What am I supposed to do?

[Energist]

I spent way too long exploring in the caverns of the home planet. Something happened, but no idea what.

I can't tell if this game has puzzles I need to solve, specific things I need to do, or what. Feels extremely aimless.

Is there anything to the center of the home planet or did I waste hours of my life? This game feels like a Nvidia tech demo.

[Energist]

Originally posted by (• ε •):

You're supposed to follow the story piece by piece. The starting planet is a tutorial to get you into the spaceship, from there you explore and collect the story, plot, and what to do. Spending 10 hours on a tutorial, are you a game journalist?

I must be. The game starts me off exploring the home planet, and never explains that I'm finished with that. I got some info from the center of the planet or whatever and spent a long ass time looking for something else because nothing really happened. I got some text about a thing and that was it.

Spending that long on the home planet soured my opinion of the game I think.

I talked to every npc multiple times expecting nested dialogue like in Dark Souls games. I scanned every tree. I thought maybe I needed to use the scanner to trigger a an event somewhere, so I tried taking photos ofpractically every square inch of the planet.

freaking obnoxious.

"go here and do this."

ok... "click text jibberish..."

....
....

I'm used to games with less subtle indicators of success or failure I suppose.
....

now what?

[(• ε •)]

This game doesn't have yellow paint, but it does have blue swirls. Look for and read the blue swirls.

[Nert]

Originally posted by Energist:

I must be. The game starts me off exploring the home planet, and never explains that I'm finished with that.

"Here are the launch codes for your spaceship, go explore the solar system and translate all that alien text" was an explanation you were finished with the village and should go explore the solar system and translate some alien text...

The village was full of NPCs giving ideas of where to explore once you took off, and to check in with all the other astronauts out there, they're each on a planet and have some starter ideas for that planet

The scout as they said is a tool for exploration like looking around corners or through holes you can't fit through. detecting danger, lighting up an area, etc

Every new thing you learn will print [Ship Log Updated] at the top of your screen the instant you see it, that's your indicator of success and is essentially the autosave

In your ship log, rumor mode, an * is the indicator of not finding everything in that location yet, it will say "* There is more to explore here", if that's not present then you're done with it

A [?] is "you've not even been here yet"

In world, everything important is big, glowing, or big and glowing, areas with nothing to find are generally empty and dull..

[Perseus]

Originally posted by Energist:

I talked to every npc multiple times expecting nested dialogue like in Dark Souls games. I scanned every tree. I thought maybe I needed to use the scanner to trigger a an event somewhere, so I tried taking photos ofpractically every square inch of the planet.

I feel like you have some expectations of how to progress that don't really hold true for Outer Wilds.
In this game, progress is measured solely and entirely by knowledge, knowledge you gain from reading Nomai texts and reaching new important locations.
Dialogue with characters is mostly either fluff or useful pointers for possible places to explore, though sometimes they have interesting info as well.

"Event"-type moments either occur entirely on their own, completely unrelated to anything you might do, or are directly caused by your actions.
But one of your actions will never cause something unrelated to occur. You will never do something on one planet that will somehow cause a character on another to move to a different location.
Outside of the tutorial, no "natural" event will ever wait for you to happen. You'll either be there, or you won't.

You'll also never get direct confirmation that you've fully explored a planet. The ship log will have a marker for specific locations you've visited if you haven't found all the important information there,
but aside from that, the closest thing to a "congrats, you found everything here" message is obtaining the achievement for fully completing the base game's ship log.

[Energist]

Originally posted by Perseus:

Originally posted by Energist:

I talked to every npc multiple times expecting nested dialogue like in Dark Souls games. I scanned every tree. I thought maybe I needed to use the scanner to trigger a an event somewhere, so I tried taking photos ofpractically every square inch of the planet.

I feel like you have some expectations of how to progress that don't really hold true for Outer Wilds.
In this game, progress is measured solely and entirely by knowledge, knowledge you gain from reading Nomai texts and reaching new important locations.
Dialogue with characters is mostly either fluff or useful pointers for possible places to explore, though sometimes they have interesting info as well.

"Event"-type moments either occur entirely on their own, completely unrelated to anything you might do, or are directly caused by your actions.
But one of your actions will never cause something unrelated to occur. You will never do something on one planet that will somehow cause a character on another to move to a different location.
Outside of the tutorial, no "natural" event will ever wait for you to happen. You'll either be there, or you won't.

You'll also never get direct confirmation that you've fully explored a planet. The ship log will have a marker for specific locations you've visited if you haven't found all the important information there,
but aside from that, the closest thing to a "congrats, you found everything here" message is obtaining the achievement for fully completing the base game's ship log.

Damn. Shows me how accustomed I am to strong feedback from games. The subtlety of this is agonizingly obtuse to me.

[Bobywan]

It is much more rewarding when you figure out something in the game because you didn't just blindly followed a marker on a map like most games