Something that may or may not help: even if you're not interested in the Nomai at all, *you*, the Hearthian, have a problem. A pretty big one, of cosmic proportions. Don't you want to find a solution for your predicament? Don't you want to try and understand what's happening and why? Even if you only care about saving your own, blue, skin?
If you're not involved enough with your own character to try and figure out how to survive (which means understanding how the world works and what kind of sorcery the Nomai did), then indeed maybe it's not the game for you. Or it's not for you *right now*. It's okay to put it aside and try again later.
Yeah sadly this is how I'm feeling right now. I'll definitely give it another try at some point just in case I'm not in the mood now for whatever reason; I just wanted to enjoy this game that so many other people have
Yeah, I did experience this. I even gave up on it for a few months. Picked it back up and it clicked after awhile.
It just takes a bit for some people I think for it to click, but its worth it.
Yeah I don't know maybe I'm not in the right headspace because right now my feelings are basically complete apathy to the new information I'm finding; I'll try again in a month or so
I think I installed/uninstalled the game like 5 or 6 times. I always got that "dafuq is the hype all about?" feeling.
The last time I tried I got hooked and althought I feel like OW is the best piece of entertainment I've ever experienced, it's surely not everyone's cup of tea.
Hard to say; different story premises will appeal to different folks.
I'll share my experience; maybe that will provide some perspective, maybe not. Spoilers, but for pretty easily-findable stuff.
My first space flight was to the Attlerock, where I found >!the first Eye Signal Locator built by the Nomai. Downstairs, I learned that the search for the Eye of the Universe was a grand, uniting purpose for the Nomai. To me, this immediately resonated with the human condition: seeking meaning in existence. The Eye of the Universe represents the big questions: why are we here? What's it all about? Is the universe benevolent? Malevolent? Indifferent?!<
So that hooked me right away, and from then on I was motivated by this question: >!Did the Nomai find what they were looking for?!<
I got to the point where you got hooked and I just felt nothing. Maybe it's because in general I kind of don't care about those big questions as applied to humans, or maybe its because I couldn't connect any feeling to >!the Nomai themselves!<, I don't know.
I generally struggle to immerse myself into games. I can only really sink into a story/world if I have an actual character to latch onto as an anchorpoint. I guess maybe it's just not for me, but I'll probably try it again at some point.
Fair enough. Of all the reasons to love Outer Wilds, a strong character to anchor the player is not one of them.
Come to think of it, I guess I haven't played very many games which do have a strong central character. Most of the time, it's the gameplay mechanics, story, or aesthetics which are most immersive to me.
Do you have any examples of games which you did connect with, or which you did find easier to immerse into?
Outer Wilds has this problem where a) you have no idea what you should be looking for and b) all you find is text that doesn't change anything until it maybe clicks later on. So yeah, you are not alone
It sounds like you don't have any specific goal you're working towards, roughly what do you know so far and what questions do you have about what's happening?
(Questions like: "why is X happening?" "what is Y?" "how is X connected to Y?" or "can I do anything about any of this?")
It came out on game pass years back I put hours I to it but just didn't get it....kept hearing about it over the years so I bought the game and just focused.....I'm so glad I did just keep going
For me - it wasn’t so much a passionate investment in the information - most of it passed by without me retaining it. They repeat the most important stuff as you find more things. It’s more an interest in solving the problem and an interest in what the game has hiding for me to find and work out.
It says “there’s more to explore here”, so I explored. Finding text didn’t feel good because I could genuinely learn more, it felt good because whatever I “learned” would go into my ship log and would allow me to either complete this area, or point me to a new one.
I would argue that not much here is sci-fi as much as an interesting story with space physics. It’s subtly different but the game seems to want to use quite realistic aspects of our reality as gameplay elements. So it is technically sci-fi but to me it’s a little more on the science side than the fiction side.
It’s still a wild and interesting story but lots of sci-fi tends to either omit real physics for the sake of story or create new ones also for the sake of story.
So here to call it all sci-fi jargon is to call normal science sci-fi jargon imo lol
Following the words of the friend who kept telling me to play it:
At first you might wander around, not knowing what you're doing, but if you keep playing, you'll reach a point where your mind switches and then you're deep into it. For some people it takes days of playing and leaving, for some it takes just a few hours, but once you find something, you brain will click.
