Outer Wilds Developers Break Down Echoes of the Eye | Noclip Podcast #49
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2024
- We chat to Alex Beachum and Loan Verneau of Mobius Digital about the development of Echoes of the Eye - the impressive DLC for Outer Wilds.
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0:00 - Intro
04:46 - SPOILERCAST
1:17:40 - Danny & Jesse's Wrapup - Hry
I am consuming every last peice of outer wilds content there has to be more people talking about this
do you speak french?
@@ilyan.v.371 no gang
@@ilyan.v.371i do please link
@@ilyan.v.371 I do ? Is there a french interview or something ?
By how he speaks, he does sound like he has hundred of ideas a second lmao. That level of creativity is MUCH needed in today's video games industry. Thank you Mobius
I love morbius movie
So sad this dlc didn’t get recommended for Anything in goty, the game is so good and the dlc is honestly perfect. Thank you for that doc and this
What is "Anything in goty"?
@@buttonasas game of the year
@@leftovernoise what is "Anything in game of the year", I mean?
@@buttonasas They’re saying it’s sad it wasn’t nominated for any GOTY awards
Aaaaaah, that makes more sense. Never heard of these awards before, weird to have such a generic name for them.
I loved the subversive solutions to the three locks. It felt so good to find solutions around the owlboys covering their tracks.
Navigating their shitty software that technically works well enough -- notwithstanding a time-travelling little blue goblin running around inexplicably bypassing everything
Fun fact: you can actually brute force the codes to unlock it without dying, and then if you free the prisoner and return to the real world, you'll find his jail opened with his corpse inside. Apparently this was added in a later patch, which further shows how awesome Outer Wilds devs are.
It is nice to see the developers having had all these ideas and they were the ones collapsing those possibilities into something coherent and enjoyable to experience. They truly are the ones who entered the eye.
I'd kill to see the more endearing versions of the strangers and their portraits....
Honestly, I don't think I was ever as scared playing EOTE as I was drifting between anglerfish in dark bramble, especially with the haunting Nomai distress signal playing. But still, as some who loves creepy vibes but hates full-on horror, I have to say they nailed that aspect in both the base game and the DLC.
dude for real. when i extinguished the candles for the first time in endless canyon and realized that the game now became a stealth horror i literally turned off my ps4 and had to steel myself for a couple days before i went back and actually tried to finish it
Damn, I have a fear of water, Giants Deep is a big kick in the nuts, both nuts, multiple times, over and over. Dark Forest?!? Holy shiz………. Had to white knuckle that shit. After getting the coordinates put in on Giants Deep, I missed the warp jump at the two towers on Ash Twin….. I WILL NOT be finishing this game LOL! You CANNOT make me go back to that DEATH POOL!!
@@Zentinel_85 Good news, I think - once you've discovered the coordinates, you don't have to go back to Giant's Deep.
@@ReverendTed AWWWWWWWWW you’re right….. I think….. you just need to GET them there. Once you have them, you can input them whenever. Hmmmmm yeah fuck water………
@@andreszarmach554 I had to resort to spoilers, it was too much for me. I am not into the scary stuff. However Stranger itself looks awesome.
Yet despite their attempts at making them less approachable, I STILL ran up to one on my first run excited for an interaction, haha.
Super sorry guys! Just kind of a natural consequence from being alone in the in-game universe.
pretty much, i saw a light in the distance, wandered over and went "friendly?" while flashing my light at them.
turns out, the answer was "no".
Me too. I was so on edge this whole DLC and was creeped out by them, but I still ran right up to my first one wanting to ask questions. Cuz that's what I did with Solanum, and Outer Wilds is a game all about discovering the mystery and finding out how everything works. I had so many questions for it.
The raft is GENIUS. Even though it only has 4 inputs, you go wherever you want, you control it 100%
I mean, your spaceship only has 6
@@quantumblur_3145 Yeah, I was appreciating that the raft driving mechanics are very well balanced and without any skill you can control it with your flashlight and move precisely despite the current pushing you and the input to the raft not being analog. Apples to oranges, the spaceship is unconstrained and optimally controlled with analog sticks/triggers... if you use a keyboard, the autopilot becomes much more necessary.
@@juanfrancisconavarrorodrig567 if you use keyboard ya just gotta learn to pulse the thrusters; "only two modes: off and on" feels much more Hearthian anyway
@@juanfrancisconavarrorodrig567 you've gotta leverage the complete precision that is the mouse, as well as "match velocity". These two in concert are key to navigating Dark Bramble on mouse and keyboard, and in general you can do everything in the game just fine.
@@quantumblur_3145 Actually it has 12. Each degree of freedom has a plus and minus button. Forward+Backward is ONE degree of freedom.
I realized how sad it is that the devs don’t get to enjoy the masterpiece they created even though they put so much effort into it
as someone that has created puzzle games specifically for a group of people, i'm happy to report that seeing people enjoy and solve a puzzle you've made is almost as good, if not better, than solving the puzzle itself.
@@turquoise7817 That’s good to know, I imaging every involved feels very happy then
Anyone making any story is gonna know all the twists and turns and never get to be surprised by them like their audience can
@@turquoise7817 Sounds like something GlaDOS would say. /::)
***** SPOILERS *****
As someone who discovered the 'Loading Zone' glitch by himself, I absolutely LOVED that self-made sense of discovery and revelation. It was one of the most 'Outer Wilds' feeling moments that I had throughout the entire game, and I don't think it dampened or ruined my experience at all. In fact, hearing this interview made that discovery feel even more special. Especially when they said their mantra creating EOTE was "The truth is hidden in the dark."
The reason I jumped off my raft between zones at all was because I was thinking, "Okay...so far, The Stranger and The Dream World have had all of their juiciest secrets hidden in dark, scary places. The tower basements, the darkness of the sliderooms, the grabby-hands hidden in the dark, etc.
