There's absolutely no chance that a guy that "feels smart" when completing WItness areas solved the puzzle needed for the real (pretentious and awful) ending. It's obvious that you mostly played this game with a a walkthrough. i wonder why do you feel the need to comment on it...
Brandon Larkin So basically as you play the game, ideally you're supposed to start to see these circle start line puzzles on the actual island structured/scenery, cloud patterns, and everywhere else. Basically once you have looked at these line puzzles for so long, you're supposed to get a tetris effect where you start to see them everywhere. There is no reward for solving the environmental puzzles, not even more puzzles. There's not even an achievement/trophy for it and most people who play the game will probably never even realize they exist
I loved Braid, and all I knew of the Witness was that it was a puzzle game made by Jon Blow, so I knew I had to play it. The first area seemed kind of cute with the little puzzles, then after solving a few more it dawned on me that this might be the whole game, and I became a bit disheartened. I was expecting an innovative puzzle game with interesting mechanics like Braid or Portal. Instead, I'm putting a line between some squares to separate the colours. By the end of the game, it had become one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. When I read from your description that you finished it, I was shocked that it's possible to finish the game without falling in love with it. I would have expected you to ragequit long before that happens. But when you mentioned that you would sometimes make guesses until it accepted them, and looked up some of the answers, then it makes complete sense. It is a game of exploration and patience. If you go into it expecting to grind through it in a day, then you're unlikely to come out of it very happy. It's a bit like Dark Souls in that way, which can also be spoiled by research.
+Zantier Ta'sa Yeah, I still appreciated what the puzzles did while looking them up, but of course this removed my "aha" feeling moments. That being said, the puzzles I DID solve without any help or clues from the environment, the ones that just take logic and figuring out, were not fun for me nor satisfying to solve. They were annoying. But again, everyone will experience that differently
Yeah, that's fair enough that people will react differently to it. The figuring out how to solve the puzzles, and getting to see the ingenuity and beauty behind the concepts was certainly the most enjoyable part of the game, compared to solving the puzzles themselves. A few of the puzzles took me over an hour to complete for various reasons, and I'm sure the satisfaction of completing those had something to do with it.
Anyone saying "you just solve line puzzles" must be missing something important from their brains. The "just" is the key word here. This is not a lush island filled with completely unrelated minigames! To get the answers you must study the terrain! At one stage you walk a path based on clues from the previous path and then translate that route to the puzzle. It's an absolutely genius concept to have clues to the mini puzzles all about you in the world. Not at first, of course - the first few are easy but there is a reason that you can't just walk to the last puzzle and solve it before the rest - because the game is constantly teaching you. Each puzzle teaches a valuable lesson. I can just see Jonathan Blow tearing out his hair seeing such opinions, and I feel bad for the guy- he's smart enough to write his own programming language and has to deal with people fundamentally misunderstanding his work on a mass scale. Honestly I don't care that people don't have the patience to see the depth of something like this, they can enjoy what they want but it's really misleading to have people believe this game involves nothing more than simply walking about an island and drawing lines. If that's all you see then I pity you.
I honestly feel the same way as Snowy. I've played it and while I was blown away at the ways it taught me to do the line puzzles, but...it's just line puzzles. Smart line puzzles! Pretty line puzzles! The environment teaches you in so many amazing ways how to solve these line puzzles, but nothing that didn't eventually bore me. I'm pretty easily amused, but this was really tiresome. I found myself just backing away from every puzzle out of exhaustion and I haven't been able to bring myself to play it since I got it. I try to go back but I just end up walking around aimlessly, fiddling with a screen for a while, giving up and moving on to another one. It's constantly teaching me, but when I don't get the message and hit a brick wall, there's no real way to learn at that point. I'm just standing there looking at a screen. But I don't like line puzzles.
The Witness managed to push the maze concept quite far enough to explore all its possibilities. It takes something as simple as a maze and turns it into a 50-hour worth of gameplay experience. In some way, it's not as different as any other game (being "just an FPS" or "just a strategy game"... with enough gameplay mechanics to make it unique) but The Witness does it with the most simplest form of entertainment : lines and paths. Beyond the game itself, it's a real proof of dedication, and Jonathan Blow didn't fall into the trap of doing alternative minigames here and there to add content !
It doesn't take much for you to pity someone :/ people can have their own opinions, maybe they just weren't into it as much as you were but it definitely doesn't mean you should be condescending especially when you have zero right to be
"You must study the terrain" --okay, but the youtuber explicitly references this in his review and says he "won't spoil it for others because it was one of his favorite parts of the game." He knows full well what you're talking about, it's not like he just didn't like this game because he happened to miss the bigger puzzles.
I think why people, including yourself, found this game so frustrating in terms of there not being dialogue or instruction is because this isn't a game about solving puzzles. This is a game about understanding puzzles. Personally, I think reward comes from understanding how each new puzzle element works. Yes, there were times where it was extremely difficult and frustrating, but it's rewarding when you get past that stage and start understanding the puzzles and their different dynamics.
I found this game highly addictive... especially when you unlock a shortcut that was literally under your eyelids the whole time but didn't know how to access (cough challenge cave cough). By the way, you do get rewarded only in the very end, after you've become the mountain king.
When you complete every pannel (spoiler) enviromental puzzle, audiolog,super challenge, etc. there is no reward whatsoever. After all, it doesn't matter what you do on the island if there is no witness to your achevements ;D
2:36 "Everything interesting in the Witness, the scenery, the mystery, the hidden clues. All of it take a back seat to the puzzles." I'm probably not the first person to say this, but have you consider that maybe the puzzles are the most interesting thing about this game? Regarding the game not spelling out its rules to you, I would think that figuring out the rules yourself is the main point of the game. In the beginning of a series of puzzles, the rules of the puzzles are implemented in a less stringent way such that you could conceive of multiple possible rule sets. As you progress in the series of puzzles, the puzzles begin to converge towards the actual rule set, and it's important to examine your assumptions about the rules as you go. Personally, I find that very cool and interesting, but it seems that most people who didn't have a great time with the Witness think of that as the game's shortcoming rather than a positive thing. 4:21 "Solving each problem doesn't leave me with satisfaction, and normally just causes me to say 'oh okay', because half the time I just messed around until I got it randomly anyway." It upsets me quite a bit that this is how you view the puzzles. You seem to think that the puzzles are only obstacles, and that you're done with them after you solve them. For me, the puzzles are partly obstacles, but more importantly they are opportunities for gaining understanding. Gaining understanding is the big source of satisfaction in this game, at least for me. If I solved a puzzle without knowing what it is that I did to solve it, then I wouldn't leave that puzzle alone until I understand how to solve it. In an RPG, you'd level up your characters and buy better gear to deal with tougher enemies as you progress in the game. If someone played an RPG, didn't level up their characters or buy gear, and said the game was too hard, you'd probably say that they played the game wrong. In The Witness, you don't have weapons or stats. You "level up" by building your understanding of the puzzles. To play responsibly, you should solve the puzzles to understand them rather than to simply get through them.
+Doofus "have you consider the notion that maybe the puzzles are the most interesting thing about this game?" He addressed this point directly in the video when he said something to the effect of "if you are the type of person that derives satisfaction merely from the completion of the puzzles, then that previous comment does not apply to you." And in regards to your analogy to explain the "leveling up" in The Witness, I agree to an extent. I personally do not see the entertainment value in being rewarded for solving a puzzle by being given harder puzzles, and I think it's fair to say that the market for such a game is rather small. Existent, but small. If The Witness provided a little more effort to providing more of a reward to solving puzzles, such as giving players more context to the world they are exploring or by permanently altering the hub world with new art or a short cut bridge, then I believe the game would have more marketability due to the variety of ways the game tries to immerse players and make them feel valued. But since the game is essentially a walking simulator with puzzles (bc their "story" is purposefully vague and suffers for it), I would get just as much enjoyment from solving Sudoku puzzles on my phone. And if I'm given the option between spending $40 or not spending $40 to get the same type of experience, I'm gonna stick with my free brain stimulators.
+Nico las I don't think that addresses my point. It's conceivable to me that someone could not enjoy something while still understand how it might be interesting. Also, I just find that kind of a meaningless thing to say. It's like saying "If you're like me, then you'll agree with me." Speaking of making the players feel valued. If you believe what Jon Blow says, then he made the game this way because he does value the players' time and intelligence, therefore he refrained from adding artificial rewards to the game. "I would get just as much enjoyment from solving Sudoku puzzles on my phone" I don't believe that, though I don't know how much you enjoy Sudoku. Personally, I don't enjoy Sudoku, but I like the Witness a lot. IMO, the experience of solving Sudoku puzzles is fundamentally different than that of playing the Witness. In Sudoku, you're told the rules up front. Solving individual Sudoku puzzles is then more of a mechanical process of applying the rules that you've learned beforehand. There's very little discovery in Sudoku. You could possibly find more efficient ways of applying the rules, but I think that's about it. In the Witness, you aren't explicitly told any of the rules to the puzzles. Figuring out the rules is the main part of the game.
Doofus I guess it's the nature for unconventional games like The Witness to spawn different opinions, because there isn't a universal, culturally-inherited response already embedded in us, like how our responses to more mainstream games (like COD) can be categorized in specific responses to the material. Because the game is so different from anything else, it has the blessing and the curse of leaving it up to players to make meaning of it for themselves. I should probably try the game before I judge it any further, but the whole idea that makes this game unique is also its selling point, and it simply hasn't proven to me that I would find it worth the $40.
+Doofus *slow claps* You hit the nail on the head, bud. This reviewer clearly let his biases get the best of him and he ended up knocking the game for what it wasn't, rather than for what it was. He missed the entire message/theme of the game and by doing so, I believe his analysis is both short sighted and amateurish.
+Snazzy it is not. the game tries to intrigue people with an apparent mystery with stuff like the statues but in reality it is all about the puzzles. why are there statues, where is the rest of the story ect the answer is there is no rest of the story because it is an unfinished game (see the second ending). so what the reviewer said is do not be mislead by the apparent promise of a story this games is all about the puzzles , which it is. and it is only a good game to small niche audience which it is
But thats exactly the point U dont need a reward. More puzzles is your reward. The worst thing that could happen is you finish all the puzzles. There is no need for a reward. You wanna find all the audio tapes ? Alright, but do it because u want to, not because if you do the game will reward you if a achiviment or something.(The are only 2 achievements) The game isnt a chore. Thats my interpretation
See a cool shipwreck, go check it out. I loved the game cause I could just do whatever I want, seriously one of the best games I've played in yearrrrrs.
Weird, one of the things you listed as a huge problem was something I really liked, you can't just assume something works as-is, so you have to second guess yourself until you're relatively sure you know the rule. That should be a good thing. It's a very very good example of confirmation-bias at work, one of the worst things that plagues humans as a whole, believing something just because and becoming absolutely sure of yourself not through evidence or anything logical but purely because someone or something else thinks/does something the same way, and using that fallacy to support and build up your 'belief' until you think it's true. I completely get that the puzzle genre etc. isn't for everyone, so I'm fine with you not liking those aspects, but this one in particular bugged me because I see it as something inherently flawed in humankind that we should all have been taught to be aware of lest we become 'stuck in our ways', it leads to intolerance and ignorance and is the cause of some of the worst social divides among people. Keep playing games, and keep enjoying different things though, different opinions on what games you enjoy can only be good for the longevity of the industry.
+Xanderj89 Yeah that is a pretty personal gripe. And I have since played more of the game since making this video and I can really appreciate what it does. Once you learn the rules, it's fine, it's just really hard :P
ugh i really hate this in one of my friends, we play a lot of puzzle games together where one "plays" it and the other one also plays it by watching and guessing and guiding at the same time, and in many occasions he just says things like ok yeah thats it so we now know this ez done no way this is wrong... i can't really describe what i mean but it's basically exacty what you wrote
more like "You don't need to play the witness cause it's not for me or any other not-into-puzzle-person". and its cool, because otherwise you may spend over a 10 hours of gameplay you just dont enjoy, in the expectation of something awesome
Something you might not have noticed: the map on the boat shows different symbols representing different puzzle types, and if you go to the location on the map where it shows a certain symbol, you find the "tutorial" puzzles that are supposed to "teach" you how to do that kind of puzzle. I thought that was brilliant because it felt like you were "finding" an essential item like a key or something, but in the form of learning how to do that kind of puzzle. It was like learning a language. I completely 100% agree that the mystery was totally unsatisfied though. I was driven forward in the game by wanting to know more about the statue people, and... then I beat the game.
+Lee Hearts Yeah once I understood all the puzzles I felt a little better, but they still weren't enjoyable for me (but I know thats just personal preference). But yeah...the mystery, my favorite part. Def unsatisfying
There's a somewhat better story resolution if you place close attention near the end of the game and get access to the secret area. It's not perfect, but you do find out a whole lot more than you do just by finishing the game.
I think i actually like it more, that you didn't get the answer. The game is not solvable, and life isn't too. There is no solution to mysteries of life and there is no solution to mystery of the witness. Your life is just bunch of puzzles. You will learn the basics when you are a kid... How to speak, read etc. You will learn that the puzzles have solution and you need to find it. That's the castle area. Then you will leave your home for the first time. The school, work and everything after that. That leaving is opening the gate. You will open the gate to the life and now, there is everything before you. There are things that you will learn easily, there are things that you will never learn. Just like on the island. And there is no order. Some things need knowledge of some other areas. Some of them don't. For example, psychics is not much understandable withnout understanding math. Well in some cases. You can get through some parts, without knowing math. But you will never be able to become an expert. But for the art, you don't need math or language. And if you think yout it, that's what happened on the island. Basics were alone. Other things contained things not from their desinged areas. Now, the ending. The mountain. The goal of life. True happines. Was inside the mountain something incredible? I don't think so. Just more puzzles. Puzzles, that you were solving the whole time. If the goal of the life is just to solve more puzzles, doesn't it mean, that true happines is hidden right in solving those puzzles? Is there somethning more? Maybe. Can we reach it? Hardly. Many of you saw, that the only way to get to the hidden cave inside the mountain, was to solve everything. And even there, there were more puzzles. Even though you did learned how to solve all of them before, you still can find some of them difficult. Some of them are easier. Yes, but not all of them. But why? You learined everything. You know everything. And still... Do you feel completion? No... Why is that? After that you can just enter the elevator again. And do it all over again. And again. And again. There is nothing more. There never was anything more. Just puzzles. The same ones. Again and again and again. It's like madness. You are locked inside that cycle. And there is now way out. Or is there a way out? You may mention now the gate. But, where does this gate leads if you open it differently? In the reality. More puzzles. More problems to solve. Again and again and again. Yes they are different then the ones on the island. But still. You are just solving puzzles. what's the differnce then? How is reality different that the game? More puzzles to solve. You solve one, another opens. And there is no clear way to win the life. There is no clear way to win the Witness. I heard that the Witness is meditation. I believe it. Meditation over life itself. The only thing that lifes gives you is puzzles and time to solve them. I doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter which one you can do best. The only things that matters.... that exists, are... You, puzzles and time to solve them. That's the only thing that exists. If you can't find happines in that, you are out of luck. Beacuse there is nothing more. There never was anythnig more. All our believes of someting outside are just like believe that there is a mystery to solve in the Witness. Maybe there is. Maybe there is not. Truth is, that we will never know for sure. And, in the end, it doesn't matter. Because life is not about that mystery. Life is about someting much closer. As the gate to true ending was right in front of you, when you entered the game, the goal of life is right in front of you. The whole time. Just look at your life again... You are looking at the puzzle of goal of life right now. You did the whole time. It doesn't matter how much you know. It does't matter how clever, beautiful, tall, fat or anything you are. The thing you were looking for is right in front of you. It was there the whole time. Just look at it. And if you are not able to see it, keep learning. Someday you will find it. I know this is long. So thanks for reading. This is why i think that there is no answer to the mystery of The Witness. Beacuse there is no answer to mystery of The Life. The Witness is witness of life.
@@snomangaming someone isnt dumb for using a guide. you can solve what you can on your own try first then use a guide when stuck. the problem was they made timed puzzles that changed that you couldnt even do with a guide at the end. so the game said F you we wont give you the satisfaction to finish not even with a guide. so yea that was the biggest mistake on the game makers part. it ruins the game. a game is not special to people if they cant beat it. they are just like F this game im done with it. if a game was hard and they needed a guide but can beat it they would be like oh i respect that game still.
+snomaN Gaming The "answers" you're looking for can be found in six specific audio logs. All of them are inaccessible until you have access to a certain area which requires all 11 lasers
I didn't believe the game was only a puzzle game, it had adventure game elements to it, it had the environmental puzzles that require no deeper thought to process. The reward was to progress into the next secret area of the game.
+Guy Fawkes Yeah, I played the rest of the game after making this vid, and it had more hidden stuff, but it was still just alright for me, but im not the target demographic
This is how to make a negative review! I didn't feel like you were attacking the game, but rather politely explaining why it wasn't for you. Not to mention that your opinions are very valuable. I personally loved this game, but I now understand why people wouldn't. Well done!
Three years late on this, but hey One of the key ideas in the study of teaching (known as pedagogy) is that of *misconceptions* - when someone thinks they understand how something works (and can maybe produce a method that sometimes works), but they don't actually understand it. These can be a big ol' problem in teaching, and in a game like The Witness that is deliberately trying to teach its puzzle mechanics without words, they can spring up all too easily. Your "go below the black squares but above the white ones" idea is a simple example of a misconception. I had a similar one initially: I treated the black and white squares as "slalom gates" that I had to pass through. And these were some of the earliest puzzles in the game! How to address this? Well, the standard way is to identify what you think will be common misconceptions in advance and design occasional "stumper" questions/puzzles that deliberately contradict such incorrect methods and will only work if you understand the rules correctly. This is pretty much what The Witness tries to do, it often goes "if you can't solve me you don't truly understand this concept yet, go back to earlier puzzles and reflect on them" - sometimes to the extent of even blacking out the panel and *forcing* you to resolve the previous puzzle to reactivate it. It can be frustrating, but it's a deliberate tool in the teaching toolkit - and perhaps an unavoidable one if you're trying to teach without words. Although if we look at the words the game *does* have, the logs are... curious. The main point of them is to be thematic: they talk about different ways of discovering things, different ways of thinking about knowledge... different perspectives. And many of the statues are, of course, about perspective in some way or another, about how they become something different when viewed from certain angles, or when looking at the shadow, or whatever. Ultimately the plot of the game... barely exists. It's much more a game about these themes. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with that, it's hard to draw a conclusion. Heck, the game itself doesn't really draw a conclusion even in the true ending. But then maybe that's the point!
