9 ms·

Thoughts on the Witness (2016)

86 points by luu 5y ago

Aeolun 5y ago
Hmm, yeah. The Witness. It was interesting for it’s puzzles, but having just come out of The Talos Principle -which had both great puzzles and a great story- it fell a bit flat for me. The puzzles are fun, but the world looks it has a story behind it, and as you go along you find out that that’s just not really the case (or extremely minimal).
- dgb23 5y ago
  One of the intriguing things about the Witness is that it feels more like studying a simulation than experiencing a story. It that sense it is remarkable. It feels a bit like some of the weirder niche games of the 90‘s but with incredible polish. Instead of guiding you literally, it communicates through taking your perspective while you slowly emerge yourself. It’s a game made with deep appreciation of their craft, respect of their players and almost something like a longing to communicate.
- dsego 5y ago
  Had high expectations for this game, anticipating with great excitement. I loved Braid, was following all the blog posts and videos with great admiration. And the game wasn't that bad, it was interesting for a while, but also frustrating. Talos on the other hand was a revelation, a thoroughly fun and enjoyable experience, very similar to Portal games. I think this was a fair critique of the Witness and why it lacks respect for the player: The Witness - A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play https://youtu.be/KZokQov_aH0 https://youtu.be/KZokQov_aH0
  - mherdeg 5y ago
    This video was my first introduction to the "long-form narrative game reviews" genre. I really enjoyed watching it -- I think the author made an interesting argument and presented it in a way that was more entertaining than playing 41 minutes of the actual game was.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      How 'long form' do you want to go? Because if a six hour review of a genre-defining Japan-only dating simulator from the early 90s sounds like something you might be interested in then I highly recommend Tim Rogers's YouTube channel, Action Button.
      - Tarq0n 5y ago
        Tim Rogers and Noah Caldwell Gervais are the absolute masters of long form video game essays. Joseph Anderson too if you can stand exhaustive detail.
  - dgb23 5y ago
    > I think this was a fair critique of the Witness and why it lacks respect for the player Just to put some counter weight to it - I had the exact opposite experience: Deep excitement and curiosity throughout the game. It felt like stepping into a different world of discovery and learning.
- mariusor 5y ago
  Jonathan Blow is known to not like games that are heavily plot driven. Here's him describing some of the reason for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVb6-Rkz7W4&t=4409s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVb6-Rkz7W4&t=4409s I think that's the main reason why Witness contains no meaningful conclusion or explanation to the world.
  - agubelu 5y ago
    The Witness does have a conclusion that explains the world. I can't explain what it is or how to access it without spoilers, but it can be found.
    - chii 5y ago
      you could call that a conclusion, but it's not really like a conclusion in the traditional sense. The game doesn't really require a conclusion tbh.
      - agubelu 5y ago
        You're right, I think it's more appropriate to call it an explanation rather than a conclusion
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I think the Witness, while not having a story in any sense, had more to say to its players than most games. I came out of it with a new state of a mind - not some major change, of course, but somewhat refreshed and looking at the world ever so slightly differently. It's somewhat more like abstract art or perhaps lyrical poetry than it is to normal story telling, but that doesn't inherently detract from its quality. The quotes and clips it uses have a very clear theme and the idea of making a game about discovery, as the blog here I think correctly puts it, is interesting and at the very least different from most games.
- IHLayman 5y ago
  Let me preface with the fact that I loved both games in their different ways. While I understand your critique for the Witness being “plotless”, I found it a bit less depressing than the plot for Talos, which actually made Talos drag for me in the second and third acts. Also while there are meta elements in both, the meta elements in the Witness were far more striking than the ones in Talos.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I had done the same, but I loved The Witness also. There is a mood unique to games like that which I think The Witness had boiled down, which is a sort of "melancholic exploration". Exploration, fueled by a lack of distractions and freedom to explore, and uninturupted by big ideas or strong emotions. Was it a 90 hour immersive story, no way, but it's an atmosphere I love and that few games provide. It is probably why I also loved Fallout76 and Cyberpunk2077 from release day while others didn't, bugs excluded, to me both were huge worlds that I could wander and explore on my own terms. The gameplay mechanics best suited for that I think get discussed as "environmental storytelling" but I think in this case the storytelling was pretty light and it was the atmosphere that I was there for. Just existing in these worlds is enough for me to enjoy for a while.
  - drc500free 5y ago
    I think you nailed it with "melancholic exploration." Very similar feel to Firewatch, where you can explore at your own place and there is no direct interaction with others - but there are signs that others have been there before.
- derbOac 5y ago
  I have so many questions of people here, it's as if I've stumbled onto this group of people who seem interested in exactly the same sorts of games I am. The Talos Principle and The Witness have always seemed interesting to me but I've never played them. I think part of it is that with both of them I've had trouble figuring out what they're like. Talos, the more I looked into it, seemed sort of like the puzzles were sort of arbitrary or contrived something? I'm not sure what the right words are. I tend to be more interested in adventure games per se, where the puzzles are ideally fully diagetic in nature, in the sense they're integrated well into the narrative. You're in X narrative scenario, and the problem to solve makes sense as a consequence of the narrative context. It doesn't feel added on post hoc. With both The Witness and Talos Principle I've had trouble figuring out what the gameplay and puzzles are like. I loved Portal and Portal 2 but felt like it was constantly tiptoeing this boundary of where the puzzles would feel too contrived, but without really going over that, maybe because of the testing environment conceit. I'm not sure what I'm saying other than that for me, part of what makes a great puzzle in a computer game is that the puzzle is seamlessly integrated into the narrative, and feels diagetic rather than nondiagetic in nature.
  - ece 5y ago
