Common Misconceptions About The "Outer Wilds" Time Loop
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.พ. 2022
- Hello everyone! I have been getting questions about the time loop and our place in it for a long time. I figure I might as well address is in its own video since itll make more sense in its own context!
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I was confused at how the cannon fired 9 million probes but the beginning of the loop would've been the first time it fires based on how the Ash Twin Project works. I didn't consider the fact that in-universe we played through the beginning 9 million times ourselves, but didn't remember it because the statues hadn't activated yet, and we only became aware of the loop once the Eye was found and therefore the statues were set to activate. Time travel is so goddamn clever when done right.
Also, just imagine how big of an existential crisis that might cause for the hatchling, realizing they've done this 9 million times before, DIED 9 million times before, and are only just now have the ability to remember their past lives.
@@jacksonbarkerthebluehairedfox Don't see what that changes, you'll only remember your past lives from the moment the statue synced with you, not the millions before.
@Baha2490 well the pure fact that u still lived and died 9 million times.
The realization itself is very existential
@@yoyodude-aoe2726 If I don't remember it, it's not me =P My thoughts would be focused on the fear of being stuck in the loop for eternity (and potentially dying in pain, though you can surely find a way to avoid that after a few loops).
@@Baha2490 yes remaining blisfully ignorant will lead to a happier life.
how chert starts having crisis as he realises everything is ending at the end of the loop.
The only remaining piece of game-logic: the first 22 minutes count from when you interact with the statue. That's where a lot of the misunderstanding comes from. Sure, it would have been brutal to be fried in your tutorial loop, but it would be so great lore-wise. Also, speedrunning.
IIRC it actually used to be a thing, as in earlier versions of the game would start with the 22 minute countdown as soon as you wake up, meaning that you could die before linking to the statue by taking too long. I presume it was removed for gameplay reasons
Imo they should have had a separate tutorial day that ends with the player going to sleep.
@@mollistuff that would still cause a problem if the player didn’t walk past the statue for 22 minutes after waking up! You just have to put this down to it being a game.
same but @ having your shiplog deleted if you die during the Final Loop
@@Uppernorwood976 That would be far less likely to happen though. I probably took 40 minutes to complete the tutorial, but would have walked past the statue by 3 minutes on day 2.
i had no idea the ship's computer worked like that!! thats so exciting, considering i always wondered why the cables underneath looked like That (exactly like the power cables scattered around the solar system)
3 years after release and we're still finding new details
There's also a gravity crystal like the ones on brittle hollow to make artificial gravity in the ship, and the scout's recalling is activated through mini black & white holes.
And the ship's gravity beam is a scavenged nomai beam placed on the roof of the ship, on top of the hatch
It feels kinda dumb for only a piece of the statue to work like that and convenient that it happens to do the exact thing you'd need it to, but it's for a mechanic that makes your life infinitely easier so I really don't care. It's nice that they even gave us an explanation for that.
@@Cyynapse The same is true for Death Stranding. Where OW's story pieces come together as you play the game, in DS it all remains a confusing mess (the scanner being called "Odradek" should be a clue as to why) until the very end. And you experience one hell of an ending that is highly rewarding that explains everything. Or does it? From the get-go there are two mysteries going on, and the premise is to figure out the solution to them. The last 5 hours or so is spent on an explanation phase and massive reveals at the very end. However, post real credits, there is a tiny reveal associated with the biggest secret the game conceals. You can even platinum the game without obtaining the full set of a certain chain of interviews. If you read through all of those, a different narrative starts to form, but now you're forced to play through the game - possibly several times (or watch others) - to start figuring out how all the subtle (and until now, unnoticed) clues support the new theory. As cheesy as some of the lines can go, that is some masterful writing. Having seen 40+ full let's plays of DS (more so for OW, but its far shorter), it's not like I'm going to hold it against anyone for not spotting these or make sense of whatever partial interviews they obtained. So a 100+ hour game being close to platinum with a highly rewarding, and you still don't even know half of it. I mean, who the hell does this? 😁
Another misconception: I remember reading a negative review on EotE, where the person said the fundamental mechanic, which is the time loop, was ignored and that it didn't make sense that you continue playing in the simulation after dying by the fire, and so they didn't like the DLC because that was somehow lazy. But that person didn't really understand that the time loop isn't triggered by you dying, it's triggered by your memories being sent back when the sun explodes. Them leaving a negative review for a reason they didn't fully understand kinda ticked me off.
It's very obvious but some people have that misconception I guess.
You can actually test this method by flying out super far away from the sun, far enough away that the explosion doesn't kill you. Then you see a different reset screen, one where the statue manually resets the loop, even though you haven't died. I believe you can also trigger that ending from just waiting inside the ash twin.
@@alexlowe2054 Correct. Though if you remove the Warp Core, the ATP's shell will eventually break and be consumed by the supernova.
Oh I see, I clearly agree, maybe the game could have made it a bit more clear for us, lore with time loops gets too easly compliated and missunderstood, but in THIS game it is so well made that it's nearly making 100% sense, the games tells us well it's story, but giving those time loop details would have been even better, but I guess how hard it can be to introduce it well without losing the player
@@MazHazPazzaz supposedly the devs wanted that to actually delete your save file and had to be stopped by the publisher
@@adora_was_taken I'd believe it, but I'm glad they didn't go with that. It'd have been real disheartening to be at like 98% for all the entries, try the ending, dying, and starting back at 0%. I definitely wouldn't have 100% the game if that was the case.
I knew most of that, but I never knew why exactly the statue connected when it did. It's great that there is an in-game reason for it, and it makes a lot of sense that the Nomai didn't want to live through an eternity of loops themselves.
Still, when you think about how the ATP works and the existential nightmare that would come from knowing that on each timeline from each loop until the Eye is found your entire people would experience the death of the solar system (and just have no knowledge of it for the next loop), you can see why many of the Nomai were against the project at the start.
They simply just didnt understand what they were doing imo. I dont think any nomai we know would do such a thing. They literally dug up and replanted plants they may hurt. All in the process of trying to kill millions of things. They mustve thought they were rewriting time.
Well. This is just saying the nomai probably assumed their was only one timeline. And they were actually rewriting all of their horrible actions within it. Making them so they never happened to begin with. I dont see the Nomai going through with killing countless species if they had any other belief.