The reward for solving a puzzle is _having solved the puzzle_. :) The reward is a purely intellectual, intrinsic one. By completing a puzzle, the game pats you on the back and says "good boy, you got it!" - that's it. Why does there always have to be an XP meter or in-game currency or cut scene to motivate players?
Here's a (spoilery) example of The Witness rewarding puzzle solving with more than just puzzles: The apple orchard near the beginning of the game. The solution to each puzzle is hinted at by the position of an apple in the tree next to it, and it gets harder as you go to tell which branch is connected where. The last puzzle has one more branch than the tree, which has no apple. The trick is that the apple was on the missing branch, and after you solve that board you turn the corner and there's a house with a patio. And on top of the patio wall is a plate of apple slices.
I played the first Layton a few months ago, and although i did finish it and loved it, it left me exhausted. Not only from doing the puzzles themselves, but from finding them. I'm a bit of a completionist, i didn't want to stop playing until i had found every single puzzle. Besides, they got a bit repetitive (The chess puzzles are the worst).
Are you sure you explored everything? Not saying that you'll have a super-satisfying ending, but there IS more to it than what you're saying. You do get to know a lot more about the island if you keep playing after you finish it the first time.
Yes I got the secret ending after making this video, and it was a bit better, though it still left me with a ton of questions :P lol. I think after months of reflecting back on it, Blow was trying to say a much larger message than just what was in the game itself, so it's whatever haha
3:30 The tutorial puzzles *do* tell you the pieces can be moved around, and the pieces *can't* be rotated. You just need to pay attention more carefully to what the tutorials teach you.
3:16 I was noticing that his misunderstanding could have been remedied if the puzzle at 3:22 was black-white-black or white-black-white instead of black-black-white. Blow even admits that there are some accidental red herrings in the game.
Well, never the less, with a bit of open thinking and paying attention anyone can understand what the puzzles are trying to teach. Besides, the "harder versions" he got stuck on trying to go above all white boxes and under all black boxes were still the tutorial puzzles, it was exactly the place to learn that he need to bisect between them, these puzzles exist in order to make sure the player doesn't make any farther progress without completely understanding the rules first. Once he saw a puzzle that didn't match his previous assumption of the rules, it was exactly the time the game expects you to question your former assumption and infer what the rules actually are, fixating on a certain assumption before the tutorial has even ended is just foolish. He claims the instructions are too open to interpretation but also mentioned that around half of the time, the puzzles left him saying "Oh, Okay" because he just messed around with them until he got the puzzle right. Of course you won't get the instructions right if you don't try to infer anything from the puzzles and just mess around with them until you succeed, no wonder he got them wrong so often
Dvir Arazi You're completely right. It actually frustrates me how many playthroughs I watch of games like The Witness, or Please Don't Touch Anything, or other games with lots of steps where people fixate on preconceived ideas and don't even look for the real solution.
There are quotes and sayings around the game that kind of toy with the idea that games don't necessarily need a penultimate goal, and the game itself really hammers that home. To me, the reward for playing the game was the journey, the discovery, the exploration, the revelation. Why is a more tangible reward necessary anyway? Like, why play Solitaire if you get nothing for "winning"? Ever play basketball with your buddies? You don't get anything for that other than the joy of playing a game with your friends. I could go on but I'm sure you get my point. The whole game is an experience. A thought experiment, if you will. My favorite thing about this game other than the minor victories in finally understanding a puzzle is the how the "huge revelation" you experienced completely changes the way you approach the game. It completely flips everything you *think* you know about this game's world on its head and you see everything in a completely different way. That's so powerful. But opposite of that is the fact that you'll never get that feeling back for future playthroughs. In my opinion it makes spoilers of this game so much worse than spoilers of a story-heavy game like The Last of Us. The quotes may seem pretentious, but I found them profoundly interesting. They follow along the theme of giving you something to think about in a different way that you probably haven't thought of. My favorite quote (aside from Ashley Johnson's powerfully delivered one in the secret cave) is one near the beginning that breaks down the act of opening and walking through the door from through the mind of a particle physicist. I've never thought about physics and the act of moving in that way before and it opened my mind, if only a little. The game is full of little things like that. Finally, about the puzzles being frustrating to you... I'm seeing that a lot. But every rule of every puzzle is clearly laid out and the ones that flash for incorrect answers give you means for experimentation for logically deducing the rules of the panel. Ultimately it's 100% your fault for not taking the time necessary to understand the puzzle on the panels that all but *give* you the answers in that way. Brute forcing is fine sometimes, but it's wasteful if you don't take the time to analyze why the solution worked and learn from it. As for the lack of story... the way this game's story is presented reminds me of how the Souls franchise presents its stories, albeit in a far more cryptic way. I'm hoping that there is a full, deeper story to uncover but I will agree with you in that it was a bit frustrating not getting answers to what the island is. I've heard theories like it's an OCD rehabilitation virtual reality environment, I had my own theories like the island being meticulously crafted by the Illuminati or something (since everything, even the trees, seems intricately man-made) to study people and the way they think, move, react, who KNOWS. Anyway, this is all coming from someone who (obviously) loves the game. I even went out of my way to complete it 100%... at least for the 100% that is currently known about, if more even exists. Sorry for the damn thesis, wasn't expecting to write this much hahaha
+ingeniousclown Gaming Man, so I played it more after making this video, and there is a lot that it does very well. The puzzles where clues are in the environment are the best by far, and I enjoyed those a lot. I liked how each area had a different "theme" to the puzzles you had to figure out. It was way to smart for my puny brain, but I can appreciate everything it did from a puzzle perspective. But the story, yeah...I've just come to accept the fact that there are no answers. Your theories are cool tho lol it might just be right.
hit the nail on the head for me. for the first 20 hours or so, I loved the game, it was like the Dark Souls of puzzle games. but then as my only reward was harder, more convoluted puzzles, i grew frustrated with the game. I understand there is more to it than the main game and that you can discover more, but when your playing a game with so much atmosphere and obvious hunting's at a grand scale story, it seems highly irrational to not explain that story little by little as you progress. if you want a Tetris like puzzle game and nothing more, meaning just puzzles, than the witness is perfect, but if you want a full experience, one you would expect from what the game looks like, skip it.
the puzzles aren’t meant to be easy, i wracked my brain for almost a day straight towards the finale. i think the game is meant for people who simply enjoy puzzles. yes the story was a total cop out, but when the game resets and you use the knowledge you learned to unlock the real ending, i felt just as accomplished as beating a game like celeste.
6:53 - 7:05 The way I see The Witness is that you get as much out as you put in. If you play the game and get stuck on a puzzle and then look up the answer to the puzzle, I completely understand why you might say "How could I ever be expected to solve this?" It is like asking someone else to do your math homework and getting mad when you see the questions on the test. Without spoiling the game, there are things you can do when manipulating the line, different techniques and frame of mind, that will help you discover what it all means. Random guessing is futile, exploratory prodding is the key. I have heard some say "X feature in the game is poorly thought out or is flawed in some way". While the possibility does exist that something about the game that confuses you, or seems out of place, could be something that the developers overlooked, there is also the possibility that there is something you don't know that will make it all make sense. And since this game is about manipulating your mind, proposing theories, and dismantling theories, all in order to solve puzzles, you've got to be pretty sure you have all the data before making such a claim. So far I haven't heard any claim that has held up. (I have specific cases in mind, but they are too spoilery) In most of those cases just thinking with an open mind, "Why would the game designer intentionally make it this way?" will help a lot in finding the truth to the matter. I think a lot of youtubers especially dislike or had trouble with the game because the job of a professional youtuber is to play through games as quickly as possible and move on to the next popular one. Often they have multiple game series going on at the same time and need to push that content out there in order to keep their subscribers' diverse interests peaked. If you rush through The Witness without paying attention to the environment, and to your own internal mental dialog you are going to have problems. The same goes for streamers on twitch. They have an audience to entertain, and getting stuck on a puzzle for 10 or 20 minutes is not entertaining. The streamer knows this, which causes stress, which reduces the streamers mental ability to solve the puzzles and so on. The solution to this is to simply leave the puzzle your stuck on and go solve something else or even leave the game for a day and come back. This is harder to do for someone who's job is to play video games. Also the streamer has a greater temptation for getting answers from the audience, which as I said before can move the player farther along then what the player is prepared for. Which turns the game into "I don't know just tell me the answer, this game is stupid for making me feel stupid." I completely understand, why people see these things as problems, but this is inherent to the game's design, the game takes time and thought. Yes, I am one of the 3.8% of people who own the game on steam that managed to complete the game including the challenge. (not to blow my horn or anything) 60 hours in and I still haven't found everything there is to find. I enjoy these kind of games and am also a fan of Johnathan Blow's work, so I'm sure I am at least somewhat biased in my opinions. I truly believe this game is best played by yourself as a mental challenge and some form of meditation. For me the reward of the game was learning how I learn when presented with something strange and foreign. I learned some things about myself that will likely prove useful in the future. If you played through the game quickly, relying on online guides, I do feel sorry for you. Unless you get amnesia you will likely not be able to play the game again with fresh eyes and mind. If you don't like the game and don't care, fine, just move along, you do what you do. However, if anything I have said rings plausible to you I highly suggest playing again with a different outlook. Perhaps you will get something out of it. I don't know.
It's refreshing to hear a different point of view, which is why I watched this video even though I already played and love the game. Honestly, I was expecting more plot too and was disappointed in that regard. Also, even though there were many themes (and flavorful areas to go with those themes), I would've liked the puzzle panels to not always be about drawing a line. I really liked the lack of explanations, though. In fact, I would've liked it to be more obscure, with less of a learning curve, so that you'd really have to experiment with the panels to figure out what each symbol meant. Every symbol in the game is introduced slowly with very simple puzzles that demonstrate the concept, which feels a bit hand-holdy despite Blow's anti-hand holding philosophy. The most enjoyable things the game had to offer, I'd say, are, in no particular order: A) The challenge level of some particularly tough puzzles such as "vault doors" (just a colloquial term, not a spoiler) and some postgame stuff. B) The graphics, sounds and overall idyllic island feel. C) Scratching your completionist itch - Especially if you're observant and clever, this game is good at fueling and supporting your completionism - it's not just blind scavenge hunting if you realize how to search. D) Ah hah moments.. There aren't that many, but a couple of them are pretty drastic game changers. And I'm not talking about the puzzle panels. Several players (and reviewers) probably never encountered all of them. Also, maybe the best part, it's very fair and very intelligently designed, and everything makes sense in your environment - they even hired architects to consider the structural integrity of in-game buildings. I've seen some Let's Players complain that they had to brute force a solution or that the game sometimes doesn't accept what should've been a correct solution, but in every case, they're just not quite grasping the puzzle element.
+Triggerfisk Everything is definitely thought out all the way, I agree that no puzzle is "accidentally wrong", they are just CRAZY smart lol. There is a LOT to find and discover, which is nice, but I was sad that ther reward was just solving the puzzles themselves, not anything else.
This seems cool, i'll definitely buy it... That is, after i get around to play The Talos Principle, which is next in my "Puzzle games i need to play" list.
I don't know, i like this game. I think empty world adding to the atmosphere (like empty world in Shdow of the Colossus). And when I got those tutorials, I'm often was like "Okay, next!" ). And I absolutely love those audio qoutes, the made me thinking for minutes about their meaning. Well i guess to each his own. Maybe I just really love solving puzzles )
+Filler Shmazman Yeah no doubt everyone will have a different experience playing it, Just sharing my thoughts in the first several hours (I am enjoying it more as I continue playing it) but yeah those audio logs just pissed me off haha!
+Thisisforvortex So ? The title is still what it is " You don't need to play The Witness " Somehow he's accounted for all the infinite possibilities and made his statement.
Why would you make such an assumption? You already got your answer. It's like saying his "You need to play" series is stupid because some people watching it might not like the same kind of games he likes. Opinion pieces are only worth the worth you give them, which is why you'll have to decide wether or not you like the content you see here.
"So some solutions seemed outright impossible due to what I thought the game had taught me. I totally get the appeal of teaching without telling but sometimes the instructions were too open for interpretation. You have the freedom to leave and do a different puzzle if you get frustrated, but that doesn't help if you don't know how to solve any of the puzzles." I feel like this misses the entire point of the game. It's a puzzle game, you are *meant* to have to actually explore and think about what the possible meaning of the symbols are and deduce a ruleset for them. What's the point of a puzzle game if everything is spelled out for you? One of the better aspects of the game is that it actually respects your intelligence. If you do the training panels for partitioning the black and white squares and come up with the wrong ruleset (e.g., like you and I did about some constraint of where the line is relative to the color), you can go back and look at the puzzles you solved and figure out what was really going on. "[...]...because half the time I just messed around until I got it randomly anyway." It sounds not so much that you don't like puzzle games, but that you weren't prepared to play a puzzle game. You should be willing (and eager) to figure out the ruleset for why some solution actually worked. Doing it randomly and not learning from it would of course make the game seem impossible. Audio clips can definitely be cringe-worthy, though.
+Nicholas Gorski Yeah that is a good way to describe it, I think I was expecting an exploration mystery game, not a puzzle game with very very little elements of anything else :/
I fully agree. I think the main issue I had with the game was that some areas require you to already know some mechanics that are taught somewhere else. This is a good idea in theory, but I would way to often get stuck in an area that required me to know a certain mechanic I didn't know, forcing me to scan the entire map for the little row of puzzles that explained it. Then turns out it is at the other end of the island, and to actually get to it I had to know a different mechanic that now I need to search for... After this happening several times, I just quit because it was frustrating. Maybe making the game slightly more linear would help. I don't mean making it a set course, but at least have an area that introduces mechanics next to the area that requires you to know them. Part of the frustration is also because of the lack of reward you mentioned. The first time I saw the stone people I was really exited to explore and find the other mysteries hidden in the island, and then when I realized that the only special thing to look for on the map are these stone people I stopped caring about exploration...
@@AJ-uf4sh It's trying to be a metroidvania based on knowledge. That's the core gameplay loop. And when a game has a sufficient element of exploration and wonder, that can work - but this doesn't hold true for The Witness. The only thing you gain here by solving a puzzle is unlocking another puzzle, right up to the end. When that's all there is to it you basically get a linear game where you have to do a lot of walking before you get to any actual gameplay. There are some choices and splits involved, which are welcomed, but each branch still feels very linear. That's why I said it would be better if it leaned more into that linear progression - not by making it a linear series of puzzles, but by lightly directing the player to the place they need to go and cutting back on the boring walking times. The other option is to add more interesting elements to the walking, which is what they tried to do with the environment puzzles, but it's still not enough to make the experience worth it. Again, it's just more puzzles. Initially I was fine with this since each area seemed unique, and I was intent on exploring the island and discovering what was going on - but I slowly realized that there was nothing to discover. The colors changed a bit, the environment changed a bit, but nothing else did. Nothing I did was ever meaningful. And I get it - that's the game's message, in the end literally nothing happens and you just go back to the beginning while all the puzzles are undone. But this just doesn't make for an engaging game. Instead of feeling victorious or inspired, you just feel cheated. If you want an example for a game that _did_ execute the knowledge-based-metroidvania idea well, just look at Outer Wilds. It's also a non linear game where nothing you do changes anything except for your own understanding of the world, and you have to reach different puzzles and backtrack to ones you were stuck on. Except this time it's done masterfully. Reaching new areas is fun and engaging, each time you solve a problem you feel like you made a true discovery, and you never feel like you're slogging through something that isn't the core of the game. Unlike The Witness, it's aware of what it is.
The boat shows you where to find the mechanics... even if you disregard that, why does there need to be a rush with trying to find the area for the mechanic? You're not being 'forced' to do so at all. That's why it's open and non-linear in the first place, the point is that it's fine leaving puzzles for later. This is established right after the tutorial area, with the vault puzzle utilising two mechanics you would have not come across at all. There is no indication that you would soon come across them, because there doesn't need to be any. You will eventually come across them anyway. That's probably why you had a bad experience with the Witness, you just narrowly focused on what you needed to proceed with a specific part rather than just moving on and seeing what new areas you haven't been to yet. Outer Wilds only supports this kind of playstyle indirectly because the main purpose of the ship log in rumour mode is keep track of the specific bits of information that make up the threads of knowledge you're pursuing; there's no need for the Witness to do the same thing when there aren't any barriers to the information you need to progress, save for the puzzles utilising the new mechanic you need to learn about themselves. It's hard to randomly come across the Tower of Quantum Trials, the Frozen Jellyfish, Escape Pod 3, the Black Hole Forge or even the Ember Twin Gravity Cannon if through sheer luck, you've missed it and assumed you've already found everything on Ember Twin, without the rumours linked to them. This is not the case with the Witness, which is why it isn't a big deal that you don't know what the caltrops symbol does in the Town (or any other symbol for that matter), how the stars work in the Quarry, the block mechanic in the Treehouses. Because you're going to come across them at some point unlike specific points of interest in Outer Wilds. That said, Outer Wilds is obviously the superior metroidbrainia. Lol.
I personally enjoyed every single second I spent in this game. But that's probably partially because I'm a student in mathematics, and this game is basically what I chose to do when I chose to study maths, so... It's a very special case of right up my alley.
