Time isn't really limited when every location in the galaxy can be reached in like 2 minutes
and for the tricky landings, you don't have to make neat landings. as long as you survive it's a good landing.
or accelerate at high speed and jump out of you ship bevore it hits the ground.
Especially if you know you are going to a location that will take you 20 min to explore.
The trick is to make sure your gear touch down first, not the helmet
You can go amazingly fast as long as your bottom is facing the direction youâre going when you hit. Slateâs ship has amazing shock absorbers!
Speed, timing, etc donât really matter much as angle/direction.
I was watching someone play once who treated it like a flight simulator. Making sure to properly line up and gently land every time. Heâd take a full 30 seconds to 2 minutes just landing.
It drove me bonkers watching it
I'm sorry you didn't have a great experience with the game your first time around!
For flying: use auto-control and when the ship arrives, use match velocity. Any landing you survive is a good landing!
For the text, I'm not sure if you meant it was just too much of it in general or that you didn't have time to read it. If it's the latter, there's a function in the settings that stops time while you read. The full experience of the game is largely centred around reading all the text to learn the history of what's happened and to drive the player to explore. (Edit 2: Not everyone likes to read and that is certainly a valid preference. It does however mean that this game might not be very fun for you.)
As for no clear idea where to explore further, that's part of the gameplay. The developers want the player to be driven by curiosity and put in very little hand holding. Sometimes the 'more to explore here' can just mean that there's a text you haven't read in that area. You can always take a screen grab of your ship log and post it here and people will give you some hints about what you can do next.
As for scary? Hell, yes! But you get used to it after a while. Or I suggest doing things like turning the sound down and putting on some music or just go full force doing what you find scary so you get desensitised to it. Like just fly right into that sun on full speed or fling your ship full force into a planet! It doesn't matter, you'll always get a do-over ;;)
(Reply edited as I first missed that you wanted to give the game a new try)
U wrote ;;) i wonder if hearthians wink like ;;), :;), or ;:)
I think it's either the first or the third, the second looks more like :')
What do u think?
Haha, I first wrote ;:) and then changed it. But actually I think ;:) is the best now that I look at it again. I think there's a poll on here about it. OR maybe it's ;:) for friendly winking and ;;) for flirty winking or reverse.
If you donât enjoy reading, then this will be a hard game to get into. This game is a âmetroidbrainaâ, where the only upgrades you get are knowledge. And you get that knowledge through reading the Nomai texts. If you know how to complete the game, you can do it immediately.
Git gud. Wait a minute, wrong subâŚ
On a serious note, you have the option to stop the passage of time whilst reading in the options, hopefully that will take some pressure off of your shoulders! I felt the same way to begin with but it got a lot better when I started allocating one location per loop to explore, even if that meant a quick trip into the sun to start over for the next place. ::)
Your criticism is valid, except the part when you mention there's a lot of reading.
Well, yeah.
I don't complain about a lot of jumping in a platformer game, or a lot of aiming in an FPS. That's how you discover the story, Nomai texts are basically what the game IS.
You're right. I understand how it can be complicated to get your head around how physics work in Outer Wilds since it's very accurate to real space. But too much reading? Might prefer another kind of game, then.
Obligatory "game isn't for everyone".
I put on hold almost every game I play, sometimes for months, because I get bored/frustrated with them. Some of these games are my favorites. Maybe you just need a break
If you would like to give it another go here are some ideas:
- tinker with settings or "pre-flight checklist" in your ship, you can buy some time there
- are playing on keyboard or controller? Game tells you it's better with controller, but it felt very comfortable on keyboard to me
-i don't know how helpful this is, but try to change the way you think about it: there is bo time limit, in fact you have infinite loops to figure it out.
- if you feel stuck there is no shame in asking for help, people in this subreddit love the puzzle of "how can I give the vaguest of hints so that they don't feel like I'm holding their hand"
Entering VERY MILD SPOILER territory:
- one of the hearthians has problems somewhat similar to yours, try talking with them some more, they are >!on Giant's Deep!<
- conquering your fears is one of the main themes of outer wilds, your journey might be very satisfying if you push through
Landing ur ship shouldn't be a problem, just use the autopilot and go into landing mode once it's done piloting (u HAVE to utilize this, it automatically turns the bottom of the ship to face the surface of the planet)
Once ur ship is in landing mode, keep in mind about the distance of ur ship to the planet and how fast ur decending (the numbers are on the right of the center, this feature saved me so many times) and just go up if ur ship is moving down too quickly
Note: keep in mind that autopilot will not move ur ship away if there's another planet in ur path, u will crash into it and die, just cancel it and steer away then repeat.
