You could always have her ‘guide’ you, ask her what she wants to do, where she wants to go, act as if you’re presenting the game to her but ask her what she thinks is going on, etc.
That’s just my idea, I hope you find something!
Not a bad idea. Maybe ask what planet to go to and just meander around in the sorta-ish right direction until she says something. When it comes to the tools like signal scope I’ll probably just use it and kinda explain it so she gets the idea!
I’d say go around timber hearth a lot, depending on how active she wants to be have her read what all the hearthians say, it’s the best way to teach her about the space ship, signal scope, and the whole deal about the time loop
And yeah dude, 100% push her close to the right choice or ‘stumble’ upon really cool things for her to see
This is what I did for my wife and it worked quite well :D just pay attention that you don't rush things - I kind of assumes she understood the ash twin puzzle a bit too early and she got ash twin spoilered because of that.
That is pretty much how my friend introduced me to the game. I have bought it since then, but still haven't technically played it myself. Absolutely work the price.
A compromise: she plays the game primarily, but she can pass off control to you if she's struggling with something in particular. Include a caveat that sometimes struggling in this game is a sign you need to search on a different planet for the answer to your problem, so there may be times you'd suggest exploring elsewhere rather than taking control. I had this kind of arrangement with my boyfriend when I was a beginner at gaming (though not for Outer Wilds) and it worked for us.
+1 for this idea! I also played OW as a relatively new gamer with the guy I was dating at the time. I generally was at the controls, but I could hand it off to him if there was something that I was mechanically struggling with (like, I couldn’t fly the spaceship well enough to land in a particular spot). He gave me hints by asking me questions, like ‘where else have you seen something like that’ or ‘ok so what’s your hypothesis for how this works, and how might you test that’ or ‘no, you don’t just have to die in this cave, think about how you could get out’.
We broke up midway through my playthrough but by that point I was hooked and I finished it myself. So can confirm this approach works!
I'm actually doing this right now
Mostly she decides specific place we are exploring (like go to the Sunless City)
Sometimes I remind her what clues are still open
I try to minimize tedious things - for example after one failed landing on the sun station I told her there is another way to get there
My husband was the same - he wanted me to play it, but i get motion sick playing certain types of 1st person games and didn't want to have a bad experience playing a game he loves...
In the end, i basically back-seated the whole thing. Go here, look at that, what's that over there? If i got stuck, we'd review the rumour log together and he'd ask me what i thought was happening and what I needed to find out about. I think the only thing he needed to nudge me towards was navigating Dark Bramble and finding the points on interest in there- "it's a puzzle game. What is the puzzle, and what tools do you have to solve it?"
It really helped that I fell in love with the story. Really got invested in it and cried like a bitch at the ending. A+, best game I technically never played.
And then we did the DLC in the same way (I needed to much more prompting/ reviewing with that - the puzzles were trickier imo)
I love this and the way you did it.
Just picturing my GF figuring it out, as it took me waaaay too long to figure out: >!You see that, babe? The anglerfish are blind. THEY. ARE. BLIND.”!<
I played this game with my wife. She didn't like the ship controls, so she asked me exactly the same question. I played the game for her but i was strictly "hands", he guided me through every step for almost whole game. I only gave her few hits once or twice when she felt completely stuck and couldn't figure out, where to go. So yeah, it's pretty doable)
I'm kind of doing something similar with my boyfriend-- he's got some difficulties with fine motor control, and so precision maneuvers are really difficult for him. He's going to be on his controls, but at any point he can ask for help and direct me somewhere that's really difficult to maneuver. I want to respect your girlfriend's desire not to play firsthand, but I wonder if there's a reason why she doesn't want to that could be addressed? If she's worried about the controls being too difficult a solution like the one my boyfriend and I have might work. In your position, I'd ask her if there's a particular reason she'd prefer to watch you do it, since the game is really best experienced firsthand. Is she self-conscious of her skills as a gamer in front of you? is she worried about missing things? is she worried about not remembering things? If there's something that can be done to get her comfortable being in the driver's seat, I'd want to do that, but otherwise I think you've got some other good advice in the comments.
