some way (see: last paragraph below)). Whether that's worth it or not is a valid consideration, and the answer could be no, but the crystals do stick out as a sore thumb and so it turns those areas into "oh, gotta pull out my tool" rather than paying attention and engaging with the individual areas to recognize when that tool is required. It always feels better to explore and experiment yourself rather than being told to do this thing. I know it sounds like a slight difference, and again might not be worth the effort, but it'd be a direction to take to make the ghost matter even more cohesive with the game's mechanics and exploration. However, I'd also consider that the game unnecessarily tells you when ghost matter is nearby, and I think the emphasis should instead be on the visual cue of the crystals, so perhaps removing the ghost matter detection system would be enough (or at least the first step). Another possible takeaway is there could be situations where you're not sure if a certain place you're at changes based on time. However, I'd argue that isn't really a problem if you follow the clues and Ship Log. It's worth noting that this could possibly worsen if more detail is added to certain spaces. Despite the above, I think it's fair to say more detail could be added to the areas that matter, since there are only a few clever details here and there, and pretty much nothing but the giant landmark and the text draws interest, which aligns to the studio's design intent and certainly works for this game (I still think Outer Wilds is a masterpiece), but to make some spaces feel more lived in or have more personality could possibly add to the game. I don't think this would add more playtime or pad the game. I think the goal would be to make each discovery (or rather, each meaningful exploratory space) even more meaningful or interesting to explore, but without taking away the focus on what matters. This would work in conjunction with the existing design space rather than against it.
@@peterpanDK Great question; I've already played the DLC, so hopefully within the next few videos. Each video takes so long to produce that plans often change, but it'll happen for sure.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies yeah, the fact that the entrance facing the satellite is cinematic and gloomy while also putting you on a more long route while the side facing the sun (the side you will most likely enter from after the first loop) is more quick functional lit up and to the point while also housing the other 2 entrances for easy acess.
Outer Wilds is one of, if not the only game to legitimately make me cry at the end of the main story. The raw emotion brought about by your memories of the game and the fantastic, grand music at the end of it all is breathtaking.
At least in early versions, when it the sun station is due to be destroyed, it suddenly moves down into the sun instead of staying on its orbit and being gradually destroyed. It looked slightly hilarious when seen on the map.
This is definitely the best critique of Outer Wilds I've seen so far, as it balances praise with genuine criticisms. However, one thing I will point out about the Ash Twin Solution at 1:53:33 is that the Sand Pillar is not hollow in the center, instead you just walk onto the warp pad before the sand pillar can pull you away, due to it being quite big (you are on the pad when the sand pillar is directly overhead, rather than just ALMOST directly overhead). The problem I have with this puzzle is that the player cannot be certain that they have the correct solution. In my playthrough, I was sure that the warp pad was the way in, as it was clearly stated there were "no physical entrances" so teleportation must be it. So I stood on the pad and was pulled way. Unfortunately, instead of thinking "oh I just need to take shelter for a moment," I thought I was merely incorrect and started looking for other ways in, which, of course, there weren't any. After looking up how to do it in frustration, I was quite unsatisfied as the solution was so unimpressive. I've thought about possible solutions in the past, such as the tower's warp core being broken and you must take a warp core from the High Energy Lab to replace it. However, maybe the problem lies within the Ash Twin Core itself? They wanted to make the puzzle to enter hard as there's lots of information inside which spoils a lot of the rest of the game, right? Well why not remove some of that information so a player stumbling in early isn't such a bad thing? For one, I'd get rid of all the stone tablets, leaving just the scroll wall; people I've watched play the game usually don't re-read the tablets. Now all that gets spoilt is that the Sun Station didn't work which can easily be implied like how the rest of the game handles things: e.g "I don't know how to put this, but the Ash Twin Project is cancelled due to an unfortunate complication." or something. Anyway, good video. Kinda want to see your whole playthrough as the sections shown seem funny.
Ah, that makes sense about the sand pillar, I just assumed it was hollow because it looked hollow when I entered it to step onto the warp pad. Removing information from the Core is an interesting idea. The problem with removing info from the Core is that it's satisfying to recap the Nomai's events in order, and arguably necessary since all the threads lead or connect to the Ash Twin Project one way or another. You're right about the tablets though, perhaps they were added to refresh ourselves on more details if we've forgotten? They could've added additional info to the wall then instead, if they wanted to. The tablets' visions don't really add anything to the Core since they're not very useful in the game in general and don't evoke nostalgia or anything. I think the biggest problem is they needed a bigger and difficult yet fair puzzle for the Core to hide behind. Or just make it clear about the whole alignment & destination stuff, basically how the warp pad technology works. Removing some of the details in case someone finds it too early is a good idea but I'm not sure if it'd be necessary depending on how the Core puzzle is handled if it was reimagined or reworked. Thank you for the kind words and for the interesting thoughts and ideas! :)
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies "just make it clear about the whole alignment & destination stuff" Don't they do it in black hole forge? There is text describing where pad should face, what angle deviation is acceptable. It mentions, that pad is active during time interval, and even has moving diagram to illustrate. And hourglass twins are separately mentioned to clarify alignment details. Is it more recent addition to the game? My story of this puzzle: - spent couple attempts waiting for all sand to transfer, then look for physical entrance - revisited texts, realized there is no entrance and I need to teleport - waited for all sand to transfer and then teleported :) - realized, that I can do this by jumping in at the right time Anyway, their push towards teleportation was so obvious, that I considered even trying to teleport from white station by manually aligning it with twins, but never tried.
The Black Hole Forge didn't have anything really useful up to patch 1.0.6; I'm guessing you played it recently when it released on Steam (version 1.0.7)? If they did change it, then maybe the puzzle in general is now too obvious. Most likely the entire puzzle needs reimagined so it's difficult but fair instead of one or the other. I didn't think about waiting for all of the sand to transfer first! That's certainly an alternative since we don't have a reason to believe the sand column won't lift us off of the warp pad.
I never liked that puzzle because it was the one thing I had to look up online, and being so close to the end just left me a bad taste in my mouth that still persists. Glad I’m not the only one that struggled with it atleast, lol.
I was getting frustrated and really wanted to look up online, but since i had the full ship log (at that point) i thought "theres no way im missing something ive literally been everywhere" and thought about how the alignment thing was the only one unresolved, so it HAD to be what i was trying Eventually, as a dumb test i just threw my scout into the pad to see if when the sand column came it would teleport, and the immense shock in the moment where IT ACTUALLY WORKED was SO relieving, immediately went into the pad holding my thrusters down and made it
When I first played the game I didn't know it was the sun exploding until it had killed me ten times or so, simply because I didn't see it explode, from being inside or from looking the other direction 💀
@DesignFrameCaseStudies seriously though, this video is amazing. I haven't even watched a full hour and I've laughed so hard several times. Looking forward to seeing more videos from you! They are very intelligently made and the dedication is evident.
This game taught me the power of "intentionally" as a comedic device. It adds strange implications, often to a hilarious degree, to any statemeant. The amount of confusion and concern it causes some people to have is absolutely worth looking like a closet consperacy theorist in normal conversations.
i personally believe the observatory projection stone was intentional. the game rewards deduction, figuring things out on your own, and occasionally dumb luck. the game shows you the model, and if you can figure it out, in you go! and if you still need a bit of help, off the the observatory you go!
4:22 Played Outer Wilds with keyboard and mouse and i didn't have the rotational controls locked out. Seeing as your control hints are for a joystick, i assume it depends on the input method. (Edit: Thinking about it, it's more probably the game version.) Having said that: 4:29 - Trying to stabilize the model ship after accidentally moving my mouse 1 micrometer to the side has the same energy as burning your marshmellow for the first time and frantically trying to extinguish it by flailing the stick around lol
Oh? I thought it was intentional. Perhaps it depends on the input method or, as you think, the game version. I think what I said still applies thankfully. And thanks for making me revisit that part of the video because I forgot about my comments about dating rocks/minerals and using puns and real-life info to do so. I'm so glad that holds up LOL. Lol I know right?! That's hilarious. The campfires are legitimate mini-games haha.
I've only just come across your channel, but this is easily one of the best videos on Outer Wilds that I've seen. It's been a long time, but I'd love to see you analyze the DLC if you still intend on doing so. You've absolutely earned my subscription.
Thank you so much! :) I finally ended up playing the DLC and I totally intend on working on a video for that as well! Although I'm unsure when -- hopefully soon.
I loved the way you explained the mechanics and how they are experienced by the player. It's quite thorough and nice to listen to. I was not expecting this video to only have a few thousand views when scrolling down, the quality of it deserves far more.
The sunless City shortcut was one I could *never* find from the surface despite surfacing through it 6+ times. I had to go through the escape pod every single time.
35:43 It's actually hinted at that they mined the rock with the anti-gravitiy pull beams, since one of these pull beams is inside the mined out holes, and it's size matches really well. 55:29 "The scout's integrity meter reads 100% on every other planet" I believe that on every other planet, the scout's integrity meter doesn't even show up, which was an attempt to make the reader more memorable on BH. ~ 1:03:00 Something that I guess only I found problematic about the Black Hole Forge is that I wrongly assumed that the Black Hole Tower would teleport me to the surface of Brittle Hollow, instead of the teleport pad in the Black Hole Forge district. I'm not 100% certain how they could have made it more obvious, maybe a note that talks about how the white hole receiver is also linked backwards, therefore making me aware that two teleporters can't lead to the same place.
Oooh, gotcha. That makes sense, but it still feels weirdly empty. But perhaps that's more of a problem with the planet as a whole, as I mention at some point. I just opened the game to check, and wow you're right, I wonder if that was changed in a future patch? That sounds like something I'd check before saying, but I might've accidentally missed it. Either that or they watched this video ;) lol. I like that detail because the addition of the integrity reading is a noticeable change for Brittle Hollow. I still think the reading doesn't really matter though, and I wish there was more obvious interaction between the meteors and integrity. That's an interesting experience that I didn't think of. Although, to be honest at this point, I don't remember the clues and circumstances to talk through this experience. I think I can at least say that all of the teleporters consistently teleport onto specifically designed pads, although I seem to vaguely remember Brittle Hollow having two of them? But then that means there would be two separate teleporters. So from what I remember, I think it lines up. And I'd be very hesitant to make certain things more obvious than they need to be for the deeper secrets like Black Hole Forge that hold clues for even deeper secrets. I hope that makes sense, and I'm certainly not discounting your experience whatsoever. Thank you for your comment! I greatly appreciate these conversations :)
i think at some point i read in the Nomai script that one of the towers can never work, it could've been somewhere at the end of a loop and I misinterpreted their message in a rush, but I did still carry that misconception with me and once I got to travelling with the warp pads I assumed the Ash Twin project tower was the one that would never work, if you look up from the warp pad it's also the only one that has a broken glass - i assumed it was broken i was *stuck* stuck to the point i needed to google the solution of how to get to the Ash Twin project because that was the only place left for me to go
@@shneancy220In the black hole forge it’s mentioned that Yarrow thinks that one warp tower will never work. Another Nomai (Poke) points out that Yarrow must not realise that the warp tower must be aligned with the centre of the astral body it’s on, not the receiver itself. Then another Nomai points out that Yarrow knows this, but thought that the Ash Twin warp tower wouldn’t work as he didn’t realise that the hourglass twins act as 1 astral body (with a shared centre point the tower must align to).
@@BananaWasTaken ahhh! Thank you for mentioning that, I'm glad I didn't just completely make it up. I think I was in a rush when I was there and was speedreading everything before the next cycle, and I didn't realise my mistake at all. Thanks!
I’m two years late on the video but I just wanted to say that the ending of this game hit me hard (Spoilers, obviously) The part where you are collecting your friends in the Eye, specifically Solanum’s section, made me think about every character’s role in this story. When you get to Solanum’s section and you see the Nomai reaching upward toward the light, reaching higher and higher until eventually creating a rocket for you to reach it made me think of how their presence and advancements affected the hatchling. When they were mining on Timber Hearth, they discovered the Hearthian’s distant ancestors and made sure to leave behind enough resources to develop. Also, even though they couldn’t see it for themselves, all of their advancements led to the hatchling achieving the goal of reaching the eye. Even in the very end, your presence in the eye leads to the creation of a new universe that you won’t be able to experience. Your legacy and how it can affect future generations felt like a major theme of the game.