The absolute, completely oppressive darkness in this tunnel is the darkest, scariest place I've come across. There's gotta be something SUPER juicy hidden in here. I wonder if..." And then I jumped and it blew my fucking mind. The truth was indeed hidden in the dark! You have to be willing to face your fear head on to make discoveries and progress (Something I also needed to hear in my real life. Thank you Mobius.)
One of the best moments I've ever had in ANY game; the sort of "Oh shit...I shouldn't be here" type of moment that Outer Wilds excels at. Favorite game of all time, thank you so much to Mobius for crafting a masterpiece, and thank you to Noclip for providing so many great insights into their creative process. Inspiring stuff.
I also discovered that glitch on my own, but for a different reason. I was trying to use quantum logic and see what would happen, so I blew out all the candles on the raft when I was in the dark space and it made the raft disappear. I had no idea what just happened.
I was messing around with the candles on the raft and extinguishing them. It just so happened that the first time I tried extinguishing them all I was going through the cave. Pretty wild.
@@smokingbobs1344 Looks like we all have similar experiences. My intention was to experiment with distinguishing the candles in the raft but since I was near the tunnel, I decided to do it there. I wasn't able to explore much though because it was at the end of the loop and my next loop, I learned about it from reels 😄
I feel like the most awesome glitch to discover yourself is the matrix.
i found the one where you drop the lamp instantly after entering the dream world for the first time and was so confused about how youre normally supposed to get to the canyon forbidden archive haha
I discovered the bell glitch by accident. I needed to reset and tried to kill myself in the fire and when I appeared in the dream rhelm, I thought it was a genuine glitch and the game simply didn't know how to spawn me back to the bell chime area.
when i first went into the music house, and saw the one by the fire, the way they were standing made me think i was meant to approach and speak to them or something, even though id encountered others before then and knew they were scary. i really thought i was meant to approach the one by the fire
Me too 😆 I honestly took that attitude even further. Our first time encountering an owl, My bf had the controller so he turned and ran and I was like "NO NO! Go say hello! Subvert expectation! They may be creepy, but they're awesome just go say hi!" So he to turns around and of course the owl picks us up by the head and blows out our candle. I didn't hear the end of that one for a while.
On the note of noticing the absence of something, while you notice theres no alive inhabitants of the stranger and you cant find their bodies, when you do find their bodies in one of the rooms you notice theres an empty bed, that looked kinda broken out of. Which gives you the sense that one of them is missing and could still be out there, (until you find out its just the prisoner) and this is also arround the time you find out they're hostile. Which only multiplies the fear and makes it even more scary. Well done Mobius games team!
Tbh to find all of the ghost birds plugged in the simulation, in a room like the ones in the final game but bigger, as the "big reveal" would've been absolutely impactful.
this idea of a light showing up at the horizon at the dream world would be really cool, it would give the idea of something beyond that timer of 22 minutes, something else happening, as if the universe would still be there after the timer resets. it would be amazing if they added it in a future update
Yeah, especially as a sort of... secret ending where you turn off the ATP and stay behind to watch the full sunrise, choosing blissful ignorance like the other inhabitants.
My only real problem with the idea of the day-night cycle in the simulation is that all of the visions or slides you see of the dream world also take place in the dark. Could be a coincidence (or the nature of the work they were doing in those visions\slides), but it is something I noticed.
@@ReverendTed maybe the ISO of their camera only worked properly at night.
@@ReverendTed That is interesting! I think them doing these things in the dark because they're secrets makes the most sense though, because in the most recent patch, if you stay till the end of the cycle in the dream world you can see a tiny bit of light spilling over the horizon.
If you disable the ATP for extra time, you don't get a full sunrise like I was hoping for... and it's pretty un-immersive knowing that, since it seems like the perfect sort of Outer Wildsy secret to put in and reward curiousity... though I guess disabling the ATP shouldn't be taken lightly, and choosing to live in the simulation forever also shouldn't be rewarded.
They actually added this in the most recent patch.
54:25 When I played it, this trick actually worked on me, even though they didn't lean into it that hard. I was horrified to doze off in that room with all their bodies. Ever since I first discovered them, I was paranoid that they'd move when I wasn't looking. And when I opened my eyes to see them all gone, it distracted me from what else had changed. But when I was unable to boost myself over the ledge to exit the stairway (my jump key wasn't bound at the time because I always used thrust), I'll never forget the sinking feeling I felt as I said to my friend, "Hey, WHERE'S MY SUIT???"
That’s crazy 😂 yeah just the whole seeing their dead corpses, then falling asleep and waking up to them being gone is horrifying.
At first when I saw the portraits I thought they had beaks but when I realized they had human mouths I was horrified it literally made me jump.
Yeah I think we all had that same horrifying realization XD I remember being like " Oh heck no, that's not supposed to open like that XD "
Every single person who worked kn this game has all my thanks. My bf and I accidentally played most of Echoes backward, figuring out all the glitches just through thorough experimentation, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. It was SO fun.
Fave moment that illustrates this: we spent a lot of time figuring out the perfect strategy to get into the music house. (Side note: the way that music builds as you enter the house? STUNNINGLY creepy and ancient. Obsessed. Well done Mr. Prahlow.) We tried all sorts of maneuvers before we figured it out. We shared the MOST celebratory high five. Ages ago we'd entered somewhere through the back lf a fireplace so we knew we could go through this one. As we took the elevator down, it hit me. This was the same fireplace. We'd been here by glitching through the dark between worlds. That said, it didn't cancel out our delight at solving that puzzle. It was still amazingly rewarding, just like every other puzzle.
I will always appreciate the way you can experiment into answers in this game. It's pure joy that everything works the same, no matter if you've unlocked the slide reel or not.
Always glad to hear from these game developers. Haven't played a game that so perfectly captures the sense of discovering and the power of knowledge.
