Planing to play but...

[Michelle]

A while ago I tried the game on a friend's account. The fact is that it didn't catch my attention until I saw how it worked and now I want to give it another chance.
My question is... do you always have a time limit to do things or is that just at the beginning? Because it's the only thing that stops me from playing it. It makes me very nervous to want to observe everything but have time for it.
And that makes me not fully enjoy the experience...

[Atlessa]

There's not really a time limit. You can spend 14.8 billion years with this game if you want.



Don't think of being sent back to the Campfire as punishment. Think of it as just the next level of the game, and this time you know a LITTLE bit more and can therefore go see the important things that much quicker, because you learned a shortcut or you noticed a landmark that you can see from space to land right there or any other weird way to make life easier for you.

The exploration IS the game, and the devs absolutely WANT you to explore everything. And due to the nature of the game that means the game has to reset everything to 0 or certain doors would stay closed, Atlantis stays sunk, the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. Only way to see them (without risking your life...) is to travel back in time to when they were still above Sea level. It's the same in Outer Wilds.


... I'm getting ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ poetic, I should probably go to bed.

[JAG]

The time loop is a setback at best. Every place takes less than a minute to go to, the game has options to pause the time during specific interactions, and more importantly, the breaks between exploration let you cool down, process everything that you've seen/learned, and think what to do next. Don't be discouraged by it!

[Bobywan]

The time limit is always there. It's a big part of the game.
It's long enough to do a lot of things.

[Songbird]

You will die in this game in a lot of different ways. Dying because you run out of time specifically is not likely to be particularly common, especially if you start giving yourself a full loop when you want to explore a new major area. Once you're competent at flight and landing, you can get to any planet in about a minute or less, and the game intentionally gives you fast routes back to almost any area you might need to return to that was hard to reach the first time.

(The exception is the DLC areas, where running out of time is quite common, mostly just because dying is relatively unlikely.)

[Akameka]

I think my opinion can help you to decide, because I had the exact same that you have now. I thought the game very interesting but was rebuted by the time limit mechanic and didn't touch it for a lonnnng while. I really had to see videos of youtubers explaining how good the game was to finally jump on.

DON'T DO THAT. DON'T WATCH VIDEOS. That was very risky and I had the chance to find one that didn't spoil anything more than whats pretty much a given already, but lots of videos will ruin everything for you.

What I want to say is : Yes, the time mechanics is central to the plot. No, it's not a problem at all. Yes, 22 minutes per loop is enough to enjoy the game. And YES, I regret nothing, this game is cult and has to be done once in your gaming life.

The time limit makes sense in a very peculiar way, but once you get a hand on piloting your ship, you'll realise that even if you were interupted before finishing, you'll at worst, waste less than 5 minutes to come back. What takes time is exploration, and as you don't have to explore/read what you already did, you'll usually have plenty of time to finish what you started. Dying is part of the game. And I am not saying that as like "It's a rogue-like game, you're supposed to die but you can do it first try if you're good", but like " it's part of the game loop". ♥♥♥♥ will happen. You'll choke to death, you'll hit an object at 400+m/s, you'll get crushed, you'll blow up your ship, you'll forget putting your EVA before going out in space, you'll get direct hit by a ramdom lantern's meteor, you'll go out to repair the engine and forget that it was turned on full foward speed beforehand and end up watching your ship leave without you, you'll forget that the sun was in the trajectory of the auto-pilot... But even when you play perfectly, you'll still die in the end, That time limit itself IS for the most part, the goal of the game. Why there is a time limit, how it works, how you can use it, and how to ideally stop it so you finally don't die without it being your fault... that's what you want to find.

dying because you run out of time specifically is not likely to be particularly common

I honnestly find it amusing how some people didn't even know of the time limit until several hours in. Tell a lot on how easily some people tend to die to stoopid XD (and I plaid guilty of jumping in the geyser before my first loop even started ^.^")

[Michelle]

Thank you all for your responses!
After reading all of them, I see that in the end you end up getting used to it and it stops being as tedious as it seemed to me.
I think I'll definitely give it another chance.

[Unit 1_262]

Unfortunately I went into the game genuinely blind because that's what I was told to do by people and learned about the time loop part the hard way. It's central to the plot so there's no getting around it really, and I got tired of back tracking pretty quickly so it just sort of did ruin the experience for me.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Unit 1_262:

Unfortunately I went into the game genuinely blind because that's what I was told to do by people and learned about the time loop part the hard way. It's central to the plot so there's no getting around it really, and I got tired of back tracking pretty quickly so it just sort of did ruin the experience for me.

Personally I just liked to go to a new place after dying to keep things fresh - since usually dying before getting everything I needed meant I needed to rethink what I was doing anyway.

[Unit 1_262]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by Unit 1_262:

Unfortunately I went into the game genuinely blind because that's what I was told to do by people and learned about the time loop part the hard way. It's central to the plot so there's no getting around it really, and I got tired of back tracking pretty quickly so it just sort of did ruin the experience for me.

