You Don't Need To Play The Witness 

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@@thatinternetshipperyouknow632 cringe

ThatInternetShipper YouKnow Yikes

He wants you to NOT play the game... haha

@Roberto Armando definitely not a bot

William Bann ikr. You mean the real real ending? So the one at the beginning? The one that fucks you up completely?

There's absolutely no chance that a guy that "feels smart" when completing WItness areas solved the puzzle needed for the real (pretentious and awful) ending. It's obvious that you mostly played this game with a a walkthrough. i wonder why do you feel the need to comment on it...

Nikos A lol chill bro your sentences are incoherent

My sentences are ok for a non native speaker. The only thing that's incoherent here is your brain.

Pazl yes yes yes

+Salmon Yeah I think I just went in expecting something very different. The whole point is the puzzles, nothing more

@@snomangaming also understanding life That was not a joke

@@snomangaming the game is absolutely about understanding life.

@@tomtang7463 makes sense since the island looks like part of the brain if you think about it

Drk

ahahahaha good point xD

Brandon Larkin So basically as you play the game, ideally you're supposed to start to see these circle start line puzzles on the actual island structured/scenery, cloud patterns, and everywhere else. Basically once you have looked at these line puzzles for so long, you're supposed to get a tetris effect where you start to see them everywhere. There is no reward for solving the environmental puzzles, not even more puzzles. There's not even an achievement/trophy for it and most people who play the game will probably never even realize they exist

Watch Joseph Anderson’s video on it

@@sampitman3630 wanted to say that

I guess we won’t *witness* the ending of this game

Those puzzles are line puzzles, not the turning the O's into X's and pressing the button

no you turn X's into O's

@@sanspapyrus9564 You can cleary see that those puzzles made by an untalented and unaknowledged being are cleary infeior.

I honestly feel the same way as Snowy. I've played it and while I was blown away at the ways it taught me to do the line puzzles, but...it's just line puzzles. Smart line puzzles! Pretty line puzzles! The environment teaches you in so many amazing ways how to solve these line puzzles, but nothing that didn't eventually bore me. I'm pretty easily amused, but this was really tiresome. I found myself just backing away from every puzzle out of exhaustion and I haven't been able to bring myself to play it since I got it. I try to go back but I just end up walking around aimlessly, fiddling with a screen for a while, giving up and moving on to another one. It's constantly teaching me, but when I don't get the message and hit a brick wall, there's no real way to learn at that point. I'm just standing there looking at a screen. But I don't like line puzzles.

The Witness managed to push the maze concept quite far enough to explore all its possibilities. It takes something as simple as a maze and turns it into a 50-hour worth of gameplay experience. In some way, it's not as different as any other game (being "just an FPS" or "just a strategy game"... with enough gameplay mechanics to make it unique) but The Witness does it with the most simplest form of entertainment : lines and paths. Beyond the game itself, it's a real proof of dedication, and Jonathan Blow didn't fall into the trap of doing alternative minigames here and there to add content !

It doesn't take much for you to pity someone :/ people can have their own opinions, maybe they just weren't into it as much as you were but it definitely doesn't mean you should be condescending especially when you have zero right to be

HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE GUY THAT MADE SALAD FINGERS

"You must study the terrain" --okay, but the youtuber explicitly references this in his review and says he "won't spoil it for others because it was one of his favorite parts of the game." He knows full well what you're talking about, it's not like he just didn't like this game because he happened to miss the bigger puzzles.

When you complete every pannel (spoiler) enviromental puzzle, audiolog,super challenge, etc. there is no reward whatsoever. After all, it doesn't matter what you do on the island if there is no witness to your achevements ;D

more like "You don't need to play the witness cause it's not for me or any other not-into-puzzle-person". and its cool, because otherwise you may spend over a 10 hours of gameplay you just dont enjoy, in the expectation of something awesome

You phrased it even better. The underline is - If you like puzzle games, play it, if you don't, don't.

"If you don't like 'impactful experiences' don't play it." C'mon man, that just sounds douchey.

you've got a point, fixed ;)

Dvir Arazi Cool man, cool. :D

+Lee Hearts Yeah once I understood all the puzzles I felt a little better, but they still weren't enjoyable for me (but I know thats just personal preference). But yeah...the mystery, my favorite part. Def unsatisfying

There's a somewhat better story resolution if you place close attention near the end of the game and get access to the secret area. It's not perfect, but you do find out a whole lot more than you do just by finishing the game.

But is it the game’s fault, though, that you were expecting some resolution where everything made sense? The game is clearly not story driven.

