Hey everyone! This is the first video I've done captions for so they might be a little jank. Let me know when they're borked and I'll get around to fixing them eventually. Thanks!
If you write a script, you can add it to your video and RUclips will automatically generate subtitles. Check "A PSA for Terraria Creators: Get some damn subtitles" by Terrasteel.
I like the witness for its visuals, cool puzzles, cool and clever game design etc. I also found out about the witness from Joe's review, but decided to play the game before finishing the spolier section of his review. You have done a really great job with this review too. I think, when just playing this game at a surface level, especially if you don't get stuck on too many puzzles or just look up a guide for any sections you have left at the end, its easy to finish the witness, turn it off and not play it again. But the more you look at 100%-ing the game, be it the challenge in the caves, all the hidden movies and hidden audio logs, etc. the game asks you to take its themes seriously, and to try and ponder them. And I like the themes, they are interesting to wonder about, and I kinda get that different perspectives each have their own takes. I like the idea that some people can obsess over finding the hidden truth in a game (when compared to the story about Shakespeare), and that some people believe that the Witness has one super-hidden penultimate puzzle that is yet to be discovered. I guess, with the whole time-wasting, accessibility thing, I guess I naturally don't mind it too much because that only really affects me if I'm going for the optional stuff. A straight main-playthrough of the game is usually fine and balanced enough. If I have further issue with the optional sections, "that's on me" - so I don't get too annoyed. I agree with people's further analysis that it can be pretty pretentious and up itself, but overall I'm just glad we have some good puzzles. Thank you for the review, worth a sub!
Jonathan blow has something of a history of being mad at the wrong people liking his game or the wrong people not getting it. An infamous example is blows previous game braid. Soulja boy liked and endorsed the game and Jonathan Blow was genuinely sad possibly angry that the wrong person got into it
Indie Game The Movie cut together footage of Blow talking about his feelings around the critical reception of his game with footage of Soulja Boy. Pretty sure he didn't have any issues at all with the way anyone was playing his game. It was more that the things professional critics were writing about it made him feel like he was shouting into a void. He talks about it some more in Braid anniversary edition. It was never meant to be "people are enjoying my game wrong", rather "it's weird to release something deeply personal and feel like no one gets it, especially when it's also very successful". Like, that's an interesting perspective and I imagine successful artists in every discipline have experienced some version of that.
Great video, I always felt that the witness on a gameplay and puzzle design was interesting but the more deeper and more philosophical angle was extremely pretentious. Like I remember on a old giantbomb cast where they where talking about the game that it always felt like Jonathan blow was over your shoulder and being smug saying how smart and deep he is, but I always felt he kind of was a dumb man's idea of a smart person since their was very little meaning behind his ideas and mostly did things to seam smart ( like the whole thing being a dream or the random quotes) these same fault are also felt in his other game braid with how asinine some of the secret puzzle are. Also based on some of your complaints on the game you might like the Talos principal a simple portal-like puzzle game with actual deep discussions and some fun puzzles with out of the box ideas
The game is really pretentious but something about the themes of discorvery/perspective/understanding really hit for me. I think you are right that this is kinda thin and doesn't really have much to say on it's own. I think the game want's to be viewed as a meditation where the contemplation is more important than the answer. In this way i see the secret ending is sort of deliberately unsatisfying to push this message but then it's like "yeah so what, it's deliberately unsatisfying". I think you are either captured by it's presentation in which case it really does feel larger than the sum of its parts but if you don't buy in then i totally get how it would just feel tedious and full of itself.
I did always feel that Joe's take on it being a joke on the player was a bit of a cope. Like, there's no way a game so clever in its design can be so far up its own ass that intestines become just another puzzle, yknow. But the more I've read up on what Blow been up to and things he said, I do believe he's just that serious about it and that's equally as funny as it is frustrating. Nevertheless, a wonderful critique that put to words some leftover frustrations I had with this game, hope it spreads around more
the looker reminded me of a myst clone pyst, it's like a law of nature, pretentious puzzle games have their evil twins and knowing that might help you to admire it more. But perhaps there could've been a better comparing material for the video, like a standalone game that excels at what witness tried to achieve and not just some snarky parody, something like antichamber that tries to make you think outside the box rather than falling in line and following the lines the way someone wants you to follow them without ever telling how to do it right. The Witness is a quite narrow minded game to say the least and I understood it thanks to your video.
I loved The Witness. I'm a slut for games with such exploration of their puzzle mechanics. I never got tired of them. Its biggest problem truly is what surrounds said puzzles.
