it’s not supposed to be a relaxing open world game though?
it’s the mystery of the entire game, why is this happening? how do i stop it? It’s also the basis of all main mechanics in the game, the entire world is on the clock, some things aren’t available at the start or become unavailable as the clock ticks. It’s not a pointless gimmick, it serves both a narrative and a mechanical purpose
But there HAVE been other games based around time loops that manage to avoid that frustration, for instance by letting you manually restart the loop yourself in a quick way, or giving other starting points.
Famous examples include Majora’s Mask, The Sexy Brutale, and others. I understand Outer Wilds tries to hold the trappings of its story around the loop being more sci-fi than magic/fantasy in nature, but that’s still a goal of the writers to wrap the rules of the world around mechanics that are fun to play.
I can even think of many games that gave themselves minor plotholes and odd exceptions to the “world rules” just so that the player could get through it more conveniently.
