The following write-up is divided into two parts: a general overview of Echoes of the Eye in relation to Outer Wilds’ base game, and a more spoiler-heavy breakdown of the execution.

Have you ever had that feeling where upon playing through a remake or sequel of a game, you start to question whether or not you liked the original game to begin with?

I’ve been going through this a lot in 2023. Ys: Memories of Celceta comes to mind first; it took me almost an entire year to finally complete it after beating Ys Seven last fall, because despite carrying over the baseline mechanics, the actual pacing of the game felt noticeably different. Then, I went through a similar feeling in the first few hours of Oxenfree II back in October, and despite the similarities to the original, I quickly shelved it and haven't returned since. Finally, this occurred a third time just a few weeks ago with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX, which upon further investigation I found that despite retaining the base structure of the original Blue/Red Rescue team, the remake directly pulled mechanics and inspiration from more recent games in the series, resulting in a system that no longer served its original purpose. Needless to say, it’s a frustrating experience that often requires a lot of scrutiny and soul searching to resolve: did the sequels/remakes change mechanics in ways that felt contrary to the spirit of the originals, or have I just been viewing the originals through rose-tinted glasses this whole time?

This brings us to Echoes of the Eye, my fourth example. In its defense, the cards were already stacked against it; practically every friend I’ve talked to has spoken very positively about how Echoes of the Eye serves as an extension of the base Outer Wilds, and how it greatly enriches the lore of its universe, so it’s hard to see even slight deviations as anything less than a disappointment. Perhaps it is also not entirely fair to lump Echoes of the Eye in with standard sequels and remakes, for Mobius Games was careful to market the DLC as an expansion instead of a separate adventure. I get that this sounds like semantics, but I’d argue that this in itself is representative of Echoes of the Eye’s identity within the game’s scope, or rather, its identity crisis as part of the game’s scope.

In theory, Echoes of the Eye needed to provide an expansion to the game without becoming a “mandatory” part of the experience, since it’s paid DLC released two years after the base game. At the same time though, the expansion also had to fulfill the role of providing a different experience from the base game (otherwise why not just release a free content patch?) while concurrently remaining consistent within the game’s lore and at the very least, capturing the spirit of what made Outer Wilds so compelling. Therein lies the dilemma: how do you make a separate expansion that doesn’t force the player to play the base game prior or coerce/spoil the player in their playthrough of the base game afterwards, while thematically capturing the design philosophy of a game that to me, felt complete?

I realize that it is difficult to discuss the topic at hand without at least explaining how the base game plays into this, so here is my brief (and admittingly, watered-down) summary since I sincerely believe that saying any more would lessen the individual experience. Outer Wilds, to me, is a game about pure discovery. It’s about struggling through life and death, time after time, making sense of something that is so much bigger than you to where it is almost unfathomable to conceptualize. At its core, the mechanics seem fairly simple and concrete; you’ve got a base set of tools and controls that never need to evolve, because much of the game is dictated by the individual circumstances around you in exploiting the set rules of the planetary system to progress further. Internalizing Outer Wilds’ baseline structure and governing mechanics and making the connections between discoveries and mysteries is every bit as key as the execution itself, and as a result, what seems to be this astronomical conundrum stemming from this vast universe becomes seemingly more manageable with each new revelation until the player puts all the pieces together to bring the tale to its close.

Unfortunately, this is not how Echoes of the Eye operates whatsoever.

Spoilers for both base Outer Wilds and Echoes of the Eye will be covered beyond this point.

BeachEpisode brings up a fundamental point in their review that I'd like to expand upon: despite separate planets and areas in Outer Wilds operating under different conditions, the universe nevertheless remains mechanically consistent because at their core, the same set of underlying systems and mechanics never changes. For example, once you learn the three rules of quantum mechanics in base Outer Wilds, you can exploit these same rules regardless of what planet you are on to manipulate quantum objects; capturing a moving quantum object with a photograph will always work on said quantum object regardless of what the quantum object is or the system it exists within. As a result, Outer Wilds also has the benefit of not having a set progression path. I like to imagine the game as a vast series of tunnels intersecting one another at various junctions; it’s super easy to jump back and forth between systems at one’s own will with no negative consequences whatsoever, and regardless of the starting point or route taken, anyone can play through the game and discover all of the content, inevitably coming to the same conclusions.

Meanwhile, Echoes of the Eye takes place almost entirely in one location, dubbed “The Stranger.” My best guess is that Mobius Games chose to isolate and contain all of the expansion’s content in one hub as to prevent players from accidentally stumbling upon the DLC’s side story, though it is still theoretically possible to unintentionally discover the strange black void in the sky without ever following the intended path of following radio tower interference to lead into the expansion, much like I did in my own base game playthrough. Already, you can see the conceptual conflicts; the player isn’t going to know that the Stranger is separate from the base game’s ending until they check their ship logs specifically demarcating the DLC from the base game, but the more troubling issue is the artificiality of creating an intended path with only one real trigger/clue for the Stranger. Either way, it puts the presence of the DLC in an awkward place.

