EotE is...not that fun to play

[CastielArch]

While I haven't finished the DLC, there will be spoilers below, so be warned.

I have no problem with the horror, and at first I found the gameplay around light was a good addition.
But once you've explored the ring world and it comes to the dream world thing, dear lord does the game becomes a chore to play.
It's painfully slow (as you can't boost yourself forward), you can't see where you have to go, there's no clear goal withing the level itself, just find the McGuffins that are...somewhere, just have to blindly and randomly look around, getting back to the locations takes almost 10% of a run each time and them half of the fires get snuffed out when the dam breaks, meaning they are on an even shorter timer than 22min.

And on top of that there's just no story once in the dream world, the last bit of lore the game gave me was 4h ago, now it blind and repetitive walking and dying with 0 progression for hours on end, to the point I'm honnestly losing any interest in the DLC.
The slide shows were nice, but they are very blunt in their delivery of what is going on (safe for what's inside the bell-thing that is, I presume, one of the reveals of the DLC).

Are the dream levels the second half of the DLC or is there significantly more gameplay after that ?
I'm really close to just watch a walkthrough of these sections and be done with them...

[Quillithe]

If you don't know where to go in the dream world and you're wandering around aimlessly, you've probably missed something important.

Did you go to the dream world inside the big bell-shaped thing? That gets you on the correct track.

After that each dream world location is actually pretty small to find where to go - though there's a bit of a puzzle on how to get there.

[76561199455560242]

It's mostly just dream world and learning a few mechanics from slide reels contained within. Actually, simply having knowledge of these mechanics will allow you to complete the DLC in a few minutes... so you're kind of just wasting your money by spoiling it with walkthroughs.

Some aimless wandering is required, but eventually you will hit certain "walls" that you cannot overcome. Keep these areas in mind and go explore elsewhere, how to get by them will become apparent soon enough.

You can focus your lantern to scout a path and light candles, which will help you explore the areas.

People here on the forum are typically very helpful and will answer specific questions without spoiling it too much, so maybe try asking for more specific information and we can give you little bits of spoilers instead of just ruining the entire experience.

[CastielArch]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

If you don't know where to go in the dream world and you're wandering around aimlessly, you've probably missed something important.

Did you go to the dream world inside the big bell-shaped thing? That gets you on the correct track.

After that each dream world location is actually pretty small to find where to go - though there's a bit of a puzzle on how to get there.

Yes, I know what I'm looking for in the dream world, I've visited the bell and each temple, 4h ago, and since then nothing, each level is a dead end I'm fed-up with visiting for the 8th time with no new progress made.

This dream worl part is nothing else than frustrating and a waste of time, the fear factor is totally gone, wiped away by the terrible gameplay you're forced into, the owl-men that were intrieging at first are just annoying NPCs at this point.

How could they do a near perfect on the base game and fail so hard on the DLC I just don't understand...

[Quillithe]

Originally posted by CastielArch:

Originally posted by Quillithe:

If you don't know where to go in the dream world and you're wandering around aimlessly, you've probably missed something important.

Did you go to the dream world inside the big bell-shaped thing? That gets you on the correct track.

After that each dream world location is actually pretty small to find where to go - though there's a bit of a puzzle on how to get there.

Yes, I know what I'm looking for in the dream world, I've visited the bell and each temple, 4h ago, and since then nothing, each level is a dead end I'm fed-up with visiting for the 8th time with no new progress made.

This dream worl part is nothing else than frustrating and a waste of time, the fear factor is totally gone, wiped away by the terrible gameplay you're forced into, the owl-men that were intrieging at first are just annoying NPCs at this point.

How could they do a near perfect on the base game and fail so hard on the DLC I just don't understand...

It sounds like you're just frustrated because you've gotten stuck on something. Those should show you pretty close to exactly where to go after maybe one visit looking around - I assume you're having problems getting caught or something? There's actually a way to get around needing to stealth in every area (though one feels a little less intentional).

[Bobywan]

The clues to the dreamworld dead ends are in the real world, I don't remember exactly how you're supposed to find them so I won't risk spoiling too much.

If the NPCs are too anoying you can activate the reduce fright option in the settings which will actually reduce their speed, making it easier to navigate with them around.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by CastielArch:

Yes, I know what I'm looking for in the dream world, I've visited the bell and each temple, 4h ago, and since then nothing, each level is a dead end I'm fed-up with visiting for the 8th time with no new progress made.

Each "section" has at least one rather obvious goal/place to go to. You know at least one mechanic that gets you to one, you just apparently haven't realized it yet. I'll describe each of the points of interest
The marshy area has a very large house, with people walking into it and singing coming from it
The big circular area has a large pit in the middle. Also a tower on the outside which is less important.
The cliffside building has a giant sus painting at the bottom
I can't imagine you not encountering any of these. All you have to do is figure out how to get to/past them all. With what you learn after these areas you can get through the puzzles in the dream inside the bell, and that gets you to the end of the DLC, to answer "how much you have left".

Some mechanics you have to logic out yourself, and others you get explicitly shown on reels in the real world. Is every real world section devoid of "there's more to explore here" marks in your ship log? One hint I can give you to make you less prone to dyingand gain progress in at least one place: you can ride the dream boats to other sections of the map. Is your fire the only one that gets snuffed out in certain temples?

