Did anyone *actually* solve Echoes of the Eye? 

Obligatory and preemptive comment addressing the existence of "Reduced Frights" mode: Yes, I knew it was a thing. No, I never considered using it, because my issue with the stealth on my first playthrough was not that I was afraid of Owlk jumpscares, it was that I was afraid of having to retry the stealth segment for the 10th time. As I say in the video's conclusion, creating "frights" was an explicit goal of the DLC. Being frustrating and prohibitively difficult was, I assume, not. Trying to mitigate the repetitive/frustrating aspects of the stealth segments my making them less _scary_ is getting the issue completely backwards. I want frights, but I don't want my (poor) ability to do gameplay while frightened to be a bottleneck in the experience. Of course, as I have since learned, the "Reduced Frights" option is actually much closer to a "Reduced Difficulty" option in practice. It apparently removes the ability of the Owlk to charge at you and overall makes the stealth much easier. To this I say: "Fuck. That sure would have been nice to know!" It's almost like, if the option has a bigger impact on the game's mechanical difficulty than its scariness, the option should be called "Reduced Difficulty". Or better yet, have the option pop up after the first loop where you get caught by an Owlk instead of the main menu on bootup, and call it "reduced stealth difficulty". Please make the option name match the thing it does, Alex, I would have uuuuuuuuused it! _I would have used it Alex!_

I didn't get frustrated by the stealth segments because each time I got caught, I got to see the inhabitants cute faces up close. Still a 9/10 tho, couldn't kiss the owlks.

save me, outer wilds video. outer wilds video... save me

The most fascinating thing about Outer wilds to me has always been fear. To clarify, a friend spoiled EotE for me when I was a quarter of the way through, so i never really played that. I mean the base game. I heard this take from a random off hand comment in point crow's twitch chat while he was playing it, that each of the planets in the game represents a common phobia, and now that I've heard this I will never un-see it. Ember twin is so obviously claustrophobia. it literally closes in around you and crushes you to death. Ash twin and the sun station both play the role of Agoraphobia, fear of open spaces and being too exposed. Ash twin hit me hard. nearly every second I spent there on my playthrough I was sure I was about to get sucked up by the sun's gravity and lifted off of the relative safety of solid ground. since then, I have tested, and if you let the sun get its biggest, stand atop the tallest tower, jetpack as high as you can, it still is not enough to get picked up by the sun. It scared me anyway. moving on, Brittle hollow is fear of heights. all the time you're on the outside of the planet you're wondering if the ground beneath your feet is as stable as you think it is, and all the time you're in side it a single missed jump will lead into a literally bottomless pit. sure, it's harmless, and once you learn that it gets a little better. but it's still a height. Timber hearth doesn't really have any fears, it's the calm and comforting home you return to when the world outside is a little too scary. but nothing of meaning can really be accomplished there, can it? Giant's deep is fear of the ocean. not fear of swimming, but the ocean. I've seen youtubers get spooked by the long swimming segments travelling between islands. funnily enough, I actually have the fear of swimming, but I don't think i've seen a single video game successfully capture that. 99% of the time you just need to hold W. maybe W and space. funnily enough, the next four celestial bodies all play surprisingly similar roles, with Dark bramble, The interloper, The quantum moon, and The eye of the universe (the four most relevant places to the story of the game) all representing different forms of one of the greatest fears of all, the fear of the unknown. (one of the most central themes of the game.) Dark bramble is monsters and evils hiding in the shadows. It's the thing under your bed, inside the closet. it's the reason you keep a night light on. The interloper is similar, but not the same. it's not the malevolent evil that kills you, it's the uncaring force of nature that kills you. it's a landslide, an earthquake, a sinkhole. the deep tragedy of the calamity wrought by something that will never and can never comprehend anything it has done, and can never truly be blamed for anything because it never had a mind in the first place. funnily, this can only really be experienced from the outside perspective and that's exactly how the game shows it to us. a tragedy from which we are but a mere observer. The Quantum moon and the eye are similarly paired. (funny that) where the quantum moon is the unknowable, ineffable mystery that you can almost see but never touch. you know it's there. but you can never reach it. The eye is the version of this which you can reach, but it never does you any good to do so. you can fully immerse yourself in it, and all you will find is a greater mystery still. no matter what, you will never know the answer here, and any claim to the contrary is a blind shot in the darkness. This is the unknown, and this is the unknowable. and nothing will ever change that. The entire supernova cycle give the game a thin outer shell of the fear of not having enough time, but the real gem which is what solidified this game to me as one of the most awe inspiring ever made is its last moments. during the final voyage it instills something that many games have tried, but nearly all have failed. this has been the goal of many a horror game, and nearly every game with permadeath. against all odds, the final voyage manages to capture the fear of death. you don't get to the end of Outer Wilds if you aren't fully immersed in the story, and the emotional journey, and the game makes it so much easier than most to slide fully into the internal mode without even realizing it. throughout the entire game, ever since you left the museum, your character has never been in any danger. at worst, you could lose about ten minutes of your time. in reality, there is no real skill needed to complete the final voyage. just don't touch the thrusters as you glide past the anglerfish. even more so, even though your character can really die there all that would happen to you is you would lose ten minutes of your time. sure the credits would roll, but then you just load the save. if you got this far, you know on some level that the developers value your time and wouldn't actually delete your file or anything (though on the menu where it normally says "continue expedition" it instead says "load save file") so you are in no danger. no more than any boss in dark souls, any caving session in terraria, any night in minecraft. and there are lower stakes than many of them. But the mortality weighs on you anyway. I have never seen this in a video game. I'm sure it's been done, but I have never seen it. Outer wilds manages to know exactly how players think, how they react, and reduces it to a science and plays them like fiddles. Outer wilds is a game that can and will scare you, means to do so, and gets away with it. most people don't think of it as a horror game because it is a highly unconventional horror game, but it is the scariest horror game I have ever played. I don't know why this isn't a more common opinion.

