[TYPING NOISES]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DANNY: Hello there, traveler.
Please come sit down.
Rest your weary legs.
 Grab a marshmallow.
I've got a story
to tell.
[FIRE CRACKLING]
Today we take a look at
the design of Outer Wilds,
an award winning critical
hit, which has been
slowly building a cult following
since its release
in May of 2019.
This is really a game
that's best played without
knowing anything about it.
So at a certain point,
we're going to hit pause
and let those of you
who have yet to experience
Outer Wilds an opportunity
to get off.
But before we get
to that stage, it's probably
about time we talked about
the unique origins of this game.
Outer Wilds was designed
by a small studio
in Los Angeles called
Mobius Digital Games.
But years before, it started
out as a student project.
Alex Beachum was completing
his masters thesis
at the University
of Southern California.
His thesis project would
be a game that
attempted to break
new design ground
while pulling in
several disparate ideas
from some old
student prototypes.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALEX BEACHUM: We wanted to
make a game where
you're exploring a world
as it changes over time,
in like really dramatic ways,
just to get away
from the idea that game
environments are these static things.
It works well with 
space exploration, of course.
Wanted to make something
where you fly a spaceship around
to get to that feeling of,
you know, it's dangerous.
You really shouldn't
be in space.
Really wanted to do
Newtonian flight mechanics,
where you're just
drifting with your ship,
and the planets  are
hurtling around the sun.
And then the other
part of the really
core part of the thesis
was the idea that
make a game where
the only reason
for players to explore
is to sort of
satiate their
own curiosity.
I was inspired by this
part in the Wind Waker
where there's this photographer,
and he has
an art gallery,
and you can talk to
him about the paintings
he's put up on the wall
They're all taken,
they're all actual photos
taken from real
locations in the game.
It's cool because
you see a photo
and you're like,
wow, I wonder
what this weird statue is,
and he will, like,
tell you where
he took the photo.
And so if you're curious,
you can go check it out,
but the game isn't
telling you to do that.
Outer Wilds, 
in some ways,
was a response to
Skyward Sword.
Because I'm a
huge Zelda fan,
and Skyward Sword is
emblematic of just
all the things that I just--
pain me to see the Zelda series doing.
And it goes with the
space exploration theme,
where we wanted to make
a space exploration
game with a reason
you're exploring space,
to learn about the world
and to gain knowledge,
and not, like, to
conquer planets.
Our ideal version of
real-world space exploration,
more in the vein of
2001, Apollo 13.
I mean, the things we
learned at USC was
the value of playtesting,
the fact that no matter
what you do, you're going to 
put it in front of
 somebody, and it's
going to break immediately.
I went there along
with Loan Verneau,
who was the other
designer on Outer Wilds.
We were in the same
class together.
Our favorite classes,
I know for us,
were the ones that kind of
 let you do-- Like you do
a project like thesis 
prep. You kind of
go off and do something,
 maybe on a prompt.
But then you all
get together, and you
sort of talk about and
critique each other's projects.
We had a class
at the USC
masters, the interactive
media masters program.
It was called
world- building.
I don't even remember
what the assignment prompt.
We just had to, like,
build a thing,
build a world
or whatever.
And I was just like,
I wonder if I can make a spaceship
that flies in Unity
with sort of--
And I got it working.
It's just like a little
like, physics box. You walk
inside of it and walk
around, go to a cockpit,
and, like, lift off
and fly around just like
a terrain height map.
Well, and spherical planets,
like Mario Galaxy style,
but maybe a bit bigger
in first person, like
I made a planet that
was bombarded
by meteors and
broke apart,
and a bunch of asteroids
with mushrooms on them,
and a lighthouse in the fog
with these big anglerfish.
And then in the thesis prep
we had this prompt
called do something with
the uncertainty principle.
And that led to this
prototype of
there's the cabin and
all these trees,
and they would move
when you looked away,
and just sort of
shift around. And then
there was
this other project
where you flew a bunch of these
little model rockets
and then had to
get into a big rocket
and the idea was that
once you've played,
even though it's
all virtual,
once you've played with
the small version of it,
the real version
feels dangerous.
And so that was just
a one-off thing.
There was one where you threw
a probe and had a video.
So just like all these
different ideas
that sort of just got
duct taped together.
And then the final one,
I think that really mattered was--
This was a-- Because
the point of this class
was to sort of figure
out what we wanted to do,
and I just pretty much
couldn't let that spaceship from
the previous class go, even 
though it was sort of, like, silly.
Just like, we're supposed to
be doing stuff that, like,
pushes the medium
or whatever.
And I was like, I just
want to play with this spaceship.
But one of my colleagues,
Simon Whiscombe,
was like, you should make
an emotional prototype.
'Cause I was struggling with sort of like,
what is this going to be?
And so instead of doing
all this mechanical stuff,
I made this quick prototype
where you roast a marshmallow
over a fire. And then you're
on a little planet,
and the sun explodes.
And you just
sort of sit there, and it's
like a firework show.
It was like very rough, but
it was still kind of pretty.
And then all the planets
went out one by one.
And then finally 
it hits you.
[WHOOSH]
[SILENCE]
At the end of thesis, we
had the solar system.
We had the planets conceptually
as they are now.
Some of them changed somewhat,
but that's more or less
the version that was at
IGF in 2015.
ANNOUNCER: And the award for
excellence in design
goes to-- 
[OPENING ENVELOPE]
Outer Wilds.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- So when we started Outer Wilds,
we just wanted to make something
where the only point 
of exploring was to
learn more about the world.
And there would be
no objectives. There would
be no missions.
And we just weren't sure
people would be into it.
So thank you
for being curious
to explore this janky
world we created.
And a big thanks to
the USC games program,
the Laguna College of
Art and Design,
and Atlantic University College.
Clearly could not
have done it without
any of them.
WESLEY MARTIN: I remember
sitting at GDC
'cause I was at GDC,
at IGF that year.
