it’s implied between the high energy lab and the observatory that 22 minutes was chosen because that was the approximate radius they were able to calculate that they needed to travel in any given direction in order to find the eye, but wouldn’t it make a lot more sense if 22 minutes happened to be the maximum amount of power they were about to get out of the supernova? Otherwise it doesn’t seem like reaching the eye would be necessarily challenging enough that they needed to develop such an improbable solution for running a near-infinite number of simulations, especially given how relatively slowly the probe is observed to travel.
Well, that would also depends on the proximity the probe needs to be to the eye to detect it. But sure, whatever.
Even though it carries in some of the aesthetic and themes of hard sci-fi, it ultimately opts for the usual tradeoffs of soft sci-fi – it’s designed top-down from narrative and experiential needs, rather than bottom-up from alternate physics principles. They surely had a debate about hearing sound in space and decided that it would be more satisfying if you do.
There’s plenty of reasons there could be sound in space, including but not limited to this solar system not being in vacuum, which I think is the actual case here (it is certainly not a breathable atmosphere in most places, but trees seem able to grow on any flat surface no matter how barren the place is otherwise)
The probe also accelerates as it gets away from a gravity well, which tracks with the established physics of the nomai
I think it’s that the tree biology doesn’t require atmosphere. You can hear a rush of atmosphere when you’re flying too fast near Timber Hearth.
Well, it’s a continuum. The way I’m thinking of it, every unrelated physics axiom a sci-fi story establishes tends to make it softer. The really hard stuff either uses real-world physics or changes just one or two physics rules and derives a world of consequences out of that.
anyway the quantum moon is incredibly cool after how relatively dry some of the other late-game puzzles are but I’m a little surprised that nothing in that area teaches you more explicitly how to find the ash twin project because it doesn’t (knowledge) gate much of anything else after all that and finding that last thing still entails some hinky guesswork?
I looked up the solution (the only one I looked up) because I had seen almost everything and still only had some guesses it would take time to test. The other teleporters all send you upward so I don’t understand why this one sends you downward, and why at this particular time rather than any time. (Does Ash Twin Core not rotate at the same rate as Ash Twin surface? There’s no way to visually tell.) It would’ve made more sense to me to take the teleporter from another planet.
The Quantum Moon is there as a separate puzzle track to unlock the optional “good” ending, and the basic ending doesn’t require quantum knowledge of any kind. I haven’t tried a basic completion but I can see where the ending could’ve naturally been cut off earlier.
Wouldn’t it be metal if the game deleted your save if you botched the final run? It would be a pain in the ass and everybody including myself would complain and fewer people would reach the good ending, but also it would just about work with this game design.
It would’ve also incentivized them away from a “good ending” entirely, which I think would have benefited the game immensely. My only real structural critique is that the whole quantum moon segment should’ve been wrapped up into essential plot progress. I feel without evidence that they split the quantum moon off as an optional bonus segment because playtesting revealed slightly too many people couldn’t solve it. Who knows though.
Can only saw now, I’m super hyped to experience this. The mentions turned big discussion have thankfully been vague enough or spoilered for the half-knowing.
Just had to clear my plate a bit. Very Downloadin’
Yeah, after watching Tulpa start this and then talk about it a bit on the Cragne Manor slack I went ahead and got it myself. Neither group handled this poorly, but still try to do a better job than I did of avoiding spoilers!
Don’t answer this, but I have been operating under the assumption that Hearthian “hearing” makes at least partial use of the electromagnetic spectrum, based on the behavior of the signalscope and other observed details about the world.
I landed on the interloper and was startled to discover that thalassophobia is not the most unsettling sensation this game can generate in me—the sensation of gravity slipping away at the comet’s meridian compelled me to get the fuck into my spacecraft and get the hell away like nothing else has. It turns out I’m a panicky animal after all.
that might’ve been too obvious – already it’s itself one of the biggest clues toward making you associate the towers on ash twin with the celestial bodies, and has one of the Nomai reaching toward it in death but I do still wish they could’ve made the superprojection of the core vis a vis the sandstorm a little more logical. they didn’t have anyone to hide it from, nothing else in the universe appears to have an intentional trick to it like that.
that it’s also way less annoying to trigger than the warps to the sun station and the black hole forge is also somehow off
I think you’re on to something here if only because the writing in the very last area was the only time I felt like the game was being too obvious about things I’d mostly come to understand by then and that’s supported by the idea that they wanted to accommodate people who had gotten there without grasping a lot of its other mysteries.
of course the other mysteries are all really compelling and it’s hard to imagine anyone skipping them! but I suppose it’s possible.
Conspiracy Theory: accessing the Ash Twin project is poorly marked and weird and hacky and FAQ-inducing because they want you to do it last so you explore everything else first. This is, in fact, what happened to me.
I was actually amazed I didn’t botch it, I had to run back out to my ship to double check my notes at one point after having accidentally teleported myself outside the thing I was supposed to be using the notes for once already
I also only realized during the ending that the reason I’d had a hard time finding the third probe distress signal was because I never noticed previously that your scanner has multiple settings.