The Witness - Release Date Trailer, coming 26th January 2016

I don't know what the point of The Witness is, I haven't played it and I haven't really wanted to look at people solving puzzles in a puzzle game because that defeats the purpose. I was just responding to someone expressing that sort of frustration in the game, and then expanding on my point of what I find particularly frustrating in some adventure games and poorly designed puzzle games.

I have no idea either, other than what few descriptions Blow has given that gave me that impression. I could be totally wrong, but I can't really imagine another way of doing it that would be anything other than a chore to play
 
I don't know what the point of The Witness is, I haven't played it and I haven't really wanted to look at people solving puzzles in a puzzle game because that defeats the purpose. I was just responding to someone expressing that sort of frustration in the game, and then expanding on my point of what I find particularly frustrating in some adventure games and poorly designed puzzle games.

Blow has alluded to using the biomes and object design to help mitigate this kind of ambiguity. He tries to communicate through the environment where you should be looking for relevant information. I think it was in an interview posted in this thread in the last few days.
 
I like getting stumped by puzzles, I don't like getting stumped by interaction. If a puzzle is presented in a way where it is clear what I need to do but not how I can do it, that's great. I'm a sucker for logic puzzles and figuring out how something works. What I hate is not knowing what the game even expects of me and not having a clearly defined understanding of a rule set of boundaries of play. Being obtuse is a good way to turn me off because I don't like wasting my time figuring out how a game expects me to interact with it. Software should always communicate clearly to not waste the user's time.
The puzzles consists of a very streamlined interface. They are not completely self-contained as such, meaning sometimes you have to get the clues on what you need to do in the game from the environment, but the actual puzzle presentation and how you interact with it is completely identical for all of them. At least from what little Blow has shown so far. (I am expecting there to be super secret stuff, where it is not obvious, though. Braid had such elements also)
 
Actually totally forgot Witness was coming to PC too...now I'm not sure what console to get it for.
On one hand I literally just bought £70 worth of PSN cards for £50ish (Thanks amazon) for Witness and Digimon the week after, but if Witness will get more frequent updates and better performance on PC, may be better there...
 
Actually totally forgot Witness was coming to PC too...now I'm not sure what console to get it for.
On one hand I literally just bought £70 worth of PSN cards for £50ish (Thanks amazon) for Witness and Digimon the week after, but if Witness will get more frequent updates and better performance on PC, may be better there...

it will run on 1080p 60fps on ps4 just saying
 
Actually totally forgot Witness was coming to PC too...now I'm not sure what console to get it for.
On one hand I literally just bought £70 worth of PSN cards for £50ish (Thanks amazon) for Witness and Digimon the week after, but if Witness will get more frequent updates and better performance on PC, may be better there...
Get it on the platform you prefer. Performance and updates will largely be the same on both.
 
From the Steam store page: "Storage: 4 GB available space". I wonder if that's still accurate, didn't expect it to only be 4 gb.
 
I hope this game brings us another Fez like zeitgeist of realizing there's a whole hidden layer of cryptic puzzles and everyone coming together to come up with theories to crack them.
 
There's also a ton of flat shading which probably saves a ton on texture size.

And remember that Skyrim was 4 GB.

It's worth noting download (compressed) size ≠ installed (decompressed) size ≠ storage requirement.

Skyrim (installed) is 10GB with high-res textures.

We only know The Witness requires 4GB.
 
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Spent some time watching Indie Game: The Movie again this morning.
 
I hope this game brings us another Fez like zeitgeist of realizing there's a whole hidden layer of cryptic puzzles and everyone coming together to come up with theories to crack them.

If other people want this, that's fine. But I really hope that everything in The Witness is something that I have the chance of solving entirely by myself. Crowdsourced puzzle solves are rarely satisfying to me. I spend hours trying to crack something only to find, oops, someone in Singapore figured it out last night.
 
If other people want this, that's fine. But I really hope that everything in The Witness is something that I have the chance of solving entirely by myself. Crowdsourced puzzle solves are rarely satisfying to me. I spend hours trying to crack something only to find, oops, someone in Singapore figured it out last night.

I was very much turned off by that aspect of Fez. What I'm hoping for is something more akin to Braid, where the puzzles can all be solved, despite some being quite difficult. But there are additional layers to the narrative and deep secrets (the stars) that take the game further. I never did the stars in that game, but they were non-essential and fascinating to read about. While the stuff in Fez just stopped my progress cold.

I suspect that kind of stuff will be more hidden in plain sight in The Witness, a mix of more challenging and accessible puzzles along side one another. And that's the reason you can skip puzzles, and "beat" the game with 7 of 11 areas completed.
 
I've been playing a lot of games via remote play on the Vita - this seems like something that would be perfect for it, I'm presuming the control scheme will be relatively simple and it won't require lightning reflexes (although obviously I don't know for certain.)

Looking forward to this one.
 
I was very much turned off by that aspect of Fez. What I'm hoping for is something more akin to Braid, where the puzzles can all be solved, despite some being quite difficult. But there are additional layers to the narrative and deep secrets (the stars) that take the game further. I never did the stars in that game, but they were non-essential and fascinating to read about. While the stuff in Fez just stopped my progress cold.

