I wouldn't say that there's no subtext in the game before the end. I'd argue that the game is heavily about accepting futility in your search for knowledge in the face of the ultimate natural limitation: death. For one, the nomai's settlements were built in harmony with the constant natural peril that existed on their planets, and said settlements provide playgrounds for you to die over and over. At first it doesn't matter since you can just ceaselessly come back to search for what their shrines emphasize as THE fundamental mystery and purpose of the universe itself. But all of their, and your, efforts end in vain - there's no way to see the universe eye-to-Eye before it ends, and accomplishing this feat requires you to accept your own mortality along with the mortality of everyone you know. So in the end, what mattered were the campfires and companions, and whatever meaning you choose to extract from the journey. Another note - in the sequence where you pick up each explorer's instrument, each sequence represents their attitude towards death. Riebeck hides away until his shelter crumbles, Chert observes death from a distance, Feldspar faces it head on (or alternatively tries to outrun it), Gabbro floats above it all, Esker watches over the changing of the ages in the form of the campfire, and Solanum (by extension the nomai) set out to reach the light at the end.
I love that reading of the instrument sequence. Thanks for sharing it! Another thing that kind of points to the subtext is that the game never _tells you_ that you can save the universe or stop the rebirth loop. For most of my hours playing the game, I kept going just to see what's out there, but I was always wondering if there might be a way. If your curiosity gives out before you explore enough to know, well, you don't get to know, and the loop keeps repeating forever. In a sense, it's not just about accepting mortality, it's about mortality being the only way forward. You go, you learn, and you move on and let someone else have a go, just like the Nomai before you. Neither The Interloper nor The Eye are cruel. Simultaneously, death is mourned and birth is celebrated.
I loved the Nomai there, all pointing at the sky, and then climbing together to try and reach what they saw in space before a spaceship was there. It felt like you learned about their way of life later and I like to think of that vignette at the end as the story of their people. For as long as they could see into the sky they wanted nothing more to be up there exploring.
@@ArtificeParagon It puts me in mind of the Isaac Newton quote about the shoulders of giants - for most of the game, you are learning and discovering things the Nomai already knew - not only did the Nomai work together over generations to understand the universe, but Outer Wilds - the Hearthian space program - itself is following the Nomai's long-dead footsteps. In the end, your reaching the Eye is the final victory of the Nomai - you finally go beyond their achievements, but only by standing on their skeletal shoulders...
I love the twist that the sun station didn't work. The whole game I naively expected that the Nomai were somehow responsible for the death of the universe and that the solution was going to involve undoing their mistake and stopping the end of everything. In actuality, their long-forgotten technology was the only thing keeping the universe from ending, and the game sees us allowing the universe to finally end and begin again. So for me, the game ends up being about enjoying the journey and the discoveries, and then learning to let go.
I was sure that the cause of death was going to be a chain reaction of Interlopers infecting stars, causing them to fuse exotic ghost matter in their cores and go supernova prematurely, which would spit out multiple new Interlopers in all directions that would bombard all of the other nearby stars. All it takes is one hitting a star in your galaxy and then stars would start dying at an exponentially growing rate. I was pleasantly surprised that the stars were just dying of old age and the Interloper didn't actually matter much in the grand scheme of things. (Other than wiping out the Nomai in that system.)
@@NiteSaiya I think I've missed the fact that the Interlopers ghost matter is what caused the Nomai to go extinct. It was certainly hinted to be extremely dangerous but I was never even reaaaly sure the Nomai were extinct. I don't think I've missed something.
@@807D14M0ND5 the Nomai in the Galaxy died because of the Interloper, you understand it when you enter inside it. Also you get an hint because that’s the last thing they talk about inside Project Twin Ashes. Nomai outsiders the Galaxy May still be alive.
@@sirfrancis2220 oh I've entered inside and I saw what happened to those Nomai in close proximity. I just missed the fact that that is what wiped them all out in this galaxy.
Maybe oneshot... But then again, I want to cherish these experiences forever. Maybe I'll come back in a decade when I can look at this type of thing with new eyes.
The only thing i or we can do now, is giving this Experience to other people. I tried to recommend or begged people to play this game, yet they do not have any interest in it or never even heard of it. I want That as many people as possible to Experience this game
I guess in a sense, this is also partly what this game is about. It's why we should sometimes just let people relive the mistakes of the past. They need to learn it again.
The crazy thing is the emotion of it and the questions the ending raised just intensify after you've finished, days, weeks or months after. It's impossible to comprehend how a game can leave such a profound mark on a person and even alter their outlook on life.... And death. Peace out guys. I hope you don't mind if I think of you all as friends 👍🏼
one of my favourite bits that recontextualised the goal for me, was, if you stare into the stars in-game, you can see them winking out, one by one, right from the very beginning, driving home the fact that this universe is at its end, that stopping the nova isn't really a viable option
It took me a long time to accept that the supernova was unstoppable. As in, I had to explore pretty much every single rumor in the game before I came to terms with it. I was in denial. But it's like you said--you have all the information from the very beginning to know that this event is real and no accident. I found it especially interesting that when you talk to Chert he actually knows this. He points out how too many stars are exploding, and his realization that the universe is way older than the Hearthians thought it was. There's also this touching moment when you read one of the Nomai's messages. One of the Nomai talks about how the universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate, and they feel sad about the inevitable cold death of the universe. And they know that it won't happen in their own lifetime, but they're still sad because: "it's going to happen to someone else."
Another interpretation to the song at the end, and Solanum's (and the little nomai skeletons) presence there gives me confidence in this, is the way the process of learning and applying knowledge is invariably a passing of the torch. Even 200.000 years after their deaths, the song of the nomai still joins the orchestra of creation, because the hearthian who made it there, like so many scientists of our own, stood on the shoulders of giants.
Yeah that was one of my fav parts, the Nomai all pooled their knowledge and wisdom to reach the eye and finally, with the help of them and the knowledge and experience of the other explorers, a hearthian was able to finish what they started (And kinda bring a Nomai along for the ride)
I always interpreted it as that every human ever throughout recorded history has 'sung' the same song - we've just sung different sections. We all want to know our place in the world, the universe. We want to know the meaning of life, who put us here. How we 'sing' the song of life might differ but it's to the same beat. And put it all together and you have the extent of human knowledge.
The moment I pieced together the path to the correct ending, and I looked up at the exposed ashen core and realized the repercussions of embarking on that path, I had this awe-struck moment. I spent like 10 loops perfecting the path I'd have to take, and then that final trip was the most tense gameplay I'd ever experienced.
I had a very similar experience! The weight of the decision is immense, and you feel that all the way until the end when you finally lock in the coordinates and warp. It's like all your skills and knowledge culminate in this final, wild ride to the end of the universe. That said, I suspect that the game let's you reload if you fail, which kind of lowers the intensity level a little bit if you know about it. (I suspect this because I accidentally stumbled into another failure state unrelated to the core and it let me reload after). But I'm glad that they decided to go the merciful route because it would have felt absolutely terrible to just throw it all away at the last moments.
I went there directly after finding the Vessel, and knew I had to take the power core. However when I got to the Ash Twin core room, I realized I had only done the correct trip to the Vessel ONCE before this final time. I said fuck it, grabbed the core, and played the rest of the game on extreme adrenaline, assuming that one messup would mean the end of my save file as I knew it. Safe to say I did it perfectly in just that run, and am not quite sure what WOULD really have happened had I died along the way to the Vessel
I did the same, but in my rush didn't wait long enough after the anglerfish trio to accelerate. I do know what happens. The game actually has a honest to god Game Over.
@@Zarzar22 You get a "game over" screen, but it restarts like normal. I got that screen, and though mechanically it's identical to the regular time loop, it does feel like I failed
There was a moment in my game when I found the Ash Twin Project.. and I just learned that this exploding sun isn't something someone did..it was just the natural end of the universe. Nothing I could do to fix it. I was thinking of plugging out the loop machine. I considered it for a few minutes and decided to not do it. Before that I would solve the one last riddle. Even if it didn't mean anything and no one would ever find out or hear about it. I wanted to find the Eye that they were looking for. And so I ventured out for another few hours until i got the last few pieces of information. Finding out that they DID find the location was phenomenal. I was leaning back in my seat "woah.." to grasp what I just found. Everything else clicked into place after it. I had the power source, the ship and the coordinates. It would be one final run. The last cycle to uncover this universes biggest secret. Outer Wilds is a pretty wild game.
This was an amazing essay! I wish you had touched on the way the game is also implicitly about accepting death in the form of viewing progression towards knowledge and learning and life as an explicitly *generational* struggle. I feel like they showed it most clearly w/ the mechanism for summoning Solanum in the Eye: a stack of Nomi skeletons, reaching higher and higher towards knowledge by literally standing atop the achievements of their dead. Like, the ultimate tragedy of the Nomi - that they *all*, every single one of them, died without ever reaching the Eye of the Universe, that their entire race was spent without ever seeing the Eye - is also their redemption and glory, because it was their work and research and compulsive documentation and conversation that enabled the Astronaut, the last Hearthian, to enter the Eye, and in so doing, bring the memory of Solanum and the Nomi with them. It legitimately brings me to tears when I sit and think about it.
demency Same. At first I was playing the game thinking. Whatever, I don’t care about those nomai. They’re just a tool to guide me in the game. And then I started getting more invested in their lives and passions. Then I met Solanum. Then I felt bad about the ones who died in the third pod, so close to the mothership. And then there’s the damn scene with the nomai skeletons, trying to reach a signal. I almost start crying when seeing that I’m just in the eye because they did so much, and they’re entire species died before being able to be where I am. At that point I just felt I was there to live their dreams for them, not for me.
It's not only implicitly accepting death. The only means to power warp drive and travel to the eye is to remove the warp core powering the Ash Twins Project. You can explore your 22-minute loop forever if you wish, trying to find some way to avert the explosion and save the Hearthians, but there is no way to achieve that. The only way forward is to remove the core from the project, accepting mortality and focusing on doing something with what time you have. (In the game, anyway. From a purely narrative standpoint, not limited by mechanics? You've got one other astronaut looped. There's a ship on Brittle Hollow with an astronaut. Convince him to travel with you to Sun Station or ATP, link him into one of the statues there. Now you have two more ships. Drag the observatory leader from Hearth off to the other, statue him. Now you've got two additional ships and pilots, communicating via signalscope, and a person on TH. While you are off deactivating the ATP and heading to the Eye, the others can be hurridly evacuating TH, cramming as many people as possible into the other two ships, and ferrying them all to the Quantum Moon to serve as a safe respite from the supernova. Quantum-lock the Moon at the eye once it's full, and they will survive in the Solanum-like timeless state until rescue eventually comes. A few billion years later, perhaps. It's an elaborate plan and would certainly take a lot of preparation, and a few dry runs, but the time-looped team can practice as many times as it takes.)
@@vylbird8014 And now I SOOO wish this was an actual thing you could do! One aspect of the game that I wasn't super impressed with was the interaction with people at the village, and to lesser extent fellow astronauts. As you gain more and more knowledge, your dialogue choices remain pretty much static with only a handful of inconsequential exceptions.
@@darkfalzx I'd say that's certainly an area for improvement. It feels like the village is an area that the player is expected to explore exactly once, and then feel no need to return to. It shouldn't even be that hard to add - just a matter of writing a load of extra dialog, where you can tell the others about your adventures and see how they react. Some might think you are making up stories, some might think you crazy, and perhaps some might even offer up theories of their own.
