Bloodworth
Member
Really? I felt like I showed the bare minimum. Like not even scratching the surface type stuff. If you want you can spoiler tag what you thought stood out.
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The Witness - Reviews Thread
- Thread starter Kenzodielocke
- Start date
Really? I felt like I showed the bare minimum. Like not even scratching the surface type stuff. If you want you can spoiler tag what you thought stood out.
FantasticMrFoxdie
Mumber
Really tempted to get it now :O
I loved what I was hearing from the review part of it, but I stopped watching when I saw the
black obelisk with symbols on it. Those objects haven't been shown before to my knowledge and now I know what to expect from them, which kinda ruins that bit of mystique. If you watch the quick look you'll notice that Brad sees one of those briefly then immediately goes in another direction. Also, there were more "advanced" symmetry puzzles being shown. Additionally, the first vault puzzle was shown being solved, which really bothered me.
It's not a big deal though, and I know all of this stuff is just scratching the surface so compared to the stuff by endgame, I'm sure all these things are absolutely trivial. But I just had to throw a warning out there.
Bloodworth
Member
Ah like I said at the top of the review, I think that may be one of those situations where it's more of a spoiler if you're already a little familiar with it.
The black obelisk I felt confident in showing because they're really obscure if you don't know what they're for. The symmetry puzzles I can kind of understand, but are very early and I didn't think would really be a problem unless you literally watched the video to follow along and solve the puzzle. And for the vault door, I really don't think we got deep enough into it to see the solution. We even cut that shot before I even knew what to do.
I agree that it seems to be a difficult game to showcase without spoiling a few things and of course it's unreasonable to expect a spoiler-free video about a game like this. I appreciate you sticking to footage of early areas though and with the game being so long, there will be TONS of stuff left to discover!
iShouldGoPro
Member
GameTrailers awarded this game a 9.4.
I can't wait to play
I can't wait to play
Game constantly saves by itself.
OT ain't too bad, most people are doing spoiler tags well.
MegaSackman
Member
Sigh... we were doing so well... brought down the meta to 88 (which is a huge number)
USGamer Review = 2/5
Edit: Oops, made a mistake.
USGamer Review = 2/5
Edit: Oops, made a mistake.
Fried Food
Banned
down 2 orth
Member
Damn, looking at these scores its no wonder this game is getting so much attention on my friends list.
I agree with quite a bit of it, although I wouldn't score it that low.
Messofanego
Banned
"But these changes are less meaningful because they have no impact on the game world. All that has happened is The Witness has taught you its made-up language of stars and Tetris shapes and squirming lines worming through seemingly countless mazes. Once you realize how little is actually happening in the world of The Witness, progression relies more on endurance than curiosity. You won’t revive any vast machinery. You won’t put massive gears into motion. You won’t find the man behind the curtain. There is no curtain. There is no man. No one waits behind any of these doors. Well, that’s not entirely true. The cutscenes are like Woody Allen’s documentary in Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which his character just runs footage of some elderly intellectual prattling on. It’s fascinating to him. He can’t comprehend that it wouldn’t be fascinating to everyone else.
As far as worlds go, The Witness isn’t the least bit interested in telling you anything about itself. Imagine playing Portal without GlaDOS, without Wheatley, without the dark hints about Aperture Science, without being able to see behind the bright white panels, humorless and sterile. It holds forth with lectures it heard once about Buddhist koans or it cites long quotes from some sort of 16th century manuscript that it happened to be reading for god only knows what reason. By the time it ends — and it does end, so make sure to keep those saved games handy if you’re interested in the optional puzzles — you’re none the wiser about any sort of place or story. If you persevered through The Witness hoping for a twist, or reveal, or resolution, the joke’s on you. Puzzles all the way down. Quite literally.
