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47 - Outer Wilds: Stories and Music at the End of the Universe · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, an extension the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Mythic Mind Fellowship where we pursue wisdom in the past
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: between primary and secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder, and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're here. Welcome back to Mythic Mind Games.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Today we're talking about Outer Wilds, which we had originally
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: plan to talk about a while back, but we had
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to push it off. I wasn't ready, Michael wasn't ready.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: It's fine, but I think now we're ready. So this
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  Speaker 1: is a well, Michael, this was your your pick, so
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  Speaker 1: why don't you give it the first word on why
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  Speaker 1: you pick this.
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  Speaker 2: It's just such a fascinating game. You know, it's a
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  Speaker 2: game that makes you think and talk a lot about
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  Speaker 2: endings and and we'll obviously get into all the spoilers
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: of that, but it's a time loop game, and so
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: things end over and over and over. You know, you're
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: redoing the same things until the time or two that
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  Speaker 2: you're not doing the same thing again, and it just
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  Speaker 2: creates some very interesting things to talk about.
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  Speaker 3: Uh.
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  Speaker 2: Plus, not just from Ah, there's a video game aspect,
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  Speaker 2: kind of a meta discussion around video games the way
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  Speaker 2: that they handle repetition and and and things like that.
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  Speaker 2: But there's also some interesting things to actually talk about
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  Speaker 2: relating to how how you think about death and how
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  Speaker 2: you think about the end and things like that as well.
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  Speaker 2: So it's just a very fascinating game. Plus, you know,
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  Speaker 2: I always like to talk about a game's art and aesthetics.
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  Speaker 2: It's got a very neat aesthetic. I once heard it
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  Speaker 2: described as NASA meets the National Park System. You know,
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  Speaker 2: it's a space travel but done folksy, with banjo's and
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  Speaker 2: whistling and things like that, so.
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  Speaker 3: Which you can probably hear in space.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, yes. But another thing that's that I that I
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  Speaker 2: like too is I always love games where the music
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  Speaker 2: is actually and there's there's a word for this, I've
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  Speaker 2: forgotten what it is when when the music is actually
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  Speaker 2: part of the world per se. It's not the music
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  Speaker 2: isn't a secondary layer of the art and the presentation
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  Speaker 2: of the story, but music is actually taking place in
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  Speaker 2: the world and has a story function in it with
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  Speaker 2: ell and that's always a As a musician, I always
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  Speaker 2: love when when music becomes part of the story. So cool.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do appreciate the folks the sci fi vibe
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  Speaker 1: it's a mash up that you don't see very often,
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  Speaker 1: so it definitely does have a very unique sthetic to it.
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  Speaker 1: But Michael, why don't you go next?
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is game I note knew about for
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: a while.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 3: I have a friend who absolutely raves about this game,
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  Speaker 3: and I think he has always been a little grumpy
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  Speaker 3: that Outer Worlds came out around the same time as
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: Outer Wilds and he hates Outer Worlds and people getting
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: confused all the time. But yeah, so I've been meaning
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: to play it for a while and it's gave me
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  Speaker 3: a good excuse to It's it does feel like a
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  Speaker 3: very indie game, like it has this kind of arts
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  Speaker 3: vibe to everything that it's doing. But I dig it.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: I think it turned out pretty well as a game.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: It's remarkably stressful to play. Like the whole time Loot
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  Speaker 3: mechanic means like everything's on this really strict time limit,
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  Speaker 3: which apparently it's like twenty two minutes long, which is
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  Speaker 3: a whole story point that is twenty two minutes long
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  Speaker 3: for each iteration, And there are certain things you can
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: only do it certain points in that timeline. Like most
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: things you want to rush to really quickly, there's a
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  Speaker 3: few things you have to specifically wait on before you
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  Speaker 3: can go do them toward the end of the time loop.
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  Speaker 3: And then like when spoilers the sun explodes. When the
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  Speaker 3: sun's about to explode, you start hearing like this theme
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  Speaker 3: music going to the background. It's like, ah, dang it,
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  Speaker 3: I get hurry, urry, get this done. So yeah, it
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  Speaker 3: might be one of the most stressful games I've ever played,
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  Speaker 3: But like once you get the hang of it and
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  Speaker 3: get kind of a rhythm for how you're gonna approach
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  Speaker 3: it each time that it does get to be more
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  Speaker 3: fun as a story. It's interesting. I didn't think much
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  Speaker 3: of the story for a while, Like it's clear as
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  Speaker 3: design toward you're kind of kind of this archaeological investigator.
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  Speaker 3: It feels like to where you're trying to see, Okay,
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  Speaker 3: what was going on with this ancient civilization and how
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  Speaker 3: does all of that piece together into something meaningful for
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  Speaker 3: me and for my exploration, and what does it have
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  Speaker 3: to do with this whole time loop thing that's triggered
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  Speaker 3: and going off over and over and over, Because you
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  Speaker 3: clearly do not want to stay in this time loop
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  Speaker 3: where the sun keeps exploding on you. You want to figure
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  Speaker 3: out a way out of that problem. So the whole
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  Speaker 3: thing is about trying to figure out some way to
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  Speaker 3: solve that through your investigation. And it's very free form.
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  Speaker 3: You can kind of go anywhere and investigate any particular thing.
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  Speaker 3: I think, Michael you described it as like it's like
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  Speaker 3: a Metroid Venea, but knowledge based, and I really since
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  Speaker 3: that later on, where it's very much about you remembering
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  Speaker 3: you learned something over here that again you can apply
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  Speaker 3: in this other place in surprising ways, and so you
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  Speaker 3: have to make some logical leaps to figure out how
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  Speaker 3: to apply it. So from the mental aspect, super interesting.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, that's that's what makes it such a neat
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  Speaker 2: game design, is that you can do everything from the
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  Speaker 2: very beginning. There's nothing that you're unlocking or gaining in
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  Speaker 2: between except what you've learned.
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  Speaker 3: Right, you could beat the whole game in like the
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: first ten minutes after you start.
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  Speaker 2: It's exactly what but you just you have to know
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  Speaker 2: what you're doing. And so the way that the information
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  Speaker 2: is scattered around the world, so that while you're approaching
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  Speaker 2: the end of this one loop and you read something,
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  Speaker 2: you're like, h Okay, I know what I'm doing next loop,
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  Speaker 2: you know, and it sets up this kind of progression
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  Speaker 2: of it's a very interesting gameplay loop. It's a very
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  Speaker 2: interesting one because it's like, Okay, I can apply this
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  Speaker 2: here now, and let's see where this gets me. You
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  Speaker 2: go off and you get a little further, and you
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  Speaker 2: learn a few new things, and you slowly piece together
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  Speaker 2: what's a pretty pretty fascinating sci fi mystery.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and I feel like most of the interesting
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  Speaker 3: themes and stuff like finally started to register with me.
