A Brief Essay on Outer Wilds: Dissonance in Video-Games and the Pinnacle of a Medium:
There is a difference between games that are ashamed of their medium and others that exist as an extension of it.
The Last Of Us 1 and 2, I would contest, rail against the limitations of a video game. A smooth, cinematic and character driven story is not ideal if one wants the gameplay and its mechanics to extend the themes and motifs being portrayed. This was seen in the LOUP2 when Druckmann wanted to use gameplay to implicate and extend the theme of guilt in his narrative. This ultimately came off as cheap since emotional consistency, due to technological limitations of gaming, is not suited to being a homogeneously succinct part of a 40 hour experience. Dialogue and choices, the driving form of conflict in character dramas, do not yet make a compelling gameplay feature. Because of this the gameplay of the TLOU series is combat, it needs to be fun to be a good game and the guilt of killing people is at a dissonance with the enjoyable aspects of its play mechanic.
Outer Wilds is a perfect example of fiction relishing and excelling in its medium. Every facet of its creation and its gameplay feeding into its wider ideas of exploration, of existential awe and confusion, at the seemingly unknowable depths of knowledge. We can feel the sense of exploration flow through are fingers as worlds are examined. Peeling back layers of mystery through our own actions and growing understanding of the underpinnings of the solar system mirrors the games own reverence towards curiosity. The ship and suit that tethers us to life and the untold number of ways to die forcing the player to fear the enormity and hostility of the wider cosmos and our precarious place in it.
I could gush about this game all day. But I truly do think that, as of now, it is the pinnacle of the video-game medium. No game has taken on such vast and universal ideas, expressed in macro and in micro, and given the player the agency to participate in them with such tact and elegance. Lets consider, the opening moments of the game, we wake up looking at the planets dancing around us and the existential dread of infinite space and time consuming our vision, yet, with a flick of a stick or a drag of a mouse downward we are transported, a welcoming fire and a friendly looking creature greet us. The vast indifference replaced with the familiarity of life and its centrality.
Gaming, as artistic expression, has been mired by the industry. Games are hard to make and cost a lot of money so because of this, it is a very unsophisticated medium. One could say about 3-5 games a year make it into mass consumers hands that exist as an uncompromising body of work; it's hard to treat TLOU2 as something attempting to be auteur when it comes with an ammo-capacity pre-order bonus (I'm only using TLOU2 as an example because of its recent release date and popularity). That may be a rant for another day, but, the existence of The Outer Wilds in the face of an industry so apathetical towards anything other than lowest common denominator creates an even larger gulf in its approach. I do love video-games and, as a relatively new form of expression, I'm so glad The Outer Wilds was created. If not just for the experience it gave me but also as an example of what video-games can achieve.
There is a difference between games that are ashamed of their medium and others that exist as an extension of it.
The Last Of Us 1 and 2, I would contest, rail against the limitations of a video game. A smooth, cinematic and character driven story is not ideal if one wants the gameplay and its mechanics to extend the themes and motifs being portrayed. This was seen in the LOUP2 when Druckmann wanted to use gameplay to implicate and extend the theme of guilt in his narrative. This ultimately came off as cheap since emotional consistency, due to technological limitations of gaming, is not suited to being a homogeneously succinct part of a 40 hour experience. Dialogue and choices, the driving form of conflict in character dramas, do not yet make a compelling gameplay feature. Because of this the gameplay of the TLOU series is combat, it needs to be fun to be a good game and the guilt of killing people is at a dissonance with the enjoyable aspects of its play mechanic.
Outer Wilds is a perfect example of fiction relishing and excelling in its medium. Every facet of its creation and its gameplay feeding into its wider ideas of exploration, of existential awe and confusion, at the seemingly unknowable depths of knowledge. We can feel the sense of exploration flow through are fingers as worlds are examined. Peeling back layers of mystery through our own actions and growing understanding of the underpinnings of the solar system mirrors the games own reverence towards curiosity. The ship and suit that tethers us to life and the untold number of ways to die forcing the player to fear the enormity and hostility of the wider cosmos and our precarious place in it.
I could gush about this game all day. But I truly do think that, as of now, it is the pinnacle of the video-game medium. No game has taken on such vast and universal ideas, expressed in macro and in micro, and given the player the agency to participate in them with such tact and elegance. Lets consider, the opening moments of the game, we wake up looking at the planets dancing around us and the existential dread of infinite space and time consuming our vision, yet, with a flick of a stick or a drag of a mouse downward we are transported, a welcoming fire and a friendly looking creature greet us. The vast indifference replaced with the familiarity of life and its centrality.
Gaming, as artistic expression, has been mired by the industry. Games are hard to make and cost a lot of money so because of this, it is a very unsophisticated medium. One could say about 3-5 games a year make it into mass consumers hands that exist as an uncompromising body of work; it's hard to treat TLOU2 as something attempting to be auteur when it comes with an ammo-capacity pre-order bonus (I'm only using TLOU2 as an example because of its recent release date and popularity). That may be a rant for another day, but, the existence of The Outer Wilds in the face of an industry so apathetical towards anything other than lowest common denominator creates an even larger gulf in its approach. I do love video-games and, as a relatively new form of expression, I'm so glad The Outer Wilds was created. If not just for the experience it gave me but also as an example of what video-games can achieve.