I like puzzle games but I just found The Witness too long. I have heard good stuff about The Talos Principle but I notice it has a similar time to beat.
@@YTKeepsDeletingAllMyComments Talos's world is way more compact, nowhere near as much running around. Also much more story and less pretentious despite being headier. Highly recommend.
I’m not a puzzle game player. I play action games and FPS games and I like to believe I am quite good at them. But The Witness is one of my top 5 favourite games of all time, having the time to play at your own pace and when you decide in a meditative and contemplative experience is such a nice contrast from the hyper competitive environment I also thrive in. It taught me something about myself and I just genuinely enjoyed it (didn’t use a single guide as well!).
@@YTKeepsDeletingAllMyCommentsI hated The Witness but loved the Talos Principle. The latter has a lot of really cool puzzle concepts and a very interesting story in my opinion. Definitely recommend playing it.
the worst thing about the witness is that i want more puzzles of this type, and there aren't a lot. some very basic logic puzzles that get more and more complex. i'm so sick of escape room type puzzles that just have nonsensical BS solutions and never escalate in complexity. i really enjoyed Taiji, it's basically the witness in 2D, without the pretentious crap.
One of my favourite parts about this game is how every single person finds different puzzle mechanics easy or super hard. I seem to be one of the very few people who has an easy time with the Tetris blocks and the atomic star signs, but I can‘t for the life of me make the star pairs and symmetry puzzles happen.
Funny how you mention Josepth, and with regards to the Witness and other games with "developer intentions" I think Darkest Dungeon would be another good game to look at (not only just cause he covered it but I heavily disagree with what he had to say about it)
Darkest Dungeon is designed to be one long struggle. Joseph just didn't seem to understand that your characters are meant to be disposable. He wouldn't stop complaining about it being turned based either.
I've put about 20 hours into Darkest Dungeon over the years, and there are a lot of things I love about it like the visual design and the dungeon crawl, but I can't get over how so many of the combat mechanics feel cruel just for the sake of being cruel. After a certain point it stops being fun for me.
Absolutely on-point discussion IMO. I'm glad to hear the best part of the game was the one I never found, I guess 😂 (by the time it was tutorialised, I was far past ready to be done and assumed it was just a "lolololol stupid nerd thinks all questions have answers, guess what, they don't, have fun in my puzzle mountain" moment). I hold that there is a good version of The Witness, and it's Outer Wilds. Which is still a frustrating game at times! Just, much less so.
Joseph Anderson is ironically The Witness of videogame essayists, his Witcher stuff was just baffling, someone talking for so long about something without never understanding it
I'm curious what you believe was misunderstood. I watched both videos all the way through with someone who has read The Witcher and neither of us had any complaints. He's been wrong about lots of things before, so I'm wondering what we might have missed.
Yup, I think his video on the Witness is really bad lol. I tracked down some tweets and comment he made after though and he said that the game grew on him and he remembered it more fondly as time passed on. I think that’s the main issue JA and this guy have, they rushed through it. I took my sweet time and played it at my own pace never chasing a goal I had set for myself and I can honestly say The Witness is in my top 5 games of all time.
@@emeraldcymophane7461 ah, well, its just a bunch of annoyances and smoll things, like the vids being too long in an obnoxious way? speaking from personal taste, obviously, but if i was to point one mayor eyebrow raising "but" would he idea that he thought the scoia'tael are annoying or something like that, which is a... come on, dude, they getting colonized, its a bit absurdist to expect them to be saints but i watched it loooong ago when they came out, so dunno
@@luk4aaaa have never played The Witness tbh, despite having seen a bunch of videos about it over the years for some reason 🤔 so can say much one way or the other... uhhh... seems and easy to 100% game if you care about that stuff 😗 I do have played The Looker a couple of times and really like it
The thing about The Looker is that if you love The Witness, you'll love The Looker, and if you hate The Witness, you'll love The Looker. It's tailor made to appeal to anyone who has any strong opinion on the game it's based on.
I loved the witness when I saw a few screenshots of it. Then I noticed it's by the same guy who made Braid, and my excitement vanished. Braid is so up its own ass I can't stand it. Purple prose, the game. _It means whatever you want it to mean but also whatever you think it means is definitely wrong,_ that's pretty much what Blow said about it. Trying so hard to look like it says something profound while not having much to say at all. So when I learned that the witness is hundreds of back-of-the-cereal-box line puzzles in very pretty environments, I thought _"of course it is."_ Some time later randomly watched the Joseph Anderson's video and my assumptions were confirmed. And now, yours did it again.
