If the developers never make a sequel, I really hope they make an entirely new game. These people have lots of talent and I'd like to see it displayed more often.
a part of me wants mobius to leave outer wilds as is, since the game was so fantastic it *couldn't* have a sequel since i have little hope it will live up to the original game, but another part of me wants that feeling of discovery and the satisfaction of piecing everything together all over again. i mean we'll see. i've been wrong with this "the sequel will never live up to the original" argument before, so who knows?
Another thing about the Nomai's third eye - when they find the early Hearthian ancestors in the pools on Timber Hearth, they say "I wonder what their fourth eye is for?" as if the third and fourth eyes are each supposed to do different things from the primary two. The Nomai probably didn't expect that all four eyes would be like their own two primary eyes.
@@zeni0nero0man Actually, on the sun station it said "Even our third eye could barely see it" so their third eye is a magnification tool just wanted to clear this up for you.
I don't think that's what that line is supposed to mean. I think it's more of a joke on the devs' part about how the Nomai think having three eyes is normal, so the hearthians' fourth one must have some special function.
@@sandels533 That doesn't make sense though. When humans see creatures with more than two eyes, they don't assume the extra eyes serve any different functions, because human eyes all serve the same functions. For the Nomai to think that an extra eye must serve a special purpose, there has to be a precedent for it, such as their own third eye serving a special purpose.
The thing about Brittle Hollow just now coming apart is probably just due to the crust reaching it's limit after millons of years of constant bombardment from Hollow's lantern. Even at the begining of the loop with all the pieces attached to it, the surface already looks pretty beaten up, wich would only make sense if the moon has been spewing volcanic material at it for a very long time. The thing is brittle for a reason Yeah, it's a bit of a huge coincidence that the planet is just now coming apart right at the end of the sun's lifespan, but no more of a coincidence than the sand on the hourglass twins switching sides right in time to finish when the sun is about to die, taking pretty much the same amount of time to switch between the twins as the duration of the loop The one thing that does seem really strange is that the lava on Hollow's lantern lowers as it shoots at the planet, wich seems odd if it has always shot volcanic material at Brittle Hollow. The one explanation I can think of is that it works in waves, bombarding the planet until it runs out of material and then somehow filling back up during a period of inactivity. This could explain the presence of nomai on the lantern, since landing on it while it's full of lava is incredibly hard, and that is with a hearthian ship, I dont even wanna think about landing there while it's full with a nomai shuttle. The skeleton you find under the lava might not be a nomai that fell into the lava (with how much dialogue left by them I feel someone would have mentioned something about a nomai falling into lava and dying, they seemed to care deeply about eachother as oposed to hearthians) rather, it was just a nomai that died to the ghost matter explosion while the moon was in it's depleted state and then the lava filled back up and covered the body
I think it is more of a coincidence than Twins. The planet survived for at least 200,000 years, and just now breaks apart. That's a much bigger coincidence than hitting the correct time/duration in the Twin Cycle. Headcanon, something in Hollow Lantern responds to the white hole generated by the ATP and that makes it more aggressive.
I would so love for there to be stories (books, concept art book, etc) about this world that couldn't have been told through the game. Outer Wilds is unique in that its story could only have been told through the medium of video games but the world feels vast enough that it could contain stories that would be suited to another format.
Thats the thing about Outer Wilds. Its infinite. Literally anything could happen within a few universal loops. I think it could translate to any medium. But you are right. The story told in Outer Wilds the game would not have worked as effectively in any other medium.
Well what do you know. The Xbox One version of the game had an early update in preparation for Echoes of the Eye, and in this update, they added a new terminal to Hollow's Lantern. One of the lines on this terminal says "increased volcanic activity detected." Alongside this, the Nomai recording just by the Escape Pod on Brittle Hollow was updated as well, subtly implying it wasn't as dangerous back then. They seem to have fixed that plot hole, amazingly enough.
