I read the first spoilered bit and that (plus what someone else hinted) narrowed down where I should spend time looking I had a theory about taking the broken warp core to the high energy lab and seeing if I could stick some of the warp things on the wall into it to fix it as the note on Ember Twin suggested they had two different ideas as to how to advance and I managed to figure it out after a cycle and a half there. Another friend had a vague tip that mentioned his trusty probe and while I’m not sure what they were getting at there it did give me the idea to stick the probe on the warp thing I couldn’t stand on and see what it did, and it warped to Ash Twin’s core. After that it was pretty easy to look around and figure out how to get myself there with what was around.
So yeah I beat the game! I have broken the cycle and got to see what happens… eventually.
takes a deep breath
There is one thing in particular a game can do that drives me up the wall, and that is giving the impression that literally no one who worked on the game actually played through what they’ve put together to make sure it isn’t… player hostile feels a step too harsh, but basically makes it feel like they simply did not care about the person who eventually will be playing through the game. The end run in Outer Wilds really has two bits you gotta do, the rest is all things you learned along the way and don’t really have to revisit or what have you. Now if this is the case for the love of god don’t have the first bit require you to sit around twiddling your thumbs for 6+ minutes at the start of the cycle watching ember twin take two and a half trips around the horizon for the sand levels to go low enough that you can even begin to stand around waiting around for the warp pad to get revealed, then take a few more minutes to grab the warp core, fly to dark bramble and try not to get killed by the fish and have to do this all over again; the fish killed me twice and each cycle attempt to get to that point even when moving as fast as possible takes 10-12 minutes. I went from excited that I was on the end run to browsing around the daily kindle deals on amazon waiting for the sand levels to drop to actively cursing whoever thought this was an acceptable design. There is literally a joke in the end game about how no one will miss the fish now that everything is dead, they knew they were annoying and very capable of killing the player and yet they left several minutes of literal dead time as the mandatory start in their end run design.
It is clear that I’ve had a very up and down run with the game, the concept is very smart a legit 9/10 but the implementation at several points has been spotty at best. Naturally the game had to piss in my cornflakes one last time before I was done.
Anyways thanks to everyone who offered tips and generally tried to prod me in the right direction and keep my spirits high, I did appreciate it and it helped me out a good deal.
Oh, uh. When I realized that I was going to have to try something dangerous, I made a note of how long into the cycle I had to wait and on subsequent attempts, I went and napped at Chert’s campfire until that much time had passed. Sounds like that didn’t occur to you…?
That said, I’m really impressed that you stuck with this because I do not have patience for games that I don’t click with, and despite your troubles you gave this more than a sporting chance. Congratulations. If you have any interest in the DLC, I’d recommend just watching a video, as it goes even further to step on your toes until you learn the tricks that turn your feet indestructible.
The DLC is so powerful and interesting. However, reading what you say about the base game, I know there are significant gripes you will have if you try it! I can practically write the posts in my head and you wouldn’t be wrong.
Still, it manages to squeeze several new ideas for movement, world dynamics, and metaphysics, so I think you should go for it.
i think the setting of the dlc puts it in position where i will recommend it, but it really ends up being far more frustrating.
i think if it was a stand alone little thing it would have been far better than slotted into the main game.
If this is your first time playing altogether, try to remember the rules of Newtonian physics while flying. If you want to cheat for the sake of convenience, the “match velocity” button will adjust your trajectory faster than your engines could normally exert force on your ship. (Not instantly, but even so, this is essentially a space-brake that doesn’t play by the rules you normally get to work with.)
Regarding the DLC, there’s an entire category of secrets that I feel like you’re going to figure out without ever needing to find the in-game evidence that explains how they work. Happy to be proven wrong, but I hope you’ll feel justifiably smug when this probably happens.
i played the pre-patch dlc almost entirely with a friend beside me and still assert that most difficult/obtuse puzzle games are best with a friend. really smooths over any rough patches or slight misunderstandings. plus when we got frustrated we’d just hand the controller over to the other person.
I’m gonna level with you: I actually googled if this would happen before my first attempt as I was half-expecting it to be the case. In theory it’d only set you back another five minutes and the only thing you’d be short is being able to mark the vessel on the UI which seems sorta in-line with the rest of my experience.
Also I hate to say never to things but like… I would not hold out hope for me ever playing the DLC. I’ll leave a slight chance for whatever the sequel/follow-up ends up being if it happens to go in a direction where it seems like my issues with this game have been addressed or side-stepped, but given how this game has near universal praise as one of the best games of the generation I am not holding out hope for much in the way of changes.
I never got around to mentioning this while playing but just to show how “game goes left, I go right” this whole experience was the game seemed to think I’d be interested in details about the aliens I’m just realizing aren’t actually named Naomi but most of my attention was spent working out the technological development of the species you play at (they have more advanced space travel than we do but also do not seem to have the ability to communicate at distance, internal combustion engines and computers capable of advanced algorithms but whose village seems to otherwise be a century behind our own) and theorizing about what the scale of everything means. For some reason they went with kilometers which means the nearest planet to your home one is comparable to the distance from New York to LA, it actually had me thinking that there would be an ending twist of the entire universe being inside a dark bramble-esque seed which would explain the small scale of it all.
When I eventually realized that the in-game time of the cycle wasn’t like the equivalent of a day but was legit 22 minutes my mind was blown with the implications. Like there could be a sci-fi story about beings who live their lives on such a time scale and how it’d appear different from our own but this very much wasn’t that, man they establish that they know enough science to grasp a star going supernova but literally cannot apply it to their own until it is a few minutes from doing so. I have spent time pondering what that time scale means in terms of the sand activity between the twins, hell the fact that they specifically targeted that exact time figure is the #1 question I’d ask Naomi if I could.
The logistics of the quantum anythings in this universe hurt my brain so much, like if a single thing is viewing them they are steady yet apparently no living being is ever glancing at the moon other than me. The fact that a camera counts as a viewer would necessitate generations of research if this was real life.
Consider this evidence that I did in fact spend time thinking while playing though this rather than just rampaging about like a buffoon, I just honest to god seemingly spent almost the whole game on the wrong foot. It’s almost impressive in a way, at least that’s what I tell myself.
okay well this has inspired me to finally pick the DLC back up and I’ve made some good progress since my last attempt. but I’m a little stuck now so I’m asking for any gentle hints
Echoes of the Eye Spoilers
I’ve worked out how to extinguish the lanterns in the village that reveal the big underground passage that’s otherwise guarded by one of those red alarm bell towers. but I can’t work out how to evade the sentries that show up as soon as I do this, because unlike the other ones they aren’t carrying torches and are almost completely invisible in the dark – and with my lantern concealed I can’t see anything at all. am I meant to just memorize a route around their patrols or is there some trick the game hasn’t taught me yet that should I seek out elsewhere and try this part again later? if there’s a trick please don’t tell me what it is.