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How do you improve upon perfection? Well, you can’t, really. Echoes of the Eye is the DLC for Outer Wilds – and since I never mentioned my final thoughts on Outer Wilds as a complete experience, I figured the DLC was the perfect time to do just that. The above screenshot has the fewest spoilers possible while technically showing some things from the DLC; this really is a game you should play blind, and the same is equally true for the DLC.
Outer Wilds is a fantastic experience. Perhaps my personal taste is affecting my judgement here since it’s almost exactly what I want out of a game, but there are few games I’ve played which so superbly show why gaming is a fantastic and unique medium. As an experience, it is complete.
So how do you expand upon that for DLC? As much as I wished for DLC, I couldn’t see it fitting anywhere in the experience. The answer Mobius Digital came to was to create an entirely separate but parallel experience. Echoes of the Eye is almost entirely divorced from the main game, from mechanics to locations – and practically a separate game entirely. This works, I think, since the base game had every corner packed already and adding DLC content there would dilute the main experience.
While practically everything about the DLC would be a spoiler, I do want to touch on two specific aspects in general terms – one positive and one negative. On the plus side: the DLC is set in a location I have always wanted to see in a video game (making my previous article seem almost prescient) and builds upon the lore of the base experience in a tremendous way to give the whole game an even more classic sci-fi vibe. The moment I arrived appropriately stunned me, after which I spent my first few hours happily thinking to myself “that’s so cool!” each time I found a new aspect of the DLC (in-between overpowering my terror to proceed).
My last two hours, sadly, were where my experience soured a bit. The DLC has significant horror aspects (which is fine), but there are mandatory stealth sections which drag on just a tad too long. The penalty for failure is actually fairly brilliant (and what isn’t in this game), but the length and ambiguity of the stealth sections is just too great when compared to the time you are allotted. Your built-in time limit starts feeling too short, a complaint I did not have in the base game. That being said, there is an in-game option to make the stealth sections far easier (“Reduced Frights” mode), which I did end up resorting to – at which point things flowed far better for me.
All in all, the DLC is certainly Tier One. The main puzzle is more difficult, I’d say, but then it’s all optional content anyway. It provides both a great counterpoint to the themes of the base game and provides explanations for a few unresolved plot threads (and not just why your map works). Not to mention another fantastic soundtrack.