Common Misconceptions About The "Outer Wilds" Time Loop

[@speedude0164]

I was confused at how the cannon fired 9 million probes but the beginning of the loop would've been the first time it fires based on how the Ash Twin Project works. I didn't consider the fact that in-universe we played through the beginning 9 million times ourselves, but didn't remember it because the statues hadn't activated yet, and we only became aware of the loop once the Eye was found and therefore the statues were set to activate. Time travel is so goddamn clever when done right.

[@jacksonbarkerthebluehairedfox]

Also, just imagine how big of an existential crisis that might cause for the hatchling, realizing they've done this 9 million times before, DIED 9 million times before, and are only just now have the ability to remember their past lives.

[@Baha2490]

@@jacksonbarkerthebluehairedfox Don't see what that changes, you'll only remember your past lives from the moment the statue synced with you, not the millions before.

[@yoyodude-aoe2726]

​@Baha2490 well the pure fact that u still lived and died 9 million times. The realization itself is very existential

[@Baha2490]

@@yoyodude-aoe2726 If I don't remember it, it's not me =P My thoughts would be focused on the fear of being stuck in the loop for eternity (and potentially dying in pain, though you can surely find a way to avoid that after a few loops).

[@yoyodude-aoe2726]

@@Baha2490 yes remaining blisfully ignorant will lead to a happier life. how chert starts having crisis as he realises everything is ending at the end of the loop.

[@MathMagician93]

The only remaining piece of game-logic: the first 22 minutes count from when you interact with the statue. That's where a lot of the misunderstanding comes from. Sure, it would have been brutal to be fried in your tutorial loop, but it would be so great lore-wise. Also, speedrunning.

[@lertik3898]

IIRC it actually used to be a thing, as in earlier versions of the game would start with the 22 minute countdown as soon as you wake up, meaning that you could die before linking to the statue by taking too long. I presume it was removed for gameplay reasons

[@mollistuff]

Imo they should have had a separate tutorial day that ends with the player going to sleep.

[@Uppernorwood976]

@@mollistuff that would still cause a problem if the player didn’t walk past the statue for 22 minutes after waking up! You just have to put this down to it being a game.

[@Reliken]

same but @ having your shiplog deleted if you die during the Final Loop

[@brandonn6099]

@@Uppernorwood976 That would be far less likely to happen though. I probably took 40 minutes to complete the tutorial, but would have walked past the statue by 3 minutes on day 2.

[@KH-tu3no]

Also, the Hatchling dies. He never respawn. It is just a new one each loop, with memories of the previous one. The "self" encounter just proves it : precedent selves are whole different persons. That is sad.

[@nexo_qc4408]

Well ot has the same mind as the one before only the body changes. In fact its like you separating one mind in 2

[@CodeRed0]

Another misconception: I remember reading a negative review on EotE, where the person said the fundamental mechanic, which is the time loop, was ignored and that it didn't make sense that you continue playing in the simulation after dying by the fire, and so they didn't like the DLC because that was somehow lazy. But that person didn't really understand that the time loop isn't triggered by you dying, it's triggered by your memories being sent back when the sun explodes. Them leaving a negative review for a reason they didn't fully understand kinda ticked me off. It's very obvious but some people have that misconception I guess.

[@alexlowe2054]

You can actually test this method by flying out super far away from the sun, far enough away that the explosion doesn't kill you. Then you see a different reset screen, one where the statue manually resets the loop, even though you haven't died. I believe you can also trigger that ending from just waiting inside the ash twin.

[@MazHazPazzaz]

@@alexlowe2054 Correct. Though if you remove the Warp Core, the ATP's shell will eventually break and be consumed by the supernova.

[@revagarasu2097]

Oh I see, I clearly agree, maybe the game could have made it a bit more clear for us, lore with time loops gets too easly compliated and missunderstood, but in THIS game it is so well made that it's nearly making 100% sense, the games tells us well it's story, but giving those time loop details would have been even better, but I guess how hard it can be to introduce it well without losing the player

[@adora_was_taken]

@@MazHazPazzaz supposedly the devs wanted that to actually delete your save file and had to be stopped by the publisher

[@MazHazPazzaz]

@@adora_was_taken I'd believe it, but I'm glad they didn't go with that. It'd have been real disheartening to be at like 98% for all the entries, try the ending, dying, and starting back at 0%. I definitely wouldn't have 100% the game if that was the case.

[@Giraffinator]

If I've remembered basic math correctly, if the someone had lived through all 9,318,054 time loops, it would've taken a little over 390 years to get the EotU coordinates.

[@yoni5919]

Imo, they should have just built hundreds of orbital probe cannons after the ash twin project failed, instead of moping about it (i know they died a short time after the sun station failed but thats just hindsight)

[@Giraffinator]

@@yoni5919 that'd be an absolute metric booty tonne of resources and time to build. The canon itself it's a sophisticated piece of machinery that uses artificial gravity to launch probes, which themselves have to be made of materials and technologies strong enough to to withstand a launch at speeds fast enough to be useful, not to mention that they would potentially need to build over 9 million of them. The logistics of such a project would be of such an enormous scale, that I wouldn't be surprised if the entire solar system wasn't mined out, not to mention the time it would take to mine all the materials, build the hundreds of launchers, build 9 million probes, and perform 9 million launches.

[@yoni5919]

​@@Giraffinator Well they wouldn't need to build millions of them, each one could launch a probe and then warp it back after 22 minutes. From their perspective they have decades to develop more efficient (in terms of power, size and construction time) cannons, and actually finding the eye would take (based off of your calculations and assuming 100 cannons each firing a probe every 22 minutes) only 4 years. so assuming it would take them 30 years to develop and build the cannons, and then launch them, most of them (assuming nomai live about as long as humans, if not longer) would see the process from start to finish.

[@BlazeMakesGames]

@@yoni5919 I mean it'd still be incredibly wasteful. The Nomai were fairly cautious about not overmining the solar system and making sure that they didn't just up and destroy everything like the Owlks did. Even if we assumed building 100 gigantic super powerful cannons was possible, they still would have had to build nearly 10 million probes that would have almost all gone to waste just flying into deep space. Imo the Nomai would have probably come up with a much better plan than that, probably involving some kind of giant telescopes like the James Web and just looking for it that way. Or just simply coming up with a better design for the sun station. Either way the grander point is that the Nomai died shortly after so we don't know what their next plan would have been.

[@yoni5919]

@@BlazeMakesGames they wouldnt need to build 9 million probes - they could just recall the launched probe back to the cannon after 22 minutes

[@mot4353]

i had no idea the ship's computer worked like that!! thats so exciting, considering i always wondered why the cables underneath looked like That (exactly like the power cables scattered around the solar system)

[@Cyynapse]

3 years after release and we're still finding new details

[@Mabra51]

There's also a gravity crystal like the ones on brittle hollow to make artificial gravity in the ship, and the scout's recalling is activated through mini black & white holes.

[@wydx120]

And the ship's gravity beam is a scavenged nomai beam placed on the roof of the ship, on top of the hatch

[@speedude0164]

It feels kinda dumb for only a piece of the statue to work like that and convenient that it happens to do the exact thing you'd need it to, but it's for a mechanic that makes your life infinitely easier so I really don't care. It's nice that they even gave us an explanation for that.

