Poor Solanum 😔 (Also, sorry about some grammar mistakes and especially editing mistakes here and there, clipchamp is abysmal at properly reflecting what an exported video will look like in editing, and so after 5 hours of cancelling exports to fix tiny mistakes, I decided to just roll with them since they're relatively minor.)
This is a super cool video! I hadn't ever really thought about the scale from plot driven to character driven stories. I think the reason that people often consider the entire story in Outer Wilds 'lore' is because of how I feel like the parts of games that are most often called lore are the 'non-character' driven parts. Most people, when they learn something that happened to a character, just consider it something that happened to the character, but if they hear something that happened in the world of the story they'll consider it a 'lore event' or whatever
This was a great video. I think of Outer Wilds as having some of my favorite video game writing yet I kind of struggle to articulate why. Especially with how the game conveys its plot to you the same way a lot of other games convey lore and most times I don’t find going through lore while playing video games to be very fun. Plus with the actual characters you talk to having so little dialogue, I didn’t really understand how this game was able to make me feel such a deep connection with the Nomai by the end of it. But it does seem like the recent influx of characters driven / focused stories did kind of make the story of outer wilds seem almost invisible to me until it hit me all at once at some big key moment like the ending and the interloper. The interloper is also one of my favorite parts of the game. It was pretty much the last thing I explored cause I struggled with the puzzle and it just seemed so small and unimportant compared to other planets I thought I already got most of what it had to offer after walking a bit on the surface and finding out how to explore the Nomai shuttle on it. So by then the parallels between the hearthians and the Nomai become so clear. I don’t think any other game has done such a good job at giving me that feeling of standing on the shoulders of giants. Sorry for the rambly comment. I really like this game.
Great video! I watched it twice because it made me see the game in I light I never saw before. I always thought of Outer Wilds as a character driven story because I felt *I* was playing the main character, as if the game invited me to play the main role in a theater play, in a sense. At the beginning I'm told I am the latest entry to a roster of brave and curious hearthian astronauts, and as such a species we don't let anything stop our drive to understand the universe -- we build our spaceships from wood! I was given a motive to search this particular solar system, other than an objective. They tell me to find some of the other astronauts that had gone without a signal for a while, but my task here is none other than following my own curiosity, driven by my hearthian heart to understand it all. It is only by luck that I stumble upon strange ruins of a long gone civilization, apparently disconnected from me and my people. But when I read the Nomai logs I learn of characters that, like me, yearn for knowledge. But they also have their own little beautiful and complex interactions. Some of them are in love with each other, some others despise working together. They have inside jokes, and they're pretty funny. I learn to care and root for them and their success, even when I know that they are all already gone. The "plot" of what the Nomai did might have happened before my story, and we might seem to merely play the role of detective in this world, and our objective seems to be nothing more than reconstructing the events of the past just to make sense of them, but when the sun explodes and the universe resets every 22 minutes I feel very much implicated by all of this. I not only form a connection of empathy with these randos that I now love, but I realize that I can finish what they started, because we are moved by the same thing: we want to survive in this Universe because it is so beatiful to us. We want to have time to make our lives worth in it. We want to be here, now the present and forever if possible, learning about it, laughing about if, fighting and arguing about it. We want to live. Now thinking about your point about how the Interloper beautifully narrates how some things just don't work out because of simple bad luck, or as you point out, just because the universe doesn't care about your progress, emotions or relationships; I realize that what I got from the game is that even though the universe seems uncaring for our little stories, we -- as part of the universe -- are the universe caring about itself. We tell our little stories to make some sense of whatever this is. We can only hope that when we go away, someone somewhere, years in the future, will find in their little hearts the time to care about our little and simple humanity, just like I did for the Nomai. Thank you for putting me in the headspace to type all of this. I needed to love story again. Good luck on your travels!
Regardless of whether the writing in this video is especially good or not (I can't tell), I totally got the point and it's interesting. I wonder if this is linked to why outer wilds is the most emotional game to me. I have pretty clear autism traits, which means it's harder for me to relate to typical emotional interactions. Outer wilds puts much more focus into this "unfortunate shit just happens" based storytelling, which is easier for me to relate to. Social interactions depend on language, culture and personality, but random shit happening and trying to solve problems are universal. Outer wilds also does the villain, owlks, amazingly. They're not a single minded villain where you can explain everything bad by just pointing at them, saying it's their fault. They were only too scared to see the full picture, except for a single one who saw the eye of the universe prophecy through to the end, and rebelled.