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  Speaker 3: Like it's a very very like because that's when you
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  Speaker 3: unlock the final pieces you need that just recontact srtualizes
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  Speaker 3: everything before that, which I do like those kinds of
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  Speaker 3: twists a lot. But it's interesting because it's a twist
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  Speaker 3: you kind of come out naturally by figuring things out
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  Speaker 3: more than the game just explicitly spilling things out for
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  Speaker 3: you tho dispell out some things. But uh yeah, one
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  Speaker 3: story it reminded me a lot of toward the end
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  Speaker 3: because it deals with kind of the end of the
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  Speaker 3: universe and this idea of like how do you deal
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  Speaker 3: with approaching the end of the universe, Like, like you said, endings.
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  Speaker 3: It reminded me of an Isaac Osamov short story called
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  Speaker 3: The Last Question, which I know Michael you read. I
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: don't know if Andrew you're familiar with It's it's very short,
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  Speaker 3: but it's this whole idea of like this supercomputer dealing
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  Speaker 3: with this question of what do we do about handling
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  Speaker 3: dealing with the end of the universe? Is there any
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  Speaker 3: way to prevent entropy from wiping out everything? And it
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  Speaker 3: has a dubiously meaningful ending, but its ending is feels
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  Speaker 3: to me very similar to the way that Outer Wilds ends.
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  Speaker 3: You can argue maybe one does it better, but the
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  Speaker 3: spirit of the question feels similar that Outer Wilds is asking.
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  Speaker 3: So yeah, I've rambled on long enough there, but I
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  Speaker 3: feel like there's plenty of theme there for us to discuss.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like this is a game that I liked it,
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  Speaker 1: but I feel like I would have enjoyed it a
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  Speaker 1: lot more if I had more time with it, versus
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  Speaker 1: having so many other things happening and trying to, you know,
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  Speaker 1: finish it on something of a deadline, because you know,
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  Speaker 1: a few episodes ago I talked about The Forgotten City
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  Speaker 1: with David, which also operates on a time loop mechanic.
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  Speaker 1: But well, this game is it's much more impressive in
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  Speaker 1: its scale. That's also something that makes it feel a
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  Speaker 1: little bit more tedious because of its scale. You know,
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  Speaker 1: in the Forgotten City that, yeah, you have to rewalk
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  Speaker 1: some of your steps, but the whole game you can
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  Speaker 1: finish in a few hours, and so it's a much
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  Speaker 1: smaller manageable scale. Whereas as as much as I like
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  Speaker 1: this game, you know, as Mike has said, a lot
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  Speaker 1: of the revelations or the more philosophical implications don't really
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  Speaker 1: pop up until you get toward the end, and so
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  Speaker 1: I do admit a bit that at points it started
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  Speaker 1: to feel a little bit tedious, a little bit like
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  Speaker 1: a chore. But that being said, I definitely do appreciate
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  Speaker 1: the esthetics that are involved here. It is a very
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  Speaker 1: stressful game where you know, you who narrowly miss a
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  Speaker 1: jump and now you're in.
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  Speaker 3: A black hole.
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  Speaker 1: You're, however, far away from your ship and you know
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  Speaker 1: you're going to die.
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  Speaker 2: So I don't you're going to die anyway, So I mean,
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  Speaker 2: that's that's true. You end up where you're not supposed
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  Speaker 2: to be. You just what can I find now, you know, I.
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  Speaker 1: Say, the first time I loaded up this game, it
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  Speaker 1: was late at night later than I should have been
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: loading up a game, and before I even got the
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  Speaker 1: launch codes, I fell off a platform and died. That
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  Speaker 1: was my first before I even got to the loop.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, so I don't know, it's it's it's a
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  Speaker 1: good game, but I think it would have been even
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  Speaker 1: better if it was more of a relaxed venture. So
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  Speaker 1: kind of Michael, I mean, do you want to take
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  Speaker 1: the lead here?
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  Speaker 2: One thing that I think it's it's always interesting about
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  Speaker 2: time loop games is they very often seem, on one
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  Speaker 2: level to be self aware of the medium of video
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  Speaker 2: games more than a way that others aren't, you know,
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  Speaker 2: because the question always is Mario has three lives. He
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  Speaker 2: runs forward, he makes it, he goes a little bit,
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  Speaker 2: and then he falls into a pit and he starts
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  Speaker 2: that level over what happens. Is Mario in a time
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  Speaker 2: loop or is this in an alternate universe? Or did
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Mario reincarnate? You know, did he come back to life? What? What?
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  Speaker 3: What?
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  Speaker 2: What is what's going on there?
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  Speaker 1: Right?
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  Speaker 3: You know?
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  Speaker 2: And and and you find games from time to time
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  Speaker 2: that use death and and the you know, retrying and
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  Speaker 2: redoing things as an actual mechanism with in the story,
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  Speaker 2: like Dark Souls, for instance, is very famous for that
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  Speaker 2: of when you die, you it is actually death and
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  Speaker 2: you you know, you come back at this nearby bonfire
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  Speaker 2: and that has you know, implications to your character within
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: the world and things like that, and it's you know,
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  Speaker 2: it's a it. It treats a necessary mechanical aspect of
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: playing a game as worth examining and being commented on
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  Speaker 2: and part of the story, right and Outer Wilds does
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  Speaker 2: it a little bit differently, and that no matter what
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  Speaker 2: you do, death is coming around at this this this
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  Speaker 2: pre done interval, and it also plays with expectations of
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: video games in the in this interesting way, and that
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: video games you are there to win, right You're you're
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: you're there to win and solve all the problems because
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: it's it's an interactive medium, and I think most people
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: once once they once they get started in Outer Wilds,
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  Speaker 2: you go through the first loop at a set amount
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: of time. It's like twenty two and a half minutes.
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  Speaker 2: You know, this ominous synthesizer music starts playing and you're like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: what's going on? If you happen to be outside looking up,
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  Speaker 2: you see the sun collapse and explode into a supernova
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  Speaker 2: and you're like, oh, this is bad, right, and you die,
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  Speaker 2: You get reround, you start over. Well, by the second
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: time that happens, you're playing a game. You now know
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: what your quest is. My quest is to save the unit,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: save my solar system, and stop the Sun from exploding. Well,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: you're going to start looking around and very soon what
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: are you going to notice? But there's a little space
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: station orbiting very closely around the Sun. And you're like, well,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: that's really interesting. What are you doing there? Are you
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: supposed to be there? What's going on? Right? And so
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: there's this this this for a lot of people, the
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: what they call this, this is the Sun Station. I can't remember.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: I think that's what it's called Sun Station.
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  Speaker 3: I think it actually is.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for a lot of people.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: Luck, if you're trying to land on it, it.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Can be done. It can be done.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: You know, it's just ridiculous.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: It's like throwing a dart into a hurricane and landing
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  Speaker 2: a high behind you. It can be done. And I
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: probably took twenty tries and did it the first time
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  Speaker 2: rather than the longer on foot route to get there.
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  Speaker 2: But you get there and you realize, well that the
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  Speaker 2: Sun Station isn't causing a supernova the supernova at all,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: and it's a whole lot more complex. What's going on?
