Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye (2021)

If you've played OW and read anything about the DLC, then you don't really need to read my review to know that you should just play it. It's an excellent addition to an amazing game.

This game takes the discovery and "ah-ha" moment aspects of the original game, but changes the formula just enough to make it feel fresh, but to me the biggest downside is it changes the feel of the game, from one that's about exploration and the openness and size and wonder of space to the confinement of a smaller indoor-world and the spookier, darker, unwelcomeness that follows.

I hit roadblocks a couple times where I felt like I wasn't going to be able to proceed, and it was made more difficult by the fact that I didn't really WANT to go back to the stranger after a while. The original game gave you a chance to take a breather from one location to explore another, and often times that breather is what gave your brain a chance to process and take a fresh look at those older locations to notice things it hadn't before; that ability to "just get away for a bit" isn't here.

Once all the new locations and mechanics came together, though, to form the whole picture, it was nearly as rewarding as the bigger moments in the original game. For a DLC, though, incredible experience that felt separate from the original but still a fitting part of the whole picture.

I'm sad to know that there's no more fresh Outer Wilds experiences in my future, but hopefully the studio behind this has spent the last 4 years since the release of the DLC cooking up something good!

This was an excellent addition to the base game, providing more flavor to the base story and timeline. It still holds a lot up for interpretation with how it connects to the base game, but I really liked that!

The puzzles are fun and engaging and the ideas and this other world is so incredibly wild to think about how everything works together. Love it.

Of course, I didn't have just the same amount of goosebumps as the first game, but I still felt a lot, and it made me feel clever and smart at times, which is nice I guess haha.

Definitely worth playing if you liked Outer Wilds!

La prueba de un gran creador es fabricar una obra maestra; la marca de un creador excelso es construir otra obra maestra sobre las bases de la primera. Mobius Digital, estudio detrás de Outer Wilds y su expansión, Echoes of the Eye, tan solo ha necesitado dos publicaciones para encumbrarse como una de las desarrolladoras independientes más interesantes del mercado. Ya en su día, la premisa de Outer Wilds permitía un amplio abanico de posibilidades para una futura expansión —la inmensidad del espacio es más un aliciente que un límite en ese respecto—, algo que no eximía a Mobius Digital de tener frente a sí una tarea titánica: recuperar la magia de su obra original en una historia más corta y sin la sorpresa inicial.

RESEÑA COMPLETA EN RIRCA

I loved the base game, and while the DLC hits many of the same highs for me, and does something pretty unique with its second half, I was a little bothered by how Little the Ship plays into the DLC, and how most cycles have the exact same starting 3-5 minute loop once you find out the main gimmick for the DLC. In addition, Save for one major puzzle that is admittedly quite cool involving the flooding, the time loop is more of a hinderance than a puzzle to learn to time your exploration carefully. Its just a continuous countdown on my attempts until I have to replay the same intro sequence again. This works opposite to the base game which has many directions and many moving components that operate off the timer mechanic, a reset cycle means trying something new.

It was still a really fun experience and gave me lots of great puzzles, but I don't think it used every aspect and mechanic of the game as well as its base game did, creating a disconnect between the loop and play expectations of the base game vs the DLC. I'll write a full review of it... one day.

I am so torn on what to write about this game. Outer Wilds is my all time favourite game. It took my by surprise when I played it all those years ago, and the way it does progression tied to exploration is just magical.

Echoes of the Eye does the same thing, and it's great, the first hours are fantastic, it's just that those "stealth" sections completely killed the DLC for me... I just hated them so much. Why did they put them here? The woods one is fine, because it feels like stealth, but the other ones, where you just fumble in the dark and can't really do anything? I am so sad :'< When I finally got through by brute-forcing it I was just done. I looked up a guide for one aspect of the final puzzle I didn't get because I didn't give myself enough time, I just wanted finish it before I went to bed. It really sucks that an otherwise great experience turned this sour. I am going to regret this decision so much.

One big thing missing from this game are close captions. While most audio effects are purely aesthetic, in Echos of the Eye I noticed two puzzles (one minor and one mayor) that require being able to hear.

First, when you remove the lanterns from the secret doors, you hear the moving of the door to indicate that something happened. This is minor, as you can notice the difference without hearing, but hearing the sound makes it much easier and clear.

Second, the whole alarm bells puzzle relies heavily on hearing. Without sound it's hard to realise that what's waking you up is the sound of the bells. And then, when you kill yourself to enter the dream, the only indication that the alarm bells will not wake you up is the lack of sound which, again, you might not get if you don't hear.

I looked through the menus and didn't see any option to enable close captioning. It should be added in an update to make the game more accessible.

