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Just completed the game today, had a blast. I think the only times I really felt tense in terms of exploration was in the caves of Ember Twin, the centre of Dark Bramble and the final loop to reach the end. Otherwise it was just generally a very chill experience.
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Jul 5, 2020 00:38
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Re: loops and probes Is the implication actually that everyone's been caught in this loop for 9 million cycles before the first one you play? That seems kind of strange because it would imply that, what, the previous 9,000,000 times you just didn't happen to get to the statue in time for you to start remembering, and that the loop the Eye was discovered happened to be the exact one before your expedition? Both seem like odd contrivances, why do things differently on that particular loop? I'd assumed that after the failure of the Sun Station and the need to research life lengthening technologies, the Nomai left the cannon running effectively on autopilot until eventually it finds the Eye on the nine millionth-and-change attempt, long after the Nomai are gone. The cannon then goes dormant for however many millions of years, and then when the ATP fires off for the first time, it sends back an new "fire probe" instruction to the dormant cannon, triggering the cannon to fire for the first time in eons, causing it to explode and wake you up with its flash at the beginning of the first loop.
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Jul 10, 2020 12:11
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Ah OK, that makes sense. Or at least as much sense as anything involving time travel can. Thanks everyone.
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Jul 10, 2020 14:22
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K8.0 posted:I don't think I've missed anything, but I still don't know how to get to the Quantum Moon. or the Ash Project Is there something I missed that would have signposted either of those things? The only other place that isn't marked as complete is the Vessel, but there seems to be an obvious reason for that. ATP Hints: 1: Why can't you just walk to the Ash Twin Project? The project is completely sealed off from the outside world. But there must be some way to get in, and there's really only two other methods of travel in the game. 2: What did the Nomai do with the techniques they learned from White Hole Station? They built the warp towers on Ash Twin. Each one is designed after the location it goes to. Where does each one go? Make a list. From these you should be able to identify the entrance to the ATP. The only problem is actually using it, and honestly that's probably the most finnicky thing about finding the ATP, because your first guess will probably be wrong, which might lead you to think that either you've misunderstood something or you're in the wrong place. Plus you can't get any hints from the Nomai on this bit since the problem post-dates their disappearance. So, final hint: The sand will lift you up too early if you just stand there. Here's the full answer if you're still stumped: The teleporter to the ATP is in the broken half of the pair of towers that represent the Hourglass Twins. You need to run onto the pad as the sand passes overhead (you're safe waiting in the closet or under the bridge directly outside), because if you just stand on the pad you'll be lifted off early. Thrusting downwards as you run on might help.
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Jul 12, 2020 10:44
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Cojawfee posted:If you went there early enough, you might have missed the latest patch where they have a better explanation. Where they explain that the teleporters are based on the center of each planet. The center of the ash twins is the barycenter which is in the space between them. Also, the teleporters work plus or minus 5 degrees off from the center which gives you more time to get to each teleporter. I think that actually contributes to some of the difficulty, because at least in my case, since the alignment could be off by 5 degrees, and exact alignment would be in the centre of the column, I was sure I was being told "don't try to be inside the column". I thought waiting on the platform would mean I'd hit that 5 degree alignment just before the column hit me. I don't think it would hurt to have something like this on the Sun Station: Idaea: Ramie, I appreciate the novel design of the towers on Ash Twin, but the delay it has added to the construction is...irritating. Ramie: Why, Idaea? What's the problem? Idaea: The problem? I am being pulled off the warp platform by the sand column because you haven't finished the roof yet! [aside] Idaea: This is like the fifth time it has happened, and I'm sick of it. Ramie: But that shouldn't be an issue for your tower. You're not just loitering around on the platform waiting for your alignment, are you? Idaea: It's not like I have much else to do while I'm waiting. If the tower had a roof, it would save me having to continuously check for my alignment. Ramie: The roof will be finished soon. Until then, you'll just have to step on while the aligment is occurring.
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Jul 19, 2020 15:23
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Chev posted:I think any supplementary explanation that isn't outright stating how it works will only make the puzzle harder, since the problem is that people are spectacularly overthinking it in the first place. Without the fluff you'd just think it's a puzzle straight out of early Myst and get it immediately. "Whoa, a place with one themed teleporter tower per planet, gee I wonder why there's twin towers for the twin planets". The problem for me the stumbling block in the problem definitely wasn't "I wonder why there's twin towers for the twin planets", it was specifically "The sand column seems to make Ash Tower unusuable". I knew which tower was the entrance in the nomai's time, the problem was actually using it.
