Don’t sleep on this one. This game is a profound masterpiece and I recommend everybody play this without any story spoilers.
For those that aren’t familiar and want to know more, Outer Wilds is a first person space-based mystery and exploration game. You are given free rein to take your space ship to any planet in the solar system. There are no combat encounters and no objective markers. Your immediate goal is set by you and your own curiosity. Depending on your pace you can expect to spend about 20 hours to finish the base game, and then another 10-15 for the DLC.
The big hook that got me to play was knowing that once you have played through this game to completion for the first time, you will never again be able to experience it in the same way. I’ve been chasing that feeling by watching other people do blind playthroughs on youtube and I’ve even forced one of my friends to play it while I watched him. Sort of like Subnautica, where
spoiler
once you’ve played the entire game then the fear of the unknown that stuck with you at first is gone and the next time you play you realize how important that was to your enjoyment of the game. Outer Wilds is a game driven by your knowledge of events that already took place hundreds of thousands of years ago, you just have to put it all together. Once you’ve learned what there is to learn, you can’t undo that.
PSA: No matter how good the game sounds, is rumored or actually is, never pre-order.
In this case the game is already available on other platforms. The pre-order risk in this case is for a bad performing port, not gameplay.
