7 Years Later, the Best Outer Wilds Quote Hits Harder Than Ever

Some advice is really just permission.

“Be curious on your journey,” says Bells, one of the ancient Nomai from Outer Wilds, the 2019 time-loop exploration game from Mobius Digital. This quote can be read as a throwaway line, simple advice meant to politely close out practical instructions before sending you on your way. But if you know about this quote in the early game — and you might; it’s the kind of thing that veteran Outer Wilds players like to say to newcomers — it serves as permission to experiment.

In the early hours of Outer Wilds, you don’t have any idea what’s happening. After dropping you into a story well underway with precious little context, the game nudges you a little to help you discover the plot. It’d seem, though, that Outer Wilds’ developers are more interested in getting you to mess with the time loop. Since you’re not immediately aware of any larger mission, you’re allowed — invited! — to be absorbed into the wonder of space…and into figuring out wild ways to break the game’s mechanics. After all, why spend time figuring out what the harmonica tunes coming out of that crashed space plant are when instead you could launch yourself into the sun, just to see if that’s anything interesting?

See, when the Nomai tell you to “be curious on your journey,” that’s something only time-loop games truly allow. I am all too aware of the stakes associated with living through one fragile human life. (Or even playing a game with a real “game over” screen.) There are joys associated with the you-only-live-once state of existence we’re all in, obviously, but it does mean that we always need to be at least a little careful. I can’t, say, deliberately let an anglerfish eat me in real life. Outer Wilds explicitly rewards that kind of creative curiosity. Since you get fully reset at the start of every 22-minute loop, memories included, consequences erased, you have freedom. Die in a black hole, fling yourself off a cliff because you want to know what's down there — you wake up back at the campfire each time, no matter what.

Which makes the Nomai’s quote, here, a little less gently parental, something you might find stuck to a child’s lunchbox, and more a dare dressed up as loving advice. For proof of this, we need only check out the game’s wild achievement list. Most reward you for doing things no responsible astronaut would ever try, from the achievement associated with eating a certain amount of burnt marshmallows (“Mmmm, carcinogens!”) to flying your ship as fast and far as you can in 22 minutes to see if there’s anything outside the game’s solar system (“It was worth a shot”), to meticulously investigating the very ordinary equipment at non-special campfires (“Well, that settles that”). While there is a gorgeous story at the heart of Outer Wilds, it’s not one that the game’s in any hurry to rush. Instead, you get in-game reminders to try and push the environment to its limit.

This is a lesson I can only take so far in my own life. But in Outer Wilds, as in my other beloved time loop games, I can be reckless, and therefore I get to be curious on my journey. Here, there’s really no version of “what if I mess this up.” Messing up just means that in 22 minutes, I’ll try again, no problem. This is the gift that Outer Wilds gives us: It’s a place built entirely so that curiosity doesn’t cost anything. So I’ll be taking Bells up on that dare for sure — one burnt marshmallow at a time, for as long as this time loop will have me.