Hey Monotom! I've loved all your videos and am eager to see what you do next, whether it's "shorter" videos like this or more deep dives like the JP videos. I don't always 100% agree with your analysis, but that's part of the fun to hear how you walked into something you thought wouldn't be for you to give it a fair shake, and enjoy listening to you all the same. Although I will agree sometimes The Witness does go a bit too far at navel gazing, with The Looker even using most of the same monologue about the captain of a ship before turning it on its head. Since you've mentioned in things like Stay Out of the House about other "stalker enemy" games like Alien Isolation, I'd be curious as to if you've tried Amensia the Bunker or other games of that ilk. Or for something more psychological, something like Fear and Hunger (if you can get past the issue of YT censorship). Keep up the awesome videos, I'm looking forward to more!
Thanks! You're in luck, I recently played Amnesia: The Bunker and have a bit to say about it so that'll be the next video. Otherwise Alien: Isolation is still the gold standard for that kind of game. The recent Resident Evils have been kind of disappointing to me but the original Resident Evil 3 scratches the same sort of itch, even if it's very rough around the edges these days. Fear and Hunger is a game I really don't like due to the RNG of the coin flips, though the setting and presentation is super interesting.
13:30 Okay hold on. If I may intrude here. This is a point in your argument I flat out HARD disagree with. You talk about puzzles being shut down like it’s a “mechanic” and like it’s “something that bogs down the experience because nothing is gained”. I say that’s flatly untrue. It’s literally AVOIDANCE of a gimmick. It forces you to only try to solve a puzzle when you think you know the solution rather than to guess and check. You will NEVER shut down a puzzle if you KNOW the solution and that’s only possible if you know the question. Take the trees with the apples for instance. If those puzzles didn’t shut down, you could just visit every branch with ease and eventually get to the end without ever knowing the apple was there to begin with. In my opinion, that sort of thing is literally NECESSARY in a game that’s trying to force you solve the “gimmick” it’s not unnecessary and annoying because it doesn’t exist for people who are solving the puzzles correctly.
To add to that point, the audio puzzles you claimed “were easy, and straightforward”. You didn’t claim those were annoying. Yet you may not have even realized that those puzzles ALSO shut down if you’re mistaken, making you go back a step. So ask yourself why aren’t you complaining about those puzzles? They shut down like any of the others. (The only place I think the argument is justified is the freakin desert water because oh my goddddd that place sucked)
Unironically, I never even heard about the Witness, and instead only knew about The Looker, thanks to Live streamers. I thought that you were talking about that game at first, until it was mentioned it was a parody of it. Great review, love the explanation of how this video came to be thanks to the Getting over it Review. Gave it a nice segway between videos.
To be fair the looker is a game that people who like the witness enjoy and people who hate the witness enjoy so having more positive reviews make sense =p
While I love The Witness, it reminds of that quote that every man is an island or something. It’s like the game is a digital representation of Blow’s brain.
Great review, but I disagree with your point on The Secret of Psalm 46. When I realized I had to listen to it in full to do the puzzle, I was very annoyed, but the talk itself was geniunly so captivating, that waiting for the puzzle became secondary. If there is anything I took away from The Witness in general, is that Shakespear doesn't exist, and I wouldn't be blessed with that knowledge if I wasn't forced to hear that talk. Besides that, I don't think the point of the environmental puzzles, was to be solved systematically, as they give no reward or progression. Solving the ones you find organically on your playthrough, and leaving the rest behind seems like the best experience.
The Witness pulls the good ol' "Oh dear! It's all so complicated!" fallacy that you see from a lot of pseudo intellectuals that like to sound more smarterest than everyone else. Also, genuinely love this vid! Very well organized! I liked the talk on the accessibility options especially. I once tried to get into a cool online web series that had amazing story telling but couldn't because it included too many flashing lights. I brought this up to my friend and he brought it to one of the devs/authors for the project and you know what? A day later a patch went out that let you slide the brightness down and reduce the flashing lights. Proper thoughtful people actually engage with criticism and work to improve. Much appreciate the video!!
What were you playing it on?! That pop in around 37:54 is crazy. I distinctly remember a really nice dithered fade between different LODs on my PC. I don't remember any noticeable pop in ever, or any slowdown, and that is the sort of thing I normally notice.
