Outer Wilds is a superbly stellar space adventure
game, that is extremely difficult to talk
about without spoilers.
The game’s core mechanic is based on an
idea so brilliant, that to reveal it outside
of the context of the player’s own discovery
would be shameful.
But if I want to discuss the beauty of Outer
Wilds, there are some pieces of its puzzle
that I have no choice but to reveal.
I in no way intend to spoil the ending or
major plot beats, but if you are at all interested
in this interstellar adventure, with clever
puzzles, ingenious writing, and so much more,
well, now’s your chance to go and try it for yourself. It's linked in the description.
If that's the case, thanks for watching, and take it easy.
With the spoiler warning out of the way, I’ll
continue.
In Outer Wilds, you are a wonderful little
alien creature, taking their first step off
of their small, rustic planet in a spaceship,
to explore the galaxy around.
There’s planets and stations and asteroids
and a charming little moon.
Each astral body has its own gravity, so you’re
free to land wherever you want, and explore
for as long as your space-suit has oxygen
and fuel.
There are two planets which orbit so closely
to each-other that the very sand which makes
up their collective surface constantly shifts
between the two bodies.
There’s an aquatic world full of islands,
with winds so powerful the islands are launched
into low orbit, before plummeting back down
to the sea below.
There’s an overgrown bramble which seems
to defy the laws of physics, growing larger
as you wander inside, and eventually recursively
overflowing back out of itself.
And, like any planetary system which can support
life as we know it, a sun shines bright in
the center.
Truly massive in scale.
In fact, it seems to be growing bigger, and
bigger until…
22 minutes.
Outer Wilds takes place over 22 minutes at
absolute most, despite my well over 22 hours
in the title.
At the end of this preset time frame, the
sun in your little system goes supernova,
obliterating all life.
At which point, for reasons you do not start
the game understanding, your memories are
sent backwards in time 22 minutes, to when
you first awaken on your home planet.
Effectively, despite the you of the then being
destroyed, all of the ideas that make up you
as a person, all those experiences, are preserved.
In essence, this is time travel ad infinitum.
If only, 22 minutes backwards in time.
The only limitation becomes one’s capacity
for memory, rather than physical age of your body.
Outer Wilds is a true time-loop game, where
nothing is preserved except for the player’s
experience.
The only thing you gain from exploration in
any given time loop is knowledge.
The more knowledge you have, the closer you
come to solving the riddle of escaping the
time loop, without simply dying.
Other time loop games, most famously Zelda:
Majora’s Mask, cheat the idea of the time
loop by allowing some equipment, and money
to be transferred between loops.
While this is fine for the kind of game that
was, the idea of a game in which literally
everything but the player’s own memories
is reset fascinates me.
Unfortunately, as a result of this mechanic,
Outer Wilds is a game that can only ever truly
work a single time, per player.
Not a single loop, but a single start-to-finish
experience.
Every planet has a set schedule it keeps,
each puzzle a set of conditions which must
be met, and once the player understands how
to overcome the tasks in front of them, it
only takes 22 minutes at most to do so.
Purely off the basis of “reaching the credits”,
Outer Wilds can be beaten in about 9 minutes.
There’s no combat to speak of, no dungeons
to loot, no currency to build up, at least
not traditionally speaking.
The same set of events occur over every 22-minute
loop of Outer Wilds.
There are only three variable factors, and
one of them is a bit of a spoiler.
So we’ll focus on the other two, the player’s
action, and quantum material.
The former requires some context of the latter
to explain, so we’ll start with that quantum
material.
The quantum moon is the most visually apparent
body made of this material.
The moon seems to teleport around the night
sky, orbiting different planets at random.
But it never does so while being observed.
The second you look away, it’s gone.
In actuality, however, it could still be there,
but it’s merely elsewhere also.
It’s occupying multiple places simultaneously.
I’m going to be massively oversimplifying
here, there are people far smarter than I
who can teach you way better than I could,
linked below.
Outer Wil- *crash*
*laughing*
*further laughing*
Outer Wilds makes use of the idea of superposition.