I wish they could have shared a bit more about the ring world flooding affecting being inside the simulation. It was so cool hearing the sound of the dam breaking and water rushing whilst in the simulation. Plus it had a great moment when you get pulled out for the first time after the tower floods, and you have to try and regain your orientation.
Also wanted to commend them for the animation when you're caught by the inhabitants. Laughed out loud when they opened their mouth wide before they gently blow out your flame.
I laughed when you hear a dull distorted "End times" track while you are in there at the end of a cycle, that was brilliant.
Interesting to hear that everyone else was running up to the inhabitants as well when they found them. For some reason my first reaction was to shine a light on one of them and yell "WHAT IS YOUR DEAL?" at my tv screen
Although I know the developers never really want you to find stuff accidentally, I think one of the coolest moments in this dlc for me was how I came about finding all the different “secret archives”. In my playthrough, I never attempted to open the prison with the seals so I never found the room that told you explicitly where all the “burn rooms” were. I found the cinder isles burn room by noticing a body of water I hadn’t been to and started to explore it. I found the hidden canyon room by going off of a false positive I had by thinking the elevator in the “burn reel locater” was the same one in the canyon so I explored the elevator shaft and found it. For the last one however , I never did find the burn room but when I had explored the “party house” fully and not finding any passage, I decided to walk to the fire to see what would happen and next thing I know, it was the archive room. When I had finished my playthrough and beaten the dlc, I began watching somebody play and when they had opened the prison slightly and showed me something I hadn’t seen before, it was amazing.
It’s seldom that you make a great, inspired, creative story in a game. It’s very seldom you do it twice in a row. Fantastic game and fantastic dlc, thank you guys.
Random thought while I listened to this:
The Eye: 1
The Owlkin: 2
The Nomai: 3
The Hearthians: 4
oh nice, that's a lovely little detail! I thought something similar while playing, I even joked to myself that they should make another dlc with a species that has only one eye, but I think it's more clever to count the eye of the universe itself as the single eyed entity!
@@daanthedoctor next species is blind
If the next species get's five, it's gonna feel like razors just adding more and more blades all the time x)
@@quantumblur_3145 Anglerfish!
@@dabo8249 the last little fish to be caught is now the anglerfish. The anglerfish passes the blindfold to them and becomes a little fish.
I truly adore this game, both it and its DLC are seperately some of the greatest experiences I've ever had combined into my favourite game ever. It's been incredibly inspiring to me, and every bit of new info about the game is so engaging to learn
These guys deserve so many awards, this game has the most intelligent way of discovery and revelation i have never seen in any game whatso ever. It's one of its kind, the journey learning about this race and actually going through what they have made and what goals were they seeking. Understanding them without one single word uttered by them or us.
It's such a fascinating game, i can't wait for their next project!
Did anyone realize how at the house party, the aliens try to corner you? The guy on the bridge shines the light trying to look for you while the other who was on the cinema goes through the back with his light off trying to catch you.
Also you can enter the blackhole in Twin Ash Project now, if you do it, go back there in the next loop. Really cool stuff.
@@oscarrodrigo1846 I believe this was always possible. It is a very cool discovery though!
@@ChimpPeensRevunge Not always but after a relatively early update, almost 2 years before DLC
i love the idea of dawn coming as the supernova happens. reminds me of Darkwood with how the world turns red as the night ends
*** SPOILERS ***
The first time I went to the dream world, I had just watched the video of how to get there, but I still couldn't figure it out. I was frustrated and just went "Screw it, I'll start over" and meditated. I was fucking blown away when I woke back up in the dream world, because I was literally trying to give up! Such a cool fucking moment.
I don't know what it was about the simulation stealth segments that completely shut my brain out of standard Outer Wilds puzzle thinking... I guess I don't play stealth games, so I just assumed they were _supposed_ to be unpleasant experiences characterized by repetitive suffering, and that trying to think my way around the mechanic would just prolong the inevitable.
My bottleneck was right at the end unfortunately 😅
The angle to the ground you have to look to drop the artifact is a lot smaller in the dream world than in the real world, so I thought for ages you could only drop them in the slide podiums. I was looking all over for one around the vault!
Eventually I thought I'd figured it out, the mural in the Endless Canyon depicts a dead tree in a flat plane of water (like in the out of bounds area). After I realised it wasn't the big tree by the boat lock, I was convinced there was some big tree somewhere around the edges of the out of bounds area! I wandered for ages before admitting defeat, going right behind the sealed vault (and seeing stairs behind it through an untextured part, mild spoiler but eh).
And then finally when I was about to give up and look up a walkthrough, I looked down fully while riding an elevator. Made me feel just a little silly I'll be honest 😂
I actually only learned you can place down the lantern anywhere... inside the sealed vault. How did I do the invisible bridge puzzle? Well, I dropped my lantern in the slide projector in the endless canyon archive, then jumped up into the noclip zone (it's not intended, but you can glitch your way up there. I thought it was the right path, but turns out it's just a cheese strat!). I saw the bridge parts floating around, so I took a screenshot, and approximated how much I have to turn each section and to what direction. I ended up getting it right the first time. Absolutely stupid way to beat the game.
@@JanneSala wait what!? How did you get across the boat from the noclip zone to the vault area without an artifact?
@@lizardlegend42 I didn't need to use the boat, actually. The archive area for the endless canyon is reachable from the noclip zone (plateau). But it's meant to be a one-way connection, as the stone wall is too high to be jumped over to get back onto the plateau. However, I could use a nearby rock face to spam jump and get back onto the plateau, and from there I could get a view of the entire invisible bridge with my lantern safe inside the slide projector back in the archive. So I took a screenshot, died and restarted the loop, and just looked at my screenshot to guess how I needed to fiddle with the bridge controls without seeing it.
