A Physicist Plays Outer Wilds (and explains it) 

Hey all, if you have criticisms on my take of the game near the end, I hear you. I responded to alot of comments about the end of the game, and people have shared their perspectives. Alot of which I disagree with, however I agree with alot of what some people have brought up. For example, I was completely wrong about how the Orbital Probe Cannon worked, and what one of the masks in the ATP represented. This slipped through my redraft and research prospect and I dreadfully apologize. I strive for factual accuracy and I fell short. The TL:DR is that there is an explicit codex referencing how the ATP is directly hooked up to the orbital probe and I missed it. I do plan on making a follow up where I more dive into my criticisms and the rebuttals many commenters brought up, so I want to thank you all! For having as much as a perspective of loving this game that you felt the need to leave a comment to dive into why my view was unfair. As for it leads to good discussion and probably a better follow up vid. I wish to justify more of my storytelling perspective than the 5ish minute section of the video allowed. I have alot of good conversations in the comment section about how I feel about certain defenses, so browse if you wanna know the perspective. Otherwise, this will be added in a touch up video in sometime in the future. Feel free to add more to the discussion by commenting your take on a section of the video, and I'll probably respond and add to my new section in which I include my coverage of the "Echoes of the Eye" DLC. Also, if you're complaining about my revisions specifically, there is a line in the video that specifically says "The point of me making these broad revisions is to show that making a story like 'The Outer Wilds' does not need to rely on contrivance" So it's more of a proof of concept that the game would be mostly similair without needing the coincidental nature. It's not a fully fleshed out idea! As always, if you wanna know my first impressions, I have a supercut of me playing through the story here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qdv3YCrIlus.html Otherwise, the video in regards to physics concepts and my general opinions on how I feel about the story exist completely on their own. Untill I cover the DLC, Peace :)

In the case of Brittle Hollow, the reason it's only starting to fall apart now can be found on its moon, Hollow's Lantern. Inside of one of its volcanoes is a small Nomai structure. One of the things that can be found there is a warning message stating that increased solar activity has caused Hollow's Lantern to become more active. The implication is that Brittle Hollow is only beginning to fall apart now because of volcanic rocks raining onto its surface (this can be seen by observing that the pieces of Brittle Hollow break only when struck by a volcanic rock).

>one of the best experiences I ever played >6/10 sheesh...

1:05:33 the third mask is the probe launcher, it's not being put in new coordinates manually, it gets back data trough each loop & sends it back to see if it found it, and to pick a new direction. That's how you could read before that it already shot 9 million probes.

I wouldn’t make a Nomai an antagonist, that goes against everything they hold for the entire game

Personally I loved the idea that the whole thing is balanced on a knifes edge of coincidences, that as you go on and learn more you realise this isn't just some laid back explorarion, the universe is dying, your sun is about to explode, you're the *final* link in a chain of good fortune and now you've got 22 minutes to figure out what, if anything, you can do to finish the chain with a "win". It's practically the whole story of humanity, our mere existence is built on a mountain of coincidence and good fortune, so much so that it's unlikely, even on a galactic scale; yet here we are now, only just realising our fragility and rarity, all right at the moment when we face the potential end of intelligent life and it's up to us to fix it, somehow. Sometimes "we got lucky" is just good enough. (Also theres the theory, helped by a couple of bits in the DLC, that a conscious observer in the eye of the universe not only creates the new universe but destroys the old one, *all* the stars in the galaxy are going supernova, not just this one. It creates a sort of bootstrap paradox, that the universe is only dying because you entered the EoTU but you only enter the EoTU because the universe is dying, if you weren't yet in a position to be able to reach the EoTU, if you'd not finished the translator yet or it wasnt launch day or something then the universe wouldn't be ending because you wouldn't be capable of ending it yet. Brain hurtingly paradoxical and only a theory but also a good explanation for why your star dies so quickly and at the same time as all the others, rather than them all burning out one by one over millions of years.) (Also also, one explanation for any inconsistencies with our universe is that this isn't our universe, the rules are familliar but different, that's just how it works in this universe and at the end, in the new universe, the laws of reality are probably subtley different again, who knows if it's universe 2 or universe 2 million)

Hi I'm also a physicist. I think a lot of your questions about this solar system can be answered by exploring more. It's not as contrived as you believe it is. And for the few sections that are, I believe they serve greater artistic themes that you just aren't catching because you are being so literal and focused only on the casualty of event to event. You are so focused on how to make events "objectively better", you're missing a lot of the beautiful and terrifying messaging the artists are portraying. It always disappoints me how bad other physicists at interacting with art :/

I think the point of the ending is basically summed up in what Riebeck says. Things today won't last forever, our art, our societies, everything about ourselves will all eventually fade away, but new things will be built on top of that. I wouldn't really say it's about the friends made along the way. Also you should definitely play the DLC if you haven't already.

The thing with the npcs is that I went back to them every time I discovered something new on their respective planet because I wanted to know what they had to say about it. Therefore I talked a lot more to them than you probably did. My interpretation is that the big bang only happens when an observer enters the eye. Sure the observer part isn't realistic but I like the idea that the universe needs life to create more or new universes and maybe that it exist for life to observe it. Also I love that in the end picture we see inverted planets meaning the new universe works differently but life sitting around a campfire still exists.

Really great video! It was fun to watch, funny, and leaves me hoping you'll play the DLC. Here's some things I think you missed or interpreted wrongly (which I think relate directly to your list of coincidences or greater questions). The length is only because this game's explanations are freakin complex. -The only "randomness" with the comet is that it enters the solar system at the time the Nomai are attempting to blow up the sun. Their sun station wasn't turned back online. The station is connected to the Ash Twin Project, and was designed to power it. The fact it couldn't fire means they didn't need to turn off the ATP. It would never start unless the sun exploded. The comet happens to go through at this point, but from the sound of it, the Nomai had been tracking its approach before the ATP attempt, and with its failure, they decided to take a break and check out something new. Its possible that them visiting the Interloper is the REASON it ruptured, in which case, there is a sense of dramatic irony that their curiosity is both what gets them killed, AND what enables us to find the eye. With their death, the ATP is just sitting at the ready, waiting to be powered. Not coincidentally. Perfectly reasonably. This was BOUND to happen. If not to us, then any one of the heartheans. Which is why it also happens to Gabbro :) -The cannon's module explodes because of the Nomai's enthusiasm. Several Nomai decided to crank the power, reasoning that because of the Ash Twin Project, it only needed to fire a single time, and more power would make the probe travel faster, thereby increasing the projects' odds of success. This is why it happens to explode. The reason the module falls down to giants deep is because its gravity pulls it in. The reason it sinks beneath the surface is either (less likely) because it is pushed down by a cyclone (the nomai figured out the cyclones could do this because it happened to another of their parts during the cannon's construction) or (more likely) because the explosion's power sends the part beneath the current. You can see this for yourself: If you fly your ship fast enough at giants deep, you can actually reach the velocity required to penetrate the current with your ship. There's an achievement for it! -Brittle Hollow is breaking BECAUSE the sun is going supernova. There's a volcano-moon log that says as much explicitly. -This leaves only the Hatchling's translator and inaugural flight as "chance". I'll get to that at the end. -The Quantum Moon fog makes more sense when you consider all the pieces of "observation". If you take a picture of a quantum rock, it stays still. If you shoot your scout onto the rock and turn around, it will move, even though you can see the distance tracker on your hud. This is because, although you were observing the technical position of the quantum rock, you didn't observe its surroundings simultaneously. Further, not SEEING the quantum object is enough for it to move, even though the hatchling should be able to use their other senses to observe it in some way. This shows us that its not precisely observation of the object itself (you should be able to feel it beneath your feet when you stand on it in the dark), but rather precise observation of a quantum object in relation to its surroundings which impacts how it behaves. When you take a picture of the quantum moon's position in space, relative to everything else, it's not the fog of the moon you're observing. It's the moon's position relative to space that you're observing. Therefore, when you fly into the fog, you can no longer observe the quantum moon relative to surrounding space, so it moves. But if you take a picture and land on its surface, you are once again observing the moon's relative position, because you can see which environment it is currently reflecting. -We are brought into the time loop only AFTER the project succeeds: meaning when it finds the eye of the universe. You can actually track how many loops you've been in by measuring the counter in the tracking module and subtracting the probe number that was listed as successful. There is text on Giant's Deep in the memory statue workshop that explains that the statues are designed to trigger only AFTER a success, OR in the event of a failure. The former is to keep the nomai from going mad from the millions of loops it would take to find the eye randomly, and the latter is to keep the nomai (and the universe) from being trapped in an endless 22 minute timeloop in the event that something went wrong. (like the cannon not firing) -You mentioned that the ending doesn't make much sense to you, and felt like it came out of nowhere. Here's a few thoughts that may help: The game actually hints several times that the eye will create a big bang. First, in the museum where the game lays out its central premises (things like the supernova display, nomai tech, quantum rocks, the Heartheans being new to space, the importance of gravity, the planets in the system, and the baby angler fish) there are notes on the star chart discussing the galaxies moving farther apart, and the extrapolation that the universe may have had a beginning. Then, the nomai note that "the signal from the eye is older than the universe itself." Then, when we see Solanum on the moon, thousands of years after their people's deaths, we extrapolate that time doesn't function normally on the moon. Mixed with Solanum's observation that the moon's nature is BECAUSE of its proximity to the eye, we then can extrapolate that the eye itself, the MOST quantum object, must be even further removed from time. Once we jump through the quantum tunnel on the eye, everything from that point on is for our consciousness specifically. We see ourselves turning into a tree which turns into a campfire which turns into the gathering point for the final song. We see our fellow travelers, and solve minor puzzles that relate to their themes / character. We even see Solanum (but ONLY if we've solved the quantum moon puzzle, which at least partially addresses your wish that the end sequence was more personalized.) You brought up that you didn't feel close to the travelers, but this isn't the typical experience for players, and at least from the Hatchling's perspective, the travelers are significant. It's their music you hear when you pull out the signal scope. It's their clues you follow to find the southern observatory, Feldspar's camp, or the core of Giant's Deep. It's Gabbro who can teach you to meditate through a loop and avoid a painful or prolonged death. The travelers represent home. And you get to bring home with you to the end of the universe, probably to help your psyche deal with everything you're witnessing. And when the big bang happens, this is the result of your conscious observation of the eye itself. The after-credits scene reveals planets that reflect the one's you've seen. Depending on how much you've found or done in the game, this scene changes to fit your experiences. If you shoot your scout into the orb before jumping in to end the game, the scout is shown flying through the new universe. This is evidence that the "purpose" of the eye (if there is one) is for it to be observed by a consciousness, so that the universe can begin again. Before jumping into the orb, if you speak with Solanum, they will tell you "I believe we’ve reached the end of our journey. All that remains is to collapse the innumerable possibilities before us. Are you ready to learn what comes next?". And if you say "No", she will say "It’s tempting to linger in this moment, while every possibility still exists. But unless they are collapsed by an observer, they will never be more than possibilities." Likewise, at the Quantum Moon, she says "As one approaches the Eye, however, that uncertainty grows enormously." Put it all together, and we can extrapolate that the eye somehow contains, taps into, or exists as every potential universe, simultaneously, in quantum form. Your act of observing collapses these into a single universe, which is "chosen" according to your consciousness and experience. Quantum Mechanics in Outer Wilds are crazy and not strictly based in reality, as you point out, but it all follows the logic that the Eye is this game's version of Quantum Mechanics taken to an absolutely absurd extreme as the central plot device. -Lastly, on the spiritual note, and the extreme coincidence of the Hatchling having the translator and being ready to launch on the SAME DAY the sun explodes. I don't think this is immersion breaking. In fact, I think one of the whole narrative points of the entire game is how absurdly convenient all this is. It's as if we were "chosen" by the eye. You'll notice that even the Nomai wrestled deeply with this question. They question if the eye has a will of its own. If it knows what it is doing. If it meant for the Nomai to find it. We see at the end of the game that at the very least, it is meant to be found by someone. But perhaps this isn't the right way of looking at it. Perhaps these "coincidences" are actually inevitability at work. If the eye represents all of potentiality, and it is the force that created this universe, then us finding it and continuing the chain is inevitable, either in our timeline or a parallel one. But I think - importantly - this is a question intended to be left unanswered, and changing the circumstances we find ourselves in would detract from this question. You are MEANT to feel lucky to have been at the right place and the right time. You are MEANT to experience a sense of meaning. And you are MEANT to question that sense of meaning, and to wonder "what WAS the point of all of this?" To which the game seems to say that perhaps the act of observing is itself the point. Or, as Gabbro puts it in his final line: "It’s the kind of thing that makes you glad you stopped and smelled the pine trees along the way, you know?"

