User:Sleepythegreat/sandbox

Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye
Announced on July 29th, 2021[5], Echoes of the Eye is the first and only expansion for the indie space exploration game Outer Wilds. Released September 2021[3], Echoes of the Eye features a completely new destination to explore, a few small additions to the starting planet Timber Hearth, and a number of quality-of-life improvements to allow returning players to play the DLC easier.

General changes
Upon launching the game, a player will be greeted with a message informing them a new exhibit has opened up in the in-game museum[2]. Additionally, the player will be informed of a new gameplay option they can select for the expansion, called “reduced frights”. While reduced frights do not affect the base game, they can be helpful for certain players in the DLC, as it makes certain enemies less hostile and less frightening. Additionally, Echoes of the Eye features new dialogue from characters Slate and Gabbro[1]. After visiting the deep space satellite, another new feature was introduced, the player can visit Gabbro on Giant’s Deep to discuss his presence there. Additionally, after traveling to the Stranger for the first time, the player can speak with Slate to unlock a new ability to mark locations through the ship log.

The Stranger
Starting at the museum, the player will be informed of a new structure added to Timber Hearth called the Radio Tower and an object in space called the Deep Space Satellite. Visiting the radio tower, the player will find dialogue from Hornsfeld in which they act surprised over a perceived anomaly with the satellite's photos. Inspecting the satellite photos found in the tower, the player may notice a strange silhouette on the photo labeled with 40 degrees2. Traveling to the satellite and waiting till its position matches that of the photo, the player is able to see the silhouette and travel towards it to land on the stranger. The Stranger is an artificial ring world composed of four separate areas: the river lowlands, the cinder isles, the hidden gorge, and the reservoir[1]. The areas are connected via a river, and traveling along the river allows a player to complete a loop through them. Each area contains several similar rooms which can be explored to gain clues as to how to complete the Stranger and the DLC. Unlike the base game from which information is learned through translating Nomai writing, Echoes of the Eye uses slide reels and a projector to teach the player. Each of the four areas features a theater with a projector and a slide reel room which contains several slightly burned slides which can be viewed through the projector. Additionally, hidden within the stranger is an entire virtual world. Within each of the four main areas, a fireplace can be found with a strange green fire. Sleeping, dying, or meditating near it while holding the artifact, an object found in the stranger will transport the player into the simulated world. Much like the stranger, the simulation is split into four areas, with each area mimicking its corresponding part of the stranger. The simulation is completely dark, and the player must use the artifact’s light source to navigate this area. The simulation also features a new owl/elk-looking alien race. These aliens, called the pursuers in the game code and achievements are hostile towards the player and will attack the player on sight. The pursuers are also vigilant and will search for the player if altered to the player's presence through environment changes, detecting light from the player’s artifact, or physically colliding with the player. If the player is caught, their artifact is extinguished, and the player is transported back outside the simulation.

Plot
While not explicitly spelled out, the story of Echoes of the Eye is told through the environment, as well as through the slide reels the player can find and view[1]. Many years before the Nomai arrived in the system, an unnamed race of aliens heard the signal coming from the Eye of the Universe. After hearing it, they constructed a massive ship and ringworld, the stranger, but destroyed their home to create it. After leaving their ruined planet and traveling to the source of the signal, they discovered that the eye of the universe would destroy everything when interacted with it. This scared them, resulting in them building a device to block the signal coming from the eye, and building the simulation as a way to replicate the home they had destroyed, which they then lived in. Unsatisfied with what the others of his species were doing, one alien simply called the Prisoner left the simulation, and disabled the signal blocker. Upon realizing this, the other aliens resumed the signal blocker and constructed a vault in both the reservoir and simulation, in which the Prisoner was locked away in. However, during the brief window that the eye’s signal resumed, the Nomai picked it up, triggering the events of the main game.

Development
Development for Echoes of the Eye began well before Outer Wilds was fully released. Initially planned as a horror DLC with a focus on night and day, the DLC kept many parts of its original concepts, such as the behaviors and state of the Pursuers. To make the necessary changes to the game to allow the DLC to feature unique ideas, parts of the main code had to be updated. One such change was a rework of how the lighting inside buildings is calculated[5]. Wanting to darken the ambient light inside houses in the stranger while not affecting outside light from the world, the developers rewrote the lighting system to have a unique object inside buildings that would transition the ambient light as a player entered a building to allow for a contrast between the bright exterior of the Stranger and darker abandoned structures.

Refrences
1. “Echoes of the Eye.” Outer Wilds Wiki, outerwilds.fandom.com/wiki/Echoes_of_the_Eye. Accessed 28 June 2023.

2. King, Andrew. “How to Start Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye Guide.” Polygon, 9 Oct. 2021, www.polygon.com/outer-wilds-echoes-of-the-eye-guide-walkthrough/22717450/start-begin-find-museum-timber-hearth-radio-tower-pictures-deep-space-satellite-flashlight-gabbro.

3. “News.” Mobius Digital, www.mobiusdigitalgames.com/news. Accessed 28 June 2023.

4. YouTube, YouTube, 18 Nov. 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcHaWycqIJg. Accessed 28 June 2023.

5. Skrebels, Joe. “Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye Expansion Officially Announced.” IGN, 29 July 2021, www.ign.com/articles/outer-wilds-echoes-of-the-eye-expansion-dlc-release-date-september.