And I, like, saw
Outer Wilds winning
the excellent in design award,
 and I was just like,
this game doesn't look very good.
Like, what's up with this
weird student project winning
all these awards?
I could make better
art than that.
And so when I heard about
the job, I was like,
I could make better
art than that.
[LAUGHING]
Eh, I guess I'll play
the like, alpha build
that's on the internet.
And then it was
four in the morning, 
and I was trying
to get to the center
of Dark Bramble.
And I was like, OK,
I have to work on this game.
And then two weeks later
I moved here
and worked on it.
- All right, the 2015 Seamus McNally
grand prize goes to
[OPENING ENVELOPE]
Outer Wilds.
ALEX: Thank you so much.
This is insane,
and we're just, I'm just
tremendously grateful
for the team and for
all of their hard work,
all of our crazy players,
and people who traded
stories on the internet.
Thank you for, yeah,
exploring, and just everything.
Thank you.
- Usually a story like this
would end once somebody
won an award,
but the timeline
of Outer Wilds doesn't exactly
follow a straight path.
Winning the IGF
did change everything
for Alex. Suddenly he found
himself at the helm
of a game that a bunch
of people wanted to
fund and publish. But we're
getting ahead of ourselves
a little bit.
So let's rewind.
After he left school, Alex
went to work on
Project Spark in Seattle,
but had returned to
LA to work at a new
studio founded by his
former classmate, Loan, 
and a surprising benefactor.
 Actor and producer Masi Oka
was interested in
starting a video game studio.
Before his breakthrough
roles in Heroes, he had
worked at ILM
creating visual effects for movies
including the Star Wars prequels.
[STRAW SLURPING]
He had approached a head
of the department at USC
about hiring one of their students.
Loan was recommended,
and the two
founded Mobius.
LOAN VERNEAU: I think he's 
always been, you know,
a very creative person,
and video games were
always a big part
of his life.
I know he was a huge
World of Warcraft player.
Like he cares very much
about the team itself,
and our work culture,
and the way we
collaborate and that sort of
stuff. So it's been really great.
DANNY: In the early days, Mobius
worked on mobile games
like Terra Chroma
and Beacon 38.
And after a few months
in Seattle, Alex
moved back to
join the team.
His side project, Outer Wilds,
wasn't part of the
Mobius Portfolio, but after
his success at IGF,
it had make sense for the
entire team to focus on it.
Alex signed a deal with
Masi to bring it in-house,
they hired Wesley
as art director,
and attempted to secure more 
funding by being
the first game to
launch a Fig campaign.
The original idea was to
give them an extra year
to polish this version
of the game
and to get it
out the door.
But this loop didn't exactly go
according to plan.
During this year, they were
approached by Annapurna
about publishing the game,
but Annapurna
didn't want a flipped
student project.
They wanted the best
possible version
of Outer Wilds. So after
a year of work,
most of the art
had to be redone.
But this extra time also allowed
much of the more
interesting elements of
story and world building
to be added to the game.
-Early on, there was
 the idea for the structure
 of the game was that
we were going to have these
four major secret locations.
They were each
going to answer a major
question about the world
that we were going to try
to get players curious about.
And then everything else in
the world was
going to point to
those, and each curiosity,
I think was going
to have about
three sort of
connecting clues.
The idea was the clues
would point to each other,
and also point
to the curiosity
and have the clue. 
So that structure's like
sort of still there,
but we added
a bunch of other, like,
clues pointing to
you know. It got
more complicated.
-Friends, we've reached a
fork in the road.
if you have yet to
play Outer Wilds,
then this is your opportunity
to get off.
Hit subscribe, smash
that like button,
close your browser,
 and boot up
your favorite video
game machine.
We're going to try to
skirt around solutions
and some of those bigger
reveals, but as a
general rule, we're 
entering the spoiler
dimension here, so
you've been warned.
Ready? All right.
Let's meet the planets.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I do remember it was
early in thesis year.
I wish I had a
picture of it,
but I just remember, like
there was a whiteboard,
and I just like, started 
drawing just ideas
on the whiteboard
and then just
circling like five
or six of them.
And one was the
Hourglass Twins.
One was just like a bunch 
of thorns stuck together.
And Brittle Hollow was sort of from
that world building assignment,
like meteors hitting a planet
that breaks apart.
One was a gas giant,
but just like
conceptually, not like the way
it is in the game.
Oh, and then the comet,
just because we were like,
elliptical orbits are cool, and
it'll look cool on the map.
Let's throw a comet in.
Maybe if it gets near the
sun, we can do
something with heat.
- The joke we always make
about Outer Wilds is
it's the game you're
not supposed to make.
'Cause like the way you do nice
lighting in games is
by static objects
that don't move.
Everything in Outer Wilds is
always moving.
The way you, like, make games
is on a grid
in Maya. Everything in Outer Wilds
is on a sphere.
Any, like, thing you expect out of
game development, we just
had to throw away and
figure it out.
And so each planet had
its own weird problems to solve
where it's like, you know,
we think we've figured out
how to make the terrain
on Timber Hearth.
then you go to the
Hourglass Twins, and it just
doesn't work at all.
DANNY: when Wesley applied
for the job at Mobius,
he had a few things
going for him.
He had worked on a number
of large projects including
 EverQuest, Microsoft Flight,
and HoloLens.
But before he worked
in game development,
Wesley spent his youth
growing up in the
Santa Cruz mountains
on a campground
surrounded by redwoods.
So when it came to creating
striking visuals for each
of the planets,
he knew exactly where to
pull inspiration from.
- Early on, we decided to
reference national parks.
Timber Hearth is a combination
of Yellowstone
and Sequoia National Park,
and a little bit of Mount Rainier too,
'cause on the surface, you kind of have
like the alpine trees.
Brittle Hollow, we looked at
Greenland and Iceland,
like the basalt rock stuff,
which at the time,
there was like, no games
that did that.
and then every game that's come
 out in the last ten
 years has had that
environment in it.
