Melancholy Mechanics

28 Jul, 2020

Or: How Outer Wilds Constructs Emotion

After developing their game from a graduation thesis project to a fully fledged video game Mobius Digital released their first title Outer Wilds in 2019 to critical acclaim. Stuck in a time loop, you explore the dying solar system you call home over and over again to desperately search for a way to stop the sun from exploding. During this trip you will not only experience moments of joy, wonder and pure awe, you will also feel sadness, melancholy and even outright despair. The following text will focus on these more somber feelings and how Outer Wilds deliberately sets up these moments despite its non linear, free-roaming nature.

Exploration against Entropy

Outer Wilds starts you out as the newest astronauts from the planet Timber Hearth. You awaken at the start of your first launch to chat with your colleagues, explore the village for a bit and then: off you go to explore the games toybox-sized universe. But while doing so, you might notice that the sun of your solar system gets steadily brighter and bigger until it finally explodes in a blinding supernova. Fortunately, if accidentally, you were connected to an ancient technical device that restores your memory, build by an enigmatic precursor tribe of aliens visiting your system thousands of years ago. As such, you go exploring until the sun explodes again. And again. And again.

These intervals are the core gameplay loop of Outer Wilds. That means, that the world state also resets every 22 minutes. The only thing that carries over between loops is the discovered knowledge stored in your ship computer. The world of Outer Wilds shows you everything that it has to offer the instant you blast your ship into space for the first time, if only you know how to access it. Thus the focus of the game becomes unearthing that knowledge: exploration becomes the core drive for playing.

And by resetting the world every 22 minutes, it encourages the player to take risks in their exploration, because: Even if you don’t make the jump over that chasm to reach the weird ruins on its other side, the world’s going to explode anyway. Even if you drown by trying to swim to the core of this ocean planet, the world’s going to explode anyway. By lowering the stakes to player death, the game makes risk taking so much more viable. And by having the world end every 22 minutes, it simultaneously takes the punishment of time away from just sitting at a campfire, roasting marshmallows for the last 5 minutes of your life.

Making Melancholy

This non-linear and open world makes it impossible to construct your emotional and plot-heavy moments in a singular sequence and on specific points, because no one knows, if your players actually experience them in the right order! Still the game manages to elicit its central emotions (melancholy, loneliness, hope) while unearthing the mysteries of your solar system. It accomplishes that through two central methods: (a) the tools of play and (b) a constantly moving world.

The (a) tools of play that the game hands out to you at the very start are, next to your spacesuit, the little scout and your signalscope. The little scout is a drone with an in-build camera that you can shoot from a cannon in your hands. Not only can you use it to test the environment around you for danger, but it can also see through it. But instead of live footage, the drone only lets you take pictures, that are overlayed with a grainy black-and-white filter. That simple change really makes you feel like an scientist exploring unknown depths, while simultaneously conveying the feeling, that you are vastly under-prepared to do so.

The signalscope fills a similar role. It can be used to locate sources of signals that you have picked up on your journey. For example: You can point it to the night sky and listen to the other astronauts of your home village, that are camped out on the other planets. Every one of them plays a different instrument, but the same melody. They are always there, playing their music, but giving the player the agency to search for them in the black sky of the universe as they watch the sun explode strongly amplifies the feeling of connection and community this shared song evokes. ¹ At any moment can the player make their on moment of quiet connection to their home planet and make these emotional moments themself.

These other astronauts are however only a small part of the (b) constantly moving world the player finds themself in. Some of the geographical features of this world are truly a sight to behold. Seeing the column of sand fall from Ash to Ember Twin on the Hourglass Twins or entering Giant’s Deep for the first time, being greeted with an open ocean, whirlwinds endlessly harrowing its surface. These vistas are beautiful, but the most powerful emotional impact came from the smaller moments scattered throughout the constantly moving universe.

When exploring Brittle Hollow, I stumbled upon a piece of ruined wall from an ancient home of one of the precursor aliens. On it was a scribbled note that I deciphered and found to be a somber love note to a lost partner. While I read that note, the crust of the hollow planet around me was bombarded by asteroids and slowly caving in, taking these ancient ruins with it. And through the cracks in the shell, I could see the sun ever growing brighter. Minutes later, I stumbled through those cracks myself and, floating in space without fuel, was watching that same sun explode.

Moments like this happen often in the game, and only because the games universe is not only densely packed with interesting things to explore, but also in constant motion. Every planet constantly spins on its axis and moves around the sun. Every object on every one of the games curved surfaces is moving somewhere. And through carefully laid patterns to that motion come the many moments on which multiple of these movements intersect to create a unique emotional experience, like in the example above.

Alex Beachum, who first designed Outer Wilds as a thesis project while at university, said in a documentary ² about the games development:

I’m really proud, that we told a story that, in a way, could only be told through video games.

And this is exactly where the game shines. By giving the player all the tools and appropriatly mysterious world to discover with those tools at their own pace and with their own focus, it really crafts an emotional experience that can only be experienced in this medium.