+Jesse D It's odd, as someone with a degree in math and computer science, I've been trying to figure out why I just hate this game. I turned on 4 or 5 lasers and then just gave up. I could do the puzzles and it was cool that they were hard puzzles even to me. But the puzzles just weren't fun for me. The tetris piece puzzles involved way too many combinations and rotations and I felt like I couldn't use logic to solve it even though I understood the rules exactly, there were just too many combinations to go through. The tree shadow puzzles likewise involved so much mental twisting of the shapes, I understood what I was supposed to do but the actual untwisting of the shadows was just so tedious. The color house area was interesting, and the hexagonal panel glare shadows were okay, and the mazes in the castle were okay but none of those were that fun though. Then I got to the forest and I'm tone deaf, made it to the last one I think and just quit the game screaming in frustration. I even tried using software to analyze the tones and just couldn't. I then realized that I just purely hated the game, it's honestly one of my least favorite games I've ever played, but am still trying to figure out why everyone else who is smart seems to love it.
I know I'm super late to this video, but I wanted to say how fascinating I thought it was. I adored the game, and would describe it as my favorite work in the gaming medium for 2016. There's more to get into than I could say in a quick RUclips comment, so I'll instead say that it was cool discovering a completely alternate take; virtually all reviews I've found have been positive, which is swell for Jonathan Blow, but ends up a bit flat as far as discourse goes. I think you really hit the nail on the head with regard to the lack of rewards - the "aha" or "eureka" moment is, effectively, the reward, so someone looking for more narrative or more varied mechanics would find the progression quite hollow. Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I was extremely disappointed with this game. Especially since it was advertised for so long as "inspired by Myst", which is a really dumb way to describe The Witness. What made Myst so amazing wasn't just the puzzles, it was the story behind it, the big mystery. In The Witness, like it's said in the video, there are a bunch of clues, but in the end, even after finishing the game 100%, we find out all those clues were actually fake clues to a story that just doesn't exist. The sad part is that it takes long enough to play the game to 100% that most reviews I read about the game, and which convinced me to buy it in the first week, were all talking about the big mistery and the clues because the reviewers still hadn't completed the game 100% and didn't know it was all a lie. So anyway, as it's said in the video, if you like puzzles you could still like this game, just don't expect it to be anything more than puzzles or you'll be extremely disappointed.
+Julien Grimard Yeah thats pretty much all I wanted to say with this video, if you were hoping for more than puzzles, dont :( But the puzzles are creative! I was just expecting more
Every quote in the game was about an epiphany. That's what the game is. An epiphany. It is a puzzle first and a game second. If you search for more, you get nothing. But if you search for what the game has, you learn a lot about it.
I really enjoyed the video; I really felt discouraged by the comments critiquing the video not "getting" the game. There's an inherent elitism in comments like that which is pretty saddening to me, because it's I think they want people to empathize with them. Braid was frankly the same way as this, in my eyes. Jon Blow's philosophy on puzzles and especially people who don't subscribe to that mindset shows a dismissive attitude that I feel mirrors the reactions he and avid players of this game have received in the past. But why reflect back to those people what you disliked receiving from them? Anyone who draws up the "you're just a CoD player, that's why you dislike it" dichotomy between themselves and people who didn't jive with the game so hard should really think about their approach, because it wholly diverts and breaks the effort to help them see your point of view. And cheers Snowman, having seen this and a couple of the speedrunning videos you had up plugging the GDQs, happily subscribed. I really appreciate your going out of the way to heavily emphasize the game's positives alongside what left you feeling unresolved about, even in your videos' comments. :)
I tried to still put my heart into this despite how I felt about the game, and at the end of the day, it's just my opinion so its all good. People will hear what they want to hear, and it still is a fine video in my eyes. It's whatever, thanks tho! Your kind words mean a lot :)
This game was just amazing. Every single puzzle was like learning the language of the game. You start just understanding it at first glance. But it was just such a wonderful use of the environment. Also, there are clues everywhere, This guy is nuts.
I'm thinking about this game a lot as I slog through Sekiro. I feel sorta similarly about FromSoft games and Jonathan Blow games: I don't need an "achievement" or "trophy" to feel satisfied after figuring out how to advance through a part I've been really stuck on. I appreciated that Blow wants players to really have as many "a-ha!" moments as possible, in every way. Like, I know you sorta get something by beating bosses in Souls games, but for me, that wasn't what was gratifying. It was that HOLY CRAP! I DID IT! And I felt very similarly every time I thought, "There's no way I'm gonna solve this puzzle" and then something just clicked and I saw the solution. I felt dumb at times, and really smart at times. But I also felt really satisfied that the game was having me think in these ways that I typically don't. The emphasis on perspective was really compelling to me, too. I appreciated that every element of the game was a puzzle: from the puzzles themselves, obviously, to the puzzle of figuring out what the mechanics of each section are, to the possible backstory or situation of the world, to what is going on in Blow's mind (which I sorta feel like the game was: a representation of his obsession with puzzles). I definitely hear you though. It's not for everybody, even for people who kinda enjoy puzzles. But I do think it's at least worth checking out for fans of puzzles, or just game design.
The point of the game is to step into the psyche of someone else completely and see the world their way. It's a videogame autobiography and it's brilliant
Contrasting opinion: This game is one of the most satisfying games I've ever played (and I've played a lot of games). I went through it adamantly against looking up solutions, and that meant walking away from some puzzles for a while, but when I came back to them they were always easier. I wouldn't have enjoyed this game if I looked up solutions, because the best moments are figuring out the puzzles that you thought to be impossible, but all of a sudden just "click" and you beat it and go "HOLY SHIT FUCK YOU JON BLOW YOU BASTARD! But really, that was very clever, good job Jon Blow." A lot of the voice-logs actually DO help with puzzles, but indirectly. Some of them, and one video in the theater in particular, talk about walking away from things that you can't do in order to be happier, or something like that. They don't hold the solutions to puzzles, but instead give you a hint as to the type of mindset you should have at that point. Someone else in here mentioned the colored elevator being an obtuse puzzle, but that was one of the most gratifying puzzles in the game. I don't know color theory or what colors turn what into what, but I mapped out "looking through red glass turns this color to this and this color to this, and looking through green turns this into this and this into this" and figured out what color the floor that I needed to go to would be through patterns, and after all that legwork I could easily figure out the solution. This isn't a game that you should try to power through, this is something that you should take at your own pace. If you get stuck on a puzzle, stick with it and try thinking of different ways to solve it. If you're still stuck, move on and come back to it later with a fresh mind. The only part I hated was the pretentious bullshit ending, but the secret ending is amazing and did exactly the kind of thing I wanted the ending to do. I just wish they hadn't hidden it, or at least alluded to the fact that it was there in the main ending, which would have been fine if they had done that, like just start you back at the beginning but not change your save file or exit the game.
+Rys0n I pretty much agree with all you said, you gotta know what you're getting into, it just wasn't quite what i was expecting. I actually got the elevator puzzle without any trouble! lol, who knows
+snomaN Gaming :) That's basically it in a nutshell. If you go into this expecting first-person Myst, you're gonna have a bad time. If you go into it expecting a puzzle game on an island that uses everything it can to make a simple line-puzzle formula as varied as possible, it's amazing. You definitely didn't just have the "All it is is line puzzles, how dumb!" attitude that so many people have, and that's good because it's a dumb observation, since only half of the puzzles actually are line puzzles, and the other half just use the line-interface as a means to input your solution to the actual puzzle (often pertaining to the environment). All your points are valid thoughts when you go into the game expecting something like Myst. This is a super interesting game and I'm not entirely sure how I actually feel about it as a whole. I mean, I love it to death, but I can't articulate why exactly just yet. The more I think about it, the more amazing I find the design of the game, and walking back through the island after figuring out how the obelisks work (didn't happen upon the solutions until after I lit all the beacons) fills me with a weird sense of nostalgia. "Oh man, I remember this part of this area, this was fun!" "Oh shit, I thought this thing was weird, I totally understand what it means now!" I definitely think I'll be replaying this game in the future now, which is something that I never expected while I was was playing through it originally.
To be totally fair, the more I play it, the more I like it. I still am loving the environment and everything, the puzzles are just my least favorite part of the game
I liked The Witness's island. I enjoyed the puzzles. In the end, though, I was left feeling like Johnathan Blow was creating art for art's sake, making a game for himself rather than the public. It felt more like an art installation than a game.
This is not necessarily a bad thing at all. I am reminded in a way of The Beginner's Guide, a game by the creator of The Stanley Parable. In both cases, I feel the real fun of the game lies not in playing it, but in discussing your experience playing it with others. (The eclipse puzzle was, IMO, a bit of a dick move though.)
I loved this game. I love puzzles and I like how each area taught you a new rule about upcoming puzzles. Fantastic idea. I'm going back to try and find the rest of the puzzles. I did need help with some, but it didn't help to just copy it from somewhere. You really need to understand how you solved it. I do agree with the reward factor. There should be some kind of reward aside from turning on a laser after completing a section. I would also like to see a puzzle count and a way to see what I am missing. I would like to complete the game with 100% of the puzzles. The environmental puzzles are genius.
+jamiesbreed Yeah the environmental puzzles and even the ones that had clues in the world around you were my favorite as well. Just wish there was a little more tangibility to the whole thing, but I guess thats the whole point? lol
The "Teaching without learning" thing is meant to be that way. Yeah, one side of the puzzle is to get to the goal, but the other is to figure out HOW to solve it. Its a part of the puzzle to "Understand" it. :)
did you watch the video? he said he's all for the idea, but the execution was bad because it's too ambiguous. When teaching, some people think that solution A works, and some think solution B works. Neither are wrong, because both could be used to solve the first puzzle, but when it turns out solution B was the only real solution, those who learned thinking it was solution A gets stuck and it's not their fault. That's terrible game design
Pety The part of the whole game is to eliminate your preconceived idea. Be able to go back and think "could this have worked for another reason?" and realize: it's all about perspective.
Chesterson Jack thats all fine and dandy, but if you realize this when you get to the puzzle where only solution B works, there's one problem: the tutorial is over. They're not trying to teach you anymore. So how are you supposed to learn solution B the game isn't showing you how it works anymore? That's why this game is so trial-and-error
Pety, I found that when I couldn't come up with a solution to a puzzle with my current hypothesis of how it works, it is best to change it. This lead to me having a deeper understanding of how the game works and was a fun and engaging part of the game where you question if what you know about it is correct.
This is not a game for everyone. You need to love puzzles and be good at thinking outside the box. I was blown away over and over again playing through this and the reward is having that "ah HA" moment. If you don't like puzzles, don't expect this to be your favorite game... Although, this game may help you discover how much you really do like puzzles. I can't tell you how many times I thought to myself "Oh my god... did that really just happen?". It's brilliant and it's beautiful.
+Frank Littlefield I had a lot of those moments too when the environment helped you solve them with clues, but the ones that were just straight knowledge puzzles I hated
+snomaN Gaming There aren't really any knowledge puzzles. Some of them you have to have learned the rule or rules that are in effect, but the game gives you everything you need. You just have to think outside the box sometimes. I can gladly say I completed this game 100% without a guide or any spoilers including the challenge area and all of the obelisks. I did get frustrated at times when trying to find a solution, but if I got to that point, I just took it as me needing to rethink how I'm looking at a puzzle. You mentioned that you HAD to look at a guide for some of the puzzles in the video and that is really too bad because those were probably some of the most rewarding ones in the game. I know I got to the point where I had graph paper and a color wheel out to make sense of them and when it finally clicked, it felt great. I don't know if you consider yourself a lover of puzzles, but I think this game really separates the people who love to be truly challenged and the people who just sort of enjoy puzzles. I'm not saying one group is more right or wrong, but I imagine there are probably fewer people who say they absolutely love puzzles after playing this game. I just wish you wouldn't tell people not to play this brilliant game. I get why you didn't like it, but it's already such a strange one that many people may already avoid it. Other than that... Keep up the good content, man.
I agree. Loved Braid, but this game left me with that sterile, empty feeling you mentioned. You nailed it.... some of the puzzles seemed like they had other solutions at first, and I wasted so much time with those tetris blocks. The story was just as obtuse! At least make the story a little more exciting if the puzzles are going to be brick walls. Once I got to the mountain and the big reward was more puzzles... I couldn't even finish it.
+Enkii Muto Yeah, I know what you mean. There were parts I was really enjoying, but the puzzles were not part of them. I was actively not enjoying them lol
A similar thing I had with Toki Tori, I got curious about the second game receiving so much praise, so I went for the first one and... it is just puzzles for the sake of puzzles. It is ok if you really like it, but it is different from say... Orbit (a game about putting asteroids on... you guessed, orbit), in orbit you do have a challenge, and while you don't get much in return, it is relaxing to do it, toki tori 1... not really that gratifying.
It's the best puzzle game I've played in years, many of the puzzles are quite awesome especially the ones which use the environment. There's probably 600 puzzles or more. Learning the rules to solve the puzzles is part of the puzzle and many of the later areas will test your knowledge.
+KGhaleon Yeah, I only had a problem with the puzzles that don't use the environment, they just werent fun for me to solve (though I understand thats just personal)
Thanks so much for this. You've managed to express 100% of my frustration and general confusion at reviewers making such a big, secretive deal about this game prior to launch. Couldn't put it into words as succinctly as you have, and it's much appreciated.
The puzzle which ends the original tutorial area when looked at from a certain angle the sun looks like the dot you navigate through the puzzles, if you use it for that and finish the puzzle with the sun you get a special artsy ending
+SnoopingTurtle Actually the opinions have been pretty mixed. As it should because its such a strange game. This game showed me what a real "Art" game is, because Jonathan Blow is *absolutely completely insane* just like artists are. They focus and explore a concept to the wonder of others. No sane person would take the concept of line puzzles to that level. To bad the muses tricked him, he should have chosen a concept more familiar to the public. Many artist had a grim fate and while fortunately this has not been the case the road of an artist is always wrought with peril.
+adrixshadow Ah to be honest i havent really kept an eye out for reviews. I have just seen what some people have been saying on twitter and what not :P
+SnoopingTurtle Yeah, I didn't mean to be too harsh, just critical and honest. There are parts I REALLY like about it, but was disappointed in other areas
Shucks, you actually adopted my alternate name for "teaching without teaching"! But yeah, I agree that the game is a just too opaque. It really fumbles the stealth tutorial thing. To intuitively teach the player without telling them what to do, you have one of two options: you construct a situation where the solution is brain-dead obvious, but makes use of a feature that hasn't been introduced yet, or you can construct a situation where it's easy to stumble upon a new mechanic accidentally. The Witness just gives you vague clues and assumes you'll figure it out on your own. It sends you vague messages and expects you to interpret them in very specific ways. That's bad tutorial design and also bad puzzle design. P.S.: I chuckled when you described the little literature quote audio recordings as pretentious -- if Jonathan Blow is anything, he's crazy pretentious, and this is coming from someone whose favorite music genre is progressive rock.
+MADMACHlNE Lol i like that last line, that made me laugh. To be fair, when I went back and looked at the tutorials again, if Ihad actually analyzed them better, I probably would've understood them better, but they were just so easy to solve, I moved on really quickly so I didnt really learn anything. Not sure of a perfect solution, but i felt it could've done a little better
For me the reward is having that 100% save file you could show to someone. I understand how frustrating it might be to have gone through all that and get nothing, though.
I was happy to watch my bro play this and I did love the environment puzzles, but yeah I agree with the reward part. The world was so interesting it felt like a wasted opportunity. They easily could have built more of a story arc that complemented the scenery instead of just being vague and pretentious.
I am a puzzle guy, and I had my fun solving these puzzles. But being a huge braid fan, I always compared it to Blows first game, and that leads to my major critic point: Most of the puzzles do not interact with the world itself. It seemed like Blow had this line puzzle idea and than just created a workd around it. I know, there are some puzzles that interact with the environment, like the apple trees, or shadow and light placement, but most of them did not really depend on the island around them.
+pfbjjz Yeah Im in the same boat, like I just wish there was a little more in the world, and obviously there is more than JUST line puzzles...but there was a distinct lack of it, and lack of story :(
MoonLit for me, it is not that there are too few ideas for a game. It just feels, that the world/island is just an inessential gimmick, (most of) the puzzles would also work on its own, like a smartphone app "unblock me free"-style. In braid everything feeled like one consistent game. PS: please, don't get me wrong. I had my fun with the game, just got the platinum trophy. But compared to braid i felt a little unpleased sometimes.
+pfbjjz I'm not sure that being on the island is just a gimmick. Because as you know there are other types of puzzles in the game that would not translate well into your suggested format. And there is, although I'm not seeing it discussed anywhere, an underlying narrative that tries to show a stark contrast between the two types of puzzles within the game, as you might infer from dialogues and clips in the island, something claimed by "critics" as pretentious. Which seems to be a valid criticism for some reason.
The obelisks, I think, fix this nicely. Just about every region has puzzles built into the very structure of the world itself. Can't make better use of the world than that. Actually, it's been some time since I've played. Does the platinum trophy include the obelisks? Or is it just the lasers + challenge?
Had a very similar feeling during the brief time I played it. Going through long lists of panels only to have nothing happen killed my enjoyment fast. Glad I checked here because the only thing keeping me going was the hope of some great mystery to be solved at the end.
First, I played for an hour and had an awesome time. The next two hours I had trouble finding the 'tutorial' puzzles, and got really, really, bored and frustrated. After finding them, I'm loving it again, so far having solved about 280. But it's definitely only for people who find satisfaction in the solving.
This is what I would have much rather seen from Joseph Anderson than the bad review he made on the game, just politely explain why the game wasn't for you. I think if you took the game more as not looking for a reward but rather as a more meditative experience you might have enjoyed it more. The game satisfied my curiosity all the way and I loved it a lot.