Giants Deep is probably
the least based
on a national park.
It's sort of loosely
inspired by the Santa Cruz beach
cliffs where I grew up
And then, at last,
our friend Dark Bramble.
You know, it's your friendly
neighborhood planet.
DANNY: The stage was set.
Mobius had established
its solar system,
six unique worlds
locked in a celestial fire circle
the player would
dance again and again.
Each of these worlds
was designed to be unique,
and so each of them
was a unique design challenge.
The clock is ticking here, folks.
But I still think we
have enough time
to take a trip around
the solar system.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
WESLEY: The first one we did in
after the Fig campaign
was Timber Hearth. We
 worked on the village, which
shouldn't have been
the first thing that we did.
It's one of the most complex
series in the game.
I think we remade the village
about six times
throughout development. The village
was sort of like we would
keep coming back around to it.
Every time we would
improve the art style, 
it's like, all right,
How can we make
the village better again?
We need to fix all these
things 'cause, you know
playtests would show
that people
weren't finding the 
right tutorials.
-There were a lot of problems with
that version of the village.
But people also just weren't excited
to go into space
because everyone they were
talking to was like,
why would you do that?
Why would you
go explore
the cosmos?
Really early on, they were like,
kind of antagonistic
about the idea of
going into space.
We were like, OK, we're going to make--
the player's going to be the one who's
excited to go into space,
and everyone else is like
don't do it. Like, oh, this is
 having the opposite effect.
And so Kelsey and 
I talked, and
came up with idea of OK, you're the 
newest astronaut  in the
space program. Your village
has a space program.
People actually want to do this
stuff. It's a bit quirky,
but we're going to get you
excited about space
by having everyone else on some level
be excited about space.
- The last version of the
writing for Hornfels was
is the person who gives
you the launch codes,
and he's also the only
mandatory conversation
in the entire game. Initially 
we were trying things like
giving the player the option to
ask what their mission was
or where to go next,
and then he would
go like, eh, it's
up to you.
And what we end up
with instead
was we reversed it.
You, as a player,
What do you want
to do next?
That ended up
really working
like surprisingly well, because
you know, you have--
 It's a selection. We gave
them a few
ideas too, right?
It's like
if you didn't know what to do,
we still give, like,
yeah, there's some things you could
be interested in.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Giant's Deep was originally just going
to be a gas giant.
It wasn't going to have an ocean.
But we wanted there to be
islands, like, floating in the sky.
But we were like,
How are we going to get
islands? Like why?
Like how are we going to get that
to work
physics-wise, also, like
just conceptually.
Like, well, maybe there are two
layers of fluids
of different densities,
and it's like,
well, one of them can just be water.
Oh, it's an ocean planet.
Then we're going to toss 'em up with
tornadoes, 'cause we can do that.
My favorite planet is Giant's Deep,
just because I love storms.
Like I was really into tornado movies
when I was a kid
and that kind
of stuff.
So getting to make these giant tornadoes
was a lot of fun for me.
-We have the fluid system, 
which is like pretty
pretty simple, but it's
a student project.
You just sort of take the things
you have and just
use them over and over
again, and so
we used the fluid system
for the geysers,
for the sand funnel on
Hourglass Twins,
for the water on
Giant's Deep,
for the tornadoes on
Giant's deep.
It's just us reusing, like,
the same idea.
We're just going to, like, take
a force and fling something
to sort of lean into
the idea that just it's all these
pieces moving around, 
and you're just caught
in the storm.
WESLEY: Yeah, Dark Bramble is
sort of a weird case.
The challenges there
were very different.
The biggest challenge was just the
scale of Dark Bramble.
Because when you fly in, like,
it's covered in fog.
So you can't tell, but those
environments, like,
they're just huge in comparison
to anywhere else
in the solar system.
ALEX: It was largely motivated
 that we wanted at least
one of the planets to be
a zero-g environment.
And obviously there was
something very large
that we had to hide 
inside Dark Bramble.
The planets in the game are,
like, not that big.
And we just embraced the idea
of these sort of
dimensional pockets that
you fly through.
It works really well
with the lights.
LARA COLSON: Dark Bramble
has ice around it,
and it's like, all right, easy,
just make some ice.
Well, it needs to look specifically
like Dark Bramble ice
so when you see it on a different
planet, you be like,
hey, that's some stuff
from Dark Bramble.
I can't just make it
look like ice
because I used the ice looking
ice over here
on the comet, or on, like,
Brittle Hollow,
or stuff like that. 
So it's like, OK,
how can I make this ice
still look like ice
but look different from
this other ice?
ALEX: A binary planet seemed
cool, and just the idea that
something could transfer
from one to the other over.
'Cause we're just looking for ways
that we can change things over time,
ideally in a way that is
like, easy for us.
And I remember originally, 
it was like, oh,
it could be like water flowing
between the two.
And then sand just seemed,
just couldn't resist the idea
of you getting closed
into these
 knowing you're just like,
oh my god, I'm trapped.
And I'm going to die
a horrible death.
It was too good
to pass up.
In the final release, the tech
and the art teams
did some really cool stuff
to make it look
more complicated than
a sphere getting
bigger and a sphere
getting smaller.
But that's, like,
all it is.
WESLEY: You know, we think we figured out
how to make the terrain on Timber Hearth.
Then to go to the Hourglass Twins,
and it just doesn't work at all.
And so we had to come up with
a different strategy there.
And so each planet
had that.
For the Hourglass Twins, it's that
it's full of caves.
And so as I mentioned before,
you have two different
curvatures at the different
heights of a planet.
And for the Ember
Twin, you have
caves that slope from
one of those to the other.
So not only do you have
two different curvatures,
but you have a ramp
that has to match
one curvature at the
top of the ramp,
and a different curvature at
the bottom of the ramp.
And then you got to
put all the props in
there and make it feel
good to move on.
