Archduke

He seemed to be expressing the opposite point in the Adam interview. He seemed to be claiming that the puzzles, which you often must change your perspective to solve, are thematically in line with the philosophical underpinnings.

Hahaha, love it. A very delightful interaction.

I wrote a big post about art, but I'll spare you my ramblings. Suffice to say that The Witness isn't asking an open-ended question like a piece of art would. It's prescribing an answer to us that doesn't have room for anything more than surface-level interpretation. (It allows us to interpret the philosophies behind the answer, but not the answer itself.) Now, let's talk about games. I'll re-iterate some stuff that most of us probably know. Games help us learn real skills by providing practice. Chess teaches us about social roles and war, shooters teach us caveman-style survival tactics, etc. The narrative of a game (not to be confused with the metaphors that most games use), provides us with an engaging story layer. It's the fluff that, while not integral to the skills being taught, is useful for player enjoyment and retention. When I, as a player of games, see extraneous elements in a game, I expect them to be harmonious with the game's narrative. The existence of an empty town, for example, builds an expectation that there is narrative reason for it to be there. The lack of attachment to the core gameplay is what makes me perceive it as fluff, and start to build expectations as to what the full extent of the fluff could be. The question may be asked, "Why don't we expect the pieces of Monopoly to have a rich backstory?" The answer being: the pieces in monopoly are metaphor, they aren't narrative fluff. We accept the metaphor as being limited because we're lazy, and we don't want to have to internalize a huge metaphor to play a game. However, we expect more from the fluff.

Awesome thread, it's great to see someone's progress in drawing. I'm going through a similar self-teaching process with writing right now, but the next step will be getting my graphic design skills up to snuff.

Man, I wish I had the same experience that you guys had. I got the game on launch week expecting a Myst-like (Which was a fair assumption given the information that we had pre-release). The visual treatment, the vague promise of a puzzle island, all of it pointed towards Myst in my head. As I progressed, the game itself most definitely pointed towards a story. The statues of people, the philosophical audio logs, and the man-made structures all hinted at something lying underneath. If the game had set my expectations properly, I would've been fine with playing a simple game about puzzles. Instead, I felt like I was set up by the marketing and the in-game promise of there being more story, then shot down by this sudden theme that only appears in audio logs and the "good ending". After my experience, hearing Blow's thoughts about not wanting to waste player's time feels especially tone-deaf.

Yes yes yes yes yes, I would really love that. Their conversation while playing Full Throttle on Twitch was great, I would love to hear their thoughts on the rest of the catalogue.

Looking forward to seeing it in whatever finished state it gets to.