This game is the most casual you can get. She just needs to play it herself. Instead of her watching you, you watch and she plays. If the only way she's willing to interact with the game is if she watches you play, then odds are she's not really that interested. Play something else with her.
I would have to disagree. The open-ness of it can be daunting if you are unfamiliar with video game logic, and the 3D controls of the ship (and zero G) are not the easiest to manage. So hardly casual in that way.
I think the open-ness is quite unique and therefore not having played many other games won't make a difference. A lot of other games hand-hold you through the plot and puzzles. OW is completely about your own drive for discovery.
The ship controls are a little fiddly but you would get used to them and if not perhaps that's where OP can take over. Then, once they've landed, OP's gf can walk around the planets.
I'd still vote for encouraging her to play herself.
Fair points! It may not even be an issue for her. But my point is that even though I think it is an amazing game, it might not suit everyone and can be confusing and a bit fiddly at times.
Feel free to disagree but, that's absolutely wrong. The type of player you're describing is someone who is a complete beginner to playing video games, not a casual player. A casual is familiar with video game logic. The controls are irrelevant as any game with similar ship controls(no man's sky: also a casual game), you have to get used to them but there isn't learning gap or a skill wall. The game even eased into it with the starting area. If you're playing on PC then for any game you play you'll have a longer time getting used to the controls especially if you don't usually play games on keyboard and mouse. That's something that's going to be true no matter casual or competitive/hardcore gamer.
Look at how the game was marketed. It doesn't have dark souls or Elden Ring level difficulty. Watch a game trailer and that will tell you this game is as casual as it gets.
For reference some other casual games:
- Spiderman 2
- Minecraft
- Firewatch
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Control
- No Man's Sky
You clearly don't know what a casual game is.
Right back at you. Are you seriously trying to say that anything easier than Dark Souls or Elden Ring is a "casual" game? There is no clear definition of what a "casual" game is. OP described their partner as "super-casual gamer", which I would interpret as someone with very limited experience of any video games at all. Now is OW a lot more casual than Dark Souls? Absolutely. But I would still say that something like Animal Crossing or Mario Kart is better described as "as casual it gets". OW is very open and more casual than many games, but my point is that it does not fit everyone. There are gamers who get confused or bored with such open games with no clear objectives. (Of course for others it is the main selling point)
Implying that something like Firewatch and Control is even remotely in the same category of difficulty for someone relatively new to games is just factually wrong.
It is pretty clear that we will just have to agree to disagree on this.
Wrong on several fronts. First of all Mario Kart can be debated on whether or not that's a casual game as there are players that take it very seriously. I'd say it was designed to be casual. Also obviously when I said as casual as it gets that's hyperbole. Regardless this is a casual game. For sure more casual and easier to pick up than some of the other casual games I've mentioned. OP said super casual, not new to games. Wrong to assume super casual means they don't understand game logic or can't pick up on the game's mechanics. Firewatch and Control are both casual games, it's irrelevant to this discussion how hard they are for people new to video games, nor did I imply anything like you are suggesting.
Clearly you have the wrong idea about what a casual game is. Especially since you can only refer to games in degrees of casualness. The games I've listed are casual games that's not up for debate, OW is a casual game, that's not up for debate either.
Anyways, continue to be incorrect.
Ladies ladies, we don't have to back and forth. Everyone has their own opinions, I personally found Outer Wilds's Control scheme very easy to adapt to, but then again I also found Dark Souls unbearable easy. Everyone has their own perspectives on things, there is no 100% objectivity when it comes to difficulty and casualness, so you're both wrong, and you're both right.
Maybe you can recommend watching someone else play it and watch it together. I have the game but never managed to get into it and so I watched SovietWomble play it instead.
