Lutias Kokopelli

The Field Guide to the Outer Wilds is a wonderful art book that is mostly a fun ride full of pretty pictures and telling a lot about the history of this game's design, but it does contain its fair share of info about lore that either was considered at some point, or still is. Seems like we have a case of the latter on our hands here!

The Nomai's ability to reshape matter around them already visible in-game with a couple examples that are either obvious (Solanum creating projection stones and levitating rocks to make the pillars for her conversation) or more subtle to notice (the road signs that can be knocked off and will rebuild themselves after a couple instants) -- but the art book fully solidifies just how far it goes, by mentioning this on multiple pages and showing that the initial Nomai architecture design was really intended to reflect this extruding and reshaping method of construction.

Anyway, two light bulbs flashed in my mind when I read about this: first off, so cool, and second, this requires some real high quality shitpost. Don't mind that this has been sitting as a WIP in my files for... °checks notes° ...almost two months. Well, uh, the lore map work and real life are also to blame I suppose fsjdklgs

(PS: Don't praise the art too hard, especially not the staff -- as the bonus page shows, game assets and screenshots were used for basically everything that isn't a living character, for the sake of saving time and effort on the parts of the comic that mattered way less in my mind than, y'know, the joke and characters' silly faces.)

So, I'm not sure how many people are interested in this type of thing, but a little while ago I found out that there's actually quite a bit of fun unused dialogue in Outer Wilds (and I personally love that stuff). So if you're in the same boat, hi! I've done my best to compile nearly all dialogue from the game files that's gone unused in the final game (not including very minor changes or stuff that I don't think means anything to anyone).

(rest under the cut because this post is very long)

With that out of the way, great summarizing overall! It sure isn't easy to read without the XML syntax colors, I'll give you that 😅 But in case you hadn't noticed, the best way to tell if a piece of dialogue is unused (aside from "it's in the file called "@UnusedTranslations.xml") is that it's in-between "<!--" and "-- >" sections. That means it's commented out text! In other words, the human eye can see it, but not the game, therefore it's never used ;;)

As for other examples, I think you've got the most important stuff with the Hearthian dialogue! That being said, there is indeed more under the cut here and there, if only lore/dev notes hidden in the Nomai files for the most part.

Some off the top of my head:

An intriguing dev note mentioning the possibility that there would be a " "time" indicating the module is no longer receiving the probe's signal" in the construction yard. Unclear whether this would be something that happens every loop (similar to how the sun station warp tower becomes offline after the sun station is engulfed in the sun) or something that would have been specific to the "time" during which the probe momentarily discovered the Eye and could have been "offline" or "missing" briefly while it was within the range of a certain DLC element -- I'm leaning towards the former due to this note being there from the very beginning.

My guess as for why this ended up not being added is that the Probe Tracking Module is missing and fully disconnected from the OPC -- therefore, it would likely be strange for the construction yard to still somehow have some connection with it, even if only up until the middle of the loop or so.

An interesting case of a ship log entry being cropped in the in-game version! While not commented out, the original text file's text is actually different from the one used by the "Translation" version (which is what is actually shown in-game). There are some other cases here and there, but this is the most important one off the top of my head -- that is to say, most are vastly insignificant.

The most other significant case is the one very old dialogue saying that ghost matter is impossibly cold, but that one has been patched out years ago.

Original text file version:

Actual in-game version:

An older version of the dialogue that followed the discovery of the Eye of the universe (essentially the same thing, but just in case):

With an actually readable transcript here (including the color code):

FILIX: I’m recording now - I’ve never seen anything like this! ESCALL: This is our first contact with anything of this nature. The signal the Vessel is receiving appears to be older than the universe itself. FILIX: Shouldn’t we [tell someone where we’re going] first? ESCALL: No, this signal will likely disappear as quickly as it appeared to us. We can send another message upon our arrival. FILIX: I understand! I’ll do that. ESCALL: Annona, is the Vessel ready to warp to the signal’s approximate coordinates? Annona: The warp core is powered, but this will be a significant jump. Afterwards, we’ll need time to recharge the core. ESCALL: That shouldn’t create a problem, provided we arrive at or near the signal’s source. Prepare to warp!

About the ghost matter bit, here's the whole thing I gathered while we're at it:

The section at the top is the original file, which never contained any mention about ghost matter being "impossibly cold" (and therefore made me lose my mind back in my early datamining days where I had screenshots proving that this line existed, but couldn't find it in its dedicated text file in any version of the game). The bottom section is from the "English translation" file (a single behemoth text file that compiles the entirety of the game in no logical order and was the bane of my existence while merging and compiling the versions lol). This English translation did use to contain the "impossibly cold" line in the older versions of the game, but it was then changed in patch 1.0.7 to fit what the original file mentioned.