Essentially, all matter is made up of particles,
which are finite points in space, and waves,
which by their very definition have to take up multiple points in space.
As a result, by definition, these objects
must take up multiple spots simultaneously.
Of course, in reality, this phenomenon is unobservable
on anything larger than an atom,
but Outer Wilds introduces the idea of material which
defies the laws of physics, as we understand
it, and is in multiple places simultaneously 
at an observable scale by the naked eye.
As a result, the only physical manifestation
of these quantum objects is
one of many possible locations.
When quantum material is looked at by the player, it will become stationary. However, upon looking away,
it will seemingly vanish. But in reality, it is actually occupying all its possible locations, simultaneously.
Quantum matter exists everywhere
and nowhere simultaneously in Outer Wilds until it is observed, at which point
it becomes a constant.
The question Outer Wilds poses, however, is what
if the entirety of the universe were to be
consciously observed simultaneously?
Well I’ll leave that up to you to find out,
by playing the game for yourself.
However, all of this was to say, the mechanic
of quantum material effectively enacts itself
as, well, manipulable RNG, or Random Number Generation.
If an object is in one place, but the player
would prefer it to be elsewhere, simply ceasing
observation of both it’s current and potential
location will allow a new possibility to occur,
effectively rerolling its RNG.
In a game on a 22-minute repeating timer,
the time and place events occur is effectively
fixated, without direct interference from
the player, an anomaly in these loops.
So, in order for random occurrences to not
become further outliers, breaking from Outer
Wild’s key gameplay mechanic of expectancy,
quantum material compromises flawlessly.
It allows for variation per loop, and yet
complete agency to the player’s role in it.
In order to beat Outer Wilds, and escape the
time loop, the player must know where and
when events are guaranteed to occur.
And as they cannot bring anything back from
a previous loop, aside from their own memories,
the only thing that changes is your knowledge
of what to do.
Much like knowing the path through a maze
that leads you to the exit, understanding
how quantum material works allows you to control it.
Now, speaking of understanding, I suppose
it is a bit unfair to state that nothing is
gained aside from memories per cycle of Outer Wilds.
Your ship is equipped with a log, which, presumably
by the main character’s manual entry, keeps
records of locations and discoveries from
past loops.
However, all this does is streamline the process
of the player’s recollection.
Giving you a journal of sorts to keep track
of all the different puzzle pieces, and seeing
how they fit together.
It’s a compromise between a true reset of
the galaxy per loop, and reducing player confusion.
We’ve all had that moment in a long form
RPG where you take a break for a few weeks,
come back and realize “oh god I have no
idea what I was doing.”
While forgetting the past over time would
be a realistic mechanic for Outer Wilds, it’s
not exactly an enjoyable one.
Although you can actually disable the Ship’s
Log if you really wish to keep track of all
this in your head, or on pen and paper.
Speaking of the player, their memories may
be the only thing which survive a time loop
in Outer Wilds, but within that 22 minute
time span is still an entire planetary system
of physics simulations and casual events,
both big and small.
Over seven astral bodies are available to
explore, and depending on when you arrive
at different landmarks upon their crusts,
something different will be happening across
the cycle.
So your exploration isn’t simply across
a large amount of space, it’s also across
a span of time.
22 minutes may not sound like a lot of time,
but this is in comparison to most game worlds
which are relatively stagnant.
Mountains remain the same regardless of when
you climb them.
The planets in Outer Wilds are constantly
in motion, constantly active.
You have to then consider each planet as 22
minutes worth of different occurrences.
The Brittle Hollow, for instance, looks completely
different at the start of the loop than it
does near its conclusion, when many of its
pieces of been rearranged into a new cluster.
Just because these events loop doesn’t mean
they are uninteresting.
Which is a good metaphor for the game’s
messaging as a whole, just because something
is small doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.
Wandering the caverns of Ember Twin, falling
into a black hole and curiously surviving,
discovering a path through the torrents of
Giant’s Deep.
And most importantly of all, learning about
the race of people who lived in this system
before you.