@@vylbird8014 I think the village, like most of the surface of Timber Hearth, is as barren as it is in order to guide the player - having no new interactions in the village is a hint that you should be focusing your attention elsewhere.
@@Crocalu The world ends later whether or not you accept it. I think it's more sad to be in denial and believe against everything that there's some higher meaning, than it is to just embrace mortality and accept that life is what you make of it, that in spite of everything, as nick said, you're here now. Why not sit and enjoy the music while you can?
@@april5054 In your scenario, it doesn't matter that the faith doesn't pay off in the end, because there is no afterlife to realise that in. But having faith will pay off in the present, as it gives you more control over your own life. This acceptance you speak of is all too often used as an excuse to deny hope and the possibility for change, when even the skeptics agree there is no ultimate argument proving the nonexistence of a supreme consciousness or God
Not arguing with what you said about the ending, with how the company of astronauts are 'collected' around the fire, because as you said - there are several ways to interpret it, but... I did want to point out my take, since you didn't list it. The way I see it, it's like travelers coming together, ones you meet during your journey, exchanging stories and knowledge, each one having different experiences, and each experience representing their own take on the world. One story of one place from one point of view is one sided and doesn't draw the entire picture, but when every story, every experience, every take is coming together - not necessarily in ways of science, but in ways of thinking and the different ways of understanding the exact same thing - that's when the full picture becomes clear, and that's when something truly can be said to exist. Probably sounds incredibly stupid, and I probably didn't explain it that well at all, but... that was my take from it.
I understand exactly what you mean. You can only ever observe one side of any 3d object with your own eyes at any given time. To see more, you will invariably need help.
Really liked your point about how space exploration in this game is not about conquest ou resource extraction. It was a insight to me. I already like this game so much. Thank you for helping me undestand it a little bit more.
There were a few points in the game where I thought, Any lesser (or more pressured by publisher) dev would have thought: "What could stretch it into a 40+ hour game?" and started adding crafting and survival elements, but these guys just sticked to what the game is about!
Since I've watched Folding Idea's essay on colonialism, I've really become more attentive to this, when you know about it you notice mechanics based upon conquest and exploitation everywhere
This game had me in awe and terror with the sheer scale of everything. The storms on giants deep, the anglerfish in Bramble, the huge pillar of sand on the Twins, that crazy spacious cavern when you jump into the eye. It’s probably the coolest experience I’ve ever had in a game.
Oh, and I'll say this bit I've been telling anyone I've talked to about this game. This is the videogame equivalent of a very good sci-fi sort. Great ideas executed brilliantly without overstaying their welcome. We're on our way to the interactive successors to the great novels of old, ladies and gentlemen.
“The need, here at the end, to not just observe the universe, but to have someone to share it with.” is quite possibly one of the most beautiful lines of speech I have EVER heard. Would you, by chance, let me paraphrase them for a song?
"hmmm... how should I explain the wole ''moving when you don't look'' deal? Ah, I know. a reference to a quirky behaviour in an obscure sherlock holmes game. Perfect" You, you are a mind I can get behind.
As a man of faith, I really dig this, on a spiritual level. Essentially, be grateful for the time you’ve had, the friends and family you’ve made, and the knowledge you’ve gained. Take that with you into the next world. Move on. I like it.
I just finished the game a few days ago and what I really took from the final scenes was that the most important things we discover and create in life are the memories we make and the people we make them with. That's why, at the end of it all, when all possibilities are collapsed into a single truth it is you and your memories of your friends, of those that went before you, of all that you learned and experienced that help create a new universe that exists simply because you were there to observe it. It is the stark contrast of comfort in the existential dread of knowing that the universe we inhabit will continue on without us one day but that we were there to experience it, if even for a fraction of a second on the cosmic time scale. For me it was the knowledge that I AM the universe, and one day I will return to it but for now to experience everything that I can in the time I have. A profoundly beautiful message presented in the simplicity of a shared experience looking into the unknown, surrounded by friends and comforted by a campfire, looking up into the infinite possibilities in awe and wonder.
This game is incredible. Also, that ending is hilarious. I just wanted to say somewhere that the soundtrack in this game is, after being one of the rare games I fully completed, amazing. It triggers intense emotions in me to hear the theme now, in a wonderful way - this game really captured something special. I also really appreciated the callout about its embrace of exploration being non-exploitative!
"...or whether that girl in class likes you" *cuts to Solanum haha, very clever. From the words of Solanum herself, she sure likes us but we are definitely in the friend zone! "I hope you don't mind if I consider you a friend."
No doubt the best game of 2019 so far, and I have a hard time seeing anything beating it. It's It's one of those stories that would change fundamentally at the core if told through another medium than a game. The strongest moment for me in the game was when I got to the sun station. Because I had been reading all the Nomai logs about how they tried to make the sun explode with to power their machine, so my thought was that I need to shut it off or we are all going to die over and over. But then when I got there it said that the Sun Station the logs said that it didn't work and I remember thinking "What? That doesn't make sense. If that's true then that must mean... oh..." And the amazing thing was the way I had made my own goal in the game and that made the whole thing so much more powerful. Like the way it crushed my hope and then having to move beyond it and find new meaning really felt like it was the core of the game itself. Like how we still search for knowledge even if we know we are going to die someday. That the end isn't the goal but it's the journey. Thanks for a great couple of videos!
It has another red herring too, which is that just before the sun starts exploding, the Interloper comet loses orbit and crashes into the sun. An early player might see that and blame the comet, but of course that's all a false hope too.
@@dracomeateor3 Not trash I don't think, but just more marketable or just having less marketing. It sucks that it might not be able to compete with them because of financial reasons and that it comes down to capital, but AAA games often great as well! I mean one of my favorite games of all time is Breath of the Wild which is very much AAA
The sun station is absolutely my favorite red herring in any narrative I've ever experienced. The text even lampshades: "I guess now we just have to find a way to wait hundreds of thousands of years for the sun to explode on it's own, haha!" It _forces_ the player to come to terms with death in a way it refused to allow before. Death may be cheap what with all the looping, but make no mistake - it is _certain and inevitable._ It's argueably the lowest point in any player's journey and everything that comes after it is meant to bring you back up and _I love it!_
I suppose I was in denial about the truth of the Sun Station then, because my response was that the sun can't explode yet because other hearthians had said it was a long way off and even if it was near the end of life it should be turning into a red giant, not exploding. I think I wondered whether there was an outside factor causing not just our sun to explode but every other one, as Feldspar(?) points out all the supernovas.
This video is a beautiful take on the game's themes, thank you. Somehow I only realized at 11:27 the point of its quantum mechanics that "observation is creation", which is why entering the eye makes a whole new universe. It's been a month since I played Outer Wilds and I'm still finding new things to think about.
Thanks for this video essay. The Outer Wilds has been one of my favorite experiences ever. Just hearing the theme at the beginning of the video warms my heart. You have recontextualized some aspects of the game that I hadn't quite considered. I like seeing Outer Wilds through the lens of interdisciplinary science and the dichotomy of the hearthian and nomai philosophies. I also hadn't previously considered the absence of colonial, security, or resource motivations for exploration to be an artistic statement. I had just considered violence and narrative motivation to be outside of the player experience in the game aspects. I.e., thinking hearthians don't have a material reason to explore because hearthians are a toy society that exists for the purpose of play. But now exploration for its own sake kind of stands out to me as a thematic element. Cool stuff.
I really like the segment in the Eye where the Nomai pile up towards the light. Not only it signifies their extensive search for knowledge and the eye, built upon generations of study, but it also represents how all of their efforts werent in vain: they helped you get there. They are giving you a little hand, a reach me up, a push into the desired direction. All of that study and effort was what enabled the Astronaut to reach it, and at the end, they litteraly give you an extra help, a final push.
It actually wasn't until like 10 cycles in when I realized the sun was exploding. Before then, I was always in a place where the sun wasn't visible. I didn't know what was killing me before that.
I had the same experience for a few loops too! In fact--the first time it happened--I thought I had somehow triggered it by accessing a recording on Attlerock.
Have you missed an ending "when you die before you get time-looped by the statue" ? And the ending "flew so far that physical body was left alive, while copy of its memories was sent back in time" ?
iirc there's also a specific ending for (i) get the warp core as if finishing the game (ii) fly way far out (iii) sun explodes but can't reach you (iv) you eventually get a screen saying you just die and your memories can't be sent back
There's also a way to break the universe completely by throwing probe into the dark hole and immediately collapsing the hole after "time altered" probe exits the white hole, but before first probe enters black hole. This breaks casuality and the universe breaks at the seams, engulfed in darkness.
@@mackncheesiest You can get a similar (but unique) ending by taking the warp core out of the Ash Twin Project, going to the Quantum Moon, and being at the sixth location when the sun goes supernova. You're living in a state of quantum undeath much like Solanum; you aren't dead, exactly, but your journey has reached its end.
It was amazing! The video that convinced me into playing the game was: ua-cam.com/video/H-yTZFi-_eY/v-deo.html The only downside of this game is that you can't erase your memory and start the game from the start again :D
@@S1N1S10S if you leave your probe somewhere in the solar system when you warp to the eye, then you'll see it in the post-credit panel flying past the creatures around a campfire (as if it's been shot by the supernovae)
This has made me feel "wholesome" and "happy" even if I have not played the game yet, these vids are amazing, thank you Errant Signal, I don't know what I have gained from this but I feel "more" for it. Good luck and good fortune!
I don't know if it did this for everyone, but in my playthrough the revelation of the new universe's species was accompanied by a flyby of the probe, presumably because I launched it through the eye's big portal and lost contact with it. Oh, and I know you shared a similar story in the last video, but I wanted to post my variation on the spoiler video. On one of my first visits to giant's deep, I stumbled upon the frozen island with the jellyfish. After wandering around for awhile and seeing Feldspar's tape, I tried for a wonky jump and sort of slipped. When I came back up, I slowly realized that I was alone in the water. After a few seconds of wondering where exactly my ship was, I remembered the white marker, and looked up. My rough thought process went as such: How the heck did my ship get up there? It's still going, how am I gonna get off this planet? It's slowing down... Cool, it's coming back. Wait... Where's the island? Oh. Oooohhhh. Oh shoot. No no no no no no NO! Crack. Bloop. Woosh. Gasp. And that was how I learned that those islands are death traps twice over. The worst part being that I very nearly made it to safety, too.
That's such a perfect story. XD I had one similar on ash-twin. "Alrighty, that was a neat bit of exploration, let's go to-......Where's....my...........ship?" **looks around, looks up, sees the marker on Ember Twin** ".......Welp" **manages to jetpack jump to Ember twin** "......I'm going too fast and don't have enough jetpack power. This is going to end terribly isn't i-" **Smash**
I once had an exceptionally violent moon landing where I hit the surface of the moon so hard my ship was hurled back to Timber Hearth. I somehow got out of the ship in time and survived, but was stranded on the moon. I laughed so hard when I looked up and see my ship all the way back to Timber Hearth above my head.
this game made me cry about 3 times and 2 of those times i wasn't even playing it, i was just thinking about it, before and after I'd finished it's pretty powerful stuff
I prefer to think that the astronauts by the fire aren't just your memories but are actually there, all reached the eye from different timelines to see the end together.