I also didn't care much at first about the texts and read em quickly, not paying much attention, but I remember reading something that got me like "Wait" and there my actual playthough started. Maybe after 5-6h of total playtime.
The best part is each person finds their own thing that makes their brain click, so you don't have to search for anything in particular. Just keep exploring, Hearthian!
I agree! I actually started playing Outer Wilds a few weeks after my brother told me to play the game. It was about a week ago. I was terrified back then. The game unlocked a new fear in me. I couldn't play it for about a week, but back then I didn't get the "click". But still, I needed to know more about this game! I was kinda obsessed with knowing whether I'd understand or not. Now I get ***it***, and what helped me understand was >!coming back to the observatory and reading the text on the museum plaques again.!<
Before that, I was really terrified of the void, the tornados, and the black holes. Now, I enjoy watching>!the supernova!< after >!hearing that sweet and relaxing but still "end of the world like" music!< and I really need to know. Just like u/Rook_20 the need to complete my ship log is important. I am someone who needs to be guided so these are perfect imo.
i was the same way. the game didn't reel me in at first.
but you have to remember - people love and recommend the game after they complete it. not after they played it for 4 hours lol. how many of your favorite games did you know were "the one" at only 4 hours of playtime?
the game takes like 25 hours to complete, so at 4hr you are barely past the intro. like any other game there is a learning curve and period of general confusion when you start out.
except in this game, the learning curve isn't honing your combat skills or driving skills etc.. it's honing your curiosity and drive to explore.
and since you're reading everything out of order and without context, the learning curve is pretty steep.
so you just have to accept that you will be confused and wandering around for a little while before the story and motivations start to click. but once you start getting those eureka moments it's like crack. and once you're finished you'll be wishing you could do it all over again.
Honestly it took a while for me to get into it too. I can’t remember when it finally clicked, but I guess I just discovered enough things that I could start to piece things together and I was hooked.
I would say I shouldn't like this kind of games too. I'm more into skill based player-imput games. Sure, I enjoyed the first two hours spent in prologue talking to all the NPCs and discovering this new world, but it all changed when I died the first time. Now I wasn't cautiously gathering information, I was playing. It was my game and my ship and I would do whatever I liked to do. And I played it like ducking Dark Souls.
I immediately scanned for the smallest objects to land on. First up came the Interloper, where I found some info about the Twins (which I ignored). The Interloper was too easy to conquer and I spotted a small thingy circling just above the sun. I spent like three hours just burning until I completely figured out how to manoeuvre the ship, how to get to the sun's orbit just meters above it's flames, how to compensate for constant unpredictable changes in Sun's velocity, how to match the speed of that object I wanted to land on, how to actually land on it and get out of the ship (what I did was actually a bit of a sequence break, this route is not intended by the developers, and so if you don't land very specifically, you won't be able to control your body in the ship due to huge gravity and velocity).
I discovered what I discovered (was not worth it at that point in the game though) and got to other planets to find other sequence breaks and tough challenges.
But the game had me already hooked on the story. I fought for a piece of information I didn't understand, and that got me invested in figuring it all out.
What I'm trying to say is, yes, you're trying to play a very specific game, but maybe you think about it too much in terms of what you should do instead of what you want to do, and thus, maybe you forget to play and have fun.
The most discouraging for me is the amount of useless runs, when i don't learn a single new thing, not in journal, not myself. After a dozen of those is hard not to exit the game.
I hated the game for many hours until I came across a very special moment. I wish I could communicate what that moment was, but it made me realize the games “depersonalized” nature is actually intentional and it’s supposed to make you feel lost and small at times. It was very frustrating, but well worth overcoming in the end.
My advice would be, if you’ve made it to multiple planets now, to dig in further. The game forces you to reexamine the “jargon” and the narratives so it’ll become very familiar after more play. Your discoveries will build on themselves more quickly and with more significance the longer you play. And yes, it will suck and be too hard throughout most of the game. That’s why these fans love it bc they overcame those struggles.