@@JanneSala Oh sorry you mean the shrouded woodlands archive 😅, the endless canyon one is where you learn about the matrix. I was thinking how you could get to there from the Endless canyon one because the actual water extends a fair bif around that. But yeah that makes sense now with the shrouded woodlands
@@lizardlegend42 Oh yeah, must have been that then. I forgot which one was which lol.
1:06:19 I'm glad to hear they're working on that part, it was the one big problem I had with the dlc. I loved the spooky atmosphere and encountering the owl deer like that, but the horror gameplay part of it was more frustrating than anything for me. I ended up turning on reduced frights to slow them down and scouted the whole area without my lamp beforehand to get past those sections. The extremely limited visibility also made me not bother exploring more than was necessary, which just felt wrong playing Outer Wilds.
I'm really curious to see what they patch, and hopefully it's done by the time I finally can get my friends to play this game
Sounds like the patch will encourage players to find the solutions that don't involve stealth at all. For example, encouraging people to send down the elevator in Endless Canyon, turning the lights off after, and then arriving by raft from elsewhere completely bypasses the stealth. This seems to be the solution they had intended, with the stealth route being intentionally difficult as a deterrent. They were probably surprised that so many players kept trying to do it the frustrating way over and over without thinking of alternatives.
SPOILERS FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO FIGURE IT OUT.
I wonder if the "solution" is shine the lantern on them to kite them to where you want them to be then book it. I noticed in my playthrough when I started deliberately shining on them because I was tired of waiting for them to move, they moved slower. It fits the theme of "facing your fears instead of hiding from them".
@@GunnGuardian Yeah I think you're 100% right. He said it was related to the theme of the game, which is intentionally facing something scary in the pursuit of knowledge, and it really seems like that was more of the intention than just bypassing them entirely
"The extremely limited visibility also made me not bother exploring more than was necessary, which just felt wrong playing Outer Wilds." You just described Dark Bramble, the DLC was fine in that regard.
@@LB_ i never even thought of that, especially after finishing the DLC. I just assumed the puzzle was how to correctly draw the owlks around.
My first encounter with a live ghostbird was in the Starlit Cove, I turned around a corner in the big, darkened building and BOOM! There he was! I let out a deafening scream and started sweating, I was scared shitless!
By far the most terrifying moment I've ever experienced in a game!
Awesome interview! I also thought the reason the signal of the Eye signal locator was spinning was because it was inside a sort of quantum volume in which the eye could be considered everywhere at once, so it was neat to hear the developers had a similar initial idea. I only wish you could have asked Alex and Loan what the deal was with the missing spacecraft in the Stranger's sunward hangar.
I saw someone say that the missing spaceship is what the Eye signal blocker was made of, which makes a lot of sense!
I played this dlc while my friend watched (he'd already finished the dlc and wanted to see my reactions)
There was one bit upon my first few loops in the ring world where I had found the artifact, and had been carrying it around. I found the diving bell in the same loop and swam into the bell WITH THE ARTIFACT and discovered the fire. I then proceeded to put down the artifact DIRECTLY NEXT TO THE FIRE and look around the area and then I proceeded to ask "do I really need to carry that thing around? I'm getting sick of holding it." to which poor friend, desperate to not tell me any answers replied "Well you never NEED to carry things around, but i would say do it because you might stumble upon the answer?" "mmmm no I doubt I'm smart enough to do that, I will just leave it"
and then I left the artifact in the bell and walked away
@@zanguusu Yah I know. I played the base game by myself. I chose to play with him because it gave me a fun and unique experience that nobody else could have.
besides, he never spoiled anything for me. In fact him being there was the reason I didn't need to google any of the answers out of fear. I actually sat down and tried to find ways around obstacles without help. I was not robbed of anything. In fact, it made the experience even richer.
So I heard about the shortcut and the non usable artefacts and all and it reminded me of my personal stupid bottleneck and I wonder if it was intended. Basically I couldn't figure out how to kill yourself beside the fire (yeah I know) so first I though I had to drown next to it in the 1st fire, the problem was that your jumpsuit saves you from drowning so I had the brillant idea to get rid of my suit or rather enter in the ringworld without it. So I aligned my ship with the breach hole and jumped through the sas naked trying to open the door before suffocating and after 5 attempts I made it. I was naked I the ringworld but it turns out that it was useless because guess what, water extinguish fire... Dumb me but a fun memory in this masterpiece of a game.
I had difficulty there too. I first figured you must run out of oxygen in the bell under water as it's sealed, so I tried wasting ad much O2 as possible first..
Then I tried jumping from the top of the room to the bottom to take fall damage.
that was really funny, HAHAHAHA thank you!
I’m just really impressed you got into ringworld without your suit!
I had the same issue lol, I was stuck for weeks 😂
I’m glad I’m not the only one who took literally dozens of attempts to realize “oh.. the fire can just kill me”
I also thought that I had to die on the green fire to get to the owlkin "afterlife". It wasn't until many hours of gameplay later that I tried to doze off by the fire :-|
It made for an easy access to the archive at least.
hahaha. For me, on the contrary, I took a while. I thought it was a fire so that we can roast marshmallows on it to regain our health..
@@k0lpA Marshmallows regain health?
@@oliviapg yes, only properly cooked ones tho I think
My frustration with the dream world is that my natural instinct to being spotted was to conceal my light and hide in the dark. I suppose my thinking was that maybe the Owelk would search, fail to find me, and go back to its patrol or whatever. That never worked. But the correct way to manage it is to confront them head-on and kite them, which was very counter-intuitive to me.
It didn't help that I first encountered one by trying to go up the stairs in the Endless Canyon lodge, and there isn't much leeway to escape that one.
About the one in the stairs... I already walked up to the ones in the woods because I knew it would be scary but I found out they shine the light first so you know it's coming. BUT... I never saw the light walking up the stairs in the pitch black and walked right into it. Scared the daylights out of me. First time I have actually screamed playing a game.
