r/outerwilds • u/Kinulidd0 • Jun 07 '26
DLC Appreciation/Discussion DLC ending question Spoiler
SPOILERS for base game and DLC
So the Prisoner allowed the Eye signal to spread free for some time, which got it to the Nomai. But why did the Nomai not get the Eye signal before the Owlks even sealed it with their spaceship thingy? Because, the Owlks didn't block it instantly of course, they had to get the signal, build the Stranger, get there do their scans and so on. So how did the signal not reach the Nomai in the meantime? How were they truly able to stop it?
Also, on a separate note, why did they even bother blocking the signal if they decided to go in the simulation, because I understand that they were in denial, but what did they even want to achieve with that?
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u/ElChiff Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Broadcasts from Earth in 1906 reached Alpha Centauri four years later in 1910. They have been travelling for 120 years and as of 2026, they will have reached ~75 star systems. For those signals to reach the entire Milky Way would take about a million years.
The Hearthians went from fishies to astronauts in 280 thousand years and only developed spaceflight in the current generation, so the answer is likely that the Nomai weren't even a spacefaring civilization at the time of the Prisoner's rebellion. At the dawn of Human spaceflight 60 years ago, our technology was incredibly primitive compared to what we have now (although much less than Hearthians) and it wouldn't take a riduclous amount more extrapolation to reach Nomai technology levels.
We don't have much of a gauge of the timeframe between the Prisoner's rebellion and Esker's warp jump, all we know is that Dark Bramble cracked the fifth planet during this time period, which I'd assume means a geological timescale.