So I finished the base game a few days ago and it's all I can think about.

I've grown up with gaming and experienced transformative moments like exploring 3D space for the first time, experiencing unadulterated freedom, subversive twists and themes and cerebral physics based puzzles.

Games like Metal Gear Solid, Morrowind, Bioshock, Ocarina of Time and Portal are some of the games that changed everything for me and this game somehow combines everything I love about these titles into one.

Unfortunately I've had fewer and fewer experiences like this through the years as gaming has become more homogenized.

Very rarely do I play a game that subverts my expectations.

Recently the only two games I can think of that I can compare to are Control and Disco Elysium.

Perhaps I'm cynical and jaded but I feel that truly original games are a genuine rarity in today's age.

I will admit that despite feeling this way and recognizing it's originality, I am also conditioned to the traditions of modern gaming and when I first played Outer Wilds, I was intimidated by the scope of the game and lack of direction once I realized how much there was to explore without even knowing where to start.

That lack of initial motivation was also something I struggled with but despite feeling overwhelmed I kept coming back because I was curious.

To me, that's the biggest strength and central theme to Outer Wilds.

Fear and excitement of the unknown as well as the opportunities it can bring, the base motivations for all exploration and discovery.

When I first started playing, I realized this was not only an incentive but a bit of a hurdle as well and I am all too aware that this is intentional.

The first human explorers on earth made mistakes, got lost, died and didn't even know where they were going sometimes, but they persevered because their curiosity drove their determination, not just in exploring new worlds, but in the pursuit of knowledge itself.

Remind you of anyone?

When you leave Timber Hearth for the first time and everyone wishes you farewell and good luck it honestly reminded me of moving away from home for the first time.

It was scary and bittersweet, but I was excited to head out into the "Wild Blue Yonder" to make my own destiny, the Outer Wilds if you will.

When I booted the game up again after relating this theme to my own life I cried at the title screen for a quite a long time.

I realized that the Outer Wilds title itself breaks apart and drifts the longer you spend on the title screen and with as long as I cried and reflected for, the Outer Wilds title was all over the screen.

Little did I know but this would also tie into some other powerful themes I would discover later, like the impermanence of things, and how after enough time eventually everything breaks apart and drifts away.

The song that plays is both somber but comforting and to me is the epitome of bittersweet.

Based on my experiences it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of leaving home for the first time.

For a bit of context I had just started Outer Wilds after visiting back home and it had been a few years since I had been back to my hometown to see my old friends and family.

My hometown is really small but I moved to a Metropolis many years ago, basically Timber Hearth in comparison to the whole solar system.

I really identified with the song and it making me feel sad for leaving my friends and family, but also making me equally excited to explore the unknown.

When I first moved I had reservations and doubts but once I uncovered the opportunities I could explore, there was no second thoughts and no looking back and that was my exact experience with starting the game.

For the first while I was overwhelmed, confused and frustrated which didn't make me want to come back to it immediately, but the beauty of the cosmos, exploring it and the mysteries it held kept me engaged when I wasn't playing.

Once I learned about things like the Quantum Moon,The Eye of the Universe and Ash Twin Project, I was addicted.

Just like when I got to sink my teeth into the potential of my own life, there was no looking back.

During one of my aimless expeditions I was lucky enough (or so I thought) to witness the interloper fly into the sun, and after observing The Interloper collide with the sun just before it went supernova, I deduced this must be the cause.

I found the Nomai shuttle and after realizing it had the same recall/warp technology as the scout that this must have something to do with the supernova.

When I found out about Ash Twin project and the Nomai's objective to manipulate time I thought perhaps it failed and went the other direction, artificially aging the sun.

Another working theory I had based on the order I discovered things (and the fact I didn't know you could get into the Interloper until after I found the Eye of the Universe) was that the Ash Twin project itself and it's subsequent warp technology as well as finding the Eye of the Universe was actually a Red Herring.

I thought the Eye of the Universe was frozen inside the Interloper as this would explain why the Nomai lost the signal of the Eye.

In the southern observatory it also states the Eye is on a very long elliptical orbit around the sun, which I correlated with the Interloper.

I also assumed the signal they picked up on the Interloper was the Eye signal they had lost before and that they could only detect again it being that close to the source.

I thought the Probe Cannon Project was a lost cause and the Nomai were looking outward to find something that was hidden within their own solar system.

I will admit the rumor card told me there was nothing else left to explore and I had to look up what the Interloper was after I had finished the game.

I knew the signal card for the Interloper was still a question mark but once I got to the Vessel I realized you could warp to the location of the Eye of the Universe having found the coordinates from the Orbital Probe.

I thought at the time I would be able to warp inside the Interloper, destroying it and the Eye and preventing the supernova thus stopping the time loop.

I also thought that this is what would finally update the Interloper rumor card to change it from being a question mark.

I also had another idea that if I shot a Nomai shuttle from a gravity cannon at the right time, I may be able to at least collide with the Interloper to knock it off course.

There was implication that the Eye was a bad thing for the Nomai, an ill omen.

Perhaps even a malicious sentient force.