[CastielArch]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Originally posted by CastielArch:

Yes, I know what I'm looking for in the dream world, I've visited the bell and each temple, 4h ago, and since then nothing, each level is a dead end I'm fed-up with visiting for the 8th time with no new progress made.

Each "section" has at least one rather obvious goal/place to go to. You know at least one mechanic that gets you to one, you just apparently haven't realized it yet. I'll describe each of the points of interest
The marshy area has a very large house, with people walking into it and singing coming from it
The big circular area has a large pit in the middle. Also a tower on the outside which is less important.
The cliffside building has a giant sus painting at the bottom
I can't imagine you not encountering any of these. All you have to do is figure out how to get to/past them all. With what you learn after these areas you can get through the puzzles in the dream inside the bell, and that gets you to the end of the DLC, to answer "how much you have left".

Some mechanics you have to logic out yourself, and others you get explicitly shown on reels in the real world. Is every real world section devoid of "there's more to explore here" marks in your ship log? One hint I can give you to make you less prone to dyingand gain progress in at least one place: you can ride the dream boats to other sections of the map. Is your fire the only one that gets snuffed out in certain temples?

That's what I feared, I know all of this. So the DLC really just is what I think it is.
Walkthrough it is then, I've lost 5h of my time already on these dream sections with none of the fun of the base game, that's enough.

Thanks everyone for your answers.

[Fear Ghoul]

My experience was pretty much the same, and I just gave up on it because I didn't enjoy the dream stuff at all. It stripped away everything enjoyable about OW, and left me with something that I felt was just frustrating, and for the first time, I felt like I was operating under a time limit in this game. I had no idea where I was, because everywhere I went looked the same, and I never even made it to these stealth sections everyone talks about. I wished it stayed in the dam parts. I mean, even the dam area took away some gameplay features I liked, but it introduced new things and I still felt like I was figuring things out myself.

[Superabbit]

Originally posted by Fear Ghoul:

My experience was pretty much the same, and I just gave up on it because I didn't enjoy the dream stuff at all. It stripped away everything enjoyable about OW, and left me with something that I felt was just frustrating, and for the first time, I felt like I was operating under a time limit in this game. I had no idea where I was, because everywhere I went looked the same, and I never even made it to these stealth sections everyone talks about. I wished it stayed in the dam parts. I mean, even the dam area took away some gameplay features I liked, but it introduced new things and I still felt like I was figuring things out myself.

This is probably not going to be a popular opinion, but I, too got fed up with stumbling around in the dark. No matter how many times I watched the slide reels the clues never clicked. Now there's some dude with a startled look, here's someone handing somebody something, a crack in the rocks I don't even know where to look for, Yada yada. I kind of thought I figured out what I was supposed to do in one area, but the thing of the owl people blowing my lantern out and sending me back, it all just got too repetitive and frustrated and turned into the opposite of fun.

So I basically skipped over a phase of it. The stuff I skipped over was the Hidden Archives stuff. As with everything in Outer Wilds, it's just another phase of exposition and knowledge gathering, and once you have the information you may proceed and start enjoying it again. Look up a walkthrough guide and see what information you get in the Hidden Archives and use it.

That will take you to the big payoff, which is cool and shouldn't be missed, after which you'll be done with EotE and can play the big ending (again, if you already did it in the base game). Having completed EotE, the ending will be different, so it's worth doing.

I know there will be some who will bemoan blowing off the Hidden Archives, which do have some cool slides to check out, but those slides are visible on some guy's YouTube video and I went back and watched them so that I wouldn't have missed any of the story. I don't feel at all like I "wasted my money" any more than I would feel that way fast forwarding through a really boring part of a movie. Once I saw what I had "missed out on" it didn't bother me that I had avoided the annoyance.

This may make some wail and gnash their teeth, but when a recreational activity turns into an annoying chore, it loses the sense of fun and wonder and turns into something I'm doing just because I paid the admission.

I LOVED EotE, even better than the base game up until the stumbling around in the dark bit. I even liked visiting the dream world at first. It was spooky and beautiful and evocative. Then the game wanted me to turn off the lights and perform complex tasks from memory with NPC's actively trying to deter me. Outer Wilds for me is about exploring beautifully rendered land(and space)scapes. There's nothing to see in pitch darkness, just memorizing a set of moves and executing them from memory while getting jump scared.

I LOVE Outer Wilds AND Echoes of the Eye. But IMO, there are segments of gameplay in both where the difficulty of executing them seemed contrived and took me out of the story. I think there may be a tendency in some studios to want to avoid getting reviews that say the game isn't challenging enough, and people are afraid to say something is "too hard," so this kind of thing happens.

So don't walk away from it entirely, it's possible to get around the tedious part and rejoin the fun. And it's worth it to get the endings of both EotE and OW.

[Fear Ghoul]

I don't know. Maybe I will eventually, but I really have no interest in continuing EotE after everything I put up with. I remember a point after I had gotten sick of EotE, when someone here was talking about some ruins with writing on Hollow's Lantern, which I had no idea about, so I went to check it out, and it felt so good to finally be playing Outer Wilds again. Just exploring Hollow's Lantern, paying attention to how things there change over time, trying to find the right spot and knowing it would probably appear after a certain amount of time passed, it felt so good. EotE really doesn't feel anything like OW to me, except in very small ways.