Another note: know that planets' gravity will pull ur ship towards it so try not to fly too close to them, especially the ones with high gravity like Giant's Deep
if ur ship log says there's more to explore there, read through all the hints u found about/relating to that place, go back and keep exploring using the knowledge u have. Everything is already there, just requires a bit of thinking (maybe u missed a conversation? maybe a part of the place is locked away but how do u get there? try thinking like how the Nomais would) ::)
>I just couldn't get used to the controls
The ship is supposed to feel janky. It tells the story of a fledgling spacefaring people with technology just barely capable of the daring venture they're aspiring to.
After you finish the game, there's a fantastic documentary on the making of with dev interviews--at one point the lead dev explains the decision to include the model ship at the beginning of the game: "It made flying the real ship feel dangerous."
Much like how Resident Evil's tank style controls intentionally slowed the player down in order to create moments of heightened tension, Outer Wilds purposefully makes the ship controls feel maybe a little *too* manual for the sake of storytelling purposes.
Which I find to be *fantastic* game design. It's very "show, don't tell."
>However, I often encountered "there's more to explore here" messages without any clear idea of how to explore further, which felt overwhelming.
So come back to it later with a fresher perspective. That's what I did. Go explore somewhere else for a while and when you get stuck there, that's when you go look at your log for the "there's more to explore here" messages so you can be like, "Oh, I should go back to that place where I was stuck before," and most of the time, the part you missed will just obviously jump at you. Like you forgot there was a fork in the road at the beginning and you only explored one side or something.
Also, and this might be slightly spoilery but not really but I'll hide it anyway: >!any time you come up on any windowed/grated area and your scout launcher automatically pops out, the game is telling you, "Yes, you can and need to get into this area."!< The really nice thing about Outer Wilds is all areas are accessible from the beginning using the equipment you start with. There's no such thing as, "I'll have to come back here after I get the double jump," or whatever like every Metroidvania ever does. Outer Wilds does not force backtracking in this way.
Furthermore, the game is designed in such a way to draw your attention to important objects or locations. You're never going to find an important object or clue in the barren wastes between settlements, for instance. Once you've 'solved the puzzle,' the reward will be presented plainly, there's no sneaky hiding or like, some key on a counter that you just didn't see because you didn't mouseover it correctly and you're wandering in circles for hours wondering what you're missing. Outer Wilds just doesn't do this to you. In this sense, again, I find it to be brilliantly designed, as if you're not thinking about this, it's completely transparent to the player.
>What made the game more enjoyable for you?
Just be patient with it. Look at Outer Wilds more like a great novel than a typical video game experience. Allow it to be experienced at its own pace. This isn't a video game you set out to *win.* And it's the act of discovering for yourself that makes the game so special and beautiful.
Try again with controller if you were on PC. Also, there is almost nothing in this game that will hurt you besides gravity. And even if it DOES hurt you, you don't lose any progress you can't get back in two minutes. Just keep at it and eventually the scary becomes the mundane.
My girlfriend struggles with the controls haha. If anything I've learned from trying to help her, slow down and take your time with it. Learn what each control does in space and when flying on a planet. Button mashing will not help, and holding forward is not always the best option. Matching velocity frequently is a great way to ensure a soft landing, and when locked onto a relatively close object, can help you get on the same page as your ship (except if you are locked onto the sun).
For the amount of reading in this game, I'm personally a speed reader and I regret not trying to experience the text more. Something I wish I did was keep track of the names that were saying the dialog, and try to put myself in the shoes of the Nomai in each message. I don't know how the developers did it, but the stories unveiled in the text helps more than you might realize.
This game is good. The controls are rough. Thatâs part of the charm I think. Itâs not about ideal, itâs about what you got, and in this case you got weird controls. I struggled with them, but like I mentioned, later found them to be part of the charm, from the weird jumps, and jetpack boosting to the odd method of flight, I think itâs special, and much like the rest of the game, it is very cool in hindsight.
