The Universe Is, and We Are | Outer Wilds, Part III (Ep. 139) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio. This is the finale,
the final part, part three of our Outer Wild's critical analysis.
I'm joined once again by Josh from the Still Loading podcast. Josh,
thanks for joining me again, man.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Rick, thank you once again for having me on. I mean,
I guess it would be kind of weird that I
was on for the first two parts and then you'd
bring in like a ringer for the third one. So
I guess it's not that weird, but I'm still grateful
to be back. So thank you for having me on.
Looking forward to closing this out and discussing the ending
of this game.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
I am too. At the time of recording this episode,
we just released our first episode and it's been received
quite well so far. It's the third, i think, the
third new release in a row that's set an all
time download record. I don't talk numbers in online or
really at all, but that was nice to say. So

(01:00):
thank you everybody for your support and for checking out
the work that we're doing over here. It's really appreciated
that you're all enjoying it because we put a lot
of effort into it, put a lot of ourselves into it,
and it's nice to know that it's appreciated and enjoyed.
That said, since this is being so well received, I
would be remiss not to do just a little plug upfront.

(01:22):
I just wanted to remind everybody we do have a
Discord server that's free to join if you were interested
in keeping up with the show, keeping up with the community,
and it's a nice place to hang around, chat with
other folks and sometimes get some things in advance. We
also have a Patreon if you're so inclined. You can
find all of these links in the description, but we'll
talk all about that later. To start with, and I

(01:44):
just talked with Josh about this off mic breaking news.
We've got some late community correspondents. This is from regular
corresponder and community member Dave Jackson, and he was bummed
that he missed the community correspond when he saw the
episode come out today part one, so he asked if
he could write in. I said, sure, just get it

(02:05):
by tonight. And here's what he has to say. I
think this is going to be a good capstone for
the entire series, he says. I think I ended up
respecting Outer Wild's more than actually having the spiritual experience
that lots of people seem to have. It's a miracle
that this simulated world in curiosity driven exploration can touch
on so many wonderful themes. But my problem was that

(02:27):
I had such a hillacious experience at least the last
three hours trying to actually pull off the final sequence
to get to the ending, specifically with the anglerfish section,
that while the ending was playing out, I was still
so tilted that the message slit off me like teflon.
I can go back and watch the scene again in
a normal state of mind, but I can only see it,
not feel it, which is the thing that game stories

(02:49):
can do so well. I still completely understand anyone who
holds the game in rare air never heard that phrase before,
and I think I still do too, despite my ending
being ruined. That's a strong reaction. Ruined and ending is ruined.
We're not doing the family guy bit. That's just how
I talk. Sometimes. I don't. I've heard the mechanical challenges

(03:10):
that some folks have, and I did die in the
last key mission, which we'll talk about, but I didn't.
I don't know. I don't consider myself very like technically
mechanically skilled at anything, but I didn't. I didn't have
that difficult. It certainly not a hillacious experience with navigating
this game. What about you, Josh me either.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I did also die in that last segment, which caused
a game over, which I don't think we've explained why
that would be just yet, so well, I guess we'll
I had did we mentioned at the end of the
last time. I don't remember anymore. But I also did
not have that much of a trouble, So I mean, Dave,
I hate to say it, but get good. No, it
just it didn't really, it wasn't that bad for me.

(03:51):
I do remember, like trying to figure out the angler
fish section, but it, yeah, I just miss timed the
first time, and then after the second. After the first time,
I tried it one more time and I think I
got it on the second attempt and it was that
was it.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, it I think for me too, And I think
I talked about this on the last episode. Just I mean,
like you, Josh, I can't remember anything anymore, but I
have this experience with games wherein and I'm not this
is going to sound pretentious a little bit maybe, and
I apologize I don't mean to be, but a lot
of this stuff I don't even consider whenever I'm I'm

(04:28):
like judging it as a as a holistic work. You know,
it can be technically frustrating and it can be annoying,
and I feel that in the moment. I definitely had
some moments where I was like, come the fuck on
whenever I was, you know, playing this game, I couldn't
get things to line up just right. But I don't
even consider that whenever I'm looking at the work as
a whole, you know, same thing can be said. I
don't I know, this isn't a great example, but I

(04:49):
think of Mortal Kombat. You know, I love those games,
but for a while there, especially like I'm thinking Mortal
Kombat nine, they admitted to programming Shao Kan to literally
be cheap, you know, like a cheap boss, and in
the moments it's rage inducing. But as a whole, I
don't know. I hate how this sounds, but I look
at things more holistically than that and the little things,

(05:12):
And that's why I wouldn't be a good game reviewer
like Capital G Capital I for a website, because I
don't take little things like that into consideration. It just
it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't know that
sound I sound she's saying that, But do you know
what I mean?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I think you are able to. I mean it's kind
of like being able to see the forest through the
trees right where you can have you can have an
experience with the game, and one negative or positive thing
for that matter, doesn't completely color your entire view of
a game. Necessarily. For me, I actually am kind of

(05:47):
with Dave, where not with Albert wild specifically, I didn't
have the same issue. But I have played games where
the rest of the game is really good, but there's
one section that's so mind numbingly in raging that it
colors my view of the rest of the game, And
instead of compartmentalizing that one section, be like, well, the
game overall is good, it just has this one bad section.

(06:10):
It really paints a negative. It paints the game in
a negative light. In my mind. I can't think of
exactly a game off the top of my head the
last time this happened, because it doesn't happen often, mind you,
but I do know that it has happened, and there
have been games that I just I can't even look
at with a rational eye anymore, because actually know what

(06:31):
I can and I won't. I'll spare the rant. But
like Dark Souls, oh sure, I can't look at Dark
Souls with a rational eye because I spent so much
time on what is it the Bell Gargoyle bosses, and
that made me so mad that it just I can't
look past any other positives that the game may bring.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, that's the classic example. And I've never beaten any
of the Soul's games. When I was playing through Demon Souls,
I absolutely got tilted and angry the whole time playing
certain sections. But now looking back, it's like, yeah, that
that game is fantastic and I can't wait to beat it.
I don't know, it's you know, different folks will respond
differently to different things, just like any medium, music, film, whatever.

(07:15):
We've got a lot to get through today and a
lot of the big discussion that's going to be super
fun is towards the end. So why don't we go
ahead and pick up where we left off last time
in Dark Bramble.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
M hm.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
So we left off we met Feldspar he's not dead.
We can't bring out our dead because he's not.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Dead yet, can't bring out the roses.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
And he says just this, he says, what me killed
off by thorny extra dimensional plants that entirely violate the
laws of space and time and a couple of giant
predatory fish with gaping maws and enormously sharp fangs. Not
in this lifetime, buddy, So he's of course, he's fine.
What ended up happening is what we learn. His tales

(08:11):
of valor may have been a bit exaggerated. Can we
say he kind of stumbled into being this amazingly well
sought after, brilliant pilot. Did he have skills, yeah, sure,
But how he ended up here was he kind of
started to he kind of descended into a crash landing,
and you know, he zigged where he should have zagged,
and suddenly he's crashed up into an anglerfish skeleton, which

(08:33):
I think we mentioned last time, Like he's here because
they're territorial, even though it doesn't seem like they are
in the game, but that's what they say. So it's fine.
But that's how he got here. He stumbled into his success, which,
as far as I'm concerned, fine, earned no notes.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
What is Elon Musk? But I'm.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
We talked about him too much on this show.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
We don't have to go any further into it.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
He's come up a weird amount of times. I wish
that I never had to think about that man ever.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Again, Well, we can jump off of that very quickly,
so we don't have to think about he who should
not be named for the rest of the episode.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Oh great, now I'm thinking of JK. Rowling.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
I made it worse, so no fuck.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Uh. Yeah, I didn't have a ton of trouble getting
too feldspar. You also don't encounter the anglerfish going to him,
at least I didn't the last three times I went
to him. I don't think you do.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
No, you there's anglerfish leading up to him, and then
that once you get to the area he's actually in.
It's really not excuse me, it's really not too bad.
And I guess because we're like at Dark Bramble, which
is kind which is really the final spot for in
the game, like it's the last place you have to go.

(09:51):
I guess we are. Oh wait, I see in the
outline where we are still going to talk about the
Ashwind project, So I'll save what we have to do,
Like should we talk about the core? Is what I'm
you know what I'm saying, Like the we are.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
But I would wager to guess that folks listening this
far have experienced the game or just truly don't care
about spoilers, and if you're in the ladder camp, please reconsider.
But yeah, I think spoilers are fully on the table.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Well, then just a very we can touch on this
briefly and then go into more depth when we get
to the ash Twin project or the yeah, the Ashwin
project part of the episode. But Dark Bramble is the
last place you have to go because essentially you're taking
I don't know, I forget what it's even called. It's
essentially an energy cell, like for all intents and purposes,
it's not that, but for all intents and purposes it is,

(10:40):
and you are taking it to the no my ship
that originally crashed here years ago, and that's that's the
final objective. Why are you taking it there? Well, we'll
get to that in a moment, but at the very least,
it just disclaimed the final mission that you're doing and
the way I got through Dark Bramble. I don't know
how you did it, Rick, but I use the signal
scope to find Feldspar and I actually have a strategy

(11:04):
of how to get through dark Bramble. Where what I
would do is I would I would match velocity with
the planet, right, so that way you're just kind of
in like orbiting at the same speed or whatever. And
then I would bring out my signal scope aim for
where Feldspar was, Like I would kind of be standing
like sitting right at the mouth of like the entrance

(11:25):
of it, right, and then I would aim for where
Feldspar is and then I would floor it until I
got out of the mouth, and then I would just
let it drift. Yeah, And that served me really well.
And then once you're if you if you play it enough,
you realize that the angler fish will not chase you
when you're in the mouth of each section, each like

(11:45):
there's almost like like it almost looks like honeycomb, right,
Like there's a little circles and they break up the
inside of dark Bramble. They have different sections that you
can go to. I you know, I haven't mapped it out.
I don't know exactly which one goes to which place
and whatnot. But if you use the signal scope to
go to Feldspar, once you're at Feldspar, you can actually

(12:06):
find your way pretty easily to the no My Ship.
But I'm sure there's a way to get straight to
the No My Ship. Maybe you did it completely differently
than I did, Rick, But always I would always go
to Feldspar first, And so when I got to the
mouth of the next section, right, you know, the next opening,
I would I would like, if I couldn't adjust the
ship on the fly, then I would like slow it

(12:29):
down real quick, aim and then speed up again real quick,
and then let off the acceleration so that way the
sound wouldn't carry past the angler fish. And that's that's
how I got past it. So the first time, I
think I tinkered around in dark Bramble before having to
do that mission. And then once I finally kind of
understood the mechanics of how the anglerfish work, Like once

(12:50):
you understand how they kind of listen, it's pretty it's
not easy to get through, but it's also not that
challenging once you understand that mechanic. You know, that's part
of the mystery is that you don't know how they
work until you do enough research and explore around the
universe to figure out what they do.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Right, So I'm going to reel us back just a
little bit a couple of things. We talked about dark
Bramble and how it works at the end of last time,
just as a refresher, think of a tartis a pocket dimension.
You enter the seed, it's bigger on the inside, and
inside this pocket dimension are other pocket dimensions. That's how
you navigate. Your signal scope is going to take you
into dark bramble and then into these other dark brambles.