This is one of my favorite game of all times. It shows genius in puzzle design and overall though that's put into the game is amazing. And yes, there are some other endings, and puzzles hidden right in front of your eyes the whole time. So in a way, panels are there to misguide you into thinking that's all you do. The only part I didn't like is the sound puzzles, because I had a hard time hearing even the easier notes.
Yeah, I've since gotten all the endings, beaten everything, etc. And it certainly was unique and had a few a-ha moments, but overall still felt like "whats the point" ya know? I get now that its a game about learning or whatever, but it just wasnt for me i guess
To me, the puzzles were enough to keep me going, though I too felt that something was missing.But only because I felt potential to be much more. Can you name any puzzle games that you really enjoyed and had similar a-ha moments?
The first time I found an environmental puzzle, it blew my mind (and I mention this in the video, in a non-spoilery way). Then I wanted to find them everywhere, and I did!
The reviews I've heard so far have been half and half. Seems like either you love it and think it's the most brilliant puzzle game in years, or hate it and found it repetitive and frustrating. Getting a lot of the puzzle pieces in Braid felt the same way, so I don't see myself thoroughly liking this game. Though I'll admit, it looks stunning.
+LassHaley Yeah I think it all comes down to preference of game genres. I LOVE platformers so I enjoyed Braid much more. But my friends who LOVED Myst are loving The Witness
+LassHaley I think the problem with a lot of the reviews is that they were written by people who haven't finished the game. A bunch of the reviews I saw are talking about the statues, and the story, and the mystery, but when you finish the game 100% you find out that it was all a lie to keep you playing, that actually there is no story or mystery, just a bunch of statues that don't mean a thing. So I think a lot of positive reviews are from people who haven't finished it, and a lot of the negative reviews are from people who have actually finished it, all for nothing. As for +snomaN Gaming's friends who love the game because they loved Myst, I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure they hadn't finished the game 100% when he wrote this. I loved Myst, and I loved The Witness at first. I even wrote a review on Steam where I said it was great game and how I couldn't wait to learn more about the people who lived on the island. I was sure there was a bigger mystery to be understood, especially since the game had been advertised as "inspired by Myst", but then ended up changing my review to a negative review once I finished the game 100% and found out at the end, there is nothing... It doesn't even bother to say "congrats, you finished the game", absolutely nothing happens. Even the old Solitaire on Windows 98 had a better ending than this. All this for nothing, and all the clues and statues are just random objects placed there as decoration, nothing more.
Hi snomaN. I have the exact same feeling about The Witness. It's great to see such an honest review and that you didn't delete this video even though it has many dislikes. I wrote an article about how bad is the game design of this game (not available in English) and I see your point. I'm surprised by the ratings of The Witness on Metacritic. Level design and graphic are great but there's no gameplay that the player seeks.
+Tom Wojcik I'm glad there's other people that feel the same way I do, instead of most people that just said I "didn't get it". I had some fun with it, but it definitely had its frustrations
I´ve only played like 2 hours, but I´m really enjoying the game. I get your point (as always, the video was awesome and well explained), but there´s something about the game that just makes me like it. I don´t know, but for me it kinda feels as if the puzzles are fully integrated with the island (even though they are just line puzzles). Keep up the good content!
I think this game is a piece of conceptual art. The puzzles are just part of the journey, they are keys and they are rewards themselves. Jonathan Blow tries to challenge you to the limit, not only with the puzzles but with the environment, the videos, the audio tapes and the intriguing story of this little town where the time just stopped and people became statues. Why did this happen? Nobody knows... Probably nobody will ever know. This game manages symbolism, semiotics and a lot of other beautiful techniques that are normally found in art and art only. What does this tell us? This tells us that Jonathan is trying to make art in the most pure way from a videogame. Try this as walking in a painting. It's one of those games that you have to analyze and get your own interpretation out of it, and then analyze again, with a smile on your face, thinking and always thinking... Just like a master piece of art. In my opinion, this is a game you DO need to play. If you really like to think, interpret, observe, explore and analyze art. My girlfriend, his brother and I just played this game and almost in every puzzle and every new room we walked in, every single audio we found, every single video we watched, we looked at each other and said... "Man, Jonathan Blow is a genius." And I really think he is, I think Jonathan Blow is one of the biggest geniuses of the industry, because he is not just trying to make one game with really awesome puzzles (Which by the way I really think they are, they are pure puzzles), he is trying to take videogames to the next level and make them beautiful, real, pure art. He knows not everybody will like it, he just doesn't care. Believe me, he could create a best seller if he wanted to (We all know Braid) But he just decided to take another step further. If you just look for "fun" in a game, and action, and coins and extra abilities and bosses and all that normal rewards games "must" have. This is not the game for you. If you look for deep concepts, poetry, symbols, critics, challenging puzzles and beautiful, complete art. This is the game for you. I felt playing this game similar as reading one of Jorge Luis Borges' books, just rewarding itself. I really recommend it. Sorry for my english by the way. And keep the good work Snoman. I really like your videos and I've learned so much of game design from you. We just have different opinions about this one.
+Jose Romero Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said. The more I played it I just had to accept that what I was expecting wasn't going to be in the game, and it was very different from what I thought it would be. And thats okay, as you said it's absolutely still art, no denying that. And I did have many moments of jaw-dropping awe, it just wasn't in the puzzles themselves for me. It was in the secrets and the island. Just wish there was more of that and less of the puzzles. But yeah, still a good game overall! He tried something very new and different, so mad respect to Blow for that
I'm really liking this. Yes understand the key to a solution can be obtuse if you stray from the main path (which you will because it's open world) but it gets you thinking on crazy ways
I know im super late, but as a "game design channel" this video totally misses the point... Ive seen few games with such elegant core game design as the witness, and thats beside the realtionship the player has with puzzlers.
I have been playing The Witness at a friend's PS4 a bit every sunday we could meet, along all this year and it was one of my most pleasant times to enjoy and expect every week. I think that this game is greater than just puzzles and it can become a real obsession. I think the pressure you have to get out a video on a game didn't let you have a time with the game in a way you could have enjoyed it better, and enjoy the whole experience it is.
I would say top 15. Dont get me wrong. I fucking loved it. But the lack of a story kind of gets me down. I dont think the game needs one. It doesnt fit the purpose of the game
Enzo De Rezende It does have one though. It's just VERY hard to find it. Blow said he planned to have a huge "info-dump" at the end of the game, but changed his mind during production. There are about six tapes in the game that don't have quotes, but part of the story in them
Are u kidding ? You mean like, a story that explains the reason for that island to exist ? The tapes ? Who created the island ? Why is that main mountain like that ? The reason for the tvs (in the main mountain also) ? Who putted you there ? Who are u ? Why are u there ? Why did u went floating by the end of the game w Shit, I really hoped he went for that plot twist ending or story ending
I loved this game!! I know a lot of people said that they didn't like it, but for me, it was all about curiosity and discovery. I'll admit, I was stuck on some puzzles for a whole day. I took pictures with my phone and would look at them in between classes and work just in hopes of having a fresh perspective. It really helps to have an open mind and not expect to be able to play through the whole thing like you would a campaign in a FPS or Assassin's Creed or something. You have to know when you've been momentarily defeated and walk away for a little bit.
3:33 Pieces that are shown at an angle can be rotated and pieces shown aligned with the grid can't. It's pretty clear if you found the place that they teach you the mechanic
I got it for free on epic store and played for 2 days. Then uninstalled it. I know, kinda harsh, bu I got the same feeling the video said. I think I am a puzzle games fan, but The Witness is just for geniuses or non anxiety people. Also I did looked up for the ending on youtube and id be like "ok fine i dont need to play it then"
The shown statue and the chalice... try to look at the shadow. It's awesome how in one turn the man craves to have the chalice and in the other turn he already has it and is toasting... It's one of the things what the game wants to teach us, different perspective about everything... the vaults and the briefcases are somewhat explaining the story of the island (or what it should teach us and yes it is all about learning).
Thank you for that non-recommendation, snomaN. I read so much praise from game developers on Twitter so now it's really interesting to hear a gamer's point of view. After Yahtzee's ZP review which didn't rate the game too good either, I think I now have a rough idea what really to expect from this game. I'm still interested in playing it though, but I might wait for a sale.
+Zet Thats a good idea, it's still worth checking out if it's brought down a bit, it does a lot of cool things. The puzzles just weren't my thing, and thats alright. The environment and all that were the best part
You are definitely not "just solving line puzzles" for example in the desert part you are guided by the reflections on the screens of the puzzles and then the reflection of the water of the reflection of the sun on the screen of the puzzles, and to top it all of IT IS SO DARN HARD!! I gave up early in the game and then my brother did the rest of the by watching the solutions on youtube
The advance shots of this were scintillating as hell, huh? As someone who loves strong visual concepts and a pretty outspoken fan of first-person explorathons (the term "walking simulator" is frigging despicable) I was so looking forward to the Witness, but with mild trepidation that I seem to reserve only for Blow's games: they always seem to emphasize ludo- chalk talk over actual, incisive design.
+Coin Explosion It's definitely for a specific audience I think. Blow knows the people that will like his games, and I think they are people like him - very into puzzles.
i've gotten into the game a bit at this point and you're *absolutely* right on everything you said! i only downloaded it 'cause it was free on Epic Games earlier this year, and I really feel sorry for folks who paid money and find that unless they're Mensa-level genius they'll _have_ to refer to a guide for likely more than a few puzzles due to the very problem you mentioned: they teach you progressively, but simultaneously _don't_ really teach you when it comes to anything more than a basic puzzle. for example i'd never in a million years realize the piece transferability along the board for those puzzles where you have to trap pieces contiguously, or even easier-yet-still-screwy implied rules like 'flat' tetris pieces vs 'tilted' ones. it feels like i'm prepping for a standardized test it's _that_ hard to want to come back to the game. and i freaking got it for free! i'm about to start q.u.b.e. 2 (also acquired for free from Epic Games) and it looks way more fun tbh. just steer clear of this one unless you either don't care about looking up tons of puzzle solutions to blow through it, or you actually taught Einstein the Theory of Relativity yourself by time-traveling in a machine you built and everything this world has to offer bores you
The Environment Is A HUGE Part Of Almost ALL The Puzzles, The Trees, The Shadows, The Sun Glare... Yea, It's DEEPER Than Jus Those Box Line Puzzles, But Still Like 1 BIG Joke... There IS A Hidden Ending, BUT NOT WORTH IT...!!!
If I may add, I think the point of this game is exactly about not having a reward. When you watch (spoiler [not really]) the movies in the mill's basement, you get a bunch of people talking about some philosophical subjects, but for me the pattern was clear after watching two clips: There was no objective at all. We started the game expecting an objective, a goal. But instead we were given puzzles (wich I find that is the perfect example of what a puzzle should be), and in any moment, the game says exactly what you have to do. But why the hell you were solving them anyway? But we keep doing them, even though we don't know why. My interpretation was that this game is all about that, even when we try to assign objectives to what we do in life, sometimes we do things (like playing games) that we do only for the activity itself to be honest. I could just give up in that moment, but then I tought: "This questions don't need a reward or answer to be enjoyable, they already fulfill that goal without these things.". Not saying that you should enjoy it, i'm just adding a different perspective to the discussion.
+Paulo Felipe Tupiná Yeah the more I learn about that and everything, I'm sure that was the point. Which is fine I guess, just not what i was expecting :/
I 100% agree with every points you made, but I really liked this game. I started enjoying it more when I stopped thinking this was an adventure game or a story driven puzzler like Portal or The Talos Principle. It really is a harcore puzzle game, the only rewards come from the satisfaction of solving puzzles. This game is also very difficult and the biggest challenge is often understanding the mecanics. I have a lots of respect for Jonathan Blow for releasing a game like this because The Witness is clearly aimed at a really specific type of players and he never considered dumbing it down. I would not recommand The Witness to many people I know but I'm happy that this game exists, it's really unique.
That puzzle at 7:12 looks great, that's super creative. I just wish more of them were creative like that. The worst part to me is that you don't always know the rules; not knowing the rules of a game is a super easy way to get frustrated fast. (disclaimer: i haven't played it and this video is about all i've seen of it)
+Christian Legge The not knowing the rules part is entirely up to the player. The game does not hold your hand and does not tell you what to do. It does a great job of teaching you the mechanics and it has a steady progression in difficulty if you go to the right places. The thing a lot of people don't get is that, if you can't solve a puzzle, back away, look for other puzzles, and later you will figure that one out. And trust me, most of the puzzles in the game are super creative. It blows your mind time after time with the variety of puzzles and mind-bending things it makes you do. Most people who dismiss the puzzles as being "all the same" didn't make it past the first few zones, where the game teaches you"the first level" of puzzles (this is a puzzle, here's how you solve it). There are many layers of complexity to the game beyond line puzzles in a panel.
Yeah so this is true ^. I do feel like I wasn't taught very well, but the level of detail in the puzzles and difference among the zones was really really cool. Once I did understand the puzzles, I felt a little better (though I still looked up a bunch of the puzzles I just didn't find fun). The best ones were the ones where clues are in the environment, wish there were more of them. But to each their own, and you can't deny the variety. It does a lot right.
That’s why it’s called ‘you don’t *NEED* to play’, not ‘you *SHOULDN’T* play’. It’s just a video pointing out some flaws and some good things with the game, not just shitting on it because of his opinion. He pointed out that if you like puzzle games, you’d probably enjoy it, but otherwise, it’s not the game for you and you don’t *need* to play it because it doesn’t have much in terms of story.
Only people that cheated think the game is a chore. This is because they haven't had the feeling of achievement from smashing a puzzle you were stuck on for days.
i think that "minor spoilers" means something very different to you than it does to me...
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@@thatinternetshipperyouknow632 cringe
ThatInternetShipper YouKnow Yikes
He wants you to NOT play the game... haha
@Roberto Armando definitely not a bot
I'm not actually a puzzle guy, but the witness made me felt so smart when I completed an area. And, when I found out the real ending, it blew my mind
William Bann ikr. You mean the real real ending? So the one at the beginning? The one that fucks you up completely?
There's absolutely no chance that a guy that "feels smart" when completing WItness areas solved the puzzle needed for the real (pretentious and awful) ending.
It's obvious that you mostly played this game with a a walkthrough. i wonder why do you feel the need to comment on it...
Nikos A lol chill bro your sentences are incoherent
My sentences are ok for a non native speaker. The only thing that's incoherent here is your brain.
Pazl yes yes yes
"This puzzle game has too many puzzles"
Snoman: “You don’t need to play the witness”
Also Snoman: “I won’t spoil it for you”
But I don’t need to play the game so please spoil it for meeeee 😭
ahahahaha good point xD
Brandon Larkin So basically as you play the game, ideally you're supposed to start to see these circle start line puzzles on the actual island structured/scenery, cloud patterns, and everywhere else. Basically once you have looked at these line puzzles for so long, you're supposed to get a tetris effect where you start to see them everywhere.
There is no reward for solving the environmental puzzles, not even more puzzles. There's not even an achievement/trophy for it and most people who play the game will probably never even realize they exist
Watch Joseph Anderson’s video on it
@@sampitman3630 wanted to say that
I guess we won’t *witness* the ending of this game
"Sans, why doesn't he love my puzzles!?"
Those puzzles are line puzzles, not the turning the O's into X's and pressing the button
no you turn X's into O's
@@sanspapyrus9564 You can cleary see that those puzzles made by an untalented and unaknowledged being are cleary infeior.
I loved Braid, and all I knew of the Witness was that it was a puzzle game made by Jon Blow, so I knew I had to play it. The first area seemed kind of cute with the little puzzles, then after solving a few more it dawned on me that this might be the whole game, and I became a bit disheartened. I was expecting an innovative puzzle game with interesting mechanics like Braid or Portal. Instead, I'm putting a line between some squares to separate the colours.
By the end of the game, it had become one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. When I read from your description that you finished it, I was shocked that it's possible to finish the game without falling in love with it. I would have expected you to ragequit long before that happens.
But when you mentioned that you would sometimes make guesses until it accepted them, and looked up some of the answers, then it makes complete sense. It is a game of exploration and patience. If you go into it expecting to grind through it in a day, then you're unlikely to come out of it very happy. It's a bit like Dark Souls in that way, which can also be spoiled by research.
+Zantier Ta'sa Yeah, I still appreciated what the puzzles did while looking them up, but of course this removed my "aha" feeling moments. That being said, the puzzles I DID solve without any help or clues from the environment, the ones that just take logic and figuring out, were not fun for me nor satisfying to solve. They were annoying. But again, everyone will experience that differently
Yeah, that's fair enough that people will react differently to it.
The figuring out how to solve the puzzles, and getting to see the ingenuity and beauty behind the concepts was certainly the most enjoyable part of the game, compared to solving the puzzles themselves.
A few of the puzzles took me over an hour to complete for various reasons, and I'm sure the satisfaction of completing those had something to do with it.
Anyone saying "you just solve line puzzles" must be missing something important from their brains. The "just" is the key word here. This is not a lush island filled with completely unrelated minigames! To get the answers you must study the terrain! At one stage you walk a path based on clues from the previous path and then translate that route to the puzzle. It's an absolutely genius concept to have clues to the mini puzzles all about you in the world. Not at first, of course - the first few are easy but there is a reason that you can't just walk to the last puzzle and solve it before the rest - because the game is constantly teaching you. Each puzzle teaches a valuable lesson. I can just see Jonathan Blow tearing out his hair seeing such opinions, and I feel bad for the guy- he's smart enough to write his own programming language and has to deal with people fundamentally misunderstanding his work on a mass scale. Honestly I don't care that people don't have the patience to see the depth of something like this, they can enjoy what they want but it's really misleading to have people believe this game involves nothing more than simply walking about an island and drawing lines. If that's all you see then I pity you.
