This review contains spoilers
Well, there it is; the sequel to possibly my favourite game of all time! Im pretty happy to say that 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 it met my expectations.
Im glad they've experimented with the formula they set up in the base game. Some experiments are more successful than others of course, with one dud being big enough to sour my experience and make me audibly go "what in the fuck were they thinking", but yeah more on that later. Let's start with the positives, which make up the majority of the dlc, in my experience at least.
The soundtrack is great, it is on par if not at points better than the base game. I'm sure they noticed the overwhelming positive reaction the ost got in the base game, so they decided to weigh in on that aspect more. It's noticeable in how the music is implemented with the slide reels, that level of synergy between in-game events and soundtrack wasn't quite there in the base game. Andrew Prahlow of course delivered in his own composition as well, it's some of the finest in the game. This dlc has been confirmed to be the last of Outer Wilds we will see, so I really hope he doesn't drop this style. Hopefully he'll develop and build upon it in his future works, be it games or films. It would really be a shame if he dropped this unique style in favour of the indie game composer stereotype of either doing synthwave or chiptune.
As far as the new content goes, "The Stranger" is a really sick concept. A rotating space habitat/dyson sphere hidden in plain sight, only visible by way of observing the object from a series of dead angles. Getting to the Stranger for the first time was amazing, finding out there was this ancient civilization predating the nomai in this solar system all along is mindblowing. The way this was made clear was very clever as well, you really dont need much more than the first text you come across at the entrance to be untranslateable. This kills 2 birds with one stone; it lets you know you're not dealing with the nomai anymore, and sets up the manner in which you'll be receiving information from now on. That's right, from now on you wont be doing ANY reading anymore, everything is being visually conveyed! I have to admit that I missed reading the nomai messages with the banter and all, it made the big reveals more impactful to me personally, but I can't call this change anything but an improvement.
In terms of gameplay it is a mixed bag. Going into the Stranger ultimately means you have to abandon your ship, so that means no more funny space shenanigans with whacky crash landings, and no more mandatory self immolation by means of flying, totally intentionally, into the sun. What you get in return are the rafts, which are admittedly very fun to control, but the fact that the space ship is completely out of the picture is a giant bummer. The first 4 hours or so will mostly involve you exploring the vessel, swimming across the whole thing with your raft and finding out about the new aliens through the picture reels. I will unabashadely say that during the whole duration of these 4 hours there was nothing but childlike joy in my mind, it's more Outer Wilds for christ's sake! Not only that, it's arguably the sickest looking place in the solar sytem yet. It's the "exploration fuels progression" gameplay loop that you expect from the base game and it's simply good, nothing more to add.
And now comes the other 3 hours... you know, the "what the fuck" part. At a certain point you start running out of leads that point towards anything on the vessel, so you start going into the artifact worlds. This is the point where the game genuinely turns into an aimless mess for a while. The first red flag you notice is that your jetpack is being taken away, immediately making movement in the world a slog. What it boils down to is this; you have to walk through these many corridors that blend together and are so dark you can barely see shit, hoping to stumble upon something that will let you progress. The only tool you have is an alien lantern which has a stupidly small field of light. The only way to see well in front of you is to focus the lamp - but, get this; if you focus the lamp, your movement grinds to a snail's pace! Great, so not only dont you have a jetpack anymore, if you want more visibility than right in front of your feet, you'll need to walk around like you just took a deadly dose of painkillers.
I can confidently say that until you get the lead to search for the bottom of the tower in the second artifact world, your endeavors into these worlds are 100% aimless. You literally dont know what the fuck to do there. The logbook is uncharacteristically unhelpful as well, marking out the worlds as fully explored while youve literally gained nothing from visiting them. Finding out later that you were definitely not done with those places was just unbelievably annoying.
The purpose of these aimless visits becomes apparent later on. After you find the 3 secret reels which reveal secret passageways in the artifact worlds, you'll need to go back to the stupid artifact worlds. Now you finally find out why you were made to walk around aimlessly. The purpose was; to make the amnesia parody segments slightly less annoying... they dropped the ball hard.
When you illuminate the secret passages you were told about by the reels, the inhabitants of the world suddenly and inexplicably go out for your blood despite you already tresspassing on their domain before this happened. There is absolutely nothing engaging about these sneaking missions, you can even skip 2 of these if you have enough patience and time on your hands. Its like the anglerfish except there is absolutely nothing unique about this, its just a generic horror game walking in the dark segment. You better have the layout memorized because youre gonna lose a lot of time otherwise trying to juke the elks and finding out youre going into a dead end instead. I highly recommend turning on the the reduced frights mode for these parts, it just makes it less of a headache.
Thankfully, it gets better from here. Once youre done with the sneaking I'd say the payoff is reasonably worthwhile. What you get out of finishing each artifact world is solutions to the "main problem" so to speak. These solutions are quite interesting and definitely worth the trouble to go after, so dont get discouraged by the sneaking segments. The final "conversation" was quite a gut-punch for me personally, and the extra stuff in the ending of the base game was a nice little addition.
It's no surprise that the dlc doesn't have a particularly huge impact on the base game, but it certainly doesnt sour it. It does raise a question of how the Nomai, a highly advanced civilization that deals with black holes and shit, weren't able to notice this vessel, but heartians somehow did. Unless I missed something, this reeks a bit of retcon.
All in all this is an admirable final send-off for an exceptional base game. Despite a big dirty spot in the middle it is a very enjoyable experience as a whole. If you enjoyed the base game like I did, this surely is worth your time.