    The Talos Principle is about as normal a puzzle game as you can get, you can ignore the story bits if you want. Just go through the levels in a numerical order pretty much. The progression might be a bit slow in the start and middle, but the puzzles themselves were fun to solve for me (definitely not contrived), and the story and ending were satisfying. Much the same as Portal/Quell games. The Witness is part normal puzzle game and part more like Myst/Riven where you really have to dig deeper to find the answer. In a way they're about as diagetic as you can get, but some of that digging deeper can be a chore and wasn't fun for me, so I stopped playing The Witness after finding the normal ending and enjoyed playing it up to that point. I'd like to pickup the Outer Wilds though, and I like a balance of adventure/puzzles within games too. I suppose environmental puzzle games really have to click for me to enjoy them.
    - ece 5y ago
      *diegetic
- memco 5y ago
  Having never played Talos principle one interesting thing I found against it is tat the mechanics of the game can be exploited such that the speed run of the game skips huge portions of it; whereas the witness is much more direct: you can’t exploit the mechanics to get ahead. Not that that matters at all since as a casual player I’m unlikely to ever get good enough at those kinds of maneuvers to skip ahead myself but that knowledge makes me feel like there’s a certain level of craftsmanship to the witness that isn’t present Talos Principle. The other side to this coin is that the speed run for Talos Principle is way more fun to watch because it is less predictable and there’s room for creatively getting around whatever barriers the game throws at you.
karolist 5y ago
Is it worth buying? I keep it in the steam wishlist and only know of the game because of the author's programming rants, but have no idea if it's actually enjoyable
- dgb23 5y ago
  It's one of the best puzzle games I played period. But people who have concrete expectations of games and features they are used to might not quite get into the flow of the game.
- emsy 5y ago
  I think part of the game actually ponders the question whether it’s actually enjoyable, so yeah, I recommend it!
- eps 5y ago
  It looks beautiful, but the gameplay is very repetitive. It's basically an exploration of what one can do with one particular puzzle class and taking it to the extreme. I can appreciate it as an unique game design, but IMO it doesn't make for an interesting gameplay.
- nvarsj 5y ago
  Yes, one of my favourite and most unique gaming experiences. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of travelling around the island, and how it encourages you to change your thinking and perspective to progress. It is essentially a puzzle game though, so if you get frustrated by being stuck on things you may not like it. I found it pretty relaxing personally, and it feels great to figure a puzzle out.
- bananaoomarang 5y ago
  As a puzzle game I think it's one of the best, certainly I became totally obsessed with that aspect of it. It's very atmospheric too and has a great sense of place.
- loevborg 5y ago
  In my view, The Witness is the best video game of all times. On the surface, it's a puzzle game. I bought it (for something ridiculous like €5 on the iPad I believe) expecting to enjoy a few logic puzzles and remembering the games of my childhood like Myst and The 7th Guest (and I was also happy that, unlike many games it wasn't about shooting people). But it ended up a much bigger deal than that. I found The Witness (which doesn't have dialog or a plot) immersive like no other game and I think about it every week, years after completing the game. If it's not about the puzzles, what is it about? To avoid spoilers, here are just a few hints: • The Witness is a game about learning and perception. And about meditation. (That's only my interpretation, though; like any work of art, you may have another valid interpretation). • The author, Jonathan Blow, is a "programmer's programmer", who built his own game engine for The Witness and is in the process of writing his own programming language for his next project. He's also an interesting speaker. Here he talks about depression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kh8pNRWOo&ab_channel=JonathanBlow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kh8pNRWOo&ab_channel=Jonat... • The Witness is as close to a video game equivalent of "film d'auteur" as you can get (at least compared to most of the other games out there, which are commercial Hollywood productions) (Disclaimer: I'm not a gamer, and haven't played more than 2-3 games in the last decade.)
spicyusername 5y ago
The Witness was a truly remarkable game. Highly recommend for anyone who hasn't played it to give it a try.
- causi 5y ago
  The atmosphere, art style etc are fantastic but he could not have chosen more boring gameplay. Playing The Witness feels like being imprisoned in a forest meadow with the contents of a doctor's office waiting room coffee table. Puzzles can be fun but it feels like Blow chose quantity over quality, at least for me. It didn't help my opinion that it goes for the modern writing story writing trope of "say a bunch of interesting things but use player agency as an excuse to not actually tie them together into a coherent narrative with events and consequences".
  - hwers 5y ago
    I strongly disagree, I loved it
  - dkersten 5y ago
    This is similar to my impression. I enjoyed exploring and looking at the wonderful art for a while, but after a few hours got extremely bored. I do enjoy puzzle games, but they became quite repetitive and uninteresting to me after a while. I guess it’s just not for me, although it sounded like the exact game I thought I would like.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > Puzzles can be fun but it feels like Blow chose quantity over quality, at least for me. I definitely do not agree with that assessment. Outside of the challenge areas pretty much every single puzzle exists to teach you something about the mechanics, or the conceptual space of the puzzles, even if what it teaches you is not necessarily helpful to completing the game[0]. The challenge sections of course are meant to test your understanding. > It didn't help my opinion that it goes for the modern writing story writing trope of "say a bunch of interesting things but use player agency as an excuse to not actually tie them together into a coherent narrative with events and consequences". I can see how you get that feeling, and truth be told so did I early on in my playthrough, but I really don't think that's the case here at all. It's more like, the things that Jon is trying to communicate in The Witness simply do not lend themselves to easy explanation and are, in fact, kind of difficult to fit into a mental framework that demands concreteness in the first place. As far as tediousness, I think the key there is that it is probably not a good idea to try and play in long sessions. Certainly the longer I would play the more I just kinda wanted the game to be over, at least until I quit and came back to it. The Fool and His Money[1] often makes me feel like that after a single puzzle, so I don't think The Witness is that bad in this regard. [0] Some of the puzzles are jokes, or even a commentary, told in the language of the puzzle. [1] I think I've been playing it for 2 years now, and I'm still not even half way through.