You can look at it however you want bud. That’s a valid interpretation of the game. Personally I don’t think the atp magically has the power to erase millions of universes out of existence. But Ive already put my thought processes in videos for everyone interested. So I won’t share them here.
It’s not the same timeline just a few seconds back. It’s a different timeline entirely. And you swap probes. Our black hole leads to their white hole. Vise verse. In the case of the hel ending you don’t swap probes. We steal theirs and space time gets mad. Edit was worded wrong. It doesn’t technically enter without an exit. But something enters their black hole and doesn’t come back out their white hole. Which is what people expect. It’s so hard to phrase this all on the fly from different perspectives.
@@TheLoreExplorer this is not how time travel works in Outer Wilds.
Spacetime breaks because you've created a paradox. Specifically, a variation on the "grandfather paradox."
If you go back in time and kill your grandpa, then you would have never been born, and then there would be no way that you could have gone back in time to kill your grandpa.
This creates a paradox that breaks reality.
If you were right about different timelines existing in the game, then this wouldn't be a paradox, as you would just be killing an unrelated grandpa in a different timeline, and there would be no conflict to cause a break in reality.
Now back to removing the black hole before the scout can enter it:
If different timelines existed, then spacetime would not be broken, because as you said 'we'd just be stealing a scout from another timeline,' and there is no reason for spacetime to "get mad" about this, as evidenced by Self existing.
If your logic was true, then *creating* Self would break spacetime (it would be stealing from another timeline), but it doesn't.
It's only when a PARADOX occurs by *NOT* traveling back in time to create Self, that the fabric of spacetime is broken.
This is directly addressed in the dialogue with Self.
Self: "Hey, what do you think happens if you don't jump into the black hole again at the end of this loop?"
Player: "If I don't, then where do you come from?"
Self: "That's a good point."
(If you don't, then spacetime breaks because it creates a paradox)
Player: "Think it's okay there's two of us?"
Self: "Well, we're talking to each other and nothing's exploded yet."
(Hence, material from the previous loop can exist at the same time as the current loop, as long as a paradox is not created.)
Ah, so there exists, in theory, an original loop where the probe cannon didn't fire at all, and the sun went boom. Which told the cannon to fire 22 mins ago, Which sent back the order when it's atp core gets powered by the sun etc. I guess in a way its kinda like if we jump into the atp core right? Like we break spacetime if we don't keep going back in, and I suppose that's what the fire order is doing too right?
Well, it's less going to break spacetime, and more simply acting on automated orders. The ATP sends a fire order back in time with a firing angle they haven't done yet then, at the start of the loop, the OPC takes tha order in, moves to fire at that angle, then fires. But, yes, before the time loop begun, the OPC never shot off.
*its
@@Mabra51 lmao
It wouldn't have broken spacetime, since the order gets sent back each time just progressed. It'd break space-time tho if for whatever reason something failed that caused the ATP to not send back the order. Since the next loop is the same as the first, it would become a paradox where no next version of the timeline is possible. Each timeline that gets reset that hatchling is in is a memory for them that they experienced, something like "sending back memories of an observer is equivilant to sending back an observer". The statutes are designed to simply be a storage vault (that the hearthians even used) that are maintained between timelines, making them hard to accidentally break space-time, since they're working with something fixed, so even the hearthian spaceship DIYers can improve their ships without even risking breaking spacetime.
@@ThatJay283 I want to clarify something. First of all this is just my theory so take it with a grain of salt.
It is somehow different to send back whether information or mass.
Take ATP self duplicate incident for example, the timeline should start by player receiving memory while self appearing, and end with self died while the player's memory AND body got sent back. Therefore if player never jumped in the black hole self wouldn't appear, causing a paradox.
Interestingly, in every other "normal" time loop, the memory player received at the start is widely different from the memory sent at the end of the loop and that's considered fine.
Now in the OPC case, in the first loop the OPC didn't fire because it didn't receive the fire command, and at the end ATP sent the fire command, that's all fine and dandy.
In every other loop exclude the last one the OPC received a different command from what it'll send at the end of the loop, and that's all good too.
So following that logic, if originally the Sun Station succeeded when the Nomai is alive, the last loop will begin at the OPC receiving fire command but at the end the Sun Station doesn't fire and ATP is never active. That would be fine I guess?
Afterwards the time loops stop, the Sun doesn't explode, and time goes on. (Assuming SS is a success of course)
If I've remembered basic math correctly, if the someone had lived through all 9,318,054 time loops, it would've taken a little over 390 years to get the EotU coordinates.
Imo, they should have just built hundreds of orbital probe cannons after the ash twin project failed, instead of moping about it (i know they died a short time after the sun station failed but thats just hindsight)
@@yoni5919 that'd be an absolute metric booty tonne of resources and time to build. The canon itself it's a sophisticated piece of machinery that uses artificial gravity to launch probes, which themselves have to be made of materials and technologies strong enough to to withstand a launch at speeds fast enough to be useful, not to mention that they would potentially need to build over 9 million of them.
The logistics of such a project would be of such an enormous scale, that I wouldn't be surprised if the entire solar system wasn't mined out, not to mention the time it would take to mine all the materials, build the hundreds of launchers, build 9 million probes, and perform 9 million launches.
@@Giraffinator Well they wouldn't need to build millions of them, each one could launch a probe and then warp it back after 22 minutes.
From their perspective they have decades to develop more efficient (in terms of power, size and construction time) cannons, and actually finding the eye would take (based off of your calculations and assuming 100 cannons each firing a probe every 22 minutes) only 4 years. so assuming it would take them 30 years to develop and build the cannons, and then launch them, most of them (assuming nomai live about as long as humans, if not longer) would see the process from start to finish.
@@yoni5919 I mean it'd still be incredibly wasteful. The Nomai were fairly cautious about not overmining the solar system and making sure that they didn't just up and destroy everything like the Owlks did. Even if we assumed building 100 gigantic super powerful cannons was possible, they still would have had to build nearly 10 million probes that would have almost all gone to waste just flying into deep space.
Imo the Nomai would have probably come up with a much better plan than that, probably involving some kind of giant telescopes like the James Web and just looking for it that way. Or just simply coming up with a better design for the sun station. Either way the grander point is that the Nomai died shortly after so we don't know what their next plan would have been.