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Who is who has set up on a planet with
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: a telescope and he's noticing, right is I think it's Chirt.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: I think it's Chirt. That's that's the one that.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't remember which one. I do remember the
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: dialogue that you know.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: What's interesting about him is that depending upon where you
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: get to him in a cycle, depends very upon his mood.
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  Speaker 2: Like he's happy, go lucky at the beginning. A little
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  Speaker 2: bit into it, he's noticing that there's suns in the
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: area going supernova laid in it. He's noticing that all
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: the suns are dying, and he's entered this full blown
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: existential panic that the universe is dying. It's all over,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: it's all over. Our own sun is swelling and going
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: to explode, right, And so at that point, whenever you,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: you know, talk to Cherton like that, you're like, oh
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: at all, Which is again a little bit of an
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  Speaker 2: examination of the way that video games are this interactive medium.
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  Speaker 3: It's also kind of related that one of the things
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  Speaker 3: that kept striking me about how surreal the world is
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: is that everything, all space time is weirdly compressed in
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: this game, like because like I wouldn't expect, even at
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  Speaker 3: this hypothetical end of the universe, all the starts to
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: start exploding at the same time. You would think that
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: we go off on their own, like very spread out intervals.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: But also, planets are not that close together in real life.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you've noticed. Then you look up
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: at the sky, the planets are not ten kilometers apart.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: It's a very chevy scale solar system. And that's another
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: fun thing about out Wild's is that despite the very cheby,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: very cute sea folksy small scale little worlds, you know
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: where if you get running and you jump fast enough
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: on some of these light light ones, you can almost
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: put yourself in orbit with jetpack, right. But despite that,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: the flight model is fairly unforgiving that that the the
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: of the of the ship and you have to learn
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: how to fly that thing pretty well because you're going
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: to be flying it and there's a couple of tricky
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: landings you have to make, and you know, catching up
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: to a comet and you know, and put settling down
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: on that can be difficult. So sore there's a little
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: bit of challenge involved with some of the physics involved
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: with the game, despite some of the cutesy appearance.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my first flight, I quickly found myself underwater with
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: all these tornadoes going around me. On.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the the game does a good job of
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: There's this very very little solar system. You've got the
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: the planet where your little species is from, which is
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: just quite little forests. You have the massive water planet
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: with this it's everywhere awful current subsurface. You've got this
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: hollow planet with a black hole in the middle that
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: is in the process of collapsing here at the end
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: of time, and so it's falling apart as the cycle
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: goes on. You have the Ashen Twins, which is like
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: two planets that are locked together, where like sand is
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: like flowing back and forth like an hourglass between them.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Then you have the Bramble, which is a weird when
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: you start out. Yes, yes, like there's a piranha it
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: just date me. Yeah, so there, there's there's a lot
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: that's there, and so yeah, it can be a little
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: daunting to go, like where where do I go? And
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: And really the answer is you just anywhere you can
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: find something and then once you start learning things, that
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: directs you on where to go. So you're right, it
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: is a very as you were saying Mike earlier, it's
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: a very wide open game with very little telling you
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: what to do at all. There is there is a
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: computer in your ship that kind of tracks things that
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: you've found that you can kind of help, you know,
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: go back and remember some stuff, and that can help
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: you fill in some gaps.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: But yeah, eventually, once you get enough information in that computer,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: it can it can guide you to be like, hey,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: there's something over here, go look at it.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Right, there's some process of elimination going.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: So once you're later in the game, I feel like
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: this game, I don't know if I would say it's
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: easier as you get further, but it does get more
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: to where you have an idea of what to do
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: later on because you have enough information to know I
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: have all these different directions I can go. It's like,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: all right, I've finished off as much as I can
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: of this path. Now let's switch over to the other path.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: So it does eventually encourage you to like start plotting
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: things out in your head for what you're going to
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: do on each iteration. But yeah, until you get to
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: that point, it's just like, what the heck do I do?
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: This is great? Like, I'll be honest, I enjoyed the
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: second my second half of my play through much more
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: than the first half, because the first half I was
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: just having a really hard time being like I've arked
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: up caring about this stuff.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: Well, once you learn enough, you start to find things
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: you care about and start to find the puzzle solving
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: to be more engaging.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: And there may be some there may be some luck
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: upon based upon what you stumble upon. First, you know,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: do you stumble upon that compelling mystery? First? I watched
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: a friend play it, and on his second loop he
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: accidentally stumbled all the way into we'll talk about later,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: but the Ashon twin project core. He happened to step
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: into that room at the exact moment that the thing happens,
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: and he warped and he goes where am I? And
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I'm just like, that's insane? Yeah, yeah, I mean he
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: didn't coincidence, He didn't. I mean, he didn't have the
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: context to understand anything either was the thing. And what
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: was funny was he didn't know how to repeat it
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: for a few dozen more playthroughs before he pieced everything
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: together and he was like, that's where I was on
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: my second cycle. So there is certainly a Your mileage
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: may vary based upon how the mystery unfolds for you. So,
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: but the mystery, right, what's what's the mystery? Well, for starters,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: the end of the universe, you know you're going, what's
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: what's going on? Because instinctively in a game, you think
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: it's the malicious and something is malicious, something has killed
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: the universe, right, that's naturally what you assume in a
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: video game. Well, you find out you you pretty much
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: eventually that's not that's just not the case. But as
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: you're exploring the Solar system, you find all these ruins
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: from a civilization that was there before. They were a
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: nomadic civilization that had come to your solar system heating
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: with looking for the Eye of the universe. It was
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: this signal that they followed here, and when they got
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: here they couldn't detect it any longer. Their ship was
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: destroyed on the way in, so they were trapped here.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: They were still looking for the eye. They were very
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: much an explorer science tist race, and so they set
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: up this elaborate system that they know the Eye of
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: the Universe is somewhere around the Solar System. I think
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: it's I think it's in an orbit. Actually around the
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: site is.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: A distant orbit, but they can't figure out how to
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: actually nail down where it is, and so they create
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: this insane system of like this satellite around that water
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: planet that's shooting out a probe which you see one
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: fire off every time you start an iteration, because it's
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: the first thing you see when you wake up, and
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: you learn later what's going on is that they're basically
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: using this time loop as a mechanism to fire in
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: every conceivable direction until eventually, on one of those iterations
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: it finally hits that stupid Eye of the Universe. Right
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: then it'll it'll send back through the time loop the
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: information about where it is, so hypothetically somebody could find it,
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: and that's how you find it eventually.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Right, they figure out that that they know it's out there,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: and they can't possibly build and send enough probes to
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: actually discover something that's that far out. And so after
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: having discovered basically that they can use wormholes as time
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: travel based upon how much energy goes in that they
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: can get information out earlier that they're going to need
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: a whole lot of energy in order to send information
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: back and just use the same probo for and over,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: and it's going to be this automated project. Well, what
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: they're going, what they decide to do is basically, the
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: only way they can get enough energy to send a
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: information back the twenty two and a half or twenty
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: three minutes is if they blow up the Sun. And
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: so you read that the first time, you're like, oh,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: those stink in no Mii, that's their name, those stink
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: and Noma. They blew up our sun. That's what's doing it, right,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: But you get further in and you find out that
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: they never figured out a way to do it. They
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: had to abandon the project based because they couldn't blow
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: up the Sun. They couldn't doce anything to the Sun
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: to get it to blow up. So while the Sun
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Station was there to investigate that possibility, it was a
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: dead end. And so they never find the eye of
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: the Universe because their fancy project of basically blowing up
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: the Sun over and over sending information back in time
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: with that probe until they do it and it sends
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: the stop signal, it never happens because they can't figure
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: out a way to blow up the Sun, which is
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: probably a good thing in general, but you know, and
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: so ultimately something happens to the Nomai. There's this this
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: comment that comes through the solar system, blanketing it with radiation,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: and they die, you know, tragically, in the middle of
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: everything they're doing, and their project, to their time travel projects,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: called the Ash and Twin project just sits there collecting
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: dust for millennia or who knows.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: How long, literally collecting dust.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: You're right, So your your little species, uh you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: comes to maturity, heads out into space, and it just
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: so happens that you set foot out into space on
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: the very last day of the universe when all the
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: sons are going nova. And so when your son goes
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: super nova, it triggers the noma's little science project. And
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: over and over and over and over. It's been sending
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: probes for thousands of cycles until it discovered the eye.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And then at that point it sends basically a signal
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: to bring a person into the loop, correct activates those
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: statues to bring the nomae into it. Basically, it's how
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: you get caught up into the loop.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's that statue you see in the
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: museum at the very beginning of the game, right, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: that's when your actual time loop starts.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Right, So you get stuck in their science project that
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: it now knows where the eye of the universe is,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: but it's still going and you're sitting there on this
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: little bubble at the edge of the universe, living the
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: last twenty three minutes of the universe, over and over
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: from a science project of a species that went extinct
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: who knows how long ago?
