Has anyone else here played Outer Wilds? I completed it a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about. Plenty of games have had an emotional impact on me, but none quite like this. I feel a sense of emptiness now that I've finished it. Perhaps that sounds pretentious, but it is genuine. It's hard to talk about it without spoiling it. Every moment is filled with such imagination and depth that a relatively small game world feels huge. It puts most sprawling open worlds to shame. I think it may have become my favourite game of all time. Play it. I've been training pull-ups for the last few months and progress has been pretty good. It's interesting to see the sharp initial rise in reps as your muscle memory improves and your body gets used to the movement. Then increases become more gradual once improvement comes down to strength/muscle gain. I've also been blasting the core workouts which are never not brutal. But it's all to keep me in good stead for when I can get in the kayak again. I was supposed to be going to Slovenia in June to kayak on the literal paradise that is Soča river. Oh well, maybe next year... I've been taking an online course in logic and critical thinking. It's something I've been meaning to do for a while, but the comment that johnnyFive left on this article I posted was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was at that point that it became too clear for me to ignore that it's unsatisfactory to read an article and just think "hmm that's interesting" without really examining it further. So thanks for helping me push back the dark. I'm coming to the end of the first part of course and I've already learnt a tonne. It started from the very basics, but it's been super useful and I dig the conversational, in-depth style it has. I'm looking forward to learning more.
Thanks for the shout-out, and a course like that sounds like an excellent idea. I certainly don't hold myself out as a model, though :) I have played Outer Wilds and loved the start. I have every intention of starting anew here soon, since God knows I have the time. Plus it's been long enough for the beginning to feel fresh. I stopped playing it partially due to simple ADHD, but also because computer RPGs often feel really restrictive to me. You can only truly roleplay but so much, since of course they can't think of everything. It's the same reason I got bored with MMOs as a genre: the actual ability to play a role is extremely limited. Contrariwise, this is probably why I can stick with third-person RPGs a bit more (e.g. Final Fantasy), because I'm watching someone else's story rather than having the game put "me" in there but in a very limited role. The Outer Wilds' writing is good enough to make up for this quite a bit, but it still can't do everything. So admittedly I may have to lower my expectations a bit.
I think you may be talking about the RPG The Outer Worlds. A decent game but not a patch on Outer Wilds for me. Outer Wilds is an adventure/exploration game about a solar system stuck in a time-loop. There is no formal objective. Instead, you search the solar system as you please to learn about an alien race that came before you and their purpose in what is now your home. An easy mixup to make considering their similar names and the fact that they came out in the same year.
Whoops, you're absolutely right. I have also played Outer Wilds and enjoyed it!
I've heard it's good. I finally trudged through Horizon Zero Dawn and got involved in Outer WORlds instead and it's amusingly weird. It trudges a lot, though, and its combat system is rudimentary at best. I like that they've got a mathematical preacher looking to solve the ultimate equation named "Vicar Max."
I guess by your use of the word 'trudged' that you don't rate Horizon Zero Dawn too highly? It's coming to PC sometime in the future and I was optimistic about it. I enjoyed my time with The Outer Worlds. Good catch with Vicar Max, I hadn't made that link. I think that the companion characters are some of the strongest bits of the game. I especially enjoyed how they interact with each other. But yeah, as you say, the story plods in the middle. Then it's like: psyche! You're actually halfway through the final act. Wait, who exactly is the antagonist? Oh well, here's the final mission. I was also disappointed by how little weight it felt like your decisions had. There's the one big decision you make on the first planet which feels impactful. And there's a cool potential interaction with a companion too during the decision. But after that, nothing felt that important. In a funny twist of fate, the writer for Outer Wilds has now been hired by the creators of The Outer Worlds. Potentially to work on the sequel. Also, if you have a spare 15 minutes, there's a good video of the devs of The Outer Worlds reacting to a 12 minute speed run of their game. Obvious spoiler warning if you haven't completed it yet.
I actually really enjoyed HZD. Bought the disc like two years ago but never got around to it; when the expansion cost $10 less than the full monty basic-game-plus-expansion-plus-swag package, I bought the swag so Aloi stares out at me whenever i turn on the Playstation. The combat is imaginative; your loadout and your selections and your strategy and your sequencing all matters. It's a fairly rich story world with engaging mysteries. I think my basic problem is with how stupid Guerilla makes their AI. I can accept it if you have a rogue machine that forgets I'm there five minutes after I launch an exploding armor piercing arrow at its head because okay, machine AI evolves stupidly. But the fact that your human adversaries timeout even quicker is weird; it's like stealth-killing a kennel full of amnesiac golden retrievers. It's obviously a design choice to tilt combat towards lots of intense combos and other dumb shit but it also means that if you're primarily a sniper many of the quests become sort of an elaborate golf game. Which hey, I guess I need right now. I'll watch that speedrun later. I'm in the middle of salvaging the hope right now because I tend to play every side quest. For a few days it was annoying because I realized I was basically walking around waiting for people to ask me to do favors but also, shit, I could stand to do some good in the (virtual) world right now. My main beef? Right now? Is it's damn hard to find an interesting video game that isn't also somewhere post-apocalyptic where you're fighting corrupt madmen. It makes me wish there was more to do in No Man's Sky.