Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Every now and then I look at games, what with their ‘360 no scopes’ and their ‘esports’ and their ‘battle passes’, and I think ‘maybe this hobby just isn’t for me’. Every now and then, however, I play a game like Outer Wilds and absolutely fall in love with the medium again. Not all games are made for me, and that’s okay - but Outer Wilds absolutely was. Did you know: the planets in Outer Wilds aren’t on set tracks - their orbits are done via integration - i.e. they’re gigantic physics objects! That’s why the jump is a crouch-and-then-jump - you’re pushing down on the planet, which sends you upwards and the planet downwards (very slightly).
Now, if you ever try to talk to someone who has played Outer Wilds about Outer Wilds, you’ll notice the conversation gets cagey and weird. That’s because the game is a sort of ‘knowledge metroidvania’ - instead of needing, say, the ice beam to get through a door, Outer Wilds requires you to possess the requisite understanding of how this setting operates and is put together. There’s nothing actually stopping a player from sitting down and finishing the game inside of twenty minutes at any point - all that limits them is the fact that they do not possess this context of how everything fits together, context intended to be gained by exploring the world and maybe spending some time outside the game thinking about it all. This makes talking about the game in terms of specifics hard, because you can walk up to someone and take away the act of playing Outer Wilds for them by explaining to them how the game works and how to finish it. I played through Outer Wilds during the pandemic of 2020, and, for me, it was an absolutely transcendent experience.
Released in 2021, Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye is an impressively meaty expansion to a game that was already complete. That said, despite loving the base game, it took me another year to finish Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye because this expansion adds stealth-horror sections a la Alien: Isolation. I do not do well with first person horror in which you are the prey! It freaks me out! Thankfully, the game adds the option to ‘make the game less spooky’ which actually just means ‘makes your pursuers slower’. The atmosphere of slow, mournful dread, accentuated by excellent sound design, is still very much in full force as it is inflicted upon your senses. My recommendation for the sections in which you are pursued is to make sure you have your route planned out in advance - it’s hard to wing it when you have no idea where you’re actually going.
Horror sections aside, Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye is an absolute delight that packs numerous surprises - including one very technically impressive one up front that I’ve only seen one other game do once, and certainly not on this scale.
The Bottom Line
This would outstrip ELDEN RING to be my game of the year if not for the fact that this one involves being chased by things that are quite a bit faster and scarier than you.