One connection I think you forgot between the nomai and the heartian is that they both understand that the universe is cold and uncaring and yet find beauty in it anyway. The nomai striving for knowledge, the heartian being more artistic, writing quantum poems and of course making music. The fact that despite all this the nomai seem so enthusiastic about their project and the heartian are of course a bunch of crazy enthusiastic people too is really pointing out to a much less pessimistic take about life. I view the message of the game as more of an "everything ends, nothing matters, life is short, might as well make it beautiful" than a misanthropic nihilism.
Happy to be of service. Yeah, I love a game that lives in the brain (as i've just spent the last 4 videos establishing), but it means you can't truly replay after the fact. Playing this game again for the footage was weird as i had to "pretend" I didn't know how to play to make it look natural.
@@VZed have you tried echoes of the eye yet? I’d love to get your take on what it adds to the history of the outer wilds. And I’m sure you will adore it.
@@jaydawg116 I definitely have. Just finished it the other day, actually. It's definitely something I got into, but i'm letting it simmer for a bit before i talk about how i feel it fits into the whole that is Outer Wilds.
You didn't touch much on how the game ends, the moment when you realize you always had the tools you needed to finish and now you have the knowledge to go and do it and ultimately how you are going to have one shot at it because the time loop you have been used to (and probably abusing when things went wrong and you needed to start over) is disabled when you have the Warp Core. That was one of the bits of the game that shook me the most because all of a sudden my character was just as mortal as I am! You have one shot and you also know that next time you play you can just go get the core then go end the game in the first loop, everything was meaningless, but the journey there was so important and will never leave you. If this game just had a waypoint to the Warp Core and where you have to take it right from the start it would have been nothing, it's the journey that had meaning and you were the director of that journey. That's why I love this game and why I want more like it without an icon on the screen to follow.
Yeah, the ending is something i decided to leave out of the video. I had a section on it originally, but i decided to cut out a bunch of stuff to keep it short (lol), and the ending, while important and powerful on it's own didn't specifically serve the angle I was approaching the game from.
I can genuinely not hear, or even sometimes think about this game without sobbing slightly, this game has genuinely impacted me so much. The Nomai at the start of the game were gods, they were beings of pure science nothing else. Until I found the old settlement, an area so drenched in the sorrow of losing the third escape pod that it gave me pause, then later at the hanging city, when I saw they had children, a school, and fears. They became something more. I began to view them more as people then before, sorrow lingered whenever I thought about them and how they all seemed to just die, and when I finally got to the core of the interloper, it hit like a truck, that they died, not of their own faults, or even something malicious, just pure cosmic accident, with no one to blame, and that hit, HARD for me I broke down at my desk for like 15 minutes. Even then that wasn't the most impactful moment to me, that would have to go to The Grave Of the Nomai, the nomai all hugging each other, or writing final words as they slowly died of oxygen depravation, that gave me such vigor to finish what they started, its an emotion I've never felt while playing a game, I've never once felt motivated by the games story for any reason other then. Well I was enjoying the game, I felt that with Kamoshida from P5 to an extent but it was more of a hyped to take him down kinda thing then I real desire to finish it. This game is truly something else and I cant wait for Echo's of the Eye Post comment thoughts: Another thing I love about this game is that everything is meanless sure, but there is still beauty in that meaninglessness. The ability to do something just because is in some ways more valuable than having to do something. Just because something is meaningless does not make it pointless.
going from "ok I have to stop the supernova" to "oh no, there is no "stopping" the supernova" is one of my favorite feelings I've ever had in a game. the inevitable realness of the power of greater nature against a silly lil guy in a spacesuit. it was rigged from the start, and we didn't even know it
Yup, that feeling was real. I love how much this game keeps working it's way deeper and deeper into my mind as time goes on. What an experience this game is.
The impact of the supernova is really lessened if you, like me, die like three times by taking fall damage or leaving your ship without your suit like an idiot, before seeing it for the first time.
Haha, yup, i've seen friends have introductions to this game like that. I can't say i specifically remember my first time seeing the super nova, but i did have it spoiled for me, so i knew it was coming. I've seen so many since then, and it's not like it's gotten less meaningful in that time.
Just the music of Outer Wilds alone can make me get emotional, so this video was certainly one that was rather emotional to watch. I love the game, and I just want more people to play it, so thanks for making this video on it, it was great, and I hope it got some more people to try it out, because it was kinda a life changing game for me.
"Meditate until next loop" is one of the most useful buttons. I tried to use it to avoid actually getting eaten a couple times, but it didn't let me and I had to see it. That was the thing that really got me. Unlike you, being in space was fine for me. Those THINGS on the other hand! The first time I ran into one it was too late and I tried to just accept my fate, but, to my surprise, I panicked.
Watching the Sun go super nova was so cool! Also for some reason I knew it was natural, I just expected to somehow be able to fix it. But something another player said made me start to doubt that especially when I realized that there was no way that the way we interact with the world around us could stop a naturally dying star. Especially with the way the game talked about the Super Novas. I started to get really sad about all the things I was discovering that the Hartheans would never know. That they would never have the chance to resettle the beautiful cities the Nomai built. I love the Sunless city. I don't know why. The tunnels around the Ember Twin were really fun to explore.