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> One complaint I’ve heard from a few players boils down to the game being very stingy with any kind of tangible rewards In particular many people seem to hate that The Challenge doesn't reward the player (much) for finishing it. Jon definitely has things to say about completionism[0][1], and if I recall correctly, Jon once responded to that specific complaint with something along the lines of "expecting a reward just because you did a difficult thing is kind of childish", which is something that resonated with me. No one made me do the optional challenge, I did it because I wanted the satisfaction of having done it[2]. One wonders what it does to a society to instill in people the idea that they should be rewarded for doing difficult things that are necessary, ethical, or just, the way games often do, and by implication that the lack of reward is sufficient to justify the alternative. [0] In both Braid and The Witness Jon has made the player do something ridiculous, time consuming, and tedious in order to technically 100% the game. In both games there are tasks that require the player to wait for literal hours to, essentially, check off a box. [1] Interestingly, Jon has stated something to the effect that he knowingly puts 'unfun' puzzles in his games because they are necessary for a complete exploration of the concept space exposed by the mechanics. [2] I also loved Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, so make of that what you will.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  > expecting a reward just because you did a difficult thing is kind of childish Playing a game is kind of childish. That’s kind of the point. I get more praise out of my boss during my day job than I ever got out of The Witness.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > Playing a game is kind of childish. That’s kind of the point. Not really. The term "game" gets applied to this kind of interactive media, but that doesn't make it any more childish than watching a film or reading a novel. Or, you know, playing baseball or hockey.
jrootabega 5y ago
I started the Witness and did maybe a dozen puzzles. I never really felt like I was in the game world. It just felt like a sequence of puzzles that I might as well have found on a website. Maybe if I had progressed further, but this was probably the main reason I didn't progress further. I'll try again someday. Funny enough, I loved Talos Principle and all of the games in the Myst franchise.
- pteraspidomorph 5y ago
  The single level/map of the Witness is rightly considered one of the best (if not the best) game levels ever designed, definitely nothing you can do on a website, but this isn't immediately evident--and for some people (myself included!) it can take quite a while to start perceiving what it has to offer (the game doesn't hold your hand at all). If you're interested in learning more, check out the videos below. They deal with distinct aspects of the game. By opening these links YOU WILL BE IMMEDIATELY EXPOSED TO SERIOUS SPOILERS. Stop watching if you have decided you want to tackle the game in the future (but you can still repeat the process with the other video). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2OT3QdrHLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2OT3QdrHLU https://youtu.be/HWKPOfSjV58?t=1287 https://youtu.be/HWKPOfSjV58?t=1287
  - passion__desire 5y ago
    I loved the interpretation videos out there on Witness. It's like an experimental style Alan Watts video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOJC62t4JfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOJC62t4JfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZokQov_aH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZokQov_aH0
Aissen 5y ago
Bought it at launch, and finished the main part, as well as small challenges (enough to get a platinum on playstation), but not 100%. I'm currently waiting for a few years to pass so that I can start anew, because the witness is this type of game: most of it happens in your brain (the process of learning); I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forget all of it, but I know the advanced parts will be as hard as they were 6 years ago.
rhdunn 5y ago
What I find interesting about The Witness is that it has different layers to it that all fit together. Some spoilers ahead. On a surface level you explore the world, find puzzles, and solve them. On the next level is the scenery. There are visual perspective curiosities (e.g. the man who's shadow is juggling, or the statue with the tree forming a tentacle-like body). Then there are the meta-puzzles -- telegraphed at the top of the mountain -- for you to find and complete. On the next level are the audio devices and the windmill. These cover different aspects of science, philosophy, and religion, but all on the same overall theme -- the sense of discovery, identity, and what it means to be human and to be a witness of life and the world around us. This builds to a kind of meta-commentary of the game, but also to an interesting outlook on life.
dkersten 5y ago
I personally didn’t enjoy the witness. I do enjoy puzzle game’s and I enjoy exploration for the sake of exploration, but the witness felt very samey and after a few hours it just felt dull and boring to me. I did enjoy the aesthetics at least and exploring was fun for a little while. Of course everyone is different, but it felt very overhyped to me, definitely wasn’t for me, I guess. Incidentally I also didn’t really enjoy Braid, so I’m not really excited about Jon’s future games although I suppose he could surprise me. It’s weird because on paper his games are the exact things I should love, but so far they didn’t resonante with me.
- mattbee 5y ago
  I'm the same, I loved the perfect polish of both games, they beg to be played with. My specific issue (in both games) was that I solved later puzzles by just exploring the problem space and not understanding the logic behind them. Like just try this ... uh no that didn't work ... try that, oh good right, onto the next... I was felt deaf to whatever the game was trying to tell me, and it became endless chores with no motivation behind them.
- X0Refraction 5y ago
  Have you played Outer Wilds? If you've got even a passing interest in exploration, puzzle and environmental storytelling I would highly recommend it.
  - dkersten 5y ago
    I haven't, although its been on my list of things to play, so I will prioritise it. Thanks for the recommendation!
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      Do prioritise it and make sure to go in completely blind!
  - cloogshicer 5y ago
    +1, Outer Wilds is one of the best gaming experience I've had in over a decade. If you decide to play it, it's absolutely essential that you go in knowing as little about it as possible. You can only ever play this game once, since your only progression in this game is your knowledge about the world.
bitshiftfaced 5y ago
The more I have trouble solving a problem, the more I NEED to solve it. The Witness tapped into that part of me. I loved the "you get zero help" part of it. Got to hand it to them for pulling that off without making it too frustrating or failing to realize that some part of the game is nearly impossible to get past. I don't think many game designers are able to accomplish that. And on the flip side, I didn't find the story engaging at all. Although it could've been fine for what it was trying to do, if it wasn't so pretentious.
- deeteecee 5y ago
