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 necessarily 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.

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

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).

A cool addition to the base game, but when by the end I was actively figuring out how to avoid certain game mechanics so that I didn’t have to deal with stealth sections that feel designed to make you fail over and over until it gets dull… well, let’s say it was far from the greatness of the base game, but it had some decent peaks at least. The ending kind of left me feeling more empty than fulfilled though. It doesn’t take away from Outer Wilds, but it also doesn’t add anything substantial or meaningful that the base game didn’t already do better.

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

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

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

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

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

Muito difícil dar uma nota para essa DLC.

Outer Wilds é um dos jogos da minha vida. A sensação de quietude proporcionada pela exploração dos planetas me passou um sentimento que nunca senti antes e não devo sentir novamente. E tudo bem.

E a nova proposta da DLC me impressionou. Achei ótima a disposição da nova área, achei INCRÍVEL a ambientação. A sensação de medo, especialmente nas primeiras horas de exploração, é digna dos melhores survivor horrors dos videogames.

É majestoso também a forma como escolheram contar a história neste novo capítulo. Ao invés de textos, como foram antes deixados pelos Nomai, agora assistimos gravações de slides dos estranhos, uma forma mais interessante, interativa e que te deixa o tempo todo intrigado sobre o que está acontecendo. E essa história, a forma como ela complementa e FECHA o universo de Outer Wilds é gratificante. É nesse ponto que a Mobius Digital sabe que fechou sua obra-prima.

E essa história tão bem desenvolvida merecia uma estrutura própria e um final próprio. A dinâmica do loop é vital para a trama, mas aqui não funciona tão bem como no jogo base. Os puzzles, por serem muito mais difíceis e escondidos, podem te deixar empacado por horas até conseguir avançar. Não que isso seja necessariamente um problema, mas é frustrante que, quando você pode ter avançado minimamente no progresso, sua exploração é cortada. Fora isso, há um segundo loop, próprio da DLC, quando a barragem se rompe, e que também pode interromper a sua exploração. Diversas vezes eu precisei meditar para reiniciar o loop porque não tinha mais como avançar no que estava fazendo, situação frustrante e que quase não enfrentamos no jogo base.

A ambientação de terror, sim, é maravilhosa. Mas, a partir de certo ponto, senti que o jogador precisa contar mais com a sorte do que qualquer outra coisa para não "ser pego", devido principalmente ao quanto escuro fica a sua tela em momentos específicos. E se você erra muito, o loop pode reiniciar, e lá se vai mais alguns minutos de sua gameplay voltando ao estado onde estava. Passado o terror, esse formato pode ser mais tedioso do que qualquer outra coisa.

E, apesar de eu achar o final real com as adições da DLC totalmente condizente com a narrativa, acredito também que Echoes of the Eye merecia um fim próprio, com créditos e tudo o que há de ser dela. Uma história grandiosa demais para não ter o seu fim único.

Vejo Echoes of The Eye como indispensável para quem jogou, gostou e terminou Outer Wilds. Aqui o universo costura as suas pontas soltas e se fecha de forma maravilhosa. Suas particularidades vão bater mais e menos em diferentes tipos de jogadores, imperfeições que não apagam o brilho desse domínio.

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.

The Outer Wilds is a beautiful, unique and technically dazzling work of art. By no means perfect, it nonetheless manages to forge a truly original experience that most players will never forget, one that is as varied as it is profound. Echoes of the Eye does not manage to recapture that magic, but then again, how could it?

There's a very reason the announcement of this DLC was such a surprise, and it's the same as why it would be strange if someone said they'd managed to fit more gears in their perfectly crafted watch. The little solar system of Outer Wilds is so finely tuned that there simply isn't the space to add another chunk of content without seriously impacting the balance of the rest of the game. Mobius took an interesting approach to making this DLC in deciding to almost entirely section it off. All but the quest to find it takes place on one (admittedly quite large) ship, hidden in plain sight all along. This is probably the only feasible way to add new stuff, but it means sacrificing a lot of what makes the base game so good.

The biggest problem with Echoes of the Eye is its enclosed nature. Where in the base game if you got stuck you could get in your ship and piss off to another planet or even just chill in space for a bit, here everything you need to do is in one place, with the same aesthetic across it all. Tired of wooden shacks and riverside nature? Bad luck mate, that's all we've got. The puzzles here feel even more basic than the base game, with most of the solutions being handed to you once you've found a hidden room it told you about earlier. Where Outer Wilds feels like following a huge, multi headed breadcrumb trail across a whole solar system, there's a more defined and obvious to-do list in Echoes. Go to three areas, find the solution to them and as a reward get one third of the solution to the final puzzle. Rinse and repeat.

All that said, I still think it's an impressive piece of game. Echoes is as visually and aurally stunning as you'd expect and the reveal of the DLC area (and its time-based twist) is absolutely stunning. The story it eventually tells is a remarkably touching one too and its ending manages to feel like a true epilogue to the themes of the base game. Playing this back-to-back with the basegame feels as though I've just finished an exquisitie, perfectly portioned, truly original main course and followed it up with a heaving bowl of decent but somewhat bland bread and butter pudding. In the end, I feel bloated and kind of nauseuous, and it makes it harder to remember just how good that main course was when all I can taste is custard.

I'll stop torturing innocent metaphors now and make some effort at a conclusion. Echoes of the Eye is a valiant attempt at an expansion for a game that felt impossible to have more of, but in the end it stumbles too often to feel half as impactful as its progenitor. If you're going to play, have some separation from Outer Wilds before you do, take six months between them and treat it like a pseudo-spinoff rather than a DLC. The story told here and the artistry is still absolutely worth baring witness to, but keep it separate from the sublimity of the proper game and you'll hopefully enjoy it more than I did.