Something I've come to appreciate about Outer Wilds is that this game has basically no secrets. It has mysteries, of course, but no secret. There are no hidden items sequestered in some dark corner of the map. (It's got a couple of Easter-eggs, but they are few and they don't add anything to the game, they are just winks, jokes and a list of kickstarter backers.)

Some games have the mildly annoying habit of rewarding the player when they stray from the more direct and obvious path. It's super common for 2D platforms to have secret items if you go left instead of the obvious right. While this can work to make the player explore and hunt for secrets, it also puts the player in the mindset of not trusting the developers. Signposting that would usually shout at the player "THIS WAY" are instead indications of where NOT to go.

But Outer Wilds is smart to train the player to trust the devs. They want you to see the good stuff. Areas with mysteries are big and shiny and areas of empty space are also clearly labelled as such and by not hiding secret stuff there, the player learns not to waste their time looking for clues where there are none.

I really think this game is an absolute masterpiece. One of the best games of the decade.

Outer Wilds is really a magic game and Echoes of the Eye is more than a fitting adition. It's enchanting, wonderful, tetric, sad and joyus. It's also incredibly smart and well-designed. Everything fits together perfectly, not only as a whole new area to explore with its own history, but also in how it is included in the broader game. Not only it's supremely elegant, but it also answers a question from the original game that I didn't realised was left unanswered.

(BTW: There is some buzz about the spooky parts that seem to require annoying levels of stealth. As a PSA, let me tell you, dear reader, that there are ways of circumventing those "stealth" sections. Play smarter, not stealthier.)

It makes me so sad that the journey is over once again. I can't wait for my girlfriend to come back from the US so I can play it again through her eyes.

Ah, yes. I was wondering what was all that "reduces frights" thing. I'm now on the "spooky" part of the game and I have to say that it does not work at all. It's kind of anathema to the spirit of the game, but also it breaks down horribly with the rougelike aspect.

Scary monsters can be fun, but when you have to play the same section many times and you already know where the spooks are going to be, it stops being frightning and starts being annoyoing.

I don't want to spoil anything for anyone, but my return to Outer Wilds was everything I could have imagined and more. The DLC really reinforces and solidifies this as one of my absolute favourite games of all time. It was a little bit unnerving, always awesome (in the original sense of the word) and just as impactful as my first journey in the game. It's a smaller slice, and full of it's own separate mysteries to unravel that both stand on their own and contribute to a larger understanding of the history of solar system known as the Outer Wilds.

I will say this, the setting of the mystery tickled me pink, and gave me even more Cyan vibes than the base game, combining things I love from Cosmic Osmo to Myst and Rivan. But the setting is also just conceptually something I've been obsessed with since I was a kind and it was a wonder to explore in a video game. It made me very happy, while also leaving me with a tinge of melancholy.

Upon tracking down a Hearthian satellite with a peculiar non-planar orbit and waiting for it to reach the correct heading based on some notes found in a radio tower you’re greeted with a mysterious hole in space, blotting out your view of the sun. Flying into this inky void reveals a cloaked ring world that, if you’re anything like me, immediately brings Halo, Larry Niven, and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun to mind.

It awes you with its sense of scale and artistic arrangement of places of interest as much as any of the other planets in the main game. Idyllic cabins that evoke the pacific northwest are dotted along cliffsides, following a river that flows far overhead.

All this seems nice enough at first, but an unsettling feeling starts to build as you explore. This ship was not made by the friendly Nomai, whose language you’ve translated. You won’t be reading any writing here. May as well leave your translator on the ship, it’s useless to you. Every bit of story you piece together will be based upon still images and environmental storytelling.

Cold, even grim portraits of these weird owl/deer people are found sprinkled around. Projectors show what appears to be slides of occult imagery. Green fire, glowing eyes, iron maidens wrapped in chains.

As you’re absorbed in these images a dam breaks far overhead, water comes rushing by, drastically changing the water levels along the whole ring world and destroying or submerging various structures. This, then, is the DLC’s time sensitive gimmick; a combination of the receding sand from Ash Twin and the environmental destruction of Brittle Hollow.

Upon one of your subsequent loops you will stumble upon a way to transport yourself...somewhere else. Somewhere very, very dark, where you are stripped of all your tools and left with a simple lantern that can be extinguished or focused into a narrow beam. You wander a rickety wooden village built along the banks of a tropical river, using your lantern to manipulate the environment in various ways and avoiding patrolling enemies while trying to reach hidden storehouses of knowledge that will give you glimpses of what the hell is going on and what the hell you're supposed to be doing. Outer Wilds has, in the blink of an eye, become a horror game. Just in time for October. Get absolutely jebaited.

10/10. Would get spooked again.