Kolzig

The Witness by Jonathan Blow

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On the other hand, I've never gotten past world 4 of Braid, and I've enjoyed all my time with it, and don't regret buying it. I imagine I will never finish The Witness, but I'll probably still enjoy it.

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If I have an issue with his thought, it's that there needs to be a reward that's more significant than just the success of having solved a puzzle.  You don't get a bell and achievement for solving a crossword in the newspaper (for all I know, you do on phone versions, in which case :spinnyfartemoji:).  Just the satisfaction of having solved a puzzle.  Which I think is likely enough for many of the people most excited about this. 

 

I haven't even watched a trailer for this or read a review besides the above excerpts, but I do think there can be too far in the opposite direction to overrewarding. Given the sheer number of puzzles in the game, it's possible the experience feels like the game actively devalues any solution by immediately saying "Well yeah you got that, have an even harder puzzle than the one that just stumped you so bad.". In a sense it can feel like in poor faith it specifically discounts achievement, rather than just not doling out reward for every puzzle solved.

 

Though to be fair, games can probably feel like that really easily just by being 'neutral' given how common constant reward is in games.

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I think I might have to reluctantly get this on PS4 instead of PC. Was hoping to have a new rig by now but I don't.

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That quote you took out is sandwiched between the one I gave and these paragraphs:

 

 

He's clearly talking about the lack of excitement/reward being out of balance with the difficulty.  You can take the whole context of the review into consideration or, you can just pull out the paragraphs about difficulty and be outraged.  Either way, it's truly funny that you read that review and decided he was saying he hates the puzzles for being clever.

 

Dude, I'm totally not outraged and I never said he hates the puzzles for being clever. I just said the review was kind of irritating for the reason I outlined. He spent several paragraphs going on about how concerned he is about people using guides and I felt that it colored the review in a negative way that seemed a bit off the mark to me. It's such a weird line of criticism for a puzzle game too. He talks about how the game rewards your puzzle solving by building your knowledge so that you can solve more puzzles, but then later says the game doesn't give you enough reward. It's not clear to me what other rewards he would need to for his criticism to be rendered invalid. A cutscene maybe? A gun?

 

Sometimes puzzles in a puzzle game can be hard. And I think it's totally fair to knock a game for having puzzles that are too difficult or obtuse. But to knock it because the puzzles didn't provide good enough rewards and didn't give you some big fanfare when you solved them is missing the point of the game. 

 

If I have an issue with his thought, it's that there needs to be a reward that's more significant than just the success of having solved a puzzle.  You don't get a bell and achievement for solving a crossword in the newspaper (for all I know, you do on phone versions, in which case :spinnyfartemoji:).  Just the satisfaction of having solved a puzzle.  Which I think is likely enough for many of the people most excited about this. 

 

Yes!

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Can I get a Witness?

 

 

I am skeptical that you could get 4 movie tickets for one The Witness, but I understand the sentiment.

 

Depends where you live, here you could easily get 6-7 tickets, probably more, for 40 euros.

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Saying the game is hard and a guide would ruin it is akin to saying something like DOOM is easy when you turn on the cheats. Now if he thinks the puzzles are unreasonably difficult or the solutions intuitive, that's a valid criticism but that doesn't sound like it was his problem.

 

Now as far as rewards go, while solving a puzzle is generally its own reward, it's possible the high number of puzzles diminishes the thrill of finding a solution after a while. I imagine that's something that will vary a lot from person to person.

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Saying the game is hard and a guide would ruin it is akin to saying something like DOOM is easy when you turn on the cheats. Now if he thinks the puzzles are unreasonably difficult or the solutions intuitive, that's a valid criticism but that doesn't sound like it was his problem.

 

Now as far as rewards go, while solving a puzzle is generally its own reward, it's possible the high number of puzzles diminishes the thrill of finding a solution after a while. I imagine that's something that will vary a lot from person to person.

I think his point was that if you look up the solution to a puzzle, you might not understand that solution, which then makes you unable to solve all subsequent puzzles that build on that idea. Without having played the game I don't know how true that is, but my gut reaction is that he's wrong. In math / physics textbooks there's a clear divide between authors who include a lot of examples as well as detailed solutions to exercises, and those who don't. Some argue that having access to the solution hampers your learning, but my experience has always been that I learn much better when I can look up solutions to problems I'm stuck on. I wouldn't be surprised if this game is similar.

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(so I have something else to do when I inevitably get very stuck and can keep myself from looking up solutions)

 

Blow has stated that they tried to design the game with enough non-linear options that if you got stuck you could simply walk somewhere else and try a different puzzle. In the Giant Bomb Presents interview he said one of his primary goals was to avoid the pitfall in adventure games where the player gets stuck and then simply can't play the game any more until they figure out the one puzzle they're stuck on. Looking forward to seeing how well they were able to do that.

 

That interview was also really interesting when he got into explaining why he chose maze puzzles: as a nearly universal way to explain how to to solve more complex puzzles, rather than having obtuse solutions that were only solvable by trial and error like in traditional adventure games. He does a bit better job articulating what that means than I do. Anyways, excited to see if those goals were achieved.

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Hopefully I'll play this tonight, and I hope the discussion can/has moved on from that one review.

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There's a pretty neat blog up on gamasutra by one of the legit/non-game-person architects who worked on The Witness: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DeannaVanBuren/20151012/254238/Architecture_in_Video_Games_Designing_for_Impact.php

 

Therefore, one of our first questions we asked Jonathan’s team (Thekla) was “What direction is north?” They replied, “What difference does that make?”