I don't think the witness is pretentious - I think it's earnest. The Marvel thing of needing to undercut every touching moment with a witty remark is fine, but not everything needs to be that. I remember reading/watching/hearing someone say that South Park taught an entire generation that caring about things and being sincere is the least cool thing you can do. It's stuck with me because it feels kinda true. But we need art that is achingly sincere. The Witness took 7 years or something to make. That's a mind boggling amount of time to be working on a single thing. It should take itself seriously. At the same time, The Witness isn't devoid of humour. I know I genuinely laughed out loud several times while playing (okay, it was more of a chuckle). It's not as funny as Braid, but Blow just has a knack for making puzzles that are jokes.
PC. It could be the recording software fighting the game for resources but I remember on the other computer I originally played the Witness on it still chugged from time to time.
@@monotonallizard Interesting. To me pretentiousness is all about the pretense. It's when someone doesn't actually believe the bullshit they're spouting - they're just doing it to impress people. If someone is completely sincere in what they're saying I would personally consider that almost the opposite of pretension, regardless of the actual content of what they're saying. But you admit to liking things you consider pretentious, so you must have a different take. What do you mean by pretentious?
@@1337pianoman I would say pretentiousness is just ascribing greater meaning or importance to something than it actually possesses. There are certainly cynical examples like you're talking about, but I'd say those tend to be more corporate in nature - rampant nostalgia-baiting in big budget movies for example. I agree that the Witness is earnest, it's just lacking perspective in I way that I find obnoxious.
I absolutely loved The Witness, but also at the time I was unemployed, between uni semesters, and desperately needed something to take up a LOT of my time.
Saying something like, "You are just drawing lines on a grid", is a dumb thing to say. You are trying to take away all intent and then say "Ha! See how boring it is?". The purpose of "just drawing a line" is to solve a bigger puzzle given where not just any line can be drawn. No better than writing random words on a crossword, or writing random numbers on a piece of paper (sudoku). The fun is in the problem solving which is what most people buy a puzzle game for, to solve puzzles. Also, you say there are a bunch of useless puzzles around that do nothing and while that is somewhat true I would say that is mostly false. I would categorize the puzzles in 4 different ways: 1) Puzzles that help you learn the different types of puzzles 2) Puzzles that further progression into your exploration 3) Puzzles meant to challenge yourself 4) Secret puzzles And I would say the former 1 and 2 types appear way more often than the latter 3 and 4 types.
Can you tell me the stories you think did the "it was all a dream" thing right? It'd possibly ruin them but im very interested in knowing what you know, you've consumed more stories Edit: lovely video/words, your thoughts on the witness were really interesting
It's kind of impossible not to ruin them by giving that part of them away, but there are two that spring to mind: the Westworld TV show and the 2017 video game Prey. They didn't treat the twist as inherently satisfying in and of itself, they both gave it a narrative purpose, and they didn't erase or reset all that had come before upon the reveal either. Plus the twist was built into the premise of both from the very start in smaller, interesting ways, so it felt less like a sudden shock and more like the final piece of a puzzle falling into place.
The Witness just made me uncomfortable from the start. It made me feel like a lab rat dropped into a maze. The problems clearly built on each other but in a really hostile way that clearly wasn't meant to increase my enjoyment but so the game could make sure I was actually "smart" enough and didn't solve any puzzles by accident...
The Witness could be a fantastic satirical critique of pseudo intellectualism. If only Jonathan Blow was self aware. But what do we expect from a guy criticising a critic for not understanding his art without even trying to consume the entire criticism. Don‘t criticise something if you don‘t see it correctly, but criticising something without seeing it _fully at all_ is fine, apparently.
This always gave off pretentious, secret lore ARG vibes. I can appreciate it came out before "games desperately attempting to generate lore content" became an entire industry through.
You really need to drop that 5 minute long section where you give your life's story and a behind the scenes documentary on the production of this video, just get to the point mate. Too many youtubers do this crap and it's BORING.
Hey everyone! This is the first video I've done captions for so they might be a little jank. Let me know when they're borked and I'll get around to fixing them eventually. Thanks!
If you write a script, you can add it to your video and RUclips will automatically generate subtitles.
Check "A PSA for Terraria Creators: Get some damn subtitles" by Terrasteel.
Much appreciate the subtitles.
_The Witness_ is not a game.
I had *no clue* this is what the lake was supposed to function as.
I like the witness for its visuals, cool puzzles, cool and clever game design etc. I also found out about the witness from Joe's review, but decided to play the game before finishing the spolier section of his review. You have done a really great job with this review too. I think, when just playing this game at a surface level, especially if you don't get stuck on too many puzzles or just look up a guide for any sections you have left at the end, its easy to finish the witness, turn it off and not play it again.
