I’ve been playing Outer Wilds lately and I must say it is absolute treasure of a game.
Just everything about it fits so nicely together. An intriguing story arc with charismatic characters. Realistic orbital mechanics play out as you clumsily navigate space. Machines cobbled together using wood and sheet metal scraps. Roasting marshmallows over a campfire on the surface of distant planets. There’s a bit of whimsy to everything.
The End Times is such a beautiful mechanic. When the tune begins, you know your time is close. The pause of time while translating glyphs no longer works. The music marches forward like the march of time itself. You can frantically attempt to gather as much info you can before the inevitable, or you can choose to relax. Either way the result is the same.
The calm indifference of the End Times echoes that of the nature of the cosmos. Everything that is wasn’t put there for a reason. To make sense of it in that way would be to cast our own beliefs upon that which holds none. To believe that we’ve somehow been wronged is completely misplaced.
Everything just is. We are simply here to be. What we learn along the way enriches us. Like the stars we gaze up upon we cast light upon the darkness and dance our little dance. When the song ends, it need not be tragic nor hostile. It just is. It’s a fact of life and how we choose to deal with it is a part of what makes us who we are. To see that captured in a game is beyond satisfying.
It’s exactly this sort of stuff that makes astronomy such a deeply satisfying hobby of mine.
