[Review] Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye DLC

A few years back, a game came out that forever changed how I look at the concept of exploration in video games. That was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A couple of years later came a game that took that feeling of discovery and turned it into a game mechanic. That game was Outer Wilds, and it changed how I think about, well, a lot of things.

In Outer Wilds, finding new information isn’t just for flavor, it’s your key item. Getting into a hidden cave isn’t done by finding a Hookshot point but by following notes and taking the time to observe the worlds around you. On September 28, 2021, this game got its first and only DLC in The Echoes of The Eye, and it proved that lightning can absolutely strike twice if you give your extra content the same love and effort as the original game.

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Outer Wilds: A Primer

First, I need to clarify a few things. I am talking about the game Outer WILDS. The studio Obsidian put out another game by the name of The Outer WORLDS around the exact same time, and it has made talking about this game difficult. That’s a pretty good game too, but I just want to make sure we’re clear.

Second, this is the kind of game where I feel obligated to tell you that you need to stop reading my review and just go play it. The less you know going in, the more satisfying and wonderful the DLC is. I understand it’s hard to trust that alone, not knowing what kind of game you’re getting into. I ask that you trust me, but I’m going to go into as much detail as I feel comfortable for the purpose of writing a review longer than “Game good, go play.” If at any point you feel intrigued, I highly suggest you quit reading there and go launch off into this incredible journey.

To talk about Echoes of the Eye, I first need to do a quick recap of the base Outer Wilds. If you’ve already played the game, then the simple review here is that the DLC is every bit worth it. It’s more of the same style of things that made the original such a unique experience, but with entirely new mysteries to solve.

Exploring A Wide Expanse

For those not already acquainted with it, Outer Wilds is an exploration game set in a solar system caught in a time loop. It’s a bit reductive but think of it like Breath of the Wild without combat. You play in a huge open world (actually, a solar system) that you’re free to explore any part of as soon as you’re out of the gate. While there aren’t monsters to fight, there are still environmental challenges to navigate and puzzles to solve.

The biggest difference between Outer Wilds and Breath of the Wild is that Breath of the Wild immediately makes your end goal clear: kill Ganon. Outer Wilds doesn’t give you anything to start with. Instead, it wants you to channel your wide-eyed inner kid, who once dreamed of traveling the stars. Pick the planet in the sky that looks the coolest and go see what it’s about.

There are several planets to explore, each with its own themes and discoveries. As you travel, your natural curiosity and some cleverly established bread crumbs should start pulling you into a bigger mystery of an ancient race that ran the solar system before yours, known as The Nomai, did. What happened to them? What were they doing? Why is there a moon that’s only sometimes in the sky? Aside from learning how to traverse further or deeper into each planet, you also learn the secrets to questions like these. Some of them help you go even further and take you to places you didn’t think you’d go when you started your humble space adventure.

Speaking of humble, I want to take a moment to talk about the atmosphere of Outer Wilds. This isn’t No Man’s Sky or Star Fox. Instead, developer Mobius Digital opted for a very cozy mountain vibe. Your home planet of Timberhearth is dotted in pine forests and rivers. Your ship is made up of far more wood than anybody should trust for a space-faring vessel, and it’s stocked with cans of marshmallows for settling by a campfire. You’ll meet other spacefarers from your home out across the system, rocking on a hammock or settling in a rocking chair by the campfire.

Mobius doubles down on this atmosphere with the masterful soundtrack by Andrew Prahlow. The folksy sounds of a banjo and whistling blend in with synthetic chords to give you exactly the unique feeling of being a Podunk space explorer.

Where you end up with Outer Wilds is honestly an experience that can change you. I don’t want to get into it, but this game is truly a work of art. It currently sits as one of my favorite video games of all time. The only problem is that once you beat it, you can’t “do it again.” Information is your key item, and unless you have the unique ability to unlearn what you know, all you can really do is hop back in your ship and fly around for fun. You could go and finish filling out your ship’s logs or get some achievements, but that’s it. And that’s okay! The trip you take will be well worth it.

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What Ehchoes of the Eye Offers

Now, for Outer Wilds‘ DLC, Echoes of the Eye, take everything I just said about the main game and repeat it. For someone who played the original when it came out in 2019, it’s an absolute blessing to have something new to explore. That feeling of triumph after uncovering a new secret, the majesty of exploration, and the wistful layers of stories to dig through all hit you again.

It’s almost crazy to think they didn’t just make Outer Wilds 2, but the way these new stories retroactively apply themselves to the main game helps add more to the incredible experience. Plus, if you’ve played the original, you know that a sequel is, well, not impossible, exactly. If you know, you know, if you don’t, go play the game.

Similar to the base game, everything you need to maneuver this new landscape is available to you right away. It’s about learning how to use those tools to navigate and discover this strange new world. In fact, even if you just get into Outer Wilds and its DLC today, you’ll be able to enjoy the new content immediately. The old rules don’t really apply to learning how to access it or play through it. At that point, the new setting for Echoes of the Eye is “just another location” in the solar system, albeit much larger and more detailed than the others.