So it's just like a compoundingly 
difficult thing to do.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALEX: We didn't have it in the 
alpha, but we had the idea
for it melting, and then
Loan was the one who did the
first pass on it. And then
at some point
I went and did a pass
on the surface
and came up with the
idea. 'Cause the comet
wasn't that fun
to navigate
just moving around on it,
'cause there's not
much there, and it's like
well, what if--
What if the ice, you can just
like, slide on the ice?
Is that too goofy?
Like is that tonally
dissonant with what you
learn in the comet?
WESLEY: The hardest planet, we often 
referred to as the final boss
for the art team,
was Brittle Hollow.
Because it's the biggest planet,
because it has
both an outside and an
inside surface,
it's one of the biggest planets
just in terms of diameter,
and then it's one of the most
complex in terms of
level design and pathing, and
all these different things
that need to go there, like
two giant Nomai cities.
It was the hardest
for every discipline.
The game design,
tech, art.
Like for everyone it was
the final boss.
Brittle Hollow was originally,
like, had a molten
core. There was
no black hole.
And the pieces, I believe
the pieces
they were going to get
just sent away
from the planet. And at
some point it's just
like, this doesn't actually
make any sense.
 Like why are they going,
why are they drifting away
from gravity? Like, OK,
can we make
them fall in?
How would we, like--
Where are they
going to go?
Are they just going to like-- 
OK, there's black
hole and it spits them
out over here.
I remember prototyping a version
of that and then
changing my mind, being like nah,
this is too much.
Just like too crazy
and weird, and like
it's not as colorful because
the black hole's all dark.
Let's just go back to
the molten core.
And we'll add geysers that,
 like, from the core,
shoot water, and the
geysers shoot these
pieces of the crust
off into space.
And then at some point
was just like, nope.
Nope, the black hole this was cool.
Let's go back to that.
And then weirdly the geysers
ended up on Timber Hearth,
And the idea of pieces getting
thrown into space
ended up on
Giant's Deep.
[WIND HOWLING]
WESLEY: It was like, hard to tune the
pieces falling at the right time
'cause it's a simulation.
They have hit points,
and they get hit by meteors,
and they fall.
And it's not scripted in
the sense of, like,
it happens in a
specific pattern.
It took a long time for
design to, like, lock it.
And then art had to
go in and, you know,
just fill it out.
And there's just so
so many rocks
on that planet.
Just thousands and
thousands of rocks.
And we put all those
there by hand.
It's not, like, procedural,
so we make sure that you can
see in the right places, and that
it feels good to walk
on and all of that.
And then with that planet,
you also have to make
sure that like, in
between the crevices, you know,
you can't fall through in some
but you can fall through in
 others where you're supposed to.
Pretty much any challenge
that you can have
we did have there, and
there's all the normal
normal Outer Wilds problems of
you have curved
surfaces with different curvature
based on where
you are on the planet,
which is not something that
a lot of games have
to deal with.
LOAN: It was supposed to be
a bit overwhelming at first.
Right? Because you arrive in a setting,
and it adds
to the whole feeling of
wonder when you arrive
and it's like, [GASP].
Oh, my god.
There's so much. It just
treats this like
one piece of one main
piece of content.
The first thing you
would find when
entering the district. Like
another one of the
districts you arrive, and there's
a big waterfall
That sort of like frames
three white--
We call them Nomai whiteboards,
but there's only
one of them is, has
text on it.
And you're like, oh, OK.
I probably need to find
the other two somewhere, right?
So the first thing players see
or the first thing players
experience should
give them a question.
And then, like,
the natural impulse
is like, if
the player has a question
in their mind,
hopefully by then,
they'd go, OK,
let me answer
that question.
[WHOOSH]
[SILENCE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- [SIGH]. Mobius had made
an entire solar
system for the player
to explore, but this
solar system didn't have
any explicit objectives,
mission markers, or
fast travel.
So how did they let
the player know
where to go, and
more importantly,
how did they let players know
when they had accidentally
found something important?
- We didn't want players
to go and look
behind every tree
and every rock
and every nook
and cranny.
So what he made sure of
was that detail
would always only be
where content was.
So like if you look at
Timber Hearth,
you have like, fast
expansive grass
on the surface and
such. Just grass.
Nothing there. And then
each of the
actual craters with content
have incredible
visual density of
detail.
-It was like a challenge
of trying to
stick as close to the gray box
as possible.
Because every time it's like,
ah, I'll put like a
nice little tree over here,
or like a pot, or
like some little thing.
And then the designers would look
at it and be like, oh,
like, actually,
there's like a very specific
viewpoint you need
to be able to see this clue
that's across this
chasm, so if you put
too much stuff there,
you'll block the view.
And it's like, ugh, god.
LOAN: Lighting as well
sometimes, just like if
you keep everything
relatively dark
or like, same tones
and then put
bright blue or something
light there.
And it's like immediately
you notice that.
Audio as well, like there's the
traveling music when you're
traveling around, and then there's
music when you're in places with content.
So like if you enter
a Nomai ruin,
suddenly piano starts coming in,
and you hear the music coming in.
So it's all these little
self clues.
If you don't have
that instinct, there's
something here, there's 
not something here.
Because of the way we
structured the game, it is
very easy to
hide things.
We wanted certain
paths to be the
path you use. 
Just from a
narrative perspective,
it was a nicer
way to find
that place.
But then we wanted
quick shortcuts
to get back
to these places.
And we were all 
worried about how
would we hide these,
and had all
these, and it's
like, no.
Because we trained the
players to not
look behind any
nook and cranny.
We learned a lot of
things in relationship
to a player, the 
way people
foresee things, and the
way, you know, players
naturally go about it.
Some of it
was frustrating, like the
natural impulse to
to see text as lore was
definitely something
we had to
fight against.