  I stopped playing because I spent most of my time running around the map while being stuck with certain problems. If there was a speed-up button then I would've kept trying.
moffatman 5y ago
Probably my favourite game. For anyone interested in something similar I would recommend “The Outer Wilds” and “Return of the Obra Dinn”.
- silvester23 5y ago
  Interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed Outer Wilds (no "The" btw) and Return of the Obra Dinn and would say they are two of my favorite games ever, but I just could not for the life of me get into The Witness. I was just plain bored after a few hours. Well, different strokes and all that I guess. Anyway, I strongly support your recommendations.
  - tobiasSoftware 5y ago
    Same here. As well as Outer Wilds, I recommend Obduction, it's from the makers of Myst and is the most similar game I've seen to Outer Wilds. There are also Talos Principle and Antichamber, a couple games clearly inspired by Portal. Talos Principle feels like Portal 3 to me, while Antichamber is a non-Euclidean version of Portal.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I liked the engine, and the graphics. What drove me to eventually give up on it, was the monotony of the puzzles.
activitypea 5y ago
For me, it's one of those games that's more interesting to think about than to play. Jonathan Blow is a genius, and it's clear he put a lot of thought into everything in The Witness, but my god it took me less than two or three hours to be sick of the line puzzles. I think the Halo "find a 30 second loop and keep presenting it over and over in different contexts" quote applies here. The contexts in the Witness are among the greatest of all time, but the 30 second loop is less engaging than math homework
zemo 5y ago
I played 40 or so hours of the Witness, I think it’s one of the most beautiful and beautifully rendered video game environments, but as a whole found the message of the game to be unconvincing and juvenile. It tries to be deep but in the end the message seems to be, simply, “there are many ways of looking at things, but only one of those ways is right”. I got more joy out of Manifold Garden in less time, and found the puzzles in Stephen’s Sausage Roll more intriguing. The Witness has a lot of puzzles in the way that a sudoku book has a lot of puzzles. At some point, the stateless constraint-fitting puzzles of line-drawing started to feel like a chore. I loved the environments so kept playing, but didn’t actually enjoy the majority of the puzzles.
- recursive 5y ago
  Not much insight to add, but I could not get very interested in Manifold Garden. It didn't help that at some point, I could not see any way to progress and was just stuck. After an hour or two, I was done. But I was totally engaged when I played The Witness. Reading the comments section here is kind of surprising. I didn't expect everyone to like it, but I didn't know it was so polarizing.
  - zemo 5y ago
    It’s just fine. I’ve grown weary of how it seems to be the only game that gets discussed on HN.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > It tries to be deep but in the end the message seems to be, simply, “there are many ways of looking at things, but only one of those ways is right”. ... many of the puzzles have multiple solutions depending on what you want them to activate when you solve them, or on the perspective you have when solving them. I don't think your assessment of the message is very generous.
- klik99 5y ago
  There are obviously layers of meaning (like how things are taught), but ultimately I don't think it's about that - it's about how being immersed in a way of looking at the world bleeds into all aspects of how you see the world, which is actually incorrect. Seeing the world as a puzzle is ultimately limiting. This "secret ending" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yMw0l26Jvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yMw0l26Jvs where he leaves the game and tries to look for the same pattern in the real world but obviously nothing happens. IRL this is like conspiracy theorists who filter all events through their worldview. I remember in college playing so much Katamari Damacy that I couldn't help imagining rolling up cars in the street. EDIT: Another layer is it's also a game about making games, ways to communicate to the player, and how to make a stripped down interaction scheme rich. I've def found more game developers who like it than non-game developers.
andrewingram 5y ago
I liked The Witness when the challenge was directly related to testing if you'd understood the rules or not. My favourite thing was where it deliberately exploited the fact that it knew you'd likely misunderstand a rule in order to redirect your thinking to the correct one. But it became frustrating when it appeared to introduce a new mechanic without any apparently priming (the colour filters in the greenhouse annoyed me). There were also a few puzzles which required near pixel-perfect positioning and orientation, which is one of the least fun things to do in 3D space and games need to stop doing it (I'm looking at you Horizon Forbidden West); others which required quite being able to pick up on quite sensitive audio differences. So as a whole, the game jumped from being highly rewarding to highly frustrating a little too quickly.
moritonal 5y ago
The Witness was an interesting case where the Steam Controller was the perfect deice to play it with. The joystick worked as a WASD keys, and the touch-pads as a mouse, which let me play with a gamepad, whilst having the dexterity for the puzzles.
the__alchemist 5y ago
The Witness is probably one of the most polarizing games made. It's my favorite single player game of all time, with The Outer Wilds in #2. However... No one I've shown it to in real life likes it, and internet comments, as here, are perpetually mixed.
klik99 5y ago
I see a lot of similarities in The Witness to "Godel, Escher, Bach" and I was certain JBlow had read that book - and I asked a friend who worked out The Witness about it. My friend said during development he thought the same exact thing and sent an email to JBlow about asking if he based the themes off "Godel, Escher, Bach", who said he hadn't ever read the book before!
- hwers 5y ago
  I've always wanted to read that book but it always felt so intimidating. Would you say it's readable? It feels like it'd be really dense.
  - klik99 5y ago
    Depends on how you read it. His writing is very playful and he tries to break up dense parts with a lighter part or an allegorical retelling of the previous info. I'm a pretty quick reader, so the first time I read it I got through the first third easily but then had difficulty and quit. The second time I read it I took it more slowly and did the exercises and got through it without it feeling weighty. Even if you don't want to do the exercises/examples in it, I'd say it's still worth reading and a good chunk of it very readable without playing along - you don't HAVE to get to the end to get something out of it. It gets denser as you go on because it builds on previous arguments, but if you take the time to absorb what he writes and do exercises it never gets super dense. It's kind of like in math when a symbol will represent a whole idea - if you already know that idea well it won't feel dense, but not knowing it so well will slow you down.