I don't think it's quite either of those, honestly they're more than just your memories... I think it's more the fact that you perceive them - almost like a hallucination out of loneliness - and that act of observation actually *makes* them real. After all, that's how the game's worked so far, and I think feldspar mentions that he's not really himself
The ending, in a literal sense, suggests an interesting theory to me. If observing something makes it real as the game devs theorize, and the heat-death of the universe destroys all known matter (and thus all known observers composed of said matter), then the entire universe defaults to an unobserved state. The game makes it clear that an unobserved quantum state is a state where an infinite amount of possibilities could exist, but actually don’t. Thus, there is infinite potential, but not infinite reality, within an unobserved quantum state. Observing the unobserved collapses the possibilities into a single reality. Where does all that infinite potential go? If the potential is infinite, then what kind of reality could be made from that potential? It stands to reason that an infinite reality could be made from infinite potential. Thus, observing the previously unobserved releases an infinite amount of energy. This suggests that the game theorizes that the heat death of the universe will not be the end of creation itself. As long as someone or some thing is there to observe the universe once it becomes a quantum state due to everything within the universe being shredded by the heat death of the universe, the quantum possibilities will collapse and trigger another Big Bang. An outside observer makes the possible, real. What else is God, but “an outside observer that made the possible, real”? The parallel blew my mind. And, it offers a theory for the argument of the existence of a creator of some kind. After all, all this creator would need to do is observe the primordial soup of quantum possibilities our universe once was, thus realizing the universe from its quantum possibilities simply by looking at the universe while it is in this quantum state pre-Big Bang, converting that quantum potential into physical reality. What a stunning theory, in my humble opinion. Sure, there’s really no way to test it... unless we wait for the heat death of the universe, and then somehow escape the universe right before the dissolution into quantum possibilities. Or, find a way to create a true quantum state on a much smaller scale, then see what energy gets released once the state gets observed. OMYGAWDIMSTILLGUSHINGATTHISGAMEOMGWTFBBQ Even if this isn’t true, my mind was blown by the possibility! Make of my thoughts whatever you will.
"It stands to reason that an infinite reality could be made from infinite potential." Not really. There is an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1 but the distance between those two numbers is very much finite.
Saf True, but that could also be seen as an infinite number of ways to view any finite thing or process. That is different than determining “Is this observed, or not observed?” Answering the latter question is more important within the context of this game, as the “quantum” states the game lets you play with only care that the states are either observed or not observed, I.e. it doesn’t matter how they are observed, just that they are somehow observed. By that logic, and considering what I have theorized before, that means that the tiniest most infinitesimally small act of observation is all that is required to collapse infinite potential into a defined reality. Just because the perspective is limited doesn’t mean the quantum collapse doesn’t happen, and energy is neither created nor destroyed, a maxim true quantum states must hold to in order to exist in the reality that we live in. Thus, infinite potential means literally infinite potential energy within a truly unobserved quantum state, and observing that quantum state would collapse that infinite potential energy into a defined reality, meaning that infinite potential energy would in theory transform into infinite actual energy, similar to water going over a waterfall. The potential energy of the water converts to kinetic at a defined rate, which depends on the amount of potential energy present in the water before it starts to fall, as well as any other forces acting on the water like gravity or other masses pushing it around. Similarly, the collapse of a truly unobserved state would necessarily convert the potential energy of the quantum possibilities of that unobserved state into a defined reality, and the defined reality must be the same amount of energy as the potential of the truly unobserved quantum possibilities, thus the conversion from unobserved to observed would transform that potential into another form, a form that can be observed and determined. Thanks for the thoughts, that was a good comment! I still can’t stop gushing about this game 😂
Don't get too carried away in thinking this might be _true,_ but please, do get relentlessly carried away in all the implications of it. It defines the First Engine not as a perfect being or even some intelligent designer, but simply as someone (An ordinary person!) marvelling at all of reality, and in doing so, making it real for everyone else. It's like eldritch horror, except it's heartwarming. Misterium tremendum et fascinans and all that. I absolutely love it. As Bill Wurtz once said: _we could make a religion out of this_
This reminded me of something from another video by someone else (can't remember which), where they contemplated the possibility that it could be the very nature of nothingness to cease being nothing, and become something.
@@boomkruncher325zzshred5 Thank you for writing these, I'm going into a rabbit hole of trying to figure out how possible or true this could be. This game is actually making me want to improve how I live and experience life
That ending was so powerful. The most rewarding and brilliant ending to any video game I’ve ever experienced. This whole game I thought I was working towards saving my universe. Reversing the inevitable death of the solar system and home that I experienced in countless loops. But at that ending, walking through the eye of the universe you slowly realize that there is no solution. There’s no great mistake of the Naomi that you can correct. It’s the inevitable death of the universe and there’s nothing a humble hearthian astronaut can do about it. And the most incredible but subtle moment for me was you had to actually make the choice to accept this in order to finish the game. Solanum asks you if you’re ready, and without saying much more you know that what she is asking about is accepting the death of everything you know. I actually chose to say I wasn’t ready just to talk to my friends around the campfire one last time. I really can’t express how beautiful that moment was. A true piece of art, this game.
i am so impressed at the way you were able to succinctly articulate such an extensively complex and high concept game / narrative. you have earned my deepest respect for this.
Thank you for introducing this game to me. It’s one of my favorite experiences in gaming ever. I love watching your channel but only about 1 in 20 of the games you talk about do I actually play. It fits so well in my mind that my favorite commentator would bring to my attention this game that strikes a cord with me so well. I love the game. But that you brought it to me means even more. Thank you. You are truly the best at what you do.
I accidentally broke the Ash Twin Project itself. That also gave that ending. Also: Dying before the Nomai statue imprints itself on you also causes something funky.
I died really fast because I jumped straight into the ghost matter because I wanted to "see what happens" lol. In that scenario, it makes you restart the entire game, rather than reloading from a save (which is how it behaves when you find one of the alternate endings). Because of this, I thought that I was only going to get one shot at finding the Eye of the Universe once I removed the warp core. It was very intense.
Oh man, I love your point about the player bridging the two races. As soon as you said that, it clicked into my head that the other Hearthians are all invariably just sitting comfortably around somewhere in the solar system, unlike the player. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in general Hearthians could never solve the mystery of the supernova without a dash of the Nomai's thirst for knowledge.
Fantastic videos these, you earned a new subscriber. I love the premise and the execution of this game even though I have never will never be able to play it, so I have no problem watching videos about it to experience it through other people. The reason Ill never be able to play it is that this game has a few scenes which just trigger all the switches in my mind to fill me with absolute existential dread even while just watching it on video. The scenes that do this aren't the ones you might expect either. Im completely fine with the mostly endless blackness of space, the supernovas, the universe destruction and the little memory replay at the end of each loop. The scenes that really get to me are any scene involving the big black hole in Brittle Hollow, the secret ending where you destroy the fabric of spacetime, and that scene at 13:55 where you fall through the "weird abstract geometric space". While the supernovas, emptiness of space and universe destruction make sense to me (stars explode all the time, of course space is mostly nothing, and I can suspend my disbelief at the idea that most stars will die within about 22 minutes of eachother); some scenes like the black holes, destroying spacetime and falling through a different dimension just kind of break my understanding of reality. This wouldn't be so bad on its own, since lots of games have unrealistic events that don't make sense in reality. The thing about Outer Wilds is that those scenes don't feel unrealistic. Through the build-up of discovery and the execution, the game makes it all feel (to me) just for a moment like it may just be possible. And its that moment where I almost believe the game that I feel like I just want to curl into a ball while my understanding of reality crumbles around me. Strangely the fact that the game does this is a big reason why I love that the game exists, even though its also the reason I will never be able to play it myself. Its a masterpiece that I wish I could experience the proper way on my own, but instead Ill settle for experiencing it through other peoples videos.
I don't know how this video doesn't have like a million views. The way you deep dive on games is so awesome to me! I hope one day I can put down as cohesive long-form thoughts as you have about these kinds of things!
I think this is your best video to date. Outer Wilds is not the kind of game I enjoy playing, but it's message is beautiful and this video allowed me to experience it through you. Thank you.
Outer Wilds never stops surprising. It converts what we'd normally call mechanics into an actual intuition. I felt a natural drive towards learning its laws of physics, as this had allowed me to read more texts of the Nomai before the universe collapses. Thanks for the essay about this unique game.
The ending always hits hard no matter how often I watch it. I like to think of it the same way as the nomai did with their towers. Basically "Learm from what we learned so that others may follow in your footsteps" We may not change the entire world but we influence those around us and change their world even if maybe only slightly. By sharing our knowledge and opinions we become the path. Everyone. We become the bricks in the road for those who come after us and we walk on the bricks of those before us
This video might be the reason why, for now at least, Outer Wilds isn't just one of my favourite games but is My Favourite Game. Your reading of the quantum mechanics as part of its larger philosophy of exploration and discovery is inspired.
I played through the demo of this game like 5 years ago and was completely blown away. I had forgotten about it up until you released the prior video about it and was overjoyed at this rediscovery. Now that it's a full game, even though I've already experienced a lot of it's strangeness, I'm definitely going to give it a spin if I can.
I won this game from a Mixer giveaway during last year's E3, and because I knew I was going to get it I avoided any sort of preview coverage of the game before playing and I'm so glad that I did. I only had a handful of screenshots and the game's logo to go by, so I thought it might be some sort of space exploration/survival game because of the guy in a space suit sitting next to a camp fire. The first time the sun exploded I was underground and couldn't see it. I thought I might have died to ghost matter somehow, but that's how I discovered what kind of game this was. It occupied my dreams for a good while. Discovering what secrets each planetary system had to tell, learning about the Nomai's tragic arrival in the system, their struggle to reunite the survivors, and their undying curiosity and their pursuit of knowledge that ultimately allows you the time to come to terms with the ending and bear hopeful witness to a new beginning. It's a beautiful game.
This is definitely one of my games of the decade, if you knew how many hours I spent questioning mysteries, it's just awesome, the music, the environment the mystery, the charm.
For me, the ideology of the game is summed up by one of Solanums writings, either on solanum's shuttle or by the launchpad on brittle hollow, it goes "We are, the universe is". The more you play, the more you find out about how the whims of the universe on the one hand rewarded the Nomai, with finding the eye, the time travel possibility, how it punished them - with the vessel crashing, the escape pod 3 inhabitants not surviving and finally, the whole interloper thing happening, and how it just didn't care when they tried to run the sun station. But it was always only being the universe, there was never any care givem by the universe. The things just happened. The universe just didn't give a damn about the sun station. It just was. This is also seen in the player's perspective: The player has no power to change anything significant anywhere(except for being able to break the universe for the sake of sassy chat and kazoos). There are no permanent upgrades, no getting better, it's only the memories that persist, but shat do those change in the outcome? Not much, they certainly can't save your friends nor stop anything from succumbing to the flow of time,only observe what is happening and speed up the end of the universe by accepting it(meditation/sleep) or forming its outcome by accepting the fate of the universe, stopping the time loop and observing the new universe being formed. We are, the universe is. Well was. And the new one is too.
Just finished this evening. Man, I nearly gave up a good few times chasing down red herrings for hourrrs. The first being that you needed to approach the quantum moon from the south pole to land on it. The second, that if you timed it right, you could re-build the vessel's old warp core by placing 2 of the cores you find in the high energy lab into it, or by somehow using the black hole forge to repair it. As well, spent so long on that bramble island in helms deep thinking the answer was there, like maybe the jellyfish melted? I think it took me properly about 45-50 hours. Like @ErrantSignal said in the first video, its not a game to play just before bed, and thats pretty exclusively what i did.
the eye of the universe looks like the quantum moon because it *is* the quantum moon. the quantum moon was a reflection of the eye itself. i recognized specific structures from the moon that are in the eye
It's the other way around, actually. The quantum moon's surface is a reflection of the planet it's orbiting, so it is stated in-game. You can see the grand polar storm of the Giant's Deep at the same pole on the QM when it's over GD. Same with every planet. It is only logical that the QM's surface is reminiscent of the Eye when it's over the Eye itself.
