I think they wanted to do a wacky Rick & Morty multiverse thing with it but failed spectacularly at it because they didn’t really add enough meaningful variety (and nothing of consequence; this is a huge issue) to their cycle and also because they decided to try and be weird and coy about how they were going about it so frankly a lot of the player base doesn’t even really realize there are wacky alternative universes you can end up in. And again, importantly, nothing ever feels like it has any meaningful consequence the moment you buy into the whole Unity thing. Like I get if they want to make some kind of commentary on the futility of existence and the meaninglessness of life or cycles of violence, but if so then like… do that. It feels like they are approaching some kind of meaning or commentary that they never actually reach, so instead you just have this awful cycle where to progress you have to discard all of the things which typically make progression worthwhile in this kind of experience. It’s just full of these kind of weird fucking choices, man.
soon after Starfield I finally got around to playing Outer Wilds, and despite the fact the cycle in that game is 20min instead of like 50h+, it actually serves a vital purpose to the narrative. I’m desperately resisting devolving into a cult like worship for the next 20 paragraphs praising Outer Wilds but like - go play it if you haven’t already, it’s spectacular.
I think they wanted to do a wacky Rick & Morty multiverse thing with it but failed spectacularly at it because they didn’t really add enough meaningful variety (and nothing of consequence; this is a huge issue) to their cycle and also because they decided to try and be weird and coy about how they were going about it so frankly a lot of the player base doesn’t even really realize there are wacky alternative universes you can end up in. And again, importantly, nothing ever feels like it has any meaningful consequence the moment you buy into the whole Unity thing. Like I get if they want to make some kind of commentary on the futility of existence and the meaninglessness of life or cycles of violence, but if so then like… do that. It feels like they are approaching some kind of meaning or commentary that they never actually reach, so instead you just have this awful cycle where to progress you have to discard all of the things which typically make progression worthwhile in this kind of experience. It’s just full of these kind of weird fucking choices, man.
edit: typos
soon after Starfield I finally got around to playing Outer Wilds, and despite the fact the cycle in that game is 20min instead of like 50h+, it actually serves a vital purpose to the narrative. I’m desperately resisting devolving into a cult like worship for the next 20 paragraphs praising Outer Wilds but like - go play it if you haven’t already, it’s spectacular.
There is no piece of media I’d like to be able to experience for the first time again more than Outer Wilds.
if I get dementia at least I’ll be able to experience it again for the first time