Furthermore, centralizing the DLC around one set location makes exploration in the expansion much more deliberate. This doesn’t inherently sound like a negative at first, but again, consider this in relation to the base game. As implied above, one understated strength is that clues are spread across the entire system and can often be linked to other outlying clues in completely different locations, which encourages the player to more thoroughly explore around the planetary system while lessening burnout from getting walled by the same mysteries in certain locations. The player can simply switch tasks yet continually progress despite doing so. What makes this particularly grating when translated to Echoes of the Eye is that despite all the DLC content being present in the Stranger, the game is still completely connected to the base game and thus will always spawn you back at Timber Hearth even if you die/lapse within the DLC. It makes complete sense for the game to utilize Timber Hearth as a respawn in the base game, but it presents a real lack of quality-of-life issue during an Echoes of the Eye run when the player has to fly back to the Stranger over and over again during the beginning of each time loop, making death feel far more punishing.

This disconnect from the main planetary system becomes even more apparent thanks to the game’s baseline mechanics feeling very underutilized in the exploration of the Stranger. For instance, the Signalscope (used to detect radio wave sources) isn’t used a single time. The aforementioned quantum mechanic laws are also absent, most likely because knowledge of such laws would require you to have played the base game. The ship’s log, used for keeping track of rumors and connecting locations, does at least take note of discoveries in the Stranger, but its presence feels minimal because there’s no space travel involved once you’ve docked in the Stranger’s hangar and actively going back to the docked hangar to check rumors in the middle of runs becomes a huge commitment when considering the one-directional flowing river in the way. Even the time loop itself becomes a detriment. In the base game, the time loop simply makes environments different to navigate, rather than strictly more difficult; for example, Brittle Hollow slowly falls apart over time into a black hole, while the Ash and Ember twins swap sand volumes like an hourglass. That’s not really the case for Echoes of the Eye: the main event dictated by the time loop is the destruction of dam causing the river to overflow, which aside from a couple of key differences from extinguishing some campfire flames, mostly just makes the river more difficult to navigate by flooding the environment with stronger currents.

Here's where another key wrinkle comes into play: the player is unable to translate the alien language of the Stranger’s inhabitants (for reasons I can’t completely explain due to excess spoilers but thematically fit into the series’ lore), and as such, most of the Stranger’s narrative is told via slides that are manually viewed from a projector. I have mixed feelings here. On one hand, the art is beautifully drawn to quickly explain concepts and lore. On the other hand, this is indicative of Echoes of the Eye’s progression feeling fairly linear; the loop then becomes exploring around areas to find reels that hint you upon how to explore other areas for more reels, and instead of making the discoveries for yourself, the gameplay becomes an elaborate exercise of just following illustrated instructions really well. At least the base game left plenty of ambiguity from other forms of given context clues (such as Nomai translations and character dialogue) creating vague hints of what to follow up upon, but the reels often quite literally display exact solutions of what to do in particular scenarios (i.e. look in this direction during this specific part of the raft path to teleport to a new area), which can leave players feeling like they didn’t need to do much extrapolating and thus rob them of the thrill of discovery. Again, this isn’t necessary a pressing issue in isolation, but when compared to the open-ended problems that the base game loved to present, Echoes of the Eye’s reels leave something to be desired.

And then, there’s the dream world, which basically exacerbates every issue I’ve described above and adds some more to boot. The separate areas of the dream world eschew many of the governing laws that dictate the base game and the Stranger’s overworlds (so you won’t be able to use your jetpack/flashlight/scout launcher/etc), and instead force the player to adhere to exclusive mechanics present only in the dream world, such as the teleporting hands and the wooden totems that can extinguish/illuminate distant light sources. Much of these areas are enveloped in this blanketing darkness where you can’t see more than a few feet in front of you, unless you make the conscious decision to focus your lantern’s light and slow your movement to a crawl. Navigation of these areas is annoying enough as is, but they become even more troublesome thanks to these roaming owls that upon spotting you in the light, will immediately dash towards you and extinguish your lantern, waking you up and forcing another reentry with more backtracking. Oddly, while the slide reels at least give you the hint on where to go for objectives, they don’t give context regarding the owls, which means that avoiding detection more or less comes down to memorizing their routes via trial and error and shutting off your lantern so you can tip-toe around them in total darkness. At that point, the forced stealth-horror sections fail to spark any enthusiasm; the in-your-face scary monsters aren’t scary anymore when you’re just getting caught over and over trying to sneak past, and the learning curve feels far more punishing than difficult thanks to the time loop cutting your experimentation short before you’ve got to redo the whole shebang and reacquire the lantern/get back to the campfire entry to try again.