(13:30):
Inside of dark bramble. Space doesn't work the way it
does here. In dark Bramble, it's completely different, and that's
how we get there. The Anglerfish, you can actually learn
this in the Anglerfish Cove. You learn this from the
Nomai that the angler fish are blind. They rely on sound.
I did not find this out my first playthrough. I

(13:50):
kind of did what you did. You just kind of
experiment to see how fast you can go before they
notice you. And the answer is you've got one bar
of acceleration in any given direction. As long as you're
not going into two bars or more, they won't hear you.
Or you can do what you did and what I
did as well, and just floor it into a seed.
And then once you get into it, and that's particularly

(14:15):
exciting because you are coasting just purely on momentum, no
control through this field of anglerfish. You know, there's multiple, multiple,
multiple of them, which is how I don't maybe they're
territorial in terms of like families or packs, but you're
flying through there, you see a nest of them with eggs,
and if you're coasting, it's very tense and it feels

(14:36):
almost like a horror game and you're sitting on one
ass cheek the whole way, just hoping you don't have
to divert course too much, but you can. You can
use one booster's worth, and once you get to Feldspar,
yes there's none over there. Before we talk about the vessel,
Feldspar tells us a couple of interesting things. If you
haven't figured out how to get to the core of

(14:58):
giants deep, this is where it gives you that we
talked about that last time with the jellyfish. He'll also
talk about the bramble seed on Dark Bramble or yeah,
on Timberhearth being a really really bad thing. What happened
out here is that a bramble seed. We had mentioned
this before, that this planet used to be a completely

(15:18):
different planet, totally normal planet until a bramble seed took
over it and it just infested it like a virus,
going all the way through, permeating it to its core
until it just took it over and exploded the thing.
That's why we can find remnants of this on the Moon,
and that's what bramble seeds will do. So that being
on Timberhearth, Timberhearth is doomed if it doesn't. If we

(15:41):
don't get it out of there, Timberharth is going to
die if the Sun doesn't get it. We got to
get it out of there. But Feltsmore will tell you
that he'll praise you if you got to the Giants
Deep without his help, without his notes. He'll tell you
you're a good little astronaut. You could tell him about
the anglerfish and he says, ah, so my plan of
just flooring it down here did not work and put
it used some tinkering, but he I forget. How you

(16:05):
find the vessel, Oh, it's with the distress beacon. So
there are escape pods. We talked about the other two
escape pods, and there's one down here as well. If
you use your beacon you can find it. This is
escape pod three. It crashed on the way out of
Dark Bramble. This is where the vessel crashed. It shot
the other two escape pods out. This one crashed down here.

(16:28):
What ended up happening was the breathable air was lessening
and lessening suffocation no breathing was gripping them, and they
had just enough time to get to a signal of
the vessel. They figured they'd go back there and refuel.
The weird thing is is because of how space works
down here, they were getting two readable signals, and maybe

(16:53):
Josh I will fully admit, at the front of this episode,
my head starts to bend in on itself, talking about
like space, time and quantum stuff, like I get it,
but also I don't. At the same time, I saw
this really great reel this morning on Instagram of a professor,
like a college professor, introducing his course to quantum physics.

(17:15):
And he's like, yeah, I've got good news and bad news.
The bad news is none of you understand quantum mechanics.
But the good news is nobody understands quantum mechanics. He's like,
I don't understand it, and in seven days, neither will you.
It was exactly how I feel about this. But so
here's what I'm thinking. Correct me if I'm wrong, ad

(17:37):
your thoughts. They were hearing two different signals from the vessel.
They went to the closer one, which ended up leading
them to a seed. They went to the wrong one.
They took the wrong gamble, and we actually see this here.
They suffocated in space. They are floating in this chasm,
preserved but all dead. Two of them are hugging. It's extremely,

(17:58):
extremely sad. But they gambled wrong. I think what happens
is they were It wasn't It's not that the vessel
is duplicated, obviously, It's just that the space kind of
weaves in and out of itself kind of at the
same time in a way that we just can't fathom
on Earth because that's not how it works here. So

(18:21):
it was coming out of this seed while also being
at another place because that seed was feeding into it,
kind of like a mobous loop. I don't know, man,
Like this is so tough to explain.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Dark Bramble is like a weird It's almost like a
hive mind of quantum mechanics because, like if you think
about it, like when the Dark Bramble seed lands on
timber Hearth right, you can see feldspar By shooting a
probe through the Dark Bramble Seed on Timber Hearth right,

(18:52):
Like you can actually see his campsite, but when you
can't get to it obviously because you can't fit through
that spot. But then if you go to Dark brand
than you actually can. So it's like he's appearing at
two different locations at once, hence the kind of like
quantum shenanigans going on. But it's also like a hive
mind because that seed is not connected to the Dark
Bramble planet at all, so they're like they're all connected

(19:16):
in this weird quantum entanglement space that it's almost like
the Dark Bramble Seed has its own space time continuum
inside of it, right, That almost is what it feels like.
So I know, I don't understand it, Like I'm trying
my best to like put to like put my thinking
cap on and sound really smart, like, oh, it's all this,

(19:36):
this and this. I don't fucking know, man, it's weird.
I don't I don't understand how like if you're in
Dark Bramble, how you can see two different signals of
the same thing. I understood it when you were outside
of it, because it like you were seeing two different
spots at once at the same time sort of. But
I don't know. It's very it's very strange how that worked.

(19:57):
So it confused me as well.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
You know, I bet there's like a science for Kids
website out there somewhere that could explain this so succinctly
and so well, probably with like they like take a
piece of paper and turn it into a tube and
then fold the tube in on itself so it's like
a doughnut and it probably looks something like that, and
then they twist it or something and it's perfect. That's
a little life hack for you. If you ever don't

(20:20):
understand a science thing, try and seek out an explanation
aimed at children, and it's always perfect, Like they explain
it great because you know children. For now, we actually

(21:01):
can find the vessel here. We know how the seeds work, right,
We know that their pocket dimensions. We know that if
we shoot our scout into it, it's going to appear elsewhere,
so that's what we do. We know that the vessel's
signal was coming from this seed. We know that they
couldn't fit through it, which is unfortunately why they died.
So we shoot our scout, we go back to our ship,
and we find the vessel. We track it down that way.

(21:24):
That's that's when we have to go through the field
of anglerfish, but we eventually find it. We find the vessel,
and it's this amazing moment. You're coming up on it
and it's in the distance and you're awe struck. There
are so many awe striking moments in this last stretch
of the game, and there are a few no My
skeleton around here. It's crash landed. The bramble thorns are

(21:45):
just infesting it, and it feels like we're walking on
hallowed ground when we walk in. And what's interesting too
is something well we obviously didn't talk about it because
we haven't been here, but the no My writing functions
more like a message board, and I think I gave
it credit for because in addition to them writing to
each other, they could also receive transmissions kind of like

(22:07):
a phone call, kind of like SMS text messaging. And
we see that inside when we when we walk in,
this place is totally totally barren. There is one no
My I think it's Eschyl Actually that's writing on the
walls like, hey, we're in desperate need of help. Our
vessel is dying. Can any is this thing broken? Can
anybody hear me? Please? We need desperate help right now,

(22:30):
and his writings go totally unanswered. However, on the other side,
we can see a new generation of no My writing
that shows us that they could still receive messages but
not send it out. And this new generation is very,
very interesting. It's started by a no My named Canna,
and they say this to any Nomi whose vessel can

(22:52):
hear this message. It's clear the universe is dying. There
are fewer and fewer resources and safe places within space now.
So my plan and I leave. The best option is
for all of our clans to stay together. If you
can reach the Gloaming galaxy. We found that black rocks
suns are fairly stable, and life in this star system
is comparatively thriving. We live in relative safety. If you

(23:15):
prefer to continue exploring alone, no, you will be on
your own. And the message goes on like they other
Nomi come in and what they talk about is this rumor,
this fable that their ancestors' ancestors passed down generations and
generations of Eskyl's missing vessel. It's the only time this

(23:38):
has ever happened in all of Noma history. Obviously, we
just saw Eskyl's messages on the other side. We know
that they didn't just vanish. They crash landed and then
got wiped out by the ghost matter. But you know,
this is emphasizing that the Nomi thrive for generations and
they're probably as a species still alive today.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
They just went to a different galaxy because they saw
suns imploding, going super nova all across the galaxy. This,
I mean, I know we ended on this last time,
but the no Mind didn't blow up our sun. It
just happened. The universe just is right, That's what Slanum said,
and that's what's happening all across the universe. Galaxies upon

(24:18):
galaxies are just blowing up in this nomadic tribe said, Hey,
we got to stick together and we found a safe place,
so come on here. Too bad about eSchool though. It's
a tragedy, man, it's a tragedy.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
I was thinking about like at work today, I was
actually listening to our first episode, right and kind of
get myself back in the mindset. I really had to
like I think, what's this game. It's so amazing about
this is that there's just so much I shouldn't say
it is amazing, but like I had to really think
about how the timeline of events occurred, and like you

(24:55):
talking about like I completely forgot about this with Canna
and the fact that there's a whole another set of
no My tribes who have found some new place to
live and it. But I was thinking about just like
the timeline of the events of this universe, of like
what happened to the Nomai here, And I mean, I
know we've laid it out over the course of this,

(25:16):
but it's just one of those things where because you
learn everything in so many different locations, it's kind it
can be hard to kind of put the timeline together
of what happened, and just thinking about you talk about
how like well they were already gone, you know, like
the ghost matter killed them. Like I'm sorry, I'm just
every time we talk about this, I just kind of
come to a new epiphany about this game, and it's

(25:38):
just blowing my mind every single time.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
And that's the beauty of it, right. This game does
what all art should do. It fosters it fosters community.
It's it's bringing us together and sharing our experiences. That's
that's why this succeeds so much. I tell you what
though you talk about like you know, it's hard to
keep this straight. I'm remembering and learning new things every
time I was fighting the battle of my life dude

(26:01):
playing this game. I don't know if you know this
about me, but I get very stressed playing jerrpg's and
visual novels, two genres that I like very much. I
get stressed because I don't want to miss content because
those games are usually so long, and I worry that, like, ah,
what if I like miss something so cool that brings
all the story together, like the rug, It really ties

(26:22):
the room together. I don't want to miss it. So
I got to use a guide, and with this game, obviously,
like I looked up a guide for one specific part
and I regret it to this day. So I was
like fighting with myself. I can't do it, but I
want to. What if I miss something, you can go
back to it.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
That's almost like beauty of not knowing, you know, it's
always vitalful to not know about stuff in this like
the fact that we have questions about it, like I think,
really what it was for me was like realizing that
the whole plan. We talked about it last at the
end of the first episode, and we touched on and
we talked about it last episode two about how like

(26:58):
the plan to supernova the sun, like artificially super and
nova the Sun, and I was thinking like, okay, But
for some reason my head, I kept thinking like, did
they actually do it? And then they do do it,
then the time loop happened, and then they don't do
it again type of thing, which is possible because if
they super artificially super and nova the Sun and then
the time loop sets it back and then they it,

(27:19):
you know, then they don't have to worry about it.
But it came to the realization that the way the
game kind of presents itself is that they died before
they could do it, and the Sun just happened to
supernova on its own, Like when you're playing it, you
just happened to start the game twenty minutes before a
supernova and because of that it because of that supernova,

(27:39):
all their preparations that went into place kind of just
happened at that point, right, Like it almost like not
you talk about it in the first episode, like it
was just it was just us, you know we why us?
There's no reason. We were just there at the right
place at the right time, just like why did this
all work out? It just happened to work out, Like

(28:00):
it's super we the fact that we got stuck into
a time loop. It was also random because they prepped
it for They prepped this twenty minute time loop for
to like test something so they could find the eye
of the universe, but they never got to implement it.
So when the Sun actually does die, it sets off
its own time loop by accident, right.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
And they they mentioned this in one of the upcoming
logs that we're going to see where they say, you know,
you know it failed. That's a bummer. I didn't want this.
We could try again, or we could just wait for
the Sun to explode on its own. But aging is
going to prove to be a problem. So they knew
this would happen. They just they thought that they would
be able to make it happen before the interloper exploded.

(28:46):
Oh it's so fantastic, dude. Now we're going to be
coming back to the vessel obviously for endgame, but before
we do that, there's an optional bit and it I'm
I'm god smack that they put such an amazing piece
of content in as optional. Did you visit the quantum Moon?

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yes? I did, Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Okay, so I did too, And I'm guessing we had
the same experience when we first saw the quantum Moon.
When you see it, you look away and then oh shit,
it's gone. And then the second time, once you realize
what it is, you stare at it and you fly
toward it, and you get up to it and you
go through its atmosphere and all of a sudden you're
back in space and it's just.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
You're doing exactly the same route, yes, exactly the same
thing where I'm like, what the fuck is that? Why
where did this planet go? And then all of a
sudden I'm like, oh, that's what it is. And then
I try it staring at it, and then you just
you just phase right through it because you can't see
it anymore.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Now. Across the universe, across this galaxy, there are three
trial quantum trials I think they're called. And what they
do is they teach you, well, they teach the no Ma.
This was part of their preparation to go on their
pilgrimage to the quantum Moon. But they function now to
teach us, the player, the hatchling, how quantum mechanics work.