The natural impulse that
most players have to
meet a goal. Hopefully
more and more games
do away with that, and so
I'm hoping that
slowly it'll be 
easier, actually
to do the sort of things we
did in Outer Wilds
as people get more, 
like, willing to
set their own goals
and get a bit more
proactive in trying to
read things as
the way to progress.
DANNY: Outer Wilds is 
such a complex
design challenge that
it's easy to forget
the technical complexity
of the project.
While Alex and Loan
led the design team,
the game's engineering was led
by another duo.
Technical artist Logan Ver Hoef
had graduated
 CS games at
US Santa Cruz,
and was a year behind Alex
and Loan at USC.
While software engineer Jeffrey Yu
had graduated USC as
an aerospace engineer with a
minor in computer science.
 - So technical art
is writing
shaders that run
on a GPU
as well as parti-- Setting up
particle systems
and setting up lighting and
that sort of thing.
So I did a bunch
of math that makes
the singularities
look like they do.
I did a bunch of math
that made our
lighting work the
way it does.
A lot of tools work, half
the gameplay code.
- Other than designers, it's just
the two of us.
- Yeah.
- Doing all the
code, so.
- Yeah.
This is Timber Hearth.
This is what it
actually looks like
in our scene.
Here's, like, the moon
over here.
DANNY: So how do you like,
work on this,
considering it's like a sphere?
 Like how do you
get in and that
sort of stuff?
LOGAN: I mean, you just
learn how to
sort work like that.
So you just--
We're actually looking straight
up right now.
But you just--
Because flying around still
works the same.
DANNY: Right.
LOGAN: You just
 learn to sort of
work in this weird way.
Sometimes people, like,
work like this or
something, or that.
And anytime we're 
working on the
underside of a planet,
I have to do this
sort of a flip,
kickflip here.
And now right and
left is reversed.
DANNY: Oh no.
LOGAN: But I remember
that I'm in this mode.
So I'm just automatically
like, OK.
Each planet is a
rigidbody,
like a physically simulated
like, object
moving through space, 
affected by forces.
And so is everything else, like,
everything in the game is.
You know if we were
a different game,
we could get away with
saying, like, you know what?
We'll just, like, you know, fake it
when you're on this planet,
and it'll look right. But
because Outer Wilds
is a game about simulation
and about truth
in systems, that was
top of my list
for things I didn't want to do
was fake anything.
That is one of those things
where we try to
just like, tighten it.
We reduce the number of
colliders on the planet. We
reduce the complexity
of them while still
having it be a
surface you can
walk around on.
So like if this
coffee cup
were a physics object,
you know, the
the rendering mesh
has all this
detail and curvature and
all this in it.
Physics could probably
just be like a
eight sided cylinder, and
you know, that's enough.
You can fly around, hit the wall,
bounce off, roll around.
- Maybe even make it just,
you know, a four sided one.
- Yeah. If you don't need it
to roll, four sided.
 If the player's just
walking into it.
So going in and
finding places to
cut back here and trim
a little bit there is good.
A lot of people wonder
like, hey, are they
faking all the caves
inside planets?
DANNY: So the zero-g cave,
it's literally zero-g because
it's in the middle
of the planet.
LOGAN: Yes, yeah. 
Because you're no longer
being attracted to, like,
the sum of all the mass.
Now you're there, and all the
mass is around you.
And so it's all pulling
on you equally
in each direction. So 
this is actually
physically correct. If
you leave a planet,
we do a bunch of stuff
to optimize it while
you're not there. We switch
to, like, a super
low res version of the planet,
you know, handmade by
like Lara or 
someone else.
- Colliders--
LOGAN: Yeah, turn off a
bunch of the collision
so we aren't updating all this
collision math while there's
nothing there to collide with.
We suspend a bunch of
scripts and a bunch
of objects.
The issue is that
if you leave
your ship on a planet, then
you go somewhere else.
It still needs to
collide with stuff.
JEFFREY: We need colliders there.
So leave colliders.
LOGAN: And furthermore for
this philosophy of
the truth in the system,
if there's a geyser
going off and should
be hitting that ship,
it needs to keep
hitting that ship.
If the sand level's rising,
and it's like, trapped
underneath something, it needs
to respond to that.
That mean we have to keep all
the collision and scripts
 running when the ship is 
left on a planet.
When you leave a probe
on a planet,
you need to be able to
take snapshots of it
from across the solar
system, which means
all the rendering, all the
visuals need to be turned on.
- If you have it right
next to a geyser,
the geyser has to go off.
[WIND BLOWING]
ALEX: The worst thing you
can possibly do in that game
is have the scout, yourself, and
the ship all on different planets.
And if you really want 
to go hard I'd
put the Nomai shuttle
on a fourth.
But, like, don't do
that. Don't.
 It's 'cause you--
We have to have--
We have to render at least
some of what's going on.
Like if you leave your ship
on Brittle Hollow
and a piece breaks, your ship
needs to go through
the black hole and get
 spit out the white hole.
And if you leave it on Ash Twin,
 we need your ship to
to get sucked up by the
sand funnel, even if
you're halfway across,
you got teleported to
to Giant's Deep or something.
And that was
really important to us. We tried
really, really hard.
And the tech team kind of
worked really hard to
make sure we didn't 
lose the sense that
this is a world that doesn't
revolve around you.
'Cause that was one of
the main design pillars.
It's like, not a player--
It's not supposed to
feel like a player
centric game.
The world doesn't stop simulating just
because you're elsewhere, right.
- At one point we thought about
making this an achievement
but then thought
better of it.
- Oh, no, we didn't think
better of it.
Annapurna got, uh,
miffed at us
because one of our
suggested achievements
was called "Critical
Performance Hit."
And it was leave your
ship on one planet,
and your probe on another,
and go to a third.
And they were like, you
cannot have an achievement
be the player crashing
their Playstation
or Xbox. Like, no
absolute.
Are you insane? And
we're like, yes.
JEFFREY: We're purposely making
 people get frame drops.