Completely agreed. I never considered the idea that something like autism could affect whether or not someone would be more emotionally attached to one or the other structures, and I think it could defo explain why I got so much emotion from outer wilds (especially the ending), meanwhile some of my non-autistic friends who played it said it was a bit of letdown emotionally. Also I completely agree about the owlks, they're such fantastic villians and the fact that they don't even speak, and everything you learn from them is purely through images just shows how Outer Wilds can pull off character focused narratives in the same incredibly unique way that the base game covered a more plot focused one. I've been wanting to make a video about them, or just the dlc as a whole, just to dive into the contrast that it presents between the base game and dlc / the nomai and owlks.
fantastic video, really put into words how I feel about the interloper's role in the story being perfect. I'll never understand the people who say it's bad writing cause it's bad luck. bad luck happens in real life, people die all the time due to bad luck, and that's the world we live in. I don't think it would have had the same emotional impact for me if it HAD been caused by a mistake of the nomai, or even intentionally triggered by one of them. It would completely ruin the nomai's character for me. Going from a civilization that is sadly gone, incredibly curious, kind, and technologically advanced, to a species that was destroyed by greed or hubris, or just in fighting. It would remove all empathy I would have had for them, the respect and mysticism would be gone, and in its place, rather than empathy, I'd feel superior to them almost. Like " they were so foolish and I am having to fix their mistakes" rather than the actual feeling of "I have never met these creatures, but I mourn them, and I vow to finish their mission in honor of their work" Again, amazing video :)
I actually saw the ceave video but didn't watch most of it, because I think way too much of it was about retelling the story, to the point that I think the video is intended for people who have never seen the game before and not for people who know it. Your video was all about the analysis and I thought it was great.
Poor Solanum 😔
(Also, sorry about some grammar mistakes and especially editing mistakes here and there, clipchamp is abysmal at properly reflecting what an exported video will look like in editing, and so after 5 hours of cancelling exports to fix tiny mistakes, I decided to just roll with them since they're relatively minor.)
This is a super cool video! I hadn't ever really thought about the scale from plot driven to character driven stories. I think the reason that people often consider the entire story in Outer Wilds 'lore' is because of how I feel like the parts of games that are most often called lore are the 'non-character' driven parts. Most people, when they learn something that happened to a character, just consider it something that happened to the character, but if they hear something that happened in the world of the story they'll consider it a 'lore event' or whatever
At first as was like “too much reading 😴” but then I got invested and couldn’t click off. W video
Great video! Thanks for your thoughts and chill music
This was a great video. I think of Outer Wilds as having some of my favorite video game writing yet I kind of struggle to articulate why. Especially with how the game conveys its plot to you the same way a lot of other games convey lore and most times I don’t find going through lore while playing video games to be very fun. Plus with the actual characters you talk to having so little dialogue, I didn’t really understand how this game was able to make me feel such a deep connection with the Nomai by the end of it. But it does seem like the recent influx of characters driven / focused stories did kind of make the story of outer wilds seem almost invisible to me until it hit me all at once at some big key moment like the ending and the interloper. The interloper is also one of my favorite parts of the game. It was pretty much the last thing I explored cause I struggled with the puzzle and it just seemed so small and unimportant compared to other planets I thought I already got most of what it had to offer after walking a bit on the surface and finding out how to explore the Nomai shuttle on it. So by then the parallels between the hearthians and the Nomai become so clear. I don’t think any other game has done such a good job at giving me that feeling of standing on the shoulders of giants.
Sorry for the rambly comment. I really like this game.
Also love how you threw some SiIvagunner in there
I might play outer wilds
Do it 👍😎👍
Great video! I watched it twice because it made me see the game in I light I never saw before.