86 points by luu 5y ago

Hmm, yeah. The Witness. It was interesting for it’s puzzles, but having just come out of The Talos Principle -which had both great puzzles and a great story- it fell a bit flat for me. The puzzles are fun, but the world looks it has a story behind it, and as you go along you find out that that’s just not really the case (or extremely minimal).

dgb23 5y ago
One of the intriguing things about the Witness is that it feels more like studying a simulation than experiencing a story. It that sense it is remarkable. It feels a bit like some of the weirder niche games of the 90‘s but with incredible polish. Instead of guiding you literally, it communicates through taking your perspective while you slowly emerge yourself. It’s a game made with deep appreciation of their craft, respect of their players and almost something like a longing to communicate.
dsego 5y ago
Had high expectations for this game, anticipating with great excitement. I loved Braid, was following all the blog posts and videos with great admiration. And the game wasn't that bad, it was interesting for a while, but also frustrating. Talos on the other hand was a revelation, a thoroughly fun and enjoyable experience, very similar to Portal games. I think this was a fair critique of the Witness and why it lacks respect for the player: The Witness - A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play https://youtu.be/KZokQov_aH0 https://youtu.be/KZokQov_aH0
- mherdeg 5y ago
  This video was my first introduction to the "long-form narrative game reviews" genre. I really enjoyed watching it -- I think the author made an interesting argument and presented it in a way that was more entertaining than playing 41 minutes of the actual game was.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    How 'long form' do you want to go? Because if a six hour review of a genre-defining Japan-only dating simulator from the early 90s sounds like something you might be interested in then I highly recommend Tim Rogers's YouTube channel, Action Button.
    - Tarq0n 5y ago
      Tim Rogers and Noah Caldwell Gervais are the absolute masters of long form video game essays. Joseph Anderson too if you can stand exhaustive detail.
- dgb23 5y ago
  > I think this was a fair critique of the Witness and why it lacks respect for the player Just to put some counter weight to it - I had the exact opposite experience: Deep excitement and curiosity throughout the game. It felt like stepping into a different world of discovery and learning.
mariusor 5y ago
Jonathan Blow is known to not like games that are heavily plot driven. Here's him describing some of the reason for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVb6-Rkz7W4&t=4409s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVb6-Rkz7W4&t=4409s I think that's the main reason why Witness contains no meaningful conclusion or explanation to the world.
- agubelu 5y ago
  The Witness does have a conclusion that explains the world. I can't explain what it is or how to access it without spoilers, but it can be found.
  - chii 5y ago
    you could call that a conclusion, but it's not really like a conclusion in the traditional sense. The game doesn't really require a conclusion tbh.
    - agubelu 5y ago
      You're right, I think it's more appropriate to call it an explanation rather than a conclusion
tsimionescu 5y ago
I think the Witness, while not having a story in any sense, had more to say to its players than most games. I came out of it with a new state of a mind - not some major change, of course, but somewhat refreshed and looking at the world ever so slightly differently. It's somewhat more like abstract art or perhaps lyrical poetry than it is to normal story telling, but that doesn't inherently detract from its quality. The quotes and clips it uses have a very clear theme and the idea of making a game about discovery, as the blog here I think correctly puts it, is interesting and at the very least different from most games.
IHLayman 5y ago
Let me preface with the fact that I loved both games in their different ways. While I understand your critique for the Witness being “plotless”, I found it a bit less depressing than the plot for Talos, which actually made Talos drag for me in the second and third acts. Also while there are meta elements in both, the meta elements in the Witness were far more striking than the ones in Talos.
ehnto 5y ago
I had done the same, but I loved The Witness also. There is a mood unique to games like that which I think The Witness had boiled down, which is a sort of "melancholic exploration". Exploration, fueled by a lack of distractions and freedom to explore, and uninturupted by big ideas or strong emotions. Was it a 90 hour immersive story, no way, but it's an atmosphere I love and that few games provide. It is probably why I also loved Fallout76 and Cyberpunk2077 from release day while others didn't, bugs excluded, to me both were huge worlds that I could wander and explore on my own terms. The gameplay mechanics best suited for that I think get discussed as "environmental storytelling" but I think in this case the storytelling was pretty light and it was the atmosphere that I was there for. Just existing in these worlds is enough for me to enjoy for a while.
- drc500free 5y ago
  I think you nailed it with "melancholic exploration." Very similar feel to Firewatch, where you can explore at your own place and there is no direct interaction with others - but there are signs that others have been there before.
derbOac 5y ago
I have so many questions of people here, it's as if I've stumbled onto this group of people who seem interested in exactly the same sorts of games I am. The Talos Principle and The Witness have always seemed interesting to me but I've never played them. I think part of it is that with both of them I've had trouble figuring out what they're like. Talos, the more I looked into it, seemed sort of like the puzzles were sort of arbitrary or contrived something? I'm not sure what the right words are. I tend to be more interested in adventure games per se, where the puzzles are ideally fully diagetic in nature, in the sense they're integrated well into the narrative. You're in X narrative scenario, and the problem to solve makes sense as a consequence of the narrative context. It doesn't feel added on post hoc. With both The Witness and Talos Principle I've had trouble figuring out what the gameplay and puzzles are like. I loved Portal and Portal 2 but felt like it was constantly tiptoeing this boundary of where the puzzles would feel too contrived, but without really going over that, maybe because of the testing environment conceit. I'm not sure what I'm saying other than that for me, part of what makes a great puzzle in a computer game is that the puzzle is seamlessly integrated into the narrative, and feels diagetic rather than nondiagetic in nature.
- ece 5y ago
  The Talos Principle is about as normal a puzzle game as you can get, you can ignore the story bits if you want. Just go through the levels in a numerical order pretty much. The progression might be a bit slow in the start and middle, but the puzzles themselves were fun to solve for me (definitely not contrived), and the story and ending were satisfying. Much the same as Portal/Quell games. The Witness is part normal puzzle game and part more like Myst/Riven where you really have to dig deeper to find the answer. In a way they're about as diagetic as you can get, but some of that digging deeper can be a chore and wasn't fun for me, so I stopped playing The Witness after finding the normal ending and enjoyed playing it up to that point. I'd like to pickup the Outer Wilds though, and I like a balance of adventure/puzzles within games too. I suppose environmental puzzle games really have to click for me to enjoy them.
  - ece 5y ago
    *diegetic
memco 5y ago
Having never played Talos principle one interesting thing I found against it is tat the mechanics of the game can be exploited such that the speed run of the game skips huge portions of it; whereas the witness is much more direct: you can’t exploit the mechanics to get ahead. Not that that matters at all since as a casual player I’m unlikely to ever get good enough at those kinds of maneuvers to skip ahead myself but that knowledge makes me feel like there’s a certain level of craftsmanship to the witness that isn’t present Talos Principle. The other side to this coin is that the speed run for Talos Principle is way more fun to watch because it is less predictable and there’s room for creatively getting around whatever barriers the game throws at you.