Ehhh I watched a friend play these sections exclusively after the patch, and by scouting areas out ahead of time as well as using careful observation to juke the owls, he pretty successfully trivialized most of the encounters. He died once and learned that he should plan a route before turning the lights off. He died a second time and learned that he needed to use the flashlight to check where he was going. He died a third time and learned that he needed to lure them. And that was it. His only other deaths were experimentation. So personally, I do think thats the intended solution, *and* I think its still totally fair as a puzzle - not unlike the anglerfish, just cranked way up. Careful planning and usage of your tools is all it takes.

I think the most interesting thing is that every forbidden archive is easier to access using the glitch it reveals. The lowlands archive can be reached via going OOB, the canyon’s archives can be reached without turning the lights off using the invisible platforms the LOD glitch reveals, and the cove can be reached without turning the lights off by killing yourself. I think it is intentional that each archive is guarded BY the mechanic whose flaw it conceals, but also wouldn’t it be so much more “outer wilds-y” if no matter which archive you made it to first, it revealed an exploit that trivialized one of the other two? It’s for sure an intentional decision but it’s interesting nonetheless I think.

Solving Endless Canyon with the elevator all by myself was the most satisfying moment in the entire game. I love trying to hint people into doing it. The realization that some of the "stealth sections" (2/3, Starlit Cove is just weird) are big puzzles is one most don't have. I only fully understood after months and now years of helping people on the subreddit. Still haven't finished the video, but every glitch lets you solve its corresponding archive without stealth. Not for the first run through, obviously, but a cool detail nonetheless.

She outer my wilds till I spoiler

Welp, time to play Outer wilds to watch an Andrew video.

I've been watching Becca Bytes play through the game, and she actually discovered the skips you describe in this video naturally. I certainly would've never thought of that on my own! I inadvertently discovered the LOD mechanic which was useful in learning where the owlks roam so that helped me avoid the "stealth" segments, but I always felt like I cheated somehow (and never learned how you were supposed to "learn" about that mechanic).

As someone who vicariously experienced outer wilds and its dlc through my brother playing it (as I had already watched multiple playthroughs before having the means to play it myself), I happened to experience the abject terror in my dear brother, who had never played a horror game before, turn to frustration over the course of no less than an hour. It was quite clear then, and even more-so now, that the horror experience of the dlc was short-lived and post his first ‘death’ the mechanics surrounding the stealth sections weren’t solid enough to capture him in the same way the base game did. In fact, the best horror the dlc provided was the warning the game gave you on boot-up to suggest the ‘reduced frights’ mode option! Because he knew the dlc was now a horror, and enough of a horror to need ‘reduced frights’, he spent every moment pre owlk encounter afraid of a sudden jumpscare, where there were none. And the actual jump-scare of the owlk was hilariously anticlimactic in conjunction with his anxiety up until that point - there’s probably something to that, but I’ll leave my thoughts here. Great game 10/10 would experience again. Tldr: by explicitly preempting the player to expect horror from the dlc through the ‘reduced frights’ notification, more horror is generated through anticipation of the horror, than the actual horror itself.

Andrew Cunningham videos with Undertale Yellow music feels really natural

I played the DLC post-patch and didn't really have any issues figuring those sections out, it was a little frustrating at first but learning how to trick and lure the owlks out the way was certainly a rewarding experience, I even went back for the "Ghosts in the Machine" achievement later on, where you go to all three archives in one loop

7:37 WAIT THAT'S ME!? I'm super thankful to you for making this video, it's everything I've been wanting to say about the DLC for a long time. I'm not happy with how they patched the game, they removed some bridges that previously made Starlit Cove easy with ghost mode scouting, and also drastically reduced the difficulty of the stealth section in Endless Canyon, removing cool AI teamwork interactions in the process. That AI teamwork thing was super cool and it's a shame most people won't get to experience it now. Feels like they gave up on the puzzle stuff and let the brute force players have their way, which I guess is one way to reduce how many people have a frustrating time, but not what I would have gone with. I can see what they were going with for the light mechanics luring the AI, I just think it doesn't work very well, like you said. Great video.

Literally every single person I've seen play it didn't want to use "Reduced Frights" since they didn't want to miss content, not realising it doesn't turn ANYTHING off at all and just makes the Owlks move a bit slower. Agree with Andrew that it's a really poor naming convention for that particular option and lots of people would have enjoyed it more had that been a little clearer.