This is an exceptionally good analysis of the game, and I with you 100% when it comes to the overall thoughts on the game. However, there are a few points I don't entirely agree with. I'll just say the two things that haven't been brought up before me: Firstly, I don't believe the the statue workshop at Giant's Deep holds such a major revelation for early game. All it does is it confirms that it is, indeed, ancient time travel technology developed by the Nomai - something that's already heavily implied by the statue in the observatory and the death screen. At the same time, it makes you wonder what exactly is going on: did the time loop start because of an "equipment failure", or did the project "succeed"? Are you going to finish what the ancient race started, whatever it is? It it "you" who actually travels back in time or only your memories from a different timeline? The game wants you to think about these ideas *while* you are playing, not at the end when you have bigger things to deal with. Furthermore, it sets up two of the biggest mysteries of the game: *how* did they do it and, more importantly, *why?* These, in my opinion, are much more engaging than the basic time travel stuff, and you come to draw connections between the teleportation time discrepancy, the Eye of the Universe, and the Ash twin project rather naturally. If they saved it for the end, I don't think it would have that satisfying "it was hidden in plain sight all along" feeling to it. That's all coming from my experience, though, so I completely understand if you have a different perspective. Secondly, I think you severely understate the usefulness of the scout. I realize its overall unimportance in the overarching exploration gameplay, but it's still a cool puzzle element. I could go on and on about the unmentioned applications for navigation (it basically eliminates the problem of getting lost in the empty space between landmarks on planets) and experimentation (especially with Nomai simulations, such as the ones and the Southern Observatory and the High Energy Lab, and hazards like the cactuses and the giant sand pillar - yes, it detects them too), but I feel that's missing the point. What I'm trying to say is: the mechanics behind it are not only sound, simple, and interconnected enough not to hurt the game, but also open-ended enough to allow for creative uses. I, for instance, used the scout to track quantum objects, particularly the shrine on the Quantum Moon (through the Rule of Quantum Entanglement), and then also to track the Sun Station to hopefully make aligning the orbit a bit easier (I launched the scout through the window, up the elevator thing and onto the launch pad and waited for it to teleport... still ended up looking up the solution to get into that warp tower). I think it's important for a game that promises so much freedom to have mechanics for the players to just... play around with. There's definitely untapped potential with the scout, but at least it can fulfill that craving for more advanced strategy in the game without being intrusive, and that's a big plus in my books. Anyway, I hope I didn't burden you with all the reading, especially considering I'm kinda late to the party. Just thought I'd put my two cents in. Outer Wilds is definitely my GOTY 2019, though I didn't get to play it until it came out on Steam this summer. P.S. - From what I understood, 2:09:45 was, indeed, not a bug. The gravity was just too strong due to the proximity to the Sun. Not saying that's fair - like, your ship's artificial gravity should always outpower any outside influences, - but it is what it is.
No such thing as late to the party! I appreciate your comment and support. Thank you very much. I won't be able to address everything here but here's what I got: 1. I don't think you're necessarily wrong here -- all of the questions you mentioned are definitely legitimate -- I just feel that it can be quite a fast revelation after such a strong mystery opener in the village. I don't think it should be saved for the end, but maybe that place can have less information that is then placed elsewhere on or in Giant's Deep. 2. I think we overall agree on this one. The Scout can definitely be useful but I feel there are some missed opportunities, maybe mostly due to the game length. I didn't mention every use you mentioned, but I do love how it's one of many tools you can freely use in the environment, even if I feel it's lacking in many areas including ones advertised in the ship's Scout image.
As someone who finished the game with almost no help at all, I agree with you friend at the end who said that it would be a lot more frustrating without a friend to give you subtle tips as there were many times I was stuck and had very little to hook me back in which made it a chore to play at times, but that ending.. oh my god, was it worth it.
I think the problem was more that he was always tired and didn't bother looking at the ship's log at all (probably because I was there to help?), but I also understand what you mean. As much as I love the ship's log, it's still great to have someone who can give a hint every now and then. I'm glad you made it to the end, it was very much worth it :)
I think the pointers towards Giant's Deep might be an extended tutorial that makes new players experience the game loop: hear about a location that answers a mystery, visit it, locate where the information is and find a way to enter it. Something like this was probably needed to get players "hooked" on the the loop before getting too confused and lost and quitting. I say that largely from personal experience: I tried Brittle Hollow first and was overwhelmed with the amount of locations, there wasn't a clear mystery I wanted to resolve there and I was still struggling with the controls, so all I managed to learn was about the white hole station. By contrast, looking at the ship's log made me identify Giant's Deep as a place to learn about the statues, so I went there and that's when the game "clicked". For further evidence that Giant's Deep mirrors the entire game, Gabbro gives you pointers about the islands, which act like planets and there's even a hidden one.
You don't actually clip through that Anglerfish's light-tendril thing, the Anglerfish are deceptively large, so it looks like you have a lot less room than you do.
Huh, it certainly looked like it. I don't remember that part of the video, but it sounds like a passing comment and doesn't mean anything for the design. I appreciate the insight though! Thanks for the comment!
You mention clipping at 2:15:48, when passing through the tendril (which I believe is a case where you just fit through it instead of clipping). At 2:49:40 you do unambiguously clip through a different anglerfish, though, so it might be the case that they don't have collision on it just to avoid random failures.
@@Pokechu22 Ah, gotcha. Thanks! I should've clarified in my comment here that I don't think clipping through the Anglerfish's tendrils is bad per se, but I don't recall saying that it's bad in the video which is why I say it was most likely a passing comment rather than a critique. But it's also fair to say that it's weird to be able to clip through it without notifying the Anglerfish.
@@Pokechu22 You can clip through them, but the point is that the intended way through the red area doesn't involve clipping through because that would be awful design.
I’d like to point out that at 2:10:00 more or less, when you’re trying to manually land on the Sun Station, that what you experienced wasn’t really a bug, just an unintended feature lol. What’s happening is that, due to the close proximity to the Sun (that has such a high gravity), you experience a large gravity gradient, meaning you and the ship experience slightly different gravitational forces since your center of masses are NOT on the same potential gravity “height”, so to speak. When you’re strapped in it’s fine, but as soon as you let go you get stuck, since the gravity crystal that comes with your ship isn’t strong enough to overcome this feature of a very accurate physics system. In fact, this is more or less what causes spagettification! Ironic that this happens close to a star and not a black hole. But regardless, this is an amazing video, it very much satisfied my Outer Wilds honest review craving. Despite its flaws, this is such a special game to me, and I’m always excited to hear everyone’s perspectives. Very high quality editing, commentary, and critiques! Subbed
Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm always extremely happy to hear when someone enjoys this video 'cause it's still my favorite :) Thank you for explaining that! I had no idea. I should make some corrections in a future DLC video and I'll credit you. That's fascinating.
I agree about the Brittle Hollow Projection Stone; but I would suggest a less drastic alteration: Instead of having two cyclone models, have one model with a control which the player can switch. This would convey all the intended information from the same view of the project stone (They were studying the cyclones in the observatory on Brittle Hollow) without revealing 'the secret' (that there are two types of cyclones) until the player went there and switched the switch on the model. It's also funny that you talk about railroading at 2:26:37 because you very much don't have to follow the path they give you. You can turn around, walk out of the ship, and throw yourself down into the eye without taking the convenient portal.
Ah, I love that idea! Brilliant! Thanks for sharing :) Oh, that's cool! Even though that's possible though, I don't think any player would do that, or even think of that as an option. But even if they did, the Eye would still have to be designed differently to allow exploration. The Eye is linear, so it makes sense that we warp straight onto it rather than give a false pretense of it being explorable, even though in the video I say that flying to it manually would allow us to "savor the moment." Although, now that I think about it further, I suppose flying to any point on the Eye would theoretically drop us at the same entrance every time, like how the Quantum Moon works. I'm not quite sure that logic checks out though. And it might feel weird to attempt to fly into the eye part of the Eye and have it send us to the rings. So yeah I honestly think the teleporting is proper because of the Eye's linearity and structure. Thanks for bringing that up!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudiesActually, the music coming from the travelers does stop during the supernova and the way you can observe it makes for an incredibly sad moment. If you take off in any direction at the beginning of the loop and rocket as far away as you can as fast as you can until you've exited the solar system (perhaps in an unrewarding attempt to catch up with the Nomai eye probe), you can point your signalscope back "home" and capture all the travelers' instruments at once (for an achievement) If you stick around and have your signalscope up when the sun goes supernova, you'll hear/see the instruments go out one by one in order: Chert's drums, Esker, Reibeck's banjo, Gabbro's flute, Feldspar's harmonica. RIP 😢
@@DesignFrameCaseStudiesalso because you're so far away, you don't get engulfed in the supernova and instead will just see a screen transition signifying your memories just being sent back to the start of the loop. This is something you're certain to eventually see if you p***** t***** ***** ****** ****** ****
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I did figure it out on my own after I saw that it was possible to chase and catch up to the eye probe and tried it myself. But if you're not wanting to do all that but want to see it, I'm sure there are a few UA-cam videos that capture what I'm saying but a gaming UA-camr Razburten wrote a beautiful recollection of one of his playing experiences that he narrates over an expertly choreographed reenactment that you watch while listening. It is exactly one loop, and it ends with the moment I described above (so you can fast-forward to the end if you want to just see the end and only want to cry a little bit). Also, we can't say for sure how the signalscope works, but we can for sure eliminate acoustics since it works through planet-sized objects over vast distances of empty space, and sound waves need a medium like air to propagate, let alone when something massive interrupts their path of travel 😅
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD 1:24:03 I don't think this is that bad, it's not as little effort as you're saying. You'd have to notice the fact that the cyclones are spinning in different directions (hard to see from that distance), infer that this is important instead of just being an aesthetic thing, go to the cyclones and find the one anticlockwise one without having any strong motivation besides a hunch. Good for you if you had the excellent logical deduction required for such leaps, but I and I think most players didn't make this connection and as such the effort required is pretty proportional to the reward. Not to mention that even if you do all that, you only get below the current, not all the way to the core, so it's not even that big of a deal until you know the Core's secret, most likely from Dark Bramble.
For sure, not everyone will see the tornado experiment and deduce what they need to, but the Nomai tablet says that the secret to get below the current lies in the tornados and then shows the key difference to look out for. I don't think it's such a leap, but I also don't think everyone will make the connection. I think overall the Construction Yard hint would be better if it was a scroll instead of a tablet, but you do make a good point how it could be taken as an aesthetic thing.
Incredible video. Keep up the good work, I'm pretty sure this channel will grow exponentially if all of its content is of such quality. Looking forward for your next videos!
In regards to the first part of the giant's deep core puzzle, I'll note that I don't think it was intended to be a massive obstacle that needs the projection stone reworked to better conceal the solution. There is actually a second solution to this puzzle, which follows the similar pattern to the one you covered. You find your first hint towards it on Giant's Deep, specifically on the bramble island, where a boasting message is left by Feldspar saying that he made it through. While alone this hint doesn't spell it out, an observant player can deduce the solution from this hint by what you heard about Feldspar on Timber Hearth. How might he have approached this problem, that the other Hearthians might not have tried? If that isn't enough, you can talk to others about Feldspar, up to and including visiting Feldspar in Dark Bramble, and see how he approached that puzzle. This fits with being able to see the simulation through the projection stone, in that it gives enough for a clever player to feel clever by solving it without further explanation rather than needing the handholding of explanatory text, while still having further hints available to find for those who didn't pick it up. For those still wondering, Feldspar's solution to the current barrier is to punch through it at high velocity.
Yeah I think the hints are great, and gives you plenty of opportunity to figure it out in some way or another. However, I think the best solution is from a recent comment where the projection can show one instead of two tornados, and then if you actually visit the simulation then you can press a button that switches the tornado rotation so you can physically experiment with it, since it takes some exploration to find the observatory and I don't like how the projection so readily removes the point of the observatory. But the projection can still provide a great hint that we can use and can make clever players feel even more clever by figuring it out before visiting the observatory.
One cool detail i never hear people mention is that the lock on reticule color isn't arbitrarily red white and blue, it's a reference to red shift and blue shift phenomenon: when light from celestial objects are observed through a spectroscope, you can determine what direction they are moving similar to the doppler effect. Longer light waves (shifted towards the red spectrum) means it's moving away, shorter (blue shift) means it's moving towards you.
It sounds like from your description that the text pertaining to the ash twin warp tower found in the black hole forge has been changed again since this video was posted. I will say that I found the current justification why the ash twin tower sends you to the core very intuitive.
I mention that in the pinned comment, but the patch notes don't mention what actually changed so I can't easily compare. It's not something I can justify revisiting at this point. I'm glad that it seems to have improved though!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies Yeah you don't have to revisit it at all. It wasn't a criticism. I was just saying I'm a fan of the current explanation. Its actually neat to hear to you talk about it because I wouldn't have known that it was different in the past. I would've been confused as well in your version.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies if you want to compare then here are 2 videos that explore the old and new black hole forge. Just search them on UA-cam and skip forwards to the correct part: Old patch: “Black hole forge… Finally! Part 45” by ‘STUFFandTHINGS Plays’ New patch: “outer wilds episode 8- Black Hole Forge” by ‘ocelottagames’ Basically the old patch mentioned that the hourglass twins share an alignment point, and the new patch has this explained by one Nomai thinking that one warp tower wouldn’t work and another explaining why it does work (ash twin and ember twin share a centre of alignment, and the tower must be aligned with the centre of the astral body to work). More importantly, the new patch explains that the warps have leniency and that you’ll still be warped even if you step onto the teleported a few seconds after it’s activated.
Hopefully within the next few videos or so! I have a lot of ideas that I want to work on. Thanks for watching :) As a very brief summary, I loved the DLC as well, but I think it struggled a bit in a couple of its horror sections.
when I saw the sun tower's cactus-filled hall, I thought that meant the hall was a blocked path much like the broken doors in various places, including on the sun tower -- so I spent a very long time trying to find a third, usable entrance. I had to look up how to get into the sun tower, and I was extremely irritated by the answer. Pretty much any time I need to look up the solution to a puzzle, it's going to be because the puzzle has a problem that causes its solution to not feel like a reasonable conclusion of what the game presents.