I think the hourglass twins does not make much sense if it takes that long for the sand exchange. In the full game, Chert says it happens regularly (meaning he probably has witnessed it going back and forth). It also makes more sense for a short-timer because when the Nomai crashed the planet started filling up with sand almost immediately. The odds of them crashing there the moment it started changing sand is really unlikely. I also imagine the small core originally of ash twin would destabilize out of orbit if it took that long for the sand to switch between the two. (before the nomai built on it)
Youre probably right. Plus the Nomai had to worry about building and having to wait 100 years to build on the opposite planet would be horrid and inefficient.
Chert also says something like "Wait a while and it'll start going back the other way". A while in this instance may be a few minutes to a day or two, but wouldn't be much longer than that
@ahlex3185 Nah cause the text in the caves implies that the main chamber of the sunless city didn't used to fill with sand, only the tunnels leading to it. presumably it was sealed off in some way or the geometry of it prevented sand from getting in. Of course, 200,000+ years is more than enough for that seal to no longer work so it fills when you're there.
That thing about Dark Bramble would change a big part of the story imo. Rather than being some kind of parasitic giant plant thing that destroys planets and warps space, it would have just been an innocent vine planet and it was the Nomai's fault for corrupting it. I wouldn't call that a small detail they left out at all.
it also makes sense thematically. Why would the Nomai vessel, which is just a machine, corrupt a planet? Why would the Nomai, who are very knowledgeable and concerned about the impact they have on their environment, build something that would start to corrupt their surroundings?
By the way. In the game we can see, how much time passed after nomai's death. Such concept as a year means one planet revolution around its star. I think, that hearthians' year is much shorter, than our one. But also, we don't know, what a year meant to nomai. It could be shorter or longer. We can suppose, that the translator converts nomai's years into hearthians' ones, but hearthians don't know how much their years are in nomai's. So, there are two options. Either it is pretty simple and these are our human years, or we don't even have a clue, how long has it been since nomai's death. Maybe I am not right. It will be interesting to see your thoughts about this :)
so, i know there has a been a lot of discussion about this. imo, the translator makes nomai language hearthian, and the game/developers make the hearthian language ours. So when we read something took 10 years, it means 10 human years. So the nomai died out around 280 thousand years ago.
Time is just weird in this game. It uses gamified time where everything goes a lot faster than in real life (the 22 minutes is several days on timber Hearth), but explicitly says "22 minutes" whenever the duration of the loop comes up. I'd just chalk it up to gameplay/story conflicts.
There is definitely some gamification going on, for example various signage on TH is in human english, even though hearthian writing uses vertical bars. Similar with the various units of time used in the game. There is one confusing piece of writing to untangle that I found: When Coleus vanishes on the ET, Melorae's writing mentions "he's been gone for several days now" and "he had a limited supply of oxygen". So what does this 'day' mean here? An Ember Twin day is 2 minutes, so a pretty useless thing to use as an unit of time, plus it can't be what's talked about here, because enough time must have elapsed since the disappearance for Melorae to climb out of the seabed cave, go to another one, place some writing there, and have a rescue party assemble and arrive from the Sunless City. But it also can't be human Earth days, because a) that's way too long to just be waiting for, b) could the Nomai suits realistically hold multiple days' worth of air?, and c) Coleus's writing on the other side doesn't indicate urgency or have any filler lines indicating he's sitting there waiting after exhausting all possible ideas; it gives the feeling like he's been there 30 minutes at most. So maybe the Nomai have their own historically established time units that are independent of where they currently are. We also have something like that to a very limited degree - for exmaple, the people operating the Mars rover definitely have to make references to the day/night cycle of that planet, and have to avoid confusion with Earth's. Or it could just be weak writing, trying to establish a relatable feeling of urgency, but forgetting to address the specific circumstances.
