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homeless snail posted:I'm someone that absolutely hates the DLC and even I think that there is a good portion of it that is really strong, namely the whole process of finding the stranger and conceptualizing where it is in the solar system, and the first couple loops inside setting up all the questions. Its the second part where you turn the questions into answers, thats deeply unsatisfying. I agree with this post. I think that ultimately the slide reels were interesting and had a lot of cool moments but overall were an unsatisfying way to convey plot and puzzle information. As far as story goes, we never really get any sense of the personalities of any individual members of the species; there's only one differentiated one and a horde of identical others, and even that one alien we don't really get to know, other than to know that they thought the Eye's signal should be unblocked. There's no characters. And, of course, pure, pitch-black darkness combined with stealth that must be maintained by shrouding your lantern is an incredibly bad game mechanic and I hated that so much. But otoh, Wingnut Ninja posted:I would rank getting into the Stranger, realizing "holy poo poo, it's a Rama and I'm going to explore it" up there with any of the high points in the base game. yeah I agree with this, too.
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Feb 3, 2024 11:34
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DontMockMySmock posted:And, of course, pure, pitch-black darkness combined with stealth that must be maintained by shrouding your lantern is an incredibly bad game mechanic and I hated that so much. One of Outer Wilds' most painful failure modes is when players don't trust the developer to always provide a less annoying way to reach a goal, but I'm not sure how they could fix it without effectively spoiling stuff. Only one of the stealth sections requires doing any stealth, and it's just for two (one if you're cheeky about hopping fences) encounters that both have the same solution. The best way I could think of to communicate this would be to soft-gate the hints so that you're encouraged to do them in the order Shrouded Woodland (to learn that you could take the back way into an area, which lets you skip the Endless Canyon stealth entirely) -> Endless Canyon (to learn the lantern trick for scouting out map layouts) -> finally Starlit Cove with actual stealth.
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Feb 3, 2024 18:41
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Thoom posted:One of Outer Wilds' most painful failure modes is when players don't trust the developer to always provide a less annoying way to reach a goal, but I'm not sure how they could fix it without effectively spoiling stuff. Only one of the stealth sections requires doing any stealth, and it's just for two (one if you're cheeky about hopping fences) encounters that both have the same solution. I was trying to selectively pick and choose what to spoil for this whole section below but it ended up easier to just mark it all. DLC spoilers within: Yes, but even one is too much in this case. It almost feels like those sections are purposely really bad, like landing on the sun station is in the main game and they're meant to push you towards finding an alternate route that tests your brain instead of your skill. The problem in my estimation, is that they're not bad enough, and that even though they're bad, you're still forced to do one of them at least in part. The reaction I had was "seriously, this is what I need to do?" as opposed to "how am I supposed to do this"? I think it might feel more satisfying if it was literally impossible to stealth around them, and not in a way that makes it feel like "I could have done that'. Essentially, they always catch you immediately if you're even a little bit in their vicinity and its clearly obvious that isn't what you should be doing. All three stealth sections should have had a hidden path that uses the boat switching and/or the concept of time in some unique combination which 100 percent unambiguously bypasses all of the stealth. They already do it unambiguously in one level, they are close in a second and it would have been easy to modify, and in the third I'm sure they could have found another solution. But... that's not the game that the devs wanted to make, and that's their choice, but its clearly also the biggest friction point for players and they've made it easier significantly a few times now. Still, even with how much I disliked that mechanic, I have to recommend the DLC. Its high sections are just too peak-Outer-Wilds not to.
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Feb 3, 2024 20:45
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Thoom posted:Only one of the stealth sections requires doing any stealth, and it's just for two (one if you're cheeky about hopping fences) encounters that both have the same solution. yeah but those two encounters loving suck, is my point Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no way to bypass the canyon stealth section without using the hint that you get after the end of the canyon stealth section, right? I mean, from what I remember reading posts here and elsewhere, a fair number of players discover the neo-vision mechanic on their own, but I sure didn't. And even once I knew exactly what to do, the other, unskippable stealth section was bad enough on its own to justify hating the DLC imo.