Every night before bed an hour or two, it was incredibly cozy and Womble is probably the best to watch playing that game, he's incredibly smart but hilarious to see stuck in dumb situations haha
I did this with my wife because I suck at both flying and platforming, so I was getting really frustrated on my own. I just directed her where I wanted her to go and what I wanted her to check out. As long as you're careful to let her be in charge, it can work really well. Not on the same granularity as "walk over there, turn right" but more like "Go read that text" or "let's check out this location next" or "let's go read the ship's log". With the signalscope I had already gotten the three wavelengths on my own, so I was able to say "look for this signal in this direction", but that may need a bit more prodding on your end if she has no control herself.
There are probably many reasonably edited play through videos on YouTube she could just watch.
My wife did this in a similar scenario after I’d finished last of us 2.
I recently did It with my girlfriend... It went extremely well! A very special experience for both of us...even although Ive completed the game in the past.
I just acted like I knew nothing, and let she make her own assumptions (right or mistaken) and choose the path to follow.
my husband and I played together. the game was new for both of us, so it's not the exact same situation, but maybe some of our experience can help you:
- I was awful piloting, so we pass the control back and forth the whole time. I'd wander around places, but he was the main pilot, with us deciding together what made more sense to do next.
- I love reading text from games out loud. I think it's really engaging when playing together.
- OW has a lot of text, with so many characters. maybe she will love to engage with the story and can keep notes about the storylines. playing together is a great way to dig deeper in the stories, since when we are alone we rarely drop the control to take notes.
- discuss everything. check the logs, read out loud, and let her make the connections. and please let her make the wrong assumptions. she needs to go through all the heartbreaks from this game.
be curious in your journey together <3
A bit different but still kinda similar here. Had a great time actually.
For a bit of context, my gf had played (worked on) the game.
I played Echoes of the Eyes when it came out and she watched me play it but kept falling asleep and had a hard time following. It's only then I realized that although she knew several puzzle solutions, she wasn't familiar with the story at all. She knew the ending sequence but had no idea what led to it. I know, unfortunate.
I didn't go back to the DLC until a couple years later and my memory of the main game started feeling a bit fuzzy. I offered her to start over from scratch together and this time around we completed the main game and DLC and she was much more invested the whole time. Here's what I did.
I played and she watched. She just prefers that even though she is good at video games.
I talked to everyone and read everything. Out loud, to her. I didn't skim through any of the text, didn't skip through anything. I read everything with intent and added to it on my own.
Since I knew the story fairly well but forgot some parts, I was just kind of reconstructing it out loud and not only did it make it way more comprehensible for her (she has a hard time putting things together on her own), it really challenged my own understanding of everything in the game.
I'd read a text and then I'd recap with what we know so far and what we don't know yet. It honestly made the whole game so interesting and exciting. I don't usually think that hard about every piece of dialogue when I play on my own lol.
Every loop, I would go back to the log and present her with the "trails" we had and ask her which one seemed more interesting. She has a really hard time figuring out where to go in games so giving her options and reasons really made it easier for her. We'd pick a planet and location that seemed like it would have interesting information then go there and look for it.
We did that the whole game and whenever she'd ask questions we would have conversations about all the clues we collected. Why didn't the ATP go off before we got here, how did the probe work, how does the ATP work, stuff like that. And it sparked interesting conversations and she could sometimes remember clues I had forgotten so she was able to correct me on some stuff I thought I had figured out. I didn't quite know how the nomai died (and how our species was born) my first playthrough, for instance.
We played the DLC after that and both of us had a much better experience and it really tied everything together, especially with the ending that recaps all the events in order (the timeline with the nomai, the people of the stranger and your species can be a bit confusing at first).
I was very satisfied with the way we went about this. Kind of a narrated playthrough but having her participate more on the "piecing stuff together" part of things and often recapping everything from the beginning based on what we knew at the time. It was a great way to re experience the game through her and it got me excited the whole playthrough lol
Hope this helps.
I played with my mom(her favourite game now). And once again with my best friend.
Of course I had already finished 100% the game. So I'd just be there in case they were REALLLY lost, or if they needed help piloting.