I kinda have to disagree, because when I first played, I felt the stealth worked as intended. Certain rooms open up when you turn off the lights specifically so you can navigate around owlks. I would focus my light to see ahead, notice an owlk, shit my pants, and then go around it. Focusing, unfocusing, and turning off the light each serves a purpose. I don't see why anyone would complain about not being able to see them in the dark, when you aren't taking advantage of all of your abilities. Personally, I saw these closed rooms and alternate paths early in the game, and was like "how do I get in there" or "what's the point of this path here", and got this "aha" moment when I turned of the lights and realized what it was for. So saying the solution is just "shine your light" is a bit oversimplified. The solution is using all the tools available to you to find the way forward, and having a clear idea of the map and abilities you have. Outer Wilds does this "the solution is hidden in plain sight" thing alot. Like getting to the sun station: when I first played, I didn't really get how you were supposed to get through the cactus room, and I trialed and errored my way trying fly through it. It wasn't until later where I learned "duh, just wait for the sand to lower part-way instead of all the way". That doesn't make the cactus room a bad puzzle just because the solution is straight forward and I did it the hard way; it's my fault for not paying attention. I feel the same about the stealth: it's not a bad puzzle, you just gotta think about it differently. The ships log usually carries hints on how to get through areas, so I'm curious if the ships log gives you any clues on how to get through the stealth. Edit: Also, I think if the intended solution was to avoid the stealth altogether and do some roundabout thing where you visite multiple campfires, it would have broken up the pacing of the game. I'm glad they didn't commit to this, because I already have some problems with the pacing of the DLC, and I didn't need this part of the game to overstay its welcome.

I think that Outer Wilds is

There's another, better, way to skip the starlit cove stealth segment. When you snuff out the lights at starlit cove, one of the guards that ends up patrolling the underground starts out on the highest floor of the aboveground (which you can't normally reach) and takes an elevator down to their patrol path, and then sends the empty elevator back up. If you quickly make your way to the walkway just under the elevator after snuffing out the lights, you can jump on top of the elevator as it returns up, then ride it down. This places you right at the end of the underground chamber. This may or may not be intended. The part of the walkway where you need to jump off to get on top of the elevator conspicuously lacks a guardrail, but the top of the elevators on the stranger do not look like you should be able to jump on top of them.

This video is incredibly well timed for me. I just finished the DLC YESTERDAY, and the news that people were frustrated by the stealth confused me for a while as I watched this video. Upon further reflection, I think it was because I only really engaged with the stealth for one loop AND played the DLC with the new patch. After I got caught 8 or so times before getting to the out of bounds glitch forbidden knowledge, I just used that to thoroughly scout the other areas' stealth sections ahead of time. I did get caught a few times, but I just blamed that on myself screwing up. I was so enamored with the story and greater puzzles that I didn't even consider the frustration of the stealth gameplay (for context, I love and play many stealth games, so I suppose that makes sense). That made this video a very interesting experience for me, especially considering the timing. Great video! Glad to see you branching out a little. I hope it performs well.

The problem with a game as good as Outer Wilds is that it becomes very difficult to actually examine its shortcomings. Despite being a flawless masterpiece in so many ways (I am a fellow member of the "love it the usual amount" crowd), it's also possible to start noticing things once you're on your 50th Blind Let's Play. Little things that people notice, or things they try that *should* make sense but weren't implemented for whatever reason. As an example, the memory statues, despite being so important lore-wise are almost completely unexplained. They're interesting enough mechanically that you could have based the entire game around them, but all they end up doing in the gameplay is...existing. You find that one room on Giant's Deep, see how some of them have their eyes open and closed, and that's it. From a game design and psychological standpoint, I almost find these cracks to be more interesting than the experience of playing the game. In almost every case, addressing them would obliterate the careful balance of the game. Outer Wilds would almost certainly be worse if it got distracted by the memory statues, or by making the low-res areas of planets look better, or giving the Hearthian townsfolk more depth on subsequent loops, or by introducing the Nomai a little differently to encourage the late-game psychological investment in them sooner (the contrast between a player's initial fascination with them vs. the Stranger is night-and-day), or by going more in-depth with the gravity crystals. *It would all harm the experience.* There's so much to learn from this game by what it did right. And even what it "missed" it *still* did right, or at least so well that the opportunity costs are worth it. I adore Echoes of the Eye arguably more than the base game, but it has more actual objective flaws at the same time. I put it down for like 6 months, I was so drained by the stealth segments, and like you there was a RU-vid thumbnail that kind of spoiled just enough to give me the "hope" to get back in the puzzle-solving mindset. (It was the render glitch, but I saw it so briefly that I had no idea what it was or how to do it. But it was enough to start experimenting!) The opportunity costs they chose for EotE were more risky, and even though they paid off it's still worth wondering what could have been done differently to avoid these sorts of player disconnections. Anyway.... great video. More than anything, you squeezed through that narrow line where it's possible to critique the game without offending literally everyone who (rightfully) loves it. And that is TOUGH to do.