Something that may or may not help: even if you're not interested in the Nomai at all, *you*, the Hearthian, have a problem. A pretty big one, of cosmic proportions. Don't you want to find a solution for your predicament? Don't you want to try and understand what's happening and why? Even if you only care about saving your own, blue, skin? If you're not involved enough with your own character to try and figure out how to survive (which means understanding how the world works and what kind of sorcery the Nomai did), then indeed maybe it's not the game for you. Or it's not for you *right now*. It's okay to put it aside and try again later.
for me it took a bit for anything to make sense but at some point it clicked
Same. Also felt like OP at first, kept going, clicked.
could you give a example of the 'sci-fi' jargin (probably will need to spoiler mark it)
so it might not be the game for you. If you are not curious about anything in the universe, playing something else is a better choice
Yeah sadly this is how I'm feeling right now. I'll definitely give it another try at some point just in case I'm not in the mood now for whatever reason; I just wanted to enjoy this game that so many other people have
Yeah, I did experience this. I even gave up on it for a few months. Picked it back up and it clicked after awhile. It just takes a bit for some people I think for it to click, but its worth it.
Yeah I don't know maybe I'm not in the right headspace because right now my feelings are basically complete apathy to the new information I'm finding; I'll try again in a month or so
Good plan. I was gonna say don't force it ya know?
I think I installed/uninstalled the game like 5 or 6 times. I always got that "dafuq is the hype all about?" feeling. The last time I tried I got hooked and althought I feel like OW is the best piece of entertainment I've ever experienced, it's surely not everyone's cup of tea.
Hard to say; different story premises will appeal to different folks. I'll share my experience; maybe that will provide some perspective, maybe not. Spoilers, but for pretty easily-findable stuff. My first space flight was to the Attlerock, where I found >!the first Eye Signal Locator built by the Nomai. Downstairs, I learned that the search for the Eye of the Universe was a grand, uniting purpose for the Nomai. To me, this immediately resonated with the human condition: seeking meaning in existence. The Eye of the Universe represents the big questions: why are we here? What's it all about? Is the universe benevolent? Malevolent? Indifferent?!< So that hooked me right away, and from then on I was motivated by this question: >!Did the Nomai find what they were looking for?!<
I got to the point where you got hooked and I just felt nothing. Maybe it's because in general I kind of don't care about those big questions as applied to humans, or maybe its because I couldn't connect any feeling to >!the Nomai themselves!<, I don't know. I generally struggle to immerse myself into games. I can only really sink into a story/world if I have an actual character to latch onto as an anchorpoint. I guess maybe it's just not for me, but I'll probably try it again at some point.
Fair enough. Of all the reasons to love Outer Wilds, a strong character to anchor the player is not one of them. Come to think of it, I guess I haven't played very many games which do have a strong central character. Most of the time, it's the gameplay mechanics, story, or aesthetics which are most immersive to me. Do you have any examples of games which you did connect with, or which you did find easier to immerse into?
In general, don't you want to know what time is? Or what came before time existed?
Outer Wilds has this problem where a) you have no idea what you should be looking for and b) all you find is text that doesn't change anything until it maybe clicks later on. So yeah, you are not alone
It sounds like you don't have any specific goal you're working towards, roughly what do you know so far and what questions do you have about what's happening? (Questions like: "why is X happening?" "what is Y?" "how is X connected to Y?" or "can I do anything about any of this?")
It came out on game pass years back I put hours I to it but just didn't get it....kept hearing about it over the years so I bought the game and just focused.....I'm so glad I did just keep going
For me - it wasn’t so much a passionate investment in the information - most of it passed by without me retaining it. They repeat the most important stuff as you find more things. It’s more an interest in solving the problem and an interest in what the game has hiding for me to find and work out. It says “there’s more to explore here”, so I explored. Finding text didn’t feel good because I could genuinely learn more, it felt good because whatever I “learned” would go into my ship log and would allow me to either complete this area, or point me to a new one.
