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Annapurna Interactive dropped a new trailer today to announce that Outer Wilds, the intriguing sci-fi exploration camping trip that won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2015 IGF Awards (in a very early iteration, obviously) will be out on May 30.
Outer Wilds (not to be confused with Obsidian's sci-fi RPG The Outer Worlds, although I often do) strikes me as a mix of Firewatch and No Man's Sky, with elements of Kentucky Route Zero and The Long Journey Home thrown in for flavor. Which is a bit of a sideways admission that I don't know what to make of it, but I think it looks potentially very good and I'm glad that the delay out of 2018 isn't going to be too terribly long.
One of the things I find most interesting about Outer Wilds is that it trades breadth for depth, taking place within the relatively limited confines of a "handcrafted" single solar system. That will, hopefully, go a long way toward the "places to go, nothing to do" problem that can plague big games that rely on repeating structures or procedural generation to bulk themselves out. As Phil said in his preview earlier this year, "This isn’t some vast, procedurally generated universe. The handful of handcrafted planets ensure that wherever you land, you’re sure to find something, even if it’s just a weird rock."
Annapurna announced earlier this month that Outer Wilds will be an Epic Store exclusive at launch.