To make it clear that it was a jetpack skill challenge, it the hallway probably should've started easy to navigate, then gotten gradually harder requiring more and more jetpack. The progression would be a cue that it was a matter of skill.
Ah, that's interesting that you didn't get in with the sand. I don't remember if it's possible to do without the sand or not, but it's darn near impossible. The sand ends up being a "ah-ha" moment since it uses the planet's features to circumvent an impossible challenge. And if I remember correctly, cactus aren't usually used to block off areas but rather as some sort of obstacle or thing to move past. So I'm not sure if the design could be improved in this case, but I may be wrong. It's interesting to hear your experience with it though, 'cause I think it's a perfectly natural thing for stuff like this happen when playing such an open puzzle game, but it's also interesting to think about the design in those cases.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I managed to practice jetpacking through the hallway enough that I could reliable get through in under 10 seconds, albeit taking damage at least once most of the time. I believe "jetpack skill challenge" was the answer I got when I looked up how to do it -- which was some time during the Epic Store exclusive period
I watched this video in a couple installments and loved it. Having played the game blind before my only way to reexperience the game is by watching let’s plays and videos like this, so thank you. I’m curious if you’ve gotten around to playing the DLC! If you do, I would love a video on it!
Thank you so much for watching and for the kind words! That means a lot :) Yes, I've played the DLC! I loved it but there were some rough parts this time around, so I definitely want to make a video on it as well.
Great video and criminally underrated in terms of viewership. The people who stumble upon it are definitely aware of the quality though since, funnily enough, I found this video by recommendation on some random Outer Wilds conversation post a few weeks back. I appreciated a lot of the inclusions of your friend's playthrough/reactions along the way! Seeing someone's reactions to Outer Wilds is the closest thing we'll get to that feeling we all first had playing it :,) Personally though, I felt like the observatory part dragged a bit too long? Though maybe I'm just not very into intermission-like vibes since I really enjoyed the similarly long, yet incredibly tense/anxiety inducing Sun Station landing bit (still gutted your friend didn't end up sticking the landing 😔). Lookin forward to the DLC video if/when that ends up coming out! ^^ (hopefully with more reactiony clips if ya got any 👀)
Wow thank you so much for your great comment, it means a lot to me!!! My Outer Wilds video is still my favorite, so I'm super glad you enjoyed it. The fact that someone randomly recommended this video is amazing and I'm thrilled to hear that! Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the observatory part was stretching it for sure, but I really liked the atmosphere of the moment (and I'm guessing we talked about stuff) so I left it in under the guise of an "intermission." I probably should've moved that section to the end of the video. I'm also thrilled to hear that you enjoyed the playthrough clips, including the Sun Station part. That was such an intense moment! The fact that Outer Wilds allows this kind of stuff and it doesn't break the game to do so (considering this is essentially an alternative way to get into the Sun Station earlier than usual) is incredible. I shared your comment with my friend so he could see the appreciation for it lol. That's gonna be a "when" ;) I've already recorded my playthrough and will do the same with my friend again, 'cause that was fun. It won't be the next video but most likely in the next 3-4. I'll try to release them more frequently, since I took a break from videos to work on a still in-progress board game. Thank you again for the comment and support! I don't get on Twitch very often but I followed you there anyway. If I see you on, I'll hop in.
This is a very nice video! It's actually one of the main motivating factors for me to play Outer Wilds myself: I started watching this video a while back, and decided to heed your advice not to watch the rest of it before playing the game. Now that I've finally bought and played through the game, I've returned to watch the video. I think it's a good analysis, I really like watching critiques that don't shy away from criticizing the parts of the game that could've been better even if the overall sentiment is very positive. I find myself agreeing with a lot of it, especially the solution to entering the Ash Twin core. That's the only part of the game I gave up on solving for myself and just looked up the solution, because although I suspected that the entrance would be via the Ash Twin warp tower and that the warp ought to activate while the sand pillar was overhead, it never occurred to me that waiting under the bridge until the pillar was just passing through would make any difference. That part was probably too unintuitive even with the additional clues from the Black Hole Forge, imo. That being said, although the review overall was great, I have two critiques of my own: First, I noticed you decided to give all the Hearthians gendered pronouns despite the fact that the game itself consistently uses only gender-neutral ones for that entire species. That gender-neutral language becomes even more apparent when contrasted with the Nomai, who do use gendered pronouns. I couldn't help but become quite distracted by the gendered pronouns you were using, as it kinda goes against one of the unique and interesting traits of the Hearthians and their culture. Second, is the intermissions of gameplay and live-commentary from your friend's playthrough of the game. I actually like these as a concept, as it's a nice way to introduce some variety to the more formal review and serves to highlight the actual player experience in a more direct way, rather than just doing a "third-person" analysis. However, some of these sections dragged on too long for my taste and kinda threw off the pacing of the video. I think you could've still included most of the substance of these clips if you had just cut them down a bit, especially the more monotonous and repetitive parts. The best example of this is the intermission around 1:04:44, as it contains long stretches where literally nothing is happening and you aren't even talking. I get that this was meant to be a slightly longer intermission to break up the middle of the video a bit, but even then I think it would've been better to cut away at least the silent parts. But those are my only gripes. I still thoroughly enjoyed the video and it gave some interesting perspectives!
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the game and the video :) I also appreciate the critiques! Addressing both: I didn't particularly notice honestly. It didn't appear to me to be a part of their culture. But also I'm okay with sacrificing that accuracy for the dumb dating bit throughout. I understand the clip complaint. A big reason I included the spaces of nothing in the intermission is because of the amazing music and atmosphere. For orbiting the Sun Station, I wanted to share the experience and tension of the journey. If I could re-edit the video, I'd probably leave the Sun Station in honestly, but I'd think about cutting the intermission. I also don't know why I didn't cut down the ending bonus conversation. Apparently I don't know what I'm doing lol. I got better at this in the FNaF video, and even better in the upcoming Cuphead DLC boss analysis video. Thanks again for sharing! :)
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I see. I suppose what also threw me off regarding the pronouns is that non-binary representation in video games is very rare to begin with, so I personally really appreciated the inclusion of an entire race that didn't appear to go by binary genders. But I suppose it didn't stand out as much to everyone, which is understandable. Although for what it's worth, I do think the dating bit could still have worked even with gender neutral pronouns. I've watched your FNaF video too actually, it was the first one I watched on your channel and it really captivated me despite the fact that I've never cared that much about FNaF before! So keep it up, looking forward to what you produce in the future :)
I never thought about the usefulness of those light switches in the Sunless City before. If it weren't for the language barrier, they would have been able to simply attach large signs to each area's entrance. But the translator device can only focus on Nomai text that's close up. It's a weird solution to an even weirder problem the devs created for themselves.
While it's technically a solution that fits the translator mechanic, I wouldn't consider it a workaround because it's a really cool way to uncover an area and its exploration potential. At least from what I remember!
1:08:20 There's a short story about a whole town of people being stuck in a time loop. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it was a neat idea that was played out in a really weird way.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies Didn't expect you to reply to a comment on a 4 year old video! Thanks for making this and the others, I've been really enjoying your cuphead content lately.
@@YoshiTheyosh123 Thank you very much! I appreciate you! I try to Heart or respond to everything I see in my notifications. This channel isn't quite popular enough for that to be impossible yet :)
Good video. Loved the running joke, thought your ideas for improvement were reasonable and thought provoking. Having the anglerfish eggs be "shown" rather than "told via gameplay with baby fish latching on would be very cool. I usually think of those types of things but Outer Wilds is one of those games that are already so good that my main critique is just to have more. Your live playthrough bits need to be sped up between your live commentary and generally edited down though, I found myself skipping through a major chunk of each minutes long clip to get to the point.
I totally understand the live playthrough stuff; there's some good interesting stuff in there but I also left a couple extended clips in there for the awesome atmosphere and music the game has. That's why around the halfway point I had the "intermission" text pop up. I also made sure to add the extra clips past the video conclusion that didn't fit into the video. Oh and that sun orbiting extended clip was freakin' intense lol. Anyway, I greatly appreciate your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
Regarding the last comments - if the team put more details on every map, then the game could turn from a 20 hour game into like 40-60 hour one just through the sheer amount of extra stuff you'd add, but unless you can make that amount of time engaging (aka have a much bigger budget) you are just dilluting the experience. I'd be really interested to see what would be your two's opinion on the Outer Wild's DLC, Echoes of the Eye, since it does offer a new place that is more focused, has more detail to it and is a lot more story and detail dense than all the other planets. So would something like that be what you are looking for, or would you share some people's feelings that it's too self-contained and you lose that sense of tracking mysteries across the multiple planets like you have in the base game...
I just relistened to the ending and I don't disagree with you, since it's a tough conversation with no real solution (as my co-host says). I think one of the main takeaways is how the ghost matter crystals are obvious enough to never have to worry about carelessly running into crystals (never really have to pay special attention or tread carefully due to the crystal factor), but the solution to that is to add more detail to the areas, except because the crystals aren't only in villages, they'd have to add more detail everywhere (or at least just in areas that matter or are important in some way). Whether that's worth it or not is a valid consideration, and the answer could be no, but the crystals do stick out as a sore thumb and so it turns those areas into "oh, gotta pull out my tool" rather than paying attention and _engaging_ with the individual areas to recognize when that tool is required. It always feels better to explore and experiment yourself rather than being told to do this thing. I know it sounds like a slight difference, and again might not be worth the effort, but it'd be a direction to take to make the ghost matter even more cohesive with the game's mechanics and exploration. However, I'd also consider that the game just kinda tells you when ghost matter is nearby, and I think the emphasis should instead be on the visual cue of the crystals, so perhaps removing the ghost matter detection system would be enough (or at least the first step). Additionally, I think it's a valid change because it's not a Quality of Life system. I'd also say another possible takeaway is there could be situations where you're not sure if a certain place you're in changes based on time. However, I think I'd argue that isn't really a problem if you follow the clues and Ship Log... and this could possibly worsen if more detail is added. However, I think it's fair to say more detail could be added to the areas that matter, since there are only a few clever details here and there, and pretty much nothing but the giant landmark and the text draws interest, which generally works for this game (I still think Outer Wilds is a masterpiece), but to make some spaces feel more lived in or have more personality could possibly add to the game. I don't think this kind of thing would add more playtime honestly. I think the goal would be to make each discovery (or rather, each meaningful exploratory space) even more meaningful or interesting to explore, but without taking away the focus on what matters. Something that I totally agree on though (and I think I said this in the Timber Hearth section) is how the home planet basically has nothing on or in it. There are a couple interesting places and an underground geyser system but the rest is bland and disappointing. I don't think I had this problem with any other planet though, since they all had deep secrets and more exploration. This comment kinda blew out of proportion but those are my thoughts. Regarding Echoes of the Eye, it wasn't perfect, but I still loved it and what they've managed to do with such a small space (although I guess it's not fair to call it small when it has other areas within). I don't quite think it's a masterpiece though and I probably still like the base game more, but that's only because I take significant issue with how they handled some of the horror segments.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I've heard a justification for Timber Hearth not having too much on it being that you don't discover the secrets of the universe by staying home, you need to leave your comfort zone and get out there. As for a lore reason, the Nomai wanted to abstain from interfering with the planet to allow its life to flourish. Finally, they wanted to avoid having things that are just there for lore reasons that don't provide any gameplay info, so that people wouldn't ignore text. So sadly this combines into them not being able to have random Hearthians milling about on the planet and too many environmental structures, outside of the tutorial, the guy at the bramble seed, and the DLC hook.
I would love more pure exploration games like this. Small but completely open sandboxes that effectively function as interconnected puzzle boxes is a really interesting idea, and I hope the overall style is adapted to new stories and settings. I unfortunately spoiled myself on Outer wilds before I got to play it, but the first Outer Wilds-like I see that people agree is good I'll grab and play sight unseen.
100%!!! It's such an ingenious design, it's gonna be rare. A couple open-travel indie games I've heard of but haven't played yet are Sable and Wavetale, so those might be worth checking out. They're probably not sandbox puzzle boxes per se though.
Oh, maybe Rain World? It's one I have a hard time finishing because it's sometimes pretty scary and intense, and it doesn't hold your hand, but the ecosystem is one of the best designs I've ever seen. It's an experience for sure.
You DO use the scout to check for ghost matter, IN the interloper. It tells you that pathway is dangerous both from pictures from the scout and the alert when it comes into contact. Your ash twin warp segment is wrong, the warps align by being aligned with the center of the planet, not the warp pad. The center of the twins are the middle between them, which both of those things are explained in text somewhere else in the game. Even if this was the text you referred to as was added later it still isn't more confusing it is less in my opinion.
Yeah, I doubt that I don't explain that in the video. The scout is the only device that can see the ghost matter. There's also that notification that ghost matter is nearby, which is separate from the scout. I don't know the context behind this comment. Yeah someone else pointed that out too. I'm guessing that was just poor phrasing on my end, 'cause it means the exact same thing for the purposes of alignment. I also don't have a source on hand to verify the details, so I'll take it at face value. But either way, having the warp point be a point in empty space between the two planets doesn't make sense, just logically speaking. It makes more sense for the warp pad to align with the core (or warp pad) of the other planet that it's attached to.