I’ve been fairly critical of Echoes of the Eye so far, but I can at least concede that within the DLC, the mechanics feel internally consistent and serve their situations well. The light/dark mechanics used to steer the raft, open doors, and display reels capture the expansion’s theme really well and match the player’s expectations (i.e. you’re shining your flashlight onto poles on the raft to steer, and it makes sense that you’d want to steer in the direction you’re looking in), which led to one particular light puzzle utilizing the scout launcher that I really appreciated. Exploration feels a bit tempered, partially because of the reels often spelling too much out and partially because using the jetpack feels risky when the flowing current can send you careening down the river, but at least the player usually isn’t lost or confused despite often not having the ship’s log within reach.

Sadly, I find it difficult to extend that same courtesy to the dream world. Aside from the tedious forced-stealth, some of the puzzles feel outright unintuitive, while others feel undercooked. For instance, one area requires you to tail hostile owls to figure out the location of a hidden stairway into an archive. However, the game has been instinctively signaling to you this entire time that the owls should be avoided entirely, especially when they can quickly spot and hunt you down as soon as they notice your light source. Why then, does the game expect you to completely invert this learning for one particular puzzle? Similarly, there are several instances in another area where the player is expected to walk between seeming gaps in mid-air using candles to mark invisible bridges. It’s not until you’ve accessed the area’s vault that you find out that those invisible bridges can be spotted all along by placing your lantern on the floor and walking a certain distance away to “reveal” the simulation and display the invisible bridges. Again, it’s a cool concept, but certainly it would have made more sense to learn the exploit before the puzzles instead of presenting it in a reel afterwards like some sort of revelation that’s not quite as useful anymore.

Many of the game’s discrepancies troubled me greatly at this time, so I decided to hunt down a primary source to better understand what was going through the dev team’s minds after completing the game a few hours later. It should then come as no surprise that many of the differences between Outer Wilds and Echoes of the Eye are a result of the DLC requiring a different design philosophy out of necessity because the base game already existed. Co-designer Alex Beachum describes Echoes of the Eye’s design philosophy in an interview as essentially the reverse approach to base Outer Wilds. While Outer Wilds was designed with story organically arising from gameplay possibilities, Echoes of the Eye had to implement the gameplay with preestablished premises in mind, building locations around the story. This then, explains the rigidity of the game’s overworld progress in phases (find the Stranger -> explore around the river -> explore the dream world -> solve the case) and hints towards why the designers settled upon reels as the solution for explaining lore and guiding players towards the intended routes of discovery.

There’s also evidence which suggests that scope creep was a pressing concern during Echoes of the Eye's development. Beachum mentions during that same interview that there were originally three worlds to be designed within the Stranger: a light world, a dark world, and a dream/simulated world. Originally, the pitch was that the Stranger was to operate on a day-night cycle, and that the big twist was that the light and dark world were really two sides of the same coin, using an elevator to flip you to the other side. The dream world essentially existed as a “matrix” where the ghosts manifesting in the overworld were plugged in. Eventually, this idea had to be greatly simplified when the designers realized it was far too much work to implement all three worlds at once. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting thought experiment considering how these three worlds would operate differently, and perhaps the distinct mechanics present in the dream world would not feel nearly as jarring if it operated as a transition world between the light and dark environments.

Finally, the interview confirmed that as a result of the game’s linearity, the development team had to deliberately scale back certain elements that they feared would lead to accidental findings outright skipping entire sections of the game. Essentially, the designers believed it made no intentional sense for the civilization to store away the “answers” to the security system. Instead, they hoped to make the final revelations of exploiting glitches in the system feel like deliberately timed discoveries. For example, Mobius Games increased the steepness of the angle at which the player has to tilt their camera to place down the lantern, so accidentally finding out about the virtual world from walking away from the lantern became much more difficult.

That more than anything, illustrates what I think is the main point of friction between the base game and Echoes of the Eye. Despite having strict solutions per hand-crafted puzzle, Outer Wilds felt like a game firmly within the player’s control thanks to its open-ended structure. By no means was it focused upon emergent gameplay, but the ability to turn accidental discoveries into tangible threads was nevertheless greatly appreciated and really made me feel like I was doing the brunt of the work. Echoes of the Eye on the other hand, is a game that had to be much more carefully scripted as to not take away from both its internal runtime and the larger overall mystery from which it stemmed from. The fact that Mobius Games had to intentionally limit the available possibilities by removing utility and filled up much of its planned runtime with forced stealth that felt like banging my head against the wall speaks to a much more visible artificiality (quite literally, in this case) present within the deliberately constrained and separated areas of the DLC.

