As with most media analysis, this will have spoilers for the game. This is a game that is best experienced with no information, as the whole point of the game is about learning at your own pace.
Read at your own risk. There will be a scene break when game talk begins.
I never understood the saying of "I wish I could forget [media] completely and experience it for the first time again."
Well, not until I played Outer Wilds.
I know I'm not the first person to say something along these lines, and I certainly will not be the last. If you check YouTube, you will find countless video essays proclaiming the value of this game... not just to video games, but to media as a whole.
While I don't believe that every game made needs to prove the worth of video games as an art form, just like I don't believe every movie I watch needs to be a critcally acclaimed masterpiece that redefines the word “evocative.“ Sometimes you just want to watch shit explode.... and sometimes you just wanna be the reason it explodes.
But sometimes.... sometimes you want art. Sometimes you want a piece of media that just makes you stop and realize that the world is wonderful and worth living in. That makes the challenges worth fighting through.
And sometimes, as we are starting to discover, video games are the only media to properly portray this correctly. Some messages can only be received by doing them yourself, you can't learn them by watching. Watching your father die in Dragon Quest 5 is a painful moment, one that forces you (and your young main character) to grapple with reality and sacrifice being a parent's duty. But, it drives even harder home due to the video game format, as you are forced into the battle scene that you've seen countless times and just watch him die in order to protect you... even though you can see by his stats (that are now available for you to see) that there's a chance he could take them. But since it isn't an obvious win, he has chosen to be sacrificed in your stead. And you have to stand there and watch it in the normal battle format that you've already gotten used to breezing through. You would not be able to get that same emotion out of a movie or show of the same scenario. You truly feel powerless, trapped in place and unable to save the person you love.
As you can see from the title of this article, Outer Wilds made me change the way that I view mortality, that I view death, and that I view the importance of life and legacy.
That is some weighty fucking shit. I've read and watched and played a lot of things. And many of them have had messages that are good, messages that made me think and then appreciate the work put in portraying them.
I can count on a single hand the media that have made me immensly change a core belief. One of which being my favorite book, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, in how it showed the value of a human life and companionship, and how interconnected and elevated and inspired our lives are by the people around us.
I know this is a substantial amount of hype for a game that I have yet to really say anything about, so let us begin.
Outer Wilds is a wonderful game in which you, a newly certified pilot of spacecraft, are given a ship and told to explore space. Not much is known about the other planets around you, there's a sparse handful of friends already out in space on specific planets, but you have been given the keys to a ship because you just invented a device that will let you read the ancient language of the Nomai on the fly.
That's right, you're a nascent scientist with a ship and that's all that you are given. You are given no other direction other than, “Research is fun :)"
So.... you explore. You go to all the other planets and find ancient writings that no one else has been able to decode as you are the first in space able to do so on the fly. At first, you do so out of curiousity... but then you start to notice an interesting running narrative. That is cohesive between all the planets.
You also die.
A lot.
As you discover, less than 20 minutes after your first voyage, the universe is about to explode. The sun is set to explode the moment a large enough asteroid hits it, eviscerating the solar system in the impact. However, a really weird goat statue thing looked into your soul at the beginning of your journey, and now you're trapped in a time loop.
Fucking weird, but that's nifty. The Nomai sure were weird.
The Nomai, a goat like race, went extinct eons ago. But they had extremely impressive technology that you have yet to understand, and seemingly came out of nowhere... and then died just as suddenly. And, as you discover, they truly just appeared in your solar system, and the entire universe died at once due to a cataclysmic explosion.
At first, as you discover each of their ramblings, you believe that they must have died in an experiment. They seemed pretty trigger happy on trying new ideas without waiting to ensure proper safety protocols were in place. Don’t know why they’re all mad scientists, but it does make for interesting locals.
But while exploring, you discover a few things: that the mass extinction was caused by an asteroid filled with a killer chemical that immediately ends anyone who was not underwater, and that the fervor of the Nomai was based in the painful history that they were separated from the rest of their race as their ancestors had been trying to discover the object of their race's religion, the Eye of the Universe.
