So what was it all about?
>Perspectives dooood!
And that's it? Braid at least had a commentary on obssesion and guilt that could have waried interpretations. The Witness just feels like an art gallery exhibit that was organized by a third party by slapping together a bunch of different artworks of different authors that just barely had somethkng in common and called it a day.
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The Witness
Stray
Obra Dinn
Outer Wilds
What is the name for this kind of game?
>What is the name for this kind of game?
Hard to say since those four have literally nothing in common.
>The Witness
Puzzle game / Myst clone
>Stray
Didn't play so can't tell
>Obra Dinn
Puzzle game
>Outer Wilds
Open world exploration game / Elden Ring, but 3 years early, better made and more creative
Elden Ring is like OW? What about the fighting and shit? I thought it's just a souls game...
Well... I think what makes ER a historically important game is that it showed that no-handholding crafted exploration experiance can work very well to a wider public. No, OW has no combat, but the overall vibe of the game, at least for me, was just like ER, where you start off overwhelmed by a giant world, explore it in chunks at your own pace and still have an all-roads-lead-to-Rome approach.
What the frick are you talking about you dumb homosexual. The Witness is nothing like Myst. Meanwhile, Outer Wilds is clearly an adventure game, it's basically Riven reinvented by Zelda fans.
Have you only played like three games?
>Stray
Is Stray a puzzle game like that? I played for an hour and decided to stop and let my 8 year old nephew play it for me when he visits. But if the puzzles get really complicated then the little dimwit won't be able to play it
One of these things is not like the others
i enjoyed the puzzles
the environment was nice
the perspective stuff was a nice trick
i don't care for, or about, j.blow's autistic takes on other things
It's about reverse engineering the "truth" from experimentation and observation and using that truth to make things happen, instead of going "but wat do i do??" and waiting to be spoonfed the answer like an NPC. Or if you want to bait Ganker, it's about agnosticism vs christcuckery.
Both the puzzles and the lame voice clips play into this.
>about
There is barely any story in there really and what's there feels extremely tacked on. I just ignore it and enjoy exploring comfy as frick island and doing enjoyable puzzles. It's easily my favourite puzzle game
Some of the audio log quotes were nice though. Contemplative. Many felt pretentious
> Many felt pretentious
"solving the puzzle is the reward" = pretentious
What kind of reward would you prefer? In the end, it's just a video game. Every reward it could give you is either used for progression (aka getting to solve more puzzles), or just a digital pat on the back.
The Talos Principle does it much better. Your reward is unlocking parts of the story in a coherent way, along with lore logs. The Witness was kind of a jumbled mess in that regard.
Talos also rewarded exploration and experimentation with countless eastereggs.
I get what you mean. But that only works for games with a story. The Witness is a more distilled puzzle exploration experience. I never found its lack of rewards upsetting because, at least for me, the puzzle are rewards in and of themselves. If I didn't like the puzzles, I wouldn't be playing the game.
I mean more than that, Talos Principle's rewards just make fricking sense.
>Puzzle game
>Puzzles are ranged in difficulty from easy, medium or hard
>Shitty ending requires you only do the easy and medium puzzles
>Better ending requires you do all easy, medium and hard puzzles
>Also hide a bunch of bonus stars in all the puzzles that are even harder to get than the solutions
>Reward for getting the hidden puzzles is unlocking even harder puzzles
>Collecting all the secret puzzles and beating all the harder puzzles unlocks the 'frick you and your little dog too' puzzles
>Beating that gives the secret ending
It's a puzzle game, the reward for solving puzzles is better puzzles, what else?
I started playing The Witness recently. Got like 90 minutes in and stopped for the day. Figured I'd keep playing the next day, but it's now been a week and I find that I just don't care. Does it get better as it goes along, or is it literally 10+ hours of the same thing?
Well, what turned you off? If its the puzzles being boring then that ends fast. If you veered off and found puzzles that make zero sense, then that is very much what the game will be for a long time, until you find enough "tutorial" puzzles to get what the game wants from you.
It's not that anything turned me off, it's that nothing hooked me. I walked out of some tunnel into an overgrown ruin, solve some puzzles, find a picnic blanket and some fancy pillows that make me thing the ruins aren't actually ruins but built to look like that, solve some more puzzles, hear an Einstein quote that doesn't seem to connect to what I'm doing, turn on a random laser, start wandering and find a bunch of puzzles I can't solve yet. What's the hook? What am I supposed to be doing? Turning on lasers because...? And the more I wander at random the more I start to think that the whole island feels like a corporate retreat designed for team-building exercises. That would explain the fake ruins, the random semi-motivational quotes from famous people, the obviously-modern puzzle pads spread around the island in an obviously designed manner, and the fact that I find puzzles I can't solve yet - that's where the rest of your group comes in to provide their own theories to see if you can't solve it together. It just feels sterile and corporate, rather than comfy and relaxing
Yeah... it's pretty much all like that, although there is one special keypoint mechanic you probaly haven't found yet. I'd say go up to the mountain where the lasers are pointing and try solving the one isolated puzzle panel you find on its edge.