The conclusion at least, brings Echoes of the Eye down to earth. After exploiting the simulation with the glitches that you learned about in the dream world vaults, you finally get to meet the lone survivor and learn more about what happened from their perspective. It’s a shame that the exploits are used exactly once and all at once instead of incrementally throughout explorations of the virtual world, but I can respect an ending that quickly comes to a natural close and serves as a succinct foil to the much more illustrious finale of the base game. The story is not quite complete yet though, because then it becomes time to share your side as the prisoner hands over the vision staff. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that this moment is perhaps the most satisfying catharsis in the entire game’s runtime. Such a simple act as becoming the storyteller yourself, coupled with the developer’s care to alter the specific pictured events depending on what your character has witnessed in the base game prior to opening the vault, really brings the whole piece together. I may have my gripes with the expansion’s conceptualization with respect to the base game, but I am certainly glad that it ended on such a memorable final message that only serves to bolster the sum of its parts.

All things considered, I think that Echoes of the Eye could have been a damn good game if it was entirely self-contained. I did feel that the light-dark mechanics were thoroughly explored within the scope of its environments, and if the game were uncoupled from the base game as to provide simple quality of life updates like a spawn point within the Stranger or a portable version of the ship-log to access at any time, I think the expansion would have been far less frustrating. Hell, if the time loop was removed entirely and I had more time to thoroughly explore the dream world without time constraints, I could definitely see myself attempting to patiently manipulate the AI for a more tense experience rather than simply bum-rushing each forced stealth section. In isolation, I think Echoes of the Eye’s mechanics and overall message are mostly thematically consistent and sound.

Major spoilers end here.

At the end of the day though, that’s exactly the core problem. Outer Wilds is a game about connection. It’s about making sense of subtle clues here and there and linking all the details together to process this overwhelming sensation of confronting something that’s so much more than you could have ever imagined. Echoes of the Eye is supposed to be an expansion that doesn't require prior knowledge of Outer Wilds, yet this linkage to the base game is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Without the base game as a reference point, its final message would not have such lasting impact, but as a result of being an expansion, it’s forever stuck playing second fiddle to something that was already so conceptually realized while feeling drastically different from its already established conventions.

Echoes of the Eye is the best DLC that never needed to exist. That’s simultaneously a knock on the DLC and praise for Outer Wilds itself, as it’s quite difficult to evaluate Echoes of the Eye on its own merits for better or for worse. Perhaps it could have been something more if it didn’t need to live in the shadow of something greater, but what purpose would it have served otherwise? It’s hard to think of any obvious and practical improvements when it feels like conceptually, Mobius Digital may have written themselves into a corner. I'm relieved that my love for the original game was not unfounded, though it's still a bummer at the end of the day that its artistic vision didn't translate too well into its expansion. As such, while I’m glad to have experienced Echoes of the Eye, I’m just as glad to have finally made some sense of this all and have seen this behemoth of modern indie games to its natural conclusion.

Around the beginning of the year, I looked back at my rating for Outer Wilds with a bit of hesitation. I may be more generous than many other reviewers with my 5/5's, but I still genuinely consider everything I give the perfect score to, a league above the rest, and as I looked at Outer Wilds, I couldn't conjure up as many concrete reasons, as I could with any of the others, to the point where I retroactively changed the rating to a 4. So I began to tackle the DLC, in hopes of remembering what blew me away about this game, in a previous life.
Outer Wilds is a game that I played alongside over 50 other's in the oft unfondly remembered year of 2020. During those months of quarantine, fewer and fewer hours at work, and dwindling social interaction, I took to clearing out my backlog at a rabid pace. It got to the point where I was playing multiple story heavy games in the same day. I begin to get addicted to watching the credits roll after beating a game, and so I just kept going, realistically past the point of burnout, but this was Covid era, I was experiencing burnout with everything. And then in October, after my declaration of a 52 game/One game a week pace for 2020, I played Outer Wilds. I was charmed by the world, the atmosphere, but I genuinely wasn't viewing the game for what it actually is. While I was playing Outer Wilds like an open world adventure game with cool sci fi flare, I was missing out on the layered puzzle at the core of it all. For whatever reason, I viewed the obtuse logic and note rewarding puzzles as obstructions to seeing the credits roll, so I willfully looked up walkthroughs, almost immediately when I'd hit an impasse. By the time I made it to the remarkable finale, I tried my best to feel proud of what I'd accomplished, but over time the victory began to feel hollow, and I desperately wished to wipe my memory of the game and start fresh.
Fast forward to 2023; Life went on, my game completion rate dwindled, but everything else began to improve. It wasn't until I sat down with a newly acquired PS Plus (Extra) subscription, and noticed a familiar space-traveling game, that I decided to give Outer Wilds another shot. It was genuinely like I was playing a new game, despite my previous knowledge undercutting some puzzles, I was still having a blast reading the history of the Nomai, figuring out their technologies and cities, and using immensely satisfying A->B->C logic chains to get a full picture of what I had seen 3 years ago. It was then that I remembered that I had purchased the games' acclaimed DLC soon after beating it, but I had simply never played it.
I had a miniature revelation moment, knowing that this was my chance to experience a chunk of the organic discovery process the base game offered, with completely fresh eyes. I made it my goal to avoid walkthroughs, unless I had tried out everything to the extent of my knowledge, I focused on deductions and exploration, and I ended up being genuinely blown away by what Echoes of the Eye has to offer.
This may be one of the best-in-class complete packages that I've ever seen for DLC of a game, it offers something completely fresh, while keeping the same satisfying design principles that the base game did.
As I type this review, I am about one hour removed from the completion of Echoes of the Eye, the tears have dried a while ago, but the impression that I'm getting, is that I finally understand not only what I felt in 2020, but what I missed, playing this game back then with guides. I hope everyone can find some sense of satisfaction with this weird, messy entertainment medium, because Echoes of the Eye definitely reminded me of what that feels like.

