
That might be boring if it weren’t for the time loop that gives a frantic feel to each moment of your journey. The Outer Wilds goes exactly at your pace. You don’t have to read a particular log or observe an event to proceed in the game. I liked the fact that you weren’t tied to an arbitrary progression system. This gives you the option to play the game in a fairly linear fashion, moving from clue to clue, or “sequence break” and bypass swathes of exploration needed to find these clues. The solution to each quandary you face is eventually spelled out for you if you look hard enough, but you can also come to a lot of the conclusions on your own by observation and experimentation.
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The cool thing is that you’re totally free to logic out things on your own. The reason Outer Wilds doesn’t feel open world is because it’s all one big puzzle, and you need the clues from one place to know what to do somewhere else. You can go anywhere you want right off the bat. I didn’t realize this until about 15 hours of play time, but you’re not shoehorned into any course of action at all. Outer Wilds Review | A puzzle spanning eons.Īs I stated above, Outer Wilds has some of the best design I’ve seen in a game. Each planet has its own unique mechanics and environments that you have to learn to work around if you want to solve the mysteries of the Nomai. It stands in contrast to Brittle Hollow, which has a rocky shell surrounding an energetic black hole. Your home, Timber Hearth, is the most Earth-like, and it’s covered with trees, grass, and oxygen. You’ll often find that central locations have shortcuts that can shave off the time needed to get there, but they contain more perils or aren’t readily apparent.Įach of the six main planets is vastly different from the next, which keeps exploring interesting. You have to mentally map the surfaces of the various worlds you’ll visit and memorize which ways are safe and which are hazardous. You can’t just trundle out of your spaceship and take the scenic route. Your limited resources force you to think on your feet. Outside of your ship, your supply of oxygen and jetpack fuel is limited. There are no reminders of this, so if you get in a rush like me, you’ll jump out of your ship in a vacuum and quickly die. Space in Outer Wilds, like space in real life, will kill you without the protection of your environmental suit. The art style is pastel and exaggerated, which belies the fact that every environment you face is incredibly hostile. Outer Wilds Review | In space no one can hear you scream.īesides a giant supernova, a lot of other things will be trying to kill you in Outer Wilds. What’s causing the supernova? What’s causing the explosion you see when you awaken after each loop? Where are the Nomai? All of these lead to more questions and more exploration as you uncover the past of the Outer Wilds. It’s your job to find out the why of everything. Now, no matter what kills you, you’ll awaken staring at the sky 20 minutes before the sun goes supernova. When the statue stared at you, it linked to your consciousness. Congratulations, you’re stuck in a time loop. Regardless of how you die, you’ll find yourself right back at the elevator to your spaceship. If not, then you’ll see the main hook of the game first hand as the sun explodes into a supernova and wipes out all the entire Outer Wilds system. More than likely, you’ll die learning the basics. You grab the launch codes (after being stared at by a weird Nomai statue with glowing eyes), thrust yourself into space, and pick a direction. When you first start the game, you don’t really get any hints other than the locations of a few fellow astronauts that are scattered throughout the system. Your task is to explore the Outer Wilds system and attempt to find out more about the Nomai. The Hearthians have recently developed the ability to travel through space and have discovered that a race called the Nomai previously inhabited the system, but have disappeared. You take the role of a rookie astronaut from the planet Timber Hearth, located in the titular Outer Wilds star system.
