A Campfire At The End Of The Universe
It's going to be ok.
Well, just like the last time I had a blog, the original purpose is fast devolving to “talking about whatever I felt like”. And so today, I’m going to change gears, and talk about the end of the universe. All our friends will be there.
Before reading further, please take a moment to close your eyes and listen to this. How does it make you feel?
From the moment I heard that song, I knew that Outer Wilds was for me. The song is beautiful in its simplicity. To me, it evokes a simultaneous sense of melancholy and hope. A song that says that the universe is dark, and terrifying, but also that we can sit down with our friends, take a load off for a moment, and relax as everything falls apart around us. It’s… comfy. Familiar.
This is a post about about the 2019 video game Outer Wilds. Before reading on, there is one very important thing you need to know about this game: you can only experience it once. This post will contain spoilers for the game, and if you want the magic of having that experience of discovery for yourself, go play that game to completion before reading this. Trust me on this. This game is best played going in completely blind, like I did. You can only experience it once. Don’t let your one time be via a blog post.
Outer Wilds is a video game released in 2019, and it is a unique and special thing. Somehow I missed it until late last year, when I was watching a Youtube video about game mechanic design that briefly mentioned this game. It was enough to pique my interest, and I bought the game and started playing right there. The only thing I knew about the game (and this is the first of many spoilers, final warning to the reader) was that it was set in a time loop with a dynamic universe that changes over time, like Majora’s Mask. I booted up the game, and, as I said, as soon as I heard that song, I knew I was in the right place.
I started the game, only to find myself opening my four eyes, awaking in the early hours of the morning, sleeping under the stars beside a campfire.
I have awoken on the planet of Timber Hearth (prounounced to rhyme with “Earth”), and as I get my bearings, I see that my friend Slate is already awake, roasting marshmallows. I ask him what’s going on, and he fills me in. The Hearthians have recently developed the worlds’ most redneck space exploration program, and I am the newest member of the Outer Wilds Expedition. It’s the day of my first space flight, and so in the Hearthian tradition, I’ve slept under the stars for good luck. He tells me that I have to go to the observatory to get the launch codes from Hornfels, and points me towards the village.
I go to the Observatory, walking through one of the most comfy and quaint towns I’ve ever seen. The vibe is laid back, comfy, bucolic. And this opening sequence, which functions as a diagetic tutorial, sets the tone for the game. In a normal game, I’d expect these NPCs to drop breadcrumbs for quests, or allude to the importance of my upcoming journey. But this is no normal game, and these NPCs do not. Instead, they simply express their love and excitement for me, and ask what I’m going to do first when I get into space.
Because there are no quests here. There is no epic quest to vanquish a powerful evil force. This game is exactly as presented here, and nothing more: welcome to your first day in space. What would you like to do? Because at it’s heart, Outer Wilds is a game about archaeology. The only goal is to explore, for no reason other than the sake of exploration. The entire world is just a deep, beautiful, thought-provoking sandbox for us to explore, and maybe learn something along the way.
In the observatory, I’m filled in on the purpose of our space program. We are not alone in the universe, and we want to learn what’s out there. The game paints this in a unique light, which reinforces the fundamental ‘comfy’ nature of the game. In any other sci fi setting, the discovery of extra-terrestrial life would be dramatic, shocking, and full of danger and fear. But the Hearthians are so wholesome, they might as well be quokkas; they appear almost incapable of fear. But why would this discovery be shocking? Our planet has been littered with relics of that long-gone alien civilization since we started keeping history. No, the Hearthians are simply excited and curious to learn the story of the Nomai, the civilization that came before.
And as luck would have it, it turns out that my player character has spent his career studying the Nomai language, and has developed a prototype Nomai translator. This sets up the primary instrumental goal of the game: explore the world, translate discovered Nomai writing, and try to figure out what happened.
As you leave the Observatory, a Nomai statue bust sitting in the entrance room suddenly glows, spins in place, and looks at me. Suddenly, my entire life flashes before my eyes, and in a moment, it’s over. The statue is still again, as if it never happened.
The time loop has begun. Or, rather, I have finally entered it.
Many people suggested that my first stop should be at Attlerock, the moon of Timber Hearth. That seems safe and easy, I think. Not long after landing on the moon, I discover a Nomai observatory on one of the poles, and start translating writings. They speak of various things. The Eye of the Universe. The Ash Twin Project (the Ash Twin being one of the other planets). And they express deep fear and uncertainty about some grand plan that the Nomai were hatching.
