Outer Wilds

Zero-Cool · 30-09-2021 11:24pm

Ah that's the way i was going all along, when i meant about flinging myself around with a sliver of health, i meant going through the cave 😂 damn this dlc is hard to talk about but also great that everyone has been on the same page and not spoiling anything :)

As for my progress, near end..

I jumped off the platform between areas, extinguished the first. Put down my device and left the matrix to extinguish the 2nd. The 3rd has me stumped with the light. I know it's something to do with the error report like the other 2 but definitely trickier. Gonna think about it, thanks man.

johnny_ultimate · 30-09-2021 11:28pm

@Zero-Cool Yeah that spoiler is the exact same problem I had, the only part of the game where I had to go through the Steam forums to see if anybody else had figured it out. Hate to look anything up in this game, but knowing the answer honestly not sure if I’d have figured it out otherwise 😅

Zero-Cool · 01-10-2021 12:18am

Just completed it. Fecking GOOSEBUMPS with that ending!

Johnny, i honestly thought i was missing something so you're advice helped me focus on the last piece of the puzzle.. ending spoilers below. Please don't click if you haven't completed it.

I looked up the trophies and there are some brilliant ones there, will definitely give them a try. But yeah, game of the year!

I figured how is an old dead guy gonna help me and i was gonna head off and look for the light source to shut off but you made me focus on that error report and even though i didn't fully understand the consequences, i figured it's telling me you can die and still go to the real world so i said why not. I thought the bell was for if you're in danger while sleeping, it brings you back like the flooding wouldn't interrupt me if i was dead but not sure how that would help opening the sarcophagus. Anyway decided to jump on the flame and when it came to the last bit, it only dawned on me with the statue bells so i was able to move forward. **** genius design.

As for the ending, i can't even describe the emotion i felt during that, maybe all of them. What a perfect send off to the perfect game.

I also read it changes the ending to the main game so i looked it up on YouTube, absolutely do it if you haven't seen it.

01-10-2021 5:51pm

Slightly disappointed by this tbh. I can appreciate the mastery of creating such a puzzling environment with light being a new theme, but I haven't finished it yet and today I found myself going to the other planets (as its a fresh save) rather than finishing this DLC. I really do not like the dark area. Getting back to The Stranger on every run is becoming a chore. I have to retrace far more as I can't see a meter in front of me. I've built up an idea of the place in my head but I still find myself having to rediscover the same areas over and over. It's such a change from what Outer Wilds is. Suddenly turns into a repetitive quasi horror game. Being without the ship and jetpack further compounds that its not about space exploration anymore. Loved the river and discovering various villages/temples though.

Zero-Cool · 01-10-2021 5:53pm

Just checking but are you lighting candles with your flame? There were only a handful of sections you have to do in the complete dark.

01-10-2021 7:03pm

Still not done yet but it took me the longest time to realise that

the aliens in the area where you dose off are the same ones in the dream world with you.

Might have made progress a little easier when trying to solve the first one. Felt stupid for not copping that sooner.

02-10-2021 10:16am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117964312#Comment_117964312

Yeah I am

02-10-2021 1:05pm

I finished it last night.... I think????

Freed the prisoner and he left in the lift after we shared memories. Found his artefact on the shore next to the raft. That showed us both leaving together???? Was there more to it?

johnny_ultimate · 02-10-2021 2:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117966998#Comment_117966998

No that’s it. If you go to the Eye and finish the base game ending again there’s a few extra bits added following on from the DLC. But what you’ve seen is everything in the Stranger.

02-10-2021 10:33pm

Thought so , truly happy for having paid for and played that. I did switch on "easy mode" though after a few failed attempts at those sections and it was a great option to have as I felt the challenge in figuring stuff out was enough for me without that some people will love others can leave it and not endure unnecessary frustration.

I've played a few games over the years that I would love to be able to play again for the first time, this being one of them and the DLC came pretty close to delivering that feeling. It was familiar and different at the same time. Not something they cobbled together for the sake of a DLC but something they put 2 years of work into and the final product felt like they put as much thought and work into as their main game. Easily the finest piece of DLC I've played in forever.

Working on the achievements now I actually think you probably could have played through the whole thing and not got a single one. I had no idea what was going on with the 1/900 one but my wife assures me it's a Zelda BoTW reference. I just though it was funny.

The one for

Burning a reel was clear reference to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, it's title was Celsius 232.78 😀

Only read that back in August. I'd recommend if you liked older stuff like I am Legend which was written around the same time I think. To me they've aged well.

skerry · 06-10-2021 3:31pm

Just started the main game earlier. Have no clue what I'm at. Visited a planet, got zipped off somewhere else and died. Will tool around with it some more later

06-10-2021 6:54pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117984304#Comment_117984304

There is a computer in the ship that makes of log of what you have visited and lets you know if you missed anything.

