Outer Wilds Part 2: Being There (Spoilers)

[Music] before we get started just to be clear this is the spoiler tastic video for outer wilds which is a game about discovering what's in the game it's a little hard to describe but if it interests you and you don't want to be spoiled check out the first video first this video is the full-on spoilery video ok ok so I don't normally do story recaps but I think a refresher here is necessary both because the narrative is told in a largely nonlinear fashion in game and also because it's been oh god 2 months since last video what am I doing with my load you play is a small four-eyed alien from the planet of timber hearth who's about to set off on their first space voyage when you go to get the launch codes for your ship a statue of an ancient alien race called the know my opens up its eyes put you in sort of a blue trance and leaves you kind of weirded out after that awkward starts your morning you blast off and explore the cosmos then twenty two minutes into your first adventure you encounter problems when the Sun blows up but you don't die you just wake up that morning again ready to fly your first journey again you find yourself trapped in some sort of time loop exploring the solar system in 22 minute increments in hopes of finding a way out that way out begins to emerge as over the course of your journey you discover that the know my requesting for the source of a signal that seemed to originate from before the universe itself they called the source of this signal the eye of the universe and treated it basically with religious deference millennia ago while following that signal a large no my ship crash-landed into your solar system when it hit dark bramble and in the aftermath escape pods full of know my established settlements on brittle Hollow and ember twin in time they learned how to manipulate their own mini black holes and white holes to teleport around but discovered a quirk things exited the white holes a microsecond or two before they entered the black holes and it turned out you could make that weird time-travel a causal break even bigger but it takes exponentially increasing amounts of energy to do so but this gives them a wacky idea to find the eye of the universe create a device that can fire a probe out in a random direction at really high velocities and listen for the eye of the universe then send the results of your probe back in time and if that vector didn't work fire the probe off again in a different direction this time you could just repeat that process until you found the eye of the universe or until the information from the future tells you something went wrong and you should stop the problem was that giving the probe enough time to travel towards the source before rewinding time would require the amount of energy of star releases when going supernova and despite it being a very bad idea the gnome I did try to induce the local star your star to go Nova in order to power their time loop perpetually with the idea being that once they found the eye they could just not trigger the explosion resulting in a sort of no harm no foul approach to blowing up a Sun however their attempt to make the Sun go Nova failed and their plan was fruitless until now anyways we're yawns later in a universe where the last few stars are dying out the hearth Ian's just happen to now be living in a solar system whose Sun is about to go Nova and trigger the nomas recursive loop whether they wanted to or not a new nameless her--they and astronaut just happened to bind with one of their memory rewind statues about 22 minutes before the Sun explodes and kicks the whole Rube Goldberg machine into gear so that's our backstory and what's interesting to me about this spoiler piece as I write it is that it isn't so much here to let me talk about a big plot twist or major character death waiting to be revealed there aren't any themes or ideas that are unmasked through playing it that weren't present in my previous video outer wilds is a game that more or less does what it says on the tin once you figure out what that tin is and what it's aiming for the game is about learning about exploration about asking questions and through observation arriving at an answer but by having a spoilery video we're now able to get into the details of how those themes and ideas we've already touched on in the non-spoiler section are implemented for example when I say outer wilds is about learning I mean it it's not about the act of learning or knowledge in some abstract form I mean it is but it's also more specific than that like most games are abstractly about learning you could argue that Dark Souls is a game about learning because it's about knowing enemy patterns attack animations and the layouts of levels and where things spawn but really it's about making the terrifying understood and making the seemingly insurmountable and achievable goal the learning is just the process to achieve those ends in contrast outer wilds is about learning as an endeavor in its own right about how exploring the world around us gives us context gives us understanding and fundamentally empowers us it's a game about how knowledge builds on top of other knowledge a game about the interconnectedness of academic disciplines and a game about how knowledge comes to be how it's used and how important it is to the human condition it's a game that wants you to be curious about the universe and your place in it but more than that it's a game that begs you to try and sate that curiosity about the universe by going out and observing the world around you and it does all of this within the frame of space exploration I mean that's the game's primary loop right you hop in your little homemade spaceship and blast off to explore the unknown at first just to see what's out there and later to solve the mysteries and riddles at the heart of the universe space exploration isn't a metaphor for growth or a journey of personal enlightenment the space exploration is about space exploration it really is the game's core focus like I said it kind of does what it said on the tin now it's abstracted away a bit the game's less interested in the mechanics and engineering of spaceflight and more interested in the sense of wonder and adventure and learning that may inspire people to care about space to begin with but it's all in service of reminding you why you should care about real space travel not because it's a fun engineering problem although it can be that too but because there are both mysteries and answers terrors and wonders a black crushing nihilism and a sense of true purpose out there space exploration is the manifestation of the game's interest in learning in asking questions and then answering them by finding out the answer for yourself space exploration has also carried forward in the game's various tools outside of your spaceship for one there's a radio antenna that lets you listen to the stars and find intelligent life be it artheon campsites or no my laboratories this is obviously not entirely dissimilar from the real-life