I honestly feel the same way as Snowy. I've played it and while I was blown away at the ways it taught me to do the line puzzles, but...it's just line puzzles. Smart line puzzles! Pretty line puzzles! The environment teaches you in so many amazing ways how to solve these line puzzles, but nothing that didn't eventually bore me. I'm pretty easily amused, but this was really tiresome. I found myself just backing away from every puzzle out of exhaustion and I haven't been able to bring myself to play it since I got it. I try to go back but I just end up walking around aimlessly, fiddling with a screen for a while, giving up and moving on to another one. It's constantly teaching me, but when I don't get the message and hit a brick wall, there's no real way to learn at that point. I'm just standing there looking at a screen.
But I don't like line puzzles.
The Witness managed to push the maze concept quite far enough to explore all its possibilities. It takes something as simple as a maze and turns it into a 50-hour worth of gameplay experience. In some way, it's not as different as any other game (being "just an FPS" or "just a strategy game"... with enough gameplay mechanics to make it unique) but The Witness does it with the most simplest form of entertainment : lines and paths. Beyond the game itself, it's a real proof of dedication, and Jonathan Blow didn't fall into the trap of doing alternative minigames here and there to add content !
It doesn't take much for you to pity someone :/ people can have their own opinions, maybe they just weren't into it as much as you were but it definitely doesn't mean you should be condescending especially when you have zero right to be
HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE GUY THAT MADE SALAD FINGERS
"You must study the terrain" --okay, but the youtuber explicitly references this in his review and says he "won't spoil it for others because it was one of his favorite parts of the game." He knows full well what you're talking about, it's not like he just didn't like this game because he happened to miss the bigger puzzles.
I think why people, including yourself, found this game so frustrating in terms of there not being dialogue or instruction is because this isn't a game about solving puzzles. This is a game about understanding puzzles. Personally, I think reward comes from understanding how each new puzzle element works. Yes, there were times where it was extremely difficult and frustrating, but it's rewarding when you get past that stage and start understanding the puzzles and their different dynamics.
+Salmon Yeah I think I just went in expecting something very different. The whole point is the puzzles, nothing more
@@snomangaming also understanding life
That was not a joke
@@snomangaming the game is absolutely about understanding life.
@@tomtang7463 makes sense since the island looks like part of the brain if you think about it
Drk
I found this game highly addictive... especially when you unlock a shortcut that was literally under your eyelids the whole time but didn't know how to access (cough challenge cave cough). By the way, you do get rewarded only in the very end, after you've become the mountain king.
When you complete every pannel (spoiler) enviromental puzzle, audiolog,super challenge, etc. there is no reward whatsoever. After all, it doesn't matter what you do on the island if there is no witness to your achevements ;D
2:36 "Everything interesting in the Witness, the scenery, the mystery, the hidden clues. All of it take a back seat to the puzzles." I'm probably not the first person to say this, but have you consider that maybe the puzzles are the most interesting thing about this game?
Regarding the game not spelling out its rules to you, I would think that figuring out the rules yourself is the main point of the game. In the beginning of a series of puzzles, the rules of the puzzles are implemented in a less stringent way such that you could conceive of multiple possible rule sets. As you progress in the series of puzzles, the puzzles begin to converge towards the actual rule set, and it's important to examine your assumptions about the rules as you go. Personally, I find that very cool and interesting, but it seems that most people who didn't have a great time with the Witness think of that as the game's shortcoming rather than a positive thing.
4:21 "Solving each problem doesn't leave me with satisfaction, and normally just causes me to say 'oh okay', because half the time I just messed around until I got it randomly anyway." It upsets me quite a bit that this is how you view the puzzles. You seem to think that the puzzles are only obstacles, and that you're done with them after you solve them. For me, the puzzles are partly obstacles, but more importantly they are opportunities for gaining understanding. Gaining understanding is the big source of satisfaction in this game, at least for me. If I solved a puzzle without knowing what it is that I did to solve it, then I wouldn't leave that puzzle alone until I understand how to solve it.
In an RPG, you'd level up your characters and buy better gear to deal with tougher enemies as you progress in the game. If someone played an RPG, didn't level up their characters or buy gear, and said the game was too hard, you'd probably say that they played the game wrong. In The Witness, you don't have weapons or stats. You "level up" by building your understanding of the puzzles. To play responsibly, you should solve the puzzles to understand them rather than to simply get through them.
+Doofus "have you consider the notion that maybe the puzzles are the most interesting thing about this game?"
He addressed this point directly in the video when he said something to the effect of "if you are the type of person that derives satisfaction merely from the completion of the puzzles, then that previous comment does not apply to you."
And in regards to your analogy to explain the "leveling up" in The Witness, I agree to an extent. I personally do not see the entertainment value in being rewarded for solving a puzzle by being given harder puzzles, and I think it's fair to say that the market for such a game is rather small. Existent, but small. If The Witness provided a little more effort to providing more of a reward to solving puzzles, such as giving players more context to the world they are exploring or by permanently altering the hub world with new art or a short cut bridge, then I believe the game would have more marketability due to the variety of ways the game tries to immerse players and make them feel valued. But since the game is essentially a walking simulator with puzzles (bc their "story" is purposefully vague and suffers for it), I would get just as much enjoyment from solving Sudoku puzzles on my phone. And if I'm given the option between spending $40 or not spending $40 to get the same type of experience, I'm gonna stick with my free brain stimulators.
+Nico las I don't think that addresses my point. It's conceivable to me that someone could not enjoy something while still understand how it might be interesting. Also, I just find that kind of a meaningless thing to say. It's like saying "If you're like me, then you'll agree with me."
Speaking of making the players feel valued. If you believe what Jon Blow says, then he made the game this way because he does value the players' time and intelligence, therefore he refrained from adding artificial rewards to the game.
"I would get just as much enjoyment from solving Sudoku puzzles on my phone" I don't believe that, though I don't know how much you enjoy Sudoku. Personally, I don't enjoy Sudoku, but I like the Witness a lot.
IMO, the experience of solving Sudoku puzzles is fundamentally different than that of playing the Witness. In Sudoku, you're told the rules up front. Solving individual Sudoku puzzles is then more of a mechanical process of applying the rules that you've learned beforehand. There's very little discovery in Sudoku. You could possibly find more efficient ways of applying the rules, but I think that's about it. In the Witness, you aren't explicitly told any of the rules to the puzzles. Figuring out the rules is the main part of the game.
Doofus I guess it's the nature for unconventional games like The Witness to spawn different opinions, because there isn't a universal, culturally-inherited response already embedded in us, like how our responses to more mainstream games (like COD) can be categorized in specific responses to the material. Because the game is so different from anything else, it has the blessing and the curse of leaving it up to players to make meaning of it for themselves. I should probably try the game before I judge it any further, but the whole idea that makes this game unique is also its selling point, and it simply hasn't proven to me that I would find it worth the $40.
+Doofus *slow claps* You hit the nail on the head, bud. This reviewer clearly let his biases get the best of him and he ended up knocking the game for what it wasn't, rather than for what it was. He missed the entire message/theme of the game and by doing so, I believe his analysis is both short sighted and amateurish.
+Snazzy it is not. the game tries to intrigue people with an apparent mystery with stuff like the statues but in reality it is all about the puzzles. why are there statues, where is the rest of the story ect the answer is there is no rest of the story because it is an unfinished game (see the second ending). so what the reviewer said is do not be mislead by the apparent promise of a story this games is all about the puzzles , which it is. and it is only a good game to small niche audience which it is
But thats exactly the point
U dont need a reward. More puzzles is your reward.
The worst thing that could happen is you finish all the puzzles.
There is no need for a reward. You wanna find all the audio tapes ? Alright, but do it because u want to, not because if you do the game will reward you if a achiviment or something.(The are only 2 achievements)
The game isnt a chore.
Thats my interpretation
Enzo De Rezende Exactly, it's like complaining that your reward for beating a level in a platformer is more unlocking the next level
See a cool shipwreck, go check it out. I loved the game cause I could just do whatever I want, seriously one of the best games I've played in yearrrrrs.
IT'S AN OPINION
literally 4:12
Weird, one of the things you listed as a huge problem was something I really liked, you can't just assume something works as-is, so you have to second guess yourself until you're relatively sure you know the rule. That should be a good thing. It's a very very good example of confirmation-bias at work, one of the worst things that plagues humans as a whole, believing something just because and becoming absolutely sure of yourself not through evidence or anything logical but purely because someone or something else thinks/does something the same way, and using that fallacy to support and build up your 'belief' until you think it's true.
I completely get that the puzzle genre etc. isn't for everyone, so I'm fine with you not liking those aspects, but this one in particular bugged me because I see it as something inherently flawed in humankind that we should all have been taught to be aware of lest we become 'stuck in our ways', it leads to intolerance and ignorance and is the cause of some of the worst social divides among people. Keep playing games, and keep enjoying different things though, different opinions on what games you enjoy can only be good for the longevity of the industry.
+Xanderj89 Yeah that is a pretty personal gripe. And I have since played more of the game since making this video and I can really appreciate what it does. Once you learn the rules, it's fine, it's just really hard :P
ugh i really hate this in one of my friends, we play a lot of puzzle games together where one "plays" it and the other one also plays it by watching and guessing and guiding at the same time, and in many occasions he just says things like ok yeah thats it so we now know this ez done no way this is wrong... i can't really describe what i mean but it's basically exacty what you wrote
All I hear is "You don't need to play the witness cause it's not for me"
more like "You don't need to play the witness cause it's not for me or any other not-into-puzzle-person". and its cool, because otherwise you may spend over a 10 hours of gameplay you just dont enjoy, in the expectation of something awesome
You phrased it even better. The underline is - If you like puzzle games, play it, if you don't, don't.
"If you don't like 'impactful experiences' don't play it."
C'mon man, that just sounds douchey.
you've got a point, fixed ;)
Dvir Arazi
Cool man, cool. :D
Something you might not have noticed: the map on the boat shows different symbols representing different puzzle types, and if you go to the location on the map where it shows a certain symbol, you find the "tutorial" puzzles that are supposed to "teach" you how to do that kind of puzzle. I thought that was brilliant because it felt like you were "finding" an essential item like a key or something, but in the form of learning how to do that kind of puzzle. It was like learning a language.
I completely 100% agree that the mystery was totally unsatisfied though. I was driven forward in the game by wanting to know more about the statue people, and... then I beat the game.
+Lee Hearts Yeah once I understood all the puzzles I felt a little better, but they still weren't enjoyable for me (but I know thats just personal preference). But yeah...the mystery, my favorite part. Def unsatisfying
There's a somewhat better story resolution if you place close attention near the end of the game and get access to the secret area. It's not perfect, but you do find out a whole lot more than you do just by finishing the game.
But is it the game’s fault, though, that you were expecting some resolution where everything made sense? The game is clearly not story driven.
I think i actually like it more, that you didn't get the answer. The game is not solvable, and life isn't too. There is no solution to mysteries of life and there is no solution to mystery of the witness. Your life is just bunch of puzzles. You will learn the basics when you are a kid... How to speak, read etc. You will learn that the puzzles have solution and you need to find it. That's the castle area. Then you will leave your home for the first time. The school, work and everything after that. That leaving is opening the gate. You will open the gate to the life and now, there is everything before you. There are things that you will learn easily, there are things that you will never learn. Just like on the island. And there is no order. Some things need knowledge of some other areas. Some of them don't. For example, psychics is not much understandable withnout understanding math. Well in some cases. You can get through some parts, without knowing math. But you will never be able to become an expert. But for the art, you don't need math or language. And if you think yout it, that's what happened on the island. Basics were alone. Other things contained things not from their desinged areas.
Now, the ending. The mountain. The goal of life. True happines. Was inside the mountain something incredible? I don't think so. Just more puzzles. Puzzles, that you were solving the whole time. If the goal of the life is just to solve more puzzles, doesn't it mean, that true happines is hidden right in solving those puzzles? Is there somethning more? Maybe. Can we reach it? Hardly. Many of you saw, that the only way to get to the hidden cave inside the mountain, was to solve everything. And even there, there were more puzzles. Even though you did learned how to solve all of them before, you still can find some of them difficult. Some of them are easier. Yes, but not all of them. But why? You learined everything. You know everything. And still... Do you feel completion? No... Why is that?
After that you can just enter the elevator again. And do it all over again. And again. And again. There is nothing more. There never was anything more. Just puzzles. The same ones. Again and again and again. It's like madness. You are locked inside that cycle. And there is now way out. Or is there a way out?
You may mention now the gate. But, where does this gate leads if you open it differently? In the reality. More puzzles. More problems to solve. Again and again and again. Yes they are different then the ones on the island. But still. You are just solving puzzles. what's the differnce then?
How is reality different that the game? More puzzles to solve. You solve one, another opens. And there is no clear way to win the life. There is no clear way to win the Witness.
I heard that the Witness is meditation. I believe it. Meditation over life itself. The only thing that lifes gives you is puzzles and time to solve them. I doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter which one you can do best. The only things that matters.... that exists, are... You, puzzles and time to solve them. That's the only thing that exists. If you can't find happines in that, you are out of luck. Beacuse there is nothing more. There never was anythnig more. All our believes of someting outside are just like believe that there is a mystery to solve in the Witness. Maybe there is. Maybe there is not. Truth is, that we will never know for sure. And, in the end, it doesn't matter. Because life is not about that mystery. Life is about someting much closer. As the gate to true ending was right in front of you, when you entered the game, the goal of life is right in front of you. The whole time.
Just look at your life again... You are looking at the puzzle of goal of life right now. You did the whole time. It doesn't matter how much you know. It does't matter how clever, beautiful, tall, fat or anything you are. The thing you were looking for is right in front of you. It was there the whole time. Just look at it. And if you are not able to see it, keep learning. Someday you will find it.
I know this is long. So thanks for reading. This is why i think that there is no answer to the mystery of The Witness. Beacuse there is no answer to mystery of The Life. The Witness is witness of life.
@@snomangaming someone isnt dumb for using a guide. you can solve what you can on your own try first then use a guide when stuck. the problem was they made timed puzzles that changed that you couldnt even do with a guide at the end. so the game said F you we wont give you the satisfaction to finish not even with a guide. so yea that was the biggest mistake on the game makers part. it ruins the game. a game is not special to people if they cant beat it. they are just like F this game im done with it. if a game was hard and they needed a guide but can beat it they would be like oh i respect that game still.
I played The Witness and I loved it. SO MANY PUZZLES! : D
+KingTwelveSixteen Yeah if you love puzzles, no doubt you'll like it :D
+snomaN Gaming did you get the two endings?
Yes. The 2nd one messed me up pretty hard. Still no answers tho lol
+snomaN Gaming The "answers" you're looking for can be found in six specific audio logs. All of them are inaccessible until you have access to a certain area which requires all 11 lasers
@@OriionCygnus even then it takes some reading between the lines.
I didn't believe the game was only a puzzle game, it had adventure game elements to it, it had the environmental puzzles that require no deeper thought to process. The reward was to progress into the next secret area of the game.
+Guy Fawkes Yeah, I played the rest of the game after making this vid, and it had more hidden stuff, but it was still just alright for me, but im not the target demographic
snomaN Gaming got ya, maybe next time
This is how to make a negative review! I didn't feel like you were attacking the game, but rather politely explaining why it wasn't for you. Not to mention that your opinions are very valuable. I personally loved this game, but I now understand why people wouldn't. Well done!
Three years late on this, but hey
One of the key ideas in the study of teaching (known as pedagogy) is that of *misconceptions* - when someone thinks they understand how something works (and can maybe produce a method that sometimes works), but they don't actually understand it. These can be a big ol' problem in teaching, and in a game like The Witness that is deliberately trying to teach its puzzle mechanics without words, they can spring up all too easily. Your "go below the black squares but above the white ones" idea is a simple example of a misconception. I had a similar one initially: I treated the black and white squares as "slalom gates" that I had to pass through. And these were some of the earliest puzzles in the game!
How to address this? Well, the standard way is to identify what you think will be common misconceptions in advance and design occasional "stumper" questions/puzzles that deliberately contradict such incorrect methods and will only work if you understand the rules correctly. This is pretty much what The Witness tries to do, it often goes "if you can't solve me you don't truly understand this concept yet, go back to earlier puzzles and reflect on them" - sometimes to the extent of even blacking out the panel and *forcing* you to resolve the previous puzzle to reactivate it. It can be frustrating, but it's a deliberate tool in the teaching toolkit - and perhaps an unavoidable one if you're trying to teach without words.
Although if we look at the words the game *does* have, the logs are... curious. The main point of them is to be thematic: they talk about different ways of discovering things, different ways of thinking about knowledge... different perspectives. And many of the statues are, of course, about perspective in some way or another, about how they become something different when viewed from certain angles, or when looking at the shadow, or whatever. Ultimately the plot of the game... barely exists. It's much more a game about these themes. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with that, it's hard to draw a conclusion. Heck, the game itself doesn't really draw a conclusion even in the true ending. But then maybe that's the point!
The reward for solving a puzzle is _having solved the puzzle_. :) The reward is a purely intellectual, intrinsic one. By completing a puzzle, the game pats you on the back and says "good boy, you got it!" - that's it. Why does there always have to be an XP meter or in-game currency or cut scene to motivate players?
Here's a (spoilery) example of The Witness rewarding puzzle solving with more than just puzzles: The apple orchard near the beginning of the game. The solution to each puzzle is hinted at by the position of an apple in the tree next to it, and it gets harder as you go to tell which branch is connected where. The last puzzle has one more branch than the tree, which has no apple.
The trick is that the apple was on the missing branch, and after you solve that board you turn the corner and there's a house with a patio. And on top of the patio wall is a plate of apple slices.
What I got from this was that I *should* play The Witness, but then again I love Professor Layton and puzzles in general.
Yeah I bet you'd like it! Just gotta have patience ;)
If you love Professor Layton and other logical puzzle games like Stephen's Sausage Roll, The Witness will be an absolutely amazing experience for you.
Professor Layton has puzzles and a story. This game has puzzles and background information.
