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Earthed

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Sep 26, 2019
494
Please, do yourself a favor, and don't watch this before playing the game. It really is worth it.
 

RoKKeR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,387
All the GOTY talk has been making me want to return to this incredible game. To be honest, I never "completed" it but it's still my #1 for the year.

Can't wait to watch this one!
 

Tygre

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,119
Chesire, UK
Outer Wilds as a response to Skyward Sword makes total sense.

Funny that Nintendo went in a very similar direction with Breath of the Wild, a game which shares a lot of spirit with Outer Wilds.

So thanks to Skyward Sword for being so incredibly godawful that we got two of the best games ever in direct response to it.
 

C.Mongler

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
3,881
Washington, DC
Looking forward to watching this later tonight. Outer Wilds is one of the best games I've ever played. Despite beating it months ago now, I still find myself periodically thinking about the game, its mechanics, and its universe. It's super enthralling and my only real disappointment with it is that I can't give myself selective amnesia and experience it all over again for the first time.

If you're into open-ended adventure or exploration games, you absolutely owe it to yourself to check this one out.
 

Failburger

Banned
Dec 3, 2018
2,455
Outer Worlds is the junk that's force fed to you at the magazine rack. 'GET A 90 INCH RESETERA COCK IN JUST 90 DAYS!'. It kind of makes you wonder if you outgrown video games.

Outer Wilds is that book way in the back of the store that nobody talks about. But you give it a chance and your love for video games is rekindled. Playing Outer Wilds is like going on a second honey moon.
 

Javier23

Member
Oct 28, 2017
2,904
which one is the good one with the roguelite elements? I forgot
Neither one has any roguelite elements whatsoever? In roguelites you get one chance at a randomized world every time. They are open ended sandboxes. In Outer Wilds everytime you die it's always the same universe and you keep your progress. It's also an adventure where puzzles don't have all that many different ways of being approached.

Outer Wilds is one of the best games ever, that much is true.
 

C.Mongler

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
3,881
Washington, DC
which one is the good one with the roguelite elements? I forgot
Neither? Outer Wilds resets its world a la Majora's Mask, but that's really about the only rouge-esque thing about it. Experiencing a reset in Outer Wilds isn't really similar to "a run" like in games like Slay the Spire or Binding of Isaac because it's an expected, unavoidble part of the game that's integral to how you come to understand the game's universe.

The Outer Worlds is just a straight up first-person RPG that takes plenty of notes from Bethesda's first-person RPGs; that one's even less rouge-esque in that it's not at all a rougelite.

I would say Outer Wilds is probably the one you're thinking of though.
 

sonicmj1

Member
Oct 25, 2017
680
Excellent work from Noclip as usual. It was interesting both to learn about the crazy process that led to Outer Wilds being what it is, as well as all the unique, weird difficulties that had to be overcome to make that vision possible. I hope it inspires more people to get into the game and see what it's all about. It might inspire me to give to the Patreon to see more interviews with the team at Mobius.

There is a part where they warn about spoilers, and while I'd still advise people to play the game before watching the whole thing, it does a good job not giving away anything major.

Read that as Outer Worlds at first now I'm disappointed
One of the many things this video addresses is the reaction of the team to learning, three years after the success of their crowdfunding campaign, that there would be a different space game called The Outer Worlds releasing in the same year.

 

Dever

Member
Dec 25, 2019
5,349
Are we really doing Outer Worlds vs. Outer Wilds in this thread? They have nothing in common other than the name lol
 

NightShift

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,027
Australia
Funny how the game incentives that the player isn't the centre of the universe even though they technically are. That kind of goes along with story of the game even though nobody should notice it.

I hope the developers have a talk at GDC or something because I would love to find out more about how the game works. But as usual, great work from NoClip.
 

Rodelero

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,537
I was just thinking last night that I'd really like NoClip to do a documentary on Outer Wilds...
 

Titanpaul

Member
Jan 2, 2019
5,008
This is exactly what I had hoped for. Loved every minute. NoClip did a fantastic job and I loved hearing about the unique design challenges. I recommend this if you played and enjoyed the game. If you haven't, please give it a try.

This was an interesting watch. Some very talented people in that team.

Everyone on the team had such interesting design strategies and philosophies. I'm super glad the team leads and Annapurna were able to let the team flex their creativity while maintaining a relatively stress free work environment.

Would love to know what they all do next.

What a special experience.
 

Ultron

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
2,769
This documentary was really cool. I loved hearing about the technical oddities and stuff like how you can really mess the game's performance up by spreading stuff between different planets.

And I accept their apology for the Ash Twin puzzle, lol.
That was the only thing I had to specifically look up. Does anyone know what they've changed about that in more recent patches? Are there just more things that would get you to think that way or is there some message that points to how the teleporters work?
 

deepFlaw

Knights of Favonius World Tour '21
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,496
This documentary was really cool. I loved hearing about the technical oddities and stuff like how you can really mess the game's performance up by spreading stuff between different planets.