I think i actually like it more, that you didn't get the answer. The game is not solvable, and life isn't too. There is no solution to mysteries of life and there is no solution to mystery of the witness. Your life is just bunch of puzzles. You will learn the basics when you are a kid... How to speak, read etc. You will learn that the puzzles have solution and you need to find it. That's the castle area. Then you will leave your home for the first time. The school, work and everything after that. That leaving is opening the gate. You will open the gate to the life and now, there is everything before you. There are things that you will learn easily, there are things that you will never learn. Just like on the island. And there is no order. Some things need knowledge of some other areas. Some of them don't. For example, psychics is not much understandable withnout understanding math. Well in some cases. You can get through some parts, without knowing math. But you will never be able to become an expert. But for the art, you don't need math or language. And if you think yout it, that's what happened on the island. Basics were alone. Other things contained things not from their desinged areas. Now, the ending. The mountain. The goal of life. True happines. Was inside the mountain something incredible? I don't think so. Just more puzzles. Puzzles, that you were solving the whole time. If the goal of the life is just to solve more puzzles, doesn't it mean, that true happines is hidden right in solving those puzzles? Is there somethning more? Maybe. Can we reach it? Hardly. Many of you saw, that the only way to get to the hidden cave inside the mountain, was to solve everything. And even there, there were more puzzles. Even though you did learned how to solve all of them before, you still can find some of them difficult. Some of them are easier. Yes, but not all of them. But why? You learined everything. You know everything. And still... Do you feel completion? No... Why is that? After that you can just enter the elevator again. And do it all over again. And again. And again. There is nothing more. There never was anything more. Just puzzles. The same ones. Again and again and again. It's like madness. You are locked inside that cycle. And there is now way out. Or is there a way out? You may mention now the gate. But, where does this gate leads if you open it differently? In the reality. More puzzles. More problems to solve. Again and again and again. Yes they are different then the ones on the island. But still. You are just solving puzzles. what's the differnce then? How is reality different that the game? More puzzles to solve. You solve one, another opens. And there is no clear way to win the life. There is no clear way to win the Witness. I heard that the Witness is meditation. I believe it. Meditation over life itself. The only thing that lifes gives you is puzzles and time to solve them. I doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter which one you can do best. The only things that matters.... that exists, are... You, puzzles and time to solve them. That's the only thing that exists. If you can't find happines in that, you are out of luck. Beacuse there is nothing more. There never was anythnig more. All our believes of someting outside are just like believe that there is a mystery to solve in the Witness. Maybe there is. Maybe there is not. Truth is, that we will never know for sure. And, in the end, it doesn't matter. Because life is not about that mystery. Life is about someting much closer. As the gate to true ending was right in front of you, when you entered the game, the goal of life is right in front of you. The whole time. Just look at your life again... You are looking at the puzzle of goal of life right now. You did the whole time. It doesn't matter how much you know. It does't matter how clever, beautiful, tall, fat or anything you are. The thing you were looking for is right in front of you. It was there the whole time. Just look at it. And if you are not able to see it, keep learning. Someday you will find it. I know this is long. So thanks for reading. This is why i think that there is no answer to the mystery of The Witness. Beacuse there is no answer to mystery of The Life. The Witness is witness of life.

@@snomangaming someone isnt dumb for using a guide. you can solve what you can on your own try first then use a guide when stuck. the problem was they made timed puzzles that changed that you couldnt even do with a guide at the end. so the game said F you we wont give you the satisfaction to finish not even with a guide. so yea that was the biggest mistake on the game makers part. it ruins the game. a game is not special to people if they cant beat it. they are just like F this game im done with it. if a game was hard and they needed a guide but can beat it they would be like oh i respect that game still.

+Doofus "have you consider the notion that maybe the puzzles are the most interesting thing about this game?" He addressed this point directly in the video when he said something to the effect of "if you are the type of person that derives satisfaction merely from the completion of the puzzles, then that previous comment does not apply to you." And in regards to your analogy to explain the "leveling up" in The Witness, I agree to an extent. I personally do not see the entertainment value in being rewarded for solving a puzzle by being given harder puzzles, and I think it's fair to say that the market for such a game is rather small. Existent, but small. If The Witness provided a little more effort to providing more of a reward to solving puzzles, such as giving players more context to the world they are exploring or by permanently altering the hub world with new art or a short cut bridge, then I believe the game would have more marketability due to the variety of ways the game tries to immerse players and make them feel valued. But since the game is essentially a walking simulator with puzzles (bc their "story" is purposefully vague and suffers for it), I would get just as much enjoyment from solving Sudoku puzzles on my phone. And if I'm given the option between spending $40 or not spending $40 to get the same type of experience, I'm gonna stick with my free brain stimulators.