[@gottagowork]

​@@Cyynapse The same is true for Death Stranding. Where OW's story pieces come together as you play the game, in DS it all remains a confusing mess (the scanner being called "Odradek" should be a clue as to why) until the very end. And you experience one hell of an ending that is highly rewarding that explains everything. Or does it? From the get-go there are two mysteries going on, and the premise is to figure out the solution to them. The last 5 hours or so is spent on an explanation phase and massive reveals at the very end. However, post real credits, there is a tiny reveal associated with the biggest secret the game conceals. You can even platinum the game without obtaining the full set of a certain chain of interviews. If you read through all of those, a different narrative starts to form, but now you're forced to play through the game - possibly several times (or watch others) - to start figuring out how all the subtle (and until now, unnoticed) clues support the new theory. As cheesy as some of the lines can go, that is some masterful writing. Having seen 40+ full let's plays of DS (more so for OW, but its far shorter), it's not like I'm going to hold it against anyone for not spotting these or make sense of whatever partial interviews they obtained. So a 100+ hour game being close to platinum with a highly rewarding, and you still don't even know half of it. I mean, who the hell does this? 😁

[@Law-gnome]

I knew most of that, but I never knew why exactly the statue connected when it did. It's great that there is an in-game reason for it, and it makes a lot of sense that the Nomai didn't want to live through an eternity of loops themselves. Still, when you think about how the ATP works and the existential nightmare that would come from knowing that on each timeline from each loop until the Eye is found your entire people would experience the death of the solar system (and just have no knowledge of it for the next loop), you can see why many of the Nomai were against the project at the start.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

They simply just didnt understand what they were doing imo. I dont think any nomai we know would do such a thing. They literally dug up and replanted plants they may hurt. All in the process of trying to kill millions of things. They mustve thought they were rewriting time.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Well. This is just saying the nomai probably assumed their was only one timeline. And they were actually rewriting all of their horrible actions within it. Making them so they never happened to begin with. I dont see the Nomai going through with killing countless species if they had any other belief.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

You can look at it however you want bud. That’s a valid interpretation of the game. Personally I don’t think the atp magically has the power to erase millions of universes out of existence. But Ive already put my thought processes in videos for everyone interested. So I won’t share them here.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

It’s not the same timeline just a few seconds back. It’s a different timeline entirely. And you swap probes. Our black hole leads to their white hole. Vise verse. In the case of the hel ending you don’t swap probes. We steal theirs and space time gets mad. Edit was worded wrong. It doesn’t technically enter without an exit. But something enters their black hole and doesn’t come back out their white hole. Which is what people expect. It’s so hard to phrase this all on the fly from different perspectives.

[@GeneralTaco155555a]

@@TheLoreExplorer this is not how time travel works in Outer Wilds. Spacetime breaks because you've created a paradox. Specifically, a variation on the "grandfather paradox." If you go back in time and kill your grandpa, then you would have never been born, and then there would be no way that you could have gone back in time to kill your grandpa. This creates a paradox that breaks reality. If you were right about different timelines existing in the game, then this wouldn't be a paradox, as you would just be killing an unrelated grandpa in a different timeline, and there would be no conflict to cause a break in reality. Now back to removing the black hole before the scout can enter it: If different timelines existed, then spacetime would not be broken, because as you said 'we'd just be stealing a scout from another timeline,' and there is no reason for spacetime to "get mad" about this, as evidenced by Self existing. If your logic was true, then *creating* Self would break spacetime (it would be stealing from another timeline), but it doesn't. It's only when a PARADOX occurs by *NOT* traveling back in time to create Self, that the fabric of spacetime is broken. This is directly addressed in the dialogue with Self. Self: "Hey, what do you think happens if you don't jump into the black hole again at the end of this loop?" Player: "If I don't, then where do you come from?" Self: "That's a good point." (If you don't, then spacetime breaks because it creates a paradox) Player: "Think it's okay there's two of us?" Self: "Well, we're talking to each other and nothing's exploded yet." (Hence, material from the previous loop can exist at the same time as the current loop, as long as a paradox is not created.)

[@bobfranklin2572]

Ah, so there exists, in theory, an original loop where the probe cannon didn't fire at all, and the sun went boom. Which told the cannon to fire 22 mins ago, Which sent back the order when it's atp core gets powered by the sun etc. I guess in a way its kinda like if we jump into the atp core right? Like we break spacetime if we don't keep going back in, and I suppose that's what the fire order is doing too right?

[@someman66]

Well, it's less going to break spacetime, and more simply acting on automated orders. The ATP sends a fire order back in time with a firing angle they haven't done yet then, at the start of the loop, the OPC takes tha order in, moves to fire at that angle, then fires. But, yes, before the time loop begun, the OPC never shot off.

[@Mabra51]

*its

[@bobfranklin2572]

@@Mabra51 lmao

[@ThatJay283]

It wouldn't have broken spacetime, since the order gets sent back each time just progressed. It'd break space-time tho if for whatever reason something failed that caused the ATP to not send back the order. Since the next loop is the same as the first, it would become a paradox where no next version of the timeline is possible. Each timeline that gets reset that hatchling is in is a memory for them that they experienced, something like "sending back memories of an observer is equivilant to sending back an observer". The statutes are designed to simply be a storage vault (that the hearthians even used) that are maintained between timelines, making them hard to accidentally break space-time, since they're working with something fixed, so even the hearthian spaceship DIYers can improve their ships without even risking breaking spacetime.

[@FernTheRobot]

@@ThatJay283 I want to clarify something. First of all this is just my theory so take it with a grain of salt. It is somehow different to send back whether information or mass. Take ATP self duplicate incident for example, the timeline should start by player receiving memory while self appearing, and end with self died while the player's memory AND body got sent back. Therefore if player never jumped in the black hole self wouldn't appear, causing a paradox. Interestingly, in every other "normal" time loop, the memory player received at the start is widely different from the memory sent at the end of the loop and that's considered fine. Now in the OPC case, in the first loop the OPC didn't fire because it didn't receive the fire command, and at the end ATP sent the fire command, that's all fine and dandy. In every other loop exclude the last one the OPC received a different command from what it'll send at the end of the loop, and that's all good too. So following that logic, if originally the Sun Station succeeded when the Nomai is alive, the last loop will begin at the OPC receiving fire command but at the end the Sun Station doesn't fire and ATP is never active. That would be fine I guess? Afterwards the time loops stop, the Sun doesn't explode, and time goes on. (Assuming SS is a success of course)

[@ReverendTed]

A few thoughts: It seems like it would make sense that were the Sun Station to have succeeded, upon finding the Eye the Nomai might choose to experience one additional loop before halting the project. That way, they could ask the Orbital Probe Cannon NOT to fire at the start of the next loop, and thus preserve the probe and cannon in case the "Eye Detection" turned out to be a false positive. In that case, they could restart the loop again later if necessary. If they halted the project immediately after detecting the Eye and waited more than 22 minutes after the OPC fired, they'd be stuck with a busted OPC. Or at least have to build a new probe; it's possible the OPC might not have self-destructed even with the extra power if it hadn't been floating abandoned in space for 280,000 years. It's also weird to think that if the Sun Station had worked, the Nomai would have known the project succeeded before they activated it, since the Orbital Probe Cannon would have fired 22 minutes before they activated the Sun Station. Honestly, it was irresponsible for them to have even fired the Sun Station - since the OPC hadn't fired, they should have known the ATP didn't activate. There was a risk they were about to trigger a supernova that wouldn't produce a loop, destroying the solar system without any way to eventually prevent it. My perspective is that there is only one "real" loop for the hatchling - the final one where you remove the ATP core. From their perspective, they go to sleep the night before their launch and then wake up with dozens of loops worth of memories flooding over them before immediately heading off to enter the Eye. When you as the player are going through all your other loops, that's the memories playing back. At least, that's my take on it.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Youre right in the sense theyd live through one loop and stop it with a loaded cannon. That was the plan. But the cannon wouldnt fire before they blew up the sun? Theyd blow up the sun. Itd send info back 22 minutes. Then the cannon would fire. Your reasoning seems flawed to me. Cause then wouldnt the nomai know there was no reason to test the sun station? The opc didnt fire 22 minutes ago so we failed. It was always meant to fire the loop after. Not prior to the sun exploding.

[@ReverendTed]

@@TheLoreExplorer This is where we get into the usual time travel paradox "solutions". If time is a closed loop, then since a successful test sends the information back in time, you'll know if it worked because it will have already worked as many times as it's going to work, even your "first time through". If it's an "infinite universes" thing, then each time travel event creates a new timeline, and you could be living through any one of them your "first time through", so the cannon would not have fired before they trigger the supernova the first time. I like to believe the closed loop theory applies in Outer Wilds because it's possible to break the fabric of spacetime by creating conditions that don't loop.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

See. I thin my that’s where everyone is flawed. They are trying to compare it to established time travel scenarios. In this scenario I think the multiverses aren’t created by the atp. They are all there naturally. And sending info between them wouldn’t cause a paradox. The cause of everything happens right before it occurs and can’t change.