I spent about 20 minutes exploring the moon, when I suddenly noticed another thing that makes this game special: there’s no music. This game is not scored like a game, it’s scored like a movie. When you’re just flying through space, or walking on a planet, the only sounds you hear are the sound effects, and while you might not even notice this at first, especially if you have a habit of muting games and listening to podcasts while playing, it really reinforces the immersion of the game. In the cold vacuum of space, the only thing to hear is your spaceship.
The music only comes in to underscore important moments. And at that moment, this eerie and foreboding song started to play. As the final notes fade out into dark lunar night, I catch a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye. I turn around, I look up.
Where home should be, there is nothing but a glowing blue ball of plasma. A few moments later, it reaches the Attlerock. In a blaze of blue glory, everything disintegrates, and I die.
Moments later, my entire life flashes before my eyes again, just like with the statue. The screen goes dark. I find myself opening my four eyes, awaking in the early hours of the morning, sleeping under the stars beside a campfire. I have awoken on the planet of Timber Hearth (prounounced to rhyme with “Earth”), and as I get my bearings, I see that my friend Slate is already awake, roasting marshmallows.
I stammer in shock. “Slate… the sun… it exploded! How are we, what is, are we dead?”
Slate looks concerned, and tells me I must have just had a bad dream. The sun is just fine, it’s there just like it’s always been. It’s just nerves. It’s your first day as an astronaut, it’s normal to be afraid.
And just like that, the game has given me a ‘quest’: save the world. Stop the sun from exploding.
But wait, you might be thinking. You just told me that there are no quests in this game. What gives?
If you don’t believe me, go check your quest tracker. I’ll wait. What’s that, you don’t have a quest tracker? That’s odd. How can you have a quest with no quest tracker? As you explore the world, and uncover the story of the Nomai, this seemingly innocuous game design decision takes on a very significant meaning. The game never gave you a quest. The game never told you to do anything. The game isn’t God. The game is just the universe. It simply exists. It has no purpose, it has no goal, it simply exists. Its purpose is whatever you bring to it, whatever you make it. We are the ones who chose to make this our quest.
I could go on for hours, explaining in detail my experience piecing together the Nomai’s story, but that is an experience you have to choose for yourself. But I’m here to talk about the meaning of the game, and so I will simply explain the gist of the full story, so I can discuss it. This is your last warning. PLEASE, go experience this game for yourself before continuing this post.
The Nomai arrived in our solar system via some sort of hyperspace jump that went wrong. They are an advanced, nomadic civilization who explore the galaxy in the name of scientific discovery, and they have discovered a very unusual signal emanating from our galaxy, one they’ve called the “Eye of the Universe”. It is a signal of maximal quantum uncertainty, and it compels them to discover it.
Upon completion of their hyperspace jump, their ship crash lands into a planet, destroying itself in the process. The crew escape aboard three emergency shuttles, which each crash on a different planet. After the dust settles, it doesn’t take long for the Nomai survivors to link back with each other, and build up a Nomai society in our solar system.
However, once they do, there’s a major problem: the Eye of the Universe has gone silent. The signal is gone. And so the Nomai in our system dedicate their entire civilization to locating, discovering, and exploring this enigma.
They spend thousands of years trying to find this signal, but space is infinite, and they can’t do much other than pick a random direction, and hope they get lucky.
Around the same time that this happens, the Nomai make a scientific breakthrough. While experimenting with linked black and white holes, they discover something fascinating: when something enters the black hole, it exits the white hole a few milliseconds before it entered. We’ve just discovered time travel.
Excitedly, the Nomai wonder if they can operationalize this technology, and send things back in time a meaningful amount, instead of a blink of an eye. He runs some calculations and discovers that they can max out at sending something 22 minutes back in time, but do that, they’d need as much energy as a supernova. And suddenly, the high-stakes plan comes together. They build four facilities that collectively will find the eye.
First, they build the Ash Twin Project. This is a gigantic time machine that can send things 22 minutes in the past. Specifically, it will be sending information.
Second, they build their Nomai statues. These are in fact, extremely complex computers capable of making a perfect imprint of one’s consciousness, tracking it and saving it no matter where in the solar system one is, and transmitting it to the Ash Twin Project.