When I was done, the feeling wasn’t elation or even satisfaction. It was that feeling you get when you finally pass part of a game you never want to have to play again. I couldn’t shake a vague resentment that I’d squandered dozens of hours to no effect beyond now knowing the made-up language of The Witness’ puzzles. Not that I’m above squandering dozens of hours in a videogame. It’s just that I prefer squandering them because I’m building something, or leveling up a character, or beating a time or score, or resolving Trevor’s storyline, or collecting more pointless stuff in virtual Gotham, or figuring out how to use banelings, or rescuing the princess from whatever damn castle she’s finally in. The Witness probably sneers at those hours because they didn’t teach me self-contained rules about when a green star can be in the same section as a yellow star. They didn’t expand my mind by teaching it what those little hollow blue squares mean. They didn’t make me look up James Burke on Wikipedia."
...
"It’s also not as narrative-free as I’m making it sound. I think of narrative, of storytelling, as a progression from ignorance to wisdom. In the beginning, I don’t know who these characters are or what they’re doing or what’s going to happen to them because of the choices they make, or whether it will have any resonance with my life. By the time it’s over, I do. A story is the act of learning these things. The Witness is the act of learning rules. Or, more accurately, of being taught rules. Because The Witness is a teaching method minus any content. It is — forgive the use of this word, because I usually wince when I read it, but it belongs on the other side of a colon at the end of The Witness’ title — pure heuristics, entirely and only about how you learn something with no regard for what you learn because it’s useless for anything other than getting to what you’re going to learn next, which is again useless for anything other than getting to what you’re going to learn next, which will in turn be useless for anything other than what you’re going to learn next. Pure and empty. Puzzles that teach you how to solve other puzzles. Most puzzle games do this. I don’t know of any puzzle games that do only this. The Witness eventually folds in on itself in a dizzying self-referential and self-reverential masterclass that collapses into a black hole of puzzle solving from which no story can escape."
...
"I might have preferred The Witness as a long-term proposition, taking time off to let my head clear, to occasionally ponder it, to spend time elsewhere for a while. This many puzzles, this much time spent staring at this many grids, this much trial and error is a bit much to take in the space of a week or so. But there’s no other way to play The Witness. As with any language, your Witness skills will atrophy if you don’t use them. When you come back after a few days, after a week, god forbid, after a month, you will have to back up and relearn everything. This is not a game about intuition or logic. It is a game about learning the made-up language created by the developers, who painstakingly teach you what a dot means, what a star means, what a star with a dot means, what a color means, what a shape means, what a shape and color mean, what a shape and a color and a star mean, combining, interacting, conjugating like verbs, hyphenating, neverending neologisms. Did I mention everything will be on the final exam? The various drawn-out finales merge all the rules into a tangled clotted polyglot of rules for rules’ sake. Just when you thought everything has come together in a fiendishly clever intersection, you still have a mountain more of puzzles. Imagine opening a hatch expecting to find a trove and instead discovering a deep pit. If you think there’s a trove down there, you’re in the wrong game."
That's disappointing to hear. I already own it but not that excited to play right now after reading Tom Chick's review.
hydrophilic attack
Member
Man, I really disagree with this review.
This quote, especially the bolded part, is a perfect example of one of the worst things in videogames. Apparently, playing a game for its own sake is not worth the time. Instead you need arbitrary rewards or collectibles or a story to keep going. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with putting these things in your game. But a game that eschews rewards to keep your attention, instead rewarding you with the pure joy of play is a beautiful thing.
Dark_castle
Junior Member
I can't believe they actually said that in a straight face.
eot
Banned
Cave Johnson
Member
Tom Chick is one of the worst critics out there. He arbitrarily wants games to have a dogmatic design system - worse - in the case of collectibles and upgrades. It's no wonder he praises the Arkham series so highly because it ascribes to a formula. He isn't looking to break down elements and criticize the game for what it is but is measured against some sort of bullshit checklist for what his ideal "games" should be.
You missed the interesting part just before:
"When I was done, the feeling wasnt elation or even satisfaction. It was that feeling you get when you finally pass part of a game you never want to have to play again. I couldnt shake a vague resentment that Id squandered dozens of hours to no effect beyond now knowing the made-up language of The Witness puzzles."
Wow, the Quarter of Three interview coincides with a lot of my concerns (I haven't played it yet).