@@liamernst9626 I had the exact same experience. I was in a discord call with some friends and just suddenly screamed at them. It was hilarious.
My bottleneck was amazingly stupid.
When you are collecting the 3 burnt out reels, and you go into that church with the maps of the 3 locations, I thought the map of the reel in the hidden city WAS THE CHURCH. I thought the burning map symbol was projecting through the mountain and into where I was standing. Not that it was actually in the elevator building which seems so obvious in hindsight.
So without that I couldn't figure out the invisible bridges.
Another one I had was that I didn't really understand how I was supposed to kill myself to not be woken up by the bells. Sadly I had to use a guide because I couldn't wrap my head around how to do it.
But I still loved every second of that DLC. I hope we keep getting more Outerwilds. Its truly amazing
Thanks for posting this!
Man, those Twitter questions were kinda underwhelming. Wish I'd known about this! I have so many questions, such as:
1. Why didn't the ghost birds need space suits?
2. Where is the core/"server" of the dream world, which you see represented in one of the slide reels as a large machine in a room with several monitors?
3. Where is the room with the brain scanner and dream fire they used to house the elderly ghost bird who collapsed, died, and lived on in the dream world?
4. What part(s) of the dream world did the now-extinguished fires (test chambers) or missing fire (brain scanner room) lead to?
5. The dream world is depicted as being in daylight in several slide reels. Is there a day/night cycle there the player doesn't get to see in 22 minutes?
6. Is there a canon day/night cycle on The Stranger that happens beyond the timeframe of 22 minutes?
7. What is the Dark Bramble/its origin?
Well, for questions 1 - 4, I think the same answer applies: it's implied that these things/places exist (or existed in the past), but probably in areas inaccessible to the player.
Question 5 was answered in another part of the podcast, and in case you missed it, yes, there is canonically a day/night cycle in the dream world. They even talked about how originally they wanted the sunrise to begin as the loop ended. The answer to question 6 can be inferred from this, though I'd imagine in the Stranger it's more artificial in nature and probably requires some kind of user input.
Question 7 is not related to the DLC (the main topic of the conversation), nor is it something the developers would ever be upfront about (though, realistically, not even they have the answer, they just thought an interdimensional weed with spooky space fish inside was a cool idea).
Wait - there are reels showing daylight in the dream world? I could have sworn they were all set at night.
@@Dan0RG no, I'm pretty sure at least some in the forbidden archives show it being daytime in there so they weren't wrong
Try and get on top of some of the towers?
This DLC was one of the most amazing experiences ive ever had with a game. Probably second only to the full game itself. This podcast is for such a specific subject. But its the exact subject I wanted. So thank you for making this
Echoes of the eye was such seamless tight experience, where everything falls into place. It surprises me to hear that it was such a challenging game to make which went through very different iterations. Everything about it feels as though it was meant to be like that from the beginning.
i can't wait to see what these guys are working on next, i love their approach to game design
Outer Wilds is one of the greatest games ever crafted. Absolute masterpiece.
I got this game with no information. I just liked the cover art. First i thought I'd Walk on a planet and do some puzzlez. Then I started into space. That was like magic.
Between this and the behind the scenes technical interview with Unity I've been eating good lately as an Outer Wilds fan. Great interview, thanks!
What is the “behind the scenes technical interview with Unity?” I wanna see / hear it! :-)
Bump, I'd love to see it too
@@Greenjay64 "The Art of Outer Wilds: Unity Creator Spotlight"
Punch that into CZcams search
Whoever programmed the AI is an evil genius. (Spoilers below)
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I’m like standing there. The owlk is standing there in the doorway, staring at me. I back away slowly. He stays put. I ask my partner “Can he not leave the house?” We think he’s stuck. I walk to the elevator. The owlk freaking *flies* at me over an entire chasm. I scream. I get up and pace for a bit before sitting back down to play again. I play horror games and have never screamed like that. Amazing.
Overall, one of my fav games of all time. Brought back that wistful Myst-like wonder that I hadn’t felt since I was a kid.
I actually did the same thing of dropping the light the first time a ghostbird spotted me to fool him, but not walking away far enough to trigger the "glitch". Then when I did encounter it later on I thought it was specific to a certain place lol
I also once blew out all the lights on the raft in the simulation and ended up completely falling out of The Stranger, which deterred me from doing any more experiments there, too.
WOO! I've been wanting to hear the devs talk about this since I beat it, finally!
"maybe we'll get to keep doing it" huge pog
really loved this DLC, but i feel the linearity of its story/progression makes it more frustrating when you're missing that 1 bit of info or puzzle piece bringing everything to a grinding halt because you cant look at it from another angle to figure it out.
for me the bottleneck was finding the the light for the vision that introduces the other hidden tower room, because attempting to open an obviously locked container then standing in front of its crack wasn't all that obvious.
Well the vision lazers appearing when you try to open the container are hard to miss. It assumes you'll try to open it even though even though you know it is locked just to see what happens.
@@samspin429 nah, 1st time i checked cracking it open i walked right past it for 2 reasons.
1 - without the light coming out of the projection stick itself (like every other vision light in the DLC) my mind never clicked the light = vision
2 - if you've lit all the candle in front of the vault the beam of light doesn't draw any attention to itself as the candles brighter white light mute out the lighter pale green
simple solution would be to have a semi-broken projection stick fall out when you open it, more of a visual aid, can give it a noise to draw attention have the vision light flicker to draw attention to itself
I agree completely. As someone with little to no time for games nowadays, I got stuck twice but had to cut my losses and look up the answers for time’s sake.
My two bottlenecks were:
1) the fireplace puzzle; i had pieced everything together but i missed the totem which opens the door allowing you to pass through the dock.
