This is an absolute travesty and must be corrected!
*EDIT: To clear up any confusion about this. Outer Wilds was released on May 29, 2019 for the Xbox One and the Epic Games Store. It is a different game from Obsidian's upcoming RPG The Outer Worlds. It also bears little relation mechanically to No Man's Sky, despite my comparison below. It's not procedurally generated.
Outer Wilds is great! It's No Man's Sky meets Mario Galaxy on Groundhog's Day. Like remember in No Man's Sky how you can explore the entirety of a realistically proportioned planet that is so boring you've seen all it has to offer the second you land? Well Outer Wilds takes all the filler out so that you have all the excitement and wonder of space exploration with none of the tedious scale. You are a new astronaut setting out to explore the mysteries of your solar system and learn about an ancient precursor race that, luckily enough, communicated entirely by scribbling on walls. Every planet can be circumnavigated on foot in less than 10 minutes, that means that there's always something interesting to find wherever you go.
The game give you a huge amount of mobility thanks to a propulsion suit. You can accelerate in any direction as well as a limited vertical jet boost while in a planet's atmosphere. It just feels good to jump around on the lower gravity worlds, getting the timing down of when to apply thrusters so you don't break all your arms and legs when you land. There's something so satisfying about being able to jump off of a planet. The ship is pretty good too, but movement on foot is far more fun.
The central mysteries to the game are all very well implemented, and there's no artificial restrictions. The only thing that limits you is your own knowledge. You could beat the game within 20 minutes of starting it if you knew what to do. But to figure out what to do you need to piece together just what the heck the precursor race was doing before mysteriously dying off. It's all very intriguing and fits together perfectly in the end, and piecing it together without the game holding your hand and dragging you along is just such a satisfying experience. The aesthetics are gorgeous despite what these cruddy Google screenshots indicate. The tornadoes on the water planet make my stomach turn and there are so many great effects that the game uses.
It's not all great though. There are NPCs but there may as well not be. They don't do anything, say very little, and are on the whole disappointing. It also has kind of a slow first 15 minutes if you talk to all the boring villagers and do the little practice tasks scattered around.
Despite that, I still cannot recommend this game enough. The planets more than make up for the boring NPCs. This is the gold standard space exploration games need to live up to in the future. If you have any interest in space games you need to play this game. If you need more convincing take a look for yourself, here's Supergreatfriend demoing the game
Anyway, now that I'm done selling it has anybody else actually played this game? Thoughts? Don't forget to use
.
*EDIT: To clear up any confusion about this. Outer Wilds was released on May 29, 2019 for the Xbox One and the Epic Games Store. It is a different game from Obsidian's upcoming RPG The Outer Worlds. It also bears little relation mechanically to No Man's Sky, despite my comparison below. It's not procedurally generated.
Outer Wilds is great! It's No Man's Sky meets Mario Galaxy on Groundhog's Day. Like remember in No Man's Sky how you can explore the entirety of a realistically proportioned planet that is so boring you've seen all it has to offer the second you land? Well Outer Wilds takes all the filler out so that you have all the excitement and wonder of space exploration with none of the tedious scale. You are a new astronaut setting out to explore the mysteries of your solar system and learn about an ancient precursor race that, luckily enough, communicated entirely by scribbling on walls. Every planet can be circumnavigated on foot in less than 10 minutes, that means that there's always something interesting to find wherever you go.
The game give you a huge amount of mobility thanks to a propulsion suit. You can accelerate in any direction as well as a limited vertical jet boost while in a planet's atmosphere. It just feels good to jump around on the lower gravity worlds, getting the timing down of when to apply thrusters so you don't break all your arms and legs when you land. There's something so satisfying about being able to jump off of a planet. The ship is pretty good too, but movement on foot is far more fun.
The central mysteries to the game are all very well implemented, and there's no artificial restrictions. The only thing that limits you is your own knowledge. You could beat the game within 20 minutes of starting it if you knew what to do. But to figure out what to do you need to piece together just what the heck the precursor race was doing before mysteriously dying off. It's all very intriguing and fits together perfectly in the end, and piecing it together without the game holding your hand and dragging you along is just such a satisfying experience. The aesthetics are gorgeous despite what these cruddy Google screenshots indicate. The tornadoes on the water planet make my stomach turn and there are so many great effects that the game uses.
It's not all great though. There are NPCs but there may as well not be. They don't do anything, say very little, and are on the whole disappointing. It also has kind of a slow first 15 minutes if you talk to all the boring villagers and do the little practice tasks scattered around.
Despite that, I still cannot recommend this game enough. The planets more than make up for the boring NPCs. This is the gold standard space exploration games need to live up to in the future. If you have any interest in space games you need to play this game. If you need more convincing take a look for yourself, here's Supergreatfriend demoing the game
Anyway, now that I'm done selling it has anybody else actually played this game? Thoughts? Don't forget to use
spoiler tags
The end run was so tense for me. I realized I would have to disable the time loop and wasn't sure if the game would delete my save if I died or not. I think it wouldn't have, but I still wanted to do it in one for the immersion of it. So I spent a little bit of time making sure I could make it past the stupid bloody fish in the Bramble and just preparing myself. Then, next run I went for it. Gave myself as much time as the game would allow and deactivated the Ash Twin Project. Then I realized I didn't actually know how to get out of the center of the planet. I reactivated artificial gravity and kind of just jumped around a bit. In doing so I managed to get stuck in front of the platform that revolves around. Just being pushed along helplessly. I can't boost up and am just out of reach of turning gravity back off. So here I am, stuck. Several minute pass and I'm thinking 'great, now I'm going to actually die, and in such a horrendously stupid way too.' I somehow manage to wiggle my way off the side of the platform just close enough to reach the gravity controls. I shut it off and try floating over to the teleport again. I'm almost out of fuel at this point, but I reach the teleport and is zaps me back to Ash Twin -- RIGHT AS EMBER TWIN IS GOING OVER THE TELEPORT!! I'm sucked off the planet hurtling toward Ember Twin with no fuel! I escape to the side and slow my fall enough to only mostly kill me. I eventually make it back to the ship with less than 30 seconds of oxygen left! The rest went off without a hitch, but good lord was that a close call! I can't believe I made it in time with all that nonsense!
