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I have a Patreon. If you like what I do, please consider offering your support.  Outer Wilds is an exploration game set in a fictional galaxy, that was released in May 2019. You find yourself caught up in a mystery, and you explore other planets for clues as to what's going on and maybe what you can do about it. It's all fairly vague, and up to you to find the pieces of the puzzle, and then figure out how to put them all together. And it stresses me out. And I am constantly re-evaluating my self-worth. This game was recommended to me by my friend P0LARMic, who also recommended that I go into the game knowing as little about it as possible. Which is what I have done. Aside from knowing the name and knowing it might have something to do with space, I'm going into this with no other knowledge whatsoever. An expansion to the game was released in late 2021, titled Echoes of the Eye. This DLC is pretty much more Outer Wilds, with all the mystery and vague clues and exploration and whatnot, and that's a good thing. The game itself has warned me that the DLC might be scary, so I will now warn you that the DLC might be scary.                           End of Base Game Bonus Videos  - Doing Stuff with P0LARMic - Finishing up Achievements               End of DLC Bonus Videos  - Doing Stuff with P0LARMic (Again) - Finishing up Achievements (Again)Jamesman fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 11, 2022 00:49
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13YlEPwOfmk Ask and ye shall receive. Hey so I, uh, really like this game. And I can't stop myself from attempting to recapture the joy of playing it for the first time again by watching other people play it. So enjoy!
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Apr 11, 2022 05:41
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I'm glad somebody knew what I was talking about. Also you should all be warned I will only be referring to them as "Watson rocks" for the entirety of this playthrough.
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Apr 11, 2022 19:36
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 Tonight, my friend Michael and I are going to be streaming We Were Here. You may or may not be familiar with my thread for the series. The plan is that we will be replaying the first three games, but switching roles from when we recorded the LPs for them. This will all be leading up to the release of the 4th game in the series. Please come. It will be starting somewhere around 8 or 9pm EST. I will be posting in the streaming thread and on Twitter when we go live. https://www.twitch.tv/p0larmic https://www.twitch.tv/jamesplaysgamesttv
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Apr 15, 2022 19:05
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GuavaMoment posted:Hey so I, uh, really like this game. And I can't stop myself from attempting to recapture the joy of playing it for the first time again by watching other people play it. So enjoy! Hmmm, this sounds really familiar for some reason...
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Apr 16, 2022 03:23
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Jamesman posted:I have repeatedly felt like this whole thing was a bit of a train wreck, only to be told by P0larmic, and others, that the train wreck is exactly what people want. You couldn't have lived 30 seconds longer on your first trip to Ember Twin? 
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Apr 16, 2022 03:25
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GuavaMoment posted:You couldn't have lived 30 seconds longer on your first trip to Ember Twin? If you're expecting me to not die in stupid, frustrating ways, this is sadly not the playthrough for you.  I died in the tutorial.
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Apr 16, 2022 04:14
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Apr 21, 2022 17:51
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"One of those supernovas off in the distance killed me. Oh well." Well yes, one of those supernovas did kill you. At least you figured it out on the next loop. And you now have your main goal! It's things like this that I think people are watching for - the first one being how do you discover the supernova and how quickly do you figure it out. Mine was on Ember Twin figuring something out you haven't seen yet. Oh and I also died in the tutorial, testing out fall damage from the geysers.
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Apr 22, 2022 04:13
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GuavaMoment posted:Oh and I also died in the tutorial, testing out fall damage from the geysers. i mean hell, whomst among us
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Apr 22, 2022 04:32
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and yeah i'm with GuavaMoment, I hold Outer Wilds as a game design master-class, and I like watching people work through it. not so much to recapture the feeling, so much as it fascinates me watching all the different ways the game plays out, both on the screen and in the player's mind, so to speak - which plot threads the player grasps first, which ones they lead to & how they intertwine, that sort of thing, and the ways in which the game is crafted to account for that that and it's fun seeing people realizing what has to be done for end-game and the implications thereof, that particular moment of epiphany (teehee)
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Apr 22, 2022 04:43
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Outer Wilds is one of a not-really-dying-just-vanishingly-rare breed of puzzle game, in which you're not so much exploring a setting solving puzzles as solving the puzzle that is the setting. The comparison I always make is that Outer Wilds isn't like Myst, it's like Riven: The Sequel to Myst, a game which only really actually had two puzzles in it, but in order to even understand what those puzzles were you had to explore and understand almost everything in the game. The thing about Outer Wilds and space is that it's a game less about space travel than about the grand cosmic mission implicit in the idea of space travel, not so much about how cool it is that we built things that can take people into space but about why we ever wanted to do that in the first place, the idea that there could be meaning, answers, truth, out there, somehow, a notion as impossible as it is utterly captivating; we could have a place in this universe, if we could only understand what it even was. Outer Wilds is the best game about exploration made to date because it captures better than any other what it is that makes exploration compelling. Poor Chert.