I played the first Layton a few months ago, and although i did finish it and loved it, it left me exhausted. Not only from doing the puzzles themselves, but from finding them. I'm a bit of a completionist, i didn't want to stop playing until i had found every single puzzle. Besides, they got a bit repetitive (The chess puzzles are the worst).
Masked lunatic Yeah, some hidden puzzles are really hard to find.
Are you sure you explored everything? Not saying that you'll have a super-satisfying ending, but there IS more to it than what you're saying. You do get to know a lot more about the island if you keep playing after you finish it the first time.
Yes I got the secret ending after making this video, and it was a bit better, though it still left me with a ton of questions :P lol. I think after months of reflecting back on it, Blow was trying to say a much larger message than just what was in the game itself, so it's whatever haha
Oh yeah, that's for sure. And the first one is probably that we shouldn't even be looking for these answers in the first place hehe
@@snomangaming one of the many goals of this game is to leave some questions unanswered
3:30 The tutorial puzzles *do* tell you the pieces can be moved around, and the pieces *can't* be rotated. You just need to pay attention more carefully to what the tutorials teach you.
3:16 I was noticing that his misunderstanding could have been remedied if the puzzle at 3:22 was black-white-black or white-black-white instead of black-black-white. Blow even admits that there are some accidental red herrings in the game.
Well, never the less, with a bit of open thinking and paying attention anyone can understand what the puzzles are trying to teach. Besides, the "harder versions" he got stuck on trying to go above all white boxes and under all black boxes were still the tutorial puzzles, it was exactly the place to learn that he need to bisect between them, these puzzles exist in order to make sure the player doesn't make any farther progress without completely understanding the rules first. Once he saw a puzzle that didn't match his previous assumption of the rules, it was exactly the time the game expects you to question your former assumption and infer what the rules actually are, fixating on a certain assumption before the tutorial has even ended is just foolish. He claims the instructions are too open to interpretation but also mentioned that around half of the time, the puzzles left him saying "Oh, Okay" because he just messed around with them until he got the puzzle right. Of course you won't get the instructions right if you don't try to infer anything from the puzzles and just mess around with them until you succeed, no wonder he got them wrong so often
He specifically said "It doesn't clearly" he never said it doesn't at all.
Dvir Arazi You're completely right. It actually frustrates me how many playthroughs I watch of games like The Witness, or Please Don't Touch Anything, or other games with lots of steps where people fixate on preconceived ideas and don't even look for the real solution.
@@ChestersonJack Well, just like in real life...
There are quotes and sayings around the game that kind of toy with the idea that games don't necessarily need a penultimate goal, and the game itself really hammers that home. To me, the reward for playing the game was the journey, the discovery, the exploration, the revelation. Why is a more tangible reward necessary anyway? Like, why play Solitaire if you get nothing for "winning"? Ever play basketball with your buddies? You don't get anything for that other than the joy of playing a game with your friends. I could go on but I'm sure you get my point.
The whole game is an experience. A thought experiment, if you will. My favorite thing about this game other than the minor victories in finally understanding a puzzle is the how the "huge revelation" you experienced completely changes the way you approach the game. It completely flips everything you *think* you know about this game's world on its head and you see everything in a completely different way. That's so powerful. But opposite of that is the fact that you'll never get that feeling back for future playthroughs. In my opinion it makes spoilers of this game so much worse than spoilers of a story-heavy game like The Last of Us.
The quotes may seem pretentious, but I found them profoundly interesting. They follow along the theme of giving you something to think about in a different way that you probably haven't thought of. My favorite quote (aside from Ashley Johnson's powerfully delivered one in the secret cave) is one near the beginning that breaks down the act of opening and walking through the door from through the mind of a particle physicist. I've never thought about physics and the act of moving in that way before and it opened my mind, if only a little. The game is full of little things like that.
Finally, about the puzzles being frustrating to you... I'm seeing that a lot. But every rule of every puzzle is clearly laid out and the ones that flash for incorrect answers give you means for experimentation for logically deducing the rules of the panel. Ultimately it's 100% your fault for not taking the time necessary to understand the puzzle on the panels that all but *give* you the answers in that way. Brute forcing is fine sometimes, but it's wasteful if you don't take the time to analyze why the solution worked and learn from it.
As for the lack of story... the way this game's story is presented reminds me of how the Souls franchise presents its stories, albeit in a far more cryptic way. I'm hoping that there is a full, deeper story to uncover but I will agree with you in that it was a bit frustrating not getting answers to what the island is. I've heard theories like it's an OCD rehabilitation virtual reality environment, I had my own theories like the island being meticulously crafted by the Illuminati or something (since everything, even the trees, seems intricately man-made) to study people and the way they think, move, react, who KNOWS.
Anyway, this is all coming from someone who (obviously) loves the game. I even went out of my way to complete it 100%... at least for the 100% that is currently known about, if more even exists. Sorry for the damn thesis, wasn't expecting to write this much hahaha
+ingeniousclown Gaming Man, so I played it more after making this video, and there is a lot that it does very well. The puzzles where clues are in the environment are the best by far, and I enjoyed those a lot. I liked how each area had a different "theme" to the puzzles you had to figure out. It was way to smart for my puny brain, but I can appreciate everything it did from a puzzle perspective. But the story, yeah...I've just come to accept the fact that there are no answers. Your theories are cool tho lol it might just be right.
Well said!
This is Jonathan Blow's Myst, basically, with all the assorted problems.
This has been a mini reveiw by ingenousclown
"The reward was more puzzles" well it is a puzzle game?...
hit the nail on the head for me. for the first 20 hours or so, I loved the game, it was like the Dark Souls of puzzle games. but then as my only reward was harder, more convoluted puzzles, i grew frustrated with the game. I understand there is more to it than the main game and that you can discover more, but when your playing a game with so much atmosphere and obvious hunting's at a grand scale story, it seems highly irrational to not explain that story little by little as you progress. if you want a Tetris like puzzle game and nothing more, meaning just puzzles, than the witness is perfect, but if you want a full experience, one you would expect from what the game looks like, skip it.
Yes this exactly. It was just teasing the whole game
Jordan Smiley The thing is that you get the whole story explained at the end in a very awesome way!
the puzzles aren’t meant to be easy, i wracked my brain for almost a day straight towards the finale. i think the game is meant for people who simply enjoy puzzles. yes the story was a total cop out, but when the game resets and you use the knowledge you learned to unlock the real ending, i felt just as accomplished as beating a game like celeste.
"Feels there are as many questions unanswered as answered"
"Thinks that 7 of 11 lasers is enough" ...
6:53 - 7:05
The way I see The Witness is that you get as much out as you put in. If you play the game and get stuck on a puzzle and then look up the answer to the puzzle, I completely understand why you might say "How could I ever be expected to solve this?" It is like asking someone else to do your math homework and getting mad when you see the questions on the test. Without spoiling the game, there are things you can do when manipulating the line, different techniques and frame of mind, that will help you discover what it all means. Random guessing is futile, exploratory prodding is the key.
I have heard some say "X feature in the game is poorly thought out or is flawed in some way". While the possibility does exist that something about the game that confuses you, or seems out of place, could be something that the developers overlooked, there is also the possibility that there is something you don't know that will make it all make sense. And since this game is about manipulating your mind, proposing theories, and dismantling theories, all in order to solve puzzles, you've got to be pretty sure you have all the data before making such a claim. So far I haven't heard any claim that has held up. (I have specific cases in mind, but they are too spoilery) In most of those cases just thinking with an open mind, "Why would the game designer intentionally make it this way?" will help a lot in finding the truth to the matter.
I think a lot of youtubers especially dislike or had trouble with the game because the job of a professional youtuber is to play through games as quickly as possible and move on to the next popular one. Often they have multiple game series going on at the same time and need to push that content out there in order to keep their subscribers' diverse interests peaked. If you rush through The Witness without paying attention to the environment, and to your own internal mental dialog you are going to have problems. The same goes for streamers on twitch. They have an audience to entertain, and getting stuck on a puzzle for 10 or 20 minutes is not entertaining. The streamer knows this, which causes stress, which reduces the streamers mental ability to solve the puzzles and so on. The solution to this is to simply leave the puzzle your stuck on and go solve something else or even leave the game for a day and come back. This is harder to do for someone who's job is to play video games. Also the streamer has a greater temptation for getting answers from the audience, which as I said before can move the player farther along then what the player is prepared for. Which turns the game into "I don't know just tell me the answer, this game is stupid for making me feel stupid." I completely understand, why people see these things as problems, but this is inherent to the game's design, the game takes time and thought.
Yes, I am one of the 3.8% of people who own the game on steam that managed to complete the game including the challenge. (not to blow my horn or anything) 60 hours in and I still haven't found everything there is to find. I enjoy these kind of games and am also a fan of Johnathan Blow's work, so I'm sure I am at least somewhat biased in my opinions.
I truly believe this game is best played by yourself as a mental challenge and some form of meditation. For me the reward of the game was learning how I learn when presented with something strange and foreign. I learned some things about myself that will likely prove useful in the future. If you played through the game quickly, relying on online guides, I do feel sorry for you. Unless you get amnesia you will likely not be able to play the game again with fresh eyes and mind. If you don't like the game and don't care, fine, just move along, you do what you do. However, if anything I have said rings plausible to you I highly suggest playing again with a different outlook. Perhaps you will get something out of it. I don't know.
I totally agree
It's refreshing to hear a different point of view, which is why I watched this video even though I already played and love the game. Honestly, I was expecting more plot too and was disappointed in that regard. Also, even though there were many themes (and flavorful areas to go with those themes), I would've liked the puzzle panels to not always be about drawing a line. I really liked the lack of explanations, though. In fact, I would've liked it to be more obscure, with less of a learning curve, so that you'd really have to experiment with the panels to figure out what each symbol meant. Every symbol in the game is introduced slowly with very simple puzzles that demonstrate the concept, which feels a bit hand-holdy despite Blow's anti-hand holding philosophy.
The most enjoyable things the game had to offer, I'd say, are, in no particular order: A) The challenge level of some particularly tough puzzles such as "vault doors" (just a colloquial term, not a spoiler) and some postgame stuff. B) The graphics, sounds and overall idyllic island feel. C) Scratching your completionist itch - Especially if you're observant and clever, this game is good at fueling and supporting your completionism - it's not just blind scavenge hunting if you realize how to search. D) Ah hah moments.. There aren't that many, but a couple of them are pretty drastic game changers. And I'm not talking about the puzzle panels. Several players (and reviewers) probably never encountered all of them.
Also, maybe the best part, it's very fair and very intelligently designed, and everything makes sense in your environment - they even hired architects to consider the structural integrity of in-game buildings. I've seen some Let's Players complain that they had to brute force a solution or that the game sometimes doesn't accept what should've been a correct solution, but in every case, they're just not quite grasping the puzzle element.
+Triggerfisk Everything is definitely thought out all the way, I agree that no puzzle is "accidentally wrong", they are just CRAZY smart lol. There is a LOT to find and discover, which is nice, but I was sad that ther reward was just solving the puzzles themselves, not anything else.
This seems cool, i'll definitely buy it... That is, after i get around to play The Talos Principle, which is next in my "Puzzle games i need to play" list.
Yeah I've heard great things about Talos, I need to play it too!
Talos Speedrun Man who's cut a couple minutes with his strats here.
Hurry up and get your hands on that masterpiece.
***** If by masterpiece you mean The Talos Principle i bought it today, it was 75% off on Steam
Masked lunatic Yup. It's an amazing game, have fun!
***** Thanks!
I don't know, i like this game. I think empty world adding to the atmosphere (like empty world in Shdow of the Colossus). And when I got those tutorials, I'm often was like "Okay, next!" ). And I absolutely love those audio qoutes, the made me thinking for minutes about their meaning.
Well i guess to each his own. Maybe I just really love solving puzzles )
+Filler Shmazman Yeah no doubt everyone will have a different experience playing it, Just sharing my thoughts in the first several hours (I am enjoying it more as I continue playing it) but yeah those audio logs just pissed me off haha!
+snomaN Gaming This is only an opinion.Please don't name the video "You don't need to play" and discourage people from buying it.
+NeilBefore ThemClones It's a reference to the "You need to play" videos he makes, which are also opinion pieces.
+Thisisforvortex So ? The title is still what it is " You don't need to play The Witness " Somehow he's accounted for all the infinite possibilities and made his statement.
Why would you make such an assumption?
You already got your answer.
It's like saying his "You need to play" series is stupid because some people watching it might not like the same kind of games he likes. Opinion pieces are only worth the worth you give them, which is why you'll have to decide wether or not you like the content you see here.
"So some solutions seemed outright impossible due to what I thought the game had taught me. I totally get the appeal of teaching without telling but sometimes the instructions were too open for interpretation. You have the freedom to leave and do a different puzzle if you get frustrated, but that doesn't help if you don't know how to solve any of the puzzles."
I feel like this misses the entire point of the game. It's a puzzle game, you are *meant* to have to actually explore and think about what the possible meaning of the symbols are and deduce a ruleset for them. What's the point of a puzzle game if everything is spelled out for you? One of the better aspects of the game is that it actually respects your intelligence.
If you do the training panels for partitioning the black and white squares and come up with the wrong ruleset (e.g., like you and I did about some constraint of where the line is relative to the color), you can go back and look at the puzzles you solved and figure out what was really going on.
"[...]...because half the time I just messed around until I got it randomly anyway."
It sounds not so much that you don't like puzzle games, but that you weren't prepared to play a puzzle game. You should be willing (and eager) to figure out the ruleset for why some solution actually worked. Doing it randomly and not learning from it would of course make the game seem impossible.
Audio clips can definitely be cringe-worthy, though.
+Nicholas Gorski Yeah that is a good way to describe it, I think I was expecting an exploration mystery game, not a puzzle game with very very little elements of anything else :/
The game, put simply, is just boring and tedious. I don't see the appeal either tbh.
I fully agree. I think the main issue I had with the game was that some areas require you to already know some mechanics that are taught somewhere else. This is a good idea in theory, but I would way to often get stuck in an area that required me to know a certain mechanic I didn't know, forcing me to scan the entire map for the little row of puzzles that explained it. Then turns out it is at the other end of the island, and to actually get to it I had to know a different mechanic that now I need to search for... After this happening several times, I just quit because it was frustrating. Maybe making the game slightly more linear would help. I don't mean making it a set course, but at least have an area that introduces mechanics next to the area that requires you to know them.
Part of the frustration is also because of the lack of reward you mentioned. The first time I saw the stone people I was really exited to explore and find the other mysteries hidden in the island, and then when I realized that the only special thing to look for on the map are these stone people I stopped caring about exploration...
If your take is to make it more linear, then you don't know what it's trying to do at all...
@@AJ-uf4sh It's trying to be a metroidvania based on knowledge. That's the core gameplay loop. And when a game has a sufficient element of exploration and wonder, that can work - but this doesn't hold true for The Witness.
The only thing you gain here by solving a puzzle is unlocking another puzzle, right up to the end. When that's all there is to it you basically get a linear game where you have to do a lot of walking before you get to any actual gameplay. There are some choices and splits involved, which are welcomed, but each branch still feels very linear. That's why I said it would be better if it leaned more into that linear progression - not by making it a linear series of puzzles, but by lightly directing the player to the place they need to go and cutting back on the boring walking times. The other option is to add more interesting elements to the walking, which is what they tried to do with the environment puzzles, but it's still not enough to make the experience worth it. Again, it's just more puzzles.
Initially I was fine with this since each area seemed unique, and I was intent on exploring the island and discovering what was going on - but I slowly realized that there was nothing to discover. The colors changed a bit, the environment changed a bit, but nothing else did. Nothing I did was ever meaningful. And I get it - that's the game's message, in the end literally nothing happens and you just go back to the beginning while all the puzzles are undone. But this just doesn't make for an engaging game. Instead of feeling victorious or inspired, you just feel cheated.
If you want an example for a game that _did_ execute the knowledge-based-metroidvania idea well, just look at Outer Wilds. It's also a non linear game where nothing you do changes anything except for your own understanding of the world, and you have to reach different puzzles and backtrack to ones you were stuck on. Except this time it's done masterfully. Reaching new areas is fun and engaging, each time you solve a problem you feel like you made a true discovery, and you never feel like you're slogging through something that isn't the core of the game. Unlike The Witness, it's aware of what it is.
The boat shows you where to find the mechanics... even if you disregard that, why does there need to be a rush with trying to find the area for the mechanic? You're not being 'forced' to do so at all. That's why it's open and non-linear in the first place, the point is that it's fine leaving puzzles for later. This is established right after the tutorial area, with the vault puzzle utilising two mechanics you would have not come across at all. There is no indication that you would soon come across them, because there doesn't need to be any. You will eventually come across them anyway. That's probably why you had a bad experience with the Witness, you just narrowly focused on what you needed to proceed with a specific part rather than just moving on and seeing what new areas you haven't been to yet.
Outer Wilds only supports this kind of playstyle indirectly because the main purpose of the ship log in rumour mode is keep track of the specific bits of information that make up the threads of knowledge you're pursuing; there's no need for the Witness to do the same thing when there aren't any barriers to the information you need to progress, save for the puzzles utilising the new mechanic you need to learn about themselves. It's hard to randomly come across the Tower of Quantum Trials, the Frozen Jellyfish, Escape Pod 3, the Black Hole Forge or even the Ember Twin Gravity Cannon if through sheer luck, you've missed it and assumed you've already found everything on Ember Twin, without the rumours linked to them. This is not the case with the Witness, which is why it isn't a big deal that you don't know what the caltrops symbol does in the Town (or any other symbol for that matter), how the stars work in the Quarry, the block mechanic in the Treehouses. Because you're going to come across them at some point unlike specific points of interest in Outer Wilds.
That said, Outer Wilds is obviously the superior metroidbrainia. Lol.
