Echoes of the Eye: The History of the Eye as told by the Owlelk, Nomai, and Hearthians

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye:

Echoes of the Eye: A Strange New Adventure

Echoes of the Eye: Owlelk and the Dreamworld

Echoes of the Eye: The History of the Eye as told by the Owlelk, Nomai, and Hearthians

The other slide reels inform the player of the secret of The Stranger. I've already revealed quite a bit, but this is the twist that astonishes, even more than discovering The Stranger, the sleeping rooms, or the Dreamworld. I've tried to not spoil puzzles, but I've mentioned hints. If you are considering playing Echoes of the Eye (and I highly recommend it), you should not read this article. If you are brave, skip down to the last paragraph, which contains no spoilers.

Ok. Each second reel reveals a truth about the Dreamworld. The Dreamworld is actually a virtual reality. The story as I understand it. The Owlelk saw the Eye of the Universe from afar. It filled them with wonder and longing. They destroyed their beautiful forest home world to build The Stranger. Upon arrival they built temples to worship the eye. Upon further analysis they realized the Eye contained a vast destructive power. Fearing it, they burned their temples. They built a new device to contain the Eye, so no one would hear its call. They hid The Stranger. They couldn't go home (because they'd destroyed it), but they wanted home, so they built a virtual reality to simulate it. They retreated to that reality and never left.

The reels also reveal how to break into the virtual reality and open the locks. The slides show the weaknesses of the virtual reality. One, if the player drops the Artifact in the virtual world, and steps away from it, they see secrets in the programming, like paths across otherwise empty space. Two, if the player jumps off a raft in one of the tunnels that connects the sections of virtual reality they appear at the switch to open one of the locks. Third and finally, if the player dies while holding an Artifact near a green fire, their conscience enters the virtual reality. The alarms, which are supposed to wake you if you enter a restricted area in the virtual world, can't wake your corpse.

It's incredible the developer conveys these secrets through holograms and reels with no words. The solutions are creative, but one wonders why the aliens left a solution to open the locks.

The final solution requires the player to die at a green fire with an Artifact, jump off the raft in the tunnel, and put down the Artifact. After performing these actions, the player is in the correct position to open all three locks and witness the ending.

As the final lock opens, the totem is revealed to be the entrance to an underground dwelling (in the virtual world). Inside resides a prisoner, an Owlelk. It reveals its story through a hologram. While its people resided in the virtual world, it regretted their decision to hide the Eye. It woke up and unlocked it. The other Owlelk awoke, and reactivated the shield around the Eye, and as punishment, locked the prisoner away forever.

The Owlelk hands you its hologram projector. With it you show the Owlelk how, because he unlocked the eye, the Noami (the aliens you investigated from the first game), saw it and came looking for it. They couldn't find it (as is related in the original game), because by then, the other Owlelk had locked it away again. You show the prisoner how the Noami died, but you explored and came to understand everything that had happened.

The Owlelk asks for the projector back. It leaves through the elevator you came down in. The elevator returns to pick you up. In a hurry you try to catch up with the Owlelk. By the edge of the water you see the hologram projector placed into the sand. A final vision shows you and the prisoner riding a raft into the sunset together. Along the sand you see the prisoner's footprints leading into the water. He has accepted his death, his body long since dead.

You too have only one choice, enter the water, and perish. A final black screen shows the words “Echoes of the Eye”.

Before closing I want to mention a few things.

From my understanding of the lore of Outer Wilds, the Owlelk heard the call of the Eye of the Universe. They thought it was beautiful and wanted to learn more. But when they scanned it in detail at close range, they realized activating it would end the universe. They were scared of its destructive power. The Nomai, hearing the same call, came. They couldn't find it because the Owlelk had rehidden it. They set up a system that would cause the universe to repeat itself every twenty-two minutes, giving them time to find it. Before their system was complete, they were accidentally wiped out by a poisonous gas. The player's character accidentally connects to the Nomai system that comes on line as the sun prepares to go supernova. The player recognizes that the Eye is destructive, yes, because it will end the universe. But the universe is dying. Some say the Eye is calling out because the universe is dying. The Eye also has creative power, the power to restart the universe. And that is what the player does in the main (and I think – best) ending.

There are a number of other endings. In addition to the expansion ending I described above, there are two more endings added by the DLC that combine with the first game. Both involve taking the power core from the Noami ship. I didn't do either, but both sound worse than the original ending. The original ending is about the acceptance of death in the face of the beauty and majesty of the universe. The new endings, which I watched repeat the mistakes of the Owlelk; denial, loneliness, and escapism.

In conclusion,

The Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye is a fitting addition to the base game. It maintains the same feeling of awe, while retaining core mechanics like the twenty-two minute time loop. It features a new location to explore. This exploration is limited to a single location, compared to the many distinct locations of the original, and doesn't allow use of the ship. The location it offers, The Stranger, is a fantastic one with its own unique quirks and charm. Echoes of the Eye maintains the same sense of mystery, tasking the player with collecting clues. These are found in the slide reels scattered about The Stranger. These are wonderfully animated, emitting the soul of the Owlelks; their awe, their terror, their despair, and their flight from reality. The slides communicate perfectly without words. Each slide provides just enough information for the player to advance. The player works their way deeper into the mystery, reel to reel, hypothesis to experiment, and lucky accident to truth. The game builds itself forward in three reveals, ever increasing in astonishment and creativity. The frights along the way are no more tense than those of Anglerfish of Dark Bramble, though more sustained. The expansion functions as both a prequel, revealing the answer to why the Nomai couldn't find the Eye, and also a resolution, as the player now knows the whole cycle, and explains it to someone else. Its ending isn't as satisfying as the ending of Outer Wilds, but the puzzles elevate it into a new universe.