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Feb 3, 2024 23:02
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The Echoes of the Eye stealth bits honestly wouldn't be that bad in any other game, but they just don't work with the time loop mechanic. It wasn't the sections themselves that frustrated me (even though they weren't super well implemented and were far too dark), it was knowing that if I hosed up one too many times it meant restarting and spending five mins hauling myself back to the stranger to reaccess the dream world, which happened a lot because those owl guys are super quick. Once, I actually managed to get through, only for the loop to end just as I did before I could find what I was looking for, which was infuriating, and even once you know what you're meant to be doing it's no guarantee you're not going to slip up and get caught. So you have multiple runs where you don't learn anything, you just bash your head against the wall and get irritated. That seems totally out of keeping with the ethos of the main game.
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Feb 4, 2024 00:34
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DontMockMySmock posted:yeah but those two encounters loving suck, is my point Echoes: you can bypass almost all the canyon stealth by lowering a ladder and then activating darkness, then taking the boat all the way around to climb up the ladder. It puts you only one guy away from the library and you can just sprint and he won’t catch you
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Feb 4, 2024 01:34
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DontMockMySmock posted:yeah but those two encounters loving suck, is my point Sorta. Technically, if you get there, lower the elevator, shut off the lights, and then come from another zone, you get to skip creating the indoor bridge and instead can ride back up the elevator. Then there's only a single mob you need to pass by, and it should be pretty far from you. So if you feel confident in the layout in pitch dark, you're not really doing any stealth, you're just running straight forward. But yeah, I think I general have the same sentiment about all of those areas as you, it takes way more fumbling around than is fun to get a sense of the layouts, and it can be hard to really feel accustomed to it when you have to explore bits in pitch black.. Maybe it's because there was less pressure, but I was way calmer going through all of that part subsequent times for achievements and it felt much less random and unforgiving.
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Feb 4, 2024 02:31
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EotE The worst part of my DLC experience was not knowing which parts were stealth sections and which parts were meant to be bypassed using ingenuity and system knowledge. In retrospect it was clear, but I spent way longer than necessary lost in the dark, trying to find ways around owls when the lights went out. Worth it for the spectacle (and initial jumpscare) of the dam breaking, and other time gated events. I also enjoyed how they subverted the obvious objective to find the codes. It has its low points but I'd definitely recommend it for anyone with momentum left over after rolling the credits. It doesn't hit exactly the same notes, but it's not really trying to.
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Feb 4, 2024 04:21
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meeting the prisoner was probably my favorite part of the game. i also really liked that you basically had to use glitches to get through the simulation. shame about the stealth sections.
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Feb 4, 2024 05:19
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Another thing about the DLC I didn’t like is that it is kind of repetitive. Four areas similar in structure with some of the same goals each time: Find the display reel then find a way to get into the tower, enter the VR world.
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Feb 4, 2024 15:00
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Thoom posted:One of Outer Wilds' most painful failure modes is when players don't trust the developer to always provide a less annoying way to reach a goal, but I'm not sure how they could fix it without effectively spoiling stuff. Only one of the stealth sections requires doing any stealth, and it's just for two (one if you're cheeky about hopping fences) encounters that both have the same solution. The best way I could think of to communicate this would be to soft-gate the hints so that you're encouraged to do them in the order Shrouded Woodland (to learn that you could take the back way into an area, which lets you skip the Endless Canyon stealth entirely) -> Endless Canyon (to learn the lantern trick for scouting out map layouts) -> finally Starlit Cove with actual stealth. For me at least my issue wasn’t the stealth, it was that navigating around in the dark is not fun. This was way, way less of an issue in the base game. While there are certainly parts of the base game where the environment is dark, the flashlight you get is really good, and functionally means that even though you’re aware that the locations you’re in are dark, that darkness is irrelevant to the gameplay. As a result I found it intensely aggravating to be given a lantern that is actively worse than the game’s good flashlight in every single way and then get put in a situation where I need to use it to navigate around a pitch black environment. And also all of the game’s fun movement mechanics were removed in favour of just having you walk around on foot, because their design for the VR world precluded letting you swim or jetpack. Adding in stealth on top of that just made a miserable experience even worse. I tried persevering with it for about an hour of gameplay, but pretty much from the moment I woke up in the VR world until I gave up, I got pretty much zero enjoyment out of the game. Still, that didn’t seem to bother most people who played the DLC, so I’d still recommend it to most people unless they hate those particular mechanics as much as I do. I’ve still enjoyed watching other people play through the DLC who don’t get quite as salty as I did at the midpoint.