(30:05):
There are three quantum rules. The rule of quantum imaging,
which teaches you that observing a quantum object works whether
you're looking at it for real or looking at a
photograph of it. But you do have to be looking
at the photograph. That's key. That's the first one. Quantum
entanglement is the second rule. That means that if you're
standing on a quantum object or otherwise touching it, you

(30:28):
become quantum with it. So if you're touching let's say,
if well, how the game does it for you? If
you're standing on a quantum shard and you shut your
flashlight off, you can't see anything. You now travel with
that quantum shard. Quantum entanglement. And then the third rule
is specific to the shrine on the quantum Moon. The
nom I traveled there as a pilgrimage. It was sacred

(30:49):
to them. I mean, here we go again, the intersection
of science and religion. This was sacred to them. And
the sixth rule, the sixth rule, no sixth location. Third
and final rule is that you will always end up
on the south pole of the quantum moon. Whenever you
go to the quantum moon, you always end up first
when you first land on the south pole. They say

(31:12):
in the game, so Lanum writes, we don't know why
this is what it is. It's just true. And the
reason that's important is because once we get onto the
quantum moon, once we take the picture, look at the
picture while we land on it, boom, We're on the
south pole. There's going to be a shrine in here.
And you get into the shrine. In know my writing,
it'll say congratulations. You know you remember the first rule

(31:33):
of quantum of quantum business or however it's trade, and
it says, please remember the second two rules quantum entanglement
and being on the south pole, we want to get
to the north pole. And this part did confuse me
a fair amount. So the way, do you want to
explain how this works? If you remember, I don't want
to hog the.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Mic, at least for the quantum entanglement. Yeah, I can.
I can explain that because I forget the third rule, right,
I'll be honest with you. But the second rule, quantum entanglement.
Basically they test you this out there. You test this out,
and you learn about this in like actual practical use
in one of the ash twin Moons or whatever, where

(32:15):
there's a there's a quantum rock that bounces from cave
to cave system to cave system, And the way they
teach it to you is that there is a series
of lights in the in this one room of the caves,
and that's the easiest spot for you to make this
rock appear. So what you're supposed to do is turn
your flashlight on, turn the lights in the room off,

(32:38):
and then if the rockets gone, because you had to
look away to do that, you flash the You turn
your flashlight on and off again. So by turning it off,
it goes pitch black, meaning you can't observe the rock anymore,
and then when you turn it back on, it may
appear there. So you keep clicking it on and off
until the rock appears.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
I meant, did you want to explain how the shrine
on the quantum moon didn't?

Speaker 2 (33:02):
From what I remember, I went inside and I just
turned the light my flashlight on and off.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Right, So there's that little map that's on the inside
that'll tell you what plant around which planet. The quantum
Moon is orbit.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
That's one thing we learned from their writings of the Noma,
and we can see this with their trackers too. The
quantum Moon can orbit six different locations in total. I
don't remember them all off the top of my head,
but Timberhearth, Giants Deep, and several others. And how we
have to do this it's a little confusing. So we

(33:34):
go inside and we can we shut all the lights off.
There's a switch to turn the lights inside the shrine off,
and we switch our flashlight off and that'll let the
shrine travel. Now we're still on the South pole or
in the Southern hemisphere, and we have to make it
such that, like certain planets will let you walk to
the North pole on the Quantum Moon, where others won't,

(33:56):
so you have to. Like the one that I always
aimed for was Giants Deep. You get on the giant steep,
you can walk to the North Pole, and from there
you kind of just play peek a boo with the
quantum shrine. You know, you look at it, you look away,
you spin in circles, and you just wait for it
to populate at the North pole right m from there,
you're able to get back in it and go to

(34:17):
the sixth location.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's This Part's was a
little fun because I remember having struggling with this part
of the game. I remember it took me a while,
Like I was able to figure out how to get
to the Quantum Moon and then figuring out the puzzle
with this shrine. I didn't look it up, but it
did take me a little bit to figure that out.
This out because it was a little bit this was

(34:41):
one of the trickier challenges if I remember correctly.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
It definitely is this and getting into the Ash Twin project,
I think are the trickiest parts of the game. If
you try to if you try to exit the Quantum
Shrine on the Quantum Moon when it's orbiting the eye,
you're going to be when it's not on the North pole,
excuse me, you're going to be blocked in by quantum
material like shards of rock. Now, what's really cool about

(35:05):
this is because the Moon is quantum, it like absorbs
the characteristics of whatever it's orbiting. So when it's orbiting
giants deep, everything is storming, there's water everywhere. When it's
orbiting timber Hearth. You know, it looks like timber Hearth.
So once we get it onto the north pole and
we get it to that sixth location orbiting the eye,
we're able to get out and we see fields of

(35:28):
just purple blue, black hued space rock, you know, quantum
shards just like this. This place is now made out
of quantum shards, like like we've been seeing everywhere, and
it's totally desolate and empty, and we keep walking and
I cannot believe this is optional. I thought this was
actually the end of the game. Whenever I first arrived here,
I thought this.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yes, because well because the whole time you're like being told, oh,
you have to get to the eye of the universe,
and now you're orbiting in right, you are finally orbiting
the eye of the universe. So you would think like, oh,
I've I'm here, I made it, But no, that's not
what it is.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
And moreover, part of what the Hearthians are doing, they're
studying the nom And what made me think this was
the end is you walk forward and you see in
the flesh, as sure as the night is long, there's
a living no mi standing there. It's selanum mm hm.
And I was like, oh, this is it, you know,
like we've got to the eye. Well I thought we

(36:25):
got to the eye and there's a living No, Mi,
like this is it. We're done? Like this is this
is amazing. The two of you can't speak to each
other though there's a language barrier. Yep. What their well
to do, what Selenum is able to do is they
draw up this. She draws up this like little platform
with a total of six different uh what do you

(36:46):
call it? Discs? Stones?

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Yeah, and those discs, I remember correctly, you see them
in other parts of the like when you explore the planets,
right when when you're exploring the other planets, you might
see those discs in other locations, if I remember correctly,
and they would let you. It was the same thing.
I think we talked about it before, right, It was
the thing that lets you view like locations on other planets,

(37:10):
if I'm remembering correctly.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Yeah, exactly. It's the same exact principle. But Solanum makes
ones for us whole cloth. She makes the following. There
are two orange ones. Identify and explain those two verbs,
and then there are four nouns. I of the universe, quantum, moon,
me and you and you can combine these in any
combination you want. Uh, And I sure took a lot

(37:35):
of notes here. I just want to read a couple.
But before I read them, like did this? Did this
just grab you as much as it grabed me? My
jaw was on the floor this whole time. I was
so shocked and pleased and happy and also a little
bit concern for Solanum. I didn't like, how is she here?
You know, like, what did you feel seeing this?

Speaker 2 (37:57):
I was just I kind of was in awe, just
like I I finally met a noma, like the thing
that I've come to like hear about for the last
however many hours, I was playing like I'm finally like
meeting one, I'm finally meeting whatever this this thing is
like I don't even know really what to make of it,
and I remember the The problem is I remember the

(38:20):
puzzle like how to get to the quantum moon more
than I remember the quantum moon itself, So like, I
don't remember the conversation I had with her with these
with these things, but I love how like the ingenuity
of Salon and how like without missing a beat, She's like, Okay,
I know how to communicate to this person, even though
we can't talk, like by doing something, even that symbol,

(38:42):
it just kind of shows the like the ingenuity of
the nomia, just how intelligent they are. It's it's it
was really it was really cool to see the first time.
And I remember, I don't I don't think it quite
has had as profound an experience for me as it
did for you. Like the end was a lot more
of a like a jaw dropper to me, but like this,

(39:03):
it was just yeah, it was Once I realized this
wasn't the end of the game, it was just like
another like a beat on my radar, if that makes sense.
Like it was not a beat on my radar. It
was like another another entry in my data logue for
the for the thing.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
It's another notch on the bedpost. You know.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
There we go. I do. But I love being able
to see no May in person, though I thought.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
That I only wish we could see them without their spacesuit.
I really want to see the one. They've got a
lot of fan art. I don't know. Fan art never
really revs my engine the way it does for some people,
but there's a lot of fan art of no Ma.
If you want to see them unmasked. But here it's
you know, just their spacesuit. You mentioned their ingenuity. Absolutely,

(39:49):
if you combine the two verbs here, identify and explain
on the little quasi vision pool that Selenam has she
writes out. Every every time you combine them, she writes
something out that you can read with your translator. By
the way, and if you do identify and explain, she says,
these are the two tenets of no my philosophy. To
seek out and to understand as our way of living. Brother,

(40:13):
you want to talk about the intersection of science and religion,
science and faith, to seek out and to understand. I mean,
that's that's at the core of both, and ideally, I
think that's the key to living a good life.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
They essentially turned science into a religion with this, where
like they treat the you know, science is about you know,
the constant understanding and knowledge of our natural world around us,
right like trying to explain the universe that has been
like you know, presented to us type of thing. Right.
So I love that they kind of took that and
instead of like they almost treat knowledge as a deity

(40:50):
in this, yeah, which which is kind of cool for.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
All the good and for all the ills too, right,
Like they're trying to literally explode the sun, and that
that that prompts and provokes these questions like how how
close can we fly to the metaphorical sun, not the
physical one, but to the metaphorical one before our wings
of wax begin to melt? How how worthwhile is knowledge

(41:14):
at the expense of well being of others? And this
is something they consider too. They're not totally discompassionate, right
Like I believed at first they were totally discompassionate for
the sake of science. They're not because they they didn't
want to blow up the universe. They had a plan.
But it is interesting we get both sides of that
deification of science. It's not a wholly good thing, right, Like,

(41:36):
like literally everything in life, if anybody tells you and
oh jeez, I hate I'm about to do the Twitter
thing where I'm like, well, obviously these I don't mean this,
and I don't mean this.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
You're gonna have to just pre arguing I understand it.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, you're gonna have You're gonna have to just be
adults and infer some of the things that I don't mean.
But uh, like nothing in this world is black and white. Truly,
nothing is it is. Everything is shades of gray, and
so too. Here the pursuit of knowledge at the extense
of everything can be worthwhile and can be pure and just,

(42:09):
but it can just as easily melt those wings and
get us into some serious trouble as it did with them, Right,
I mean, think of Pok and Pie. They were playing
around in the Interloper and were the first to get incinerated, destroyed, right,
I mean, it's it would have been their faith anyway.
But you know, anyway, I apologize, I don't mean to be.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
No, you don't have to. You don't have to apologize
at all, man. I think it just makes me think,
like it feels like when people think that things are
there's only ever going to be black. Like there are
some black and white things, Like, don't get me wrong,
there's obvious, Like I know what you're saying. There are
absolutes out there to a degree, but like it's a
lot less. There's people who want to believe in that

(42:53):
there's only absolutes and there's not as much gray. I
feel like I'm not even trying to insult them. I
feel like they just don't want to deal with the
complicated reality of things, right, and that's all The Nomaia
are consistently dealing with the complicated reality of their existence,
and they're always but they there's almost like a hope

(43:14):
in their science in the sense like they're in this hope,
this awful situation. Dark Bramble has taken over their their
initial ship. They're stranded in this solar system that they
don't understand, trying to find the eye of the universe,
like all this stuff. And instead of like just giving
up and be like, well, our ship crashed and we're

(43:34):
kind of fucked right now, they look at what they
did right, Like they didn't take the universe as a
binary black and white, but like, well this is bad
and we are meant to die here. They took it
as an opportunity to explore the gray area, which is
just such a cool It just makes them that much
more interesting. Like the no Maye are such an interesting
like they're a character. Like I know they have characters

(43:56):
that you meet through the text, but like the way
they're portrayed in this game, it's like they're their overarching
philosophy is a character in it of itself.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
There's I think I'm going to get this a little
bit wrong, so and if I get it really wrong,
I'll rerecord it. But this notion of theirs to to
not accept the black and white I think black and
white thinking is easy, Josh, in real life and in
fiction too. But it's easy because it doesn't require that
extra mental effort. Kant, Emmanuel Kant, Was it knt? No,

(44:27):
it was it was Albert Camu, the philosopher that coined
the absurd, said that the only philosophical question in life
is whether or not to die by suicide, whether or
not to take one's own life. And he goes on
about this in the myth of Sisyphus, which is good.
I don't mean to say he goes on, but you know,

(44:47):
in addition to physical suicide another suicide, he talks about
his philosophical suicide, wherein one chooses not to seek out
the extra knowledge and one chooses to just believe, like
blind faith is I think think the example that he
often gives, And again I might be reducing this overly so,
but the no my stand in opposition to this. They

(45:08):
do not accept that they want to be in all
of the nooks and crannies of the world, and it's beautiful.
I really think it's beautiful. I'm gonna go on plenty
at the end, so I want to read through some
of this if you combine explain and the Eye of
the universe, and this is important for the ending. So
Lanam says, conscious observation forces a quantum object to collapse

(45:30):
to a single possibility. But what would happen if a
conscious observer somehow entered the eye itself? Over time, this
has become my Klan's greatest question. Now the Eye of
the Universe is this is the greatest of all quantum objects.
It has been around since prior to the universe. It
has infinite and no knowledge. It is everything and nothing.