Also, by its nature, it remains “disconnected” from the sort of spider web pattern of secrets found on the rest of the planets. Instead, it has its own web that connects the different locations within. Ultimately, the story of this new place will feed back into beating the proper game. Even if you’ve beaten the game before, do it again after you complete Echoes for some additional, emotionally charged pay-offs.

Appropriate Audio

One of the reasons why Outer Wilds’ soundtrack is so great is because you use the music to attach yourself and fully experience the game’s biggest moments. I’m sure you could glean the appropriate emotions from the music on its own. But I can’t imagine that the song that plays while you’re rafting through this strange new world would have nearly the same impact without the awe-inspiring view the first time you arrive there.

Curiously, with Echoes of the Eye, the studio has managed to retain that very folksy sci-fi aesthetic in both the music and the world. This time, there are far more haunting and melancholy sounds befitting the terrible events that befell this newly discovered world.

The secenic settings

The landscape is more swampland than mountainous, but this new civilization you discover is clearly inspired by out-of-this-world science fiction and cozy, homegrown aesthetics. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the base game’s Nomai people were technologically advanced and science-minded, and this new civilization was similarly advanced but also more spiritually inclined. It shows in the architecture, the technology, and the storytelling. It feels unique and new while also strangely nostalgic and familiar.

The base Outer Wilds experience has its share of spooky environments and mysteries that can make you feel tense, even a bit dreadful. You never know what to expect, but ultimately, the biggest threats to your safety are the environments. And The Sun. You will die, several times, by falling into its gravity well. At least one of those will be because you used your auto-pilot, which is not smart enough to maneuver around other celestial bodies to get to your destination. Thus, it will fly you right into the big orange menace.

Echoes of the Eye is different. While the environments are still haunting and foreboding, and there is a clearer threat to you in this new world as you dig deeper into its structures. You will have to navigate dark passages with pursuers who are not fond of your exploratory instincts, and your best line of defense is to hide your light — which is the only thing that illuminates the pitch-black environments around you.

Adding The Right Amount of Tension

The DLC’s very stealth-heavy segments can be outright terrifying, as well as a bit frustrating if you’re not good at video games like this. There is, mercifully, a setting called “Less Frights Mode” that lets you bypass these very difficult segments. It may “cheapen” the experience a bit, but of all the things I have encountered in Outer Wilds, these segments are absolutely the biggest barriers to progress. Less-experienced or impatient players may find themselves frustrated with them, even to the point of quitting.

This feature is a welcome addition, especially if it feels like it might be the thing that prevents you from seeing the game to the end. That said, it is a masterfully tense and nerve-rattling experience to navigate the darker reaches of Echoes of the Eye by yourself. These aren’t just some cheap jump scares, and the reason for all of it in the narrative is incredibly clever and well-earned.

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Inspiration taken from a certain legendary series

I know I’ve been vague with this review, perhaps frustratingly so. But everything is structured specifically for you to have surprises everywhere you look in Outer Wilds and Echoes of the Eye, and I don’t want to take that experience away from you. It’s clear that the developers of this game look to the history of the Zelda series for inspiration, with characters named Tektite and an achievement called “You’ve met a terrible fate.” But, it’s also deeply embedded into the game’s design.

I’ve already mentioned that this open-world game behaves similarly to Breath of the Wild. The only progress barriers are ones that require specific knowledge to bypass. Other than those, the world is entirely open for you to explore at your leisure.

I also briefly stated that the solar system you explore is trapped in a time loop, a premise reminiscent of Majora’s Mask. As in that game, Outer Wild‘s environment is essentially one big clockwork machine that moves the same way every loop. This means certain puzzles require certain time frames to be active so you can find more information. Certain events might not trigger until 15 minutes into the 22-minute time span, requiring you to learn how the pieces of this system move. You’re still on that clock when you enter Echoes of the Eye, but you will have to learn all the new ways in which this particular world is going to act within its time frame.

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DLC that echoes the core game’s greatness

All of this is to say that Outer Wilds is a truly remarkable experience that I believe will be very comfortable for people who hang out here at Zelda Universe. It’s thought-provoking, clever, and constantly surprising. Echoes of the Eye continues that excellent design one more time and manages to deliver in all the same ways with an entirely different world to explore. This game is equal parts warm, comforting, optimistic, frightening, tragic, and sad. All of this applies to Echoes of the Eye, and arguably more so.

Video games were changed for me after Outer Wilds, and Echoes of the Eye serves as an incredible reminder as to how and why that is, while giving me more to think about for a long time to come. It’s a hauntingly beautiful solar system waiting for you to uncover the tragic history that befalls it and the uncertain future that awaits it.

Outer Wilds is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One/X/S, and PC. On Xbox, it is part of the GamePass program. It will be coming to Switch at some point in the near future. The base game retails for $24.99 and the DLC is $14.99.