Outer Wilds
13 Oct 2021It’s a great game. I don’t really want to write much of a review because the game doesn’t need one. It’s good, if you like games you should play it. Outer Wilds might be in my top 10 games The DLC is not as good, but still way better than average. I got it too and thought it was worth it.
This article is just going to be some ruminations I’ve had on Outer Wilds. Some potential story issues, some minor analysis, some theories, etc.
I think you don’t have control of the player character for the probe that found the eye. That’s the loop right before the looping starts that you’re aware of. The Nomai statue activates because the previous loop found the Eye, not because the current loop found it just a few minutes after launch. As to why the statue doesn’t activate immediately and pair with Hal at the start of the first day you control the character? Maybe there’s a brief transmission delay between ATP and the statue on Timber Hearth because it was moved from Giant’s deep? Maybe Hal isn’t standing close enough to the activation spot? Maybe standing just to the left of the statue and looking at it is what’s required to activate it and nobody else did that that day before the player character?
Another thought I’ve had is that it’s kind of weird how we’re able to catch up to the probe from the probe launcher in our rickety ship. This is supposed to be one of the fastest launches the Nomai have ever done. The probe’s supposed to reach massive distances from the sun in 22 minutes to find the Eye of the Universe. The propulsion is so strong it blows up the whole station. But the rickety Hearthian ship has no trouble catching up to and speeding past the nomai probe. Either the hearthians are way better at conventional space travel than the Nomai, it’s an oversight in the game, or something else.
I have a watsonian explanation that could fix this issue and I don’t remember any Nomai text disagreeing with it.
The probe launcher isn’t actually launching when we start becoming aware of the loops. It has the info from the ATP that the probe found the eye already so it attempts to abort the launch. I do remember some text saying that the Nomai don’t really care if the station explodes because in the true timeline it’s not even going to fire. But of course, in game the station still launches even though the probe has already found the eye. Since the probe launch process starts right at the very beginning of the loop there isn’t actually enough time to cancel the launch. But it still tries to cancel the launch. So the probe is only getting propulsion from an aborted launch, not the typical propulsion it would get from a full launch.
Back before we were aware of the loops the launches could have been much, much faster because there was no abort order from the ATP.