(45:52):
What happened if a conscious observer forced it into a
singular state of existence? And a better question for all
of you out there is can you comprehend such a thing?
Because it's it's tough, you know. That's when my mind
starts to fold in on itself a little bit.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
The only thing I can the only thing I can
think of is that if a conscious observer would observe
the Eye of the Universe, then it and force it
into a single state. Because it is a quantum thing, entity,
not even entity quantum, you know, just thing like whatever,
it's a quantum. Wow, Like you can't really define it.

(46:32):
It almost seems like to me. Then, if the eye
of the universe is able to be everything or nothing,
and it has all knowledge and no knowledge, then by
forcing it into the constraints of whatever the observer can see,
then it would essentially like imagine if like some omnipotent
not even omni omnipotent being can't say the word right now,

(46:54):
but imagine if it was just like right, when the
eye of the universe is not observed, there is an
infinite number of possibility of worlds and universes it could create.
But when it's observed, then the observer will directly influence
the type of world the eye of the universe would create.
And which kind of makes me think about the ending
of the game when we get to it. Yes, yeah,

(47:16):
that's all I want to say. Before I didn't want
I didn't want to go any further without like talking
about the ending.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
That's well, all I'm gonna say is, let's I'm going
to put a pin in this because that is directly
related to how how I view the ending. Selena will
talk a little bit about quantum stuff that we already know,
sul if you ask her to talk about you. Uh,
it's a little cute, she says, you know, I hope
we can consider each other friends even given the language barrier.
I like your four eyes. I like it, like that

(47:44):
a lot. It's just a cute little touch. Before you leave, though,
Going back to that quantum idea, she says this. You
may think I'm strange, but I have a hypothesis that
I may not be entirely alive. Perhaps my journey has
reached its end. She also says that we're orbiting the
eye like we're not on the eye. We can't. This
is the closest we've ever been, the closest we can

(48:04):
get as far as we know. And the way that
you leave this is by sort of jumping out towards
the eye, and that takes you back onto the quantum moon.
It'll be orbiting somewhere else. And when you do this,
Slanum's dead body can be seen, and no matter how
many times you turn around and relook, it'll be there

(48:25):
in all possibilities. This is another area where my brain
starts to get a little bit folded and stacked on itself,
Like I understand conceptually Solanum is both alive and dead
because she has essentially become a quantumized object with the moon. Yes,
what with being there presumably being there when the interloper exploded.

(48:50):
But that's about where my understanding ends. Like I have
to just tell myself that that's true and I accept it.
I can't think about it too much more, do you
know what I mean? Like I feel like I'm ply
admitting that I'm kind of dumb, but like that's about
as far as I can go. I have to just
say I accept it, you know.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
I mean you shouldn't feel dumb, man. I mean, like
it I this quantum like that professor you said that
you mentioned earlier, like where no one you're not going
to understand, like after see seven days, you won't understand
quantum physics either. And I feel like at least with this,
like I don't know the no I it almost seems
like there's, you know, the two possible outcomes. Either you

(49:28):
just accept it and you're at peace with not knowing,
or you accept it and you were like determined to
figure it out. And I don't know. Sometimes I'm just
at peace with not knowing depending on.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
What it is. Yeah, that's a weakness of mine. I uh,
you know, I'm forever trying to make sure I understand everything,
and yeah, I once it gets to more like abstract stuff,
like like towards the end, you know, like all my
training in the arts has traded me to like, you know,

(49:58):
there are no right answers, so I can I can
argue when there's no right answers. But uh, and when
it comes to science, it's like, uh, you know, sometimes
there are right answers and sometimes you're either right or
you're wrong, which I don't. I don't think is quantum
you know, I don't think it's it's that simple, otherwise
it wouldn't be you know, quantum mechanics.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
Uh, so real quick, I'm sorry. So when you said
with solanum and how she is a salanum, right, Wow,
I'm not I'm blaking on this. Yeah, when when you
see her body later on, is that after you've left
the sixth location.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Yes, it's after you've left the sixth location. It's on
every other location, So so.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
She's tied to that, She's tied to the sixth location,
and if she any other location, she's just not alive.
That's why.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's sad. It's kind of a purpose.
That's another thing this game kind of toys with and
asks you to consider, is this idea of immortality. We
functionally we are immortal. We get to see three sorts
of states.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
Here.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
We have our immortality where we were groundhog daying every day, right,
we get the same twenty two minutes over and over,
and we get to change. But we're functionally immortal. We
also have the Nomi who were wiped out, and we've
got Solanam who is kind of both. She's both at
all times and at no times. And it I think

(51:24):
it's kind of implicitly asking you to consider, you know,
the beauties and the horrors of each of these. I mean,
it's really easy to think about, you know, immortality. I
feel like everybody thinks about this about how amazing and
terrible it would be to be immortal, right, the profundity
of eternal knowledge and time. But you're also seeing everybody

(51:45):
that you know pass away. You're seeing unending existence. It
can be not just tedious, but taxing versus obviously death,
like you know, the great anxiety. I mean, we see
everyhilosopher and thinker has spoken of this. But then we've
got that third thing with solanim being both at the

(52:06):
same time.

Speaker 2 (52:07):
And being aware of it, which is the crazy thing.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
And even it almost sounds like for as smart and
brilliant as the no my were, and as as prodigious
as Solanum seemed to be, you know, or at the
very least precocious, you know, having all of these observations
about God and the eye whenever she was a kid,
even she is not sure. So that kind of existence

(52:31):
where you can never be certain, it's fascinating too, because
like there is a philosophical angle where one could argue
that that is the case for us. Now, like there's
there's a really I apologize for another diversion.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
But there's a uh no, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Very interesting thought experiment called last thursday Ism that states
the universe came into existence last Thursday. There's really no
way to disprove this if you think about it enough,
because it can be that all of our memories are fabricated.
We have no way of proving anything except for the present.
So if the past we're an elaborate reconstruction of memories

(53:09):
within us, we would have no way of truly discerning this.
Right now, nobody believes this. It's just the thought experiment
that that gets into the nitty gritty of consciousness and observation,
but it sort of ties into what we're seeing here.
The great you know, consciousness is the great observation, right

(53:30):
that is, the observation of all observations is consciousness. And
I wrote that later in the notes with regard to
the ending. It's so this stuff is so cool, man,
and you could talk in circles, but it's I love it.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
You know, something you brought up that really just like
piqued my interest to the idea of like immortality, like
as presented through this game. And I think you touched
on a little bit, but you know, the different types
of immortality quantum you know, quantum loops and whatnot, that
you're experiencing, the kind of immortality that Solanam is experiencing

(54:04):
where you're neither dead nor alive all at the same time.
And then the noma it's almost like like, uh, like
historical immortality, right like where yes, their knowledge is the
thing that gets passed on, so while they may not
be there in their physical forms anymore, they are immortal
because people still remember them and discover them and like

(54:26):
learn about them long after they they they're dead. Uh,
to to quote a philosopher of our time, h Raheem
Jarbo aka Mega Ran. I don't know if you ever listen
to Mega RAN's music or not, but he uh, he
has a he has a song called Infinite Lives and
the whole you know, I actually look up the lyrics
so I can actually get it right. What is it?
Infinite lives? We've got infinite lives. Never say never, we're

(54:49):
gonna live forever. Uh, you only live once. Well, I'm
gonna I'm gonna disagree, because you can live forever and
forever doesn't see cease. Live through your creations and the
people that you meet. So I lived through my music
eternally through the beats.

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Yeah, it's that idea of like every man, every man
dies three deaths, the death of the body, the death
of the soul. If we're thinking of faith and the
death of the memory, right, And I think shakes, I
think Billy Shakespeare said that like two deaths. I think
I might have added that third one, but yeah, and
I mean that ties into this idea of generational memory

(55:26):
and species memory and just organic life memory, this eternal unconscious,
the eternal return of Oh God, here we go j RPGs.
We're back. It's so fascinating this. I posted an Instagram
rant today about you know, the the question in our
games are that's that's done, That's that's passe, it's not

(55:48):
interesting to talk about anymore. What's cool, though, is whenever
you do find that one stuck up person, like maybe
an orchestral musician that thinks that and I'm not calling
anybody out, I'm making up a person. Games like this
are what you can point to that say like games
go there, They examine the great unknowns of life, and
they do it in meaningful ways. It's it's just a

(56:10):
new medium, right. The same pushback happened whenever movies began
to speak like talkies or movies in general, like we've
seen this time immemorial, this looping and how appropriate is
that that we've seen this looped in before and we
will see it again within our lifetimes. I'm sure you
and I are going to live to a point where
we are saying this about the youth, like we don't understand,

(56:31):
why are you doing this seemingly worthless thing, and in time,
maybe even if we get reborn, we're going to see
that we were wrong, because that's just how generational growth goes.
It's amazing and you see it from games to hip
hop rappers to philosophers, and that's the beauty of it.
It's not gate kept knowledge. Everybody can ponder this.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
M now, you're you're right. It's almost like we're in
a cultural time loop. We just keep it a cyclical thing, right,
Something new comes along and then there's naysayers and there's
people who are for it, and then then you know,
whatever is meant to actually last will last obviously. But
like so maybe that's a little bit of like cultural

(57:13):
evolution in the sense of things that survive and don't.
But I don't know that that is it. There's so
many different places you can go with in this game.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
For now, why don't we go to our final destination.
Let's go to the ash Twin project.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Man, you are great at these transitions.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
That's why they pay me the big bucks.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
All the big patriots.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Yeah, all like ten of them. Now, I'm just kidding.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
Those dear lovely ten patrons.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
Hey, we have more than ten patrons, I'll have you know.
And you can be one of them one of these
more than ten at patreon dot com, slash books, Project Greedy.
The ashwin Project that's on our final planet, the ash Twin.
It's the one that orbits a shared center of gravity
with Ember Twin. Remember think Dumbbell. You know, the middle
of the Dumbbell is the sand bridge that links them.

(58:26):
The ash Twin Project is here, but on ash Twin
we also have the four warped towers that I think
we talked about m HM. Now, the ash Twin project
getting into there is a little tricky, I admit I
had to look this up. I'm not proud of it
because of how the center of too, because of how
the center of gravity works. The ash Twin Project is

(58:48):
in the core the ash Twin Project.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
I could it's in the core of one of the moons.
I can't remember which one, but it's in the core
of one of the moons.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
No, no, it's it's in the core of Embertwin. That's
what it is. I think that.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Yeah, sorry, one of them. That's what I meant. One
of those. The ember Twin moves like the ash Twin
in Ember Twin. It's in it's and I guess you're
on the ash Twin planet. That then warps you into
Ember twin the core of Embertwin.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Right, and because of how the center of gravity works,
you have to the sand bridge is going to be
right above you, as as the warp. Uh, the warp
window is active, so you have to boost down with
your with your jet pack so as to not be
sucked up into the sand dune. And that's that's what'll
take you to the ash Twin Project. I that took

(59:36):
some time for me to understand. Uh, not proud of
looking it up, but in my defense, it seems like
a lot of people do at any rate. Though you
get into the ash Twin project, it is completely encased
in the ore, the iron ore from timber Hearth to
protect it from any outside forces like supernovas, and the
devs covered their bases here really really well. It's it's

(59:58):
really clever actually because this is you need to go
here to beat the game. So if you happen across
here without exploring some other key areas, they give you
all of the information you need inside of here in
writing and in projection stones. It's really brilliant now because
we aim to be comprehensive here Pixel Project Radio. We've
talked about a lot of this, so we're just going
to hit the greatest hits real quick. The ATP was

(01:00:22):
connected via the warped towers. We mentioned that the memory
statues are all here. They're all in a big circle.
Only three of them are active though, gabros On Giants,
Deep Hours on timber Hearth and the Probe tracking module.
They were ready, whether success or failure, they were ready
to go. I forgot to write down who said this,
but one of the nom I say, we're nearly ready

(01:00:43):
to activate the ASH twin project. Here is what will happen.
So they're giving you a play by play of what's
going to go down.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
First, the Sun station will receive the order to fire
at the Sun, prompting it to explode or in our case,
you wait for however long it happens naturally using the
energy from the result thing supernova, the ASH twin Project
will send the order for the orbital probe cannon to
fire back in time by twenty two minutes. This is
why they needed the power for that twenty two minute interval.