+Nico las I don't think that addresses my point. It's conceivable to me that someone could not enjoy something while still understand how it might be interesting. Also, I just find that kind of a meaningless thing to say. It's like saying "If you're like me, then you'll agree with me." Speaking of making the players feel valued. If you believe what Jon Blow says, then he made the game this way because he does value the players' time and intelligence, therefore he refrained from adding artificial rewards to the game. "I would get just as much enjoyment from solving Sudoku puzzles on my phone" I don't believe that, though I don't know how much you enjoy Sudoku. Personally, I don't enjoy Sudoku, but I like the Witness a lot. IMO, the experience of solving Sudoku puzzles is fundamentally different than that of playing the Witness. In Sudoku, you're told the rules up front. Solving individual Sudoku puzzles is then more of a mechanical process of applying the rules that you've learned beforehand. There's very little discovery in Sudoku. You could possibly find more efficient ways of applying the rules, but I think that's about it. In the Witness, you aren't explicitly told any of the rules to the puzzles. Figuring out the rules is the main part of the game.

Doofus I guess it's the nature for unconventional games like The Witness to spawn different opinions, because there isn't a universal, culturally-inherited response already embedded in us, like how our responses to more mainstream games (like COD) can be categorized in specific responses to the material. Because the game is so different from anything else, it has the blessing and the curse of leaving it up to players to make meaning of it for themselves. I should probably try the game before I judge it any further, but the whole idea that makes this game unique is also its selling point, and it simply hasn't proven to me that I would find it worth the $40.

+Doofus *slow claps* You hit the nail on the head, bud. This reviewer clearly let his biases get the best of him and he ended up knocking the game for what it wasn't, rather than for what it was. He missed the entire message/theme of the game and by doing so, I believe his analysis is both short sighted and amateurish.

+Snazzy it is not. the game tries to intrigue people with an apparent mystery with stuff like the statues but in reality it is all about the puzzles. why are there statues, where is the rest of the story ect the answer is there is no rest of the story because it is an unfinished game (see the second ending). so what the reviewer said is do not be mislead by the apparent promise of a story this games is all about the puzzles , which it is. and it is only a good game to small niche audience which it is

Enzo De Rezende Exactly, it's like complaining that your reward for beating a level in a platformer is more unlocking the next level

See a cool shipwreck, go check it out. I loved the game cause I could just do whatever I want, seriously one of the best games I've played in yearrrrrs.

IT'S AN OPINION

literally 4:12

+KingTwelveSixteen Yeah if you love puzzles, no doubt you'll like it :D

+snomaN Gaming did you get the two endings?

Yes. The 2nd one messed me up pretty hard. Still no answers tho lol

+snomaN Gaming The "answers" you're looking for can be found in six specific audio logs. All of them are inaccessible until you have access to a certain area which requires all 11 lasers

@@OriionCygnus even then it takes some reading between the lines.

+Xanderj89 Yeah that is a pretty personal gripe. And I have since played more of the game since making this video and I can really appreciate what it does. Once you learn the rules, it's fine, it's just really hard :P

ugh i really hate this in one of my friends, we play a lot of puzzle games together where one "plays" it and the other one also plays it by watching and guessing and guiding at the same time, and in many occasions he just says things like ok yeah thats it so we now know this ez done no way this is wrong... i can't really describe what i mean but it's basically exacty what you wrote

Yes I got the secret ending after making this video, and it was a bit better, though it still left me with a ton of questions :P lol. I think after months of reflecting back on it, Blow was trying to say a much larger message than just what was in the game itself, so it's whatever haha

Oh yeah, that's for sure. And the first one is probably that we shouldn't even be looking for these answers in the first place hehe

@@snomangaming one of the many goals of this game is to leave some questions unanswered

Yeah I bet you'd like it! Just gotta have patience ;)

If you love Professor Layton and other logical puzzle games like Stephen's Sausage Roll, The Witness will be an absolutely amazing experience for you.

Professor Layton has puzzles and a story. This game has puzzles and background information.

I played the first Layton a few months ago, and although i did finish it and loved it, it left me exhausted. Not only from doing the puzzles themselves, but from finding them. I'm a bit of a completionist, i didn't want to stop playing until i had found every single puzzle. Besides, they got a bit repetitive (The chess puzzles are the worst).

Masked lunatic Yeah, some hidden puzzles are really hard to find.

3:16 I was noticing that his misunderstanding could have been remedied if the puzzle at 3:22 was black-white-black or white-black-white instead of black-black-white. Blow even admits that there are some accidental red herrings in the game.