Didn't think I'd ever entertain the possibility that an expansion might be my favorite game of a year.

Similar to its predecessor, revealing even the slightest detail about what makes Echoes of the Eye special will rob you of experiencing its magic first-hand. Outer Wilds is reliant on what the player knows, and once our brains know something, it cannot unlearn it. Understanding how to "beat" the game can shrink this adventure from 13 hours to ten minutes.

But the purpose is the journey. It's not just about what you know, but how you learn it and the visual/aural feast that accompanies each moment. Every solution is organic and could happen naturally. You're not gated behind walls or scripted events. Rather than your knowledge being a hard-coded stat, the player needs to actually remember, learn, test, and theorize.

I'm really proud that I got through Echoes of the Eye without looking a single thing up, as I googled some stuff in the original Outer Wilds and I regret it. Only after playing the original Outer Wilds did I learn how to truly experience Outer Wilds, and I'm glad this expansion allowed me to utilize that knowledge in my quest for the truth.

To keep the experience intact, I won't say much else except that this is a great expansion and was easily my GOTY. Can't wait to see what Mobius Digital crafts next.

Echoes of the Eye comes along as a DLC, that cements Outer Wilds as the most astonishing gaming experience you can have. Those, who have played the main game, my favorite game of all time, will know what to expect, but let me tell you: this is a one of a kind DLC, that’s basically an entire game within the game and designed at the same level we’re used to by Outer Wilds standards. It pushed the exact same buttons for me - it will leave you in awe of the mind-bending world that it puts you in and it will challenge you to solve a mystery that has the same emotional background story.
Outer Wilds is absolutely special. Special because of the way it’s world was built and special because of the way the game-loop is designed.
The solar system in which you’ll find yourself, is fully realized. It’s living. Everything and everyone is moving in the endless blackness that surrounds it. You can watch the planets and the sun do their dance from anywhere in the game. It’s just crazy, when you find all the little details the devs have thought of, to make it feel ‘whole’.
The second part of what makes this game so special is, that you could basically beat the game in the first loop you ever play. Because the only progress you make in this game, is getting information. You don’t develop new abilities, you don’t get new equipment, all you get, is bite-sized snippets of information that slowly completes the puzzle and finally shows you how to ‘end the game’. The big problem this brings with itself is then, how do you hide all of that information in plain sight and at least good enough that it’s not easy to find it. And oh boy some of the mysteries are hard to solve, but the payoff is almost always resulting in a dropped jaw. If you progressed to a later stage in the game or even finished it, you’ll still wonder how they hid all of it and how it all makes sense in retrospect. It’s a masterclass in game design, how they give you the exact amount of info you need and how it included all the places you can visit. I can’t stress this enough, I have never ever seen a game that is built so cleverly.
And all of this is true for both the main game and the dlc.
As usual I don’t talk about the specifics of the story, but it will hit you as hard as it hit me, when you are interested in the existential questions of a civilization and the future of our universe. It will give you goose bumps if the questions the most intelligent people on our planet deal with every day, interest you. And it will make you speechless when exploring other planets and space sounds like something you want to do.
Andrew Prahlow even delivers the best game soundtrack I heard on top of it, making Outer Wilds the best game or 2019, the DLC the best game of 2021 and the whole package my favorite game of all time.

outer wilds is probably one of the most incredible experiences ive ever had in the videogame media bar none a product so wide that it expanded through time and space and will go down history as one of the major pieces of art of our generation mark my words

how I was definitely intrigued by this new addition to the original game and how it was gonna tie in to the base experience and honestly this is almost as good as the main game but has some slip ups here and there that I wish were streamlined to actually make the most of this beautiful story

since you already explored most of the stuff in the solar system the dlc will take place in a hidden starship that actually acts as the main destination for the entirety of your playthrough

issue 1 apart from actually discovering the stranger that is somehow the beginning of the quest when you actually know its coordinates every . single . loop you will have to get back to this spaceship after your times up sure that's a little less of a hassle when you get autopilot but this ties to

issue 2 the stranger is still subject to the time loop now this makes a lot of sense narratively this is definitely not an issue in that sense because since the gemini project is gonna explode anyway of course you will have to make your way back to base one . that being said exploring the environment while still being annihilated after 20 minutes grows tiring really fast mainly because instead of having a lot of variety and options like the solar system exploration you will have to lose those 2-3 minutes doing the exact same things

and thats the end this dlc is almost perfect after that

so I will talk of stuff that goes from less spoiler to more spoiler so SPOILER WARNING and I highly highly advice you to get into this dlc without any previous knowledge please please please