I thought the the Eye of the Universe was a lovecraftian star killing god that would lure sentient species to a solar system only to supernova the most local star.

I also thought this was the cause of the surrounding supernovas we see, not the heat death of the universe.

The 3 last important places I went to was the Quantum Moon's sixth's location, (I had been to the moon itself a few times with no luck) inside the Ash Twin project and on the Sun station.

I then realized in a hilariously ironic subversion, all of the Red Herrings that were placed for me to correlate to the events of the time loop/supernova were in fact unrelated and the actual root cause (The Ash Twin Project/Orbital Probe) was something I thought was a Red Herring haha!

I think subversion on that level is astounding, especially because it was only the order of the information I discovered that formed my theory.

Had I discovered things in a different order, I may have realized the inevitability of the situation earlier.

The Red Herrings I covered kept me guessing until the very end and is an example of masterclass engagement in storytelling and world building.

I think this also speaks to the importance of fully forming an opinion and course of action once all relevant information is available instead of jumping to conclusions and rash decisions like the Nomai Vessel did when it suddenly and unexpectedly warped to follow the signal for the Eye.

Also equally important is to understand is that drawing such sudden conclusions in the face of chaos is all too easy.

The Eye itself is essentially quantum chaos manifested in a celestial body and the dying solar system we explore is also absolute chaos.

Knowing that, it's easier to understand why the Nomai, or us the player, may jump to sudden conclusions or decisions in the face of overwhelming chaos.

I'll also add for context that I am a musician that recently left my band to pursue a new career (another scary and unknown territory to navigate) and the ending hit me that much harder because of that.

It also comes back to the heavy theme I mentioned before of impermanence and how nothing lasts forever.

All love we experience as people in our lives, all the hate and everything in between won't last forever.

This planet and it's history, all it's legends and legacies, good and bad, will be gone without a trace once our sun goes supernova or if the planet destroys itself.

On the largest scale is total entropy, the heat death of the universe, when all the legends and legacies in the entire universe die.

I've known about this before Outer Wilds and I often use these micro and macro examples to explain how nothing truly lasts forever.

I don't do this to be a downer but quite the opposite, the beauty of impermanence is epitomized by a sand mandala.

A beautiful work of art that takes a lot of time and meticulous work, only to be cleared away with no trace left behind.

That's life.

The love you have and lose, the job you love or hate, the friends and family you have, you yourself, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, ALL of it?

None of it last forever and that's okay.

I'm proud of the music I have created, how it's inspired myself and others, but I know that one day my name and accomplishments will be forgotten by time and that's okay too.

What matters is what I felt in the moment and the journey that brought me there and the friends I made along the way.

To face universal annihilation and have all my buddies across the solar system get together for one last song?

To get the band back together for one last moment of beauty before it all ends?

Fucking beautiful man.

When you try to harmonize all the instruments in the solar system with a signalscope, things are a bit out of sync but when everyone plays together at the fire, it's all harmonized perfectly.

I cried for a good while.

Then you realize at the very end that the Eye is a good thing after all, it calls out to a conscious observer to witness the birth of a new universe and you still get a happy ending in spite of the universe dying, it's fucking perfect.

I've always been fascinated by the universe, it's endless expanse and it's mystery.

Likewise with the origin of the universe, the origin point of the big bang and the hypothesized "big bounce" wherein once the universe reaches total entropy, it rapidly recedes into a dense point that turns into another big bang, another loop if you will.

This game ties ALL of it together so well.

Once I got the true ending I caved and looked up the Interloper and solved the one mystery I hadn't been able to solve myself, what happened to the Nomai?

Why does it look like they all died at the same time suddenly?

A lot more clicked with this final revelation.

Despite all their ambition and technical prowess, a simple chaotic event wiped them all out in an instant with their ambitions unfulfilled.

The Nomai figured out how to do 389 years worth of work in 22 minutes and they were killed by random, unrelated ghost matter.

We all had grand ambitions to save the universe/solar system/our friends at first but we all eventually begin to realize that we simply can't despite literally being immortal within those 22 minutes.

Even being the recipient of such grand technology we couldn't escape the chaos of the universe much like the Nomai before us.

There's a lot more I could gush about like the artstyle, fantastic visuals, physics and weather phenomena but that's all surface level stuff haha.

Before I got the true ending I jumped into the black hole at Ash Twin and had a nice self talk which was also great.

To top it off I also destroyed spacetime after that! :D

The last thing I'll say is that I had Echoes of the Eye installed before I played the base game so I thought the radio tower and Ol' Spacey were just an easter egg for the base game haha.

I located the satellite and bumped into it like the hearthian satellite orbiting around Timber Hearth and thought I'd just get another achievement for knocking it out of orbit but it just fucked up my map and I thought that was it's entire purpose.

After I got the true ending I looked it up and found out I have to follow the thing to observe some sort of phenomena that I can pilot into!

Another thing I definitely would not have figured out if I hadn't looked it up haha!

Anywho that's my tangent about my experience with Outer Wilds and how the base game impacted me, hopefully some of you can relate or gain something from my experience/interpretation.

Now onto Echoes!

Wish me luck, I hear it's scary! :D