I suspect that kind of stuff will be more hidden in plain sight in The Witness, a mix of more challenging and accessible puzzles along side one another. And that's the reason you can skip puzzles, and "beat" the game with 7 of 11 areas completed.

For me, Fez wasn't satisfying because of crowdsourced puzzles. I deliberately avoided any online guides for Fez because I wanted to figure it out myself.

What I loved about Fez was that it convinced me that it was OK to break out a pen and paper to do some true puzzle solving on my own. I thought I'd never do that, but then the game was so well designed that I ended up wanting to.

The lateral thinking required by Fez is what I'm hoping to get out of The Witness.
 
I don't know what to think about this...

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Better have a 64-bit OS.

Edit: From what I read afterwards, it is for the DRM-free version. Steam version is ok.
 
I know nothing about coding so someone other than me could say if this has something to do with A) Blow's new programming language B) making the game harder to datamine.
 
"How do I deliver the game to a casual person?"

Interesting question. It's easy to forget sometimes how tough it is to manage "camera control" in first person games. Myst etc. solved it by having fixed perspectives. But I think there are going to be precious few moms who are totally new to games and who can enjoy this game.
 
"How do I deliver the game to a casual person?"

Interesting question. It's easy to forget sometimes how tough it is to manage "camera control" in first person games. Myst etc. solved it by having fixed perspectives. But I think there aren't going to be precious few moms who are totally new to games and who can enjoy this game.
My dad used to play Resident Evil 2 and Gran Turismo, but nowadays he can't handle modern controls. Move with left, while simultaneously look with right, while holding this button to aim and that one to shoot, etc. Too complex for him
 
Jonathan Blow would hate the suggestion, but this is exactly why the Windows Store exists.

More than 200 million people using Windows 10. The Windows Store would be an instantly easy way for non-gamers to discover this game.
 
Jonathan Blow would hate the suggestion, but this is exactly why the Windows Store exists.

More than 200 million people using Windows 10. The Windows Store would be an instantly easy way for non-gamers to discover this game.

That's nuts.

I guarantee you the amount of relevant exposure a game gets today in the windows 10 store is a small, tiny fraction of on Steam -- even accounting for orders of magnitude more competition.
 
More than 200 million people using Windows 10. The Windows Store would be an instantly easy way for non-gamers to discover this game.

I know a lot of people who use Windows 10, but I don't think I've met anyone who's bought something through the Windows Store for their PC...
 
You would just make an installer... Im not sure what this guy is on. Maybe im just reading all the tweets out of context.
 
From the Steam store page: "Storage: 4 GB available space". I wonder if that's still accurate, didn't expect it to only be 4 gb.

I hope the PS4 version is around that size since there's no pre-loading. I want to be able to play it day 1 and not just watch a download progress bar.
 
That's nuts.

I guarantee you the amount of relevant exposure a game gets today in the windows 10 store is a small, tiny fraction of on Steam -- even accounting for orders of magnitude more competition.

I know a lot of people who use Windows 10, but I don't think I've met anyone who's bought something through the Windows Store for their PC...

That's because the content isn't there right now.

But if the content was there, then all Blow would need to do is link someone to the store.

A few clicks later, the customer has the game, and it's ready to play.



Look, I work for Microsoft so obviously my viewpoint here is biased. I'm just stating the fact that if Blow's problem is trying to figure out how to package a game in such a way that a non-gamer can easily purchase it and play it without installing Steam, that's exactly the reason why the Store exists.
 
I imagine if Blow really wants to get this game in casual people's hands he'll focus on selling them the ios version. Everyone will buy games on phones/tablets.
 
"How do I deliver the game to a casual person?"

Interesting question. It's easy to forget sometimes how tough it is to manage "camera control" in first person games. Myst etc. solved it by having fixed perspectives. But I think there are going to be precious few moms who are totally new to games and who can enjoy this game.

There's no time pressure or danger in the game, though. You couldn't ask for a better scenario in which to learn an unfamiliar control scheme.
 
I imagine if Blow really wants to get this game in casual people's hands he'll focus on selling them the ios version. Everyone will buy games on phones/tablets.

Not if it's $40. Heck, even if it's $10, he's going to have a hard time selling it. I'm really curious about how he plans on pricing the mobile version.
 
I hope this game brings us another Fez like zeitgeist of realizing there's a whole hidden layer of cryptic puzzles and everyone coming together to come up with theories to crack them.

There's nothing like Fez's awful QR code puzzle, but remember that Fez was heavily inspired by Braid, and The Witness is basically Super Braid, sooo...

And again, I know I have mentioned this several times, but I strongly encourage everyone to take their time, and take frequent breaks. Bashed my head against a puzzle for a long time last night. Beat it first try today, after looking at it with fresh eyes. Of course, there's another progress-stopping puzzle that I bashed my head against for even longer, and I'm still just as stumped on that one... but I won't give in. Maybe just one more night's sleep...
 
Anyone got any interviews with Jonathan Blow that's worth watching?

There seems to be a ton of discussion of this game and his previous games throughout the past couple of years that I've totally missed.
 
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