Outer Wilds: At The End Of Everything, Hold On To Anything
A spoiler-heavy discussion of one of gaming’s best endings
Outer Wilds is an exploration-heavy game with environmental puzzle-solving elements in which the player character explores their small solar system and slowly uncovers a mystery to solve. It’s really difficult to talk about this game because it is so heavily based on discovery and putting together figurative puzzle pieces that even discussing the mechanics of one planet would spoil the experience of you working it out it for yourself. I’m going to be talking quite a bit about the ending of base game and Echoes Of The Eye, the newly-released DLC for it, specifically the themes in this game. It’s going to be full of spoilers, and I would really, really recommend not going forward unless you’ve played the game or watched someone else play it. If you’re not sure, or you’ve only just heard about Outer Wilds, I highly recommend checking out footage of the earlier parts of the game online to decide if this game is for you or not.
Reaching the Sun Station is a huge emotional turning point in the game. At some point early on, you’re likely to notice a little structure orbiting the Sun, and it’s also equally likely you don’t have the mechanical skill to land your ship on it, because the Sun’s gravitational pull is just too strong. It’s yet another of the game’s mysteries, another piece of the puzzle to keep in mind as you continue exploring.
One of the first things you realize in Outer Wilds is that after 22 minutes, the Sun explodes in a supernova, wiping out the entire solar system, killing your character and restarting the loop from when you wake up for the first time in the game. Through the course of the game, you uncover more and more about the motives of the Nomai, a long-gone precursor race who lived in the solar system, and the true extent of their far-reaching projects. One of these is a project that’s large-scale even by their standards and that they have no adequate power source for. Such is their drive to see the project through that they consider harnessing the power of the Sun in supernova form, even if it means destroying the Solar System.
The implications are obvious. The time loop, the Sun going supernova, the reverse-playback of that loop’s activities at the end of the loop, it’s all because of this ‘Ash Twin Project’ created by the Nomai and being powered by triggering the death of the Sun. So, obviously the game ends with you going to the Sun Station and shutting it all down, right?
The Sun Station is probably the toughest location to reach in the game. There are several other critical end-game locations that a player might feasibly stumble onto by mistake, but reaching the Sun Station involves following a number of steps correctly under a tight time constraint that can only be done if you have most of the pieces of the puzzle. You’re really not likely to be reaching the Sun Station by accident. With everything that you know about the Ash Twin Project by now, the difficulty in reaching the Sun Station and even the music, it all feels undeniably climactic.
So you finally make it to the Sun Station, and find out that the attempt to induce the Sun into going supernova was a failure, dooming the Ash Twin Project.
Meaning that the Ash Twin Project which became active after 281,042 years must have been triggered by the Sun going supernova for real.
Meaning that there is no way to stop the solar system from being wiped out.
This is the point at which Outer Wilds reveals what it was really about all along. It introduces you to the crushing, oppressive, sinking realization that everything is really going to end, everything you’ve seen, everyone you’ve spoken to, all that you’ve discovered and learned, everything; it’s all going to end. And then it holds your hand, tells you to look it right in the Eye and walks you through it all.
The game quite literally keeps you company during the end times. The game’s final moments have you sitting with your fellow travelers around a fireplace, playing their instruments together, eating toasted marshmallows, and comprehending the end of all things. The atmosphere is exactly as cozy as when you were first introduced to Timber Hearth in the game’s opening, with the homey wood-based aesthetic, warm characters and gentle, wholesome, slightly melancholic background music. Imagine if none of this was present in the end of the game, and if the player character went through all of it alone, in the dark and in silence. Outer Wilds would convey a very different message.
But by surrounding you with the warmth and coziness of home at the end of the Universe, by making it known to you that you’re not alone, the ending of Outer Wilds perfectly embodies the tagline of Night In The Woods, another truly great indie game — “At the end of everything, hold onto anything”.
This message of companionship and warmth has the weight and substance that it does because of the game’s unflinching, unwavering insistence that the end of the Universe must happen. All things must come to an end eventually. It starts with the gut punch of a revelation at the Sun Station, and any information you uncover from that point will make it clear that there is nothing you can do to stop any of this from happening. The meaningful and emotionally satisfying ending comes from choosing to warp to the Eye of the Universe, and triggering the destruction of the old Universe and the creation of a new one. Any endings in which you manage to avoid this in some way, like flying far away from the Solar System when the loops end, give you a single screen of text for your troubles. They’re more often that not humorous and not meant to be taken seriously. There’s only one true ending to this game.
The newly-released DLC Echoes Of The Eye further illustrates this point by introducing a new race of antlered-owl-bipeds called the inhabitants of the Stranger (but players call them the ‘Owlks’). The Owlks, like the Nomai were also single-minded in their pursuit of the Eye, even destroying their home moon to help them. But where they differ from the Nomai is that they realized that the Eye would bring about the end of the Universe, and thus completely turned back on their pursuit of the Eye, blocking its signal and retreating into a simulated reality of their home planet on a vessel that will survive the supernova. The narrative isn’t unsympathetic to the Owlks, but it shows you a contrasting, head-in-the-sand approach to dealing with the end of the Universe, one which would lead to them withering and dying in the real world, and eventually even in the simulated world, because their connection to it can withstand neither the Sun going supernova nor, more obviously, the end of the entire Universe. All things come to an end eventually, even eternities in simulated realities.
Even if Outer Wilds had just been about exploring a toy solar system with incredible simulated physics, with no mysteries and backstory about the Nomai, it would have been a very good game. If the game had ended when you realise the solar system can’t be saved, it would have been a depressing, unsatisfying but earned ending. If the game had ended when you warp to the Eye, it would have been a really interesting, ambiguous ending, asking the player to envision what the end of the Universe might entail, and again entirely earned by the game.
But by bending the player’s perception of reality in the Eye, by having them start all alone in the dark and slowly gather their friends one by one, identifying them by their music, by having them all gather by the campfire a final time to share in the moment together, by having friends beside you when the Universe ends, by showing you a glimpse of the Universe that is to come, so different and yet familiar, Outer Wilds shows you a way to come to terms with endings that is steady, knowing and accepting without downplaying the sadness and loss you feel about it all. They really didn’t have to do all this. And I am so glad that they did.