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Feb 4, 2024 15:56
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Reveilled posted:For me at least my issue wasn’t the stealth, it was that navigating around in the dark is not fun. Big agree with this as well. I got stuck at one point simply because it was too dark and I missed a path. Specifically, the path that leads to a little island in the swamp area where there's an "extinguish" thingy that opens the door that lets you get to the swamp area from other areas, which is critical to doing the whole "wait until the dam breaks to kill the partygoers" puzzle. In a game that's about exploration, they remove your ability to explore properly. There has never ever been a videogame where darkness is a good game mechanic and there never will be.
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Feb 4, 2024 18:12
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I can think of a couple of games where darkness is paired with alternate vision modes with different characteristics than normal light, but yeah, being unable to see generally sucks
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Feb 4, 2024 19:41
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To be 100% honest? Screw that poo poo, I modded the game to slightly increase ambient visibility.
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Feb 5, 2024 00:18
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Reveilled posted:This was way, way less of an issue in the base game. While there are certainly parts of the base game where the environment is dark, the flashlight you get is really good, and functionally means that even though you’re aware that the locations you’re in are dark, that darkness is irrelevant to the gameplay.[/spoiler[ It made me sad because I felt like there were elements of it I really enjoyed. I loved the idea of using your lantern's focus to light the random candles along the way. It made the darkness feel like a bit of directed exploring, where you'd slowly reveal the path forward that would last for the rest of that loop. And in whatever the Starlit village was, I liked the lesson of blowing out candles to open and close doors. I wish there were more mechanical puzzles using the presence or absence of light, instead of what most of it felt like it turned into, which was 'turn off lights and oh no there are patrols now'
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Feb 5, 2024 01:24
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ymgve posted:Another thing about the DLC I didn’t like is that it is kind of repetitive. Four areas similar in structure with some of the same goals each time: Find the display reel then find a way to get into the tower, enter the VR world. This is my big criticism of it. The stealth sections aren't super fun, but what lost me was how formulaic the exploration became. After the first time you solved one of the sections you knew at a high level what you were going to need to do for the others, what you would be rewarded with, and when. The base game's hints and mysteries were much more organic, as was the first half of the DLC. Its big moments hit just as well as the base game though. And the ending is just as emotionally satisfying.
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Feb 5, 2024 01:32
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MikeJF posted:It is actually possible to cause some actual, physical, not-just-information time travel to happen in the game. It's worth it. Oh my God you can meet yourself and the two of you can just both scream back and forth till you get tired and then have a nice chat. 
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Feb 6, 2024 17:02
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Jerusalem posted:Oh my God you can meet yourself and the two of you can just both scream back and forth till you get tired and then have a nice chat. Do what you did again
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Feb 7, 2024 01:31
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That bit rules so hard
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Feb 7, 2024 01:37
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The Saddest Rhino posted:That bit rules so hard  thinking back to Vinny and how he got Got by the consequences of that action right as he started the finale. i would have been so pissed off lmao (e: after i was done being scared shitless by the audiovisual effects of said)
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Feb 7, 2024 01:44
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Mazerunner posted:Do what you did again I didn't, and things uhhh... well. Yeah.  Edit: I really dig that talking to yourself reveals you're as much of a weirdo as the other Hearthian explorers  Edit Edit: Re: the top line: the kazoo over the credits is loving hilarious 
Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 7, 2024 03:57
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Jerusalem posted:I didn't, and things uhhh... well. Yeah. there's another smaller version of that elsewhere in the game if you're interested - on (planet)ember twin, at (location)the High Energy Lab
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Feb 7, 2024 08:09
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So I went back re: the above and got a whole new bunch of dialogue options, including bragging to each other about the cool poo poo we've done that nobody else (except Gabbro) would ever remember. If it wasn't 22 minutes each time, I'd be sorely tempted to keep going back to see just how far down the rabbit hole goes.
