This review contains spoilers
It’s difficult not to contrast the DLC with the base game when it tries hard to integrate itself into the entire main package while still being a segregated part of the whole, even if it makes sense contextually. All of the clues and solutions you need for the game will only be found from The Stranger with no interactions necessary from other planets. But not satisfied with just having its cake and eating it too, it takes a different design direction than anything we’ve seen from Outer Wilds. Even taking the DLC as its own separate instance, the direction it takes is something I feel tedious and frustrating at the worst of times. Despite my misgivings though, there is something really good at the heart of this game that feels way more emotionally potent than what I found in even the base game.
Echoes of the Eye poses a question of how one reacts to the knowledge of their own demise and the fear and anxiety that drives people to commit acts of cruelty to cheat over their mortality even if the outcome is inevitable. That is the crux of this campaign and is something that resonates similarly to the base game’s take on death on how one reacts to it. Unlike the forum-style inscriptions of the Nomai that detail their history through dialogue, EotE has a show [through powerpoint] don’t tell about the history of the people, mostly redacted to preserve the secrecy of their tribe and what acts they have done to ensure that.
One of the driving worries was that we would never really know too much about the tribe outside of the fact that they just had some great mystery that they were hiding, and thankfully that’s not entirely true and even more so that it’s not just through slideshows. Through the little contextual clues found throughout the breathtaking yet ruined ringworld of The Stranger and the mirrored veneer of a once living world now drowned in near pitch darkness brings together a picture of what these people were once like before fear took hold that drove a once peaceful, nature loving people to take the actions that you will soon discover over the course of the game.
Despite new liberties that the game takes, there is still the familiarity of exploring every corner of the planet still present in the game, piecing together what clues you have and places that still haven’t been fully explored. It still maintains the core concept of the game for the most part, but unfortunately is confined to a small scope. Regardless of it being meant to be played as a part of the whole, it still doesn’t change the fact that it's a secluded area of the solar system. Meaning that each loop will be dedicated to exploring, dying, going back to your ship, and making your way back to what you were doing before the end of the loop. In the base campaign, it works since things that were sectioned off could be worked on another loop and you can use the remaining time and switch to another part of the solar system or planet to explore. The time limit works against you in this case. That sense of urgency somewhat hinders some of the appreciation of picking up on clues that show the type of people the inhabitants of The Stranger were and are now, especially when it comes to the Dream World.
My first impressions of the Dream World were extremely sour and is the biggest deviation from Outer Wilds. No suit or flashlight, but instead a pitch dark world where you have only candles and other small sources of light aside from your lantern. There are multiple entry points to this world, but exploring it can be a giant hassle of getting to the specific entry you want to be in and start finding out where you need to go while avoiding the inhabitants within. The lamp is what both helps and hinders you. The light only gives you a small cone of vision where you can barely see three steps ahead of you, but you can either conceal your flame and stay in total darkness, or focus your light to see at a greater distance at the cost of significant speed.
When it comes to avoiding the people of the Dream World, most of the time you’re trying to run and hide in a completely unfamiliar level layout with no light except your own to see where you’re going unless you stop and focus your light to see ahead, all the while being chased by the denizens. This is where most of my frustration with the game lies of having to get the lay of the land before you can attempt to properly stealth your way through the area since the first few times will likely be fumbling around and spotting the dead ends and the areas of interest that you need to be at. There is a boon to all of this and that is the AI is thankfully slow and easy to conceal yourself from, but this is at the cost of concealing your flame and going into pitch darkness. Sometimes the game has obvious looping layouts for you to be able to juke them, but then there’s more complex architecture with small hideaways that would be ideal if the game wasn’t having you run in darkness and stop for a moment to see what’s ahead of you so you don’t accidentally bump right into the enemies. There are thankfully only two instances where you actually need to sneak around enemies, and one of them is actually pretty straightforward.
Even for all of my troubles with The Dream World, it still adheres to the design principle of hiding in plain sight, all you need is the knowledge. Very much inline with Outer Wilds base game, the DLC "hides" these mechanics, anticipating a typical player behavior, with only information being the key. Like in base game you could just immediately skip straight to the end, but the only real thing that's stopping you is the know how. Echoes of the Eye has ways you get through obstacles that you already possess technically but you're kept in the dark about them until you uncover them. Like you can drop the lantern and stray away from its radius and you can see the everything for what it all is, fake and virtual, or how you can die on one of the green fires in the real world and that way you are completely immune to alarms. With a bit of experimentation, you could probably accidentally stumble upon some of these unintentionally. But if you know all of this information, you could just immediately skip straight to the end if you already have the knowledge to get to the final area. It's these aspects of Outer Wilds that I enjoy that are thankfully present in the Echoes of the Eye. Not through additional mechanics or keys, but information is what unlocks all the doors for you.
Most of my grievances, aside from a few uncertain hints to solutions, can be distilled into facets of the dream world and a bit of tedium. But for all the annoyance of tracking back to pick back up the progress being made, the game still has a story to tell about a people. A story of finding a species of people that don’t want to be found, content to live in darkness to hold on to that secrecy. Clinging to the green flame, that once brought them together as a culture, now keeping them on life support, becoming husks of their former selves, existing in the fake reality they've constructed themselves, with all its imperfections. Oblivious to the rot and decay of the world they left behind, until it reaches the tipping point and all comes crashing down on them in the end.
That awe of entering The Stranger for the very first time, the added score, entering the sealed vault, the last vision, and revisiting The Eye one last time. All these moments of Echoes of the Eye are some of the best times I’ve had from Outer Wilds in general. It is only a shame that my own personal qualms got in the way of truly appreciating what this campaign does. It’s hard for me to treat it as part of the entire OW experience given its seclusive nature, but still makes for a nice contrast from the rest of the game when taken at its own terms. While my score seems to reflect somewhat poorly on Echoes of the Eye, it’s a game I can immensely appreciate.
