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The Witness |OT|
- Thread starter Afro
- Start date
not sure what you mean by style
the surrounding decoration? cause the panel is has none of the 'stuff' in it, just normal get from point to b
Cheesewheel
Member
Finished the game and got all the
How do I get into the following area or areas?
videos.
How do I get into the following area or areas?
Other side of the gate under the windmill
Gate behind the elevator under the desert temple
Path over the theatre
Boarded up wooden house in the village
Gate behind the elevator under the desert temple
Path over the theatre
Boarded up wooden house in the village
Belgian Dude
Member
Yeah, the surrounding decoration - there's another area that teaches you what you need to do to solve those panels, and you also need to open up the door in front of the panel first.
Did you get the 4th video too?
that one is right next to the access to all those paths
ah, ok. man, my broken wood solution was so good though. pout
Remembrance
Member
Got another burst of inspiration and managed to power through to the very end. The sheer interplay in those last puzzles is astounding. The planning involved, and the mental gymnastics required even when you know exactly what you have to do...
And now after powering through two things that I thought for sure was the finale, I'm stuck again in what has to be the ending room.
Has to be.
And now after powering through two things that I thought for sure was the finale, I'm stuck again in what has to be the ending room.
Has to be.
orange/brown panels on the wall in a row, with charring/scorch marks - the first thing you come across after going down into the mountain and into a bright white room. There is a cable going off the right hand side so I thought I might have to do them.
d00d3n
Member
I remember encountering that door, not having a clue, and moving on as a loser. After mastering
the swamp
Belgian Dude
Member
Oh, alright:
you'll have to do them pretty soon, but you need something else to reach it. Should be pretty close but it's where the difficulty really begins to ramp up imo.
Cheesewheel
Member
lol it is too.
I totally didn't explore that cave after I activated the music player. Tunnel vision.
Out of interest, what's the densest area in terms of sheer quantity of puzzle panels?
is, I think, the shallowest I've found; there's not very many in
either. The
has a lot, and I'm currently partway through the
, and there's an awful lot there, too.
The Bunker
The Monastery
marsh
Treetops
Remembrance
Member
Dr_Boris_Goltz
Banned
Puzzle in the buddhist temple spoiler:
http://i.imgur.com/m4AMg7K.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/L0EdLJQ.jpg?2
http://i.imgur.com/m4AMg7K.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/L0EdLJQ.jpg?2
Am I missing a third piece to this? The branches don't set out a complete path, even when combined.
OrbitalBeard
Member
Dr_Boris_Goltz
Banned
I can safely say I would have never noticed that. Thank you!
CAAAAAAAAAAAW
Member
Jeez, I take a break for a little while and you just zoom right past me. Guess I better get cracking on those last few +
Dr_Boris_Goltz
Banned
Castle spoilers:
I finally went back and finished the clock tower tetris puzzle, and nothing happened. The laser is already active... Did I only have to complete one?
Ow, my eyes!
D
Deleted member 30609
Unconfirmed Member
mountain spoilers:
the fourth color puzzle (or maybe it's the third... the second-last color puzzle, let's say, with the dot starting in the flashing color part), is evil. I thought I had something when I assumed the "true" color wasn't actually blue, but even then...
Chairmanchuck
Member
Two questions:
1.
2.
1.
What do these play-button panels that lie around do?
2.
Is there anything you can do with the statues if you line them up right? it seems a lot of statues can be lined up e.g. the "helping hand" or in one area some guy wants to get some kind of grail, but in the shadow he has it.
Where is the entrance for this?
Belgian Dude
Member
Jeez, I take a break for a little while and you just zoom right past me. Guess I better get cracking on those last few +
( Someone found a 522 )
)Anyway, I'm satisfied with where I'm currently am though I'll try to find all the audio logs and see if there's any more puzzles. After around 40 to 45 hours of playtime, my total panel/puzzle count is
521 panels, 656 puzzles if you count the + ones, 662 puzzles if you count the ++ ones, which is over 660 as I think was said
Because of that I decided to take a bit of a look at the game in general and try to see if I could piece what I thought was the message. In the end, I saw some people that had similar ideas and am a bit confident about it, so I'm going to post it in here if anyone wants to start a discussion about it.
I think everything you can find on the witness is intentional and ends up in a net positive. Yes, even the seemingly random videos, and even the environmental puzzle that has you wait a full hour while he mocks you in the background that you're only doing so in order to collect everything. So even if something feels like a bit of a stretch in this, I'll try to explain it or I think it's deeply based on world building.
