sheep007

I seriously think that people who didn't find it aimless had a completely different experience to me and a lot of the rest of us who played it. First off is pretty aimless but that's chill, that's what you expect in an open world game (I am aware that me calling Outer Wilds an open world game may be irritating). Then you get some directionality and start heading places, but at a certain point I started running out of things to do and getting directed back to the same places (Dark Bramble and the Ember Twin which was filling with sand) where I was very lost on exactly where to go or how to execute the required solution. And there didn't seem to be many other leads remaining at that stage, I think I had maybe four !s remaining in rumour mode, with pretty much everything else having resolved itself? And about 30 minutes of feeling aimless and like I was running into a brick wall made me realise I just wasn't having that much fun.

The mechanics are fine enough, although the physical puzzles are mostly very uninteresting, the more information-related puzzles are neat I loved basically all of the quantum stuff, and the plot is alright with some really cool concepts and cute exposition, but it never made me care, or feel a strong emotional attachment past the start. On my first attempt at a playthrough I did try and get as far away from the sun as possible, and I think that was a really compelling thing for a game to drive me to do, but it never really pushed me beyond that. I didn't even really go "wow, I can't wait to get home and play Outer Wilds!" like games I consider genuinely great would. It felt more like sticking it out and hoping it would get good and that the great bits would make the crap bits melt away. I think some of it is a frustration thing but like, I've played far more frustrating games and not bounced off them. I finished fuckin Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy, feeling like I am making no progress isn't the thing which stopped me liking Outer Wilds.

I'll reinstall it and give it another try today, I think, because I do want to love it and I can understand why people love it so much. But I also think the people who have loved it have had a fundamentally different experience to those who don't on some level, because I genuinely never found that straightforward flow of information which kept me engaged despite playing 7-8 hours of the game through a couple different playthroughs. Like, I'm meant to be in an adventure/exploration game and it feels like I am fundamentally doing exploration and adventure wrong because I have missed an intended "adventuring correctly" path somewhere.

Apologies for the lengthy rant, this is probably the one video game I've played where I have the most conflicted opinions.