Echoes of the Eye - Unused Puzzle and Secret Ending? *SPOILERS*

[Tweedler]

*BIG TIME SPOILERS*
--Read at your own risk--



I just finished Echoes of the Eye and thought that there had to be a better ending.

To open the sarcophagus you need to die going into the virtual world in order to get past the two alarm-bell statues on the bridge. This leads to you releasing the virtual Prisoner and you both accepting death. A black screen pops up saying (Echoes of the Eye) but no credits. I was certain this was not the end.



* UNUSED PUZZLE? *

Knowing now that alarms don't wake you up if you're dead, I went back to the Tower Pit in the Virtual World dead so I could enter the pit / auditorium without blowing out the lights and triggering the Owls to wander the stage.

With time to explore I found that the stage has 4 paintings, 2 to the left of the door heading to the Forbidden Archive and two to the right. Even more interesting, there are copies of these paintings, some mirror-flipped, on the pillars around the auditorium.

With this in mind I figured this was the final puzzle that used what you learned about going into the virtual world dead to bypass alarms in a clever second way, allowing you to get a code to deactivate the light on the Virtual Bridge so you can open the sarcophagus in the real world without dying. At this point I was certain this was how to get the True Ending!



* PUZZLE VARIABLES *

I figured the 4 paintings on the stage plus the door in the middle leading to the archive would give you the 5 digits you needed to enter the code to deactivate the lights on the Alarm-Bell Statue Bridge.

There are 3 paintings on each of the 6 pillars in the auditorium. This gives us a total of 18 (not including the 4 lit onstage). This is tricky because the two paintings on the left look nearly identical. They almost look mirror-flipped which is INCREDIBLY confusing because some of the paintings in the auditorium are mirror-flipped. The only real difference between the two is that the first painting's collar is green, and the second painting's collar is yellowish-green. But I digress



* PUZZLE NOTES *

Here are the totals I found of each painting in the auditorium, going in the order that they appear on the stage from left to right.

Painting 1: (Looking Right / Green Collar / No Pupils)
- 0 looking left
- 3 looking right

Painting 2: (Looking Left / Yellow Collar / No Pupils)
- 2 looking left
- 1 looking right

Door to the Forbidden Archive / Possible 5th painting that's around the auditorium but not on stage. (Looking Left / Red Collar / Yes Pupils
- 2 looking left
- 0 looking right

Painting 3: (Looking Right / Green Collar / Yes Pupils)
- 5 looking left
- 3 looking right

Painting 4: (Looking Right / White Collar / No Pupils)
- 0 looking left
- 2 looking right



* OTHER NOTES *

I entered the archive as well to look for paintings in there, but didn't see anything.



* SOLUTION? *

Armed with these notes I went back to the bridge and entered in the combination in every way I could think of. Top to bottom, Bottom to top, only the exact paintings not including mirror flips to the right, same but to the left, totaling the left and right facing top to bottom/bottom to top, trying nothing for the door instead of the 5th painting, all of the previous solutions but adding 1 to include the paintings onstage, etc.

At this point It had been nearly 3 hours, a third of my total time in Echoes of the Eye so I threw in the towel and went to look up the answer. Hurt the ego since I didn't need to look up any other puzzle, but this one was too tough for daddy.

But to my absolute surprise, there is no mention of the Auditorium Painting Puzzle (coinage) anywhere, and there seems to be no way to open the sarcophagus in the real world and live to see it without modding the game. Apparently there are even data-mined codes that seem to do nothing in-game. And to add the cherry on top, apparently the open sarcophagus in the real world was in the game with the Prisoner's corpse, but was removed via patch.



* FINAL THOUGHTS *

Best I can gather is the Auditorium Painting Puzzle is an unused puzzle that allowed players to turn off the light on the Virtual Bridge so you can open the sarcophagus in the real world without dying. But maybe the devs didn't want to people to think this was how to get a different ending. So they removed the open Sarcophagus in the real world as well as the code to turn off the light, but didn't go through the effort of removing the paintings from the auditorium.

I also did the regular end where the Prisoner joins in the campfire song.

[Bobywan]

The only real ending is indeed to redo the main game ending with the addition of the prisoner.
There is no code to be found for the sarcophagus, the owldeers people made sure of it as you can find burnt code in each of the archive.
Some people did datamine the codes though. If you look for speedruns, I think they use the codes. But it doesn't change anything if you open the sarcophagus while still alive.

[June]

There is no painting puzzle. The portraits are just flavor, just like all the other similar portraits all over the Stranger. I have no idea why you would assume these portraits are any different.

As for the EotE ending, it's exactly the same whether you're dead or not. You didn't miss anything.

Edit:

Originally posted by Tweedler:

there seems to be no way to open the sarcophagus in the real world and live to see it without modding the game.

Actually there are multiple ways. You can use the code (while it doesn't appear in-game it does exist), you can climb the rocks behind the bridge area, or you can glitch your ship into the dreamworld and grab your jetpack.