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Apr 22, 2022 05:16
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Fedule posted:Poor Chert.  From reddit, I'd post a link but spoilers everywhere.
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Apr 22, 2022 05:33
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Fedule posted:Outer Wilds is one of a not-really-dying-just-vanishingly-rare breed of puzzle game, in which you're not so much exploring a setting solving puzzles as solving the puzzle that is the setting. The comparison I always make is that Outer Wilds isn't like Myst, it's like Riven: The Sequel to Myst, a game which only really actually had two puzzles in it, but in order to even understand what those puzzles were you had to explore and understand almost everything in the game. I can definitely see this... now. Going into this as blind as I did, though, I was treating it along the same lines as I'd treat most puzzle/adventure games. I spend a lot of time wandering around almost aimlessly, just seeing what information I can gather, so I can piece it together later and solve the puzzles. Because of this, I feel like I've been playing the game very wrong, and people are going to be very annoyed with my lack of focus. Or maybe my lack of observation (HOW did I not realize the sun, that was right in front of me, was just gone a moment later?). It's also why a lot of these videos are longer than what I typically aim for. I often feel like I've been running around and have nothing to show for it. No "progress," as it were, so I keep going and hoping that I can have some sort of payoff. Maybe I had something in mind I wanted to try or somewhere I wanted to explore, so I can at least check that off, or maybe I'll discover something new that means something to my current understanding of the game and give me a jumping off point for next time. I've had people suggest that a good way to do videos is just a single death loop per video, but I die far too often outside of supernovas to have that kind of consistency, and I just constantly feel like I'm not moving forward enough to feel like one death loop would have any worthwhile content in it. I've spent a lot of this game in my own head, rather than in the world. I just hope it will all pay off in the end for those of you watching. But hey, at least at this point, I now am starting to understand the deal with this game, and least have an idea about something (if it's right or wrong, I couldn't tell you) that is helping to put more purpose behind my gameplay.
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Apr 23, 2022 01:50
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 Once again, my friend Michael and I will be co-streaming. This time we're doing the role-reversal for We Were Here Too, the second game from this LP. Stream will start between 8pm and 9pmEST. https://www.twitch.tv/p0larmic https://www.twitch.tv/jamesplaysgamesttv
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Apr 27, 2022 21:46
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I think the explosion happened because the quantum rock tried to spawn where your ship was? I'm not sure
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Apr 27, 2022 21:56
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Nihilarian posted:I think the explosion happened because the quantum rock tried to spawn where your ship was? I'm not sure Yeah, there's nothing stopping quantum rocks clipping into the ship and breaking it. If certain part of the ship take too much damage it'll explode, as we saw.
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Apr 27, 2022 22:40
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That sounds like a fair enough explanation. Just remind me not to park my ship in that grove ever again.
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Apr 28, 2022 19:40
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 I'm a little salty in this one. Things were just not going very smooth and it was wearing me down.
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May 2, 2022 20:07
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It might not feel like it but you're actually doing a real good job dodging the anglerfish
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May 2, 2022 20:37
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Also you were shockingly close to finding the REDACTED and even the DLC REDACTED without any hints. You had a good insight on the interloper, too! But I don't know if my favorite thing was your sideways autopiloting directly into the sun, or watching your ship drift off the interloper into the sun without your knowledge.
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May 2, 2022 21:57
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Nihilarian posted:It might not feel like it but you're actually doing a real good job dodging the anglerfish When I told Michael about that, his response was along the lines of "Oh, sure. You just... got to the eggs. Like it wasn't a big deal. That's normal." So I'm guessing it's not supposed to be that easy? Or maybe I cheated by getting out of my ship to do it? GuavaMoment posted:the DLC REDACTED without any hints I do have a question here. I don't have the DLC installed (not even purchased yet). Was this stuff that was always in the base game, or was it patched in later as a connection to the DLC?
