The Witness Appreciation Post

I got the urge to play the witness for the 3rd (or maybe even 4th) time again after being slightly disappointed by the Talos Principle 2, and man I cannot express enough how much I enjoy this game. It just satisfies something deep inside me every time I play it. And I know a LOT of people (probably some here) strongly dislike this game, but for me it’s just sublime to play. Relaxing yet challenging, mysterious and layered, it’s great in my opinion.

It does however deeply annoy me how misunderstood the game is. Mostly from people who didn’t play it all the way through. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard somebody complain about an aspect being “useless” or not making any sense when it IS useful and DOES make sense as long as you just keep playing the game. Also what’s frustrating is when somebody complains about stumbling onto a puzzle they haven’t learned yet in an open world puzzle game and then refusing to use the open world to go and find where it teaches you… idk. Anyway, LOVE this game. If there’s anybody reading this who’s into puzzles, especially 2D puzzle games, you may love the witness (but your computer might hate you, it’s surprisingly graphically intense at times)

perishthethought, (edited )

EDITED: I should play The Witness again. I’ve played it once, mostly completed and loved it. I’m in the middle of the Talos Principle 2 now and want to finish it first. Come to my community and talk about what you didn’t like, OP.

TheTalosPrinciple@lemm.ee

lemm.ee/c/the_talos_principle

Smoke,

I can say I was put off at first glance by the “realistic” aesthetic, with props like jammers and minigun turrets that have an unnecessarily detailed, grounded look when as a puzzle game, graphics should not be the focus of the experience. A stylised, or minimal, graphical style would put the focus firmly where it belongs - on the puzzles themselves.

perishthethought,

Huh, OK. That never crossed my mind while playing TTP / TTP2 but I can see how that would be distracting from the puzzle solving.

Funny thing is, after I finished Witness, I went back to play Braid, the earlier game by the same creator and its look & feel just never worked for me at all. So yeah

Smoke,

Let me add one thing more, that a realistic aesthetic brings with it certain expectations. For example, I don’t question how Security Bots in Bioshock refuel themselves, or fly, or recognise intruders. I don’t ask how come the turrets in Portal never run out of bullets (though it’s answered as a gag in one of the videos). They’re not presented as realistic, and I don’t expect them to be. But when you make the choice to use realistic miniguns in Talos, those questions are going to bubble up to the surface, like “Where’s the ammo box on that thing?” and “Who’s maintaining these on islands in the middle of nowhere?” and “Scratch that, who’s making them?” and “If Elohim (yeah real subtle name there) did all this then why bother with a machine that requires maintenance in the first place instead of a magic pillar of fire or smth?”

bermuda,

Eh it’s fine ill just type it here.

Basically I was disappointed by the lack of star variety and the very predictable story. The environments were pretty but I also disliked that the devs put more effort into preventing alternate solutions, those were some of my favorite aspects of the first game.

The stars were 100% the biggest issue though. They were some of the most fun parts of the first game, but in 2 once you solved some of them you pretty much knew how to do the rest, and they became a major chore instead of a puzzle.

Azzu,

I treasure it a lot. The aesthetic, the design, the voices, the calm, everything just fits together perfectly to create something amazing that’s truly greater than its parts.

I feel like it’s a game that works best if you are a person that either doesn’t have or can let go of their expectations, and just experience.

GammaGames,

I played the Witness for… maybe 5 hours? when it came out. A friend got all the beacons and it took forever! I was amazed at how much variation this game had in its puzzles.
I should really pick it up again, maybe I’ll get my partner to try it. Is it on ps5?

also obligatory Joseph Anderson thar be spoilers

bermuda,

It’s on PS4, so there should be backwards compatibility

EvaUnit02,
EvaUnit02 avatar

I can't comment on this title in particular but if you load it on your PS5 and receive a toast which reads something to the effect of "when playing on PS5, this game may exhibit errors or unexpected behavior" then it means some part of the game is absolutely fucked up but still "playable."

For example, Star Ocean: Till the End of Time messes up very late in to the game on the PS5 where a space ship environment zooms very far out, the controls become locked in such a way where camera control doesn't work, and directional movement controls seem arbitrarily mapped. While someone more patient and talented than I may have been able to navigate through that issue, I couldn't proceed until I continued the game on my PS4 via cloud save transfer.

fri,

If you liked The Witness, you might like these games too:

LoamImprovement,

The Looker

🤔

ag_roberston_author,
@ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org avatar

It’s a parody of The Witness, haha.

LoamImprovement,

Oh I know, I’ve played it, I like it, but I’m a chronic shitpost enjoyer. I suppose you can’t beat the price, but I think I’d hesitate to call it a puzzle game, exactly?

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