I personally enjoyed every single second I spent in this game. But that's probably partially because I'm a student in mathematics, and this game is basically what I chose to do when I chose to study maths, so... It's a very special case of right up my alley.
+Jesse D Yeah like, my wife saw me playing it last night and said "I would LOVE this game!", she was a math major.
+snomaN Gaming Haha this game seems to click with math nerds. Day9, a streamer with a degree in math, LOVED The Witness
+Jesse D haha, jep. As a computer science student I also thought it's mainly graph theory :)
+pfbjjz Figuring out particular trees in a planar graph basically!
+Jesse D
It's odd, as someone with a degree in math and computer science, I've been trying to figure out why I just hate this game. I turned on 4 or 5 lasers and then just gave up. I could do the puzzles and it was cool that they were hard puzzles even to me. But the puzzles just weren't fun for me.
The tetris piece puzzles involved way too many combinations and rotations and I felt like I couldn't use logic to solve it even though I understood the rules exactly, there were just too many combinations to go through. The tree shadow puzzles likewise involved so much mental twisting of the shapes, I understood what I was supposed to do but the actual untwisting of the shadows was just so tedious. The color house area was interesting, and the hexagonal panel glare shadows were okay, and the mazes in the castle were okay but none of those were that fun though. Then I got to the forest and I'm tone deaf, made it to the last one I think and just quit the game screaming in frustration. I even tried using software to analyze the tones and just couldn't. I then realized that I just purely hated the game, it's honestly one of my least favorite games I've ever played, but am still trying to figure out why everyone else who is smart seems to love it.
I know I'm super late to this video, but I wanted to say how fascinating I thought it was. I adored the game, and would describe it as my favorite work in the gaming medium for 2016. There's more to get into than I could say in a quick RUclips comment, so I'll instead say that it was cool discovering a completely alternate take; virtually all reviews I've found have been positive, which is swell for Jonathan Blow, but ends up a bit flat as far as discourse goes. I think you really hit the nail on the head with regard to the lack of rewards - the "aha" or "eureka" moment is, effectively, the reward, so someone looking for more narrative or more varied mechanics would find the progression quite hollow. Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I was extremely disappointed with this game. Especially since it was advertised for so long as "inspired by Myst", which is a really dumb way to describe The Witness. What made Myst so amazing wasn't just the puzzles, it was the story behind it, the big mystery. In The Witness, like it's said in the video, there are a bunch of clues, but in the end, even after finishing the game 100%, we find out all those clues were actually fake clues to a story that just doesn't exist. The sad part is that it takes long enough to play the game to 100% that most reviews I read about the game, and which convinced me to buy it in the first week, were all talking about the big mistery and the clues because the reviewers still hadn't completed the game 100% and didn't know it was all a lie.
So anyway, as it's said in the video, if you like puzzles you could still like this game, just don't expect it to be anything more than puzzles or you'll be extremely disappointed.
+Julien Grimard Yeah thats pretty much all I wanted to say with this video, if you were hoping for more than puzzles, dont :( But the puzzles are creative! I was just expecting more
Omg it’s not just puzzles!!!!!!!! You guys are missing the whole point of this masterpiece
Every quote in the game was about an epiphany. That's what the game is. An epiphany. It is a puzzle first and a game second. If you search for more, you get nothing. But if you search for what the game has, you learn a lot about it.
needs more screen shake and gun
I really enjoyed the video; I really felt discouraged by the comments critiquing the video not "getting" the game. There's an inherent elitism in comments like that which is pretty saddening to me, because it's I think they want people to empathize with them. Braid was frankly the same way as this, in my eyes. Jon Blow's philosophy on puzzles and especially people who don't subscribe to that mindset shows a dismissive attitude that I feel mirrors the reactions he and avid players of this game have received in the past. But why reflect back to those people what you disliked receiving from them? Anyone who draws up the "you're just a CoD player, that's why you dislike it" dichotomy between themselves and people who didn't jive with the game so hard should really think about their approach, because it wholly diverts and breaks the effort to help them see your point of view. And cheers Snowman, having seen this and a couple of the speedrunning videos you had up plugging the GDQs, happily subscribed. I really appreciate your going out of the way to heavily emphasize the game's positives alongside what left you feeling unresolved about, even in your videos' comments. :)
I tried to still put my heart into this despite how I felt about the game, and at the end of the day, it's just my opinion so its all good. People will hear what they want to hear, and it still is a fine video in my eyes. It's whatever, thanks tho! Your kind words mean a lot :)
_There's no reward when you solve a puzzle._
Well, there's the instant gratification generation's whole problem in a nutshell.
This game was just amazing. Every single puzzle was like learning the language of the game. You start just understanding it at first glance. But it was just such a wonderful use of the environment. Also, there are clues everywhere, This guy is nuts.
Totally agree
I'm thinking about this game a lot as I slog through Sekiro. I feel sorta similarly about FromSoft games and Jonathan Blow games: I don't need an "achievement" or "trophy" to feel satisfied after figuring out how to advance through a part I've been really stuck on. I appreciated that Blow wants players to really have as many "a-ha!" moments as possible, in every way. Like, I know you sorta get something by beating bosses in Souls games, but for me, that wasn't what was gratifying. It was that HOLY CRAP! I DID IT! And I felt very similarly every time I thought, "There's no way I'm gonna solve this puzzle" and then something just clicked and I saw the solution.
I felt dumb at times, and really smart at times. But I also felt really satisfied that the game was having me think in these ways that I typically don't. The emphasis on perspective was really compelling to me, too. I appreciated that every element of the game was a puzzle: from the puzzles themselves, obviously, to the puzzle of figuring out what the mechanics of each section are, to the possible backstory or situation of the world, to what is going on in Blow's mind (which I sorta feel like the game was: a representation of his obsession with puzzles).
I definitely hear you though. It's not for everybody, even for people who kinda enjoy puzzles. But I do think it's at least worth checking out for fans of puzzles, or just game design.
The point of the game is to step into the psyche of someone else completely and see the world their way. It's a videogame autobiography and it's brilliant
Contrasting opinion: This game is one of the most satisfying games I've ever played (and I've played a lot of games). I went through it adamantly against looking up solutions, and that meant walking away from some puzzles for a while, but when I came back to them they were always easier. I wouldn't have enjoyed this game if I looked up solutions, because the best moments are figuring out the puzzles that you thought to be impossible, but all of a sudden just "click" and you beat it and go "HOLY SHIT FUCK YOU JON BLOW YOU BASTARD! But really, that was very clever, good job Jon Blow."
A lot of the voice-logs actually DO help with puzzles, but indirectly. Some of them, and one video in the theater in particular, talk about walking away from things that you can't do in order to be happier, or something like that. They don't hold the solutions to puzzles, but instead give you a hint as to the type of mindset you should have at that point.
Someone else in here mentioned the colored elevator being an obtuse puzzle, but that was one of the most gratifying puzzles in the game. I don't know color theory or what colors turn what into what, but I mapped out "looking through red glass turns this color to this and this color to this, and looking through green turns this into this and this into this" and figured out what color the floor that I needed to go to would be through patterns, and after all that legwork I could easily figure out the solution.
This isn't a game that you should try to power through, this is something that you should take at your own pace. If you get stuck on a puzzle, stick with it and try thinking of different ways to solve it. If you're still stuck, move on and come back to it later with a fresh mind.
The only part I hated was the pretentious bullshit ending, but the secret ending is amazing and did exactly the kind of thing I wanted the ending to do. I just wish they hadn't hidden it, or at least alluded to the fact that it was there in the main ending, which would have been fine if they had done that, like just start you back at the beginning but not change your save file or exit the game.
+Rys0n I pretty much agree with all you said, you gotta know what you're getting into, it just wasn't quite what i was expecting.
I actually got the elevator puzzle without any trouble! lol, who knows
+snomaN Gaming :) That's basically it in a nutshell. If you go into this expecting first-person Myst, you're gonna have a bad time. If you go into it expecting a puzzle game on an island that uses everything it can to make a simple line-puzzle formula as varied as possible, it's amazing.
You definitely didn't just have the "All it is is line puzzles, how dumb!" attitude that so many people have, and that's good because it's a dumb observation, since only half of the puzzles actually are line puzzles, and the other half just use the line-interface as a means to input your solution to the actual puzzle (often pertaining to the environment). All your points are valid thoughts when you go into the game expecting something like Myst. This is a super interesting game and I'm not entirely sure how I actually feel about it as a whole. I mean, I love it to death, but I can't articulate why exactly just yet. The more I think about it, the more amazing I find the design of the game, and walking back through the island after figuring out how the obelisks work (didn't happen upon the solutions until after I lit all the beacons) fills me with a weird sense of nostalgia.
"Oh man, I remember this part of this area, this was fun!" "Oh shit, I thought this thing was weird, I totally understand what it means now!"
I definitely think I'll be replaying this game in the future now, which is something that I never expected while I was was playing through it originally.
To be totally fair, the more I play it, the more I like it. I still am loving the environment and everything, the puzzles are just my least favorite part of the game
Thank you for stating your opinion in a polite manner Rys0n, its always nice to have a contrasting opinion that isn't immediately hostile.
I liked The Witness's island. I enjoyed the puzzles. In the end, though, I was left feeling like Johnathan Blow was creating art for art's sake, making a game for himself rather than the public. It felt more like an art installation than a game.
This is not necessarily a bad thing at all. I am reminded in a way of The Beginner's Guide, a game by the creator of The Stanley Parable. In both cases, I feel the real fun of the game lies not in playing it, but in discussing your experience playing it with others. (The eclipse puzzle was, IMO, a bit of a dick move though.)
Riven: The Sequel to Myst. Best adventure, puzzle game ever!
I loved this game. I love puzzles and I like how each area taught you a new rule about upcoming puzzles. Fantastic idea. I'm going back to try and find the rest of the puzzles. I did need help with some, but it didn't help to just copy it from somewhere. You really need to understand how you solved it. I do agree with the reward factor. There should be some kind of reward aside from turning on a laser after completing a section. I would also like to see a puzzle count and a way to see what I am missing. I would like to complete the game with 100% of the puzzles. The environmental puzzles are genius.
+jamiesbreed Yeah the environmental puzzles and even the ones that had clues in the world around you were my favorite as well. Just wish there was a little more tangibility to the whole thing, but I guess thats the whole point? lol
The "Teaching without learning" thing is meant to be that way. Yeah, one side of the puzzle is to get to the goal, but the other is to figure out HOW to solve it. Its a part of the puzzle to "Understand" it. :)
did you watch the video? he said he's all for the idea, but the execution was bad because it's too ambiguous. When teaching, some people think that solution A works, and some think solution B works. Neither are wrong, because both could be used to solve the first puzzle, but when it turns out solution B was the only real solution, those who learned thinking it was solution A gets stuck and it's not their fault. That's terrible game design
Pety The part of the whole game is to eliminate your preconceived idea. Be able to go back and think "could this have worked for another reason?" and realize: it's all about perspective.
Chesterson Jack thats all fine and dandy, but if you realize this when you get to the puzzle where only solution B works, there's one problem: the tutorial is over. They're not trying to teach you anymore. So how are you supposed to learn solution B the game isn't showing you how it works anymore? That's why this game is so trial-and-error
Pety You can go back and resolve the tutorial. It's not blocked off
Pety, I found that when I couldn't come up with a solution to a puzzle with my current hypothesis of how it works, it is best to change it.
This lead to me having a deeper understanding of how the game works and was a fun and engaging part of the game where you question if what you know about it is correct.
This is not a game for everyone. You need to love puzzles and be good at thinking outside the box. I was blown away over and over again playing through this and the reward is having that "ah HA" moment. If you don't like puzzles, don't expect this to be your favorite game... Although, this game may help you discover how much you really do like puzzles. I can't tell you how many times I thought to myself "Oh my god... did that really just happen?". It's brilliant and it's beautiful.
+Frank Littlefield I had a lot of those moments too when the environment helped you solve them with clues, but the ones that were just straight knowledge puzzles I hated
+snomaN Gaming There aren't really any knowledge puzzles. Some of them you have to have learned the rule or rules that are in effect, but the game gives you everything you need. You just have to think outside the box sometimes. I can gladly say I completed this game 100% without a guide or any spoilers including the challenge area and all of the obelisks. I did get frustrated at times when trying to find a solution, but if I got to that point, I just took it as me needing to rethink how I'm looking at a puzzle. You mentioned that you HAD to look at a guide for some of the puzzles in the video and that is really too bad because those were probably some of the most rewarding ones in the game. I know I got to the point where I had graph paper and a color wheel out to make sense of them and when it finally clicked, it felt great. I don't know if you consider yourself a lover of puzzles, but I think this game really separates the people who love to be truly challenged and the people who just sort of enjoy puzzles. I'm not saying one group is more right or wrong, but I imagine there are probably fewer people who say they absolutely love puzzles after playing this game. I just wish you wouldn't tell people not to play this brilliant game. I get why you didn't like it, but it's already such a strange one that many people may already avoid it. Other than that... Keep up the good content, man.
The game itself in its entirety seems to be a puzzle.
+Sabaca Maybe that's the goal, the entire thing is just a puzzle ;)
I agree. Loved Braid, but this game left me with that sterile, empty feeling you mentioned. You nailed it.... some of the puzzles seemed like they had other solutions at first, and I wasted so much time with those tetris blocks. The story was just as obtuse! At least make the story a little more exciting if the puzzles are going to be brick walls. Once I got to the mountain and the big reward was more puzzles... I couldn't even finish it.
Yeah like it was just so depressing lol. I wanted much more than just puzzles
Reminded me of Ergoraptor saying something like "if the game is not fun, well, there you go, the game is not fun".
+Enkii Muto Yeah, I know what you mean. There were parts I was really enjoying, but the puzzles were not part of them. I was actively not enjoying them lol
A similar thing I had with Toki Tori, I got curious about the second game receiving so much praise, so I went for the first one and... it is just puzzles for the sake of puzzles. It is ok if you really like it, but it is different from say... Orbit (a game about putting asteroids on... you guessed, orbit), in orbit you do have a challenge, and while you don't get much in return, it is relaxing to do it, toki tori 1... not really that gratifying.
It's the best puzzle game I've played in years, many of the puzzles are quite awesome especially the ones which use the environment. There's probably 600 puzzles or more. Learning the rules to solve the puzzles is part of the puzzle and many of the later areas will test your knowledge.
+KGhaleon Yeah, I only had a problem with the puzzles that don't use the environment, they just werent fun for me to solve (though I understand thats just personal)
Thanks so much for this. You've managed to express 100% of my frustration and general confusion at reviewers making such a big, secretive deal about this game prior to launch. Couldn't put it into words as succinctly as you have, and it's much appreciated.
+sekou lumumba Thank God I'm not the only one who feels this way. Thanks lol
The puzzle which ends the original tutorial area when looked at from a certain angle the sun looks like the dot you navigate through the puzzles, if you use it for that and finish the puzzle with the sun you get a special artsy ending
After seeing a bunch of people gushing over this game, it is quite refreshing to see a different opinion on the matter.
Keep up the good work! :)
+SnoopingTurtle Actually the opinions have been pretty mixed.
As it should because its such a strange game.
This game showed me what a real "Art" game is, because Jonathan Blow is *absolutely completely insane* just like artists are. They focus and explore a concept to the wonder of others.
No sane person would take the concept of line puzzles to that level.
To bad the muses tricked him, he should have chosen a concept more familiar to the public. Many artist had a grim fate and while fortunately this has not been the case the road of an artist is always wrought with peril.
+adrixshadow Ah to be honest i havent really kept an eye out for reviews. I have just seen what some people have been saying on twitter and what not :P
Super Bunnyhop absolutely hated it.
+SnoopingTurtle Yeah, I didn't mean to be too harsh, just critical and honest. There are parts I REALLY like about it, but was disappointed in other areas
+SnoopingTurtle Snooping Turtle :D
Shucks, you actually adopted my alternate name for "teaching without teaching"!
But yeah, I agree that the game is a just too opaque. It really fumbles the stealth tutorial thing. To intuitively teach the player without telling them what to do, you have one of two options: you construct a situation where the solution is brain-dead obvious, but makes use of a feature that hasn't been introduced yet, or you can construct a situation where it's easy to stumble upon a new mechanic accidentally. The Witness just gives you vague clues and assumes you'll figure it out on your own. It sends you vague messages and expects you to interpret them in very specific ways. That's bad tutorial design and also bad puzzle design.
P.S.: I chuckled when you described the little literature quote audio recordings as pretentious -- if Jonathan Blow is anything, he's crazy pretentious, and this is coming from someone whose favorite music genre is progressive rock.
+MADMACHlNE Lol i like that last line, that made me laugh. To be fair, when I went back and looked at the tutorials again, if Ihad actually analyzed them better, I probably would've understood them better, but they were just so easy to solve, I moved on really quickly so I didnt really learn anything. Not sure of a perfect solution, but i felt it could've done a little better
3:35 It... does teach you that they can be combined and rotated.... in their own little sections.... that you might've missed...
You are totally right. I liked playing this game but after hours of solving it was disappointing that there is no reward at all
+blash 3000 (Suprise) Yeah! I'm surprised more people aren't talking about that
For me the reward is having that 100% save file you could show to someone. I understand how frustrating it might be to have gone through all that and get nothing, though.
I was happy to watch my bro play this and I did love the environment puzzles, but yeah I agree with the reward part. The world was so interesting it felt like a wasted opportunity. They easily could have built more of a story arc that complemented the scenery instead of just being vague and pretentious.
I am a puzzle guy, and I had my fun solving these puzzles. But being a huge braid fan, I always compared it to Blows first game, and that leads to my major critic point: Most of the puzzles do not interact with the world itself. It seemed like Blow had this line puzzle idea and than just created a workd around it. I know, there are some puzzles that interact with the environment, like the apple trees, or shadow and light placement, but most of them did not really depend on the island around them.