But the more you look at 100%-ing the game, be it the challenge in the caves, all the hidden movies and hidden audio logs, etc. the game asks you to take its themes seriously, and to try and ponder them. And I like the themes, they are interesting to wonder about, and I kinda get that different perspectives each have their own takes. I like the idea that some people can obsess over finding the hidden truth in a game (when compared to the story about Shakespeare), and that some people believe that the Witness has one super-hidden penultimate puzzle that is yet to be discovered.
I guess, with the whole time-wasting, accessibility thing, I guess I naturally don't mind it too much because that only really affects me if I'm going for the optional stuff. A straight main-playthrough of the game is usually fine and balanced enough. If I have further issue with the optional sections, "that's on me" - so I don't get too annoyed. I agree with people's further analysis that it can be pretty pretentious and up itself, but overall I'm just glad we have some good puzzles. Thank you for the review, worth a sub!
Jonathan blow has something of a history of being mad at the wrong people liking his game or the wrong people not getting it. An infamous example is blows previous game braid. Soulja boy liked and endorsed the game and Jonathan Blow was genuinely sad possibly angry that the wrong person got into it
I didn't know that, that's pretty funny
@@monotonallizard how are you doing so you decided to do custom levels in tresspaser
Indie Game The Movie cut together footage of Blow talking about his feelings around the critical reception of his game with footage of Soulja Boy. Pretty sure he didn't have any issues at all with the way anyone was playing his game. It was more that the things professional critics were writing about it made him feel like he was shouting into a void. He talks about it some more in Braid anniversary edition. It was never meant to be "people are enjoying my game wrong", rather "it's weird to release something deeply personal and feel like no one gets it, especially when it's also very successful". Like, that's an interesting perspective and I imagine successful artists in every discipline have experienced some version of that.
Great video, I always felt that the witness on a gameplay and puzzle design was interesting but the more deeper and more philosophical angle was extremely pretentious. Like I remember on a old giantbomb cast where they where talking about the game that it always felt like Jonathan blow was over your shoulder and being smug saying how smart and deep he is, but I always felt he kind of was a dumb man's idea of a smart person since their was very little meaning behind his ideas and mostly did things to seam smart ( like the whole thing being a dream or the random quotes) these same fault are also felt in his other game braid with how asinine some of the secret puzzle are. Also based on some of your complaints on the game you might like the Talos principal a simple portal-like puzzle game with actual deep discussions and some fun puzzles with out of the box ideas
I loved the Talos Principle! I've been meaning to give the sequel a try too.
The game is really pretentious but something about the themes of discorvery/perspective/understanding really hit for me. I think you are right that this is kinda thin and doesn't really have much to say on it's own. I think the game want's to be viewed as a meditation where the contemplation is more important than the answer. In this way i see the secret ending is sort of deliberately unsatisfying to push this message but then it's like "yeah so what, it's deliberately unsatisfying". I think you are either captured by it's presentation in which case it really does feel larger than the sum of its parts but if you don't buy in then i totally get how it would just feel tedious and full of itself.
I love Portal 1 and 2 so I thought I would like this game. Big mistake.
What did you not like about it?
Would you ever consider maybe talking about (or even just playing) the “The Thing” game? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
Yeah, one day. Not until all my current projects are finished though.
I did always feel that Joe's take on it being a joke on the player was a bit of a cope. Like, there's no way a game so clever in its design can be so far up its own ass that intestines become just another puzzle, yknow. But the more I've read up on what Blow been up to and things he said, I do believe he's just that serious about it and that's equally as funny as it is frustrating.
Nevertheless, a wonderful critique that put to words some leftover frustrations I had with this game, hope it spreads around more
No. Jon is literally taking the piss.
the looker reminded me of a myst clone pyst, it's like a law of nature, pretentious puzzle games have their evil twins and knowing that might help you to admire it more. But perhaps there could've been a better comparing material for the video, like a standalone game that excels at what witness tried to achieve and not just some snarky parody, something like antichamber that tries to make you think outside the box rather than falling in line and following the lines the way someone wants you to follow them without ever telling how to do it right. The Witness is a quite narrow minded game to say the least and I understood it thanks to your video.
I loved The Witness. I'm a slut for games with such exploration of their puzzle mechanics. I never got tired of them.
Its biggest problem truly is what surrounds said puzzles.
I like puzzle games but I just found The Witness too long. I have heard good stuff about The Talos Principle but I notice it has a similar time to beat.