Well, never the less, with a bit of open thinking and paying attention anyone can understand what the puzzles are trying to teach. Besides, the "harder versions" he got stuck on trying to go above all white boxes and under all black boxes were still the tutorial puzzles, it was exactly the place to learn that he need to bisect between them, these puzzles exist in order to make sure the player doesn't make any farther progress without completely understanding the rules first. Once he saw a puzzle that didn't match his previous assumption of the rules, it was exactly the time the game expects you to question your former assumption and infer what the rules actually are, fixating on a certain assumption before the tutorial has even ended is just foolish. He claims the instructions are too open to interpretation but also mentioned that around half of the time, the puzzles left him saying "Oh, Okay" because he just messed around with them until he got the puzzle right. Of course you won't get the instructions right if you don't try to infer anything from the puzzles and just mess around with them until you succeed, no wonder he got them wrong so often

He specifically said "It doesn't clearly" he never said it doesn't at all.

Dvir Arazi You're completely right. It actually frustrates me how many playthroughs I watch of games like The Witness, or Please Don't Touch Anything, or other games with lots of steps where people fixate on preconceived ideas and don't even look for the real solution.

@@ChestersonJack Well, just like in real life...

+Nicholas Gorski Yeah that is a good way to describe it, I think I was expecting an exploration mystery game, not a puzzle game with very very little elements of anything else :/

The game, put simply, is just boring and tedious. I don't see the appeal either tbh.

Yes this exactly. It was just teasing the whole game

Jordan Smiley The thing is that you get the whole story explained at the end in a very awesome way!

Totally agree

+ingeniousclown Gaming Man, so I played it more after making this video, and there is a lot that it does very well. The puzzles where clues are in the environment are the best by far, and I enjoyed those a lot. I liked how each area had a different "theme" to the puzzles you had to figure out. It was way to smart for my puny brain, but I can appreciate everything it did from a puzzle perspective. But the story, yeah...I've just come to accept the fact that there are no answers. Your theories are cool tho lol it might just be right.

Well said!

This is Jonathan Blow's Myst, basically, with all the assorted problems.

This has been a mini reveiw by ingenousclown

+Jesse D Yeah like, my wife saw me playing it last night and said "I would LOVE this game!", she was a math major.

+snomaN Gaming Haha this game seems to click with math nerds. Day9, a streamer with a degree in math, LOVED The Witness

+Jesse D haha, jep. As a computer science student I also thought it's mainly graph theory :)

+pfbjjz Figuring out particular trees in a planar graph basically!

+Jesse D It's odd, as someone with a degree in math and computer science, I've been trying to figure out why I just hate this game. I turned on 4 or 5 lasers and then just gave up. I could do the puzzles and it was cool that they were hard puzzles even to me. But the puzzles just weren't fun for me. The tetris piece puzzles involved way too many combinations and rotations and I felt like I couldn't use logic to solve it even though I understood the rules exactly, there were just too many combinations to go through. The tree shadow puzzles likewise involved so much mental twisting of the shapes, I understood what I was supposed to do but the actual untwisting of the shadows was just so tedious. The color house area was interesting, and the hexagonal panel glare shadows were okay, and the mazes in the castle were okay but none of those were that fun though. Then I got to the forest and I'm tone deaf, made it to the last one I think and just quit the game screaming in frustration. I even tried using software to analyze the tones and just couldn't. I then realized that I just purely hated the game, it's honestly one of my least favorite games I've ever played, but am still trying to figure out why everyone else who is smart seems to love it.

+Julien Grimard Yeah thats pretty much all I wanted to say with this video, if you were hoping for more than puzzles, dont :( But the puzzles are creative! I was just expecting more

Omg it’s not just puzzles!!!!!!!! You guys are missing the whole point of this masterpiece

Yeah I've heard great things about Talos, I need to play it too!

Talos Speedrun Man who's cut a couple minutes with his strats here. Hurry up and get your hands on that masterpiece.

***** If by masterpiece you mean The Talos Principle i bought it today, it was 75% off on Steam

Masked lunatic Yup. It's an amazing game, have fun!

***** Thanks!

I totally agree

+Rys0n I pretty much agree with all you said, you gotta know what you're getting into, it just wasn't quite what i was expecting. I actually got the elevator puzzle without any trouble! lol, who knows

+snomaN Gaming :) That's basically it in a nutshell. If you go into this expecting first-person Myst, you're gonna have a bad time. If you go into it expecting a puzzle game on an island that uses everything it can to make a simple line-puzzle formula as varied as possible, it's amazing. You definitely didn't just have the "All it is is line puzzles, how dumb!" attitude that so many people have, and that's good because it's a dumb observation, since only half of the puzzles actually are line puzzles, and the other half just use the line-interface as a means to input your solution to the actual puzzle (often pertaining to the environment). All your points are valid thoughts when you go into the game expecting something like Myst. This is a super interesting game and I'm not entirely sure how I actually feel about it as a whole. I mean, I love it to death, but I can't articulate why exactly just yet. The more I think about it, the more amazing I find the design of the game, and walking back through the island after figuring out how the obelisks work (didn't happen upon the solutions until after I lit all the beacons) fills me with a weird sense of nostalgia. "Oh man, I remember this part of this area, this was fun!" "Oh shit, I thought this thing was weird, I totally understand what it means now!" I definitely think I'll be replaying this game in the future now, which is something that I never expected while I was was playing through it originally.

