Found it much less engaging and charming than the main game. There's no sense of wonder and exploration, you're basically just solving one isolated puzzle level instead of piecing together the mystery of an entire game world.

The light-based mechanics are very nice, and the planet is a cool addition to the roster, and obviously much bigger than all the main ones, but the things that made me look past the more annoying aspects of Outer Wilds are just not there anymore. Space plays virtually no role in the DLC, you're just booking it to the same place over and over again. The mystery seemed small and inconsequential compared to the multiple intertwined mysteries of the main game.

The annoying aspects themselves, however, are still very much there. The runback in the main game could feel brutal, but you just couldn't wait to explore more of the story, so you just bite the bullet and retrace your steps for the tenth time. In the DLC the runback is many times more exhausting (go into the DLC world, swim to the location you need, enter the subworld there, runback to the place you need there), and there's just not that much that compelled me to come back.

Might return to it later, but for now it even began to tarnish the good memories I had of the main game, which is just unacceptable.

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.

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.

Ce DLC est un exploit miraculeux après avoir sorti le chef-d'oeuvre qu'est Outer Wilds. Si vous connaissez ce jeu vous savez que c'est LE jeu qu'on peut faire une seule fois dans sa vie, qu'on ne pourra pas revivre etc, mais contre toute attente, ce DLC à réussi à reproduire ce qu'on a vécu avec le jeu de base en (imo) MIEUX. Déjà ça commence fort, grâce au satellite très loin dans le système, les atriens ont vu une chose étrange sur l'une des photos du système. Alors en voyant ça on va voir de nos propres yeux et... Une chose, ronde qui passe devant le soleil apparait ? En fonçant dedans, on découvre qu'un gigantesque vaisseau était camouflé, avec une belle inspi Halo (j'imagine) bien bien stylé. En le visitant on se rend compte rapidement que ce n'est ni atrien, ni nomai, et le but va être encore une fois de comprendre pourquoi, comment, quand, qui ? Ce DLC arrive parfaitement à faire redécouvrir la formule parce que cette fois, c'est pas du texte, vu qu'on peut pas le traduire, mais des diapositives. Ce qui rend la chose encore plus intéressante de voir les êtres, comment ils réagissaient et tout ça vraiment visuellement. Je dois aussi dire que j'ai commencé ce DLC en sachant une seule chose, c'est qu'il était apparemment très flippant. Résultat, déjà que j'étais mal à l'aise de partir au satellite bien loin bien isolée dans l'espace, j'étais donc constamment avec une petite pression qu'à tout moment il se passe quelque chose dans cet environnement ayant l'air d'avoir été abandonné depuis bien longtemps. Les musiques ajoutées dans ce contenu sont tout simplement magiques et ont juste prouvées une fois de plus à quel point Andrew Prahlow (compositeur du jeu) est un génie dans son domaine. L'ambiance mi onirique mi terrifiante dans les parties plus avancées du DLC est vraiment excellente et le thème vert-bleu dans tout le DLC est super beau. L'histoire apportée est magiquement exécutée et parfaitement implémentée dans l'histoire de base sans la spoil pour autant ou quoi que ce soit, et ça nous ajoute une vision de tout le lore du jeu qui retourne le cerveau. Les énigmes ajoutées sont très ingénieuses et certaines sont vraiment compliquées à capter. La fin du DLC est vraiment exemplaire et tellement belle que la scène ou notre personnage retourne l'acte (si vous voyez de quoi je parle pour pas spoil) est sûrement un des moments qui m'a le plus marqué des jeux auquel j'ai joué. En plus d'ajouter une chose à la fin du jeu de base qui n'est CLAIREMENT pas négligeable étant donné que je n'arrive plus à voir (ou plutôt entendre) la fin de base sans l'ajout en question. Pour conclure je trouve que ce DLC a presque tout de parfait, et apporte à l'expérience Outer Wilds quelque chose qu'on ne pourra pas oublier au même titre que l'expérience de base. Merci pour ces chef-d'oeuvres.

Might update later since some stuff in this just left a bad taste in my mouth, but overall I just didn't really enjoy it as much as the main game. The time loop mechanic doesn't really gel as well as it does in the main game here and the stealth parts are just very whatever. For a game that's so effortlessly polished and creative in it's mechanics (including the central mechanics of this dlc!) the stealth sections just didn't really have anything unique to go for. So I suppose, in a way I am disappointed, though just by the really high bar the main game set. The story is still fantastic though, Maybe even more poignant than the main story for me. I really felt for these bipedal owl deer people.

Probably one of the best DLC's out there. I also enjoyed DLC more than base game. Which I think is due to the density of the new planet we are in. In the base game you have the whole space to figure out a puzzle, so it can get confusing. DLC holds everything both tightly and loosely in the same area, with different versions. Thus giving a better and faster puzzle experience, imo.

Not going in to the story, atmosphere etc. (as they are still perfect thanks to the base game), newly added horror sections give a fresh new gameplay to the game.

"What they could not unlearn was hidden away in darkness - obfuscated, then lost. They did not want to see their story end." -The prisoner

After beating the game I was really excited to experience more of the game with the DLC however the more I delved into the DLC the more I realized it strays somewhat from what made the original game special while excelling at using its own format to tell its story.

I do very much want to start with the positives as I genuinely find this to be a fantastic DLC. the setup towards it and getting there is so well done and when you finally get to the main area of the DLC they made it in such a way that you become so excited to see all the areas you could potentially explore.

The brand new gimmicks in this DLC while very different from what is expected and controversial I think are all so excellent and make for some of the best puzzles in the game. They go a long way to make the atmosphere feel so unnerving and unwelcoming which I believe goes really well with the message that the DLC wants to send.

And just like the base game this DLC has things that genuinely boggle me how they programmed these things in. They integrate the music with some thing so well it really does an incredible job of immersing you into its story telling.

Now unfortunately we reach to the bad and most of it come from while it branched out to do its own brand new ideas it neglects what made the original game so special and I believe that attributes to 3 major pillars: wonder, freedom, and drive to learn.

I found the DLC to Outer Wilds to be just as intriguing and rewarding as the original game, with arguably a more compelling story. While Echoes of the Eye did feel a bit more linear and contained, I think that worked to its benefit with few exceptions, every discovery had a direct meaning that led to something else on the Stranger and before I knew it, all of the mechanics which initially felt foreign to me, felt like my second language. No other game does discovery and exploration like this which is why I really tried to beat this without any online assistance. I did obtain one hint after spending a third of my playthrough trying to figure out how to get into the music house without the owls catching me, but I think it would have taken me another few hours to finally figure out that one considering there are no direct hints about such in the game. Other than that, every puzzle felt super satisfying to accomplish, including that final sequence - putting together all the pieces that you've gathered along the way.