Then, they build the Gravity Cannon. This is a cannon that can use anti-gravity to ballistically launch a payload into space. They configure it to select a random direction, and fire.
Finally, they build the Sun Station. The Sun Station will trigger the sun to supernova, powering the Ash Twin Project.
And yet all is not as it seems. Something seems off. If this is all part of the Nomai’s grand plan, then where are they? You get the ultimate answer while exploring the sun station, and its in this moment that the full meaning of the game hits you like a freight train.
The sun station didn’t work
The Nomai put this plan into place hundreds of thousands of years ago. The Sun Station didn’t work. The Ash Twin project did. The Nomai aren’t a great evil, they haven’t condemned your species to death. Your sun is simply dying. It is at the end of it’s natural life, and when it spontaneously supernovas on its own, the time loop is triggered.
The game never gave you a quest to save the world, because you can’t save the world. The world is bigger than you or I. Video games have trained us to believe that, in a world full of evil, we can kill God to restore peace. But this is not a video game. It’s a piece of art, a universe to explore. And in the real universe, you can’t kill God.
The game never gave you that quest. You gave it to yourself. And just like in the real world, you win some, you lose some. Not every quest ends in triumph.
By the time you’ve reached this point in the game, you’ve gone through hundreds of loops. Some ending with a supernova. Some ending in a crash. A hilariously large number of times, exiting the spaceship while forgetting to wear your suit. You’ve died, and been reborn, hundreds of times, in a desperate event to save yourself and your loved ones. But…. you can’t. You can’t fight fate. All you can do is make your peace with it.
It’s impossible to overstate the emotional impact of experiencing this moment in the game for yourself. It is, quite sincerely, one of the most existentially horrific moments I have ever had in art. But, just like I said, way back at the title, it’s going to be ok. We had a good run. Everything ends eventually, but we can enjoy the show, sitting around a campfire with our loved ones, reminiscing about the good times we had along the way. It’s the journey, not the destination. The universe isn’t here to give us meaning, it doesn’t care about us. It’s our job to do that for ourselves.
Outer Wilds teaches us, in a powerful and visceral way, to stop and smell the roses. To appreciate our loved ones. To find peace and serenity in a world falling apart, by sharing the small moments together.
The universe is ending, but before it does, there’s one thing left to do. I left one detail out about the Nomai’s plans.
When the plans were started, one Nomai Statue was bound to the probe. When the supernova happens, the statue sends the information from the probe back in time. If the probe didn’t find the eye, they try again.
But if the probe did find the eye, then the rest of the statues would activate, binding the nearest conscious observer into the time loop. Then, the lucky chosen few would experience death by supernova, and this would be their signal to declare victory. From the perspective of the Nomai, the eye would be discovered mere moments after activating the project, and the only ‘conscious’ observer that would experience the supernova would be the probe.
Remember how at the start of the game, the statue activated, and bound you to the time loop? Remember how I said, perhaps the loop hasn’t started, but rather that you’ve simply entered it? Your first ride through the time loop was not the first iteration of the loop. In fact, there’s been almost ten million iterations already.
The Nomai may be long gone, and the sun station never worked, but now, hundreds of thousands of years later, they have succeeded. They have found the Eye of the Universe. You can’t save the world. But maybe, before it all snuffs out, you can find your own meaning in finishing the work that the Nomai started.
You travel to the coordinates for the eye, and as you do, you can see all the stars in the sky start to go dark. It wasn’t just your sun that was dying. The whole universe is dying. It’s lived a nice, long life, and now everything is going back to cold darkness.
But the Eye of the Universe is a signal of infinite quantum potential. We could only begin to speculate what might happen if a conscious observer were to observe it. And here, alone, at the end of all things, a conscious observer is coming. You.
As you observe the eye, the infinite quantum potentials collapse, materializing in front of you what’s deep in your heart. And what materializes for the nameless Hearthian explorer, is a campfire at the end of the universe. From the happy memories in your mind, the eye materializes your friends around you. The world is ending. Let’s play a tune around the fire and make the best of it.
First, Esker starts whistling the melody. Feldspar takes out his harmonica. Chert keeps the beat. Gabbro harmonizes on the flute. Riebeck strums his banjo. And finally, Solanum, the last remaining Nomai, who you discovered on your explorations, adds piano. And as you all sit here, enjoying one last moment before everything ends, the Eye itself begins to manifest above the fire. It is time to find out what happens when a conscious observe observes the ultimate quantum signal.