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May 3, 2022 02:05
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Jamesman posted:I do have a question here. I don't have the DLC installed (not even purchased yet). Was this stuff that was always in the base game, or was it patched in later as a connection to the DLC? The deep space satellite, and the satellite tower and area around it on Timber Hearth were patched in with the DLC and did not previously exist. When you get the DLC installed there's a small change to the Timber Hearth museum to get you started, a small change to both the satellite and tower, and then one...other thing...is added. From there what the DLC is, and my statements, will make more sense. GuavaMoment fucked around with this message at 02:27 on May 3, 2022 |
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May 3, 2022 02:24
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I wouldn't call it cheating but yeah, it probably helped for reasons. I didn't actually think about going shipless in there, going in with a ship is scary enough
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May 3, 2022 05:17
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 I think my main struggle with this game is that everything is just... happening. Always happening. Like I never feel I have time to just stop and think or try different things or just explore. Time's always moving, and time is always short. I'm getting eaten by space fish or thrown into the vastness of space or exploded or the sun explodes and it's just a lot. So I feel that pressure to utilize my time as effectively as I can, and I do it by just trying to collect whatever clues I can find, and then sorting it all out later. As a result, I haven't really retained much of the information I've gathered, instead relying on the ship logs to make sense of it all later, and kind of expecting the game to really let me know when things start falling into place. You can probably see the flaw in that approach. I have another half-dozen videos in the can, all done prior to publishing. Being able to look back through the videos and reflect on them while also getting feedback on my playing is giving me the different perspective I think I needed in how I want to progress through the rest of the game, and hopefully that will make the whole experience less of a struggle for me.
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May 6, 2022 19:53
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That was the most perfect first-time to Giant's Deep imaginable. 
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May 6, 2022 21:20
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Jamesman posted:
It really is all about time, you have to do things and not waste any of it.
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May 6, 2022 22:45
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:It really is all about time, you have to do things and not waste any of it. Nah, wasting time's no problem because you can just make it up next loop. It really is fine (and best) to just relax and not stress out.
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May 7, 2022 00:17
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look out folks, it's a motherfucking multiquote postJamesman posted:I think my main struggle with this game is that everything is just... happening. Always happening. Like I never feel I have time to just stop and think or try different things or just explore. Time's always moving, and time is always short. I'm getting eaten by space fish or thrown into the vastness of space or exploded or the sun explodes and it's just a lot. at first for me this was off-putting as hell - i'm a theme park kind of person, not one for sandboxes - but it got easier, and by the time i was finishing the game this universal indifference became one of my favorite things about the game's overall design Jamesman posted:So I feel that pressure to utilize my time as effectively as I can, and I do it by just trying to collect whatever clues I can find, and then sorting it all out later. As a result, I haven't really retained much of the information I've gathered, instead relying on the ship logs to make sense of it all later, and kind of expecting the game to really let me know when things start falling into place. You can probably see the flaw in that approach. i realize it's sometimes hard to let go of that sense of pressure though, especially when your ears are keenly listening for that first note of End Times arteliad posted:Nah, wasting time's no problem because you can just make it up next loop. It really is fine (and best) to just relax and not stress out.  )** fun fact: in the game engine movement is inverted from the norm: the player character is the mathematical origin of the rendering space (0,0,0) and everything else moves around you. so what i said up there is a total lie if you want to get literal 
Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 18:23 on May 7, 2022 |
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May 7, 2022 18:15
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Ciaphas posted:there's only one flaw here, and it's that the game won't let you know you're on the "right" path until the very end, after you've already figured out how to get to the end. after all, what does "right" even mean, in this game world? beyond that using the ship log (especially rumor mode) to make sense of things is literally what it's there for, and wholly encouraged. sure as hell i wouldn't have put all the dots together without it Pretty much. The lack of processing the information I'm receiving means even if the game is letting me know anything, I'm not paying attention. You also mentioned Rumor Mode, which I've often dismissed in favor of the other view to get a better sense of what information I've gathered in an area, with the mindset of "No sense starting the puzzle until I've got all the pieces!" My plan for my next recording definitely involves Rumor Mode. So hey, a lot of people that watch my videos aren't subscribed to my channel. That's fine and all, but sometimes, I make weird videos that aren't part of a Let's Play that I feel people might enjoy watching, but they'll never know these videos exist because I don't really have anywhere appropriate to share them. Anyway here's a video I did about a Carrot Top movie and a Mortal Kombat score. I'd love for you to watch it.  (I'm also currently at 299 subs, so if anyone DOES want to subscribe and put me over 300 that would be super-neat of you.)