To make my first point in how the Outer Wilds changed me, I would like to focus on the first of those... the second of those will hit the second point I wanted to make. Please be patient.
POKE: ...Pye. Whatever the matter inside this stone casing is, it's more than just profoundly unstable; it's under tonnes of pressure. Look at this density scan. I've never seen anything this tightly compacted before! What is this?
PYE: This is orders of magnitude worse than I'd imagined. If this stone were to rupture, the lethal matter within would rapidly expand, completely blanketing this star system almost instantaneously. And the pressure is building as the sun...
PYE: Return to the shuttle, right now! The rest of our friends need to know they're in terrible danger. Leave your equipment and run!
POKE: What are you doing, Pye?!
PYE: The more we know about this alien matter, the better our chances of survival. I will learn what I can here. Go warn the others; maybe they can construct shelter somehow. ...Now, Poke!
The Asteroid, known as the Interloper, is the origin of all Ghost Matter, the chemical that killed all Nomai life. Nomai interaction with the Interloper is nothing short of a tragedy. 3 Nomai, who you have been following the stories of throughout the different planets, landed on the asteroid eons back to see what this large object that was constantly wizzing by the sun was up to. One stayed in the ship to keep communications running, constantly nervous about the fate of her sister and friend. The other two ventured in after finding a very unique reading on their preliminary reading of the surface... only to discover the Ghost Matter in a crystalized form. Horrified, they realized that it could destroy all life in the galaxy... and seemed like it was considering doing so soon. They felt trapped between a rock and a hard place, do they escape quickly and try to ward off the more foolhardy of their race from trying to poke at it? Or do they do some VERY careful base research to try to see if there is a way to prevent tragedy.
And, as they were doing said research, they got too close to the sun.
The crystals exploded.
All of life ended. Everywhere. In an instant.
Your people, the Hearthians, had wondered for ages why all of the Nomai seemed to have died midaction. Why the worlds seemed to be in a level of statsis. Why they had survived.
Until now.
The Hearthians were once a subaquatic species. Ghost Matter is negated by water. This is a thing that you have to personally know by the time you have all of the pieces needed to put together this tragic story.
You find the corpses of Pye and Poke by the exploded crystal shards. A broken camera in the air. Anxious writings and goodbyes on the wall.
This was the first moment in Outer Wilds that broke me. A personal note: I had initially read the scene incorrectly. I had thought that the Nomai had accidentally ruptured the Ghost Matter while trying to figure out how to stop it. After finishing the game and crying, I read the wiki to relive some poignant moments, and discovered otherwise.
My initial reading gave me such heartache. Poke and Pye were stuck. To find their corpses, you have to navigate through Ghost Matter filled tunnels to find your way to the middle of the Interloper. A shattered array of Ghost Matter is out. The corpses of the poor Nomai is right by the explosion point. They were only trying to help. They knew immediately that there was a problem and that people could die from this, that they could all die from this. But in their anxiety, they had messed up. I was wrecked by the idea that good intentions pave the road to hell and that accidents happen you can change the entire course of history in a moment.
Thankfully, with the further information, I am able to rest slightly easier. It's still heartbreaking. But instead of it being a focus on the good intentions, bad results... it was a focus on how sometimes life just fucking happens.
Life just fucking sucks sometimes.
Sometimes you're doing great, you have ideas on how to take care of yourself and get things ready for yourself and your future.... and then the world decides that at that moment you need to have immediate back surgery because your genetics hate you. Sometimes you're finally getting your shit together and having a positive swing for the first time in a long time, and you suddenly have uncontrollable vertigo that forces you to stop working.
Sometimes the world seems to be trying to heal and there's a global pandemic.
You can't control this shit. You can try to help prevent it, you can put up safeguards. But then something else will fucking show up out of nowhere and kick you down anyways.