[Incitatus]

There are other endings, although I wouldn't call them better.

If you break the loop, you can wait on the stranger. Both alive and not.

[Tweedler]

Certainly seems to be a puzzle.

The paintings / door onstage are the only thing lit in the room by stage lights which draw the eye to them.

The painting copies on the pillars around the auditorium are in cabinets that you need to open just like ones that have the burnt codes in them. This also hints at their purpose being the same, to allow access to the totem locking the sarcophagus. No other painting in the DLC is interactable like this.

And by dying you can access the auditorium safely by bypassing the alarm totem leading down into the pit. This gives you time to work out the puzzle without an Owldeer breathing down your neck. This is the same technique you learn in the archive the auditorium leads to.

I should clarify that I'm not insisting this is a puzzle that needs solved to unlock additional content. I'm saying this is an early puzzle that was left in the game that doesn't do anything in the final release. My best guess being that it used to allow you to open the sarcophagus without dying.

[June]

Originally posted by Tweedler:

And by dying you can access the auditorium safely by bypassing the alarm totem leading down into the pit.

That's not something unique. EVERY dreamworld stealth section can be bypassed using the glitch you learn after solving it — the lantern glitch reveals an invisible pathway in the canyon that bypasses the bridge; and the falling glitch lets you directly access the archives beneath the shrouded woodlands.

As for the cabinets, they don't seem at all like a puzzle, just a red herring (Looking for something? Too bad, this isn't it!) to distract you while you're trying to stealth.

[AtomHeartDragon]

Originally posted by June:

Originally posted by Tweedler:

And by dying you can access the auditorium safely by bypassing the alarm totem leading down into the pit.

That's not something unique. EVERY dreamworld stealth section can be bypassed using the glitch you learn after solving it — the lantern glitch reveals an invisible pathway in the canyon that bypasses the bridge; and the falling glitch lets you directly access the archives beneath the shrouded woodlands.

The lantern glitch is the only one that can be reasonably discovered on your own by purposeful actions - experimenting should be your second nature by that point and you might also want to try and keep your lantern out of the reach of pursuers (not that it helps, but it makes sense to try).
The falling glitch is not something you're going to do on purpose, because without knowing about it it just seems like a way to lose progress within current loop.
The bell glitch is perfectly logical and can be predicted but also makes very little sense to expect it would work on you specifically instead of just getting whisked back to the beginning of the loop if you try, and removes your ability to exit the simulation, which also makes sure that you cannot make *the* change you can effect in the DLC and that is effectively its point narratively, stick.

[Tr3m0R]

Originally posted by Tweedler:

Certainly seems to be a puzzle.

The paintings / door onstage are the only thing lit in the room by stage lights which draw the eye to them.

The painting copies on the pillars around the auditorium are in cabinets that you need to open just like ones that have the burnt codes in them. This also hints at their purpose being the same, to allow access to the totem locking the sarcophagus. No other painting in the DLC is interactable like this.

And by dying you can access the auditorium safely by bypassing the alarm totem leading down into the pit. This gives you time to work out the puzzle without an Owldeer breathing down your neck. This is the same technique you learn in the archive the auditorium leads to.

I should clarify that I'm not insisting this is a puzzle that needs solved to unlock additional content. I'm saying this is an early puzzle that was left in the game that doesn't do anything in the final release. My best guess being that it used to allow you to open the sarcophagus without dying.

I get whar you were and are saying and do find it interesting in how passionate others are that this couldn't be possible. It is quite an insightful post to me at least and we'll articulated as to what may have been evidence of earlier trials that are left as their own remnants in the game, intentional or not, for super fans to debate or draw their own inferences.

[Tweedler]

Thanks! I appreciate that and am also surprised that it seemed to strike a negative chord with people. Maybe because I led off the post saying I thought the true ending was an optional bad ending. In hindsight I could have been more tactful with how I said that. It was meant to be an explanation of how and why I went down the path of working on this possible unused puzzle. Not an indictment of the DLC or the story.

[AtomHeartDragon]

Originally posted by Tweedler:

Thanks! I appreciate that and am also surprised that it seemed to strike a negative chord with people. Maybe because I led off the post saying I thought the true ending was an optional bad ending. In hindsight I could have been more tactful with how I said that. It was meant to be an explanation of how and why I went down the path of working on this possible unused puzzle. Not an indictment of the DLC or the story.

I think the min problem is that it would be too, well, puzzly.
It would be contrived in very videogame logic way, which is something Outer Wilds generally (and DLC to a somewhat lesser extent) does a great job at avoiding.

I do agree that inability to make prisoner's release "stick" and inability to see the effects of our efforts in physical world does make ending somewhat less satisfying as part of OW.
Branching timelines interpretation of time travel makes it land better, but it in turn makes the implications of Nomai's project kinda horrifying and Nomai themselves bad at ethics (even though their hearts or analogues are clearly in the right place), which is also not an ideal landing, this time for some parts of the game's original story.

That said I have greatly enjoyed the DLC, even if not to the same extent as the base game.