To be totally fair, the more I play it, the more I like it. I still am loving the environment and everything, the puzzles are just my least favorite part of the game

Thank you for stating your opinion in a polite manner Rys0n, its always nice to have a contrasting opinion that isn't immediately hostile.

If your take is to make it more linear, then you don't know what it's trying to do at all...

@@AJ-uf4sh It's trying to be a metroidvania based on knowledge. That's the core gameplay loop. And when a game has a sufficient element of exploration and wonder, that can work - but this doesn't hold true for The Witness. The only thing you gain here by solving a puzzle is unlocking another puzzle, right up to the end. When that's all there is to it you basically get a linear game where you have to do a lot of walking before you get to any actual gameplay. There are some choices and splits involved, which are welcomed, but each branch still feels very linear. That's why I said it would be better if it leaned more into that linear progression - not by making it a linear series of puzzles, but by lightly directing the player to the place they need to go and cutting back on the boring walking times. The other option is to add more interesting elements to the walking, which is what they tried to do with the environment puzzles, but it's still not enough to make the experience worth it. Again, it's just more puzzles. Initially I was fine with this since each area seemed unique, and I was intent on exploring the island and discovering what was going on - but I slowly realized that there was nothing to discover. The colors changed a bit, the environment changed a bit, but nothing else did. Nothing I did was ever meaningful. And I get it - that's the game's message, in the end literally nothing happens and you just go back to the beginning while all the puzzles are undone. But this just doesn't make for an engaging game. Instead of feeling victorious or inspired, you just feel cheated. If you want an example for a game that _did_ execute the knowledge-based-metroidvania idea well, just look at Outer Wilds. It's also a non linear game where nothing you do changes anything except for your own understanding of the world, and you have to reach different puzzles and backtrack to ones you were stuck on. Except this time it's done masterfully. Reaching new areas is fun and engaging, each time you solve a problem you feel like you made a true discovery, and you never feel like you're slogging through something that isn't the core of the game. Unlike The Witness, it's aware of what it is.

The boat shows you where to find the mechanics... even if you disregard that, why does there need to be a rush with trying to find the area for the mechanic? You're not being 'forced' to do so at all. That's why it's open and non-linear in the first place, the point is that it's fine leaving puzzles for later. This is established right after the tutorial area, with the vault puzzle utilising two mechanics you would have not come across at all. There is no indication that you would soon come across them, because there doesn't need to be any. You will eventually come across them anyway. That's probably why you had a bad experience with the Witness, you just narrowly focused on what you needed to proceed with a specific part rather than just moving on and seeing what new areas you haven't been to yet. Outer Wilds only supports this kind of playstyle indirectly because the main purpose of the ship log in rumour mode is keep track of the specific bits of information that make up the threads of knowledge you're pursuing; there's no need for the Witness to do the same thing when there aren't any barriers to the information you need to progress, save for the puzzles utilising the new mechanic you need to learn about themselves. It's hard to randomly come across the Tower of Quantum Trials, the Frozen Jellyfish, Escape Pod 3, the Black Hole Forge or even the Ember Twin Gravity Cannon if through sheer luck, you've missed it and assumed you've already found everything on Ember Twin, without the rumours linked to them. This is not the case with the Witness, which is why it isn't a big deal that you don't know what the caltrops symbol does in the Town (or any other symbol for that matter), how the stars work in the Quarry, the block mechanic in the Treehouses. Because you're going to come across them at some point unlike specific points of interest in Outer Wilds. That said, Outer Wilds is obviously the superior metroidbrainia. Lol.

did you watch the​ video? he said he's all for the idea, but the execution was bad because it's too ambiguous. When teaching, some people think that solution A works, and some think solution B works. Neither are wrong, because both could be used to solve the first puzzle, but when it turns out solution B was the only real solution, those who learned thinking it was solution A gets stuck and it's not their fault. That's terrible game design

Pety The part of the whole game is to eliminate your preconceived idea. Be able to go back and think "could this have worked for another reason?" and realize: it's all about perspective.

Chesterson Jack thats all fine and dandy, but if you realize this when you get to the puzzle where only solution B works, there's one problem: the tutorial is over. They're not trying to teach you anymore. So how are you supposed to learn solution B the game isn't showing you how it works anymore? That's why this game is so trial-and-error

Pety You can go back and resolve the tutorial. It's not blocked off

Pety, I found that when I couldn't come up with a solution to a puzzle with my current hypothesis of how it works, it is best to change it. This lead to me having a deeper understanding of how the game works and was a fun and engaging part of the game where you question if what you know about it is correct.