The Nomai, a race with a long history of interstellar travel and research, were able to discover pretty quickly that the sun was suspect and would explode in the eventual future. And so, they made a system to allow people to relive a set amount of time until either the sun didn't explode or the Nomai were able to escape the solar system.
But they didn't plan for a toxic gas explosion that would eliminate all life outside of the water in less than a minute.
Sometimes, the world will fucking hit you, no matter how prepared you are. And you're not a bad person for getting hit by that shit. You are not a failure for missing this. You are not a bad person. Poke and Pye weren't bad people for not discovering the Ghost Matter earlier, how could they have? Even though I had initially blamed them (with a lot of grace) for setting off the explosion, I had been wrong. They had not done this thing, and they were not bad people even if they had. The world wanted to fucking burn, and it did.
This gave me so much grace to myself. As you could probably tell from those very specific examples up above, I've been hit with a lot of shit. I sometimes like to think I have a target for this stuff. But it wasn't my fault. I didn't do anything. I am not a bad person for not anticipating a full back failure at 25. I am not a bad person for having to take a leave from work due to vertigo. I am not to blame for these things.
SOLANUM: As a child, I considered such unknowns sinister. Now though, I understand they bear no ill will. The universe is, and we are.
And the second point, the religious fervor of the Nomai with the Eye of the Universe.
The further you get into the game, the more and more you see the Eye of the Universe symbol drawn across the solar system. The notes you read from the Nomai before you make references to this unknown entity. Notes that seem to be even earlier than the Nomai point to this as well. This is the end goal of the Nomai. This is what they were researching as they died. Heck, it’s why they came to the solar system in the first place, to try and find out more information on how to get there.
It is this fanatic obsession with discovering the object of their ancestor’s worship that drives the Nomai’s every action. Their entire race is working together in unison to solve this one mystery that their species needs to solve. You discover weirder and weirder experiments that were left behind just to solve this one mystery. Even other mysterious left behind situations will have notes that refer to someone else’s work that was directly about the Eye. It is the center of the crazy corkboard known as the Nomai.
And they all died.
And nobody could read all their research until the day this game starts.
And now they only have 22 minutes left until the heat death of the sun destroys it all.
Good thing you are trapped in a time loop and hold the technology that allows you to read everyone’s research.
The further in the game you get, the heavier the weight is on your shoulders. The Hearthians only asked you to read some of the cool script they couldn’t before and have fun exploring. But, as you navigate the world further and further, you realize that the Nomai weren’t weird mad scientists who were doing science because they were bored. They were a desperate race, separated from the rest of their people, trying to either find their way home or complete their mission. They were cut off from their people, driven with survivor’s guilt and anxiety over the fate of their species, terrified of what was going on, as they take note of the speed in which all the stars were exploding. Their emotions and drive was passed down to the next generation, and the next, and the next.
But then they all died.
There was no one to pass the mantle onto. No one to complete their mission, the mission so many of them had died for and that they risked everything for.
Until you.
You got to complete their life mission. The life mission of so many generations. You got to hear their story, in their own words, and discover the love and joy and fear and grief of their people. You got to make their entire civilization in your solar system not be in vain.
You got the Eye of the Universe.
The Nomai didn’t live in vain. You did that.
And the Nomai even got to see it. Solanum was there with you at the end of it all.
You were able to watch Solanum grow up, from her youth playing with the anglerfish skeleton on Ember Twin, to her schooling on Brittle Hallow, to her success arriving on the Quantum Moon. She was responsible for many of the wall scribblings you found and learned from.
And then you got to speak, face to face. Ask her all the questions about the Nomai that you had, fulfilling your quest given to you by the Hearthians. In exchange, she got to finally find the Eye of the Universe, fulfilling her quest from the Nomai. You were each the last of your race, but you did it.
As the universe ended, you both were able to fulfill the legacies of two different species.
In case you couldn’t tell by all the pauses I’m putting in this with giant gaps, this was huge to me. This was the part that made me view death differently. That made me understand that there is a heaviness to legacy and to carrying the torch and that it was a good and noble thing.