I'd help them make sense of the information they gathered but I would never spoil them or tell them where to go.
It's extremely entertaining to experience the game once again but through someone else. They had a totally different reasoning than I had during my playthrough. I'd sometimes would show them some Easter eggs (like the smiley scroll on Brittle Hollow, the underwater Geysers on Timber Hearth, Gabbro's poems, the Stranger's artifact, the Fabric of Spacetime ending, the twin paradox, etc...)
I would make sure their experience was as enjoyable as possible, and I would assume the role of "Quality of Life" manager, such as making sure they unlock meditation early.
I would insist on some key aspects of the story, such as "Pay attention to that scroll by the way, it's important" when reading Solanum's lore for example, but never telling them why.
She's the captain, you're the driver. I tried it with my wife for a while and it worked but then she didn't continue to be curious. But it was a working model and fun, a shared memory.
kinda sorta did this with my 15 year old after completing base game on my own. they knew a little about the game from watching me go through dark bramble (shivers). the way we did it was I sat with them and just let them do their thing. if they had any questions, I encouraged them to use what they'd learned so far and provided the least spoilery hints possible, and ONLY answered a question if absolutely necessary. then the funnest part came when they played the DLC (I had no knowledge of the story or gameplay) and I watched. we got to unravel the mystery and sh*t ourselves together 😅. I think your girlfriend will enjoy it if you "play" it for her but let her guide you. update us please!
I got super lucky and a friend wanted to play it, and another wanted to watch. Both first timers. So they were working it out together.
As for your girlfriend? Yeah, ask her where you should go. Encourage her to think and discuss out out. Keep her engaged.
I’ve done this exact thing a few times with different people. Having her guide you is the easy part, the hard part is not falling into habits and quicker routes that you already know
You could always have her ‘guide’ you, ask her what she wants to do, where she wants to go, act as if you’re presenting the game to her but ask her what she thinks is going on, etc. That’s just my idea, I hope you find something!
Not a bad idea. Maybe ask what planet to go to and just meander around in the sorta-ish right direction until she says something. When it comes to the tools like signal scope I’ll probably just use it and kinda explain it so she gets the idea!
I’d say go around timber hearth a lot, depending on how active she wants to be have her read what all the hearthians say, it’s the best way to teach her about the space ship, signal scope, and the whole deal about the time loop And yeah dude, 100% push her close to the right choice or ‘stumble’ upon really cool things for her to see
Yup! And it just occurred to me that we need to TALK about the inscriptions we read. And check the ship log constantly.
Please share the results afterwards
This is what I did for my wife and it worked quite well :D just pay attention that you don't rush things - I kind of assumes she understood the ash twin puzzle a bit too early and she got ash twin spoilered because of that.
Yeah, in that way, she is really playing the game, but you are doing the movement mechanics.
That is pretty much how my friend introduced me to the game. I have bought it since then, but still haven't technically played it myself. Absolutely work the price.
A compromise: she plays the game primarily, but she can pass off control to you if she's struggling with something in particular. Include a caveat that sometimes struggling in this game is a sign you need to search on a different planet for the answer to your problem, so there may be times you'd suggest exploring elsewhere rather than taking control. I had this kind of arrangement with my boyfriend when I was a beginner at gaming (though not for Outer Wilds) and it worked for us.
+1 for this idea! I also played OW as a relatively new gamer with the guy I was dating at the time. I generally was at the controls, but I could hand it off to him if there was something that I was mechanically struggling with (like, I couldn’t fly the spaceship well enough to land in a particular spot). He gave me hints by asking me questions, like ‘where else have you seen something like that’ or ‘ok so what’s your hypothesis for how this works, and how might you test that’ or ‘no, you don’t just have to die in this cave, think about how you could get out’. We broke up midway through my playthrough but by that point I was hooked and I finished it myself. So can confirm this approach works!