There are two 'halves' regarding The Witness' story. One is about you - as someone new to the island. It doesn't matter what your identity is, however - what it matters is what you go through, the places you see and the things you do. What matters is the events that you see unfold. You're literally your own witness to your own journey and the things around you, and I don't think the title was chosen for being a 'catchy word with impact'. But what exactly are you witnessing? Well - this ties directly into the two halves. You're witnessing first hand your own process of learning and discovery. You're learning new languages, learning shortcuts, beginning to know the ins and outs of the island... I think this also ties with how the puzzles are presented to you - your only weapon is knowledge, and your assumptions, and the world won't mold to your assumptions - you have to see the world for what it is and keep reacting around it.
And the second half is about creation, and the creator of the island - which I think is fair to say, it's about Blow. I know it sounds a bit narcisistic, but I think a 'self-insertion' works well at times, like all the confusion surrounding 'The Beginner's Guide'. Talking about creation, I think it works so well because it doubles as a creation of the island, and of the actual game. The mountain was a factory where new ideas were made, iterated upon, revised, and discarded. Things begin to get a little bit glitchy, off-set. You are introduced to a lot of new concepts in rapid-fire sucession, only for them not to be touched that much later on. You can also see that in the statues of the island - on the outside, even if there are statues of thieves and things like that, you still get very much the picture of a live world, with people living, friends being friends and enemies being enemies - but as you begin to go up the mountain, where gadgets are being set-up, there are people arguing despite making the trek together, and as you go down, you can see the workshops getting more and more messy, until you end on the 'red cave', where a single 'creator' stands over a panel trying to tie everything together. Now this is not my analogy but I agree when I saw someone say it can be compared to Development Hell - near the end, deadlines approaching (everyone got 'statued' in the middle of setting up everything).
And in the end, we have the 'sea'. A sense of serenity, with puzzles still being hard, but something that shows us that everything was done. It paid off. You are asked, as a player, to apply all of your knowledge (besides the ones discarded in the factory hell) in one last challenge. Before going back to the start. Time to begin a new journey, learn new things, see what you accomplished, start anew. It doesn't matter who you are, what matters is that our experiences, what we learned and how we adapted to our assumptions being denied, and how we interpreted everything around us - THAT is what makes us important, unique as a person, and what makes everything have been worth. Maybe things aren't at face value. Maybe you'll be tricked. But that's up to us to discover.
And I think one of the biggest discoveries (and also support for this 'interpretation'I think it's clear that the island was 'created'. Not in a sense of 'here's something artificial', but in a sense of an actual company setting out to make something. We can see this not only be the many couches and pillows scattered through apparently no reason, but also because you can always see a sort of a 'sun' motif throughout the island. The gate right at the beginning, there's some perfume bottles scattered, there's even calling cards around and that is not even going into the developer's ending which multiply the whole thing by a thousand, even if it's a bit weird.
Yes, I do feel sometimes the game feels to pretentious (like the chanting of words in the end, some of the audio logs...), but overall I think it makes for a very cohesive experience - and in the end, what matters is that I witnessed such things and that I made that interpretation - my point of view on everything is what gives the experience value. I don't think it's a cop-out to say that ok, maybe there are other valid explanations for the actual story, and it is a bit too abstract, but I think the whole idea behind the learning and discovery process stands and that's part of the beauty of it.
There are two 'halves' regarding The Witness' story. One is about you - as someone new to the island. It doesn't matter what your identity is, however - what it matters is what you go through, the places you see and the things you do. What matters is the events that you see unfold. You're literally your own witness to your own journey and the things around you, and I don't think the title was chosen for being a 'catchy word with impact'. But what exactly are you witnessing? Well - this ties directly into the two halves. You're witnessing first hand your own process of learning and discovery. You're learning new languages, learning shortcuts, beginning to know the ins and outs of the island... I think this also ties with how the puzzles are presented to you - your only weapon is knowledge, and your assumptions, and the world won't mold to your assumptions - you have to see the world for what it is and keep reacting around it.