karolist 5y ago

Is it worth buying? I keep it in the steam wishlist and only know of the game because of the author's programming rants, but have no idea if it's actually enjoyable

dgb23 5y ago
It's one of the best puzzle games I played period. But people who have concrete expectations of games and features they are used to might not quite get into the flow of the game.
emsy 5y ago
I think part of the game actually ponders the question whether it’s actually enjoyable, so yeah, I recommend it!
eps 5y ago
It looks beautiful, but the gameplay is very repetitive. It's basically an exploration of what one can do with one particular puzzle class and taking it to the extreme. I can appreciate it as an unique game design, but IMO it doesn't make for an interesting gameplay.
nvarsj 5y ago
Yes, one of my favourite and most unique gaming experiences. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of travelling around the island, and how it encourages you to change your thinking and perspective to progress. It is essentially a puzzle game though, so if you get frustrated by being stuck on things you may not like it. I found it pretty relaxing personally, and it feels great to figure a puzzle out.
bananaoomarang 5y ago
As a puzzle game I think it's one of the best, certainly I became totally obsessed with that aspect of it. It's very atmospheric too and has a great sense of place.
loevborg 5y ago
In my view, The Witness is the best video game of all times. On the surface, it's a puzzle game. I bought it (for something ridiculous like €5 on the iPad I believe) expecting to enjoy a few logic puzzles and remembering the games of my childhood like Myst and The 7th Guest (and I was also happy that, unlike many games it wasn't about shooting people). But it ended up a much bigger deal than that. I found The Witness (which doesn't have dialog or a plot) immersive like no other game and I think about it every week, years after completing the game. If it's not about the puzzles, what is it about? To avoid spoilers, here are just a few hints: • The Witness is a game about learning and perception. And about meditation. (That's only my interpretation, though; like any work of art, you may have another valid interpretation). • The author, Jonathan Blow, is a "programmer's programmer", who built his own game engine for The Witness and is in the process of writing his own programming language for his next project. He's also an interesting speaker. Here he talks about depression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kh8pNRWOo&ab_channel=JonathanBlow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kh8pNRWOo&ab_channel=Jonat... • The Witness is as close to a video game equivalent of "film d'auteur" as you can get (at least compared to most of the other games out there, which are commercial Hollywood productions) (Disclaimer: I'm not a gamer, and haven't played more than 2-3 games in the last decade.)

spicyusername 5y ago

The Witness was a truly remarkable game. Highly recommend for anyone who hasn't played it to give it a try.

causi 5y ago
The atmosphere, art style etc are fantastic but he could not have chosen more boring gameplay. Playing The Witness feels like being imprisoned in a forest meadow with the contents of a doctor's office waiting room coffee table. Puzzles can be fun but it feels like Blow chose quantity over quality, at least for me. It didn't help my opinion that it goes for the modern writing story writing trope of "say a bunch of interesting things but use player agency as an excuse to not actually tie them together into a coherent narrative with events and consequences".
- hwers 5y ago
  I strongly disagree, I loved it
- dkersten 5y ago
  This is similar to my impression. I enjoyed exploring and looking at the wonderful art for a while, but after a few hours got extremely bored. I do enjoy puzzle games, but they became quite repetitive and uninteresting to me after a while. I guess it’s just not for me, although it sounded like the exact game I thought I would like.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > Puzzles can be fun but it feels like Blow chose quantity over quality, at least for me. I definitely do not agree with that assessment. Outside of the challenge areas pretty much every single puzzle exists to teach you something about the mechanics, or the conceptual space of the puzzles, even if what it teaches you is not necessarily helpful to completing the game[0]. The challenge sections of course are meant to test your understanding. > It didn't help my opinion that it goes for the modern writing story writing trope of "say a bunch of interesting things but use player agency as an excuse to not actually tie them together into a coherent narrative with events and consequences". I can see how you get that feeling, and truth be told so did I early on in my playthrough, but I really don't think that's the case here at all. It's more like, the things that Jon is trying to communicate in The Witness simply do not lend themselves to easy explanation and are, in fact, kind of difficult to fit into a mental framework that demands concreteness in the first place. As far as tediousness, I think the key there is that it is probably not a good idea to try and play in long sessions. Certainly the longer I would play the more I just kinda wanted the game to be over, at least until I quit and came back to it. The Fool and His Money[1] often makes me feel like that after a single puzzle, so I don't think The Witness is that bad in this regard. [0] Some of the puzzles are jokes, or even a commentary, told in the language of the puzzle. [1] I think I've been playing it for 2 years now, and I'm still not even half way through.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> One complaint I’ve heard from a few players boils down to the game being very stingy with any kind of tangible rewards In particular many people seem to hate that The Challenge doesn't reward the player (much) for finishing it. Jon definitely has things to say about completionism[0][1], and if I recall correctly, Jon once responded to that specific complaint with something along the lines of "expecting a reward just because you did a difficult thing is kind of childish", which is something that resonated with me. No one made me do the optional challenge, I did it because I wanted the satisfaction of having done it[2]. One wonders what it does to a society to instill in people the idea that they should be rewarded for doing difficult things that are necessary, ethical, or just, the way games often do, and by implication that the lack of reward is sufficient to justify the alternative. [0] In both Braid and The Witness Jon has made the player do something ridiculous, time consuming, and tedious in order to technically 100% the game. In both games there are tasks that require the player to wait for literal hours to, essentially, check off a box. [1] Interestingly, Jon has stated something to the effect that he knowingly puts 'unfun' puzzles in his games because they are necessary for a complete exploration of the concept space exposed by the mechanics. [2] I also loved Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, so make of that what you will.