When I first played the DLC I think it was post-patch and I did shine the light at the owlks. Maybe I'm wrong because it was some time ago already, but I think what the devs mean is more than "shine the light at them for a second then hide", the way I remember it you could shine the light at them for a long time, and they would move really slow, and unless you got really close you would be ok. Perhaps the next step is to look into the enemy AI and see what you can get away with.

honestly this just makes me want to rewatch raocow's lp of this because i'm pretty sure he _did_ just figure this out on his own. he also stumbled upon the lod glitch by complete accident, and iirc just straight-up logic'd out the death glitch too. it's likely something aided by his format of just doing a loop or two, then calling that a daily episode, since it kept stuff fresh in his mind while letting him constantly sleep on new discoveries before even more information could overwhelm him, but it's still funny to think that this funny lil' dude who's known to induce yelling at the scream when he misses obvious stuff just casually wrapped his mind around something that stumped a whole bunch of the game's fans

I beat Echoes of the Eye by dropping off balconies and barely surviving the fall damage (which has since been increased) to skip past the guards. Later, I had an IRL conversation with the devs where they explained that the "stealth" sections were always intended to be what they call "cat and mouse", somewhat like you outline in the video. Specifically, the Strangers are extremely smart in that their search algorithms will always find you if you hide in one place, but extremely stupid in that if you shine a light in their eyes, they will go investigate where you were standing *even if you walk away without concealing your lantern*. Nowadays, I can get to the archives within a couple minutes of entering the dream world without concealing my lantern once (except to slip by the starlit cove alarm).

I did do that skip in my first playthrough, but that's probably because entering the simulation was one of the last things I learned about. I couldn't find the hull breach and didn't make the leap of logic to nap by the fire with the artifact in hand myself, so by the time I first entered the simulation, I was so familiar with the flood cycle that it just seemed natural to leverage it to my advantage. I thought it was just what you were supposed to do. My "get stuck" moment was entering the simulation itself so I didn't get stuck again on the stealth.

Aww yeah I'm a real RAMhead!

As someone who actually did solve both Endless Canyon and Starlit Cove with the "owlless" routes, here's my take on time crunch in Starlit Cove: You only have enough time for one of three slide reels in the Archive before your loop ends. What's interesting to me is that this is the only Forbidden Archive with three reels! The first reel I stumbled into was the report of how the inhabitants discovered you could persist after dying within the simulation. Instead of attempting a second time, I unintentionally inferred the context of the second slide reel (that you don't wake up from the alarm if you're dead), and used it to access the Archive early before I actually managed to access that reel in the first place! It may be just my experience being an unusual outlier, but the fact that two of three reels that can teach you the lesson that lets you access the Archive combined with the time crunch makes it seem to me that this may have been a developer-intended approach. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me if that first slide reel I grabbed was deliberately placed such that it would be the first one I would find, though I'd have to go and check the layout to confirm it.

The starlit cove solution where you wait until the owlks die has actually been done by BeccaBytes in her playthrough! I was surprised to see her do it like this but it ended up being pretty elegant once she figured out through that she could enter that archive pretty easily by dying

I suppose that *technically,* the Starlit Cove Owlless route only needs to be done once (sorta), but it absolutely requires the player to have figured out at least one other archive first AND be able to intuit a couple things about the nature of the archives to do so. Namely, if the player knows which reel is the one that contains the glitch, aka the major progress mechanic (I believe the glitch symbol is the same for every reel?), AND they figured out from the other archive(s) that the local glitch of the area makes said archive much easier to access, they can go in post-tower collapse, grab the glitch reel, absorb the juicy info, find out that the alarms don't work if you die, and then next loop, kill yourself on the fire and just casually walk past the Cove alarms while the place is still lit so you can read the other two reels in peace. Like, 99.9% of players aren't going to do this, but there *technically* is a smart way to bypass this area with minimal inconveniance for the actual geniuses among us at least. XD

For me, the thematic tie to illuminating the darkness more than makes up for the clunkiness of the stealth segments. There's something poetic about claiming for yourself the courage and determination that the Owlks lacked. However, I absolutely see your point. This isn't really a revelation that came to me as I was playing the game, it's an interesting thematic connection I made much later when listening to the same interview you mentioned. Perhaps this was an unavoidable flaw in the way the DLC was developed, since it was essentially birthed from a multitude of unfinished ideas from the base game. Had the designs of the Owlks not been set in stone, had the idea of ghosts in the machine not been left as a relic, then maybe they could have designed a more natural and cohesive method of delivering their central thesis. As it stands, I don't see any effective diagetic way of conferring that piece of information to the player, with no dead nomai or living explorers around to give helpful hints (assuming the Owlks aren't kind enough to leave a helpful picture guide to the flaws in their patrol routes) Great video!

I played it with no community interaction or spoilers whatsoever and figured the proper "owless run" method out myself lol. I never knew people were playing it otherwise until watching this video.

