Anyone else really dislike pretty much every quote/story from the audio recorders you can find?

First of let me make clear that I love the game (even though I also hate it, because fuck Tetromino puzzles), but oh boy, I can't listen to the weird shit from the audio recorders you can find. I just can't.

Pure nonsense stories/religious quotes/pseudo morale stories/etc., none of which are moving or interesting to me in any way, read in the most monotonous voices possible (most certainly on purpose), are not something I even want to look for.

That story about the guy whose ship went down, which he knew was a possibility, but ignored because of convincing himself that nothing bad will happen, since it never did before, was the worst thing I've heard in months. "One thing is for sure, he is to blame for the death of those people, because his conviction doesn't change facts." Yeah, no shit. But what are you trying to tell me?

Seriously, just what the hell? Is this why some people dislike Jonathan Blow so much?

Do any of you guys actually enjoy listening to these things or am I not alone in thinking that stuff is just bad?

The audio logs are one of my favorite parts of the game so far.

@mike: Okay, do you like them, because you like random quotes (this is not meant in a demeaning way, I just don't know how to phrase this question properly) in general or do you actually feel they add something to this game specifically?

I am not a fan of them, it replaces the pretty compelling, subtle zen mindset of the game with a very direct, very unsubtle one. Almost as if Blow wasn't confident that the player would "get it". It reminds me of the fairly unfortunate poetry in Braid.

@sessh: I don't know yet. I just find they are a nice break from the game when I find one, and I like listening to them and thinking about how they may relate to what is going on in the world. I think that eventually they will all make sense and may not be as random as you think they are.

Yeah, not really digging the quotes. Some of them seem excessively long, and maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm not seeing the connective tissue. I don't really want to bring up the comparison again, but this is another area where Talos shines. That game had some incredible, genuinely thought-provoking writing.

@mike: Fair enough.

Also if they actually relate in a grand way to what is going on on the island, aside from some rather obvious connections like: "There's a story about a sunken boat, there's a shipwreck here." or "We failed to find god and now everyone on the island has been turned into stone (or pillars of salt)" than I might be with you.

@thatfrood Yeah, that's the problem I have with them right now. They just feel unnecessary. I'd rather have no "story" bits at all over having these forced on feeling things lying around.

Yeah, I don't see the point of them. I only found about 8 so far and none have added anything. The statues do nothing for me either so far. I was hoping for story of who wired up the island like this and why. All I get is philosophical drivel. I am probably completely missing the intended message, but I am still having fun solving the puzzles.

So I suspect a lot of people here didn't go far enough into playing Braid and interpreting the meaning behind all those quotes in that game and how they fed back into the gameplay of what Tim is doing.

Major, major Braid spoilers:

It's a very metaphor laden interpretation that certainly isn't clear while playing through the first time (the big reveal doesn't even happen until you've beaten the game), and definitely took time for people to understand. I suspect The Witness will be similar in its eventual "plot". The quotes and audio files will give context to whatever the bigger overall meaning is. Assuming that meaning exists and Jonathan Blow isn't leading us on for no reason.

I mentioned in the comments of Brad's review that I hope The Witness didn't include the ostentatious nonsense that Jonathan Blow put in Braid. I'm now playing the game, listening to the tapes, and there it is again. He just can't help himself.

I have to turn off the sound whenever I pick up an audio log, I'm not sure why but I just find them really awful and they're pretty long. Easily the worst part of the game for me.

@sessh: I've only found about 5 so far. Just started this morning. I don't hate them. So far I've liked the more "theoretical physics" one I found voice by a british man talking. The ones that the woman (Ashley Johnson) are voicing are more vague in nature and I have a hard time finding how they can specifically matter in the context of this game.

Again. Too early to say. I kind of agree with @mike that they are a good break from the intense critical thinking the game has me doing sometimes and thematically I think they fit the mystery of the island.

Also I didn't want to start a whole new topic on this, but is there a way to keep track of them or view how many you have left to find? I was pretty zen with this game until a semblance of collectable popped up and now that part of my brain is on and I can't stop thinking about getting them all. I'm one of those people. I have a problem.

I got a little pissed off at the part where my video game lectured me on being unqualified to judge artistic intent. It's a rare occasion where my monitor gets told to go and fuck itself.

I don't particularly care for them, at least not right now. Put in the context of whatever The Witness is trying to say I could appreciate them more. Personally I would prefer the game was more about the island than what the island represents. I'm more for mysteries that involve unravelling the plot, as opposed to unravelling some sort of hidden message or meta commentary. I do think the game does a fantastic job of encouraging you to explore and making you think in circles about what it could all mean but if the audio diaries are any indication, I'll probably be disappointed with the resolution.

i've only played about an hour, but for the moment i'm really enjoying them just for what they are- little reflections that are great food for thought. i'm not engaging with them that deeply yet- maybe that will come when i get deeper in. but for now it's fun to be reacquainted or introduced to some of the great thinkers.

also for what it's worth- i find it a little humourous that people are criticizing a jblow game for being a jblow game (trying to be all "deep" and stuff). it's kinda like going into a lynch movie and saying "this is really weird." uh, duh.

