A Universe of Wonder: Why ‘Outer Wilds’ is One of the Best Games of All Time
Ben suggests listening to Andrew Prahlow’s Outer Wilds’ original score while reading and watching. The following content involves spoilers and a post-play perspective.
What does it mean to wonder?
Playing Outer Wilds, I imagine, is much what it would feel like for an intelligent alien to step foot on Earth for the first time. They might wonder why we stop when the light turns red, or even what the concept of color might be in the first place. They might wonder why people sleep when the moon shines but not when the sun is up. We don’t know what the alien will wonder about, exactly, but we do know that they will wonder.
Outer Wilds takes the things that we think we know, throws them in a blender, and spits them back out as something new. Its universe doesn’t follow the same set of rules that exist on Earth. For instance, on earth, I know that if I stare at a large boulder it will still be there if I were to do a quick spin. In Outer Wilds, I have no such assurances. It’s through a distinct set of rules, through structures that are foreign to the things we as people think we know, that Outer Wilds crafts a sense of new and established that same wonder – the wonder of a hypothetical alien on Earth – in me.
After I finished Outer Wilds I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wanted to write about it. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever played – and chances are, it’s unlike anything anyone has ever played. It provided me with something untraditional, and it seems only fair that I’d return the favor when talking about it. But the truth is, I’m unlikely to conjure up anything half as smart as Outer Wilds. I don’t say that to put it on a pedestal – it’s not beyond critique, and I’ll offer plenty of my own – but it’s bold in a way that’s hard not to appreciate. It owns a vision that I could not have conceivably imagined, yet still feels distinctly human and artistic. And so, instead of attempting to match its extraordinary design, I’ll relish the opportunity to write about what is undoubtedly one of the best video games of all time. Something I’ll use as an excuse to wonder about the Outer Wilds universe a little longer.
Introducing The Outer Wilds
While I’d wholeheartedly recommend that anyone reading this who hasn’t played Outer Wilds go and play it instead of continuing, I’ll provide a short framework for what Outer Wilds actually is, just in case. At its core, Outer Wilds is about exploring a scaled-down solar system. Within this solar system there are a handful of planets (each with a distinguishable terrain), a living species (called ‘Hearthians’) that explores these planets via the ‘Outer Wilds Ventures’ space program, an extinct species (called the Nomai), and a 22-minute time loop that closes with a devastating supernova that wipes the universe clean. There is a lot of nuance in between, but the only valuable way to talk about this game is from a post-play perspective – so that’s how I plan to do it. Spoilers ahead.
Crafting a Universe
One of the first things I’ll note about Outer Wilds is that it’s really difficult to get into. In fact, the first time I picked up Outer Wilds, I quit. Very little of what I explored made any sense, the physics system was cumbersome and awkward, and it felt like there were too many rules. All of this, I’d argue, is still true despite knowing what I do now. Outer Wilds does a poor job introducing you to its vast systems.
It’s something that is pretty easy to notice right away. The playable character (a Hearthian) doesn’t move around very well. They jump low to the ground, and the run speed is slow. There’s no way to crouch, although the character ducks a little every time you prepare to jump. You eventually put on a space suit, where jet-packing around is even clunkier – and, somehow, Outer Wilds develops a control system that uses damn near every button on a typical Xbox controller just to navigate around properly. The same complaint applies for using the ship, which I found myself tumbling over and crashing in with relentless consistency.
This is something Mobius (the development team) seemed well aware of. In a documentary developed by ‘Noclip’, the lead designers talk about how getting players hooked and excited to explore in those opening ten minutes was among their most difficult challenges. As a result, they trimmed down the barriers to get started by including only a single mandatory conversation (to get a launch code for your ship). While Outer Wilds clunky start is certainly a viable critique, it does feel as if Mobius did everything they could to get the jets going.
And here’s the other thing: I hate when people tell me that I just have to stick with something until it gets good. A popular concept in television is that you just have to “make it through the first couple of episodes” or the “first season” of some shows for them to really click. I don’t think I would have ever tried Outer Wilds again had it not been for a Roger Ebert review of the film Synecdoche, New York where he expertly opens his review by saying:
“I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman‘s “Synecdoche, New York” twice. I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time because I will want to. It will open to confused audiences and live indefinitely. A lot of people these days don’t even go to a movie once. There are alternatives. It doesn’t have to be the movies, but we must somehow dream. If we don’t “go to the movies” in any form, our minds wither and sicken.”