Been waiting for this video since your first one dropped, and it's just as good as I was hoping. There's a lot to be said about this game. This video, and one by Jacob Geller really hit the nail on the head with this game's intentions and mechanics. Just when I think I can't possibly love this game more
I just finished the game an hour ago. I want to replay the whole thing for the first time again. I kinda ruined the experience for myself because I stumbled on some spoilers. If there were a memory wipe device you bet I'd use it and start the game all over again. It was such an amazing experience, especially the first few hours were the best for me. Discovering all the different planets, and not knowing what actually happened. I didn't really like the ending, the universe just.. died. I couldn't do anything to stop it, and there was just this sense of dread. But it was briefly extinguished by the campfire song which was the best part of the ending. I'd rate it a 9/10 simply because of the ending and because I ruined it for myself. If I wouldn't have I'd probably rate it a 10/10. The best part of the game was the beginning, discovering everything in this solar system you've never been to. If I could I'd go back to the beginning.
I haven't played, but I love these videos because I often find it difficult to make time for games like this one, even if I know I'd be really into them. It's always a real treat to dive into the themes and such with you!
Your first video got me to play the game, and I'm really glad I did I like to watch other people play the game now(and get mad at Streamer Intelligence), and the ending gets me every time
the answer to the question what the ending means is a cycle in itself. because the meaning is different for everyone and for me one of the biggest messages of the game was that things depend on your interpretation and therefore i must have my own unique way of seeing things, which is different for everyone. to me the eye of the universe is like a mirror. part of the eye is you. in meditation there is this idea of just observing and being right there in the direct experience of whatever is going on. i feel like the game helped me understand what this means on a spiritual level and not only in a practical way. Mother Therese once was asked: “When you pray, what do you say to God?” she replied: "I don't say anything, I just listen.” The person asking then asked “Okay, when God speaks to you, what does he say?” and she said: “He doesn’t say anything. He just listens.”
This might just be me being stupid, but Outer Wilds is literally the first nonlinear-narrative-type game I've ever played in which I fully understood the story _as it was being revealed_ rather than only after watching some internet dude summarize it. It might partially come down to the writers' _admirable_ commitment to clarity over conversational naturalism, but I think it's mostly because piecing together the fragmented story isn't just something you do alongside progressing through the game in Outer Wilds, but rather is _how_ you progress through the game. Your mental path through the narrative dictates your physical path through the game world. It's very slick. All that is to say, putting together the story on the fly turned out to be really, _really_ fun, and now I kind of wish more games would force me to do it instead of assuming the Internet Lore Man will clean up the mess.
When I was young I watched 2001: a space oddysee, and the ending scene made me anxious in a way I never experience before, And this game provokes exactly the same feeling when you get to the more "distant" or "abstract" locations.... Guess it's fear for the unknown :)
The best game I've played in years, glad I found it by pure chance and just booted it up and enjoyed all the way. Right now, I'm having someone play the game in my pc to let them experience it. This is almost like playing it for the first time myself (of course, I keep silent about everything and just observe). I'm just waiting until that person reaches the ending, I'm sure it'll be a wonderful moment. The ending for me was about accepting "fate", and making the best of whatever situation we find ourselves in, making sure to enjoy the journey and all the things, little and big, along the way. The ending moved me a lot, it was really special to me, and I'm sure it'll be as special as it was for this person. I'm sure it'll be just like finishing the game for the first time. That bit you showed, where they get together to make the last song, it always tears me up. Did you know that you can roast marshmallows without burning them? I did not know this, but this person stuck one close to the fire, and after a few seconds it got roasted without being burned to a crisp. Random thing about the game: Have you waited for the end of the cycle at the Ash Twin Project? Irrelevant to the video but at 11:22 You said that "a photon is a wave and a particle until you decide how you want to detect it" is not true, as we detect photons because they behave like a particle, but when we aren't looking (detecting) them they move like waves. The more you know™
Fun little tidbit I got when finishing the game, since the game taught me to use the probe at every moment the first thing I did with the Big bang ball (as I call it) before jumping in was send my probe in, and as the picture zooms out and you see the insect creatures (which btw only appear if you've gotten Solanium) my probe whizzed by observing this new universe and I dunno that made me happy, just imagining it orbiting some planet seeing all new things, and telling those aliens "there's someone out there"
9:36 wish you did a follow up video on the DLC because the owl creatures are a third representation. One of at first, extraction and drying their homeworld of resources to travel, only to regret it and seclude themselves in nihlism. Nomai are all about the end of the journey, Hearthians all about the journey itself, and the owls all about the beginning, wishing they never started the journey to begin with.
I didn't read to much into the meaning of the song. I just thought that sequence spoke to the innocence and playful nature of humanity. That if met with inevitable doom, all we would really want to do is connect with each other, even if only through something as arbitrary as a jam session. Although i suppose in hindsight it could be seen as a metaphor for the players experience of the games story. All of the characters parts in the song seem disconnected when you hear them seperately, but once put together and harmonized it makes perfect sense. The games lore seems disconnected at first too, but once you finish the game and see it all come together and harmonize it makes perfect sense.
One of the scary, pessimistic theories that I had towards the end of the game was that the Eye of the Universe was actually just part of Dark Bramble. I thought that maybe some signal inside of Dark Bramble was being repeated through some loop, such that the Nomai were tricking into believing that the signal was older than the universe itself. Gods, that would have been so bleak if I was right. But of course there is this very ominous trail of questions that the Nomai have about the Eye of the Universe. They are afraid of it even as they desperately search. They fear that the Eye is a trick, and that this illusion will actually be there undoing. The kind of thing that would make you do something crazy, like pushing an orbital cannon past its limit, or forcing a star to go super nova. I'm glad that I was wrong! I take solace in knowing that Dark Bramble gets destroyed. "If I die, then I'm taking you with me."
And even more so, the ending shows the player that it is okay to let go. Almost the entire game, we always get another chance. And, if the game interests the player enough, they start to use those other chances to their advantage, manipulating the timing and exploration of their chance to explore certain parts of the solar system that may not be available at other times. The message of the game, up until the very end, is to keep on trying, to keep on discovering, to keep asking questions. But the game itself turns that lesson on its head in the final part. It argues that it's okay to let go, it's okay to not be able to solve and fix every problem in the universe. It's okay to sit back with friends, play a song, and watch the universe explode. The game has the duality of causing the player to learn to use time to their advantage, and to live in the moment. For this little 10-15 hours of gameplay, the player gets to evolve and change. Towards the beginning, the player may feel more pressure to get everything right, to be the savior of the solar system. Then, you learn to be wrong and learn from it, but continue to persist, but this time with a different intention than before; wanting to explore for the knowledge of it rather than just "winning the game." Then, we see that at the end, the player learns to let things go, and accept the fate of what happens. In a way, the beauty of this game is not only the graphics, physics engine, music, or storyline, but rather how the game causes the player to completely shift their outlook and intentions of playing throughout the game. Or at least, that's what I took from playing it. I felt like I was like the Nomai going on this journey of exploration, learning along with them. This game truly is one of a kind.
There were a bunch of things in Outer Wilds that made my skin crawl. Anything to do with quantum objects, (AND THE WHOLE FUCKING ENDING IS TERRIFYING TO ME. LEGIT HORROR ELEMENTS THERE.) all of the Dark Bramble, the core of Giant's Deep, Ghost Matter... I think the reason it all spooked me so much was that I couldn't control the dangers. I could only learn how to avoid them. There's no bargaining with an angry anglerfish. Specifically, though, there was one thing that scared me a lot, and it may have affected why the Quantum Shards bothered me so much. I was on the Quantum Moon, turning the lights on and off to go to different locations. I open the door, and I see a quantum rock blocking the door. I was at the Sixth Location, but not at the North Pole. I messed around a bit, looked away, looked back. Touched it. Shot my probe at it. I don't know which action caused it, but a unique kill animation (sorta like the memory rewinds) appeared at the edges of my screen like a frame, and my vision got smaller and smaller, and then I regressed backward again. It shook me to my BONES.
Uuuugghhhh your analysis of the ending damn near made me cry and I basically never cry for any kind of media (I got teary eyed at the ending of toy story 3, and at the pivotal moment of Warframe's The Sacrifice quest but have never actually cry-cried for anything other than pain). So yeah, VERY well played with your analysis. :)
I wouldn't say that there's no subtext in the game before the end. I'd argue that the game is heavily about accepting futility in your search for knowledge in the face of the ultimate natural limitation: death. For one, the nomai's settlements were built in harmony with the constant natural peril that existed on their planets, and said settlements provide playgrounds for you to die over and over. At first it doesn't matter since you can just ceaselessly come back to search for what their shrines emphasize as THE fundamental mystery and purpose of the universe itself. But all of their, and your, efforts end in vain - there's no way to see the universe eye-to-Eye before it ends, and accomplishing this feat requires you to accept your own mortality along with the mortality of everyone you know. So in the end, what mattered were the campfires and companions, and whatever meaning you choose to extract from the journey.
Another note - in the sequence where you pick up each explorer's instrument, each sequence represents their attitude towards death. Riebeck hides away until his shelter crumbles, Chert observes death from a distance, Feldspar faces it head on (or alternatively tries to outrun it), Gabbro floats above it all, Esker watches over the changing of the ages in the form of the campfire, and Solanum (by extension the nomai) set out to reach the light at the end.
I didn't realize that bit about picking each instrument and the significance of it. This game is just so well crafted together.
I love that reading of the instrument sequence. Thanks for sharing it!
Another thing that kind of points to the subtext is that the game never _tells you_ that you can save the universe or stop the rebirth loop. For most of my hours playing the game, I kept going just to see what's out there, but I was always wondering if there might be a way. If your curiosity gives out before you explore enough to know, well, you don't get to know, and the loop keeps repeating forever.
In a sense, it's not just about accepting mortality, it's about mortality being the only way forward. You go, you learn, and you move on and let someone else have a go, just like the Nomai before you. Neither The Interloper nor The Eye are cruel. Simultaneously, death is mourned and birth is celebrated.
I loved the Nomai there, all pointing at the sky, and then climbing together to try and reach what they saw in space before a spaceship was there. It felt like you learned about their way of life later and I like to think of that vignette at the end as the story of their people. For as long as they could see into the sky they wanted nothing more to be up there exploring.
gabbro being gabbro XD
It teaches me to just let go :)
@@ArtificeParagon It puts me in mind of the Isaac Newton quote about the shoulders of giants - for most of the game, you are learning and discovering things the Nomai already knew - not only did the Nomai work together over generations to understand the universe, but Outer Wilds - the Hearthian space program - itself is following the Nomai's long-dead footsteps. In the end, your reaching the Eye is the final victory of the Nomai - you finally go beyond their achievements, but only by standing on their skeletal shoulders...
I love the twist that the sun station didn't work. The whole game I naively expected that the Nomai were somehow responsible for the death of the universe and that the solution was going to involve undoing their mistake and stopping the end of everything. In actuality, their long-forgotten technology was the only thing keeping the universe from ending, and the game sees us allowing the universe to finally end and begin again. So for me, the game ends up being about enjoying the journey and the discoveries, and then learning to let go.