(01:01:10):
Exactly twenty two minutes after these orders are received, the
Sun station will again trigger the supernova to send the
data from this cannon launch back in time. In total,
each cycle created by the Ashwin project will last precisely
twenty two minutes. We can end this cycle at will
just continually going back to have a functionally infinite number

(01:01:32):
of launches to give the best probability of success for
finding the eye. Now the sun station does fail. As
we talked about the no Meyer despondent, the ATP is
sound in theory. This is where they talk about waiting
for the Sun to die naturally, but you know they
would all age out and die, and this is when
the interloper comes into the galaxy. They get excited. They

(01:01:55):
put the ashtwin project on indefinite hold until they can
find a power source. They've been ornament for so long.
There are nomadic people. They want to explore this new
commet uh and that is ultimately their end before they
can figure out the ATP. Now here's something that maybe
you can help me with, Josh, I get time travel.

(01:02:15):
I'm listening all of the ways that I'm just intellectually yes,
it it It weirds me out because like in theory, Okay,
so they send it back twenty two minutes. Right now,
we're in the past, and we see them debating about
this philosophically. But we're in the past. Wouldn't we then
create a new timeline, So wouldn't like, like if we

(01:02:39):
right now as we're podcasting, send this back twenty two minutes,
we would still functionally be here and we would still
functionally die with the supernova, right, it would just be
the branching timeline that stays around.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Or would would get over rit.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
I'm so like this, this really confuses me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
The only thing I can think of, the only thing
I can think of is that because essentially when the
theory behind this, right is that when the supernova goes
and it causes the time loop, it's because it's essentially
creating a black hole, and they figured out how to
use that black hole to send you back twenty two minutes,
right by using the energy in conjuncture with everything, if

(01:03:21):
I'm remembering correctly, right, Like, that's what that's what is happening,
because like they first discover when they have the black
hole in brittle hollow and you come out the white hole,
and by essentially when the Sun goes supernova, they have
enough energy to create their own black hole and white
hole that would shoot them out twenty two minutes earlier.

(01:03:42):
That's the theory if I'm remembering correctly. I wonder if
this is a big if. I am not well versed
on this, and anyone who is well versed in quantum
theory and mechanics is probably gonna laugh at me. But
I almost wonder, how, like, think if if quantum is
like dealing with space some time, right, like that kind
of thing imagined, like the universe, not just the galaxy,

(01:04:06):
but the universe like a pond, right, And when a
sun explodes, it's like a rock going into a pond,
and it will ripple out. However many you know, miles, thousands,
millions of light years and all that other stuff, right,
theoretically eventually that there's not even going to be a
wave anymore. And so maybe that time loop, since it's

(01:04:29):
such a small black hole, it only that that the
ripple from that time loop is small, and so it
only affects the beings in the galaxy you're in. So
if if if that little time loop that they they
spark from the supernova, not the black hole from the supernova,
but the thing that they spark from the supernova. Maybe

(01:04:50):
it only goes Maybe it only ripples out so far
because it's a lot smaller than a giant fucking sun exploding. Right,
So by shooting off a probe cannon once they're beginning
to it, it reaches outside the distance that the ripples
would affect it, and so they can shoot all those probes,
and so when they travel back in time, that probe

(01:05:12):
is already out and searching. I don't know if any
of that made sense.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
I think we're on the right track here, and I
think the masks have a and the statues have something
to do with it too, but they're not activated until
the astra.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
I don't think. I don't think that they were shooting
thousands upon thousands of tries because this is the first time.
Like theoretically it would have only worked for the amount
of times that you like, say you died to like
like fifty times over the course, or you reset the
time fifty times, there'd only be fifty probes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
Well, no, we see all of them though in the
probe tracking module we can see all like nine million
shots that they made.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Oh that I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
This is another I mean, this is a perfect conversation
that we would love to invite listeners to partake in
in the discord. The Outer Wild subreddit is really active
with theories and fan theories too. Like we said, that's
part of what makes this game beautiful is is it
provokes conversation. It prompts community correspondence, conversation, things like that.

(01:06:22):
I don't think Josh and I are going to figure
out this on air. That and that's not the point.
Are we just are? Rick?

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Are we going to just accept the fact that we
don't know?

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
I think we have to. I think this is a
therapeutic exercise, and that's not the point of it. Right,
So let's let's bring this conversation inward and say if you,
if you would like to participate and maybe help guide
us to understanding and we could all mutually guide each
other and become better for it, a better community. Uh,
you can do so in the discord server link in

(01:06:53):
the description, et cetera, et cetera. But I want to
continue this conversation, I really do.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Yeah, tell me tell me why I'm stupid, listeners, Like,
that's not even I'm making a joke out of it,
But I would genuinely like to understand what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
So the final thing we do here is we grab
the advanced warp core. This is a very powerful warp cores.
It is shaped the exact same as the one that's
in the vessel. So if you get to the vessel
before the ash Twin project, you can kind of have
a little hint. That way, you can also piece it
together through the writings. But what we're gonna do now
is we are going back to Dark Bramble once we

(01:07:29):
have the advanced warp coreps from the Ash Twin project.
We're taking it out immediately when we get in our ship,
the final track begins to play, and oh man, it
gave me goosebumps as I was driving towards Dark Bramble
to make our final voyage. You can die here, which

(01:07:56):
this is a bit of comedy with what I'm sure
is the music playing right now, it's a bit of comedy.
I crashed right into Dark Bramble. I was going way
too fast and I crashed and I died. So I
got the U Died ending. Did you do the same?

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Yep? I will. So I didn't crash, but I did
get the U Died ending. Because you're supposed to take
the warp core to the vessel and then input the
coordinates for the eye of the universe, which the one
uh whatever. I can't even think of it, you know
what I'm saying That the thing was able to find
tracking module the probe, thank you. I don't know why

(01:08:31):
the probe. I could not think of the word probe
for some reason, the one probe was able to find.
I didn't quite put two and two together right away
with that, And I remember, I think what actually happened
was I figured out the puzzle of how to get
to the ASH twin project and the core in in

(01:08:54):
uh the planet and then get the and get the
actual like power power core whatever for for the vessel.
I figured that out probably about ten minutes into the loop,
and so I was like, Okay, let me try. And
I was thinking, like, maybe they'll let me finish the
game before I get to it. So I got to

(01:09:16):
the vessel. I could but they did not pause time.
Let me tell you, listeners, they did not pause that
twenty two minute loop. Once you do that, which makes sense,
the Sun's gonna go supernova no matter what. But I
got to the vessel and I couldn't quite I was
like trying to still solve the puzzle. So I it
took me a little bit and then I finally figured

(01:09:37):
out the puzzle. But I by the time I had
figured it out, I was inputting I think the first
of the three coordinates. When the Sun went supernova. Oh,
and I got the game over screen. I went no
or something like that. It was like close to it,
and so then I had to go back and I
figured it out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
You know it's tragic too, is if you make it
to the eye of the Universe, you can watch the
Sun go supernova and you're f is it's been established
in the game, like the eye is just way way
outside of the Sun. It still orbits it, but it's
so far out there that you can watch the universe.
You could watch the galaxy go supernova and you'll be fine.

(01:10:14):
We should say too, there's another alternate game over you
can get in the Ash twin project. Whenever you take
out the warp core, a black hole was left behind.
And I haven't done this, I just read about it,
and you can jump into that black hole, which sends
you back. It kind of functions as a as a
reset of the loop. Right, you think that you're just
ending a loop and it sends you back in time

(01:10:36):
twenty two minutes, but it sends you back in time
the twenty two minutes prior to the Sun going supernova
for the first time. So when you go back to
the Ash twin project, you can find yourself there like
there's another there's a clone of you. You and you
can talk to yourself and there is a lot of cute,
funny dialogue. You could be a little snarky or sarcastic.

(01:10:58):
But then if you don't jump back into that black
hole and again, this is another thing that kind of
twists me up logically. How I've seen it presented online
is you're making a promise to yourself whenever a promise
to the universe whenever you jump in the black hole,
that you were going to do it again whenever you
find yourself. So if you die after jumping in once

(01:11:18):
you see the double of yourself. If you die like
from the supernova, that breaks space time and the universe
falls apart and you get a non standard game over, Wow,
it's it's crazy. There's another way you could do that
at the High Energy Lab. If you're playing with the
black hole, the Black and White cores the black hole
white hole. Course, yeah you can if you shoot, if

(01:11:39):
you power it up such that you shoot your scout
into the black hole and it comes out early in
the white hole. You remember that. Yeah, yeah, if you
do that and you take out the black hole core
before your scout goes in it, but after it comes
out of the white hole, that breaks space time down immediately,
and you get this funny little uh you know, the

(01:12:01):
theme of the game d.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
D.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
You get it played on a bunch of kazoos that
are really out of tune. It's pretty funny. But yeah,
you can break spacetime. It's great.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
That's awesome. Though, it's it's ship like that where it
like it's rewarding the player who like understands the like
the science that the game is trying to like teach you,
not necessarily teach you, but that the science the game
is using. So if you understand it, then you could
maybe poke around at the edges and be like, oh
I could I could like will this break their logic?

(01:12:42):
Because and they thought of it apparently that's really funny.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
I yeah, I gotta do it. I did that one
with the with the scout. I've never jumped into the
black hole at the ash twin to uh to see
a double of myself. I've got to do it. I
gotta do it. But let's say you don't do that.
Let's say you don't crash into dark bramble. Let's say
you don't figure it out too late and get incinerated
as you're putting in the coordinates. Let's say you put
in the coordinates, you put in the advanced warp core,

(01:13:08):
you hit go, and you are taken to this eerily
quiet place. You look outside and it's just black. You
can see some storming. We are at the Eye. The
surface looks pretty similar to our visit to the quantum Moon.
There's quantum shards, quantum trees, and a storm is half
violently just raging everywhere, especially on the south pole. And

(01:13:31):
when we get to the South Pole, we're walking around
flashes of lightning are bringing quantum objects into and out
of existence. When we get to the south Pole, a
hole appears in the sky. This is the eye of
the universe, and we're about to find out what happens
when a conscious observer enters the ultimate quantum object, the

(01:13:52):
ultimate thing of existence and non existence simultaneously being condensed
into a singular point of existence we were about to
find out. You walk onto the like planetary architecture. It's
it's like a crater ish thing, and you're able to
hop into the eye. We plumb it down, down, down,
columns of inner planetary material and quantum stuff pass us by.

(01:14:16):
The sound is building and building, and before you know it,
we PLoP back into the darkened hallway of the museum.
From early in the game. There are some differences in
the material you can like read about it. I'm kicking
myself for not writing them down. At the top of
the museum, there is a galaxy, like a little model

(01:14:39):
of the universe, and we get one prompt whenever we
walk up to it, and it is observe we are.
We are doing exactly what a man I got. I
got to reel myself in. We're not even talking about
the themes and ideas. I can't get choked up. Now.
Let's let's just get through this and then we could
talk about how freaking cool this is. We observe, we

(01:15:01):
interact with it, and the camera immediately zooms out out
of the museum, out of the village, out of timber Hearth,
and the galaxy, Clusters of stars form galaxies, Galaxies form clusters,
clusters form superclusters, and we, our perspective completely shifted, are
able to touch one of these superclusters, causing a scatter

(01:15:21):
of light, just fireflies dancing in this space. But we
know that that is millions of living things, stars and
galaxies within And we move forward, and it appears we're
moving downward into a forest. Each of these pinpricks, thousands
of dancing fireflies that represent galaxies, galaxies that we can
touch and disintegrate, galaxies that explode on their own. The

(01:15:44):
universe as we know it is dying before our eyes.
And isn't it beautiful?