Personally I just liked to go to a new place after dying to keep things fresh - since usually dying before getting everything I needed meant I needed to rethink what I was doing anyway.

I did this initially also, but there are only so many planets to explore and given the fact that the time in the loop when you visit them matters greatly it just seemed like slog waiting to discover the correct time points to access stuff.

[Lavos]

Yeah, it's a bloody nuisance. USE WALKTHROUGHS. It'll save you a lot of grief in the long run. Timed puzzles here are some of the worst in gaming. You basically just need to stand in place for extended periods for certain puzzles, or rush towards the planet immediately on the loops start.

Spoilers, I guess, but just read ahead, I'm really just helping you out. Use walkthroughs for entering Ash Twins Core. Getting past Anglerfish, entering Tower of Quantum Knowledge, and entering Lakebed Caves. These are the worst. Most of the rest can be completed at any time.

[Bobywan]

Originally posted by Lavos:

Not liking the game is not a reason to try and ruin other player experience with spoilers.
Post a review and move on

[Lavos]

They're not story spoilers in any way. And I did say that I'm talking about spoilers before I talked about them, didn't I?

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Unit 1_262:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Personally I just liked to go to a new place after dying to keep things fresh - since usually dying before getting everything I needed meant I needed to rethink what I was doing anyway.

I did this initially also, but there are only so many planets to explore and given the fact that the time in the loop when you visit them matters greatly it just seemed like slog waiting to discover the correct time points to access stuff.

I can see this I guess. There aren't too many places with specific time points though. I can think of maybe three that require waiting and two that you need to do right away (and if you fail those you'll ...uh... get a chance to try them again immediately lol)

And of the three that make you wait two are on the same planet anyway. Most planets aren't time sensitive at all actually just the twins and a single location on Brittle hollow, nothing anywhere else is

[Unit 1_262]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Originally posted by Unit 1_262:

I did this initially also, but there are only so many planets to explore and given the fact that the time in the loop when you visit them matters greatly it just seemed like slog waiting to discover the correct time points to access stuff.

I can see this I guess. There aren't too many places with specific time points though. I can think of maybe three that require waiting and two that you need to do right away (and if you fail those you'll ...uh... get a chance to try them again immediately lol)

And of the three that make you wait two are on the same planet anyway. Most planets aren't time sensitive at all actually just the twins and a single location on Brittle hollow, nothing anywhere else is

On one hand, the problem with your response here is that it operates in hindsight, when playing through the game blind it isn't so clear where timing might be important. Why should I assume when playing the game that only the places where it's obvious are affected by the time? Luckily for my disinterest in the general gameplay of walking around and reading, you ended up being correct that it wasn't actually as wide spread as I initially thought. On the other hand, the planets where they do matter have several puzzles based around this that you need to find, and I just didn't find the majority of them particularly compelling.

[Mohguy]

Originally posted by Unit 1_262:

On one hand, the problem with your response here is that it operates in hindsight, when playing through the game blind it isn't so clear where timing might be important. Why should I assume when playing the game that only the places where it's obvious are affected by the time? Luckily for my disinterest in the general gameplay of walking around and reading, you ended up being correct that it wasn't actually as wide spread as I initially thought. On the other hand, the planets where they do matter have several puzzles based around this that you need to find, and I just didn't find the majority of them particularly compelling.

So many planets?
It's not NMS, there aren't even 10 planets, it's really not that big.

And yes at the beginning we don't necessarily know when and where there are temporal puzzles, but they are puzzles so it's pretty normal not to have all the cards in hand.
It's a game whose puzzles are based on the functioning of the game's universe itself, environmental puzzles. If you're somewhere, take into account the elements that can influence the place where you are and ask yourself "what would happen here depending on the progress of the loop, and would it allow me to do something new/special".

On the contrary, I think that there are very intelligent and interesting puzzles, because they are not necessarily based on what we are used to seeing elsewhere.

An example of puzzles that I find great on Brittle Hollow, but I don't recommend watching the spoiler before finishing the game or what's on this planet:
take into account the fact that a planet is gradually destroyed to be able to access a place that was previously inaccessible because of gravity, and be able to go there when the structure is in space after falling into the black hole. Personally I find it really "compelling".
It's this kind of stuff that is great.

Temporality also allows you to discover things by chance, just because you were in the right place at the right time. This kind of thing is also nice, and so some places that can be "puzzles" for some players, others will not even be aware of said riddle because they will have "solved" it without knowing it.
That's Outer Wilds, everything is accessible at any stage of your progression, but you just have to know how, or sometimes have a little luck or curiosity while exploring

You're just not sensitive to the game, its concept, its universe, its story, its atmosphere etc, it happens, no game can please everyone.
Many of us like it for its originality, its puzzles, what it tells, its structure, its themes, its atmosphere etc, it's not your case, too bad but it happens