I've read that in the alpha, the comet had a different story, being the origin of gravity crystals rather than Ghost matter. In the full game, the crystals were found in Brittle Hollow and Ghost Matter originated from the Interloper
I just had an idea that this video gave me. What if there was an alien species that didn't have eyes and therefore could interact with quantum objects because they can't observe, instead they use some sort of other process like echo location or something
@@theblackwidower I was only using echo location as an example. Whatever the hypothetical sense they use to interact with quantum objects I could only speculate.
@@imstillw8ing Well, any interaction that can be perceived is still 'observing'. I mean if you really want to get down to the nitty-gritty, the actual quantum effects are more about interaction with measurement devices. For instance, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is more about how the act of measuring a particle's position will influence its position a microsecond later simply because even something as small as a photon is just too heavy, meaning it's harder to measure its speed. However, put less energy into the photon used to measure its position, it'll be easier to measure its speed. But that would also make it harder to measure its exact position. Then you have entanglement, which is more about someone not knowing what properties a particle has until it's measured. However, if two particles are created with the exact same properties, you won't know what those properties are until it's measured, at which point the properties of the other particle will also be known. At a base level, that's what it entails, that's where it originates. But the ancillary effects caused by the inherent weirdness of quantum mechanics including wave-particle duality and the quantum foam cause some messed up things to happen, and make our observations of these things affect the particles at a more base level than the initial concepts would imply. That's my understanding at least. But I might just be Dunning-Krugering. I'll fully admit I'm not an expert, I just read a book on this a very long time ago. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene if you're interested. It's a good read.
We actually do know how long it takes the Hourglass Twins to exchange sand in the final release- I believe Chert says it happens every thirty minutes or so. Of course, we never see it go the other way because the time loop is only 22 minutes long.
@@TheLoreExplorer Hmm. Well, I reinstalled the game to take a look for myself, and I guess they don’t actually say the exact time. I think where I originally got that idea was a Reddit comment which said the same thing I did here. That person must have been wrong, because as far as I can tell you’re totally right about Chert not saying the exact time interval. Maybe I and the person on Reddit just assumed that it switches right after the time loop ends, without any real evidence.
When you talked about the origin of the Hearthians, you said “Nomai” instead lol. Also, it was called “Devil’s Furnace”, not “Devil’s Lantern”. To be honest, I quite like the older names for stuff. The comet was called the “Nomad”, but then changed to the “Wanderer” with the introduction of Nomai, then finally the “Interloper”. But the Wanderer’s a nice name. Devil’s Furnace also sounds cool for Brittle Hollow’s moon. And in the really, really old build of Outer Wilds, Giant’s Deep used to be called “Gale Giant” and was an actual gas giant, not the ocean-based gas giant we have now. Giant’s Deep never made sense to me. It seems more like an Oceania planet rather than a Gas Giant.
The human race doesn’t really know what a gas giant would consist of. The physics there is a mystery. Add onto that a different set of physics. Giants deep is just the devs take on what may be at a gas giant. The gas that consists of the planet would likely have a pressure in which its liquid.
I'm actually pretty sure the whole thing with the sun and the surrounding bodies becoming more active is still true in the final release. The Nomai text on Hllows lantern clearly states that both "increased solar activity" and "increased volcanic activity" have been detected. Implying to me that Hollows lantern, while always prone to some amount of eruption, has only recently started going off like crazy. This is why brittle hollow only collapses just as the loop begins.
I love Beta bramble, it has the same air of unease as current bramble, but it doesn't have any unnatural behaviors like Tartus tech. And it also makes the nomai vessel's condition more Understandable. But with anglers staying in vew and not resetting their possessions and adding Questions with no answers I see why it was more reworked than the final fantasy remakes.
The Brittle Hollow thing was something that confused me once I thought about it. The Nomai were complaining about it being unstable thousands of years ago, but only now is any of it actually collapsing? Even when the Lantern has been at least intermittently active through all that time?
Well, the universe is dying, so maybe things are different in the final minutes. Maybe the black hole is suddenly stronger as the universe approaches its end? Or maybe the planet just happened to reach the breaking point exactly as our journey begins, after eons of bombardment.