1:05:22 The statues didn't activate as a failsafe. The statues activated because the coordinate for the Eye of the Universe was found, which would alert Nomai to deactivate the Ash Twin Project and the Sun Station, had it worked as planned. I would also disagree with the notion that if a story contains unlikely, incredible events, it's a bad storytelling. Unlikely events happen in real life, after all. Anyway, I really enjoyed this video for the most part.

Also, I don't think they made 9 thousand (or was it a million) probes that got launched. I think the station is part of the Ash Twin Project, and each loop it launches the one probe at a different trajectory. Because it is part of the project, the data is saved and compiled. This is how I understood what information was presented to the player.

Outer Wilds is not character motivated for a reason. Individual characters are tiny and meaningless specks on the vast canvas of space. A villain is not just something that this story doesn't need, but a thing that would actively work against the game's message: "The universe simply is, and we are. The unfortunate circumstances we find ourselves in are just that: circumstances." - Solanum That being said, I loved the supercut of your playthrough and this was a well rounded summary

"one of the best experiences I ever played. 6/10" WHAT DOES IT MEAN

I take issue as a writer with the section on contrivances. There is a fairly simplified explanation for what uplifts the game and what's genuine contrivances. If the Hearthians didn't have space travel by the time the sun went kaboom then we wouldn't have a game, it's entirely plausible that that could happen but it wouldn't be a story that was told and it would be just another universe that came to a cold, dead, end. As surely as ours will. But we tell this story because they did have space travel and they did find what the nomai had written. We wouldn't tell the story if they hadn't. Is it contrived that the probe tracking module falls below the currents? No it's just happenstance, if it fell to the waters below and got flung back out and just floated in a slightly different orbit or among the waves you wouldn't think twice of it. Again you don't tell the story about realising you are low on fuel, popping back into your ship and refueling. You tell the story of how you realised you were low on fuel, went to go back to your ship but realising "Oh it's just been yote off the interloper" and so you had to use controlled oxygen burns and a part aerobraking/part lithobraking manoeuver to land "safely" on timber hearth, where you had a marshmallow to heal up and a breath of fresh air. The Hearthians do have space travel however, and it is in fact the definining characteristics of them, aswell as how ramshackle their space ventures tend to be. It gives them heart and identity that they would not have if you were just a regular member of their society that happened to commandeer a space vessel after being stuck in the loop. The hearthians are like 40% astronauts, that's weird but it's fun, it's a part of hearthian identity to drink horrific sap wine and blast yourself off into space in a wooden spaceship because fuck it, why not? If it just enhances the story it isn't a contrivance. You touch on these but your revisions miss the point of what is wrong with contrivances. It isn't contrived if it adds to the story in an interesting way. It isn't contrived that they already have a translater as they have been manually translating for a while, this just makes it easier and then your hearthian uses it to learn things nobody has ever seen before because of the time and feckless disregard for our life rivaling Feldspars the loop gives us. It isn't contrived that it is an astronaut that is pulled into the loop because that gives the player reason to be introduced to all of the mechanics of the game diagetically, and of course plays to the genre of the space game. The Nomai dying after going "We failed, what can we do?" "We strive ever forward, we live to learn another day" only for their most recent discovery to be that which we know killed them is either a tragic dramatic irony or a horribly tragic payoff to the question of whether the nomai ever got over this failure depending on the order in which you discover things. Your revisions do not enhance or reflect the themes, it just makes it about petty politics and perhaps could be a reflection of real life petty squables but honestly that's outside the scope of the Outer Wilds story. Also it is frankly cliché. Also the idea of having time skips and montages would absolutely ruin the immersion from a gameplay standpoint. For the time I and many people play outer wilds we are all a Hearthian, just for however long we are playing. You are in their body, you speak with their people, and nothing they do is out of your control save blinking the sleep out of their eyes... which you do press a button for. To then wrench control away from your character to have a montage and say "Your character did this while you were seeing some pics" would entirely ruin the personal connection that you would otherwise have, and ruin the sense of true first person experience the entire game is based on. *You* figure out everything in this game, *you* do all the exploration to get to the information, and in the end you did it all as that little hearthian seeing every second save hitting autopilot and taking a swig of your drink, which wouldn't even break immersion as your hearthian could easily be doing that. I feel the continuous, unbroken, first person experience of the game is far too important to the heart of the game to be ripped away because it would be more "Likely" especially as none of these contrivances harm the agency of the characters nor the effectiveness of the game's themes

I think the one change I can't agree with is making the Nomai a hostile and fractured species. One of the things I LOVE about the Nomai is that they're highly ethical to both their species and others - They have a strong culture of preservation and safety. Maybe I can see a Nomai intentionally sabotaging the Sun Station - Hell, maybe that's actually what happened, and there's just no evidence that could be discovered before the comet arrived. But to have a Nomai attempt a coup? One that went so wrong as to locally wipe out the entire species? That paints the Nomai as incredibly destructive, in a way that I personally think is horribly overdone in media, and an incredibly dour outlook on civilization generally. I love the fact that the writer for the game, the developers in general, committed to the idea that, while the Nomai were hardly always perfect or harmonious at all points, and they did have disagreements... They still committed to seeing everything through to the end, to the best of their ability, despite the challenges they faced. And they equally committed to doing it as safely as they could. What they did was, in the end, incredibly dangerous (if the loop failed to start, they would destroy everything, and knew that), but it wasn't HOSTILE. And it didn't end up being the thing that killed them. Their work was beautiful and clever, and it fucking worked. They just... Didn't get to see it, by coincidence. Stories are always contrived, because it's much harder to sell the mundane parts. The contrivance of the death of the Nomai, I don't think is a contrivance at all - It's a cosmic tragedy, a reminder that the universe doesn't care about you, and while that's not a bad thing, sometimes it can rear its head in very ugly ways. It fits much better with the themes of Outer Wilds that the Nomai were NOT their own demise - That they saw the universe as beautiful and worth sharing with others, and that despite an incredibly cohesive culture, they were as powerless as us to stop it all from ending. What they did do instead, at least, was share one last beautiful thing with us. EDIT: I like your explanation of the 'why' of the big bang at the end, though. That's a pretty cool interpretation.

In my opinion, the perfect timing of the player's launch day being part of the timeloop is what makes this so beautiful. You're right! If the translator tool wasn't ready yet, we wouldn't have a game! The universe got extraordinarily lucky that someone was able to make it to the Eye. The universe was dying. It was its time. But thanks to some luck and an adventurous astronaut, a new universe was able to be born from its ashes.