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Feb 7, 2024 10:01
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Finished the dlc earlier this week, I have a question : is there any lore reason behind the owl / reindeer race hiding things behind panels and such? Like why are there so many hidden panels to the ritual rooms and also a shortcut, and a fake fireplace in the vr world? They all know each other anyway so what is with all the need of this secrecy do they just really like feeling mysterious
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Feb 8, 2024 14:55
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Finished the dlc earlier this week, I have a question : is there any lore reason behind the owl / reindeer race hiding things behind panels and such? Like why are there so many hidden panels to the ritual rooms and also a shortcut, and a fake fireplace in the vr world? They all know each other anyway so what is with all the need of this secrecy do they just really like feeling mysterious They're just freaky lil' guys
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Feb 8, 2024 15:14
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The Saddest Rhino posted:Finished the dlc earlier this week, I have a question : is there any lore reason behind the owl / reindeer race hiding things behind panels and such? Like why are there so many hidden panels to the ritual rooms and also a shortcut, and a fake fireplace in the vr world? They all know each other anyway so what is with all the need of this secrecy do they just really like feeling mysterious They knew that their ritual rooms would double as their burial chambers, and it feels very human that they'd seal their burial chambers behind an iconic image of their beloved homeworld. And this is speculation, but if they imprisoned the saboteur behind three locks with hidden keys, it suggests they were worried a sympathizer among them might try to free the saboteur. Maybe only a few of their leadership knew all the secret paths and panels? But yeah, it's a little contrived.
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Feb 8, 2024 15:40
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I think after the Prisoner unmasked the Signal for a while, the owlks started to worry that an alien species might come looking for it, find the Stranger, and manage to reverse-engineer the jammer and find the Eye. Hence hiding away all of their mechanics around the thing and burning the physical records of their history, except for just enough to satisfy the curiosity of potential explorers stumbling upon the Stranger and wondering who built it. While I get the logic of not having their language be translatable, it does mean it's really on the player to infer why they did any of the things they're doing, with very limited information to go on. Even what they were scared of the Eye for isn't really explained.
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Feb 8, 2024 15:50
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Tenebrais posted:Even what they were scared of the Eye for isn't really explained. The Eye of the Universe is a doomsday button that deletes the old universe and makes a new one, which is bad news for things living in the old universe like the Owlks.
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Feb 8, 2024 16:17
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DLC discussion (outside of spoilers: I loved the DLC and had a very different experience than many of the ones I read here) The only part of the DLC I really disliked was the secret way to the top of the tower never gets used, and is basically a red herring. Similar with the misaligned probe with the burned controls: we had to infer it was a dead end. We were very confused that the DLC was 'actually over' when we finished it because we assumed there had to be more. We naturally figured out all the puzzles and I think I only got caught once or twice in the stealth sections. Getting to explore the Space-Ring and then slowly understanding the nature of their VR world was incredible.
Atoramos fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 16:33
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Darox posted:A lot about them is left ambiguous, but their interactions with the Eye are pretty easy to follow. Discover Eye from great distance -> sacrifice homeworld to travel to Eye -> scan Eye from up close -> realize it will destroy the universe and all life in it -> seal the Eye and destroy all physical records of it. Yea this was my read too, I thought the Owlks were relatively straightforward to understand: only the Prisoner accepted the eventual need to reboot the universe, which kinda makes sense since their ship can survive the death of a solar system. Since it appears to be solar powered though, that would only last so long.
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Feb 8, 2024 16:41
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Atoramos posted:The only part of the DLC I really disliked was the secret way to the top of the tower never gets used, and is basically a red herring. Given the non-linear arrangement of the game and exploration, I think that part is a hint to the nature of the tower and to signpost the three other similar locations. You can also see how the link to the river lowlands goes dark when flooded. Once you have deduced the key element here it doesn't really have any other use, aside from being a neat overlook. There's plenty of hints and often enough a player will discover something they already know. I noticed that bit watching IsNotRetro's playthrough and had a 'Oh of course the devs though of that detail' moment.
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Feb 8, 2024 22:44
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Atoramos posted:The only part of the DLC I really disliked was the secret way to the top of the tower never gets used, and is basically a red herring. . Can you elaborate? If I'm thinking if the same thing it has a very important step/hint
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Feb 8, 2024 23:56
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Mazerunner posted:Can you elaborate? If I'm thinking if the same thing it has a very important step/hint They just mean that you can walk up to the very tippy top of the tower instead of stopping in the room with the secret and there's not much of note up there even though it seems like an important place due to the set dressing.
