LogFAQs > #968794570

#2: Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/1/AAA-H0AADykF.jpg

(Note: I'm not going to spoil ANYTHING in the plain text, or in the screenshots. I never include what I think are major spoilers in the screenshots of any of these writeups, but I'm being ESPECIALLY cagey about this one, because... well, you know why. If you've played the game, you know what I'm not showing and why.)

They made a sequel! Sort of. It's actually an expansion, but I played the original Outer Wilds for 25 hours and this 'expansion' for 18 hours. It's as close to a sequel as I ever expect to get to this game. It's one more hike up the trail for the Outer Wilds expedition; one last adventure in this masterpiece of a game. It was more than I could have ever asked for.

I was initially rather hesitant about the announcement that they were making an expansion to Outer Wilds. I had played the game by the time the news came out, and I was immediately skeptical. I don't think I can stress enough that I consider Outer Wilds to be basically a perfect game. There's virtually nothing major about it that I would change, and nothing that I felt could have been added or more fleshed out that would have improved the game's experience at all. It is basically exactly how it should be. The notion of an expansion to the game coming in and upsetting the incredibly delicate balance that the game already had was really strange and hard to wrap my head around. The only reason I decided to be optimistic about it was that I trusted the dev team. They already made Outer Wilds, after all, and I trusted that they wouldn't be making an expansion to the game if they didn't have a really good idea of what to do, and how to make it fit. I trusted that if they were doing it, then they definitely had a story they still wanted to tell.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/2/AAA-H0AADykG.jpg

I needn't have been worried - in fact, now that I've played Echoes of the Eye, I can't imagine the game without it anymore. The part of the game that the expansion goes into now feels entirely necessary, a core part of the experience, a chapter in the story that absolutely needed to be told, its themes required for a full understanding of what Outer Wilds is about. Even though I trusted the dev team, I wasn't really sure if they would be able to pull this off, but they did. If Echoes of the Eye falls short of the greatness of Outer Wilds at all, it is by the teensiest of margins; a 9.75/10 game versus a 10/10 game, if even that. It is really hard to match the experience that Outer Wilds delivers, but Echoes of the Eye manages to live up to its own hype, while at the same time delivering a surprising, new experience all of its own.

Again, like I said about Outer Wilds, I don't really want to talk about what Echoes of the Eye is. Even if you've already played Outer Wilds, I don't want to talk about it; if you're confused about what this 'expansion' even is, you're going to have to find out for yourself, because I'm not gonna talk about it here; not without spoiler bars. I actually haven't really decided what I'm going to talk about yet; much like Outer Wilds itself, this review is a sort of long, winding journey where I don't know where I'll end up at the end of it. I didn't want to do spoiler bars for any of these writeups, but I think it might be necessary here. I've said about as much as I can about Echoes of the Eye without getting into spoiler territory, and I consider spoiler territory to be "talking about any aspect of the game basically at all."

So there's your non-spoiler review of Echoes of the Eye. It's a worthy followup to the game that everyone who played Outer Wilds has to play. It's something that I thought I didn't need, but I foolishly realized afterwards that was completely necessary. It was one more chance to revisit this game and truly appreciate how great it is; a sort of celebratory afterparty for me where I get to have a victory lap and also feel like I can properly say goodbye to the game, but also just a brilliant game in its own right. (In case it's not obvious, I had to be clear about my definition of what counts as a 'game of the year' here to include expansions, since Echoes of the Eye is an expansion. But by all rights it deserves to be in the 2021 GOTY conversation.)