[@StansStuff]

@@TheLoreExplorer Yeah the original commenter has good logic but isn't quite right. Assuming the project succeeds, the first loop is when the OPC doesn't fire, as it hasn't received any information yet, and they go and set off the sun station. If this had worked, they wouldnt remember this loop - in fact, the only loop they'd actually remember is one where they get the coordinates, and don't set off the sun station as a result. It's only because the sun station doesn't work, that the fact they tried to set it off with no OPC firing actually becomes 'canon' with the timeline, if that makes sense. In Outer Wilds logic, there isn't really any true time travel, and causality is still linear, it just... well... loops a lot.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Its just frustrating to me that people believe the in game explanations. They are either from nomai who admit they dont really know whats happening. Or from like gabbro who says "Yeah. That makes sense. Its hard to say what exactly is happening with time. But lets call it a loop for now". Then everyone just goes "OHHH. It looks like it. Must be a timeloop". I know it shouldnt frustrate me. But I probably have over 50 hours just replying to comments that are trying to straighten out two contradictory things in the game. So its definitely no ones fault. The game is telling them that its a timeloop. And if its a true timeloop then op is kind of right. And the game tells us it is multiple times. But imo we are SHOWN it isnt. And such thingd are kind of a hindrance to explaining the real mechanics of the game to people. Its always an uphill battle because I have to fight these preconceived notions which makes it hard. Almost impossible. Cause usually most of the time even after hours of trying to explain things people they usually disagree with me because of one weird thing. I got someone all the way through my theory once. And they were catching onto it. But then busted out "Well, then why does self cause spacetime to crash and not our memories". Well cause one changes spacetime and causes things that shouldnt happen in them and the memories dont cause anything to happen that shouldn't. And they didnt buy that one thing and it was back to nope. Dont buy it. Its like wait....thats not even a problem with my theory. Thats inherent to the game. It just makes my work feel pointless sometimes. Idk.

[@vanderkarl3927]

I put most of this together after finding everything to 100% the game (pre-dlc), but having it all explained in a coherent, cohesive fashion is highly appreciated!

[@Len923_]

I'd say the most unbelievable part of the whole loop is that, somehow, Gabbro wasn't in his hammock and paired with a statue - he's more the type to have been in that hammock at the start, and never have left it.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Youd think so. But apparently the first issue the hearthians ran into they called upon gabbro to deal with it.

[@speedude0164]

It would really suck for him if he happened to be somewhere else 22 minutes before the supernova and had to get back to his island at the start of every loop, but it seems he did start there and only left for Statue Island afterwards. That calls the timeline of his ship into question. You wouldn't expect it to be so far in the water if he used it to get to another island so recently, and assuming he doesn't leave his island again every loop afterwards you'd think it would still be near him or that he'd at least have an idea where it is. Jetpacking isn't gonna work either due to Giant's Deep's stronger gravity, so the most likely scenario seems to be that he just swam there. Gabbro is such a chad he just swims in tornado water chasing moving islands like it's nothing.

[@dat_fast_boi]

@@speedude0164 Decided to read through Gabbro's dialogue on the wiki to see if there was any mention of where they are when the loop starts / how they got to statue island; Gabbro does sometimes say “You know, I kind of wish I'd built a hammock here before we ended up in this time loop" when talking to them after the third loop (if you've spoken before), so they *might* not be on the island at the start of the loop, but they definitely aren't in a hammock. As for the statue pairing, sadly all we know is that Gabbro was standing when it happened, and that they're able to get the hammock set up by the time you get there on the first loop.

[@BobbinRobbin777]

@@speedude0164 maybe the statue’s could bind people to the ash twin project, even before the actual project starts?

[@gemstonegynoid7475]

@@BobbinRobbin777 gabbro would be the closest sentient being. the nomai writing does say " Yarrow, would you kindly step back so Daz is closest to the statue? When pairing, the statue will choose whoever is in closest proximity. "

[@warmgarbage]

This man is honestly the best "small" content creator out there. He has such a lovable demeanor, he makes high effort videos, and is an excellent speaker. Everything you could want to know about Outer Wilds can be found on this channel, and it's been keeping me engaged with the game long after I've finished it.

[@bbbbbbb51]

He's not an excellent speaker or writer, but I appreciate his work & videos none the less.

[@mynameisdilksy]

@@bbbbbbb51 his imperfections make him that much more lovable in my opinion, like he may sometimes struggle with narrating etc but he loves the game enough to overcome his difficulties to share these great videos

[@Acudit]

And his slight accent is the cherry on top.

[@nick0ketchum]

I love hearing him stutter and mess up words because I do that all of the time and he obviously does so much work for his videos so why should he go through and re-do every time he messes up a word or stutters? It’s not like we can’t understand him and he adds captions when he messes up and he wants us to know what he meant

[@hemansx]

dude, i already thought the game was good but hearing your videos on it are filling in so many gaps and making me appreciate it even more.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Glad to hear it!

[@speedude0164]

That's one of the many beauties of this game. Even after beating it you can still realize things that explain parts of the story you didn't understand and add to it. The more I think of all the technicalities behind the Ash Twin Project, the more impressed I am with it.

[@sunorcio3901]

Actually, those two being in charge of the launch only has its upsides, since the loop will reset anyway, the integrity of the cannon after the launch isnt really important, and as their colleages say, they surely know how to launch the probe as far as possible, making me ponder if the project would have worked without that extra kick to gather information each launch. Also the important room from the cannon, the one with the statue that receives the data, is unintentionally placed inside the planet (lucky nomai), so it isnt at risk. Its actually crazy playing the game and seeing all the coincidences that had to take place for the adventure to be possible, it really triggers the existential wonder in our brains.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

It is important. Actually, definitionally, central. As the video shows and states. The place we find the eyes coordinates could have easily broke like the couple rooms still on the orbital probe cannon. It wasnt "placed" at the core of giants deep. It fell when the cannon fired and could have easily broken if the stress wasnt put exactly in the neck of the module. If that happened the atp failed the instant it started. Central. And lore wise. The eye is found as we talk to hornfells. The eye was found relatively early in the "loop". There was no need to make it fire at such high speed.

[@Zarith7480]

@@TheLoreExplorer that's hindsight that they didn't need to fire it fast to find it... the eye may have been further out in which case theoretically a slower speed may also have doomed the project if it took longer than 22 min to reach

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Not really. I think they did calculations to see how far something can orbit the sun and how fast the probe needed to travel to reach it.

[@jeffumbach]

Yep in their written argument the Nomai who wanted to put it to max power points out that the cannon technically only has to fire once from their subjective POV anyway because of the time loop.

[@turquoise7817]

@@TheLoreExplorer hey, i know this came out a while ago but i hope you can respond! though i already understood 99% of this, what makes you think we were talking to hornfels as the eye is found? is that conjecture on your part or is there dialogue i missed? also, I learned through this video about the log being made using statue materials, which is so cool!

[@wellgaroa]

have you noticed how different both warp cores are? it would be interesting to see a video about it, cause to me it reflects how the nomai before the vessel crashed in dark bramble had a different culture to the nomai after the crash, in their decoration and architecture.

[@RolandVonRose]

I have alway loved how absolutely insane of a plan this was! I remember when of got to the ash twin project I was think “You mad lads! This was your plan!” It is honestly brilliant!

[@ameliabuns4058]

I originally expected us to find a way to stop the sun from exploding and then end the loop

[@Captain_Maeve]

In our years outside of the game, there are just under 390 years between the ash twin project first firing its probe and the hearthian linking to the statue.

[@Uppernorwood976]

Great video, the best practical explanation of the loop on KZbin.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Glad you think so!

[@kamil118]

2:40 To be fair to the guys that set up the cannon, it has been 240 thousand years since the orbital canon was built, it might have just deteriorated.

[@NWolfsson]

The Nomai conceptualizing the Loop to only make them realize it's active after the Eye is found makes sense. Can you imagine relieving not only the same 22 minutes (with the people unlinked acting the same every day, and every event happening the same way unless you intervene) but the explosion of a star into a supernova... For about four hundred years?! That's far enough for anyone to become crazy and try to disable the whole thing before it's come to fruition, I can understand that they would want to be unaware.

