I don't subscribe to the notion that spoilers lessen a game's impact on me: when I was quite young, I read through the solutions to every puzzle and the timing of every story beat in Ocarina of Time before I played it, and it has been my favourite game of all time for a long time now.

So, if anyone would be so kind: what does this game have to offer story-wise? Can someone scratch the itch that all the pussyfooting around spoilers has been causing me? Absolutely everything in the game is fair game and is something I want to hear about.

You are on an island and there are puzzles. In one ending, you fly all the way back to the beginning of the game and everything resets. The other endings are first-person videos, which I believe amount to 'you woke up and it was all a dream'. And I believe that's pretty much the whole 'story'.

Really, in lieu of an actual fleshed-out narrative, there's a variety of audio logs / videos with philosophical/religious sentiments.

Also, there are implications in some hidden audio logs that the island was created by people for some reason. It is likely that these people are the developers of the simulation that is the island, which is the game. As far as I can tell, it's a rather strange and bizarrely recursive way to talk about game design within a game, and more importantly, talk about the design of a game within that game itself. The story is eating itself, ouroboros-style. Or, the narrative is that there is explicitly no narrative and that the place exists for its own sake, independent of narrative.

I think I may have hurt myself while trying to think about that.

What if real life is a simulation mannnn??? But seriously, I think the ending implies more than a dream maybe because he has wires and stuff hooked up to him. Also, piss jug from twitter makes an appearance which I enjoyed more than the actual ending.

Bacon became Bach became Brian became Blow became Carl became Beca.

35 became 14 became 34 became 52 became 34 became 11.

Bacon became Beca.

35 became 11.

46.

The story is all in the setting. This is not a game where events unfold and move a plot along. It turns out the island is a sort of manipulated dream created for "you." At the first ending of the game, you enter an elevator and are brought back to the beginning, with all the in-game progress markers reverting back to their original states, but with the knowledge and skills you developed remaining in your brain. In the second ending of the game, you walk through a sort of metaphysical modern office that gives you a variety of physically impossible views of the island, dispelling any notion you may have that the island is meant to be a natural, physical space. As you walk through the office, things get more and more surreal, until eventually physical space breaks down and you walk through some sort of portal. Then some FMV plays where you see the point of view of a person waking up from "playing" the game, which audio logs in a secret area will have made clear is a constructed VR experience meant to stimulate the mind and teach you problem solving and analytic skills.

For what it's worth, when people talk about not wanting to spoil The Witness, they're almost always talking about not wanting to spoil the different puzzle areas. The narrative, insofar as one actually exists, is completely secondary and subservient to the gameplay.

That's a good way of putting it because I did have the game spoiled for me just watching the quick look. Edit: I deleted what I wrote but if you beat the game you will know what I'm talking about how you get the ending with the fmv video.

Until someone is able to connect all the dots in a convincing way, don't play it for the story. Play it for the amazing puzzles, which absolutely shouldn't be spoiled. I'm fine with story spoiler, but if you spoil the puzzles for yourself there is no point in playing the game.

By the end it's a recruitment tool for conspiracy theorists. Sort of.

Here's my take, and this might be complete pontification:

The title Witness alludes to "witness to the miracle," which is what atheists fall back on when people of faith ask them "why bother living?" The answer is "because we are witness to the miracle," that is, if the universe really is just chaos and happenstance, then we're the luckiest elements to exist within it ever.

Life is a process of figuring things out. Finding meaning and making connections. Throughout the game you are forced to look at how things interact differently. To gain new perspective, quite literally. And that is what life is. A quest for meaning, which takes effort, and can be very frustrating at times. Just like the game!

PS. Also statues. Representations of those who searched for meaning before you arrived on this earth?