+Triggerfisk Everything is definitely thought out all the way, I agree that no puzzle is "accidentally wrong", they are just CRAZY smart lol. There is a LOT to find and discover, which is nice, but I was sad that ther reward was just solving the puzzles themselves, not anything else.

needs more screen shake and gun

+Guy Fawkes Yeah, I played the rest of the game after making this vid, and it had more hidden stuff, but it was still just alright for me, but im not the target demographic

snomaN Gaming got ya, maybe next time

+Sabaca Maybe that's the goal, the entire thing is just a puzzle ;)

+Zantier Ta'sa Yeah, I still appreciated what the puzzles did while looking them up, but of course this removed my "aha" feeling moments. That being said, the puzzles I DID solve without any help or clues from the environment, the ones that just take logic and figuring out, were not fun for me nor satisfying to solve. They were annoying. But again, everyone will experience that differently

Yeah, that's fair enough that people will react differently to it. The figuring out how to solve the puzzles, and getting to see the ingenuity and beauty behind the concepts was certainly the most enjoyable part of the game, compared to solving the puzzles themselves. A few of the puzzles took me over an hour to complete for various reasons, and I'm sure the satisfaction of completing those had something to do with it.

+Filler Shmazman Yeah no doubt everyone will have a different experience playing it, Just sharing my thoughts in the first several hours (I am enjoying it more as I continue playing it) but yeah those audio logs just pissed me off haha!

+snomaN Gaming This is only an opinion.Please don't name the video "You don't need to play" and discourage people from buying it.

+NeilBefore ThemClones It's a reference to the "You need to play" videos he makes, which are also opinion pieces.

+Thisisforvortex So ? The title is still what it is " You don't need to play The Witness " Somehow he's accounted for all the infinite possibilities and made his statement.

Why would you make such an assumption? You already got your answer. It's like saying his "You need to play" series is stupid because some people watching it might not like the same kind of games he likes. Opinion pieces are only worth the worth you give them, which is why you'll have to decide wether or not you like the content you see here.

+Jose Romero Yeah I agree with a lot of what you said. The more I played it I just had to accept that what I was expecting wasn't going to be in the game, and it was very different from what I thought it would be. And thats okay, as you said it's absolutely still art, no denying that. And I did have many moments of jaw-dropping awe, it just wasn't in the puzzles themselves for me. It was in the secrets and the island. Just wish there was more of that and less of the puzzles. But yeah, still a good game overall! He tried something very new and different, so mad respect to Blow for that

I know it's probably too late, but if you keep an eye out for the environmental puzzles, it makes things a lot more interesting.

+Paulo Felipe Tupiná Yeah the more I learn about that and everything, I'm sure that was the point. Which is fine I guess, just not what i was expecting :/

+jamiesbreed Yeah the environmental puzzles and even the ones that had clues in the world around you were my favorite as well. Just wish there was a little more tangibility to the whole thing, but I guess thats the whole point? lol

Thanks for the heads up hahah

That’s why it’s called ‘you don’t *NEED* to play’, not ‘you *SHOULDN’T* play’. It’s just a video pointing out some flaws and some good things with the game, not just shitting on it because of his opinion. He pointed out that if you like puzzle games, you’d probably enjoy it, but otherwise, it’s not the game for you and you don’t *need* to play it because it doesn’t have much in terms of story.

+Frank Littlefield I had a lot of those moments too when the environment helped you solve them with clues, but the ones that were just straight knowledge puzzles I hated

+snomaN Gaming There aren't really any knowledge puzzles. Some of them you have to have learned the rule or rules that are in effect, but the game gives you everything you need. You just have to think outside the box sometimes. I can gladly say I completed this game 100% without a guide or any spoilers including the challenge area and all of the obelisks. I did get frustrated at times when trying to find a solution, but if I got to that point, I just took it as me needing to rethink how I'm looking at a puzzle. You mentioned that you HAD to look at a guide for some of the puzzles in the video and that is really too bad because those were probably some of the most rewarding ones in the game. I know I got to the point where I had graph paper and a color wheel out to make sense of them and when it finally clicked, it felt great. I don't know if you consider yourself a lover of puzzles, but I think this game really separates the people who love to be truly challenged and the people who just sort of enjoy puzzles. I'm not saying one group is more right or wrong, but I imagine there are probably fewer people who say they absolutely love puzzles after playing this game. I just wish you wouldn't tell people not to play this brilliant game. I get why you didn't like it, but it's already such a strange one that many people may already avoid it. Other than that... Keep up the good content, man.