A bright flash of energy explodes into the universe, disintegrating you and your friends, as it all ends. But as the light begins to fade, the Eye reveals its power. Everything dies, and sometimes you can’t save people. But through your actions, through your earnest attempts to celebrate the world and the people around, through your determination in the face of inescapable doom, as its dying act, your consciousness observes the eye, and births a new universe.
And that is Outer Wilds. A beautiful piece of art, with breathtaking visuals and a soundtrack that you can’t help but tear up at. A comfy sandbox universe to explore, with nothing other than your own passion and curiousity as motivation.
A world that is quite silly and stylized, teaching us that we don’t always have to be serious. A world where astronauts pack nothing but s’mores for food in space. Where every astronaut has a pack of emergency tree seeds, in case they need oxygen somewhere. A world in which your redneck uncle builds a spaceship in his backyard out of wood and scrap, and somehow it works.
It teaches us that we don’t always need to be serious. We’ll all make mistakes, but when you fall, you get back up, you dust yourself off, and you laugh about it. Playing this game, the autopilot will accidentally fly you directly into the sun at least a dozen times. And you have no one to blame but yourself; Hornfels warned us that it was unreliable. Don’t sweat it. Just pay more attention next time.
It teaches us to explore, with the innocent curiousity of a child. It doesn’t tell us where to go, or that we have to do anything at all. It teaches us that if we pay attention to detail, there are infinite wonders in the world to reward us, and discovery is its own reward.
It teaches us that we have the power within ourselves to accomplish what we set out for. There’s no leveling in this game. No skills to unlock. No powerups. Every element of this game is accessible from the moment you start, and if you really want to, you can speedrun the true ending in 10 minutes. For every challenge in this game, the only powerup you need is information. Understanding. If you can’t access an area, the only thing stopping you is that you haven’t figured out how yet.
In the same vein, it teaches us to be proud of our achievements. If I grind to level 99 in Final Fantasy 6 and oneshot Kefka, I didn’t really do that. The game mechanics did that. But in Outer Wilds, every single achievement truly is your own accomplishment; the game did not hold your hand.
It is a meditation on the finality of things, and finding serenity in the face of certain doom. A lesson on slowing down to appreciate the journey, no matter its twists and turns, showing us the importance of stopping to smell the roses.
It imparts on us the importance of family, friends, and community. It shows us that as long as we have each other, everything will be ok.
It teaches us to be bold, courageous, and determined. It teaches us that we are in control of our own lives. It’s up to us to find our own way, and make our own meaning.
It teaches us the value of music, and that there can be beauty in simplicity. You don’t have to be Mozart to make music; a few chords on the banjo can be beautiful on its own.
It teaches us that there isn’t a single person that is unnecessary. It shows, viscerally, how we all have a part to play, and when we all play our part, we can create something beautiful. Literally, in the case of music. And figuratively, in the case of their space program. There’s Chert, who wants to learn about the science of the universe, but regrets what he’s discovered. Feldspar, the adrenaline junkie always looking for an adventure. Gabbro, without a care in the world. And Riebeck, who’s cautious and afraid, but doesn’t let his fear stop him from exploring. Each unique perspective brings something valuable to the Outer Wilds venture.
And it teaches us that the actions we take in in our lives matter to those who come after us, and we have a responsibility to inspire them to greatness.
This game is one of my favourite games of all time. It’s even more than that. It’s one of the greatest human creations I have ever experienced, and the world is better for it. Especially the world right now. Politics and outrage infect everything. Everyone is constantly angry, yelling about meaningless political slogans so old fucks in suits can bomb more innocent civilians in the name of ‘democracy’. This game came out in 2019, during a time where just about every game on the planet bent over backwards to force woke progressivism messages into our brains.
Outer Wilds stands against that. It offers an alternative vision of society, community, life, one that earnestly focuses on the positives in the world, instead of devolving into anger at the negatives. Outer Wilds say “politics, who fuckin’ cares? Come roast some marshmallows, friend; there are endless wonders in the universe we can explore in the morning”.
Outer Wilds gives us a vision of peace in a world falling apart. All you need to do is sleep under the stars
It’s all going to be ok.