Why I Can’t Stop Thinking About ‘Outer Wilds’
By: Thomas Jenkins
Tags: Gaming, Storytelling, Science Fiction, Writing, Videogames

Exploring Space

To start with a brief summary (one that’s intentionally vague) Outer Wilds places the player in the shoes of an astronaut exploring a solar system. Specifically, you’re searching for the Nomai, an ancient civilization that journeyed into the region long ago. There are several planets to explore, with varying secrets and puzzles buried inside.

There’s also a fascinating gameplay element. The sun explodes every 22 minutes, leaving you with nothing more than the memories and information you’ve gained (which is fortunately recorded in your ship’s log). Outer Wilds exists in a time loop, a hard cap on each journey you make. Uncovering exactly why this is happening has much to do with the narrative.

Everything in Outer Wilds is based on information. You don’t gain any upgrades or get any stronger as you play. Instead, you learn more and more about what’s out there, what happened before you arrived. There is a concrete goal you need to accomplish that will end the game, but finding it requires nothing more than exploring location after location. Some of that exploration is slow and thoughtful, some of it is tense and filled with danger, but all of it slowly draws you closer to the conclusion.

Critical Acclaim

A 22-minute time loop and a long-buried mystery make an intriguing premise on their own, but what led me to finally play Outer Wilds is the near-universal acclaim it received from writers. In a game of the year writeup for Polygon, Chelsea Stark wrote, “Outer Wilds’ final revelations left a mark that will be on my soul much longer than any game of the year discussions, one that pulls at me every time I hear its simple, enthralling theme music.” She wasn’t alone: many others echoed the highest of praises for this title.

To reach that level of recognition is something few games can do, a mark of how special Outer Wilds is. Even this year’s The Last of Us Part II, which I wrote on at length, failed to meet that mark. Games are often divisive in the critical community, especially when they try weird ideas like some of the ones here. Incredibly, Outer Wilds landed positive post after positive post.

Beauty and Tragedy

Playing it myself, I was struck by how beautiful the story is. It becomes clear pretty early on that the Nomai met a tragic fate. But the intricacies of how their story played out are beautiful. We can see a great deal of recorded dialog that they left behind, making characters that we never meet feel real and vulnerable. We also see that they were on the cusp of an incredible discovery, one that we have the chance to chase down using what they left behind.

The game’s open structure is also enthralling, even though it’s also frustrating at times. The game opens up with the whole map available — it’s even possible to reach the end mere minutes after starting the game, though that’s impossible without knowing exactly what to do. The ability to explore everything is liberating, but the lack of clear instructions often left me confused as well. I had to look up a few walkthroughs, though that may be due more to user error than the fault of the developers. Regardless, I think it’s worth pointing out that you can easily get lost in Outer Wilds.

But when Outer Wilds flexes its muscles — at its most engaging moments — there is truly nothing like this game out there. You’ll go flying through black holes, streak across the surface of the sun, and uncover a mystery with truly mind-boggling implications. The end of the game is impossible to explain without spoiling everything. But when you get there, it’s transcendent in a way that nearly no other game is. It’s an ending well worth getting to.

Months later, that ending is still stuck in my head, along with the game’s haunting theme music. What I keep coming back to the most isn’t necessarily the individual story beats though, it’s how it felt to uncover each layer of the mystery. I’d begin each 22-minute segment with a concrete plan for what to do next — albeit one from a guide — and I couldn’t wait to jump into my spaceship and leave.

In many ways, Outer Wilds reminded me of 2016’s Firewatch from Campo Santo. The emphasis on storytelling, the slow pace of much of the game, and the methodical uncovering of a mystery make these two titles similar in many ways. But Outer Wilds absolutely nails its ending (while Firewatch‘s fell short) and the scale of the narrative it tells is truly magnificent. I realize that these limited descriptions I’m offering here get repetitive quickly, but I don’t want to give any more of the story away than I have to.