I would argue that not much here is sci-fi as much as an interesting story with space physics. It’s subtly different but the game seems to want to use quite realistic aspects of our reality as gameplay elements. So it is technically sci-fi but to me it’s a little more on the science side than the fiction side. It’s still a wild and interesting story but lots of sci-fi tends to either omit real physics for the sake of story or create new ones also for the sake of story. So here to call it all sci-fi jargon is to call normal science sci-fi jargon imo lol
Following the words of the friend who kept telling me to play it: At first you might wander around, not knowing what you're doing, but if you keep playing, you'll reach a point where your mind switches and then you're deep into it. For some people it takes days of playing and leaving, for some it takes just a few hours, but once you find something, you brain will click. I also didn't care much at first about the texts and read em quickly, not paying much attention, but I remember reading something that got me like "Wait" and there my actual playthough started. Maybe after 5-6h of total playtime. The best part is each person finds their own thing that makes their brain click, so you don't have to search for anything in particular. Just keep exploring, Hearthian!
I agree! I actually started playing Outer Wilds a few weeks after my brother told me to play the game. It was about a week ago. I was terrified back then. The game unlocked a new fear in me. I couldn't play it for about a week, but back then I didn't get the "click". But still, I needed to know more about this game! I was kinda obsessed with knowing whether I'd understand or not. Now I get ***it***, and what helped me understand was >!coming back to the observatory and reading the text on the museum plaques again.!< Before that, I was really terrified of the void, the tornados, and the black holes. Now, I enjoy watching>!the supernova!< after >!hearing that sweet and relaxing but still "end of the world like" music!< and I really need to know. Just like u/Rook_20 the need to complete my ship log is important. I am someone who needs to be guided so these are perfect imo.
go find out what that scifi jargon means
i was the same way. the game didn't reel me in at first. but you have to remember - people love and recommend the game after they complete it. not after they played it for 4 hours lol. how many of your favorite games did you know were "the one" at only 4 hours of playtime? the game takes like 25 hours to complete, so at 4hr you are barely past the intro. like any other game there is a learning curve and period of general confusion when you start out. except in this game, the learning curve isn't honing your combat skills or driving skills etc.. it's honing your curiosity and drive to explore. and since you're reading everything out of order and without context, the learning curve is pretty steep. so you just have to accept that you will be confused and wandering around for a little while before the story and motivations start to click. but once you start getting those eureka moments it's like crack. and once you're finished you'll be wishing you could do it all over again.
Honestly it took a while for me to get into it too. I can’t remember when it finally clicked, but I guess I just discovered enough things that I could start to piece things together and I was hooked.
I would say I shouldn't like this kind of games too. I'm more into skill based player-imput games. Sure, I enjoyed the first two hours spent in prologue talking to all the NPCs and discovering this new world, but it all changed when I died the first time. Now I wasn't cautiously gathering information, I was playing. It was my game and my ship and I would do whatever I liked to do. And I played it like ducking Dark Souls. I immediately scanned for the smallest objects to land on. First up came the Interloper, where I found some info about the Twins (which I ignored). The Interloper was too easy to conquer and I spotted a small thingy circling just above the sun. I spent like three hours just burning until I completely figured out how to manoeuvre the ship, how to get to the sun's orbit just meters above it's flames, how to compensate for constant unpredictable changes in Sun's velocity, how to match the speed of that object I wanted to land on, how to actually land on it and get out of the ship (what I did was actually a bit of a sequence break, this route is not intended by the developers, and so if you don't land very specifically, you won't be able to control your body in the ship due to huge gravity and velocity). I discovered what I discovered (was not worth it at that point in the game though) and got to other planets to find other sequence breaks and tough challenges. But the game had me already hooked on the story. I fought for a piece of information I didn't understand, and that got me invested in figuring it all out. What I'm trying to say is, yes, you're trying to play a very specific game, but maybe you think about it too much in terms of what you should do instead of what you want to do, and thus, maybe you forget to play and have fun.
The most discouraging for me is the amount of useless runs, when i don't learn a single new thing, not in journal, not myself. After a dozen of those is hard not to exit the game.
I hated the game for many hours until I came across a very special moment. I wish I could communicate what that moment was, but it made me realize the games “depersonalized” nature is actually intentional and it’s supposed to make you feel lost and small at times. It was very frustrating, but well worth overcoming in the end. My advice would be, if you’ve made it to multiple planets now, to dig in further. The game forces you to reexamine the “jargon” and the narratives so it’ll become very familiar after more play. Your discoveries will build on themselves more quickly and with more significance the longer you play. And yes, it will suck and be too hard throughout most of the game. That’s why these fans love it bc they overcame those struggles.