ok I figured it out. I’m curious, though
does the game give you any kind of hint that discarding the lantern is the solution beyond the pursuers blowing the torch out when they catch you? feels a little obtuse but maybe I’m just kind of dense.
there’s definitely some slide projector which shows it somewhere
well that’s gonna drive me nuts because I swear I’ve seen every god dang slide reel in the light world by now
what if it’s not in the light world?
I wish I could play Echoes of the Eye for the first time again 
then I really don’t know how I’d be expected to find it without the knowledge it already contains given that the only slide projector I found in the dream world is gated by being able to evade the sentries!
unless I’m missing something huge! which is definitely possible!
If I correctly recall which area is being alluded to here, there’s a switch somewhere to turn off all nearby lights and sentry totems. The puzzle itself is a metaphor for the reward.
It was arguably the hardest puzzle in the game at least before the latest patches and it’s the one I didn’t properly complete myself, I kept bumping into dudes in the dark (they react to the power outage by turning off their lamps too to be more sneaky!).
okay I think I completed everything in the DLC.
it felt a little anti-climactic, like I was expecting to maybe discover the purpose of the stranger (I guess some of the slide reels are meant to imply it’s trying to block the eye of the universe’s signal but that doesn’t really make sense to me?), and maybe find a way to prevent it from failing. I don’t dislike the direction they went with it, though. and I’m impressed how it goes from abject horror, to just being kind of poignant and depressing when you realize that it’s all a simulation (I appreciate how the “simulation view” makes everything seem sterile and harmless in stark contrast to your first impression), but then after you rescue the prisoner and realize that you’re now trapped in the simulation, completely alone, it’s somehow both extremely depressing and terrifying at the same time. it’s good stuff!
something that still bugs me, though. I don’t know how it’s possible to solve the endless canyon without knowledge of the hidden world actually being a simulation and being able to exploit this via abandoning the lantern. but indeed, the slide reel that reveals this to you can only be accessed after completing endless canyon. I still don’t understand how you’re meant to figure this out otherwise. the only thing that did it for me was noticing that the inhabitants snuff your flame out instead of killing you when they catch you, which suggested that the flame is more significant to your presence there than you are. but that felt like such a reach that I didn’t even try it until I was prodded to by posting here. still feels like I’m missing something… I know the part broco is talking about, but the switch doesn’t turn off the sentry totems (there’s no way to do this as far as I know, you either sneak past them in the dark or enter the hidden world by dying so it’s impossible for the bells to wake you up). all it does it open up all the sealed doors, and summon inhabitants who are literally impossible to bypass without exploiting the lantern trick. of course if you’ve learned that you can enter the hidden world by dying instead of dozing off I think you can bypass that entire area without ever turning the lights off? I might try that just to see.
I also should clarify that when I said “sentries” earlier I meant the owl-antler creatures (who the game calls “inhabitants” and the achievements call “pursuers”), not the sentry-towers. maybe that was contributing to confusion.
also, it kind of feels like the story/mechanics are commentary on speedrunning? is that a reach? like, half of the DLC takes place inside an explicitly video-gamey simulation, and you end up resorting to what amounts to glitchy exploits to get around otherwise impossible obstacles. the most on-the-nose one is of course clipping through the floor when you’re in a loading zone, but you also have to immediately kill yourself on the campfire (which is basically required in speedruns of the main game) to progress as well. kind of neat I guess.
been playing this game belatedly…
through determination and crack piloting i caught up with the probe that gets launched from the gravity cannon at the beginning of each loop and it felt like a huge achievement even though there was nothing to see there. (afaict) you can lock onto it but there’s nothing interactable on it
only frustrating part so far has been ember twin the sunless city keeps saying ‘there’s more to explore here’… and i keep trying to get to the high energy lab but it keeps filling with sand and at the end of that tunnel it’s too narrow to do anything except shoot a scout through anyway… all the clues say this should be my main task rn i’m just confused as to how to proceed there, so i’ve been sort of doing other stuff while i think on it.
that area in general is the most stressful for me, i just don’t do well with the pressure when i’m exploring
i love the physics in this as well, subtle things like the stars smearing across the cockpit glass as you accelerate to relativistic speeds. i wonder if they model redshift/blueshift
ah from reading another post frustrated about this area i see there is simply a path that i must spot in the dark. hm.
