Board 8 > Why did no one tell me Outer Wilds was a horror game

(+) Yeah! (+)

I liked the wandering around but I do agree with your spoiler, that was definitely the weakest part of the ending in my mind.

Man these alternate endings are kinda fucked

Slow death by starvation, a different slow death by starvation, trapping yourself on the Quantum Moon, trapping yourself in the matrix...really emphasizes the themes of not running away from the inevitable.

Knowing the ending adds a lot to how you view the owls and the impact the Eye had on them and the choices they made. Aside from the gameplay flow arguments presented, that's the biggest reason to do the ending first rather than how it actually affects the ending. You might or might not be applying your new understanding of the Eye back to the things you saw and the slides you watched now, but that's a bit different than knowing it as you are trying to piece their history together.

I thought it was a bit funny you SUDDENLY decided to go do the ending after that reason had more or less passed

KamikazePotato posted...

Outer Wilds' focus on knowledge as a reward, rather than intrinsic abilities, is approximately one thousand times more satisfying.

I find it interesting that Super Metroid did have a minor element of this, but as far as I can tell they never really did that again?

In terms of mechanics, I found it cool how they present you with what feels like an adequate but limited kit, and then they manage to explore that kit in ways you wouldn't have expected. It really enhanced the feeling of discovery-- that even the tools you have, that you thought you fully understood, have aspects to them that you're not aware of.

The story is something that will stick with me for a long time, and it's a shining example of a narrative that could not be replicated in any other medium. Which also makes it surprisingly hard to recommend to friends! The ones who would find the story interesting don't have the 3D gaming ability required, while the people who do have the requisite skill are either too impatient or have a huge backlog of games and will never actually get to it.

In terms of games that are somewhat similar, definitely agree with what Para said. Tunic and The Witness scratched a similar itch, even though both evoke very different feelings.

I know these aren't what you're looking for, but The Return of the Obra Dinn and The Curse of the Golden Idol occupy a similar space in my mind. Less exploration, but definitely a focus on uncovering and understanding the plot as a means of progression.

Current status: sad because there's no more Outer Wilds to play.

And now you join the rest of us in looking for other people to watch play it for the first time to try and get that feeling again vicariously

Already am lol

I was going to play Outer Wilds but I can't handle horror games, so not anymore. Thanks for the warning though.

You should be fine for the base game. DLC, probably not.

KamikazePotato posted...

Already am lol

I've never pursued more streams of a game than this one, yeah

swirIdude posted...

I was going to play Outer Wilds but I can't handle horror games, so not anymore. Thanks for the warning though.

Play it anyway. There's really only one one area in the base game that's even remotely scary

It's a very very different kind of game but Vision Soft Reset is another time loop Metroidvania. Basically, everytime you save it creates a separate timeline and a quick travel point, and you have to jump back and forth through different timelines to figure out a way to save the planet. All major upgrades are considered knowledge (mechanically they're still unlocks though), so they stay with you, but health upgrades are physical items so you'll only have them in timelines where you collected them.

It doesn't have the emotional pull of Outer Wilds, though, or nearly as cool of a setting. It's much closer to Super Metroid in those areas. Fun game though.

Just some games I can vouch for that I don't believe have been mentioned that could evoke some feelings you may have felt with Outer Wilds:
- FEZ
- The Forgotten City
- MYST
- Treasures of the Aegean
- The Void

I'll keep all those in mind, thanks everyone.

agesboy posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbY0mBXKKT0

good documentary on the game, which elucidates some aspects of the game you might have not noticed regarding physics. like how brittle hollow breaks apart in a different way each time!

Incredibly impressive documentary. The devs were really firing on all cylinders.

The gameplay is very different, but for a similar sense of archeological discovery there's Heaven's Vault. It's got the open-ended exploration and the piecing together of degraded information, but it's less Eureka and more satisfied Ah of pattern recognition.

It doesn't strike the same tone or have as expansive a world, but for a metroidvania that trades on information I recommend the Swapper. You have the tools to solve every puzzle from the start even if you don't realize it, and later puzzles nudge you to rethink how your abilities fundamentally work.

KamikazePotato posted...

Incredibly impressive documentary. The devs were really firing on all cylinders.

rewatched it myself when i posted it and damn. the amount of effort and creativity that went into this that they just handwaved away as "we could have fudged it but we didn't because it was neat" was astounding

minor fun fact, the documentary had the supernova and gasps for air at both 22 minutes and 44 minutes. before the 22 minute one, they even begin playing End Times (the supernova theme) at the right time

I slightttttly prefer The Witness over Outer Wilds, mostly just because The Witness is more replayable. They're basically neck and neck in my top 10 though.