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, is it implied because I'm trying to think, because
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: approach would have only been starting to fire when the
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: time loop started, right, Yes, it implied that you've actually
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: been stuck in the time loop a long time before
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: the game starts, but you only are aware of it
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: when the statue looks at you.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Right, once it discovered the eye, then the statues become
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: active because at that point, once it wants to know
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: my experience the loop, then they're supposed to just stop.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: It, right because if you do, as if you die
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: before the statue activates, then you.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Get it says you're dead. Happens because that's what happens
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: if you rip out that power core in ash and
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: twin and you die, that's what it says, and you
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: start over the same way, but it's like a distinct
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: difference of what it tells you happened.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Uh So, where were we at here? I'm trying because
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to because like I said, it's a it's
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: a it's a fascinating concept and kind of a horrible one.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: But you know the way the way it you get
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: stuck in someone else's loop and you're by late in it.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: You're trying to figure out what am I supposed to do?
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: And eventually you can figure out I've got to go
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: to the eye of the universe. I've got to go
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: to the eye of the universe. The no mice experiment
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: was successful. I'm going to carry it out and finish it.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: And what what's so fascinating about the way it does
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: it is you can take their ship, but it doesn't
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: have a warp cores anymore. You know that their ships
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: just teleport around and you need a warp core, And
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: at first you're kind of thinking that some other equipment
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: can make some over. I think in the the collapsing planet,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: there's like a there's was where their fabricator was was
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: making it. But that doesn't work out, you know, it's
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: it's it doesn't you can't do that. And ultimately you
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: figure out that the only way to get a warp
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: core into their ship is to pull the one out
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: of the Ashen Twin project that's basically keeping the universe
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: going on this loop. And so that's one of those
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: really just fascinating moments in gaming when you finally get
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: into the core of the sign It's experiment. You read
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: these last logs, you figure out what's going on, and
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: you sit there and you look at this warp core
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: and you know that if you pull that out, that
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: the universe actually does end, that it won't just keep
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: stuck on this loop here at the end. And that's
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: a fascinating thing because when when you pull it, the
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: there's there's there's always I mentioned that music, that end
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: of time music that's like this arpeggiating scynth. Well it
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: starts again, but it's different. Right. You've heard this one
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: piece of music signaling the end of the music probably
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: a couple dozen times at this point, right, And so
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: when you pull that core and it starts those familiar notes,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: but it's not the same. You go, mmm, I'm in
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: for it now, right this this is this is the
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: end of the line here. So that's it's a neat
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: moment in gaming to wrap an awful lop around just
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: the little thing of well, I'm just gonna pull this
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: thing out and well now now I'm in for it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Now I go see what the eye of the universes?
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Now I see you know, now I let the universe die.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: You know that was sitting here on this cusp for
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: who knows how long.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: And it does make that final run. Like I was
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: talking about the game being stressful, it makes that final
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: run super stressful because like, even though you know you
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: if you died, you still get to start over, even
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: but yeah, you still feel like I really don't want
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: to die now. So I have to rush through this
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: incredibly dangerous place to get that power corp back to
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: where it needs to be up on the super strict timeline,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: because you've already had to wait some time to even
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: be able to access it. So you're already like five
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: minutes into the twenty two minute loop at that point,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: and you're like, oh my godness, can I get past
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: all the stupid piranhas? Can I navigate through this like
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: stupid quantum super sized planet to like get to the
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: ship and drop it off. Can I.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: And then the little the little coordinate thing where you're
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: moving the marble around for the coordinates.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: You're like, yeah, exactly. It's like so so stressful, but
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: it's kind of brilliant because you it's like you have
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: to do that. You have to pull yourself out of
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: the time loop and get yourself in extreme danger, the
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: whole universe into extreme danger just to be able to
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: find a way to potentially save it. But you don't
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: really know what's gonna happen.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And so I guess now we start to move toward
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the I at the universe unless you ainything else before that.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Now, the Universe, I think is one of more interesting
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: thematic elements of this game because it's kind of like
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: a semi religious entity. It's how the game treats it.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: It doesn't really want to answer that question whether the
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: eye is. It doesn't it doesn't answer that question at all.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: What the eye is ultimately, you know, other than some
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: some some form of the singularity, the seed that starts
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: the next universe.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, it's kind of almost like a almost feels
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: like a deified version of quantum mechanics at tried to
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: do with.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: It to an extent. And even the nom I think
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: there's some there's some conversation with the no My at
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: some point kind of questioning asking whether is is this?
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Is this an entity? Is this a personality of God?
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: What is this?
