Análisis de Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

Echoes of the Eye allows us to rediscover Outer Wilds at a wide DLC that captures the magic of the original.

Back to Outer Wild after two years is all a shock: The controls of the ship have been evaporated from muscle memory, the particularities of each tool escape to our control and the internal clock that was capable of notifying the imminent end of the temporary loop You need rope. I needed almost an hour just to finish the initial mission that gives access to the new DLC zone; Of having been more wasplain could have followed the chain of tracks in the middle of time. In the end the gears of my brain again adapted to the way of thinking of the game and I managed to reach the new area. The overwhelming transition encapsulated all the original experience in just a moment: the unrepeatable magic of each discovery, the torrent of possibilities with each small advance and, although relegated to the background, the frustration of a progress that sometimes wishes more than what should.

Basic information

Developer: Digital Mobius Editor: Annapurna Interactive Platforms: PS4, One, PC Proven version: PS4 Availability: 09/28/2021

Echoes of the Eye is an expansion for Outer Wilds that fit within the same temporary loop as the base game. A small track leads us back to the Museum of Luz where, after that little search for the treasure that mentioned above, we open our way to [censored]. This new location can be visited at any time once unblocked, as well as the rest of the Galaxy planets. Its history is self-contained and can be played without problem as a continuation of a completed game of the base campaign, but it is naturally integrated into the experience for those who start your trip for the first time.

It was already difficult to talk about the experience of Outer Wilds without going into details, but with the expansion it is even more complicated. I do not want to comment something that may seem as silly as the shape of the mapping, because it is worth discovering itself. For this reason, the analysis can be a bit opaque and will focus on the mechanics in an imprecise way; I can not share everything I have in my notes without bursting a couple of surprises.

One of the great differences of expansion is that the ship becomes almost irrelevant beyond the journey from Lut to [censored]. If you did not like the experience of landing the ship, here you can valerte from the autopilot to start investigating almost from the beginning of the loop. Echoes of the Eye has a lot to show and wants you to lose the minimum possible time on journeys (at least zero gravity). From there, a whole network of locations, puzzles, tracks and events is deployed during the loop that we must handle intuitively to progress. The expansion is committed to density, rather than by the size, giving a new meaning to the counted localizations known as we make discoveries. It is even funny the way we plant very important localizations in front of the noses, but it is always shown so that we do not find them until you are interested.

The story is told in a more explicit and visual way than in the base campaign, although always playing with the amount of information that gives us so that, again, it is a challenge to spin the underlying story. This new method works at the same time as foundations with which to build its history and as a source of the necessary key data in the progress in the puzzles, although it is less than a way to consult the already discovered information.

Echoes of the Eye is generous in extension and originality. As soon as it reuses the ideas of the base game rather than in specific points, choosing to introduce turns at every few minutes to surprise the veteran player. He knows the value of each of his ideas and the capital importance of the discoveries; Despite being limited to a location, at times its mimbres are more than sequel than expansion. It manages to repeat the success of Outer Wilds precisely trying to repeat the minimum possible of an unrepeatable experience by its unique nature.

It also recovers some of its problems, difficult to avoid when the structure is built around the temporary loop. The constant repetition of the same steps becomes agony when we are stuck in a situation that we can not solve. By giving so much weight to discovery, experience is irretrievably of less to more. The first loop is an explosion of stimuli that we do not know where to start covering; The last one is a relief because we are going to be able to abandon at last the task we were optimizing based on repetitions.

In a perfect storm, Echoes of the Eye introduces his worst mechanics, the most frustrating of the set, right on the final stretch. What should become an intense search for truth is transformed into a boredom when a stealth that is half a cook appears. The impenetrable darkness of the environments manages to disorient ourselves, but leaves us exposed to spinning around areas without barely milestones that help us move with more pretend in the following visits. At first it manages to transmit terror effectively, but reveals its letters too fast; It ends up being more repetitive and frustrating than anything else. It was not the time nor the place to introduce some of the most convoluted puzzles of the whole and the lower of the experience, it shows even more.

All this is forgotten, at least for a moment, when we managed to solve all this puzzle and assist a conclusion that collects the best of the original. Under the title of Mobius Digital beats an immense heart that knows how to thrill with small intense, warm and welcoming scenes in which the soundtrack plays a central role. In many videogames the reward to our effort is an improvement to our team, an increase in our skills or an item crossed out of an endless list; Here is always an experience that treasure. This virtue was so present at Outer Wilds as in Echoes of the Eye, and is undoubtedly the best thing that can be said about expansion.

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