@@BlazeMakesGames they wouldnt need to build 9 million probes - they could just recall the launched probe back to the cannon after 22 minutes
This man is honestly the best "small" content creator out there. He has such a lovable demeanor, he makes high effort videos, and is an excellent speaker. Everything you could want to know about Outer Wilds can be found on this channel, and it's been keeping me engaged with the game long after I've finished it.
He's not an excellent speaker or writer, but I appreciate his work & videos none the less.
@@bbbbbbb51 his imperfections make him that much more lovable in my opinion, like he may sometimes struggle with narrating etc but he loves the game enough to overcome his difficulties to share these great videos
And his slight accent is the cherry on top.
I love hearing him stutter and mess up words because I do that all of the time and he obviously does so much work for his videos so why should he go through and re-do every time he messes up a word or stutters? It’s not like we can’t understand him and he adds captions when he messes up and he wants us to know what he meant
A few thoughts:
It seems like it would make sense that were the Sun Station to have succeeded, upon finding the Eye the Nomai might choose to experience one additional loop before halting the project. That way, they could ask the Orbital Probe Cannon NOT to fire at the start of the next loop, and thus preserve the probe and cannon in case the "Eye Detection" turned out to be a false positive. In that case, they could restart the loop again later if necessary. If they halted the project immediately after detecting the Eye and waited more than 22 minutes after the OPC fired, they'd be stuck with a busted OPC. Or at least have to build a new probe; it's possible the OPC might not have self-destructed even with the extra power if it hadn't been floating abandoned in space for 280,000 years.
It's also weird to think that if the Sun Station had worked, the Nomai would have known the project succeeded before they activated it, since the Orbital Probe Cannon would have fired 22 minutes before they activated the Sun Station.
Honestly, it was irresponsible for them to have even fired the Sun Station - since the OPC hadn't fired, they should have known the ATP didn't activate. There was a risk they were about to trigger a supernova that wouldn't produce a loop, destroying the solar system without any way to eventually prevent it.
My perspective is that there is only one "real" loop for the hatchling - the final one where you remove the ATP core.
From their perspective, they go to sleep the night before their launch and then wake up with dozens of loops worth of memories flooding over them before immediately heading off to enter the Eye. When you as the player are going through all your other loops, that's the memories playing back. At least, that's my take on it.
Youre right in the sense theyd live through one loop and stop it with a loaded cannon. That was the plan. But the cannon wouldnt fire before they blew up the sun? Theyd blow up the sun. Itd send info back 22 minutes. Then the cannon would fire. Your reasoning seems flawed to me. Cause then wouldnt the nomai know there was no reason to test the sun station? The opc didnt fire 22 minutes ago so we failed. It was always meant to fire the loop after. Not prior to the sun exploding.
@@TheLoreExplorer This is where we get into the usual time travel paradox "solutions". If time is a closed loop, then since a successful test sends the information back in time, you'll know if it worked because it will have already worked as many times as it's going to work, even your "first time through". If it's an "infinite universes" thing, then each time travel event creates a new timeline, and you could be living through any one of them your "first time through", so the cannon would not have fired before they trigger the supernova the first time.
I like to believe the closed loop theory applies in Outer Wilds because it's possible to break the fabric of spacetime by creating conditions that don't loop.
See. I thin my that’s where everyone is flawed. They are trying to compare it to established time travel scenarios. In this scenario I think the multiverses aren’t created by the atp. They are all there naturally. And sending info between them wouldn’t cause a paradox. The cause of everything happens right before it occurs and can’t change.
@@TheLoreExplorer Yeah the original commenter has good logic but isn't quite right. Assuming the project succeeds, the first loop is when the OPC doesn't fire, as it hasn't received any information yet, and they go and set off the sun station. If this had worked, they wouldnt remember this loop - in fact, the only loop they'd actually remember is one where they get the coordinates, and don't set off the sun station as a result. It's only because the sun station doesn't work, that the fact they tried to set it off with no OPC firing actually becomes 'canon' with the timeline, if that makes sense. In Outer Wilds logic, there isn't really any true time travel, and causality is still linear, it just... well... loops a lot.
Its just frustrating to me that people believe the in game explanations. They are either from nomai who admit they dont really know whats happening. Or from like gabbro who says "Yeah. That makes sense. Its hard to say what exactly is happening with time. But lets call it a loop for now". Then everyone just goes "OHHH. It looks like it. Must be a timeloop". I know it shouldnt frustrate me. But I probably have over 50 hours just replying to comments that are trying to straighten out two contradictory things in the game. So its definitely no ones fault. The game is telling them that its a timeloop. And if its a true timeloop then op is kind of right. And the game tells us it is multiple times. But imo we are SHOWN it isnt. And such thingd are kind of a hindrance to explaining the real mechanics of the game to people. Its always an uphill battle because I have to fight these preconceived notions which makes it hard. Almost impossible. Cause usually most of the time even after hours of trying to explain things people they usually disagree with me because of one weird thing. I got someone all the way through my theory once. And they were catching onto it. But then busted out "Well, then why does self cause spacetime to crash and not our memories". Well cause one changes spacetime and causes things that shouldnt happen in them and the memories dont cause anything to happen that shouldn't. And they didnt buy that one thing and it was back to nope. Dont buy it. Its like wait....thats not even a problem with my theory. Thats inherent to the game. It just makes my work feel pointless sometimes. Idk.
I put most of this together after finding everything to 100% the game (pre-dlc), but having it all explained in a coherent, cohesive fashion is highly appreciated!
I'd say the most unbelievable part of the whole loop is that, somehow, Gabbro wasn't in his hammock and paired with a statue - he's more the type to have been in that hammock at the start, and never have left it.
Youd think so. But apparently the first issue the hearthians ran into they called upon gabbro to deal with it.
It would really suck for him if he happened to be somewhere else 22 minutes before the supernova and had to get back to his island at the start of every loop, but it seems he did start there and only left for Statue Island afterwards. That calls the timeline of his ship into question. You wouldn't expect it to be so far in the water if he used it to get to another island so recently, and assuming he doesn't leave his island again every loop afterwards you'd think it would still be near him or that he'd at least have an idea where it is. Jetpacking isn't gonna work either due to Giant's Deep's stronger gravity, so the most likely scenario seems to be that he just swam there. Gabbro is such a chad he just swims in tornado water chasing moving islands like it's nothing.