I think i got the rawest experience that you can get out of this game... VR Mod... on my first run... with DLC... I felt so scared at times. It is something different to watch your screen character get sucked into a black hole, and your actual vision to be spilled out in the coldness of space without your ship. I got the same fear that i would have in thalasophobia, (fear of the ocean) with this empty space just waiting to snap you at any moment. I just love Outer wilds in almost every point, but still great Video! (Even though i'm a little to late)
Oh wow, the game scared me sometimes, but I can only imagine the feelings in VR! Thanks for taking one for the team lol And I totally agree, Outer Wilds is a masterpiece :)
1:23:20 I disagree this gave an answer. Maybe if you were very observant and thought more about why it showed two tornados. I'm confident that 99% of people who saw that projection just thought "oh little holographic tornados. Ok. " And that ended there. The only knowledge is revealed from actually reading the wall.
1:54:30 I think you misunderstood the info in the Blackhole Forge about warp tower alignment. The blackhole warp tower does NOT need to align with a whitehole receiver as you stated, but with the center of the astral body associated with the receiver. For instance, the Sun warp tower doesn't point at the Sun Station when it warps you but rather at the heart of the Sun itself. As the Twins are so close, they function as a single astral body effectively making the center to which the warp tower must align a point that is halfway between them. This is why Ember Twin needs to be overhead to warp inside the core (because when it is, both the Ash and Ember Twin towers are aligned with the midpoint between the two planets). It has nothing to do with the receiver on Ember Twin.
I don't recall what I said exactly but what I meant was the planet that the receiver is on. Sorry if I misspoke and thanks for bringing it up. Thankfully it shouldn't change anything since I wrote the video with that fact in mind.
Outer Wilds Spoilers . . . . . . . . . . . I disagree with the jellyfish hint in my opinion it doesn't track very well that being able to walk through a dead one implies the ability to safely do the same with the live ones. There should have been a bit more direct way to make sure the player knew they wouldn't hurt you if you touched their tentacles. Even though you are wearing a space suit it doesn't fully track that you can do that with the live ones before you attempt it after exhausting every other option.
That's fair that it might not be a 1:1, but I also think that the fact that the game focuses on just the core and the jellyfish with no other distractions lends itself well to allowing the player to reasonably experiment with the puzzle.
took me some time to actually play this game. i super appreachiate the spiler warning at the beginning, only because it gave me time to think and made me decide to not watch until i eventually played the game.
Was the interior of the interloper not worth mentioning, or is it part of the DLC and not the main game like I thing. Also, I can't believe you forgot to talk about the most important marriage candidate, your time clone from jumping into the black hole in the ash twin project.
Ah, yeah, I see I don't have any dedicated Interloper sections. It's part of the base game. I briefly mention how its state changes close to the sun, its story relation to the Nomai, and how the Little Scout is useful for it, but only for a sentence each or so. Honestly though that's most of the Interloper, but I could've talked more about it. I did start an Interloper section but I see that I crossed it out. Once a video/script gets long enough, it makes sense to cut some things. Crap, you're right! The perfect candidate!
Fair enough, I didn't particularly pay mind to it. I just guessed based off of their names. But regardless, I refer to them as he or she for personal interest and the dating bit, and it still works 'cause players can project onto the NPCs during gameplay.
Good video. But I think the multi minute long segments where you show something you and a friend of yours experienced in a discord call are a very bad move. They take way too long and interrupt the flow of the video. Stuff like this would be better suited for the segment at the end of the video.
I thought they fit most of the time since they're essentially entertaining examples; however, I'm assuming you're mostly referring to a couple of the extended ones, like orbiting the sun to land on the Sun Station, and sitting in the observatory. I wanted to share the experience and tension of the journey of the former, and the thoughts and overall intermission-type feeling of the latter with the fantastic music and atmosphere. But I also understand that can be off-putting to people. I actually do put a bunch of clips at the end as well, so perhaps I should've moved them there also. I greatly appreciate the feedback and I'll try to not interrupt the flow in the future! I have some longer clips in the Security Breach video as well, but that video and game is such a special case where there were so many entertaining examples that also demonstrated the game's brokenness every step of the way, so I felt like I had to capture the game's legacy in a comprehensive enough way or else I wasn't doing the game justice. That's definitely an exception and not the rule though in terms of using clips. Anyway, thanks again! I'll be more careful for the DLC video.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I don't hate them. It's more that some of them take WAAAAAAAAY too long. Pretty sure the longest is like 5 minutes. That's way overboard. I'd argue anything over 30 seconds is already too long.
I don't know what you're talking about but I'm guessing in response to how watching someone else experience something is less memorable than you experiencing it yourself. That's just how experiences work. Watching someone else experience it can clearly still be memorable but comparatively less so.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudiesYou said after talking about the first supernova that watching someone experience something is less memorable. That's just wrong. Experiences are not qualitative in that manner. You can't just say "doing something is more memorable than seeing something" because people experience things differently.
@@riolufistofmight People learn better by actively doing the thing compared to simply watching. Similarly, there are additional factors in play when playing a game as opposed to the more limited scope of watching the same experience. Those two are experienced differently, yes, but it's not controversial to say that those additional physical and mental factors at play change the experience in the game itself in favor of memorability, whereas the viewer may experience something similar (or gain memorable moments of the person playing, but that's unrelated and cannot be considered here), but the fewer factors at play produces a less memorable experience by comparison as a generalization. There are exceptions and variance but that doesn't change the generalization, and the generalization was all I needed for the point (which I'm guessing was either a side comment or convincing people to play before watching, so it's not really important anyway). I'm sure people who find themselves detached from or not used to the physical and mental processes of using a controller and how that translates to the experience may find less enjoyment in actively playing. I could see the argument in that case and it's certainly valid, but that wasn't my intent or the target audience for this kind of video. I didn't consider this exception before now though, so I appreciate that! It really does lead into important considerations of inputs and accessibility as well for different types of players.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies Some people learn better by actively doing a thing, but that's not a universal experience. Some people do learn better by hearing lectures, some people learn better with kinesthetic connections to the topics and some people learn better via looking at images. I've read lots of history sources and listened to lectures from professors, but I remember the information I learned from watching and listening to the youtube channel Extra History better than either of those. People learn *better* when they're more engaged by the subject/source, and different people are more engaged by different things.
Just watched your Security Breach video and though, "Huh, it'd be cool to see coverage of Echoes of the Eye." Then I see this! I can't wait to check this out, and even despite having yet to even hit play, eagerly await the DLC video so you can fully break-down the insanely cool and creative designs which makes EotE's atmosphere shine~
This is so cool to hear! Thanks for sharing! I hope you enjoy the video, because it's still my favorite that I've done, and Outer Wilds itself is a masterpiece. I've played the DLC and want to make a video on it for sure! I think it falters some in its horror sections, but otherwise it's fantastic.
@Design Frame: Video Game Case Studies Oh yeah, theres definitely room for critique in those sections. That said, I'm not sure if you've got it in the research already, but it might be interesting to look at some of the changes made between launch and the first major patch, especially those concerning the level design changes in the aforementioned areas!
@@firekirby123 Looks like I played with Patch 12 but not 13. My main problem was that the enemies and everything else were invisible in the darkness but they immediately aggro and capture you when you pull out a light. I'm guessing Patch 13 doesn't fix this. It made the game impossible in a couple sections so I had to try to cheat and skip the sections. I apparently rated it 7/10 because of how bad those sections are.
@Design Frame: Video Game Case Studies Yeye, the DLC did very little to actually give a straightforward clue to their behavior, like the base game did for the anglerfish in Amber Twin's Anglerfish Cave, and it's definitely a valid complaint and point of frustration. But like everything in the DLC, environmental clues do exist, and experimentation to work out their behavior is rewarded due to failure not resetting the loop. The areas are also designed so only one area has mandatory stealth; everything else can be curcumvented through exploration and puzzle solving. Because of this, I actually didn't have much trouble personally, but can definitely see why others did.
@@firekirby123 The area with the lanterns is fine since you can actually see them from their light. But can the other two dark areas be circumvented? From the reddit posts I've read, the alternative routes required information that isn't told to us until you've already gotten past said areas. So the two dark areas seem like linear sections. Am I supposed to run past them all instead of stealth?
I would love to see a case study on the DLC, Echoes of the Eye. While not as good as the first game, I still think you could make a great video out of it!
For sure! I appreciate the request. Hopefully within the next few videos or so. I've already played it so I definitely want to make a video on it. It's an option in the poll on the last Community post, and may be a future option depending on future video plans. But either way it'll happen.
I think you can change the playback speed to 1.25 without losing any information. It negatively affects Watch Time for me, but I'd rather you have a better experience. I keep improving my voiceover each video, so I'm sorry if it's not quite there for this one. I appreciate the feedback!
I'm planning on making a comeback soon with a new Design Frame followed by a new commentary series premiering in the next few months or so. I'm also partway through the next Odyssey episode script. So while I've been dead for a while since I've been working on other game design projects (alongside my full-time job of course), I definitely want nothing more than to keep this channel going! So stay tuned!
They're clips from my friend's playthrough, not on any stream. I included ones that were good examples, entertaining, and/or included thoughts. They weren't arbitrarily shoved in.
Love the analysis and presentation! I’m a little disappointed you ignored all the hearthians’ actual pronouns though, they all explicitly use ‘they’, and it’s an interesting contrast to the explicitly binary genders of the nomai.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies …huh? Wait, how do you determine an aliens sex, and why would that determine what language you use for them when the game has an explicit correct answer.
@J Sherer I just guessed based off of their name. And it determines the language because I refer to them as he or she for personal interest and the dating bit. But you can refer to them as either or neither if you want. Although I didn't particularly notice if I'm being honest, so that's also a factor
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies It felt a little weird to me at first but I can see you didn’t mean anything by it. On a more constructive note, I personally loved how you intersperse gameplay with your friend! OW is defined in many ways by those aha moments and seeing them happen tells a lot of the story. Contrary to what some people are saying, I think you should continue to use them or even use them more often. You two sounded like you had a lot of fun :D
@@jsherer9616 I don't mean any harm :) And thank you! I think the complaints are mostly about the intermission section, which is understandable. I'm super glad you enjoyed the clips though! I'll definitely do the same for the dlc video :)
IMPORTANT NOTES!
First of all, thank you so much for watching! This commentary critiques up to version 1.0.6. To my understanding, 1.0.7 added more information in the Black Hole Forge, which may have slightly altered my thoughts on the Ash Twin solution into the core but it still retains the same general sentiment. I'll be creating a follow-up DLC critique in the future, so subscribe and hit the bell if you want to be notified when that releases!
Secondly, the ending of this video contains additional thoughts that aren't necessarily coherent but are worth thinking about, so I thought it's about time I revisit it here after someone left a comment on it. If you couldn't tell, this was edited some time later haha. So if you're interested, I've extracted the incoherent mess of a discussion into something tangible.
I first want to reiterate that the topics discussed at the end of the video are a tough conversation with no real solution (as my co-host says). But I still think there's one solid design change (removing the ghost matter detection system), and one possibly solid improvement if dev time wasn't a factor and if there was a more reliable guarantee that it'd fit into the game's design space without a problem (last paragraph).
I think one of the main takeaways is how the ghost matter crystals are obvious enough for us to never have to worry about carelessly running into the crystals, which unfortunately results in the player never being required or even expected to pay attention to potential ghost matter areas. One potential solution is to add more detail to the areas so that the crystals are more difficult to notice. The problem with that is the crystals aren't only in villages, so they'd have to add more detail everywhere (or at least just in areas that matter or are important in some way (see: last paragraph below)). Whether that's worth it or not is a valid consideration, and the answer could be no, but the crystals do stick out as a sore thumb and so it turns those areas into "oh, gotta pull out my tool" rather than paying attention and engaging with the individual areas to recognize when that tool is required. It always feels better to explore and experiment yourself rather than being told to do this thing. I know it sounds like a slight difference, and again might not be worth the effort, but it'd be a direction to take to make the ghost matter even more cohesive with the game's mechanics and exploration. However, I'd also consider that the game unnecessarily tells you when ghost matter is nearby, and I think the emphasis should instead be on the visual cue of the crystals, so perhaps removing the ghost matter detection system would be enough (or at least the first step).
Another possible takeaway is there could be situations where you're not sure if a certain place you're at changes based on time. However, I'd argue that isn't really a problem if you follow the clues and Ship Log. It's worth noting that this could possibly worsen if more detail is added to certain spaces.
Despite the above, I think it's fair to say more detail could be added to the areas that matter, since there are only a few clever details here and there, and pretty much nothing but the giant landmark and the text draws interest, which aligns to the studio's design intent and certainly works for this game (I still think Outer Wilds is a masterpiece), but to make some spaces feel more lived in or have more personality could possibly add to the game. I don't think this would add more playtime or pad the game. I think the goal would be to make each discovery (or rather, each meaningful exploratory space) even more meaningful or interesting to explore, but without taking away the focus on what matters. This would work in conjunction with the existing design space rather than against it.
When are you doing it? 😢
@@peterpanDK Great question; I've already played the DLC, so hopefully within the next few videos. Each video takes so long to produce that plans often change, but it'll happen for sure.