@@YTKeepsDeletingAllMyComments Talos's world is way more compact, nowhere near as much running around. Also much more story and less pretentious despite being headier. Highly recommend.
@@smergthedargon8974 Thank you for the suggestion. I'll probably pick it up if I see it on sale.
I’m not a puzzle game player. I play action games and FPS games and I like to believe I am quite good at them. But The Witness is one of my top 5 favourite games of all time, having the time to play at your own pace and when you decide in a meditative and contemplative experience is such a nice contrast from the hyper competitive environment I also thrive in. It taught me something about myself and I just genuinely enjoyed it (didn’t use a single guide as well!).
@@YTKeepsDeletingAllMyCommentsI hated The Witness but loved the Talos Principle. The latter has a lot of really cool puzzle concepts and a very interesting story in my opinion. Definitely recommend playing it.
i actually found the "secret ending" before even leaving the first area and i was very confused.
the worst thing about the witness is that i want more puzzles of this type, and there aren't a lot. some very basic logic puzzles that get more and more complex. i'm so sick of escape room type puzzles that just have nonsensical BS solutions and never escalate in complexity.
i really enjoyed Taiji, it's basically the witness in 2D, without the pretentious crap.
One of my favourite parts about this game is how every single person finds different puzzle mechanics easy or super hard. I seem to be one of the very few people who has an easy time with the Tetris blocks and the atomic star signs, but I can‘t for the life of me make the star pairs and symmetry puzzles happen.
Funny how you mention Josepth, and with regards to the Witness and other games with "developer intentions" I think Darkest Dungeon would be another good game to look at (not only just cause he covered it but I heavily disagree with what he had to say about it)
Darkest Dungeon is designed to be one long struggle. Joseph just didn't seem to understand that your characters are meant to be disposable. He wouldn't stop complaining about it being turned based either.
I've put about 20 hours into Darkest Dungeon over the years, and there are a lot of things I love about it like the visual design and the dungeon crawl, but I can't get over how so many of the combat mechanics feel cruel just for the sake of being cruel. After a certain point it stops being fun for me.
Great, thought-out review. You sure deserve way more views
Absolutely on-point discussion IMO. I'm glad to hear the best part of the game was the one I never found, I guess 😂 (by the time it was tutorialised, I was far past ready to be done and assumed it was just a "lolololol stupid nerd thinks all questions have answers, guess what, they don't, have fun in my puzzle mountain" moment).
I hold that there is a good version of The Witness, and it's Outer Wilds. Which is still a frustrating game at times! Just, much less so.
Joseph Anderson is ironically The Witness of videogame essayists, his Witcher stuff was just baffling, someone talking for so long about something without never understanding it
Thank you.
I'm curious what you believe was misunderstood. I watched both videos all the way through with someone who has read The Witcher and neither of us had any complaints. He's been wrong about lots of things before, so I'm wondering what we might have missed.
Yup, I think his video on the Witness is really bad lol. I tracked down some tweets and comment he made after though and he said that the game grew on him and he remembered it more fondly as time passed on. I think that’s the main issue JA and this guy have, they rushed through it. I took my sweet time and played it at my own pace never chasing a goal I had set for myself and I can honestly say The Witness is in my top 5 games of all time.
@@emeraldcymophane7461 ah, well, its just a bunch of annoyances and smoll things, like the vids being too long in an obnoxious way? speaking from personal taste, obviously, but if i was to point one mayor eyebrow raising "but" would he idea that he thought the scoia'tael are annoying or something like that, which is a... come on, dude, they getting colonized, its a bit absurdist to expect them to be saints
but i watched it loooong ago when they came out, so dunno
@@luk4aaaa have never played The Witness tbh, despite having seen a bunch of videos about it over the years for some reason 🤔 so can say much one way or the other... uhhh... seems and easy to 100% game if you care about that stuff 😗
I do have played The Looker a couple of times and really like it
The thing about The Looker is that if you love The Witness, you'll love The Looker, and if you hate The Witness, you'll love The Looker. It's tailor made to appeal to anyone who has any strong opinion on the game it's based on.
I loved the witness when I saw a few screenshots of it. Then I noticed it's by the same guy who made Braid, and my excitement vanished. Braid is so up its own ass I can't stand it. Purple prose, the game. _It means whatever you want it to mean but also whatever you think it means is definitely wrong,_ that's pretty much what Blow said about it. Trying so hard to look like it says something profound while not having much to say at all.