So your view on the game is really interesting to me because I saw everything with wonder and that while there was all of this death there was a beauty to everything. The Nomai were so cool and had such an impact on the Hearthians that I don't think their sacrifices were in vein. Like the statue said at the end "The Nomai got to see it for themselves, but thanks to their efforts and technology, a Hearthian was able to reach the Eye of the universe." There lives weren't for nothing. Even reading the writing of the modern Nomai touched on the fact that everyone remembered this tribe of Nomai. And the the final image of the game showed a new beginning. The end of the universe was not the end, but a new beginning for new people. It makes me sad that the other Hearthians didn't get to fulfill their potential or experience the Nomai culture. Reibeck really got me. They loved the Nomai culture and were just a short bridge walk away from the Hanging City. I easily could have escorted them across just so they could see that before everything was destroyed. It's the lives cut short that hurt my heart. But even then, because we made it to end there was closer for the Outer Wilds astronauts and they got to meet a Nomai. The circle of life is beautiful and eternal. Personally I do believe there is something after death, that we individually are eternal beings. But even without that, we are not nothing and the things we do make an impact and are important to the grand scheme of things no matter how small the contribution was. Because there was a Nomai that had worked with the Nomai that created the core for the ship the Ashe Twin Project functioned and we were able to use the core. Without that one Nomai we wouldn't have made it. Without whichever Nomai found the signal of the Eye of the universe the Hearthians wouldn't have even figured out space travel before the Super Nova. No, the new species we saw at the end may not have known about these people, and all of the advancements the rest of the Nomai made may have disappeared, but the Eye knew. I do feel bad for all the Nomai desperately trying to survive the Super Novas though.
Thanks for checking out the video, and sharing your journey through it with me, haha. It was fun! I like your your take away from this game. I think there's enough here to speak to people on many different levels. I don't fully subscribe to the philosophies I discuss in the video, it just the direction it took me in, and wound up being an interesting perspective to view the game from. I could talk for hours about this game and i won't even rule out the idea of making further videos on it in the future, but for now I need to play some other stuff and think in different directions for a while, haha. Thanks for your comments!
@@VZed Yeah, this was just my experience and the feelings I had. I just don't have anyone in real life to talk about it with since it isn't a game genre that interests my husband. But my sibling is coming to visit next week, maybe I'll make them play it... Thanks for the video! It was a good watch!
The moment that I realized I could just die and reset to fix any problem I faced, like losing my ship was such a relief! I had died a few times (took me forever to realize the sun was exploding...) And had the instinct to actively try to avoid death, so realizing I could just accept death and it was fine, in fact inevitable and rewarding was crazy and one of the things that really sets this game apart.
Sometimes dying is a chore though, because you have to actively run out of air or something. You can get the ability to meditate from one of the NPCs so you can always end the loop whenever you want.
@@tabeatamm3594 yeah, the 1st thing I did was go to Giants Deep and ended up running into them on my 1st loop, got killed by the Super Nova and just thought it was a random planet phenomenon that was supposed to happen while talking to them. I went back to finish the conversation and they taught me how to meditate. So I had that option basically the whole game.
This game really gets me, I started playing it, not because I wanted to finish it or something. I started playing for the relaxation the game provides. I never actually intend to finish the game, and if I do, it will be purely out of happenstance and luck (at least how I play the game right now). It makes me calm and I somehow the world feels more real than any other game I've played before. And I think it is because of how well made the Nomai are in the game, and how the Hearthians, to me, feel in some way like and insert for the player character more than anything. You also hit it really hard with the environment, this game captured the perspective of reality or at least nature really well and, in fact, so well that it is really relaxing to play because it somehow captures the feelings that nature has or at least that we ascribe to it. If anything, nature is like the idea of hunger, in that it is there and in some way we always try to stave it off and push it back, but it always wins. And the smallness this game gives is freeing to me, a way to submit and feel helpless and powerless within a game. It feels as if, that smallness, that inevitable powerlessness and pointlessness actually inadvertently makes us a powerful agent in the universe. Idk if I kinda just said what you did in my own words but I hope I added something cool in some way. Just wanted to give my 2 cents, I really appreciate you talking about this game because it is great.
Outer Wilds fundamentally changed the way I look at existence. (How's that for a back of the box quote?) The universe ends again and again, and no matter what we do, we can't alter that. All we can do is know it (and ourselves) better. The indecipherable void and a well-worn song at a campsite of friends are both part if It All, both equally real in different ways. Because the universe isn't ending- it's changing. Constantly. We're just changing with it. As the final moment of the game so beautifully expresses, something will come next. So much of what you said in this video resonates with my experience on a pretty profound level while introducing new concepts that I hadn't considered, and I'm very grateful that you took to time to create it! - Stephen
Truthfully, i was sick to death of this video by the time it was done, but i'm finding more and more that I could talk about this game forever, and i'm already considering how to come back to it. I won't say that this game changed the way i looked at existence, other pieces of media have done or helped me in that way beforehand, but it definitely underlined and contextualized a lot of those feelings for me. I've always said, if a game can make me think, then it's a win, and i've been thinking about this game for a year and change now, clearly it's doing something right.
So, going with how these games cast and empower players as explorers, scholars, and empiricists: Myst is the universe knowing itself through those 16th-19th century colonial scientists who think knowing is archiving and journaling to the empire's standards (until going native by the last few myst games), and solving reality like a puzzlebox. The Witness is about knowing the world as a high modernist and cybernetic era scientist, who thinks knowing is a fully pathologized and mathematized understanding of the human mind (which they presume possible), of how we know and see patterns, projected and inscribed outwards to make reality out of our thoughts. Outer Wilds is about a more contemporary, ecologically complex and relatively posthuman kind of knowing; the universe is doing fine without us, every thing in its own way. We can fear and fight it, or learn from it and chill out to that kind of cosmic horror. To current biology our cognition is just an emergent thing, very much a predictable kind of result from the biggest known forces of physics. Something else will likely always be there to know things differently, in our stead, when we are gone or elsewhere occupied.
Once while playing the game, my gravity crystal was damaged and I had to repair it - floating around my ship before that.. It was because of that that I noticed its existence and importance.
That's really cool. Until basically right now I wondered if the gravity effect was built into the ship and if the crystal was there just to create that connection in the world but it's really cool to know it's mechanically in line with the rest of the game!
I hadn't heard of Outer Wilds, I just randomly found it on the Xbox game pass and have no idea why I downloaded it. Quickly became my favorite games (except the time the anglers gave me a panic attack...)
