Venture Into The Cosmos
Outer Wilds, 2019, Image by Mobius Games.
By Nick M. W.
Staring at the sun, floating adrift among the stars, out in the vast expanse of the solar system. There’s no hope for me. This is what happens when you fall into a black hole, one that serves as the core of a planet that was crumbling apart, hollow and brittle. Now, I am drifting and waiting to die. I’ve run out of fuel for my jet pack while trying to avoid the blackhole, as if I could fly out of it once it got its gravitational hooks in me. I traveled through the black hole and was jettisoned out on the edge of the solar system, four thousand kilometers from my ship, which happens to be back on the planet that swallowed me. My only options are to wait and see if I have enough oxygen left to survive until the sun goes supernova, which it should do in a few minutes. It’s a beautiful way to go out, or I can burn the last of my oxygen to fuel my jetpack and propel myself closer to a suffocating death. Either way, I’m not making it. Welcome to Outer Wilds.
This is a video game unlike any others in my library and unlike any I’ve ever played. It’s the only type of space exploration game I own, but I do have a couple others that are set in space or across it, like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Alien: Isolation. Outer Wilds is as different from those two games as those games are from each other. There are no frightening aliens stalking you in Outer Wilds, although, there are some massive Anglerfish tucked away in the Dark Bramble, a former planet that looks like the gnarliest tumbleweed you’ve ever tussled with. You have no weapons with which to defend yourself, so when you do happen to catch an Angler’s attention, you’re usually as good as dead. You have no supernatural powers. You have your wits and some equipment to help you out on your quest: a Signalscope (to identify a few sounds throughout the solar system), a Scout Launcher (a wireless camera that you launch out of a potato cannon), and a translating tool (to scan and translate Nomai writing). You can’t upgrade your character, your equipment, or your ship. The only thing that expands throughout the game is your knowledge of what went down with the Nomai.
Creepy anglerfish will swallow your ship whole in The Dark Bramble. Screenshot by Nick M. W.
Your unnamed character is the newest addition to Outer Wilds Ventures, a “DIY” space program founded by the alien race to which you belong, housed on the friendliest planet in the system, Timber Hearth. The only objective you have in this game is to explore the ever-changing solar system in search of answers. “Answers to what,” you might ask. Well, I don’t want to spoil the adventure for you because uncovering the mystery behind what is happening with your solar system, and perhaps also learning about the origin of your species, is the engine that drives this game.
The interior of your ship. She ain’t much, but she’s reliable. Screenshot by Nick M. W.
The biggest questions of the game that you are tasked with answering are who or what are the Nomai, why did they travel to your solar system, and what happened to them. As the game unfolds, which it does without many in-game prompts to guide the player, other questions about the Nomai, questions about the bizarre quantum minerals and portals that appear on several of the solar system’s planets, the Quantum Moon, and the time loop, in which the entire solar system is trapped, emerge. How you go about answering those questions, the path you choose to moonwalk, is up to you.
When I say the prompting is subtle, I mean that there are clues on what to look for given in the dialogues you have with other characters, the Nomai texts you translate, and other text-based interactions you have in the game. There is nothing in the game that explicitly states which steps you need to take next. The game lets the player determine their course of action. There are no cinematic cues in cut scenes either. Creator and game director Alex Beachum designed the game so that the secrets of the story remain a mystery until you uncover them by solving puzzles, by taking clues from text-based dialogue and Nomai hieroglyphics and plain old observation, and using those clues to piece together the “who, what, when, and why” of it all.
Timber Hearth, the coziest planet in the solar system. Screenshot by Nick M. W.
Adding to the challenge of understanding the origins of your species in relation to the Nomai, every twenty some minutes, the sun goes supernova, which destroys that solar system and everything in it. There is a minimalist, down tempo song that plays around one minute before this happens. It’s called “End Times,” appropriately, and as it ticks away towards your character’s impending demise, it also serves as a reminder that you’ll get another chance to pick up your exploration once your life resets back twenty-two minutes at the launching pad on Timber Hearth.