I'm actually doing this right now Mostly she decides specific place we are exploring (like go to the Sunless City) Sometimes I remind her what clues are still open I try to minimize tedious things - for example after one failed landing on the sun station I told her there is another way to get there
My husband was the same - he wanted me to play it, but i get motion sick playing certain types of 1st person games and didn't want to have a bad experience playing a game he loves... In the end, i basically back-seated the whole thing. Go here, look at that, what's that over there? If i got stuck, we'd review the rumour log together and he'd ask me what i thought was happening and what I needed to find out about. I think the only thing he needed to nudge me towards was navigating Dark Bramble and finding the points on interest in there- "it's a puzzle game. What is the puzzle, and what tools do you have to solve it?" It really helped that I fell in love with the story. Really got invested in it and cried like a bitch at the ending. A+, best game I technically never played. And then we did the DLC in the same way (I needed to much more prompting/ reviewing with that - the puzzles were trickier imo)
I love this and the way you did it. Just picturing my GF figuring it out, as it took me waaaay too long to figure out: >!You see that, babe? The anglerfish are blind. THEY. ARE. BLIND.”!<
I played this game with my wife. She didn't like the ship controls, so she asked me exactly the same question. I played the game for her but i was strictly "hands", he guided me through every step for almost whole game. I only gave her few hits once or twice when she felt completely stuck and couldn't figure out, where to go. So yeah, it's pretty doable)
I'm kind of doing something similar with my boyfriend-- he's got some difficulties with fine motor control, and so precision maneuvers are really difficult for him. He's going to be on his controls, but at any point he can ask for help and direct me somewhere that's really difficult to maneuver. I want to respect your girlfriend's desire not to play firsthand, but I wonder if there's a reason why she doesn't want to that could be addressed? If she's worried about the controls being too difficult a solution like the one my boyfriend and I have might work. In your position, I'd ask her if there's a particular reason she'd prefer to watch you do it, since the game is really best experienced firsthand. Is she self-conscious of her skills as a gamer in front of you? is she worried about missing things? is she worried about not remembering things? If there's something that can be done to get her comfortable being in the driver's seat, I'd want to do that, but otherwise I think you've got some other good advice in the comments.
This game is the most casual you can get. She just needs to play it herself. Instead of her watching you, you watch and she plays. If the only way she's willing to interact with the game is if she watches you play, then odds are she's not really that interested. Play something else with her.
I would have to disagree. The open-ness of it can be daunting if you are unfamiliar with video game logic, and the 3D controls of the ship (and zero G) are not the easiest to manage. So hardly casual in that way.
I think the open-ness is quite unique and therefore not having played many other games won't make a difference. A lot of other games hand-hold you through the plot and puzzles. OW is completely about your own drive for discovery. The ship controls are a little fiddly but you would get used to them and if not perhaps that's where OP can take over. Then, once they've landed, OP's gf can walk around the planets. I'd still vote for encouraging her to play herself.
Fair points! It may not even be an issue for her. But my point is that even though I think it is an amazing game, it might not suit everyone and can be confusing and a bit fiddly at times.
Ah okay fair enough, I can agree with you there!
Feel free to disagree but, that's absolutely wrong. The type of player you're describing is someone who is a complete beginner to playing video games, not a casual player. A casual is familiar with video game logic. The controls are irrelevant as any game with similar ship controls(no man's sky: also a casual game), you have to get used to them but there isn't learning gap or a skill wall. The game even eased into it with the starting area. If you're playing on PC then for any game you play you'll have a longer time getting used to the controls especially if you don't usually play games on keyboard and mouse. That's something that's going to be true no matter casual or competitive/hardcore gamer. Look at how the game was marketed. It doesn't have dark souls or Elden Ring level difficulty. Watch a game trailer and that will tell you this game is as casual as it gets. For reference some other casual games: - Spiderman 2 - Minecraft - Firewatch - Hogwarts Legacy - Control - No Man's Sky You clearly don't know what a casual game is.
