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The Witness - Release Date Trailer, coming 26th January 2016
- Thread starter Kenzodielocke
- Start date
YianGaruga
Banned
DId you play FEZ? FEZ totally did that to me.
For real? NMS is made by like 10 people. Their last game was Joe Danger
Persistent online multiplayer tracking of an enormous procedurally-generated universe. Or, in a word, scale.
It's great. I played it in December, so my memory is still fresh. It's one of my most favorite games from last year.
The puzzles start out incredibly easy, but at some point the difficulty ramps up. It's definitely challenging, but I wouldn't call it "stupidly hard". But I guess the puzzles from the DLC deserve that label. They were indeed hard as fuck, but I loved them.
Remembrance
Member
Good point. I just remembered that after I posted.
Got stuck fairly early on. Will have to try again in the future.
SmiteOfHand
Member
Funny, I feel similar. I decided I am going to sit out DS3. I love the Souls series to death but need a break.
As far as why I am looking forward to the game, maybe looking at the grid puzzles slightly differently will help. In Braid you could jump, like in a million platformers before it. Braid brings absolutely nothing to the table when it comes to platform jumping. But when it clicks that you use the rewind not to fix a jump mistake, but instead as part of solving a jumping puzzle, it suddenly became a very different thing.
The Witness has shown flashes of that sort of moment all over the place with the grid puzzles if you are looking for it. It is just a more subtle thing, not as sexy or snappy as verbs like JUMP and REWIND.
Cheers for the reply fella. I know it sounds like I'm being a big wimp when I say that knowing a game is going to be 60 hours long is off putting, but it's just what I'm like, I don't have the patience to spend too long on one thing when I know there are other games out there I want to play. Plus I don't get as much time to play games these days as I used to. At least I can get my fps puzzle fix with Talos if needs be.
I'm saying all this, if The Witness comes out with spectacular reviews (which I bet it will), I'll probably fall for it hook line and sinker and buy it anyway.
Orakio Rob
Member
Hmmm, that's a very good point.
Yeah, I miss the days when games could easily surprise me...
This is also a good point.
And this too.
Ok, guys, you convinced, I'm interested. Thanks for this!
Ryo Hazuki
Member
I guess it is similar in that it's a puzzle game. It's become one of my favourite games of all time and it is by no means stupidly hard. The game does a great job of progression and you will pick it up pretty quickly. Some of the puzzles can definitely be challenging as you go through the game though. If you have any interest in exploration puzzle games with interesting narratives The Talos Principle is a must. Can't recommend it enough.
Haha, you can't be serious.
These procedurally generated games procedurally generate themselves.
serenewarfare
Banned
I mean yeah they totally just put "x+y=2" in a spreadsheet and hit go, right?
The Illiterati
Member
Peter Molyneux is at the center of the cu...I mean Island.
Remembrance
Member
At least with Curiosity everyone knew to expect absolutely nothing.
By the way, what would be a good way let everyone compare progress once the OT is posted? While there's probably a puzzle count, it's not very informative if everyone is working on different parts of the island.
I assume that if you wander around right at the beginning you should be able to find a lot of obviously hard puzzles (like the beach door). And, of course, you'll know it right away when you solve one of the puzzles that activates a laser. Would it be consider non-spoilerish to put a list of these on the first page (with generic names like "beach door" and "tower laser") so that people can post their progress based on it?
SmiteOfHand
Member
Will be tricky, yeah, with the whole open world puzzle thing. Probably just sticking to general referential info to lead into a spoiler will be the way to go. Something like..
Building covered in red flowers..
is an excellent spot to spam 'nades, bro.
That would ruin 8 years of waiting for me.
cpp_is_king
Member
Probably a coincidence but 01/26 is an anagram of 2016. It's a clue guys! "Witness" must be an anagram of the true secret of the island.
Witness = Sin Stew
Witness = Sin Stew
Remembrance
Member
That got me to rewatch the trailer. As soon as you go outside at the start of the game, you're facing both the first puzzle panel and the mountain in the distance exactly behind it.
Speculation:
Speculation:
That's a strong hint that you're going to use the solution of the very first puzzle at the very end, I guess? Assuming the mountain even is the endgame.
pharmboy044
Member
Any idea when the embargo lifts? I hear whispers of people playing the game but no concrete details on if they are enjoying it or what it's about.