With another universe being created at the end I thought the entire idea of extremely unlikely circumstance was part of the point, like given infinite monkeys with typewriters one will eventually copy the entire works of Shakespeare. Given infinite universes one will eventually contain all these coincidences, the one that you play in. The game puts into perspective how small and insignificant you are in the context of one or infinite universes, but that the experiences you had in your short window of time (your life) ARE significant to yourself (the campfire scene with your friends). Also, character driven plots aren't inherently better than coincidence driven ones, they're just more realistic... So what.

i love how that "interdimensional space recall" thing is just innately explained by the hearthians salvaging all the nomai crap they find around hahaha

I disagree with almost all your story critiques. You clearly prefer linear "A then B then C" narratives, where characters can shine and drive the plot. Outer wilds is not that type of story or game. It is a non-linear story where characters dont matter. The "characters" of the game that drive the story are the sun, hourglass twins, timber hearth and the attlerock, brittle hollow and hollow's lantern, the quantum moon, giants deep, dark bramble, the eye of the universe, the nomai as a race, and the hearthians as a race. Gabbro, solanum, esker, hornfels? none of them matter. If you removed the names from the nomai text, the story wouldnt change, and i can guarentee it because of my own experience. My first playthrough i ignored the names entirely. The only exception was solanum, and only on the quantum moon itself. It did not matter that they were a child who grew up on ember twin that i could follow the writings of, only that a nomai survived for me to "talk" to. To me, solanum didnt have a name until i saw them in person, and i still got everything out of the story i was supposed to. If the names of nomai dont matter, a nomai villain clearly wouldnt have worked. Even if we assume they did, the nomai were scientists. If the interloper was a known factor carrying such a dangerous payload, no nomai in their right mind would use it as a weapon. If you like analogies so much with the retort of "a guard having a heart attack and dropping a key in a prisoner's cell", then using the interloper as a weapon would be analogous to dropping a nuke on the house you live in to kill your local representative that lives on the opposite side of town. Even if successfully disrupting the plans you disagree with, you wouldnt be alive to see the aftermath, and no-one you know would, either. Scale, tone, and structure of a story all matter for what works within it. A book designed to teach a baby their ABCs wont have pornographic content within, as it clashes with all 3 elements. Tone? a baby cant handle porn. Scale? ABCs dont need characters having intimate relations. Structure? How in the world would you fit a spicy scene into the ABCs book?! Yes, this is all hyperbolic to make a point, but it isnt without an ability to make a more reasoned example. Stories usually have 1 of 3 different scales. Intimate: only what directly affects the protagonist matters to the audience. The protagonist's dog dies and they have to get over their grief, even if that means becoming a monster on a murderous rampage for revenge. Their co-worker's divorce does not matter beyond how it could possibly help the protagonist overcome their grief. Communal: An evil business man wants to pave the town or a group of rebels has to stop the evil empire. Any threat to a world is too big to be taken seriously. Either it is a bluff, or the planet/town in question holds no characters of note or relevance to the story, simply being a show of power. Cosmic: Beyond the scope of mere individuals. The characters are comprised of locations and races of peoples. This is the scale outer wilds operates at. If chert died, it wouldnt affect the story beyond what information he could give. If mica died, absolutely nothing would be lost. The nomai as individuals dont matter, only that a race of scientist aliens were chasing a mystery you have to finish for them. An individual acting against the wishes of the group cant be taken seriously without it being backed up by action or consequence, and on the scale of planets as characters, it also breaks tone. Tone is a lot more difficult to pin down concrete examples for, but this is where my prior hyperbole can do the most heavy lifting. The absurdity of the suggestion alone demonstrates the issue of balancing tone. The tone of outer wilds is a dying universe, meaning the universe is the character the tone is set by. Putting the power in the hands of a singular evil nomai as the sole cause of the death of their race shifts the focus from the solar system to the nomai. The game loses the point of exploring the universe for answers to mysteries buried in the past to one of nomai being destroyed by their own hubris. Where does the game go from there to give an ending if the nomai are already dead? How does finding the eye of the universe, the exact goal of the now hubris-tic nomai, warn of the dangers of hubris when we are rewarded for continuing their past mistakes? The ending works because it is the answer to the central and arguably singular mystery of the game. It is an abstract answer, yes, but it is still an answer. Nomai hubris gets no resolution. That only leaves structure, what should be the most obvious of the bunch, but is so obvious it is hard to explain if you dont already get it. OUTER WILDS IS NON-LINEAR! the only linearity to the entire game is the single plot point of being linked to the memory statue and the final ending when there are no more mysteries to solve. The world is fully explained in such a way where any gaps in logic have enough information to theories with so little holes they are effectively truths. If you are missing information, you are missing answers. If you are missing answers, you have unsolved mysteries. If you have unsolved mysteries, the ending doesnt land properly. If the ending doesnt land properly you misattribute it all to a flawed game. Follow the chain backwards: you are missing information and jumping to conclusions. The third active mask is not DLC, it is a piece of information directly proved in the game, but something you missed. That third mask is linked with every other piece of the puzzle and is the core of the fundamental misunderstanding. The third mask contains the data stored on the central "computer" of the orbital probe cannon and probe tracking module. When the sun's time is naturally up because the sun station failed, it provides enough power to boot up the ATP. The ATP then sends the memory of those linked to it back in time by about 22 minutes, as well as the data from all previous probe attempts. Then the orbital probe cannon receives the data from the ATP 22 minutes in the past, which triggers the automated system to pick an unlisted set of coordinates and fire the singular probe at maximum power, breaking off the tracking probe module in the process. The tracking module, trapped in the gravity of giants deep begins plunging to the "surface" below, where the singular current that spans the entire planet drags the tracking module into the counterclockwise cyclone, plunging it into the depths. With the gravity being highest at the center of the planet, it is drawn inwards, undisturbed by the electric wall protecting the core and settling against some coral at or near the center of the planet, where the hatchling eventually stumbles upon it. No nomai (except for a quantum solanum trapped by their own demise at the other 5 locations) survived the ghost matter explosion while the hearthians were nothing more than tadpoles protected by the water they swam in. Overtime, the ghost matter decayed in half-lives, and the hearthians evolved into a sentient, humanoid shape no longer bound to the water and developed space flight. The sun station never triggered the supernova, and the explosion we see is the natural end of life (unless we want to believe the absorption of the lingering ghost matter in the interloper detonated the explosion slightly early as the comet flew into the larger red giant) of the sun, with no way to stop it. The sun was not the only one dying, and all that was left as hope for life to continue was the eye of the universe, be it for simple refuge or the reality we got of birthing a new universe through a big bang very spiritually significant. All the pieces were there by chance, but it took the will of a hearthian trapped in a timeloop to put the pieces together. Chance is the entire point. Everything is by chance. Fate is the idea that chance doesnt exist, yet in one moment you condemn chance then the next question why chance let it happen? You cant have it both ways: either fate dictated this story happen and nothing was chance, or everything was chance and we had to use that benefit to find our answer. Fate and Chance are both concepts of faith, and are 2 sides of the same coin. You are not a hypocrite just for trying to find meaning in both, but you are a hypocrite for moving the goal posts and expecting fate in one moment but condemning chance the next. Fate is the circumstances the story needs to set up to exist, and is every "hand of the author" moment. Chance is the will to seek out the pieces and put them together. No one MADE you find the eye of the universe, you and everyone else that saw the game to completion seek it out. Seek is an active verb; something you have to participate in. Everything in the game has a purpose, and every question has an answer if you think hard enough about it with enough information. Was it fate that you played the game, or was it chance? Fate and chance are synonyms, only differing in perspective. Yes, the game can get spiritual, but that is by choice of the player to see a spiritual meaning. "The universe IS, and we ARE." It is the core of the game. You must accept chance as something you cant change, what we can change is how we react to it. If the quote doesnt make sense to you, the game doesnt make sense. It is just a statement that everything is independent, but the way such independent variables interact create meaning. Sometimes there is no "greater meaning", and those who struggle with it cant accept reality. The reality of the game is that all these coincidences happened. You cant change them, and attempting to breaks what is already there in some way of varying imperceptibility.

The orbital probe cannon breaking right as you wake up is not a coincidence, except for the first loop (which can be justified as game mechanics since the 22 minute timer doesn't start until the statue activates). It breaks because it fires on the ATP's command, and the ATP also woke you up with the memory download.

Hi! Love the editing and effort put into this video and the themed stingers for each planet were fantastic. On the topic of relying on coincidence to begin a story: People mind when a story is resolved thanks to luck because it invalidates the characters journey, but they don't mind when a story begins or is prolonged due to luck because we're used to that. I'm fine with that because literally everything in our own world relies on an unfathomable amount of luck to happen. Every human being is the winner of a lottery with billion to one odds, and the chance of their parents coming together reduces those odds exponentially. The Nomai being killed by the interloper doesn't feel contrived because we're accustomed to tragedy having no warnings or thematic relevance. There is no "good time" for a fanily member to pass from cancer, just as there was no good time for the interloper to wipe out Nomai.

I stumbled onto this video through my love of Outer Wilds, and I love everything about it! The editing, your humour, and all the science I don’t understand. Incredible work!

I feel like there are some gaps in knowledge that maybe contributed to some misunderstanding, but I can't know since I didn't see your full playthrough: 1: there aren't infinite probes, there's exactly one probe that has been shot 9 million times. Someone in the comments mentioned that the third mask is the probe, so every loop is another shot. 2: there is already a 200,000+ year gap between the Nomai and the Hearthians. The Nomai encountered the ancestors of the Hearthians (4-eyed amphibians) on Timber Hearth when they went to go mine the ore. That's probably not enough time to evolve to become spacefaring by our time scale, but clearly things work a little differently in OW's universe. 3: the translator getting completed exactly when it did is a bit of happenstance, but the Hearthians have been researching the Nomai for years before your maiden flight, so the idea that they have a finished translator ready to hand you by the time you're ready for your first flight isn't too farfetched. The Hearthians seem like they fly by the seat of their pants. 4: you *can* spend a lot of time with the npcs. Every time you find out a big piece of information, you can go back to tell them about it, or talk to them to figure out where to go next. But in the ending the NPCs aren't actually there, how could they be? They're (probably) your mind trying to make sense of what's going on. Each of them represents the planet you find them on, which is why grabbing their instruments is tied into something visually or experientially about the planet. 5: Brittle Hollow starting to break apart isn't random, back when the Nomai lived there, the moon would only erupt very rarely. The increase in solar flares preempting the supernova is aggravating the lantern and causing it to shoot meteors more often, which causes the hollow to finally start breaking apart because it's being bombarded so frequently. I don't like the idea of a Nomai 'villain' sabotaging the sun station using ghost matter. That feels extremely cartoonist, especially since the Nomai are a very scientifically minded and curiosity driven people. The way the Sun Station was set up is that it would explode the sun and the power of the sun exploding would allow memories to be sent back in time, so they could fire infinite probes until one of them found the coordinates, and then they would turn off the sun station project before it destroyed the sun, meaning that they gain all of the knowledge with none of the annihilation. It's a well thought out plan, it just failed to activate. I can't see any Nomai intentionally wiping out all life in the solar system to stop the Nomai accidentally wiping out all life in the solar system. You should definitely play the DLC, I'd watch a video of that. It adds some context to the main game, but it's just worth playing for its own sake. It's fucking gorgeous and intriguing in a way that feels very different but connected to the main game.