2) the final bridge; i did not correlate the slide reel with the dead Stranger not being awoken by the bells to the fact that you wouldn’t awake if you were dead in the real world. i saw the slide initially as the portrayal of so much time passing that somehow one Stranger decomposed yet one remained alive- and having seen the empty bed in the Cinder Isle tower, I thought that was an “escapee” being depicted.
@op: You made an assumption though. How did you know the wheel in front of the container would try to open it? For all the player knows, it could do any number of things to the container or the space nearby: lower the container and the ground beneath it, raise the container, turn it, relocate it elsewhere, flip it over, or something entirely unrelated to the container itself... You assumed it would try to open it, and in doing so avoided interacting with the wheel at all without trying to confirm your suspicion. Can we really blame the devs for that?
@dv: on 2) There is another slide reel in the same area as the first you described. That reel very clearly depicts the elderly collapsing, their flesh losing color, and their flame lighting as they enter the dream world. Wasn't that a clear enough demonstration that one could die to enter the dream? And if that wasn't the hang-up, the other reel you did describe clearly shows the sound reaching the alive ghost bird's brain, and failing to reach the dead one's brain.
The empty bed in the tower is unrelated; that was the bed the Prisoner inhabited before they sentenced him to purgatory. They never had a bed for the dead, elderly ghost bird b/c that one died before the dream technology was perfected.
@@ReavoEnd I really disagree with you. First off, I want to say I loved the DLC, but I will criticize the bottleneck at the vault.
For your first point, for one that's not really the issue here. This issue is that players turn the wheel to open the vault, see that it doesn't work, and don't realize that the green glow will project a vision. This happened to me. I assumed there was some weird phenomenon or eldritch evil in the vault, which seems to be the intended experience with how much effort was put into sealing it up. It's a very logical conclusion to come to. When I saw the glowing light, I thought it was coming from whatever strange object they locked up, not a vision staff.
Also, assuming that the wheel opens the vault isn't really a leap in logic. It's a vault that is locking something up, what else could the switch do? Anything else, like the examples you listed, seem comparatively absurd.
Outer Wilds players have also been trained to poke around at everything they find that seems like it might do something. Very few people will pass up a simple button prompt because "I didn't think it would do anything."
For your second point, Outer Wilds is a very complex game. There are so many things to keep in your head at once and with so many puzzles it's all but guaranteed that someone will misunderstand the hints for some of them. This isn't the fault of the devs, they communicated the mechanic as clearly as could be expected of them. It's good enough for most players to figure out. But, as I said earlier, everyone will miss some hints. So the misunderstanding wasn't really the player's fault either. It was an inevitability.
Wonderful interview, I love hearing the thought process of these incredibly creative people
My only problem with the DLC is that I found the ending kind of anticlimatic.
I had it in my mind that finding the vault would allow me to deactivate the signal-jammer. Thus, when I found the way to the eye of the universe via the nomai vessel, I could alternatively go to the signal-jammer and deactivate it.
That way, the other nomai tribes could go to the eye and a Hearthian could get to meet the Nomai.
A different ending, even if I ended up jumping into the Eye
Bro, it would take probably centuries or even millennia for the Eye signal to reach another Nomai clan, considering what we saw at the "slides" we showed to the prisoner. We don't get that time.
Your idea wouldn't make sense at all for this game
@@alexandrucalitescu5822 why not?
@@Nico_com_c I think light travels differently in this universe considering there's teleportation. And considering that time may not even exist within the Eye, that seems to be no problem
I found the walking away from the lantern one by accident when I first discovered the submerged structure very early on in my playthrough, before I'd discovered any other entrances to the dream world, when I put my artifact down to try to see if I went fast enough and didn't have a light with me I'd be able to get past the bells and just before I was woken up, I saw the glitch world, then when I went back in I experimented and tried putting it down and just walking away from it and that's how I found it out, then later, before I discovered any of the forbidden archives, at the canyon when I was going to restart the loop to be able to go to the swamp because the dam had already broke I jumped in the water in the dream world, then I jumped on the fire in the real world, just trying to end the loop, and then I woke up in the dream world, I didn't think much of it I just thought, I guess this kinda makes sense, and didn't think to try anything with it because the reason I was trying to end the loop was what was on my mind.
My guess for the patch is they're going to do something with how you can shine the artifact at an owlk to make them conceal their own artifact
After a month away from the game after solving 2 of the 3 puzzles for getting to the forbidden archive, I had forgotten how to play the game as intended (that sort of interpreting of hints, recollection of things you know and learning how the game communicates riddles to you that you reinforce over repeated loops and play sessions) and I had just looked into a guide on steam to help me fill out a section's ship log. I looked a bit further and ruined the final revelation for me. I let myself be tempted by the metaphorical cookie jar!
...
dang it
One issue I had with the dlc is that the game (for me) made me think that in order to get into starlit cove you had to figure out how to make the "ghostbirds" that were in your way either not be there or disappear, let me explain.
In the shrouded woodlands I quickly figured out that you had to wait for it to flood then go in there through another fire room. That resulted in you not needing to encounter the ghostbirds.
Then I tried to apply the same line of thinking to the endless canyon. "How do I avoid the ghostbirds all together?" And since in the woodlands you had to go through another fire room I figured out that the first thing in the loop you lower the elevator in endless canyon blow out the lights, then go to shrouded woodlands (or starlit cove) jump on the raft go up the elevator in endless canyon then you can just rush into the painting without encountering any ghostbirds. (I know there's technically one behind you but it doesn't do anything if you just walk into the painting)
So now in the starlit cove I'm trying to use the same line of thinking. "How do I avoid the ghostbirds all together?" or put in a more meta way "The game doesn't want me to stealth around them it wants me to figure out how to not need to stealth around them." (note that I thought stealthing was impossible since I never had to do it) So in starlit cove I figured out you could jump off the building in order to avoid the first one that's blocking the way to the downward stairs (It felt wonky and unintended) but then I was stuck for a long time in the basement. What I thought I had to do was to make them not go down the elevators in the first place (that would also mean that the guy blocking the stairs would not be there) but eventually decided to just smash my head through the basement hoping to get lucky and eventually I got through.