Aeolun 5y ago
> expecting a reward just because you did a difficult thing is kind of childish Playing a game is kind of childish. That’s kind of the point. I get more praise out of my boss during my day job than I ever got out of The Witness.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > Playing a game is kind of childish. That’s kind of the point. Not really. The term "game" gets applied to this kind of interactive media, but that doesn't make it any more childish than watching a film or reading a novel. Or, you know, playing baseball or hockey.

jrootabega 5y ago

I started the Witness and did maybe a dozen puzzles. I never really felt like I was in the game world. It just felt like a sequence of puzzles that I might as well have found on a website. Maybe if I had progressed further, but this was probably the main reason I didn't progress further. I'll try again someday. Funny enough, I loved Talos Principle and all of the games in the Myst franchise.

pteraspidomorph 5y ago
The single level/map of the Witness is rightly considered one of the best (if not the best) game levels ever designed, definitely nothing you can do on a website, but this isn't immediately evident--and for some people (myself included!) it can take quite a while to start perceiving what it has to offer (the game doesn't hold your hand at all). If you're interested in learning more, check out the videos below. They deal with distinct aspects of the game. By opening these links YOU WILL BE IMMEDIATELY EXPOSED TO SERIOUS SPOILERS. Stop watching if you have decided you want to tackle the game in the future (but you can still repeat the process with the other video). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2OT3QdrHLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2OT3QdrHLU https://youtu.be/HWKPOfSjV58?t=1287 https://youtu.be/HWKPOfSjV58?t=1287
- passion__desire 5y ago
  I loved the interpretation videos out there on Witness. It's like an experimental style Alan Watts video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOJC62t4JfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOJC62t4JfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZokQov_aH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZokQov_aH0

Aissen 5y ago

Bought it at launch, and finished the main part, as well as small challenges (enough to get a platinum on playstation), but not 100%. I'm currently waiting for a few years to pass so that I can start anew, because the witness is this type of game: most of it happens in your brain (the process of learning); I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forget all of it, but I know the advanced parts will be as hard as they were 6 years ago.

rhdunn 5y ago

What I find interesting about The Witness is that it has different layers to it that all fit together. Some spoilers ahead. On a surface level you explore the world, find puzzles, and solve them. On the next level is the scenery. There are visual perspective curiosities (e.g. the man who's shadow is juggling, or the statue with the tree forming a tentacle-like body). Then there are the meta-puzzles -- telegraphed at the top of the mountain -- for you to find and complete. On the next level are the audio devices and the windmill. These cover different aspects of science, philosophy, and religion, but all on the same overall theme -- the sense of discovery, identity, and what it means to be human and to be a witness of life and the world around us. This builds to a kind of meta-commentary of the game, but also to an interesting outlook on life.

dkersten 5y ago

I personally didn’t enjoy the witness. I do enjoy puzzle game’s and I enjoy exploration for the sake of exploration, but the witness felt very samey and after a few hours it just felt dull and boring to me. I did enjoy the aesthetics at least and exploring was fun for a little while. Of course everyone is different, but it felt very overhyped to me, definitely wasn’t for me, I guess. Incidentally I also didn’t really enjoy Braid, so I’m not really excited about Jon’s future games although I suppose he could surprise me. It’s weird because on paper his games are the exact things I should love, but so far they didn’t resonante with me.

mattbee 5y ago
I'm the same, I loved the perfect polish of both games, they beg to be played with. My specific issue (in both games) was that I solved later puzzles by just exploring the problem space and not understanding the logic behind them. Like just try this ... uh no that didn't work ... try that, oh good right, onto the next... I was felt deaf to whatever the game was trying to tell me, and it became endless chores with no motivation behind them.
X0Refraction 5y ago
Have you played Outer Wilds? If you've got even a passing interest in exploration, puzzle and environmental storytelling I would highly recommend it.
- dkersten 5y ago
  I haven't, although its been on my list of things to play, so I will prioritise it. Thanks for the recommendation!
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Do prioritise it and make sure to go in completely blind!
- cloogshicer 5y ago
  +1, Outer Wilds is one of the best gaming experience I've had in over a decade. If you decide to play it, it's absolutely essential that you go in knowing as little about it as possible. You can only ever play this game once, since your only progression in this game is your knowledge about the world.

bitshiftfaced 5y ago

The more I have trouble solving a problem, the more I NEED to solve it. The Witness tapped into that part of me. I loved the "you get zero help" part of it. Got to hand it to them for pulling that off without making it too frustrating or failing to realize that some part of the game is nearly impossible to get past. I don't think many game designers are able to accomplish that. And on the flip side, I didn't find the story engaging at all. Although it could've been fine for what it was trying to do, if it wasn't so pretentious.

deeteecee 5y ago
I stopped playing because I spent most of my time running around the map while being stuck with certain problems. If there was a speed-up button then I would've kept trying.

