And when I say "SPOILERS," I mean more for the "story" side of the game than for the actual puzzles. The only puzzle related thing I intend to mention is the Challenge, and even then, I'm not going to give anything resembling a solution, just describing some aspects of it. Anyway, you've been warned, read at your own discretion.

Also, I kinda did something different with this one from what I usually write, and...I dunno that it turned out that well, but it is what it is, and I figured that I might as well post it. Anyway, here is the thing I wrote now, I guess.

It was hard to go into The Witness with a blank slate. The game had been in development for so long that I was honestly thinking it was never going to come out. Or that if it ever did, it'd be kind of a hot mess. It's the first game Jonathan Blow has released since Braid, and in the eight years since he's achieved a Kojima-esque air of being the sole driving force behind his games, even if that's not the case (though arguably it's closer to true in Blow's case). And in my case, the biggest impact Braid left on me was when I learned about the crazy hidden meaning(s?) behind the game. The game itself was fine (even if it didn't grab me), but the idea that Blow had taken all these years to make The Witness led me to think it'd be filled with the biggest, secretest, most absurdest hidden meanings in all of games.

And that's more or less the mindset I had going into the game. That's why, once I learned the game was not a hot mess like I had feared, I bought the game day one. So I could be there in the beginning playing the game constantly, and obsessively digging deeper and scouring the game for whatever secrets it might hold. For the first week that game was out, it was all I could think about. When I wasn't playing The Witness, all I wanted to be doing was playing The Witness. And given that I'm still in a state of perpetual unemployment, I was able to dedicate most of my time to playing the game.

What did I find during all of this? I did really enjoy the act of solving the puzzles, even if some of them are seemingly pointless. However, it seemed like there was scant in the way of a deeper meaning, or anything that might lead to anything like that. Sure, I found a couple of audio logs, but those were mostly quotes from long dead people about god. There was one from an astronaut that was basically just The Boss' speech about seeing a world without borders from space, which is perhaps unfair given that I think that quote predates MGS3, but there didn't seem to be any cohesion to the logs. Just vague quotes about stuff that one might assume correspond with how Jonathan Blow sees the world. And to be fair, I still have not found or listened to all of the logs, for reasons I'll get too in a bit. Perhaps they are more cohesive than I realized, but I'll leave that for someone else to determine. I did find one near the end of the game that I originally thought was a recording of Blow talking to one of the voice actors about recording the voices for the game, but then I realized later that it wasn't actually Blow and I felt silly because it didn't really sound like him at all. Rather, it seemed to be about the people who, in fiction, created the island and scattered the audio logs around. Apparently there are more of those, but that was the only one I found.

I was more successful in gleaning information from The Theater Room. The first couple videos I saw there felt in line with the audio logs, just more focused on science than on god. But after those, I started to notice kind of a parallel between what was being said/shown in the video, and what it was that I had to do to unlock these videos. You don't just walk up to the thing and get to enjoy some "quality" seventies era BBC. You have to find patterns that only work in the panel in The Theater Room. And these are written down on pieces of paper that are stowed in lock boxes hidden behind doors locked with some pretty difficult puzzles. I might even go so far as to call some of them needlessly difficult, especially when the only reward are video clips that can probably be easily found online for free. At least I assume so, because I can't imagine that Blow spent a lot of money licensing them for the game.

There was one video to me that felt like it was pretty overt in the message it was trying to convey. I didn't have any idea what it was, or what it from from initially, though a perusal of Wikipedia let me know that it was the ending of the film "Nostalghia." I had never heard of the movie before. In the clip, a man tries repeatedly to carry a lit candle across a shallow pool of water without the flame going out. Eventually he succeeds, and then it takes a rather long amount of time for the clip to actually end. Or, as I would put it, he beat his head against a needlessly difficult and seemingly pointless task. Granted, the plot synopsis on Wikipedia did reveal that there was a reason for this in the movie, but the connection had already clicked in my mind. But then another, darker thought popped into my head.

Jonathan Blow was screwing with us. After all these years of making us wonder what he had hidden away in this intricately crafted, bespoke game, the reward for getting as deep as I had gotten was a not so subtle middle finger from Blow as he sat back with his urine bottle and laughed? It couldn't be, so I kept going deeper. I found another video, this one of a woman apparently named "Gangaji" (I had to go to a YouTube video to find out since her name isn't given in game) giving the message, "Stop looking for what you want." Again, not exactly subtle here.

