Outer Wilds

2026-06-29
I buried a little bird in my backyard last week. I was on my walk when I saw a bigger bird picking up and tossing something on the pavement. When I realized it was another bird I ran as fast as I could. But I was too late. My poor feathered friend was barely clinging on to life. I gently picked him up, wrapped his tiny body up in the folds of my umbrella to keep him dry, and carried it the quarter mile back home. I must have looked a loon, a man getting rained on, cradling an umbrella in his arms, but he needed it more than me. When I came back in the garage, towel and little bowl of water in hand ready to nurse my patient back to health, the little avian had passed. I couldn’t handle that I failed this creature. I sat down in my garage and I bawled my eyes out.

Death, life, purpose, meaning. They’re concepts most of us avoid thinking about most of the time. I know I do. There’s a calcified layer sitting on top of the psyche to prevent spending too much time thinking about the things that can bring us down and have us collapsed alone in a garage holding a dead bird. But sometimes you need an experience like that to kick you in the gut and remind you that you can feel.

Incredible art can do it too. Games rarely hit those levels. At best tugging heart strings in predictable ways: a character death, some maudlin strings-heavy orchestra wibbling away. But to be able to make you think about it all? What you want to do with your life, why you’re here, why any of us are here? Keep dreaming, pal.

Or, play Outer Wilds.

Did it accomplish the feat of making a grown man reconcile the meaning of it all and end up crying? Yes. But the crying's not even the half of it. Strip the gut-punch away completely and you're still left with one of the best mysteries ever made--sitting inside an exploration game so well-built that even just leaving the ground is a wonder.

But that’s all I can say. We’ve all had similar experiences playing this game and in a solemn act of humanity we’ve silently agreed to spoil nothing and quietly, earnestly tell people “Just play it.”

Just play it.