After I finished the game I was looking up how to do the starlit cove the intended way and It was just stealth and It felt very wierd to me. Then I also found out you can stealth the endless canyon aswell.
Basically my issue is that I felt the game mislead me that I had to solve the puzzle of avoiding them but in reality it wasn't a puzzle to begin with, it was just stealth. I don't know if anyone else had this problem.
Totally agree that my thought process for the starlit cove was "they don't want me to stealth through here, they want me to think my way through it".
In the end I was able to get through without stealthing. You can wait for the owlfolk there to die right near the end of the loop, and you have just enough time to run in and look at 1 slide reel. Around 2 mins, which isn't heaps but it is enough time
If you've already been into the hidden room at the other areas, you would have seen and looked through the slides that show a "glitch" in the system, they are marked with a glitchy looking planet. You can infer that such a slide reel would exist in starlit cove, and so when you get in there you know exactly what to look for. You can also infer that the glitch would allow you to bypass the ringing bells, since that's what you need to get past.
So that's what I did. I was able to get the information I needed with no stealth and no guesswork. It made me feel very smart.. but I guess it's not the easiest or intended solution. But it is possible.
@@amee4231 I considered waiting for them to die as well but since I knew i'd have extremely little time I was sure the game didn't want me to do that. In retrospect mabe I should've tried it.
I think this is part of the reason the two main stealth sections got redesigned in 1.1.12.
@@Thisisthegreatestatofalltime
I just saw the changelogs, I have to check out exactly what they changed but i'm glad they did something about this issue. The dlc is fantastic and I hope it makes less people confused about intended design.
Haven’t played the dlc yet, but I’ll save this to my watch later. Thanks for covering this though! I can’t wait to listen to the development process 🙂
PLEASE make a documentary on this DLC
I wish I worked on this game / DLC. What an amazing project and result. Thanks for the evocative experience!
Love this! Such a great interview. Outer wilds is my favorite game of all time and always will be!
When they mentioned an alternate path with the release of the Echoes of the Eye. I absolutely believe they shouldve. As long as it stayed not straight forward
1. Most people finished the game or intended to finish it traditionally before jumping into the stranger.
2. Deactivate the signal's disrupter.
3. go to the more sensitive sensor.
4. Use the different radars/probe to go towards the right verticality
5.use the Nomai ship and program it in some way.
I could listen to these guys talk about this game all day. Fantastic show. Really looking forward to what Mobius come up with next, whatever it is. :)
honestly my first instinct was that we had to turn off the sun in the stranger to go to the dark world, its funny that that implication somehow came to me
Man just finished a video essay on the DLC. Bummer I saw this wonderful interview until now
Made my day seeing this video in my subscription feed
19:13 Guess you got to patch that in after all 😌
Just finished the dlc and this is exactly what I've been looking for! Thanks
This was super interesting!
Can you imagine looking out at the sky as light spills over the horizon like they said, _just before_ the time loop recalls you?? And since you're afforded extra time in the Stranger if you turn off the ATP, it could be a secret ending in a way, watching the full sunrise. A text crawl revealing you remain stuck in the dream, with the others. Maybe you eventually make friends with them, in the digital sunlight, too fearful to move on.
Honestly, that'd be a great mod.
Funnily enough, I could not have thought of dropping the lantern myself because I didn't even think it was possible-whenever I went into the dream world my button prompts went invisible for the rest of the cycle. (PS4)
OUGH I've been getting the same bug on my laptop
@@quantumblur_3145 Oh that sucks.
@@ZedAmadeus I mean, I've already finished the game and DLC, but it's going to play hell with my efforts to fill out an excel spreadsheet of every nomai's name, generation, final resting place, gender, lineage, personality, etc.
@@quantumblur_3145 Yeah I bet! Wow, that's a mammoth task on it's own, even without bugs interfering. Good luck, friend!
@@ZedAmadeus thanks! You wouldn't believe the number of names you can put to the skeletons. For instance, the skeleton under the Hourglass Twin Tower bridge is Yarrow, and the adult skeleton in the school is Thatch.
The one on the bench in the Sun Station clutching the tablet is Idaea, who apparently kept coming back up to the Sun Station to stare directly into the Sun, reread the log of its failure over and over, and mull over it all. Poor fella.
Yes! Loved this game and DLC!
Thank you so much. Great insight into a phenomenal game. I really appreciate the skill and talent of the entire dev's in every aspect of the game through storytelling, animation, world-building, interaction. I'm sad I won't get to experience it again. What an outstanding achievement.
I can't wait to see what this team comes up with next, instant buy whatever it is.
*** SPOILERS ***
I also got stuck because of the second artifact. I had discovered everything except for how to not be woken up by the bell. I thought that the slide where one dies and one goes to sleep indicated that the second artifact could be used to die, so I stood in the fire and died without entering the second world. I spent many hours after this trying to figure out some other way to get across the bridge. I finally looked up how to progress. Thankfully, that was my only time I had to cheat.
not sure why the algo finally recommended this to me, but several YEARS after playing outerwilds, it remains the only game ive thought about near daily since playing it. Phenomenal doesnt cover it. I cant wait to see what games Outer Wilds inspired in the next generation
It's funny that the only reason I know what he's talking about when he mentions plato's cave at 38:27 is because we just covered that exact subject in my ethics class the other day.
What is plato's cave?
spoilers
the one thing i found out by accident was how to get into the simulation. i always, by reflex, meditate out of loops when i feel like im done or want to check my ship log. i did that when i first saw the room, but then it took me into the dream world! i was so incredibly scared. i only found out how to get into the dream world the normal way like maybe a couple hours later.
