I don’t remember, to be honest with you. I went back to the underwater bell thing last night to see if I could find anything else so maybe? I’ve found so many visions and looked at so many slide reels they’re kind of running together. I’ll check again when I go back to the game.
It’s honesty hard to give you hints. You might be missing something in their habitat.
I think we need to stop giving you hints for a bit. This game is so satisfying when something clicks. Always good to take a break and see what happens next time you launch it.
Yeah, you guys are right. I’m kind of just putting my thoughts down to sort of clear up my own thinking, I’m not averse to you guys pointing stuff out but I’m not necessarily looking for a push in the right direction either. It’s very likely I missed something that will clear all this up, I’ll give it a few days and try again.
This is probably the best advice, especially for figuring it out yourself. It’s more of pain to check the log than in the base game but it’s still super helpful to be told “there’s more to find in this location” and “you’re done here, look elsewhere”.
So, I did it. I’ve completed the Echoes of the Eye DLC for Outer Wilds. But I don’t really feel good about it. Mainly because I solved the remaining problems through brute force.
I mean, I did review all the slides and clues I had received, going through all the rumors on the spaceship and visiting every place on the Stranger I could think of to visit. And a lot, a whole lot, of wandering in the dream world. I never really felt like I was on this game’s wavelength, I stopped having lightbulb moments around the time I made my last post. Like, I had to jump in the fire, die in the fire, in order to get past the sentinel things? I guess in retrospect it makes a kind of sense, but even watching that particular slide it didn’t occur to me to do this, it was just a thing I tried out of frustration - and then I kept wandering around because I had no other way to exit the dream world! Except die again, I suppose. I don’t remember any other time in the game where I needed to manipulate the whole live, die, repeat cycle in order to progress and that just didn’t seem like a logical way forward, for whatever reason. And the whole jumping off the raft - I could tell that I needed to do it, but it was a fair amount of trial and error before I worked out where to do that. Though that one did make more sense in retrospect.
Anyway I did like the final moments, and it was all worthwhile in the end. When I ran into the owl guy hiding in the locked room, and he stepped out of the darkness reaching for me, as if to snuff my lamp like all the other times, and then just gives me a big toothy grin? Yeah that was just about a heart attack. Cool to see a resolution to all the stuff I had found, even if I felt that I did a poor job piecing things together. The experience was satisfying, but my path through it was less so, if that makes sense.
Anyway, thumbs up overall, just not quite as high as the main game for me. I really can’t wait to see what these folks do next.
Congratulations.
My understanding of the progression having beaten it is: (Heavy spoilers. Do not read unless you finished the DLC as it covers the critical path)
Explore the ships world and discover:
- The damaged slides
- The strange vault
- The secret of the artifact and how to enter the simulation
Explore the simulation (specifically from the vault room fire) and discover:
- A secret room in the tower which ultimately leads to the hidden slide burning rooms. This might be the trickiest sequence of the DLC, and one of the most important, as it involves both simulation and ship overworld actions/exploration.
Explore each slide burning room to discover:
- How to access the three hidden archives in the simulation
Explore the hidden archives in the Simulation to discover:
- How to break the three seals on the vault
I generally followed this progression with the exception that I found one of the slide burn rooms early before ever entering the simulation. Suffice is to say it’s slide reel did not make much sense at the time.
End.
It’s worth noting that with the DLC done, the main game’s ending will differ slightly and I think it’s worth the final journey to witness.
That moment with the fire and death was an incredible realisation to me and I felt like such an idiot for not seeing it sooner. I loved that you never got the codes for the vault, just the means to side step them.
The segment with the prisoner and exchanging your stories is one of most gut wrenching and emotional moments in the entire game for me. The base game + DLC arc coming together with the music, the completion of the ring motif, then the painful/joyous scream of the owl afterwards was just beautiful.
Oh man, I had to sit back and laugh when I realized that the things I had been chasing for the entire DLC story was not important at all and, probably more importantly, didn’t even exist.
Yup, that is a cool trick of the DLC.
The actually codes cannot be found in-game, BUT they DO actually exist AND work, thanks to people who datamined the game.
Silly, but cool. Somebody made a translator (kind of) like the one in the game:
https://www.reddit.com/r/outerwilds/comments/13b7t4q/i_made_a_functional_translator_device/
That’s amazing!
I’m watching a vtuber playthrough of Outer Wilds right now and for the first time in (my) living memory the youtube algorithm worked well for me.
It recommended this channel which makes supercuts of streamed playthroughs (mostly Outer Wilds but also some other games).
It cuts out most of the stumbling around (unless it’s funny or interesting).
As comments point out you can never experience Outer Wilds for yourself for the first time again. But this allows you to experience the journey in a different and edited format which I found very engaging. In the last week I watched three streamer supercuts and found each very interesting and immensely intriguing in their own way.
It really helps with when decent streamers constantly articulate their experiences and theories, especially for this game. Their theories(especially the wrong ones), surprises and moments of realization are all very satisfying to experience second hand.
Sorting by popularity Sovjetwomble’s and About Oliver’s playthroughs are good. Very different approaches and paths, really showcasing and appreciating the amazing design of Outer Wilds.
Joseph Anderson (former youtube games-essayist, now streamer) plays very differently with a “break the game” mindset which apparently is also a focus of his streams for other games. Probably not a good choice for the first watch but definitely noteworthy in its own way.
I personally found the story and design of Outer Wilds incredibly amazing, but was very bothered by some mechanical FPS aspects which I felt were notably frustrating.
These supercuts are the second best way to experience the game IMO, cutting out most of the boring and frustrating stuff. And as mentioned almost a way to replay a game you can’t really experience again like the first time.
I quite often had to think of this.
All streamers describe a whole set of fears the game causes in them. The more hardcore gamers often have specific ones like water, angler fish or darkness. Others, like About Oliver for instance, jump at everything and are shocked, but not repelled, by a huge amount of the game’s interactions.
I don’t know if that makes me more or less immersed, but I personally had a very different experience. The time loop setup was immensely freeing on a grand scale for me. Outside of the frustration of long restarts to failed platforming puzzles it allowed me to focus much more on the curiosity part of the journey.
Maybe for people like @BrianRubin that channel is an alternative to experience one of the best gaming experiences, and definitely one of the best space games in existence.
In that regard, SovietWomble has his playthrough uploaded:
He’s very well spoken and voices all his thoughts, it’s pretty enjoyable (but still a vod).
Him trying to land on the Sun Station is both infuriating and hilarious but I particularly love that he streams without watching the commentary (and comments on what he thinks the comments are saying while playing).
I remember trying to do that. I still think it might be possible :)
It’s totally possible. There’s an achievement for doing it. It’s just realllly hard.
I would propose that anyone who watched that video and believed that what happened was at all FAST or EASY should give it a try. One thing worth noting, if you haven’t ever tried it, is that you can’t autopilot there, you’ve got to match speed with the fast-moving sun station while also keeping at altitude - i.e., not flinging your ship back into space nor falling into the sun. And that thing that looks like a landing platform doesn’t have any artificial gravity, what the player did (and I did too) was try to get the lander tangled up in the curly pieces there so you can jump out. And then! Then you’ve got to jetpack across to the actual station, again maintaining speed and altitude, and fling yourself into that relatively tiny hole. It’s very difficult.
I tried a couple times but gave up. It was hard enough just clearing the gap between the teleporter room and the rest of the station.