@Names are for the Weak And remember, the Nomai had a base on Hollow’s Lantern that gets revealed the as the moon drains of lava. I’m guessing after a while, Hollow’s Lantern calmed down and stopped erupting, so the Nomai began using it as a forge. Time passed, the Nomai died, and eventually Hollow’s Lantern accumulated enough material to destabilize and start erupting.
I'll check later but I'm pretty sure that forge is open right away. I've even been in there when lava erupted from it. And didn't die. Lol. So nomai could be cool in there too. In the alpha it's called the Devils furnace, suggesting some demonic powers always keeping the furnace lit. But I could be reading that wrong.
Great video! I've been binging a few of your Outer Wilds lore videos. I think the issue about Hollow's Lantern is briefly addressed in game, though. (Spoilers ahead, just in case!) Since the Nomai used Hollow's Lantern to test the melting point of the ore used in the Ash Twin project, there is Nomai equipment in one of the craters. Translating the readings on the Nomai equipment, it turns out that Hollow's Lantern is becoming far more active and violent due to the increasing activity of the sun. You can even see the lava getting lower and Hollow's Lantern shrinking. It's neat!
@@TheLoreExplorer I mean, alright. Thank you for letting me know, just more of an addendum on to your video since it is now explained. Thought it was interesting that they explained it and bothered to follow up. But yeah, September update. Cool beans, dude.
@@codapplesvenhands Im sorry. Sometimes I dont realize how curt I make my responses while trying to respond to as many as possible. Thanks so much for the kind words bud. My response was just meant to say "I didnt miss it I promise. It was updated later". But I sort of need to say that and not just "It ws added in a recent update"!. Ill try to do better.
@@TheLoreExplorer Nah, man. I didn't mean to throw the vibe off. You didn't do anything wrong! You're doing a great job with these videos. I appreciate your kind response a ton, but I'm sorry for making you feel like you had to say it! You seem like a great guy, man. I hope your audience keeps growing.
A book about this game where it goes into detail and where we follow a person, who is stuck in the way the player is stuck in this universe Outer wilds created, would be insanely cool
It's implied that the sand transfer between the Hourglass Twins happens quite frequently, based on Chert's dialogue. Although we don't know anything about the lifespan of a Hearthian, so perhaps having witnessed it at least multiple times (implied, again) could still mean it's a slow process.
One of the minor irks I've had in the whole game in general is the translation of Nomai text. It's essentially impossible to translate a dead language without using known intermediates. For example, the only reason we know how to translate a good amount of Egyptian hieroglyphs are because some were found on the Rosetta Stone, alongside the same message written in Ancient Greek. Even so, a lot of the Nomai text you find is incredibly specific. For example, there's the text that you use to learn that angler fish are blind. How would a Hearthian-built translator be able to translate the Nomai word for "blind" when: A) None of the other text in the game mentions blindness, B) Basically none of Nomai text you translate has never even been seen by another Hearthian, and C) neither of the two people who built the translator had even left the planet?
If we head to the hearthian observatory they do have some nomai text(i think from the attlereock). Its only a few lines, but to be fair the lines are pretty long. the sign next to the short conversation mentions it was instrumental to the deciphering of the nomai text. I dont think nomai used picturesque type language. They likely used a mathematical based or some sort of alphabet for their language. So if you were able to work that out, or build a computer to have worked it out for you, then youd be in good shape i think. Also, if we head to the attlerock it seems reibeck has tried their hand at reading nomai text. And theyve managed to actually work some things out. Head to the signal locator there and read the logs reibeck left behind! Its interesting!(to see what they managed to decipher on their own with just a bit of will and obsession)
@@TheLoreExplorer Not really, the omai communicated solely through writing (which is why we see their conversations as inscriptions). So they would not use a phonetic alphabet, and we'd likely see something that looks like emoji plus math basically, with whatever they used for grammar.