Author Note: I want to thank Colin Halby, whose not even on this site, for assisting me in sorting my thoughts out about this game and bringing to light details I hadn't fully considered.
Echoes of the Eye poses a question of how one reacts to the knowledge of their own demise and the fear and anxiety that drives people to commit acts of cruelty to cheat over their mortality even if the outcome is inevitable. That is the crux of this campaign and is something that resonates similarly to the base game’s take on death on how one reacts to it. Unlike the forum-style inscriptions of the Nomai that detail their history through dialogue, EotE has a show [through powerpoint] don’t tell about the history of the people, mostly redacted to preserve the secrecy of their tribe and what acts they have done to ensure that.
One of the driving worries was that we would never really know too much about the tribe outside of the fact that they just had some great mystery that they were hiding, and thankfully that’s not entirely true and even more so that it’s not just through slideshows. Through the little contextual clues found throughout the breathtaking yet ruined ringworld of The Stranger and the mirrored veneer of a once living world now drowned in near pitch darkness brings together a picture of what these people were once like before fear took hold that drove a once peaceful, nature loving people to take the actions that you will soon discover over the course of the game.
Despite new liberties that the game takes, there is still the familiarity of exploring every corner of the planet still present in the game, piecing together what clues you have and places that still haven’t been fully explored. It still maintains the core concept of the game for the most part, but unfortunately is confined to a small scope. Regardless of it being meant to be played as a part of the whole, it still doesn’t change the fact that it's a secluded area of the solar system. Meaning that each loop will be dedicated to exploring, dying, going back to your ship, and making your way back to what you were doing before the end of the loop. In the base campaign, it works since things that were sectioned off could be worked on another loop and you can use the remaining time and switch to another part of the solar system or planet to explore. The time limit works against you in this case. That sense of urgency somewhat hinders some of the appreciation of picking up on clues that show the type of people the inhabitants of The Stranger were and are now, especially when it comes to the Dream World.
My first impressions of the Dream World were extremely sour and is the biggest deviation from Outer Wilds. No suit or flashlight, but instead a pitch dark world where you have only candles and other small sources of light aside from your lantern. There are multiple entry points to this world, but exploring it can be a giant hassle of getting to the specific entry you want to be in and start finding out where you need to go while avoiding the inhabitants within. The lamp is what both helps and hinders you. The light only gives you a small cone of vision where you can barely see three steps ahead of you, but you can either conceal your flame and stay in total darkness, or focus your light to see at a greater distance at the cost of significant speed.
When it comes to avoiding the people of the Dream World, most of the time you’re trying to run and hide in a completely unfamiliar level layout with no light except your own to see where you’re going unless you stop and focus your light to see ahead, all the while being chased by the denizens. This is where most of my frustration with the game lies of having to get the lay of the land before you can attempt to properly stealth your way through the area since the first few times will likely be fumbling around and spotting the dead ends and the areas of interest that you need to be at. There is a boon to all of this and that is the AI is thankfully slow and easy to conceal yourself from, but this is at the cost of concealing your flame and going into pitch darkness. Sometimes the game has obvious looping layouts for you to be able to juke them, but then there’s more complex architecture with small hideaways that would be ideal if the game wasn’t having you run in darkness and stop for a moment to see what’s ahead of you so you don’t accidentally bump right into the enemies. There are thankfully only two instances where you actually need to sneak around enemies, and one of them is actually pretty straightforward.
Even for all of my troubles with The Dream World, it still adheres to the design principle of hiding in plain sight, all you need is the knowledge. Very much inline with Outer Wilds base game, the DLC "hides" these mechanics, anticipating a typical player behavior, with only information being the key. Like in base game you could just immediately skip straight to the end, but the only real thing that's stopping you is the know how. Echoes of the Eye has ways you get through obstacles that you already possess technically but you're kept in the dark about them until you uncover them. Like you can drop the lantern and stray away from its radius and you can see the everything for what it all is, fake and virtual, or how you can die on one of the green fires in the real world and that way you are completely immune to alarms. With a bit of experimentation, you could probably accidentally stumble upon some of these unintentionally. But if you know all of this information, you could just immediately skip straight to the end if you already have the knowledge to get to the final area. It's these aspects of Outer Wilds that I enjoy that are thankfully present in the Echoes of the Eye. Not through additional mechanics or keys, but information is what unlocks all the doors for you.
Most of my grievances, aside from a few uncertain hints to solutions, can be distilled into facets of the dream world and a bit of tedium. But for all the annoyance of tracking back to pick back up the progress being made, the game still has a story to tell about a people. A story of finding a species of people that don’t want to be found, content to live in darkness to hold on to that secrecy. Clinging to the green flame, that once brought them together as a culture, now keeping them on life support, becoming husks of their former selves, existing in the fake reality they've constructed themselves, with all its imperfections. Oblivious to the rot and decay of the world they left behind, until it reaches the tipping point and all comes crashing down on them in the end.
That awe of entering The Stranger for the very first time, the added score, entering the sealed vault, the last vision, and revisiting The Eye one last time. All these moments of Echoes of the Eye are some of the best times I’ve had from Outer Wilds in general. It is only a shame that my own personal qualms got in the way of truly appreciating what this campaign does. It’s hard for me to treat it as part of the entire OW experience given its seclusive nature, but still makes for a nice contrast from the rest of the game when taken at its own terms. While my score seems to reflect somewhat poorly on Echoes of the Eye, it’s a game I can immensely appreciate.
Author Note: I want to thank Colin Halby, whose not even on this site, for assisting me in sorting my thoughts out about this game and bringing to light details I hadn't fully considered.