The time loop or temporal loop is a plot tool in fiction whereby personalities re-experience a period of time which is duplicated, occasionally greater than as soon as, with some hope of breaking out of the cycle of rep. The term time loop is often used to refer to a causal loop; nonetheless, causal loopholes are unchanging and also self-originating, whereas time loopholes are continuously resetting: when a certain problem is met, such as a death of a personality or a clock getting to a specific time, the loop starts again, perhaps with one or even more characters retaining the memories from the previous loop.
When I reviewed Outer Wilds, it was clear to me it was a special game. I am always proud to list it in my top 10 of the best games of all time (in my head). Its mixture of crossing space using a small solar system as a watch puzzle was quite unique. I could not ask it. I had great hope for Echoes of the Eye and although it is an excellent DLC entry in itself, he does not reach the summits of the basic game as I had hoped. Decompose it.
Beware of light spoilers to come! Although I avoid going into the details of the original game or any great history of the new DLC, I will talk about what is happening mechanically, so if you want to experiment with something blind, you have been warned friend.
Echoes of the Eye is integrated into the game as a piece of history during your normal time loop. Vanity is that there is a new exhibition in the museum that deserves your attention. What you find in the museum is the first piece of a long thread that takes you on the way to a totally different adventure style.
And that s what surprised me the most. Outer Wilds has always been composed of many pieces that blend in one all. All his solar system is a puzzle and you solve him little by little by taking note of his operation in your time loop. The echoes take place only in a single place divided into two distinct areas. The first area is a fascinating rafting adventure on a Ringworld similar to Halo. The second domain is a horror game that has more to do with a soma than with Outer Wilds.
In the way of Outer Wilds, you are not at all portable to solve this new mystery. And the mystery itself is convincing and prefigures a very interesting tradition that affects the original basic game. Trying to get these answers is what pushed me even at times when I tired of the pace of the DLC and the lack of ... Well, from the extra-atmospheric space.
In the normal game, you spend a lot of time crossing vast interstellar and planetary areas. It s a good mix and there is so much to do. This reduces the friction between players, because if you feel stuck in an area, you can travel elsewhere to progress and come back later when you feel refreshed.
If you are like me in Echoes, you have finished the basic game, so the only place to go is this new environment. And this new environment is full of dead ends. Every little progress I did finally leads to another impasse and, if I was frustrated, there was nothing else to do. I can see that players who play Echoes during their first part are much less frustrated because it is better to serve them in small pieces with the possibility of part with. The timer of the time loop does not help ECHOES either. There is nothing worse than making a new discovery towards the end of your loop, see what you have to do next, only to have the supernova of the sun and reset your progress to zero. This was compensated by the small pieces of the basic game and the many worlds, but when you only have one task, it s a disappointment.
It happened enough for me to have dropped the game, too frustrated, especially in the second zone. While the first zone looks like planetous puzzles that you are used to, the second zone is a light and slow horror experience in absolute black. It even comes with creatures that can track you if you are not careful and expel you, thus losing even more time in the time loop. This can be a bit exasperating at times when you will not know where to go, or how to unlock a path, and then get out of the dark area and know that you have already spent half of your time.
Other environmental changes have an impact on your progress in the dark, so depending on how you enter this area, you will determine how long you will even more than the overall time loop - an aggravating and punitive decision.
Although I have always appreciated my time with Echoes overall, I m a little disappointed by the approach of completely abandoning the range of the original and lock players in a single domain. I did not enjoy the frightening zone either because it forces a different style of play to focus on the distance you can browse before resetting. I did not feel like an intrepid explorer and rather like a speedrunner, hoping for being able to turn a sequence, sank and just three meters away than the last time. In the end, history changes and parts of the new zone are a pleasure to see. Some of the new mechanics such as rafting or manipulation of light are welcome. Thus, while Echoes abandons some parts of what has made Outer Wilds so great in the great exploration, Echoes of the Eye is a solid companion of the basic game. I just wish I did not go almost far from my spaceship.
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