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Jul 19, 2020 15:56
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Chev posted:That's the stumbling block for most people though, which is why all fixes tend towards overexplaining it and only making it confusing. When I discovered that the teleporters should work within 5 degrees of alignment I thought "ah OK, so the trick is I need to be standing on the platform beforehand, so I'll be within the window before getting pulled up by the sand. When that didn't work I figured "OK, so the sand column must cover the entire 5 degree alignment. Since this is the only tower that's affected by the sand column, I guess that's there deliberately to stop me using the tower to access the project. I need to find another way in."
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Jul 19, 2020 18:01
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NoEyedSquareGuy posted:Feels like I'm so close to figuring out what I need to do. You might need to reread one of the rules.
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Sep 13, 2020 02:04
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Bedshaped posted:Watching other people play is the only way to relive that 'first time' experience. Lewis and Lydia did a playthrough that I enjoyed watching, though Lewis had played the game before and maybe got a bit too overeager with hints occasionally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFj3ynKbuXQ Playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFj3ynKbuXQ&list=PLvSp-8FGBzxk7muVg-ELNYsksMbGD3z7e
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Oct 21, 2020 13:22
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The only thing I can think of that I'm pretty sure requires out-of-game knowledge is differentiating the two female passengers, which requires you to know That married people wear wedding rings, and unmarried women have the title "Miss".
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Oct 31, 2020 03:42
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RattiRatto posted:About Nomai messages - I just got to the hollow planet for the first time and there are some messages which i cannot read - basically the translator pops up but i cannot scan it, no matter the angle. Is this a bug or i just haven't gotten the ability to read that part? It's a bug, did it start after you opened a door? Closing and restarting the game tends to fix it, and assuming it happened after that door, that's the only place I've seen the bug occur.
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Mar 30, 2021 11:39
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Colonel J posted:I feel like I'm so close to the end, but I'm getting pretty burned out by the game. I feel like I've gone everywhere a couple of times, I found the Ash Twin Project and got what's inside it, found Solanum, got the "real death" ending but I just can't tie it all together. I kind of obsess over it, but at the same time I'm getting tired of the time loop and hopping between planets. The only piece you might be missing is that you need to get what's inside the core of Giant's Deep. If you have that already, the bit in your spoiler will begin the end sequence.
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May 5, 2021 15:02
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VideoGames posted:
Yeah, a good time to land on the interloper is early in the loop after it passes Giant's Deep, then you have an entire trip around the sun to have a look about before you need to worry about it pulling you off.
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Jul 7, 2021 12:56
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I have to make a whole list of things I need to do! 
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Outer Wilds is every bit as much about the experience of going camping in the woods as it is about exploring space. The profundity it imparts is the same sense of simplicity and wistfulness that a weekend in a forest brings, and that’s why it works so well, I think.
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Jul 13, 2021 02:51
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I’d wager that the inspiration for ghost matter is the hypothesised strange matter, a substance made up exclusively of Strange quarks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_8yK2kmxoo Obviously ghost matter is a fair bit different in the end (didn’t turn the whole solar system into strange matter), but for that reason I’m inclined to assume that it is a natural substance rather than a bomb or something, unless otherwise indicated
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Jul 31, 2021 02:19
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I’d say there’s also a hopefully very slim but not completely zero chance that the expansion will detract from the original experience. If it pops up right at the end when it’s looking like the game is completely over and you’re ready to finish, it could turn into a bit of a drag. I’d really really hope not, but no reason to take chances when you can experience it now.
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Jul 31, 2021 02:25
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:I'm a bit lost on where to go now, after exploring the early DLC a bit. I've found slide reels showing the aliens discovering the Eye and traveling here, only to analyze it and decide it was going to destroy them all, then torching their temple in anger - that last one was in a house full of burned up slide reels. I also found some dead aliens around a fire. I roasted some marshmallows on it. Aliens seem quite dead. Oh, and I found a slide reel showing an alien walking into a pit of some sort carrying an artifact, but I have no idea where that could be. I feel like I'm running a bit low on places to check out. I assume I need to get into the locked-up thing in the diving bell but I don't know where the little fire locking mechanisms could be. Some gentle hints towards where to look next? Have you been to the place on the other side of the collapsed bridge yet? Hint: Take a trip past it into the reservoir, look back and think Directions: Use a raft to hug the right wall of the river. In the village on stilts, you need to get over to the far right and take the stream into the rightmost canyon. Keep right, this stream forks and the main current will push you back into the left channel, but if you hug the wall tight you can get to the stream that feeds into the rightmost intake of the revervoir If you've been there, have you searched every building? Hint: the multi-storey building has three entrances and two are locked. Find a way in, then find a way into the downstairs.