I tried to still put my heart into this despite how I felt about the game, and at the end of the day, it's just my opinion so its all good. People will hear what they want to hear, and it still is a fine video in my eyes. It's whatever, thanks tho! Your kind words mean a lot :)

+KGhaleon Yeah, I only had a problem with the puzzles that don't use the environment, they just werent fun for me to solve (though I understand thats just personal)

+SnoopingTurtle Actually the opinions have been pretty mixed. As it should because its such a strange game. This game showed me what a real "Art" game is, because Jonathan Blow is *absolutely completely insane* just like artists are. They focus and explore a concept to the wonder of others. No sane person would take the concept of line puzzles to that level. To bad the muses tricked him, he should have chosen a concept more familiar to the public. Many artist had a grim fate and while fortunately this has not been the case the road of an artist is always wrought with peril.

+adrixshadow Ah to be honest i havent really kept an eye out for reviews. I have just seen what some people have been saying on twitter and what not :P

Super Bunnyhop absolutely hated it.

+SnoopingTurtle Yeah, I didn't mean to be too harsh, just critical and honest. There are parts I REALLY like about it, but was disappointed in other areas

+SnoopingTurtle Snooping Turtle :D

+ChrisTheFields And to say I "hated" it wouldn't be accurate either. I still am enjoying it, but there were just a few issues rubbing me the wrong way. It has a lot of charm, and obviously a lot of effort put into the world. I still had plenty of "aha" moments, just was upset at some of the choices it made.

+Enkii Muto Yeah, I know what you mean. There were parts I was really enjoying, but the puzzles were not part of them. I was actively not enjoying them lol

A similar thing I had with Toki Tori, I got curious about the second game receiving so much praise, so I went for the first one and... it is just puzzles for the sake of puzzles. It is ok if you really like it, but it is different from say... Orbit (a game about putting asteroids on... you guessed, orbit), in orbit you do have a challenge, and while you don't get much in return, it is relaxing to do it, toki tori 1... not really that gratifying.

This is not necessarily a bad thing at all. I am reminded in a way of The Beginner's Guide, a game by the creator of The Stanley Parable. In both cases, I feel the real fun of the game lies not in playing it, but in discussing your experience playing it with others. (The eclipse puzzle was, IMO, a bit of a dick move though.)

what?

@@tuatarian6591 it actually reference to another video, but meaning is that he didn't try to understand the game - he just looked at view, but never actually SAW it

@@spynderMKso much well said

I bet the Witness would be a lot more fun with a friend!

+sekou lumumba Thank God I'm not the only one who feels this way. Thanks lol

+pfbjjz Yeah Im in the same boat, like I just wish there was a little more in the world, and obviously there is more than JUST line puzzles...but there was a distinct lack of it, and lack of story :(

He had a time manipulation idea and he built braid around it. you mean you can't build a good game around a single idea?

MoonLit for me, it is not that there are too few ideas for a game. It just feels, that the world/island is just an inessential gimmick, (most of) the puzzles would also work on its own, like a smartphone app "unblock me free"-style. In braid everything feeled like one consistent game. PS: please, don't get me wrong. I had my fun with the game, just got the platinum trophy. But compared to braid i felt a little unpleased sometimes.

+pfbjjz I'm not sure that being on the island is just a gimmick. Because as you know there are other types of puzzles in the game that would not translate well into your suggested format. And there is, although I'm not seeing it discussed anywhere, an underlying narrative that tries to show a stark contrast between the two types of puzzles within the game, as you might infer from dialogues and clips in the island, something claimed by "critics" as pretentious. Which seems to be a valid criticism for some reason.

The obelisks, I think, fix this nicely. Just about every region has puzzles built into the very structure of the world itself. Can't make better use of the world than that. Actually, it's been some time since I've played. Does the platinum trophy include the obelisks? Or is it just the lasers + challenge?

Probably played through the whole game without knowing that the obelisks or challenge existed, like most people.

+Skritz Yeah thats a really good point, like its absolutely geared toward a niche audience, and that's cool. It sold well anyway haha

+swat2555 Go to sleep. Try again later. Like in a week. It is standard procedure when it comes to Blows games.

+swat2555 Yeah I found myself enjoying it A LOT more when I would just look up when I got stuck, at least I felt like I was progressing, and I could still appreciate the difficulty of the puzzles for what they were

+LassHaley Yeah I think it all comes down to preference of game genres. I LOVE platformers so I enjoyed Braid much more. But my friends who LOVED Myst are loving The Witness