From the moment you first leave that planet in your built from spare parts ship, the new discoveries you make on your journey will be logged into the ship’s computer. You can return to view the notes from your explorations any time you’re in your ship. Playing a game once a week would typically leave me at a disadvantage in terms of remembering what I was doing in the game. In Outer Wilds, because of the way the game records the notes on your character’s progress, I can jump back in, review my ship’s log, and determine which planet I need to visit. I might not know exactly what to do when I get there, but your ship’s log provides some general hints with the subtle, “There’s more to explore here” message being the most obvious clue you’re likely to receive. The log is a clutch feature to include in this game. I often jump back into a game I haven’t played in a minute and ask myself, “What the hell was I doing?”. It’s nice to have a game take notes about all of the important texts you read.
Flying into the storms on Giant’s Deep. Screenshot by Nick M. W.
The mechanics of the game are simple; there are only a few things beyond running and jumping that your character can do. Flying your ship and using your jetpack require the same finesse, as these actions can require a player to utilize most of the buttons on a controller and several simultaneously. You’ll have the opportunity to practice flying a small model of your ship and simulating the jetpack in an anti-gravity cave on Timber Hearth before you launch into space.
Initially, I had some issues controlling the ship’s direction while in flight, and I couldn’t land where I wanted to without cracking my ship’s hull or crushing its landing gear. You can repair any damage that you cause to your ship, except for flying into one of those massive lava rocks Hollow’s Lantern randomly spits out. In most circumstances, your ship can take a beating. However, if you slam into the ground or the side of a structure while zooming round on your jetpack, you could end up dead. With a little repetition and practice, though, I quickly picked up the basics of interstellar flight. Having an auto-pilot option also proved to be a tremendous help.
The solar system in Outer Wilds is minimal in design and details, but it renders some beautiful moments. The massive waterspouts that traverse the liquid surface of Giant’s Deep and literally pull islands into the sky look magnificently ominous as they dance around each other in tempestuous ballet. I couldn’t take my eyes off the solar system’s churning sun, lashing out with solar flares, burning towards its extinction. This game provides eye candy in a variety of ways even though the various environments lack in detail.
Stark and beautiful. Screenshot by Nick M. W.
The sound and soundtrack also compliment the overall design of Outer Wilds. The game features a couple of folksy tracks that remind me of early Arcade Fire if they were lost in space, especially the game’s theme song. There are other moments when you are on a planet, or when you encounter another explorer, or you are nearing the end of the time loop when music will play, but for the most part, Outer Wilds allows the ambient sounds of each planet (and the lack of sound in the vacuum of space, except your breathing) to fill your headphones or speakers.
Put these elements together, and Outer Wilds proves to be an engrossing game. I became obsessed with every new discovery I made. The way the mystery unfolds following the Nomai breadcrumbs is enough to keep my attention until the next nugget I find, and so on until I reach the end of my character’s journey. Playing Outer Wilds can feel like a type of meditation, a Zen-like experience where you are focused on the focusing, present in the moment because the clues come and go, and you have a limited amount of time to learn something new before you have to start over from Timber Hearth.
When I realized that your character is caught in a time loop, I put an emphasis on making the most of each venture I made. As a result, I reduced the number of careless mistakes I made. During my early ventures, I would accidentally fly into space junk orbiting planets, or walk right into cactus and puncture holes in my space suit while already low on oxygen. I knew I would reboot back on Timber Hearth, but when I learned that even if I avoid all of the stupid mistakes I made early on that got me killed, even if I played a perfect space explorer, I would still die at the hands of nature when that time came. There’s something about how fragile Outer Wilds treats your character’s life and existence in general, that shapes this game into a critique on how we treat our own lives.
Ash Twin at the end of its life cycle. Screenshot by Nick M. W.
Our time here in this realm is limited and it’s precious and it’s fragile, so why am I sitting around, playing this damn video game?
True, but games do offer an occasional reprieve from everyday stress. In the case of this game, it also helped me work through a personal tragedy late last year. My dad passed away in November, and he loved the cosmos. He used to print out pictures of deep space he’d pull from the internet and put them up on his wall because he found them inspiring. He joked about traveling through space with psychedelic pachyderms, and he never took psychedelic drugs.
I have, so it may not surprise you to hear me say that I felt his presence with me as I played this game. His spirit was with me, and we voyaged through space in search of answers to the galaxy’s deepest questions. This played a big role in endearing Outer Wilds to me, and I found the conclusion to the game to be moving. No spoilers, but life just goes on, billions of years, on and on. We are mere specs of sand in the hourglass of time.
Outer Wilds deserves the accolades it has received. It is a masterpiece of thought, and it is worth your time to explore.