I know this is 5 months old but I wanna say that in that video I hope you mention the entrances and how genius it is@@DesignFrameCaseStudies
@@Manimanocas Are you referring to the two different entrances of the DLC planet (depending on which side you approach the planet from)?
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies yeah, the fact that the entrance facing the satellite is cinematic and gloomy while also putting you on a more long route while the side facing the sun (the side you will most likely enter from after the first loop) is more quick functional lit up and to the point while also housing the other 2 entrances for easy acess.
Outer Wilds is one of, if not the only game to legitimately make me cry at the end of the main story. The raw emotion brought about by your memories of the game and the fantastic, grand music at the end of it all is breathtaking.
It's such a fantastic end to the game :)
This 100%
At least in early versions, when it the sun station is due to be destroyed, it suddenly moves down into the sun instead of staying on its orbit and being gradually destroyed. It looked slightly hilarious when seen on the map.
Lol I didn't know about that! I'm glad they changed that!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies i don't actually know if it was changed -- that's why I used the "at least" wording
Oh, I see. I think it's still the same but to me it looks like it stays where it is and the sun grows to engulf it, so it looked fine to me.
@@klikkolee8 88 8p
This is definitely the best critique of Outer Wilds I've seen so far, as it balances praise with genuine criticisms. However, one thing I will point out about the Ash Twin Solution at 1:53:33 is that the Sand Pillar is not hollow in the center, instead you just walk onto the warp pad before the sand pillar can pull you away, due to it being quite big (you are on the pad when the sand pillar is directly overhead, rather than just ALMOST directly overhead). The problem I have with this puzzle is that the player cannot be certain that they have the correct solution. In my playthrough, I was sure that the warp pad was the way in, as it was clearly stated there were "no physical entrances" so teleportation must be it. So I stood on the pad and was pulled way. Unfortunately, instead of thinking "oh I just need to take shelter for a moment," I thought I was merely incorrect and started looking for other ways in, which, of course, there weren't any. After looking up how to do it in frustration, I was quite unsatisfied as the solution was so unimpressive. I've thought about possible solutions in the past, such as the tower's warp core being broken and you must take a warp core from the High Energy Lab to replace it. However, maybe the problem lies within the Ash Twin Core itself? They wanted to make the puzzle to enter hard as there's lots of information inside which spoils a lot of the rest of the game, right? Well why not remove some of that information so a player stumbling in early isn't such a bad thing? For one, I'd get rid of all the stone tablets, leaving just the scroll wall; people I've watched play the game usually don't re-read the tablets. Now all that gets spoilt is that the Sun Station didn't work which can easily be implied like how the rest of the game handles things: e.g "I don't know how to put this, but the Ash Twin Project is cancelled due to an unfortunate complication." or something. Anyway, good video. Kinda want to see your whole playthrough as the sections shown seem funny.
Ah, that makes sense about the sand pillar, I just assumed it was hollow because it looked hollow when I entered it to step onto the warp pad.
Removing information from the Core is an interesting idea. The problem with removing info from the Core is that it's satisfying to recap the Nomai's events in order, and arguably necessary since all the threads lead or connect to the Ash Twin Project one way or another. You're right about the tablets though, perhaps they were added to refresh ourselves on more details if we've forgotten? They could've added additional info to the wall then instead, if they wanted to. The tablets' visions don't really add anything to the Core since they're not very useful in the game in general and don't evoke nostalgia or anything.
I think the biggest problem is they needed a bigger and difficult yet fair puzzle for the Core to hide behind. Or just make it clear about the whole alignment & destination stuff, basically how the warp pad technology works. Removing some of the details in case someone finds it too early is a good idea but I'm not sure if it'd be necessary depending on how the Core puzzle is handled if it was reimagined or reworked.
Thank you for the kind words and for the interesting thoughts and ideas! :)
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies "just make it clear about the whole alignment & destination stuff"
Don't they do it in black hole forge? There is text describing where pad should face, what angle deviation is acceptable. It mentions, that pad is active during time interval, and even has moving diagram to illustrate. And hourglass twins are separately mentioned to clarify alignment details. Is it more recent addition to the game?
My story of this puzzle:
- spent couple attempts waiting for all sand to transfer, then look for physical entrance
- revisited texts, realized there is no entrance and I need to teleport
- waited for all sand to transfer and then teleported :)
- realized, that I can do this by jumping in at the right time
Anyway, their push towards teleportation was so obvious, that I considered even trying to teleport from white station by manually aligning it with twins, but never tried.
The Black Hole Forge didn't have anything really useful up to patch 1.0.6; I'm guessing you played it recently when it released on Steam (version 1.0.7)? If they did change it, then maybe the puzzle in general is now too obvious. Most likely the entire puzzle needs reimagined so it's difficult but fair instead of one or the other.
I didn't think about waiting for all of the sand to transfer first! That's certainly an alternative since we don't have a reason to believe the sand column won't lift us off of the warp pad.
I never liked that puzzle because it was the one thing I had to look up online, and being so close to the end just left me a bad taste in my mouth that still persists. Glad I’m not the only one that struggled with it atleast, lol.
I was getting frustrated and really wanted to look up online, but since i had the full ship log (at that point) i thought "theres no way im missing something ive literally been everywhere" and thought about how the alignment thing was the only one unresolved, so it HAD to be what i was trying
Eventually, as a dumb test i just threw my scout into the pad to see if when the sand column came it would teleport, and the immense shock in the moment where IT ACTUALLY WORKED was SO relieving, immediately went into the pad holding my thrusters down and made it
When I first played the game I didn't know it was the sun exploding until it had killed me ten times or so, simply because I didn't see it explode, from being inside or from looking the other direction 💀
Lol, I'm glad you didn't get that spoiled for you at least! What a great moment!
@DesignFrameCaseStudies seriously though, this video is amazing. I haven't even watched a full hour and I've laughed so hard several times. Looking forward to seeing more videos from you! They are very intelligently made and the dedication is evident.
@@balengd5402 Oh wow, thank you so much! That's very kind of you. It's amazing to hear it made you laugh as well :)
This game taught me the power of "intentionally" as a comedic device. It adds strange implications, often to a hilarious degree, to any statemeant.
The amount of confusion and concern it causes some people to have is absolutely worth looking like a closet consperacy theorist in normal conversations.
You can tell how much a lets-player pays attention to the text based on how much they laugh at the jokes.
i personally believe the observatory projection stone was intentional.
the game rewards deduction, figuring things out on your own, and occasionally dumb luck. the game shows you the model, and if you can figure it out, in you go! and if you still need a bit of help, off the the observatory you go!
4:22
Played Outer Wilds with keyboard and mouse and i didn't have the rotational controls locked out. Seeing as your control hints are for a joystick, i assume it depends on the input method.
(Edit: Thinking about it, it's more probably the game version.)
Having said that:
4:29 - Trying to stabilize the model ship after accidentally moving my mouse 1 micrometer to the side has the same energy as burning your marshmellow for the first time and frantically trying to extinguish it by flailing the stick around lol
Oh? I thought it was intentional. Perhaps it depends on the input method or, as you think, the game version. I think what I said still applies thankfully. And thanks for making me revisit that part of the video because I forgot about my comments about dating rocks/minerals and using puns and real-life info to do so. I'm so glad that holds up LOL.
Lol I know right?! That's hilarious. The campfires are legitimate mini-games haha.
I've only just come across your channel, but this is easily one of the best videos on Outer Wilds that I've seen. It's been a long time, but I'd love to see you analyze the DLC if you still intend on doing so. You've absolutely earned my subscription.
Thank you so much! :) I finally ended up playing the DLC and I totally intend on working on a video for that as well! Although I'm unsure when -- hopefully soon.
I loved the way you explained the mechanics and how they are experienced by the player. It's quite thorough and nice to listen to.
I was not expecting this video to only have a few thousand views when scrolling down, the quality of it deserves far more.
Thank you so much! I still consider this to be my pride and joy so I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
The sunless City shortcut was one I could *never* find from the surface despite surfacing through it 6+ times. I had to go through the escape pod every single time.
Kinda same, I sorta knew it existed, but only really figured it out after fully exploring the Sunless City, after which, well, it's useless.
35:43 It's actually hinted at that they mined the rock with the anti-gravitiy pull beams, since one of these pull beams is inside the mined out holes, and it's size matches really well.
55:29 "The scout's integrity meter reads 100% on every other planet" I believe that on every other planet, the scout's integrity meter doesn't even show up, which was an attempt to make the reader more memorable on BH.
~ 1:03:00 Something that I guess only I found problematic about the Black Hole Forge is that I wrongly assumed that the Black Hole Tower would teleport me to the surface of Brittle Hollow, instead of the teleport pad in the Black Hole Forge district. I'm not 100% certain how they could have made it more obvious, maybe a note that talks about how the white hole receiver is also linked backwards, therefore making me aware that two teleporters can't lead to the same place.
Oooh, gotcha. That makes sense, but it still feels weirdly empty. But perhaps that's more of a problem with the planet as a whole, as I mention at some point.
I just opened the game to check, and wow you're right, I wonder if that was changed in a future patch? That sounds like something I'd check before saying, but I might've accidentally missed it. Either that or they watched this video ;) lol. I like that detail because the addition of the integrity reading is a noticeable change for Brittle Hollow. I still think the reading doesn't really matter though, and I wish there was more obvious interaction between the meteors and integrity.
That's an interesting experience that I didn't think of. Although, to be honest at this point, I don't remember the clues and circumstances to talk through this experience. I think I can at least say that all of the teleporters consistently teleport onto specifically designed pads, although I seem to vaguely remember Brittle Hollow having two of them? But then that means there would be two separate teleporters. So from what I remember, I think it lines up. And I'd be very hesitant to make certain things more obvious than they need to be for the deeper secrets like Black Hole Forge that hold clues for even deeper secrets. I hope that makes sense, and I'm certainly not discounting your experience whatsoever.
Thank you for your comment! I greatly appreciate these conversations :)
i think at some point i read in the Nomai script that one of the towers can never work, it could've been somewhere at the end of a loop and I misinterpreted their message in a rush, but I did still carry that misconception with me and once I got to travelling with the warp pads I assumed the Ash Twin project tower was the one that would never work, if you look up from the warp pad it's also the only one that has a broken glass - i assumed it was broken
i was *stuck*
stuck to the point i needed to google the solution of how to get to the Ash Twin project because that was the only place left for me to go
@@shneancy220In the black hole forge it’s mentioned that Yarrow thinks that one warp tower will never work. Another Nomai (Poke) points out that Yarrow must not realise that the warp tower must be aligned with the centre of the astral body it’s on, not the receiver itself.
Then another Nomai points out that Yarrow knows this, but thought that the Ash Twin warp tower wouldn’t work as he didn’t realise that the hourglass twins act as 1 astral body (with a shared centre point the tower must align to).
@@BananaWasTaken ahhh! Thank you for mentioning that, I'm glad I didn't just completely make it up. I think I was in a rush when I was there and was speedreading everything before the next cycle, and I didn't realise my mistake at all. Thanks!
I’m two years late on the video but I just wanted to say that the ending of this game hit me hard (Spoilers, obviously)
The part where you are collecting your friends in the Eye, specifically Solanum’s section, made me think about every character’s role in this story. When you get to Solanum’s section and you see the Nomai reaching upward toward the light, reaching higher and higher until eventually creating a rocket for you to reach it made me think of how their presence and advancements affected the hatchling. When they were mining on Timber Hearth, they discovered the Hearthian’s distant ancestors and made sure to leave behind enough resources to develop. Also, even though they couldn’t see it for themselves, all of their advancements led to the hatchling achieving the goal of reaching the eye. Even in the very end, your presence in the eye leads to the creation of a new universe that you won’t be able to experience. Your legacy and how it can affect future generations felt like a major theme of the game.
There are so many amazing emotional moments 😢
This is an exceptionally good analysis of the game, and I with you 100% when it comes to the overall thoughts on the game. However, there are a few points I don't entirely agree with. I'll just say the two things that haven't been brought up before me:
Firstly, I don't believe the the statue workshop at Giant's Deep holds such a major revelation for early game. All it does is it confirms that it is, indeed, ancient time travel technology developed by the Nomai - something that's already heavily implied by the statue in the observatory and the death screen.
At the same time, it makes you wonder what exactly is going on: did the time loop start because of an "equipment failure", or did the project "succeed"? Are you going to finish what the ancient race started, whatever it is? It it "you" who actually travels back in time or only your memories from a different timeline? The game wants you to think about these ideas *while* you are playing, not at the end when you have bigger things to deal with.
Furthermore, it sets up two of the biggest mysteries of the game: *how* did they do it and, more importantly, *why?* These, in my opinion, are much more engaging than the basic time travel stuff, and you come to draw connections between the teleportation time discrepancy, the Eye of the Universe, and the Ash twin project rather naturally. If they saved it for the end, I don't think it would have that satisfying "it was hidden in plain sight all along" feeling to it. That's all coming from my experience, though, so I completely understand if you have a different perspective.
Secondly, I think you severely understate the usefulness of the scout. I realize its overall unimportance in the overarching exploration gameplay, but it's still a cool puzzle element. I could go on and on about the unmentioned applications for navigation (it basically eliminates the problem of getting lost in the empty space between landmarks on planets) and experimentation (especially with Nomai simulations, such as the ones and the Southern Observatory and the High Energy Lab, and hazards like the cactuses and the giant sand pillar - yes, it detects them too), but I feel that's missing the point.