+LassHaley I think the problem with a lot of the reviews is that they were written by people who haven't finished the game. A bunch of the reviews I saw are talking about the statues, and the story, and the mystery, but when you finish the game 100% you find out that it was all a lie to keep you playing, that actually there is no story or mystery, just a bunch of statues that don't mean a thing. So I think a lot of positive reviews are from people who haven't finished it, and a lot of the negative reviews are from people who have actually finished it, all for nothing. As for +snomaN Gaming's friends who love the game because they loved Myst, I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure they hadn't finished the game 100% when he wrote this. I loved Myst, and I loved The Witness at first. I even wrote a review on Steam where I said it was great game and how I couldn't wait to learn more about the people who lived on the island. I was sure there was a bigger mystery to be understood, especially since the game had been advertised as "inspired by Myst", but then ended up changing my review to a negative review once I finished the game 100% and found out at the end, there is nothing... It doesn't even bother to say "congrats, you finished the game", absolutely nothing happens. Even the old Solitaire on Windows 98 had a better ending than this. All this for nothing, and all the clues and statues are just random objects placed there as decoration, nothing more.

If you think the point of the game is to get to the end, then yea it's not for you.

+RedTruth Man, some of the puzzles are so freaking hard and big that there's no way I could ever solve them

+Toll Booth Videos Yeah I think I just went in with the wrong expectations, the entire point is the puzzles, which just isn't my jam

Yeah like it was just so depressing lol. I wanted much more than just puzzles

+Tom Wojcik I'm glad there's other people that feel the same way I do, instead of most people that just said I "didn't get it". I had some fun with it, but it definitely had its frustrations

Yeah, I've since gotten all the endings, beaten everything, etc. And it certainly was unique and had a few a-ha moments, but overall still felt like "whats the point" ya know? I get now that its a game about learning or whatever, but it just wasnt for me i guess

To me, the puzzles were enough to keep me going, though I too felt that something was missing.But only because I felt potential to be much more. Can you name any puzzle games that you really enjoyed and had similar a-ha moments?

The first time I found an environmental puzzle, it blew my mind (and I mention this in the video, in a non-spoilery way). Then I wanted to find them everywhere, and I did!

+Christian Legge The not knowing the rules part is entirely up to the player. The game does not hold your hand and does not tell you what to do. It does a great job of teaching you the mechanics and it has a steady progression in difficulty if you go to the right places. The thing a lot of people don't get is that, if you can't solve a puzzle, back away, look for other puzzles, and later you will figure that one out. And trust me, most of the puzzles in the game are super creative. It blows your mind time after time with the variety of puzzles and mind-bending things it makes you do. Most people who dismiss the puzzles as being "all the same" didn't make it past the first few zones, where the game teaches you"the first level" of puzzles (this is a puzzle, here's how you solve it). There are many layers of complexity to the game beyond line puzzles in a panel.

Yeah so this is true ^. I do feel like I wasn't taught very well, but the level of detail in the puzzles and difference among the zones was really really cool. Once I did understand the puzzles, I felt a little better (though I still looked up a bunch of the puzzles I just didn't find fun). The best ones were the ones where clues are in the environment, wish there were more of them. But to each their own, and you can't deny the variety. It does a lot right.

+Coin Explosion It's definitely for a specific audience I think. Blow knows the people that will like his games, and I think they are people like him - very into puzzles.

+Austin Argo Huh? The only real spoilers are like, specific puzzle solutions and you'll have to pause the video just to do them.

Oh. I thought you meant story spoilers. Sorry.

+Trax2oooK1ng Yeah the extra credits video made a lot of sense to me and my relationship with this game

Well done for having an opinion. Well done to SG for having one, too...

I would say top 15. Dont get me wrong. I fucking loved it. But the lack of a story kind of gets me down. I dont think the game needs one. It doesnt fit the purpose of the game

Jipsy Jeepies wut? You're sad because of the lack of a story but you think it doesn't need one?

Enzo De Rezende It does have one though. It's just VERY hard to find it. Blow said he planned to have a huge "info-dump" at the end of the game, but changed his mind during production. There are about six tapes in the game that don't have quotes, but part of the story in them

Are u kidding ? You mean like, a story that explains the reason for that island to exist ? The tapes ? Who created the island ? Why is that main mountain like that ? The reason for the tvs (in the main mountain also) ? Who putted you there ? Who are u ? Why are u there ? Why did u went floating by the end of the game w Shit, I really hoped he went for that plot twist ending or story ending

+Luke Carelsen Glad someone out there agrees :P lol

well... he'd certainly like the pirate ship. I think he'd be floored by the rest of it...

+Nashtanir Yeah I thought so at the beginning as well, it taught without telling very well, but some of them I just couldn't understand. Maybe im just dumb lol!

That is an important point of view though. It is hard for me to think how the game would have been if I had been struggling with puzzles and rules. You could make an argument that the game may expect too much from some players, making the game not appealing to all kinds of players. I just think Blow may have taken this route on purpose if you read any of his Witness interviews. Good route or not, I surely enjoyed it, someone else did not.

LOL now that would be a good video!