I always thought of Outer Wilds as a character driven story because I felt *I* was playing the main character, as if the game invited me to play the main role in a theater play, in a sense. At the beginning I'm told I am the latest entry to a roster of brave and curious hearthian astronauts, and as such a species we don't let anything stop our drive to understand the universe -- we build our spaceships from wood! I was given a motive to search this particular solar system, other than an objective. They tell me to find some of the other astronauts that had gone without a signal for a while, but my task here is none other than following my own curiosity, driven by my hearthian heart to understand it all. It is only by luck that I stumble upon strange ruins of a long gone civilization, apparently disconnected from me and my people. But when I read the Nomai logs I learn of characters that, like me, yearn for knowledge. But they also have their own little beautiful and complex interactions. Some of them are in love with each other, some others despise working together. They have inside jokes, and they're pretty funny. I learn to care and root for them and their success, even when I know that they are all already gone. The "plot" of what the Nomai did might have happened before my story, and we might seem to merely play the role of detective in this world, and our objective seems to be nothing more than reconstructing the events of the past just to make sense of them, but when the sun explodes and the universe resets every 22 minutes I feel very much implicated by all of this. I not only form a connection of empathy with these randos that I now love, but I realize that I can finish what they started, because we are moved by the same thing: we want to survive in this Universe because it is so beatiful to us. We want to have time to make our lives worth in it. We want to be here, now the present and forever if possible, learning about it, laughing about if, fighting and arguing about it. We want to live. Now thinking about your point about how the Interloper beautifully narrates how some things just don't work out because of simple bad luck, or as you point out, just because the universe doesn't care about your progress, emotions or relationships; I realize that what I got from the game is that even though the universe seems uncaring for our little stories, we -- as part of the universe -- are the universe caring about itself. We tell our little stories to make some sense of whatever this is. We can only hope that when we go away, someone somewhere, years in the future, will find in their little hearts the time to care about our little and simple humanity, just like I did for the Nomai.
Thank you for putting me in the headspace to type all of this. I needed to love story again.
Good luck on your travels!
congrats your comment made me tear up
it was lovely to read
Regardless of whether the writing in this video is especially good or not (I can't tell), I totally got the point and it's interesting.
I wonder if this is linked to why outer wilds is the most emotional game to me. I have pretty clear autism traits, which means it's harder for me to relate to typical emotional interactions. Outer wilds puts much more focus into this "unfortunate shit just happens" based storytelling, which is easier for me to relate to.
Social interactions depend on language, culture and personality, but random shit happening and trying to solve problems are universal.
Outer wilds also does the villain, owlks, amazingly. They're not a single minded villain where you can explain everything bad by just pointing at them, saying it's their fault. They were only too scared to see the full picture, except for a single one who saw the eye of the universe prophecy through to the end, and rebelled.
Completely agreed. I never considered the idea that something like autism could affect whether or not someone would be more emotionally attached to one or the other structures, and I think it could defo explain why I got so much emotion from outer wilds (especially the ending), meanwhile some of my non-autistic friends who played it said it was a bit of letdown emotionally.
Also I completely agree about the owlks, they're such fantastic villians and the fact that they don't even speak, and everything you learn from them is purely through images just shows how Outer Wilds can pull off character focused narratives in the same incredibly unique way that the base game covered a more plot focused one. I've been wanting to make a video about them, or just the dlc as a whole, just to dive into the contrast that it presents between the base game and dlc / the nomai and owlks.
Thanks for this!
fantastic video, really put into words how I feel about the interloper's role in the story being perfect. I'll never understand the people who say it's bad writing cause it's bad luck. bad luck happens in real life, people die all the time due to bad luck, and that's the world we live in. I don't think it would have had the same emotional impact for me if it HAD been caused by a mistake of the nomai, or even intentionally triggered by one of them. It would completely ruin the nomai's character for me. Going from a civilization that is sadly gone, incredibly curious, kind, and technologically advanced, to a species that was destroyed by greed or hubris, or just in fighting. It would remove all empathy I would have had for them, the respect and mysticism would be gone, and in its place, rather than empathy, I'd feel superior to them almost. Like " they were so foolish and I am having to fix their mistakes" rather than the actual feeling of "I have never met these creatures, but I mourn them, and I vow to finish their mission in honor of their work"
Again, amazing video :)
No voice to praise Outer Wilds
Born of Game and Video
Absolutely lovely
(Outer Wilds is the best game ever made)
I actually saw the ceave video but didn't watch most of it, because I think way too much of it was about retelling the story, to the point that I think the video is intended for people who have never seen the game before and not for people who know it. Your video was all about the analysis and I thought it was great.
Great
Good video, but I am still waiting for the fortnite stream!
Fortnite stream soon