study laboratories listening the radio waves from the stars in the hopes of discovering intelligent life and while that's cool and ties loosely in actual space work it's not nearly as useful or is loaded with space metaphor as the probe at any point while outside of the ship the player can launch a little probe it'll travel in accordance with whatever gravitational fields it happens to pass through and the player can use a probe mounted camera to look around wherever it happens to end up those pictures allow you to document what's there in order to lock in the state of quantum objects which we'll get back to in a second but in a more general sense lets you see beyond where your own eyes can safely or reasonably access it also lets you perform science experiments the game points this out by launching probes and seeing where they go and that's really useful in a game that has weird gravity or areas of space that don't behave as you'd expect and it also serves as a light source that's far more powerful than your flashlight turning underground cities and creepy caverns into spaces that are far easier to explore launching probes literally illuminates your path forward all of this frames the probe is a way of gathering data before you make a potentially dangerous move a way of going there without actually going there much like a real space probe the next best thing to being there for real is being there virtually and collecting the data you can with the tools you have finally there's the translator it's the one tool that isn't tied directly to spacefaring experiments or physics but it serves as a means of uncovering the no Minds history and culture and contextualizing your discoveries if the other two tools light your way this tool gives your discoveries meaning and it's notable that that context comes from a discipline that's distinct from pure math physics and exploration this makes the game's emphasis and research more multidisciplinary with history and sociology helping your understanding of the universe as much as the discovery of physical phenomena so your entire vocabulary in this game is oriented around space travel and research it's clear that outer Wilde's cares a lot about space travel but it sells space travel not in a literal sense but in an abstract sense a toybox solar system that has impossible wonders rather than a dry adventure around a series of lifeless rocks if Kerbal space program is a game that captures the math and physics and systems of spaceflight out wilds is the game that captures its spirit and soul it is a game that is deeply profoundly passionate about space exploration and in outer wild space doesn't represent a place to colonize or a place to extract value from the hearth Ian's treat spacefaring as a hiking trip a journey up out into the big unknown just to see what's out there commune with nature and get back to the basics they literally set up camp sites where you can roast marshmallows under the stars the know my meanwhile are a bit more complicated and while they do end up colonizing your solar system it's largely because they ended up stranded there after crashing into dark bramble as their name implies they're largely nomadic by nature and much prefer to scour the cosmos looking for new knowledge and scientific phenomena they also take great pains to avoid disturbing the local ecosystem with their research as evidenced by their concerns about mining on timber earth where the early proto hearth Ian's were swimming around with their four eyes in the water the point is at the outer wilds space is not a resource or a thing to war over or an untouched frontier and our spacefarers aren't colonists space marines or a mega corporation they're a technologically advanced pseudo utopian race looking for their god-like entity explicitly for the knowledge it could provide and a bunch of hippy natural ists roasting marshmallows and playing banjos who travel through space the way we hike up mountains the gnome I care only about the destination the knowledge and not so much about where they are at any given moment the hearth Ian's only care about the journey seeing what they can see and doing what there is to do because it's there and it's only you a player of her--they and origin but preserved with no mind technology that can bridge that gap and solve the game by merging a wanderer spirit for adventure and exploration with a scientists quest for enlightenment and critical thinking and it's that confluence gaining knowledge by going out there and observing that's the soul of the game it's not enough to read it in a book the knowledge contained in the game's Museum in the opening wasn't enough you need to go and witness it you need to be there this is codified in the game's quantum mechanics mechanics which is a great plan words that I'm sure the developers had fun with throughout the game you'll note that there are rocks and trees and other things that move when you aren't looking at them sort of like creepy Watson [Music] the idea is that these rocks exists in a fluctuating quantum state and that observing the rock collapses it down from a series of probable locations to a single actual location think of it as like a ludic approximation of Schrodinger's cat except instead of a wave or a particle you're collapsing a few potential object locations down into one and this isn't entirely made up either obviously rocks and trees and whatnot aren't teleporting around our world but the scientific phenomena of the composition of photons being dependent upon how they're observed is a real thing but we're in reality a photon maybe both a wave and a particle until you decide how you want to detect it outer wilds reframes the idea to be less about the states of matter and more about the act of observation creating reality itself the effect is so powerful that turning your flashlight on and off becomes a means of shifting the state of the game world it's not just your presence but your conscious observation that grounds those objects and this connotation between possibility and observed reality by a conscious being is made even more explicit when you discover the second rule that any sentient entity on one of these objects can actually travel with it the act of a conscious being observing a reality is what makes it real in outer wilds if the game has a firm philosophical stance it's that a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it doesn't just not make a sound it arguably doesn't exist until someone stumbles upon it the unwitnessed and by extension the unexplored arguably doesn't exist which brings us to the game's ending as you solve the game's big core mysteries they each set up a component of the final act in the heart of giants deep you find that one of the many many probes it was sent out actually managed to find the eye of the universe and gives you a series of coordinates to reach it in the deepest level of dark bramble you find the crash no my ship still ostensibly capable of space flight but in need of a functional warp core to power it and in the science lab at the center