Outer Wilds is a fantastic game. If this were a review, that would be the takeaway. This exploration-based title delivers on every promise to offer players with the opportunity to bound across a diverse solar system teeming with ruins, hazards, questions, and answers to the deepest mysteries of the universe. As you fly between worlds, you discover the secrets and musings of a civilization long past, meet up with fellow explorers and friends, and become a central figure in a time loop that has engulfed your home and just about everything else.
But this isn’t a review of Outer Wilds, because as much as I’d like to gush about every brilliant detail of this game, it prompts a more profound discussion on the magic of discovery.
SPOILER WARNING: There are major spoilers for Outer Wilds ahead.
The Collective Journey
As can probably be expected, traveling through space is fraught with peril:
- Approach gas giants with care; you never know what’s just beneath the clouds
- Watch your orbit path while you match the velocity of any celestial body
- Not every perceivable light is worth pursuing or in your best interest
- The sun has a strong gravitational pull
- Autopilot is sometimes inaccurate
Although Outer Wilds features a prominently advertised 22-minute time loop in which you’re encouraged to explore anything and everything in sight, the dangers of exploration are so common that you’ll regularly meet your demise long before the sun goes supernova. But with every launch past Timber Hearth’s horizon, you learn something new. Similar to the loop of a Souls game, you may not pick up a revelatory piece of lore (though the game is rife with those) with each respawn, but you will develop an understanding of how best to traverse each area’s hazards and puzzles, ultimately achieving the right sequence of actions that safely (or less so) land you somewhere new.
You soon find that you’re not the first person to arrive in these places, often uncovering the remnants of the Nomai, an ancient civilization of explorers and scientists who arrived in this solar system millenia ago. And then there are yet additional arrivals who more recently predate you: your fellow Outer Wilds Ventures explorers.
You eventually become quite the trailblazer over the course of your journey through Outer Wilds, but the game is intent on illustrating the presence of those who accomplished so much before you. Besides the numerous studies and conversations left behind by the Nomai, you’ll meet up with Chert, Esker, Feldspar, Gabbro, and Riebeck, each stationed throughout the solar system to offer you a place at their campfire or hints about the secrets of their planet. Despite being content with the relatively limited breadth of their exploration, these characters provide a sense of community. They represent a collection of accomplishments that came before you and set the scene for your journey, continuing to contribute to your knowledge of the universe.
Hearthlings and Earthlings
Outer Wilds asks the player to find the path to the center of the universe in an open solar system model. Although the game tracks your progress and offers a log of your discoveries, it’s technically unnecessary to explore everything the game offers. If someone told you how to complete it from the start – if you, the player, knew the sequence of actions and events necessary to see the ending – you could reach it without even remotely playing the 20-or-so hours that the game typically demands. But that’s hardly a recommended way to play, because so much of the Outer Wilds experience is about joining your fellow explorers (humans, Hearthians, and Nomai alike) on a journey that bonds you all together.
Both you and your Hearthian avatar (conveniently left unnamed), collect morsels of information that solve the mysteries of the universe. You, the player, are responsible for understanding, remembering, and implementing the many discoveries that you’ll uncover. You must carry that information between each time loop (and potentially share it with other adventurers you know if they’re looking for a tip) and build upon it. This mental tether between the game world and reality encourages you to further identify as this alien. You are both exploring the mechanics of the solar system, whether successfully decoding an environmental conundrum or flying head-first into space junk at break-neck speed. The Groundhog Day setup of Outer Wilds encourages players to safely experiment. Your character also is stuck in a loop that puts them in a similar mindset. Death is not permanent for either of you; memory is shared; this adventure through the universe belongs to you both, but many more can lay claim to its conclusion.
Endings and Beginnings
It began with a bang. The Nomai’s ship was destroyed and they found themselves stranded in a strange part of the universe that called out to them and encouraged them to feed their sense of discovery. Although their biology is very different from our own, the Nomai’s predicament parallels the Hearthians’ origins, and humanity’s by extension – floating in the ether, wondering who we are and how we can discover our place in all of this.
We are all waking up, blinking into the cosmos, gasping for breath and looking outward at the many worlds of our universe to learn more about what is within ourselves. While the last leg of that adventure in Outer Wilds is ultimately your own, it is not without the achievements of everyone you’ve met and learned from along the way. As Reibeck says, “The past is the past now, but that’s… you know, that’s okay! It’s never really gone completely. The future is always built on the past, even if we won’t get to see it.” We may be playing our instruments worlds apart, but it’s the same song.
Putting the Band Back Together
When you near the journey’s conclusion and you’ve arrived at the Eye of the Universe, you find something that breaks through the cold, dark silence of this place: a campfire and a song. As you wander out into the darkness of the wilds to find another instrument, you always return to this fire, this warm sense of unity and beauty. You collect and build pieces of the song in much the same way you built the path that brought everyone here. They all know the part they play because they’ve been practicing it the whole time. They just needed someone to bring them all together.
Whether equipped with two eyes, three eyes, or four, all perspectives unite in pursuit of the single Eye of the Universe. Differences in personality, culture, biology, timelines, and even reality are transcended by discovery. But they find their commonality. Everyone who approaches the fire is there for the music. Some have come to play. Others are simply there to listen along and roast a marshmallow while the universe is lulled to sleep.
No one can say what awaits us when the Eye opens again, but there will certainly be someone ready to explore it.
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