And that’s a feeling that resonated with my short experiences with Outer Wilds. Lest my mind wither and sicken, I resolved to “go to the movies.” Something about the confidence with which Outer Wilds trusted me to want to master it compelled me back in for a third time.
It was during the start of this play through that I finally understood something: it wasn’t Outer Wilds that I was having a difficult time adjusting to. It was my brain’s marked stubbornness to learn – and not learn in the traditional fill-in-the-blank tutorial kind of way, but to learn a new set of rules that were as true as the concept of gravity (which is remarkably well mirrored in Outer Wilds), or water being wet. And with that realization, I began to wonder, or dream, as Ebert ascertained: what might be possible?
Exploring the Outer Wilds
Outer Wilds isn’t so much a puzzle game as it is a game that is a puzzle. On each of the galaxy’s planets are a handful of hints, all of which help paint a larger picture. On your spaceship exists a system that logs all of the information you learn along the way, and visualizes that information as a “rumor” board – you know, like the one that Charlie has going on here.
In fact, much of my time in Outer Wilds was spent acting just like Charlie. Waving my hands, concocting theories (many of which proved untrue), and sinking myself into a web of information.
Outer Wilds lets you connect these pieces of information with little guidance. Other non-playable characters in the game are often strong resources, but I frequently found that they were reaffirming things I already knew or pointing me in the direction of something I knew about but had yet to figure out how to access. And that access is what makes Outer Wilds so fascinating to explore. Much like a baby learning their first words or taking their first steps, I stumbled into much of what I learned almost by accident – or as I said earlier, by letting my sense of wonder take hold. “What if I tried this?” was a recurring question I asked myself. The truth is, in Outer Wilds, I never knew until I tried.
One of Outer Wilds’ most expansive planets – Giant’s Deep – is home to a series of twisters. Through a collection of hints, I knew the answers to questions I had from previous explorations could be found there. The trouble is that on Giant’s Deep, the twisters and body of water that sit below it act like a protective shield to the planet’s core. After some trial and error, I realized that one of the twisters was working counter-clockwise. Much like you would expect, Outer Wilds meticulously designs its set of rules so as not to be illogical. So I sent my ship flying into the counter-clockwise twister, and down I went. Success!
That was, until my death just seconds later.
Between the body of water and the core of Giant’s Deep sits an electrical current and a handful of giant jellyfish. Without thinking twice, I plunged my ship into the current and paid the price. This time, I wasn’t quite lucky enough to advance.
After hours of exploration, I found myself floating into the core of a dense, foggy planet called Dark Bramble. Dark Bramble feels inherently dangerous, as it owns an eerie silence and dozens of glowing, white bulbs. Some of them move. Before I knew it, I found my ship locked into the jaws of a giant, monstrous fish (appropriately named Anglerfish). Conceptually, it might seem frustrating. But the truth is that Outer Wilds unlocks a new path with every failure. It’s just one more avenue for progress – a piece of the puzzle that’s now on the board.
Instead of walking through my entire adventure, I’ll skip ahead to a few hours when I was in the throes of exploring the Ember Twin planet – a planet that adds another time constraint to your exploration by slowly filling with sand, undoubtedly one of the game’s many metaphors for existential dread. Inside Ember Twin was a giant skeleton of a fish with a bulb connected at its snout. I didn’t think much of it, as the last time I had encountered one of those fish I had done my best to forget about it. But I did a double take, and began to connect the thread between my experience on Dark Bramble and what I was seeing at Ember Twin.
It turns out, the Nomai had discovered that the horrifying fish were unable to see, and can only hunt using sound. Once the time loop had been reset, I used the Nomai information to see if it made a difference in my exploration. It turns out, the Nomai were right (as they usually were). I floated right past the Anglerfish and opened the door to a wealth of secrets – one of which just so happened to be in the way of a large, dead jellyfish with a note left next to it. Turns out, jellyfish are insulated from electricity. Of. Course. Why didn’t I think of that? Much like in my life here on earth, my knowledge is built on the shoulders of others. I made it to the core of Giant’s Deep within my next loop.
It’s within these connections that Outer Wilds shines its brilliance. Of course, I don’t think it would have been quite so compelling if the world building (or deconstruction, in this case) weren’t so expertly designed. Within the secrets that Outer Wilds has to offer lies a complex and tragic story of the death of a species.
The Compelling Nature of Tragedy
I won’t pretend to understand everything about Outer Wilds vast world building or its complicated narrative structure. There have been attempts online to explain it, most of which I’ve consumed at this point. They all arrive at a similar conclusion: the Nomai, in their desperation to find a stable universe for their colony, got stuck in the Outer Wilds solar system because they were curious about a signal that they believed to be “the eye of the universe.”