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: You know? Trying to tribe intense to it, right, they don't,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: They don't know at all.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Right, it's even there their name that no My. I mean,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I assume that's related to the Greek nosss for for knowledge,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: or like you know, a gnome is a wise one.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: And then I mean the in the the classical cosmology,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the high of the universe it is the sun, which
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I mean this is not the sun. But nonetheless, the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: the universe is principally associated with the kind of philosophers.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: There's there's who want to know, there's there's who are
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: able to see things clearly, and there's something divine at
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: play here. And so yes, as you said, the game
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: itself isn't really answering that question. But the fact that
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the eye of the universe is described as being older
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: than the universe implies it's not one and the same
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: with the universe.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it wants you to ask some questions,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: but the game isn't interested in answering them per se.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: The game is perfectly content with the nature of the
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: eye being a mystery.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Right, And I think it it still instills there's some
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: sense of the sacred, at the very least in the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: sense that our mortality is weighed against this thing that
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: is not mortal. Right, Like, as much as we ourselves
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: die and the universe dies, countless universes die, there's something
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: that endures and continues forward. Yeah, it's also mechanically, it's
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: kind of interesting to me that at least the no
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: my theories, if you find the right people to tell
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: you this, the no my theorize that, like, what's actually
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: going on is like you, as a conscious observer going
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: into this super quantum thing is what actually might trigger something.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And it's kind of I think they vaguely imply that
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the fact that you, a living person who wants the
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: universe to go on, goes into it as an observer
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: is what causes it.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: To come to existence, a new universe come to existence.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: And if someone hadn't, it's questionable whether that would have happened.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: But like Michael said, it doesn't really answer that. It's
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: just like characters in world are throwing out that theory,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: but that theory may or may not be correct. It
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: doesn't like go out of its way to establish their
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: correct or not.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So the last twenty minutes of the game get
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: in classic sci fi faction like two thousand and one
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: or something like that, very trippy. Right as you find
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: this weird planetoid with lightning and fall down into it,
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: it gets very weird. You end up in this forest
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: and are seeing all the galaxies around you and you're
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: watching as they all snuff out, with the implication of
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: you've now dird past the universe. You're in this forest,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: which is you know, probably only a forest because you're
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: the one that's there. So it looks like things that
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: you know. You walk around and are are finding and
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: remembering your friends, basically the people that you met along
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: the way, all the different people, and all of them
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: were playing instruments, and so they all gather around this
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: fire and and there's one more hidden person there. There's
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: as as Micah was alluding to, there's there's a surviving
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Noma that was left kind of in this in this
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Schrodinger's cat State of Both Alive and Dead. Did everybody
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: find solanum.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Something? I don't know how you pronounce it, but yeah,
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: I found it. I don't know intrigod Yeah, okay, so
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: we had a guide for it because at that point
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: I was just like right right, because it's stupidly complicated
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: to get to it.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the quantum moon is one of the one of
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: the the the weirder parts. But you know, and you know,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: everybody that you found collects around this fire, and you
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: and and you know, you can talk to everybody, and
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: everybody has these these really the people aren't there, they're
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: already dead, right, You're you're talking to the memory of them,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: and and they all have their observation on the ending
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: and what's going to happen. And when it's time, you
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: ask them all to start playing their music again. And
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: so everyone is playing their music again, including you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: if you save this Nomai. And also there's there's something
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: else with the DLC, which I don't know if either
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: of you guys played, And I can summarize it later
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: because it's kind of interesting.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: I think I heard it's like something called the Prisoner
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: or something.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can do a quick summary of it later
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: and how it fits it thematically into these things. But
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: you know, if everyone plays their music again, which is
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: the main theme, you know, and adding to it, and
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: basically you know, there's this little collapsed singularity that starts
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: the new universe. You're sitting there at all, and then boom,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: you know, you see bang you die. Right there goes
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: to credits. After the credits, you know, you see you
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: see this scene of the new universe that's come and
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit different depending upon who's there, right
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: if if you haven't spoken to the Nomai, it's a
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: different universe because, uh, the the implication is the person
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: that was there to see the beginning of the universe
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: brought the memories of these people with them and the
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: music that they were playing. There's almost there's almost a
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: a silmarillion, you know, the music of the einer there
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: that that their their music, you know, is a memory
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: that's poured forth into the universe and changes the next one.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of a somber ending in a way.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And that and that the the end is inevitable, right,
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: there's no saving the universe, there's no saving your race,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: there's no saving any of it. But there is an
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: acceptance in saying that. But it's okay because you know,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: there's something that comes after me, there's something that follows,
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: and you know, you know, I've seen conversation around this game.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Some people declare it to be realistic because you can't
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: save anything, right, And I think that's really kind of silly,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: because the game reeks with purpose, right, that things happen
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: for a purpose. Oh, the Gnoma just happened to to
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: set up their fancy science experiments so that one last
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: explorer late in time can stumble around in this loop
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: long enough to see the eye. It's like, Okay, you
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: can say that's nelistic, or you can say that there's
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: clearly even if even if the game doesn't say there's
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: divine purpose, there's clearly purpose in all these things. There's
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: purpose in the memories of all the people that are
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: there playing their instrument at the fire at the end,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: and so it's certainly not theistic in a Christian way,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: you know, but it's still there's still this sense that
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: that the live that the lives that we live, despite
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: the fact that we're going to tie have a purpose
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: to them. You know, there's very much any Ecclesiastes, Uh,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: live live it, live it well, live it with purpose,
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: have a have it, have have the right outlook, enjoy
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: your life, and but know that your time on earth
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: is limited. So it's even even though it doesn't it
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: doesn't rise up to what I would call a Christian
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: standard of a theology of death and acceptance of death,
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: I still think there is. It's thinking about those things
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: more seriously than most other secular things try to do.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's definitely not egocentric, which to to a
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: postmodern audience, not egocentric and theholistic almost sound like the
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: same thing that. Yeah, the point is it's not all
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: about you. That there is a certain futility that comes
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: along with mortality. That's the Ecclesiastes, that's the momentum more angle.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: But recognizing that futility forces us to consider what is
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: it that endures in the face of our mortality, And
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: so that kind of thinking is actually a pathway to
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: genuine meaning, true meaning as opposed to the glib vanity
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that we tend to base our lives on that we
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: tend to look for personnificance. And so, yeah, I definitely
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: agree with you. Is it's not realistic. It actually forces
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: you to take your life more seriously, recognizing that, yes,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: one hand, the story, most of the stories that we
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: enact as well as the stories that we tell, will
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: die out, something about them continues on to shape the future.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: And while as you said, that's not the fullness of
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: a Christian picture of meaning, it's still something that you
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: have a larger part to play in the story of
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the cosmos than just yourself.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And so one other thing like I keep thinking
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: about when I try to look at this from a
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: Christian perspective, is I find it really interesting when you're
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: looking through the Nomi's apocalyptic logs, if you will, about
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: how they had this complex emotional relationship with the Eye,
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: which feels almost like it was written kind of like
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: with a mind toward how people have an emotional relationship
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: with our understanding of God. It's like crrect me if
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: I wone. But I feel like I remember several logs
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: that I found early that where they were saying it
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: was a hateful, horrible entity that had brought them there,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: like it had summoned them there only to greet them
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: and give them failure and death. And that reminds you
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: of like how a lot of people who are bitter
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: towards God feel to where they're thinking, like a lot
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: of people would call God an evil entity because he
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: allowed them to experience suffering, and a lot of them
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: believe he caused them to experience suffering, And so you
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: see kind of that, but you also see the other
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: kind of thing where they're like, this is like our
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: greatest hope, Like there are some places where they basically
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: worship the Eye, which were that's really good for them
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: have been doing, but like whether that's idolatry, But if
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: we treat this as like a religious metaphor, it's kind
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: of like there's this very wide range of feelings toward
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: the Eye, and I feel like there is a sense
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: in which the creators here were kind of exploring that
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: question of like what do we think of God? Like?
