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On Outer Wilds, mortality and the sterility of high-concept sci-fi (spoilers) (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Outer Wilds is hands down one of my favorite games of the last decade, and one of its major strengths is forcing the player to make peace with mortality in a way that is neither weepy nor explicitly frightening. The universe ends, and you are part of the universe. Simple as.

But for dealing with such an inhetently human concept as facing our own mortality, the game's story is pretty emotionally sterile. There's no complicated interpersonal relationships to deal with, no moral dilemmas to struggle through, no real attachment to the characters you know are doomed to die every 22 minutes.

This is a common limitation of a lot of existential Western sci-fi. It's partly why Lem wrote Solaris: to try and inject humanity into a genre that seemed to consider humans tangential while exploring the Big Questions of life, the universe and everything.

I don't have any real point to make here I just like using hexbear as a diary to jot down my shower thoughts that can also give me feedback on said shower thoughts

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Solaris was so good. Soviet sci-fi was really incredible.

Anyways, to add to your thoughts, I think it's very hard to put any real artistic effort into things that require such huge budgets and collaboration among so many different people. Just compare Solaris the book with the Clooney movie.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

the Tarkovsky movie is a masterpiece tho

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

yea soviet era movies are fire.