Some of the points made in the end of the video are valid criticisms, but a couple of them are due to you not understanding the setting properly (either that or I misunderstood you; in this case, just ignore everything below this lol). - There is only one probe. It is launched with such a high force that it breaks the orbital probe cannon (that's why it breaks, it's not a coincidence), it travels for 22 minutes in a random direction that hasn't been selected before (the Nomai know which ones were selected already because the Ash Twin Project has a mask/statue paired with the probe tracking module). If the probe physically finds the Eye, it sends back its coordinates (the ones you see in the probe tracking module) and triggers the Ash Twin Project to activate the masks in order to make the Nomai aware of the situation (that they found the eye) and stop the Sun Station from triggering this chain of events in the next loop. Since it's a time loop, there's only need for one probe because you can reuse it indefinitely. Also, since the supernova occured naturally, the masks were only triggered when the Eye was found (but the Ash Twin Project was active since the first time the sun went supernova!). That means that, before you start playing, your character has lived these 22 minutes for 9 million times without having their memories mantained (because the masks were not active). Like I said, the points you made about everything else are valid, but these ones about infinite probes or the orbital probe cannon are OK :)

Thanks for playing Outer Wilds! I'm sorry it didn't leave you with a better impression. I definitely had to warm up to the ending over the last couple of years, but it's become one of my favorite games of all time at this point, which is how I found your video. I hope that in time, you'll continue to explore the game and your perspective on it, by continuing to ask questions and opening your mind to possible answers. If you're anything like me, I believe this could open you up to appreciating the game more in the future when looking back on the one-of-a-kind experience it provided, and how lovingly it was crafted.

I very much enjoyed the science portion of this video! It's always fun to hear about supernovas, and spaghettification, and quantum quantum with more quantum! However when it comes to the narrative, you seemed displeased as I would be if I made a sandwich and it didn't taste right, when in reality I completely ignored some of the readily available fillings. There are a few details (well addressed by fellow commentor @Caleb_Plehn) you point out as happenstance that are explained through either text/dialogue or cosmic fate, and while I do agree that things like the interloper's arrival and the translator are all kinds of random, they're spread so far apart within the timeline of the game, like hundreds of thousands of years, that I personally don't believe it would fall under the category of contrivance. Also, about how the character has a translator instead of simply speaking the language of the nomai, I would imagine this would have to be because they could not derive the phonetic sounds from the seemingly only written language displayed by the long dead race of nomai. That being said, and despite the paragraph, I did enjoy the video! It clearly took a lot of time to make and hot damn you can make an hour breeze by, haha. Even though this game didn't make you emotionally cream or cry at the end like most others (myself included), I'm glad it tickled some good spots! In the words of IGN, "It has a little something for everyone."

The devs are really aware that time travel shouldn’t work the way it is portrayed in the game. When you go to the High energy lab, you can actually break the fabric of space time, by taking out one of the warp cores. Edit: I wrote this before I finished the video. I see you found that out eventually.

TLDR: if this is too long for anyone, at least read point #3, since that is the most infuriating one to me and 99% is entirely based off misconception. Glad you liked the game but oh boy where do I start. I'll start with your point 3 since talking about point 1 and 2 might run long: point #3: This is a common misconception: The probe tracking module was NEVER on the cannon when it launched, it was always in the core. The island they used to launch cannon parts into space relied on the tornadoes to lift them up out of orbit. One of the writings shows that they attempted to do the same thing with one of the modules and it got launched into the core instead. They probably would've replaced it, but the project got put on hold and they never got a chance to, but it was all hooked up and ready to receive data the whole time. Also I think you're fundamentally missing the point of the probe cannon and ATP. It's not firing millions of probes in hopes that it finds the eye. It's firing ONE probe millions of times in hopes of finding the eye. They're brute forcing it but doing it all completely automated in a time loop. So yes it would be Extremely unlikely but if giving infinite time (within that 22 minute window) it literally will find it guaranteed. Meaning if it had worked like the Nomai intended. They would've found the coordinates 22 minutes before they even initiated the project. That's why the third mask is linked to the probe tracking module, it's responsible for determining if a probe spotted the eye, then relay that information to the ATP which then stores and sends that information back in time and provides a new randomized location to search for the eye. That's why the cannon not only launches at the beginning of the time loop (the request for fire is sent to the past with you) but it's also a different direction every time. (Also side note the statues activated because the project SUCCEEDED in finding the eye. One of logs mentions that they prepared for the event that it could fail, but that was to add the element of uncertainty. You don't know if it succeeded or failed until you get to the probe tracking module to find out that it did in fact succeed) point #4: While I agree that brittle hollow falling completely apart in 22 minutes is a plot hole made for the convenience of a fun gaming experience. They do, however, offer and explanation. On hollow's lantern there's a computer log that shows increased volcanic activity caused by the expanding sun thus making it pump out WAAAAY more firepower than it normally does. point #1: Storytelling in video games comes in many forms. The outer wilds team very specifically chose to let you have your hands on the wheel at all times in the game. If the game decided to take you through a montage of you learning the language, it would betray everything outer wilds is about. Exploration, Curiosity, and Discovery. I don't want to learn something because the game railroads me into learning it. The game has so much value because everything is THERE for you to find, and finding it doesn't change the world around you but gives you a new perspective retranslates everything that you know about it. The initial discovery of the Supernova is so impactful from a gameplay perspective that it would be so ABSOLUTELY devastating if it was replaced but some cinematic montage of discovering that the sun is exploding. Sure it might be a cosmically convenient, but it does so SPECIFALLY to ALWAYS give you control and to hide the Armageddon that you've unknowingly been in for millions of cycles until the statues activate on a successful probe. You have to think about storytelling from a gameplay perspective to understand the choices they made. (I want to edit to emphasize that not only do I think getting rid of the initial supernova impact is not only detrimental to the whole game but probably the single biggest thing you could do to ruin the game in it's entirety, it's that important) point #2: Despite talking about plot holes, Outer wilds is actually one of the most consistent worlds I've ever seen in a video game. Sure the physics don't always map to reality (for gaming purpose that I know you understand) but the new wacky physics that they cultivated maintains throughout the world. Which is why I wouldn't understand you're idea to make a evil nomai that would want to sabotage and kill everyone because they.... don't want them to kill everyone with supernova?? That seems counterintuitive. That's only half the problem though. The sun station is built for one purpose and one purpose only, to blow up the sun. It doesn't get more kill everyone destructive than that. Plus having and "evil nomai group" would kind of really put a dapper on the whole message of the game. They wanted the Nomai to be a unified group of people and sort of like a guardian angel to the hearthians, having bad blood between them on the end puts a tarnish on the ending of the game (Don't even get me started on how wrong I think you are with the ending, but this is big enough already) If you read this far, Thank you. I'm glad you liked the game.

You missed one of the best pieces of text in the entire game. By the anglerfish exhibit in the mind-palace museum at the end, the plaque said “of all the beings that will perish in the oncoming death of the universe, we will miss the anglerfish the least”

Well, i was hooked on this video until the end. In a game with a message of infinite possibility there was always going to be someone who missed the themes and points of the game so completely. All I can say is your rewrite of the story would have greatly deminished this story of the game for me and would not have been one of the best games ive ever played because of it. In a game about the collectivist action and working through issues together for a greater purpose of discovery and knowledge, standing on the shoulders of those who came before to see a sunrise they will never see, to taint that with a plot of backstabbing and murder and sabotage would completely undercut the themes and the points the story was trying to tell. I think the issue is the parts if the story you leave up to coincidence or chance are tied into the more spiritual or philosophical messages of the game. Specifically that the eye of the universe called the nomai there to get them to that point and called us to seek discovery and find it. Its not just chance, its fate and the calling of some force older then the universe itself which is beyond our ability to fully understand, and it is dying. It needs help to be reborn. It is a story about working towards something great and a new future, even if it's one you'll never see. It is also meant to be a reflection and metaphor for internal struggles. Sometimes to remake ourselves into something new, we must let the past and an old version of ourselves die. But we also get to choose the parts of ourselves we carry on into the future and what we make of our new selves. Remembering the past but not being trapped by it. A hunger to learn new things, even if we're sometimes afraid of what we learn. Spending time with the people around us in the moment we're in. Being unafraid of obstacles and challenges and being able to overcome them. Remembering to enjoy the world around us while we can before it's gone. Each of the travelers represents not just a core theme of the story and our journey but an aspect of the message the game is imparting. And the changes you wanted to make to the story would heavily undercut all of this. Bringing conflict like that into a game with no violence or fighting is antithetical to the game itself.

i think streaming this game instead of playing it alone takes away from the experience because the loneliness of exploration in a time loop makes your encounters with the other travelers more special.

1:06:02 I always saw this the other way around. The cannon exploding is what wakes up the player.

The teleporters are always two-way, it's just hard to tell when the darker pad is activated. It doesn't require a person to be on the pad, it will also teleport objects, and you can actually put your probe on the platform to see exactly when it becomes active.

I just watched the noclip documentary about the making of the game. To think that they went with that project just because the one who came up with it wanted "to fly around in the ship" in the first place as their thesis project in gaming then extrapolated into something greater that captivated so many people is impressive. And despite it not following fully the rules of physics from the real world, through their own rules, it made for a pretty awesome experience and one that I'm sure might captivate more than a few people into learning more about quantum physics and physics in general.

"i didn't care about the NPCs because I didn't spend time talking to them" Well, that's entirely on you You can talk to them numerous times, and tell them about the things you've learned and they'll react to that. They all had character and personality, but you didn't bother to learn who they were

Damn, I saw multiple people try to catch the black hole forge on the way up. But you're the first who actually managed to do it successfully.

