An impression of the DLC [Spoilers]

[Cryten]

The dlc comes in 2 parts. A fascinating exploration of a derelict world ship, and a forced stealth section where you cant even see you enemies.

For the first section the game is a delight. There are some quibbles with having to keep repeating actions and how additional exploration is all stuck behind 1 clue. But it was a great experience. I am still curious how the eye is seen as a destroyer by these creatures and what the stranger is doing during the accelerated sun sequence. Great, loved the finding new routes, opening the dream world and reading new info to contextualise the place.

On the other hand there is the second half. A slog of a 3 part sequence with miserable repeated actions in attempts to navigate the stealth while blind. I hated this part. And it has left me feeling cold about the experience. I liked the revelations about the dream world but that was the only thing about all this that was positive for me. (IE the learning to apply the 3 error reports. But for all the frustration the game caused me, there wasnt sufficient catharsis to make me feel better. As the meeting with the prisoner while nice, failed to answer anything we didnt already know except a single anecdote about him an escaped signal to bring the Naomi here.

Which leaves the questions about the accelerated time, the visions of destruction wrought by the eye, ghost matter, quantum effects and dark brambles planet killing parasitism still completely unanswered. As such I am left disappointing. Not with the work, it is a wonderful DLC for a game I love, but I have got no narrative satisfaction. Especially with being unable to do anything with the prisoner I spent so much effort getting to but reseting the timeloop and visiting him in the afterlife.

Did you guys have better impressions of the end sequence?

[heidi]

I have similar feelings to you. The initial discovery and exploration of the Stranger was fantastic. The stealth sections were total ass. I know there are ways to trivialise the stealth sections, but aside from the 1st one (where you could conceivably figure it out yourself when you get kicked out of the dream world and wake to a flooded room), the knowledge to trivialise them is locked behind the stealth sections themselves.

Poor decision imo. It would have been better to hide the stealth tips before the sections so you would have to knowledge to get past them if you'd explored appropriately. Then the hidden libraries could have given you more backstory on the owldeer and their motivations (the film reels were nice but a bit light).

The ending also was a bit of a letdown. After the prisoner leaves I was left wondering 'that's it'? Something else would have been nice here, maybe to do with the dreamworld bell, which otherwise does not react to you messing with the vault.

I feel like it was a good experience overall, but not as solid as the base game.

[Wendigo]

For pretty much all the "stealth" sections, I'm pretty sure the intended solution doesn't involve any sneaking at all. I only know of a single owl that you actually need to sneak past, the one at the bottom of the mansion in the cliffside area that you need to hide your flame for for all of 3 seconds as you walk towards the door and across the bridge. All the others have a non-sneaking solution.

2/3 areas you can do without enemies entirely because of flooding, and you can skip the last one too by just lowering the cliffside elevator and taking the raft to there after you blow out the lights.

In my playthrough I snuck past a grand total of 3 enemies, 2 of which turned out not to be needed but were easy to sneak past because of the error reports from the other archives.

They should have made these sections way harder (or impossible entirely) to make it super obvious that sneaking isn't the intended solution for any of them.

The ending was missing something the same way I think the base game ending is missing something, like one last mechanical revelation that would change the way you interact with the stranger.

[Llyr]

Originally posted by Wendigo:

2/3 areas you can do without enemies entirely because of flooding, and you can skip the last one too by just lowering the cliffside elevator and taking the raft to there after you blow out the lights.

Tower/well area floods way too late for it to be a feasible solution.

It's also not so much an issue of difficulty, as it is frustration at not being able to see anything. The base game is about looking for points of interest and exploring them. You see something in the distance, go there, explore it, find clues. Can't exactly do that here.

[AYAYA]

The stealth sections aren't forced. You can get around them, without any specialised knowledge.

[KaitoKid]

I thought the lowering the elevator and then turning everything dark was the intended solution, didnt have to really sneak that way.

[Ysen]

Yeah, I tend to agree. Too much time spent bumbling around in the dark, not sure if this was the way I was supposed to be doing it - presumably there's a reason for the conceal function, right? - or if I was missing something that would make it easier.