+pfbjjz Yeah Im in the same boat, like I just wish there was a little more in the world, and obviously there is more than JUST line puzzles...but there was a distinct lack of it, and lack of story :(
He had a time manipulation idea and he built braid around it. you mean you can't build a good game around a single idea?
MoonLit for me, it is not that there are too few ideas for a game. It just feels, that the world/island is just an inessential gimmick, (most of) the puzzles would also work on its own, like a smartphone app "unblock me free"-style. In braid everything feeled like one consistent game.
PS: please, don't get me wrong. I had my fun with the game, just got the platinum trophy. But compared to braid i felt a little unpleased sometimes.
+pfbjjz I'm not sure that being on the island is just a gimmick. Because as you know there are other types of puzzles in the game that would not translate well into your suggested format. And there is, although I'm not seeing it discussed anywhere, an underlying narrative that tries to show a stark contrast between the two types of puzzles within the game, as you might infer from dialogues and clips in the island, something claimed by "critics" as pretentious. Which seems to be a valid criticism for some reason.
The obelisks, I think, fix this nicely. Just about every region has puzzles built into the very structure of the world itself. Can't make better use of the world than that.
Actually, it's been some time since I've played. Does the platinum trophy include the obelisks? Or is it just the lasers + challenge?
"If you buy this puzzle game and don't like puzzle games, you wont like this game."
Had a very similar feeling during the brief time I played it. Going through long lists of panels only to have nothing happen killed my enjoyment fast. Glad I checked here because the only thing keeping me going was the hope of some great mystery to be solved at the end.
First, I played for an hour and had an awesome time.
The next two hours I had trouble finding the 'tutorial' puzzles, and got really, really, bored and frustrated.
After finding them, I'm loving it again, so far having solved about 280. But it's definitely only for people who find satisfaction in the solving.
I know it's probably too late, but if you keep an eye out for the environmental puzzles, it makes things a lot more interesting.
This is what I would have much rather seen from Joseph Anderson than the bad review he made on the game, just politely explain why the game wasn't for you.
I think if you took the game more as not looking for a reward but rather as a more meditative experience you might have enjoyed it more. The game satisfied my curiosity all the way and I loved it a lot.
already summing it up as "The Witness is an amazing game to play - if you like puzzles" has to be the best description I've heard about this game
This is one of my favorite game of all times. It shows genius in puzzle design and overall though that's put into the game is amazing. And yes, there are some other endings, and puzzles hidden right in front of your eyes the whole time. So in a way, panels are there to misguide you into thinking that's all you do. The only part I didn't like is the sound puzzles, because I had a hard time hearing even the easier notes.
Yeah, I've since gotten all the endings, beaten everything, etc. And it certainly was unique and had a few a-ha moments, but overall still felt like "whats the point" ya know? I get now that its a game about learning or whatever, but it just wasnt for me i guess
To me, the puzzles were enough to keep me going, though I too felt that something was missing.But only because I felt potential to be much more. Can you name any puzzle games that you really enjoyed and had similar a-ha moments?
The first time I found an environmental puzzle, it blew my mind (and I mention this in the video, in a non-spoilery way). Then I wanted to find them everywhere, and I did!
The reviews I've heard so far have been half and half. Seems like either you love it and think it's the most brilliant puzzle game in years, or hate it and found it repetitive and frustrating. Getting a lot of the puzzle pieces in Braid felt the same way, so I don't see myself thoroughly liking this game. Though I'll admit, it looks stunning.
+LassHaley Yeah I think it all comes down to preference of game genres. I LOVE platformers so I enjoyed Braid much more. But my friends who LOVED Myst are loving The Witness
+LassHaley I think the problem with a lot of the reviews is that they were written by people who haven't finished the game. A bunch of the reviews I saw are talking about the statues, and the story, and the mystery, but when you finish the game 100% you find out that it was all a lie to keep you playing, that actually there is no story or mystery, just a bunch of statues that don't mean a thing. So I think a lot of positive reviews are from people who haven't finished it, and a lot of the negative reviews are from people who have actually finished it, all for nothing.
As for +snomaN Gaming's friends who love the game because they loved Myst, I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure they hadn't finished the game 100% when he wrote this. I loved Myst, and I loved The Witness at first. I even wrote a review on Steam where I said it was great game and how I couldn't wait to learn more about the people who lived on the island. I was sure there was a bigger mystery to be understood, especially since the game had been advertised as "inspired by Myst", but then ended up changing my review to a negative review once I finished the game 100% and found out at the end, there is nothing... It doesn't even bother to say "congrats, you finished the game", absolutely nothing happens. Even the old Solitaire on Windows 98 had a better ending than this. All this for nothing, and all the clues and statues are just random objects placed there as decoration, nothing more.
3:20 OMG that was my thought, too! because it really is above-below when you start to learn it. Oh and lack of gratification.
+GrgoljBlaster LOL glad I'm not the only one who thought so!
+snomaN Gaming oh and you've got a subscriber :)
Hi snomaN. I have the exact same feeling about The Witness. It's great to see such an honest review and that you didn't delete this video even though it has many dislikes. I wrote an article about how bad is the game design of this game (not available in English) and I see your point. I'm surprised by the ratings of The Witness on Metacritic. Level design and graphic are great but there's no gameplay that the player seeks.
+Tom Wojcik I'm glad there's other people that feel the same way I do, instead of most people that just said I "didn't get it". I had some fun with it, but it definitely had its frustrations
I´ve only played like 2 hours, but I´m really enjoying the game. I get your point (as always, the video was awesome and well explained), but there´s something about the game that just makes me like it. I don´t know, but for me it kinda feels as if the puzzles are fully integrated with the island (even though they are just line puzzles). Keep up the good content!
+Lucas Palacio It is a really well made puzzle game, and it has a lot of charm and beauty, just had a couple things I didnt like is all
This game was amazing. You DO need to play it!
I think this game is a piece of conceptual art. The puzzles are just part of the journey, they are keys and they are rewards themselves. Jonathan Blow tries to challenge you to the limit, not only with the puzzles but with the environment, the videos, the audio tapes and the intriguing story of this little town where the time just stopped and people became statues. Why did this happen? Nobody knows... Probably nobody will ever know. This game manages symbolism, semiotics and a lot of other beautiful techniques that are normally found in art and art only. What does this tell us? This tells us that Jonathan is trying to make art in the most pure way from a videogame. Try this as walking in a painting. It's one of those games that you have to analyze and get your own interpretation out of it, and then analyze again, with a smile on your face, thinking and always thinking... Just like a master piece of art. In my opinion, this is a game you DO need to play. If you really like to think, interpret, observe, explore and analyze art. My girlfriend, his brother and I just played this game and almost in every puzzle and every new room we walked in, every single audio we found, every single video we watched, we looked at each other and said... "Man, Jonathan Blow is a genius." And I really think he is, I think Jonathan Blow is one of the biggest geniuses of the industry, because he is not just trying to make one game with really awesome puzzles (Which by the way I really think they are, they are pure puzzles), he is trying to take videogames to the next level and make them beautiful, real, pure art. He knows not everybody will like it, he just doesn't care. Believe me, he could create a best seller if he wanted to (We all know Braid) But he just decided to take another step further. If you just look for "fun" in a game, and action, and coins and extra abilities and bosses and all that normal rewards games "must" have. This is not the game for you. If you look for deep concepts, poetry, symbols, critics, challenging puzzles and beautiful, complete art. This is the game for you. I felt playing this game similar as reading one of Jorge Luis Borges' books, just rewarding itself. I really recommend it. Sorry for my english by the way. And keep the good work Snoman. I really like your videos and I've learned so much of game design from you. We just have different opinions about this one.
+Jose Romero Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said. The more I played it I just had to accept that what I was expecting wasn't going to be in the game, and it was very different from what I thought it would be. And thats okay, as you said it's absolutely still art, no denying that. And I did have many moments of jaw-dropping awe, it just wasn't in the puzzles themselves for me. It was in the secrets and the island. Just wish there was more of that and less of the puzzles. But yeah, still a good game overall! He tried something very new and different, so mad respect to Blow for that
Every time I come across the thumbnail for this video, I keep reading "You don't need weed to play the witness"
I'm really liking this. Yes understand the key to a solution can be obtuse if you stray from the main path (which you will because it's open world) but it gets you thinking on crazy ways
I know im super late, but as a "game design channel" this video totally misses the point... Ive seen few games with such elegant core game design as the witness, and thats beside the realtionship the player has with puzzlers.
I have been playing The Witness at a friend's PS4 a bit every sunday we could meet, along all this year and it was one of my most pleasant times to enjoy and expect every week. I think that this game is greater than just puzzles and it can become a real obsession. I think the pressure you have to get out a video on a game didn't let you have a time with the game in a way you could have enjoyed it better, and enjoy the whole experience it is.
I bet the Witness would be a lot more fun with a friend!
mmmmhhh the witness is in my top 10 list games of all time
Well done for having an opinion. Well done to SG for having one, too...
I would say top 15. Dont get me wrong. I fucking loved it.
But the lack of a story kind of gets me down. I dont think the game needs one. It doesnt fit the purpose of the game
Jipsy Jeepies wut? You're sad because of the lack of a story but you think it doesn't need one?
Enzo De Rezende It does have one though. It's just VERY hard to find it. Blow said he planned to have a huge "info-dump" at the end of the game, but changed his mind during production. There are about six tapes in the game that don't have quotes, but part of the story in them
Are u kidding ? You mean like, a story that explains the reason for that island to exist ? The tapes ? Who created the island ? Why is that main mountain like that ? The reason for the tvs (in the main mountain also) ? Who putted you there ? Who are u ? Why are u there ? Why did u went floating by the end of the game w
Shit, I really hoped he went for that plot twist ending or story ending
Your videos are getting better and better. :)
+csiApok Hey thank you :) That means a lot :D
I loved this game!! I know a lot of people said that they didn't like it, but for me, it was all about curiosity and discovery.
I'll admit, I was stuck on some puzzles for a whole day. I took pictures with my phone and would look at them in between classes and work just in hopes of having a fresh perspective. It really helps to have an open mind and not expect to be able to play through the whole thing like you would a campaign in a FPS or Assassin's Creed or something. You have to know when you've been momentarily defeated and walk away for a little bit.
+Toll Booth Videos Yeah I think I just went in with the wrong expectations, the entire point is the puzzles, which just isn't my jam
3:33 Pieces that are shown at an angle can be rotated and pieces shown aligned with the grid can't. It's pretty clear if you found the place that they teach you the mechanic
I got it for free on epic store and played for 2 days. Then uninstalled it. I know, kinda harsh, bu I got the same feeling the video said. I think I am a puzzle games fan, but The Witness is just for geniuses or non anxiety people. Also I did looked up for the ending on youtube and id be like "ok fine i dont need to play it then"
If you think the point of the game is to get to the end, then yea it's not for you.
The shown statue and the chalice... try to look at the shadow. It's awesome how in one turn the man craves to have the chalice and in the other turn he already has it and is toasting... It's one of the things what the game wants to teach us, different perspective about everything... the vaults and the briefcases are somewhat explaining the story of the island (or what it should teach us and yes it is all about learning).
Nicely presented, and well-thought-out. Thank you!
+Xaos Bob Glad you enjoyed!
Thank you for that non-recommendation, snomaN. I read so much praise from game developers on Twitter so now it's really interesting to hear a gamer's point of view. After Yahtzee's ZP review which didn't rate the game too good either, I think I now have a rough idea what really to expect from this game.
I'm still interested in playing it though, but I might wait for a sale.
+Zet Thats a good idea, it's still worth checking out if it's brought down a bit, it does a lot of cool things. The puzzles just weren't my thing, and thats alright. The environment and all that were the best part
Papyrus: **HEAVY BREATHING**
well... he'd certainly like the pirate ship. I think he'd be floored by the rest of it...
You are definitely not "just solving line puzzles" for example in the desert part you are guided by the reflections on the screens of the puzzles and then the reflection of the water of the reflection of the sun on the screen of the puzzles, and to top it all of IT IS SO DARN HARD!! I gave up early in the game and then my brother did the rest of the by watching the solutions on youtube
"You do not need to play this game."
"Spoilers."
Yee.
+Austin Argo Huh? The only real spoilers are like, specific puzzle solutions and you'll have to pause the video just to do them.
Oh. I thought you meant story spoilers. Sorry.
The advance shots of this were scintillating as hell, huh? As someone who loves strong visual concepts and a pretty outspoken fan of first-person explorathons (the term "walking simulator" is frigging despicable) I was so looking forward to the Witness, but with mild trepidation that I seem to reserve only for Blow's games: they always seem to emphasize ludo- chalk talk over actual, incisive design.
+Coin Explosion It's definitely for a specific audience I think. Blow knows the people that will like his games, and I think they are people like him - very into puzzles.
Did you complete the environmental puzzles? What about the lake? Or the obelisks?
Probably played through the whole game without knowing that the obelisks or challenge existed, like most people.
i've gotten into the game a bit at this point and you're *absolutely* right on everything you said! i only downloaded it 'cause it was free on Epic Games earlier this year, and I really feel sorry for folks who paid money and find that unless they're Mensa-level genius they'll _have_ to refer to a guide for likely more than a few puzzles due to the very problem you mentioned: they teach you progressively, but simultaneously _don't_ really teach you when it comes to anything more than a basic puzzle. for example i'd never in a million years realize the piece transferability along the board for those puzzles where you have to trap pieces contiguously, or even easier-yet-still-screwy implied rules like 'flat' tetris pieces vs 'tilted' ones. it feels like i'm prepping for a standardized test it's _that_ hard to want to come back to the game. and i freaking got it for free! i'm about to start q.u.b.e. 2 (also acquired for free from Epic Games) and it looks way more fun tbh. just steer clear of this one unless you either don't care about looking up tons of puzzle solutions to blow through it, or you actually taught Einstein the Theory of Relativity yourself by time-traveling in a machine you built and everything this world has to offer bores you
The Witness is probably the only game I wish I could completely forget everything about so I could experience it again and have “that moment” again.
The Environment Is A HUGE Part Of Almost ALL The Puzzles, The Trees, The Shadows, The Sun Glare... Yea, It's DEEPER Than Jus Those Box Line Puzzles, But Still Like 1 BIG Joke... There IS A Hidden Ending, BUT NOT WORTH IT...!!!
Agreed, but the title seems a bit harsh. Also you don't really "need" to play any game, you play because you want to.
If I may add, I think the point of this game is exactly about not having a reward. When you watch (spoiler [not really]) the movies in the mill's basement, you get a bunch of people talking about some philosophical subjects, but for me the pattern was clear after watching two clips:
There was no objective at all.
We started the game expecting an objective, a goal. But instead we were given puzzles (wich I find that is the perfect example of what a puzzle should be), and in any moment, the game says exactly what you have to do. But why the hell you were solving them anyway? But we keep doing them, even though we don't know why.
My interpretation was that this game is all about that, even when we try to assign objectives to what we do in life, sometimes we do things (like playing games) that we do only for the activity itself to be honest. I could just give up in that moment, but then I tought: "This questions don't need a reward or answer to be enjoyable, they already fulfill that goal without these things.".
Not saying that you should enjoy it, i'm just adding a different perspective to the discussion.
+Paulo Felipe Tupiná Yeah the more I learn about that and everything, I'm sure that was the point. Which is fine I guess, just not what i was expecting :/
I read this as "You Don't Need Weed to Play The Witness".
LOL now that would be a good video!
I 100% agree with every points you made, but I really liked this game.
I started enjoying it more when I stopped thinking this was an adventure game or a story driven puzzler like Portal or The Talos Principle. It really is a harcore puzzle game, the only rewards come from the satisfaction of solving puzzles. This game is also very difficult and the biggest challenge is often understanding the mecanics.
I have a lots of respect for Jonathan Blow for releasing a game like this because The Witness is clearly aimed at a really specific type of players and he never considered dumbing it down.
I would not recommand The Witness to many people I know but I'm happy that this game exists, it's really unique.
+Skritz Yeah thats a really good point, like its absolutely geared toward a niche audience, and that's cool. It sold well anyway haha
I need a story that motivates me to solve puzzles.
That puzzle at 7:12 looks great, that's super creative. I just wish more of them were creative like that. The worst part to me is that you don't always know the rules; not knowing the rules of a game is a super easy way to get frustrated fast. (disclaimer: i haven't played it and this video is about all i've seen of it)
+Christian Legge The not knowing the rules part is entirely up to the player. The game does not hold your hand and does not tell you what to do. It does a great job of teaching you the mechanics and it has a steady progression in difficulty if you go to the right places. The thing a lot of people don't get is that, if you can't solve a puzzle, back away, look for other puzzles, and later you will figure that one out. And trust me, most of the puzzles in the game are super creative. It blows your mind time after time with the variety of puzzles and mind-bending things it makes you do. Most people who dismiss the puzzles as being "all the same" didn't make it past the first few zones, where the game teaches you"the first level" of puzzles (this is a puzzle, here's how you solve it). There are many layers of complexity to the game beyond line puzzles in a panel.
Yeah so this is true ^. I do feel like I wasn't taught very well, but the level of detail in the puzzles and difference among the zones was really really cool. Once I did understand the puzzles, I felt a little better (though I still looked up a bunch of the puzzles I just didn't find fun). The best ones were the ones where clues are in the environment, wish there were more of them. But to each their own, and you can't deny the variety. It does a lot right.
"You don't need to play The Witness because I didn't like it. But if you like the game, you like it" wtf Snoman?
That’s why it’s called ‘you don’t *NEED* to play’, not ‘you *SHOULDN’T* play’. It’s just a video pointing out some flaws and some good things with the game, not just shitting on it because of his opinion. He pointed out that if you like puzzle games, you’d probably enjoy it, but otherwise, it’s not the game for you and you don’t *need* to play it because it doesn’t have much in terms of story.
Only people that cheated think the game is a chore. This is because they haven't had the feeling of achievement from smashing a puzzle you were stuck on for days.