There’s a great sense of irony that, in a game where curiosity is both your means to progress and also what spells your doom (over and over again), that an entire species – or at least a clan of a species – was driven to extinction because of curiosity too. The short of it is that the Nomai discovered a way to power a time loop (by setting off a supernova) which would allow them enough time to find the eye of the universe. Unfortunately, they failed at triggering the time loop, and found a new exotic matter (what is referred to in-game as “ghost matter”) that led to their death. All of this, including the skeletons of their bodies, is heavily documented and pieced together as you play.
Thousands of years pass between the extinction event and the present in Outer Wilds. The present just happens to be twenty-two minutes before a universe-ending supernova. When the first supernova occurs, all of the Nomai’s plans and ancient machinery (now with the necessary power to function) are kicked into gear. A twenty-two minute time loop becomes the reality of the playable character, a Hearthian.
There was a sense of longing that began to come with each nugget of information. As I learned more in Outer Wilds, the Nomai’s death began to become more and more clear. Their attempts at finding the eye of the universe led to disagreements among their species about survival versus scientific advancement. When I learned just how close they were to finding success, Outer Wilds achieved this lasso effect of saying ‘they couldn’t finish it, but you have the information to do so’.
There’s a tantalizing moment at the end of Outer Wilds (if such a thing exists, given that you begin the game just as close to the end of it the moment you begin playing) where I realized I had everything I needed to carry out the Nomai’s plan of reaching the eye of the universe. All of the threads had been connected, the puzzle pieces now mostly connected. It was time to finish things.
Doing so would mean ending the time loop. If I fail, that might mean the end of what I had hoped would be a way to save the universe from dying. There was little else to learn and I had everything I needed. The game establishes an all-time set of stakes: the fate of the universe and everything the Nomai set out to accomplish was now in my hands.
What It Feels Like in the Outer Wilds
I want to pause for a second, because to ignore all of the other things that make Outer Wilds so unique would be a disservice. The race to the finish can wait for just a moment – something I put into practice in- game, where even once I had found all of the necessary information to complete the Nomai’s trek to the eye of the universe, I just wandered the solar system one more time. Just because the Outer Wilds is so fascinating to exist inside of, even if I know it can’t last.
So what makes this universe so wonderful to be a part of? For me, it started with the music and Outer Wilds’ distinct visual flavor. Outer Wilds uses music as a guide around the solar system, providing a sound device (called the signal scope) that allows you to track certain sounds. Most aptly, it allows you to track the other Hearthians out in the solar system – all of which are playing some form of the game’s magnificent central theme. In a lesser game, it may have even felt like music was the focus of Outer Wilds. Instead, its harmonic convergence stands to aid everything else around it.
Moreover, Outer Wilds uses a theme aptly titled “End Times” from the game’s original soundtrack (composed by the talented Andrew Prahlow) to mark when the loop is just about at its end. There is a distinct tension in scrambling for last bits of info, knowing that the supernova was right around the corner. Much like the “Running Out of Time” theme from Super Mario Bros., “End Times” serves as one of Outer Wilds’ many auditory systems to aid its gameplay. Similarly, the “Space” theme – played when you are exploring the solar system – perfectly matches that unending curiosity that pairs with every new launch. Much like the “Campfire Song” that wraps Outer Wilds up, the deep sense of harmony that the game so frequently achieves between story, gameplay, and music is what makes it special.
At first glance, Outer Wilds isn’t a particularly pretty game. It’s textures are flat and blocky, much of the interior design shares a muted, beige color that feels like a staple of the Nomai architecture, and the planets are not particularly dense with things to look at. Of course, part of this is that the one little bit of hand holding that Outer Wilds utilizes is that nothing exists without reason. If the jagged end of a structure is poking out of a bit of rock, chances are there’s some way to access it on the other side of the surface. These visual clues are a central part of the Outer Wilds exploration experience, and it’s just subtle enough that it’s not something I was consciously thinking about as I played. Almost like a thin trail of breadcrumbs, Outer Wilds’ visual design is its one and only waypoint system.
Now that I’ve completed Outer Wilds, however, I can’t stop thinking about how pretty it is. The planets all have a distinct visual style that fits the kind of exploration that Outer Wilds dictates. For instance, the Ember Twin begins the loop as a barren space but is slowly filled with sand. All of this happened whether I was exploring the planet or not – in fact, I spent an entire loop observing the sand from its “twin planet” the Ash Twin as its sand methodically poured onto the other. It’s nerve-racking when trying to explore, but beautiful in that there’s a science and structure to it. Observing it from afar helps paint an amazing picture: there are so many things going on in the Outer Wilds all at once, whether my eyes were fixed on it or not.