LOGAN: But good point though.
Yeah, it's like, don't
encourage people to do this.
And we're like, OK.
You're right, but
not as fun.
DANNY: Like everything in this
world is moving, right?
I guess the sun is
maybe the only object
that's not technically moving?
- Technically it is too.
Because the way we--
with video games you
 got to keep the camera
near the center of the
world's coordinate space.
DANNY: OK.
ALEX: Or you start running into
floating point error
and everything starts
kind of jittering.
And so we have to keep
the player near the mathematical
origin of the world.
And the way we do that
in this game--
 A lot of games sort of,
like you reach a threshold,
and they like
reload the next
zone, right?
But because ours, everything's
moving relative
to each other, what I
ended up doing back
when it was a student
project is just
every time we apply a
force to the player,
we just apply an opposite
force to every
physics object in
the world.
DANNY: Wow.
ALEX: That's currently simulating.
And it doesn't actually really
do anything to performance because
 we're already doing that.
We're already applying
forces to every object,
because everything's moving.
It's just another number
on top of numbers.
So when you jump
in Outer Wilds, technically
every planet's jumping out
from under you, and you're
more or less not moving.
So it works, and we
haven't changed it.
 DANNY: There's some cosmic
horror about that or something,
Some like science--
- Yeah.
DANNY: It makes me recoil a little
bit now hearing that.
- I love that, because
we're always like,
ah yeah, the player's not
the center of the world,
but technically you are.
Like literally the center
of the world at
all times.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DANNY: Like the best sci-fi, 
Outer Wilds marries
the technical with
the emotional.
And a large part of
this heavy lifting
is done by the narrative
and musical score.
For the story, Alex turned
to his lifelong
collaborator, his
sister Kelsey.
As children they made
silly plays together,
and stop motion mockups of
the Star Wars films
starring beanie babies.
Kelsey had been writing her
entire life and
had often used
a tangential form of note
 taking, which inspired
the Nomai whiteboards. I was
eager to talk to
her about the wonderful
personalization of the Nomai
using these interplanetary
telephone logs.
But unfortunately, she doesn't
live in the same
state as the studio,
so we did the
next best thing 
and aimed our scout
across the country 
at North Carolina.
[BOOM]
[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]
-Some of them are, like,
literally just meeting notes
like, here's what we decided, and
someone else was like,
oh, yeah, by the way,
so and so wants to do
this other thing. So
having kind of
a rationale behind why these things
are getting written down
and explained, to me,
just kind of added
a sense of logic to
what was going on.
Yeah, a little less
difficult to
explain things because
they're talking to each other.
They need, you know, everyone
to understand what's going on.
For how much Outer Wilds
is a very
narrative driven game,
I actually really love
very character driven writing.
And a lot of
my writing is like that.
It's very intensely
about characters and
about their evolutions,
and I think that's kind of
what the difference.
I felt like that was what
was going to be the difference
between having an interesting
story with interesting
characters versus the
more tropey
ancient alien civilization
that was here before us
and is smarter than us.
What essentially the
player is doing
is they're
tracing the same journey
that the Nomai took.
And then eventually, spoiler
alert, toward the end of the game,
you're, you know,
finishing that journey.
And to really feel like
you were connecting
with the Nomai.
I don't think people
really connect with, like,
a civilization as a whole.
So I think it necessarily
had to be very
character driven, which
was terrifying
because, yeah, we don't
see these characters.
And also I had very small chunk
of text to work with.
And most of it had to
be dedicated toward
quickly advancing a
complex story
and then also getting
across your clues.
And then, of course,
the clues work as
you know, here's what's
happened. Here's kind of
 the next piece. Here's where
 you should go
to continue chronologically
in the story.
Then there's a little
piece that directs usually
backward of like, here's
where I'd go to check out
where this piece came from,
if you want to trace
the opposite direction
chronologically.
And then it usually connects
into other things
depending on who the
characters are in that
particular, because I use--
Certain characters
are attached to
certain plotlines
so that when that 
character is present,
typically that's kind of
the signifier that
plotline is coming into play
and intersecting with
this other one.
ALEX: How do we communicate
this idea to players
in a way that is, like,
interesting narratively?
Makes sense why the
Nomai would even be talking
about this. It is also like,
you know, telling you.
You read it, and you're like,
OK, I get what
this text is actually communicating.
And we just did just
so many revisions of all of this,
 and so many playtests.
LOAN: This is how you
used to read text in the game.
DANNY: Oh, wow.
LOAN: Except it's
not working.
DANNY: Is it busted?
- Probably.
- They were busted at
one point, yeah.
- You have to pull out your--
- Oh, no, you have pull out
your translator.
- Oh, my gosh. 
I coded this.
DANNY: Oh, wow.
- It does that
faster now.
- That's, yeah.
- From a design perspective,
a certain amount
of minimalism was
actually advantageous.
Like knowledge is
the only reward.
So you learning, you know,
things is the only
thing you get. You know,
it's really hard to do
because players see
text as lore
that's not necessarily
actionable.
We really had to set
the example of
never having lore
in the text
which also applies
to other things.
To have lore on like,
pieces of level design
or a part of the
environment.
So through design, we
actually had to be
pretty minimalist, because
we had to make sure
everything was actionable
and everything was pointing
to the thing it
helped you to do.
ALEX: So originally, the ship
log we knew we were going to need.
'Cause we didn't want people to
have to take paper notes.
We originally only had
the solar system view,
where it's sort of the
planets in a row.
We added the rumor mode
with the lines,
the detective board, like a year,
a year before launch.
Because we had some
playtest people just
weren't understanding the
structure of the game,
like how to go about
investigating.
Let's just show them how
we think about it in--
Like let's just put our design
 docs into the game
pretty much is
what we did.
We needed way to
get people curious
about things, and pointing
your telescope
at a distant planet
and hearing a sound
just seemed like a no-- like,
of course people are going to want to
check that out. You can
go to NASA's website
and there are these
recordings of, like,
sounds from Saturn, where
they sort of interpret
data they've recorded.