I've found exactly four so far. I don't really care to spend the time searching around for them. For one, they're really hard to find and the investment I get from them is small in relation to the effort. The few I've heard also seem to be mostly high-falutin-head-in-the-clouds Bohr Quadrant kind of stuff, which I don't find particularly compelling, either as something plot centric or just as flavor text.

From an interview with Jonathan Blow:

Perhaps go the not listening to them route.

I never played more than ten minutes of Braid so Blow wasn't on my radar enough to have an opinion on him one way or the other. These audio logs definitely pain a negative picture of a dude so far up his own ass that he'll never see sunlight again. I went ahead and spoiled myself on Braid a while ago and it seems like even though knowing exactly what the story is about was hard, the game made you feel like there was a story from the very beginning. There was actual writing about Tim's feelings and suchlike from the start. The Witness has yet to convince me that these real-world quotes actually lead to anything bigger, and everybody who's beaten the game has basically said there's no story, so it all just seems like pointless wankery. I guess we'll see though.

the one I found in the desert trying to say that scientists are -actually- the most profoundly religious people turned me off of looking for them. I think I'll watch the videos i discover, but the first one in that sequence also left a bad taste in my mouth. the biggest problem i had with the talos principle was the college-age ruminations on science and religion that read to me like someone had a BLAST reading about egypt in their humanities course and filtered that through god (who is an asshole) and the person on the terminals (bigger asshole than god). the substance of these games don't need the bored philosophical ramblings to be compelling, im satisfied enough with the clever puzzles!

unlike talos though, the contextual fluff is entirely optional - though designed as a reward for puzzle solving.

I've only found a few so far, but I think they are more about the nature of obsession (though maybe not all of them revolve around this topic). Taking that to mind, maybe Jonathon Blow sprinkles them in the game as food for thought, knowing his puzzles can easily lead the player to obsessing for the solution, or even the overall mystery.

The astronaut one was nice if a bit long and maybe jarring. I just stood there too thinking it would stop if I moved off and started doing things. Only one I heard so far.

I like the audiologs. They are very meditative. I would bet that trying to find a purpose in them or attempting to piece them together into an overall narrative is very frustrating, as I'm sure that is not their function.

@ripelivejam: That thing literally goes for 8 mins...

Oh and by the way if it isn't clear to anyone, you can start an audiolog and just go do other stuff. It isn't a localized event.

The core of this game is looking at things from a different perspective. You can think the audio recorders are cheesey, but their philosophical nature fits with the overall tone of the game.

@sickthrads: That quote was by Einstein who was an atheist. People like to pick and choose his quotes for references to god, but they are always purely metaphorical. I got the same knee-jerk reaction to that recorder as well, but when you listen carefully it is actually about the religious-like awe, that people who devise grand physical theories are often very capable of. It's basically a quote in favour of science as a way of finding the truth about the unicerse as opposed to science as a purely technical endeavour. The quote talks about science being the true and most profound religion instead of scientists actually being religious (which they rarely are), I would prefer that quote to be less divisive toward practicioners of science, but I can easily see what Einstein was talking about.

Apart from that, I'm also quite disappointed overall about the choice of quotes, I was hoping they would be more about epistemology than metaphysics. However, aren't they also supposed to provide slight hints about puzzles. Danny mentioned somewhere that the one about God being both visible and invisible (utterly nonsensical one, based purely on personal revelation) helped him find the solution to the puzzle it was lying next to (you know which ones).

After thinking about it, I'm feeling more negative towards these audio logs. Even disregarding the content, they still feel out of place. One special thing about the puzzles in The Witness is that none of them involve words or require words to explain. It's a game that doesn't require language, yet somehow, there's a lot of talking.

I have completed all the areas of the game. And only found 3 so far. None of them mentioned god either. Anyways the few I found were exciting just to have another reason to take in the environment. Reminds me of what I do with my ipod wandering around my city some times. Maybe I am just weird. Also my wondering is usually to video game podcasts. Not quotes about class, religion and life.

I've not run in to them much, so my play through has been close to what you are suggesting would have been good. It's hard to say if that is true or not. At least I haven't found anything to object to, or put me off from enjoying the game. Maybe if I found like 20 of those recordings I might not like them any more.

!End game spoiler!

Yeah, no matter the content of the quotes it's just random stuff to think about. Much like the entire game really.

@beachthunder: God, I feel like I'm going to be comparing Witness to Talos the ENTIRE time I'm playing it. Likely to Witness' detriment in my eyes.