Death is a part of life. It is something that is inevitable. No matter how much you prepare for it, you cannot negate that one day you will die. And, sometimes… you won’t be able to get everything done you wanted to. Usually you won’t. And, while you can’t live through your kids… it isn’t good to force your child to be an actor if they don’t want to be… you can instill in them what drives you. What your guiding star is.
I am Native American. My great grandmother survived the residential schools. Every generation after her has been chasing after cultural information since. It was lost, it was erased with her. And so then we inherited that. While my grandmother also inherited the fear and survivor’s guilt and need to survive, we all inherited the need to reconnect. The need to stand firm and make sure the world knows that we’re still here. The need to have pride in who we are and the need to never forget what they did to us. And the need to make sure it never fucking happens again.
Multiple times a week, if not every day, I think about what my family went through and how I can undo it. I think about all the culture that was lost, and what can be done to, if not regain, then create culture for our people. To make sure we are never swept under the rug again, and to make sure that we are respected for who we are and what we have survived. This is my family’s mission that I have inherited. It was something that was a level of suffocating growing up. I actually tried to not think about it. It stressed me out.
But now? With this game? I changed my mind. I realized that it wasn’t a burden I had inherited. It realized it wasn’t this scary daunting thing. My job was just to do my best, and then make sure I left enough behind for the next generation. My people, the Anishinaabe, have something call the Seven Generations. Every single thing that we do, we are supposed to think about how it would effect our grandchildren seven generations down. If we pollute, will our grandchildren seven times over be able to live here? If we fight to get Native literature as part of the book curriculum, will they be able to feel pride in who they are and feel respected, or will they feel ostracized like we did growing up?
I think we can make it work for this game as well. When we make a life mission, is it one that we would want to give to our grandchildren to inherit? Is it one worth passing down? If so, go after it with your whole heart, make it the guiding star in all of your decisions. Chase it with fervor. Make it your Eye of the Universe. Fight for the educational opportunities for your community with so much heart and laser focus that one day your grandchild will be fighting tooth and nail for educational opportunities for the whole state, and their grandchild for the whole world. Make it worth fighting for, make it worth taking risks for, make it worth sacrificing for.
And, one day. Your dream will come true. The tree you planted will sprout and grow and drop seeds of its own. Someone will reach the Eye of the Universe and you will be able to rest knowing that the torch was not only carried but fulfilled. Someone with a smaller dream, more of a desire, will come in contact with your dream and realize that there’s so much more they can be doing.
I inherited my family’s dream of making sure that we don’t forget who we are. But I don’t want to settle for that. I want it to be more than surviving or just remembering. I want us to thrive, to be known, to be unforgettable. Not just remembered, but unforgettable. I want us to not be a footnote in history or in culture talks, but main points of conversation.
One day, all of our fighting will have been worth it. Someone will see our dreams come true. And the tree that we plant will sustain those who come after we are gone.
Isn’t it beautiful?
BELLS: If you're here to make your first pilgrimage to the Quantum Moon, you are almost prepared to set out on this deeply significant journey. Before you do, pause and remember your history.
BELLS: We make this journey not only for ourselves, but also to honour the members of our clan who came before us: Those who, after the crash that brought them to this star systems, became stranded on Brittle Hollow and on Ember Twin, with no communication between these two groups of survivors.
BELLS: These Nomai looked upwards from two different planets and saw the same wandering moon visiting their skies. It was this moon (the Quantum Moon) that kept their curiosity alive during this long period of hardship.
BELLS: After the two divided groups were able to reunite, it became our clan's united goal to find and visit the Quantum Moon. This took time, and many Nomai who dreamed of seeing the Quantum Moon died before we discovered how to make the journey.
BELLS: When you reach the Quantum Moon, recall these Nomai, and carry their curiosity onward with you.