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Played an hour so far this morning. Really loving it so far. Already got to a few very clever puzzles. I think in my first hour i solved about 50 puzzles give or take a few.

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Watching the first half of the Giant Bomb quicklook convinced me to buy this, but it is not unlocked in my region yet... I think I had to wait 7 hours at time of purchase, meaning it will unlock in maybe 3 hours' time? I need brain teasing :D

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Depends where you live, here you could easily get 6-7 tickets, probably more, for 40 euros.

 

It's $11.50 for tickets at the movie theater closest to me.

 

 

I think being concerned just the solution to a puzzle as its own reward in a game with 700 line puzzles is a perfectly valid concern. Especially if the follow up to a 20 minute solve is a 30 minute solve. I also think it makes sense that solving it is enough for some people. It's perfectly reasonable to say "Hey, if you're coming to this for something beyond what you find in 60 hours of line puzzles reevaluate." The money/time proposition is daunting for me right at the moment, and I never played Braid, so we'll see how I feel about coming around to this down the road. I do like puzzles.

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If you compare it to Myst, those games had CGI and FMV scenes as reward. People usually need some reward for hard work.

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This game nauseates me. I don't know if it's the FOV or the turning acceleration or what, but I basically want to hurl.

I'm not usually that susceptible to simulation sickness, but sometimes a game gets it just right.

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I took this snapshot from the Giant Bomb Quick Look.

 

post-8337-0-07516100-1453829658_thumb.jpg

 

Is the player character wearing a suit jacket?  And his (?) hair sticks out a little in the back?

 

Oh no—wait a minute:

 

post-8337-0-39393400-1453829771_thumb.png

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This game nauseates me. I don't know if it's the FOV or the turning acceleration or what, but I basically want to hurl.

I'm not usually that susceptible to simulation sickness, but sometimes a game gets it just right.

. I feel a little headache coming on too. Maybe the colours

This would be the perfect iPad game, I wish I could tell myself 24 hours a go to hang on a few months and get that

Also, not really a spoiler, just something I saw on he island

a statue that looked remarkably like Agent Smith. What if this is a secret Matrix game and when you complete the final puzzle Rage against the machine starts playing and you fly away from the island...

Best

Ending

Ever

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I think I might be experiencing some motion sickness as well. Much milder than with Quantum Conundrum, though. I'm not exactly sure what is causing it, but I'm assuming it's the lack of guns, since I have no problems with FPS games.

 

Damn this game is pretty! So far the puzzles have been quite pleasant as well. Unfortunately, there are only two achievements in the game, so I cannot with good conscience recommend you buy it.

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Really enjoying it so far, puzzles have been pleasant and I'm enjoying the Mist flashbacks. Am stuck on one puzzle that i'm guessing from the Polygon review is a finicky perspective trick. I keep shuffling a few feet back and forth trying to stick the right angle. Overall very happy and excited, though. 

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According to Steam, I'm a bit under two hours in, but I've mostly been wandering around taking screenshots. I did solve a set of puzzles that resulted in something surprising happening in the game world which I'll talk about in a spoiler tag.

 

Spoilers are for a thing I saw on top of a mountain

 

I had been avoiding trailers and previews, so I didn't expect a giant light beam to shoot out after I solved a set of puzzles. Of course I needed to see where the light beam was headed so I walked toward the mountain and climbed to the summit. Lots of creepy statue people there.

Also, I learned that you can interact with the river at the bottom of the mountain like it was a puzzle and then something shimmery happened. Weird. I have no idea what's going on, but I like it.

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116 + 1 after 3 hours. Initially I was disappointed that it seem to have a lot of trouble with Steam Link. But I don't know if that was only in the starting area, or it was a network problem, or Steam figured out that it was failing and switched to some different encoding, but after a few minutes it went to normal and looked and played and sounded beautifully. The blue skies have some visible gradient lines which I suspect are not there when viewed on same PC, same as in GTA V. But I guess I can live with that, so I'll be using Steam Link for this going forward as well.

 

I'm not sure how to talk spoilers for this game. Luckily prettyunsmart's spoiler was something I'd seen as well, but just as well it could have ruined a surprise. Maybe we should at least say the location the spoiler is for before the spoiler? Anyway, I've seen a couple of way more surprising things, but I don't want to spoil.

 

And so far I have to say the Polygon review (which I didn't read except for the quotes posted here) seems bullshit and the reward for solving puzzles is just opening up new areas and making progress and that's fine as it has always been and sometimes that progress involves things other than puzzles and just area unlocks... I'll not say more. Then again I'm sure that closer to the end of the game there will be times when it is easier to get stuck... in the beginning there are so many possibilities that I can't see myself getting stuck any time soon.

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I've messed around for about 100 minutes according to steam. I got really lost for a while, and glimpsed some truly sadistic looking puzzles for the future. I love how the game looks, and have experienced many different themes (zones?) whilst trying to find my way back to the starting area.

I've solved puzzles to do things other than open up new stuff; to what end, I'm not sure. I've also had to do specific things before solving some puzzles. Clever stuff :)

I've already come up against a puzzle where I can't figure out the 4th panel even though I have the first 3. I'm not going to look at any hints though.

I'll tell you what, playing just before bed is an absolutely terrible plan :P! I'll not do that again. At least I was able to end on a completed puzzle.

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