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The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

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The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Old 01-28-16, 09:19 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

It's really good. Watched a guy streaming earlier on Twitch and saw how clever some of the puzzles are, so I decided to download it. Played for maybe 30 minutes, activated the first laser thing, and had a good time, until...

... I felt really, really queasy! I've almost never felt motion sickness playing a game, but boy, this one hit hard. I had felt queasy earlier watching the Twitch stream and thought maybe I was just coming down with some bug, but nope... Google reveals that there are quite a few people having this same issue, and the dev says they're working on a fix. Heard some speculation it could be related to the FOV, or more likely that there is no crosshair or reticle in the middle of the screen. Hoping a fix is found, cause I really can't wait to get back into it.

This game would probably look really cool in VR, but there are puzzles that are heavily dependent on forcing certain perspectives to see the solution, and I don't think that would work in VR.
Old 01-28-16, 10:58 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

I've done about 160 puzzles. Only broke down and looked up one. I was stuck on this panel for hours and it was actually the easiest damn thing, I was just convinced that I had to do something that wasn't actually necessary. A few other times I looked at hints or a clear explanation of the concept.

It's surprising how I've been able to quickly catch on to some pretty difficult mechanics, yet also struggle with relatively simple ones.

If anyone hits a brick wall with a certain panel or puzzle type, post about it here so someone who has done it could maybe help. A small hint is sometimes all it takes and still leaves some satisfaction as opposed to watching a video and copying the line.
Old 01-31-16, 07:01 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Are there banks of tutorial machines for all puzzle mechanics? I did the two right at the beginning, but haven't come across any others. I keep finding puzzles with markings I don't get and am not sure if I'm supposed to power through them or find a tutorial bank that makes them a little less opaque.
Old 02-01-16, 07:18 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Yeah, each symbol type has a group of panels that introduce things to you & help ease you into it. It's inevitable you'll encounter several mystery shapes long before you find the more basic tutorial style ones. Just wander around until you discover what each puzzle types rules are.
Old 02-02-16, 06:55 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

I would guess I've done 75 to 100 puzzles and have activated two lasers. I'll probably give it another night or two, but this game is boring me to death. I recently played The Talos Principle and that game was a blast. It had some very tough puzzles that actually felt rewarding when I figured them out. With the Witness, it feels less like I'm trying to figure out a logical solution than I am trying to guess what intentionally confusing bit Jonathan Blow came up with. In three nights playing, I've fallen asleep with the controller in my hands two of them and that never happens to me. So far, it just strikes me as a really dull experience. A boring world with puzzles that are less about logic than the patience to explore around intentional obfuscation. I wish I'd waited for a sale on this.
Old 02-02-16, 12:40 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

There shouldn't be any guessing, if you find the right tutorial banks they should pretty much walk you through the rules. If I come across a puzzle that's going to drive me nuts, I copy it down and write where it was and look at it on paper later. If it's a symbol I don't know the rules to I just walk away until I find the tutorial. This game has drawn me in more than anything in a long time, but I will say the voice over stuff has me rolling my eyes whenever I get one of them. I've only done one laser but I'm at 170 panels + 1 solved.
Old 02-02-16, 01:44 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Is there a way to check in-game how many puzzles you've gone through?

I guess I view the decision to spread out the tutorial banks as a pretty major flaw. On some level, it's like introducing Metroidvania-style backtracking to a puzzle game, which is immensely annoying to me. It would be one thing if the 'story' justified it, but there is no story. There is no sense of the island being anything other than a virtual space for Blow to put a bunch of puzzles. Using two examples that shouldn't give anything away to those who haven't found them, the bird puzzles and apples puzzles: there's no sense of 'who put these here and what do they mean?' There is no mystery or story to the world or narrative within it. It's just a digital space Blow created to vomit out a bunch of puzzles coupled with occasional snippets of philosophy or history he presumably thinks are interesting. Outside the forced perspective crap, he could've put most of the puzzles into a $5 3DS game and I would've enjoyed it much more than I'm enjoying The Witness.
Old 02-06-16, 02:27 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Originally Posted by maxfisher
Is there a way to check in-game how many puzzles you've gone through?