Im glad they've experimented with the formula they set up in the base game. Some experiments are more successful than others of course, with one dud being big enough to sour my experience and make me audibly go "what in the fuck were they thinking", but yeah more on that later. Let's start with the positives, which make up the majority of the dlc, in my experience at least.
The soundtrack is great, it is on par if not at points better than the base game. I'm sure they noticed the overwhelming positive reaction the ost got in the base game, so they decided to weigh in on that aspect more. It's noticeable in how the music is implemented with the slide reels, that level of synergy between in-game events and soundtrack wasn't quite there in the base game. Andrew Prahlow of course delivered in his own composition as well, it's some of the finest in the game. This dlc has been confirmed to be the last of Outer Wilds we will see, so I really hope he doesn't drop this style. Hopefully he'll develop and build upon it in his future works, be it games or films. It would really be a shame if he dropped this unique style in favour of the indie game composer stereotype of either doing synthwave or chiptune.
As far as the new content goes, "The Stranger" is a really sick concept. A rotating space habitat/dyson sphere hidden in plain sight, only visible by way of observing the object from a series of dead angles. Getting to the Stranger for the first time was amazing, finding out there was this ancient civilization predating the nomai in this solar system all along is mindblowing. The way this was made clear was very clever as well, you really dont need much more than the first text you come across at the entrance to be untranslateable. This kills 2 birds with one stone; it lets you know you're not dealing with the nomai anymore, and sets up the manner in which you'll be receiving information from now on. That's right, from now on you wont be doing ANY reading anymore, everything is being visually conveyed! I have to admit that I missed reading the nomai messages with the banter and all, it made the big reveals more impactful to me personally, but I can't call this change anything but an improvement.
In terms of gameplay it is a mixed bag. Going into the Stranger ultimately means you have to abandon your ship, so that means no more funny space shenanigans with whacky crash landings, and no more mandatory self immolation by means of flying, totally intentionally, into the sun. What you get in return are the rafts, which are admittedly very fun to control, but the fact that the space ship is completely out of the picture is a giant bummer. The first 4 hours or so will mostly involve you exploring the vessel, swimming across the whole thing with your raft and finding out about the new aliens through the picture reels. I will unabashadely say that during the whole duration of these 4 hours there was nothing but childlike joy in my mind, it's more Outer Wilds for christ's sake! Not only that, it's arguably the sickest looking place in the solar sytem yet. It's the "exploration fuels progression" gameplay loop that you expect from the base game and it's simply good, nothing more to add.
And now comes the other 3 hours... you know, the "what the fuck" part. At a certain point you start running out of leads that point towards anything on the vessel, so you start going into the artifact worlds. This is the point where the game genuinely turns into an aimless mess for a while. The first red flag you notice is that your jetpack is being taken away, immediately making movement in the world a slog. What it boils down to is this; you have to walk through these many corridors that blend together and are so dark you can barely see shit, hoping to stumble upon something that will let you progress. The only tool you have is an alien lantern which has a stupidly small field of light. The only way to see well in front of you is to focus the lamp - but, get this; if you focus the lamp, your movement grinds to a snail's pace! Great, so not only dont you have a jetpack anymore, if you want more visibility than right in front of your feet, you'll need to walk around like you just took a deadly dose of painkillers.
I can confidently say that until you get the lead to search for the bottom of the tower in the second artifact world, your endeavors into these worlds are 100% aimless. You literally dont know what the fuck to do there. The logbook is uncharacteristically unhelpful as well, marking out the worlds as fully explored while youve literally gained nothing from visiting them. Finding out later that you were definitely not done with those places was just unbelievably annoying.
The purpose of these aimless visits becomes apparent later on. After you find the 3 secret reels which reveal secret passageways in the artifact worlds, you'll need to go back to the stupid artifact worlds. Now you finally find out why you were made to walk around aimlessly. The purpose was; to make the amnesia parody segments slightly less annoying... they dropped the ball hard.
When you illuminate the secret passages you were told about by the reels, the inhabitants of the world suddenly and inexplicably go out for your blood despite you already tresspassing on their domain before this happened. There is absolutely nothing engaging about these sneaking missions, you can even skip 2 of these if you have enough patience and time on your hands. Its like the anglerfish except there is absolutely nothing unique about this, its just a generic horror game walking in the dark segment. You better have the layout memorized because youre gonna lose a lot of time otherwise trying to juke the elks and finding out youre going into a dead end instead. I highly recommend turning on the the reduced frights mode for these parts, it just makes it less of a headache.
Thankfully, it gets better from here. Once youre done with the sneaking I'd say the payoff is reasonably worthwhile. What you get out of finishing each artifact world is solutions to the "main problem" so to speak. These solutions are quite interesting and definitely worth the trouble to go after, so dont get discouraged by the sneaking segments. The final "conversation" was quite a gut-punch for me personally, and the extra stuff in the ending of the base game was a nice little addition.
It's no surprise that the dlc doesn't have a particularly huge impact on the base game, but it certainly doesnt sour it. It does raise a question of how the Nomai, a highly advanced civilization that deals with black holes and shit, weren't able to notice this vessel, but heartians somehow did. Unless I missed something, this reeks a bit of retcon.
All in all this is an admirable final send-off for an exceptional base game. Despite a big dirty spot in the middle it is a very enjoyable experience as a whole. If you enjoyed the base game like I did, this surely is worth your time.