@@speedude0164 Decided to read through Gabbro's dialogue on the wiki to see if there was any mention of where they are when the loop starts / how they got to statue island; Gabbro does sometimes say “You know, I kind of wish I'd built a hammock here before we ended up in this time loop" when talking to them after the third loop (if you've spoken before), so they *might* not be on the island at the start of the loop, but they definitely aren't in a hammock.
As for the statue pairing, sadly all we know is that Gabbro was standing when it happened, and that they're able to get the hammock set up by the time you get there on the first loop.
@@speedude0164 maybe the statue’s could bind people to the ash twin project, even before the actual project starts?
@@BobbinRobbin777 gabbro would be the closest sentient being. the nomai writing does say
" Yarrow, would you kindly step back so Daz is closest to the statue? When pairing, the statue will choose whoever is in closest proximity. "
have you noticed how different both warp cores are? it would be interesting to see a video about it, cause to me it reflects how the nomai before the vessel crashed in dark bramble had a different culture to the nomai after the crash, in their decoration and architecture.
dude, i already thought the game was good but hearing your videos on it are filling in so many gaps and making me appreciate it even more.
Glad to hear it!
That's one of the many beauties of this game. Even after beating it you can still realize things that explain parts of the story you didn't understand and add to it. The more I think of all the technicalities behind the Ash Twin Project, the more impressed I am with it.
Actually, those two being in charge of the launch only has its upsides, since the loop will reset anyway, the integrity of the cannon after the launch isnt really important, and as their colleages say, they surely know how to launch the probe as far as possible, making me ponder if the project would have worked without that extra kick to gather information each launch. Also the important room from the cannon, the one with the statue that receives the data, is unintentionally placed inside the planet (lucky nomai), so it isnt at risk. Its actually crazy playing the game and seeing all the coincidences that had to take place for the adventure to be possible, it really triggers the existential wonder in our brains.
It is important. Actually, definitionally, central. As the video shows and states. The place we find the eyes coordinates could have easily broke like the couple rooms still on the orbital probe cannon. It wasnt "placed" at the core of giants deep. It fell when the cannon fired and could have easily broken if the stress wasnt put exactly in the neck of the module. If that happened the atp failed the instant it started. Central. And lore wise. The eye is found as we talk to hornfells. The eye was found relatively early in the "loop". There was no need to make it fire at such high speed.
@@TheLoreExplorer that's hindsight that they didn't need to fire it fast to find it... the eye may have been further out in which case theoretically a slower speed may also have doomed the project if it took longer than 22 min to reach
Not really. I think they did calculations to see how far something can orbit the sun and how fast the probe needed to travel to reach it.
Yep in their written argument the Nomai who wanted to put it to max power points out that the cannon technically only has to fire once from their subjective POV anyway because of the time loop.
@@TheLoreExplorer hey, i know this came out a while ago but i hope you can respond! though i already understood 99% of this, what makes you think we were talking to hornfels as the eye is found? is that conjecture on your part or is there dialogue i missed? also, I learned through this video about the log being made using statue materials, which is so cool!
I thought I already knew all there was to know about the time loop, but what really got me was the inclusion of a piece of the statue in your ships computer. I never saw that, and it's really cool! love all these lore videos anyway, keep it up!
Hey I never picked up on the explanation for the ship log! That is fascinating. Something that I've wondered, though it might just be an issue of suspending disbelief: do you think the Eye could have been positioned such that the Ash Twin Project would've been doomed to fail? I think both Giant's Deep and the Sun block a huge cone of space from being directly accessible by the probe, no matter how many millions of times you shoot it. That is, any probes fired directly at the Sun or at Giant's Deep will burn or drown there, incapable of exploring the space on the other side of those two celestial bodies. I guess you could circumvent Giant's Deep by assuming the probe could cut through the current and emerge on the other side, or the cannon could have a random delay that lets it shoot from the shadowy side (though that's not what we see in the game, where it always shoots from the same sunny side for the player's benefit).
Youd be surprised. The way things orbit and all of that. Something sitting so far out and theoretically orbiting would never always be behind a certain object for that long. And we use things like gravity assists all the time. That fling probes around the planet and send them going off which ever way we want. plus, go the the orbital cannon on ember twin right now and fire directly at the sun. You wont hit it. Its all confusing. I dont think in this case its suspending disbelief. But rather having faith the nomai computer couldve done those calculations.
In the game, if you raced to your space ship, and chased that loop's probe, you can catch up to it. Usually it's hard, because you aren't sure exactly which direction it went, but when it's a more visible one, it's easier. Having caught up to the probe, you can stick with it for 22 minutes.
You can try that infinity times, and the probe will never lead you to the Eye. This is for technical reasons with the implementation of the game. You can do the same thing with your ship - thrusting in any direction for 22 minutes, and you will never find the Eye.
This has resulted in a dubious hypothesis: in order to find the Eye, the probe had to be aimed at the Quantum Moon, pass through the cloud layer in the upper atmosphere (on a very shallow angle), *and* have the Quantum Moon transition to the Eye at just the right time to bring the probe along with it, before the probe pass out of the Quantum Moon's atmosphere again. But in truth, neither you, nor your scout can do this, for those same technical reasons.
@@robertboily9030 I think it makes sense that the probe never leads you to the Eye. The chances of it hitting it twice would be infinitesimal. Technically you should reach the Eye if you managed to follow the probe *in your first loop*, which would probably require some type of sequence breaking. But the fact that the game deliberately freezes celestial time during that loop specifically really breaks whatever you could deduce from the world based on that loop especially.
@@DavidTMarchand The player's first loop is the loop after the eye has been found.
@@blindbeholder9713 That would make things much clearer! But it doesn't sound right to me. It that were the case, the statues would activate at the beginning of the loop, right? Because they've already been told the Eye has been found. And the one on Timber Hearth would sync up with Hal or Hornfelds several minutes before you reach the Observatory.
Great video. Helped me get a better understanding of the loop. It can be pretty difficult to wrap your head around but you did a great job of putting things into perspective.
