To make matters tenser, the game doesn’t just give players an entire miniature solar system to explore. Outer Wilds also gives players a time limit while doing so. The player character is trapped in a 22-minute loop.
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With all this pressure, players might be worried about saves. They won’t want to lose the progress they squeeze out of each run. Thankfully, while it’s not a frequent autosave, saving in Outer Wilds is simple.
Progress in Outer Wilds
Before getting into Outer Wilds’ save system, it’s important to understand how the game handles progression and completion. The player character doesn’t get new gear or abilities throughout the game. The skills they start with are the skills they end with. And any changes they make to the world also reset with each loop.
Instead, Outer Wilds’ progression comes in the form of knowledge. In most games, “getting a shortcut” means “unlocking a formerly locked path.” In Outer Wilds, “getting a shortcut” just means “learning where the shortcut is.” It was always available, just unseen.
The game does keep track of discoveries on the ship’s computer between loops, but aside from that, players shouldn’t worry about losing progress. Their own memory will fill in the blanks.
Saving in Outer Wilds
Outer Wilds saves every time the time loop resets. It doesn’t matter what caused it, whether it’s the player hitting the time limit or dying to one of Outer Wilds’ many hazards. Once the player wakes up at the start of the loop, they can be confident that the game is saved.
There is a way to save manually. The player just needs to end the loop early. The most obvious way is to die, but the availability of an easy death hazard varies depending on which of Outer Wilds’ planets the player is on. And if they aren’t on a planet, it can take a bit to throw themselves into the sun.
But there’s a faster method that’s available at all times. The player just needs to open the pause menu and quit the game from there. This will abort the loop, save the game, and bring them back to the main menu.
Outer Wilds is available now for PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.
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