And the second half is about creation, and the creator of the island - which I think is fair to say, it's about Blow. I know it sounds a bit narcisistic, but I think a 'self-insertion' works well at times, like all the confusion surrounding 'The Beginner's Guide'. Talking about creation, I think it works so well because it doubles as a creation of the island, and of the actual game. The mountain was a factory where new ideas were made, iterated upon, revised, and discarded. Things begin to get a little bit glitchy, off-set. You are introduced to a lot of new concepts in rapid-fire sucession, only for them not to be touched that much later on. You can also see that in the statues of the island - on the outside, even if there are statues of thieves and things like that, you still get very much the picture of a live world, with people living, friends being friends and enemies being enemies - but as you begin to go up the mountain, where gadgets are being set-up, there are people arguing despite making the trek together, and as you go down, you can see the workshops getting more and more messy, until you end on the 'red cave', where a single 'creator' stands over a panel trying to tie everything together. Now this is not my analogy but I agree when I saw someone say it can be compared to Development Hell - near the end, deadlines approaching (everyone got 'statued' in the middle of setting up everything).
And in the end, we have the 'sea'. A sense of serenity, with puzzles still being hard, but something that shows us that everything was done. It paid off. You are asked, as a player, to apply all of your knowledge (besides the ones discarded in the factory hell) in one last challenge. Before going back to the start. Time to begin a new journey, learn new things, see what you accomplished, start anew. It doesn't matter who you are, what matters is that our experiences, what we learned and how we adapted to our assumptions being denied, and how we interpreted everything around us - THAT is what makes us important, unique as a person, and what makes everything have been worth. Maybe things aren't at face value. Maybe you'll be tricked. But that's up to us to discover.
And I think one of the biggest discoveries (and also support for this 'interpretation'I think it's clear that the island was 'created'. Not in a sense of 'here's something artificial', but in a sense of an actual company setting out to make something. We can see this not only be the many couches and pillows scattered through apparently no reason, but also because you can always see a sort of a 'sun' motif throughout the island. The gate right at the beginning, there's some perfume bottles scattered, there's even calling cards around and that is not even going into the developer's ending which multiply the whole thing by a thousand, even if it's a bit weird.
Yes, I do feel sometimes the game feels to pretentious (like the chanting of words in the end, some of the audio logs...), but overall I think it makes for a very cohesive experience - and in the end, what matters is that I witnessed such things and that I made that interpretation - my point of view on everything is what gives the experience value. I don't think it's a cop-out to say that ok, maybe there are other valid explanations for the actual story, and it is a bit too abstract, but I think the whole idea behind the learning and discovery process stands and that's part of the beauty of it.
This ended up being bigger than I expected but god I love this game.
I've seen this asked a few times and still don't know the answer. I think I'll start a new game today just to see what happens if you do this before the mazes
HoodWinked
Member
finished the game with
puzzles total. managed to do this with absolutely no hints.
the three puzzles that i probably spent the most amount of time were all in the final area (most difficult to less most difficult)
https://imgur.com/a/tWwwD
1.
2.
3.
362 +32
the three puzzles that i probably spent the most amount of time were all in the final area (most difficult to less most difficult)
https://imgur.com/a/tWwwD
1.
got 5/6 at a decent pace but got too attached to my solution so i kept trying to make small edits to the solution instead of just throwing it out and using a completely new approach to get the 6/6.
two of the three solutions i got relatively quickly the third one took awhile his damn foot is in the way LOL
this one was was annoying kept missing two dots no matter what
4th:
Do you have all 11 lasers yet?
Belgian Dude
Member
Clocked around 50 minutes/1 hour. I started counting at 10:17 (it already had left the starting area by then, so you add about 5 to 10 minutes to that) and ended the puzzle somewhere at around 11:06. Thankfully the matching up at the end was pretty forgiving because I thought I wasn't going to make it near the end.
#4 -
do the challenge
around the keep/treehouse; doesn't need anything
CAAAAAAAAAAAW
Member
Should be
a little over a half hour? I wasn't timing it precisely when I did it but I have reason to believe it was between 30 and 40 minutes. You could probably just look up the original thing to make sure.
End game question:
So in the first
And are the videos meant to be
? I found three in the main area -
So in the first
open portal-like area, with the blockage the middle. I've made the light path so I can reach the puzzles on the sides, and done those puzzles. Now I need to get to the left hand exit which is where the door is. But there is a 4-long straight Tetris piece and I can't see how to get past it. It always has to go at least partly through the blockage which means your path is always blocked so you can't get to the exit. That was ok for the puzzles as you just needed the first part of the path to be near them,mthey redo it on the other side.
And are the videos meant to be
out of sequence
glorious James Burke, softly spoken woman, and strange movie clip of man with candle.m it on the panel below they aren't 1-2-3
Shrike Alvaron
Member
I did it.
I reached THERE.
439+53, no stopping now...
I reached THERE.
439+53, no stopping now...