I knew some of this, but a whole lot of this I had no clue about! It’s amazing to learn, and I shall continue to appreciate your lore finding and explaining contributions.
Also, the Hatchling dies. He never respawn. It is just a new one each loop, with memories of the previous one. The "self" encounter just proves it : precedent selves are whole different persons. That is sad.
I understood most of that when I played the game, but your video definitely filled in a couple of gaps that I hadn’t considered. Thanks!
Nice bit of lore there with the ship computer, i actually didn't know that and just thought of it as a game logic kinda thing. Great video buddy, can't wait to send you this prop!
Great video, the best practical explanation of the loop on TH-cam.
Glad you think so!
In our years outside of the game, there are just under 390 years between the ash twin project first firing its probe and the hearthian linking to the statue.
I had to watch many of your videos until that I actually understood every single part of the process. Very nice that you decided to make a video summing all information
I love your videos on this game. Reminds me of how much I loved sci-fi as a kid. 10 to 15 minute break from the horrors of reality.
I have alway loved how absolutely insane of a plan this was! I remember when of got to the ash twin project I was think “You mad lads! This was your plan!” It is honestly brilliant!
Lol 😆 answering my many questions. Thank you for not only answering in comments but making a whole video . Love it
The idea that the "first" loop is the 9 1/2 millionth loop....
I really loved your explanation! Finally I understand the loop better and how it got triggered etc.
I think I knew all of this but your video really helped in organizing my thoughts anyway, so thanks, keep up the good work!
AAA I only got to watch this video now, thank you so much for the dedicated shout-out!! Happy to finally be a member
Of course! Welcome to the crew bud!!
This answered every question I had, thank you so much!
More reason to love this game even more!
Thanks a ton for exploring this game!!!
The Nomai conceptualizing the Loop to only make them realize it's active after the Eye is found makes sense. Can you imagine relieving not only the same 22 minutes (with the people unlinked acting the same every day, and every event happening the same way unless you intervene) but the explosion of a star into a supernova... For about four hundred years?!
That's far enough for anyone to become crazy and try to disable the whole thing before it's come to fruition, I can understand that they would want to be unaware.
Solid work.
Hey lore, there's a new game that just released called "will you snail" - it is a rage platformer, but it also has a really interesting story about AI told through text logs you can find throughout the game. (The developer was an outer wilds player, and I think he took some inspiration from it making the text logs) It's pretty interesting, but if you're not into stupidly hard platformers then that's fine lol
The single most helpful video I've found on understanding the time loop mechanics and fundamental nature of Outer Wilds and putting together the many disparate elements in some cohesive whole. As much as I love the game, its lore and backstory (in relation to the player) is really dense, even after you've figured everything out. I still struggle to make sense of it all... Almost like my brain is on a 22-minute loop. (How do I escape?)
I love your videos !!
Outstanding!
That is brilliant that they even figured out a way to inject lore to explain your ship’s log getting updated along with the other loop memories.
Great explanations, as usual!
So when I first played the game, it took me about 20 loops before I realized that the sun was exploding. I kept either dying, meditating, or wasn't looking at the sun when it happened. But in that time I figured out that the ash twin project would activate when the system malfunctioned, then a little later I figured out that it was the suns explosion that powered the whole thing. In this way I assumed that there was some problem with the cannon so it was sending a message to sun station to do the time loop so that I could fix it. I thought I would fix it, then the time loop would end, and I would have a chance to share all my discoveries with everyone else on timber hearth. By the time I figured out how to get to sun station via the teleporter, I still had not been disillusioned. When I read on the pylon that the sun had reached the end of its natural life cycle and the truth unfolded, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Crikey moses. I've played this game through twice and I was nowhere near understanding this. Even after watching this video, I only half-understand it. I flipping love it though, and I love this channel. Great work!
Awesome video!
Your videos are great. I love this game!
The thing I'll add is that I think there are two possible interpretations of the time loop. The first as you say at 7:26 and 7:38 (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the 9+ million loops before the Hatchling became aware of it, physically happened. But the second interpretation is that those loops never physically happened because no one was aware of them. The Ash Twin Project only got the information from the possible future. The game addresses these two possible interpretations in one of the Nomai texts, on the Statue island on Giant's Deep:
PHLOX: I'm curious: Is sending a being's memories back in time the same as sending the being itself back in time?
PHLOX: As an example, if we were to send my memories back in time, is that the same as sending "me" back in time (not my physical self, but my essence)?
DAZ: I imagine they're two different actions.
CASSAVA: Wouldn't both action be effectively the same?
DAZ: Suppose time is being rewritten. I believe this is different than receiving memories from what is effectively the future.
CASSAVA: But isn't the end result identical in either case?
I like the second interpretation little more. I think the ATP is getting information from the future but that future hasn't actually happened yet. Only the final loop happened, or actually no loop ever physically happened. Every loop was only the Hatchlings memories. Only the final run happened.
But the fun thing is that both interpretations are kind of correct. The one isn't more correct than the other.
The way Outer Wilds' universe seems to work is that the information can be sent from the future (effectively being created out of nothing) without creating the paradox, but something physical can't be (or it can , but it would easily create a paradox).
It's amazing how much there still was to discover replaying the game after I had "beaten" it. With enough paying attention and some math, you can get how "long" the loop has been going on and even which loop was the one where they found The Eye.
Something lorewise that's interesting to consider is that because we only become linked to the statue on the 9 millionth and something loop, our character still had their first "launch day" and went to explore space over and over and over in the same way, but we don't really know how that day went. And it's even possible that each of those 9 million something days went slightly differently because each time the probe would have been launched in a slightly different direction which could cause you to do something slightly different than last time. But we don't know what our character did on any of those 9 million loops. We only know what they did after the eye was found.
You're epic my man I think you are one of my top 3 favorite youtubers
Thanks! The only connection I wasn't making was what activated the statues. Even though I totally had that info, it didn't click in my head. Now it did and I realize I knew that already lol. I love the Outer Wilds lore!
I think the easiest way to explain this is by starting with the fact that Outer Wilds doesn't depict a "time loop" in the conventional sense. The player character isn't being sent back in time (the trigger conditions for the Breaking Spacetime ending notwithstanding) - only their memories are. In effect, the Ash Twin Project is rewriting history each time it activates.