I don't know, I'm already forgetting I even have it installed. I might just take a short tour for some screenshots and then uninstall it. It's obviously inspired by Myst, and Myst is one of my favorite games, but where Myst makes me curious and intrigued, The Witness fills me with the same feeling I have when I play Sodoku on my phone while waiting for the buss: it's something to fill the void
That's really all it is. Opinion, but, if you like 3D puzzle games but found the Witness fricking boring visually, thematically and gameplay wise, give Talos Principle a try. Pretty sure it does literally everything Witness does, and then some, but better.
>Talos Principle
That one is actually on my list
Talos Principle is very boring visually, has really repetitive puzzles and has a gay ass story and writing. It even needs to give you a few dumb responses when talking so the AI you're talking to can call you stupid and talk about superficial AI theory. It's really overrated and has nothing on either Outer Wilds or the Witness
Imagine being a person who unironically praises The Witness while trying to claim that The Talos Principle has "repetitive puzzles" and "a gay ass story and writing". Is that you, Jonathan Blow?
I don't like the Witness that much, and certainly don't care about the story. But you'd have to be blind to think the borrowed asset looking crap that is Talos Principle looks visually better than the handcrafted visuals of the Witness. And also the Witness doesn't waste my time with a shitty story like Talos does
Everything in The Witness looks completely flat. The entire thing is like a bad rendition of some wannabe mix of Pixar and Fortnite had sex with Minecraft.
>So what was it all about?
"Don't be too obsessed with finding meaning where there isn't any."
Pretty much a modern version of Takeshi's Challenge's "Don't take video games so serious".
So, in other words, a god-tier shitpost that incentivizes you to do exactly what it is criticizing?
yes
Now play The Looker for maximum Blow-Butthurt.
I hate this because I also felt that was the message, but what the frick where they thinking?
>puzzle game
>point is to thoroughly explore every nook and cranny
>perspective puzzles and central theme puzzles being 'there could be a puzzle literally anywhere and you need to always look carefully'
>thematic and story theme is then 'don't be obsessed with finding meaning, just relax bro its a game lol'
Frick off with that nonsense, worst kind of game to use to express that message.
The Talos Principle shits all over The Witness in every single way. Story, actual world lore, graphics, sound design, puzzles, voice acting, and so on. The WItness is pure pretentious wankery while The Talos Principle actually delves into some real philosophy.
>Graphics
Ehh... I just googled it and the pics look like some Steam early access asset flip to be honest. However I am intriguied so I'll give it a shot.
That's just Croteam reusing their Serious Sam assets on the Serious Engine
Forgot to mention the puzzles are actually enjoyable too, and amazingly, constructed in ways that make fricking sense.
>The Witness: 'hey we scattered puzzles all over this fricking island some make sense some don't gotta go find the tutorials for those puzzles first we're an exploration game after all, just with nothing to actually explore or find because all the puzzle areas are clearly labeled and nothing besides bonuses are hidden'
>Talos Principle: 'Here is a puzzle. You have everything you need to solve this puzzle. When you solve this puzzle, you will understand a new way of using this item, that will be required for later puzzles. You cannot reach a puzzle you are not equipped to solve, for you cannot have reached this point otherwise. No tricks. It's all up to you.'
That's true, I forgot about that. I also forgot to mention that the extra star puzzles are REALLY engaging and fun as well. Some of the things where you have to bring elements from outside the "level" to solve them is some 10/10 "think outside the box" design.
It's too scary
>that jumpscare in the desert level
Frick those guys for real for that. I laughed after, but it was 3 in the morning in a game that is otherwise completely chill, I was not ready for that shit.
Yeah, it was a nice Serius Sam reference
talos is fine, but i wish talosgays would stop acting like it's on some whole other level to the witness.
it's not. they're both puzzle games, but very different to each other. both good in their own right.
Since you actually seem level-headed, what do you feel like The Witness did better than The Talos Principle then?
i preferred the open-ended nature of the witness
the puzzles felt more varied. i think the "it's just line puzzles, bro" critique is a bit reductive.
i'm not a fan of the way talos looks in terms of art direction and look. the witness was comfier to walk around in.
witness is up its own ass but talos felt a bit cheesy
opinions tho
you could easily play both and end up being
insufferable dude. for some reason a lot of talos fans seem to fall into that category.
i'll add one thing:
since the release of the witness and particularly since blow started talking about software and developing his own language, there has formed around him a sort of cult of personality.
those people are more insufferable than any talos fan will ever be.
>i preferred the open-ended nature of the witness
That's fair, I can see how people would enjoy that. I personally thought it felt a bit disjointed though, because I was often torn between wanting to clear everything next to each other and just running away in one direction with my eyes closed to explore.
>the puzzles felt more varied. i think the "it's just line puzzles, bro" critique is a bit reductive.
I fee the exact opposite. I felt like The Talos Principle had way more varied puzzles, and that they also made me think a lot more, especially the bonus star levels. The Witness felt like everything was just pretty straight forward and there wasn't much thinking required for 90% of the things and there was hardly ever any kind of surprises or anything that required a "EURIKA!" moment.