Artifacts, ancient scrolls, and collaborative
writings of the Noami species give explanations
as to the conditions of the planetary system,
and if you dig deep enough, to the time loop
itself.
This writing is not mere lore, but rather
the most important tool at the player’s
disposal for learning about the worlds in
Outer Wilds.
Trial and error do work, but expecting the
player to die, come back and have to spend
all the time getting back to the spot where
they died to try something new is an inefficient
method of teaching.
Having characters long since passed discussing
with one another about the best ways to not
be eaten by giant angler fish, is a better
teaching tool than the player trying countless
times to learn so themselves.
Both will work, eventually, one is simply
more satisfying and less time consuming.
Saving time is just as important as planning
around it, as some areas can only be accessed
at certain points during the time loop.
Thankfully, these mechanics are usually a
one-and-done sort of thing, rather than locking
large areas which would require multiple loops
to fully explore behind doors which mandate
10 or 20 minutes of waiting beforehand.
Your reward is typically one major puzzle
piece which a player shouldn’t soon forget,
hidden in an area which is only time locked
as part of a larger puzzle behind it.
For instance, a small area with some text
which reveals a massive plot twist, or the
knowledge of how to reach other areas to explore elsewhere.
Information is the currency upon which Outer
Wilds is based, but once that information
is spent, it cannot be reused, at least not
to any level of satisfaction.
Once you know how the game works, where to
go and how to successfully stop the time loop…
that 22 minutes is all you need to act on
said information.
For a much simpler example, going back to
Zelda, the Lost Woods areas of these games
are only as complex as the path you’re required to follow.
Once you know to go North, West, South, West,
spoiler warnings for Zelda 1, you don’t
have to take all the steps before to learn
those directions.
You can skip massive swathes of the game simply
by remembering something from a previous playthrough.
Outer Wilds is built around this concept,
you’re effectively writing a walkthrough
for yourself piece by piece, by discovering
areas you previously thought were inaccessible,
learning how quantum material works, and
once you’ve found every piece and understand
the order in which they’re placed does the
full walkthrough reveal itself.
The act of exploration and discovery is where
the bulk of the game, and thus the enjoyment,
comes from.
So yes, once you understand how to complete
Outer Wilds, it’s a trivial experience.
You could try to explore every last quadrant,
but the goal of escaping the time loop is
always doable, once you’re ready.
However, the experience I had getting there,
putting together the pieces myself and finding
my way to the solution, was absolutely magnificent.
Outer Wilds still stands as one of the best
games I’ve ever played, despite a lack of
replayability.
According to the developers, the goal of Outer
Wilds was to make a game with… no real goal
at all.
Simply letting the player explore as they
wish, seeing everything this limited, but
complex space and time has to offer.
However, there still has to be a catch, something
to guide the player to explore.
Games without any kind of goals at all inevitably
reach the same point of becoming… boring,
once the player has done everything they wish
to do, explored all they wish to see.
Having closure allows for a bow to wrap things
up, a satisfying conclusion which will leave
the player happy with their time.
And Outer Wild’s ending doesn’t come out
of nowhere, it’s a decision made by the
player when they are ready to move on.
Between incorporating quantum mechanics as
effectively manipulable RNG, preserving the
true time reset nature of the universe, and
the sheer volume of content waiting to be
explored, Outer Wilds only ends once the player
has gotten everything they wish to get out
of it.
If you can’t solve the puzzle to complete
the game, that just means you still have more
to explore.
So I have no problem with the game, by its
very design, only working once.
Because what I got out of my one playthrough
was so much wonderous writing, satisfying
solutions, and exhilarating exploration.
I wasn’t left wanting more, but in this
case, that’s a good thing.
I took the steps to complete the game knowing
it would be the end of my journey.
The light goes out, for it served its purpose.
-but if you are at all interested in this interstellar
adventure, with clever puzzles,
ingenious writing, and so much more, well now's your chance to go and try it for yourself.
It's linked in the description. If that's the case, thanks for watching, and take it easy!
