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Jonathan Blow Wants to Test Your Brain With The Witness

The designer's follow-up to Braid had its coming out party at the PS4 reveal (it's coming to other platforms, too).

Feb. 20 2013

Posted by: Patrick

In This Episode:

The Witness

70 Comments

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Amaru25

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This underwhelmed the shit out of me.

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LiquidPenguins

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pretentious garbage

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DriftSPace

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Music by ... Celtic Woman?

Maybe my mother in-law would be into this.

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Coleslaw893

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Really looking forward to this. Having just played The Unfinished Swan, I was thinking how awesome another colorful first-person puzzle/adventure game would be.

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aceofspudz

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I want this so badly. Thank god it's not an exclusive.

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Giantstalker

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8 gigs of DDR5 and this is what you've got to show? Looks like exactly what I don't want to see from next gen, cel shading should've died with the PS2 era. It looked bad then, but at least it could be justified by hardware constraints of the time.

Blow also made the game sound incredibly boring, but then again, I guess something had be stuck in the middle of the show. Pity something more interesting or relevant wasn't ready.

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Soulblitz

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Edited By Soulblitz

Need that music in my life.

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sravankb

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I'm a sucker for good music in my games. I'm looking forward to this for at least the soundtrack.

But the gameplay needs more explaining - I'm not entirely sure what exactly is going on here.

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bvilleneuve

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@sravankb said:

I'm a sucker for good music in my games. I'm looking forward to this for at least the soundtrack.

But the gameplay needs more explaining - I'm not entirely sure what exactly is going on here.

You'll be surprised how much about the gameplay you can tell from the trailer. From what I understand (based mainly on Ryan's and Patrick's impressions from a couple years ago), the flow of the gameplay is that you observe the environment and then use a variety of inputs to reflect patterns that you see during your observations. That's really abstract, but look at the trailer again with that description in mind and have a bucket close at hand to collect the jizz if you're a fan of environmental puzzle games like Myst.

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statiknights

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Edited By statiknights

This just screams Myst to me.

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Mumrik

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This just screams Myst to me.

I'm so split on this game. The gameplay looks like a Myst-ish relic from the past that I want nothing to do with. The visuals and the art is amazing. The gameworld looks gorgeous

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bvilleneuve

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Edited By bvilleneuve

@mumrik said:

@statiknights said:

This just screams Myst to me.

I'm so split on this game. The gameplay looks like a Myst-ish relic from the past that I want nothing to do with. The visuals and the art is amazing. The gameworld looks gorgeous

I feel like there's something timeless about environmental puzzle games. I can play Myst today and what it does right is still amazing. This game looks like it boils down what Myst does right and offers up a huge bowl of it.

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mattymjp

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Just watching the trailer for this game makes my brain hurt

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selbie

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Edited By selbie

So realMyst mixed with Antichamber? :P

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LoopyChew

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This is the prettiest Nonary Game chamber ever.

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IcarusFoundYou

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Looks like Riven a little bit

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Rekt_Hed

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Edited By Rekt_Hed

cool!

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sahest

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Looks great, love the artstyle. But I think I'll pass - don't want to contribute to Blow's already bloated ego.

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@dan_citi said:

@legion_ said:

@bvilleneuve said:

@mooseymcman said:

This game looks beautiful.

So, if his last one was about the atom bomb (maybe?), then is this one about Agent Orange?

This probably isn't the place for this, but Braid isn't "about" the atom bomb, at least not in the way that I read it. It just used the search for the atom bomb as one of its several avenues for exploring the idea of what it means to get what you've been looking for for what feels like your whole life. Braid is a game where the story is truly there in service of what the gameplay is communicating, which is one of the things that makes it such a compelling experience. The endless search for what Braid is "about" is a bit misguided, because Braid isn't at all convoluted or duplicitous about what it's about; Braid is about solving puzzles.

Braid does have the side effect of being one of gaming's great Rorschach tests, though. Everybody either thinks it's about the atom bomb or thinks it's about an abusive relationship. Which story thread a person thinks is a metaphor for the other probably says something about him or her.

Anyway, hot damn I am all the way excited for The Witness. As I think I've posted before here, this game is probably my most anticipated thing coming out this year, across all media.

Braid is about a young man who drove away his loved one by creating a weapon that makes him the ultimate monster. That's my take on it.

It could be about anything, it could be about a lost album like SMiLE, it could be about the atom bomb, it could be about a lost and twisted love, et cetera. I agree that pigeon holing it as "about the atom bomb" is lame, dumb, and kind of depressing that people dropped it as a pretentious atom bomb metaphor game. The brilliance is that it is intuitively integrated into the game and its mechanics.

Yeah, that's the most frustrating part. People can think whatever they want about Braid, just so long as they don't think that the line referencing the atom bomb is some The Sixth Sense late-game twist where you're supposed to suddenly recall every other story beat in the game and go "Ohhhhh, it was about the atom bomb the whole time". No, it wasn't, not in the slightest; anyone who thinks that conclusion makes even a bit of sense is a simpleton.

The atom bomb reference at the end is a brief extension, an addendum, to the theme the game is exploring, but is by no means the point the game was building to the whole time.

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kevslider

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Hey guys...it's out tomorrow!