What I'm trying to say is: the mechanics behind it are not only sound, simple, and interconnected enough not to hurt the game, but also open-ended enough to allow for creative uses. I, for instance, used the scout to track quantum objects, particularly the shrine on the Quantum Moon (through the Rule of Quantum Entanglement), and then also to track the Sun Station to hopefully make aligning the orbit a bit easier (I launched the scout through the window, up the elevator thing and onto the launch pad and waited for it to teleport... still ended up looking up the solution to get into that warp tower). I think it's important for a game that promises so much freedom to have mechanics for the players to just... play around with. There's definitely untapped potential with the scout, but at least it can fulfill that craving for more advanced strategy in the game without being intrusive, and that's a big plus in my books.
Anyway, I hope I didn't burden you with all the reading, especially considering I'm kinda late to the party. Just thought I'd put my two cents in. Outer Wilds is definitely my GOTY 2019, though I didn't get to play it until it came out on Steam this summer.
P.S. - From what I understood, 2:09:45 was, indeed, not a bug. The gravity was just too strong due to the proximity to the Sun. Not saying that's fair - like, your ship's artificial gravity should always outpower any outside influences, - but it is what it is.
No such thing as late to the party! I appreciate your comment and support. Thank you very much. I won't be able to address everything here but here's what I got:
1. I don't think you're necessarily wrong here -- all of the questions you mentioned are definitely legitimate -- I just feel that it can be quite a fast revelation after such a strong mystery opener in the village. I don't think it should be saved for the end, but maybe that place can have less information that is then placed elsewhere on or in Giant's Deep.
2. I think we overall agree on this one. The Scout can definitely be useful but I feel there are some missed opportunities, maybe mostly due to the game length. I didn't mention every use you mentioned, but I do love how it's one of many tools you can freely use in the environment, even if I feel it's lacking in many areas including ones advertised in the ship's Scout image.
As someone who finished the game with almost no help at all, I agree with you friend at the end who said that it would be a lot more frustrating without a friend to give you subtle tips as there were many times I was stuck and had very little to hook me back in which made it a chore to play at times, but that ending.. oh my god, was it worth it.
I think the problem was more that he was always tired and didn't bother looking at the ship's log at all (probably because I was there to help?), but I also understand what you mean. As much as I love the ship's log, it's still great to have someone who can give a hint every now and then. I'm glad you made it to the end, it was very much worth it :)
I think the pointers towards Giant's Deep might be an extended tutorial that makes new players experience the game loop: hear about a location that answers a mystery, visit it, locate where the information is and find a way to enter it. Something like this was probably needed to get players "hooked" on the the loop before getting too confused and lost and quitting.
I say that largely from personal experience: I tried Brittle Hollow first and was overwhelmed with the amount of locations, there wasn't a clear mystery I wanted to resolve there and I was still struggling with the controls, so all I managed to learn was about the white hole station. By contrast, looking at the ship's log made me identify Giant's Deep as a place to learn about the statues, so I went there and that's when the game "clicked".
For further evidence that Giant's Deep mirrors the entire game, Gabbro gives you pointers about the islands, which act like planets and there's even a hidden one.
You don't actually clip through that Anglerfish's light-tendril thing, the Anglerfish are deceptively large, so it looks like you have a lot less room than you do.
Huh, it certainly looked like it. I don't remember that part of the video, but it sounds like a passing comment and doesn't mean anything for the design. I appreciate the insight though! Thanks for the comment!
You mention clipping at 2:15:48, when passing through the tendril (which I believe is a case where you just fit through it instead of clipping). At 2:49:40 you do unambiguously clip through a different anglerfish, though, so it might be the case that they don't have collision on it just to avoid random failures.
@@Pokechu22 Ah, gotcha. Thanks! I should've clarified in my comment here that I don't think clipping through the Anglerfish's tendrils is bad per se, but I don't recall saying that it's bad in the video which is why I say it was most likely a passing comment rather than a critique. But it's also fair to say that it's weird to be able to clip through it without notifying the Anglerfish.
@@Pokechu22 You can clip through them, but the point is that the intended way through the red area doesn't involve clipping through because that would be awful design.
I’d like to point out that at 2:10:00 more or less, when you’re trying to manually land on the Sun Station, that what you experienced wasn’t really a bug, just an unintended feature lol.
What’s happening is that, due to the close proximity to the Sun (that has such a high gravity), you experience a large gravity gradient, meaning you and the ship experience slightly different gravitational forces since your center of masses are NOT on the same potential gravity “height”, so to speak.
When you’re strapped in it’s fine, but as soon as you let go you get stuck, since the gravity crystal that comes with your ship isn’t strong enough to overcome this feature of a very accurate physics system. In fact, this is more or less what causes spagettification! Ironic that this happens close to a star and not a black hole.
But regardless, this is an amazing video, it very much satisfied my Outer Wilds honest review craving. Despite its flaws, this is such a special game to me, and I’m always excited to hear everyone’s perspectives. Very high quality editing, commentary, and critiques! Subbed
Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm always extremely happy to hear when someone enjoys this video 'cause it's still my favorite :)
Thank you for explaining that! I had no idea. I should make some corrections in a future DLC video and I'll credit you. That's fascinating.
I agree about the Brittle Hollow Projection Stone; but I would suggest a less drastic alteration: Instead of having two cyclone models, have one model with a control which the player can switch. This would convey all the intended information from the same view of the project stone (They were studying the cyclones in the observatory on Brittle Hollow) without revealing 'the secret' (that there are two types of cyclones) until the player went there and switched the switch on the model.
It's also funny that you talk about railroading at 2:26:37 because you very much don't have to follow the path they give you. You can turn around, walk out of the ship, and throw yourself down into the eye without taking the convenient portal.
Ah, I love that idea! Brilliant! Thanks for sharing :)
Oh, that's cool! Even though that's possible though, I don't think any player would do that, or even think of that as an option. But even if they did, the Eye would still have to be designed differently to allow exploration. The Eye is linear, so it makes sense that we warp straight onto it rather than give a false pretense of it being explorable, even though in the video I say that flying to it manually would allow us to "savor the moment." Although, now that I think about it further, I suppose flying to any point on the Eye would theoretically drop us at the same entrance every time, like how the Quantum Moon works. I'm not quite sure that logic checks out though. And it might feel weird to attempt to fly into the eye part of the Eye and have it send us to the rings. So yeah I honestly think the teleporting is proper because of the Eye's linearity and structure. Thanks for bringing that up!
1:09:55 Actually that make sense, the music takes time to travel so you'll still receive music for a while.after the person playing has stopped.
Ah, that's true! Nice catch!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudiesActually, the music coming from the travelers does stop during the supernova and the way you can observe it makes for an incredibly sad moment.
If you take off in any direction at the beginning of the loop and rocket as far away as you can as fast as you can until you've exited the solar system (perhaps in an unrewarding attempt to catch up with the Nomai eye probe), you can point your signalscope back "home" and capture all the travelers' instruments at once (for an achievement)
If you stick around and have your signalscope up when the sun goes supernova, you'll hear/see the instruments go out one by one in order: Chert's drums, Esker, Reibeck's banjo, Gabbro's flute, Feldspar's harmonica.
RIP 😢
@@DesignFrameCaseStudiesalso because you're so far away, you don't get engulfed in the supernova and instead will just see a screen transition signifying your memories just being sent back to the start of the loop. This is something you're certain to eventually see if you p***** t***** ***** ****** ****** ****
@@DrEcho Even better catch! I never knew that!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I did figure it out on my own after I saw that it was possible to chase and catch up to the eye probe and tried it myself.
But if you're not wanting to do all that but want to see it, I'm sure there are a few UA-cam videos that capture what I'm saying but a gaming UA-camr Razburten wrote a beautiful recollection of one of his playing experiences that he narrates over an expertly choreographed reenactment that you watch while listening. It is exactly one loop, and it ends with the moment I described above (so you can fast-forward to the end if you want to just see the end and only want to cry a little bit).
Also, we can't say for sure how the signalscope works, but we can for sure eliminate acoustics since it works through planet-sized objects over vast distances of empty space, and sound waves need a medium like air to propagate, let alone when something massive interrupts their path of travel 😅
Good video. Few worlds are as engrossing as the Hearthian System was for me.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD
1:24:03 I don't think this is that bad, it's not as little effort as you're saying. You'd have to notice the fact that the cyclones are spinning in different directions (hard to see from that distance), infer that this is important instead of just being an aesthetic thing, go to the cyclones and find the one anticlockwise one without having any strong motivation besides a hunch. Good for you if you had the excellent logical deduction required for such leaps, but I and I think most players didn't make this connection and as such the effort required is pretty proportional to the reward.
Not to mention that even if you do all that, you only get below the current, not all the way to the core, so it's not even that big of a deal until you know the Core's secret, most likely from Dark Bramble.
For sure, not everyone will see the tornado experiment and deduce what they need to, but the Nomai tablet says that the secret to get below the current lies in the tornados and then shows the key difference to look out for. I don't think it's such a leap, but I also don't think everyone will make the connection. I think overall the Construction Yard hint would be better if it was a scroll instead of a tablet, but you do make a good point how it could be taken as an aesthetic thing.
Wonderful review! I hope you get the recognition you deserve for this masterpiece of a gameplay breakdown.
Thank you so much! UA-cam is a game of chance so maybe one day it'll like me!
:(
Incredible video. Keep up the good work, I'm pretty sure this channel will grow exponentially if all of its content is of such quality. Looking forward for your next videos!
Thank you so much! It's difficult to grow on UA-cam but I hope I will!
In regards to the first part of the giant's deep core puzzle, I'll note that I don't think it was intended to be a massive obstacle that needs the projection stone reworked to better conceal the solution.
There is actually a second solution to this puzzle, which follows the similar pattern to the one you covered. You find your first hint towards it on Giant's Deep, specifically on the bramble island, where a boasting message is left by Feldspar saying that he made it through.
While alone this hint doesn't spell it out, an observant player can deduce the solution from this hint by what you heard about Feldspar on Timber Hearth. How might he have approached this problem, that the other Hearthians might not have tried? If that isn't enough, you can talk to others about Feldspar, up to and including visiting Feldspar in Dark Bramble, and see how he approached that puzzle.
This fits with being able to see the simulation through the projection stone, in that it gives enough for a clever player to feel clever by solving it without further explanation rather than needing the handholding of explanatory text, while still having further hints available to find for those who didn't pick it up.
For those still wondering, Feldspar's solution to the current barrier is to punch through it at high velocity.
Yeah I think the hints are great, and gives you plenty of opportunity to figure it out in some way or another. However, I think the best solution is from a recent comment where the projection can show one instead of two tornados, and then if you actually visit the simulation then you can press a button that switches the tornado rotation so you can physically experiment with it, since it takes some exploration to find the observatory and I don't like how the projection so readily removes the point of the observatory. But the projection can still provide a great hint that we can use and can make clever players feel even more clever by figuring it out before visiting the observatory.
One cool detail i never hear people mention is that the lock on reticule color isn't arbitrarily red white and blue, it's a reference to red shift and blue shift phenomenon: when light from celestial objects are observed through a spectroscope, you can determine what direction they are moving similar to the doppler effect. Longer light waves (shifted towards the red spectrum) means it's moving away, shorter (blue shift) means it's moving towards you.
I had no idea! That's very cool. Thanks for sharing!
It sounds like from your description that the text pertaining to the ash twin warp tower found in the black hole forge has been changed again since this video was posted. I will say that I found the current justification why the ash twin tower sends you to the core very intuitive.
I mention that in the pinned comment, but the patch notes don't mention what actually changed so I can't easily compare. It's not something I can justify revisiting at this point. I'm glad that it seems to have improved though!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies Yeah you don't have to revisit it at all. It wasn't a criticism. I was just saying I'm a fan of the current explanation. Its actually neat to hear to you talk about it because I wouldn't have known that it was different in the past. I would've been confused as well in your version.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies if you want to compare then here are 2 videos that explore the old and new black hole forge. Just search them on UA-cam and skip forwards to the correct part:
Old patch: “Black hole forge… Finally! Part 45” by ‘STUFFandTHINGS Plays’
New patch: “outer wilds episode 8- Black Hole Forge” by ‘ocelottagames’
Basically the old patch mentioned that the hourglass twins share an alignment point, and the new patch has this explained by one Nomai thinking that one warp tower wouldn’t work and another explaining why it does work (ash twin and ember twin share a centre of alignment, and the tower must be aligned with the centre of the astral body to work).
More importantly, the new patch explains that the warps have leniency and that you’ll still be warped even if you step onto the teleported a few seconds after it’s activated.
I can't wait to see your breakdown of the DLC for Outer Wilds. Im curious as to if you liked it better than the main game
Hopefully within the next few videos or so! I have a lot of ideas that I want to work on. Thanks for watching :) As a very brief summary, I loved the DLC as well, but I think it struggled a bit in a couple of its horror sections.
when I saw the sun tower's cactus-filled hall, I thought that meant the hall was a blocked path much like the broken doors in various places, including on the sun tower -- so I spent a very long time trying to find a third, usable entrance. I had to look up how to get into the sun tower, and I was extremely irritated by the answer. Pretty much any time I need to look up the solution to a puzzle, it's going to be because the puzzle has a problem that causes its solution to not feel like a reasonable conclusion of what the game presents.