I can't watch the vid cause I still haven't played the game but I will let it play to support in the algorithm, God knows youtube hates variety

for the endless canyon's dark segment, i failed a stealth attempt once and then thought about any ways to work around the segment since it was like really scary. i had internalized cross-campfire travel earlier in the dlc for the cabin with the singing folk (after realizing that the occasional screaming was of the inhabitants dying from the flood and that they probably corresponded to the bodies in their respective sleeping chambers), and also made a mental note of there being an elevator from the bottom of the ravine all the way to the lodge itself only accessible after lighting up the bridge (which was my chekhov's gun the moment i saw it my first raft ride, since the other elevators had more obvious utility upon first encounter). quickly put together how i could do the lodge while its illuminated to setup the elevator safely, and then doing cross-campfire travel (with the 2nd fire since that buys more time) to bypass the segment entirely. definitely one of the most fulfilling puzzles across the game for me 🐐

Outer Wilds has always encouraged multiple solutions. You said that the cactus hovering is inconvenient but it's actually not that hard imo. Any solution is a valid one. Similarly, there is no true solution to the Owlks. Only valid ones. Stealth was always an option but not the only one. I solved the alarm glitch on my own but not the lift method.

Honestly the best sponsor you could get, I've been watching the development of RAM for a while now, very cool that they are sponsoring other youtubers.

i feel obligated to shout out my other two favorite knowledge-based unlock games in case anyone who loves outer wilds sees this and hasnt heard of them, Tunic and the La-Mulana series. getting information that drastically changes the route you take through the game on the second time through is one of the greatest mechanics ever invented and i wish more games used it. hope this comment helps someone out there discover some new potential favorites

I accidentally got the lantern light sphere thing before I was supposed to on accident, trying to see if the bell totem thing couldn't see me without the lantern.

This girl called BeccaBytes recently finished OW as her first playthrough and actually finished it without stealth making those moves of the video it was impressive.

Actually such a great video! Agree wholeheartedly that they should have doubled down on the puzzle aspect of the stealth, though I do still love the themes of Echoes of the Eye and can see why they did what they did, especially because their patches do at least turn the stealth more puzzley now

I did actually manage to figure out this strat. I remember thinking on how all the dream zones are very intentionally linked via the river and how the dam breaking wipes a bunch of them out proves you go to other areas after they change. So that indicated to me there should be a way to bypass them. It did take a couple tries to work out the order of operations though.

Almost my exact thinking after I beat the dlc loved it but what the heck was with that one section I actually did do the other sections without the mechanical stealth but with the one you can’t (I forgot the name) you can just jump while walking past the bell thingy which stops you from slowing down which is definitely not intended but I got to beat the dlc without any scary scooby doo chases so yipee for me I guess

Operation Owlless was how I did the Endless Canyon on the first day it came out! I also had previously accidentally stumbled upon the dying-to-bypass-alarm-towers, so I didn't have any trouble getting into the starlit cove. I have to agree with you on the cove, though -- it is by far the weakest of the three puzzles, though in my experience it only requires that you confront one Owlk and it is much less mazelike, so that benefits it somewhat. I stand by that Endless Canyon was meant to be skipped, still.

My experience with the DLC was really funny. For one, I was playing while my cousin (who absolutely loves outer wilds) watched, which made the would've been frustrating stealth sections rather funny as I cheesed the AI (post patch stealth sections). What was even funnier though, is that I realized the wake up glitch because the first time I went to sim world I did it by dying in the fire and just assumed that's how you were supposed to do it. When I got to the prisoner room for the first time, I was able to cross the bridge guarded by sirens with no issue. I eventually figured out you could indeed just rest, and be woken up by sirens, I put two and two together, and was able to finish the DLC without ever completing one of the sim puzzles

Loved this video!! Outer Wilds seems like a super interesting game. Honestly could listen to you talk about anything in circles and enjoy it.

Mollystars jumpscare got me good LMAO, Great video Andrew love the branching out!

As much as I want to watch the latest Andrew Cunningham video, the clips in the intro sold me on the game so I won't spoil it... Anymore than I probably already have.

Great video! Glad to see an interesting and fresh Outer Wilds perspective, I think you had a lot of good points

After I beat the base game, I played around 3 or 4 hours of Echoes of the Eye. I got frustrated with it- never felt like I was making progress, and repeatedly having to redo half a dozen minor actions to get back to the point I was at, like the worst parts of Majora's Mask except with jumpscares. So I quit. And I never went back to it, even though I did love the original game and wanted to experience the continuation of its story. Anyway, I ignored the spoiler warnings, knowing exactly what I was getting into, and you spelled it out perfectly just the same. Imagine my surprise when my frustration with the DLC is not only vindicated, but felt by tons of other players of the game.

