Outer Wilds Review: A joy to explore, but...

[Colinde]

So.. I just finished playing through Outer Wilds. It is released on the Epic Games Launcher (I do not approve of the exclusivity).
I'm not going to detail gameplay at all. You can find that elsewhere, easily.


I will black over spoilers, so beware! I will conclude my review before the major spoiler section. So it will be pretty safe to read the review.

Story and world experience

I want to start by saying that visually, it is beautiful. The art-direction is superb. Not flashy or "Wow!". It is just very balanced and cohesive.

Same goes with the audioscape. Consistently good.


The story is also very good. I was deeply engaged in finding clues, and to my surprise, almost all clues, I found myself in a natural feeling way.

This is in stark contrast to many other similar games, where I often find myself wander aimlessly, trying to find the next clue. But Outer Wilds doesn't feel dumbed down either. I had to look up a couple things, but only one of them turned out to be a thing, I would never had found out if i hadn't looked it up. When I looked up the other thing, I just facepalmed myelf like "Doh! How could I have missed that?"

So the story and progression is very well done.


However... There is one thing I really don't like about this game.

Performance..

It is crap. I do not have the latest and greatest graphics-card, but it isn't that old.

It's a Nvidia 780 GTX with 3 GB of VRAM. It can run games like Battlefield 1 on High-Medium settings at a locked 70 FPS.

CPU is much newer though: Ryzen 2600X. Also got 16 GB of 3000MHz RAM.

My GPU is locked at 100%, no matter what. I refuse to drop resolution below my native 1680x1050. It ain't even 1080p.

No matter what settings I set up, my GPU is loaded 100%.

I get slight stutter all the time.
Medium stutter periodically.
Heavy stutter occasionally.
Straight up 10 s freezes occasionally when moving between areas. (teleport)
I also had a single game crash during one of those freezes.

It does not matter how low i drop settings. Same exact performance and same stutter problem.

It really is weird to me. The art direction in the game is gorgeous! Nothing wrong visually. But it doesn't seem to me, that the game should be this intensive on the GPU. The art-style certainly doesn't call for it.

I am curious to find out what reason, that makes the performance is so bad.
Is just poor optimization?
Is it an over-reliance on computationally heavy effects?
Is it use of too high quality assets, compared to the art-style?
Choice of engine?
__ INSERT SPECULATIONS HERE __

It is not only me, that seem to get poor performance. I read a post, somewhere, where someone was having issues with a GeForce 1080. Not so much stutter though, but oddly low framerates.
I really have no clue to why this game is so damn GPU intensive.
This marred an otherwise exceptional game experience, to the point, where I no longer can give top marks. It really affected my ability to get sucked into the game-world, because the stutter reminded me that I was playing a game, and not actually flying around, exploring the star-system. For a game that has been under development more than 4 years, this poor performance is not ok. Optimizing games is hard and time-consuming. And I'd rather have a great story and gameplay, than a perfectly optimized game. But still..
I really hope they optimize the game in the future.

Conclusion:

Superb game. Well executed, balanced and a really nice way to spend a weekend.
I don't have any other major criticism, other than the performance. The spoiler section below is more a couple story nuisances, and not outright criticism.
I want to say it is a 10/10 game (to me), but the performance is simply too rough. So with a heavy heart, I must give it 9/10 .

I hope you enjoyed reading my review as much as I enjoyed playing Outer Wilds.
Fly safe everyone o/

CAUTION!

Spoiler time!! Do not read further if you want to find out the ending for yourself!! You have been warned!

So.. I can only give top marks for the story, until the end. I liked the end, but felt a bit cheated when I discovered that you never actually get any answers about what exactly The Eye of the Universe is. It is some sort of entity. We know it's properties, but I would have liked to get a little more back-story on this object. At least this isn't a big thing issue. The ending was still fine. Not amazing, just fine.

Oh! Before I forget.. I would also like to have gotten some more back-story on the Nomai. Almost all the information you get about the Nomai, is from shortly before their arrival to the system, and what happened to them after that point. I would have loved stumbling into a library or something, explaining their origins, age of the race and how they got so technologically advanced. Just general history stuff about them. Again: Small thing.
We get to know Nomai personally through their texts they leave all around, and I felt like it was very well done. Believable characters and interactions between them. Quirky personalities and everything. I'd rather miss some back-story, if it means we get this level of writing/story quality.

I honesty don't have any other things to say really. I really enjoyed the story, and I cannot find other things to mark it for, at all.

[Colinde]

Originally posted by 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞:

Don't worry I already play it for free.

What?
What has that to do with the review?
And how? Piracy?

[Terr0rRyTe]

I got a GTX970 and an I5-4690 runs it without any problems at max settings in 1080p.
So imo it's not the games' fault

[Colinde]

Originally posted by Terr0rRyTe:

I got a GTX970 and an I5-4690 runs it without any problems at max settings in 1080p.
So imo it's not the games' fault

Hmm.. Interesting.
I did update drivers, and all sorts of trouble-shooting.
This points to a optimisation issue of some sort. It isn't unheard of that certain hardware configurations can cause issues. This also is backed up by the 100% load 100% of the time. And I know that it isnt't a case where the graphics card is hanging on something, because the temps i get are identical to GPU burn-tests. So it is spending a ton of resources calculating something.

IMO it is the games fault. Many games have had this type of issue after release, but it is still a part of the game experience. As far as I remember, No Mans Sky had the exact same type of problem on release. This was unanimously agreed to be not OK by reviewers. Same goes for BF2141 (oldie, but a goodie).

I'm pretty confident that it wil be patched. Still. Review stands. I might add a comment on it later. My score isn't going to change before it is fixed though.

[[HYST] JDM12983]

I thought it didn't release until Oct 25, 2019 (according to their site). So, is it actually already out even sooner than their site said? (I know it's epic store exclusive - not buying it there. But seems odd that it would come out several months sooner than what their own site says)

[Colinde]

Originally posted by HYST JDM12983:

I thought it didn't release until Oct 25, 2019 (according to their site). So, is it actually already out even sooner than their site said? (I know it's epic store exclusive - not buying it there. But seems odd that it would come out several months sooner than what their own site says)

Yeah... Corporate shenannigans.. I don't approve either.

[[EaR]Termy]

Originally posted by HYST JDM12983:

I thought it didn't release until Oct 25, 2019 (according to their site). So, is it actually already out even sooner than their site said? (I know it's epic store exclusive - not buying it there. But seems odd that it would come out several months sooner than what their own site says)

their site said "soon on steam" until after the release on EGS...

[paul_endymion]

In order to get rid of the stuttering in exclusive full screen mode, I had to :
- Use the -window-mode exclusive command line option (by default the game is in
borderless mode)
- reduce by one level the antialiasing quality
- reduce by one level the quality of shadows
- Set Nvidia V-sync on adaptative mode (or ""active")

Seems to work fine now for me (GTX 1080 laptop)....btw the fact it is a laptop is why I really need a true exclusive full screen mode...otherwise, the GPU is burning....
With a desktop, I guess that the borderless mode with the in-game V-sync mode is just fine.

Anyway I feel like the antialisaing option is the most impactful (more than shadows) but I'm not sure and I'm bit tired of trying a lot o things for the last 2 hours instead of playing...

But I will play now...I like the atmosphere of this game :)

If it can help...though I know every rig is unique and some options here can have a different impact there.

[basbas_k]

My V-sync is set to Nvidia Adaptive but this seems to be overruled by the in-game v-sync setting. I also have all the controller problems and relatively low performance. Not very happy with the game so far.