Outer Wilds — Once More Unto the Stars
Put yourself back in time. Maybe preschool, or kindergarten. It was that time in a kid’s life where they find themselves infatuated with dinosaurs, or space, or ancient Egypt, or something. If you’ve seen kids, or can remember being that new to everything, you know how absolutely bonkers they go for that thing they just love. I was a space kid myself. And I look back, and remember (and am often reminded by family) that the first thing I expressed interest in being, vocationally-speaking, was not as astronaut, but an astronaut alien. The logistics of tacking the “alien” into my job title was beyond preschool me, I simply knew I wanted to explore the stars. Even though I haven’t quite rocketed into the cosmos (yet), Outer Wilds by Mobius Digital lets me digitally fulfill my dream to be an astronaut alien, and presents players with a grand, cosmic mystery to boot.
Outer Wilds begins with the player-character, an astronaut alien (!), waking up on their home planet and performing final preparations for their first flight into space. From there, they (and the players) can partake in tutorials on all of the gadgets and knickknacks available to aid in exploration (a scout probe, an audio transceiver, and a translator), and run through different methods of controlling through the game: piloting a miniaturized spaceship, using thrusters and jetpacks, navigating in zero-gravity, and the like. All of the exercises are largely optional: players need only make their way to the observatory to depart. But for a first-timer, this first area is phenomenal. The controls take getting used to, but are clearly bound to reasonable laws of velocity (read: I broke lots of mini ships). Friends will bid you well, drop little mysterious snippets about the other cosmic explorers and ancient forerunners, and eventually let you take off.
And from here, Outer Wilds becomes all the player’s experience. The sentiment I got, with all of the breadcrumbs laid out for me, was “Here’s space. Go.” It could just be a game about curiosity, of exploring this slice of space. Players pilot their spaceship to any of the myriad spots throughout the unfamiliar frontier, and can (with proper equipment found on-ship) explore at their leisure. Maybe they’re just in it to travel, to zip back and forth in a beautiful, starry vista. Maybe players want to track down all the funky music coming from the different planets, a sign of the other astronauts. Or perhaps play archaeologist and delve deep into the mysteries of those-before-you. Maybe you’re just in it to launch yourself into orbit around a planetoid and see how fast you can go. Outer Wilds lets you, no questions asked.
The whole experience can be as relaxing or intense as players want. They effectively set the difficulty, or if there’s even any difficulty at all. But inevitably, players will find themselves fallen amongst the stars: including, but not limited to, a horrible fall, crashing face-first into a planet, being left adrift in space, or a literal meteor winning a fight against their skull. And players will, for reasons, be able to start over again. No game over, no lives, no major gameplay penalty. Just “Here’s space. Go again.”
If you play like I do, you might’ve been intrigued by all of this mystery and tidbits about ancient civilizations. In accordance with “Here’s space. Go,” Outer Wilds gives players a bunch of wonderful trails to follow in no particular order! Just go! Explore! The trail spiderwebs out in dizzying directions. Mysteries on top of mysteries, encased in enigmas, all await a curious adventurer. Revisit the same area a few times, maybe just blast off to wherever strikes your fancy. Maybe you’ll find an answer you were looking for, or just more questions! Outer Wilds is a tempter, always dangling “one more run” in front of hungry explorers. As they say of great mysteries, “It makes no damn sense! Compels me, though.”
By way of sound, every footstep, every banjo-twang, every sound is accounted for and well-made. The silence in space is unsettling and unnerving, but beautiful in a way that only space can be. In a way, civilization sounds good, and space sounds serene. It’s in the adventures, the exploration, that Outer Wilds’s sound design shines as bright as it does. In a game so entrenched in space and exploration, the sound makes players feel like an intruder the whole time. The entire solar system moves to the beat of its own natural drum, and cares not for you. The sound of exploration is loud, it is explosive, it is shocking, it is effective. Meteors crashed close enough, and thunderously enough, to my character to make me jump and scramble for shelter. Crashing waves, whipping winds, and torrents of rain batted against me. It nails the sensation of being inside a giant glass hourglass, mounting tension rising as the sands fall all around you. There is nothing, and suddenly, something as it growls. If Outer Wilds isn’t a proper virtual reality title, it does the next best thing in its immersive sound design.
It is often I curse myself for my late arrival to a game, not because I didn’t get to enjoy it sooner, but because I missed out on the vinyl soundtrack release. Outer Wilds (unfortunately) provides such a sense of regret. I was pleasantly surprised, starting the game, to learn how important music is in-game, how much of an anchor it was and is for this astronaut alien culture. But it’s all familiar to us on Earth: banjo, harmonica, drum, and pipes, all resonating into space, beacons in the silent dark. It is…folksy. Western-esque, or Frontiers-adjacent. A little bit of how people have traversed into the unknown of our Little Blue Dot carries in the music. But otherwise, in stepping foot through strange ruins and labyrinthine caves, the music becomes deep, mysterious, foreboding. It makes you feel, again, as though you are an intruder, that you don’t belong. And at the end of it all, if you survive as long as you can, you’ll become all too familiar with the synthy…piano and guitar?…signaling the imminent and fast-approaching end of a run, but with a sense of hope for whatever the next run will be. And even after launching from home so many times, the melody that kicks on as the spaceship breaks atmosphere into the stars hits me with a renewed sense of wonder every time.
When a coworker of mine told me about Outer Wilds, he spoke as though warning me. It was a one-and-done game. That once I figured out the mystery, that was all there is to it. Only so many hours into my adventure at time of writing (having now completed it), I wholeheartedly disagree. Outer Wilds can be a gripping and engaging mystery begging to be solved, yes, but it can also just be a time to explore. To experiment. To discover. Anyone can pick up the controls to the spaceship (even though landing is another thing entirely) and rocket into the stars, no matter their drive. It satisfies all kinds of adventurers. That is the beauty of Outer Wilds.
All images captured in-game.