1:28 "What the fuck is that I wanna find out what that is" perfectly summarizing the whole Outer Wilds experience

I'm probably one of the only ones that is glad to see it but those MSPA/Homestuck references were a very pleasant addition to the Hiveswap OST! (All the music chosen to illustrate this were really well appointed!) I was told by a friend about the invisible bridge that allowed to skip the Stealth section of the Canyon not too long ago while playing with QSB on and it got me thinking if there was ways to circumvent the Tower's one, so this video is a happy coincidence. Whatever the case, that's another video I'm glad I watched and I hope you find ways to speak about other things you are so passionate about and that it still works out for you in the end. Keep up the good work ^w^

I'm going to be honest, I didn't think that there was any problem with the dlc's stealth section, though I can see how not having a foolproof 100% correct solution is different from the rest of the game. I have one objection with this video though. Bruteforcing the stealth isn't Feldsparring the game. Feldsparring the game is what Thor from Pirate Software did where he intuited or stumbled upon all three of the glitches and managed to skip *the entire horror section of the dlc*.

Love this video, articulated a lot of my frustrations and favorite parts of echoes.

Cant remember if I commented this when this vid came out, but I love your thoughts here so much. Really enlightening stuff

Good video! interestingly i had kinda the opposite experience, i made it through the stealth sections with relative ease (tho with multiple month long breaks and on a newer patch from you[which i think made the stealth sections better ?]) but i got completely stuck at the house section. because the other two sections were solved with stealth i assumed the third one was too and tried at least 15 times to get past them in any way i could but eventually i just asked a friend for a hint. i think it would have been a much better experience at least for me if they were all stealth or all puzzly, tho i do really like how the stealth sections tie into the dlc's theme of not letting fear consume you and such. anyway the ending to the dlc was so good that it completely overshadows any of my complaints 10/10

The "Owlless" techniques you describe were how I solved both sections. I still think Endless Canyon was meant to be skipped, to let you defer facing your fear until Starlit Cove forced the issue. (I suspect someone forgot that the Stranger being outside Supernova range would give you an extra minute)

Andrew making an OUTER WILDS VIDEO AT THE PEAK OF MY HYPERFIXATION?????

Accidentally stumbling on the LOD glitch early is one of the most sublime feelings I've ever experienced in a video game. Just pure dopamine

The thing with your Startlit Cove owless route and only having enough time to get 1 slide reel, is that if that slide reel is the ‘dying makes you immune to the bells’ one, you can reduce it to two trips instead of one, and the second trip is significantly shorter than doing the same wait for the tower to fall thing 3 times. It doesn’t really solve the problem but it sure as hell makes it a lot easier. The main thing is you have a 1/3 chance of choosing said slide reel

Amazing video! I love that you did those patch comparisons, I had been wondering what those changes were. I have a couple of questions: 1) Can you elaborate on the mechanic mentioned at 11:17? Is there somewhere I can read up on it? 2) What was the game showcased at 12:55 ?

This might sound implausible, but the Endless Canyon stealth skip came to me in a dream, and it was one of the coolest moments in a game for me to find out that it actually worked. I very frequently get the Tetris effect in my sleep with whatever game I'm currently playing a lot of. Usually it's not one to one with the way the game actually works since dream logic tends to distort things, but I guess the intensity with which I was thinking about the world in Echoes of the Eye made my dreams about it stay accurate. I distinctly remember having trouble with the Endless Canyon stealth section before going to bed one night and wondering if there was a way around it. Then I just recall playing the game in my head all night while I was asleep, and at some point during that time I mapped out that route. When I woke up, I immediately had to try it, and to my surprise, it worked. As to whether or not it's the "intended" solution, I'd venture to say they intentionally made it so that you could brave the stealth section if you were up for it while leaving a clever workaround there for those that wanted a different approach. The Endless Canyon section is by far the hardest stealth section in terms of the terrain you have to navigate in the dark, so it makes sense to me that this is the one they left a full workaround for. Most of the other segments like the Starlit Cove have fairly simple routes with clear forks in the road that you can use to lure the owlks one way and then sneak by the other. Plus, as you said, using the lamp glitch makes it way easier to plan out routes in advance and feel more confident in where you're going.

I ended up playing Outer Wilds for the first time when I heard you were making this video, and loved it until the end. I actually ended up not finishing the dlc, becasue of the stealh stuff. the fact that you had to lure them and then manouver in the dark just did not click...

not to be "that guy", but yeah, i beat the DLC on the release patch with no hints or anything. perhaps there was an element of luck in what i encountered, but i found myself falling into the same discovery/exploration cycle as the base game without really hitting the hitches mentioned with the stealth. i viewed it like navigating around anglerfish, lights in the fog and all. that said, there's more dynamic traversal on foot with gravity compared to rocketing around the fog, and as you mentioned, you can lure Owelks off their patrols by just flashing your light at them. it's nice there are alternate solutions and routes, but i view the positions and environmental layout as just as much of a puzzle as any other. perhaps the darkness is a bit aggressive and makes figuring out said Owelk positions and paths difficult, but considering the Owelks all make loud footstep sounds and hold shining lantern lights themselves, i feel like the info you need HAS always been there. At least, it was in my own experience. A small final aspect to this is that, to get to where you turn off the lights, you have to first traverse the paths forward in light, so you ARE given the chance to learn the layout before stealth occurs. i can see this being why people would dislike the last room of the cove down the well, as it's easily the hardest stealth room and you didnt get to see it beforehand. this is why i say perhaps i got lucky with how i encountered it, because i realized the Owelks in that room had to take the stairs in the side while i could just hop over the banister in the middle to get a big lead on them.

