The 22 minute time loop really killed it for me, and only with hindsight do I realise why. In Majora’s Mask, the timeloop existed not just for atmosphere, but also to be exploited: you have an inordinate task to perform in three days, better make the most of the Goddess’ good graces. Plan out every moment of your day and find better ways to do right by others so they can do right by you. Like tapping a dial to ensure it gives an accurate reading, and contemporaneously with scoring and rankings in other games (though this modus operandi is becoming uncommon^), I recall this being the slight bit of pressure I needed to make me the best Link – and by extension the best player – I could possibly be.

Outer Wilds, despite its stricter time limit, feels entirely incommensurate with the above approach: leading to me being blindsided by its eventual tonal shift. I assume the gradual revealing of the horror of the history of the solar system was intended to eventually inspire trepidation and ennui, whereas I was becoming more and more cavalier so as to optimise around a forced restart every 22 minutes, going around with the timeloop as an immutable divine crutch. Was I lashing out against the whims of the universe? Not really, by then I was filling in a checklist.

I guess I played it wrong? In my defence, I wouldn’t call it the breakthrough of puzzle gaming that reviews had suggested to me it was. Having a majority of puzzles be “Find a way to get to X” in a game with fully simulated physics sounds like a slam-dunk until you realise how ancillary the physics actually are: trying and failing to wrangle the ship into places only to later discover some menial solution somewhere else, sometime later is really sleight-of-hand, not discovery. Two decades ago, Riven set the benchmark by challenging players to ask the right questions, not just find the right answers. Outer Wilds is just a more robust conjuring of an outdated pedagogy.

^Yes, I blame FromSoft.

Imagine the Lorax but he can go combo mad.

Actually, to be fair to the game, as ridiculous as that above statement sounds, it is one of few sequels I've played that makes the jump to the action genre successfully (the Bash really opens the game up). Unfortunately, there's also a certain stiffness and awkwardness (and, depending on how uncharitable you feel, an overproducedness) that sabotages some of the potential highlights (in particular sequences where you escape from bosses Ori could no doubt thrash) and keeps the game from getting out of 'good metroidvania'.

I remember hearing somewhere that BotW was the type of game that could be rendered redundant by a good sequel. Having finished TotK, two things came to mind:

1. TotK is only debatably that better sequel, and;
2. TotK is also a game that could be rendered redundant by a good sequel.

Rather than replacing BotW as some fans feared (or perhaps hoped), TotK feels more like one step forward, one step back: the new abilities are improvements on the runes from BotW, but Ultrahand is a non-starter, almost divorced from the rest of the game (I was seeing nine-tenths completed vehicles even twenty, thirty hours into the game); the sky islands and the caves flesh out Hyrule mechanically and narratively, but the Depths is easily the weakest take on LttP’s Dark World in any Zelda yet; Princess Zelda has a better place within the story, but it’s borrowing of beats from OoT is executed worse than BotW, despite borrowing even more overtly from it. The biggest disappointment however, and why I think TotK could also be made redundant, is that even though the moment-to-moment gameplay is as sublime as last time, that comes at the expense of worldbuilding rather than being to its credit, putting it behind its contemporaries and even some of the older 3D Zeldas in this hugely important aspect. Even connecting BotW to TotK is difficult; the most obvious example for me was when, wondering if my BotW save file would carry over my boarded horses from that game, I went to a stable early in the game. I was then instructed to register to become a member, not already being one, and instructed on how to catch a horse. After doing so, I discovered that, actually, my save file had carried over and I had all my old horses. This isn’t inexplicable in-universe of course, but just a slight change would greatly satisfy even a passing interest in worldbuilding from the game (or, at least, from its English localization), hence its omission, in favour of reshuffled Koroks and shrines, robs Hyrule of some needed verisimilitude.

Six years later, and the franchise feels like it’s treading water after the leap from Skyward Sword to BotW. I’m still interested in the next game and the probable DLC, but I do wonder if the games are relearning some bad habits.