...I should really play that Gehenna DLC...

I was fairly annoyed at the one on the top of the mountain. The reading felt flat/forced to me and it seemed to go on forever.

Einstein was not an atheist. From his letters:

"'I am not an atheist"

"I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal god is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being."

@poobumbutt: You aren't the only one, and I agree it's making the Witness's flaws much more apparent.

I've only found one, but I had no idea what the hell it was going on about, and nothing so far I've encountered on the island makes me think there is some big inner thing at work. I don't think there is some huge background narrative, I think it's just trying to appear like there is.

It makes me sad there isn't more in a narrative thing going on. I think the puzzles are fun, if not infuriating, and the island is great looking, but the feeling of something missing is always nagging at me. It makes me sad, as I freaking loved Talos Principle, and feel it nailed everything from puzzles to story to presentation with top marks. While I am enjoying the Witness and I'm glad reviewers like it too, it makes me kind of sad that most people seem to either have completely ignored Talos, or only played a bit then moving on claiming it to be "another portal like puzzle game", which couldn't be more wrong.

All I know for sure is once I'm done with The Witness I'm grabbing Talos again on PS4 this time, to play through it and the expansion I never got.

They're fine.

I just found a weird audio log where after reading the quotation the speaker gets angry at someone for offering them a sandwich.

Maybe there's more to these things that it appears.

Not a fan of the audio logs, not a fan of the... other logs either. I'm sure there's some big thing behind them, but I really don't care. They don't reveal details about the island and they don't lead to more puzzles so I have no interest in them.

@gravytrain: Those 'other logs' are certainly something... =|

Not too spoil too much, but I disliked almost all of the logs going throughout the game until the end. As cliched as it is, the ending gave me a new appreciation for everything.

i like em

@mach_go_go_go: That quote doesn't make him a theist, it makes him an agnostic in the strict meaning of the term. What makes you an atheist is the lack of belief in a god/gods – "There is no reason to believe there is a god" instead of "There is no God". We've had this discussion on this forum already, but it bears repeating that you can be both an atheist and an agnostic as well as a theist and an agnostic. What would make you "not an agnostic" is ascribing to a position that it is possible to know whether there is a god or not.

If you let me slightly parody Einstein's generalization: bastardizing the term "atheist" is common among people who often come in contact with and are irritated by proselytizing non-believers.

I'm not here to argue why people are 'irritated by proselytizing non-believers'. I'm saying Einstein was likely not an atheist because:

"I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations."

To me, that reads as "I believe in God, but hell if I know anything about God."

@mach_go_go_go:

Hmmm, this one is actually much more convincing. Thing is, apart from the first sentence, I would gladly sign my name under that explanation. I guess it depends on what you are willing to call the "mysterious force". For me "fuck if I know, I'm just a subset of the system" is enough, but if AE preferred to call it God, than who am I to argue, To me it still seems like a poetic reaction to the awe you fill when thinking about existence, but I guess you're right, I have no more right to call AE an atheist than adherents of any particular religion to call him a believer. Actually, they seem to be more justified, even though I suspect they are not talking about the same god.

One of the audio logs actually helped me have a big revelation about a particular gameplay mechanic and the rest of them are interesting at the least.

What exactly about the ending did that for you?

@effache: Not the main ending itself, but the underground after the ending. If you find it.

Not sure what you're talking about, so I guess I haven't found that yet. Is there anything in particular I need to focus on to get there? Is it the environmental puzzles, or the weird triangle/arrow puzzles I've found around?

@effache: There is more to the mountain once you've activated all 11 lasers.

@nime:

@beachthunder: Yeah they definitely are. I don't like them at all. The audio logs are at least KIND of bearable because you can walk around and do stuff, but just hanging out for those is a huge bummer.

I've really enjoyed them. Some are better than others for sure. I've always been a huge fan of quotations and there are some good ones included here - Arthur Eddington is rather quite eloquent. The audio logs are pretty rare, so it's always a pleasant surprise when you find one - it gives you a natural break from the puzzle solving and time to gaze at the view while listening. As for the "other" logs - I've only found 3 codes:

I love Feynman, so seeing his lecture and interview was great. Not so sure about that clip from Nostalghia by Tarkovski - I "got" the symbolism, but it was still a "wtf did I just watch" moment.

Overall, I think they are a good addition - if there were none, I would be rather disappointed. The puzzle design is vastly superior to Talos Principle, but I like having some kind of story in my game so I prefer Talos' audio logs to these. And with Talos I felt like I was closing in on the mystery, figuring out what was going on as I went along - here I feel like I have no hope of deciphering the mystery of the island, so I'm not even going to try. I'll just enjoy the puzzles and the quotations as is, without trying to peer into the mind of Mr. Blow.