Zero-Cool · 06-10-2021 7:20pm

Also, every planet will have story points that fill up the log helping to piece together the story and the log will tell you if there's more to explore. I read a few people went from planet to planet not knowing what was going on and gave up which i find tragic but i also have up 30 minutes into Subnautica for the same reason. Someone talked me into going back and it became one of my favourite games of all time, just like Outer Wilds.

I'm watching The Lore Explorers playthrough on YouTube at the moment. He dives deep into the OW lore and it's great watching him discover Echoes of The Eye secrets for the first time.

skerry · 06-10-2021 7:29pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117985200#Comment_117985200

Seen that earlier. Its saying there's more to explore in the last planet so I'll head back there and scope it out a bit more.

skerry · 06-10-2021 10:28pm

OK, Im intrigued now. Opening up a bit. This is good stuff.

Zero-Cool · 08-10-2021 1:21pm

Just watched a yootoober completing Echoes of the Eye and was confused how we got different endings. Turns out he either started a new save or hadn't explored the Nomai fully.

DLC ending spoilers

After the Owl people locked away the prisoner and turned the signal blocker back on, it then showed the the Nomai crashing on a planet, living, dying and then the Heartian people discovering their remains. Completely misses the bit where the Nomai find the signal because the Prisoner briefly stopped the blocker and that's the thing that explains the Nomai coming to the solar system and then losing the signal. Bit sad if people don't see that.

11-10-2021 9:37pm

Came back to this after leaving it for about week. If there was ever a developer that I'd give multiple chances to, its these guys. Started making progress straight away after accepting the dark area for what it is. I started making notes as I was going. One of the biggest issues I had before is I couldn't remember what "sleep portal" brought me to where. I previously found myself having to relearn the dark area over and over. It kinda looks the same up close and you can't really view from afar, nor can you cross reference your ship as you're going. Anyway... I think I'm very close to getting the last few passwords after making my own notes. This DLC isn't the quasi-space sim I wanted but it's still a fantastic puzzle game with a brilliant method of story telling and drip feed of hints.

CatInABox · 19-11-2021 11:30am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118178002#Comment_118178002

Yeah, fair enough. I really think that accessibility options need to be built into the engines that developers use, make it so that these options require little to no dev time to implement.

01-12-2021 8:26pm

The loop in Outer Wilds is actually about 22 minutes if I recall. Forgotten City I'm not sure about but definitely felt a lot longer. For me I found it was something that pushed me forward but I guess I could see it as annoying to some. Normally I'd have a problem with being rushed in a game too but with Outer Wilds it seemed to work for me.

The controls on the ship did bother me starting out and when I started back with the DLC but got used to them again fairly quickly. The less said about the achievement/trophy for landing in a certain place the better.

How many loops did you waste by rushing back to where you left off and forgot to suit up before getting out ????

Zero-Cool · 01-12-2021 9:57pm

I hope you stick with it TPP, especially since you liked Subnautica so much. That is one of my favourite games of all time but Outer Wilds is a level above it imo. The false sense of difficulty you're seeing is because the devs didn't want to waste areas of each map wondering aimlessly. If you see something that looks interesting, it more than likely is worth checking out so you'll constantly come across areas and things that fill out your ship log. Also, when the bigger picture comes together, you start to understand the loop and when you need to, you can take off go where you need to in under a minute. Some places are 1 way trips just to gain info for your ship log to figure out next steps. Basically, after exploring the planets a few times, you'll know where you need to go and be zipping back in no time

Once the bigger picture stats coming together, it's just beautiful. Then it's figuring out how to complete it which is fairly tough. I believe they added a patch because originally it was too obscure for people to figure out. Some really really tough parts to figure out but it's just great when you do. I had to Google hints a couple of times but replaying it multiple times, all the info you need can be found somewhere in the world and your ship log remembers it so you don't have to.

As for my first impressions on this, i nearly didn't make it off the hike planet as i just found it bad looking and janky moving around. Similar with Subnautica, i actually did stop playing that after 30 minutes. Took me about a month to try again and thank **** i did.

Saying all that, it's not for everyone, i think i just get excited watching people play and hearing about their experience with it.

johnny_ultimate · 01-12-2021 11:05pm

A year full of timeloop games - good and bad (Annapurna have the peculiar distinction of publishing both the best and worst timeloop games ever made) - has only given me a deeper appreciation of how Mobius Games took advantage of the conceit. It certainly has the most satisfying timeloop narrative and central mystery - a fantastic sci-fi tale with a killer ending. And aesthetically that supernova is an eerie, memorable thing. I also think it’s a smart way of regulating pacing and prodding the player to follow different threads, rather than getting them stuck meandering around in one little corner of the world.