The game starts you in a place of curiosity. All the other Hearthians that you meet while you are adventuring have tried… and failed to discover the secrets. Each for different reasons. One because they’ve volunteered to sacrifice their dream of adventure so everyone else could have it. One who traveled to the ends of the known universe and then realized that they just didn’t want to be home. One who has the thirst for knowledge, but is too afraid to step out there. One who who found part of the puzzle, but it scared them so much that they refused to look any further and see if there was anything else. And finally, someone who even has the same gift of forever that you were given… but has chosen nihilism instead of answers.
But then there’s you. You, the Heartian, haven’t had your soul crushed yet, and you’re starting out with more tools than they ever had - so you shouldn’t be worn out as quickly. You’re given the ability to not be afraid of the consequences of trying, but also given the urgency of 20ish minutes.
You are set up for success, and given just enough of a mystery to entice you, the player.
You, the player are enticed by promises. By the universe at your fingertips. By the promise of answers.
You, both the player and Hearthian, are also carrying the hopes and dreams of not only the Hearthians… but of the Nomai before you. You are the legacy. You are the one who can accomplish everyone’s dreams.
And, the amazing thing is? Everyone believes in you. They all trust you. All the Nomai and Hearthians trust you in the game. And the developers trust you the player.
This is one of the least instructive games I’ve ever played. There is an optional tutorial that’s about 5 minutes long… and then they just send you out there with nothing else. It’s incredible. They trust you, the player, to want to solve the mystery enough to figure it out.
As you take the first steps on your own, the game cheers and gives you so many places to explore, so many plotlines to see which one snatches your attention first. It’s trust you to go after it due to a desire to explore.
And then, just as you’re getting hooked, and you’re becoming attached to the people who came before you, understanding them and why they tick… you are hit with the gravity of the Ghost Matter. How it not only was a sudden act of nature, but how it snuffed out the light from countless dreams that we actively being pursued.
But, there is beauty in the moment as well. The fire wasn’t fully put out. The Nomai fostered the evolution of your people, the Hearthians. I would like to think that, while they were looking out for your species, they managed to inspire the desire to learn in you all. And that desire to learn was just enough for you to find the smoldering embers, rekindle them, and bring the torch to the finish line.
There is one line in the game that makes me cry every time I see it:
The Nomai never got to see it for themselves, but thanks to their efforts and technology, a Hearthian was able to reach the Eye of the universe.
I sat at this screen and bawled for a while.
I started as someone who got a little motion sick at the 360 motion of space travel, and ended as someone who completed the legacy of an entire race of people, all because I was willing to learn and study and try over and over again.
Yes, the universe still ends.
But since the universe end was met with joy and singing and love, that love shaped the universe. Just like the Nomai shaped the Hearthians into people who naturally had a thirst for knowledge because of their love of learning… the combined joy and love of the Hearthians/Nomai/Stranger changes the universe.
The things you’ve done, the people you choose to have sit around the campfire with you at the end of the universe, those change the ending.
This game could have pulled a Mass Effect and made them all the same. We’re talking about a cataclysmic event after all. But it didn’t.
In a game about how dreams never die, they’re just inherited. It chose to take that even further. The combined dreams of those who watched the birth of a new universe create what happens next. You and your fellow Hearthians are just so full of unadulterated wonder and joy at being able to see what the universe had to offer. Solanum, the last Nomai, is full of uncontainable joy at fulfilling the work of her people, but she still desires to learn more, and is excited to be able to learn with others once more. The Stranger (I’m not getting fully into the DLC, this is far too much), is overwhelmed at the prospect of being remembered and wanting to be known.
These things combined? A love of learning, a wonder and zest for life, joy of being known? That sounds like a recipe for a wonderful universe to me.
I could go on tangents for hours and hours. I’ve already written 10 pages about this game. And I could easily write 10 more.
So, instead I will leave you with a quote and a question.
I learned a lot, by the end of everything.
The past is past, now, but that's... you know, that's okay! It's never really gone completely. The future is always built on the past, even if we won't get to see it.
Still, it's, um, time for something new, now. - Riebeck
If you were with them, at the end of it all… what attribute would you leave for the next universe? Are you happy with that?
What’s your dream?
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