I recently played Outer Wilds and absolutely loved it. But after playing it I realised how little of the game was really on the critical path – most locations fill in lore and deepen your curiosity but don’t actually help you reach any location you couldn’t before. To analyse this, I made a mission graph for the game. Spoilers ahead.

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By my calculation, less than half the locations give you a hint that is necessary to find something else. It’s a bit imperfect as there are often ways to skip things, and there are multiple places to get some hints.

Dark Bramble and Brittle Hollow have fewer hints than Ember Twin, but they are also slower to navigate so you’ll have to spend quite a bit of time there. But what’s more surprising is how few entries for Timber Hearth (0) and Giant’s Deep (2) there are. I expect this is because as the starting planet and the planet immediately in front of you, the developers knew you’d explore them anyway.