I have, as of today, ZERO CLUE why the "English translation" file could sometimes be different from the original text files, especially to such extent (again, 99% of the time the two versions are thankfully identical, but that still makes those rare exceptions stand out all the more). Or also why there would be a need for an "English translation" to begin with, but I suppose that part comes from the game being multilingual from the start, so English is just treated like the other languages despite being the (mostly) "original" version.

Alex Beachum described ghost matter as an "exotic particle that clearly interacts very poorly with lifeforms" -- so if I'm taking it literally, my particle physics hobbyist brain is going to think of stuff like strange matter and whatnot (or on the larger scale of biochemistry, maybe just radicals of any kind tbh). That being said, I have yet to find any real world counterpart to ghost matter that would be remotely close in its properties (for the strange matter example, the presence of ghost matter in the midst of a perfectly normal environment completely goes against the propagation hypothesis), especially in terms of being "negated" by water on top of all its other properties. That being said, I am fully aware and supportive of the fact that the world of OW just has vastly different laws of physics, including stuff like the fact that gases like Hearthian oxygen can form stable pockets of breathable air that won't be swept away by (proven to exist due to the Stranger's solar sails) solar wind, so... anything's possible in regards to how ghost matter really works, at the end of the day xD

Here are a few more official details about ghost matter if you want to narrow your brain's interpretations of it with more canon info!

So, I'm not sure how many people are interested in this type of thing, but a little while ago I found out that there's actually quite a bit of fun unused dialogue in Outer Wilds (and I personally love that stuff). So if you're in the same boat, hi! I've done my best to compile nearly all dialogue from the game files that's gone unused in the final game (not including very minor changes or stuff that I don't think means anything to anyone).

(rest under the cut because this post is very long)

With that out of the way, great summarizing overall! It sure isn't easy to read without the XML syntax colors, I'll give you that 😅 But in case you hadn't noticed, the best way to tell if a piece of dialogue is unused (aside from "it's in the file called "@UnusedTranslations.xml") is that it's in-between "<!--" and "-- >" sections. That means it's commented out text! In other words, the human eye can see it, but not the game, therefore it's never used ;;)

As for other examples, I think you've got the most important stuff with the Hearthian dialogue! That being said, there is indeed more under the cut here and there, if only lore/dev notes hidden in the Nomai files for the most part.

Some off the top of my head:

An intriguing dev note mentioning the possibility that there would be a " "time" indicating the module is no longer receiving the probe's signal" in the construction yard. Unclear whether this would be something that happens every loop (similar to how the sun station warp tower becomes offline after the sun station is engulfed in the sun) or something that would have been specific to the "time" during which the probe momentarily discovered the Eye and could have been "offline" or "missing" briefly while it was within the range of a certain DLC element -- I'm leaning towards the former due to this note being there from the very beginning.

My guess as for why this ended up not being added is that the Probe Tracking Module is missing and fully disconnected from the OPC -- therefore, it would likely be strange for the construction yard to still somehow have some connection with it, even if only up until the middle of the loop or so.

An interesting case of a ship log entry being cropped in the in-game version! While not commented out, the original text file's text is actually different from the one used by the "Translation" version (which is what is actually shown in-game). There are some other cases here and there, but this is the most important one off the top of my head -- that is to say, most are vastly insignificant.

The most other significant case is the one very old dialogue saying that ghost matter is impossibly cold, but that one has been patched out years ago.

Original text file version:

Actual in-game version:

An older version of the dialogue that followed the discovery of the Eye of the universe (essentially the same thing, but just in case):

With an actually readable transcript here (including the color code):

FILIX: I’m recording now - I’ve never seen anything like this! ESCALL: This is our first contact with anything of this nature. The signal the Vessel is receiving appears to be older than the universe itself. FILIX: Shouldn’t we [tell someone where we’re going] first? ESCALL: No, this signal will likely disappear as quickly as it appeared to us. We can send another message upon our arrival. FILIX: I understand! I’ll do that. ESCALL: Annona, is the Vessel ready to warp to the signal’s approximate coordinates? Annona: The warp core is powered, but this will be a significant jump. Afterwards, we’ll need time to recharge the core. ESCALL: That shouldn’t create a problem, provided we arrive at or near the signal’s source. Prepare to warp!

ref thing of all the canon hearthian face patterns and colors and such. picked colors are very vague but its fun to see who matches patterns with who! and eye colors oooo. done mostly for my own interests but u all bullied me to post lol (thank you)

Thanks so much for your fun question, anon! Apologies that it’s taken the team a little while to respond! 