Namely teaching the player a visual language so that they can have those eureka moments. The super-focus that the Witness seems to have feels like it would make the arbitrary tension-reief loop obvious where it might not be so obvious in a platformer like Braid or Portal.
Namely teaching the player a visual language so that they can have those eureka moments. The super-focus that the Witness seems to have feels like it would make the arbitrary tension-reief loop obvious where it might not be so obvious in a platformer like Braid or Portal.
hydrophilic attack
Member
No, that part is inextricably linked to the part I bolded. If you play games to be drip-fed rewards you will probably feel like you wasted hours when you play The Witness. But if you find joy in the actual act of playing a game, in this case solving the puzzles and, yes, learning the language (to me figuring out the rules is the best part of this game) then you will love it.
Precisely. The joy of Witness is that it really is sheer, elegant gameplay from start to finish. It's like someone complaining that Chess is shitty because there's no characterization for its Bishops. You don't need to get gears moving in the game to some great machinery, because the game is all about getting the gears moving in the machinery that is your brain. It's like some great wind coming through a cavern to clean out the cobwebs. It's positively invigorating at times.
These people are allowed to like their mindless collectathons or whatever he's pining for in the review, because Chick did fine justifying his position. But his "criticisms" aren't criticisms - they're essentially saying the game is exactly what it is meant to be. If you don't like what "it" is, then it's just saying that you don't like pure puzzle games like that. I don't play Word Bubbles on a phone because I need some overarching narrative or some shit, I do it because the gameplay is fucking fun.
His complaints about Witness being about learning a made-up language are particularly weak though. All games teach you a made up language to play their content. All of them. That language can be interpreted through a series of button presses, but you always must learn that language. That it's intuitive to learn the languages of most traditional games is a function of experience. Since there are no other games like The Witness, he's finding he's starting from square one, and he can't get over it. It's a dramatic failing of critical thinking on Chick's part.
Eurogamer Spain has given it the 'Essential' stamp.
http://www.eurogamer.es/articles/the-witness-analisis
http://www.eurogamer.es/articles/the-witness-analisis
I actually agree with the review. I feel so unmotivated while playing this game, and in turn pretty bored.
I disagree with the part of the review you quoted but the part I quoted is fair.
The game is only about trying to figure out the made up, arbitrary, everchanging and unexplained rules of this game, not really the puzzles in themselves. The rules are needlessly obtuse (Well not really needlessly, since otherwise the puzzles would be extremely simple). The difficulty is completely articificial. It relies entirely on obfuscating the ruleset. It's more about guessing what the game designer meant. I, too, could come up with obscure rules like, you have to solve that puzzle in reverse order just because a music is playing in reverse in the room or something.
It's also very trial & error sometimes, like what does 4 small blue squares mean?
Subtract 4 1X1 squares or 1 2X2 square? Which is it?
The review is pretty honest about it being the personal stance of the reviewer, so I'm fine with it. That said, that point of view absolutely boggles my mind. I don't understand how one could prefer to literally do pointless chores rather than truly engage mentally.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Wow, I could not disagree with you more.
The "rules" are explained quite clearly every time (except for one puzzle I've encountered, where I really do think it wasn't visualized well at all) and they absolutely ramp up in difficulty.
And yes, there is trial and error. The entire point of the game is to experiment!
You don't have to guess anything. There are tutorial panels that meticulously explain the rules minus narration but plus hands-on experience. There's no guessing involved - the first part of every tutorial panel is so simple that if you find yourself needing to guess what the issue is there's a big problem, and it's not with the game. By the second tutorial panel, given how you solved the first one, it should already be crystal clear.
People must really need shit hand fed to them these days. Glowing yellow arrows, tutorial videos that insult my goddamned intelligence because it's so fucking obvious. I would have been furious with this game if it had to put that in to appease those who lack the simplest of critical thinking skills.
semiconscious
Gold Member
same. i think this's the first tom chick review i've ever agreed with. there's something sterile & pretentious at the core of this game, & the longer i play, the more i see it everywhere
...What joy did you find in the Witness? This is a rhetorical question.