Outer Wilds certainly has a better story...but, The Witness does get me thinking introspectively in other ways.

~~~

Separately, I've had a question about Outer Wilds for a while, and I've been forgetting to ask people.

Is the Quantum Moon optional? Is it likely that many players beat the game without going there? I feel like yes, but I'm not sure.

If so, I kinda disagree with that design choice. I feel like that's a pretty big chunk of the game that you could "miss".

I mean, I get it: the point of the game is that you explore it because you WANT to, not because the game requires you to. ...But that's not entirely true--I mean, it DOES have an ending, and that ending DOES require you to go to a lot of specific places.

I need Mark Brown to make one of those key/door metroidvania diagrams for Outer Wilds.

Yes it's optional, but I doubt many people beat the game without going there. If someone is enjoying Outer Wilds enough to reach The Eye then they would probably go to the Quantum Moon purely out of curiosity, if not belief that it's necessary.

There are surprisingly many purely optional things in Outer Wilds that basically offer zero useful clues towards the endgame puzzles and instead just flesh out the story or give you ideas around the general goal of the game. At the most, they might just tell you to check another spot for information, but you could easily run into that other spot first. (i.e. "Nomai X wrote about how to do so-and-so in this location" but you could just find a sign for that location on another planet and follow the path on your own.

Sun Station
Quantum Moon and the three Quantum locations that teach its rules
Pretty much everything on Timber Hearth (you can shoot your scout into the seed, but you can also just find Feldspar with your signalscope while on Dark Bramble which makes this completely unnecessary)
The Attlerock
The Interloper
The High Energy Lab (sort of, it's a more direct reinforcement of information you could already learn at e.g. White Hole Station)
All locations above the water on Giant's Deep
The Orbital Probe Cannon, sort of (if you happen to just feel you should check out the Deep core when you learn how to)
Hollow's Lantern (probably easiest location to miss in the game)
Everything with the other travelers other than Feldspar's jellyfish hint

Consider that you only need to learn a few things to finish the game:
How to get below the current on Giant's Deep
How to get into Giant's Deep core
How to reach the center of Ash Twin
How to survive Anglerfish
How to locate the Vessel (but this is entirely self-contained in Dark Bramble other than getting the escape pod signal)

So yeah, there are a surprising amount of things you can just outright miss in a playthrough. Especially if you end up solving certain puzzles accidentally or with more "brute force" methods, which is more possible with some of these than others. That said, absolutely no one who has played this game to the end without looking up all the solutions or otherwise ruining it for themselves has ever felt like they didn't want to fill in the logbook and explore everything, from what I've seen.

If you want a crash course on what's actually required in Outer Wilds, check out a speedrun. They don't do shit except if they have to. In fact I think there's a narrated dev speedrun out there because we love them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIK2uceHow8

Speed runs aren't really the same because they know all the information initally. I'm talking about ways that a player can go into the game blind and find all the information they need to solve all the puzzles and located all the locations required to get the end of the game. There are a lot of areas and pieces of information in the game that don't actually lead towards the end of the game at all, so they could be considered optional, even if we consider it mandatory to learn the solution to a puzzle before enacting that solution.

you can literally finish the game in 3 seconds by walking into the campfire right when you wake up on your first playthrough

The speedrun is actually way crazier than that dev-commentated one now lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BcjM4ebKLg

the_rowan posted...

Speed runs aren't really the same because they know all the information initally.

yeah, i agree, speedruns are a whole different category, whoops if i conflated them. its just both are pretty interesting. i think speedruns are an interesting way at looking at any universe

especially in a physics-based game like this

Paratroopa1 posted...

The speedrun is actually way crazier than that dev-commentated one now lol

FUCK ANGLERFISH THO AAA

Wait, he got into the ship without getting the launch codes, could he have launched the ship itself if he wanted to?

Huh, not sure how they're able to sleep without two deaths first. The improved ship movement by angling to use multiple sets of thrusters to push the ship in the correct direction is smart, though. (Is there a reason they can't use all three sets? Too hard to aim the ship?)

I love reading about how the geyser at the start only works exactly 31 seconds from loading the universe, because otherwise the gravity from the other planets in the solar system affects your trajectory enough to make the fall lethal. (It's literally such a miniscule difference from fatal that you have to land on the very, very slightly higher outer edge of the launch pad or you die even with the correct gravity.)

Wait, he got into the ship without getting the launch codes, could he have launched the ship itself if he wanted to?

Nothing in the universe that is time-based "turns on" until you get the cutscene as you're leaving the observatory after getting the codes. (Which actually plays while standing next to the ship in this speedrun, but it still plays.) It still runs the physics simulation, but there's one thing in the run that can't be done until a certain time.

the_rowan posted...

Huh, not sure how they're able to sleep without two deaths first.

I don't think you need to take two deaths to sleep anymore. I've never noticed that restriction, anyway.

so he wouldn't have been able to fly the ship, correct?

guffguy89 posted...

so he wouldn't have been able to fly the ship, correct?

Pretty sure he could fly the ship, and the ship isn't even required anyway, just a little bit faster than going shipless. (The spacesuit inside the ship is still required, of course.) But he couldn't beat the game because the very next thing he does isn't possible until a certain amount of time has passed.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

I always compare it to Zelda, because the designers took a lot of influence from Zelda. It's like, instead of gathering items to get more, you're gathering knowledge.

Zelda since LTTP is also Metroid-like

KamikazePotato posted...

Legitimate question: is there any game that replicates the Eureka moments of Outer Wilds while still having an actual world attached to it? I know people swear by Baba Is You for puzzle solving but that's not remotely the same experience.

A Monster's Expedition. It's another sokoban puzzler but with huge emphasis on a seamless world. It's a spiritual sequel to A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build which is much smaller scope but incredibly good too.

I do still highly recommend Baba because while the world it builds is abstract, it is charming and you do fall in love with it. The harder the puzzles get, the more rewarding it becomes. You definitely get the ennui feeling when you're done with it.