And then there's the final video. Not final in terms of the order that the patterns for the videos are displayed in The Theater Room, but final in terms of how (I assume) most people would unlock them. The others are hidden behind doors accessible at any time from the surface of the island. But the last one is the reward for completing the now infamous Challenge. By the time I had gotten to this point, I had already finished (and been disappointed by) the game's ending. Or, rather, the ending you get for activating seven lasers and solving your way down through the mountain and to the end. There all you get is a magic elevator that flies around the island, slowly disappearing as you get back to the start of the game while everything else resets, and you're left with a screen that just has the name of the game and an option to start over.

Even if I didn't consider not letting you continue playing after seeing the ending one of the "cardinal sins of gaming," that's still a whole lot of nothing for all the puzzles solved to get to that point. The most I got out of it was that perhaps the game is set in some sort of Sisyphean puzzle hell, where everything resets once you finish it. But I knew there was still a video left to find, and a Challenge to undertake, so I turned to the internet to help guide me along the way. Just a little hint about where to go, I didn't want to spoil anything for myself. Yet.

And soon I was in the secret, final area solving puzzles as I tried to discern what the Challenge actually was. Eventually I found it, and another query to the internet told me that I was correct, this was indeed the Challenge. What is the Challenge? It's a series of puzzles that have to be completed in order to open the door behind which lies the final pattern for the final video. Also, it's timed, but instead of an on screen timer, you have until the music ends (after it turns into the comically frantic "In The Hall of the Mountain King"). The various elements of the Challenge are random, and pausing the game causes the entire thing to reset, so there's no easy way to cheat.

As an aside, I'm glad I realized that pausing resets it early into an attempt. Had I gotten to the final step, and had to pause the game because of something like, getting a phone call, I would have been beyond furious. Not allowing pausing is fine, I certainly like plenty of other games with no pausing, but this is the one thing I wish the game outright said. Because I'm sure that has happened to someone, and that would be heartbreaking.

After a few attempts, I thought back to the clip from Nostalghia, and decided that perhaps this candle was too needlessly difficult to carry across for this seemingly pointless task. Especially when I could just watch the video you unlock without doing any of the hard work. And this was then the point where I gave up on trying to find everything on my own (even if I had glanced at the solutions to two or three puzzles throughout the game when I was completely stuck). I found the pattern online, and made sure to watch the video in game, so I would know it was the actual one, and not some clever trickery.

This time the video was of a talk from one Brian Moriarty that covered topics ranging from working in a Radio Shack in the seventies, to easter eggs in video games, to investigations into who actually wrote Shakespeare's works. Or, rather, I should say it had the audio from that, because aside from a title at the start and some legal information at the end, the video was just a solar eclipse. A pretty slow one at that, but I will say that I think this is the only one of The Theater Room videos that is worth seeing through to the end.

The important point for what I'm trying to say, however, is that Moriarty's talk just reinforced what this game had been saying about obsessing over finding secrets. It's not worth it. And once I had listened to the entire thing, I felt good in my decision to give up my attempts at the Challenge, and to move on with my life. And I decided that trying to find the rest of those audio logs wasn't worth the time either. To use a phrase I'm quite fond of, I had better ways to waste my time.

Certainly better than the other secret with the Theater Room, which is that there are environmental "puzzles" hidden in some of the videos, including the Moriarty one. You have to step around the back of the screen and trace a line that start with the beginning of the eclipse, and ends with the end of it. Yes, you have to sit through the entire thing. I think that's kind of hilarious, honestly. Being lectured on all these examples of how obsession destroyed the lives of some people while obsessively tracing this line. But like I said, I was done, and that was that.

But it's never that simple with obsession, is it? It wouldn't be obsession if it was something you could just stop that easily. Of course it didn't end there, as much as I wanted it to. I'm the type of person that obsessed for literal years over MGSV trailers, and still think about that game way more than I should, almost half a year after its release. I wasn't about to let a game outright telling me not to obsess over it to stop obsessing over it.

At first it was just me trying to find more information about The Witness and the hidden stuff in it online. I told myself it was because I wanted to be well informed for the thing I wanted to write. I didn't want it to be a rambling mess like most of the things I write (not that I succeeded there, mind you). So I read up on stuff like how to get the secret FMV ending (or endings, as some would have you believe, but I've yet to find a video of the second one online), and I went and saw that FMV ending in game. I had actually been very close to finding that on my own, I just got distracted by the Challenge and forgot to check the thing I was meaning to check.