The Rules of Outer Wilds
Perhaps there is no better segue than to explain one of the three central “rules” that the player must learn in order to complete Outer Wilds. In one of the Nomai’s quantum structures, you learn that there are certain materials or resources that exist in the universe that exist when being observed, but move as soon as they are out of sight. It’s an amazingly cool trick – a piece of video game magic if you will – and it pairs brilliantly with the game’s best mechanic: the scout camera.
Again, one of the most subtle features of Outer Wilds is that the universe continued to exist regardless of how I interacted with it. The scout camera feels like an example of the sheer amount of confidence Mobius Digital had in their systems. When launched, the scout camera sends out a digital camera that can take pictures as rapidly as I could push the button – entirely separated from the spatial restrictions of the character. It’s endlessly useful as an exploration tool (and also something that can keep those pesky moving objects in place when you aren’t staring them down), and it fits in so well with the Outer Wilds universe.
The usefulness of it is twofold: Firstly, because Outer Wilds operates on such a short time loop and takes place in such a vast space, there was no good way to explore all of curiosities by foot, ship, or jetpack. Instead, the scout camera allowed me to shoot the tool down into nooks and crannies I wasn’t sure led to anything. When I’d snap a picture of something that looked like it might be useful, I explored the path. But in the event that it didn’t return anything interesting, it allowed me to continue right along my intended route.
Secondly, the scout camera tracks ghost matter, the same material that got the Nomai killed in their own explorations. The fundamental difference between what I could see and what the scout camera could see was fascinating. In a sense, it provided a lens into the horrifying death of the Nomai – while simultaneously allowing me to avoid it.
There’s a mastery to all of what Outer Wilds has to offer. Its gravity and physics systems are remarkably complex. In fact, one of the game’s developers, Logan Van Hoef, has articulated the difficulty of designing movement in Outer Wilds: in many games, a single moving platform creates a wide variety of development problems. In Outer Wilds, everything is moving and it never stops. Even the gravitational pull was specifically designed for this universe and its smaller solar system. From a development perspective, it’s fascinating. From a gameplay perspective, it was all so smooth and intuitive once I got the hang of it that I might not have even thought about it had I not put words to the page.
Pointed Criticisms
There are a handful of things about Outer Wilds that I struggled with. It was actually the first moment I knew how attached to the game I was – when it hit me just how intricate some of the gameplay systems actually are and how inherently frustrating that can be.
Oftentimes, games intentionally ignore rules. The Elder Scrolls, for instance, is notorious for its game-breaking habits. There are ways that Skyrim wants you to climb up a mountain, but why bother if I can just ride a horse thousands of feet up the cliffside? Outer Wilds rejects the notion that rules shouldn’t apply to its universe in the name of convenience, and sometimes that is frustrating. For instance, many of the game’s central moments of progress take place dozens of minutes into a loop. If I failed in whatever I was trying to do, I’d reset and wait the allotted time until I could give it another go. (Note, there is a way to fast-forward time by resting at the opening campfire. Though, this is of little help when making progress requires something early in a loop and something late in a loop)
Similarly, while the gravity system really is impressive, I was constantly banging my head on walls, landing my ship at awkward angles, zooming right past planets when I didn’t properly match their speeds, and often got sucked into the sun in the middle of an autopilot. All of these things are verifiably my fault, but it didn’t stop that aching feeling that maybe they could have just used a fast travel system or maybe there could have been an automatic landing. At no point was landing my ship a smooth experience, nor was it particularly satisfying even when it was. But I appreciated the hell out of Outer Wilds saying “here are the rules, like them or not” and living by it.
It’s also important to note that Outer Wilds is remarkably vague. If it weren’t for sheer moments of luck, I fear I may have never broken my way through to the end game. Some of the hints feel as if they should be obvious, like the jellyfish example I mentioned before, but oftentimes even those hints are purposefully guarded. Instead of Outer Wilds saying “Hey, it turns out those same jellyfish on Giant’s Deep are immune to the electrical current” it offers a vague statement about their insulation. In his review on IGN, Mike Epstein called these moments “confounding,” and I think he has a point.
But wow, are those moments of the lightbulb turning on all the more gratifying. Outer Wilds requires a mastery of its elements and is unapologetic about it.