@@defne499 The 3 angler fish are the worst. I thought I had to maneuver through, but every single time I touched my thrusters even the tiniest amount they would get me. For some reason I cannot handle that death, all the other ones are fine. Eventually I asked for help on Reddit and they told me not to do anything, which meant I didn't even have to look at the screen while floating past! That's the only reason I was able to get past. I wasn't happy about having to go back to finish the game. It was stressful.
@@ThatOneLadyOverHere that's where i kept dying as well, I waited a long time to pass them, then i made noise so one of them started chasing me. I was never so terrified while trying to rush to the next node before the anglerfish caught up to me. Outer wilds is secretly a horror game and a great one at that. I will never forget how stressful dark bramble was.
From one part of the universe trying to understand itself to another thank you for making this video and sharing your experience with us. I wish I could wipe my memory of anything and everything related to Outer Wilds so I could experience it all again, for the first time.
Maybe I need to try this game again. I LOVED it for about the first 10-15 hours. It was incredible, so much so that I kept playing long after it had ceased being awe inspiring or fun. Now at 40 hours into the game, I mainly just sit there looking at the info board trying to figure out what little detail I missed. I go back to areas that say there's more to explore and I scour them cycle after cycle after cycle trying to figure out what small thing I missed. And trying to keep all that information in my head, what happens when and where, just feels arduous. I loved it in the beginning more than almost anything else I've ever played, it just feels like it was a bit too ambitious and a bit too vague in its openendedness, and that made it possible for players to get lost and never reach the end. I'm not even watching this video past the spoiler warning because I hold out hope that somehow I'll figure it out and find a satisfying conclusion. I just wish there had been fail-safes put in place to prevent a disappointment like this.
Well i suppose it depends on when you put that time in, because the game has been updated somewhat recently to make a major part of the progression easier to come by naturally. There was initially a part of the ultimate answer of the game that required you to resist your learned instincts of the game and in my first playthrough it was the one thing i had to look up an answer to, and i thought it kind of ground against the rest of the experience in a bad way. It has been changed now, and i do kind of wish i could do the first experience again and see how it would have played out in my brain differently. I will encourage anybody to try and play this game to completion, even if i'm not entirely convinced the ending is the best part. I don't even really talk about the ending past the spoiler warning, just the story specifics, but ultimately i think the entire experience is the statement of the game so it's all important. Either way, i hope you get what you need out of the game, even if it is just a few hours at a time spent in a wonderous new place.
so after this and your Witness video, what I've learned here is that my childhood with Myst games shaped my taste in games *way* more than I thought it did XD which sounds silly, but my thoughts and feelings on Outer Wilds are too big and (forgive the pun) nebulous to condense into something concrete even in my own head, let alone a YT comment. so silly is all I've got this time. I never would have thought to put these four games in a series, but *boy* do they work. 22/10
There's a time and a place for everything, and a little silliness never hurt anyone! Thanks for the kind words. I was worried i was drawing a bit too nebulous (hiyooo) a line between these games, but the connection i felt there was too much for me to just leave behind. This is the biggest project i've worked on on this channel and i'm glad it's resonating with people!
Space always scared me and excited me at the same time. The big unknown and the ultimate adventure. I've had those thoughts you talked about in your video (do what we do matter at all? Will we be stuck in a small corner in the universe? What will happen when all the stars will die?). Pretty depressing stuff but also interesting. I am glad I am not alone in the wandering of the mind. Anyway, great video! :)
Thanks so much! I've actually been thinking about this video a lot lately. Might have to revisit this game soon. Pretty cool how this game stays with you years after you think you're done with it.
20:27 I imagined theres so much of it on the wall because the walls are connected communication methods Insert ash twin marker to type to ash twin etc. The pools to.
Yes, I'm just going to keep making new comments. I finished this game a few months ago and have lots of different thoughts. Anyways, the thought: I love how the story is not structured and linear. There are 2 stories and the important one is everywhere and in weird orders. It was late in the game when I realized that it was the same Nomai everywhere and wish I'd paid more attention to names. That's what I want to do next play through, but I also want to wait a while so I've forgotten a bit of the game.
This is the first of your vids I've seen (because I love Outerwilds so much and can't get enough of peope talking about it) and I really love it, thank you for making it. You peaked my interest in the other puzzle games you talked about, gonna try playing them first before checking those videos out.
So glad you enjoyed the video! I might've gone a little overboard, talking about 3 games as a lead-in to talk about Outer Wilds, but i think there's a lot hiding in the relationship OW has to other puzzle games. Thanks for coming by :)
I really appreciate the time and effort you put into making this fantastic video for this fantastic game. Despite the many existing videos on this game you still had many new perspectives to bring forward and I found it really interesting. Thank you 💚 here's hoping we'll all enjoy Echoes of the Eye when it comes out.
Goodness, this was glorious. I've been saving this for an afternoon I had some time, and I'm so glad I waited until I could pay it my full attention. I got chills so many times, and full-out cried at the end, full of despair and hope and everything in between. It was truly an honor to watch something so beautiful 💜
Well thanks so much! I was worried I went too bleak with this one, but i'm so glad to know it's reaching people. I'm definitely doing something a bit more light-hearted next.
I really like this vid. You've put so much work and thought into it and it really shows! I didn't play Outer Wilds, as the guy who reviews video games on our local community radio station, spoiled the super nova surprise in his review. Don't mater though. I've had alot of fun watching other people talk about it, and their take on it. Great work mate!!
Thanks very much! There's a lot of this game i didn't touch on, and maybe i'll come back to it and talk through it some more one day but for now, I need to play something else, haha.
One of my favorite games. Reading about the game, it sounded really interesting and glad I played it. Adding your own philosophical thoughts on it, and elaborating about different parts of the game was awesome. This is the best review I have seen on it by far. I did not know you like these type games and can relate because I grew up playing point and click adventure games on old IBM computers such as Kings Quest, Indie Jones, and the Black Cauldron. I played Myst too and was so excited as a child to beat that game. It was really tough and mysterious and trying to figure out everything on the island was awesome. I did try Riven but did not get that far. I walked around to all the different mechanical devices and tinkered with them a bit. It did seem harder than Myst but I did not put the time and effort in at the time. Witness is another one that that looks interesting and want to try it sometime. Another one I would like to try I hear is like Outer wilds is Subnautica.