The short answer is, yes! Ice is the crystalline, or solid, form of water - it’s naturally occurring, inorganic, has a definite chemical composition (H₂O), and has a defined and organised crystal structure (as seen below) - so by all accounts, a block of ice is what we would call a mono-mineralic rock!

Fig. 1: Crystalline structure of ice, or solid water. Doesn’t that structure look familiar? There’s a reason that snowflakes look the way they do, and that’s because of that beautifully organised crystalline structure!

You are absolutely correct in that glacial ice meets all the requirements to be classed as a metamorphic rock, too! 

But, why?

Well, we won’t divulge too much as we’ll be talking about the different rock types in our next big post - but for the purpose of this ask we’ll do a quick crash course in sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.

Let’s start with sedimentary basics. When talking seds one of the best ways to imagine your rock is like a layer cake. Let’s say you’re making a chocolate and vanilla layer cake. Your chocolate batter represents mud, and your vanilla batter is sand - they each have a different colour and texture. You lay your muds down first, then your sands. You can keep doing this again and again if you wish, until you have lots of layers. Then, you bake! The baking represents the many millions of years it takes for these sediments to solidify into a solid rock (although you technically don’t need heat for real rocks). Do note that in reality it’s not quite as simple as this, there are many things that affect ways that rocks solidify!

Now imagine just a plain old chocolate cake. No frosting or filling. Just chocolate sponge. We layer up the chocolate sponge and bake. Boom, we have a whole unit of just mudstone.

The origins of glaciers are exactly the same, except your mudstone is snow! Lots and lots of snowflakes that have built up over time.

Okay, but what about the metamorphism? Metamorphic rocks start out pre-baked, if we’re using our cake analogy, so we already have our snow layers. Metamorphism of rock occurs either due to heat or pressure - or both. We don’t have heat when it comes to ice, but we do have pressure! Lots of pressure, actually - caused by the weight of all that snow piling up and up. As the weight increases, the ice at the bottom gets squashed which causes the crystals to change shape or recrystallise into ice. 

Now think back to our cake. If we kept layering up layers and layers of baked cake, eventually the bottom layer would get squashed, altering the texture and making it really dense. The same thing is happening here! Turning soft snow into hard ice. And then this keeps happening, compressing the ice even more to form glacial ice! Also cool to note that the “texture” of normal ice under the microscope is very different to that of glacial ice!

Fig. 2: Diagram showing how glacial ice is formed. Note the different texture and size of the "crystals" between the fine-grained and coarse-grained ice! Original image from Let's Talk Science.

This recrystallisation is a really key part of metamorphism in rocks, too, with metamorphic textures being one of the main diagnostic features that geologists use to categorise different types of metamorphic rocks - limestone to marble, for example!

Fig. 3: Petrographic slide images showing limestone (left) and marble (right) showing the recrystallisation effects of metamorphism. Note how different the shapes are! Marble and limestone are made of the same building blocks (CaCO₃), but have different properties because of this! Original images from Alex Strekeisen's incredible website for all things optical petrography.

Now you can be a cool geologist at parties and let folks know the ice in their drink is technically a rock! 

(DekkiiDan does this. Merrydock does this. So does Mohs. We are cool.)

Anyway, hope that answers your question! It was a really fun one, hehe!

i love the model rocket (shoutout to xen-42’s mod that puts an fpv camera on it). its so much. how much they love what they do to be making functional space ships at an age around moraine (in my head this is less than hatchling and hal but more than tephra galena). how capable they already are, probably better at fixing ships up than any of the astronauts. a little about how close they are with slate.

it’s so interesting to me to think of another mini slate, someone who loves the rockets and science of it all without actually wanting to go to space. they make it sound like they’re super super excited to see your launch, but only for the launch itself, and not because you’re going into space. not that they wouldn’t be interested, of course, there must be some interest there to motivate making the rocket instead of working on other kinds of machines. theyre the clearest “next in line” out of any of the hearthians.

i bet they’d be a dangerous prankster. like one to elevate the game. they’re young, able, and capable, with none of slate’s prank wisdom that comes from decades of yanking people’s chains. rutile is worried about all the fires that owv starts, but they aren’t worried enough about all of the windows mica’s going to break. i don’t think they’d be a wild child, nothing seems to imply that, but boy would they be influenced by slate. in fact, i bet slate would egg them on to do the (safer) pranks. i bet they bounce ideas off of each other in a mentor-mentee way.

