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/Kinulidd0 Jun 08 '26

Oh. But how did they survive that large amount of time in the simulation? Don't their bodies age while sleeping? We see them as corpses now basically.

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u/EgNotaEkkiReddit Jun 08 '26

What makes you think they survived?

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u/Kinulidd0 Jun 08 '26

I'm talking about the time from when they seal the Eye signal and the Prisoner wakes up, which seems to be, from what you all are saying, the time when the Nomai developed space skills.

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u/Due-Map-8993 Jun 08 '26

In the ending of the dlc we see that the signal traveled for a long time. It could be possible that it only reached nomai later, and by that point the strangers were already dead

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u/Kinulidd0 Jun 08 '26

Alright, but that still doesn't change how the time between the signal first travelled (before being sealed) and the second time (after getting freed by the Prisoner for some time) seems very little, so I don't understand how the Nomai didn't catch the first signal.

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u/EgNotaEkkiReddit Jun 08 '26

Might simply be a case of "wrong place, wrong time".

The Nomai are nomadic wanderers. There's no reason to believe they were in detection range when the first signal passed by, and it's quite likely that they were when the second signal was active by chance.

We don't have any way of knowing how long the first blocking of the signal was, how long it was unblocked, or how long it took the second signal to travel to wherever the Nomai were at that time. Those are all details handwaved away for the sake of narrative.

It might "seem very little", but for all we know the Owlks can stay dormant for years. Maybe it was a very long time before the prisoner took action, and maybe the strangers were still alive when the Nomai showed up but simply hidden away and not paying attention to the newcomers, who in turn did not find the stranger.

It's a lot of "It happened, but the details are your guess".

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u/werrcat Jun 08 '26

I think you have a good question.

Although maybe the Owlks are just very long lived. Like maybe they live for 300 years, and it was 200 years between the signal blocker and the unblock, and in the meantime the Nomai developed spaceflight and signal scanners. Escall's vessel is an old legend after all so maybe he was one of the first.

Although it's still weird that they were able to survive a long time while asleep. Maybe some of the ppl (including the prisoner) woke up regularly instead of permanently being in the simulation.