Also, the modern Nomai text from the Vessel’s incoming message board is fully translatable and does not sound any different from ancient Nomai text. The Nomai as a species somehow managed to preserve their language and written dialect for at least 280000 years.
@@OwenLearnsDrawing That's a similarly fair point, like such a broad-spanning and long-standing civilization could calcify like that. That's not even to mention they're using the same technologies and transmission protocols after so long, or that any of the their tech would be even 80% functional, after so many millennia of exposure to turbulent water, sandblasting, and meteorite bombardment. Although, I do love the Echoes easter egg, where you can go back to the observatory and tell Hal you've found a new written language, to which he replies "Just give me… let’s call it a hundred samples, some form of epigraphical codex, and six months, and I should have the vague gist of the sort of graphemes this new language is working with!" ... While still insufficient to my mind, it does acknowledge starting from scratch is incredibly painstaking.
Interesting that now we know from your interview with Alex that the Nomai had to contend with the sand happening with their doors closing so they didn't get sand in their homes, though it still doesn't say how often it happens. Also I always assumed the volanic moon near Brittle Hollow wasn't erupting until recently because how would the planet have stayed together? Though if it's called Brittle Hollow then maybe it has fallen apart before but with Nomai technology they put it back together or something, I just don't know! I feel like some details are better in the Alpha and some are better in the final version. They have thought about almost everything but not everything is perfect it seems. I like that you can basically play the full game in the Alpha, and it is dang cool but the low texture quality and weird low poly versions of the solar system creeps me out so much more than the full game does that I can barely play the Alpha. Flying towards the Alpha's dark bramble is super creepy
Honestly i'm not sure if brittle hollow is something even devs have proper lore for. It was first designed planet in the game with the concept of destructible planet that requires looping back. Lore wise, you just cannot make sense out of it. Nomai were gone for hundreds thousands of years, so it would have to be stable for that long (therefore your theory of fixing the planet back gets invalidated) and it happens to break apart just 22 minutes before suns collapse and not before the Twin project loops. Simply does not make sense, just like Nomai technology being still functional for so long after their demise without any maintenance. These parts cannot be understood or made sense of. It is simply game mechanic made to make the (re)playablity entertaining and unique.
Yeah. I've had a tough time with brittle as well. There is an argument to be made for a few things though. We can assume the sun in its gas giant form ended up heating brittle hollows crust as it expanded and got closer. Or we can look at the floating shelves on brittle hollows quantum moon, and assume they were there until very recently. That's the constant bombardment wore them down. Though I don't it'd be such a uniform thing if that were the case. In the alpha, hornfells mentions how "things are changing out there". This implies the whole universe is dying for a reason, and this reason sends things into chaos as well.
@@TheLoreExplorer Patch 1.1.8 added a Nomai computer to Hollow’s Lantern stating that it has detected increased volcanic activity, meaning that it’s bombardment of BH only began recently.
Yeah. I said the sun may be effecting the surface of brittle. But instead it effected hollow. At least I was on the right track. Either way. Tbh I still think mine makes more sense. Regardless of how slow the bombardment was it’s been happening for 280k years. It’s seem strange they are saying more lava balls happened in 22 minutes compared to 280k years. Even if it was once a year it should’ve been bombarded more before the sun excited hollow.
perhaps it comes down to size as well as frequency. say in the time of the nomai they experienced a handful of golf ball sized chunks of molten rock instead of massive boulders raining down. still a threat to them, but not enough to drain the moon nor damage the planet
2 minutes into this video and already the stated changes make me wonder WHY they were changed. So much of the system doesn't make sense in the canon game; but these bits from the alpha suddenly make sense in a way that I thought always should have been the case.
what if there's things due to the changes to the sun. like brittle hollow falling apart because higher heat from the sun starting to die maybe? the interloper and sun station both get destroyed, same with the entire universe, so i reckon there'd be things before then too like planets heating up abit.
