![]() It had an option to “recall the shuttle” which was at the “Quantum Moon”. ![]() I chose to land on something that looked like a landing pad surrounded by a conical metal lattice, even though it was difficult to get through the narrow mouth of it.Īfter setting down the ship slapbang in the middle of the pad, I wondered if this should become my regular Brittle Hollow landing spot, I took a closer look at the wishbone-shaped controls of the structure which was called a “Gravity Cannon”. I was still unfamiliar with Brittle Hollow during my mid-game explorations, particularly as it disintegrates over time which makes cartography a nightmare. What isn’t clear at first is that progress in Outer Wilds is dependent on becoming not just familiar with each planet but establishing landing sites you can return to quickly. Inside the maw of a predator, the only colour left is black. The children and I jolted as a guttural growl heralded two rows of sharp teeth clamping shut over the cockpit windscreen. This journey probably only lasted around a couple of minutes, but I felt every terrifying second of it. Silhouettes of barbed vines seemed to reach out of the fog towards me, and the unbroken, eerie whine of the distress signal meant Outer Wilds was unexpectedly treading sci-fi horror territory. The fog exerted drag on my spacecraft, so I kept having to boost the ship’s forward inertia every few seconds. A Nomai escape pod signal appeared to be closer than Feldspar so I followed that trail instead of the harmonica for this run but, of course, nothing is what it seems inside the corrupted space of Dark Bramble. Outer Wilds hadn’t prodded me towards Dark Bramble but as my exploration options narrowed I decided to find out why I could hear Feldspar’s harmonica coming from the planet – as well as from a Bramble seed on Timber Hearth.īut as soon as I penetrated Dark Bramble’s interior, I was enveloped in a filthy, impenetrable fog. Then I noticed the word “SHIP” tumbling upwards through the column. The column passed above and, miraculously, the thin door frame provided enough protection. I pushed myself hard against its surface – and when I mean hard, I mean I held down the S key and recited a quiet prayer to the videogame gods. I doubted I could outrun it and the structure in front of me had a closed door. I was trapped on an elevated section of the path if I jumped off sideways I would probably fall to my doom and I had forgotten all about the jet pack. Over the top of the next structure, a white, shimmering column of milk was advancing towards me at speed – the pillar connecting the planets wasn’t solid at all. Ash Twin seemed a little dull – was this to be the entire game? Huge planets with a smattering of largely empty locations? I set down on a path then followed it to a few apparently inert structures. (A cardboard ship would have made the source material too obvious.) After all, I was flying around in a ship made of wood. But I was young and naive: everything is ridiculous in Outer Wilds and that’s what makes it so interesting. I noted the column connecting Ash Twin to its neighbour Ember Twin, a knobbly ball of clay, but I found the idea of a solid structure linking two planets ridiculous – the physical stresses would rip it apart in no time. So the next best thing was a creamy planet called Ash Twin. But the autopilot wouldn’t lock onto it, so my journey to a station mere millimetres above the sun’s corona would make my moth simile somewhat more literal.
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