Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. In the game, the player-character finds themselves on a planet with only 22 minutes before the local sun goes supernova and kills them. The player continually repeats this 22-minute cycle by learning details that can help alter the outcome on later playthroughs. It received critical acclaim and won several awards, including game of the year.

In Outer Wilds, the player-character is an astronaut who starts out camping on a planet near their space ship. Within 22 minutes of game time, the local sun will go supernova, ending the game, though the game will restart at the same point.[1] Thus, the player is encouraged to explore the local solar system (referred to somewhat inaccurately as a "quirky and condensed galaxy") to learn how the astronaut got there, why the sun will go nova, the secrets of the Nomai, the alien race that had visited this system, looking for the Eye of the Universe, and other information and secrets that can be used on the subsequent replays of the game to explore further.[2] For example, in order to use the ship, the player must guide the astronaut to a local observatory, where the launch codes are located. Once the player has done this once in one playthrough, that information will not change in subsequent ones, so on the next playthrough, the player can bypass the observatory and immediately launch the ship with the known codes.[3] Though the galaxy repeats the same 22 minutes each time the player starts the game, the galaxy will change over the course of that period, making some parts of planets accessible only at certain times;[4] one example is a pair of planets orbiting so close to each other that sand from one planet is funnelled over to cover the other planet, making its surface inaccessible later in the 22-minute period.[3]

The player-character has health and oxygen meters, which are replenished when the character returns to the ship. If the character's health or oxygen should run out, they will die, but respawn back on the home planet.[5][6]

Plot

The Player takes the role of an alien space explorer, preparing for their first solo flight. After being involuntarily paired with a Nomai statue on their home planet, the Player discovers they are trapped in a 22-minute time loop, with every loop resetting on the Player's death or the local sun exploding in a supernova. This loop has been compared to the time loop in Groundhog Day.[2] In order to solve this mystery, the Player begins exploring the solar system, uncovering artifacts and ruins left behind by the Nomai, an ancient and mysterious race that had once colonized the system.

The Player eventually learns that the Nomai were obsessed with finding the "Eye of the Universe," a massive quantum anomaly that is supposedly older than the universe itself. Curious to find out what was held within the Eye, but having lost its signal, the Nomai built an orbital cannon to launch probes into the outer edges of the star system to find the Eye. In addition, they developed the Ash Twin Project, which leveraged their mastery of quantum physics to send information 22 minutes into the past via statues like the one the Player was paired with so they could more accurately predict the location of the Eye. However, the Nomai themselves were never able to achieve the full potential of the Ash Twin Project since sending information into the past would require a vast amount of energy that only a supernova could produce, and they died out before they could figure out a way to artificially induce one. This explains why the Player is trapped in the 22-minute loop, since the supernova activates the Ash Twin Project, sending all of the information the Player learned back to their past self.

Armed with this knowledge, the Player is able to discover the coordinates of the Eye and repairs a derelict Nomai vessel, warping to the Eye's location. Upon entering the Eye, the Player encounters quantum versions of the various characters they had befriended in their travels, and working together, they create a Big Bang, giving rise to a new universe. The full completion ending adds a scene showing that intelligent life begins to develop 14.3 billion years after the creation of the new universe.

DevelopmentOuter Wilds began as Alex Beachum's USC Interactive Media & Games Division master's thesis and grew into a full-production commercial release. He started the project in late 2012 for his yearlong thesis and "Advanced Game Project" assignment. Beachum had previously made a three-dimensional platformer out of Lego bricks as a kid, and was uninterested in a career in games until applying to the Interactive Media program.[5]

Beachum's original ideas were to recreate the Apollo 13 and 2001: A Space Odyssey "spirit of space exploration" in an uncontrollable environment, and to make an objective-less open world game where exploration would satiate the player's questions without feeling "aimless."[5] Beachum took cues from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker's non-player characters that would tell tales of distant lands as to entice the player to explore those areas for themselves.[5] The game heavily employs a camping motif, reflecting Beachum's personal interest in backpacking while also emphasizing that the player-character is far from his home and alone in this galaxy.[5] While journalists have compared Outer Wilds' time loop mechanics to that of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Beachum notes that these mechanics are used in Outer Wilds primarily "to allow the creation of large-scale dynamic systems" as opposed to "play[ing] around with causality" as in Majora's Mask.[5][6]

The original development team members were University of Southern California, Laguna College of Art and Design, and Atlantic University College students.[5] Beachum's team started by working with "paper prototypes" and a "tabletop role-playing session" to brainstorm a narrative. The team built the game in the Unity3D game engine. They later wrote the game as a text adventure in Processing. After Beachum's graduation, the project hired members full-time to work towards a commercial release, with Beachum as creative director.[5]

As of March 2015, the game was in alpha release and available for free download from the developer's site.[7] The development team were writing a central conceit into the game.[6]

Actor Masi Oka, who has had previous experience as a programmer and started the studio Mobius Digital to develop mobile games, had seen the demo of Outer Wilds during a demo day for the USC Interactive Media & Games groups. Oka saw the opportunity to expand his team and hired the entire team behind the game into his studio to help bring the title to development.[8] The game became the first title to be supported on the new video game-centric crowdfunding site, Fig, launched in August 2015.[8]

In March 2018, Mobius announced it had received funding support from publisher Annapurna Interactive, which bought out the investment and rights from Fig, and that the game was planned for release in 2018.[9][10] Mobius later announced plans in June 2018 to release the game at launch for the Xbox One alongside the computer platforms.[11] In December 2018, it was announced that the game's release would be delayed until 2019.[12]

In May 2019, Mobius announced that the game's release for Windows users will be a timed-exclusive on the Epic Games Store, in exchanged for additional financial support. As it was originally announced that Fig backers would have received redemption keys on Steam for the game, some backers complained about the change; Linux users noted that as the Epic Games Store does not have a Linux-compatible front end, the change left them without any option.[13]

Outer Wilds was released on Xbox One on 29 May 2019, with a Windows version being released the following day.[14][15] A PlayStation 4 version was released on 15 October 2019, with a Steam version set to be released on 18 June 2020.[16][15][17]