And there's just,
we knew we wanted to
have these travelers around
the solar system
on each planet,
sort of as the trail guide
or the travel guides
for each planet. And it's
 like, OK, they each
 play an instrument, and
wouldn't it be cool
to pick up the music in
sort of whimsical fashion?
- Back in the very beginning
stages, we were
talking about having the different
travelers on different planets.
And then I kind of
crafted the concept
with Alex of having them,
like, actually all
playing the same tune, not
having them play different songs.
Like I was like, we should
have them play together
so it's kind of grasped
this approach where
no matter where you're at,
the world can be like
a smaller place 
through music,
and like, you can
be connected that way.
Hopefully captivated that
message by having 'em
all apart, but really
they're all in sync
like, in a certain way
through this, like
tune that's really, like
a premonition to
the end of the game.
Really it was based on
like, thinking about sitting
around a campfire.
Something that's simple
and easy to play
but memorable, so like it
kind of gets caught in your head.
So, I mean really
the main theme is only
a couple bars long.
It's about the joy
of life, and like,
the journey, and
all that existential
stuff that gets involved
towards the end
of the game.
And it's sort of this theme
that starts off like
when you hear it first,
it sounds kind of happy
but over time it
like, becomes this
melancholy and like
reflective piece.
So that's kind of what
I was aiming for.
This bittersweet, nostalgic
campfire tune.
Really I wanted it to be
like when music is
playing, something important
is happening.
It's not just kind of--
Like it's important
for it to stand out when
it needs to, and when there
doesn't need to be
music, there shouldn't be,
especially like when
you get into
the desolation of space, and
I think it helps make
it a little bit
more fearful
in areas where there's no
music, 'cause you really
do feel like you're a
little bit more alone.
'Cause all you're hearing is
like your breathing and stuff.
That way, people
notice the music,
and it actually is meaningful
rather than just always
 just being around.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The second thing I ever
wrote was the main title.
So what I did was
I went back,
and I recorded myself
playing banjo with my
seven years ago self 
at the very end
just 'cause I thought it
would be cool to literally
wrap the game up. 
Like when you first
play it, it's like
me playing at
at the beginning when we started
and then at the very end.
It's like multitrack 
banjo, and one of 'em
is me from seven
years ago.
And one of them is me from
right before the game came out,
so like May. Yeah.
That's why I was like,
I have to do it,
I have to do it.
DANNY: We talked to the team
at Mobius about design
for over two days,
but as you know,
time is precious, so we
can't fit it all in the doc.
So if you're interested in
watching some bonus scenes,
you can do so on our
Patreon for the price of
a few bags of
marshmallows.
Speaking of paywalls, 
Outer Wilds had
what you might consider
to be an untraditional launch.
For PC, it would be an
Epic Game Store exclusive,
while on consoles, it would
launch as part of
Xbox Gamepass. We
asked the development
about the reasons
for both of these
partnerships, and they
said those decisions
were made by Masi
and their publisher Annapurna.
The game launched in
May of 2019
and has been slowly
building positive word
of mouth as the
studio continues
to tinker on it. The Ash  
Twin project has gone
through several redesigns,
 as the final
puzzle has stumped
a number of players.
While the game was 
brought to Playstation 4
in October of 2019.
- Yes, I would like to
publicly apologize
for the Ash Twin
project puzzle.
I mean, sort of--
We are, we are
still working on that
actually. Yeah, we're--
We keep-- There was one
where you just didn't have enough
long form playtests. We did
do long form playtests,
and we knew that
was an issue.
It's not as easy as going
in and like, just telling people
the answer, because we don't
want to invalidate all of
the other clues. So we're
trying some new stuff
our new patch, actually,
that's coming out pretty soon.
We'll see. We're watching people
play, streamers online
you know, still
taking playtest notes.
LOAN: We've been
really happy,
you know, with
Game Pass.
It really has brought
so many people
that may not have played the game,
and now then they have.
They're just enthusiastic
evangelists for us.
So that has been a really,
really great experience.
Because it's a game
that's so easy to spoil,
you try to say as
little as possible,
which makes it
hard to sell.
So like a game that is
in itself a mystery
will definitely benefit from
the subscription service
because it's like,
people are like--
They won't buy a
mystery, but they may
try out a mystery
and then be like,
oh, my god. You
have to try this.
WESLEY: I remember one of
my favorite moments when we first
first showed the game off
at PAX East, someone was
playing on Brittle Hollow, and 
they like parked their ship.
And they went down and
explored for a while.
Then they were looking over,
and they saw a piece falling.
And then their ship just sort of,
like, tumbled off
the top of the fragment
and like, bounced off
as it was falling
into the black hole.
And they were like,
"my ship!"
And they were like, chasing
after it as it's like
falling into this black
hole, and I was like,
all right, we made
a cool game.
I spent a lot of time
on it, like several
people on the team
spent basically a year of
our lives working
on that ship.
And we had all these, like,
grand ideas of, like
how we want it to break apart,
and we want all the
little gadgets to be
actually useful.
And like in the middle of 
development when you're just
trying to ship the game,
it's like oh, there's no way.
It's just going to be
a box that moves around.
I guess we'll make it work.
And then when we actually
managed to get, like,
the damage in there.
We managed to get the
destructibility in there.
And just the more little
details we could add, it just
really feels right.
And seeing people
fall in love with the ship,
and have adventures where the
gravity crystal breaks 
and they're floating
around, hurtling towards
the sun, and they're trying
to repair things. 
It's just so exciting
for me every time I
see something like that.
- I mean, when you're
a musician
and a composer, you
want to be listened to,
and you want to be heard,
and like, have your voice
like, speak a story through
your musical voice.
And finally that
has happened on
a large scale
where people are
noticing my work.
So it's like
finally stuff is paying off
after all this time.