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
That's I it's funny because I the way you described it,
I it never I was just I was genuinely confused
when I first played this. But that makes perfect sense
with the like observe and so it zooms out and
you're observing the whole you, oh my god, like.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
Well, think of what? Think of what happened? We have
We have taken the ultimate form of observation consciousness and
applied it to the ultimate form of quantum, of simultaneously
existing and not. When these two great forces meet, they're
going to butt up against each other and sometimes things
fray at the edges. And what what we're functionally seeing now, uh,

(01:16:33):
is the universe saying we can't have this, so I
and here's here's we should have started with this. We
are in no way saying that this is the solved ending.
This is like the ending explained, because you know, if
you see a video that says the ending explained, they didn't,

(01:16:54):
you know, it's not that kind of game.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
But this is just our interpretation. And I mean, like here,
functionally we are kind of like a deity here we are,
and I mean we're gonna see that in a second here,
but we're seeing the universe die out because something that
shouldn't have happened is happening. And now, like we are
larger than life. Literally we are in a new plane

(01:17:18):
of existence and things are snuffing out. We hear an
unidentified signal. We land in this forest, and we hear
a signal. We bring up our signal scope, the only
thing that we have, our outer wild, Outer Wild's ventures.
We hear breathing. It's you, quantum you. If you try
to interact with yourself, you disappear in static You turn

(01:17:40):
into a tree. Then if you quantumize it again by
looking away or turning off your flashlight, it turns into
a campfire. You light the campfire. It could never begin
or end with anything else, this symbol of primitive light
and all encompassing community. We turn away from the campfire
and a rocking chair appears. When we look back again,

(01:18:01):
we repeat, and it's Esker, and he says, do you
hear music? And this this kind of begins our final,
uh little mini puzzle of the game before we before
we jump to that, Josh, I think I interrupted you
a little bit, did you please?

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):
I was I was going to go into kind of
like just interpreting some of this stuff. I don't know
if you want to save that for themes or whatnot,
but just like what I kind of looked at with
the like the campfire.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Let's okay, we're since we have so little like quote
unquote game, let's let's talk about this final part here.
So here we're gathering the rest of the musicians, the
rest of the Hearthians one by one. What did you
think of this little part?

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
Playing it the first time, I didn't understand it. Playing
it now, and honestly believe it or not. I feel
really stupid having like doing this, but I read the
Wikipedia entry for for the plot, and it actually helped
me understand a little, Like it put me on at
least a train of thought to understand or like to

(01:19:06):
come up with like an idea as to what is
happening here right at least my interpretation. So like when
you when you first arrived there, like you said, like
you saw it was it's a quantum version of you.
Then it's a tree, and then it's a campfire, which
kind of symbolized to me the beginning and death of

(01:19:26):
the universe. Like the tree is like full of life,
and now the campfire is is wood burned right, and
it's it's it's ashes. It's ashes, like the end of
the universe is happening, and it's what the remnants of
it of all the different planets, all the different trees
in this campfire. It's been burnt out, it's been used.
It's it's just a shell of a fire there, right,

(01:19:49):
But you light it again because time, because the world
goes on in some way, shape or form, and as
you piece together, you're piecing your little ensemble of comrades
that you've met throughout the throughout your adventures between Gabro
and Feldspar and you know, oh my gosh, why am

(01:20:11):
I blanking on some of the other characters' names, But
I don't want to say, like Perch, it's not Perch.
Who's the dude that's got a really short name, Churt?
Thank you, Churt. What a great name. But as you're
piecing together, you're ensemble from all the friends you've made
between Gabro and Churt and Feldspar and you name them,
you gather them around the campfire, and as they each

(01:20:35):
lend their individual musical voice to just kind of almost
like a group of friends just having one final hurrah
before the end of this journey, right, and or at
least if not friends, it is it's it's actually kind
of more beautiful than friends in the sense that these
are all part of this your community. You may not

(01:20:56):
be friends with them, but you were all on this
same journey, and you're all here at the end to
experience the end of this journey together, whether you knew
you were on the same journey or not. And by
playing music, you see the smoke coming out from the
fire and creating what looks to be a new universe
above it, and it's a new universe being created from

(01:21:17):
the memories and from the memories of all all of
these disparate wanderers and these disparate adventurers who didn't really
interact much with each other. Kind of similar like it'd
be like people from all over the world coming together
to create their own type of like cultural like I
don't like a cultural conscious almost to give birth to

(01:21:39):
this new universe. And that's what it kind of meant
to me when I was watching it. It was the
collective experiences of all these people who are it's not
a group of friends, it's just humanity. It's it's consciousness,
it's it's life, like all the experiences of just literal
life around the universe coming together to help mold and

(01:21:59):
form or this new young universe that just gave birth
at the very end of it. And that's what it happened.
That's what it meant to me, Like when I was
watching it, it was it was a really almost like
hopeful view of death in the sense like that even
when our universe dies, our consciousness will still somehow be

(01:22:20):
given in some way, shape or form, whether maybe not directly,
but even indirectly, it will help form the next instance
of life, which I thought was really very like very
heartening almost.

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
That's absolutely part of it. And consider too, you had
mentioned the trees turning into the campfire, which is then
relt We're regressing from tree to campfire to ashes. It's
the end, but it's also the beginning. You are the
one that turns into the tree. Quantum, You the hatchling.
This all begins with you. And this is this is

(01:22:52):
an interpretation I just came up with, like over the
past day or two. I don't want to gloss over them.
The campfire scene though, you gather each of your comrades instruments,
and it demonstrates it in a way that you know them.
This is entirely representative of their memories to you. Right,

(01:23:14):
Ribec's banjo is in a no My building and you
have to kind of look away and look back. The
building will get destroyed a bit, a bit a bit
until you can get inside. Right, Churt, who is having
existential dread over super Nova's you see his bongos floating
like among a field of mini suns stuff like that.
The no My one is beautiful. Uh Solanum will join

(01:23:38):
you if you found her. If not, she's not there,
but if you did, you hear her music. It's a
sort of keyboard instrument. And you go to this clearing
and there's no my skeletons standing. They're pointing up the
sky where you can hear the signal scope is saying
that that Solanam is coming from. And each time you
look away and look back, there's more and no mind.

(01:23:59):
They're pointing at the sky, and then the next time
you look back, they're they're going towards this stump in
the middle of all of them. And then the next
time there are no my skeletons on the shoulders of
those on standing on the ground, and then their shoulder
standing on the shoulders of the shoulders of the people,
until they form a ladder that that is almost reaching

(01:24:20):
up high. It's one of three things in this ending
that that just made me sob It's it's a represent
it's a beautiful representation of of this idea of everybody
and everything building on what before, what has come, what
has come before? Yeah, exactly like it's generations upon generations,
and even more locally, it's it's communities upon communities, families

(01:24:44):
upon families, it's this beautiful thing. One of the things too,
whenever you bring all of these people in uh your
comrades around the campfire, you can talk to them before
it's time to start yep, and they muse about x
essentialism and Rebec has a line, it's probably my favorite

(01:25:04):
line in the whole game. I gotta take a deep
breath here. Rebec says, the past is the past. But
that's you know, that's okay. It's never really gone completely.
The future is always built on the past, even if
we won't get to see it. Even as they're facing

(01:25:24):
and they all when you speak to them, they kind
of know that something huge is coming. They know that
this is a major event. In some ways, they know
that they're staring the end of the universe in the face.
And they've become so accepting of this fact because everything
we've seen shows it tells us that that time is

(01:25:46):
cyclical in this way, that we may die, but the
universe continues to get rebuilt. Well, I'll hold off on
that because what happens is around this campfire. One you
tell them, listen, it's okay, it's time to start playing.
You begin this most sacred of rituals of music once again,

(01:26:11):
fire the symbol of the most primitive and visceral symbol
of humanity. Fire, community and now song sacred and primitive
and human, innately human, one of the things that makes us.
So we begin to play one by one, and when
everybody is joined in, everybody is a community. We are

(01:26:32):
seeing the birth of a new universe. This, like you
alluded to, this planet starts to form above the campfire.
It begins to build above the campfire. And what's interesting
is that we the one that turned into the tree,
that turned into the campfire, the ashes and then rebirthed
with fire. We are the ultimate observer. We don't have

(01:26:53):
an instrument. We are the overseer, the leader. We conduct
this ensemble of rebirth. We have functionally become the ultimate being.
This is all because of us. This is and that's
a core message of this game. I think that I
missed the first time around, is that no matter how
small you think, anything you do it has consequences, and

(01:27:14):
it builds and it has effects. And here we see it. Here.
Everything we've done, that the hatchling is done, is resulting
in this the birth of a new universe. And it happens.
The camera pulls back immediately once we interact with it
to the extreme, and a flash and a bang, and
we get the creation of another universe. Fourteen point three

(01:27:37):
billion years later comes upon the screen. A new life
sustaining universe is formed with insectoid life forms. If Solanam
was met, that's a little easter egg. We see them, planets, stars, everything,
accompanied by a single musical voice alone cello soto voce.
It's simplicity, it's the roots, if you'll pardon the post

(01:28:00):
of all harmony, of all counterpoint, just one single voice
enough to start a community, a new world. Ushers us
into this new life, all created by us, by our actions,
seemingly small as they were. We did this, and that's
I think that's core of this. We talked a lot,

(01:28:21):
Josh about about the cyclical nature of community and standing
on the shoulders of those that have come before, and
how the death of one universe is a necessary and
beautiful thing, even though even though it's scary, you know,
and we have thinkers like Schopenhauer that talks about the
will to life being necessitated by the fear of death

(01:28:43):
and epictetis excuse me not epictitus Epicurus saying there's no
need to fear it, because when we are death is not,
and one death is, we are not. We have thinkers
all across the world. The rapper you mentioned of not
MegaMan meg Mega ran speaking about this idea of what
it means to die, and we're seeing it here too,

(01:29:06):
that we have created new life and through this too,
new consciousness and by extension, new observation. And what if
what if this new form of ultimate observation yields a
new new life cycle? What if when consciousness is taken away?

(01:29:27):
Who is to say, when consciousness is taken away and
observation along with it, that all possibilities cannot begin to
exist and not exist? And who's to say that one
might not be one in which we are reborn and rebuilt.
There's just so many tests, so many different ways. I
feel like we could go down this and and it's

(01:29:47):
it just it's so beautiful and strangely like I left this.
I read online A lot of folks say, like, yeah,
I left the ending. I was terrified of the death
of the universe, But I think it's hopeful. It's far
more hopeful than that. It shows that it's inevitable, it
will happen, But that doesn't mean that we will die
in any sense of the word. And in many senses

(01:30:08):
we continue to live on. And maybe it's not our
physical beings, but we are also one with the universe.
We are a part of it. We just and I
mean we just created it. We are physically a part
of it now and maybe we will stay connected to
it as we go into the next one and we
become a part of it. And do you know what
supports this theory is if you shoot your scout into

(01:30:31):
the eye of the universe before you jump into it. Oh, however,
many minutes ago, if you shoot your scout in on
this ending slide with the planets and the insects around
the fire, you will see your scout shoot across the
galaxy in the back. You will see it there. Now,
you would assume fourteen point three billion years would degrade
any and all metal that we know, But yet there

(01:30:52):
your scout is zooming across the sky. So who is
to say this new observation when when observation goes away,
who is to say that a new one is not
born and new and that the cycle cannot continue? And
we maybe still are alive in some way, whether it's
the same as we know it now. Well, I mean,
we can't say, we can never say, but maybe we will.

Speaker 3 (01:31:12):
Be I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
I'm I'm gonna be profound I'm gonna be profoundly embarrassed
listening back to this because I don't I'm not really
super comfortable with how much my voice was cracking and wavering.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):
And no, dude, this is what games, not just games,
just art is meant to do. Like, and it's this. Man,
there's so many different things that are pop into my
head right now. I'm trying to like put them all
together in some semblance of an order that actually makes

(01:32:00):
any sense. But like, this is why, this is why
I like games so much. Like this is why I
like this medium. And then in turn, the community that
that we all that you and I and everyone who
listens and everyone here is like a part of whether
it's our podcasting community, whether it's like you know, you know,

(01:32:21):
the friends of ours that all do podcasts, or the
listeners that like that support all of us like it,
it just kind of I don't know, it makes me
think about all that in the sense of like, just
there's so much all right, So instead of trying to
figure out what the fuck I'm even trying to feel
because my emotions are are like yours. I'm feeling. I
got lots of feels right now, Rick, what I want

(01:32:45):
to say is just I guess to bring it to
break it down. A couple of things you talk about
made me think of like what what some other what
if scenarios and like could it mean this? It couldn't
mean that, and like interpreting things in different ways. And
when when you when so Lanam comes and you see
all the Nomi like reaching out for her, it very
much feels like she is the epitome of her community,

(01:33:07):
her community's effort for striving for knowledge. Right that even
in their death, they're quantum entangled death, they are coming
here to support and pass on the information that they've
obtained via Salonam. Right then, when the the universe gets created,

(01:33:29):
it's not just the fact that you and your adventurer
allies and friends and compatriots and just acquaintances are all there.
You're you're breathing life into the universe with song, right
like you're you're creating and not just a song where
you're playing a beautiful piece of music, but it's a
song played in a community representing how like humanity or

(01:33:52):
how life exists is. It's it's life exists in community,
in harmony with each other in order to survive. Right, Like,
look at our like the environment and how we have
to I mean, we should be taking care of our planet.
That's a different conversation for a different day. But like
when when the new universe does get created? The first

(01:34:13):
thing that even signified to me that our generational knowledge
of the previous universe that had other than us creating
this new one really really didn't have any direct contact
with like any species that evolved after the four however
many billion years. Right, But the music you hear is

(01:34:33):
the same melody that you played to create the universe,
but done in that single voice, in a different voice too.
It's not any of the same instruments. It's it's the
same melody being sung across multiple universes that have been
since created. Like, what what instrument was played for our
universe when it got created?