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Sep 29, 2021 19:53
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I'm not sure I'm going to finish the DLC. I was having a pretty good time with it, but I've learned that I really don't enjoy scrabbling about in the dark and it's essentially tanked my enjoyment of the back half of the experience. It's not scary, just frustrating dealing with darkness and a light that's feels insufficient for the task of exploration. I realise that's the point, of course, but it doesn't change how frustrating it feels for me. The main game had it just a little in Ash Twin, but it was all quite contained, enough that dark areas would be lit pretty comprehensively by your flashlight, and it was only a small part of a much larger (and generally well-lit) game, while I get the impression that after you enter the dark bits, it's most of what's left. 
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Sep 29, 2021 20:22
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:Do yourself a favor and enable the "less frights" option-- it's abstract in description and does a bit of guilt tripping about it but nearly literally disables the owls in the dark. They still see you, but their run speed is reduced to "geriatric amble" and their chase range seems to be reduced as well. It's hard to feel bad about it when it's such a lovely mechanic played straight and nearly ruins the game given the seeming requirements to interact with it. I appreciate the suggestion. Unfortunately I've tried that, just in case "makes navigation easier" meant any of "entire area won't be blanketed in darkness", "lantern will be as good as the base game flashlight" or "you can use the base game's fun movement mechanics" which I didn't really expect but thought I ought to make sure of. I don't want to just trash a thing I know others are enjoying, but man, the cool things I enjoyed about Outer Wilds were the individual stories of the ancient Nomai, coming to know them and connect with them across ages; and the fact that you started the game with a few base tools (signalscope, scout, jetpack, flashlight and translator) and could solve every problem you encountered with just those, your knowledge and your ingenuity. I was slightly disappointed when I realised the non-functional translator meant I wouldn't be getting to know individual past owl people, but then having all my tools stripped away to ensure there can be no solution to problems other than "use [bad] lantern" (I guess "drop [bad] lantern" might count separately) just tanked it for me.
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Sep 29, 2021 22:38
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Torquemadras posted:So I figured that message I mentioned got added later? Because I don't know if any other, except for the White Hole Station, explains how teleporters work. (I suppose it's possible that someone never tries the Ash Twin teleporter, because they might think it's broken? The core is just fine, but the roof may make one think otherwise. You don't have to know that it leads to Ash Twin to try it, I attempted it believing it would take me to Ember Twin, after all.) That was how it was for me, pretty much. I worked out this was the teleporter to the ATP, so I tried standing on it and waiting for the column of sand to pass overhead. I thought the trick with the five degree clue was that five degrees was going to be fractionally larger than the diameter of the sand column, so you'd get pulled into the ATP just before the column hit. That didn't work, of course, and then I got pulled up into the air. I assumed therefore that the column covered the entire 5 degree arc (correct) and that because of that, the teleporter was unusable and another entry must exist (incorrect). In my mind there was no reason to try running onto the platform while the sand was overhead, because if it didn't work the first time due to the sand lifting me up, running into the sand column would make no difference, because a fraction of a second in the column is still a fraction of distance lifted up.
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Oct 24, 2021 14:24
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I believe there's a slide reel that may point you in the right direction in the hidden gorge. It's a slide reel that appears to be a damage report
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Nov 24, 2022 15:45
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Sassy Sasquatch posted:I've been thinking about this a bunch because it's bugging me that I can't fully articulate yet why I disliked the DLC so much. At face value it's just more of the original game, but you're right that the light mechanics definitely were super annoying even without VR (was using a gamepad because PS4). R3 is an awkward button to use and you need it constantly here to open doors, navigate with the rafts etc... I does give an unsatisfying vibe to the whole area, especially when you're just exploring and inadvertently closing doors left and right because your light is on. I think the other big factor of the dark sections is how much of your toolkit is removed to make the experience work as intended. The DLC is a gradual exercise in stripping away your stuff; first the stranger can only be entered on foot so you can’t use the ship to fly around. The gravity is higher on the stranger so the jet pack works less well, and there are large walls in places to deliberately restrict your freedom of movement. Those are individually bearable, there ate other parts of the game where those happen. But then when you arrive in the dark areas, your regular flashlight (which is otherwise very good in other parts of the game) is removed, along with your jetpack (so you can’t jump over the environments), your scout, and your ability to swim. That so much of how movement and navigation work in Outer Wilds had to be deliberately turned off for the dark sections to work should have been an indication imo that they were a poor fit. It feels a lot less like exploring a world and a lot more like a contrivance.