moffatman 5y ago

Probably my favourite game. For anyone interested in something similar I would recommend “The Outer Wilds” and “Return of the Obra Dinn”.

silvester23 5y ago
Interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed Outer Wilds (no "The" btw) and Return of the Obra Dinn and would say they are two of my favorite games ever, but I just could not for the life of me get into The Witness. I was just plain bored after a few hours. Well, different strokes and all that I guess. Anyway, I strongly support your recommendations.
- tobiasSoftware 5y ago
  Same here. As well as Outer Wilds, I recommend Obduction, it's from the makers of Myst and is the most similar game I've seen to Outer Wilds. There are also Talos Principle and Antichamber, a couple games clearly inspired by Portal. Talos Principle feels like Portal 3 to me, while Antichamber is a non-Euclidean version of Portal.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I liked the engine, and the graphics. What drove me to eventually give up on it, was the monotony of the puzzles.

activitypea 5y ago

For me, it's one of those games that's more interesting to think about than to play. Jonathan Blow is a genius, and it's clear he put a lot of thought into everything in The Witness, but my god it took me less than two or three hours to be sick of the line puzzles. I think the Halo "find a 30 second loop and keep presenting it over and over in different contexts" quote applies here. The contexts in the Witness are among the greatest of all time, but the 30 second loop is less engaging than math homework

zemo 5y ago

I played 40 or so hours of the Witness, I think it’s one of the most beautiful and beautifully rendered video game environments, but as a whole found the message of the game to be unconvincing and juvenile. It tries to be deep but in the end the message seems to be, simply, “there are many ways of looking at things, but only one of those ways is right”. I got more joy out of Manifold Garden in less time, and found the puzzles in Stephen’s Sausage Roll more intriguing. The Witness has a lot of puzzles in the way that a sudoku book has a lot of puzzles. At some point, the stateless constraint-fitting puzzles of line-drawing started to feel like a chore. I loved the environments so kept playing, but didn’t actually enjoy the majority of the puzzles.

recursive 5y ago
Not much insight to add, but I could not get very interested in Manifold Garden. It didn't help that at some point, I could not see any way to progress and was just stuck. After an hour or two, I was done. But I was totally engaged when I played The Witness. Reading the comments section here is kind of surprising. I didn't expect everyone to like it, but I didn't know it was so polarizing.
- zemo 5y ago
  It’s just fine. I’ve grown weary of how it seems to be the only game that gets discussed on HN.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> It tries to be deep but in the end the message seems to be, simply, “there are many ways of looking at things, but only one of those ways is right”. ... many of the puzzles have multiple solutions depending on what you want them to activate when you solve them, or on the perspective you have when solving them. I don't think your assessment of the message is very generous.
klik99 5y ago
There are obviously layers of meaning (like how things are taught), but ultimately I don't think it's about that - it's about how being immersed in a way of looking at the world bleeds into all aspects of how you see the world, which is actually incorrect. Seeing the world as a puzzle is ultimately limiting. This "secret ending" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yMw0l26Jvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yMw0l26Jvs where he leaves the game and tries to look for the same pattern in the real world but obviously nothing happens. IRL this is like conspiracy theorists who filter all events through their worldview. I remember in college playing so much Katamari Damacy that I couldn't help imagining rolling up cars in the street. EDIT: Another layer is it's also a game about making games, ways to communicate to the player, and how to make a stripped down interaction scheme rich. I've def found more game developers who like it than non-game developers.

andrewingram 5y ago

I liked The Witness when the challenge was directly related to testing if you'd understood the rules or not. My favourite thing was where it deliberately exploited the fact that it knew you'd likely misunderstand a rule in order to redirect your thinking to the correct one. But it became frustrating when it appeared to introduce a new mechanic without any apparently priming (the colour filters in the greenhouse annoyed me). There were also a few puzzles which required near pixel-perfect positioning and orientation, which is one of the least fun things to do in 3D space and games need to stop doing it (I'm looking at you Horizon Forbidden West); others which required quite being able to pick up on quite sensitive audio differences. So as a whole, the game jumped from being highly rewarding to highly frustrating a little too quickly.

moritonal 5y ago

The Witness was an interesting case where the Steam Controller was the perfect deice to play it with. The joystick worked as a WASD keys, and the touch-pads as a mouse, which let me play with a gamepad, whilst having the dexterity for the puzzles.

the__alchemist 5y ago

The Witness is probably one of the most polarizing games made. It's my favorite single player game of all time, with The Outer Wilds in #2. However... No one I've shown it to in real life likes it, and internet comments, as here, are perpetually mixed.

klik99 5y ago

I see a lot of similarities in The Witness to "Godel, Escher, Bach" and I was certain JBlow had read that book - and I asked a friend who worked out The Witness about it. My friend said during development he thought the same exact thing and sent an email to JBlow about asking if he based the themes off "Godel, Escher, Bach", who said he hadn't ever read the book before!

hwers 5y ago
I've always wanted to read that book but it always felt so intimidating. Would you say it's readable? It feels like it'd be really dense.
- klik99 5y ago
  Depends on how you read it. His writing is very playful and he tries to break up dense parts with a lighter part or an allegorical retelling of the previous info. I'm a pretty quick reader, so the first time I read it I got through the first third easily but then had difficulty and quit. The second time I read it I took it more slowly and did the exercises and got through it without it feeling weighty. Even if you don't want to do the exercises/examples in it, I'd say it's still worth reading and a good chunk of it very readable without playing along - you don't HAVE to get to the end to get something out of it. It gets denser as you go on because it builds on previous arguments, but if you take the time to absorb what he writes and do exercises it never gets super dense. It's kind of like in math when a symbol will represent a whole idea - if you already know that idea well it won't feel dense, but not knowing it so well will slow you down.