Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

2025-04-10
That they were able to find another realm of mystery to explore within the seemingly fully explored solar system in Outer Wilds is an incredible feat. And in the first half of the game as the Stranger appears out of nothingness and you're exploring that river ring world, rafting about, doing sum puzzlin with the new light-based mechanics I was having a blast. I wasn't quite in awe as I was in the original but damn I was happy to have more.

And then I went to The Secret World. And at this point I went from enjoying the game to not enjoying the game. See, the original had one source of frustration: the ever-present ticking clock. In a game largely focused on figuring things out, its frustrating to occasionally be given a small window of time to look at a mural or decode this or that. Worse still there are certain actions that can only be accomplished after waiting for a certain moment. You have to be at point X by time Y or GG time to reload. This frustration was tempered for me in the original because just flying around that little toybox solar system full of weird and wonderful sights was such a delight. It gave me a buffer on my patience for backtracking. But here, in the Secret World with it's drab, darkened environments and half-baked stealth sections you now have time pressure, a pressure to hide, alllll wrapped up in backtracking and repetition. I'm actually surprised this is rated as highly as the original--a genuine masterpiece--because I loathed the entire Secret World section. It's about a third of the game. I loathed about a third of the game.

But hey even a scuffed ass addition to a masterpiece is still worth checking out. And if you're like most other people you'll be able to look past the tedium of the Secret World and enjoy everything else Echoes of the Eye has to offer.

??? 2021
I'll try to keep this review quick.

It's more Outer Wilds. Which is kind of amazing that they were able to add more content while preserving all the cool lore of the original. It's very nicely additive.

It also adds new puzzles and mechanics. Everything happens on a single ring world hidden in the game. There's a giant river running through it and you have to ride little rafts around it. At some point a giant dam at the start collapses scaring the shit out of you but also modifying a bunch of the structures and making them inaccessible.

A lot of the new mechanics are centered around light and they're pretty fun. About halfway through you uncover enough clues to enter the Dream Realm or whatever it's called. And at this point I went from enjoying the game to not enjoying the game. Which is the classic problem of Outer Wilds. It's all fun and games till you get stuck. And because there's a timer ticking down constantly you have to do a TON of backtracking and you're feeling this constant pressure when you're just trying to figure out what the fuck to do. And that sucks.

Overall it was cool but after I got to the dream world I basically had to use a guide because it was so frustrating having to traipse my ass back and forth to do the same set of tasks OVER AND OVER AND OVER.