This video is so awesome and also hauntingly beautiful!!!💗💗👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 side note: I was also scared of Myst as a kid and could never pinpoint why haha(sorry it took me this long to watch just got life stuff happening
The Eye of the Universe is the very essence of the universe. -no reason to exist at all -seriously why the fuck does it exist -I cannot hammer home this point enough what the fuck -it's beautiful nonetheless -it had no reason to be beautiful, it could have been anything (or nothing) -you had no reason to be there -you enjoy what limited time you have there surrounded by friends, grateful for this (last/only) chance at this inexplicable thing called existence -you don't need to be told what to do. Nothing makes sense but you intrinsically know that you need to enjoy this experience
I happened to play those two back to back. And besides the obvious differences, they make a perfect pair. Thematically there's lots of similarities, but also in terms of puzzle design and trusting you to solve things with the tools you start with and your own growing understanding of its fictional cultures and language.
In a weird way, Outer Wilds cured my existential dread of the inevitable Heat Death of the Universe. For my playthrough of the game, it was sort of like a chance at fighting against that inevitability, even if it still ends the same way it would’ve ended without me fighting back. It’s a shame you didn’t talk about the ending, but it makes sense considering what you were going for in this video would’ve somewhat contrasted with what the official ending of the game went with. Though I do have to ask, what is your take on the ending, thematically speaking?
Yeah, i had a few sections in the original script that i cut out because they didn't specifically support what i was going for in this video, and to keep the video short (lol). Reading those notes again, though, I haven't ruled out the possibility of returning to this game in the future, cause honestly I could talk about it forever. I could probably drum up at least two more video topics on it but I want to give them some time because there are other games i want to talk about and vids I want to make :) As for my thoughts on the ending I kind of summed up my general feeling with the line about standing at the end and saying "i'm still here". I largely take the ending pretty literally. I think the presence of a conscious observer has the ability to collapse the potential of nothing into something, in the same way the game has moved forward until that point. Does that make sense? I definitely would need more time and more words to get my full point across. Like i said, there's no way i'm not coming back to this game in one way or another. This genre of game is among my absolute favourites and this game is at the top of it currently.
@@VZed Oh don't worry, what you said makes sense, we started from Nowhere in terms of information, but still at the end managed to achieve something, from nothing. Anyways, I look forward to the day you return to this game, but also look forward to your next video. This video was my first exposure to you, and you seem to have some pretty interesting topics.
Thinking on the Myst/Witness subgenre connection. The one thing that irked me in this game was that the starting village and protagonist felt too zelda-ish and gamey, and the light fantasy fluff style of that detracted from the game's sense of highconcept gravitas and personal meaning at times. I think what I was missing was a meta/paratextual frame story, involving the actual player magically entering into a cyberspace otherworld, in a way that gave a lot of those 80's and 90's RPG's, as well as Myst and the Witness, that extra sense of personal involvement and worldbuilding weight. The sense that you, sitting behind the computer, taking notes and making maps, are a part of the story too. They kind of imply that there's more meta game stuff going on with those digitized precursor minds, or some mind outside the universe, looking into the player character's world through the statues, I think? But that eye of the universe stuff was left super vague and indefinite. Otherwise, totally, this game was a perfect realization of the realtime action adventure Myst thing that those devs seemed to be aiming for with Uru, and the best possible contemporary hightech addition to this wayy too small subgenre of games.
I'm 5 months late but did you unlock all the ship logs? I think if you have any confusion about how The Eye of The Universe works, you probably missed some stuff in the game. I see what you're saying about the Zelda stuff but I totally disagree that it's a flaw.
A puzzle game I bet you haven't even heard of is called Obsidian. It's a great game lost to time. I wasn't ever able to finish the game as it always crashed after I got out of the chemistry part of it....perhaps you could do a video on that game :D Also I think Outer Wilds is definitely overrated, but that's doesn't mean it's not good, it just means that it didn't really speak to me like all these people around me claim it spoke to them...maybe I missed something, but I seriously don't get the hype of the game. Or maybe the hype became too large and annoying, and I got tired of hearing people constantly gush about this game Add nauseam....and thus it soured my experience. Whatever happened, I just don't see the magic that other people do. With that said, this was very good video.
One connection I think you forgot between the nomai and the heartian is that they both understand that the universe is cold and uncaring and yet find beauty in it anyway. The nomai striving for knowledge, the heartian being more artistic, writing quantum poems and of course making music.
The fact that despite all this the nomai seem so enthusiastic about their project and the heartian are of course a bunch of crazy enthusiastic people too is really pointing out to a much less pessimistic take about life.
I view the message of the game as more of an "everything ends, nothing matters, life is short, might as well make it beautiful" than a misanthropic nihilism.
Thanks for this video. Ever since I finished this game I've relied on analysis videos to momentarily fill the void that it's left in my soul.
Happy to be of service. Yeah, I love a game that lives in the brain (as i've just spent the last 4 videos establishing), but it means you can't truly replay after the fact. Playing this game again for the footage was weird as i had to "pretend" I didn't know how to play to make it look natural.
@@VZed have you tried echoes of the eye yet? I’d love to get your take on what it adds to the history of the outer wilds. And I’m sure you will adore it.
@@jaydawg116 I definitely have. Just finished it the other day, actually. It's definitely something I got into, but i'm letting it simmer for a bit before i talk about how i feel it fits into the whole that is Outer Wilds.
Here cause of heavy, outer wilds is my favorite game of all time.
I'm not crying you're crying
Ah! I miss this game! Hearing the music and seeing the things just brought back so many emotions so hard! Why is this game so good!?
“When the last heart stops beating-how will the stars know they are beautiful?” You made me cry with that line. Thank you. ❤️
I was also gonna type this. This video is *excellent*. Bravo.