Right back at you. Are you seriously trying to say that anything easier than Dark Souls or Elden Ring is a "casual" game? There is no clear definition of what a "casual" game is. OP described their partner as "super-casual gamer", which I would interpret as someone with very limited experience of any video games at all. Now is OW a lot more casual than Dark Souls? Absolutely. But I would still say that something like Animal Crossing or Mario Kart is better described as "as casual it gets". OW is very open and more casual than many games, but my point is that it does not fit everyone. There are gamers who get confused or bored with such open games with no clear objectives. (Of course for others it is the main selling point) Implying that something like Firewatch and Control is even remotely in the same category of difficulty for someone relatively new to games is just factually wrong. It is pretty clear that we will just have to agree to disagree on this.
Wrong on several fronts. First of all Mario Kart can be debated on whether or not that's a casual game as there are players that take it very seriously. I'd say it was designed to be casual. Also obviously when I said as casual as it gets that's hyperbole. Regardless this is a casual game. For sure more casual and easier to pick up than some of the other casual games I've mentioned. OP said super casual, not new to games. Wrong to assume super casual means they don't understand game logic or can't pick up on the game's mechanics. Firewatch and Control are both casual games, it's irrelevant to this discussion how hard they are for people new to video games, nor did I imply anything like you are suggesting. Clearly you have the wrong idea about what a casual game is. Especially since you can only refer to games in degrees of casualness. The games I've listed are casual games that's not up for debate, OW is a casual game, that's not up for debate either. Anyways, continue to be incorrect.
Ladies ladies, we don't have to back and forth. Everyone has their own opinions, I personally found Outer Wilds's Control scheme very easy to adapt to, but then again I also found Dark Souls unbearable easy. Everyone has their own perspectives on things, there is no 100% objectivity when it comes to difficulty and casualness, so you're both wrong, and you're both right.
Maybe you can recommend watching someone else play it and watch it together. I have the game but never managed to get into it and so I watched SovietWomble play it instead. Every night before bed an hour or two, it was incredibly cozy and Womble is probably the best to watch playing that game, he's incredibly smart but hilarious to see stuck in dumb situations haha
I did this with my wife because I suck at both flying and platforming, so I was getting really frustrated on my own. I just directed her where I wanted her to go and what I wanted her to check out. As long as you're careful to let her be in charge, it can work really well. Not on the same granularity as "walk over there, turn right" but more like "Go read that text" or "let's check out this location next" or "let's go read the ship's log". With the signalscope I had already gotten the three wavelengths on my own, so I was able to say "look for this signal in this direction", but that may need a bit more prodding on your end if she has no control herself.
There are probably many reasonably edited play through videos on YouTube she could just watch. My wife did this in a similar scenario after I’d finished last of us 2.
I recently did It with my girlfriend... It went extremely well! A very special experience for both of us...even although Ive completed the game in the past. I just acted like I knew nothing, and let she make her own assumptions (right or mistaken) and choose the path to follow.
