You do not find gear and there are no clear-cut missions spelled out for you to perform. “Again, “figure out” is the operative phrase here. Each place feels unique and meticulously crafted, from the largely aquatic planet of Giant’s Deep, whose rising green seas and sky-high whirlpools can disrupt you at any time, to Brittle Hollow, a dying planet with a black hole at its core that’s pulling in chunks of the surface as time goes on, potentially blocking your path or even sucking in and destroying your destination before you can reach it. Each planet has a unique look and feel, not to mention a mechanical concept that complicates traveling and creates “natural” puzzles out getting from point A to point B.
Since exploration is the centerpiece of Outer Wilds, each of the five planets serves as a mechanical and aesthetic showcase. If you’re willing to work through it, though, that fear is almost always unfounded and the thrilling feeling of discovering a new place is always rewarding. If you, like me, are mildly unsettled by swimming through underwater levels in a lot of games, you may find the experience of floating in space instills some existential dread. It feels like anything could come out of the deep black void at any time – and there are some surprising moments in store. Though the solar system is small enough that you could conceivably touch down on every planet in a single 22-minute run, you are smaller and insignificant by comparison. “That lack of understanding makes every run, from blasting off for the first time to exploring a previously hidden place, both exciting and a bit terrifying. The simple premise gives way to the interesting story (stories, really) you uncover in your travels: The Nomai, like Metroid’s Chozo, Mass Effect’s Protheans, or any of a handful forerunner races seem unknowable at first glance, but as you become acquainted with them through diaries and other notes they feel both distant – they are dead, after all – but relatable.
That process leads to a long, convoluted puzzle which you solve by exploring each of the system’s five planets, along with a handful of moons and other points of interest.
#Outer wilds logo how to
Before too long, you figure out that you are trapped in a surprisingly helpful Groundhog Day- (or Majora’s Mask)-style time loop, so it is up to you to figure out how to break out of it. By turning lore into puzzle elements into progress, into the meat of the experience rather than the dressing, it elevates the process of learning about these worlds to heights rarely seen in games.You control an alien astronaut/anthropologist exploring your own solar system to uncover and unravel the mysteries of the Nomai, a mysterious and ancient race whose ruins lie scattered across every planet. That’s a problem that Outer Wilds, a space-exploration sim laced with puzzles and a mystery story, sidesteps by putting the storytelling that normally litters the background of games front and center. Countless worlds smother us with lore and histories, giving us the opportunity to understand them better if we choose to stop and smell the roses, but that understanding is usually optional, and often feels superficial as a result. Legitimate discovery is a difficult sensation to simulate in a video game.
0 kommentar(er)
