The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
I literally tried that game a month ago, and after a couple hours of flying blind in space, with a not great flight control system, having no idea where to go, it completely lost me.
Maybe I missed the point, or maybe it's an issue with me not having enough free time, but if didn't grab me at all.
There is an autopilot that isn't terrible but be careful if the sun is in the way. I didn't realize there was a boosted jump with the rocket pack for like 30 hours. Seriously looking up the controls would be a good idea.
But to get started I really just recommend fly to a planet and just explore it as long as you can. Take note of what you can't do and once you feel good just go to a different planet and start again. It doesn't take much time and you are limited to about 20 minutes anyways.
The game rewards starting again. And sometimes jumping into space without a suit is a fast way to do that. But it is a slow puzzle/exploration game essentially in the vain of Myst so if it's not for you that's fine.
A few hours? Something about your post tells me that you didn't play past 22 minutes.
Call it a hunch.
sorry I offended your game, oh fragile one. I even blamed myself for missing something or not having enough time. I ran around the starting area talking to everyone for about an hour, just wandering, and then finally went up into space, struggling with the controls. Landed somewhere with just a guy and a radio, ran all around there, again maybe a total of an hour after my first launch. Crashed a few times at first, of course.
He says that because the main mechanic of the game is that the entire game resets every 22 minutes.
So you couldn’t have ran around for hours without noticing that, which is kind of the first clue as to what kind of game it is.
Notably, 22 minutes from when you see the nomai statue. So the commenter could have spend over an hour in the tutorial area, and then quit before experiencing much of the actual game
They said they spent another hour after launching, though - not sure you can launch without having interacted with the Nomai statue.
You can, but definitely not by accident.
It's interesting you bring up the controls, because that is one of the things that instantly grabbed me about the game. Before I even knew what was going on, I knew I absolutely loved moving around in the world. I used to spin up the game just to zip about for a half hour.
But of course everyone is different. Not every game is for everyone. I really grew to love Outer Wilds more and more over the days.
ship log will tell you where there's more stuff to find
Honestly, I found it hard to enjoy too, even though I finished the game. The game can be really fun, but it can also get a bit annoying to realize that you have missed something on a planet and if you did, it might take a boring amount of time to find what. The problem is that the save limitations means you basically have to waste a ton of time whenever you were wrong about something or mess up. The ship computer can hint at when a planet has more to see, but it's not necessarily easy to figure out where to go, how to reach it, or if you're supposed to do a different planet first to get a hint.
Fuck Brittle Hollow. I almost quit the game with how much time that stupid planet wasted. A quick save/load function would have made the game massively more fun for me. Replaying stuff I've already done because the game has bleh checkpointing is just not fun.
I could never get into it either. People are so so obsessed with this game. They tell you to never look anything up, etc. I’ve tried it on mouse and keyboard, I’ve tried it on controller and the gameplay does not feel right, so I’ve never left the ground tutorial area.
You basically haven't played any of the game then lol. It's a long slow burn but it's absolutely beautiful. Make your way through that tutorial section and get your ship, from there it really opens up.
I know and I’ve downloaded it and tried it so many times over the years, but can’t make it past the tutorial without getting frustrated.
No game is for everyone but here's some ideas to enjoy it more. It sounds like you never really got to the call to adventure.
The core quest will not reveal itself until you survive after take off for 20minutes. Even then there isn't really a explicitly stated goal. Let your curiosity guide you, read all dialogue, especially the translations bits and just enjoy exploring, you are a space archaeologist. If you have trouble finding a place to start I would recommend using your signal scope and chasing one of those signals. This is a game about exploring and gathering information about a mystery, the reason people are so particular about spoilers is because there's nothing gating your progress except your own knowledge, if you know the final puzzle you can 'beat' the game in like 2 minutes. the only save state the game has is your ships computer that stores the clues you have uncovered so far. Also if you got the DLC I would recommend disabling it or ignoring it until you complete the main story.