[@DavidTMarchand]

Hey I never picked up on the explanation for the ship log! That is fascinating. Something that I've wondered, though it might just be an issue of suspending disbelief: do you think the Eye could have been positioned such that the Ash Twin Project would've been doomed to fail? I think both Giant's Deep and the Sun block a huge cone of space from being directly accessible by the probe, no matter how many millions of times you shoot it. That is, any probes fired directly at the Sun or at Giant's Deep will burn or drown there, incapable of exploring the space on the other side of those two celestial bodies. I guess you could circumvent Giant's Deep by assuming the probe could cut through the current and emerge on the other side, or the cannon could have a random delay that lets it shoot from the shadowy side (though that's not what we see in the game, where it always shoots from the same sunny side for the player's benefit).

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Youd be surprised. The way things orbit and all of that. Something sitting so far out and theoretically orbiting would never always be behind a certain object for that long. And we use things like gravity assists all the time. That fling probes around the planet and send them going off which ever way we want. plus, go the the orbital cannon on ember twin right now and fire directly at the sun. You wont hit it. Its all confusing. I dont think in this case its suspending disbelief. But rather having faith the nomai computer couldve done those calculations.

[@robertboily9030]

In the game, if you raced to your space ship, and chased that loop's probe, you can catch up to it. Usually it's hard, because you aren't sure exactly which direction it went, but when it's a more visible one, it's easier. Having caught up to the probe, you can stick with it for 22 minutes. You can try that infinity times, and the probe will never lead you to the Eye. This is for technical reasons with the implementation of the game. You can do the same thing with your ship - thrusting in any direction for 22 minutes, and you will never find the Eye. This has resulted in a dubious hypothesis: in order to find the Eye, the probe had to be aimed at the Quantum Moon, pass through the cloud layer in the upper atmosphere (on a very shallow angle), *and* have the Quantum Moon transition to the Eye at just the right time to bring the probe along with it, before the probe pass out of the Quantum Moon's atmosphere again. But in truth, neither you, nor your scout can do this, for those same technical reasons.

[@DavidTMarchand]

@@robertboily9030 I think it makes sense that the probe never leads you to the Eye. The chances of it hitting it twice would be infinitesimal. Technically you should reach the Eye if you managed to follow the probe *in your first loop*, which would probably require some type of sequence breaking. But the fact that the game deliberately freezes celestial time during that loop specifically really breaks whatever you could deduce from the world based on that loop especially.

[@blindbeholder9713]

@@DavidTMarchand The player's first loop is the loop after the eye has been found.

[@DavidTMarchand]

@@blindbeholder9713 That would make things much clearer! But it doesn't sound right to me. It that were the case, the statues would activate at the beginning of the loop, right? Because they've already been told the Eye has been found. And the one on Timber Hearth would sync up with Hal or Hornfelds several minutes before you reach the Observatory.

[@_Bread-_-]

I thought I already knew all there was to know about the time loop, but what really got me was the inclusion of a piece of the statue in your ships computer. I never saw that, and it's really cool! love all these lore videos anyway, keep it up!

[@chekote]

I understood most of that when I played the game, but your video definitely filled in a couple of gaps that I hadn’t considered. Thanks!

[@tutacat]

Oof, they designed to find the eye of the universe by random brute force! Storing the location that it's not by sending it back.

[@ink6202]

12:04 Poor prisioner, he will be in there until the stranger runs out of power And i think that the signal blocker gets its energy from the eye's signal So maybe if theres no other thing to power the stranger it uses what the signal blocker uses

[@someman66]

Maybe they coded the signal blocker to eventually shut off to allow the stranger to receive the eye's residual energy

[@tazsapp]

i have no idea how strong the hull of the stranger would be, but i doubt it's anywhere near as powerful as the lining of the ash twin project. and even if it was, i think the developers said that all races use solar energy, so it would mostly run out very shortly after the supernova happens (based on their power reserve systems)

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Where have the devs stated this? May have been before the dlc. We know both hearthians and nomai use solar. But the stranger lives on long after all suns die.

[@tazsapp]

i think the quote was from before the dlc. but that is... so deeply depressing. i hoped that the prisoner wouldn't be a prisoner forever.

[@ink6202]

@@TheLoreExplorer i dont think they stated this I made it miself in a discussion on the ow server

[@PloverTechOfficial]

I knew some of this, but a whole lot of this I had no clue about! It’s amazing to learn, and I shall continue to appreciate your lore finding and explaining contributions.

[@RoseColoredIris]

Great video. Helped me get a better understanding of the loop. It can be pretty difficult to wrap your head around but you did a great job of putting things into perspective.

[@thewilltheway]

So when I first played the game, it took me about 20 loops before I realized that the sun was exploding. I kept either dying, meditating, or wasn't looking at the sun when it happened. But in that time I figured out that the ash twin project would activate when the system malfunctioned, then a little later I figured out that it was the suns explosion that powered the whole thing. In this way I assumed that there was some problem with the cannon so it was sending a message to sun station to do the time loop so that I could fix it. I thought I would fix it, then the time loop would end, and I would have a chance to share all my discoveries with everyone else on timber hearth. By the time I figured out how to get to sun station via the teleporter, I still had not been disillusioned. When I read on the pylon that the sun had reached the end of its natural life cycle and the truth unfolded, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

[@St.Cali666]

The idea that the "first" loop is the 9 1/2 millionth loop....

[@russiandoggo4336]

Think about it, whatever you did on your first loop is what your character did for 9,000,000 loops completly unaware

[@judd5936]

I love your videos on this game. Reminds me of how much I loved sci-fi as a kid. 10 to 15 minute break from the horrors of reality.

[@itsd0nk]

That is brilliant that they even figured out a way to inject lore to explain your ship’s log getting updated along with the other loop memories.

[@aleksakocijasevic6613]

The thing I'll add is that I think there are two possible interpretations of the time loop. The first as you say at 7:26 and 7:38 (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the 9+ million loops before the Hatchling became aware of it, physically happened. But the second interpretation is that those loops never physically happened because no one was aware of them. The Ash Twin Project only got the information from the possible future. The game addresses these two possible interpretations in one of the Nomai texts, on the Statue island on Giant's Deep: PHLOX: I'm curious: Is sending a being's memories back in time the same as sending the being itself back in time? PHLOX: As an example, if we were to send my memories back in time, is that the same as sending "me" back in time (not my physical self, but my essence)? DAZ: I imagine they're two different actions. CASSAVA: Wouldn't both action be effectively the same? DAZ: Suppose time is being rewritten. I believe this is different than receiving memories from what is effectively the future. CASSAVA: But isn't the end result identical in either case? I like the second interpretation little more. I think the ATP is getting information from the future but that future hasn't actually happened yet. Only the final loop happened, or actually no loop ever physically happened. Every loop was only the Hatchlings memories. Only the final run happened. But the fun thing is that both interpretations are kind of correct. The one isn't more correct than the other. The way Outer Wilds' universe seems to work is that the information can be sent from the future (effectively being created out of nothing) without creating the paradox, but something physical can't be (or it can , but it would easily create a paradox).

[@WalnutBun]

I think the easiest way to explain this is by starting with the fact that Outer Wilds doesn't depict a "time loop" in the conventional sense. The player character isn't being sent back in time (the trigger conditions for the Breaking Spacetime ending notwithstanding) - only their memories are. In effect, the Ash Twin Project is rewriting history each time it activates.

[@speedude0164]

It also helps to compare the memories in the Ash Twin Project to the scout in the High Energy Lab as it's essentially the same thing happening. When you shoot the scout at the energized black hole, there's no other scout coming from the white hole from its perspective. But once the scout goes through, the last second-ish is deleted and it comes out before it entered.

[@DavideWernstrung]

9,318,054 loops x 22 minutes = 204997188 minutes which is 390.02 years. We have lived for 390 years before we even became aware of the loop - and we spent all that time exploring the solar system on our first day in space! It makes me think that at the end of the game when we finally die - it's really not so sad after all - it's a far far better fate than if we had been unable to shut off the ash twin project - I would have hated if the game ending implied we would be stuck forever unable to die and aware of our immortality. But that pales in comparison to the Prisoner. He was aware and - well alive is the wrong word - but he existed for 200,000 + years! And was aware of it the entire time!

