Recent reviews by vi

As many other reviews have said, the game suffers from some terrible performance and stability issues. From low framerates on above-recommended specs, to repeated crashes, to visual bugs like extreme LOD pop-in and seemingly corrupt geometry.

It's an embarrassing state for a game to be in, especially at this price tag. The actual gameplay is great, the story is fine, and I personally find it to be quite pretty (when it works).

But for those who don't want to risk their money for a dysfunctional product, I cannot recommend it in this state. I can only hope these issues will be addressed, but at the time of this review we have not received any acknowledgement from the team about the pitiful performance, nor have they expressed any interest in fixing their product.

I went into this blind, never having played the previous games. Given what I had seen in 30 seconds of trailer footage, I thought this would be a Souls-like game with guns, set in a Bloodborne-like universe. I was mistaken in all the right ways.

Don't get me wrong, I love Souls games, and the comparison isn't far off, but needless to say my initial idea of this game doesn't fully capture the essence of Remnant 2. After about 15 minutes of gameplay, the scope of the narrative opened up and I was HOOKED.


What Remnant 2 offers is a story with lore on a generally similar scale and aesthetic to Souls games, but with less of FromSoftware's signature ambiguity and vagueness, which I sometimes find difficult to get invested in. It features lots of interesting characters with fantastic writing and performances, alien worlds, and beautiful vistas.

The environments boast meaningful visual variety that's still surprising me 30+ hours in. Enemy variety is also quite good, with each environment featuring new enemies with cool visuals and unique behavior. Weapons and armors look so cool too, which matters a lot if you're playing for fashion. The gunplay is very satisfying, and the game encourages a variety of playstyles and builds.


Forego traditional healing and only heal from weapon mods? Melee focused? Summoner build? Sniper glasscannon? It's all possible, and encouraged.

Resources work so that you can always completely change your build at a very low cost. I've already shifted my character's focus multiple times as I stock up on interesting equipment, and it's been refreshing to have the freedom to redefine my playstyle so easily.


Another way Remnant 2 differs from Souls games is that it isn't as punishing. Death is not as big of a deal, you can often respawn very near a boss gate instead of having to run through enemies to retry a fight, and all in all it doesn't feel as difficult. I don't think this is a bad thing though, it keeps the momentum going, and there's certainly still enough of a challenge to keep me invested and focused.


Beyond all this, however, the part that really appeals to me is the exploration and discovery. The world is full of secrets, hidden passages, puzzles, and challenges. There's a plethora of items to collect, with high content replay value (and replay systems that make this super easy and comfortable). Some randomness introduced here and there keeps things fresh, too.

With the exception of a few especially obtuse secrets, the exploration is super satisfying. It feels like there's something cool to discover and collect around every corner. And it's rewarding on an intrinsic level, it doesn't hold your hand and map everything out for you. Unlike many publishers who see potentially missable content as time wasted on development, Remnant 2 is indeed a lot like Souls games - not at all afraid to see large chunks of its content missed if you don't look for it. And that makes discovering it all the more sweeter.

Give it a try, it's even more fun with friends!

Outer Wilds does what other games wish they could do: truly stimulate curiosity and give player genuine, total freedom to exercise that curiosity. What has been repeatedly said in other reviews is true, so I'll try not to be redundant and instead share my personal take on things.

I won't spoil anything, but if you're already set to play this game, just go play it. If you've already played it, or want to read a little analysis on game design, please stick around!

Put shortly, some of my work involves the game industry, and I am especially interested in Outer Wilds because it successfully accomplishes what I've always found most valuable in games, and what I find to be lacking in many games today. That is the player-driven approach Outer Wilds takes to its unraveling of a story.

This is a complex topic. It's admittedly very hard to design a good story delivery system with traditional narratives, since player interaction needs to be somehow suppressed. Otherwise, a dissonance between player choice and a static (or branched, but still limited) narrative starts to form. This happens because our systems usually can't appropriately react to anything but a select set of actions predicted and accounted for by the developers. Without this suppression of player action, this inability to react fully to players becomes evident, and it ruins the very necessary suspense of disbelief a story requires.

Until we can plug into the matrix and have a virtual dungeon master react to our complex interactions, we unfortunately have to deal with these limitations. Outer Wilds handles this cleverly by putting you in circumstances where your limited interaction abilities as a player are narratively justified. Combine that with an incredibly imaginative world packed with variety, and it's easy to fall into a strong state of curiosity-driven gameplay.

This is what I feel when I first pick up a game: the feeling that there's a plethora of things I don't understand yet. And I love this feeling! I know this may not be how everyone else feels. In fact, I might be in a minority. But if you're like me, you might understand my frustration with games that litter your vision with waypoints, markers, and other means of guidance. In short, if a game tells me what to do and how things work, all my curiosity to explore its systems evaporates.

Of course, I understand most games aim to appeal to a large audience, and accessibility is important to reach wide demographics. However, over time we also condition players to have certain expectations about games that makes less guided experiences like Outer Wilds harder to come across.

In any case, what I value in games is an opportunity to take something complex, like a game's content and systems, and to strive towards understanding it. Like a scientist feels ultimate fulfilment forming understanding and building knowledge on a certain subject, I want to go into a game where discovery is not limited to "find collectables", or "walk until you see something new". I want a game where I'm given an unknown world. No waypoints. No markers. No tips. Just a set of systems that I don't understand, and a reason to go out there and figure things out.

That is exactly what Outer Wilds does. And unlike typical puzzle games, it doesn't feel like an arbitrary set of steps, but an actual unveiling of a mystery that was always there. It has the most powerful "a-ha!" moments because you're not just discovering the solution to a mechanical puzzle, you're discovering the reason behind a certain event, the mechanisms involved, and how it fits into a larger story.

I love Outer Wilds, and feel incredibly inspired when it crosses my mind. I hope to one day work on such a project, and I hope that more developers go in the design direction Mobius Digital took. I am a very critical person, but if I had to pick any game to call a "masterpiece", Outer Wilds would be it.