Updates to Xbox One games are incredibly easy to miss since I power on the console maybe once or twice a month, but I got lucky and managed to catch the update to Elea – Episode 1 less than a week after it came out. The idea was to run through it again and see what’s changed, but I managed to cause a few glitches in the process that made it easy to look through solid objects, so I ended up having some fun running around the ship and trying to figure out how everything loads. Some interesting things were found in the process, including a coffee/food vending machine hidden behind the walls of a vent you crawl through near the episode’s end.

Let’s start with the new stuff

The most obvious change hits you as soon as you start the game, with there being a new intro that consists of main character River Elea Catherine Jones looking out of a window as dialogue from the “memory erasure” beginning sequence plays. This scene still exists in the game, too, so new players are potentially hearing this twice.

The second biggest change is a new checkpoint that you get after leaving the vents at the very end of the game, right before the QTE. Basically, dying doesn’t require slowly crawling through the vents anymore, and while it can be slightly disorienting to respawn and not be sure which direction you’re facing, it’s a good change that makes the QTE much less frustrating by allowing you to reach it and try again faster.

I also noticed some minor changes to the placement of early objects, with the keys you need to open the basement being on the table instead of the kitchen counter.

Likewise, Elea’s infopad has been moved to a different room. This took me awhile to find since it ended up being in the last place I looked (admittedly, I didn’t search very efficiently), but I suppose this drives the player to explore the area and interact with various objects while looking. Something I noticed around this point was that my right stick would occasionally become stuck after picking up an object and putting it down, requiring picking it up and putting it down a second time to be able to turn.

Looking through Elea – Episode 1’s walls

Here’s what happened: while exploring the optional Mars mindscape memory, there was a point during which I was able to crouch. Crouching is only allowed at specific points, though, so I became unable to stop crouching and could run and everything while crouching. This persisted even once I left the memory, so I looked down to see the top of Elea’s head and in the process realized I could look through walls.

The video above is a cut of various interesting things I discovered while looking through walls. First, the cryo chamber that you can’t normally enter or even see inside of (as far as I’m aware) is actually fully rendered, complete with cryo pods. The rest of the observations consist of looking through the elevator while the game loads different floors, which yields a bunch of interesting observations. For example, the two people playing a game in the recreation area exist even when you’re on a different floor, as does the vending machine that you use to get Alice coffee. The very last clip takes place after Alice has been drugged, and that floor actually loads two Alices before despawning the default mindscaping one. Very interesting stuff.

Elea’s crouching state persisted all the way until she grabbed the suit and started the sequence that involves going down the elevator shaft, but I somehow managed to exploit the crouch a second time. I’m not sure how it happened, but the camera ended up at normal standing height while she crouched, making it possible to look above vents. Starting around 2:34, you can see that there’s actually a vending machine hidden behind one of the vents. It might be the one in the recreation area viewed from behind (I’m not sure where these vents are in relation to the rooms), but that would mean that it looks the same from both sides for some reason. Really, I was just happy to have found a random coffee dispenser in the vents.

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