Nice video. By the way, one of the coincidences you're talking about near the end is not a coincidence. The Orbital Probe Cannon did not coincide to break at just the right moment. It was scheduled to do so, because launching a probe with enough energy would inevitably break the Cannon. Therefore, the only way to launch enough probes was to launch just one in random direction at the beginning of the cycle, and send the info from the probe to the Ash Twin Project. It's also quite cool that the first thing you see upon waking up is that launch.

Nice video! I just wanted to comment one thing: our main character has been really interested in the nomai language since we were younger, and we specifically helped build the translator. Is it coincidence that it got finished at that very important moment? Sure, but we had already been developing it, and since we were the next Hearthian to actually go into space (since the other Hearthians were already in other planets), it made sense we were the first to actually use it.

Altough the solution you proposed to the "cosmic coincidence problems" is more realistic and reasonable, I do think from a game standpoint It would lose the magic, having coincidences is what makes it fun and interesting, it might be unreasonable but there is a blackhole inside a planet and is the coolest thing ever, how the hell did that happend? idk & idc because is fun, these coincidences "plotholes" though make the story less sensical it makes more fun to play with. Imagine if you had to somehow manually translate the language, or if Brittle Hollow didn't had falling pieces, or if in every loop you had to find the tracking module in a different location or it didn't had to go to the southern observatory and the Dark Bramble to see Feldspar to understand how to get to the core, lots of fun elements of the game would be lost to story cohesion, though the death of the nomai wouldn't be really affected by a gameplay point, I think a "traitor" or villain would be against the culture of the Nomai, they seem peaceful by nature with their main objective is to collectively understand the mysteries of the universe, though conflicts of ideas might surge, they still are aiming to reach the eye, and something like some angry Nomai do some sort of revenge to their own people would be out of character, but still could have some sort of reasoning. . [SPOILERS FOR EOTE] In the DLC this idea of a "traitor" is explored and makes sense with the characters, so it is a interesting element but it wouldn't fit with the Nomai [END OF SPOILERS] . In conclusion, I think in a game these changes wouldn't work, but in a more linear story like a book or a movie, thats way more fitting, it wouldn't hurt the gameplay elements(cuz there isn't) and would make those coincidences more reasonable. Anyway I really enjoyed the video! I like seing other perspectives of Outer Wilds and it was really interesting seing your view in the game! . Edit: I paused the video to write all of that and you said other solutions to the gameplay aspects, and agree with the tracking module part, and partly agree with the Brittle Hollow, but I think that it would be really confusing if to discover and find parts of the planet are im the white hole, I took a few falls to see that there was the White Hole station and after that I wouldn't stay in the space void for too long, and another thing I want to point out is that how does the sand from Ash Twin returns to it? And it has the same problem as the Brittle Hollow, that the sand only start to fall when the loops starts. These are somethings that don't make much sense but are cool gameplay elements nonetheless.

A bit late to the party but about 53:50, it actually makes sense you can't translate the coordinates from a Nomai system to an Hearthian one because it's likely the first time ever you find a sample of their coordinate system, so it makes sense Hal (the linguist of the village) hasn't encoded it into the translator to begin with.

1:10:50 I want to bring in a few thoughts about the probe cannon. There are two ways I imagine the Probe Tracking Module fell into the core of giants deep. The first way would be, that it coincidentally fell right inside a counterclockwise spinning tornado and got under the current this way. Another possibility would be, that the force it had when it fell from the orbit to the core was front enough to penetrate the current. For context, there is an achievement, where you have to penetrate the current of giants deep, by going really really fast. So if the Probe Tracking Module would have enough kinetic energy to go through the current, that would be the way it probably did go. Also the probe cannon does not have infinite probes, it shoots the same probe over and over again at the start of each loop, until it finds the eye. When it finds the eye, it transmits the data to the Ash Twin Project. That is also the ominous third mask glowing inside the ash twin project, it’s the statue inside the Probe tracking module. The probe sends the signal, that it found the eye to the ash twin project, which activates the statues, that connect to the closest sentient being. It doesn’t matter if the first probe ever shot would have found the eye, the statues would have only activate after the first supernova.

Thanks for the video! I wanted to say that while some of your criticisms of the story are valid, many of them stem from some pretty basic misunderstandings of the story. (For instance, there were not 9 billion copies of the probe. There was only one. The cannon was only ever fired once. Or more accurately, once per time loop.) This isn't a criticism of the video, but if you're interested, I'd be happy to clarify a few more misunderstandings in another comment. I'd do it now, but 1: I'm typing on my phone right now, and 2: I don't want to put in a buch of time to write a comment that might not ever get read. So if you're interested, please let me know, and I'll respond. Thanks! Nice video!

About the warp pads, you can actually activate them with your little scout, so they don't need a person to set them. So you'd only need one Nomai on ash twin to throw a rock or something into the towers to keep the return warp pads charged.

space and physics? I should really give it a try.

I think, observing the quantum moon sending the prope in taking a Pic then going in would make more sense

I would like to comment that the statues don’t activate until either the eye of the universe is found, or if there is a issue with the project. This way the Nomai aren’t required to live through all 9 million time loops themselves. When the statues are activated they connect to the next conscious being near them. This means that you didn’t happen to stand in the exact right place at the exact right time, there is a range of time where you could have interacted with the statue. That way it was more a matter of *who* interacted with the statue and not complete random chance. Also, a few things on the gravity canon. The gravity canon was always meant to break at the beginning of every time loop. Since only the information is being sent back in time, not the gravity canon, the gravity canon was placed on max even though it would likely destroy the canon. That way the probe could go the maximum distance possible. It is also of note that you too can breach the center of giants deep without using a tornado or jellyfish by simply reaching a fast enough speed and ramming into giants deep. So it would stand to reason something similar happened with the tracking module. While this would require a ton of force from the gravity canon, and most of that force would have to be directed straight into the tracking module in order to generate enough speed. It is better than no explanation. I do agree that gravity fluctuation from the star increasing volcanic activity and degrading the structure of brittle hollow is quite the weak explanation, and would likely see some revision if it could be redone, but brittle hollow, the interloper, and the fact that we happened to be at the end of the stars lifespan (although it could be argued that it is inevitable so we are just focusing on the time it happened, similar to the “someone has to meet the aliens” argument you made) the only coincidences that the game allows. Even then there are a few more fan theories that explain these things, they do just remain fan theories and I do think, if possible, they should be integrated into the game to remove the few coincidences that are currently necessary to create interesting and convenient game mechanics and story points

28:10 this is actually what my first run looked like. i got too distracted by looking up at the sky after exploring timber hearth a bit, and then just died. interesting way to find out im in a timeloop!

Personally, I love the coincidental stuff that all has to add up to make the story and game happen. I remember playing for the first time, and thinking, 'wow, this is just as unlikely as me, being here, alive, playing this game right now'. After all, what is life but an insane number of coincidences. From all the ones that lead to the creation of a solar system, to the Earth being perfect for life, to evolution leading to us, to my parents somehow stumbling into one another on the other side of the planet, to my DNA ending up exactly as it is to make me exactly who I am. If it is a story about something grounded, something real, like set in history or our world, yeah sure, coincidence taken too far is immersion breaking. But it's not. It's an innately fantastical game. It's an analogy to how the universe simply is.

I appreciate the tangent about what a quantum observer actually is at the very end. Science communication often places a load bearing amount of weight on the term "observers" which gets people into trouble and magical thinking, and in those cases its not even their fault. I think this game's usage of quantum mechanic allegories is really awesome as a puzzle element and for teaching people quantum ideas in an intuitive way through game mechanics though, so I think it's cool even if its inaccurate! [Disclaimer I am not a physicist either] Its a bit like how Portal isn't a story about realistic wormholes but it is a game teaches you how to comfortably tie and untie your brain into a pretzel. On that note I was a bit bummed about the black hole in the game didn't behave like a real black hole. I was ready spaghetti for horrors beyond my comprehension.

Sure, this video didn't do well, but i sure have enjoyed it, thank you.

Ah, before I forget, there's text in Giant's Deep that actually states that the Probe Tracking Module did fall towards the core of the planet way back in the time of the Nomai, while they were constructing it. The Nomai were using the tornadoes to propulse the parts to orbit, where they'd then assemble the cannon, but the tracking module they unknowingly used the wrong tornado and it sank straight to the core, which left them stumped as to how or why, thus motivating the construction of the tornadoes model in the Southern Observatory in Brittle Hollow, to study and understand how they work. Edit: There's ALSO text stating that the cannon was going to explode on it's first shot anyways, so they never had infinite probes. They only had one. The probe only shoots because as the universe reaches the end, the sun goes supernova, it powers the Ash Twin Project, which sends back in time the order to _fire_ the cannon, as well as any data from the tracking module (so as to not repeat the same angle twice) and the memories of those paired with statues. It's also inferred that the cannon had been doing that for more than 9M times, before we get paired with the statues in one of the loops. As if to say, that it took more than nine million tries for the chance that one Nomai (you, and technically Gabbro) would be next to the statue just as it begins. It's still left to chance, but it's more credible that way. What _does_ make it a little too much chance, is the fact that we know this because even if you reach the Tracking Module on your first loop, that's the exact same loop where the one probe does find the coordinates of the Eye, and in consecutive loops you can see the number of "probes fired" increasing one by one since that. They could have made it so the coordinates were found a while earlier (maybe at 8~M probes?) to make it seem less coincidental, that's for sure.

