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Comment by gambiting

15 hours ago

Well, nothing new has been invented since checkers, if you really think about it hard enough and reduce everything to a few buckets of games that everything can fit neatly into, then everything is just a mystery game or just open world or just a platformer. Again, I have a feeling like you're just looking at it mechanically and not how these elements work together to produce a game that is larger than just the sum of its parts. Outer Wilds has puzzles and open world and mystery element to it - and all of those have been done before. But has anyone else combined them this way to produce a game with this narrative? No, I don't believe so(happy to be proven wrong, as always).

Like the other commenter said - I hope I don't become jaded like this about video games, it still brings me joy to see how every new game twists the known formula a little bit more and in new and exciting ways, I believe there are several nieches where we haven't seen the game of that genre yet and I can't wait to see it emerge and how and who is going to do it.

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gambiting

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reactordev  14 hours ago

Have other games put together open world and mystery? Yes.

I have a feeling you haven’t played those games otherwise you’d see the similarities.

Yes, I am ABSOLUTELY looking at the mechanics of the game. I’m also looking for innovation. Take something someone tried (maybe it was a big part of their design) and make a full blown out version of it. Pushing the genre in either a new direction or opening one up. Outer wilds did neither. Not to say it wasn’t a good game. That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying outside of those that played it, it will be forgotten. It changed nothing. It came, it endeared, it left.

  • soulofmischief  6 hours ago

    Have you played Outer Wilds though?

    I'd finished a playthrough of RDR2 in 2022 and thought I was done with gaming forever, that nothing would ever be able to touch that level of experience again. I stopped playing for months, completely having lost interest.

    Then I discovered Outer Wilds, went in completely blind, played in VR, and had one of the most engaging experiences of my life. It's a true gamer's game.