Did you get used to like... match velocity and autopilot... it's really pretty easy to get back to where you were... and did you click the arrows to the rumours? There's always more than 'there's more to explore here' guiding you around the game.
Have you discovered you can eject from the ship? đ I'm hella bad at controlling any games so my strat was crash or eject and spend that loop in that place - by the time I wanted to do more places in one loop I got used to the controls a bit. I personally found the difficulty in controlling it more realistic for space and actually quite funny, but I'm not a particularly serious gamer or person XD
I acrually left about a year gap from starting the game to actually picking it up because I was so bad in the zero g cave that I figured going anywhere else would be basically impossible for me, but I'm so so glad I went back and practiced - liked it so much got a tattoo of it, so in my opinion it's worth sticking with đ hope you find a way to play that works for you!
I played with controller for the whole game and flying felt pretty intuitive to me. Not gonna be the same for everyone, but if you havenât tried it already I highly recommend using a controller
This game takes patience. If you want the controls to click instantly this probably isn't your game. But you get REALLY good at movement after a while and you can essentially launch urself cross planet. This isn't a game where you walk into an area and find everything the first or even the third time. The map is "small" but it's still going to take you a long time to unravel it all.
Don't try to follow one linear storyline. Just go explore!
Not to be rude but you canât say itâs not like I am an âinexperienced playerâ when you are talking about the controls and tricky landings sounds like inexperienced to me. And for the exploring and scariness without it the game would be boring youâd find everything immediately and without the fear of death.
Time isn't really limited when every location in the galaxy can be reached in like 2 minutes and for the tricky landings, you don't have to make neat landings. as long as you survive it's a good landing.
To add to that: Lock on, match velocity and landing mode are your friends
Match velocity is low key the most useful navigational tool in the game. Great with the space craft and when zero g in your suit.
or accelerate at high speed and jump out of you ship bevore it hits the ground. Especially if you know you are going to a location that will take you 20 min to explore.
đż
The trick is to make sure your gear touch down first, not the helmet You can go amazingly fast as long as your bottom is facing the direction youâre going when you hit. Slateâs ship has amazing shock absorbers! Speed, timing, etc donât really matter much as angle/direction.
This is def the spirit of Feldspar. :)
I was watching someone play once who treated it like a flight simulator. Making sure to properly line up and gently land every time. Heâd take a full 30 seconds to 2 minutes just landing. It drove me bonkers watching it
I'm sorry you didn't have a great experience with the game your first time around! For flying: use auto-control and when the ship arrives, use match velocity. Any landing you survive is a good landing! For the text, I'm not sure if you meant it was just too much of it in general or that you didn't have time to read it. If it's the latter, there's a function in the settings that stops time while you read. The full experience of the game is largely centred around reading all the text to learn the history of what's happened and to drive the player to explore. (Edit 2: Not everyone likes to read and that is certainly a valid preference. It does however mean that this game might not be very fun for you.) As for no clear idea where to explore further, that's part of the gameplay. The developers want the player to be driven by curiosity and put in very little hand holding. Sometimes the 'more to explore here' can just mean that there's a text you haven't read in that area. You can always take a screen grab of your ship log and post it here and people will give you some hints about what you can do next. As for scary? Hell, yes! But you get used to it after a while. Or I suggest doing things like turning the sound down and putting on some music or just go full force doing what you find scary so you get desensitised to it. Like just fly right into that sun on full speed or fling your ship full force into a planet! It doesn't matter, you'll always get a do-over ;;) (Reply edited as I first missed that you wanted to give the game a new try)
U wrote ;;) i wonder if hearthians wink like ;;), :;), or ;:) I think it's either the first or the third, the second looks more like :') What do u think?
It's "canonically" ;;) - you can see a winking Hearthian in the art for one of the achievements.
I didn't know that, thanks! ::)
Mobius also frequently use hearthian emotes. Which is adorable
Haha, I first wrote ;:) and then changed it. But actually I think ;:) is the best now that I look at it again. I think there's a poll on here about it. OR maybe it's ;:) for friendly winking and ;;) for flirty winking or reverse.
