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Outer Wilds is one of the best open-world games that has ever been created, and I fully understand the weight of such a statement. While it may not be as packed with content as Elden Ring or as cinematic as Red Dead Redemption II, it harbors a pervasive sense of wonder, freedom, and exploration that managed to pull me back into its world loop after loop. Furthermore, the narrative of Outer Wilds is not only satisfying to piece together on your own, but beautiful and meaningful. Despite the literal world ending before our eyes, Outer Wilds ends with the concept of hope for a future yet to come.
All of this makes the overwhelmingly negative review of Echoes of the Eye that I about to write even more frustrating. However, understanding what makes Vanilla Outer Wilds so great is crucial to understanding the failures of its only expansion. Echoes of the Eye introduces a new, massive artificial world to explore, and one with plenty of mysteries to piece together and ruins to explore. However, this time around, you are parted from your ship when you arrive, as you are forced to land in a docking station before entering on foot. I understand that having the ship within The Stranger would completely negate the river traversal system in place, but the traversal itself is not the issue. The ship houses the ship log, your only navigation tool in terms of the actual story of Outer Wilds. When the player is unsure of where to go or what to do, the ship log provides crucial reminders of your discoveries and often points you in a certain direction. Sure, you could glance at the log BEFORE entering The Stranger, but not being able to reference the log as you explore makes Echoes often feel directionless and confusing.
I have read many posts on both Steam and Reddit in which fans of Echoes claim that the player must understand it as "just another planet added to the game" instead of a stand-alone experience. However, the design of The Stranger actively discourages this. As it is a DLC that was added later on, none of the clues that you find on The Stranger point you to different planets or give you options of what to do. The Stranger is oddly divorced from the rest of the Solar System in both content and location, as it is (subjectively) too tedious to return to the hanger mid-exploration. What made the base game so enthralling was the manner in which the different planets and moons of the solar system worked off of each other, making the player bounce between them often and find different paths of exploration to consider. Echoes contains none of this, but instead chooses to present a singular, linear pathway of discovery with even less direction than the base game. What results from this is the weakest area of the game, as The Stranger ends up being too tedious and confusing to explore.
Furthermore, Mobius attempts to play with genres a bit with the inclusion of a horror element to Echoes. While there were certainly creepy moments in the base game, Echoes includes multiple stealth sections that are genuinely frightening in many ways. However, these sections, while effective in terms of eliciting emotion, are incredibly unfun to play. The aliens (for lack of a better term) that hunt you are very difficult to avoid and the pitch-black areas that you are forced to navigate during these sections make them even more difficult. Both I and other players that I know have turned the encounters off (thankfully, this is an option) due to how un-Outer Wilds they feel. Outer Wilds's strengths are not in large linear segments and jump-scares but in freedom, choice, and wonder. Echoes offers none of this.
However, let us end on a positive note. Mobius continues their trend of excellent writing in Echoes, as the story was genuinely fascinating (when I finally got to it) and built upon the existing story of Outer Wilds in a fulfilling way. Furthermore, Prahlow expands the already-fantastic score of Outer Wilds with a new array of bangers for the new areas.
TLDR: Base game is fantastic, DLC strays from the strengths of it in many ways. Hard pass for me.