I've been staring at their models in the past few days for my art. The more I look at them the more details I discover haha. (Here is the link to the refs I've been looking at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18Me-eKLK8WZiByvGE6UCo1D4PwmCZfCi?usp=share_link) Some things I've noticed:

Based on Esker's ear floppiness, they're actually much closer to the other Founders' ages than to Gneiss, Spinel, or Tektite's ages.

Hearthian eyes are really colorful :0. I thought Esker had pink eyes, they actually have PURPLE eyes (maybe Arkose as well, but it's hard to tell because their eyes are almost all pupil and no sclera). Moraine's eyes are orange, Hatchling's eyes are orange-yellow, Hal's eyes are yellow skewed towards green, Porphy and Gneiss both have pink eyes, but Porphy's eyes are a lighter pink than Gneiss's, Marl and Rutile's eyes are green, and Tuff's eyes are blue. Most hearthian eyes are yellow, but even then the shade of yellow varies.

(this is based on a height chart, i couldn't actually pull the models in a 3d program to view so idk how accurate this is) Esker is WAY shorter than I thought, literally the same height as the Hatchling

Speaking of height, Hornfels is the tallest Hearthian, followed by Slate, then Riebeck. Hornfels and Slate are over a head taller than the Hatchling, almost 2 heads taller than Gossan and Feldspar.

While Solanum is very tall compared to most Hearthians, she is about half a head shorter than Hornfels and Slate. The Prisoner, if we measure all the way to the tip of their antlers, is twice the height of the Hatchling. Even without the antlers, they are about 75% taller than the Hatchling. They are so big :0

All of the Hearthians wear leather boots. The only two exceptions are Mica, who wears what looks like sideways geta sandals, and the Hatchling, who wears SOCKS (WHY??? THE VILLAGE IS BUILT AROUND A GEYSER, HAS A WATERFALL, AND MULTIPLE SMALL CREEKS. THE GROUND IS GOING TO BE MUDDY AS HELL). The Hatchling does wear boots when in their space suit though.

The Hatchling is the only traveler that doesn't have an Outer Wilds patch sewn on their space suit (which makes me sad :( maybe it's because they're supposed to get their patch once they complete their first solo flight? they'll never have a chance to earn their patch....). Esker also doesn't have one, but it's likely because we never see them in their space suit.

Proportion-wise, Hearthians are generally top-heavy. While the exact proportion varies (ex: Hornfels and Slate have almost perfect 50-50 upper-lower body ratios while Riebeck's legs are only half the length of their torso), Hearthian legs are usually about the same length as their torso.

Because Hearthians are top-heavy, their arms are also longer than ours. Their hands fall right below the crotch (just like in humans). Their hands are also really big. Human hands are approximately the size of our faces (from chin to eyebrow) while Hearthian hands are the size of their entire skull.

The third finger of Hearthian hands is thicker than the other two fingers, and all of their fingers are thicker than our fingers. It makes it easy to draw because we can use our own hands as reference without having to squish the bones in our palms to match Hearthian hands haha

I'm sure most of us have noticed that Hearthians have unique patterning. Common patterns include spots and leopard spots. Gossan is unique in that their spots form stripes. The color and density of the spots varies as well. Most of the Hearthians tend to have spots along the sides of their skull, their upper face and ears, and the sides of their neck. Hornfels has almost no spots, just some spotting along their eyes, ears, and neck. Spinel has spots that resemble freckles that cover their entire face, ears, and forehead, but has almost no spots on their skull. Gossan is again unique in their patterning as their spots are along the front of the skull and back of their neck.

Every single Hearthian has a unique eye, mouth, and skull shape, which is an insane detail to add from an art direction perspective. Every Hearthian is already distinguishable from more obvious design choices, like height and clothes, so unique face shapes are entirely unnecessary, especially since most players will probably never talk to the other Hearthians more than once, much less remember what they look like beyond the travelers. Some Hearthians have narrow jaws while others have squarer jaws. Some Hearthians have droopy eyes while others are doe-eyed. Some Hearthians have an upward tilt to their lips while others have a downwards tilt. Some Hearthians have a long oval face while others have a square face. Some Hearthians have resting bitch face while others have an easy smile. This are details that only insane people who stare at the Hearthian models for hours find *coughs*

Like there's some obvious differences that can be explained away by time, like Gossan's eye, the clothes they're wearing, their ear droop, etc, and other differences like their relative height can be explained away by artistic liberty and composition.