Yeah, having watched several playthus now and seeing how quickly players can get derailed or mislead themselves when presented with RELEVANT lore and clues, I'm sure the devs realized they had to jettison anything that distracts from the main story in order to keep people from hopelessly distacting and confusing themselves. Somewhere, some Alpha player was *convinced* that if they could get a bowl of cactus stew into the EotU, they could save all of existence....
This would be quite cool. But it would most likely take away the concept of the 22 minute cycle. It would be different, and i dont know if it would feel the same.
Better yet, just adopt what they learned in making this game to make another game of of the success of this one. The story of this game is wholesom but the gameplay itself is untapped potential. They could essentially make a first person Kerbal Space Program with the game engine. Which I think would be a cool approach with this developers talent.
I think you said Nomai once or twice in this video when you should have said Heartheans (around the 3.5 to 4 minute mark). Otherwise this is all pretty great! Thanks for the video! 😁
I've always been wondering about Brittle Hollow. How did it not start breaking apart until the game starts? The thought's always confused me. It's odd that the Alpha had an explanation when the full game doesn't even acknowledge it.
The nomei did not go extinct 280 thousand years ago. When the text at the sun station mentions 280 thousand years its talking about the sun stations rotation around the sun. Since the sun station rotates very fast around the sun we can assume 280 thousands years on the sun station is probably a week or so.
I’m not even sure what you’re trying to say. The sun station is mentioning the last time it had an input and automatically shut down after inactivity. So the nomai who were on the sun station haven’t interacted with it for 280k years. It’s not measuring local time. Something like the sun stations rotation or speed doesn’t matter.
Something that has always bugged me is that the nomai say that hollow's lantern is erupting with ash and debris, which is fine. but then, Riebeck's audio logs mention the meteors that we see in game, however this does not line up with the fact that the logs on hollow's lantern say that only now very recently have the meteors started erupting because of the sun. if you were to say, "maybe they were already erupting at the time when Riebeck landed on brittle hollow", how is the entirety of brittle hollow still intact at the beginning of the loop?
I forget exactly where. But they added text saying the suns recent activity has drastically increased the amount of lava balls being sent out. The suns activity may have also made brittle a little more , well , brittle.
I wish they'd left the cactus stew recipe in, written on a wall somewhere in The Sunless City. The other details I don't really care much about. I am honestly glad they removed the vessel corrupting Dark Bramble. idk, I feel like it doesn't really fit the dark theme and the message of the game. Also doesn't really make a lot of sense. The game shouldn't really be hopeful like that, imo.
i got a bit annoyed when you said that there is nothing that mentions the frequency of the hourglass twin transfer in the full game, if you speak to Chert he actually tells you about the transfer and says that it eventually flips back, so its probably not a super long time if Chert is observing it frequently
brittle hollow always bothered me lore-wise. why would the planet endure constant bombardment for 200.000 years and then, within a time frame of 20 minutes, loose 80 percent of its mass to the destruction? That aside, I think the final story has amazing connective tissue, and I am amazed at how far the alpha already was with its development direction. all the important things are already there
The colors in your videos appear quite washed out. Are you using Shadowplay to record, by any means? I ask because I ran into this same issue, and the solution was as simples as tweaking some settings in the nvidia control panel.
hmm. i got this comment a lot a while ago. But it stopped for like half a year since i messed with settings. Ill have a look to see if they reverted. I use an elgato hd 60
I think different versions of the alpha are different levels of complete. In the one I played you could enter the atps core. But you couldn’t do anything in there. I don’t think any of them had an ending.
@@TheLoreExplorerAh cool, good to know. Thank you! Shame though, would've been pretty cool to see some sort of proto-ending. I wonder what it would've looked like in the Alpha.
@@TheLoreExplorer You accidentally said the underground water area was where the Nomai originated from instead of Hearthians. Also, please make a video covering all the old Nomai ruins in the alpha compared to the finished game, they look quite different and for some of them they don't actually do anything like the ruins on Timber Hearth