I was sure that the cause of death was going to be a chain reaction of Interlopers infecting stars, causing them to fuse exotic ghost matter in their cores and go supernova prematurely, which would spit out multiple new Interlopers in all directions that would bombard all of the other nearby stars. All it takes is one hitting a star in your galaxy and then stars would start dying at an exponentially growing rate.
I was pleasantly surprised that the stars were just dying of old age and the Interloper didn't actually matter much in the grand scheme of things. (Other than wiping out the Nomai in that system.)
@@NiteSaiya I think I've missed the fact that the Interlopers ghost matter is what caused the Nomai to go extinct. It was certainly hinted to be extremely dangerous but I was never even reaaaly sure the Nomai were extinct. I don't think I've missed something.
It humbled me. For hours and hours I thought my goal was to save the universe. What made me think I was even capable of doing that!?
@@807D14M0ND5 the Nomai in the Galaxy died because of the Interloper, you understand it when you enter inside it. Also you get an hint because that’s the last thing they talk about inside Project Twin Ashes. Nomai outsiders the Galaxy May still be alive.
@@sirfrancis2220 oh I've entered inside and I saw what happened to those Nomai in close proximity. I just missed the fact that that is what wiped them all out in this galaxy.
I don't think I've ever wished so much that I could wipe my memory of a game, just so I could experience it again.
Maybe oneshot... But then again, I want to cherish these experiences forever. Maybe I'll come back in a decade when I can look at this type of thing with new eyes.
The only thing i or we can do now, is giving this Experience to other people. I tried to recommend or begged people to play this game, yet they do not have any interest in it or never even heard of it.
I want That as many people as possible to Experience this game
I guess in a sense, this is also partly what this game is about. It's why we should sometimes just let people relive the mistakes of the past. They need to learn it again.
This is one of those games, yeah.
@@Exel3nce I've gotten a few people to play this game, it's definitely how you approach them about it that makes all the difference
The ending was the most powerful ending to a video game I've ever experienced. I can't explain how I felt
Such a good game
Same. I just beat the game last night so I could experience the ending yet again. Pure art
The crazy thing is the emotion of it and the questions the ending raised just intensify after you've finished, days, weeks or months after. It's impossible to comprehend how a game can leave such a profound mark on a person and even alter their outlook on life.... And death.
Peace out guys. I hope you don't mind if I think of you all as friends 👍🏼
Nier Automata's ending was pretty close I think
only thing comparable for me is Rain World
one of my favourite bits that recontextualised the goal for me, was, if you stare into the stars in-game, you can see them winking out, one by one, right from the very beginning, driving home the fact that this universe is at its end, that stopping the nova isn't really a viable option
It took me a long time to accept that the supernova was unstoppable. As in, I had to explore pretty much every single rumor in the game before I came to terms with it. I was in denial. But it's like you said--you have all the information from the very beginning to know that this event is real and no accident. I found it especially interesting that when you talk to Chert he actually knows this. He points out how too many stars are exploding, and his realization that the universe is way older than the Hearthians thought it was.
There's also this touching moment when you read one of the Nomai's messages. One of the Nomai talks about how the universe is expanding at a faster and faster rate, and they feel sad about the inevitable cold death of the universe. And they know that it won't happen in their own lifetime, but they're still sad because: "it's going to happen to someone else."
@@nyghtly-derek holy smokes that last sentence. could never have guessed that that line from the beginning of the game was actually foreshadowing
Another interpretation to the song at the end, and Solanum's (and the little nomai skeletons) presence there gives me confidence in this, is the way the process of learning and applying knowledge is invariably a passing of the torch. Even 200.000 years after their deaths, the song of the nomai still joins the orchestra of creation, because the hearthian who made it there, like so many scientists of our own, stood on the shoulders of giants.
Yeah that was one of my fav parts, the Nomai all pooled their knowledge and wisdom to reach the eye and finally, with the help of them and the knowledge and experience of the other explorers, a hearthian was able to finish what they started (And kinda bring a Nomai along for the ride)
I always interpreted it as that every human ever throughout recorded history has 'sung' the same song - we've just sung different sections. We all want to know our place in the world, the universe. We want to know the meaning of life, who put us here. How we 'sing' the song of life might differ but it's to the same beat. And put it all together and you have the extent of human knowledge.
If you've played the DLC and then replayed the ending on the same save file, then it pretty much confirms your interpretation.
The moment I pieced together the path to the correct ending, and I looked up at the exposed ashen core and realized the repercussions of embarking on that path, I had this awe-struck moment. I spent like 10 loops perfecting the path I'd have to take, and then that final trip was the most tense gameplay I'd ever experienced.
I had a very similar experience! The weight of the decision is immense, and you feel that all the way until the end when you finally lock in the coordinates and warp. It's like all your skills and knowledge culminate in this final, wild ride to the end of the universe.
That said, I suspect that the game let's you reload if you fail, which kind of lowers the intensity level a little bit if you know about it. (I suspect this because I accidentally stumbled into another failure state unrelated to the core and it let me reload after). But I'm glad that they decided to go the merciful route because it would have felt absolutely terrible to just throw it all away at the last moments.
I went there directly after finding the Vessel, and knew I had to take the power core. However when I got to the Ash Twin core room, I realized I had only done the correct trip to the Vessel ONCE before this final time. I said fuck it, grabbed the core, and played the rest of the game on extreme adrenaline, assuming that one messup would mean the end of my save file as I knew it. Safe to say I did it perfectly in just that run, and am not quite sure what WOULD really have happened had I died along the way to the Vessel
I did the same, but in my rush didn't wait long enough after the anglerfish trio to accelerate. I do know what happens.
The game actually has a honest to god Game Over.
@@Zarzar22 You get a "game over" screen, but it restarts like normal. I got that screen, and though mechanically it's identical to the regular time loop, it does feel like I failed
There was a moment in my game when I found the Ash Twin Project.. and I just learned that this exploding sun isn't something someone did..it was just the natural end of the universe. Nothing I could do to fix it. I was thinking of plugging out the loop machine. I considered it for a few minutes and decided to not do it. Before that I would solve the one last riddle. Even if it didn't mean anything and no one would ever find out or hear about it. I wanted to find the Eye that they were looking for. And so I ventured out for another few hours until i got the last few pieces of information. Finding out that they DID find the location was phenomenal. I was leaning back in my seat "woah.." to grasp what I just found. Everything else clicked into place after it. I had the power source, the ship and the coordinates. It would be one final run. The last cycle to uncover this universes biggest secret.
Outer Wilds is a pretty wild game.
So close to 22 minutes with this video
This was an amazing essay! I wish you had touched on the way the game is also implicitly about accepting death in the form of viewing progression towards knowledge and learning and life as an explicitly *generational* struggle. I feel like they showed it most clearly w/ the mechanism for summoning Solanum in the Eye: a stack of Nomi skeletons, reaching higher and higher towards knowledge by literally standing atop the achievements of their dead.
Like, the ultimate tragedy of the Nomi - that they *all*, every single one of them, died without ever reaching the Eye of the Universe, that their entire race was spent without ever seeing the Eye - is also their redemption and glory, because it was their work and research and compulsive documentation and conversation that enabled the Astronaut, the last Hearthian, to enter the Eye, and in so doing, bring the memory of Solanum and the Nomi with them. It legitimately brings me to tears when I sit and think about it.
demency Same. At first I was playing the game thinking. Whatever, I don’t care about those nomai. They’re just a tool to guide me in the game. And then I started getting more invested in their lives and passions. Then I met Solanum. Then I felt bad about the ones who died in the third pod, so close to the mothership. And then there’s the damn scene with the nomai skeletons, trying to reach a signal. I almost start crying when seeing that I’m just in the eye because they did so much, and they’re entire species died before being able to be where I am. At that point I just felt I was there to live their dreams for them, not for me.
It's not only implicitly accepting death. The only means to power warp drive and travel to the eye is to remove the warp core powering the Ash Twins Project. You can explore your 22-minute loop forever if you wish, trying to find some way to avert the explosion and save the Hearthians, but there is no way to achieve that. The only way forward is to remove the core from the project, accepting mortality and focusing on doing something with what time you have.
(In the game, anyway. From a purely narrative standpoint, not limited by mechanics? You've got one other astronaut looped. There's a ship on Brittle Hollow with an astronaut. Convince him to travel with you to Sun Station or ATP, link him into one of the statues there. Now you have two more ships. Drag the observatory leader from Hearth off to the other, statue him. Now you've got two additional ships and pilots, communicating via signalscope, and a person on TH. While you are off deactivating the ATP and heading to the Eye, the others can be hurridly evacuating TH, cramming as many people as possible into the other two ships, and ferrying them all to the Quantum Moon to serve as a safe respite from the supernova. Quantum-lock the Moon at the eye once it's full, and they will survive in the Solanum-like timeless state until rescue eventually comes. A few billion years later, perhaps. It's an elaborate plan and would certainly take a lot of preparation, and a few dry runs, but the time-looped team can practice as many times as it takes.)
@@vylbird8014 And now I SOOO wish this was an actual thing you could do!
One aspect of the game that I wasn't super impressed with was the interaction with people at the village, and to lesser extent fellow astronauts. As you gain more and more knowledge, your dialogue choices remain pretty much static with only a handful of inconsequential exceptions.
@@darkfalzx I'd say that's certainly an area for improvement. It feels like the village is an area that the player is expected to explore exactly once, and then feel no need to return to.
It shouldn't even be that hard to add - just a matter of writing a load of extra dialog, where you can tell the others about your adventures and see how they react. Some might think you are making up stories, some might think you crazy, and perhaps some might even offer up theories of their own.
@@vylbird8014 I think the village, like most of the surface of Timber Hearth, is as barren as it is in order to guide the player - having no new interactions in the village is a hint that you should be focusing your attention elsewhere.
Maybe the world ends later, but you're here now.
I dunno, I enjoy that thought.
Ah, a secularist clinging onto the last embers of hope in a hopeless worldview :')
@@Crocalu given that the end comes regardless of whether you enjoy the present or not, what have I to lose?
@@Crocalu The world ends later whether or not you accept it. I think it's more sad to be in denial and believe against everything that there's some higher meaning, than it is to just embrace mortality and accept that life is what you make of it, that in spite of everything, as nick said, you're here now. Why not sit and enjoy the music while you can?
@@nickolas474 Unnecessary negativity and suffering, that's what you can lose by having a religious/spiritual outlook!
@@april5054 In your scenario, it doesn't matter that the faith doesn't pay off in the end, because there is no afterlife to realise that in. But having faith will pay off in the present, as it gives you more control over your own life. This acceptance you speak of is all too often used as an excuse to deny hope and the possibility for change, when even the skeptics agree there is no ultimate argument proving the nonexistence of a supreme consciousness or God
8:56
-Meets someone for the first time
-Immediately goes for a hug
We know them so well already though :D
69th like
,,,
I'll get my coat
Not arguing with what you said about the ending, with how the company of astronauts are 'collected' around the fire, because as you said - there are several ways to interpret it, but... I did want to point out my take, since you didn't list it.
The way I see it, it's like travelers coming together, ones you meet during your journey, exchanging stories and knowledge, each one having different experiences, and each experience representing their own take on the world. One story of one place from one point of view is one sided and doesn't draw the entire picture, but when every story, every experience, every take is coming together - not necessarily in ways of science, but in ways of thinking and the different ways of understanding the exact same thing - that's when the full picture becomes clear, and that's when something truly can be said to exist.
Probably sounds incredibly stupid, and I probably didn't explain it that well at all, but... that was my take from it.
I understand exactly what you mean. You can only ever observe one side of any 3d object with your own eyes at any given time. To see more, you will invariably need help.