And I accept their apology for the Ash Twin puzzle, lol.
That was the only thing I had to specifically look up. Does anyone know what they've changed about that in more recent patches? Are there just more things that would get you to think that way or is there some message that points to how the teleporters work?

I haven't watched this just yet, but I played through it in the past few weeks. So I don't know what it was like pre-patching (the latest one came out while I was part of the way through), but...

There's definitely some stuff about Nomai considering the twins as one alignment when it comes the wraps on Ash.

Not sure what didn't used to be said, whether they added it repeating that bit more clearly in the ship log to make it stick out, whether they just more clearly connected it to the related clues, etc. But when I needed to get in (warping in for the first time was the last thing I did before the final loop), I pretty much immediately tried the warp due to that and seeing that there were two towers in its design, so one for each of the twins.

EDIT:
Looked at some patch notes.

Looks like they added a lot of stuff across the game to make how the warps worked clearer, huh. Seemingly not just that one but all of them; makes sense, since Forge still seems to trip some people up.
 
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Complicated

Member
Oct 29, 2017
3,339
This was a nice look at the game and its history. Wish it would have dug a little deeper on the nuts and bolts it seemed pretty surface level after going through the origins of the game just a few interesting anecdotes strung together. I could have listened to Kelsey Beachum talk about the writing for at least another half hour.
 

Goldenroad

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Nov 2, 2017
9,475
That was great. I just finished the game last night, and then went in search of any info I could find about it, and the first thing I see is this tweet from Danny saying his new doc is out. I do wish they went a bit deeper into the story/lore side of things as well as the quantum mechanics at play, but I know this is primarily a look at the development process and Danny nailed that side as usual.

I'm still up in the air about whether this or Disco Elysium is my overall GOTY, but Outer Wilds is a very strong contender.

And I accept their apology for the Ash Twin puzzle, lol.
That was the only thing I had to specifically look up. Does anyone know what they've changed about that in more recent patches? Are there just more things that would get you to think that way or is there some message that points to how the teleporters work?

Having just beat it last night, I had to look it up too. So the signposting definitely isn't quite there for that part yet. Even after looking it up I wasn't like "Oh, how did I miss that?", it was more like "Oh...maybe if I would have messed around for hours more, I might have figured that out eventually".
 

jem

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,757
That was really interesting.

Some extremely clever designers working at that studio.
 

Necromanti

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,550
Having just beat it last night, I had to look it up too. So the signposting definitely isn't quite there for that part yet. Even after looking it up I wasn't like "Oh, how did I miss that?", it was more like "Oh...maybe if I would have messed around for hours more, I might have figured that out eventually".
There are definitely a few hints (maybe 2-3), but I had to go through a few logs on my ship and re-read some entries to have that eureka moment. It's not explicit.
 

Goldenroad

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Nov 2, 2017
9,475
There are definitely a few hints (maybe 2-3), but I had to go through a few logs on my ship and re-read some entries to have that eureka moment. It's not explicit.

I mostly understood how the Ash Twin Project worked, and the overall big picture of

It works like the white hole station. And was able to travel to the Sun Station and other planets using that method, but I didn't understand the "waiting for the sand to come down while standing under the bridge so the sand didn't pick me up, and then walk into the Ash Twin tower as the sand was falling" to enter the ATP. I would try standing in the tower, but the sand would lift me up. Was there actually a hint explaining how to get around that? I feel like I had the rumor board almost 100% full and went through it a dozen times before looking up the solution.

The other thing I couldn't put together was:

There is that power station in the Sunless City. What was that for? I was never able to find a real use for it.
 

adumb

Banned
Aug 17, 2019
548
Are we really doing Outer Worlds vs. Outer Wilds in this thread? They have nothing in common other than the name lol
And pass on the opportunity to pretend you've mixed them up again and take a dig at whichever game you don't like, like an enormous dickhead?
Don't be silly.
 

Necromanti

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,550
I mostly understood how the Ash Twin Project worked, and the overall big picture of

It works like the white hole station. And was able to travel to the Sun Station and other planets using that method, but I didn't understand the "waiting for the sand to come down while standing under the bridge so the sand didn't pick me up, and then walk into the Ash Twin tower as the sand was falling" to enter the ATP. I would try standing in the tower, but the sand would lift me up. Was there actually a hint explaining how to get around that? I feel like I had the rumor board almost 100% full and went through it a dozen times before looking up the solution.

The other thing I couldn't put together was:

There is that power station in the Sunless City. What was that for? I was never able to find a real use for it.
For the actual issue with getting sucked away, I just experimented and used my probe a lot, so I don't know if there was a direct hint to wait a bit. I knew it had to be there, though, so I just persisted.

In general, though (for people wondering if there were any hints whatsoever):
The biggest clue was a message that stated that there were 6 warp cores, but only 5 planetary alignments. So that meant two of the warp cores shared the same alignment to a planet to activate. There was only one tower (of the five) that fit that build since all the other towers took you to a different planet. And I was wondering why you would need two warp cores for the towers representing the Twins unless each corresponded to a certain twin. And since you were already on one of those planets, it just had to be the one to go into the actual core of said planet.