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: And at the end, one of the things I really
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: like about when you're actually going into the eye is
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: how unbelievably terrifying that thing is. Like when you're going
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: through that darkness with lightning hitting everywhere, rocks disappearing and
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: appearing all around, He's like, oh my god, I'm gonna
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: get crushed, and then you fall into this void and
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: then you just fall through this endless cavern of cosmic
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: winds or whatever, and then everything just goes black. It's
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: like there, it's like they are trying to capture this
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: notion of Okay, this is what it would actually be
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: like to meet God. This would not be like like
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: an experience that would do anything but just absolutely terrify
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: you and just overwhelm you with the sheer power of
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: what you're dealing with. It's just incomprehensible. And I think
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: in that sense it does kind of capture some of
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: what the Bible does teach about who God is. Is
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: like he is this incredibly like powerful being if you
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: are being feels inadequate to describe God, but who is
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: just overwhelming Like that was like the whole thing with Moses,
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: like it couldn't even look upon God without just being blinded,
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: was the idea. So yeah, it's that to me is interesting,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: and it does also relate again to like our emotional
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: feelings about God feel almost like inadequate and pointless sometimes
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: when you consider how incredible He actually is. So that
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: for me was probably the most thought provoking part of
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: the story.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely feel like there is no hostility towards
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: God in this story that you feel so often in
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: secular works, And it feels like it does kind of
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: poke around the edges of thinking about uh, God and
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: the divine as as Andrew was saying earlier. But but
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: it's not poking in a way where you think that
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: the creators are being hostile any more than they're just
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: asking a few questions and and maybe keeping their distance,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: you know, keeping keep keeping out at a secular, you
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: know thing. But it but it is a is a
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: game that does provoke, you know, big questions and big conversation.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: I remember, you know, when it came out. I remember
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: going and cruising its subreddit, which there were two big
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: kinds of posts on this on that on that subreddit
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: back back then. One of them were people that had
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: thought were trying to find Outer Worlds because it came
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: out in the same year as Outer Wilds, uh and
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: we're very confused. And the other where people said were
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: you know, ostensibly you know, atheists and non believers saying
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: I played this game, I cried afterwards, and I don't
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: understand what it's making me think, you know, because it
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: because it does flirt with the edges of very large
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: questions in a way that that cause some distress, you know,
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: with a lot of a lot of these you know,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Reddit atheists that played this game. They loved it, you know,
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: but they just didn't understand why. They didn't understand why
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: some of the things removing them in the way it did,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: which is just very very fascinating to look at. You know.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that a lot of people,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: probably especially the secularists and the redded atheists, they don't
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: regularly consider their mortality. And most Christians dough regularly consider
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: their mortality. But let alone the unbeliever who who as
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: far as they know, this is all that they have.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I teach philosophy of State University.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite classes to teach is a course
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: is a philosophy course called Life, Death and Meaning. And
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: it's all about just you know, the fact that we're
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: going to die, where do we find meaning? And this
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: is something that they just really hadn't considered. A lot
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: of them are very uncomfortable, which is why I just
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: begin in the class by asking them, you know, how
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: many of you know that you're going to die? And
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, they know, that, but they don't really
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: know that. And so when we read stories, I mean,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: in that class, I have them start with Tolstoys the
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Death of evan Iliach, which is one of my favorite
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: short stories, and it just forces them to confront the mortality,
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: and that necessarily leads to either despair or something like
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: a religious kind of experience. Now, actually despair and religious
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: kind of experience, that those kind of go hand in hand,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: because once you start despairing over this life and you
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: recognize how futile it is, then naturally you're going to
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: be looking for something else, whether you consciously or not.
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: And so it makes sense that this game could trigger
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: that kind of response in somebody who hasn't really dealt
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: with their own mortality, the fact that even this universe
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: itself eventually is going to come to an end, and
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: we are far earlier than that, I assume.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we we we have a terrible ah, we
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: have a terrible ethic of death in our culture, right probably,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, any earlier pagan culture is going to have
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: a better, better grasp of death, I think, because we
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: have the ability to delay it in such ways now
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: for so long, you know, compared to so many uh,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: any other civilization that's come before. You know, we we
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: we we we hold up. We have hold on desperately
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: to the end, far longer than we should in some cases.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like the purpose of medicine is not
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: to prolong life indefinitely. You know, you you hit those
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: points where it's where where it's like, you know, it's
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: it's okay, it's okay not to keep administering treatment. You know,
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: it's the But but we don't have where we're right,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: We have no we have no ethic of death. We
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: are so secular, and so people do everything to avoid it.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: It's very humor where we find o.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, you can, you can always go back to Tolkien.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: I have heard it said that let's stop provoking.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: For me, when I heard this was that civilization, as
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: at least our civilization, is very heavily organized around distracting
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: us from the reality that we're going to die. So
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: then when we have something that confronts us with death
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: like and where we can't ignore it, that's very overwhelming
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: for us because we're not used to considering the question
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: a lot of the time.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: And as Christians, we should It's funny because we should
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: be better with that, and we usually are, but we
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: should be better with death from multiple different angles. One,
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: we know that death is not the ideal plan. We
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: know that there is, you know, a fallen nature to
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: this world that introduces this calamity that we're so afraid of.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Right we that sin is destroying us and is killing us.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, we're also the ones that
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: have hope and and should be okay to say, you know,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: it's it's my time. And so often you know, my
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: grandfather was ninety five years old, died about a month
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: and a half ago. Right, he'd been ready to go
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: for a long time. You know, he'd been ready. He
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: was ready, and you know, in this last he had
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: a fall at the end of February. You know, he
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: had a brain to lead. We were like, he's not
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: a surgery candidate. We're not not okay. You know, that's
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: that's not going to improve his quality of life. You know,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: even if even if we save him, it's going to
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: destroy the last of his quality of life, you know.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: And it stopped.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: Miraculously for a couple of weeks. He got to go
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: home for a few days, everybody saw him, and then
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: it just started again. And it was over, you know,
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: but he was ready to go. He was ready to go.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: You know. That's that's the hope that as Christians we have,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: is that we can we know that death is not okay,
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: but yet at the same time, it's also our our
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: liberation from this fallen state for now, and we'll be
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: we'll be overjoyed to be reunited with a glorified body
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: later when it's you know, when all of those things
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: are healed. But it's too often we get caught up
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: in our society and our culture and our same thing
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: of just it's avoiding death, it's right, or, as Mike
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: was saying, distraction from from the impending doom that's coming.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, there's an interesting game in that it
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: because it layers on finality in several different sections. It's like, oh,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: I died in the supernova. I'm going to stop it.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: Oh all the stars are dying. Oh the whole universe
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: is ending. I can't stop it. It cannot be stopped.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: It's the universe's time. You know. Really, just layers on
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: finality in so many ways that you can't you can't
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: avoid thinking about it. So fascinating.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: It is interesting that only hand, you have something like
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: the stoic recurrence eternal recurrence, where things continually you know happens,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: are going to happen again and again. But also that
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: that fatalism is very much challenged by the fact that
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: your presence and the things that you do and things
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: that you bring into this new universe, like they have
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: an impact on things, and so it's not it's very
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: anti fatalistic, like some things are guaranteed, like the destruction
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: of the universe, universe, like your own death, but your
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: agency still matters. And that reminds me of as many
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: stories do. It might be a Beowulf, where in that
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: story fate is almost always attached to mortality, like whenever
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: that word fate is mentioned, someone's about to die. Like
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: fate is always attached to mortality. And so the question
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: is is not you know, are you going to die,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: but the question is how are you going to live?
