Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

released on Sep 28, 2021

DLC for Outer Wilds

The Hearthian space program has detected an anomaly that canʼt be attributed to any known location in the solar system. Grab your flashlight and prepare to illuminate the darkest secrets of the Outer Wilds in it's first and only DLC, Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye.


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Reminded me of how good Outer Wilds is. Maybe not as mind blowing as the base game, but still a damn good experience.

le plus grand dlc que jai joué de ma vie

Like the base game, if you are even somewhat intrigued by Outer Wilds and/or its DLC, STOP READING and just buy it. I can almost guarantee you will love it. I would also recommend playing through the entire base game before purchasing/installing Echoes of the Eye. This DLC is clearly intended to be played near the end of your time with the base game, after you have learned about all the major plot points and uncovered nearly all of the mysteries. If you install the DLC, there is a chance you might accidentally stumble upon it before the devs intended.

Echoes of the Eye introduces a singular new major area in the solar system to explore, and it's genuinely mind blowing how cleverly designed the entire thing is. You could say the same about the base game, but consider the fact that the DLC took me about 12 hours to complete (compared to the base game's 22 hours) - that speaks volumes about the level of challenge and the content that is packed in here. The story is a wonderful expansion on the lore and progresses amazingly, capped off with an ending that is sure to tug at your heartstrings. As is the case with the ending of the base game, the ending of the DLC doesn't have a traditionally satisfying conclusion, but if you really give it some thought and time to ponder over, I think you'll find that it couldn't have been more fitting of a conclusion.

Now, I would be remiss to avoid addressing the 2 major elephants in the room about Echoes of the Eye. The game explicitly warns you about scary moments and gives you the option to tone them down if you wish. There is absolutely no shame in doing this. The scariness certainly enhanced the experience for me, but I also experimented with the "fewer frights" setting enabled and it really won't make that much of a difference to your overall enjoyment of the DLC.

The second elephant is a certain shift in gameplay that comes alongside these scarier moments. I know they frustrated me after a while, as they did with many players out there. I would simply suggest to you to think outside the box. I was shocked when I discovered from online guides the easy ways I could have simply bypassed the more difficult and frustrating parts. Just keep this general rule in mind: if you feel like you're banging your head against a wall and not making progress even when it feels like you should be able to, maybe you just need to explore elsewhere and do something else first.

I'll leave it at that, but don't be too ashamed if you need a guide or a hint to nudge you in the right direction. This is a challenging game at times, and the DLC only ramps up the challenge. Regardless of its arguable shortcomings, I still think Echoes of the Eye is mandatory to experience if you enjoyed Outer Wilds. Highly recommended.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better...

Echoes of the Eye tells a beautiful story and its first and last impressions are its strongest, but I felt a deep sense of disappointment throughout much of my playtime. While The Stranger is a breathtaking environment and its ring shape is an excellent tool to inform the player of what is hidden within its winding canyons, you will regularly find yourself railroaded from waking up to an all-out bum rush toward The Stranger to the nearest artifact you're aware of to the Secret World's nearest access point, which leaves the actual structure of the game feeling rote and repetitive in a way that the base game didn't.

The ideas on display, especially when it comes to the Secret World as a Matrix allegory (and, by extension, an allegory for Plato's Allegory of the Cave) and the ways that the inhabitants of The Stranger serve as a Yang to the Nomai's Yin, both in regards to the Eye and the Protagonist are fascinating and certainly warranted the time given to them by the DLC. Furthermore, the Protagonist's conversation with The Prisoner is a beautiful vindication for someone who gave up everything in an attempt to help those who would come next, and I once again found myself misty eyed at the end of the game.

I stumbled upon the secret chambers to enter the Secret World very early on, and quickly determined how to enter the matrix without seeing all of the exposition slides due to the lanterns held by the inhabitants, which threw my progression through the DLC into disarray. While such sequence breaks could occur in the base game, they necessarily didn't shunt you too far off the intended path due to the fact that every branch of the game generally narrows as it goes (perhaps with exception to Ember Twin) and ties back into the others, whereas the shape of progression in Echoes of the Eye is that of a barbell. In contrast, the introduction of the DLC is very open but quickly narrows down to the bottleneck of figuring out how to enter the Secret World, before widening back out once you enter it. I owe a lot of my wasted time in the DLC and my overall negative reception of its pacing to that structure, though it was further reinforced by the limited interactivity with both The Stranger at large and the Secret World.

One of the best mechanics in Outer Wilds is the jetpack because of all of the ways with which you are able to use it to smoothen your interaction with the world. Intelligent use of your thrusters allows you to utilize the curvature of the planet you're currently on to accelerate beyond your normal walking clip (essentially entering into a very low-altitude orbit once you go fast enough) or to overcome cliffs as a a player-made shortcut. Both of these are much rarer occurrences in The Stranger and downright impossible within the The Secret World, with the most desirable skip within The Stranger, to hop from a tree near the dam up to the top of the tallest cliffs, seemingly being impossible. Combined with fast movement in The Stranger being more-or-less limited to the use of the rafts, my aforementioned problem with the limited use of our spaceship, and the moment to moment gameplay within The Secret World boiling down to observe -> position properly, Echoes of the Eye felt less interactive than base Outer Wilds, which just left me bored a lot more often than I want from a game.

And yet, I do still have a lot of love for it. It's not as good as base Outer Wilds, but then very little is.