I was also scared of Myst when I was playing it as a kid
You didn't touch much on how the game ends, the moment when you realize you always had the tools you needed to finish and now you have the knowledge to go and do it and ultimately how you are going to have one shot at it because the time loop you have been used to (and probably abusing when things went wrong and you needed to start over) is disabled when you have the Warp Core. That was one of the bits of the game that shook me the most because all of a sudden my character was just as mortal as I am! You have one shot and you also know that next time you play you can just go get the core then go end the game in the first loop, everything was meaningless, but the journey there was so important and will never leave you. If this game just had a waypoint to the Warp Core and where you have to take it right from the start it would have been nothing, it's the journey that had meaning and you were the director of that journey. That's why I love this game and why I want more like it without an icon on the screen to follow.
Yeah, the ending is something i decided to leave out of the video. I had a section on it originally, but i decided to cut out a bunch of stuff to keep it short (lol), and the ending, while important and powerful on it's own didn't specifically serve the angle I was approaching the game from.
From the moment i saw the quote, i knew that this was gonna be good
I figured you'd like that one.
I can genuinely not hear, or even sometimes think about this game without sobbing slightly, this game has genuinely impacted me so much. The Nomai at the start of the game were gods, they were beings of pure science nothing else. Until I found the old settlement, an area so drenched in the sorrow of losing the third escape pod that it gave me pause, then later at the hanging city, when I saw they had children, a school, and fears. They became something more. I began to view them more as people then before, sorrow lingered whenever I thought about them and how they all seemed to just die, and when I finally got to the core of the interloper, it hit like a truck, that they died, not of their own faults, or even something malicious, just pure cosmic accident, with no one to blame, and that hit, HARD for me I broke down at my desk for like 15 minutes. Even then that wasn't the most impactful moment to me, that would have to go to The Grave Of the Nomai, the nomai all hugging each other, or writing final words as they slowly died of oxygen depravation, that gave me such vigor to finish what they started, its an emotion I've never felt while playing a game, I've never once felt motivated by the games story for any reason other then. Well I was enjoying the game, I felt that with Kamoshida from P5 to an extent but it was more of a hyped to take him down kinda thing then I real desire to finish it. This game is truly something else and I cant wait for Echo's of the Eye
Post comment thoughts: Another thing I love about this game is that everything is meanless sure, but there is still beauty in that meaninglessness. The ability to do something just because is in some ways more valuable than having to do something. Just because something is meaningless does not make it pointless.
going from "ok I have to stop the supernova" to "oh no, there is no "stopping" the supernova" is one of my favorite feelings I've ever had in a game. the inevitable realness of the power of greater nature against a silly lil guy in a spacesuit. it was rigged from the start, and we didn't even know it
Yup, that feeling was real. I love how much this game keeps working it's way deeper and deeper into my mind as time goes on. What an experience this game is.
The impact of the supernova is really lessened if you, like me, die like three times by taking fall damage or leaving your ship without your suit like an idiot, before seeing it for the first time.
Haha, yup, i've seen friends have introductions to this game like that. I can't say i specifically remember my first time seeing the super nova, but i did have it spoiled for me, so i knew it was coming. I've seen so many since then, and it's not like it's gotten less meaningful in that time.
Just the music of Outer Wilds alone can make me get emotional, so this video was certainly one that was rather emotional to watch. I love the game, and I just want more people to play it, so thanks for making this video on it, it was great, and I hope it got some more people to try it out, because it was kinda a life changing game for me.
If the video doesn't work, then me constantly haranguing my friends to play it certainly will.
Just a few seconds of the music and I shed a year, Every time
"Meditate until next loop" is one of the most useful buttons.
I tried to use it to avoid actually getting eaten a couple times, but it didn't let me and I had to see it. That was the thing that really got me. Unlike you, being in space was fine for me. Those THINGS on the other hand! The first time I ran into one it was too late and I tried to just accept my fate, but, to my surprise, I panicked.
this game is one of the rare I'd love to forget to be able to play all over again
Same here...
50 minute video from a great creator about my favourite game ever? YES PLEASE.
Happy to help!
Watching the Sun go super nova was so cool! Also for some reason I knew it was natural, I just expected to somehow be able to fix it. But something another player said made me start to doubt that especially when I realized that there was no way that the way we interact with the world around us could stop a naturally dying star. Especially with the way the game talked about the Super Novas. I started to get really sad about all the things I was discovering that the Hartheans would never know. That they would never have the chance to resettle the beautiful cities the Nomai built. I love the Sunless city. I don't know why. The tunnels around the Ember Twin were really fun to explore.
So your view on the game is really interesting to me because I saw everything with wonder and that while there was all of this death there was a beauty to everything. The Nomai were so cool and had such an impact on the Hearthians that I don't think their sacrifices were in vein. Like the statue said at the end "The Nomai got to see it for themselves, but thanks to their efforts and technology, a Hearthian was able to reach the Eye of the universe." There lives weren't for nothing.
Even reading the writing of the modern Nomai touched on the fact that everyone remembered this tribe of Nomai. And the the final image of the game showed a new beginning. The end of the universe was not the end, but a new beginning for new people. It makes me sad that the other Hearthians didn't get to fulfill their potential or experience the Nomai culture. Reibeck really got me. They loved the Nomai culture and were just a short bridge walk away from the Hanging City. I easily could have escorted them across just so they could see that before everything was destroyed. It's the lives cut short that hurt my heart.
But even then, because we made it to end there was closer for the Outer Wilds astronauts and they got to meet a Nomai. The circle of life is beautiful and eternal. Personally I do believe there is something after death, that we individually are eternal beings. But even without that, we are not nothing and the things we do make an impact and are important to the grand scheme of things no matter how small the contribution was. Because there was a Nomai that had worked with the Nomai that created the core for the ship the Ashe Twin Project functioned and we were able to use the core. Without that one Nomai we wouldn't have made it. Without whichever Nomai found the signal of the Eye of the universe the Hearthians wouldn't have even figured out space travel before the Super Nova.