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Hey Davide. These are nice observations. But you dont need to worry. The prisoner was aware the whole time. But their reality shifted. Time lost all meaning and they found meaning in their own way. At the same time. We do get trapped in a worse fate than the atp. You know the Solanums fate ending? Well , the qm is just reflecting the eye. We get trapped in a timeless quantum existence too. Forever. But again. Forever loses meaning. Solanum shows us this. She cant tell if its been minutes or years. And this is considered enlightenment in a way by the game. The ancient glade is our new reality (like the prisoners prison). But thats ok because the ancient glade actually is a beautiful place where anything can happen. Even if it is outside of time and usually dark.

[@TheBlueOne217]

The first time I realized that I had been repeating the same 22 minute segment more than 9 million times without remembering it was breathtaking

[@TonkarzOfSolSystem]

8:20 I think the writing visible at this timestamp suggests the Nomai were going to let the time loop run another few times to "gather data" before they shut it down.

[@KiloShank]

It's funny that it's implied in game that you could simply fly to the eye of the universe. I don't think you can, but since you can fly ahead of the probe, you could theoretically fly every path the probe takes until you find the eye.

[@russiandoggo4336]

Before I understood how the probe works, I tried a few loops to follow it, because "thats where the eye is right?"

[@KiloShank]

@@russiandoggo4336 Oh yea, I did that too. Grabbed it on the tracker and followed for like 20 minutes before realizing I wasn't as clever as I thought.

[@tutacat]

I like how they tried to stop a supernova.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

no no. They tried to start one lol

[@animal3799]

I don’t know if you would even see this but with this information which I see as mostly true how does gabbro fit into this because they already are in the loop because of the statue opening it’s eyes before hand.

[@majorgnu]

His first loop and your first loop are the same. If you go to him straight away, he tells you of a statue opening its eyes but not of there being a time loop, so he's in the same boat as you.

[@catarinamotta514]

I had to watch many of your videos until that I actually understood every single part of the process. Very nice that you decided to make a video summing all information

[@MarkQDunbar]

@6:21 So I just did some quick math and I’m not sure what I think about it. If there have been 9,318,054 probes, each being “22 minutes apart” so to speak, multiplying that gives us 204,997,188 minutes from when the first loop happened. Then, dividing that by 60 gives us hours, then 24 to get days, and 365 to get years, which results in ~390 years. That means that there has been nearly 400 years worth of time loops, all technically happening within the same 22 minutes!

[@MegaChickenfish]

It's amazing how much there still was to discover replaying the game after I had "beaten" it. With enough paying attention and some math, you can get how "long" the loop has been going on and even which loop was the one where they found The Eye.

[@jixaw9383]

Figuring this out is one thing but being the people to make this concept to begin with is insane

[@CorDharel]

I really loved your explanation! Finally I understand the loop better and how it got triggered etc.

[@thecousinwithaforesaken]

I actually realized somethings funky about the time loop. When you connect to the loop and your memories are sent back in time, that’s not a complete do-over. When your memories are sent through the black hole into the past, a new timeline is generated, which branches off from the point of the loop starting. Some of the nomai text asks if sending the memories back in time is the same as sending the person back in time, and they conclude that they are two different functions with the same results. And this brings up an interesting thing, all those deaths were *real deaths* they weren’t erased when the loop restarts, they are never erased. Those were real deaths and when the player wakes up again, that’s not the same person in their pre-supernova non-vaporized body, that is a completely *new* person with all of your memories and traits. Even if the outcome is exactly the same the process is still different, and all those yous that died were real deaths that weren’t erased when your memories were sent back. That’s just my theory though

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Yeah. I feel like that goes by a lot of people. Too many imo. Well reasoned. I have some input though. Technically we don’t know how the atp works. It could be rewriting time. It could be generating new timelines each loop. Or the timelines could all be there naturally. As in it was always an infinite multiverse. These would all be very different. Rewriting would mean it is sort of a do over. No 9 million dead us’s. The one where the atp generates timelines would be crazy. Cause then every black hole ever should do the same. Each time a piece breaks off brittle hollow it should create a new universe. And the last would mean that all those deaths were real. All 9 million. But they’d have happened anyway. Regardless of the atp. I personally believe the last. But I view the atp making them as a sort of good understanding of the game. Cause time is relative anyway. They may as well all be created as we wake up to us. So again. Well done bud. If you’re interested on deeper theories and idea about a it my channel is full of them.

[@alicoon]

@@TheLoreExplorer i think its the first because if it wasnt the spacetime wouldnt break when you clone yourself in the atp, there wouldnt be a problem if anothr you from other universe comeß to your universe because you dont break causality, but if you do it in the same universe you do break causality

[@Scion141]

The "time travel" the Nomai use, is what you see at the High Energy lab when you send the probes through the black hole, but on steroids, in that the negative time interval was increased to 22 minutes. There has to be one timeline, otherwise it wouldn't make sense for objects sent through black holes to appear from white holes before they pass through the black hole. The fact that you break reality when you remove one of the cores before the probe enters the black hole but after it exits the white hole is proof of a singular timeline. If there were multiple timelines, reality wouldn't break.

[@Eliza-yd7fi]

​@@TheLoreExplorerHow can we die 9 million times? When the sun explodes, no matter what the fancy statues and funny black holes do, everything in this system just dies. It's like Talos Principle.

[@Chfoulu]

Time loops being the huge clusterfuck it is, we can shorten it this way : The loop began 9 millions shots ago, when the cannon shot the very first probe. Then it reset it 9 million times until it foudn the coordinates of the Eye and we are connected to the statue because of it. But that doesn't mean we enter the 9th million loop. We actually enter the first loop, since the sun never implosed yet. We enter the loop when the latter is the first loop and the 9th million at the same time, because the Hatchling never experienced the sun turning into a supernova. It's like entering a highway : many cars are already in the highway but we are not inside it yet, and then we enter it and it's like we first entered it for everyone So the orbital cannon technically fired for the first time, and for the 9th million time. And the hatchling experiences the first loop and the 9th million loop Damn time loops are such a complex thing to explain by a simple messagee

[@tutacat]

They weren't expecting the solar panels to receive a supernova which is enough power to fire it that much.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

They knew theyd have enough power. Just two mischievous nomai turned the power too high because they thought thed find it faster ::D

[@herrzyklon]

One thing that's incredibly daunting about firing the probe is the geometry of the probe path. Working from memory, a curved line segment is the linear distance travelled (circle radius) multiplied by it's angle theta. So if the probe was fired at 1 single degree from the neutral axis, and it travelled for 100 km, then the distance between that probe and one fired down the axis (theta = 0 degrees) would be 100 km. That's just in the plane. Since its in 3 dimensions, i believe it would be multiplied by a further angle phi (azimuth). The gist of that is that the distance of the Eye from the cannon is a very significant factor, not just direction. There's an Edgar Allan Poe story called the Goole Bug that uses the planar distance in a dramatic setting. A treasure (the Goole/Gold Bug) is buried a distance from a tree, and the instructions for finding it say turn to this angle and walk this far. But the narrator gets the angle a tiny tiny bit wrong. They don't find the Bug, and even though they're a short distance from it, they never know that and think it's already been claimed. They don't realise the huge effect that the minute angle change caused.

[@hooliganhammond486]

Did you know that before you gain your memories through the statue, the loop has already been going on for 3.893 centuries.

[@harlankovacs6276]

The time loop has looping for 390 years before reaching the eye.

[@Greenpixel16]

Hey lore, there's a new game that just released called "will you snail" - it is a rage platformer, but it also has a really interesting story about AI told through text logs you can find throughout the game. (The developer was an outer wilds player, and I think he took some inspiration from it making the text logs) It's pretty interesting, but if you're not into stupidly hard platformers then that's fine lol

[@CaffeineConnoisseur]

Took a while for me to notice that the OPC doesn't fire in the same direction every time. It became abundantly clear to me when I woke up one time and the probe almost collided with timber hearth.