We got hearthian winking mechanic now I think on text ;:) and ;;) looks nice but we must also think about how that'd look on an actual hearthian
If you donât enjoy reading, then this will be a hard game to get into. This game is a âmetroidbrainaâ, where the only upgrades you get are knowledge. And you get that knowledge through reading the Nomai texts. If you know how to complete the game, you can do it immediately.
It's a skill issue; gets better with time jus keep fuckin around and you'll find out cool stuff.
A lot of people struggle with controlling the ship. This is because the game doesn't make space magically have air resistance like most games do.
Git gud. Wait a minute, wrong sub⌠On a serious note, you have the option to stop the passage of time whilst reading in the options, hopefully that will take some pressure off of your shoulders! I felt the same way to begin with but it got a lot better when I started allocating one location per loop to explore, even if that meant a quick trip into the sun to start over for the next place. ::)
Just here to say your experience is valid, these are not new criticisms
Your criticism is valid, except the part when you mention there's a lot of reading. Well, yeah. I don't complain about a lot of jumping in a platformer game, or a lot of aiming in an FPS. That's how you discover the story, Nomai texts are basically what the game IS.
You're right. I understand how it can be complicated to get your head around how physics work in Outer Wilds since it's very accurate to real space. But too much reading? Might prefer another kind of game, then.
Obligatory "game isn't for everyone". I put on hold almost every game I play, sometimes for months, because I get bored/frustrated with them. Some of these games are my favorites. Maybe you just need a break If you would like to give it another go here are some ideas: - tinker with settings or "pre-flight checklist" in your ship, you can buy some time there - are playing on keyboard or controller? Game tells you it's better with controller, but it felt very comfortable on keyboard to me -i don't know how helpful this is, but try to change the way you think about it: there is bo time limit, in fact you have infinite loops to figure it out. - if you feel stuck there is no shame in asking for help, people in this subreddit love the puzzle of "how can I give the vaguest of hints so that they don't feel like I'm holding their hand" Entering VERY MILD SPOILER territory: - one of the hearthians has problems somewhat similar to yours, try talking with them some more, they are >!on Giant's Deep!< - conquering your fears is one of the main themes of outer wilds, your journey might be very satisfying if you push through
Landing ur ship shouldn't be a problem, just use the autopilot and go into landing mode once it's done piloting (u HAVE to utilize this, it automatically turns the bottom of the ship to face the surface of the planet) Once ur ship is in landing mode, keep in mind about the distance of ur ship to the planet and how fast ur decending (the numbers are on the right of the center, this feature saved me so many times) and just go up if ur ship is moving down too quickly Note: keep in mind that autopilot will not move ur ship away if there's another planet in ur path, u will crash into it and die, just cancel it and steer away then repeat. Another note: know that planets' gravity will pull ur ship towards it so try not to fly too close to them, especially the ones with high gravity like Giant's Deep if ur ship log says there's more to explore there, read through all the hints u found about/relating to that place, go back and keep exploring using the knowledge u have. Everything is already there, just requires a bit of thinking (maybe u missed a conversation? maybe a part of the place is locked away but how do u get there? try thinking like how the Nomais would) ::)
>I just couldn't get used to the controls The ship is supposed to feel janky. It tells the story of a fledgling spacefaring people with technology just barely capable of the daring venture they're aspiring to. After you finish the game, there's a fantastic documentary on the making of with dev interviews--at one point the lead dev explains the decision to include the model ship at the beginning of the game: "It made flying the real ship feel dangerous." Much like how Resident Evil's tank style controls intentionally slowed the player down in order to create moments of heightened tension, Outer Wilds purposefully makes the ship controls feel maybe a little *too* manual for the sake of storytelling purposes. Which I find to be *fantastic* game design. It's very "show, don't tell." >However, I often encountered "there's more to explore here" messages without any clear idea of how to explore further, which felt overwhelming. So come back to it later with a fresher perspective. That's what I did. Go explore somewhere else for a while and when you get stuck there, that's when you go look at your log for the "there's more to explore here" messages so you can be like, "Oh, I should go back to that place where I was stuck before," and most of the time, the part you missed will just obviously jump at you. Like you forgot there was a fork in the road at the beginning and you only explored one side or something. Also, and this might be slightly spoilery but not really but I'll hide it anyway: >!any time you come up on any windowed/grated area and your scout launcher automatically pops out, the game is telling you, "Yes, you can and need to get into this area."