I've already talked profusely of base outer wilds and it's mechanics so I won't take a detour but what actually made me scream is the fact that most of the stranger will recontextualise how you use your tools: since this is an object created by a life form which is not part of the solar system (the stranger duh) most of the storytelling will happen in different ways than you were accustomed to the numai the people of this spaceship mainly used visual traditions to archive their culture instead of writing and even those sparse “letters” on the walls will be illegible due to the fact that this is not the numai language anymore and that's why I think its so fucking genius to create an entire different gameflow adding the fact that these people mainly used light sources to create energy and so you will use the flashlight to do what you have to do

that being said the stranger is absolutely beautiful to traverse an entirely circular world that makes use of water canals to traverse from one place to the other and explore every little nook and cranny of this artificial environment and the sense of exploration and wonder is still untouched from the OG game and getting to slowly know the owl people and making sense of what happened to them through films is probably the highlight of the experience

basically these guys received the signal of the eye and decided to reach it to know what's up with that and when they got there they realised the thing the eye does / will do is to eventually decimate the universe population and something something happened and you can actually find them in some attics just sleeping in front of a light

getting to know later in the game that the reality is actually that they had to completely destroy their home planet to get to the eye just for them to realise its not a divinity but a ruthless and violent being without any reason is just so fucking sad and an incredible twist and they were so broken by this that they tried to recreate digitally their homework to forever live in it transporting their conscience . they knew they were gonna die nonetheless but wanted to stretch that time for as much as possible

and in some ways you can also get in this digital world and explore it boom

the digital world is probably the point where I have the most problems . its honestly pretty confusing to traverse it feels like a labyrinth with very interesting but tricky mechanics and the fact that its completely dark and you still are subject to the time limit doesn't help

I wanted for it to be more streamlined but even beside that I can really say this is the most tense part of the entire outer wilds experience the atmosphere is so thick its gonna suppress your breath and the horror elements of the owl people actually hunting you down is such a good addition I was sitting tightly in my chair with my butt clenched

main point of this part of the game is trying to open a vault that the owl people hid in the water of the stranger and while it's very convoluted the game slowly gives you all the elements to open this vault that you also saw in the films

and when you manage to do that boom face to face with the prisoner he will give project onto you his experience and help you make sense of what actually happened and when it's your turn to show him your life its gonna get TEARY unironically had to stop for a second because the entire sequence of like 30 seconds absolutely annihilated me incredible storytelling through literally 0 words I cannot and also ties back to the entire lore of the main game and I was flabbergasted (this word is so funny)

so after he knows everybody's dead and gone he gets outside and kills himself so that he can finally get out of this endless prison and you do the same and youre left with a little scene of them ideally getting on the same boat towards the sun (another crying fit)

ideally this would be the end of the dlc but you can actually replay the ending of the game to see that the prisoner is added to the bunch and thats such a beautiful touch honestly I love that guy so much he went through a lot give him a happy ending

even though I wanted some kind of closure instead of this open ended narrative about the prisoner and a new ending I really enjoyed how this all tied back to the main game and actually recontextualises most of the story elements happening in outer wilds for a epopee that stems ages and ages

yes again I'm left with the feeling that this game is special theres so many deep themes explored by this game that I honestly never found in any other piece of media whatsoever alien movies didn't even scratch the surface of the greatness this duo of games touched upon a tale so grand so melancholic so happy and so tragic at the same time that it can't be discussed in a single review or even a 4chan 1000 pages discussion

outer wilds is and will always be one of my favorite things ever and this dlc is a testament of how much love was poured into this project and I cannot wait to see what the developer team is gonna make after this you guys got my heart and I thank you for releasing the most incredible experience I've ever had in my life in the videogame media

One of the best parts about the main play-through of Outer Wilds is just how wide open the universe is. You might want to check out the Attlerock first, but if you're daring (and if you read any reference to harmonicas as a chance Pynchon reference needing dire attention) you can also head off into the terror of Dark Bramble. Or go to the cool ocean planet. Or the scary fire one! Mechanically speaking you're given myriad options for advancing the game, but you also just have a whole bunch of locations you can go. The universe feels big, the planets feel big: there's always somewhere else to go.

I think Echoes of the Eye kind of intentionally goes for the opposite. Outer Wilds was about exploring the "open" space of The Universe, Echoes of the Eye is about exploring the "closed" space of the Stranger. And well of course, the Stranger is big enough that it doesn't feel very restrictive. But it ends up playing out a bit more like a puzzle box: you really need to go over each area closely and there are hinge points you can get stuck at. It can be a little frustrating. It feels a little "trickier" than Outer Wilds did. I think the most difficult and rough parts of Outer Wilds were found in the final few steps of closing out any given puzzle; Echoes of the Eye's puzzles feel like they were mostly just those few final steps. To be clear I am not the smartest guy and am not too great at puzzle games.