I played Outer Wilds a second time with my father after completing it myself, he does not know how to play videogames, but he knows how to solve complex puzzles, so I controlled the game while he solved everything. After finishing the main story we moved on to the dlc, thing is, I never actually finished the dlc on my own because I got frustrated with the stealth. We ran into the same issue when trying to get the Cove archive, so we muddled over alternative solutions, and we realized that every archive holds the glitch used to access that archive (the endless canyon’s invisible bridges for instance, and the secret one you can use to skip the mansion), so if we could get to the archive in the brief time between the real tower falling and the loop resetting we could get the glitch and access the archive that way. While planning our route we kept asking whether this was truly intended, I had told my dad about how games sometimes have unintended solutions in the past, and this seemed like a massive oversight, but it worked and we could continue with the story. Finding out now that that solution was more intentional (at least to the original idea) than the more immediately obvious stealth challenge is the biggest mind blown moment I have ever experienced, and it makes me love this game so much more.

Dang now I gotta play Outer Wilds to watch this video.

LET'S GOOOOOO!! A great RU-vidr making a essay video on My favorite game of all time? Heck yeah!

Okay, so after you showed the first owlk-less solution I decided to try and figure out the second one on my own, surprisingly I managed to get it right, but got confused too due to not having enough time to read more than one scroll. Still, it felt nice to find a new alternate solution!

Yes, for instance in the starlit cove’s secret manor, I used the light of the lit backdrop to navigate to said backdrop, see the Owlk move on what looked like a bride, time my jump on the scaffolding and make it below. Made me feel like was mastering light as the owlk have. I later figured out how slow their pathing is around objects and then that made everything way easier. I am a weird cat though, I felt at home in their simulation. And my meta awareness always tells me it’s a simulation in a simulation in a simulation. The middle simulation being game designers made it; ergo, it follows a set of rules to exploit.

You can get to the starlit cove archive owless a bit faster by entering from the cliffs simulation before turning off the light and hopping on one of the owl's elevators as it comes back up, then taking it down right before the tower falls

had a bit of a freak out moment as you said outer wilds was your favourite game and I thought "same... besides maybe undertale", then two seconds later a flash on screen mimicked me.

Outer Wilds is a game i wish i got to play. i can see the appeal all the way from the cat's eye nebula. i robbed myself of that though, due to complex personal factors. so all i can hope for now is that something else like it reaches a comparable level of deserved popularity.

As one of the many who also had to dive a bit into the wiki to solve EOTE, this is just insanely on point. May the algorithm bless this video.

As I have not played Outer Wilds I cannot watch this, but I will leave this running at 0.25x speed in the background so you can get the watch time regardless. Godspeed to you Mr Cunning Ham and may your Outers forever be Wild or something

I ended up looking up guides at certain points of both OW and its dlc, specifically: ¹sneaking past anglers, ²getting into the ash twin project, and ³endless canyon. I don't feel guilty about any of them (especially endless canyon). ¹I knew you had to stealth and be quiet for the anglers due to the sunless city but got fustrated at how I would randomly get caught and looked up the specific mechanics involved alongside some hints for avoiding them ²i just apparently forgot to test the teleporters, i got a hint that it had something to do with the tps and it was easy to figure out the rest. ³endless cayon is just fustrating and owlless was the solution godspeed to the random youtube video that was linked on reddit.

"a cited author in my limbic system" is so good - will be using that line!

So while I did figure out how to extinguish the owlkins with the dam, I only ever used it in for the woods archive behind the fire, which was the only archive I found in my play through. I got caught like 3 times by the owlkins in my plathrough... and the first one I ran too out of excitement having discovered another being. I died to enter the simulation the first time trying to reset the loop in the bell and figured out how to bypass the ringing sentries before knowing they woke you up. I just tried jumping into the water on the invisble bridge lock and landed on the second platform. Somehow I figured out this game lets you hold crouch and walk to an edge without falling off like in Minecraft, so using that I could solve the puzzle without even trying to drop the artifact. Just try each symbol and crouch walk down the platform to see if I could go further than last time. The only one I figured out and used as intended was the loading screen one.

It's possible to do starlit cove without luring the owlks, but I don't think it is intentional. When I did it, I turned off the light, jumped on the railing and onto a rock before the entrance down into the mine. This bypasses the cave guard. From there, it was simple to go down to the mine and recon-and-time a dash across the bridges at the bottom without luring the sentries away.

Echoes of the eye confounds my completionist run because of one achievement - get to all 3 secret spots in one run. It shows true mastrey of the Dream, which I do not have. The gorge is the one i struggle with the most. Navigating the darkness is so scary. There's a sentinel who patrols after you turn the lights out and that's the only way to open a specific door.

Commenting for engagement as I can't watch this video (I'll get to Outer Wilds someday), but would very much like to. Keep up the good work

I had the idea to put the lantern down and walk away from it on my own. So I "beat" the mansion on the cliff without stealthing it at all.

The only Owlks I wasn't able to avoid entirely were the two guarding the Starlit Cove forbidden archives. Though the game was still way too scary....