Not to say its not okay to try to revise a story, but I think your whole revision section just really misses the whole point of the game. Yes, I know its more an example than an actual serious idea for a better story, but the idea that it needs to be revised so majorly is strange to me. I have watched many videos about this game, but none of them have ever suggested these kinds of changes solely because it would be "better than having contrivances". I really don't understand your issue with improbable things happening in such an unrealistic world as Outer Wilds. (1.) I don't understand why this matters so much to you. If this wasn't the case, you would either have to develop the tool yourself or it would've already existed for a some time beforehand. The former option would completely change the gameplay in a probably not bad but completely unnecessary way, and the latter would make almost no difference to the story. It is never implied that the translator tool was JUST finished the night before you launched. It could've been in working condition a couple months or weeks before you launched, it is never stated. It is the tool's inaugural flight, being taken into space by one of the people who made it. Sure, either other way could work, but it isn't much of a contrivance that your character is the first to have a translator tool, only one tool among many you and the other travelers hold. (2.) The Nomai could've been killed by a billion other environmental factors. Again, this could've been changed, but there isn't much of a reason to do so. Their untimely death is more important than the fact that what killed them was improbable. Their death is an extension of the most basic themes of the game. Coincidence and happenstance is an important part of Outer Wilds, and trying to remove so much of it is reductive to both the story and gameplay. In a world where black holes can exist at the centers of planets and your entire reason for even experiencing the game is happenstance, it never seemed that strange to me that a comet appeared at a convenient time. The interloper is just a cool way of expressing themes, and it makes the story work better by appearing at the time that it did. The Nomai could've died later or the comet could've arrived earlier, but the fact that they die exactly after their biggest failure as a society is more important. (3.) I guess its convenient, but again, why does this matter to you? Sure it could've been different, but there is absolutely no reason for it to be different. This seems rather nitpicky to me. (4.) There's no defense for this, it just kind of is what it is. I don't have a problem with it but you don't seem to have much of a problem with it either. Apparently increased solar activity is linked to increased volcanic activity? It doesn't make much sense but personally I don't care. I can definitely see why you might have a problem with these things, but I don't think it reflects badly on the game. This definition of "contrivance" is far too broad for my tastes. I enjoyed seeing your perspective but I cannot understand why you take so much issue with these things. For me, this kind of coincidence doesn't ruin the stakes, but adds to the story in a meaningful way. Still a great video and fun playthrough to watch though!

I really like your criticism of the game, I think they are all fair points. But I also really like the game for what it is. Nice explanation / playthrough / review / whatever I just ended up experiencing :)

I liked this video and analysis a lot. However, there is a flaw in reasoning I found. Raitro calls it a contrivance where the story follows the one person lucky or unlucky enough to make alien contact. It isn't. If there are 8 billion people on a planet, the story of alien discovery is by following the one person who makes the discovery. Similarly he calls it a contrivance where the events can only play out if there's a space faring civilization. But there may well be an infinite different realities where there were not, and they were not worth following the story about, because they ended without being able to fix it. Same for the unlucky hearthian who got locked to a memory statue, but wasn't sent to space that day. That story is not worth following the way this one is, therefor if both happened, then only this one would be told.

My interpretation of the ending is that the eye of the universe was placed there by the previous universe in a similar manner to how you started the next one, there is no beginning and there is no end(yet) the laws of the universe were designed subconsciously by the last person to observe the eye, no matter how wrong those perceptions were. if you really need a beginning you could go a little meta with the theory and say that the eye of the universe was put there as a failsafe by whoever made the universe, a god, or maybe the programmers of the game. without going into the dlc and what it implies thats about as far as my theory can go. please play the dlc if you haven't already, it is glorious and is able to stand on it's own.

yay i am not the only one who got jumpscared by that fking rock XD

I really enjoyed this video, the humor was fun, and you did great summarizing your experience. I think a major part of your criticism stem from the fact that your trying to critique the lore as if it were a story. Because, I agree, if a film or book had the ancient civilization happen to be destroyed, or have a translator at the exact time a character was exploring alien ruins, it would be a contrivance, In fact, you bring up ground hog day as a point of comparison, and link mauler's video on art analysis both support this view. The fixes you suggest are story(lore) focused fixes, you even say as much in the video, it was about wanting the background and initial setup to make more sense. But you don't really bring up the gameplay or theme consequences. 1. For the initial fix for the translator, it is an admittedly weak point, but immediately jumping into a establishing cutscene will really detract from the sense of player control, and later, when we transition from this character heavy narrative to free form exploration, the cut off would be abrupt and jarring, as we setup our character motives and agency, only to cede all control to the player. The initial point of waking up and immediately beginning game play was to set up what's to come, to let the player get use the world at their leisure. (And even if it has been said at this point, it bears mentioning we do not have definitive time scale lore wise for the time between launches, any of the launches before you could have retrieved enough of the language for the translation effort to begin. And also, you could have been the first to want to take it off planet, being partly the one to build it, and then you just had it in your back pocket while they set up for your launch. The game only mentions that you will be the first with a complete translator, not that it was built a few days ago, or that only you are able to take it off world. not sufficiently explaining why you have it is not a point against the game in my opinion.) 2. The idea of a Nomai internal conflict or hubristic down fall might be a more coherent plot wise, but I feel will detract from the theme. A major theme in the outer wilds is the drive of curiosity and discovery against set backs laid out by cosmic indifference. The Nomai overcame being telefragged, separated, and having their technology set back decades by identifying and explaining(their core tenets) with compassion and cooperation. All over the solar system, plaques detail endless discussions of comic phenomena, their discovery and usage. In class they speak of a massive conference of sharing and mutual development, In their mines they talk of minimal interference, leaving enough minerals for future civilizations to develop metallurgy, in the geyser they pay respects the hardy hearthian ancestor, admiring their four eyes and fascinated by their behavior, even their immense spirituality comes as a consequence of the drive to understand and near worship of the unknown. It would be massively out of character for a member of this race to engage in individual subterfuge or villainy, when it should be them seeking mutual understanding, and convincing others of the ethical views. The hubristic or ironic down fall would be jarring in the same way, the Nomai embody idealized discovery and drive, their optimism permeated the solar system, even till their last moments. To portray them as reckless or a danger to themselves, is to miss what drove them, not a selfish push for progress, or a naive push in ignorance, but optimistic and cautious push toward understanding. The comet in a way, is a real reminder of the randomness and indifference of the world, that for all that the Nomai was , all of it could fall. But like Reibeck says, the future is built on the past. Their legacy lives on in the hearthians, in the way all brilliant legacies do, we inherit their curiosity and drive. We ourselves will confront the sun rending hand of cosmic improbability, and we too will leave behind our legacy. And that message, I think, necessitates the comet. (Sorry have to split the comment.)

Getting some Doug Walker vibes here ngl

You all forgot about one thing that always made me think a comet may or may not be responsible: if you look at the stars in game, they all explode into supernovas. The Sun in game isn't the only one to explode. The universe, as a whole, is dying and slowly fading into entropy.

I actually like your take on the game being less about convinience but Outer Wilds tries to explain half of them by being about the sun dying, the probe being launched in a random direction at each time loop and of course, how the Eye of the Universe uses an observer knowledge about the universe to recreate the coincidences that had to happen billions of years before and after the game happened, does that mean every universe created is the same? Who knows... And I liked the characters, I liked the extrapolated concepts on physics and I loved how they adapted unproved theories to a really well planned gameplay

I lost it when at 46:35 you played the music of the classic unreal tournament from the level Facing Worlds. Nice touch you did there!

5:54 I Said outloud He’s About to Get Vaporized in 5-4-3-2- Accidentally Perfectly Counted It Down You’re Not Partially Deaf You’re Just Deaf

"I'm terrified of space!" YEP! I hit that wall *hard* when I jumped into No Man's Sky VR for the first time. Especially jumping to a dead star system. Finally thought I had overcome that fear, only for Outer Wilds to instill it right back in me haha. Falling through the black hole for the first time had me terrified! The ship is nowhere in sight, its pitch black, and if you don't know about white hole station you assume you're *miles* away from everything!

On your points of contrivances, I disagree with most of them. 1. That is not a story contrivance that is a gameplay one, the two ways it could work without it are either you the player have to learn it or the character will just magically be able to read it, they decided to go with number 2 with a diagetic explanation 2. That one is a contrivance but is also critical to the games story about the nomai, and relates to Solanum as a character because at first they thought the eye was actively malicious, but would later come to realize that it held no I'll will and that what happened to them was nothing but happenstance. Similarly, just as how you, the player, think the Nomai destroyed the solar system but it is also mere happenstance. 3. That's actually the same modular that originally fell they just never retrieved it cause being a corpse really puts a damper on things like that. 4. The one real big contrivance I agree with, realistically it makes 0 sense the sun blowing up suddenly turn the volcano from annoyance to dropping hundreds of bombs on the surface to destroy it, that ones a true contrivance.

I just finished the video and though I disagree with your opinion at the end and how you would change the story, I will say I do agree that it is quite coincidental. So, if I were you, I'd play the DLC. Not because it fixes the story or whatever, but because it adds that little "a person causes the plot to move forward instead of cosmic coincidence" issue you had alongside not actually being that coincidental in terms of plot, with the exception of one main thing. I don't want to spoil anything major, but I will say is that the DLC takes place in one central area, and that area *coincidentally* starts rapidly breaking down as the loop goes on, Brittle Hollow style. As you said, any game should be able to stand up on it's own, which I 100% agree with. But, the DLC is basically a separate story entirely. So, with the exception like, two parts of the story, you won't need story about the main game leaking in. A lot of the game is based around technology and the past instead of "it's quantum, don't worry". If Outer Wilds is space detective simulator, Echoes Of The Eye is amateur archeology simulator. And yes, the sun explodes because it's at the end of it's lifespan. Personally that's not something I take issue with, but I can 100% understand how someone (especially a physicist) dislikes that. Personally, Outer Wilds is one of my favorite games. I love the story, the themes, the plot, and how you figure things out. But, I'm not going to stand here and act like it's a monolith, an absolute pinnacle of game design. Edit: Played some more Echoes Of The Eye today and remembered why the "coincidental" thing happens. It's actually not coincidental and has a perfectly reasonable cause, so that's neat

This was a very enjoyable video, you have some interesting perspectives that I did not have myself when I played the game. I personally am not so bothered by the incredible coincidences that were necessary to make the plot of the game work. I actually think your suggested changes would make for a worse story even if it's a less contrived one, at least for me. But how good a story feels is always going to vary from person to person based on our own preferences and mindset, so I can respect that the contrivances significantly worsened your experience with the game even if they didn't for me.

Everyone else had already responded to the things you proposed at the end so, I'm just gonna say that I really like you using "Voices of Urdak" in the Dark Bramble parts. hehe

So, the idea of "A conscious observer enters the Eye of the Universe and creates a big bang" is the fact presented in the game that the Eye is Quantum. By virtue of Quantum Entanglement, the universe is quantum and everything within it. The Eye sends out its signal as everything starts to grow too far apart as it requires conscious observation to start again. Conscious observers find the Eye and then enter the eye, thus causing the Universe in its infinitudes to collapse to a single probability just as is described through the game's definition of Quantum. When the universe collapses, the observer dies and thus the universe and expand back to its infinitudes.