It also helps to compare the memories in the Ash Twin Project to the scout in the High Energy Lab as it's essentially the same thing happening. When you shoot the scout at the energized black hole, there's no other scout coming from the white hole from its perspective. But once the scout goes through, the last second-ish is deleted and it comes out before it entered.
we love you king
The first time I realized that I had been repeating the same 22 minute segment more than 9 million times without remembering it was
breathtaking
Its nice to see I already figured all of this on my own.
Interesting! I knew most of that, and did find the mechanics of the statues only activating when they found the eye a nifty bit of information. But the one thing I didn't know was the bit about your system computer; guess I never found the right dialogue tree while playing. Been awhile since I started up Outer Wilds; new games and all that.
A series of escape room games that are simple straightforward puzzle games with really basic stories; the creators love their dramatic twist to the point where it's predictable and basic. Little to nothing in the way of lore, but Manifold Garden is a real mind-bender of a non-euclidean game.
I have tried so many interesting titles, and now I'm getting myself a bit excited by it..
Figuring this out is one thing but being the people to make this concept to begin with is insane
I don’t know if you would even see this but with this information which I see as mostly true how does gabbro fit into this because they already are in the loop because of the statue opening it’s eyes before hand.
This video is how I r ealized the third statue active in the Ash Twin Project isn't connected to Solanum, but the Orbital Launch Canon
Dude I’ve been replaying this game for years & never put all that together. I was convinced of 2 theories I came up with on my own.
1: when they fired the sun station & it failed, it just took 200000 yrs to see the actual effects. Kinda like a snowball rolling down hill, but they caused it with the rest fire.
2: the comet that floats around & is filled with GM falls into the sun & that volatile hunk of ice upsets the suns chemical reactions & boom.
Ur makes a lot more sense though, so thanks for the deep dive 👍🏻😁
I can’t believe they actually came up with a reason why the ship log works, I love these devs
12:04
Poor prisioner, he will be in there until the stranger runs out of power
And i think that the signal blocker gets its energy from the eye's signal
So maybe if theres no other thing to power the stranger it uses what the signal blocker uses
Maybe they coded the signal blocker to eventually shut off to allow the stranger to receive the eye's residual energy
i have no idea how strong the hull of the stranger would be, but i doubt it's anywhere near as powerful as the lining of the ash twin project. and even if it was, i think the developers said that all races use solar energy, so it would mostly run out very shortly after the supernova happens (based on their power reserve systems)
Where have the devs stated this? May have been before the dlc. We know both hearthians and nomai use solar. But the stranger lives on long after all suns die.
i think the quote was from before the dlc. but that is... so deeply depressing. i hoped that the prisoner wouldn't be a prisoner forever.
@@TheLoreExplorer i dont think they stated this
I made it miself in a discussion on the ow server
One thing that's incredibly daunting about firing the probe is the geometry of the probe path.
Working from memory, a curved line segment is the linear distance travelled (circle radius) multiplied by it's angle theta. So if the probe was fired at 1 single degree from the neutral axis, and it travelled for 100 km, then the distance between that probe and one fired down the axis (theta = 0 degrees) would be 100 km. That's just in the plane. Since its in 3 dimensions, i believe it would be multiplied by a further angle phi (azimuth).
The gist of that is that the distance of the Eye from the cannon is a very significant factor, not just direction.
There's an Edgar Allan Poe story called the Goole Bug that uses the planar distance in a dramatic setting. A treasure (the Goole/Gold Bug) is buried a distance from a tree, and the instructions for finding it say turn to this angle and walk this far. But the narrator gets the angle a tiny tiny bit wrong. They don't find the Bug, and even though they're a short distance from it, they never know that and think it's already been claimed. They don't realise the huge effect that the minute angle change caused.
9,318,054 loops x 22 minutes = 204997188 minutes which is 390.02 years. We have lived for 390 years before we even became aware of the loop - and we spent all that time exploring the solar system on our first day in space!
It makes me think that at the end of the game when we finally die - it's really not so sad after all - it's a far far better fate than if we had been unable to shut off the ash twin project - I would have hated if the game ending implied we would be stuck forever unable to die and aware of our immortality.
But that pales in comparison to the Prisoner. He was aware and - well alive is the wrong word - but he existed for 200,000 + years! And was aware of it the entire time!
Hey Davide. These are nice observations. But you dont need to worry. The prisoner was aware the whole time. But their reality shifted. Time lost all meaning and they found meaning in their own way.
At the same time. We do get trapped in a worse fate than the atp. You know the Solanums fate ending? Well , the qm is just reflecting the eye. We get trapped in a timeless quantum existence too. Forever. But again. Forever loses meaning. Solanum shows us this. She cant tell if its been minutes or years. And this is considered enlightenment in a way by the game. The ancient glade is our new reality (like the prisoners prison). But thats ok because the ancient glade actually is a beautiful place where anything can happen. Even if it is outside of time and usually dark.
I never knew that the probe tracking module fell into Giant’s deep! I thought it was just always down there and was placed there as a safe location
I originally expected us to find a way to stop the sun from exploding and then end the loop
The nomai have a really interesting yet unfortunately brief conversation about whether sending information back in time counts as time travel and how they are affecting the cause effect relationship of the universe. It’d be a great concept for you to talk about if u wanted
Ive talked about it in the sense of how it relates to us. But I think a deep dive on it would help people understand it a bit better, Thanks for the suggestion! They really help.
The time loop has looping for 390 years before reaching the eye.
This is very good
the first loop we connect with the statue is the exact same loop Gabbro connects with their statue. I wonder what would happen if you visit them on your very first loop. Would they say yet that they are in a time loop? I'm going to try it tomorrow
I thought the probe tracking module was dropped into the water by accident and that they built a second tracking module. The busted up room we see up there is totally the tracking module; I recognize that track for the glowing marble.
Also considering the electrical field surrounding that sunken module, aren't we lucky it still works? I assume it made direct contact on the way down, and the intense electrical field could prevent communication.
Nomai tech is damn near magical...
8:20 I think the writing visible at this timestamp suggests the Nomai were going to let the time loop run another few times to "gather data" before they shut it down.