The community behind
Outer Wilds is
really passionate about
the music, too,
as well as the game,
so that's been like
incredible to have
people reach out and, like,
tell me how much the
music means to them
or that they've been
listening to it nonstop.
And, I don't know, it's really--
Like, it feels really good.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[WHOOSH]
- All right, it's time we address
the elephant in the room.
There's probably a bunch of
you who clicked on this
expecting us to be
talking about
something else.
A different game
set in space that
came out in 2019
and was developed by a studio
based in Los Angeles.
- I think we were just
in a class, and a few
of us were brainstorming.
We were just tossing
ideas, words that felt
good. I think will--
I remember at one point, we
were like, Cosmic Wilderness.
Then we were like,
all right, well, wilds
is shorter than that,
and then, you know
Outer Wilds somehow, you know,
you just kind of slot
the words together.
Eventually it's like,
Outer Wilds.
Yeah, all right.
And it stuck.
DANNY: Do you remember
when you first saw that
there was another game
coming out that had a
somewhat similar name?
- I do. 'Cause it was
almost exactly a year ago
at The Game Awards.
DANNY: Oh, right.
- Yeah. Actually, no.
We had seen it.
They'd filed a patent
or like a copyright.
We had seen The Outer Worlds,
and I remember looking at that
being like, wow, I really hope they like,
hear about our game and don't do that.
But The Game Awards,
we saw that trailer,
and it's just like, all right.
All right, cool.
The Outer Worlds and
Outer Wilds together in 2019.
They obviously are
a bigger studio than
we are and have a
bigger kind of reach,
and I think ultimately
it's probably good for us.
'Cause people talk about
it like, wait
Wait, these aren't the same game?
What is happening?
DANNY: Have you ever met any
of the folks from Obsidian?
They're pretty close.
They're in Irvine.
- Are they really?
DANNY: Yeah.
- No, man. You know, we
talked about that we
should do some sort of
cross-promotional thing with them.
Just like a-- Just anything.
Or like April Fools
we just actually
switch our names.
I think Logan mentioned
that the other day.
We were just like,
it'd be so good though.
DANNY: The Outer Bundle.
- Yeah, it's been
a good--
It's been a strong year
for outer games.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DANNY: We've explored the
origin of this game,
the design of its planets,
how the team
guided players, the
technical challenges,
and the emotional
core of the game.
But Outer Wilds is more than
the sum of its parts.
It's the type of game that
leaves you with a feeling that
can't be explained. It has
to be experienced.
And for the team at
Mobius Digital, the
years long cycle
from award winning
thesis project to
full retail release
has been an experience
all on its own.
- I think the
nicest thing is
even though working on
the project has been
like, super crazy,
we haven't
haven't had to
like, crunch.
And we all work
reasonable hours.
I think it's the fact
that it's just a
nice chill atmosphere.
- Yeah, we try to keep
the work environment
good and safe
and make sure
people don't overwork,
but to some extent we did
not as good of work on
that side for the leads.
For me, Alex, and Wesley,
we both had to
deal with a lot
of stress, and so
yeah, it was difficult.
But to finally
see the results and
to hear from people,
this dad who played
the game with
their I think nine
or ten-year-old kid
who told us that at
the end, the kid wanted
to become
an astronaut.
I was just melting
in my chair
reading this, you know?
That's our soul.
It's just like, oh,
my god, OK.
This was all worth it
in the end, yeah.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ALEX: When we released it and
we started to get feedback
back in, just seeing the
people who understood
what we were
trying to do.
It's like, people like the
game for the reasons why
we made it, and like,
they got the
story we were trying
to tell. And I'm really
proud that we told
a story that could only--
In a way that could only be
told through video games.
'Cause we really, we tried
really hard. We wanted
to make something that
couldn't have been made
any other way. 
Yeah, that there's sort of this
just connection with
everyone who plays the game,
and, like, we added
something meaningful
to the lives of the
people who played it
is just really humbling,
but, like, an incredible feeling.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
- Thanks for watching
our video.
Shout out to all these
paying patrons
who paid for all
these marshmallows
which I've been
gorging on
for most of
this shoot.
They're really delicious.
They'd be a lot nicer
if we actually
had a fire here,
but setting fires indoors
probably not a good idea.
And California kind of frowns,
you know, frowns on people
setting fires outdoors for
documentaries about video games.
So we just did it
in post, I guess.
Thank you so much
for supporting our work. 
If you'd like to become a
patron and get access to
bonus scenes from
this documentary,
and a bunch of other things,
then please go to
patreon.com/noclip
and help us fund
even more documentaries
in 2020.
This whole video is of
just me chewing on marshmallows for patrons.
They pay for
the good stuff.
[LAUGHING]
Oh my god.
ALEX: We have on that's
like, where we like,
 lock really. It's like
there's an IGF build
but with a lot of the
planets locked off.
So they won't be able to
spoil themselves for the whole game.
So if you go too close to certain
planets, it blows up the sun.
DANNY: Oh, that's funny.
ALEX: There's like a spoiler
warning around the planet.
DANNY: Right.
ALEX: And then there's like,
the original one that
we'd like, took it down,
but you can find it.
It's kind of fun.
LOGAN: You should definitely
get some footage of--
- This is supposed to be 
the tower that you--
DANNY: Right.
ALEX: This is the tower of quantum knowledge.
You have to wait for it to fall through.
except there's like, oh yeah.
That's the original one, right?
That's not yours.
LOGAN: Yeah, it has a weird
spinny distortion.
DANNY: Oh, there
goes a piece.
LOGAN: Oh god.
DANNY: Whee!
LOGAN: Oh, it caught on
one object, but it--
ALEX: Oh right, 'cause
the physics actually--
DANNY: Are you going to
hit this thing?
LOGAN: Apparently.
ALEX: Getting to the
southern observatory
used to be a lot easier.
[LAUGHING]
[TYPING NOISES]