And of course there's things to be interpreted from that stuff. My thinking is that the whole game is just some Matrix like VR thing where Jonathan Blow was hooked in so long he needed that urine bottle, and he couldn't get out until he found that specific, secret path to that point in the game. For those that haven't seen it, this is shown through a lengthy video where Blow had a Go Pro strapped to his head and he wanders around poking things, falls over like he was in that hospital bit in MGSV, taps some things with a spoon, and eventually lies down on a bench outside. Supposedly there's an alternate version with a healthier Blow, but I haven't found a video of it online, and what I've read makes it sound like no one knows what triggers the other video to play. Could just be random for all I know, but I suspect that getting 100% completion is a more likely cause.

Of course, despite the guise of this being for research, it was really just to sate my own curiosity and obsession. And eventually, after seeing other people mention the Challenge, and beating it, I felt compelled to give it another go, despite knowing it wasn't "worth my time." But now is the point where I kind of undermine everything I've said by saying that I was able to finish the Challenge and in that one moment, it was all worth it. Even if my victory was mostly the result of the best possible luck. I had literally zero time left to finish the Challenge when I did, and that feeling of relief upon completing it was quite good. I might even go so far as to call it satisfying, even though satisfying is a word I generally don't like to use. Dunno why, it just doesn't sit well with me.

Obsession is a weird thing. I told myself that the smart thing to do was to just stop, to not waste any more time on it, and then the right answer was actually to see it through to the end. Or at least to the point where I felt, well, satisfied, and like I could move on. But that really only applies in situations like this where there is an end, and one that, to be honest, isn't actually that difficult, in retrospect. As much as I've made it sound like that Challenge is some near insurmountable feat of gaming prowess, it didn't take me nearly as long to complete as I've heard it has for some people. Even if, like I said, I credit luck, in the grand scheme of things, it's challenging, but not that bad. Certainly not the hardest or most frustrating Platinum Trophy I've gotten in the last year (looking at you, Bloodborne and MGSV (I regret neither)).

Not like trying to find out who actually wrote Shakespeare's works, at least. Maybe that's the point The Witness is trying to get across. Don't obsess over the impossible, but don't give up on the possible. Or maybe he was just messing with us all along. I don't know. Maybe there is some last, ultra secret thing that no one has found yet, and maybe everything I've written today will be invalidated by it (if it isn't already a rambling mess that doesn't deserve validation to start with). Or maybe it is all in those audio logs, and I just wasn't diligent enough to listen to all of them.

So, I'll end this by saying that regardless of the deeper meaning of the game, I still did mostly love my time with The Witness, and I am glad that I obsessed over it, for a time. But it's over, and I'm glad it's over.

At least until the next big secret is found.

Anything Else?

The next thing I write will probably be more in line with the usual stuff. I just realized I haven't yet written about Rebel Galaxy, and I should play more of the more recent PS+ games so I can do that too. Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope you liked it, even if I was a little disappointed in this piece.

You've got a realistic view of The Witness here. I also felt a similar but more toned down version of obsession with this game. But my attention span was too short to keep me going past the vanilla ending. I had a good time with it and was mostly pleased with its excellent pacing. But this interpretation is definitely valid. At least for the moment

I've never been one to deduce deeper meanings out of the games other than what they present on the surface. So my version of the Witness is that it is just a island full of puzzles. THE END You've put a lot of thought into this and it seems like you've come to a logical conclusion to me.

My take was that the regular puzzle panels represent the works of man while the environmental puzzles represent the hand of God, drawing patterns in the very fabric of reality.

I took the whole island as designed to be either an experiment, or an exercise. In the fiction of the audio logs, the creators debate over the use of philosophical elements and how they are used in repetition of the exercise. In those logs, they, or at least one female, seems to be constantly returning to the island in order to achieve some enlightenment created by the combination of puzzle and philosophy, although there are some detrimental effects such as memory loss. These conversations elude that they are creating this experiment as a specific tool, maybe for public use. I don't feel if I have listened to all of the logs, but that is what I gathered from the ones I did hear that break the fourth wall.

I took the environmental puzzles to be the next level of enlightenment that this experiment was supposed to elicit. The island was designed to broaden your thought horizon to see beyond what is just in front of you, but see pattern existing in everything. Unfortunately for the game, the only fundamental pattern is a dot with a line flowing from it. It comes in many forms, but it is always a dot and a line. Maybe that works with the hierarchy metaphor in one of the hidden videos.

