this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
416 points (96.8% liked)

Games

32951 readers
658 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

In my experience, if people are going to bounce off the game it’ll come down to one (or more) of three reasons:

  • They hate the flight controls
  • They hate the feeling of being on a constant timer
  • They hate the lack of explicit direction in what to do next

It’s one of my favourite games of all time, and it has good reasons for all of the above, but it’s definitely not for everyone!

And for anyone wondering, my counterpoints to the above would be:

  • Learn to use the autopilot but don’t trust it; learning to manoeuvre precisely will come over time
  • Don’t overthink the timer element; pick just one thing to investigate and focus on that, anything else is a bonus
  • Use the ship’s computer and follow the unknowns; avoid walkthroughs unless you’re absolutely 100% stumped on what to do next
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

in my experience as a impatient person you simply need to make peace with the timer, it stings at first but then- i think thanks to Outer Wilds i can play souls likes now ::: spoiler because it shows clearly how death is simply a part of the learning experience, it's not a failure :::

i have no idea if this spoiler is working

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

It is working for me, at least. The spoilered text is a good summary of the idea too

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Whether or not it’s a failure, it’s a waste of time. Imagine if a relaxed open world game constantly interrupted you with cutscenes of your character falling over, slowly waking up, and trudging back to where they fell.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

it's not supposed to be a relaxing open world game though?

it's the mystery of the entire game, why is this happening? how do i stop it? It's also the basis of all main mechanics in the game, the entire world is on the clock, some things aren't available at the start or become unavailable as the clock ticks. It's not a pointless gimmick, it serves both a narrative and a mechanical purpose

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But there HAVE been other games based around time loops that manage to avoid that frustration, for instance by letting you manually restart the loop yourself in a quick way, or giving other starting points.

Famous examples include Majora's Mask, The Sexy Brutale, and others. I understand Outer Wilds tries to hold the trappings of its story around the loop being more sci-fi than magic/fantasy in nature, but that's still a goal of the writers to wrap the rules of the world around mechanics that are fun to play.

I can even think of many games that gave themselves minor plotholes and odd exceptions to the "world rules" just so that the player could get through it more conveniently.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

You can manually restart in OW - it’s an ability you can learn from one of the characters you meet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I have a friend who stopped for a whole other reason. But I can't talk about it without revealing too much. But basically had to do with bramble and deep, things that don't bother most people much, triggering some actual phobias.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I dealt with that too, sadly. Thankfully there is a mod that can alleviate it. (I'd link it but it'd also reveal spoilers...)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Nice, I'll have to look those up for him. I keep trying to talk him into trying again.