In the main game I realised the landing on the Sun Station or flying around the black hole in Brittle Hollow weren't the intended solution but tried it anyway because it was fun, whereas this was just kind of tedious and frustrating.

[Wendigo]

Originally posted by Noc_vt:

Originally posted by Wendigo:

2/3 areas you can do without enemies entirely because of flooding, and you can skip the last one too by just lowering the cliffside elevator and taking the raft to there after you blow out the lights.

Tower/well area floods way too late for it to be a feasible solution.

I think you still get like 2 minutes to walk through a room and watch the reels (and when you watch the error reel there it shows you how to get back there super easily to take all the time in the world next time). This is the one place where I snuck through where it wasn't needed though. There's one above the well with the weird walkway that seems to exist only to sneak around that one owl, and 3 in the room below where they're visible without a lantern as silhouettes against the light of the exit so you can just walk through when they move away.

The tower/well is the one I solved last and the knowledge from the other areas helped mostly just the matrix vision that lets you take a look at their positions and paths without risking being spotted, but it's also the easiest of the 3 for sneaking through by far.

Originally posted by Noc_vt:

It's also not so much an issue of difficulty, as it is frustration at not being able to see anything. The base game is about looking for points of interest and exploring them. You see something in the distance, go there, explore it, find clues. Can't exactly do that here.

When you figure out matrix vision, you can just walk around in all of the dark areas as if they're bright. Maybe I just got lucky and found that early, but I thought the solution for the village that floods and the cliffside areas were both pretty obvious and except for a bit of the forest they're both pretty well lit. In the forest the path first gets lit for you by the enemies though, so that's kind of the point.

[Cryten]

I appreciate you found a shortcut, though the invisible path to it is usually only findable from the same vault that you need to sneak into (and its the last in the sequence as far as the world works). But I would like to focus more on peoples impressions of the DLC rather then argue over how they solved it.

[Xunkar]

I agree with most of what you said. I was expecting riddles to solve and mysteries to unravel, not an odd Amnesia mod. All in all the stealth part felt very much out of place, but so is the whole DLC. The fact that this is all happening within the time loop and in the usual solar system plays... no part in this DLC and only aggravates it in my opinion.

The time loop for instance, is the dam the only thing constrained by time? Most of the things you want to explore are before the breaking of the dam, not after, leaving you with less options instead of about as much like the base game. Besides, you want to play the stealth part taking your time, being cautious, but the time loop presses you on in an uncomfortable way. To me this DLC would have felt much better as a completely independent story, outside of the game constraints, like a standalone.

Another thing that I found a little disappointing was how cramped everything was. In the base game you always have options to explore. Stuck on Giant's Deep? Check Brittle's Hollow and come back later with a fresh mindset. But here... it's all in a small place, if you don't find that little detail you need to move on you're just stuck. I myself got stuck in the dreamworld because you need to spot very subtle things, in the dark. It felt cheap and not really rewarding. Mostly because the world isn't dark, it's pitch black.

As far as story goes... So OK, it finally explains why the Eye stopped sending its signal, but the whole ordeal with the prisoner isn't something that I could commiserate with. I mean, you tell him what in the end? That his efforts were not in vain because the Nomai came? No, he still doesn't know what the Eye will do or that it's not evil, because we're in the loop so we ourselves don't really know it at that point. We only bring him bad news that everyone's dead or so is the universe.

And like you said, there are a few dangling threads. To me, it's the ghost matter. I thought for a moment it could be tied to the Stranger (because of the house with the artifact, it kinda looked like they were experimenting with it) but no. However about the rest...

"what the stranger is doing during the accelerated sun sequence" are you referring to the fact that the Stranger is moving away from the sun? They tried to hide the Sun from outside detection in a further attempt to block access to the eye I believe, or at least it looks like they've moved the stranger deliberately on a alignment to hide it from view in one of the reels. But this doesn't make sense, it will never work due to the sheer size of the galaxy and universe. But at least the Stranger could be programmed to leave the sun in case of a supernova so they could survive and live indefinitely in their dreamworld. The only other explanation I have is that the Stranger is using light from the sun as an energy source. But then, why try to escape the supernova? The sun will still be gone and the Stranger will end up dying (which I suppose will extinguish the flames at some point). So...