I feel that the original intent might have just been to interact with the owlks more during the stealth sections. Focusing your light on them allows you to find them, as well as slowing them down, makes it a lot easier

I figured that there needed to be a reason you could shut off your lantern. I also noticed that they kind of flinched if you focused the beam in their eyes, so I would blind them to lure them over, then shut it the lantern off and sneak by. I never even considered that this wouldn't have been obvious to people. Huh! (This was pre-patch)

unique thoughts about outer wilds are rare, great video

HAHAH I never expected to see my reddit post in this video. I just clicked out of curiosity (hehe), and there I am, writing about how I did the endless canyon in the "intended way", in your video. funny

the beginning segment is so nice

(one of) the undertale / deltarune guy who makes cool videos... and now did one about OUTER WILDS (DLC) LETSGOO that comment you left on the.... soundtrack? gave me hope but that's been months or years ago post video edit: i was also someone who looked up how to get past the owl fellas (luckily, not mechanic spoilers, however before i started the dlc i watched a few seemingly only base game talk videos and got story spoilers). the dlc's theme is definitely about fear, as you know "you can only know if you made the right choice if you step into the darkness" -roughly what the prisoner says at the eye if you pick not ready to decide option. i'm a little confused when you talked about how the "duke and run" method wasn't really working. E.G. cinder isles before well owl, you shine the light on them, lead them on the bridge, shine the let again while halfway, shut lantern and run. this should work pretty effectively, but hmm

Very interesting video, and I've been similarly frustrated by this DLC. I do wonder at around 15:19, there's no mention of *another* obscure mechanic - you can blind the owlks by focusing the lantern in their eyes when they get close, which is what the chokepoint changes are nudging you to, to pass by very close. Maybe that's the big intended thing? It certainly fits with, well, shining a light at dark things. Frankly, while it may be intended, it's not a super consistent mechanic, it only earns you a second or two and sometimes their charge will bypass it (and lock you in to the death animation). It does let you play similarly to reduced frights, and be much more aggressive walking by owlks, when it works. On a completely unrelated note, sometimes I wonder if you're meant to discover the glitch mechanics ahead of time and that's something the devs "intended" for more people. Breaking the (in-universe) simulation like a videogame speedrunner is certainly a theme of the DLC and incredibly cool - you have clips from Joseph Anderson which *did* discover the glitches on his own and had a great time. I also found the LOD glitch on my own (in the prisoner room) but sadly did not connect just how useful it was and kind of forgot about it - until I got to the endless canyon, could not navigate in the dark, died 20 times, and stopped being scared in any way (the bad experience...), but then actually came up with operation owlless as my solution. Except I was so annoyed and frustrated at this point I made the mistake of double checking online what the heck was going on and what the intended experience could possibly be (and if owlless would even work). Turns out yes, but alongside someone laying out how owlless works there was a an oblique reference to checking the canyon without the lantern, as a non-spoiler spoiler, which I *did* know what meant through sheer coincidence and thus solved the canyon that way. Oops. Overall kind of sad, 9/10 flawed experience.

Lovely video, still lovin' how you put emphasis in your scripts. I would love to play RAM but the only computer I got is a Mac that is currently bullying me by not allowing me to play 32-bit games. I'm also too stupid-brained to figure out how to emulate that. I'm gonna still buy it and hopefully I'll be able to fix up my old 2014 windows desktop to play it by the time it releases.

Im really proud of the fact that I did in fact discover owlless organically bc it scared me too much and failed too often (admittedly after the patch).

I really didn't think that a Andrew Cunningham video would make me play Outer Wilds for the first time

One note of constructive criticism, I think the background music was too loud in some parts and drowned out the audio commentary, so just something to keep in mind for the future. Great video as always!

Your hypothesis is great & makes so much sense with OW’s gameplay philosophy. I’m sure the devs agree with your take but they had to be consistent with their “Embrace the darkness” themes.

I have no idea what any of this means, but I enjoyed the video and laughed at all the jokes! Also thank you for all the Rain World nods, that alone gives this video an A+ in my book 😁

thank you for feeding me tonight king i’m so excited to one day see the 18 naked shield guys at ram ranch

I mean, I did do a complicated sequence to skip the stealth section in Shrouded Woodlands

My favorite UTDR youtuber??? Making an outer wilds video????? Today I have been blessed

I like this This is good I like people talking about Outer Wilds specifically the dlc

andrew cunningham jump scare(just got on my computer) (edit): not a fan of puzzle games but this seams very interesting. great video. also... OH MY IS THAT SONA UNDERTALE: KISSY CUTIE!!!

I think it’s possible that the triple loop solution WAS intended- this is, after all, still the time loop game- but the devs accepted that the majority of players would gravitate to traditional gamer tactics, and adjusted accordingly. I’m probably just coping but seriously, Outer Wilds is entirely devoted to its gimmick. Why would it change its tune after an entire game and half its DLC?

we really should bring homestuck memes back in full force imo great vid!

I managed to not have to do any stealth segments. I was so relieved and felt clever even though I was sad I missed out on overcoming my fears.