of ash twin you discover the time memory black hole you later what sends your memories back in time every 22 minutes and powering it is a removable warp core once you have all three pieces of the puzzle you can run to ash twin and remove the core take it to the ship in dark bramble program a flight path learned from giant steep and blast off to meet an entity older than the universe itself the core of all the quantum uncertainty in the galaxy and instead of running into God or some sort of cosmic force you instead find a trip into the psyche of your her--they and avatar an abstract and metaphorical journey of the mind in a game that's been all about literal space outer wilds up until this point has very little in the way of subtext it's all pretty literal it's a game about how cool space travel is and how cool science is a game about getting you to ask questions and find answers a game whose mechanics were largely the point the game itself was trying to make and here at the end the game shifts focus abruptly from the external to the internal and from the literal to the largely metaphorical after exploring the eye of the universe's surface that looks reminiscent of its quantum moon you find yourself falling upwards into a vortex that throws you through a weird abstract geometric space before arriving at the museum connected to the observatory on timber earth but instead of the real observatory this one is dark and lifeless instead of a monument to exploration and knowledge it stands as a memorial outer wilds makes it clear at various points as you play that you are in the early stages of the heat death of the universe the hearth Ian's unlucky and extremely late arrivals to sentience and the cosmic stage and by breaking the cycle of the rube goldberg time loop machine by removing the warp core your solar system Sun did explode and this time there's no going back we zoom out and watch not just your solar system but your whole galaxy die then we fly forward and into a wooded area here the explorable universe as hiking metaphor thing is reinforced as forested Woodlands hosts countless galaxies that are each snuffed out [Music] the universe you came from is dying or is already dead or look time doesn't matter much here it's before and after your universe outside of time as we know it soon all is black and there's nothing left no woodlands no universe nothing exists then you pick up a signal which turns out to be you and you realize you exist unlike everything else in the universe you come from you haven't turned to atomic dust and you're sitting inside of a swirling vortex of infinite possibilities and all it takes is an observer to collapse them into a real thing so a campfire appears then esker or at least a facility of them sitting in their rocking chair they suggest you go investigate some nearby music and when you find in return with Rybak's banjo they're there playing at the campfire then you slowly pull the rest of the her--they and astronauts together by collecting their instruments from around the campfire each with their own small puzzle rooted in outer wilds mechanics that you've spent this whole game learning and it's notable I think that you're collecting not just various hearth Ian's but the astronauts in particular fellow explorers into the unknown and solan um if you met her who was on a similar journey and as you gather each astronaut each instrument comes together to form a cohesive whole the song that will write a whole new universe [Music] their harmony could be read a lot of ways here and I think that's part of what makes this ending so powerful is it the interdisciplinary nature of science that the game advocates for coming together to make all of this possible with each instrument its own field of study is it an encapsulation of the worlds of rules and physics each necessary in their own way leading to the creation of another universe or is it just the need here at the end to not just observe the universe but to have someone to share it with a campfire with marshmallows and songs and friends and a curious heart to see whatever's out there and whatever it is that comes next together whatever you want to read into it once you have everyone together you turn collectively and gaze at the creation of a new universe [Music] [Music] [Music] and creation once again exists because there was someone there to witness it being created and again it's the act of looking at something of seeing it of witnessing it and being there to witness it that makes it manifest they're not just hypothetical this does happen at the eye of the universe after all given its interest in space travel as well as its emphasis on sentient perception of phenomena outer wilds invokes a sort of spiritualist take on Carl Sagan's famous quote of we are the way for the universe to know itself that they allow existence itself to continue implies the quest for knowledge is almost a moral imperative outer wilds makes a passionate plea for space exploration by making it clear there's value in actually having people go out to these places and see these things that theorizing and guesswork are great but don't replace firsthand observation but while it's most specifically about space travel one gets the sense that at once an explorers philosophy to be embraced in all aspects of a player's life to ask questions and then find out about the unknown and not just cosmic Newtonian physics questions but every sort of question about what kind of trees are on the other side of this trail or how computers work or whether that girl in class likes you or whether there's a better job out there just waiting feed your curiosity and watch it grow and when you get answers ask more questions never stop learning never stop exploring never stop pushing yourself outer wilds contends that unasked questions may have a lot of possible ephemeral answers and that unknown potential can be seductive but an actual answer to an asked question is a powerful and more importantly real thing answers are in some sense tangible so keep asking questions and keep looking for answers I'll see you out there [Music] you so I wanted to include this somewhere because I learned it in my research for the game but it never really came up in the video so I'm just tacking it on here at the end so you know the high energy lab on ember twin with the black holes that you can toy around with by shooting a probe into them well the game developer has ran into a problem the controls to turn it off are right there where you're shooting the probe which means in theory you could ramp up the time displacement so that the probe exits before it enters and then shut it off so what happens if the players manage to turn off the black holes while there are still two probes in the game world [Music] you I don't know if it's my favorite secret ending ever but it's up there

Channel: Errant Signal

Views: 79,441

Rating: 4.9672804 out of 5

Keywords: errant signal, outer wilds, the outer wilds

Id: wg8IrnqKLMo

Length: 21min 4sec (1264 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 06 2019