The ending of Echoes of the Eye was phenomenal, and overall exploring the Stranger and uncovering its mysteries was great. And these thoughts on it might be colored by taking a several-month long break on the game after getting like 60% of the way through, and also by only having finished it like an hour ago. It is worth a play for sure; it is better than most other things out there, but some of the rough spots can create discouraging friction.

when i was like 8 years old i had a dream once that i somehow was teleported to my grandpa's house

i remember hiding behind the trashcans in front of their house, watching my uncle sitting on the front porch with a friend of his sharing a 6 pack
i was so freaked out and i had no idea what would happen if they saw me

but then they did
and he stared right at me
and my entire body just went cold, frozen, paralyzed by the thought of "oh my god, what do i do, how do i explain this"
it wasn't necessarily fear of my uncle, i actually got along with him pretty well

it was the idea that i had intruded a place that i had no reasonable explanation for being at, watching people go about their daily routines, routines i were never meant to see, not because the routines were secret but because i was simply not a part of them

this fucking game man
anyways dlc was stellar, i played it before any updates so arguably i got the "worst" experience, and even then it was amazing
the visuals, the music, the story, the twists, the fear
all of it worked
and the ending was one of the most cathartic things i've ever felt

if you haven't played the dlc, or just haven't played outer wilds in general i absolutely IMPLORE you to try it
yes, it may not be for everyone, yes it may not "click" for you the same way it did for me, but you never know what experiences you're missing out on if you never give it a chance

Maintains the sublime terror of embodying a fragile being at the whims of an uncaring universe (and a sense of scale only achieved elsewhere by Shadow of the Colossus or Subnautica), especially in the central sequence evoking a visceral moment in Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.

I did find later sections incredibly opaque, as my idiot brain couldn’t parse where and when I was, let alone solve the core puzzles. Mechanics are introduced generously, but it is often unclear when and why to use them (especially compared to the stark, illuminating reveals of the main game).

Otherwise this is still the same alluring hostile universe, filled with brief moments of warmth, and one of the only games that feels this way.

Echoes of the Eye is all the best and worst parts of Outer Wilds, amplified. The sometimes obtuse reasoning behind some of the puzzles, and the sense that you risk wasting large amounts of time (due to the nature of the loops) if you want to experiment with a solution is even more pronounced. Some sections in the dlc (that I highly recommend you turn on the Reduced Frights mode for to make the gameplay more tolerable) honestly just suck to play, a lot of wandering around blindly in the dark and hoping. Even the nature of the loops finally started to get to me upon the twentieth time in a row of having those exact same opening couple minutes.

But there are so many moments that are just breath-taking or outright mind-blowing; in particular the opening hour is up there with the very best parts of the base-game. The planet it is set on is remarkable in many ways, and potentially overtakes Brittle Hollow as my favourite world of all of those in this solar system. The tale this expansion tells is so enjoyable for all the reasons it contrasts with and deviates from the base game, and ultimately hit more emotional notes for me personally than the base game did too.

So, it's the base game but more. I was much more frustrated at points here than I was with the base-game, but also somehow more rewarded also.

Um ótimo complemento pro game mesclando a exploração com toques de terror. Várias mecânicas novas criadas apenas pra essa dlc, que visa mexer muito com a luz e com a escuridão.

O que me incomodou um pouco nessa dlc, foi ter que fazer várias vezes o mesmo percurso, principalmente quando eu não tinha ideia do que fazer. Isso também aconteceu algumas vezes no jogo base, mas aqui ocorreu em uma escala muito maior, me cansando bastante pelas horas que não senti progresso algum.

Minha nossa! Quanto eu sofri nas partes escuras do jogo!

Fantastic DLC, but somehow sadly not quite as good as the main game. Not gonna go into detail for obvious reasons but here's a very barebones review:

Pros: Amazing story, neat new gameplay ideas, fantastic OST and art direction. Super creative setting that builds upon the established gameplay concepts, but introduces its own unique twist. It's almost the same length as the main campaign too! Basically, it's more of what we all love about the main game, and that's already enough to make me give it a glowing recommendation.

Cons: The horror/stealth sections aren't great. Bit tedious. Shame, because that was seemingly the draw for a lot of people. Some of the puzzles are a bit too obtuse for my taste. The complete reliance on visual hints over written words makes for more compelling detective work but it's WAY too easy to miss crucial pieces of information. Also not a fan of having to make the whole trip over there every time you die. Story-wise and lore wise it feels a little tacked-on, but it's not a problem because the story IS pretty compelling.

All in all: despite some flaws, an amazing experience that will definitely, 100% positively add to your experience with Outer Wilds. If you liked the base game, this one's a no brainer.