So when I learned that the witness is hundreds of back-of-the-cereal-box line puzzles in very pretty environments, I thought _"of course it is."_ Some time later randomly watched the Joseph Anderson's video and my assumptions were confirmed. And now, yours did it again.
Hey Monotom! I've loved all your videos and am eager to see what you do next, whether it's "shorter" videos like this or more deep dives like the JP videos. I don't always 100% agree with your analysis, but that's part of the fun to hear how you walked into something you thought wouldn't be for you to give it a fair shake, and enjoy listening to you all the same. Although I will agree sometimes The Witness does go a bit too far at navel gazing, with The Looker even using most of the same monologue about the captain of a ship before turning it on its head.
Since you've mentioned in things like Stay Out of the House about other "stalker enemy" games like Alien Isolation, I'd be curious as to if you've tried Amensia the Bunker or other games of that ilk. Or for something more psychological, something like Fear and Hunger (if you can get past the issue of YT censorship). Keep up the awesome videos, I'm looking forward to more!
Thanks! You're in luck, I recently played Amnesia: The Bunker and have a bit to say about it so that'll be the next video. Otherwise Alien: Isolation is still the gold standard for that kind of game. The recent Resident Evils have been kind of disappointing to me but the original Resident Evil 3 scratches the same sort of itch, even if it's very rough around the edges these days.
Fear and Hunger is a game I really don't like due to the RNG of the coin flips, though the setting and presentation is super interesting.
How is this channel still so small, this is legit high effort content
13:30 Okay hold on. If I may intrude here. This is a point in your argument I flat out HARD disagree with.
You talk about puzzles being shut down like it’s a “mechanic” and like it’s “something that bogs down the experience because nothing is gained”. I say that’s flatly untrue. It’s literally AVOIDANCE of a gimmick. It forces you to only try to solve a puzzle when you think you know the solution rather than to guess and check. You will NEVER shut down a puzzle if you KNOW the solution and that’s only possible if you know the question.
Take the trees with the apples for instance. If those puzzles didn’t shut down, you could just visit every branch with ease and eventually get to the end without ever knowing the apple was there to begin with.
In my opinion, that sort of thing is literally NECESSARY in a game that’s trying to force you solve the “gimmick” it’s not unnecessary and annoying because it doesn’t exist for people who are solving the puzzles correctly.
To add to that point, the audio puzzles you claimed “were easy, and straightforward”. You didn’t claim those were annoying. Yet you may not have even realized that those puzzles ALSO shut down if you’re mistaken, making you go back a step.
So ask yourself why aren’t you complaining about those puzzles?
They shut down like any of the others.
(The only place I think the argument is justified is the freakin desert water because oh my goddddd that place sucked)
Unironically, I never even heard about the Witness, and instead only knew about The Looker, thanks to Live streamers. I thought that you were talking about that game at first, until it was mentioned it was a parody of it.
Great review, love the explanation of how this video came to be thanks to the Getting over it Review. Gave it a nice segway between videos.
To be fair the looker is a game that people who like the witness enjoy and people who hate the witness enjoy so having more positive reviews make sense =p
While I love The Witness, it reminds of that quote that every man is an island or something.
It’s like the game is a digital representation of Blow’s brain.
I had no idea about the lake.
Great review, but I disagree with your point on The Secret of Psalm 46. When I realized I had to listen to it in full to do the puzzle, I was very annoyed, but the talk itself was geniunly so captivating, that waiting for the puzzle became secondary. If there is anything I took away from The Witness in general, is that Shakespear doesn't exist, and I wouldn't be blessed with that knowledge if I wasn't forced to hear that talk.
Besides that, I don't think the point of the environmental puzzles, was to be solved systematically, as they give no reward or progression. Solving the ones you find organically on your playthrough, and leaving the rest behind seems like the best experience.
The Witness pulls the good ol' "Oh dear! It's all so complicated!" fallacy that you see from a lot of pseudo intellectuals that like to sound more smarterest than everyone else. Also, genuinely love this vid! Very well organized! I liked the talk on the accessibility options especially. I once tried to get into a cool online web series that had amazing story telling but couldn't because it included too many flashing lights. I brought this up to my friend and he brought it to one of the devs/authors for the project and you know what? A day later a patch went out that let you slide the brightness down and reduce the flashing lights. Proper thoughtful people actually engage with criticism and work to improve. Much appreciate the video!!
What were you playing it on?! That pop in around 37:54 is crazy. I distinctly remember a really nice dithered fade between different LODs on my PC. I don't remember any noticeable pop in ever, or any slowdown, and that is the sort of thing I normally notice.