I had an issue with the death rule where i had never let the bells wake me up before, so I didn't know that that clue prevented that.
I discovered quantum imaging myself. I was taking a picture of gabbros poem trying to follow where the arrows went, and noticed the sign didn't move when I had taken a picture of it, felt crazy just messing around in the forest cause I was stuck and finding that out.
Very insightful
What a fantastic interview
Saaad does someone know if they commented on there beeing another DLC or a sequel or something else?
I was lucky enough that I didn't stumble on a reveal to early, so I could get the full intended impact of it.
SPOILER :
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But I watched a streamer play it and he just fumbled his way though the whole thing. Secret doors to the fires, secret room in the tower, dropping the lantern, only found the lantern cabin at the end, never found the invisible bridges because he never dropped the lantern where he was supposed to discover he could... He ended up skipping a bunch of things because of that. It was a weird playthrough. But he still loved it.
This game has DLC? Man the base game is so good tho
You have no idea. It's perfect. Play it blind just like the base game
Dlc is just as good and just as long play it
It's absolutely beautiful, I'm sure it goes without saying but go in as blind as possible
I love rafting and I'd love to raft in a coin world. Maybe another DLC? 😆
I personally think learning about the glitches on your own won't tarnish the fun and experience. They will just be a different kind of experience and fun. If I'll repeat the game, I want to learn about the matrix on my own. I feel like that would be an awesome feeling 😄
I think having different experiences is the the biggest strength and weakness of Outer Wilds.
The ending is fine to me though at first I thought the Prisoner tells me to raft to the other side 😂
But I guess it indeed needs some kind of a cue that it's the end because as it is now, it can be confusing what to do next or if there's anything else to do.
I honestly wish we could see that version of the coin-world in action it sounds genuinely interesting even though it definitely is inferior to the final idea
Does anyone know why the DLC marketing mentions Dark Bramble and Alien Ruins on the Moon when it doesn't touch on those at all?
1:02:00 ish: I jumped off my raft during a "loading" section while trying to put my flame out and then the direction I wandered in happened to be the end of the shrouded woodlands, which also happens to be the one area you can safely get to (vs the two with structures cannot be accessed). I didn't even realize what I did until I took the elevator up and I could hear the music and the fireplace. At the time I welcomed it because the horror/stealth sections of this DLC were giving me a lot of anxiety, but after I learned how to beat that section properly I was pretty disappointed with what had happened. I'm guessing they did this intentionally? or else they would have made it inaccessible from the water like the other two ending sections.
You can use each of the exploits to get to their respective forbidden archives. The first one you pointed out, the second to avoid ever needing to blow out the lights in the Starlit Cove since the alarm bell can't wake you up and the third allows you to see the invisible bridge leading right to the elevator that is also on the same path to the mural.
I feel like it doesn't make sense being disappointed about it, especially if you've worked out the 'regular' solution as well. You simply found the easiest path that people rarely found. I will direct you to Titanium Legman's playthrough, that lead to him discovering the other two exploits through experimentation and consequently realising what he could do with that knowledge. It's amazing how they've not only carried over the 'progression through abilities' aspect from metroidvanias, just with knowledge instead, but also the sequence breaking aspect where you can get abilities early and consequently areas early as well. But again, knowledge instead of abilities.
A TRUE *Masterpiece* :D
23:31 I'm not entering water in the simulation ever again D::
This conversations are so hard to follow when there is no video, one day I will have a better level in English and i will be able to follow everything without any problem I hope. Great interview and amazing games guys!!
Captions would certainly be nice
So the original idea was that you were going to explore invisible planets from the previous universe??! Oh my gosh. I hope their next game explores this concept. Doesn't have to be an Outer Wilds sequel. That is just so cool!
Damm I wish you could've unjamed the eye that would've been so cool to just fly there. But the dlc was much more than I expected and I loved every second of it.
Does anyone know if I'm just being dumb or something? (spoilers ofc) In the starlit cove, after the alarm sentry, I only ever found the burned out house. Was there some hint that I was supposed to look at the cliff during the raft ride? I had to look up a hint :(
10:50 interesting, that could explain why the nomai crashed into dark bramble. This bit has pretty much no answer other than "it happened".
Okay one question: how did the owlks even see shat the eye was about/capable to do? How did they know? No othet species knew it. And they just got a "vision"?
more just more with the outer wilds developers
Has anyone else noticed similarities between EotE and SOMA? Both have a similar theme.
I stumbled upon all 3 glitches long before their reveals unfortunately just from trying to kill myself to reset the loop, so every reveal was like "Wait I've been working 2 hours just for THAT? I found that forever ago but I was trying to find the actual story route! ffs" I think that might have ruined it for me like the devs were worried about, since I loved the base game but the DLC was just meh. That and thematically the DLC was just way grimmer and less uplifting. I kept expecting a big reveal like "SURPRISE you shouldn't have judged the owls by their cover, see they're actually good guys like the Nomai!" Then... Nope, DLC suddenly ends with a whimper not a bang and confirms the owls just kinda suck.
Great base game though. I've been obsessed with that ending for months.
Personal timestamp 18:09
Man I loved hearing this and how their thought process went. When I saw the time I thought "How did you make this longer than the first one?!"
Spoilers below.
It's so interesting to hear how often someone put down a lantern to get around an obstacle, It never occured to me since it had the conceal function.
A CZcamsr I watch was actually uploading hour long episodes of the DLC and so I was having fun playing alongside them and at one point stumped on the village until while watching him pace around the trees I just thought "just follow one!" I loved that.
I also saw a mention of kiting and I guess I kinda did that. For the canyon and tower I managed to reveal myself and then immediately conceal and sneak around while they checked out the area, I think it's all about if they have LoS and you need to break that.
Overall loved the DLC!
27:00