[@jeffumbach]

That happened to me as well, I wondered if I was going to get a rare death and achievement for the probe hitting me like a meteor and ending my loop within seconds.

[@rndm9087]

Nice bit of lore there with the ship computer, i actually didn't know that and just thought of it as a game logic kinda thing. Great video buddy, can't wait to send you this prop!

[@ForgeofAule]

No wonder the nomai didn't want to be aware, it would have been 390 Earth years

[@wolfboos]

More reason to love this game even more! Thanks a ton for exploring this game!!!

[@FinetalPies]

I didn't know the ship computer had a lore reason to remember stuff, I was so ready to accept that it was just a convenient gameolay contrivance. God what a good game

[@J7Handle]

I think the paradox idea conflicts with the idea of time loops. Time loops imply that what comes out of the white hole is just from a prior loop (even for the microsecond white hole), meaning that it’s not necessary for the stuff emerging from the white hole to match what goes into the black hole later. So why can there be a paradox when it comes to physical objects only? The duplicated objects are from different loops, so no paradox, right? Another thing. If the Sun Station had succeeded, imagine that the Nomai could trigger it early in a given loop, activating the ATP 10 minutes early. The ATP would still send information back a full 22 minutes, which would then be 32 minutes. This could be repeated with each successive time loop, thereby achieving unlimited time travel to the past, at least up to the point when the ATP was first readied or to 22 minutes before the Sun Station was first readied, whichever is later. Actually, the Nomai could have easily done this with the high energy lab, bypassing the need for the Sun Station and ATP entirely.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Did I mention paradox's? I agree in the game there is no paradoxs. I think space time breaks because spacetime changes drastically if a duplicate object is left in it. And its not certain they could change the timings. Thats one of the reasons the devs added the space time ending. So the nomai couldnt just forever duplicate batteries for endless energy. So I doubt the mechanics would be such that you could keep sending things back. Something like "It has to go through at the same time to reach the right place. They are doorways through time. Changing the timings makes it a new doorway. "

[@TheLoreExplorer]

I dont remember them mentioning it myself. Like I didnt see it and no one has shown it to me so I cant confirm it. But what I remember spreading was just the devs saying "stopping the atp as the nomai planned wouldnt cause the spacetime ending". And they only addressed that because it would have been a huge sort of plot hole. The entire atp would have been pointless if it were to just destroy the universe anyway. I dont remember it being about paradox's though. People definitely inferred they were talking about paradox's later. But from what I can remember initially it was a paradox free claim. No mention of them.

[@DigiTamerRiley]

This video is how I r ealized the third statue active in the Ash Twin Project isn't connected to Solanum, but the Orbital Launch Canon

[@EvilCherry3]

9:00 Yeah but no. We don't activate the statue yet when entering the museum so it means that when the cannon fires we should be inside the museum (and not able to see it), not sleeping at the campfire.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Im not so sure exactly what in the video youre talking about. But again. Us entering the museum and the time loops beginning have nothing to do with each other. We connect to the statue a couple minutes into the timeloop. But the timeloop does , and has for 9 million loops before we enter , start when we are sleeping at the campfire. The statues activating and us being connected to one doesnt change that.

[@EvilCherry3]

@@TheLoreExplorer If the loop started while we were sleeping then the statue would activate as soon as we enter the museum (or even earlier because other inhabitants already look at the statue before we enter the museum). It's impossible that the statue decides "Ok the Eye is found so i'm turned on now, but just for fun i will ignore everyone for a few minutes and then i'll choose who i want to link to.".

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Nope. The statues activate once the eye is found. Not before. The implication being the eye was found while we talked with hornfells and got the launch codes.

[@EvilCherry3]

@@TheLoreExplorer So it means that the time needed for the probe to find the eye is equal to the time the player takes to go from the fire camp to the end of the museum (which is different for each player) even though the coordinates of the eye are the same for each player.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Heres how I see it. The first loop is a mechanical oddity for the players sake. Its longer than 22 minutes. But we can assume that lore wise. It is 22 minutes. And we can work things out from there. After the cannon fired , lore wise, the character did what we consider the tutorial tutorial. they stopped and played hide and seek with the kids. They learned about ghost matter. Flew the remote controlled ship. Practiced with Gossan one last time before They launched. They went and chatted with hal. Then they talked to hornfells. At which time the eye was found.statue activated. But Id say lore wise all those things happened. So id say the time it takes for the probe to find the eye is the time is takes for the in world character to do all those things.

[@tenchimuyo69]

Devs took the proverb "everything happens for a reason" extremely literally.

[@obaytheface]

fun fact, the probe cannon spent roughly 390 years running cycle after cycle before it finally found the eye, and opened the time loop to the player.

[@BlueShellshock]

One thing that bugs me about the Nomai's plan: they expected to blow up the sun to power the ATP, with the info received from the probe launch sent back in time repeatedly until they had the coordinates. After they had the coordinates, they planned to **not** blow up the sun. Isn't that a violation of causality? Without the supernova, they could never activate the ATP to send back the right coordinates.

[@bonelesschickennuggets1868]

No because from the start physics aren’t the same in their “universe” as ours, and the other thing that is the key factor: They’re not sending back matter or mass through the warp, they’re sending back information by radio waves, which carry no mass, that way they’re circumventing the law of conservation and evading destroying reality Other use we would’ve died at the very end of the game but it doesn’t happen

[@ashleyl3699]

i always find that most of the people who couldn't figure most of this stuff out and didn't understand the plot and how the ATP worked, are the people who didn't pay much attention to their ship log. because literally everything is very clearly explained in the ship log.

[@GrandNoble]

Lol 😆 answering my many questions. Thank you for not only answering in comments but making a whole video . Love it

[@sykes1024]

Something lorewise that's interesting to consider is that because we only become linked to the statue on the 9 millionth and something loop, our character still had their first "launch day" and went to explore space over and over and over in the same way, but we don't really know how that day went. And it's even possible that each of those 9 million something days went slightly differently because each time the probe would have been launched in a slightly different direction which could cause you to do something slightly different than last time. But we don't know what our character did on any of those 9 million loops. We only know what they did after the eye was found.

[@randomdude8202]

Its nice to see I already figured all of this on my own.

[@Siferiax]

Thanks! The only connection I wasn't making was what activated the statues. Even though I totally had that info, it didn't click in my head. Now it did and I realize I knew that already lol. I love the Outer Wilds lore!

[@kinrah1711]

I find it interesting to speculate what the Hearthian would have been doing in the 'first' iteration, prior to connecting with the statue. Would they have gotten off Timber Hearth? What planet would they have explored? Would they have been looking in the right direction to see the supernova, or would they have been completely oblivious?

[@scroogledoogle3028]

I imagine that in the case you entered the game blind to the time loop mechanic, you would recreate the "first" iteration near perfectly. The only exception would be if your path were to deviate due to something that could vary between the blind playthrough and the prior loops, i.e. the orbital cannon's random direction or the statue encounter, which wouldn't occur in prior loops. Like, there was definitely a loop in there where you woke up and were immediately crushed by a Nomai probe to the face, and that was distinct to your blind playthrough which should in theory fire the probe towards the eye. In my own case I knew of a loop, so flew directly into the sun in my tutorial loop. I can only imagine my prior selves had done the same, however not been fortunate enough to have actually been in the loop. Idiots, the lot of them.

[@Syka]

Whatever you do on your first loop is probably what the Hatchling did in all 9 million previous loops, except that the statue didn't look at them when they left the museum. Also like the above commenter said, any loops where the probe would have caught your eye (like when it flies right by Timber Hearth) might change that particular loop too. But without any memory transfer, almost all 9 million loops would look basically the same.

[@GasparGa]

I think I knew all of this but your video really helped in organizing my thoughts anyway, so thanks, keep up the good work!

[@HornetSilksong1232]

theres an interesting loop ending alternate screen if you're out of reach of the supernova (really far out/ on the 6th location) which shows the ATP working rather than just sending you back after your death to the supernova

[@communistthanos3642]

This video explained a lot of things that I was confused about, but there’s still one thing that I don’t understand. Why does Brittle Hollow only begin to fall apart during the loop if Hallow’s Lantern was already spitting out fire since the Nomai were there. Also, why does the dam break in the Stranger only when the loop starts

[@TheLoreExplorer]

They added an update during the dlc. The sun begins to go supernova and the extra solar activity accelerated the bombardment.