my husband and I played together. the game was new for both of us, so it's not the exact same situation, but maybe some of our experience can help you: - I was awful piloting, so we pass the control back and forth the whole time. I'd wander around places, but he was the main pilot, with us deciding together what made more sense to do next. - I love reading text from games out loud. I think it's really engaging when playing together. - OW has a lot of text, with so many characters. maybe she will love to engage with the story and can keep notes about the storylines. playing together is a great way to dig deeper in the stories, since when we are alone we rarely drop the control to take notes. - discuss everything. check the logs, read out loud, and let her make the connections. and please let her make the wrong assumptions. she needs to go through all the heartbreaks from this game. be curious in your journey together <3
A bit different but still kinda similar here. Had a great time actually. For a bit of context, my gf had played (worked on) the game. I played Echoes of the Eyes when it came out and she watched me play it but kept falling asleep and had a hard time following. It's only then I realized that although she knew several puzzle solutions, she wasn't familiar with the story at all. She knew the ending sequence but had no idea what led to it. I know, unfortunate. I didn't go back to the DLC until a couple years later and my memory of the main game started feeling a bit fuzzy. I offered her to start over from scratch together and this time around we completed the main game and DLC and she was much more invested the whole time. Here's what I did. I played and she watched. She just prefers that even though she is good at video games. I talked to everyone and read everything. Out loud, to her. I didn't skim through any of the text, didn't skip through anything. I read everything with intent and added to it on my own. Since I knew the story fairly well but forgot some parts, I was just kind of reconstructing it out loud and not only did it make it way more comprehensible for her (she has a hard time putting things together on her own), it really challenged my own understanding of everything in the game. I'd read a text and then I'd recap with what we know so far and what we don't know yet. It honestly made the whole game so interesting and exciting. I don't usually think that hard about every piece of dialogue when I play on my own lol. Every loop, I would go back to the log and present her with the "trails" we had and ask her which one seemed more interesting. She has a really hard time figuring out where to go in games so giving her options and reasons really made it easier for her. We'd pick a planet and location that seemed like it would have interesting information then go there and look for it. We did that the whole game and whenever she'd ask questions we would have conversations about all the clues we collected. Why didn't the ATP go off before we got here, how did the probe work, how does the ATP work, stuff like that. And it sparked interesting conversations and she could sometimes remember clues I had forgotten so she was able to correct me on some stuff I thought I had figured out. I didn't quite know how the nomai died (and how our species was born) my first playthrough, for instance. We played the DLC after that and both of us had a much better experience and it really tied everything together, especially with the ending that recaps all the events in order (the timeline with the nomai, the people of the stranger and your species can be a bit confusing at first). I was very satisfied with the way we went about this. Kind of a narrated playthrough but having her participate more on the "piecing stuff together" part of things and often recapping everything from the beginning based on what we knew at the time. It was a great way to re experience the game through her and it got me excited the whole playthrough lol Hope this helps.
I played with my mom(her favourite game now). And once again with my best friend. Of course I had already finished 100% the game. So I'd just be there in case they were REALLLY lost, or if they needed help piloting. I'd help them make sense of the information they gathered but I would never spoil them or tell them where to go. It's extremely entertaining to experience the game once again but through someone else. They had a totally different reasoning than I had during my playthrough. I'd sometimes would show them some Easter eggs (like the smiley scroll on Brittle Hollow, the underwater Geysers on Timber Hearth, Gabbro's poems, the Stranger's artifact, the Fabric of Spacetime ending, the twin paradox, etc...) I would make sure their experience was as enjoyable as possible, and I would assume the role of "Quality of Life" manager, such as making sure they unlock meditation early. I would insist on some key aspects of the story, such as "Pay attention to that scroll by the way, it's important" when reading Solanum's lore for example, but never telling them why.
She's the captain, you're the driver. I tried it with my wife for a while and it worked but then she didn't continue to be curious. But it was a working model and fun, a shared memory.
kinda sorta did this with my 15 year old after completing base game on my own. they knew a little about the game from watching me go through dark bramble (shivers). the way we did it was I sat with them and just let them do their thing. if they had any questions, I encouraged them to use what they'd learned so far and provided the least spoilery hints possible, and ONLY answered a question if absolutely necessary. then the funnest part came when they played the DLC (I had no knowledge of the story or gameplay) and I watched. we got to unravel the mystery and sh*t ourselves together 😅. I think your girlfriend will enjoy it if you "play" it for her but let her guide you. update us please!
I got super lucky and a friend wanted to play it, and another wanted to watch. Both first timers. So they were working it out together. As for your girlfriend? Yeah, ask her where you should go. Encourage her to think and discuss out out. Keep her engaged.
I’ve done this exact thing a few times with different people. Having her guide you is the easy part, the hard part is not falling into habits and quicker routes that you already know
One guy was just on this sub like a week ago talking about doing the same thing with his dad.
Why do girlfriends never want to play by themselves? Same for mine, she got bored after minutes but enjoyed watching me playing.
My husband and I played it taking turns with each death. Worked out well. I was the one who found the game, but we really enjoyed playing it together.