The Witness

i 'beat the game' tonight but i've only done about half the puzzles, gotta go looking for the secret areas now

Some of the environmental patterns have an annoying demands for standing in the precise square centimeter that seems not to make it worth it. the reward isn't there for the pains being taken.

Firewatch came out today, and I'm curious how it'll be to alternate playing that with this. Both games involve exploring a painterly environment and not focused around action, but one foregrounds the human element & connection, and the other removes any trace of it it could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ONNcwoFSw

this game is amazing. it helps that my gf is really into it (more than me, almost!) so we've been tackling everything together. the puzzles based on the sounds of the jungle were particularly fun, although i guess that's just freshest in my mind since it was the last thing we worked on. i can't imagine anything topping it on my coint & plick ballot next year.

i mean, tarkovsky is in here. this game is everything.

Firewatch is a great little game (semi-game?). One of those that stays with you long after completion

i think the witness is in my top 5 games of all time

~380 puzzles in

and it's doing the thing where real life is morphing into the witness, both visually and aurally

i guess i should pony up huh.
firewatch too?

PC or PS4 for those two?

i've only played it on PS4, so i don't know which is better.

i thought it would start to get old after 20 or so hours, but somehow it's only gotten better. i guess this is probably a 60-80 hour game, depending on how much of a genius you are? (i kind of want to prank someone by casually mentioning that the witness typically take 8-10 hours to complete). i guess the total time estimate depends on whether you're aiming to get an ending (which i haven't done yet, sort of on purpose) or COMPLETE complete it.

i highly recommend playing through it with someone, if possible, although it's a huge time commitment. so much fun

let me see if i can talk my gal into playing this game with me

The sound is so good, just amazingly integrated into the game. It doesn't knock you over the head, most of the time, although there are plenty of sections where it's pleasingly featured, and others where the puzzle is the sound

it's odd because i have read several FUCK THIS DUMB GAME reviews and several raves along the lines of your take and i really don't know where I'll fall on that spectrum

I haven't read the reviews, but if they're complaining about things beyond the puzzles and the general flow of the game, I'm guessing they're pissed at the pretension of it all, esp with regards to the "readings" you'll find. I'm not such a fan of some of those (though I love the videos) but they don't interfere with the rest of the game, at worst, and at best they add a nice new layer that gradually unfolds in an indeterminate way

the complaint i've heard is that it's the same puzzle over and over and that each puzzle unlocks another puzzle that's the same puzzle

it only took me 15 hrs to beat the game but i'm still messing around in the secret challenge area now

the audiotapes in the challenge area get weird/creepy

Many of the puzzles do share similar mechanics, but many are unique. There's also a kind of epic side quest that involved searching for many, many little environmental perspectives that allow you to trace certain paths. (I think it's side? I haven't gotten to an ending yet but I'm assuming it's optional). Just exploring the island is a joy. It's exceptionally designed

ciderpress, did you get the one at the bottom of the ship that involved atmospheric violin/string patterns (mid low mid high repeat) with water drops (low high mid)? if so, can you just tell me if the water drops made a difference, or if it was just the violin/strings? that one is driving me nuts.

also i never did figure out the crazy tree in the bamboo forest, but the sound there is just amazing, especially when you're spending 10+ minutes searching through every inch of it

i haven't done the ship area yet, its a side quest i guess since it wasn't necessary to beat the game or enter the challenge area

and yeah the 'perspective puzzles' are a side quest too but some of them get kind of insane in the level of environment detail necessary to make them work

there's also a ton of other neat perspective and shadow stuff hidden all over the game that doesn't count for anything but is cool to find e.g. http://i.imgur.com/Z8tazxj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sHzr1YV.png

Definitely. It sounds crazy that he spent 7 years on this but as you walk around you can sense the investment

alright i'm downloading now. i thought the whole point with this goddamn system was that you could play while it downloaded the rest of the game in the background? not how this seems to work.