But Gossan doesn't look like that?? Their nose is too low on their face (it should be between their lower eyes), their torso is too broad, and their scale patterning is completely wrong (it should be stripes).

I highly doubt that adult Hearthians can somehow lose 6 inches of shoulder width, completely rearrange their facial structure, and completely change scale pattern by growing old.

(The shoulder thing is actually a thing I noticed with all the Hearthians. The width of adult human shoulders are usually about two horizontal human heads while adult Hearthian shoulders are only about one horizontal Hearthian head. It is also a major difference between the Founders photo and actual Founders' models.)

I somewhat vaguely "disagree" with some of your interpretations when they involve colors, but this is because Repcon's artist refs are extremely dark and desaturated, which will skew a bit what colors mean in a vaccuum (on top of making it hard to see their eye color specifically, but so does the game in that regard). What I use as reference for color charts are rather each Hearthian's texture files (which Repcon also shares in that same drive, just in the Textures (dump) folder and they're hidden within all the other textures of the game – look for the "Villager_HEA_*" PNG files). They are admittedly too bright and saturated compared to what we see in-game, but they make it clearer that each Hearthian's spot pattern and color, skin and eye colors are less 100% unique and more different combinations of a specific pool of possibilities. For example, Porphy (duller) and Gneiss' (redder) here show that their eyes actually are more red than pink:

You are correct on Esker's and Arkose's eyes being purple rather than pink though!

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Height charts are tough, and I'm very sorry to pull the "Your honor, the defense's autopsy report is outdated" on you 😭 I've datamined the game on version 1.1.14 and tried looking at the 3D models myself, but the scale of models is inconsistent (as in 10x bigger or smaller than other Hearthians for no known reason, so it's difficult to really trust whether manually adding or removing zeroes is good enough), so you will see a couple different height charts out there. The latest one that I believe people consider the most accurate to this day is this one (made by Repcon as well in assistance with Pikpik and Tashizuma) — as in, it's accurate for everybody except Galena and Tephra, who are too tall here for some reason (they should be around the same height as Mica, Moraine and Arkose):

In that one, I'm so sorry to tell you that Hornfels lost like uh. a lot of centimeters T_T Slate's still tallest, with Marl and Porphy coming right after.

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About the uniqueness of the characters' skin and spot patterns: Hal and the protagonist have the exact same skin color, Slate and the protagonist the exact same eye color, and the more complex spot patterns such as Hal's or Marl's are kinda sorta copy/pasted on different Hearthians, just using different skin and spot colors. So everyone is still unique, but I just wanted to specify that they're not as unique as if everyone's textures had been completely repainted from scratch independently.

The characters' 3D models definitely are tweaked in 100% unique ways though!! Not enough to cure the same face syndrome impression to me (they still need to fit the limited number of rigs), but definitely enough to give guidelines for interpretation. The next image is a sketch of mine rather than anything datamined/calculated by modders, but it was an attempt to look at each character's face as seen in Repcon's Artist Reference images, and enhance the tweaks in the face that makes each of them unique:

I initially wanted to wait until after I'd had the time to give them colors and spot patterns, but oh well, I'll post that again in its own post once that is done. In the meantime, have fun guessing who's who! (I repaired Gossan's eye on purpose in order not to make it too easy to find them :P)

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Founders of the Outer Wilds Geological Survey Mohs & Lari

Outer Wilds hosts a story like no other; one that spans eons and is pieced together across planets. However, you may not have noticed the subtler story beneath the one we know and love - the one told through the rocks that paint the world. What rocks occur where, their shapes, colouration, and orientation, can all give an indication to a broader geological history.

Here, we aim to survey the Outer Wilds and explore what the rocks say about mineralogy, volcanic activity, major historical and geological events, and even planetary formation! From the geyser mountains of Timber Hearth, to the labyrinthine caves of Ember Twin, to the floating islands of Giant's Deep - We plan on exploring all major sites of interest and come up with our best explanations of the geology and what it means for the history of the Outer Wilds solar system.

Investigating a collapsed in cave on Ember Twin; The Grove Shard, on Timber Hearth

This blog is run by @merrydock and @dekkiidan. We are both huge fans of geology (huge enough to have studied it and have professional experience in this field!). We just couldn't help but read the rocks of Outer Wilds to see what we could learn, and we hope to share our notes with all of you to inspire you to take a better look at the geology that surrounds you, too!