A Race to the Finish Line
And so, just as I found myself doing in my playthrough of Outer Wilds, I have gone deeply off the rails as a means of prolonging an experience that filled me with joy and a sense of wonder.
The end of Outer Wilds is a uniquely tense moment in the archives of my video game history. Knowing that reaching the end of the game meant ending the time loop was a sense of finality to approaching the next step. Every step closer to the finish line felt momentous. The stakes were incredibly high – in large part because of my connection to the Nomai and their unending struggle to understand the universe they inhabited – and the brief window of time in which was open to complete everything I needed to is just twenty-two minutes long… And somehow, someway, this singular loop feels like almost the exact amount that I needed to complete my journey.
The final act involves tracking down the warp core that was inducting the time loop, removing it, and bringing it to the crashed vessel that kicked off the series of events listed above. With the coordinates to the eye of the universe in hand, all I needed to do was safely bring the warp core to the vessel, install the coordinates, and save the universe from its repeating cycle.
In between all of this is a series of tests that Outer Wilds put me through to ensure I didn’t luck my way into beating it. Of course, it never feels like a test, but in hindsight, pulling off the final warp is all about compiling all of the learned secrets into one, twenty-two minute loop. There’s this fascinating moment where, despite the scarce amount of time available, I had to bring my ship to a crawl to get past a set of Anglerfish. Making even the slightest movement would ping them to my location. In my successful journey, I accidentally triggered the attention of an Anglerfish and avoided the clasp of its jaws by mere inches. Before I knew it, I was in front of the vessel, core in hand.
The final moments in the Outer Wilds solar system were a panicked realization that it’s very possible this would be the last canonical loop. Meaning that all the characters I met along my journey, all of the incredible events and secrets I had explored over and over again were about to no longer exist. Much as the saying goes, I didn’t know what I had until it was about to be gone. I plugged in the coordinates anyway, completing the Nomai’s mission from thousands of years ago.
An End to the Outer Wilds
It becomes clear minutes after traveling through the eye of the universe that ending the loop has effectively ended the Outer Wilds universe. The supernova still occurs, and this time there is no loop to send it back twenty-two minutes in time. A comfort that I had taken for granted, even if it was a morbid one.
Yet, Outer Wilds ends much like its beginning. The creation of a new universe occurs as a part of the successful journey. Our friends, all of which have their instruments in hand, play the “Travelers” theme in front of an open campfire as a new universe emerges from its spark. It’s a beautiful moment, and one that Outer Wilds has earned in spades.
Of course, not everything was clear to me as I was experiencing this swell of emotion at the end of my Outer Wilds experience. And yet, the simplicity of its conclusion – the birth of something new, matched with the harmonic convergence of the various instruments – felt like more than enough. This complicated web of action concludes with just the briefest moment of achievement and serenity. An ode to the complicated lives we live, and the sacred moments of joy that accompany them.
Making Sense of Everything
I don’t think I’m in the best position to theory craft, especially as there are entire communities who have poured their heart into understanding and appreciating Outer Wilds. Though, there is something about the sense of mystery that hasn’t allowed me to stop thinking about the game. In the same way I’ve talked about Dark Souls and its impact on my life, I get the feeling that Outer Wilds is here to stay for me.
So what else is there to make of the game, its storytelling, and conclusion? The best I can offer is that Outer Wilds is a story of accepting the concept of living not being good enough. I recently watched the television show Station Eleven – based on the wonderful novel Emily St. John Mandel – that ponders a post-apocalyptic world. In it, Mandel opines that “survival is insufficient,” as in we must have something to live for.
In Outer Wilds, life is eternal as it was first presented to us. After twenty-two minutes, time resets itself and we continue to exist. Though, for the Hearthian, and the Nomai before them, survival was insufficient. A curiosity for something greater was at the core of life itself. The exploration of the universe was sufficient, it was the meaning that made survival worth it.
My reading of the narrative is that the eye of the universe needed the Nomai (and without getting into the DLC, it’s arguable that the Nomai weren’t the first or only species to hear its call). The universe was always coming to an end, and someone needed to provide the eye with what it needed to birth something new.
The completion of Outer Wilds’ journey is both practically and artistically satisfying. I’m not quite sure I’ll ever experience anything quite like it, and even if I do, it will never be like my first time through this. No, I think this particular experience is the sort of one-of-a-kind adventure that will live on as something special and irreplaceable. Instilled with a sense of wonder, I can’t help but resolutely believe that Outer Wilds is one of the best video games of all time.
Thank you for reading. Your Patreon support keeps our community entirely Ad free.