Definitely starting the game anew this weekend. Looking forward to it, I got hung up and frustrated during my first playthrough and my progression became sporadic.
I finished The Marsh, The Keep, Treehouse, Bamboo, Forest, Desert Temple but I feel like I've lost momentum and I don't know whether I'm in endgame or not.
I finished The Marsh, The Keep, Treehouse, Bamboo, Forest, Desert Temple but I feel like I've lost momentum and I don't know whether I'm in endgame or not.
GlamFM
Banned
What would starting a new game change about that?
TyrantGuardian
Member
Oh my, as a
I felt so god damn smart when I realized what the forest camouflage puzzles were all about. I solved them all but have no idea where the
.
musician
yellow and purple power lines lead
CAAAAAAAAAAAW
Member
Well, that makes +3. I wonder how long it took them to
line everything up so precisely, in ten million little spots.
How are people checking how many puzzles they have completed?
On to discussion about the game:
1) I really like the game, like, a lot.
2) I've avoided as much solution material as possible for my ability level. In all but the marsh area (the one with tetris-like blocks) I was able to deduce what the puzzles were asking by way of the mini-tutorials, and trial-and-error, but for whatever reason wasn't making the spatial connection needed on my own. Still, avoided looking up all but 2 of the solutions I think.
3) The design of the world is pretty amazing. I don't know what is going on yet, or how some of the maybe-secret-things I've found tie into the whole, but it's cool seeing the island react (and sometimes not react at all) to things you do in it.
4) Most of the puzzles are actually pretty fun, though I've been reduced to pen and paper now for some of the more involved ones.
5) I can't tell if the game spends more time making me feel smart, or stupid lol. More often than not, smart, but there are moments where I think I solved some puzzles by pure luck -- even knowing what the mechanics were.
Overall, really great game so far, if a bit annoying in spots.
edit: I've done 254 puzzles so far apparantly. 14 hours in, not sure if that's a good number or not :|
On to discussion about the game:
1) I really like the game, like, a lot.
2) I've avoided as much solution material as possible for my ability level. In all but the marsh area (the one with tetris-like blocks) I was able to deduce what the puzzles were asking by way of the mini-tutorials, and trial-and-error, but for whatever reason wasn't making the spatial connection needed on my own. Still, avoided looking up all but 2 of the solutions I think.
3) The design of the world is pretty amazing. I don't know what is going on yet, or how some of the maybe-secret-things I've found tie into the whole, but it's cool seeing the island react (and sometimes not react at all) to things you do in it.
4) Most of the puzzles are actually pretty fun, though I've been reduced to pen and paper now for some of the more involved ones.
5) I can't tell if the game spends more time making me feel smart, or stupid lol. More often than not, smart, but there are moments where I think I solved some puzzles by pure luck -- even knowing what the mechanics were.
Overall, really great game so far, if a bit annoying in spots.
edit: I've done 254 puzzles so far apparantly. 14 hours in, not sure if that's a good number or not :|
GwyndolinCinder
Member
Great write-up!
I had similar ideas about
how this game is about the creation process of this game/island and how developers get inspiration for their game.
And for something completely different: This game has a VR mode on PC, but I wonder if some of the
enviromental perspective puzzles
Like when you combine something from the foreground with something in the background to form a line (or something like the cloud puzzle). It's probably really confusing in 3D.
Yeah, the design of the island is absolute masterclass. After I finished the game I browsed reddit a bit and there are a lot of really cool perspective easter eggs with statues, tree branches, reflections and such. This game has so many little details in addition to the
+1 puzzles
It's in the name of your save game; easiest to see by going to 'load game'.
I'm showing signs of addiction to this game. Sitting at work, all i can think of is getting home and continue playing. I love the game. It will take me ages to finish and i'll try my best to do it without spoilers (120 +3 currently) but i don't mind at all.
Also, it's hard to believe there are more than 650+ puzzles in this game. There must be quite a few hidden ones and a few secret areas.
Also, it's hard to believe there are more than 650+ puzzles in this game. There must be quite a few hidden ones and a few secret areas.
I don't know, haha. Maybe I should just start writing down what I've seen and what I can't solve and then persevere.
Additionally, could someone give me a hint with the red tree temple just beyond the village and the fence on the other side of the cracks in the wall?
I understand that I have to look through the cracks in the wall to see the path through the puzzle, that works on the left/first one. But the very clear path doesn't work on the second one?
GlamFM
Banned
Thinking about this game is for AMATEURS!
Dreaming about this game is where it gets crazy.