At first, I thought that tower was busted, but then I realized the actual core looked intact. When I saw the sand column aligning perfectly over the hole, I had an 'oh shit' moment and realized that was the alignment that activated both cores. Of course, I didn't get in the first time due to the issue you mentioned, so I tested it first with a probe that then disappeared into the middle of the planet and realized it was just a sneaky timing thing.

In short, it makes sense once you have the entire picture, but I definitely didn't have it at first.

By the power station, do you mean the High Energy Lab?
That was more for lore/context to understand how the Nomai tested the phenomenon they observed where objects exited white holes before (a few milliseconds at most) they even entered its paired black hole. They realized that the more power you provided to power the warp cores, the larger that differential was. You can test that yourself with your probe there (and get one of the secret endings) before and after diverting power to them.

The power needed to increase the time gap between something exiting a white hole and entering a black hole was exponential. Long story short, it would take the sun blowing up to generate enough power to go back in time ~22 minutes.
 
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deepFlaw

Knights of Favonius World Tour '21
Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,496
I mostly understood how the Ash Twin Project worked, and the overall big picture of

It works like the white hole station. And was able to travel to the Sun Station and other planets using that method, but I didn't understand the "waiting for the sand to come down while standing under the bridge so the sand didn't pick me up, and then walk into the Ash Twin tower as the sand was falling" to enter the ATP. I would try standing in the tower, but the sand would lift me up. Was there actually a hint explaining how to get around that? I feel like I had the rumor board almost 100% full and went through it a dozen times before looking up the solution.

The other thing I couldn't put together was:

There is that power station in the Sunless City. What was that for? I was never able to find a real use for it.

I was similar to Necromanti when it came to figuring that out, actually.
It seemed like something wasn't really working, so I just left my scout on it and waited on the other side. When my scout warped, I ran over and warped too. It really isn't as clear as it should be, but that's how I got it without much of a struggle. Similarly, I feel like the rumor board had a very specific note about the ash twins sharing one alignment tower for the warps, and there's the logs that make it clear that they delivered stuff to the project using the warps, so...

Also, yup, the High Energy Lab mainly helps explain what was used for the warping experiments and the sheer amount of power required - you can divert the city's power to do your own very short experiment. (And, through that yeah, you can get a secret ending...)

EDIT: Wait, did you maybe mean the thing in the city itself, with the sphere-in-tubes controls? I think that's just their lighting system, lol; you can selectively turn on the lights for each section.
 

True Prophecy

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,921
I look forward to watching this because I tried to play the game multiple times on game pass and I just don't get it... I feel I'm missing out and I hope this helps me understand what.
 

medyej

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,440
I spent a loooong time in the High Energy Lab thinking I was missing something. They just give you these things to play with like the warp cores and the power control so I was SURE I was supposed to do something there. I think the game had just trained me that if there is stuff like that then you are supposed to do something with it, so I wasted a lot of time just fiddling with it and then respawning and treking back there to try again. I should have known that I had 'completed' it from the rumor log not saying there was more to learn there but at that point I hadn't figured out that mechanic either.
 

Young Liar

Member
Nov 30, 2017
3,421
i had pretty much the same process as necromanti and deepflaw regarding the ash twin puzzle. didn't actually take me very long! also, there are bits of the roof right next to the warp pad you can stand under while waiting during the last sand cycle before the pad activates to keep you from getting thrown into the air, so you don't have to make a mad dash inside!

anyway, enjoyed the doc! kelsey beachum's writing imbued the game with so much humanity that made me go beyond just thinking "this is super cool and a masterclass in game design" to "oh wow this game is also an emotionally resonant piece of storytelling".
 

P A Z

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,915
Barnsley, UK
Spoilers for Ash Twin

Regarding how to get to the Project, it was actually the first tower I teleported from because I went to Ash Twin before I discovered what the Towers purpose was on Ember.

Until I explored more and discovered how the towers work, I thought that the sand sucking you up was how all the towers worked.

I'd been over to all the other towers, except the Brittle Hollow one and stood on the teleporter and I must've always just not been stood on there at the exact right time because I never teleported anywhere.

Then I discovered the rest work like the white hole station, which is something I'd been to multiple times hours ago, because OF COURSE they work like that dummy.
 

MDSVeritas

Gameplay Programmer, Sony Santa Monica
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,026
I just watched this recently and it was fantastic to see, I love how you can see all the bits of the game slowly come together from that first student project: the solar system concept, the time loop, the concept of the world rapidly changing while you're playing it. This game is the most wonderful surprise of 2019 for me and to see the pretty tiny team behind it, and how much work and experimentation they did to get here is really neat.

Also that bit about centering the world on the player to account for float precision is amazing because it makes total sense but sounds totally bonkers.
 

Glassboy

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,550
I finished the game tonight and watched the making of instantly. Awesome game and doc. NoClip puts out some seriously great stuff.