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Feb 9, 2024 03:13
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There's some hints there. you can watch the transmitters from each of the rooms go offline one by one as they fail. And the pictures themselves hint at the importance of those locations.
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Feb 9, 2024 10:23
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Darox posted:A lot about them is left ambiguous, but their interactions with the Eye are pretty easy to follow. Discover Eye from great distance -> sacrifice homeworld to travel to Eye -> scan Eye from up close -> realize it will destroy the universe and all life in it -> seal the Eye and destroy all physical records of it. I am here once again to nitpick that the eye is probably not a doomsday button, as in the owks entering it would have ended all things for everyone at that moment. Or at least my interpretation is that someone entering the eye will remain there until the natural end of the universe - sort of like how it’s described someone falling into a black hole will appear to freeze on the event horizon? The owlk entering the eye would probably experience similar to what we did, but all their buddies would have carried on.
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Feb 9, 2024 16:21
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Oxyclean posted:I am here once again to nitpick that the eye is probably not a doomsday button, as in the owks entering it would have ended all things for everyone at that moment. Or at least my interpretation is that someone entering the eye will remain there until the natural end of the universe - sort of like how it’s described someone falling into a black hole will appear to freeze on the event horizon? The owlk entering the eye would probably experience similar to what we did, but all their buddies would have carried on.
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Feb 9, 2024 16:34
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Ciaphas posted:i always assumed that their visions of the future were imperfect and, being a broadly fearful species, they took an extremely negative interpretation of said visions. gives the Prisoner motivation to do what he did, too, which I always thought was kind of a minor plot-hole otherwise That's kind of what I mean. Their vision stick showed them the experience of someone entering the eye, and understood it the wrong way. Or just were confronted with the idea that their existence would inevitably come to an end.
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Feb 9, 2024 19:21
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EotE Between the owlks having spooky monster faces, the lack of explicit dialogue, and the creepy music, I actually didn't recognize that they were reacting with horror after seeing the Eye. I thought their faces were melting because of some eldritch horror thing. It wildly changed my entire reading of the story until I eventually looked at the ship's log and realized I was way off the mark.
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Feb 9, 2024 20:23
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Just finished the DLC also. Great stuff, I was a bit rusty as I had not played the original in year or so, but it was great to get back into the world. I think the DLC is a bit more challenging and does introduce a new mechanic that some may not like, but it’s a dlc so why not. It’s great value though as this could be a full size game. The dlc definitely rewards exploring the world and mechanics and you get those great eureka moments when it all comes together. It’s neat how much there is around you that you don’t realize until you have the knowledge. Dark stuff: Honestly these are not so bad. I won’t lie and say I didn’t go into the music house several times with them all staring at me while I tried to figure out the next step. But the dream raft is right there asking to be used. So you gotta explore that raft and think about how it relates. It’s great once you realize you can just skip those two stealth areas via the raft. The final one yeah you can’t avoid (unless you wait for the 1 minute timer), but you got matrix mode at that point to scout stuff out. My funny oh wow this works moments: first turning off the tower lights in the dream world works to impact the real world. I needed to watch that reel more literally. The second was realizing you had to die for the alarm. I was sitting around and it occurred to me that you can’t hear if you are dead, just as the slides show.
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Feb 9, 2024 21:32
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Oxyclean posted:That's kind of what I mean. Their vision stick showed them the experience of someone entering the eye, and understood it the wrong way. Or just were confronted with the idea that their existence would inevitably come to an end. I still don't buy this. I think that the slide reels show a highly abstracted, metaphorical depiction of the process of the Stranger's inhabitants studying the Eye, and I think that they are smart and probably understood, correctly, that there was a connection between someone entering the Eye and the end of the universe. If there is no such connection, then you have to believe both that the end of the universe (observed by Chert and the modern Nomai messages in the vessel) and the player character entering the Eye happen at the same time by coincidence, AND that the species capable of building the Stranger was just kinda dumb.
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Feb 10, 2024 02:05
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