The Witness
Where to draw the line?
We begin with a quote from Ghost Town Games, developers of the excellent Overcooked:
I feel some slight trepidation writing about The Witness, almost as if Jonathan Blow is going to peer over my shoulder and say “Wow, you didn’t understand what I was trying to say at all.”
Player 1 has Joined
The Witness is a blend of line-drawing puzzles, island exploration and ruminations on epistemology; it is therefore difficult to write about without disappearing up your own arse. This might be my favourite game of all time, so bear that in mind as I write a review from my partner’s perspective.
You are on a deserted island. Exploring yields panels like the one above. Interacting with a panel allows you to draw a line from the circle to an endpoint. Drawing the correct path emblazons your solution on the panel and rewards you with a satisfying click. An incorrect solution chides you with an angry buzz, and your solution fades away, mocking you.
Puzzles often form a chain; solving each allows you to attempt the next. Chains combine to form areas, usually around 50 panels in total. Completing an area activates a laser. Activating at least 7 lasers allows you to complete the game. Simple.
After a brief introduction area, the entire island is available to you. You can walk anywhere and attempt any panels. Before long, you will stumble upon some symbols you do not recognise, and suddenly treating the panels as mazes no longer works.
The Witness is a game about learning, the joy is in deciphering the visual language of the areas you discover. There is no guesswork. If you’re thinking you lack the information necessary to solve a puzzle, you’re probably right. Move on and come back later. The areas feed into each other; you’ll leave each furnished with more knowledge that you can apply to the remaining ones.
The centre of the island is a large mountain, and it contains the end. The lasers you activate eventually open the door into it. I am being annoyingly vague on purpose here.
My opinion of this game is pretty clear cut: I think it one of the most beautiful, carefully designed and considered games in history. The surgical attention to detail and the way it pairs with the philosophy of the game is breathtaking. There are layers of depth I was totally unaware of while playing, and I was being thorough. Jonathan Blow is a true auteur and has created something unparalleled by what has come before.
You may have noticed that I like this game a great deal.
Player 2 has Joined
Tong enjoyed The Witness; I do not think she would wax quite so lyrically about it as me, but she definitely enjoyed it. She found the complexity and mental demands engaging; we spent many hours discussing and dissecting panels and solutions.
Make no mistake, this game is hard. You will get stuck — as we did many times. It can be frustrating and we sometimes wanted to throw the game out the window. We found that walking away from the game and coming back later provided a new perspective; we usually solved the previous night’s nemesis within a few minutes of sitting down.
Motion sickness was a real problem for us. The game is in first person, with standard WASD or dual-stick gamepad controls. We found Tong would quickly feel sick if I was controlling the camera, though this was greatly diminished when she was in control. First person controls are hard for those who have not grown up with them, she found it initially frustrating but got the hang of it by the end.
With one notable exception, the game does not require speedy execution. Tong could easily input solutions to the panels, and would frequently wrestle the controller from my unwilling hands when I was already putting the solution in FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE IT BACK.
We played on Steam. At the time we were not living together, so cloud saves were great; we could play one evening on my gaming PC, and then pick up where we left off on her laptop a day later. However, sitting in two office chairs in front of a desk — the setup at my house — was not the most comfortable shared gaming setting.
Can you share it?
Yes, but your gaming partner must realise what they are getting into. I obviously think this game is one of the greatest ever designed, but it is difficult and it is long. Our completion time was around 30 hours; Tong left me to explore the wealth of post-endgame content alone. I would recommend playing on a TV if you can and be aware of motion sickness if your partner is not used to first person movement.
With those provisos, I have no hesitation in urging you to embrace the game and get lost in this beautiful and enigmatic world.
The Witness was developed by Thekla, and is available on Windows, PS4 and Xbox One. OSX and iOS editions are scheduled for release in 2017.