This review touches on a valid complaint. Some parts of it weren't designed to be fun, they wetter designed to teach. Imagine having a teacher who half asses their explanation.
You can still learn but there's a lot more busy work involved and no room for you to ask questions and explore more than what they give you.
The emotional highs for figuring out the rules will vary among people.
I feel that way when playing most shooters, or when I'm asked to follow icons around in an open world game. It feels completely pointless to me. But some people's minds are wired to enjoy that sort of thing, so I'm glad those games exist for them.
If you don't derive any joy or satisfaction from mentally engaging with and overcoming logical obstacles, then there's definitely no way I would recommend The Witness. But for those who do enjoy that, the act of doing it is al the motivation that's needed.
MMaRsu
Member
Totally agree Amir0x, couldnt say it any better really.
Also Tom chick has a bad opinion
Every time I've been stuck on something, thinking the game had changed the rules or was breaking them and had to either look it up or puzzle it out for ages, I discovered that my own assumptions about the puzzle were, in fact, wrong.
This is a game about challenging assumptions, much more than anything else.
Fried Food
Banned
Say what you will about Tom Chick (I happen to like him, even after this review), he knows what he likes.
It's not systematic. Yes, quite a bit of the puzzles have some kind of tutorial panels and it's ok, but several environnental ones are obscure, like
the ones with the sun reflecting
I don't actually find it that mentally engaging is my problem. When I run across a new "word" in the game's language I'm either looking at something that is relatively easy to figure out, or I haven't found the part of the game that gives me the relatively easy tutorial panel(s). I don't bang my head I just make a mental note and return later and at this point that has always worked. In Metroid I don't waste time trying to bomb jump when I know I'll be given another tool later that will make things easier, or more clear.
I just imagine this game with a neat narrative or lore like Portal and can't help but want to play that where the cool context has more noticeable meaning other than a fancy looking holder for puzzles.
The environmental puzzles are strictly optional, though?
Not the ones in the desert for instance.
Or through the tainted window puzzles
In The Witness, when you solve a panel, it's never clear if you have the tools to solve it at your disposal or if you need to learn something elsewhere first. You shouldn't have to second guess that.
OrbitalBeard
Member
They are completely optional. And even if they weren't, it's basically impossible to miss the very obvious hints at the first puzzle if you spend more than a minute walking around. Now, if you just run around that area with no purpose, then yeah, you'll miss it. But if you simply stop and observe for a bit, you're going to figure it out pretty easily. The game gives visuals hints out like candy.
The problem is that we've become so used to every single game spoonfeeding us everything. It's incredibly refreshing to play a game that basically says "I don't think you are stupid and I am going to treat you as someone with at least some amount of intelligence".
There's a laser activation at the end of it but it's optional?
MMaRsu
Member
And I know what I like too. I dont enjoy filling meaningless bars or collect meaningless items.
I do enjoy using my brain to work out a problem and solving it
OrbitalBeard
Member
Well it's another thing the game doesn't explain well, you don't know what's optional or not.
How did you know?
OrbitalBeard
Member
Pre-release interviews.
Pretty sure the game makes it fairly obvious though. It assumes you'll follow the light path at least once and you can easily deduce it from there.
The game explains itself quite well, but it does so visually.
if you follow the lasers to the top of the mountain you can count the number of panels needed to unlock the box. Just like the very beginning of the game makes you unlock 3 panels, the mountain only requires 7.
Mr. Mister
Member
Well said. Completely agree.
An obscure puzzle is something straight out of Zelda II or Castlevania II. Whatever verbal clues that are in the game are lost in translation and what you have to do in order to progress is pure nonsense. This is absolutely not the case in The Witness.
Figuring out how the desert panels work is not a matter of luck at all. The environment is designed to give you clues and guide you to the solution, remember the tree shaped panels next to the starting area? This part is meant to teach you to be aware of your surroundings.
The Witness is all about asking the right questions; What are those markings outside the ruins supposed to symbolize?
you notice how they reflect sunlight
it kind of looks like a sun
Mr. Mister
Member
By going up to the top of the mountain and counting to seven?