Regarding your four big problems with the game and the solutions them: 1) Having to learn the Nomai language during the time loops to avoid the coincidence of you having a translator is a very bad idea. That means you have 2 scenarios: a) you have the freedom of agency like we do now in the game, resulting in not visiting the necessary locations to learn the language, resulting in a looot of wasted time, flying around unable to read/understand anything: BAD gameplay -> BAD game b) you do not have such agency, putting the player "on railroads", and forcing him to go through loops where he learns the langauge. This ruins the joy of learning about the timeloops on your own. For many players, the realization this is a time loop happens quite late (not everyone has seen the movie groundhog day!). Taking away agency and discovery from players ruins the gameplay and goes against the spirit of the game: BAD game 2) "The Nomai die to a comet randomly entering their solar system." Who says it's random?? You forget the Nomai are new to that solar system, they've been there for like 2 generations, which is nothing on a cosmic scale. It is highly possible that this comet was always locked in an orbit in the solar system but which such a low periodicity the Nomai just never observed it earlier. It's also quite likely that Nomai disturbing the comet is what caused it to erupt. The game doesn't tell you this because the Nomai wouldn't know that (they land on the comet and die) and the game is told from their perspective so the game doesn't tell you what they don't know. After the eruption of the comet, its trajectory got changed by the change in mass, and now it has a much higher periodicity. This is a perfectly plausible explanation, and it makes sense the game wouldn't tell you that. So your entire issue is moot 3) "the orbital cannon falls to the centre of Giant's Deep where it's impossible to go". It's not impossible, you yourself went there. The game gives a very clear mechanism of how it ended up going there. It just fell on the counter-clockwise tornado. And counter-clockwise tornadoes DO exist, they are not affected by the Coriolis Effect because they are too small. You didn't mention the Coriolis Effect, but I know you were thinking it. Fact is that anticyclonic tornadoes exist and have been observed 4) "Brittle Hollow starts falling apart when the player visits it". Not true, it's been falling to pieces for a while, which is why it's hollowed out. with its innards gone, now the crust sis tarting to give. Don't forget that ANY given state of the planet at the start of the loop would be coincidental for a first time observer, you can always ask "why this state and not another?" It's a meaningless criticism. That's like rolling a single die, and when it rolls a 1 you complain "why a 1 and not another number?". It's irrationally attributing a special case to the rolled 1. Likewise you're irrationally attributing a special case to the state of Brittle Hollow as a hollow shell. It's been falling apart for ages before Nomai even reached the solar system a few thousand years ago, which is nothing for a planet.

"Curiosity killed Schrödinger's cat". Well, that line killed me 🤣I think you may find About Oliver's run of the main game quite interesting. Don't watch the DLC until you've done it yourself though, for obvious reasons. The Twins towers works perfectly. One of them have broken down over thousands of years, ripping the ceiling off. Also, the Twins does work in symbiosis, as the sand goes back and forth, hence the name. You as the player in the 22 minute period only get to experience one part of it. Don't worry about it, Benjamight gaming also had a terrible time with this puzzle (last upload today). And others struggle with other parts. A game with puzzle elements wouldn't be a good game if it wasn't frustrating for some. Wrt the red node in Dark Bramble: "I'm gonna see 'one', aren't I"? I lol'ed so hard. And yeah, as you elaborate, them being blind is a good clue. Love this part with all the players. Interloper "arriving" being of grand importance is irrelevant. If aliens arrived here, would they immediately be aware of Halley's comet, or become aware when it gets closer and visible? The orbit is highly elliptic and we don't know what the orbital period would be in a "realistically" scaled star system. I'd just settle with it being a pressure bomb that gets set off because the star is nearing its natural life. If you watch the commentary, you'll also find they had to rewrite some laws of physics to make it work, and I have no issues with that as they're not trying to "teach physics". Wrt to the condensed time, I would think our own planets would undergo some serious changes and "cosmic threats" by the time the sun starts expanding until it gets critical, so I don't really have an issue with this. I really dislike the idea of having to "have a villain" in the game to work. Lucky coincidences? Sure, but isn't that a thing in most games that are near to impossible to avoid? Now, if you want to challenge your ability to spot "plot holes", you could give Death Stranding a go. Seriously, while being a very long (and for some, a boring) game due to its slow pacing, the storytelling is Kafkaesque with tons and tons of clues served (gameplay, calls, and very long cutscenes) that nobody will pick up on, and unlike Outer Wilds where the pieces come together as the game progresses, in Death Stranding they don't come together until the very end - and it will blow your socks off. And here is the kicker - there is a third mystery you get an extra reveal to but nobody notices the third mystery because it's not presented to you. This is something you have to discover for yourself by watching the game several times over and try to figure out what the clues actually relates to. Brilliant writing, and in true Japanese way, kinda cheesy too. If even considering this game, check out Yong Yea's spoiler free review of it, as this is definitely not a game for everyone. Prey (2017) is also one scifi game I think you'd like, although the formula for that one is more straight forward with quest markers and skill trees. Highly under-rated game imo.

I like the idea of your character learning how to translate an alien language and how to fly a ship as it is VERY convenient that you just happen to be ATP'd right at that moment. I agree with the first point, it is pretty contrived that it just happened to be you. I think I would prefer this plot over the actual games plot. The second point is also down to luck, but I'm not sure it would really matter whether the comet killed everyone 2 days after the sun station failed or after 500 years. Either way the sun station failed and the time loop would just lay dormant until the supernova happened. It wouldn't matter how long it took the Nomai to die off as the time loop wouldn't happen regardless until the suns natural death hundreds of thousands of years later. I think the reason the devs went this way is because they would have to fill out that extra history with more areas and writings which would make the story even harder to follow, especially if that history wasn't relevant to the overall plot. The orbital probe cannon breaks due to excessive power as it only needed to fire once. However, the tracking module ending up in the core isn't properly explained I admit. Maybe the weight of the module falling from orbit was enough to overcome the current and the electric field? Brittle hollow isn't blasted by as many lava rocks until the solar activity increases as the sun begins to go supernova. Of course it doesn't make any sense in actual physics, but that's the in-game reason the planet is still whole at the beginning.

The translator beeing unable to work in the coordinates kinda makes sense for me. I think as a different type of writing that they have, since we dont see symbols like the eye of the universe coordinates in the nomai texts.

I care a lot about my box friends

I have a bit of a theory, inspired by the DLC but requiring no knowledge of it. What if Ghost Matter and Dark Bramble are both weapons of a sort, things sent by other civilizations intended to keep anyone from reaching the Eye (which would destroy the current universe)?

Thank you for posting this. I really enjoyed your perspective! Keep doing what you love.

the probe doesnt take a photo, its a live recording of everything it sees so is recording the quantum object at its current state, i dunno if this makes more sense but i think its slightly more accurate😂

Okay, so, a little bit of criticism for your criticism: while I understand your preference of having a character-driven storyline instead of a "per-chance" storyline, I think the game is constantly trying to make a point that "The Universe doesn't plan stuff, it's just a clump of coincidences that happen as it exists, and that's how things like life proliferate". This is one of the most important (albeit missable) quotes in the game, "The Universe is, and we are". It's not a game with a villain because it doesn't WANT to have a villain. It doesn't want you to see things as part of some grandiose plan, or to look at it from the perspective of a typical RPG Adventure. You're the protagonist, but there's no antagonist. Any obstacle you face is simply natural, it's not the game trying to punish or berate you in any way, it's just... the way things happen to be. On a side note, I do agree that having a sense of personal progression and skill development would be cool, but then again, this is no RPG or metroidvania. I think it's pretty deliberate that you can't craft your way out of situations, and that the only thing you gain throughout the whole game, is knowledge, and your own controlling skills as a player. It's not meant for you to see a problem and think "ah, I'll get an item to solve this sometime, I just can't do it", it wants you to know that you _can_ in fact solve it, and if you're not doing so is just because you lack the knowledge on how to do it. That's an amazing and unique experience that goes against the trend and in my opinion, the game wouldn't be as special as it is if it lost that identity (which is something that would happen even if done just once at the beginning of the journey, since it'd affect your mentality towards problem-solving for the remainder of the game).

Personally, I like your changes with 3&4, but maybe this is just a personal preference, I like that the Nomai die to a random comet. I do agree that the comet should have already been there, and maybe the Nomai could have been drilling into the ghost matter without knowing what it is bc they aren’t sure what’s past the casing (still dying by their own hands). I think the first one could be fixed if the translator tool was made somewhat before the game takes place, or if you are one of the people pioneering the making of it and you like click a button to finish it during the tutorial or something. I’m no professional, though, just someone whose here to listen to your take on this game, and I loved your video!

just stumbled upon this vid and it’s great you’re so underrated i’m sure you’ll make it big one day 👍

I can definitely feel the necessity of the cutting room floor for the sake of the video😂😂 The choice between a healthy 1 hour video vs dozens of hours to see it all😅 I'm sure there were so many more experiments, theories, and hiccups than we'll ever know, but you condensed the most necessary bits into this well paced video. Sometimes i wonder if there were shole revelations you had that were left out, but i just can't know lol Kinda gives me a similar feeling to how I felt at the game's ending. I saw so much and knew I missed some, but I also knew I just couldn't truly know everything I got to experience a wild ride and then it ended with me satisfied with the overall experience Great video. I literally beat the game like... Two nights ago, so I've been looking for Outer Wilds content since i mostly can now. (I never knew Hollow's Lantern could even be accessed)

The only time I've seen smart people have such trouble with the angler fish is when they're extremely scared. It seems like fear destroys all logic every time. Really great format for an Outer Wilds playthrough btw. Good job

I'll throw in here too, why not. 53:50 Ignoring what was already said about there being nothing to translate about Nomai coordinates, even if you had them you would have no way of reaching the Eye. Chert wasn't kidding, it's in such a stupidly far orbit your tin can would need hours to reach it judging from the gameplay distance. Also I do agree in a way with the Interloper being contrived. It always felt like the most bandaid fix towards clearing the Nomai out of the solar system. But I really don't see the point in adding faction disputes as it really would not fit with the theme of the Nomai. Personally I would just make it so the comet is the toxic waste flung away by an entirely new and irrelevant alien race that hoped it just float around and stay frozen and inert for all time. It doesn't make make the Interloper any less random but it does add the weight and meaning to make the random murder comet not feel like a piece of story duct tape.

