Simulation

This article contains spoilers! Outer Wilds and Echoes of the Eye should be played with minimal spoilers, knowing too much will hinder the experience! Please play the game before reading any of this!

Simulation
Location	The Stranger
Creator	The Stranger's inhabitants
Purpose	Recreation of the home moon of the Stranger's inhabitants

The simulation is a simulated reality located on The Stranger. It is a recreation of the destroyed homeworld of the Stranger's inhabitants.

Locations

The Simulation includes 4 areas that can be accessed from The Stranger by bringing an Artifact to a Green Campfire.

Shrouded Woodlands

The Shrouded Woodlands, accessed from the River Lowlands. It is a dense forest along the banks of a river, with many Inhabitants patrolling and gathering in a building to play music.

Starlit Cove

The Starlit Cove, accessed from the Cinder Isles' Island Tower. It is a residential area held above a lake by stilts inside a cove, with non-hostile Inhabitants patrolling on initial entry.

Endless Canyon

The Endless Canyon, accessed from the Hidden Gorge. It is a candlelit lodge built into the face of a cliff, held above a large canyon, there are Inhabitants here watching slideshows and wandering around.

Subterranean Lake

and The Subterranean Lake, accessed from the Submerged Structure at the Reservoir. It is a large cave that contains all three Forbidden Archives, and the location of the Sealed Vault.

Description

Features

The river running through all areas of the simulation

An inhabitant inside the simulation

At the start of the loop, all of the Stranger's inhabitants are connected to the simulation. They can be encountered at various points. If the inhabitants notice the Protagonist, they will attempt to get them out of the simulation. They do this by either blowing out their Artifact or by snapping their neck if the Protagonist is not holding their Artifact. The inhabitants in the Shrouded Woodlands continuously file out of the buildings in the darkest part of the forest. The inhabitants in the Starlit Cove and the Endless Canyon only start roaming around once the Protagonist has extinguished all lights in their respective areas.

The Forbidden Archives are key areas inside the simulation. They contain unburned slide reels showing critical information about the Stranger and the simulation. The Shrouded Woodlands, Starlit Cove, and Endless Canyon each contain an access point to a Forbidden Archive. However, they are all guarded by the Stranger's inhabitants.

Connecting

Green firepit room inside the Island Tower

To connect to the simulation, an Artifact needs to be held in front of the green firepits in one of the simulation connection buildings. These buildings are located in every area of the Stranger and are usually marked with a stylized green fire on the front of the building. To enter the room with the green firepit, the lanterns in front of the painting with the ringed planet need to be removed. Dozing off, meditating, or dying at the green firepit connects an individual to the simulation.

Once inside the simulation, there are several ways to exit it and wake up in the real world. The easiest way is to extinguish the Artifact by either falling into water or by having an inhabitant of the Stranger blow it out. Another way to disconnect from the simulation is by dying inside of it. This can be done by taking lethal fall damage, drowning without holding the Artifact, or by being killed by a Stranger's inhabitant.

Alarm bells inside the Starlit Cove

There are also bells above each green firepit in the real world that are all connected to alarm bells inside the simulation. Activating an alarm bell in the simulation for too long causes the Protagonist to wake up due to the bells ringing in the real world. Lastly, it is possible to disconnect from the simulation if the Artifact in the real world gets extinguished.

Dam

The Stranger's sails activate around seven minutes into the loop to move the spacecraft away from the impending supernova. Because of the strain this puts on the Stranger, the dam starts breaking down. 13 minutes into the loop, the dam eventually bursts. This also has certain effects on the simulation.

The extinguished artifacts of the inhabitants

The Stranger's inhabitants that are in the simulation connection building in the River Lowlands get disconnected from the simulation, as the flames of their artifacts are extinguished by the water. 20.5 minutes into the loop, the Island Tower falls down completely after being damaged by the dam break. This also disconnects the Stranger's inhabitants in the tower from the simulation.

Once a green firepit room gets flooded, it is no longer possible to access the simulation from that room. If the Protagonist is connected to the simulation there, they get woken up as the water floods the room.

Glitches

The simulation contains three distinct glitches that can be used to open the Sealed Vault. The glitches are all shown on slide reels inside the three Forbidden Archives.

One of the glitches of the simulation

1. Jumping off a raft during a transition between areas causes an individual to fall below the world. They eventually land on the surface of the water of the Subterranean Lake, and can walk on the water briefly.
2. Usually, an individual can connect to the simulation by sleeping inside the range of a green firepit. However, it can also be entered by dying near a green firepit while holding an Artifact. As a consequence, that dead individual cannot be woken up by the alarm bells inside the simulation.
3. Dropping the Artifact on the ground and walking beyond its projection radius shows a green low-detail version of the simulation. This simplified vision reveals hidden bridges and pathways.

History

Eye of the Universe

The barren home moon after the Stranger's construction

The construction of the simulation was set in motion after the inhabitants of the Stranger received the signal from the Eye of the Universe while on their home moon. As they were longing to visit the Eye, they completely destroyed their homeworld to build a spacecraft capable of reaching the Eye.

The Eye's signal being blocked

Once they arrived at the Eye of the Universe on the Stranger, they found out that the Eye had the potential to end the universe. In response, they built an Eye signal blocker which would stop the Eye's signal from spreading throughout the universe. After the inhabitants put the Eye signal blocker into orbit, they moved the Stranger near the center of the Solar System and enabled its cloaking field.

Construction of the simulation

Construction of the simulation

The Stranger's inhabitants were devastated by the pointless sacrifice of their home moon. They decided to build a simulated reality modeled after their homeworld. In the laboratory in the Hidden Gorge, they experimented with different types of Artifacts to connect to the simulation. One was eventually created that had a focus and conceal mechanism which could successfully connect an individual.

Discovery of connecting while dead

While testing the simulation, the inhabitants also discovered that it is possible to connect to the simulation after having died. They set up the Stranger to autonomously move away from the Sun once it starts going supernova. All of the inhabitants then went to sleep and entered the simulation, intending to stay inside it for eternity even after their deaths.

Prisoner

Sealed Vault seal brought into the simulation

At some point, one individual woke up and disabled the Eye signal blocker. This caused the Eye's signal to broadcast freely across the universe again. This individual was quickly caught and imprisoned inside the Sealed Vault. The Eye signal blocker was re-enabled and all slide reels were uploaded inside the simulation. The physical slide reels were all burned, with the exception of a select few of them. The vault seals to open the Sealed Vault were also brought into the simulation. They were stored inside the Forbidden Archives along with the slide reels. However, the contents of the seals were all destroyed at a later time.

Inhabitants dead but still inside the simulation

All inhabitants of the Stranger went back to sleep inside the simulation, abandoning the Stranger forever. As time went on, their physical bodies died. Since their Artifacts were still lit, they remained inside the simulation, never to wake up.

Trivia

• A muted version of End Times plays while in the simulation in the last two minutes of the loop.
• The Ash Twin Project still sends the Protagonist's memories back in time if they connected to the simulation by dying.
• The memories from the simulation have a grainy filter on them when seen in the flashback and through a vision torch.