I don't think the witness is pretentious - I think it's earnest. The Marvel thing of needing to undercut every touching moment with a witty remark is fine, but not everything needs to be that. I remember reading/watching/hearing someone say that South Park taught an entire generation that caring about things and being sincere is the least cool thing you can do. It's stuck with me because it feels kinda true. But we need art that is achingly sincere. The Witness took 7 years or something to make. That's a mind boggling amount of time to be working on a single thing. It should take itself seriously.
At the same time, The Witness isn't devoid of humour. I know I genuinely laughed out loud several times while playing (okay, it was more of a chuckle). It's not as funny as Braid, but Blow just has a knack for making puzzles that are jokes.
PC. It could be the recording software fighting the game for resources but I remember on the other computer I originally played the Witness on it still chugged from time to time.
I don't think pretension and sincerity are mutually exclusive.
@@monotonallizard Interesting. To me pretentiousness is all about the pretense. It's when someone doesn't actually believe the bullshit they're spouting - they're just doing it to impress people. If someone is completely sincere in what they're saying I would personally consider that almost the opposite of pretension, regardless of the actual content of what they're saying.
But you admit to liking things you consider pretentious, so you must have a different take. What do you mean by pretentious?
@@1337pianoman I would say pretentiousness is just ascribing greater meaning or importance to something than it actually possesses. There are certainly cynical examples like you're talking about, but I'd say those tend to be more corporate in nature - rampant nostalgia-baiting in big budget movies for example. I agree that the Witness is earnest, it's just lacking perspective in I way that I find obnoxious.
I absolutely loved The Witness, but also at the time I was unemployed, between uni semesters, and desperately needed something to take up a LOT of my time.
Saying something like, "You are just drawing lines on a grid", is a dumb thing to say.
You are trying to take away all intent and then say "Ha! See how boring it is?".
The purpose of "just drawing a line" is to solve a bigger puzzle given where not just any line can be drawn.
No better than writing random words on a crossword, or writing random numbers on a piece of paper (sudoku).
The fun is in the problem solving which is what most people buy a puzzle game for, to solve puzzles.
Also, you say there are a bunch of useless puzzles around that do nothing and while that is somewhat true I would say that is mostly false.
I would categorize the puzzles in 4 different ways:
1) Puzzles that help you learn the different types of puzzles
2) Puzzles that further progression into your exploration
3) Puzzles meant to challenge yourself
4) Secret puzzles
And I would say the former 1 and 2 types appear way more often than the latter 3 and 4 types.
Can you tell me the stories you think did the "it was all a dream" thing right? It'd possibly ruin them but im very interested in knowing what you know, you've consumed more stories
Edit: lovely video/words, your thoughts on the witness were really interesting
It's kind of impossible not to ruin them by giving that part of them away, but there are two that spring to mind: the Westworld TV show and the 2017 video game Prey. They didn't treat the twist as inherently satisfying in and of itself, they both gave it a narrative purpose, and they didn't erase or reset all that had come before upon the reveal either. Plus the twist was built into the premise of both from the very start in smaller, interesting ways, so it felt less like a sudden shock and more like the final piece of a puzzle falling into place.
i personnaly like the witness for its environment and exploration, the puzzle were fine until they began to feel like a chore
Laundry Files mentioned!
The Witness just made me uncomfortable from the start. It made me feel like a lab rat dropped into a maze. The problems clearly built on each other but in a really hostile way that clearly wasn't meant to increase my enjoyment but so the game could make sure I was actually "smart" enough and didn't solve any puzzles by accident...
oh, hey, i was wondering if you were going to mention The Looker
The Witness could be a fantastic satirical critique of pseudo intellectualism. If only Jonathan Blow was self aware. But what do we expect from a guy criticising a critic for not understanding his art without even trying to consume the entire criticism. Don‘t criticise something if you don‘t see it correctly, but criticising something without seeing it _fully at all_ is fine, apparently.
I feel lkke this game would be better if anyone else made it
15:25 This •━ panel and the ┓̣-shaped one beyond it are objective errors in design.
Wait. Why?
This is one of those really rare channels where I genuinely look forward to every time. ❤
This always gave off pretentious, secret lore ARG vibes. I can appreciate it came out before "games desperately attempting to generate lore content" became an entire industry through.
30:20 - ... Please tell me that pun wasn't intentional.
What an idiotic take.
You really need to drop that 5 minute long section where you give your life's story and a behind the scenes documentary on the production of this video, just get to the point mate. Too many youtubers do this crap and it's BORING.