I didn't know the ship computer had a lore reason to remember stuff, I was so ready to accept that it was just a convenient gameolay contrivance. God what a good game
It always bothered me that there were three active statues (according to the ash twin core room). The player is one, obviously, and the Hearthian you speak to on Giant's Deep mentions being stuck in the loop...but I never worked out what the third one was. Based on your video though, I guess it's the Cannon...which makes sense I guess. I just always thought there was some other person out there somewhere that was stuck.
isnt it solanum from the quantum moon?
@@bobert3230 I don't think so...he's stuck in a quantum state of alive and dead.
it's the probe tracking station, you can see the list of active statues on one of those floating ring displays in the ash twin project
If you go to the core of Giant's Deep, in the probe tracking module of the OPC, you will find a statue with open eyes. The statue there is the one that is recording the amount of probes launched and their coordinates.
@@bobert3230 no solanum never gets her memories from past loops. the last mask in the ATP is connected to the probe tracking module which was lost at the bottom of giant's deep
2:40
To be fair to the guys that set up the cannon, it has been 240 thousand years since the orbital canon was built, it might have just deteriorated.
can you explain how does sand stay in the picture of the loop? Why one of the twin is fully covered with it and by the end of the loop it deplenishes. DId nomai perfectly timed the events? Where the sand come from? Was it there when they started building? curious about your throughts on that
oh I thought the sun station was responsible for exploding the sun and collecting it's energy, probably because it reminds me of ideas like the Dyson sphere. thanks for clearing that up!
God damn, my theories got very close. Really interesting how all this works in the game. In the high energy facility you learn that things which go in a black hole come out of a white hole before it enters the black hole, this is why the project even works. You can delay, or speed up the outcome progress, in which the data/object comes out the white hole...by 22 minutes.
Perhaps the nomai became too advanced for the eye, because they did something the eye cant do. Still wish there was more info about the eye.
The interesting question is how long were we asleep between our memories being sent back and 'waking up'? The probe cannon presumably takes some discrete amount of time to wheel about and pick a random coordinate, so it has to be at *least* a few seconds, possibly longer..
handful of seconds tops. The cannon should get the orders to rotate and fire in a new direction at the same time we are receiving our memories. They are both governed by the same mechanisms. But since our memories are a sequence they take longer to receive. So by the time we wake up the opc has acted on the info already.
I actually realized somethings funky about the time loop.
When you connect to the loop and your memories are sent back in time, that’s not a complete do-over. When your memories are sent through the black hole into the past, a new timeline is generated, which branches off from the point of the loop starting. Some of the nomai text asks if sending the memories back in time is the same as sending the person back in time, and they conclude that they are two different functions with the same results. And this brings up an interesting thing, all those deaths were *real deaths* they weren’t erased when the loop restarts, they are never erased. Those were real deaths and when the player wakes up again, that’s not the same person in their pre-supernova non-vaporized body, that is a completely *new* person with all of your memories and traits. Even if the outcome is exactly the same the process is still different, and all those yous that died were real deaths that weren’t erased when your memories were sent back.
That’s just my theory though
Yeah. I feel like that goes by a lot of people. Too many imo. Well reasoned. I have some input though. Technically we don’t know how the atp works. It could be rewriting time. It could be generating new timelines each loop. Or the timelines could all be there naturally. As in it was always an infinite multiverse. These would all be very different. Rewriting would mean it is sort of a do over. No 9 million dead us’s. The one where the atp generates timelines would be crazy. Cause then every black hole ever should do the same. Each time a piece breaks off brittle hollow it should create a new universe. And the last would mean that all those deaths were real. All 9 million. But they’d have happened anyway. Regardless of the atp. I personally believe the last. But I view the atp making them as a sort of good understanding of the game. Cause time is relative anyway. They may as well all be created as we wake up to us. So again. Well done bud. If you’re interested on deeper theories and idea about a it my channel is full of them.
@@TheLoreExplorer i think its the first because if it wasnt the spacetime wouldnt break when you clone yourself in the atp, there wouldnt be a problem if anothr you from other universe comeß to your universe because you dont break causality, but if you do it in the same universe you do break causality
The "time travel" the Nomai use, is what you see at the High Energy lab when you send the probes through the black hole, but on steroids, in that the negative time interval was increased to 22 minutes.
There has to be one timeline, otherwise it wouldn't make sense for objects sent through black holes to appear from white holes before they pass through the black hole. The fact that you break reality when you remove one of the cores before the probe enters the black hole but after it exits the white hole is proof of a singular timeline. If there were multiple timelines, reality wouldn't break.
Wow, I found this channel recently and Im enjoying your videos so much cause i rushed the game a bit (regreting that now) Great channel cause now im learning a lot of the small thing i missed!
one question though. Was the time loops entire purpose just so they could fire the probe cannon infnite times to find the eye without them actually living through it?
Yes and no. The time loops purpose was the idea that launching 9 million probes is basically impossible to do. To create launch and track the paths of 9 million probes would probably take many lifetimes. And the chances of finding the eye are low. The entire point of the statues connected to the atp is so they wouldn’t have to live through those 9 million or so loops consciously.
@@TheLoreExplorer Ok I think i got it, thanks :)
Ig with the statutes since it isn't actually them rotating that activates them it's more just an indicator for us to know that they've been indicated, this would have been the nomai as planned but the 2 hearthians stumbled their way into it instead
It would have been crazy if the Nomai got the sun station working. As they go to press the button to trigger the super Nova they would look around hoping for a Nomai to walk in and reveal the eyes coordinates. Then the dread sinks in as they release they’re the first, and they would die, and then they still activate the station.
They would already know that they’re the first because the probe wouldn’t have fired yet
So when you die before activating the statue, it isn't actually game over - it just is just the death of those memories.
What I find most terrifying about the beginning of the game is knowing that, mathematically speaking, the time loop has been going for at least 390 years without anybody knowing about it, not even you until you finally connected with the statue.
The universe has essentially been in a state of limbo for three centuries, before the player finally disconnects the warp core.
Imagine the existential dread of repeating the same day over and over again for that long, without ever knowing it, until one day you… wake up.
It's not actually a classical time loop where time repeats itself. Information is being sent back in time. In other words, the Ash Twin Project is altering history. From the perspective of the universe, it all only happens once.
