9/20/2023 0 Comments The witness puzzle rules![]() A good puzzle breaks us down only to build us up into something better, smarter. A good puzzle is equal parts affirming and insulting. It forces us to confront the limits of our knowledge, to admit our ignorance, and then sits in mocking silence as we fail and flail about trying to find an answer. It gives us a crash course in critical thinking, lessons in analysis, interpretation, and experimentation all wrapped up in a package that emphasizes entertainment. They've all been near ships, which I think might be important.A good puzzle is a teacher. I've found a couple of audio logs, that new standby of videogame narratives. The Witness has yet to offer me any reasons to expect that my faith will be rewarded, however. In some places, it seems that I'm on the precipice of a real discovery. I've made some headway, here and there, on some truly difficult puzzles. I found a way to travel to various parts of the island quickly, offering some perspective on the structure of the place. Even after hours of playtime, I don't know enough to tell. I'm not sure it cares.įrankly, I think I might hate The Witness. By refusing to offer any guidance at all, The Witness runs the risk of players bouncing off it entirely. This is a fundamentally subjective complaint, and I can imagine people with a knack for geometric logic sneering here, but I don't think it's entirely my fault. This is exacerbated by the impenetrability and complexity of some of the puzzles, which have so far proven to be beyond me. I'm on an island, and it's lovely and intricate but I don't know why I should care. So far, The Witness has offered me nothing. By using a strange book, you could travel to the game's island, discovering clues that told a concrete, albeit elliptical and strange, story. But Myst had a clear narrative impetus, a hook to draw you into the experience, to give you a reason to care. The obvious touchpoint here seems to be Myst, the blockbuster adventure game from the '90s that sent you to a similar island. Likewise, there are no signposts explaining anything about the game's setting or narrative impetus. The circuit puzzles stubbornly refuse to explain themselves understanding the rules governing them is a matter of trial and error (and error and error), piecing together functional heuristics by inference and work. I feel like I might be halfway through it. I've sunk hours upon hours into The Witness. To tell you the truth, I'm less than confident. I think that's what you're supposed to do. By traveling to different parts of the island, you come to understand different rules, then return to apply those rules to more complex puzzles you couldn't solve before, eventually opening new paths, activating mysterious machines, and figuring out what in God's name is going on here. The puzzles are stretched across the landscape, with different locations revolving around different sorts of puzzles, each adding a different rule to the basic circuit-completion idea. This is The Witness: A set of circuit puzzles on a ruined, abandoned island. You are greeted by more island, and more puzzles. The pull and push of the tide somewhere in the distance. Lush, overgrown with foliage in impossibly bright hues, and quiet. In response, the game gives you a tunnel, and then an island. Given all the pressure, it's hard not to imagine The Witness as an answer to Blows' detractors. ![]() ![]() Its successor has the dual pressures of being good and reaffirming the legitimacy of Blow's standing in the gaming world. But Braid positioned Blow as a controversial and important studio. I'm not convinced that Braid has aged well-so many of its ideas have folded so neatly into the "indie aesthetic," so far as such a thing exists, that it feels almost unremarkable eight years later. To say people have high expectations for The Witness, coming Tuesday on PC and PlayStation 4, is an understatement. More than five years in the making, The Witness is the second game from indie developer Blow, whose breakout 2008 hit Braid arguably ushered in the modern indie games movement. ![]()
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