If I remember right, there’s an opening you can shoot your drone through early on that can serve as your waypoint later when you get into the particularly mazey bits
oh i did that part with the anglerfish skeleton etc in fact i think i’ve done everything there except the high energy lab
Of my several issues with this game, I think my original was with the High Energy Lab and (for everyone except stylo right now, she can check this after getting there)( how I had to do this whole maze bit every single time I wanted to go there
well i got to the high energy lab eventually but STILL i have that stupid ‘there’s more to do here’ because i gather i forgot to get into one of the random blocked-off houses in that city to read some text on the wall grrrr
the coolest thing from most recent play session was definitely the interloper getting underneath the core and finding the slippy slidey bits etc. in fact a lot of finding corpses this past play session, the tone is definitely shifting which i appreciate. but i feel like many of the remaining puzzles have shifted firmly into fiddly platforming and waiting around territory which is frustrating.
i will say that my first and last attempts at the end-of-game run were incredible and the ones in between fell a little flat. this doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with your post i don’t really remember my last few puzzles by this point
ok getting close-r to wrapping up a lot of the threads
currently grappling with the quantum moon- landed on it but trying to get the shrine to warp around with me in it is proving quite a mindfuck… i’ve found the three ‘rules’ from other shards, gathered that i need to be observing the moon but not observing the shrine, just trying to figure out if there’s a way to do that while also being in the shrine… trying various things with the scout but not having a ton of success idk. i managed to do it once but couldn’t reproduce the steps [edit: this was a misconception i was misreading the map] no hints needed im sure i’ll happen upon it but maybe give a shout if i’m barking completely up the wrong tree
loved the reveal at the probe tracking module those crazy nomai bastards… although i continue to feel that way too many of these puzzles rely on dodgy 3d platforming.
oh and i FINALLY found all the clues at the sunless city no thanks to the game itself.
yall should have told me i was barking up the wrong tree in the last post! the actual way is much lamer imo. although maybe i wouldn’t think so if i had thought of it myself. i’m sure it would have taken an additional 5-10 hours of banging my head against the wall though. i’m too stubborn for this stuff >:[
prepping for the final thing to do, can i wander around afterwards or should i be doing my little achievement stuff now. i guess it probably doesn’t matter since i assume most achievements can be done on a new game
funny endgame-y things that happened today
… yeah, i’m finding the puzzles a little bit fiddly at the end here but at least it’s obvious what to do from here on out.
at least now i’ve completed enough of the game to catch up on the thread.
also as the plot events and sci-fi grows larger i’m really appreciating how small and ill-prepared the protagonist is by comparison. that whole planet has like 20 people on it and the ships are made out of wood?? and you’re really running directly into certain death constantly?? very neat
yeah this was really stupid and annoying and one of several pathfinding puzzles where i stumbled onto the answer by just screwing up repeatedly. (i.e. wasting so much time flying into the cacti that the sand eventually caught up and covered them allowing me through) which is not a good tendency to reinforce in the player! it’s kind of a mixed message if on one hand you’re saying “use your parallel thinking, there’s always an easier way” and on the other hand there’s puzzles that are solved just by 3d platforming jankiness and running around. similarly with the lakebed cave, it’s kind of clever if you think about the pathways being randomized due to the cave being quantum but in practice i just ran into it and died over and over until i got lucky once.
with this one i can mayyyybe give them a pass in that this solution is a little foreshadowing for the sun station tower later on - i.e. you can use the sand to walk across the cacti there if you get there early enough, and use the warp pad
You can’t wander around afterwards.
Yeah if you fully consider the meaning of what you are doing with the warp core, I think it is pretty obvious that, whatever is going to happen, it’s going to make big changes…