Yeah no that's EXACTLY how I interpreted the ending and it's why I find it so beautiful. XD
fits in with the whole quantum system in game. i like it.
If you've played the DLC and then replayed the ending on the same save file, then it pretty much confirms your interpretation.
Really liked your point about how space exploration in this game is not about conquest ou resource extraction. It was a insight to me. I already like this game so much. Thank you for helping me undestand it a little bit more.
There were a few points in the game where I thought, Any lesser (or more pressured by publisher) dev would have thought: "What could stretch it into a 40+ hour game?" and started adding crafting and survival elements, but these guys just sticked to what the game is about!
Since I've watched Folding Idea's essay on colonialism, I've really become more attentive to this, when you know about it you notice mechanics based upon conquest and exploitation everywhere
This game had me in awe and terror with the sheer scale of everything. The storms on giants deep, the anglerfish in Bramble, the huge pillar of sand on the Twins, that crazy spacious cavern when you jump into the eye. It’s probably the coolest experience I’ve ever had in a game.
Oh, and I'll say this bit I've been telling anyone I've talked to about this game. This is the videogame equivalent of a very good sci-fi sort. Great ideas executed brilliantly without overstaying their welcome. We're on our way to the interactive successors to the great novels of old, ladies and gentlemen.
“The need, here at the end, to not just observe the universe, but to have someone to share it with.” is quite possibly one of the most beautiful lines of speech I have EVER heard. Would you, by chance, let me paraphrase them for a song?
"hmmm... how should I explain the wole ''moving when you don't look'' deal?
Ah, I know. a reference to a quirky behaviour in an obscure sherlock holmes game. Perfect"
You, you are a mind I can get behind.
I never heard of the game, but it matches the Outer Wilds' mechanic so well I thought it was on purpose at first.
The song at the campfire bit is so powerful dude, made my cry like mad.
Not going to lie, I ugly cried
Don't go quietly into that night, take a song with you.
Don't rage... whistle!
@@Yggdrasil42 I greatly aproove of this philosophy.
As a man of faith, I really dig this, on a spiritual level. Essentially, be grateful for the time you’ve had, the friends and family you’ve made, and the knowledge you’ve gained. Take that with you into the next world. Move on. I like it.
I just finished the game a few days ago and what I really took from the final scenes was that the most important things we discover and create in life are the memories we make and the people we make them with. That's why, at the end of it all, when all possibilities are collapsed into a single truth it is you and your memories of your friends, of those that went before you, of all that you learned and experienced that help create a new universe that exists simply because you were there to observe it. It is the stark contrast of comfort in the existential dread of knowing that the universe we inhabit will continue on without us one day but that we were there to experience it, if even for a fraction of a second on the cosmic time scale. For me it was the knowledge that I AM the universe, and one day I will return to it but for now to experience everything that I can in the time I have. A profoundly beautiful message presented in the simplicity of a shared experience looking into the unknown, surrounded by friends and comforted by a campfire, looking up into the infinite possibilities in awe and wonder.
This game is incredible. Also, that ending is hilarious. I just wanted to say somewhere that the soundtrack in this game is, after being one of the rare games I fully completed, amazing. It triggers intense emotions in me to hear the theme now, in a wonderful way - this game really captured something special. I also really appreciated the callout about its embrace of exploration being non-exploitative!
Yeah the Nomai wanted the Hearthians to thrive, bless um ♥️
"...or whether that girl in class likes you" *cuts to Solanum haha, very clever.
From the words of Solanum herself, she sure likes us but we are definitely in the friend zone! "I hope you don't mind if I consider you a friend."
No doubt the best game of 2019 so far, and I have a hard time seeing anything beating it. It's It's one of those stories that would change fundamentally at the core if told through another medium than a game.
The strongest moment for me in the game was when I got to the sun station. Because I had been reading all the Nomai logs about how they tried to make the sun explode with to power their machine, so my thought was that I need to shut it off or we are all going to die over and over. But then when I got there it said that the Sun Station the logs said that it didn't work and I remember thinking "What? That doesn't make sense. If that's true then that must mean... oh..."
And the amazing thing was the way I had made my own goal in the game and that made the whole thing so much more powerful. Like the way it crushed my hope and then having to move beyond it and find new meaning really felt like it was the core of the game itself. Like how we still search for knowledge even if we know we are going to die someday. That the end isn't the goal but it's the journey.
Thanks for a great couple of videos!
It has another red herring too, which is that just before the sun starts exploding, the Interloper comet loses orbit and crashes into the sun. An early player might see that and blame the comet, but of course that's all a false hope too.
Sadly it'll be overshadowed by some trash AAA game
@@dracomeateor3 Not trash I don't think, but just more marketable or just having less marketing. It sucks that it might not be able to compete with them because of financial reasons and that it comes down to capital, but AAA games often great as well! I mean one of my favorite games of all time is Breath of the Wild which is very much AAA
The sun station is absolutely my favorite red herring in any narrative I've ever experienced. The text even lampshades: "I guess now we just have to find a way to wait hundreds of thousands of years for the sun to explode on it's own, haha!"
It _forces_ the player to come to terms with death in a way it refused to allow before. Death may be cheap what with all the looping, but make no mistake - it is _certain and inevitable._
It's argueably the lowest point in any player's journey and everything that comes after it is meant to bring you back up and _I love it!_
I suppose I was in denial about the truth of the Sun Station then, because my response was that the sun can't explode yet because other hearthians had said it was a long way off and even if it was near the end of life it should be turning into a red giant, not exploding. I think I wondered whether there was an outside factor causing not just our sun to explode but every other one, as Feldspar(?) points out all the supernovas.
This video is a beautiful take on the game's themes, thank you. Somehow I only realized at 11:27 the point of its quantum mechanics that "observation is creation", which is why entering the eye makes a whole new universe. It's been a month since I played Outer Wilds and I'm still finding new things to think about.
Thanks for this video essay. The Outer Wilds has been one of my favorite experiences ever. Just hearing the theme at the beginning of the video warms my heart. You have recontextualized some aspects of the game that I hadn't quite considered. I like seeing Outer Wilds through the lens of interdisciplinary science and the dichotomy of the hearthian and nomai philosophies. I also hadn't previously considered the absence of colonial, security, or resource motivations for exploration to be an artistic statement. I had just considered violence and narrative motivation to be outside of the player experience in the game aspects. I.e., thinking hearthians don't have a material reason to explore because hearthians are a toy society that exists for the purpose of play. But now exploration for its own sake kind of stands out to me as a thematic element. Cool stuff.
Ah this game is incredible, so glad someone made a video essay about it
Also check out Jacob Geller's piece on it! ua-cam.com/video/H-yTZFi-_eY/v-deo.html
"The universe is to beautiful to not be experienced by someone" as Kurzgesagt once mused.
I really like the segment in the Eye where the Nomai pile up towards the light. Not only it signifies their extensive search for knowledge and the eye, built upon generations of study, but it also represents how all of their efforts werent in vain: they helped you get there. They are giving you a little hand, a reach me up, a push into the desired direction. All of that study and effort was what enabled the Astronaut to reach it, and at the end, they litteraly give you an extra help, a final push.
Had no idea about the secret ending! Hilarious!
You're laughing?
We're witnessing the heat death of the universe, and you're laughing?
The other fabric of spacetime one is even better. (You can do a similar thing by sending your body back in time inside Ash Twin.)
@@wiiu42 There's one more! (That I know of). It has to do with the Quantum Moon at the sixth location... ;-)
@@codyallen43 Yes, and I invite you to join me in my enjoyment of the universe (especially, because it will not last forever).
Observing this video has collapsed the waveform determining whether I will play it.
It actually wasn't until like 10 cycles in when I realized the sun was exploding. Before then, I was always in a place where the sun wasn't visible. I didn't know what was killing me before that.
I had the same experience for a few loops too! In fact--the first time it happened--I thought I had somehow triggered it by accessing a recording on Attlerock.
Have you missed an ending "when you die before you get time-looped by the statue" ?
And the ending "flew so far that physical body was left alive, while copy of its memories was sent back in time" ?
iirc there's also a specific ending for
(i) get the warp core as if finishing the game
(ii) fly way far out
(iii) sun explodes but can't reach you
(iv) you eventually get a screen saying you just die and your memories can't be sent back
There's also a way to break the universe completely by throwing probe into the dark hole and immediately collapsing the hole after "time altered" probe exits the white hole, but before first probe enters black hole. This breaks casuality and the universe breaks at the seams, engulfed in darkness.
@@SinaelDOverom someone didn't watch the whole video ;)
@@SinaelDOverom
Did you even watch the video?
@@mackncheesiest You can get a similar (but unique) ending by taking the warp core out of the Ash Twin Project, going to the Quantum Moon, and being at the sixth location when the sun goes supernova. You're living in a state of quantum undeath much like Solanum; you aren't dead, exactly, but your journey has reached its end.
I cannot thank you enough for introducing this game to me! That was ludonarative masterpiece of the game.
It was amazing!
The video that convinced me into playing the game was: ua-cam.com/video/H-yTZFi-_eY/v-deo.html
The only downside of this game is that you can't erase your memory and start the game from the start again :D
there is a second secret ending as well - you can steal the warp core and just run, and you'll slowly watch as all the little galaxies go out.
I played the game since last time you talked about it, so glad you are making a follow up.
Don't forget the probe ending if you lose your probe while traveling to the eye. Probe is my fav
I wonder if the probe is quantum now like the moon was? A probe that randomly teleports anywhere in the universe could be useful for exploration :P
Wtf are you talking about ?
@@S1N1S10S if you leave your probe somewhere in the solar system when you warp to the eye, then you'll see it in the post-credit panel flying past the creatures around a campfire (as if it's been shot by the supernovae)
@@Hawkmens thanks but i posted that a year ago wow
@@S1N1S10S ahah I finished the game yesterday (and I had that ending), so I only watched this video now and saw noone answered your question, so I did
This has made me feel "wholesome" and "happy" even if I have not played the game yet, these vids are amazing,
thank you Errant Signal, I don't know what I have gained from this but I feel "more" for it.
Good luck and good fortune!
The ending to outer wilds is the first time ever that I cried playing a video game.
I don't know if it did this for everyone, but in my playthrough the revelation of the new universe's species was accompanied by a flyby of the probe, presumably because I launched it through the eye's big portal and lost contact with it.
Oh, and I know you shared a similar story in the last video, but I wanted to post my variation on the spoiler video.
On one of my first visits to giant's deep, I stumbled upon the frozen island with the jellyfish. After wandering around for awhile and seeing Feldspar's tape, I tried for a wonky jump and sort of slipped. When I came back up, I slowly realized that I was alone in the water. After a few seconds of wondering where exactly my ship was, I remembered the white marker, and looked up. My rough thought process went as such:
How the heck did my ship get up there?
It's still going, how am I gonna get off this planet?
It's slowing down... Cool, it's coming back.
Wait... Where's the island?
Oh.
Oooohhhh.
Oh shoot.
No no no no no no NO!
Crack.
Bloop.
Woosh.
Gasp.
And that was how I learned that those islands are death traps twice over.
The worst part being that I very nearly made it to safety, too.
That's such a perfect story. XD
I had one similar on ash-twin.
"Alrighty, that was a neat bit of exploration, let's go to-......Where's....my...........ship?"