I think the game files have to be set up in a certain way for that to work, less likely for an indie game

yeah wow, this completely held me for three hours.
i like how the tutorial helps you feel like you're super smart and you're gonna breeze right through this game and then the laser turns on and it's like oh hi entire island and puzzles i have no idea how to read. No more brute forcing and so much to explore. I went to bed with a massive headache though.

glad you're into it so far!

the degree of difficulty just jumped so precipitously.

we reached the ending (an ending? i haven't read too many spoilery things so i'm not sure if there's a better one if you complete everything) last night. :) now it's on to finding all the secret shit :) :) :)

so, the obelisks - has anyone here completely filled one in? i'm SO close on one of them, i'm only missing one little environmental path, but i can't find it anywhere. i just want to complete one obelisk so i can see what happens. i'm guessing it opens up something in the area beneath the windmill?

Have any of you also played the Talos Principle? How would you rate the two?

i saw you mentioned in it the whatchu playing thread, so i'm going to check it out soon!

i never finished an obelisk

I'm sure I'll come back to this game at some point and go for the 100% finish

oh man, after taking a couple weeks off we're back in, and we've FINALLY figured out how to unlock the secret area near the videos. currently waiting it out. i can see how this forced waiting would piss some people off but i will never forget it, and that's something.

There was a certain amusement when James Burke popped up. It was akin to already having the record before one of its songs shows up in a Tarantino or We'd Anderson flick

yeah, i was just watching his portion again, realizing there were puzzles related to it. this game, sheesh.

also, xpost to self, it did NOT unlock the secret area. FUCK!

i'm trying to figure out whether have to 100% the remaining portion of the game in order to unlock the windmill stuff, or if you can do it earlier.

What, they hid puzzles in the video?

*grimly nods*

At least I think it was in the Burke video. If that one is nothing but a closeup shot of him, though, it was in one of the others. I am an unreliable witness.

This is such a great game to introduce to non-gamers. in certain situations it can get them to reconsider the value of videogames in general. I'm watching that process right now and it's so powerful!

unsubstantiated theory: if somehow the witness replaced the oregon trail as the standard apple II game back in the day we would be colonizing galaxy 20AF23 right now

This is such a pleasant game. I wasn't much into the aesthetic of Braid, but the environmental design and ambience in The Witness are perfect. Exploring beautiful buildings and gardens in an eerie dreamworld is obviously what games were made for.

https://dustmop.itch.io/the-witnes

that was fun!

a little confusing, though - where is the full version? i'd be willing to shell out a few bucks for it but all i can find is the link to the demo.

it's freeware; i think that's it.

http://time.com/4355763/the-witness-jonathan-blow-interview/

one thing that's nice about the long tail of the witness is you end up revisiting every part of the island several times trying to figure out shit anyway

(well, i guess that's nice if you like the island, which i do. if i had to live on a videogame desert island it would be witness version)

Good thread idea, which videogame would you live in. (Expanded beyond desert islands since I can't think of too many others. Or any.)

research material: Best Level from Super Mario 64 and favorite place to hang out in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

btw i wish i hadn't read that KM post about the talos principle because i agree completely and now fear i should buy the witness

Got the first endgame with one laser to go, panicked a bit when I thought I was going to have to start from scratch.

This is an incredible game but I'm very happy I'll never have to solve some of those puzzles again.

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-09/8/9/enhanced/webdr08/enhanced-buzz-21645-1410182243-23.jpg

The part of the game that never ends :)

What did folk make of the challenge area then? At first I thought it was a huge lol, turning what had been a leisurely no pressure pursuit into a frantic race against time, making you feel like a puppet on a string jerking frenetically around to the music, and like a prize chump for going along with it. Then I got frustrated and angry at how hard it was, then all of a sudden I got lucky and breezed it (plus I slightly unintentionally cheated and found out the clue to the maze room). I think it was a good idea but ultimately too reliant on luck, the pillars and not one but two 'pick one out of three' in particular tipping it over into fucking bastard territory.

Had the same experience of butting my head against it and then beating it out of nowhere. Think it's cool thing to have in there and introducing a random element, which the rest of the game is so dead set against is neat. The best puzzles in the game made me feel smart though and beating the challenge just made me glad I wouldn't have to keep trying.

This couldn't be ported to PS3? Doesn't seem too incredibly graphically intensive? Played a bit at a friend's, only did a few puzzles but was very enjoyable. I may actually re-download steam after five years when I decided my computer would only be for work related stuff (which really just meant I play rubbish flash games or android phone games) for this.

Can I recommend people have a look at this?

https://severedheads.bandcamp.com/album/snowglobe-for-pc
https://severedheads.bandcamp.com/album/snowglobe-for-mac

Mac port arrived today