To make it clear that it was a jetpack skill challenge, it the hallway probably should've started easy to navigate, then gotten gradually harder requiring more and more jetpack. The progression would be a cue that it was a matter of skill.
I wrote this before you finished the segment -- I did try several times to get in using the sand, and I never succeeded that way
Ah, that's interesting that you didn't get in with the sand. I don't remember if it's possible to do without the sand or not, but it's darn near impossible. The sand ends up being a "ah-ha" moment since it uses the planet's features to circumvent an impossible challenge. And if I remember correctly, cactus aren't usually used to block off areas but rather as some sort of obstacle or thing to move past. So I'm not sure if the design could be improved in this case, but I may be wrong. It's interesting to hear your experience with it though, 'cause I think it's a perfectly natural thing for stuff like this happen when playing such an open puzzle game, but it's also interesting to think about the design in those cases.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I managed to practice jetpacking through the hallway enough that I could reliable get through in under 10 seconds, albeit taking damage at least once most of the time.
I believe "jetpack skill challenge" was the answer I got when I looked up how to do it -- which was some time during the Epic Store exclusive period
Oh dang, I'm sorry that was the answer you found 'cause jetpacking through that is super difficult. That's really unfortunate.
Nice. Found this after your FNAF video. But now you have my respect.
Thank you for giving me a chance! :)
I watched this video in a couple installments and loved it. Having played the game blind before my only way to reexperience the game is by watching let’s plays and videos like this, so thank you. I’m curious if you’ve gotten around to playing the DLC! If you do, I would love a video on it!
Thank you so much for watching and for the kind words! That means a lot :)
Yes, I've played the DLC! I loved it but there were some rough parts this time around, so I definitely want to make a video on it as well.
Great video and criminally underrated in terms of viewership. The people who stumble upon it are definitely aware of the quality though since, funnily enough, I found this video by recommendation on some random Outer Wilds conversation post a few weeks back.
I appreciated a lot of the inclusions of your friend's playthrough/reactions along the way! Seeing someone's reactions to Outer Wilds is the closest thing we'll get to that feeling we all first had playing it :,) Personally though, I felt like the observatory part dragged a bit too long? Though maybe I'm just not very into intermission-like vibes since I really enjoyed the similarly long, yet incredibly tense/anxiety inducing Sun Station landing bit (still gutted your friend didn't end up sticking the landing 😔).
Lookin forward to the DLC video if/when that ends up coming out! ^^ (hopefully with more reactiony clips if ya got any 👀)
Wow thank you so much for your great comment, it means a lot to me!!! My Outer Wilds video is still my favorite, so I'm super glad you enjoyed it. The fact that someone randomly recommended this video is amazing and I'm thrilled to hear that!
Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the observatory part was stretching it for sure, but I really liked the atmosphere of the moment (and I'm guessing we talked about stuff) so I left it in under the guise of an "intermission." I probably should've moved that section to the end of the video. I'm also thrilled to hear that you enjoyed the playthrough clips, including the Sun Station part. That was such an intense moment! The fact that Outer Wilds allows this kind of stuff and it doesn't break the game to do so (considering this is essentially an alternative way to get into the Sun Station earlier than usual) is incredible. I shared your comment with my friend so he could see the appreciation for it lol.
That's gonna be a "when" ;) I've already recorded my playthrough and will do the same with my friend again, 'cause that was fun. It won't be the next video but most likely in the next 3-4. I'll try to release them more frequently, since I took a break from videos to work on a still in-progress board game. Thank you again for the comment and support! I don't get on Twitch very often but I followed you there anyway. If I see you on, I'll hop in.
This is a very nice video! It's actually one of the main motivating factors for me to play Outer Wilds myself: I started watching this video a while back, and decided to heed your advice not to watch the rest of it before playing the game. Now that I've finally bought and played through the game, I've returned to watch the video. I think it's a good analysis, I really like watching critiques that don't shy away from criticizing the parts of the game that could've been better even if the overall sentiment is very positive. I find myself agreeing with a lot of it, especially the solution to entering the Ash Twin core. That's the only part of the game I gave up on solving for myself and just looked up the solution, because although I suspected that the entrance would be via the Ash Twin warp tower and that the warp ought to activate while the sand pillar was overhead, it never occurred to me that waiting under the bridge until the pillar was just passing through would make any difference. That part was probably too unintuitive even with the additional clues from the Black Hole Forge, imo.
That being said, although the review overall was great, I have two critiques of my own: First, I noticed you decided to give all the Hearthians gendered pronouns despite the fact that the game itself consistently uses only gender-neutral ones for that entire species. That gender-neutral language becomes even more apparent when contrasted with the Nomai, who do use gendered pronouns. I couldn't help but become quite distracted by the gendered pronouns you were using, as it kinda goes against one of the unique and interesting traits of the Hearthians and their culture.
Second, is the intermissions of gameplay and live-commentary from your friend's playthrough of the game. I actually like these as a concept, as it's a nice way to introduce some variety to the more formal review and serves to highlight the actual player experience in a more direct way, rather than just doing a "third-person" analysis. However, some of these sections dragged on too long for my taste and kinda threw off the pacing of the video. I think you could've still included most of the substance of these clips if you had just cut them down a bit, especially the more monotonous and repetitive parts. The best example of this is the intermission around 1:04:44, as it contains long stretches where literally nothing is happening and you aren't even talking. I get that this was meant to be a slightly longer intermission to break up the middle of the video a bit, but even then I think it would've been better to cut away at least the silent parts.
But those are my only gripes. I still thoroughly enjoyed the video and it gave some interesting perspectives!
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the game and the video :)
I also appreciate the critiques! Addressing both:
I didn't particularly notice honestly. It didn't appear to me to be a part of their culture. But also I'm okay with sacrificing that accuracy for the dumb dating bit throughout.
I understand the clip complaint. A big reason I included the spaces of nothing in the intermission is because of the amazing music and atmosphere. For orbiting the Sun Station, I wanted to share the experience and tension of the journey. If I could re-edit the video, I'd probably leave the Sun Station in honestly, but I'd think about cutting the intermission. I also don't know why I didn't cut down the ending bonus conversation. Apparently I don't know what I'm doing lol. I got better at this in the FNaF video, and even better in the upcoming Cuphead DLC boss analysis video.
Thanks again for sharing! :)
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I see. I suppose what also threw me off regarding the pronouns is that non-binary representation in video games is very rare to begin with, so I personally really appreciated the inclusion of an entire race that didn't appear to go by binary genders. But I suppose it didn't stand out as much to everyone, which is understandable. Although for what it's worth, I do think the dating bit could still have worked even with gender neutral pronouns.
I've watched your FNaF video too actually, it was the first one I watched on your channel and it really captivated me despite the fact that I've never cared that much about FNaF before! So keep it up, looking forward to what you produce in the future :)
Just like that, you make me want to buy this game I never heard of
Awesome! Don't spoil yourself before you play it, trust me 😄
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I believe you :)
Did you do it? Did you like it?
Tell us!
Just grabbed this game as it's now available on steam. I really look forward to this video once I finish it up!
Awesome! Have fun!
I never thought about the usefulness of those light switches in the Sunless City before. If it weren't for the language barrier, they would have been able to simply attach large signs to each area's entrance. But the translator device can only focus on Nomai text that's close up. It's a weird solution to an even weirder problem the devs created for themselves.
While it's technically a solution that fits the translator mechanic, I wouldn't consider it a workaround because it's a really cool way to uncover an area and its exploration potential. At least from what I remember!
"Hears elevator music" my head says "Stanley"
First supernova discussion isn’t at 22:00. Literally unwatchable
Oh did I mess up a timestamp?
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies no nothing like that, just meming cuz 22 minutes lol
Oh gotcha! I think I did do the time revert gimmick when editing the video though, if I remember correctly :)
1:08:20
There's a short story about a whole town of people being stuck in a time loop. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but it was a neat idea that was played out in a really weird way.
i think jacob geller talked about something like that in "Time Loop Nihlism"
outer willds
yes
Just watched your cuphead and a few other videos. Was supprised to see you didn’t have more subs. Here’s mine and good luck in the future!
Thank you very much!
33:10 I feel the need to notice there's a quantum shard in the museum, introducing the concept before even the first launch.
Ah, yeah, that's a good detail too :) The museum provides a taste of the game's mechanics for the player to experiment with, which is ideal!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies Didn't expect you to reply to a comment on a 4 year old video! Thanks for making this and the others, I've been really enjoying your cuphead content lately.
@@YoshiTheyosh123 Thank you very much! I appreciate you! I try to Heart or respond to everything I see in my notifications. This channel isn't quite popular enough for that to be impossible yet :)
Good video. Loved the running joke, thought your ideas for improvement were reasonable and thought provoking. Having the anglerfish eggs be "shown" rather than "told via gameplay with baby fish latching on would be very cool. I usually think of those types of things but Outer Wilds is one of those games that are already so good that my main critique is just to have more. Your live playthrough bits need to be sped up between your live commentary and generally edited down though, I found myself skipping through a major chunk of each minutes long clip to get to the point.
I totally understand the live playthrough stuff; there's some good interesting stuff in there but I also left a couple extended clips in there for the awesome atmosphere and music the game has. That's why around the halfway point I had the "intermission" text pop up. I also made sure to add the extra clips past the video conclusion that didn't fit into the video. Oh and that sun orbiting extended clip was freakin' intense lol.
Anyway, I greatly appreciate your feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
I still cant get over how good the sound track is. It complete subvert the game, not being generic space music
Regarding the last comments - if the team put more details on every map, then the game could turn from a 20 hour game into like 40-60 hour one just through the sheer amount of extra stuff you'd add, but unless you can make that amount of time engaging (aka have a much bigger budget) you are just dilluting the experience. I'd be really interested to see what would be your two's opinion on the Outer Wild's DLC, Echoes of the Eye, since it does offer a new place that is more focused, has more detail to it and is a lot more story and detail dense than all the other planets. So would something like that be what you are looking for, or would you share some people's feelings that it's too self-contained and you lose that sense of tracking mysteries across the multiple planets like you have in the base game...
I just relistened to the ending and I don't disagree with you, since it's a tough conversation with no real solution (as my co-host says).
I think one of the main takeaways is how the ghost matter crystals are obvious enough to never have to worry about carelessly running into crystals (never really have to pay special attention or tread carefully due to the crystal factor), but the solution to that is to add more detail to the areas, except because the crystals aren't only in villages, they'd have to add more detail everywhere (or at least just in areas that matter or are important in some way). Whether that's worth it or not is a valid consideration, and the answer could be no, but the crystals do stick out as a sore thumb and so it turns those areas into "oh, gotta pull out my tool" rather than paying attention and _engaging_ with the individual areas to recognize when that tool is required. It always feels better to explore and experiment yourself rather than being told to do this thing. I know it sounds like a slight difference, and again might not be worth the effort, but it'd be a direction to take to make the ghost matter even more cohesive with the game's mechanics and exploration. However, I'd also consider that the game just kinda tells you when ghost matter is nearby, and I think the emphasis should instead be on the visual cue of the crystals, so perhaps removing the ghost matter detection system would be enough (or at least the first step). Additionally, I think it's a valid change because it's not a Quality of Life system.
I'd also say another possible takeaway is there could be situations where you're not sure if a certain place you're in changes based on time. However, I think I'd argue that isn't really a problem if you follow the clues and Ship Log... and this could possibly worsen if more detail is added. However, I think it's fair to say more detail could be added to the areas that matter, since there are only a few clever details here and there, and pretty much nothing but the giant landmark and the text draws interest, which generally works for this game (I still think Outer Wilds is a masterpiece), but to make some spaces feel more lived in or have more personality could possibly add to the game. I don't think this kind of thing would add more playtime honestly. I think the goal would be to make each discovery (or rather, each meaningful exploratory space) even more meaningful or interesting to explore, but without taking away the focus on what matters.
Something that I totally agree on though (and I think I said this in the Timber Hearth section) is how the home planet basically has nothing on or in it. There are a couple interesting places and an underground geyser system but the rest is bland and disappointing. I don't think I had this problem with any other planet though, since they all had deep secrets and more exploration.
This comment kinda blew out of proportion but those are my thoughts. Regarding Echoes of the Eye, it wasn't perfect, but I still loved it and what they've managed to do with such a small space (although I guess it's not fair to call it small when it has other areas within). I don't quite think it's a masterpiece though and I probably still like the base game more, but that's only because I take significant issue with how they handled some of the horror segments.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies I've heard a justification for Timber Hearth not having too much on it being that you don't discover the secrets of the universe by staying home, you need to leave your comfort zone and get out there. As for a lore reason, the Nomai wanted to abstain from interfering with the planet to allow its life to flourish. Finally, they wanted to avoid having things that are just there for lore reasons that don't provide any gameplay info, so that people wouldn't ignore text. So sadly this combines into them not being able to have random Hearthians milling about on the planet and too many environmental structures, outside of the tutorial, the guy at the bramble seed, and the DLC hook.