But it’s the way the loop itself informs the world and puzzles which has yet to be bested. Both individual puzzles and the universe as one big puzzle are so intimately tied into that ticking clock. It’s a structure that offers more exploration possibility the more you learn the intricacies of what’s going on. In many timeloop games the world is fairly static outside of discrete levels or gameplay states, while others require you to prod at them to influence change. The worlds here shift majorly over 22 minutes (or in some cases in smaller cycles within that), and it’s our growing understanding of it that gradually reveals the scale of it all. The shortcuts that also reveal themselves are most welcome - there are very few spots in the game that can’t be reached within a few minutes when needed. To make such big, bold ideas work so clearly and concisely remains a remarkable feat of design.

The DLC is an interesting test of the game’s structural limits as that’s where the countdown feels more restrictive, given there’s not another planet you can go explore if you’re stuck (assuming you play it in one go after the main game like most of us in this thread have). It also has a few sections most players will have to repeat more than anything in the base game. But I think the fact the designers got even more ambitious in having an environment and puzzles that dramatically (and quite spectacularly, it must be said - experiencing that mid-loop cataclysm for the first time is my gaming moment of the year) change over the course of the loop on an even grander scale than the base came justifies it in the end.

God, if I could cleanse one game from my mind just to experience again… this wonderful thing would be it.

02-12-2021 11:58am

I'm curious... how would you simplify flying the ship and jetpack? I think the nature of flying in 3D space is inherently tricky at first. I've played a few space simulators and Outer Wilds is fairly simple in comparison. There's even an auto pilot.

johnny_ultimate · 02-12-2021 12:25pm

I think the ship movement is cool both thematically (love the sense of it being a sort of ramshackle, fragile thing) and mechanically. As @[Deleted User] says a lot of it can be automated anyway, but it is hard to create something that's easy to use with proper 3D movement and fluctuating gravity. I do get how people would be frustrated with it at first, mind you.

I do love the jetpack though - I think that just reveals more depth the more you play. When you reach a point when you're doing gigantic leaps over chasms or even in and out of the atmosphere it feels bloody fantastic. It's a refreshing movement set that rewards pushing the limits while still always having an element of risk involved. One of the better realisations of dynamic first-person exploration and lite platforming IMO.

Zero-Cool · 29-12-2021 11:06pm

Never knew about this, looking forward to giving it a listen!

https://youtu.be/tz8Sw6X-knM

Zero-Cool · 04-01-2022 5:15pm

Fantastic play through of Echoes of the Eye, hands down one of my favourite youtubers, one of the only ones I would site down and watch play instead of actually playing a game myself.

https://youtu.be/PD_Qb7A54XY

quokula · 11-01-2022 12:24pm

Finally got round to starting this now it's back on Gamepass, played around 4 or 5 hours but not sure I'm feeling it as much as most people. It's an interesting premise but I'm not sure I'm a fan of the aimlessness to be honest. I never know if I've seen all the things in the area or if I should keep looking around and I find it annoying when I find some structure or object but nothing is interactable and the game makes no acknowledgement of it, does that mean I've missed something or it's just some red herring? Then there's the clunkiness of the controls, the platforming is an absolute pain and controlling the ship isn't much better. The transition from being in space to being on planet feels quite awkward too in a lot of cases. There are also two fairly long sequences I was right close to the end of when the loop reset both times which was super frustrating, and I couldn't be bothered to go and repeat all the steps again as the process of getting there just isn't fun.

In the time I've spent playing I've been to every planet at least once, seen a bunch of stuff, got a lot of random snippets of story but nothing that's really given me much understanding of anything that's going on. I also spent one cycle going back into the village and to the museum to tell people what's happened and what I've learned and there's just nothing you can say at all to acknowledge that which seems really weak.

All that said, I still want to explore more and see if it starts to come together. My favourite thing about the game is probably the music and the atmosphere which is great when you're just exploring and not fighting controls or getting frustrated.

CatInABox · 11-01-2022 3:01pm

The computer on the ship keeps track of everything, and I'm pretty sure it'll tell you if you're missing anything in a location. Took me a while to figure that out.

Hard to give a direction in a game that lets you set your own direction so much, but I always tell people to investigate the explosion that see as you wake up from each loop. I'm pretty sure that it's meant to be the "start", and then you go from there, which is why it's the first thing you see every time. Took me a while to figure that out too.

johnny_ultimate · 11-01-2022 3:04pm

Yeah the ship's log is extremely helpful in telling you if you should keep exploring a particular area. There'll still be question marks and a hint there's still more to find if you haven't exhausted your leads.

Keep in mind there will be some areas inaccessible until you learn something somewhere else, but again the ship's guide does a great job pointing out how everything is/isn't connected.

Outer Wilds

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