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
What? What were they using? What song were they singing
around the campfire to create our universe before it came
to and this.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
To say, too, we created this new one and we're
now hearing a new instrument. Our instrument was never revealed.
Who's to say that sonically this isn't representative of us.
That we've ascended and though we no longer exist in
the physical plane, we are so at one with the
universe that it's become a sort of cosmic melody.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
And then who knows who the like previous people who
have like died and died with the universe and created
a new one, are they playing in heart cosmic harmony
with us now that we've been added to it exactly
like there? And like I think, because you can talk
about all these things and talk about interpreting a game
in this way, and if you if you haven't played

(01:35:39):
the game, it sounds very kind of like that, like
the way we're kind of describing it. Almost sometimes I
wonder when you talk about something like this and you
really dive into like what does this mean, what does
that mean, what's the what's the meaning of all this?
It can come off And I don't think we're doing
this to just to be clear, but it can come
off as pretentious, right, you know, Like you know that
joke that you would see and like was if American

(01:36:00):
Beauty with the dude filming the plastic bag in the wind.
Oh yeah, and that it comes off as pretentious, like, look,
there's the meaning of life, man, I don't think this
game is doing that. I don't think this game is
talking down to its audience or to the audience at all.
It's just talking to you, not down to you. And
you can read into it however you want. But I

(01:36:22):
think what makes this game so special is that it
feels like no matter how you interpret it, whether it
is as you know, as deep as we're trying to
like really dive in and like talking about like cosmic
harmonies and like you sentient beings coming into grips with quantum,

(01:36:42):
like sentient observational beings coming into contact with quantum reality,
like quantum creation and all like all this other shit.
Take all that out of it, and what you're what
you boil this game down to is community. It's a
it's it's about a community of people going out and
exploring the world and trying to do good in a

(01:37:03):
sense like whether it's and not always do good. There's
people who there's the gray area of like how much
are we willing to do for knowledge? Like you see
with the Nomi or in the just like in the
normal back and forth and arguments you might see within
the dialogue between you as the Hearthians, or the diaries

(01:37:24):
that you read of the Nomi.

Speaker 1 (01:37:26):
But it just.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
It's a game that's meant to illustrate community and humanity
and ultimately how we move, how it like it transcends
after you die, whether it's as deep as we're going
into it with. You know, oh what if you're this
quantum being now creating added to the quantum heart blah blah,
all this other shit like it. You don't even have

(01:37:49):
to read into it that far if you don't want to.
It's you creating a community and passing that information along
to the next generation. And as much as it is
scary to die, and it is scary too to you know,
like to not know that what happens at the death

(01:38:12):
of the universe, whether it's your universe or the literal
universe of our sun exploding or something like that, yeah,
there there is this. It is very hopeful in the
sense that this game tells you like it's going to
get passed on. We just don't know how yet.

Speaker 1 (01:38:27):
And that's precisely why I don't think it's pretentious, like
you were saying it would be pretentious to take a
more And you know, I'm reading a lot of Schopenhauer
right now, who is a little bit before Nietzsche. Schopenhower
and nietzsch are both kind of like the I am
fourteen and this is deep starter pack of philosophers, Like

(01:38:48):
that's who you turn to if you want to be like, whoa,
this is so deep man, And like it's because.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):
For me it was Final Fantasy eight that was my
I'm deep for fourteen year old starter pack.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
It's because they're so they're pessimistic, largely or antagonistic. And
if this game had fizzled out like that, like the
death of the universe is coming, so you know who
this was all for, not who cares? That I think
would be completely insincere and pretentious and trying to puff
up this artificial message. But instead they opt to be sincere,

(01:39:19):
and they opt to say, look around you. Look not
just at the community of Hearthians that you have with
Chert and Ryebeck and Hornfells and Escer on the moon
and even the folks in the village making sap wine
or playing hide and seek, Look at that community the no, Ma,
who have died thousands of years before you are functionally
a part of your community now through the writing and

(01:39:40):
through their ever present well presence in the universe. And
now we are going to become that for the next universe,
those weird insect looking things are going to be thinking
of us in the same way it is. It is hopeful,
like you said, Josh, and that is precisely why it's
not pretentious. I think that's I mean, I can see

(01:40:03):
somebody looking at this and saying it sounds too pollyanna
ish and saying that, you know, it's naively hopeful, and
that's not how it works. Whenever, whenever life is done,
we're done, and that's it, sorry, Cupcake. Like do you remember,
and you might remember since you said you listened to
to our first episode today. In the first episode, I

(01:40:25):
said something to the effect of like I don't think
I believe, but I desperately want to in afterlife where
things of that nature. It's stuff like this that makes
me think about it more but also brings me a
sense of like serenity, like peace, Like I want to

(01:40:45):
believe that I will go on after the Big Sleep,
even though empirically it's unlikely. I still choose to believe
that in some way, perhaps it's true. Perhap phaps, it's
possible when the great observation of consciousness fizzles out. Who's
to say what possibility might snap into place? I mean, shit, man,

(01:41:08):
when we measure electrons themselves, it's a sort of quantum thing.
Electrons kind of exist all around their band until we
measure their frequency, at which point they snap into a
fixed place. Otherwise they're kind of everywhere all at once.
A side note, I did not look up scigns for kids,
so I'm kind of fuzzy on that. I tried to

(01:41:31):
do a lot of science today amid a hectic work day,
and it's a struggle. But I don't know. I feel
like some listeners are I feel like listeners are either
going to love or hate this conversation because it's so abstract.
I again, I try to make the podcast that I
would listen to. I love this shit, but I could
see people saying, like, you guys aren't actually getting at anything,

(01:41:52):
and you haven't decoded anything.

Speaker 2 (01:41:55):
For me, that's kind of the point. That's the fucking point,
though we don't know's I think what Sometimes it gets
under my The reason I was bringing up the pretentious
thing is not that I think this game is being
pretentious in its ambiguous message. I think it's the opposite
of that, or not ambiguous message, but ambiguous delivery maybe

(01:42:15):
is a better way to put it. But it's the
reason I'm bringing up is because it it would be
easy to slip into that, and I feel like generally
the people who either say, you know, like, oh, you
shouldn't be reading that far into it. Life's meaningless, like
looking at a pessive, Like finding a pessimistic outlook at

(01:42:37):
reality is easy because the real because reality is reality
is hard, and it's when stuff is hard, it's not
always going to be fun. And so when it's not fun,
you're going to have a negative outlook on shit. And
I'm not saying this, you know, like, oh, just have
a cheery disposition and shit works out. I understand that's
not reality either, Like you can't like hopeless optimism is

(01:42:59):
also not like hopelessly optimistic also isn't necessarily a good thing,
but I do think it's way it's easier, it's an
easier mentality to get stuck into the hopelessness of non existence,
right of just the idea that we're just not going
to exist and that's it and who care? Who gives
a shit about the rest. It's almost a very selfish

(01:43:19):
way to look at it, because you just want to
make yourself feel better that you're tired of thinking about
being afraid of not knowing what's out there. And this
game almost feels like it's making it's taking that argument
and be like, yeah, we don't know what's out there.
We're taking a wild fucking stab at this, but our
I'd rather think that we don't know what's out there,
and when we cease to exist, something in us, even

(01:43:40):
though it's not going to be ever credited to us
or known about us, but we push something forward, We
pass some type of knowledge or culture or consciousness to
the next generation, whether it is a direct familial transfer
of knowledge or a cosmic one that we can't quantify.
And I think I think that is a lot more

(01:44:01):
of a hopeful way to look at the world, that
just be like, why even bother existing? If all that's
going to happen is that I die and then that's it.
Like I nihilism feel to me like it's only serves
someone who doesn't want to think about anything else but themselves.
Maybe that's a little harsh.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
I don't think it's harsh at all. I think it
is a form of philosophical suicide. There was there was
a period of time, and I don't want to get
too far into this because mainly because I don't want
people to misunderstand what I mean, because this is this
community is filled with misunderstandings. But there was a time
when I considered myself a LaVey and Satanist.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
And that does not mean do worship, no idea, what
any of that.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
That LaVey and Satanism is functionally which they would call
that tautologically redundant, But all it is is it's a
form of atheism that is rooted in egoism, the philosophy
of egoism that worships oneself as the God right. Nothing
wrong with that inherently, but it takes especials. I want

(01:45:06):
to I want to preface this by saying that I
might word this differently on a different day, and I'm
really trying to say this in a way that is respectful,
but it takes a certain kind of philosophical I don't
want to say laziness, giving up philosophically, to just to
just think that the universe is I, me and mine

(01:45:29):
and that's the end all and be all, and fuck
everyone else. And you know, it's not quite solipsism, but
it's close enough. I mean, I don't subscribe to that anymore.
I think that's fundamentally flawed in many ways, I think,
and largely because it's not. It is the easy option
to think that way, to think so insularly with oneself.
And of course I'm being a little bit reductive. I apologize.

(01:45:51):
I wasn't exactly planning to speak on this, but I
think looking at things in the way that you've laid
them out with this idea of you know, it's not
hopeless optimism, but it is seeing a sense of being
greater than oneself. I think that's critical and important in
a life view that is conducive to happiness, yes, but

(01:46:16):
a sense of spiritual, spiritual holisticness. I don't know, are
we saying anything? Are we just using buzzwords? I don't know.
This is really difficult to pin down because language is
not precise. It's as precise as we've got, but it
will never do the job. I think. I don't know
what I think I think, I don't know, We're not.

Speaker 2 (01:46:38):
We've got it, We've broken in folks.

Speaker 1 (01:46:41):
I truly, I really, truly, I think like recording this
episode on ten different days is going to get eleven
different answers.

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
I think that's very quantumy with numbers even write.

Speaker 1 (01:46:53):
But it's not. I mean, it's not. I don't I
agree with you. I don't think it's hopeless optimism. I
think it's greater than that. I I think it is.

Speaker 2 (01:47:02):
I think sometimes I also think sometimes being having an
optimistic outpoint, not even necessarily hopelessly optimistic, but like a
more positive outlook. Who knows, maybe maybe everything does. Maybe
you know, shit, nothing really matters, and you know that
maybe the nihilists are correct or whatever it is. You know,
it's all that matters is your world around you, and

(01:47:23):
once you're gone, that's that's it. Right. But I feel
like if that's all you have, then there's that does
nothing to benefit that the world would be hopeless, right,
Like that does nothing to benefit the community around you.
Like I almost feel like at this point the game
is just trying to tell us, like the point of
the meaning of life is community, whether that is just
so you're not alone, right, like you build a community

(01:47:45):
in some way shape. I don't know. We are kind
I feel like we are kind of circling around a
lot of different I teas at this point, but I
feel it can easily keep circling.

Speaker 1 (01:47:53):
But yeah, that nihilism infects your brain like a dark
bramble seed, really, and it infects your entire beat, and
you begin to act in ways, even though you may
not perceive it. You begin to act in ways that
are poisonous to you and to poisonous to all around.
Instead of like it's and it's not so simple as
just saying, like, you know, for the greater good of humanity,

(01:48:14):
it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:48:15):
It is and it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:48:16):
It's quantum it is and it isn't. I don't know, man,
I think we can at least say that nihilism is
a form of poison, you know, for I don't mean
this shit talk. Nietzsche call him, I'm fourteen, and this
is deep. He was complicated, but he said that nihilism
and the Last Man a form of nihilism, and Zarathustra

(01:48:37):
was going to be an inevitable end of humanity and
that we should avoid it at all costs, and to that. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I think we can agree, and I think
this game's message, you know, isn't explicitly Nietzsche, but it
goes there.