**looks around, looks up, sees the marker on Ember Twin**
".......Welp"
**manages to jetpack jump to Ember twin**
"......I'm going too fast and don't have enough jetpack power. This is going to end terribly isn't i-"
**Smash**
I once had an exceptionally violent moon landing where I hit the surface of the moon so hard my ship was hurled back to Timber Hearth. I somehow got out of the ship in time and survived, but was stranded on the moon. I laughed so hard when I looked up and see my ship all the way back to Timber Hearth above my head.
Outer Wilds has the absolute best ending I have ever seen! I don't think witnessing a big bang first hand will ever be topped
this game made me cry about 3 times and 2 of those times i wasn't even playing it, i was just thinking about it, before and after I'd finished
it's pretty powerful stuff
I prefer to think that the astronauts by the fire aren't just your memories but are actually there, all reached the eye from different timelines to see the end together.
I don't think it's quite either of those, honestly
they're more than just your memories... I think it's more the fact that you perceive them - almost like a hallucination out of loneliness - and that act of observation actually *makes* them real. After all, that's how the game's worked so far, and I think feldspar mentions that he's not really himself
The ending, in a literal sense, suggests an interesting theory to me.
If observing something makes it real as the game devs theorize, and the heat-death of the universe destroys all known matter (and thus all known observers composed of said matter), then the entire universe defaults to an unobserved state.
The game makes it clear that an unobserved quantum state is a state where an infinite amount of possibilities could exist, but actually don’t. Thus, there is infinite potential, but not infinite reality, within an unobserved quantum state. Observing the unobserved collapses the possibilities into a single reality.
Where does all that infinite potential go? If the potential is infinite, then what kind of reality could be made from that potential?
It stands to reason that an infinite reality could be made from infinite potential. Thus, observing the previously unobserved releases an infinite amount of energy.
This suggests that the game theorizes that the heat death of the universe will not be the end of creation itself. As long as someone or some thing is there to observe the universe once it becomes a quantum state due to everything within the universe being shredded by the heat death of the universe, the quantum possibilities will collapse and trigger another Big Bang.
An outside observer makes the possible, real.
What else is God, but “an outside observer that made the possible, real”?
The parallel blew my mind. And, it offers a theory for the argument of the existence of a creator of some kind. After all, all this creator would need to do is observe the primordial soup of quantum possibilities our universe once was, thus realizing the universe from its quantum possibilities simply by looking at the universe while it is in this quantum state pre-Big Bang, converting that quantum potential into physical reality.
What a stunning theory, in my humble opinion. Sure, there’s really no way to test it... unless we wait for the heat death of the universe, and then somehow escape the universe right before the dissolution into quantum possibilities.
Or, find a way to create a true quantum state on a much smaller scale, then see what energy gets released once the state gets observed.
OMYGAWDIMSTILLGUSHINGATTHISGAMEOMGWTFBBQ
Even if this isn’t true, my mind was blown by the possibility! Make of my thoughts whatever you will.
"It stands to reason that an infinite reality could be made from infinite potential."
Not really. There is an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1 but the distance between those two numbers is very much finite.
Saf True, but that could also be seen as an infinite number of ways to view any finite thing or process. That is different than determining “Is this observed, or not observed?” Answering the latter question is more important within the context of this game, as the “quantum” states the game lets you play with only care that the states are either observed or not observed, I.e. it doesn’t matter how they are observed, just that they are somehow observed.
By that logic, and considering what I have theorized before, that means that the tiniest most infinitesimally small act of observation is all that is required to collapse infinite potential into a defined reality. Just because the perspective is limited doesn’t mean the quantum collapse doesn’t happen, and energy is neither created nor destroyed, a maxim true quantum states must hold to in order to exist in the reality that we live in. Thus, infinite potential means literally infinite potential energy within a truly unobserved quantum state, and observing that quantum state would collapse that infinite potential energy into a defined reality, meaning that infinite potential energy would in theory transform into infinite actual energy, similar to water going over a waterfall. The potential energy of the water converts to kinetic at a defined rate, which depends on the amount of potential energy present in the water before it starts to fall, as well as any other forces acting on the water like gravity or other masses pushing it around. Similarly, the collapse of a truly unobserved state would necessarily convert the potential energy of the quantum possibilities of that unobserved state into a defined reality, and the defined reality must be the same amount of energy as the potential of the truly unobserved quantum possibilities, thus the conversion from unobserved to observed would transform that potential into another form, a form that can be observed and determined.
Thanks for the thoughts, that was a good comment! I still can’t stop gushing about this game 😂
Don't get too carried away in thinking this might be _true,_ but please, do get relentlessly carried away in all the implications of it. It defines the First Engine not as a perfect being or even some intelligent designer, but simply as someone (An ordinary person!) marvelling at all of reality, and in doing so, making it real for everyone else.
It's like eldritch horror, except it's heartwarming. Misterium tremendum et fascinans and all that. I absolutely love it. As Bill Wurtz once said: _we could make a religion out of this_
This reminded me of something from another video by someone else (can't remember which), where they contemplated the possibility that it could be the very nature of nothingness to cease being nothing, and become something.
@@boomkruncher325zzshred5 Thank you for writing these, I'm going into a rabbit hole of trying to figure out how possible or true this could be. This game is actually making me want to improve how I live and experience life
my mind didnt understand the ending but my heart sure did
That ending was so powerful. The most rewarding and brilliant ending to any video game I’ve ever experienced. This whole game I thought I was working towards saving my universe. Reversing the inevitable death of the solar system and home that I experienced in countless loops. But at that ending, walking through the eye of the universe you slowly realize that there is no solution. There’s no great mistake of the Naomi that you can correct. It’s the inevitable death of the universe and there’s nothing a humble hearthian astronaut can do about it. And the most incredible but subtle moment for me was you had to actually make the choice to accept this in order to finish the game. Solanum asks you if you’re ready, and without saying much more you know that what she is asking about is accepting the death of everything you know. I actually chose to say I wasn’t ready just to talk to my friends around the campfire one last time. I really can’t express how beautiful that moment was. A true piece of art, this game.
Getting goosebumps just hearing the music again.
i am so impressed at the way you were able to succinctly articulate such an extensively complex and high concept game / narrative. you have earned my deepest respect for this.
Thank you for introducing this game to me. It’s one of my favorite experiences in gaming ever. I love watching your channel but only about 1 in 20 of the games you talk about do I actually play. It fits so well in my mind that my favorite commentator would bring to my attention this game that strikes a cord with me so well. I love the game. But that you brought it to me means even more. Thank you. You are truly the best at what you do.
I accidentally broke the Ash Twin Project itself. That also gave that ending.
Also: Dying before the Nomai statue imprints itself on you also causes something funky.
I died really fast because I jumped straight into the ghost matter because I wanted to "see what happens" lol. In that scenario, it makes you restart the entire game, rather than reloading from a save (which is how it behaves when you find one of the alternate endings). Because of this, I thought that I was only going to get one shot at finding the Eye of the Universe once I removed the warp core. It was very intense.
holy crap i never even went to the high energy lab, that's AMAZING
Oh man, I love your point about the player bridging the two races. As soon as you said that, it clicked into my head that the other Hearthians are all invariably just sitting comfortably around somewhere in the solar system, unlike the player. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in general Hearthians could never solve the mystery of the supernova without a dash of the Nomai's thirst for knowledge.
I just wanted to thank for making part 1 of this video and letting me find out about this gem. I've since played and loved this game so much
Fantastic videos these, you earned a new subscriber.
I love the premise and the execution of this game even though I have never will never be able to play it, so I have no problem watching videos about it to experience it through other people.
The reason Ill never be able to play it is that this game has a few scenes which just trigger all the switches in my mind to fill me with absolute existential dread even while just watching it on video.
The scenes that do this aren't the ones you might expect either. Im completely fine with the mostly endless blackness of space, the supernovas, the universe destruction and the little memory replay at the end of each loop.
The scenes that really get to me are any scene involving the big black hole in Brittle Hollow, the secret ending where you destroy the fabric of spacetime, and that scene at 13:55 where you fall through the "weird abstract geometric space".
While the supernovas, emptiness of space and universe destruction make sense to me (stars explode all the time, of course space is mostly nothing, and I can suspend my disbelief at the idea that most stars will die within about 22 minutes of eachother); some scenes like the black holes, destroying spacetime and falling through a different dimension just kind of break my understanding of reality.
This wouldn't be so bad on its own, since lots of games have unrealistic events that don't make sense in reality. The thing about Outer Wilds is that those scenes don't feel unrealistic. Through the build-up of discovery and the execution, the game makes it all feel (to me) just for a moment like it may just be possible. And its that moment where I almost believe the game that I feel like I just want to curl into a ball while my understanding of reality crumbles around me.
Strangely the fact that the game does this is a big reason why I love that the game exists, even though its also the reason I will never be able to play it myself.
Its a masterpiece that I wish I could experience the proper way on my own, but instead Ill settle for experiencing it through other peoples videos.
I don't know how this video doesn't have like a million views. The way you deep dive on games is so awesome to me! I hope one day I can put down as cohesive long-form thoughts as you have about these kinds of things!
I think this is your best video to date. Outer Wilds is not the kind of game I enjoy playing, but it's message is beautiful and this video allowed me to experience it through you. Thank you.
Damn, you ruined one of the best experiences in the Gaming scene for yourself
What a masterpiece of a game. I can't wait to play it again years from now when I've forgotten all the answers.
Finally, near a year since watching the first video, I get to finish and like this one. It sure was a trip.
Outer Wilds never stops surprising. It converts what we'd normally call mechanics into an actual intuition. I felt a natural drive towards learning its laws of physics, as this had allowed me to read more texts of the Nomai before the universe collapses. Thanks for the essay about this unique game.
The ending always hits hard no matter how often I watch it.
I like to think of it the same way as the nomai did with their towers. Basically "Learm from what we learned so that others may follow in your footsteps"
We may not change the entire world but we influence those around us and change their world even if maybe only slightly. By sharing our knowledge and opinions we become the path. Everyone. We become the bricks in the road for those who come after us and we walk on the bricks of those before us
This video might be the reason why, for now at least, Outer Wilds isn't just one of my favourite games but is My Favourite Game. Your reading of the quantum mechanics as part of its larger philosophy of exploration and discovery is inspired.
just in time for NerdCubed starting to release his playthrough of this game ^_^
I played through the demo of this game like 5 years ago and was completely blown away. I had forgotten about it up until you released the prior video about it and was overjoyed at this rediscovery. Now that it's a full game, even though I've already experienced a lot of it's strangeness, I'm definitely going to give it a spin if I can.
I won this game from a Mixer giveaway during last year's E3, and because I knew I was going to get it I avoided any sort of preview coverage of the game before playing and I'm so glad that I did. I only had a handful of screenshots and the game's logo to go by, so I thought it might be some sort of space exploration/survival game because of the guy in a space suit sitting next to a camp fire.
The first time the sun exploded I was underground and couldn't see it. I thought I might have died to ghost matter somehow, but that's how I discovered what kind of game this was. It occupied my dreams for a good while. Discovering what secrets each planetary system had to tell, learning about the Nomai's tragic arrival in the system, their struggle to reunite the survivors, and their undying curiosity and their pursuit of knowledge that ultimately allows you the time to come to terms with the ending and bear hopeful witness to a new beginning.
It's a beautiful game.
Oh my god that secret ending, it may not be your favorite secret emding but it sure is mine now.
That's the ending the game is leading you towards, how is it a secret ending?
maybe you should watch the full video
This is definitely one of my games of the decade, if you knew how many hours I spent questioning mysteries, it's just awesome, the music, the environment the mystery, the charm.
You got me really hyped for this one game I've never played, well done.