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: And then that in turn is going to impact the
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: meaning of your death. And I think that we see
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: the idea on a much greater scale in this game
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: that yes, certain things are fated, this universe is going
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to end, but what you do actually does matter and
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: it still has an impact on things to come, So
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: in that sense, it's very anti fatalistic.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think the way that ends is very
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: much about like there is still a rebirth after which
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: is itself like ultimately it is very Christian idea, like
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: we will be born again, we'll be raised, and that's
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: where we can find hope even when we face the
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: reality of death. And it almost feels like, again, you
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: could look at this from a pickup perspective, but I
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: think we could also like it from a Christian respective
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: that there's this theme of cycles, but more importantly resurrection
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: at the end of a cycle. So it's like you
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: have this like smaller cycle. You're going through the entire
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: game twenty two minutes, but then at the end there's
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: this notion of like can we actually start things over
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: on a universal level, And then that's what going into
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: the eye actually triggers. But it's also like something you
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: have to appeal to this like insanely powerful entity to
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: actually even be able to achieve that, like you yourself
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: cannot do it. And I think that's like very core
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: to like human existence, is that we realize we can't
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: solve this problem of death on our own. That's why
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: like we ultimately kind of just have to turn to God.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: And you could even argue from a theological perspective, maybe
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: that's one of the reasons why God allowed the church
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: to happen after the fall, was so that we would
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: have this like imminent death problem where we realized we
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: have to get back to God, Whereas if we were
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: able to just go on living our lives, we would
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: just be more complacent and wallow more in our sin
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: and we might not have turned back to Him. So,
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know, I think there's a lot of interesting
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: questions around that.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: The gift of Alluvitar. Well do Michael, do you wanna
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: tell us about the DLC.
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So, you know, when it was first announced, I
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: was very you know, because I really liked this gang, right,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: I listed as one of my top ten favorite just
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: because it's the conversations you can have with that are
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: just great. Right, And so my initial thought is, what
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: can you add to this conversation that's that's going to
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: be It's not just going to feel like something lay
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: slathered on top of it, right, And so what it
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: what it adds is it adds another species that came
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: looking to the eye that they came earlier than the Noma.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: They they tore up their home world to build like this,
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: this this world ship. It's like a like a halo
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: ring inside, and there's like this river that circumnavigates and
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: you can explore it and all this stuff. You know,
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: you have to find it. It's way out there. So
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: they came. They came to find the Eye, but they
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: they came for it much much earlier, long before the
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: universe was dying. And they basically discovered that if they
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: were they found just found out enough about the Eye
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: from studying it that that they were worried that they
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: were going to end the universe by interacting with it.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: And so they cut themselves, cut themselves off, and cut
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: the Eye off from the universe by like blocking its
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: signal with their ship. But they destroyed their world to
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: get here, and they couldn't go home anymore. And they're
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: already here, and so and they were afraid of the
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: universe ending because they couldn't couldn't let it go. And
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: and so they live their life out on their living
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: their lives on the ship. But they're getting older and
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: there's limited resources, and so they put themselves into this
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: simulation of their home world basically, and it's represented by
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: they're around these fires and there's this green fire and
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: they have their lanterns with the green fire in it,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: and they're dreaming basically of in this simulation of their
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: home world. Only their bodies are all long long gone, right,
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: they've broughted away, they're gone, but the fires are still burning,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: and they're still dreaming in their simulation, living on in
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: not in death, but in this kind of purgatorial type
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: state where they can't let go of life and some
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: collect you know, like everything else. Things are happening at
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: certain times, and there's this this calamity happening where a
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: dam on this river breaks and this water comes rushing
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: down a certain time and it floods into all of
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: the rooms and it puts the lights out right at
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: some point, So the death comes for them during the
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: course of it, right. But you can enter into their
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: world with them, you know. You can take one of
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: one of the lanterns, light it, go get in the
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: spot and you can enter in. And there's actually some
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: horror elements because they're like these creepy things with antlers
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: and it's very dark, it's night, and they don't like
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: you there and you think you're about to get eaten,
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: but they just blow out your lantern and it kicks
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: you back out right. When you get kicked out, you
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: just wake up right. But they don't wake up because
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: they've got no body to wake up too. The one
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: that you get to meet and know more of is
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: basically there was one of them that he thought it
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: was wrong for them to cut off the eye is signals. Basically,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: the you can kind of put together that he thought
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: that the eye signal was supposed to be going out,
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: and so he turns off the blocker for a while,
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: and he gets captured and imprisoned, and they put him
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: in this separate little chamber and a separate little simulation
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: in a metal chamber, and sink him down into the river,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: and he's hard to find. He's hard to get to.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: But going back to everything in every the sequence of
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: events all having a purpose, when he turned off the
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: blocker was when the noom I heard the signal and
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: came searching for it. And when he was discovered and
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: they turned the blocker back on, it was why and
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: no I couldn't find it afterwards, And so for that
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: one little moment that it was that this one with
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: this one little alien that believe that, you know, that
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: the purpose of the eye, that the signal was supposed
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: to be going out, it was there. But again it
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: layers on some of that same stuff about death. In
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: this case, you know, you have the people that want
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: to retreat into digital immortality basically, although here it's more
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: quasi spiritual. With these lanterns and these fires. It's the
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: same sort of things as the transhumanist talking about in
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: fifteen years, will upload our minds and live forever. Well,
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: there's nothing good about that, right, you know. That's it's
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: a it's a it's a it's a it's a false Uh,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: it's a false heaven. And uh even you know, and
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: as as as the story plays out, you know, and
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: and the flood rushes in, even even the people that
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: are left there dreaming away and immortality, their fires get
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: put out. They're gone, you know. And the one guys
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: who doesn't get put out is because he was put
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: in prison and the waters can't reach him because he's
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: in a sealed chamber. And so he's the one you
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: get to talk to and kind of learn. You talk
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: to him and learn, you know, and then he shows
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: up in the eye, and his conversation is a little
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: different because he's he's ashamed of what his people did,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: and you can, you know, you can offer to bring
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: him to the campfire. He won't come on his own
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: until you invite him to the fire, and then he's remembered.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: He plays his instrument, which adds another theme into another
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: theme to a louvitar's music. And then the ending scene
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: is just a little bit different again because someone else
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: was remembered, the one member of that species that thought
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: the eye should be heard. So it's it's pretty interesting,
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: and like I said, it plays into those themes of
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: how we handle death. And I cannot remember what this
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: species is called for the life of me. I should
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: have looked it up, and how they were terrified of
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: the eye and found a way to reject and cheat
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: death and stay alive forever, just in this memory of
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: their home world. So it feels it's good, It is
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: worth playing. It is it is satisfying. It's another few
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: hours of it. The only negative is that you know
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: you don't have it's less ship oriented. You know you're
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: flying to the same place every time.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Once you have it signal, you just lock onto the signal,
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: fly there, get out. There's this you know, interior world there.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: So there is the repetition of going back to the
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: same place, spending that first minute getting back there every time.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely sounds timely in light of some of
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: the conversations that people are having today.