Speaker 2 (01:48:53):
I'd be very curious, like what the like, I'd be
curious to hear Alex Beacham like talk about that's But
at the same time, I don't, I'd rather I'd rather
just keep this as biguous as it is.

Speaker 1 (01:49:06):
You would even have to ask, is would he have
the answers? You know, I don't think so, Yeah, No,
I don't. I don't think he would say here's the
answers and like yeah, you got it, or no, you
were wrong. It's just like he's just another point on
the on the quantum scale, right, I mean, all of
this is I'm I feel like I'm starting to be
a parody of what we've been talking about. Like all
of this is right and it's also incorrect. But that's

(01:49:29):
kind of true if you if you think about it, right,
like this, none of this is is correct because there
is no correct. This is all it all just is
the universe is, and we are right.

Speaker 2 (01:49:40):
Samos feels like it almost feels like this game is
just it's the type of it's a type of art
that is meant to pose a question, and that's it.
And I'm not saying that it's a dismissive thing. It's
posing a question because it wants you to think. It
wants you to think about it for in a weird
tess for yourself, because everyone's going to take different meaning

(01:50:01):
out of this, Like it's it's what what each thing different?
What each what each ending or outcome, or like what
the ending truly means to them. I think really the
only constant is like community, because that that's in the game,
Like no ifs, hands or butts you end the game.
You begin the game with community, by the community of

(01:50:21):
Herthians sending you into space and questioning your sanity when
you go through that first time loop, and it ends
with you with your fellow explorers finishing the time loop.
But the game ends with community. You all sit around
a campfire and reminisce as as the next stage of

(01:50:43):
life goes on. Right, So there's there's lots of ways
you can really look at it, and that's kind of
what it's meant to be. So I think that not
to wrap up the episode for you, Rick, but I
feel like that is like what this game is meant
to be it it It poses a question for you,
and even then, like question, you could argue was a
little ambiguous, which is fine, but it at least gives

(01:51:03):
you a setup and encourages you to start poking at
the at the edges and explore for yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:51:10):
No, your instincts to rein me in are correct. I
think you're you're good there. No, you're right. It ends
in that most sacred of ways with community, and in
some ways that is the only true way to interpret
this game is by ending it and then engaging in
that most sacred activity of bringing it to the community.

(01:51:33):
And that's it. It doesn't matter what you say, and
it doesn't matter how you say it. What matters is
you are being a part of something greater, something you
are engaged becoming one with the community, that is becoming
one with a greater universe and returning to that universe.
And that is outer wilds mm hmm, man.

Speaker 2 (01:51:59):
I feel like we just like I feel like we
just ran a marathon in our minds. Yeah. I not saying,
not saying we thought anything actually profound. We just we
just we were doing a lot of thinking. Don't know
if it actually went anywhere, but I mean the journey
and et cetera, and et cetera. You know, I said
this whenever we did the reboot of Final Fantasy nine

(01:52:21):
with Eric. If this, if this series doesn't bring in
at least a couple of new listeners, I don't know
what I could do that would This is some of
the best podcasting I think I've been a part of this.
This has been really therapeutic and profound, and it gets
this is what art should be. You know, every time
you listen to a Beethoven symphony, you can take something

(01:52:43):
different away.

Speaker 1 (01:52:44):
Why should video games be different? Why should we look
for games that just tell a story and that's it,
wrap it up, wham bam, thank you, ma'am, move on
to the next one, because we've got a backlog to conquer.
God damn it. No, it's it's greater than that. It's
stuff like this where you get to sit down with
friends and discuss how it made you feel and what
it made you think. That's what's important. And I hope,

(01:53:06):
I mean, I've I've had a phenomenal time. I hope
you have, Josh, and I hope our listeners did too,
especially not being an active participant. You know, I hope
I edited this in a way to make me sound okay.
I mean, Josh is already basically there and I need
so I hope, I hope you get a justice this. Uh,

(01:53:28):
this is just phenomenal. I and and you know, it
breaks my heart that we could never experience this the
same way again.

Speaker 2 (01:53:35):
But yeah, that's the heart. Sorry not to go off
one final thing, but the most heartbreaking thing about Outer
Wilds isn't necessarily thinking about like what it means and
the meaning of the game. It's the fact that once
you beat it, you can't experience it again. It because
the entire game is the joy of discovery of a

(01:53:55):
community and the knowledge that the game the world that
this game shows to you. And that's why I said
at the very first episode, Rick, how like when I
went back to try to replay it in preparation for
this show, I was like, Man, I don't think I
can replay this because it's just like this, that it
was that one singular experience that like I know what

(01:54:18):
happens now unless I want to go back and reread
stuff that I've already read before and in but without
the wonder, you know, without the sense of discovery, Like
this game is truly something that like, there's so few
games that I've played that when you that I can
only play once, right and like get like a lot
of games, you know, I actually recently replayed the first

(01:54:40):
Ratchet and Client game because I'll be guesting on a
friend's another friend's podcast to talk about that later on.
That game still feels fantastic to me, and I still
had just as much fun playing it now as I
did when I first played it.

Speaker 1 (01:54:50):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:54:51):
Outer Wild left such profound impact on me that when
I try to go back and play it again, it
just does like, yeah, I could play it and still
have fun with the game mechanics and this and that,
But what really sells this game is just that sense
of just wonder and discovery, and once that's all gone,
like once the game has shown you what it's trying

(01:55:13):
to show you, it just you can't get that back.
And that's what in that sense, it's very much like
this is so fucking cheesy an apologies. It's like life,
you can only experience life once type of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:55:25):
Way. It's you know what, it's it's cheesy because it's
a platitude. But here's the thing. Platitudes are platitudes for
a reason that life's greatest truths are not sexy. They
are sometimes banal and sometimes repeated. What makes this game
it's bittersweet because yes, we will never get to experience
it again, but it is teaching us and encouraging us

(01:55:46):
to to appreciate and embrace the moments and the present
in which we are. In some depending on who you ask,
the present is all we have. There is no pass
and there is no future. It is only the present.
And you know, I think collective between the two of us, Josh,
we've tried to put a bow on this episode like
seven times, so I'm going to do an eighth one year.
This makes me think. This makes me think of one

(01:56:10):
of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors,
Kurt Vonnegut. You need to take the time to reflect
on when you were feeling happy in the moment and
say to yourself, if this isn't nice, I don't know
what is m And there that's your eighth bo We've
wrapped this supplic eight times, but it's great. Well, this

(01:56:34):
was fantastic. That about does it here? We can obviously,
I think we're both really really open to engaging in
more conversation and talking more about this. You can do
that with us on the socials. You can find links
to those in the episode description. You can also do
that by joining the discord server again. It's free again.

(01:56:57):
In the episode description. Also in the episode discretion will
be more links to still Loading. The past two episodes
in the description have had links well to the no
Clip doc but also to Josh's socials online, the interview
with Andrew Pralo. Now, the last time we spoke, we
spoke twice, and now we've recorded these episodes a bit
spaced out, but not too spaced out. Last we talked,

(01:57:19):
Punch a Nazi Month was underway. We're about to be underable.

Speaker 2 (01:57:24):
It's yeah coming out. It'll be oh my gosh, so
one episode. Actually, now that I realize it, I think
Punch a Nazi Month won't be starting until after all
of this airs, because this is airing back to back
to back in terms of weeks, right.

Speaker 1 (01:57:37):
Like, yes, this episode will come out the first week
of April.

Speaker 2 (01:57:41):
Yes, so it about one to two and a half weeks.
The first episode of Punch a Nazi Month will be
coming out conveniently on four to twenty. I actually genuinely
did not plan that. It just kind of worked out,
So I'm as crazy as that sounds, it actually worked
out surprisingly well with that. So yeah, that Punch a
Nazi Month, covering a bunch of games about punching Nazis

(01:58:02):
starting on April twentieth.

Speaker 1 (01:58:04):
Hell yeah, did you want to want to plug anything
else that's upcoming? I mean, I don't know, ye ask
you to tease more than you are comfortable on your show,
but you know, if you want to, or if you
want to talk about anything else you've got going on
on the socials. I know I tuned in to see
a bit of one of my favorite final fantasies played
on Twitch Final Fantasy ten two, which yes, I would

(01:58:27):
like to very much replay that a little bit, but
we'll see what happens. Uh Well, anything else you.

Speaker 2 (01:58:32):
Still don't I don't mind teasing that. I don't mind
teasing that for for your listeners, so my patrons. So yeah,
Still you can find the still Loading podcasts online at
all the podcasting places you know, Spotify, YouTube, Music, Apple Podcasts,
all that good stuff. I do have a website, still
loading podcast dot com. I also have a discord but
I never really, I'm bad at it. Join Ricks. I'm

(01:58:54):
never active on my own, but I always have stuff
going on on the show. At the time this comes out,
Mario Month will have just ended, literally a couple days ago.
By the time this episode comes out, it will be
my most recent episode. Will be the last episode of
Mario Month with Bill from the Gaming Collecting Podcast and
the three Day Experience, and then in April we punch

(01:59:15):
a Nazi Month and sometime, I guess I'm trying. I
think the episode that we're hinting at it won't be
due out for a couple months, but Rick here is
going to be joining me to talk about Final Fantasy
ten too. Once I beat that and everything and my
patrons voted for that, and you know, I do have
a Patreon not to shout out stuff for people to

(01:59:36):
pay money to, but if you also want to get
to help guide the director of the show, it's only
a dollar a month. Then Rick is going to be
joining me to discuss a game my patrons chose, and
that is Final Fantasy ten too. So yeah, and you
can follow me on social media at still Loading Pod
at Blue Sky and Twitch and Instagram and all that
good stuff, and that was as dis jointed as my
thoughts were trying to wrap up this episode, so hopefully

(01:59:58):
that enticed somebody. I don't fucking know that's where my
show's at, though It's okay.

Speaker 1 (02:00:04):
I have heard many a great podcast get frazzled, talking
out or wild, so you know, count ourselves among the
greats and that's everlasting. You know we're going to sleep
well tonight. I think you should all check out still loading.
You can find links to Josh's stuff again in the description,
and from those links you could arrive at his Patreon,
his Discord server, wherever you'd like to see him, Twitch channel,

(02:00:27):
et cetera. Check us out playing, check us out. Talking
about Final Fantasy ten to two. I love that game
so much. I did an essay about it on my show,
and it's one of the show's worst performing episodes. And
every time I think about that, I think, Man, I
guess I shouldn't write more for the show.

Speaker 2 (02:00:43):
Just kidding, No, I consider that more. Just like ten
to two, it's dependent on the game. Man. That's a
little podcasting behind the scenes. You can have one of
the best episodes ever, but if no one cares about
the game itself, that you're talking about it's not going
to like. It's not going to hit as much as
you think you would think.

Speaker 1 (02:01:00):
But the last time I checked my best performing episode,
or maybe it's number two, Final Fantasy thirteen.

Speaker 2 (02:01:07):
Thirteen's pretty big though it's polarizing, hated, it's bigly dislike
it too, that could be it.

Speaker 1 (02:01:16):
Thirteen's a good game just for everybody that's listening, so
is eight. They're all good. Relax. You can check all
of that out. Still loading podcast on Twitch and socials
on discord as well. You can check out our links.
I've already kind of plugged those before, so I won't
plug them again. Check out the socials. Just a quick reminder,
I'm on TikTok and YouTube doing shorts as well, TikTok's

(02:01:40):
and shorts that is. I don't really do Twitter anymore,
I don't really want to, so please follow us on
Blue Sky or Instagram instead. You can check all that
out in the description. But with that, I mean talking
around the game is what I anticipated from the start.
I think we did that. If you want to continue
the convo, join the discord at a on socials either

(02:02:01):
of us. But until then, Josh, thank you again for joining.
I think I've taken up enough of your time and
the listener's time, and I want to thank both you
and the listeners for sticking around. Stick with us until
next time. Coming next week is Final Fantasy One. We're
going all the way back to the roots this time,
and until then, I'm your host. As always, I'm Rick.

(02:02:22):
We're signing off for now. Take care,

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The Universe Is, and We Are | Outer Wilds, Part III (Ep. 139)

Episode Transcript

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Universe Is, and We Are | Outer Wilds, Part III (Ep. 139)