9/10

Tá, o que eu elogiei da não-linearidade do jogo base eu vou reclamar aqui.

Apesar da dlc começar promissora, ela foi meio decepcionante pra mim no fim das contas.

Aqui nós entramos no Desconhecido, um lugar enorme e abandonado.

No começo, exploramos o lugar e tentamos entender como funciona o loop por lá. Mas conforme vai avançando, vc vai percebendo que tudo vai levando pra um grande puzzle. E vc deve seguir uma ordem especifica pra poder resolver isso.

Sinceramente...achei chato pra caralho explorar o Desconhecido depois de um tempo. O sentimento de exploração dá lugar a um corrida contra o tempo pra resolver o puzzle. Eu só queria terminar logo a DLC pq alguns puzzles menores tavam me cansando e eu tava ficando zem pacienca.

Enfim, uma DLC que tem um começo e um final ok, mas foi bem chato no meio.

Echoes of the Eye is a work of genius, just as Outer Wilds was before it. The locations, ideas, designs, and reveals are just incredible. Some as stunning as those from the original game.

It took me a while to even accept the DLC. The first time I tried to play it I stopped before making any discoveries, because it simply felt wrong to add any further story to one that was already so beautiful and complete. This feeling lingered for some time, but ultimately Echoes of the Eye does a good job of not stepping on the toes of the base game's story - and I think works by being more puzzley, while not oversaturating the compassion and empathy of the original story.

Echoes of the Eye dials up the intensity in some areas - especially the spooky - but dials up some frustrating elements in equal measure. As the DLC involves mostly one new location, you will repeatedly have to travel back in the same direction over and over and over and over.. and the nature of your experimentation will see you restarting loops very frequently towards the end.

It's not as good as Outer Wilds - although realistically almost nothing is - but the genuine magic of the exploration and reveals makes Echoes of the Eye are on equally as high a level, and it is a worthy extension to the game.

One of the best games I've played since starting these reviews has been Outer Wilds, a game where you travel across a solar system discovering the mysteries left behind by an ancient civilization in order to save your own. It had the perfect mix of exploration, mechanics, and discovering mysteries through your own curiosity. It's one of the best games I've ever played. Thus, it was about time that I got around to playing its DLC -- Echoes of the Eye. Where the main Outer Wilds game focused on traveling across many planets, Echoes of the Eye almost entirely takes place on the hidden space station of a separate race of aliens, so much so that aside from the beginning, you will be doing very little spaceflight in this DLC. This station, referred to as "The Stranger", is an incredibly cool setting. It comprises of a river and villages on the inside of a rotating barrel, imparting gravity. The river flows all the way around, allowing for easy access throughout while fitting with the game's theme of surprisingly small planets. It's a really great setting, and one of the best examples I've seen of this concept (another game I played this year, Zone of the Enders, tried a similar setting with far less success). While you learned about the aliens in the base game via their written journal entries, in Echoes of the Eye there is no written text at all. Instead, the game displays hints and lore via visual slide projectors, a somewhat contrived but incredibly effective method. Without a single word I felt that this species was as fleshed out as the other, perhaps more since we actually get to see what they look like. The mysteries and exploration here are just as excellent as the base game, and it's a shame I put off playing it for this long. That being said, I think Echoes of the Eye is unfortunately not quite as strong as its predecessor, mainly due to some decisions near the end of the expansion. Without revealing too much, the game heavily leans into stealth sections near the end, which are both a bit confusing to navigate as well as somewhat repetitive. Unlocking the best ending also requires you to redo the end of the base Outer Wilds, a sequence of events that I had largely forgotten, and feels a bit out of place given how Echoes of the Eye had remained very separated up until that point. These are minor nitpicks though, and overall I thoroughly enjoyed my return to this world(s).

Echoes of the Eye centers on themes of not being afraid to face the truth of fundamental life (that the universe is super big, that we're all gonna die, that we've made mistakes, etc), no matter how scary they are, and I think it succeeds in addressing them very well. Using varying levels of darkness and sight focus to force the player to commit to seeing what's in front of them, even if it frightens them, teaches a bravery and acceptance of what could be that fits really well with Outer Wilds' overall ideas of the tragically limited nature of our lives. And, really, what's hiding out in that darkness isn't even scary monsters, just other people who are trying to go about those same questions and fears in different ways.

I think the feeling of interconnectedness and solemn community from original Outer Wilds is somewhat missing here; locations and discoveries progress very linearly and separately instead of the larger solar web that the base game builds. Things are overly lonely on The Stranger; there's no lost time with any character or friends like in the wider solar system. Raft navigation and general getting about on the stranger is also kind of awkward. I understand why it's there, once you get to breaking open the night areas it's a pretty clever way to guide how a player moves from where to where. But while the player is still figuring out The Stranger as a whole it's limiting and difficult to use for repeated navigation between places.