"the visions of destruction wrought by the eye" well, what we have is the interpretation of the events by the aliens, it may not be what the Eye sent precisely. However, it would still make sense. The Eye *will* ultimately destroy everything in the universe so it can be recreated again. But somehow they only understood half the story. Maybe the vision from the Eye was also a warning. The end will come, seek me.

"dark brambles planet killing parasitism" I don't think this deserves an explanation. You don't need to explain the existence of say, a lion. It's a life form that does what it needs to in order to survive. I don't think there's a grand scheme behind it. However I would have loved more details about the ice planet that was there before but... when the Nomai came, and when the "Aliens" came, Dark Bramble was already there, so it was probably just barren.

"quantum effects" are all explained by the Eye. Now why is the Eye quantic at the macroscopic level? That's left to your interpretation, maybe because it's the result of a conscious mind or maybe it's due to the material that composes it. But I'm not sure what you would except to find about that exactly? It's a mystery bigger than life and the universe, as unfathomable as a god. Any explanation would come off as disappointing I feel. I'm more interested in the odd cry-like sounds you hear on the Eye's surface for instance.

[Llyr]

Originally posted by Wendigo:

When you figure out matrix vision, you can just walk around in all of the dark areas as if they're bright. Maybe I just got lucky and found that early, but I thought the solution for the village that floods and the cliffside areas were both pretty obvious and except for a bit of the forest they're both pretty well lit. In the forest the path first gets lit for you by the enemies though, so that's kind of the point.

I didn't know you could just drop the lantern on the ground until after i've finished the dlc. I was convinced that you could only drop it at slide reel spots. Even after watching that slide reel it never clicked for me.

You still have to stumble around in complete darkness to activate elevators, even if you've scouted ahead using matrix vision.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Noc_vt:

I didn't know you could just drop the lantern on the ground until after i've finished the dlc. I was convinced that you could only drop it at slide reel spots. Even after watching that slide reel it never clicked for me.

You still have to stumble around in complete darkness to activate elevators, even if you've scouted ahead using matrix vision.

Wait, how did you finish the dlc without knowing that? You need it to find out the left code by cheating.

[Mogross]

The stealth parts are very much forced. It doesn't matter that you can ignore one of them and trivialise the other by using knowledge you gain by passing said stealth section, they are still tedium and they stand in stark contrast with the rest of the game.

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by Mogorsssssssssssss:

The stealth parts are very much forced. It doesn't matter that you can ignore one of them and trivialise the other by using knowledge you gain by passing said stealth section, they are still tedium and they stand in stark contrast with the rest of the game.

I'd say one of them is forced - none of the ways to get past the second section seem very natural. I know there are tricks, but they don't appear to be the intended method (and they're all hard to execute, especially if you don't have a bunch of first person gaming experience). The first one is clearly not really forced and also reasonable since they use lights so you can see, and the third is very naturally avoidable if you've explored the place - there's no trick to figure out really.

[Gilben]

I have the exact same thoughts. Banged my head against the "stealth" section for about 4 hours (even waiting for flooding, I kept running out of time or stepping in water because the view distance is so low). I wound up looking for the "codes" because I thought "screw it, this isn't a puzzle it's just tedious, I'll skip it". Turns out that spoils the entire rest of the game.

I don't think I've ever been this disappointed in a game, it sucks. They should just make a "no enemies" checkbox instead of the "less frightening" one. It wouldn't change any of the puzzle solutions and it would be a better game IMO. Maybe increase the lantern light distance while they're at it for those of us that despise the "walking in the dark with cheap jumpscares" genre.

[Dr.Gonzo]

Originally posted by heidi:

I have similar feelings to you. The initial discovery and exploration of the Stranger was fantastic. The stealth sections were total ass.

I'm so glad to see other people with the same opinion. The Stranger is brilliant, the stealth is ridiculous.