Here's my rebuttal to your problems with the plot of Outer Wilds and it's "contrivances": *HEARTHIAN EXPLORER WITH TRANSLATION DEVICE GETS ATP'D THE NIGHT THEY'RE TAKING OFF* By the time the player gets pulled into the loop, the loop has already repeated 9,318,109 times before the first probe WE see launches and finds the Eye of the Universe... the coordinates of which it sends back to the Tracking Facility and saves it since that's the success condition. The instant it succeeded and found the Eye was the instant that all the statues activated and attuned to the ONE person that was the nearest to them at that point in time (only Gabbro and the player were in that position, the third statue was likely in the Tracking Facility and was always active, to ensure that no data was lost regarding the trajectories that the Cannon had fired before); in fact, if you talked to Gabbro on your first loop, he has no knowledge of the loop itself but DID experience what the statue did... which goes to show that both you and Gabbro were pulled into the loop at the same time. Whatever you do on your first loop is exactly what the Hatchling (the player character) has been doing for the last 390 years (that's how long the loop had been repeating before the Eye was found); the only thing that changed is that this time, when the Hatchling was going past the statue (which he has done every loop, at the exact same time), the Eye was found at that exact moment and you are now AWARE that you're in the loop, instead of being the same unaware explorer that you've always been. For 390 years, your character was one of the side characters in Groundhog Day, unaware of any change/loop, but it's only NOW that your character has become aware of the loop because it was NOW that the Eye was finally found. With regards to the translator tool, the Hearthians had been trying to learn about the Nomai for years, at the very least ever since they first began space exploration and discovered the ruins on their moon, Attlerock. Previous explorers were able to translate the Nomai text (Riebeck was able to translate the text on Attlerock, and considering that he's been stuck on Brittle Hollow for a while, it must've been long ago when he was doing his first explorations) and later, both Hal (the guy we meet next to the statue) and the PLAYER set out to make a perfect translator where there would be no translation errors. Hal and the Player were the ones who had finished the translator, so it only makes sense that the Player should be the one to test it out on his OWN space flight; Hal was merely handing it to him after the Player had finished their pre-flight ritual of sleeping under the stars (a custom among Hearthians). They likely made prototypes, using the Nomai texts brought back by other explorers to test/refine their tool on, with this only being the first flight with a PERFECT translator that was fully up-to-date on all Nomai vocabulary, instead of just rudimentary ones (like a "Nomai-to-Hearthian" translator book). The only unfortunate thing, that neither of them knew, was that the Player's first flight was doomed to only last 20 minutes or so before the Sun went supernova. Continued on next comment due to "returned error".

I think you would benefit from watching the video "The one thing that sets Outer Wild's story apart" by greg boing, it talks about the positive's of Outer Wild's more plot driven narrative rather than being Character driven like you wanted it to be.

Actually haven’t seen much of this game, looks really interesting

heartwarming: tesla spaceship detects child stranded in sun, sets course to put it out of its misery

Loved the video thank you. I too am a physicist and was terrified of nearly everything. I just wanna say so it is immortalised somewhere but I landed on the sun station first try by launching from timber hearth, matching that orbit and gradually reducing speed until I matched the sun stations speed. Then I tried the eject and almost lost it all and boosted my little space suit for dear life and made it on. Got the Hot Shot achievement and all. That was after I beat the game mind you and had already warped to it. I was just trying to get that achievement. You have to match its orbital velocity and if you try to get close you'll just shoot past it in a highly elliptical orbit. Need to spiral inwards by reducing KE. My replay had so many rotations around the sun it was dizzying. Thank you..

Letsgo new Outer Wilds playthrough just dropped. With a great perspective.

"He a little confused, but he got the spirit." and "If I had a nickel for every time I [watched a physicist play Outer Wilds], I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it [only] happened twice."

I don't think I would like your revised story as much as I like the story that is in the game. It is refreshing because it has no individual villain; the Nomai are a cooperative, honest people full of curiosity and empathy for the world around them (they refer to objects as if they are alive; the Vessel was "mortally wounded," the Orbital Probe Cannon is "well," etc.). Their flaw is hubris and self-righteousness as a people, rather than as individuals. I don't mind contrivance in a setup to a story, so long as the story is internally consistent and consistent with its presentation of the setup, so we have different perspectives here. Apart from your literary criticism I enjoyed this video quite a bit.

after reading through all the comments I'd just like to say that it's alright to admit that you just wanted the game to only about space exploration and cool physics and you weren't interested in the story it was trying to tell. This is a valid viewpoint to have, and you're justified in what kind of games you like to play, but that doesn't inherently mean the story of outerwilds is bad. It just isn't what you were wanting from the game, and that's ok to admit dude. People who like the game aren't wrong, and people who don't like the game aren't wrong either. Either way though the game remains the same experience, it just depends on the person playing it and how they feel about it. Thank you for reading, I enjoyed the video and your reactions, and have a nice day

Just want to correct something you said: someone has to observe a picture of a quantum object for it to lock itself to a location

there is nothing in the game to explain from being on the eye to the "big bang" it's all assumption. Nomai tried to get to the eye, they got killed by the ghost matter, sun station wasnt powerfull enough, "some years later" ... you woke up on your first day working with the spaceship, wich occurs 22min to some hours before the probe found the eye while you were sleeping. So you meet the statue, that choosed and linked to you to make you remember stuff. And the whole loop thing was just there because the probe finds the eye just before the sun goes supernova. And you just can't stop it, it's the end of the universe, you may have not noticed, but there is a lot more stars in the sky starting the loop, compared to 22 min later. What happened in the eye ... i guess is a "quantum mess" from the game perspective. o7 And yeah, the thirst mask is linked to the Probe, when it goes supernova, a signal is sent 22min earlier, to make the probe shoot at a different or random direction thing (brainfart)

10.44 him being scared of the quantum rock … same. I got scared more of those damn rocks than by anglerfish or dlc stuff

The orbital probe cannon only fires once, so you don't need infinite probes. thats the reason for the timeloop. and brittle hollow falls apart because of the solar activity, which affects hollows lantern and makes it more violent. Therfore brittle hollow was only midly affected before (but of course people would still die from it). And a villain wouldn't make sense. The Nomai, even though they explore space, don't have a single weapon, neither found nor in there pictures, meaning they never really consider violence. So someone who was violent and wanted to destroy everyone seems very uncharacteristics. Also the interloper could've arrived at any point after the sunstation didn't work. It didn't have to be immediately, the messages on the tablets could be quite long apart. And I kind of understand what you mean about the ending, however you can hear all your comrades at almost every point in the solar system. And you can also talk with any one of them and have discussion about stuff you learned the more you discover yourself. I talked quite a bit with them, and together with finally hearing all the music intrsruments together to form the complete song was quite satisfying to me. But I agree with the quantum moon (was for gameplay) and that the timing of getting the translator and the supernova appearing was very convenient.

Instead of trying to explain the reasoning for each of the lucky events, because you've already heard it a lot, I'm going to bring some larger speculative lore into the discussion. I've seen a common idea that the Eye needs the observer because it needs to collapse it's infinite universes into 1. It does this by using the experiences and knowledge of the observer to create a new universe, in which the Eye can be observed again. This universe must follow a few rules to succeed: 1. The universe must have a form of conscious observer 2. The observer must be able to get physical access the Eye/observe the Eye 3. The observer must be able to reach the eye before the inevitable end of the universe 4. The observer must have enough knowledge/understanding to be able to create a new universe that also fulfills this list, when observing the Eye Clearly the Nomai would have been the observers, due to their interest in reaching it. But after their sudden death, only 1 option appears to remain alive: The Hearthians. The coincidence of the events in the game MUST have happened, or else rules 2 and 3 would be false. The universe itself was created so that eventually the Hatchling could reach the Eye, as if anything was slightly different, it would have never happened. Yes this theory does put everything up to luck, but the lore does explain it, and I believe discredits the "bad writing" idea.

Everyone who uses MnK seems to struggle with the space controls lol

I think it being a coincidence everything happened the way it does is kind of the point of the whole thing. We aren't a chosen one destined by the eye, we just happen to be there at the end of the universe. Or are we? Maybe the Universe ist destined to end by being observed and all live is only there to kickstart the next universe. Also this randomness/coincidences highlight how feeble life is on a cosmic scale. There are a large number of events that could completely wipe out all life on earth and we could do nothing to prevent that. Also the reason Brittle Hollow is only just falling apart is kind of explained. In one of the volcanoes there is a device stating that there is increased volcanic activity. This could mean that the moon was dormant for some time or that the Nomai found a way to lessen it. But yeah that involves me interpreting things the game doesn't say and I had similar thoughts to you on that. It definitely is not perfect as a game but no other game I ever played gave me a feeling of wonder and curiosity as this did. Ever since I played it a couple months ago I have been captivated by it in a way no game and only very few things in my life have. Also cool shout out to the Longman.

Black holes don't have to be activated by you, you can also activate them with your scout. Edit: Don't know why you suggested that the Nomai's own scientific process is what kills them. The whole point of the story is that there is no villain, no one to blame. That death can come for us unexpectedly. That we need to strive to be the shoulders upon which the next generation stands. To have the Nomai destroyed for daring to reach for the stars is antithetical to the entire work. As well, if you talk to the other characters, you can see that YOU are a xeno-linguist, and the whole point of your trip was deciphering the Nomai script. That's why you're ready to go at the start of the game. It's a tragedy that your people were born so shortly before the universe died, not just a coincidence. Just like the comet showing up as the Sun Station failed. No matter when the comet appears, the Sun Station still ends in failure. No matter when the sun explodes, you will still die. All things end, the only difference is timing.