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: So on a final little side note, did anyone get
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: any rather ignoble endings other than Andrew dying before he
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: was stuck in the time loop, Because there's a few
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: other interesting things you can do the the okay, so
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: on the on the ash and twin, did you find
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: the little there's like a little wormhole simulator. You can
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: put your probe into the wormhole and see it come
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: out the other one right there. M hm, just that
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: little experiment. Well, if you're paying attention, because things come
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: out of a wormhole before they go in. That's like
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: the whole premise that's going on there. Your your your
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: probe comes out very briefly before it goes in. And
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: so if you're fast enough, you can turn off the
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: wormhole before your probe goes in and after it's come out,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: and so you have there's two probes there for a second.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: But then basically all of reality starts glitching and you
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: destroy the universe with a with a paradox. Uh, there's
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: a there's a few that one I did on accident.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: I was like, there's a few other good things. I
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: like the I think there's one that you can What
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: do you do? You pull the the warp core and
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: then you out run the super nova. Just fly a fly,
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: fly away, just to die solo.
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: I watched the video with all the different endings, and
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: I think I remember that being one.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of them. You can pull, pull the
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: core and out run the nova. You can wait for
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: the super nova that opens the portal in the Ashen
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Twin Project, and then you can jump into that portal.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: And so what happens is you send a copy of
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: yourself back in time, and if you go back to
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: the Ash and Twin Project, you are there in the
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Ash and Twin as an NPC that you can talk to. However,
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: if you don't go back into the wormhole when it
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: opens up in the Ash and Twin Project fires, you
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: create a paradox and destroy the universe. So by still
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: doing it, you're stuck in this thing unless you pull
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: the core and make it out to the eye in time,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: you can break that. But there's there's I think there's
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: at least one more. But they did think through some
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: of those goofy time travel things that should be possible
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: according to the universe that they set up, So I
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: really appreciate that they took the effort for that. One
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: of the other really funny things is you can find
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: videos of this online. But the probe that the Noma fires,
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: you know, you can see it firing at the very
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: beginning every time, right, Well, it fires in a different
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: direction every time too. I don't know if you've noticed
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: that it's a randomly chosen direction. It can fire directly
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: at you and hit you and kill you at the beginning.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: There are videos out there of people making up to
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: the top of the platform and the Noba probe coming
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: down like a meteor and destroying the ship right in
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: front of them. I don't know what the odds of
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: that are, and I'm glad that. Yeah, it seems like
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: very low odds. I've never heard that happen. Yeah, it
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: seems very unlikely. But whether it's total luck or if
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: they have it programmed as an odd space thing a
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: one in every so often so somebody will see it
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: and hopefully record it. But there's a few comical things
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: like that that can happen to You can actually catch
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: the probe too, I don't know if anyone tried to
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: do that. You can catch it.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: And there's I know I've all of it a couple
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: of times, but I never could find out anything I
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: could do with it.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, maybe there wasn't anything I couldn't remember, but yeah,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: there's there's, there's there's some there's a few interesting sandboxy
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: things that they thought about the nature of the game
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: that they were making, and uh, which I appreciate. I
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that sort of.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: Take it.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: It's like Chrono trigger, you know.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: If you've got a time travel oriented game, it feels
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: like the begs for multiple.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Endings exactly exactly, and almost all of these are with
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: the eye right, and very subtle variations basically just based
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: upon the MPCs that you met and interacted with.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: But yeah, when I heard there were multiple endings, at first,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: I thought like they would be radically different, Like I
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: thought going to the Quantum Moon was itself an ending,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: But no, it's just it's a modifier for the ending, right, right, so.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: Well, that's all I got. That's one of my top ten.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: I love it. Fascinating game.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good game.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: The only problem with it is you cannot replay it
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: unless you forget things, because I will never forget how
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: to get into the ashing core.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: If I get it blazoned into your brain because you're
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: thinking so hard, how do I do this? I could.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: If I could forget how to get into that stinking
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: ashen core, I could play the game again and enjoy
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: it blind. But I can't forget that detail. So that's
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: that's why I definitely watched a friend play the whole
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: thing one time because I was like, I had to
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: see his experience because I couldn't experience it again myself.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Is there a sequel to this game? Or did I
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: make that up?
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: There's not?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: At the moment, was something announced?
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: I have the creators done any other games?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's not. I don't know where I got that idea. No,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: there's an outer World sequel. I probably saw that somewhere.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: So what's funny was I typed out a world sequel
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: and it is confirmed there's nothing. You know, the Mobius
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: digitals moved on to something else, but the aioverview says
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: note as Have twenty twenty six. The Outer Worlds two
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: is often confused with this, but is even Google's Even
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: Google's AI knew that there was an issue with someone I.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: Was really unfortunate naming. Yes, the coincidences.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I honestly, I think Outer Wild's profited from it
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: because Outer Worlds had the much bigger budget, the much
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: bigger advertising campaign, and I guarantee you people bought it
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: completely on accident, thinking they're getting an obsidian game and
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: got a quirky indie time travel end of the world
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: game instead, So clever marketing strategy. Yeah.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's as cool game deals with some some
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: important themes regarding kind of where do you where do
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: you find meaning in the face of mortality, in the
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: face of finality? And so yeah, so it's a good game.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: Definitely recommend that you give it a shot. Now, next
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: time for Mythic mind Games, we are going to Final
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Fantasy seven, the original, So we're back to a little
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Final Fantasy run with one of the best are arguably
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: the best, but I guess we'll talk about that, okay,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: our arguably Well, we'll get into that, all right, Thanks guys,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: I will talk to you next time.