No, the new species we saw at the end may not have known about these people, and all of the advancements the rest of the Nomai made may have disappeared, but the Eye knew. I do feel bad for all the Nomai desperately trying to survive the Super Novas though.
Thanks for checking out the video, and sharing your journey through it with me, haha. It was fun!
I like your your take away from this game. I think there's enough here to speak to people on many different levels. I don't fully subscribe to the philosophies I discuss in the video, it just the direction it took me in, and wound up being an interesting perspective to view the game from. I could talk for hours about this game and i won't even rule out the idea of making further videos on it in the future, but for now I need to play some other stuff and think in different directions for a while, haha. Thanks for your comments!
@@VZed Yeah, this was just my experience and the feelings I had. I just don't have anyone in real life to talk about it with since it isn't a game genre that interests my husband. But my sibling is coming to visit next week, maybe I'll make them play it...
Thanks for the video! It was a good watch!
Ember Twin was my favorite planet to explore.
Mine was probably Brittle Hollow.
Outer Wilds! I love it. So many wonders. I can't forget how I got overwhelmed by the horrors in Giant's Deep and Dark Bramble.
The moment that I realized I could just die and reset to fix any problem I faced, like losing my ship was such a relief! I had died a few times (took me forever to realize the sun was exploding...) And had the instinct to actively try to avoid death, so realizing I could just accept death and it was fine, in fact inevitable and rewarding was crazy and one of the things that really sets this game apart.
Sometimes dying is a chore though, because you have to actively run out of air or something. You can get the ability to meditate from one of the NPCs so you can always end the loop whenever you want.
@@tabeatamm3594 yeah, the 1st thing I did was go to Giants Deep and ended up running into them on my 1st loop, got killed by the Super Nova and just thought it was a random planet phenomenon that was supposed to happen while talking to them. I went back to finish the conversation and they taught me how to meditate. So I had that option basically the whole game.
This game really gets me, I started playing it, not because I wanted to finish it or something. I started playing for the relaxation the game provides. I never actually intend to finish the game, and if I do, it will be purely out of happenstance and luck (at least how I play the game right now). It makes me calm and I somehow the world feels more real than any other game I've played before. And I think it is because of how well made the Nomai are in the game, and how the Hearthians, to me, feel in some way like and insert for the player character more than anything. You also hit it really hard with the environment, this game captured the perspective of reality or at least nature really well and, in fact, so well that it is really relaxing to play because it somehow captures the feelings that nature has or at least that we ascribe to it. If anything, nature is like the idea of hunger, in that it is there and in some way we always try to stave it off and push it back, but it always wins. And the smallness this game gives is freeing to me, a way to submit and feel helpless and powerless within a game. It feels as if, that smallness, that inevitable powerlessness and pointlessness actually inadvertently makes us a powerful agent in the universe. Idk if I kinda just said what you did in my own words but I hope I added something cool in some way. Just wanted to give my 2 cents, I really appreciate you talking about this game because it is great.
I like good smaller channels if not to see the genuineness than to find the most wholesome like dislike ratios
I'm burning marshmallows now.
no cooking
they are my sacrifice to the unweighted scale
I actually just finished this game! It’s definitely one of my favorites
Outer Wilds fundamentally changed the way I look at existence. (How's that for a back of the box quote?) The universe ends again and again, and no matter what we do, we can't alter that. All we can do is know it (and ourselves) better. The indecipherable void and a well-worn song at a campsite of friends are both part if It All, both equally real in different ways. Because the universe isn't ending- it's changing. Constantly. We're just changing with it. As the final moment of the game so beautifully expresses, something will come next.
So much of what you said in this video resonates with my experience on a pretty profound level while introducing new concepts that I hadn't considered, and I'm very grateful that you took to time to create it!
- Stephen
Truthfully, i was sick to death of this video by the time it was done, but i'm finding more and more that I could talk about this game forever, and i'm already considering how to come back to it. I won't say that this game changed the way i looked at existence, other pieces of media have done or helped me in that way beforehand, but it definitely underlined and contextualized a lot of those feelings for me. I've always said, if a game can make me think, then it's a win, and i've been thinking about this game for a year and change now, clearly it's doing something right.
So, going with how these games cast and empower players as explorers, scholars, and empiricists: Myst is the universe knowing itself through those 16th-19th century colonial scientists who think knowing is archiving and journaling to the empire's standards (until going native by the last few myst games), and solving reality like a puzzlebox.
The Witness is about knowing the world as a high modernist and cybernetic era scientist, who thinks knowing is a fully pathologized and mathematized understanding of the human mind (which they presume possible), of how we know and see patterns, projected and inscribed outwards to make reality out of our thoughts.
Outer Wilds is about a more contemporary, ecologically complex and relatively posthuman kind of knowing; the universe is doing fine without us, every thing in its own way. We can fear and fight it, or learn from it and chill out to that kind of cosmic horror. To current biology our cognition is just an emergent thing, very much a predictable kind of result from the biggest known forces of physics. Something else will likely always be there to know things differently, in our stead, when we are gone or elsewhere occupied.
Once while playing the game, my gravity crystal was damaged and I had to repair it - floating around my ship before that.. It was because of that that I noticed its existence and importance.
That's really cool. Until basically right now I wondered if the gravity effect was built into the ship and if the crystal was there just to create that connection in the world but it's really cool to know it's mechanically in line with the rest of the game!
this game is just magic.
This is now my favorite outer wilds video. And that is a very, very fuckin high bar
There's a lot of great Outer Wilds content out there, so i do not take this comment lightly. Thank you so much!