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Dec 30, 2022 11:44
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Organza Quiz posted:eh I mean it is a contrivance, it's a fake world with fake rules. Not letting you swim or jet over obstacles makes it feel like a fakey fake rpg world and that's exactly what it turns out to be. Whether the areas are actually fun to play is another question but surely the choice to remove all the tools is a narrative/atmosphere/foreshadowing choice rather than something forced for a mechanic. I think it’s both. Sure, it’s a fake world with fake rules, but there’s lots of possible fake worlds with fake rules, so why choose this specific fake world, why choose these fake rules? I don’t think the removing your movement is foreshadowing that you’re inside a video game, since that would still make “sense” if it was some actual real spirit world or whatever. It’s certainly pushing an atmosphere of fear and dread, but I don’t think that’s easily separated from the mechanics. The atmosphere of fear and dread is tied to the stealth sections, the stealth sections only work if you can’t use your tools.
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Dec 30, 2022 12:38
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Sassy Sasquatch posted:I paid enough attention to notice that the Nomai described the signal from the eye as being older than the universe itself, which is actually what prompts them to investigate it. Maybe I missed some vital pieces of information in the DLC explaining this but either they received the original transmission, meaning the actions of the prisoner were pointless, or they received the prisoner's signal, which prompts another question: how come the Owlks and the Nomai never met then ? We know the Nomai basically jumped as soon as they received the transmission. Also how much time elapsed that the Nomai could not receive the first transmission but were advanced enough by the time the second one reached them ? "it's just long distances" is a bit thin. The signal is older than the universe itself, but it's being jammed by the Stranger, which is cloaked. The prisoner turns off the jamming for a short period of time, which allows the Nomai to hear the signal. By the time they've recovered from the destruction of their vessel (which is at minimum several hours, but likely days or weeks as they deal with the fallout of the emergency evacuation), the Prisoner has been caught and the jamming turned back on, so the next time the Nomai have a chance to check, the signal is gone again. The entire time the Nomai are in the system, the stranger is present, but the Owlks never contact the Nomai because they're xenophobic assholes all in VR suspended animation.
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Dec 31, 2022 04:14
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Sassy Sasquatch posted:I agree with you that the Nomai were already space explorers when they got the eye's signal, that much is clear. What's unclear to me is which signal they received. What I was pointing out was that for the prisoner's signal to matter, the Nomais would have to both not be technologically advanced enough to receive or process the pre-blocker signal (they would have showed up to the party otherwise), and then suddenly make massive technological leaps within the prisoner's lifetime to both receive the prisoner's signal and have the capacity to act immediately. The only way to make sense of it is either that the Nomais had incredibly fast technological development within a small time window, or the vessel was a generation ship and the prisoner was born long after the owlks warped there. Since we know for a fact that the prisoner was in fact born on their home planet, that leaves us only with option 1 I believe. This assumes that the signal is detectable from any distance. Even our own radio signals from earth are mostly drowned out by the radio signature of the sun, and past a certain distance our transmissions will become harder and harder to distinguish from cosmic background radiation. The slides in the DLC are ambiguous, but I think they imply that the Owlk's homeworld was extremely close to the Hearthian system. If the signal is only detectable within, say, 10 or even 50 light years of the Eye, space is sufficiently large that it's not at all unexpected that during the entire period the Owlks were investigating and then blocking the signal, they were the only sapient species near enough to the Eye to hear it. At the same time that the Owlks are building the signal jammer and their virtual world, a young Anonna is inventing warp travel and allowing the Nomai to travel the stars in real time. Jump forward, some number of years, the Prisoner awakes, turns off the jammer signal, gets imprisoned and the jammer is renabled. Cut forward another few decades, the momentary burst of the eye's signal hits a Nomai vessel that has the happens to be in the "right" place at the right time, and receives the signal. They warp to the source system, but when they arrive the signal has already been disabled for decades and the Owlks have all perished. EDIT: took too long to type this I guess lol
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Dec 31, 2022 16:59
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DontMockMySmock posted:S tier base game, F tier DLC. I also stopped posting about the DLC back when it came out because I didn't want to neg out a thread that was broadly enjoying it but you're not the only person who felt that way. The base game had excellent controls and it was a joy to move around in, but in order for the DLC to make sneaking about in the dark work they had to strip away everything from you and switch you from having one of the best torches in any exploration game to one of the absolute worst. Reduced frights didn't help, the problem wasn't the owls, it was the dark--and you can't make those sections less dark until you find out about matrix mode and my patience for an actively unpleasant experience was not sufficient for me to bang my head against the wall until I learned about that. I'm glad I watched a Lets' Play of the DLC cause I like the story elements but man oh man I wish they'd just gone for a different design that didn't require these darkness segments.