[@ReverendTed]

The dam breaks in the Stranger because the when the Stranger detects the sun is about to go supernova, it deploys its sails and begins to accelerate away from the sun. You can see that the dam starts leaking shortly thereafter. It's something about the Stranger starting to move that weakens the dam.

[@bachaddict]

@@ReverendTed I just started the DLC and was wondering why the loops don't end in the supernova!

[@MegaChickenfish]

7:20 So in their ideal circumstances, they would destroy the sun with the Sun Station, but then, coordinates in hand after an unknown number of times, _stop it from firing._ Wouldn't that cause a time paradox? Man, imagine spending millions of loops and their entire civilization to get inches from the Eye of the Universe only to start hearing *kazoos.*

[@tomatodoggo5350]

The nomai do have a conversation about if sending back information counts as time travel or not (AKA will it cause a paradox) and it seems as long as it's not physical, it doesn't cause a paradox. They only send back the "memories" of the tracking module so they know the coordinates (one thing that seems to confuse the people is that the coordinates are seen physically but that's just the metal stuff showing the coordinates that were sent back as information) hope this clears it up :)

[@Potato27777]

Would the owlks taste like owls or elks?

[@Yuti640]

I never knew that the probe tracking module fell into Giant’s deep! I thought it was just always down there and was placed there as a safe location

[@finlay9260]

AAA I only got to watch this video now, thank you so much for the dedicated shout-out!! Happy to finally be a member

[@TheLoreExplorer]

Of course! Welcome to the crew bud!!

[@bkPaladin80]

It always bothered me that there were three active statues (according to the ash twin core room). The player is one, obviously, and the Hearthian you speak to on Giant's Deep mentions being stuck in the loop...but I never worked out what the third one was. Based on your video though, I guess it's the Cannon...which makes sense I guess. I just always thought there was some other person out there somewhere that was stuck.

[@bobert3230]

isnt it solanum from the quantum moon?

[@bkPaladin80]

@@bobert3230 I don't think so...he's stuck in a quantum state of alive and dead.

[@Graknorke]

it's the probe tracking station, you can see the list of active statues on one of those floating ring displays in the ash twin project

[@theforgottenapostle1940]

If you go to the core of Giant's Deep, in the probe tracking module of the OPC, you will find a statue with open eyes. The statue there is the one that is recording the amount of probes launched and their coordinates.

[@supercharged5-39]

@@bobert3230 no solanum never gets her memories from past loops. the last mask in the ATP is connected to the probe tracking module which was lost at the bottom of giant's deep

[@rosefuneral89]

So basically the Ash twin project causes this loop and when it finally finds the coordinates of the eye, it activates the statues since something has change. Hence finding the eye location. The loop has already shot the probes, repeated over 9 million times in a memory that hasn’t been recorded so it means nothing. But now that statues activate since the change, the 22 minute intervals are recorded and the Nomai mission can take place for the protagonist.

[@jdmhexagon2584]

Crikey moses. I've played this game through twice and I was nowhere near understanding this. Even after watching this video, I only half-understand it. I flipping love it though, and I love this channel. Great work!

[@Mimerneos]

I was under the impression that the tracking module of the orbital cannon gets damaged during the firing (It doesn't sink in the Deep) The reason there's a _working_ tracking module at the bottom of the Deep is because early on, the Nomai tried launching the Tracking module using one of the cyclones, but accidentally used the reverse cyclone, causing the tracking module to sink. This sunk tracking module acted as an unexpected redundancy and is the only reason that the coordinates were recoverable

[@TheLoreExplorer]

nah. They only ever made one tracking module. you can watch a small projection pool liquid show it break and fall during probe launch. The piece that was launched to the bottom via cyclones was a bridge type piece which can be found near the tracking module.

[@niklas5336]

Here are open questions I have: 1. How do my memories get from my head to the black hole in the center of the ATP, no matter where I am? 2. Following up on this, how do the orbital probe cannon components communicate with each other? Logically, somehow the probe cannon's computer must know the result of the previous cycle's probe. But this comes from the probe tracking module, which has crashed into the center of giant's deep. How does that information get back to the ATP and eventually the next loop's cannon? 3. Why does the orbital probe cannon keep on firing *after* the eye has already been found? It no longer needs to send more probes - and indeed, it doing so (hence destroying itself) only makes the probe tracking module needlessly harder to access. 4. Why does the ATP cycle behave different from the other black hole / white hole pairs in the game? In e.g. the high energy lab, the black/white hole pair is treated as forming a single 'self-consistent' timeline - if you create a scenario where this single timeline would break itself, you instead destroy spacetime. But in the ATP cycles, each cycle is treated as completely "independent" from the others - indeed, even when you yourself jump into the black hole, you meet yourself in the *next* cycle - when logically, you should have already met yourself in *this* cycle if the game was being consistent here. 5. Indeed, if the ATP was a single consistent timeline like the others, merely shutting it off would break spacetime - thus dooming the Nomai to a fate of infinite supernovas even *if* they succeed in finding the eye, because anything that would break them from the cycle would violate causality.

[@niklas5336]

Extra thought: The way the ATP time loop behaves is very much like a 'parallel universes' style time travel - each loop is somehow *independent* from the others - when you send something back in time, you effectively send it to a parallel universe, that parallel universe representing the 'next' loop in the causal chain. So really, if the game wanted to be extremely consistent here, what should happen when you shoot something else (e.g. your scout) into a black hole is... that it simply disappears and never comes back. And then in some other parallel universe, you opened up the white hole and a random probe just came flying out out of nowhere.

[@TheLoreExplorer]

1:) The statue we connected to is wirelessly connected to us. Its connected to the mask within the atp and they communicate instantly. So the mask in the atp is what stores and sends your memories back. Its a bit odd but we know they have the warp pads and they can listen to sound from long distances. Its not too weird to just accept the wireless nature of the statues. 2.) The probe tracking module is also connected to the atp via a nomai statue. Which then communicates this to the specific modules computer in the opc that tracks the probe. Which we happen to find in giants deeps core. But really its through the same way we are connected to the statue. The probe tracking module has a statue of its own. 3.) The atp was designed to be automated. So it would do everything on its own until it found the eye. At which time , the atp and statues would make the nomai aware of the timeloop/probes success. The Nomai would then shut down the atp themselves. Preventing the order for the cannon to be send back and fired again. As it sits. There is no nomai to turn off the atp and along with it , the opc. So it continues to fire. (also , as it sits. The sun is dying naturally. And so it cant be turned off unless the atp itself is. Instead of just having to turn off the sun station as planned) 4.) This one is up in the air. Imo , its explained by your bonus. This is indeed(imo) a multiverse. And self and our scout are different in this sense. With the scout , its a parallel universes version of us sending us a scout. With self. Its actually us entering the black hole in our universe. And exiting in another. And we follow that perspective to a certain extent since we follow the memories. So its just different circumstances with the same mechanic. 1 is coming from another to our universe. 1 is traveling from our universe to another. And we follow that negative time interval instead of having the perspective of no time travel yourself. Tbh this throws a lot of people and they tend to fall back on the idea that self is different because the game cant predict 22 minutes in the future. But after analysis and consideration of the game as a whole(quantum phenom , the black hole/white hole phenom , and the fact we KNOW the eye creates a multiverse. We just dont know to what extent it does it. But solanums words , and the quantum phenoms rules , suggest to me its an infinite multiverse). I think it actually makes sense if we follow it all the way through. 5.) Also solved by your bonus. It may appear to be a single timeline to us. But thats because we are trapped in the perspective of character stuck in a single timeline(9 million different versions of the same character. Each of which die and never experience a timeloop). But the fact seems to be that actions in another universe dont cause the outcome of ours. Everything is relative. And relatively. Cause and effect is actually followed from the viewpoint of the time traveler. Ie we have to jump into the atp before self can appear in the past of another universe. The memories in loop one had to be sent before loop 2's version of us could receive them. But the negative time interval , and the fact that we follow the memories , makes this confusing to most. But anyway , this isnt an issue. The atp would not have caused spacetime to end since it doesnt directly cause anything that shouldnt happen. Everything that happens has a cause , regardless of memories being sent back because relative to the observer(the experiencer of time travel) , everything proceeded normally in regards to cause and effect. (though imo youre right. IF it were a single timeline looping , this should be a problem). This does beg the question "why does spacetime end then?" But I think its because the future was changed in the scenarios in which we create self or a duplicate scout. Just makes more sense to me. Sorry for the long format text stuff. But I hope this helped! And for someone who seems to have a pretty deep want to understand the game at a deeper level than most. I suggest my video "Outer Wilds and the many worlds interpretation". Should probably touch an a lot of this and help you understand better!