I hadn't heard of Outer Wilds, I just randomly found it on the Xbox game pass and have no idea why I downloaded it. Quickly became my favorite games (except the time the anglers gave me a panic attack...)
on my first attempt to bring the warp core to the vessel, i literally jumped out of my chair when one of the anglerfish noticed me lol
@@defne499 The 3 angler fish are the worst. I thought I had to maneuver through, but every single time I touched my thrusters even the tiniest amount they would get me. For some reason I cannot handle that death, all the other ones are fine. Eventually I asked for help on Reddit and they told me not to do anything, which meant I didn't even have to look at the screen while floating past! That's the only reason I was able to get past. I wasn't happy about having to go back to finish the game. It was stressful.
@@ThatOneLadyOverHere that's where i kept dying as well, I waited a long time to pass them, then i made noise so one of them started chasing me. I was never so terrified while trying to rush to the next node before the anglerfish caught up to me. Outer wilds is secretly a horror game and a great one at that. I will never forget how stressful dark bramble was.
From one part of the universe trying to understand itself to another thank you for making this video and sharing your experience with us. I wish I could wipe my memory of anything and everything related to Outer Wilds so I could experience it all again, for the first time.
Same here... same here.
Maybe I need to try this game again. I LOVED it for about the first 10-15 hours. It was incredible, so much so that I kept playing long after it had ceased being awe inspiring or fun. Now at 40 hours into the game, I mainly just sit there looking at the info board trying to figure out what little detail I missed. I go back to areas that say there's more to explore and I scour them cycle after cycle after cycle trying to figure out what small thing I missed. And trying to keep all that information in my head, what happens when and where, just feels arduous. I loved it in the beginning more than almost anything else I've ever played, it just feels like it was a bit too ambitious and a bit too vague in its openendedness, and that made it possible for players to get lost and never reach the end. I'm not even watching this video past the spoiler warning because I hold out hope that somehow I'll figure it out and find a satisfying conclusion. I just wish there had been fail-safes put in place to prevent a disappointment like this.
Well i suppose it depends on when you put that time in, because the game has been updated somewhat recently to make a major part of the progression easier to come by naturally. There was initially a part of the ultimate answer of the game that required you to resist your learned instincts of the game and in my first playthrough it was the one thing i had to look up an answer to, and i thought it kind of ground against the rest of the experience in a bad way. It has been changed now, and i do kind of wish i could do the first experience again and see how it would have played out in my brain differently.
I will encourage anybody to try and play this game to completion, even if i'm not entirely convinced the ending is the best part. I don't even really talk about the ending past the spoiler warning, just the story specifics, but ultimately i think the entire experience is the statement of the game so it's all important. Either way, i hope you get what you need out of the game, even if it is just a few hours at a time spent in a wonderous new place.
so after this and your Witness video, what I've learned here is that my childhood with Myst games shaped my taste in games *way* more than I thought it did XD
which sounds silly, but my thoughts and feelings on Outer Wilds are too big and (forgive the pun) nebulous to condense into something concrete even in my own head, let alone a YT comment. so silly is all I've got this time. I never would have thought to put these four games in a series, but *boy* do they work. 22/10
There's a time and a place for everything, and a little silliness never hurt anyone!
Thanks for the kind words. I was worried i was drawing a bit too nebulous (hiyooo) a line between these games, but the connection i felt there was too much for me to just leave behind. This is the biggest project i've worked on on this channel and i'm glad it's resonating with people!
Space always scared me and excited me at the same time. The big unknown and the ultimate adventure. I've had those thoughts you talked about in your video (do what we do matter at all? Will we be stuck in a small corner in the universe? What will happen when all the stars will die?). Pretty depressing stuff but also interesting. I am glad I am not alone in the wandering of the mind.
Anyway, great video! :)
This should definitely have more views than it does. Well done.
Thanks so much! I've actually been thinking about this video a lot lately. Might have to revisit this game soon. Pretty cool how this game stays with you years after you think you're done with it.
I’ll come back to this after I’ve beaten the game I haven’t played it yet but I’ve heard a lot about it :)
I feel like it is my duty to reinforce this idea. Please play this game.
Existential crisis: the video: the videogame
Accurate, and frighteningly so!
20:27
I imagined theres so much of it on the wall because the walls are connected communication methods
Insert ash twin marker to type to ash twin etc.
The pools to.
what a fantastic video, always lovely to have people share your way of seeing things!
Hell yeah! I've been waiting for you to post man
Ok that was a beautiful analysis. You got yourself a new subscriber. Time to go back and watch those Myst videos.
Yes, I'm just going to keep making new comments. I finished this game a few months ago and have lots of different thoughts. Anyways, the thought: I love how the story is not structured and linear. There are 2 stories and the important one is everywhere and in weird orders. It was late in the game when I realized that it was the same Nomai everywhere and wish I'd paid more attention to names. That's what I want to do next play through, but I also want to wait a while so I've forgotten a bit of the game.
This is the first of your vids I've seen (because I love Outerwilds so much and can't get enough of peope talking about it) and I really love it, thank you for making it. You peaked my interest in the other puzzle games you talked about, gonna try playing them first before checking those videos out.
So glad you enjoyed the video! I might've gone a little overboard, talking about 3 games as a lead-in to talk about Outer Wilds, but i think there's a lot hiding in the relationship OW has to other puzzle games. Thanks for coming by :)
I really appreciate the time and effort you put into making this fantastic video for this fantastic game. Despite the many existing videos on this game you still had many new perspectives to bring forward and I found it really interesting. Thank you 💚 here's hoping we'll all enjoy Echoes of the Eye when it comes out.
Glad you enjoyed the video! And oh wow, i hadn't heard about Echoes until right now. I guess... yeah, here's hoping!
Goodness, this was glorious. I've been saving this for an afternoon I had some time, and I'm so glad I waited until I could pay it my full attention. I got chills so many times, and full-out cried at the end, full of despair and hope and everything in between. It was truly an honor to watch something so beautiful 💜
Well thanks so much! I was worried I went too bleak with this one, but i'm so glad to know it's reaching people. I'm definitely doing something a bit more light-hearted next.
Loved this video, the nihilistic comfort of Outer Wilds is really interesting to think about. Thanks for the feature in the description!
My pleasure! Hope it gets you some readers. Glad you liked the video.