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Aug 22, 2023 12:17
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MikeJF posted:Everyone else but not you Jerusalem do you think it's okay to say 'maybe go back to the sun station and double-check everything', they either didn't see or didn't absorb the 'Star has reached end of natural life cycle' readout I think that they may have seen this and just chalked it up to their "the universe is aging faster" theory. Like, if you don't immediately accept that time is a bit abstract in this game's universe, it's not unreasonable at all to think "a sun doesn't naturally go from normal to red giant to supernova in 20 minutes" and "a species can't evolve from tadpoles to spacefarers in 200,000 years". Those are both true facts IRL and if you apply them to this universe without knowing that you shouldn't, what conclusion can you reach other than that messing about with time travel has accelerated time? If you latch onto that as being a thing connected to the mystery, I'm not sure how you dislodge yourself from that.
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Jan 31, 2024 13:52
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Yeah found that surprising when I watched other people play, I don't consider myself to be particularly musical but I picked up that the end times music was the warning cue on Loop 1 basically because it lined up with the events too well. I always just put it down to most streamers and youtubers having the game volume way down for the clarity of their mics. From what I remember [game end spoilers] When I picked up the core in Ash Twin, I took it outside and was kind of considering "oh poo poo, do I take this to the vessel?" and the music kicked in with that thrumming, hopeful rendition of End Times it was like the game was telling me "that's exactly what you're going to do. Get in your ship and go. We''re all counting on you!" It was nerve wracking, of course, but it it was also a confidence boost, a sense that what you were doing was right, what the universe wanted. I feel a little sad for folks who don't pick up on the tone of that theme, and just think they're hearing the same one. But everyone gets something different out of different parts of the game.
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Feb 1, 2024 23:27
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Thoom posted:One of Outer Wilds' most painful failure modes is when players don't trust the developer to always provide a less annoying way to reach a goal, but I'm not sure how they could fix it without effectively spoiling stuff. Only one of the stealth sections requires doing any stealth, and it's just for two (one if you're cheeky about hopping fences) encounters that both have the same solution. The best way I could think of to communicate this would be to soft-gate the hints so that you're encouraged to do them in the order Shrouded Woodland (to learn that you could take the back way into an area, which lets you skip the Endless Canyon stealth entirely) -> Endless Canyon (to learn the lantern trick for scouting out map layouts) -> finally Starlit Cove with actual stealth. For me at least my issue wasn’t the stealth, it was that navigating around in the dark is not fun. This was way, way less of an issue in the base game. While there are certainly parts of the base game where the environment is dark, the flashlight you get is really good, and functionally means that even though you’re aware that the locations you’re in are dark, that darkness is irrelevant to the gameplay. As a result I found it intensely aggravating to be given a lantern that is actively worse than the game’s good flashlight in every single way and then get put in a situation where I need to use it to navigate around a pitch black environment. And also all of the game’s fun movement mechanics were removed in favour of just having you walk around on foot, because their design for the VR world precluded letting you swim or jetpack. Adding in stealth on top of that just made a miserable experience even worse. I tried persevering with it for about an hour of gameplay, but pretty much from the moment I woke up in the VR world until I gave up, I got pretty much zero enjoyment out of the game. Still, that didn’t seem to bother most people who played the DLC, so I’d still recommend it to most people unless they hate those particular mechanics as much as I do. I’ve still enjoyed watching other people play through the DLC who don’t get quite as salty as I did at the midpoint.
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Feb 4, 2024 15:56
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I think it's just a simple matter of "is there anything still in the area that will add a line to the ship log".
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Mar 25, 2024 09:56
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