I guess I view the decision to spread out the tutorial banks as a pretty major flaw. On some level, it's like introducing Metroidvania-style backtracking to a puzzle game, which is immensely annoying to me. It would be one thing if the 'story' justified it, but there is no story. There is no sense of the island being anything other than a virtual space for Blow to put a bunch of puzzles. Using two examples that shouldn't give anything away to those who haven't found them, the bird puzzles and apples puzzles: there's no sense of 'who put these here and what do they mean?' There is no mystery or story to the world or narrative within it. It's just a digital space Blow created to vomit out a bunch of puzzles coupled with occasional snippets of philosophy or history he presumably thinks are interesting. Outside the forced perspective crap, he could've put most of the puzzles into a $5 3DS game and I would've enjoyed it much more than I'm enjoying The Witness.
Pause the game and then choose "load game" and you can see your puzzle total on your save.

Everything else you posted is utter nonsense.
Old 02-06-16, 11:48 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Originally Posted by The Questyen
Pause the game and then choose "load game" and you can see your puzzle total on your save.

Everything else you posted is utter nonsense.
So, what exactly is the story? I sure didn't get much of one out of what I have seen.
Old 02-07-16, 01:10 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

He said "there is no sense of the island being anything other than a virtual space for Blow to put puzzles" which I don't see how anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes with this game could possibly come away thinking. He also mentioned "no sense of who put these here and what do they mean". The whole driving force of the game is "who put these here". There is more stuffed in this island for you to explore then 99% of the people who play this will ever find. I've put 20-30 hours in, finished the game and still have hundreds of puzzles that I haven't solved. I'm still constantly finding secrets, secret areas, audio tapes,
Spoiler:
videos
. This "virtual space" is more fully realized (and fun to explore) then the majority of open world games I've played.

If you've listened to a few of the audio tapes you should get that is not a "traditional story driven game". There is not some easily explainable plot. Even when you start getting to "the stuff" you're not going to come away with easy answers. All I know is I've had moments in this game (not related to puzzles) that are up there with some of my favorite gaming moments of recent memory.
Old 02-09-16, 12:25 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Well, I guess we just have to disagree then. I wrapped up the game with somewhere north of 300 puzzles solved and that's more than enough for me. I found quite a few hidden areas, tapes, videos, etc. and none of them offered anything that piqued my curiosity in the least. The island never felt like it was intended to be a fictional place, just an environment for puzzle solving. It never felt like I was playing as a character inhabiting the world, but just as me, looking at some logic puzzles in an odd little game. The whole thing boiled down to Brain Age in a 3D environment filtered through the mind of a stoned philosophy minor. Don't get me wrong, some of the puzzles were quite good and overall I enjoyed most that weren't of a forced perspective or purposefully obtuse variety, but that's all there was to the game for me. I'd be more inclined to just ignore the game's weaknesses if it was $15 or $20 or was a physical copy that could at least be traded back in. For $40 and a digital-only game? It was an annoying rip off that will put me off paying that much for anything purely digital for a while.
Old 02-15-16, 10:03 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

I just started playing this last night, and I'm hooked. I've probably only solved about 40 or 50 puzzles (assuming you count each individual puzzle in a set), but I'm loving the challenge so far.

I haven't run into any forced perspective stuff yet, but I'm kind of dreading that. I don't mind all other forms of puzzle solving, but forced perspective can be a pain in the ass for me.
Old 02-20-16, 12:24 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

This is one of the best videos I've ever watched with a creator talking about a video game. The almost 2 hours flew by. Don't watch if you haven't finished the game.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jhEDARvLf90" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Last edited by The Questyen; 02-20-16 at 12:30 PM.
Old 02-21-16, 12:18 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

I had to take some time off of this for a while because the weather here has been murder on my sinuses. The last few days stuff just clicked for me. The Quarry took me a while to realize what it wanted me to do. I had just wandered out of the Marsh at one point, no idea why I didn't finish it before. The Treehouse was driving me nuts trying to get to the laser, then the answer of what to do literally woke me up this morning. I'm glad the Jungle was short I hated that set. Went over to the Keep and realized I only had the laser puzzle to do there, I would've done it before but I thought I was only half done. I'd looked around the Monastery before, but once I figured out what to do in there I zoomed through it since it was a very short area.

Tomorrow if I get a chance I'll hopefully do 2 or 3 of the remaining lasers. I think I'm close to done in the Desert, I have a few panels left in the tree area, and it looks like I have 1 more to go in the greenhouse or whatever it is. I have yet to touch any of the town's puzzles.

