It’s About Life
I would not say I’m very savvy when it comes to science. I barely have patience for puzzles (despite how much I do enjoy them). Had I not played Outer Wilds with a friend, I may not have finished the game at all. Outer Wilds is both rooted in its folksy theming, and yet so scientific, so existential that it can’t help but lift itself off solid ground and out of the stratosphere. What I couldn’t follow in its discussions of time distortion and black holes, I could grasp in the silence of wandering alone in the dark, the quiet hum of a harmonica coming from the corner of some distance place. If you were to ask me right now what the ancient Nomai people wanted, I’d say they wanted knowledge. And I, a humble Hearthian, astronaut anthropologist, simply wanted to know how I got caught in their web.
In Outer Wilds, I am a fledgling astronaut trying to uncover the secrets of my solar system. The biggest secret is the time loop that I am stuck in. No matter how many times I die, I always wake up again, near a campfire on my home planet, Timber Hearth.
Let’s start over: In 2023, I ended my marriage. We were together for nearly ten years, married for six. We both tried to change ourselves to keep something going, until it, like Timber Hearth’s sun, reached the end of its life cycle, and died.
Outer Wilds allows you to pick any planet to start your research, and funnily enough, I start my first trip at the end of the Nomais’ story. Before they can ever find what they’re looking for, a scientific anomaly known as “The Eye of the Universe”, they are suddenly wiped out by an existential event. Hundreds of years pass, and while the Nomai cease to exist, their tools still function. I study their literature, find their equipment, and am able to follow through with their scientific discoveries. The Eye’s signal is a call for the end of a cycle, the end of all life.
By the time I started playing Outer Wilds, I had already ended my marriage loop. I was in the middle of watching myself change unimaginably: I mourned old habits I no longer needed and celebrated new ones I naturally formed. I changed my diet and my hair. I started wearing perfume. I found the joy in knowing I was a failed wife.
Let me begin again: The loop is generational, trauma bound. How dare you end a good thing? There was care, there was money, and a pet. There were friends. There was home and stability. What kind of idiot gives that up?
In the DLC “Echoes of the Eye,” Outer Wilds adds a new, ancient race to the mix, colloquially known as Owlks, for their owl- and elk-like shape. Like the Nomai, they too hear the faint signal of the Eye, but unlike the Nomai, they are able to hear the call completely. By the time the Owlks understand the Eye’s foreboding call, much has already been sacrificed; they destroyed their home planet in order to make a ship to find the Eye. Even if they could go home, they’d return knowing their life would very soon end.
The Owlks refuse to let their lives end, and instead, create a device to block the Eye’s signal. To replicate their razed home, they build a new life through virtual reality to simulate their lives before they knew of the Eye. By the time I find their ship, hundreds of years later, their bodies have decayed. Their bones still cling to a lantern that keeps their souls intact, even in death. Their virtual home is both haven and hell. Outside, their ship crumbles to pieces. In their minds, their world lives on, free from extinction.
While it took me a while to fully understand the Nomai’s pursuit for knowledge, the Owlks touched me almost immediately. Their devotion to the Eye is an unhealthy form of love. They made statues of the Eye. They held their hands toward the sky, hoping to hold the Eye between their fingers. When they learned, they felt betrayed. They burned their icons, censored their own texts, and sequestered themselves to a world where that betrayal could never exist.
I’ve taken too long and must restart: Sometimes endings cannot be planned. Sometimes you have no control over the door, the door handle, its hinges. Sometimes the door is swung open, and you are shoved through.
As I explore the Owlks’ virtual and physical worlds, I uncover one Owlk who interpreted the Eye’s call not as the death to all life, but the beginning of new life. This Owlk, known as the Prisoner, temporarily unblocks the Eye’s signal, thus letting other species hear it. The Prisoner’s act is what allows the Nomai to hear the Eye’s call, who then create the time loop that, many years later, traps me in a battle with time.
Hidden in the Owlk’s virtual haven sits a burned down house. Fans believe this to be the Prisoner’s home, burned as punishment for their actions. In this home is a painting, an interpretation of the Eye’s message: Covered with overgrown grass sits an Owlk skull. Through the skull, a tall stalk grows into a vibrant flower, and out of that flower comes new galaxies blowing in the wind like pollen.
The death of my marriage opened more than my Eye. It opened my heart, my mouth, my head, my legs, and my arms. When I was one of the many affected by layoffs, I was once again forced open. While I had no control over the project’s outcome, I welcomed its failure too. I do not fear endings, whether they be soft and mutual, like my marriage, or harsh and upending, like a layoff. I was shackled to it before, but now there is trust, not only in my own intuition, but in the universe’s signal. So long as I stay open, and allow its call to reach me, I will grow.
I started Outer Wilds worried that its scientific jargon would prevent me from grasping its powerful story, but tucked neatly in a world of space travel and anomalies is a story full of banjos and gentle whistling. It’s a story of wood and tall grass. It’s about time.
Restart: It’s about life.