>i'm not a fan of the way talos looks in terms of art direction and look. the witness was comfier to walk around in.
That's fair, this one is probably completely subjective. Some people will just be fans of one or the other.
>but talos felt a bit cheesy
What do you mean by cheesy? Do you mean like it was maybe a bit hamfisted with the whole Elohime thing and all of that? Because if that's what you mean, I can perfectly understand that.
Not that guy, but a large part of it was the very "bite-sized" approach to puzzles in the Witness. There's hundreds of them, but each one can be tackled in 10 seconds by drawing the correct line, no nonsense, just you and your thought process. Meanwhile, I feel like Talos fell into the Spacechem trap a bit, where later puzzles are just tons of work to go through, with all the elements you have to painstakingly move around over and over.
I see. That's actually a very good explanation that also explains why I prefer The Talos Principle over The Witness. I disliked the bite-sized puzzles because I felt there was hardly ever any buildup, and I loved The Talos Principle because you spent time building things up until you feel a great reward when you finally finish.
Overall I loved Talos too, but it's the kind of game that simply tires me towards the end because of what I described, particularly because it's a long damn game. I didn't save the last guy in Gehenna because I just had no energy left for it.
The puzzles in TTP also often have more than one solution and the game flat out expects and encourages you to frick with it and get objects out and into the puzzle rooms which in TW would be the equivalent of ripping one of the panels out, carrying it to a different puzzle and slapping it onto another panel.
I don't really remember a lot of (or in fact ANY) puzzles in TW where you had more than one valid solution for the same puzzle or being able to solve it in a different, not intended way.
Also, it's actually baffling how that elaborate shitpost The Looker ended up using TW's mechanics in more varied ways than TW itself.
They aren't. That's the point. Witness lovers are people who are jizzing over 'muh graphics' and 'muh deep story ideas' in a game that has essentially one kind of puzzle, repeated a hundred times with slight variations. It's a shitpost from Blow that doesn't do anything it sets out to do well. Talos, on the other hand, is probably the best 3D interaction puzzle game since Portal, with a story that actually asks you questions and challenges you to think on top of the puzzles already challenging you. They are very different, but not even in the same ballpark in terms of quality.
Story is 2deep4me, but the gameplay was great. Explore it at your own pace and everything. Almost like Outer WIlds
It's about atheist plebbit game designers discovering hermeneutics and other esoteric works and trying to incorporate them into the gameplay whether through the main puzzles or the environmental puzzles
>you're making that shit up
Just listen to the audio files and the videos in the cinema room below the town, particularly the fifty minute Ted talk that used the moon in the video to draw out one particular environment puzzle.
>uses arguments made by Manley P Hall that Lord Francis Bacon was the ghost writer to some if not all Shakespeare's works
>points to gematria
I got the game for free years ago, it's kinda interesting for the puzzles but that's it
I thought the cinema viewing room's point was to show a bunch of contradicting viewpoints to play on the perspectives angle, with the exception of Tarkovsky's Nostalgia clip that seemingly was there as a shitpost in refrence to the 50min enviromental puzzle.
It was about me solving cool puzzles in a comfy world.
it's funny how Blow seems to obsess over realism yet the idea of an island full of weird line puzzles makes perfect sense to him
He actually explained it in a interview.
He meant to send 3 messages
1) It's more about the journey than the destination
2) The more you look for secrets the less enjoy you will feel
3) Don't try to search for deeper message where there isn t one.
But what happens is that these 3 messages get mixed and what you actually understand is
>nothing really matters lol.
That s why there is the illusion of the existence of a plot but not a real one.
Anyway if the author consider a video of 45 minutes an ending then it s clear he has his head up his ass
>just feels like an art gallery exhibit
That's pretty accurate, but also with some extremely easy puzzles thrown in the mix.
What are your thoughts on J. Blow's open contempt for completionists?
I'm confused why someone who hates video games as much as Blow insists on continuing to make them.
When they can't find success in the field they care about, some people choose to go into what they consider an inferior field to prove they're superior.
It was about non-verbal communication.
ummm jp andersonbros??
Holy pseudery batman!
>I watched 30 seconds and I know you didn't understand mah game!
That's some strong incapability to take criticism, or to deal with the death of the author.
Try reading and understanding Invisible Cities then come back and the quotes i’m The Witness should make a lot more sense.
I completed the Witness and I'm pretty proud to say that I only had to look up one puzzle in the whole game.
I think the best explanation for the Witness is that there isn't one. It seems to have been deliberately made to be as open ended as possible by having no actual explanation.
In the end you either start where you began or you take the extremely long psychedelic ending and wake up in the Thekla inc offices.
>So what was it all about
You are playing a VR Tester trying out some new game. It's implied you have been in the simulation for a very long time. There's some artsy crap about philosophy that feels like exists so the developer can be '2 smart 4 u'.
>So what was it all about?
I didn't know Blow was a Sniper main.
why does blow constantly claim to be a god programmer and then the witness performance is shit?