[@Scion141]

@@niklas5336 "The way the ATP time loop behaves is very much like a 'parallel universes' style time travel - each loop is somehow independent from the others - when you send something back in time, you effectively send it to a parallel universe, that parallel universe representing the 'next' loop in the causal chain." Have to disagree with this one. If that were the case, it would be impossible to break reality. Reality breaks because one timeline is involved.

[@doodelbopgames]

now that i know they were gonna loop and shut it down after they find the eye i know they're actually genuises now

[@keaton7437]

This answered every question I had, thank you so much!

[@pilarsalles3234]

This is exactly how I thought everything worked at Outer Wilds universe, finally I found someone who came to the same conclusions as me! I still find some inconsistent scenarios though. First, I don’t get how the probe shot at the beggining of each loop goes every time in a diferentent direction. I mean, if there are infinite parallel universes that are exactly the same except when we send things in black holes, the order to fire should be in the same direction each time as long as the order itself is the same. And the other thing I dont get is that in this theory of multiple universes with which I agree, when we send something into a black hole, what we are really doing is sending it to another timeline, so in our timeline, we see this thing getting into the black hole but never getting out through the white one, it would disappear. In another timeline, we would suddently see something getting out the white hole without having putted it into the black. So, the cause-effect thing happens in two diferente timelines. If this is correct then the game show us an error. When we are in the high energy lab we put something in a black hole and we see it getting out the white one a bit before it has entered the black. All in the same timeline. We should never see it getting out the white hole, something is wrong with that. The same happens with the teleporting plataforms, which send the person back in time (altough it’s less than a second it’s still a time travel). The person that teleportes himself should disappear from that timeline (die) and then appear in another timeline on the other platform (so there would be two of him in that timeline). Everytime someone enters a black hole and timetravel, he is duplicating himself in the timeline he is heading. However, thats not what the game shows, so I dont know if this theory is wrong or if the game is inconsistent in some situations.

[@supercharged5-39]

the order is to fire in a random direction. the direction is randomly determined and then the launch command is sent to the orbital probe canon.

[@supercharged5-39]

the black holes don't send stuff back to new timelines, they send stuff back in time during the loop. most of the black holes dont have any big effect on the loop because they only send stuff back a few miliseconds at most. the black hole in the ash twin progect responsible for the loop is given enough power to send stuff back 22 minutes. causality doesnt break spacetime because everything else sent backwards is given a definitive point of origin. the only thing unaccounted for is you jumping into the black hole sending yourself back in time alongside your memories, gabbro's memories, and the probe data. that leads to there being two of yourself with one having memories of the previous loop. however you break spacetime by not allowing yourself to jump into the blackhole, thus giving the previous loop version of yourself no origin point, breaking spacetime

[@ThatJay283]

Ig with the statutes since it isn't actually them rotating that activates them it's more just an indicator for us to know that they've been indicated, this would have been the nomai as planned but the 2 hearthians stumbled their way into it instead

[@Kavukamari]

i think the in-universe reason for why sending information back in time does not break reality is because no matter is being paradoxically created or destroyed, the information only changes what matter is there by storing information in the hard drive incidentally I think they have to send the entirety of all of the data they've collected through the entire time loop process, so every loop the data packet gets a little bit bigger I assume that eventually the computer will be full and it will have to either start overwriting old data or maybe the computer will crash and no longer be able to send the data back in time. I assume the nomai would have put in a data management system that deletes old data because they only care about the final result, so maybe they only store a certain amount of memories and launches

[@SideQuestStories]

I've often wondered if the Ash Twin Project demonstrates what the quantum behavior of the Eye actually is - it's just a time loop with memory of the previous loop changing the new loop (like giving the probe canon a new firing solution).

[@cameronharris5107]

Dude I’ve been replaying this game for years & never put all that together. I was convinced of 2 theories I came up with on my own. 1: when they fired the sun station & it failed, it just took 200000 yrs to see the actual effects. Kinda like a snowball rolling down hill, but they caused it with the rest fire. 2: the comet that floats around & is filled with GM falls into the sun & that volatile hunk of ice upsets the suns chemical reactions & boom. Ur makes a lot more sense though, so thanks for the deep dive 👍🏻😁

[@LordZipThe3rd]

You're epic my man I think you are one of my top 3 favorite youtubers

[@jsby523]

It would have been crazy if the Nomai got the sun station working. As they go to press the button to trigger the super Nova they would look around hoping for a Nomai to walk in and reveal the eyes coordinates. Then the dread sinks in as they release they’re the first, and they would die, and then they still activate the station.

[@Quacking-duck]

They would already know that they’re the first because the probe wouldn’t have fired yet

[@Reeceander]

12:04 does this mean the Nomai were willing to blow up the sun, killing themselves, so that a parallel timeline gets the coordinates? Idaea was right.

[@Red_Oak.]

I did the math and the looping had been going on for 390 years worth of time prior to you being introduced to it.

[@Hammerheadcruiser]

The loop I understood, but I didn't know about the ship. Figured it was just a gameplay thing

[@Moshugaani]

There's so much Nomai texts everywhere that it's no wonder why people miss some crucial things that would help with getting the whole picture.

[@supercharged5-39]

i always thought the proble tracking module fell beneath the current while the nomai were still alive

[@kahlzun]

The interesting question is how long were we asleep between our memories being sent back and 'waking up'? The probe cannon presumably takes some discrete amount of time to wheel about and pick a random coordinate, so it has to be at *least* a few seconds, possibly longer..

[@TheLoreExplorer]

handful of seconds tops. The cannon should get the orders to rotate and fire in a new direction at the same time we are receiving our memories. They are both governed by the same mechanisms. But since our memories are a sequence they take longer to receive. So by the time we wake up the opc has acted on the info already.

[@lonelyone]

The single most helpful video I've found on understanding the time loop mechanics and fundamental nature of Outer Wilds and putting together the many disparate elements in some cohesive whole. As much as I love the game, its lore and backstory (in relation to the player) is really dense, even after you've figured everything out. I still struggle to make sense of it all... Almost like my brain is on a 22-minute loop. (How do I escape?)

[@blipblap614]

Supernova activates ATP. Black hole opens where the advanced warp core was. Self tells us we/they emerged from a white hole in ATP to begin this loop. That's an interesting detail: ATP pumps a signal to the past by creating a source which is temporally, but not spatially, separated from the sink. I think the tall structures at the poles are not solar panels, but antennae.

[@blipblap614]

Somewhat weird: Nomai had mined / engineered material to withstand a supernova, but they're baffled when they scan (what became) the ruptured core?

[@evanrutledge-sz4yo]

What I find most terrifying about the beginning of the game is knowing that, mathematically speaking, the time loop has been going for at least 390 years without anybody knowing about it, not even you until you finally connected with the statue. The universe has essentially been in a state of limbo for three centuries, before the player finally disconnects the warp core. Imagine the existential dread of repeating the same day over and over again for that long, without ever knowing it, until one day you… wake up.

[@crad5476]

God damn, my theories got very close. Really interesting how all this works in the game. In the high energy facility you learn that things which go in a black hole come out of a white hole before it enters the black hole, this is why the project even works. You can delay, or speed up the outcome progress, in which the data/object comes out the white hole...by 22 minutes. Perhaps the nomai became too advanced for the eye, because they did something the eye cant do. Still wish there was more info about the eye.