(This is pretty much spoiler free)
It's really enthralling to find something that brings my jaded and nostalgia biased perception of any media of "progressing mediocrity" and throw it out of the water to fire up the soul in your hearts once more and say "We're back and better than ever". Maybe my outlook will change and be more hopeful towards the future. Maybe I will stay jaded and just deem that thing an outlier and a modern classic or some other buzzword. No matter what it will be though, that particular "thing" will be a classic.
Outer Wilds is that "thing". It's a once in a lifetime achievement of video game design for the overall medium and a once in a lifetime experience for me. An experience that will be wholly ruined if spoiled beyond the synopsis and which makes it immensely difficult to talk about its qualities in public without ruining some of the magic. It's a game of knowledge. The less learned beforehand the better.
A game which ties the individual emotions of you as a player, you as a character with the seemingly cold and indifferent outer space. It dabbles on nihilism and the existential dread of your unimportance in "the big picture" and flips it entirely on something profound and hopeful melancholy in all the vanity. And it doesn't sprinkle hope in crumbs neither does it provide forcefully. The game will be hostile and indifferent pretty much all the way through and most of your efforts to best it will be in vain. You need to find that hope within yourself. The whole game is a song, whether a swansong or an elegy, it's up to you.
Being an exploration game, it's also a game about curiosity. Now the game explores curiosity thematically in two ways: through its base game and the DLC Echoes of the Eye.
(While we are here, I'd like to give a disclaimer that the base game and the DLC play very differently, for better or for worse)
The base game explores on the wonder of curiosity, the drive to know, the drive to find out, the drive to understand and the rush and magic that comes along with it; the DLC on the other hand explores on the fear aspect of curiosity, on how the things that you find maybe aren't something you want to find out or aren't ready for it. The exploration aspect is designed so organically, so meticulously and with such thought, that nothing feels "wrong" or out of place or order. There's full freedom of exploration and none of it feels non-satisfactory over an oversight.
The puzzles don't hold your hand at all and it's upto you to figure it out; by yourself as googling up your walkthrough will severely damage your experience. They're subjectively not easy and some of them can be incredibly complicated to figure out. But it's worth it. Finding them by your own is worth it.
All of this is bolstered by the amazing sound design and the stellar soundtrack by Andrew Prahlow which wouldn't be the first thing that come on your mind when thinking about exploring in space but it fits like a glove.
It's certainly did not come out of the blue and wears it's inspirations on its sleeves viz. Zelda, Myst, a lot of Metroidvania design. But it'd be an awful lie to insinuate and categorize it as something similar or akin to any of the others. It's a truly unique and original experience that is exclusive to games as a medium and which elevates the said medium.
Probably my second favourite game of all time, if not my favourite.
10/10
It's really enthralling to find something that brings my jaded and nostalgia biased perception of any media of "progressing mediocrity" and throw it out of the water to fire up the soul in your hearts once more and say "We're back and better than ever". Maybe my outlook will change and be more hopeful towards the future. Maybe I will stay jaded and just deem that thing an outlier and a modern classic or some other buzzword. No matter what it will be though, that particular "thing" will be a classic.
Outer Wilds is that "thing". It's a once in a lifetime achievement of video game design for the overall medium and a once in a lifetime experience for me. An experience that will be wholly ruined if spoiled beyond the synopsis and which makes it immensely difficult to talk about its qualities in public without ruining some of the magic. It's a game of knowledge. The less learned beforehand the better.
A game which ties the individual emotions of you as a player, you as a character with the seemingly cold and indifferent outer space. It dabbles on nihilism and the existential dread of your unimportance in "the big picture" and flips it entirely on something profound and hopeful melancholy in all the vanity. And it doesn't sprinkle hope in crumbs neither does it provide forcefully. The game will be hostile and indifferent pretty much all the way through and most of your efforts to best it will be in vain. You need to find that hope within yourself. The whole game is a song, whether a swansong or an elegy, it's up to you.
Being an exploration game, it's also a game about curiosity. Now the game explores curiosity thematically in two ways: through its base game and the DLC Echoes of the Eye.
(While we are here, I'd like to give a disclaimer that the base game and the DLC play very differently, for better or for worse)
The base game explores on the wonder of curiosity, the drive to know, the drive to find out, the drive to understand and the rush and magic that comes along with it; the DLC on the other hand explores on the fear aspect of curiosity, on how the things that you find maybe aren't something you want to find out or aren't ready for it. The exploration aspect is designed so organically, so meticulously and with such thought, that nothing feels "wrong" or out of place or order. There's full freedom of exploration and none of it feels non-satisfactory over an oversight.
The puzzles don't hold your hand at all and it's upto you to figure it out; by yourself as googling up your walkthrough will severely damage your experience. They're subjectively not easy and some of them can be incredibly complicated to figure out. But it's worth it. Finding them by your own is worth it.
All of this is bolstered by the amazing sound design and the stellar soundtrack by Andrew Prahlow which wouldn't be the first thing that come on your mind when thinking about exploring in space but it fits like a glove.
It's certainly did not come out of the blue and wears it's inspirations on its sleeves viz. Zelda, Myst, a lot of Metroidvania design. But it'd be an awful lie to insinuate and categorize it as something similar or akin to any of the others. It's a truly unique and original experience that is exclusive to games as a medium and which elevates the said medium.
Probably my second favourite game of all time, if not my favourite.
10/10