Wok
Member
It is not a coincidence. This is how Jon chose the date.
darkinstinct
...lacks reading comprehension.
Wok
Member
Could have been $62,10 though.
paperspace
Member
Granted, I've only seen 3 gameplay videos so far (from three different hype events) but I just couldn't see it. I certainly wouldn't call it non-ambitious but what makes it more ambitious than other games? The procedurally generated world seems to be the only thing it has going for it at the moment.
Spelunky was developed by one guy and the procedurally generated levels are key to the challenging gameplay. How is it implemented in NMS? Is it simply there because it's cool? It reminds me of the marketing for the gazillion variations of guns you could find in Borderlands, and we all know how interesting that ended up being. It's still the same guns, and a lot of them are just crap and/or unusable.
But maybe I'm just missing something, and if that's the case I'd be happily proven wrong!
Its an open world sandbox game, where your sandbox is a believable sized galaxy with no loading screens and you can traverse it in a spaceship. Planets have an ecology. None
of it is scripted.
If that doesn't sell you on it or sounds technically ambitious to you, I don't know what to say.
More_Badass
Member
A seamless universe larger than Elite, where you can land on planets that have their own unique ecosystems, while factions interact independently of you, all in a persistent online with other players? That doesn't seem ambitious?
Wok
Member
What makes NMS likely to be postponed is that to get a good result with that kind of game, the amount of tweaking and polishing goes way beyond what project managers have planned. If the procedural generation results in "gazillion variations of guns you could find in Borderlands, and we all know how interesting that ended up being. It's still the same guns, and a lot of them are just crap and/or unusable.", then it is likely that the game will be postponed. It is okay for Borderlands to have lots of the same guns, people do not care, however for an exploration game, this would be devastating. The same kind of disappointment as Spore. Not less.
slavesnyder
Member
Wow, never saw this before - VERY early footage of the game, when it looked totally different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN4q2dtxkHk
More_Badass
Member
2010 > 2014 > 2015 (First tutorial puzzle)
Nice. Why isn't it Tuesday yet?
Looks like he just gave away a code for it (release date key) via Twitter.
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/689854843867951104
(Someone got it already, from the subsequent hints.)
*itshappening.gif*
https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/689854843867951104
(Someone got it already, from the subsequent hints.)
*itshappening.gif*
He gave away two yesterday, too. Keep your eyes out!
More_Badass
Member
It's definitely inspired by Myst and is in the same genre
But the real Myst spiritual successor is Obduction
family_guy
Member
Any footage of the audio logs?
Nope.
Deputy Dangle
Member
They just recently recorded all the dialogue a few weeks ago. How the audio logs work and what they sound like is one of many things we've been kept almost completely in the dark about.
Wok
Member
To be fair, he took a whole month to support Arabic subtitles correctly.
TheDangerMan
Member
I was wondering this too... anyone know if there's an embargo / when it's up if so?
Deputy Dangle
Member
I don't think we know of an embargo yet but I have seen mention of outlets/critics with copies they've been playing mentioned inside and outside of this thread.
Once they made the decision to publish digitally, Blow build out the remaining dev schedule for that. So while it seems to be running tight, I don't think that means it was running behind. From the blog and Twitter, the plan was to finish it very close to release.
All the audio recordings have been in the game for a long time, but with Blow reading the dialogue. So once they recorded it they would basically just have to swap it out. I really want to hear the temp tracks. :lol
Ryo Hazuki
Member
Just want to highlight the generosity of a fellow gaffer who gifted me The Witness in the pricing thread. Rafaelr wanted to brighten up the thread from the ignorant comments people were making on the price. Really kind of them to do that and it will not go to waste as I've been looking forward to The Witness for a long, long time. Overwhelmed by their generosity.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=192765300&postcount=1339
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=192765300&postcount=1339
oreomunsta
Banned
Don't mean to put any pressure on you, but the best thing to do with generosity is to pass it on and make another Gaffer's day, even with just a little surprise
Remembrance
Member
The first few maze panels stayed the same for the entire time, too.
This game has so much work-in-progress media floating around that a lot of comparisons like this could be made, especially with how much continuity remained over the years.