I would love more pure exploration games like this. Small but completely open sandboxes that effectively function as interconnected puzzle boxes is a really interesting idea, and I hope the overall style is adapted to new stories and settings. I unfortunately spoiled myself on Outer wilds before I got to play it, but the first Outer Wilds-like I see that people agree is good I'll grab and play sight unseen.
100%!!! It's such an ingenious design, it's gonna be rare. A couple open-travel indie games I've heard of but haven't played yet are Sable and Wavetale, so those might be worth checking out. They're probably not sandbox puzzle boxes per se though.
Oh, maybe Rain World? It's one I have a hard time finishing because it's sometimes pretty scary and intense, and it doesn't hold your hand, but the ecosystem is one of the best designs I've ever seen. It's an experience for sure.
You might wanna check out a game called "Tunic".
You DO use the scout to check for ghost matter, IN the interloper. It tells you that pathway is dangerous both from pictures from the scout and the alert when it comes into contact.
Your ash twin warp segment is wrong, the warps align by being aligned with the center of the planet, not the warp pad. The center of the twins are the middle between them, which both of those things are explained in text somewhere else in the game. Even if this was the text you referred to as was added later it still isn't more confusing it is less in my opinion.
Yeah, I doubt that I don't explain that in the video. The scout is the only device that can see the ghost matter. There's also that notification that ghost matter is nearby, which is separate from the scout. I don't know the context behind this comment.
Yeah someone else pointed that out too. I'm guessing that was just poor phrasing on my end, 'cause it means the exact same thing for the purposes of alignment. I also don't have a source on hand to verify the details, so I'll take it at face value. But either way, having the warp point be a point in empty space between the two planets doesn't make sense, just logically speaking. It makes more sense for the warp pad to align with the core (or warp pad) of the other planet that it's attached to.
I think i got the rawest experience that you can get out of this game... VR Mod... on my first run... with DLC...
I felt so scared at times. It is something different to watch your screen character get sucked into a black hole, and your actual vision to be spilled out in the coldness of space without your ship.
I got the same fear that i would have in thalasophobia, (fear of the ocean) with this empty space just waiting to snap you at any moment.
I just love Outer wilds in almost every point, but still great Video! (Even though i'm a little to late)
Oh wow, the game scared me sometimes, but I can only imagine the feelings in VR! Thanks for taking one for the team lol
And I totally agree, Outer Wilds is a masterpiece :)
1:23:20 I disagree this gave an answer. Maybe if you were very observant and thought more about why it showed two tornados. I'm confident that 99% of people who saw that projection just thought "oh little holographic tornados. Ok. " And that ended there. The only knowledge is revealed from actually reading the wall.
Ay this is pretty good. Im subbed now. Love long form stuff like this.
Thank you so much! I'm very happy with this video so I'm glad you enjoyed it.
1:54:30 I think you misunderstood the info in the Blackhole Forge about warp tower alignment. The blackhole warp tower does NOT need to align with a whitehole receiver as you stated, but with the center of the astral body associated with the receiver. For instance, the Sun warp tower doesn't point at the Sun Station when it warps you but rather at the heart of the Sun itself. As the Twins are so close, they function as a single astral body effectively making the center to which the warp tower must align a point that is halfway between them. This is why Ember Twin needs to be overhead to warp inside the core (because when it is, both the Ash and Ember Twin towers are aligned with the midpoint between the two planets). It has nothing to do with the receiver on Ember Twin.
I don't recall what I said exactly but what I meant was the planet that the receiver is on. Sorry if I misspoke and thanks for bringing it up. Thankfully it shouldn't change anything since I wrote the video with that fact in mind.
Great video! One of my favorite games of all time!
Thank you! Yes, mine too!
Are you gonna do a critique on Rain World?
Outer Wilds Spoilers
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I disagree with the jellyfish hint in my opinion it doesn't track very well that being able to walk through a dead one implies the ability to safely do the same with the live ones. There should have been a bit more direct way to make sure the player knew they wouldn't hurt you if you touched their tentacles. Even though you are wearing a space suit it doesn't fully track that you can do that with the live ones before you attempt it after exhausting every other option.
That's fair that it might not be a 1:1, but I also think that the fact that the game focuses on just the core and the jellyfish with no other distractions lends itself well to allowing the player to reasonably experiment with the puzzle.
took me some time to actually play this game. i super appreachiate the spiler warning at the beginning, only because it gave me time to think and made me decide to not watch until i eventually played the game.
I'm glad! The game is definitely worth playing without spoilers. My video will always be here :)
Amazing video and analysis. It's mind boggling that a video of this quality has so little views.
Thank you so much!!! This is still my favorite video that I've done, so I'm glad you enjoyed it :)
Was the interior of the interloper not worth mentioning, or is it part of the DLC and not the main game like I thing. Also, I can't believe you forgot to talk about the most important marriage candidate, your time clone from jumping into the black hole in the ash twin project.
Ah, yeah, I see I don't have any dedicated Interloper sections. It's part of the base game. I briefly mention how its state changes close to the sun, its story relation to the Nomai, and how the Little Scout is useful for it, but only for a sentence each or so. Honestly though that's most of the Interloper, but I could've talked more about it. I did start an Interloper section but I see that I crossed it out. Once a video/script gets long enough, it makes sense to cut some things.
Crap, you're right! The perfect candidate!
It's probably a bit late, but all the Hearthians are genderless, and use they/them pronouns. Only Nomai use he and she
Fair enough, I didn't particularly pay mind to it. I just guessed based off of their names. But regardless, I refer to them as he or she for personal interest and the dating bit, and it still works 'cause players can project onto the NPCs during gameplay.
Good video. But I think the multi minute long segments where you show something you and a friend of yours experienced in a discord call are a very bad move. They take way too long and interrupt the flow of the video. Stuff like this would be better suited for the segment at the end of the video.
I thought they fit most of the time since they're essentially entertaining examples; however, I'm assuming you're mostly referring to a couple of the extended ones, like orbiting the sun to land on the Sun Station, and sitting in the observatory. I wanted to share the experience and tension of the journey of the former, and the thoughts and overall intermission-type feeling of the latter with the fantastic music and atmosphere. But I also understand that can be off-putting to people. I actually do put a bunch of clips at the end as well, so perhaps I should've moved them there also. I greatly appreciate the feedback and I'll try to not interrupt the flow in the future! I have some longer clips in the Security Breach video as well, but that video and game is such a special case where there were so many entertaining examples that also demonstrated the game's brokenness every step of the way, so I felt like I had to capture the game's legacy in a comprehensive enough way or else I wasn't doing the game justice. That's definitely an exception and not the rule though in terms of using clips.
Anyway, thanks again! I'll be more careful for the DLC video.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies
I don't hate them. It's more that some of them take WAAAAAAAAY too long.
Pretty sure the longest is like 5 minutes. That's way overboard. I'd argue anything over 30 seconds is already too long.
@@TheGlenn8 That's fair! I appreciate it, I'll be careful for the next video.
Booo! I boo you! They break things up, they're better viewed in context _and_ --you can-- _it's a doddle to_ skip them. It's a win/win
I very strongly disagree with the notion that watching a memorable event makes it somehow less memorable.
I don't know what you're talking about but I'm guessing in response to how watching someone else experience something is less memorable than you experiencing it yourself. That's just how experiences work. Watching someone else experience it can clearly still be memorable but comparatively less so.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudiesYou said after talking about the first supernova that watching someone experience something is less memorable. That's just wrong. Experiences are not qualitative in that manner. You can't just say "doing something is more memorable than seeing something" because people experience things differently.
@@riolufistofmight People learn better by actively doing the thing compared to simply watching. Similarly, there are additional factors in play when playing a game as opposed to the more limited scope of watching the same experience. Those two are experienced differently, yes, but it's not controversial to say that those additional physical and mental factors at play change the experience in the game itself in favor of memorability, whereas the viewer may experience something similar (or gain memorable moments of the person playing, but that's unrelated and cannot be considered here), but the fewer factors at play produces a less memorable experience by comparison as a generalization.
There are exceptions and variance but that doesn't change the generalization, and the generalization was all I needed for the point (which I'm guessing was either a side comment or convincing people to play before watching, so it's not really important anyway).
I'm sure people who find themselves detached from or not used to the physical and mental processes of using a controller and how that translates to the experience may find less enjoyment in actively playing. I could see the argument in that case and it's certainly valid, but that wasn't my intent or the target audience for this kind of video. I didn't consider this exception before now though, so I appreciate that! It really does lead into important considerations of inputs and accessibility as well for different types of players.
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies Some people learn better by actively doing a thing, but that's not a universal experience. Some people do learn better by hearing lectures, some people learn better with kinesthetic connections to the topics and some people learn better via looking at images. I've read lots of history sources and listened to lectures from professors, but I remember the information I learned from watching and listening to the youtube channel Extra History better than either of those. People learn *better* when they're more engaged by the subject/source, and different people are more engaged by different things.
@@riolufistofmight That's true! Engagement and passion matters, and the context of the material as well.
Just watched your Security Breach video and though, "Huh, it'd be cool to see coverage of Echoes of the Eye." Then I see this! I can't wait to check this out, and even despite having yet to even hit play, eagerly await the DLC video so you can fully break-down the insanely cool and creative designs which makes EotE's atmosphere shine~
This is so cool to hear! Thanks for sharing! I hope you enjoy the video, because it's still my favorite that I've done, and Outer Wilds itself is a masterpiece. I've played the DLC and want to make a video on it for sure! I think it falters some in its horror sections, but otherwise it's fantastic.
@Design Frame: Video Game Case Studies Oh yeah, theres definitely room for critique in those sections. That said, I'm not sure if you've got it in the research already, but it might be interesting to look at some of the changes made between launch and the first major patch, especially those concerning the level design changes in the aforementioned areas!
@@firekirby123 Looks like I played with Patch 12 but not 13. My main problem was that the enemies and everything else were invisible in the darkness but they immediately aggro and capture you when you pull out a light. I'm guessing Patch 13 doesn't fix this. It made the game impossible in a couple sections so I had to try to cheat and skip the sections. I apparently rated it 7/10 because of how bad those sections are.
@Design Frame: Video Game Case Studies Yeye, the DLC did very little to actually give a straightforward clue to their behavior, like the base game did for the anglerfish in Amber Twin's Anglerfish Cave, and it's definitely a valid complaint and point of frustration. But like everything in the DLC, environmental clues do exist, and experimentation to work out their behavior is rewarded due to failure not resetting the loop. The areas are also designed so only one area has mandatory stealth; everything else can be curcumvented through exploration and puzzle solving. Because of this, I actually didn't have much trouble personally, but can definitely see why others did.
@@firekirby123 The area with the lanterns is fine since you can actually see them from their light. But can the other two dark areas be circumvented? From the reddit posts I've read, the alternative routes required information that isn't told to us until you've already gotten past said areas. So the two dark areas seem like linear sections. Am I supposed to run past them all instead of stealth?
12:00 OH MY GOD ITS RIXIAN, I KNOW I SAW YOU. I MISS YOU
Who?
I would love to see a case study on the DLC, Echoes of the Eye. While not as good as the first game, I still think you could make a great video out of it!
For sure! I appreciate the request. Hopefully within the next few videos or so. I've already played it so I definitely want to make a video on it. It's an option in the poll on the last Community post, and may be a future option depending on future video plans. But either way it'll happen.
2:13:38
I love how you link this by itself lol. I forgot about this part. Dark Bramble is seriously spooky.
can you talk 15% faster?
I think you can change the playback speed to 1.25 without losing any information. It negatively affects Watch Time for me, but I'd rather you have a better experience. I keep improving my voiceover each video, so I'm sorry if it's not quite there for this one. I appreciate the feedback!
Is this chanel dead?
I'm planning on making a comeback soon with a new Design Frame followed by a new commentary series premiering in the next few months or so. I'm also partway through the next Odyssey episode script. So while I've been dead for a while since I've been working on other game design projects (alongside my full-time job of course), I definitely want nothing more than to keep this channel going! So stay tuned!
No. Not streams.
They're clips from my friend's playthrough, not on any stream. I included ones that were good examples, entertaining, and/or included thoughts. They weren't arbitrarily shoved in.
Love the analysis and presentation! I’m a little disappointed you ignored all the hearthians’ actual pronouns though, they all explicitly use ‘they’, and it’s an interesting contrast to the explicitly binary genders of the nomai.
Thank you very much! :)
Fair enough, but for my dating purposes I used sex. But if that's interesting to you, then more power to you!
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies …huh? Wait, how do you determine an aliens sex, and why would that determine what language you use for them when the game has an explicit correct answer.
@J Sherer I just guessed based off of their name. And it determines the language because I refer to them as he or she for personal interest and the dating bit. But you can refer to them as either or neither if you want. Although I didn't particularly notice if I'm being honest, so that's also a factor
@@DesignFrameCaseStudies It felt a little weird to me at first but I can see you didn’t mean anything by it. On a more constructive note, I personally loved how you intersperse gameplay with your friend! OW is defined in many ways by those aha moments and seeing them happen tells a lot of the story. Contrary to what some people are saying, I think you should continue to use them or even use them more often. You two sounded like you had a lot of fun :D
@@jsherer9616 I don't mean any harm :) And thank you! I think the complaints are mostly about the intermission section, which is understandable. I'm super glad you enjoyed the clips though! I'll definitely do the same for the dlc video :)