1/4
I guess my main take away while playing the game was that at no point while playing OW did I feel "wow I havent played this before". I did think "this is cool, this is clever, this was fun" but that was almost always followed by the thought "this reminds me of X, I have seen this in games before, often times better, often times from games that predate this by a good decade (if not more)"
so then the only take away becomes "that was a good package that did a lot of things well" but nothing more than that
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2/4You can do all sorts of post-hoc analysis and rationalization about what makes the game special, but the immediate emotional experience of playing it is what matters.
people dont like to admit this, but the most important aspect that determines if you like a game or not is when you play it in your life, so if you happened to play it at the right time or not for this game to hit (both mood wise as well as medium-naivete wise).
ow left me decently satisfied, but not much more. I liked it, I can see what it does well, but I just dont see where the immense amount of praise comes from, especially when similar games dont get the same amount of love.
OW has become a "cool club ticket" kind of game, I feel a lot of the hype around it is unknowingly manufactured to create a game that selfproclaimed elite enlightened gamers can call theirs. it has a popular set of game mechanics that enough people like, that this game executes well, causing this game to get this image.
Plenty of other games do their central idea equally well, but that central idea is just not popular enough for enough people to lose their minds. the fact that so many people like OW so much isnt a sign to me that the game is greater than others, its a sign that what it does is popular. other games that are as good at fullfilling their core idea are less liked just because they chose a set of mechanics and aesthetics that arent as popular. killer7 is an obvious example of such a game.
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3/4so is any great game actually great, or just great by consensus. another aspect is that its become part of fandom identity and culture to find your game a GOAT. if enough people agree that just becomes the truth then. this part is extremely manufactured. Especially in the way fans talk about the game. phrases like "dude you can only play this game for the first time once" or "dude just play the game and dont look up anything" make the game seem much better than it is, meanwhile those phrases are true for literally every game ever made, especially every mystery game, or any game with a substantial story, arguably any piece of art even.
that kind of language feels disingenuous to use to make OW stand out, because that language will always be true not matter the quality of a work. but hte fandom has gone full force on the offensive with that kind of language and the game is good enough for people to fall for it. this language wont work for super mario bros, because super mario bros is too ubiquitous and taken for granted. OW is niche enough for people to fall for it.
it feels like a very forced way to have other people like the game, especially because this language works best on people that have never played a game in the same genres that OW occupies (be it myst or obra dinn or eve or older zelda or anything else). OW then becomes the first game of its kind for these people (again that thing of the right game at the right time I was talking about earlier) to a mostly naive audience. the less genres people are deeply familiar with, the more OW hits. inversely, OW loses its luster the more experience you have with all kinds of games
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[...]4/4
couple that with a cheep price of entry and enough lore autism and heckin cute campfire vibeez, and you get a game that tries too hard to be special and a fandom that is willing to eat it all up. if you ask them what they like about it, they have to rationalize after the fact what they liked, rather than them just admitting "yeah its just a game tailor made for me and my tastes which I played at the right time when I was most receptive to what it was trying to do".if you then give an unpopular opinion against the consensus, such as I liked the game but I dont see why its so special, that then becomes an assault on their identity of liking the game and forces people to face the fact that other people didnt play the game at their perfect time, in turn implying that the only reason fans liked it so much is because they happened to play it at the right.
case in point
I had my mind blown play 999, the first zero escape, on the ds as an adolescent and since then a game can never blow my mind again. be it mgs2 or undertale or OW.
you can only have that kind of paradigm shifting mind blowing game a couple of times in your life, if not just onceIf you like the game, it's because of that emotional response, which is biased, but that isnt a bad thing. just dont make it seem like youre special or clever for liking something. just like it and be excited about it and recommend it, but dont inflate what the game actually is.
bonus because word limit/4
it can take a long time for that mindset to take hold, only now do we see Nier Automata fans or Silent Hill 2 fans admit its moreso a game for them than an undisputed masterpiece. my guess is the same will happen with the outer wilds. Will we be talking about obra dinn or outer wilds 400 years from now? probably not. we will absolutely be talking about miyamoto and super mario bros, because there the brainworms have taken hold in the minds of historians and the general populace. kojima is getting there now with his acceptance as a "genius" by film and hollywood directors. but people so desperately want OW to became gaming history, for it to be the new standard.. for it to become that, it would have to be genuinely paradigm-shifting AND a great complete package. In my opinion its only the latter. A lot of familiar ideas done well in a polished final product.. other words, good. like so many games releasing all the time.
Rain World is the only game I have played in the last 10 years that actually forced me to re-learn what games can be, what they can achieve. RW was so unconventional, but clicked so well when you could meet the game on its terms, that its genuinely noteworthy. Outer Wilds is too conventional for it to be on that level for me. its a familiar kind of game done well, and thats where my final opinion on it sits. cant bring myself to see it as anything more than that..
but you know, personal biases and all that.