I appreciate you making your own reaction cut-away's.
AHHHH holy crap what a good video dude!!!
I really like this vid. You've put so much work and thought into it and it really shows! I didn't play Outer Wilds, as the guy who reviews video games on our local community radio station, spoiled the super nova surprise in his review. Don't mater though. I've had alot of fun watching other people talk about it, and their take on it. Great work mate!!
Thanks very much! There's a lot of this game i didn't touch on, and maybe i'll come back to it and talk through it some more one day but for now, I need to play something else, haha.
@@VZed Really looking forward to it, whatever it is!
One of my favorite games. Reading about the game, it sounded really interesting and glad I played it. Adding your own philosophical thoughts on it, and elaborating about different parts of the game was awesome. This is the best review I have seen on it by far. I did not know you like these type games and can relate because I grew up playing point and click adventure games on old IBM computers such as Kings Quest, Indie Jones, and the Black Cauldron. I played Myst too and was so excited as a child to beat that game. It was really tough and mysterious and trying to figure out everything on the island was awesome. I did try Riven but did not get that far. I walked around to all the different mechanical devices and tinkered with them a bit. It did seem harder than Myst but I did not put the time and effort in at the time. Witness is another one that that looks interesting and want to try it sometime. Another one I would like to try I hear is like Outer wilds is Subnautica.
This video is so awesome and also hauntingly beautiful!!!💗💗👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 side note: I was also scared of Myst as a kid and could never pinpoint why haha(sorry it took me this long to watch just got life stuff happening
No rush! watch whenever you want, lol. And *whew* glad i'm not the only one who got freaked out by Myst. Game is scary, y'all!
The Eye of the Universe is the very essence of the universe.
-no reason to exist at all
-seriously why the fuck does it exist
-I cannot hammer home this point enough what the fuck
-it's beautiful nonetheless
-it had no reason to be beautiful, it could have been anything (or nothing)
-you had no reason to be there
-you enjoy what limited time you have there surrounded by friends, grateful for this (last/only) chance at this inexplicable thing called existence
-you don't need to be told what to do. Nothing makes sense but you intrinsically know that you need to enjoy this experience
nice one g.
You put out such impressive content, I thoroughly believe you'll blow up. You truly deserve it and I wish the best!
Ok, now I want your take on Heaven's Vault.
I happened to play those two back to back. And besides the obvious differences, they make a perfect pair. Thematically there's lots of similarities, but also in terms of puzzle design and trusting you to solve things with the tools you start with and your own growing understanding of its fictional cultures and language.
In a weird way, Outer Wilds cured my existential dread of the inevitable Heat Death of the Universe. For my playthrough of the game, it was sort of like a chance at fighting against that inevitability, even if it still ends the same way it would’ve ended without me fighting back. It’s a shame you didn’t talk about the ending, but it makes sense considering what you were going for in this video would’ve somewhat contrasted with what the official ending of the game went with. Though I do have to ask, what is your take on the ending, thematically speaking?
Yeah, i had a few sections in the original script that i cut out because they didn't specifically support what i was going for in this video, and to keep the video short (lol). Reading those notes again, though, I haven't ruled out the possibility of returning to this game in the future, cause honestly I could talk about it forever. I could probably drum up at least two more video topics on it but I want to give them some time because there are other games i want to talk about and vids I want to make :)
As for my thoughts on the ending I kind of summed up my general feeling with the line about standing at the end and saying "i'm still here". I largely take the ending pretty literally. I think the presence of a conscious observer has the ability to collapse the potential of nothing into something, in the same way the game has moved forward until that point. Does that make sense? I definitely would need more time and more words to get my full point across. Like i said, there's no way i'm not coming back to this game in one way or another. This genre of game is among my absolute favourites and this game is at the top of it currently.
@@VZed Oh don't worry, what you said makes sense, we started from Nowhere in terms of information, but still at the end managed to achieve something, from nothing. Anyways, I look forward to the day you return to this game, but also look forward to your next video. This video was my first exposure to you, and you seem to have some pretty interesting topics.
The interloper was rough...
Thinking on the Myst/Witness subgenre connection. The one thing that irked me in this game was that the starting village and protagonist felt too zelda-ish and gamey, and the light fantasy fluff style of that detracted from the game's sense of highconcept gravitas and personal meaning at times. I think what I was missing was a meta/paratextual frame story, involving the actual player magically entering into a cyberspace otherworld, in a way that gave a lot of those 80's and 90's RPG's, as well as Myst and the Witness, that extra sense of personal involvement and worldbuilding weight. The sense that you, sitting behind the computer, taking notes and making maps, are a part of the story too.
They kind of imply that there's more meta game stuff going on with those digitized precursor minds, or some mind outside the universe, looking into the player character's world through the statues, I think? But that eye of the universe stuff was left super vague and indefinite.
Otherwise, totally, this game was a perfect realization of the realtime action adventure Myst thing that those devs seemed to be aiming for with Uru, and the best possible contemporary hightech addition to this wayy too small subgenre of games.
I'm 5 months late but did you unlock all the ship logs? I think if you have any confusion about how The Eye of The Universe works, you probably missed some stuff in the game. I see what you're saying about the Zelda stuff but I totally disagree that it's a flaw.
A puzzle game I bet you haven't even heard of is called Obsidian. It's a great game lost to time. I wasn't ever able to finish the game as it always crashed after I got out of the chemistry part of it....perhaps you could do a video on that game :D
Also I think Outer Wilds is definitely overrated, but that's doesn't mean it's not good, it just means that it didn't really speak to me like all these people around me claim it spoke to them...maybe I missed something, but I seriously don't get the hype of the game. Or maybe the hype became too large and annoying, and I got tired of hearing people constantly gush about this game Add nauseam....and thus it soured my experience. Whatever happened, I just don't see the magic that other people do.
With that said, this was very good video.
You used a lot of flowery language to describe "God" without actually saying "God"; and now that i think of it, so did the game.