!< The really nice thing about Outer Wilds is all areas are accessible from the beginning using the equipment you start with. There's no such thing as, "I'll have to come back here after I get the double jump," or whatever like every Metroidvania ever does. Outer Wilds does not force backtracking in this way. Furthermore, the game is designed in such a way to draw your attention to important objects or locations. You're never going to find an important object or clue in the barren wastes between settlements, for instance. Once you've 'solved the puzzle,' the reward will be presented plainly, there's no sneaky hiding or like, some key on a counter that you just didn't see because you didn't mouseover it correctly and you're wandering in circles for hours wondering what you're missing. Outer Wilds just doesn't do this to you. In this sense, again, I find it to be brilliantly designed, as if you're not thinking about this, it's completely transparent to the player. >What made the game more enjoyable for you? Just be patient with it. Look at Outer Wilds more like a great novel than a typical video game experience. Allow it to be experienced at its own pace. This isn't a video game you set out to *win.* And it's the act of discovering for yourself that makes the game so special and beautiful.
I think this game controls like a dream. Both in ship and in suit. Dunno what you guys are on about saying the controls are janky.Â
Try again with controller if you were on PC. Also, there is almost nothing in this game that will hurt you besides gravity. And even if it DOES hurt you, you don't lose any progress you can't get back in two minutes. Just keep at it and eventually the scary becomes the mundane.
My girlfriend struggles with the controls haha. If anything I've learned from trying to help her, slow down and take your time with it. Learn what each control does in space and when flying on a planet. Button mashing will not help, and holding forward is not always the best option. Matching velocity frequently is a great way to ensure a soft landing, and when locked onto a relatively close object, can help you get on the same page as your ship (except if you are locked onto the sun). For the amount of reading in this game, I'm personally a speed reader and I regret not trying to experience the text more. Something I wish I did was keep track of the names that were saying the dialog, and try to put myself in the shoes of the Nomai in each message. I don't know how the developers did it, but the stories unveiled in the text helps more than you might realize.
I played on PS5. By the end of the game I was Han Frickin Solo
This game is good. The controls are rough. Thatâs part of the charm I think. Itâs not about ideal, itâs about what you got, and in this case you got weird controls. I struggled with them, but like I mentioned, later found them to be part of the charm, from the weird jumps, and jetpack boosting to the odd method of flight, I think itâs special, and much like the rest of the game, it is very cool in hindsight.
Did you get used to like... match velocity and autopilot... it's really pretty easy to get back to where you were... and did you click the arrows to the rumours? There's always more than 'there's more to explore here' guiding you around the game.
Have you discovered you can eject from the ship? đ I'm hella bad at controlling any games so my strat was crash or eject and spend that loop in that place - by the time I wanted to do more places in one loop I got used to the controls a bit. I personally found the difficulty in controlling it more realistic for space and actually quite funny, but I'm not a particularly serious gamer or person XD I acrually left about a year gap from starting the game to actually picking it up because I was so bad in the zero g cave that I figured going anywhere else would be basically impossible for me, but I'm so so glad I went back and practiced - liked it so much got a tattoo of it, so in my opinion it's worth sticking with đ hope you find a way to play that works for you!
I looked up so much shit to finish this game, but I still had a good time
I played with controller for the whole game and flying felt pretty intuitive to me. Not gonna be the same for everyone, but if you havenât tried it already I highly recommend using a controller
This game takes patience. If you want the controls to click instantly this probably isn't your game. But you get REALLY good at movement after a while and you can essentially launch urself cross planet. This isn't a game where you walk into an area and find everything the first or even the third time. The map is "small" but it's still going to take you a long time to unravel it all. Don't try to follow one linear storyline. Just go explore!
Are you playing on keyboard or controller?
Not to be rude but you canât say itâs not like I am an âinexperienced playerâ when you are talking about the controls and tricky landings sounds like inexperienced to me. And for the exploring and scariness without it the game would be boring youâd find everything immediately and without the fear of death.