Whoa, this is an awesome analysis. You almost made me cry. What a gorgeus game.
For me, the ideology of the game is summed up by one of Solanums writings, either on solanum's shuttle or by the launchpad on brittle hollow, it goes "We are, the universe is".
The more you play, the more you find out about how the whims of the universe on the one hand rewarded the Nomai, with finding the eye, the time travel possibility, how it punished them - with the vessel crashing, the escape pod 3 inhabitants not surviving and finally, the whole interloper thing happening, and how it just didn't care when they tried to run the sun station. But it was always only being the universe, there was never any care givem by the universe. The things just happened. The universe just didn't give a damn about the sun station. It just was.
This is also seen in the player's perspective:
The player has no power to change anything significant anywhere(except for being able to break the universe for the sake of sassy chat and kazoos). There are no permanent upgrades, no getting better, it's only the memories that persist, but shat do those change in the outcome? Not much, they certainly can't save your friends nor stop anything from succumbing to the flow of time,only observe what is happening and speed up the end of the universe by accepting it(meditation/sleep) or forming its outcome by accepting the fate of the universe, stopping the time loop and observing the new universe being formed.
We are, the universe is. Well was. And the new one is too.
Beautiful! Great job, was so excited for this video!
Just finished this evening. Man, I nearly gave up a good few times chasing down red herrings for hourrrs.
The first being that you needed to approach the quantum moon from the south pole to land on it.
The second, that if you timed it right, you could re-build the vessel's old warp core by placing 2 of the cores you find in the high energy lab into it, or by somehow using the black hole forge to repair it.
As well, spent so long on that bramble island in helms deep thinking the answer was there, like maybe the jellyfish melted?
I think it took me properly about 45-50 hours. Like @ErrantSignal said in the first video, its not a game to play just before bed, and thats pretty exclusively what i did.
the eye of the universe looks like the quantum moon because it *is* the quantum moon. the quantum moon was a reflection of the eye itself. i recognized specific structures from the moon that are in the eye
It's the other way around, actually. The quantum moon's surface is a reflection of the planet it's orbiting, so it is stated in-game. You can see the grand polar storm of the Giant's Deep at the same pole on the QM when it's over GD. Same with every planet. It is only logical that the QM's surface is reminiscent of the Eye when it's over the Eye itself.
Been waiting for this video since your first one dropped, and it's just as good as I was hoping. There's a lot to be said about this game. This video, and one by Jacob Geller really hit the nail on the head with this game's intentions and mechanics. Just when I think I can't possibly love this game more
I just finished the game an hour ago. I want to replay the whole thing for the first time again. I kinda ruined the experience for myself because I stumbled on some spoilers. If there were a memory wipe device you bet I'd use it and start the game all over again. It was such an amazing experience, especially the first few hours were the best for me. Discovering all the different planets, and not knowing what actually happened. I didn't really like the ending, the universe just.. died. I couldn't do anything to stop it, and there was just this sense of dread. But it was briefly extinguished by the campfire song which was the best part of the ending. I'd rate it a 9/10 simply because of the ending and because I ruined it for myself. If I wouldn't have I'd probably rate it a 10/10. The best part of the game was the beginning, discovering everything in this solar system you've never been to. If I could I'd go back to the beginning.
I haven't played, but I love these videos because I often find it difficult to make time for games like this one, even if I know I'd be really into them. It's always a real treat to dive into the themes and such with you!
And now you ruined it for yourself, great
I love this video almost as much as I love Outer Wilds, and that's REALLY saying something
My Rating for the game?
14.3 billion out of 10.
Your first video got me to play the game, and I'm really glad I did
I like to watch other people play the game now(and get mad at Streamer Intelligence), and the ending gets me every time
the answer to the question what the ending means is a cycle in itself. because the meaning is different for everyone and for me one of the biggest messages of the game was that things depend on your interpretation and therefore i must have my own unique way of seeing things, which is different for everyone.
to me the eye of the universe is like a mirror. part of the eye is you. in meditation there is this idea of just observing and being right there in the direct experience of whatever is going on. i feel like the game helped me understand what this means on a spiritual level and not only in a practical way.
Mother Therese once was asked: “When you pray, what do you say to God?” she replied: "I don't say anything, I just listen.”
The person asking then asked “Okay, when God speaks to you, what does he say?”
and she said: “He doesn’t say anything. He just listens.”
Thank you for not spoiling game's mechanics. I'm gonna enjoy it thoroughly!
This might just be me being stupid, but Outer Wilds is literally the first nonlinear-narrative-type game I've ever played in which I fully understood the story _as it was being revealed_ rather than only after watching some internet dude summarize it. It might partially come down to the writers' _admirable_ commitment to clarity over conversational naturalism, but I think it's mostly because piecing together the fragmented story isn't just something you do alongside progressing through the game in Outer Wilds, but rather is _how_ you progress through the game. Your mental path through the narrative dictates your physical path through the game world. It's very slick.
All that is to say, putting together the story on the fly turned out to be really, _really_ fun, and now I kind of wish more games would force me to do it instead of assuming the Internet Lore Man will clean up the mess.
When I was young I watched 2001: a space oddysee, and the ending scene made me anxious in a way I never experience before,
And this game provokes exactly the same feeling when you get to the more "distant" or "abstract" locations....
Guess it's fear for the unknown :)
Finally watched this video after finishing the game. Glad I held off, but also glad I watched it. Thanks!
The best game I've played in years, glad I found it by pure chance and just booted it up and enjoyed all the way. Right now, I'm having someone play the game in my pc to let them experience it. This is almost like playing it for the first time myself (of course, I keep silent about everything and just observe). I'm just waiting until that person reaches the ending, I'm sure it'll be a wonderful moment.
The ending for me was about accepting "fate", and making the best of whatever situation we find ourselves in, making sure to enjoy the journey and all the things, little and big, along the way.
The ending moved me a lot, it was really special to me, and I'm sure it'll be as special as it was for this person. I'm sure it'll be just like finishing the game for the first time. That bit you showed, where they get together to make the last song, it always tears me up.
Did you know that you can roast marshmallows without burning them? I did not know this, but this person stuck one close to the fire, and after a few seconds it got roasted without being burned to a crisp.
Random thing about the game: Have you waited for the end of the cycle at the Ash Twin Project?
Irrelevant to the video but at 11:22 You said that "a photon is a wave and a particle until you decide how you want to detect it" is not true, as we detect photons because they behave like a particle, but when we aren't looking (detecting) them they move like waves. The more you know™
Whats the difference when you are at ash twin?
Just beat the game and fianly got to watch this. Thanks for helping me contextualise what i just experienced.
Fun little tidbit I got when finishing the game, since the game taught me to use the probe at every moment the first thing I did with the Big bang ball (as I call it) before jumping in was send my probe in, and as the picture zooms out and you see the insect creatures (which btw only appear if you've gotten Solanium) my probe whizzed by observing this new universe and I dunno that made me happy, just imagining it orbiting some planet seeing all new things, and telling those aliens "there's someone out there"
Finally got around to playing this game and getting back to this video as well. Amazing video for an amazing game.
Okay, the "Big Whoops" Ending is just glorious :)
9:36 wish you did a follow up video on the DLC because the owl creatures are a third representation. One of at first, extraction and drying their homeworld of resources to travel, only to regret it and seclude themselves in nihlism. Nomai are all about the end of the journey, Hearthians all about the journey itself, and the owls all about the beginning, wishing they never started the journey to begin with.
So happy I didn't spoil myself
I didn't read to much into the meaning of the song. I just thought that sequence spoke to the innocence and playful nature of humanity. That if met with inevitable doom, all we would really want to do is connect with each other, even if only through something as arbitrary as a jam session.
Although i suppose in hindsight it could be seen as a metaphor for the players experience of the games story. All of the characters parts in the song seem disconnected when you hear them seperately, but once put together and harmonized it makes perfect sense. The games lore seems disconnected at first too, but once you finish the game and see it all come together and harmonize it makes perfect sense.
I feel like the only thing that I want someone to talk about is dark bramble, that place is just odd in so many ways
One of the scary, pessimistic theories that I had towards the end of the game was that the Eye of the Universe was actually just part of Dark Bramble. I thought that maybe some signal inside of Dark Bramble was being repeated through some loop, such that the Nomai were tricking into believing that the signal was older than the universe itself. Gods, that would have been so bleak if I was right. But of course there is this very ominous trail of questions that the Nomai have about the Eye of the Universe. They are afraid of it even as they desperately search. They fear that the Eye is a trick, and that this illusion will actually be there undoing. The kind of thing that would make you do something crazy, like pushing an orbital cannon past its limit, or forcing a star to go super nova. I'm glad that I was wrong! I take solace in knowing that Dark Bramble gets destroyed. "If I die, then I'm taking you with me."
1. Grab item
2. Bring it from A to B
3. Do the thing
Tada - you won.
This game was an incredible journey
And even more so, the ending shows the player that it is okay to let go. Almost the entire game, we always get another chance. And, if the game interests the player enough, they start to use those other chances to their advantage, manipulating the timing and exploration of their chance to explore certain parts of the solar system that may not be available at other times. The message of the game, up until the very end, is to keep on trying, to keep on discovering, to keep asking questions.
But the game itself turns that lesson on its head in the final part. It argues that it's okay to let go, it's okay to not be able to solve and fix every problem in the universe. It's okay to sit back with friends, play a song, and watch the universe explode.
The game has the duality of causing the player to learn to use time to their advantage, and to live in the moment. For this little 10-15 hours of gameplay, the player gets to evolve and change. Towards the beginning, the player may feel more pressure to get everything right, to be the savior of the solar system. Then, you learn to be wrong and learn from it, but continue to persist, but this time with a different intention than before; wanting to explore for the knowledge of it rather than just "winning the game." Then, we see that at the end, the player learns to let things go, and accept the fate of what happens.
In a way, the beauty of this game is not only the graphics, physics engine, music, or storyline, but rather how the game causes the player to completely shift their outlook and intentions of playing throughout the game. Or at least, that's what I took from playing it. I felt like I was like the Nomai going on this journey of exploration, learning along with them. This game truly is one of a kind.
There were a bunch of things in Outer Wilds that made my skin crawl. Anything to do with quantum objects, (AND THE WHOLE FUCKING ENDING IS TERRIFYING TO ME. LEGIT HORROR ELEMENTS THERE.) all of the Dark Bramble, the core of Giant's Deep, Ghost Matter... I think the reason it all spooked me so much was that I couldn't control the dangers. I could only learn how to avoid them.
There's no bargaining with an angry anglerfish.
Specifically, though, there was one thing that scared me a lot, and it may have affected why the Quantum Shards bothered me so much. I was on the Quantum Moon, turning the lights on and off to go to different locations. I open the door, and I see a quantum rock blocking the door. I was at the Sixth Location, but not at the North Pole. I messed around a bit, looked away, looked back. Touched it. Shot my probe at it. I don't know which action caused it, but a unique kill animation (sorta like the memory rewinds) appeared at the edges of my screen like a frame, and my vision got smaller and smaller, and then I regressed backward again.
It shook me to my BONES.
Uuuugghhhh your analysis of the ending damn near made me cry and I basically never cry for any kind of media (I got teary eyed at the ending of toy story 3, and at the pivotal moment of Warframe's The Sacrifice quest but have never actually cry-cried for anything other than pain).
So yeah, VERY well played with your analysis. :)
totally worth the 2 month wait, buddy.
I think the overarching theme of the game is "coming in peace with the inevitable".
News articles getting the quantum observation stuff wrong, is quite funny.