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May 9, 2022 19:33
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I’ve been really enjoying the LP. I know it’s common to be worried about videos seeming slow or uneventful, but I want to echo others when I say that’s 100% what people who watch blind Outer Wilds playthroughs are here for. We all went through that experience of being massively confused, putting together the pieces one step at a time, still having a confusing mess until slowly those bigger chunks of info click together. There’s absolutely no way to have that experience twice, so the only option is to experience it vicariously through others and this LP absolutely scratches that itch. I will say, I admire your dedication to flying without autopilot when you can. One thing you can observe from the autopilot though is that it starts decelerating when it’s about halfway to the destination, so if you want to fly manually you kind of need to do the same, take note of how far away the object is, and then start reversing when a little over half the distance is covered.
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May 11, 2022 03:41
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I used autopilot liberally. Having the ship do the work left me more free to think about stuff
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May 11, 2022 07:43
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I stopped using the autopilot after I set it to take me to Brittle Hollow and crashed directly into the moon. Learning how to control the ship and slowly gaining a level of skill where I can mostly get to places quicker than the autopilot felt like one more example of coming to an understanding of the world and your place in it. It worked really neatly with the themes of the game. Still haven't landed on the Sun Station, though.
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May 12, 2022 04:09
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 Admittedly, this is another episode that starts off with me feeling confused and frustrated and doubting myself at every turn, but things do turn around and start to come together and I think it ends up being one of my favorite moments of the game so far.
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May 12, 2022 17:58
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Gabbros island and the construction yard don't typically merge like that. The cyclones can do weird things sometimes.
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May 12, 2022 18:59
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I don't know that I'd say you're playing it wrong but I know that one of the first things I did was futz with the controls. Granted, I think they updated some of the defaults to the more convenient options so I don't know how much that helps these days
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May 12, 2022 21:18
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I’m usually pretty firm on not giving spoilers or hints to people doing blind playthroughs, but where people are having a frustrating time I think the good outweighs the bad. If you’re committed to having no advice at all please skip this post! There’s a quality of life feature that you might find helps deal with some of the frustrations that can come about when you end up in lovely situations. This is technically a spoiler, but there’s a real chance you could miss it, and it’s probably the one thing I’d tell a player going in blind after two or three loops. What to do: Go ask Gabbro how he stays calm through all of this What it would unlock: the ability to skip to the next loop from the ESC menu There’s also something covered in the tutorial that I think you’ve forgotten: Ghost matter shows up in pictures taken by the Scout, showing you exactly where in the crystal field it is, sometimes allowing you to path around it.
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May 13, 2022 01:19
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 I would say we've now stepped foot on every planet in the solar system, except there's probably some super-secret planet I've yet to discover. Also there's at least a couple other spots to check out, and we'll need to revisit everywhere to uncover more information. But.... progress? We'll also be sticking around Brittle Hollow for a while longer as I try to navigate a planet that is actively collapsing into a black hole. This game stresses me out a lot. I have 4 more videos queued up, but I'll probably be looking into at least one recording session in the near future where I'm going to follow up on a couple ideas I have. But after that, if I'm still feeling like I'm being too aimless, I will open the thread up to suggestions on areas to go back to or possibly leads to stay focused on. For now though, I'm still going it alone and trying to make sense of all this crap.
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May 17, 2022 19:08
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Have you considered having p0larmic along for an episode or two? Not that there's anything wrong with a completely solo blind playthrough, but I think if your intent is to potentially take some direction after the thread is caught up, that direction often comes best from a friend! If we give you advice it's hard to thread the needle between "so vague it's actually unhelpful" and "clue so good it felt like a spoiler". Having someone there in the moment can allow them to ask really simple questions we all have a tendency to skip over, like "what actually is that?" and often that's all that's necessary to make a new discovery. Whether you do that or not, I'm looking forward to more videos
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May 18, 2022 14:59
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Reveilled posted:Have you considered having p0larmic along for an episode or two? It's an idea that's been brought up, but right now I feel like I have at least a couple ideas I want to follow up on myself and see where they lead me. If I feel I'm continuing to hit dead ends, then I'd probably solicit some more help from him. As for getting advice from the thread, my thought process would be that people would come to a consensus and say "Go back to this planet" and so I know I should probably not leave there until I end up discovering something. But again, we'll see if it gets to that point or not.
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May 18, 2022 22:25
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