Right now I'm at 323 panels solved + 17. I don't want this game to end
Old 04-07-16, 01:36 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

The PS4 patch popping up in my downloads inspired me to finish this tonight. I only had a few more puzzles in the Desert and was about half done with the Town, so they didn't take an extremely long time.

Before I took some time off from it I did some of the puzzles that you needed 7 or 8 of the lasers to unlock. So it took me another hour or so to finish them up and beat the game. I loved the way you learned puzzles in this game. The only ones I wasn't a fan of were the jungle ones.

Now I've been working on "The Challenge" I've been at this thing for 4 hours and I'll have to try again tomorrow I think.
Old 04-08-16, 12:33 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Picking up this game after not playing it for two months is... not good. It was very difficult to remember how all the puzzles work and what the "rules" are for the more complicated things.

Ugh. I don't want to start over, but I feel like I'm really lost again.
Old 04-08-16, 06:49 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

I was lucky, the Desert had no rules to remember. The only ones I didn't remember well at first were the colored stars, but luckily I had my notes still.

The challenge is killing me. I'm still angry about the good run I had going, had probably about a minute to a minute and a half left and exited the maze, the damn phone rang and out of instinct I paused it, which ends the challenge
Old 08-10-16, 08:45 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

I saw this in June, but didn't think to mention it here...
The Wit.nes
A demake of Thekla Inc's 2016 game "The Witness" has you exploring a mysterious island* and solving puzzles. Developed over 2 months, this Nes ROM stands as a reinterpretation and tribute to the original work. Aimed at both players unfamiliar with the full game who want to learn what it's like, as well as veterans that need a fix of new puzzle panels to solve.

32 puzzles with various rules to discover
Overhead world with 4-way scrolling
16 full screens of map to explore
NROM based hardware, no mapper necessary!

Run in your favorite NES emulator, or on original hardware using a Powerpak or Everdrive!

* - demo version: Only explore the starting area
It's pretty cool, all things considered.
Old 09-10-16, 10:20 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

I bought this game during the sale last week and have to say I really love it so far. The most relaxingly frustrating game I've played since Myst and not nearly as boring.
Old 09-10-16, 11:00 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

It's interesting but yeah sometimes frustrating. I don't know how long I will stick with it - - some of it feels like when I have to do my daughter's algebra homework.
Old 09-12-16, 03:46 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Yeah, I could see that. I'm enjoying it but don't see it as being one I'll revisit when I'm done. I like pushing frustration to prove I can do it.
Old 04-20-17, 08:53 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Finally finished The Challenge today. It took way too many attempts. Nothing more frustrating than getting to the final two puzzles and not getting them in time. That and getting disoriented in the maze after doing a puzzle.

I'm at 73 hours, though I have a bad habit of leaving the game running in the background. I tried to avoid that, but missed it a few times. (For reference, my Portal 2 playing time shows some 3600 odd hours. I've spent a lot of time testing aftermarket chambers, but certainly nowhere near 3600 hours)

I really enjoyed The Challenge, but found the random order of the 4 puzzles before you cross the bridge to be very annoying. It adds an element of luck to the game that is unnecessary. I.e. the order of the puzzles can cost you a fair amount of time by forcing you to run back and forth.

Overall I like this game. I'll continue and find any puzzles I may have missed.

I'm sitting at 485 solved +3. Not sure what the +3 refers to. I did look some puzzles up as I got too impatient. I kind of regret that, but there are just so many puzzles, it's not like I cost myself much gameplay.

I have to say, it is a beautiful game. My only real complaint is that it's almost too non-linear. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out where I hadn't been yet.

Also, the videos are pretty bizarre. Although the one you get from completing The Challenge will be interesting when I watch the whole thing. It's an audio recording made by one of the developers from Infocom.
Old 04-20-17, 10:07 PM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

Originally Posted by andicus
I'm sitting at 485 solved +3. Not sure what the +3 refers to. I did look some puzzles up as I got too impatient. I kind of regret that, but there are just so many puzzles, it's not like I cost myself much gameplay.
485 are the number of panels you solved +3 means you did 3
Spoiler:
environmental puzzles
Old 04-21-17, 09:25 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

^Thanks! And wow. It looks like I have a lot to find.
Old 04-21-17, 09:56 AM
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Re: The Witness (PS4, PC) 1/26/16

The first one of those I found was one of those "holy shit, this is awesome!" moments in the game for me. There's so many good ones... in some ways, they're more satisfactory than the regular puzzles.

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