I do enjoy the metaphor of the game how @mooseymcman explains: "Don't obsess over the impossible, but don't give up on the possible". The game does tend to intentionally fuck with you in a lesson of futility, but merits accomplishment. That was really evident in the eclipse puzzle, which yes, I waited the whole monologue protecting the right button of my mouse to not accidentally getting clicked and having to start over. I got some laundry done in the mean time too. By that time I got used to being fucked with by Blow's puzzles, and stood up to his challenges like someone standing up to a bully, but this one was a real long middle finger. Was completing this one puzzle really worth it? Will I get the easter egg I wanted?

Moosey's write-up made me curious about the possibility of the "healthy" ending. This led me to the greatest metaphor the game has. You can get straight to the hotel ending from the beginning of the game, with only solving the first two tutorial doors. The lightning rod/force field door is already activated from the start. This metaphor is super special, in that by solving the first puzzle of shutting down the force field, it requires you to solve all the other puzzles, including the challenge, to figure out how to turn it back on to get to the end. If that isn't the biggest slap in the face lesson on futility. Nothing ever had to be solved at all. The only thing keeping you from moving forward was the obsession of trying to figure everything out, which actually only reflected your lack of knowledge. Jonathan Blow, you hilarious asshole. This made me crack up as soon as the realization dawned on me.

BTW I started a new game and went straight through the hotel. I was hoping that Blow would be "healthy" by doing it this way because he (the player) didn't spend 30+ hours lying in a bed. Maybe the game already knows I started from a 30+ hour game, or I'm barking up the wrong tree, but this did not produce a "healthy" ending.

I wonder who out there figured out the lightning rod puzzle right away. Who started the game for the first time, stepped into the sunlight right as it hit the top of the lightning rod, and connected the shape of the sun and lightning rod to the two dot-line puzzles that they just used to open the first two doors?

Edit: I just remembered the lightning rod puzzle solution was near the theater, not the challenge.

@yellownumber5: I definitely went into the game, having seen the Quick Look, being almost positive that there were "environmental puzzles" like that, having seen circles in the environment in the Quick Look. Had I been lucky enough to line up the sun perfectly, I might have tried it there. But alas, 'twas not to be. But yeah, getting that immediately after starting is definitely something I've thought about.

I'm also still not 100% positive that the "healthy" ending actually exists. I'm pretty sure I've seen it mentioned in multiple places online, but I haven't seen it myself.

@yellownumber5: did you see the spoiler vid Blow did with Jeff and Brad? Was interested to hear that the environmental puzzles, or more specifically the moment of epiphany when you realise that those puzzles even exist, predated the rest of the game. The panel puzzles while substantial are really just a diversion from the "real game".

My read of the island is that it's a theme park of a sort, though clearly the kind of park that Frasier and Nines Crane would visit. But that implies that in a metaphorical sense the island is just a game, a place for fun. So underneath it all The Witness is a game and delights in it. Other games ask you to push through in order to be rewarded by a cutscene or a character skin. This game says that play is its own reward. That's the implicit game-design philosophy I take from it anyway.

I know you say you listened to a couple of the audio logs and didn't find a deeper meaning in them, but how many of them in the caves (where you reach the Challenge) did you find? They are especially interesting as the narrators are seen as people. They talk to each other as if this is their daily work. They talk about banal things like grabbing a sandwich together. They talk about the special importance of them finding these quotes. Of their wish to read them well. They speak of some test they have to take, of a dream they must enter. Hell, there's even one where the girl speaks of visiting the island.

You might want to look them up. They are the closest this game has to a direct narrative and realised characters.

@dixavd: I only found one. It was the one where one of them is talking to another one about how they should record their conversations and then leave them around the island too, so people will think they are just regular people too. Then he reveals that he had been recording that one. I originally thought it was Jonathan Blow talking to one of the voice actors, but then after going and looking up Blow's actual voice, I realized I was very wrong about that. But then I did hear bits and pieces of another one during the video where Brad and Jeff played The Witness with Blow.

If anything, after thinking about it, I feel like the existence of those might strengthen my argument (not that you said it doesn't, it hurts it, I'm just saying). Because rather than showing that all the other quotes and recordings around the island are the ultimate best and whatever, it just says that these are some random quotes that those people thought would be good. Rather than being some ultimate truth about the world, it's just more mumbo jumbo from some people that were trying to find some sort of meaning. Does that make sense?

Anyway, you are right, I should try to look those up. Maybe I'll look up where their locations are and listen to them in game.