@@CanIHasThisName It’s basically taking information and sending it to a different universe, or creating a different universe. (Though I do find the secret ending, the one with your other self, confusing. As when he travels back in time from the blackhole, it causes a paradox that presumedly ends the entire universe. But at the end of the game, you take out the wormhole that allows information to travel loop to loop, there by breaking the cycle, since the information can travel back in time. If this is the case, shouldn’t unplugging the wormhole and stopping the flow of information cause a paradox? Who knows, I’m probably overthinking a joke ending that isn’t canon to the story.)
Did you know that before you gain your memories through the statue, the loop has already been going on for 3.893 centuries.
now that i know they were gonna loop and shut it down after they find the eye i know they're actually genuises now
i think the in-universe reason for why sending information back in time does not break reality is because no matter is being paradoxically created or destroyed, the information only changes what matter is there by storing information in the hard drive
incidentally I think they have to send the entirety of all of the data they've collected through the entire time loop process, so every loop the data packet gets a little bit bigger
I assume that eventually the computer will be full and it will have to either start overwriting old data or maybe the computer will crash and no longer be able to send the data back in time. I assume the nomai would have put in a data management system that deletes old data because they only care about the final result, so maybe they only store a certain amount of memories and launches
I seem to recall the tracking room in Giants deep's core fell during construction. There is a note about it in the construction yard.
I assume the one in space was destroyed by the cannon
Nah. There was another piece that feel early during construction. Not the tracking module. You can find it very near the tracking module though ::D
@6:21 So I just did some quick math and I’m not sure what I think about it. If there have been 9,318,054 probes, each being “22 minutes apart” so to speak, multiplying that gives us 204,997,188 minutes from when the first loop happened. Then, dividing that by 60 gives us hours, then 24 to get days, and 365 to get years, which results in ~390 years. That means that there has been nearly 400 years worth of time loops, all technically happening within the same 22 minutes!
I did the math and the looping had been going on for 390 years worth of time prior to you being introduced to it.
So is the reason that the probe cannon still fires every loop, even after finding and storing the coordinates for the Eye, is because there aren't Nomai around to manually prevent the launch after noticing the statues have activated?
That's all well and good, but I always wondered why the orbital probe cannon and its constituent parts always break apart in the exact same way with each iteration of the loop. The launch module always has the same area of the window broken, the tracking module always descends to the same exact position in Giant's Deep, etc.
I suppose you could argue that the launch is always done at the same velocity and the modules would always be damaged in a similar way, but as the trajectory changes, the orientation of the modules also changes. Wondering if that might have an affect on the damage they sustain or where the tracking module ends up.
It could have something to do with the "deep sea" currents on giants deep. The other piece that got pushed under the surface current was found right next to the module. So it seems to me things just get carried there by the waves and currents regardless of where exactly it lands.
But its hard to say. Could be an oversight for the sake of gameplay or art or something.
If you free cam to the prob that finds the eye dose, it actually get there.
So cool 😎
The end that was shown before the members is that the quantum moon one or is there a similar ending with the stranger
Similar ending with the stranger
Took a while for me to notice that the OPC doesn't fire in the same direction every time. It became abundantly clear to me when I woke up one time and the probe almost collided with timber hearth.
That happened to me as well, I wondered if I was going to get a rare death and achievement for the probe hitting me like a meteor and ending my loop within seconds.
I do still think that, should the Hatchling be so inclined (Maybe with Gabbro's help), they could collect some awaiting statues in order to link others to the loop, in order to have more help and people to do things.
A big fanfiction concept I've had in mind for a while is for a statue to be collected and linked to Solanum, but there are a lot of unknowns given her particular situation.
Possibly, with Hal and other clever Hearthians, the statues could be 'hijacked' to allow for linking multiple people, as per the ship computer, possibly allowing the entire Hearthian species to participate in the time loop and do... something. Come to terms with it, at least, and maybe get to the Eye.
Of course, the ship's situation _could_ imply the necessity that parts of the statues are broken off and used prior to the loop, in which case... yeah, maybe a bit out of luck there. Unless you can maybe transmit reprogramming instructions through the loop to the statues, allowing them to link to multiple people without requiring prior modification and send their own reprogramming back again infinitely, buuuuuut that sounds incredibly risky. If something goes wrong, then the loop and awareness of it could break entirely, with no real way to recover, and the universe is just... stuck forever. Until maybe some quantum phenomenon happens and changes something.
I find it interesting to speculate what the Hearthian would have been doing in the 'first' iteration, prior to connecting with the statue. Would they have gotten off Timber Hearth? What planet would they have explored? Would they have been looking in the right direction to see the supernova, or would they have been completely oblivious?
I imagine that in the case you entered the game blind to the time loop mechanic, you would recreate the "first" iteration near perfectly. The only exception would be if your path were to deviate due to something that could vary between the blind playthrough and the prior loops, i.e. the orbital cannon's random direction or the statue encounter, which wouldn't occur in prior loops. Like, there was definitely a loop in there where you woke up and were immediately crushed by a Nomai probe to the face, and that was distinct to your blind playthrough which should in theory fire the probe towards the eye.
In my own case I knew of a loop, so flew directly into the sun in my tutorial loop. I can only imagine my prior selves had done the same, however not been fortunate enough to have actually been in the loop. Idiots, the lot of them.
Whatever you do on your first loop is probably what the Hatchling did in all 9 million previous loops, except that the statue didn't look at them when they left the museum. Also like the above commenter said, any loops where the probe would have caught your eye (like when it flies right by Timber Hearth) might change that particular loop too. But without any memory transfer, almost all 9 million loops would look basically the same.
I was under the impression that the tracking module of the orbital cannon gets damaged during the firing (It doesn't sink in the Deep)
The reason there's a _working_ tracking module at the bottom of the Deep is because early on, the Nomai tried launching the Tracking module using one of the cyclones, but accidentally used the reverse cyclone, causing the tracking module to sink. This sunk tracking module acted as an unexpected redundancy and is the only reason that the coordinates were recoverable
nah. They only ever made one tracking module. you can watch a small projection pool liquid show it break and fall during probe launch. The piece that was launched to the bottom via cyclones was a bridge type piece which can be found near the tracking module.
Such a fantastic game, I think of it often. Great video too. Also, to hell with anglerfish.