The Witness is one of the upcoming games I am most exited about. And I remember there being a lot of excitement for this a while ago, but I have heard no talk about it in maybe a year, even though its supposedly out soon? (Q4 2014, but no specific date). It almost seems like everyone just forgot about it. So who else here is really looking forward to this game?

It's simplified Myst for people that never played Myst before so I'm cautiously interested.

That seems pretty reductive. And from what I've seen of The Witness (which granted is, of course, very little) in some ways it seems like the opposite of Myst.

In that game, the puzzles were all kind of tangentially related things that you had to solve to further the narrative. Not a knock against Myst, I love that game and Riven even more, but it often felt like you were just doing arbitrary things to then progress and uncover the experience.

In The Witness, it seems much more that the puzzle solving is uncovering the world. That it combines the puzzles with the experience in a simultaneous way that Myst never did.

To the OP, I and I think tons of others are still very excited for it. It's just that there's been no new news about the game itself, so there's just not much to talk about yet.

That's just how the game coverage cycle works, really. A game gets talked about a bunch around events, goes silent until release, and then gets another boost of discussion when it actually comes out. I'm still very intrigued by it, but I don't really have it in me anymore to pine for a game release--not when there are dozens, if not hundreds, coming out every week.

I'll care about it when it's out, like most games.

I tend to forget about a lot of games until they start popping up with the, "it's out next week," kind of stuff. Main exceptions to that are when I decide to pre-order something.

@joshwent: Ahh but Myst IV: Revelation does exactly what you describe! There is a tight narrative and a lot of the puzzles in each "age" not only are linked to the story but also serve as a way to reveal what happened to the world you're in. It's an amazing game that I'm sure not a lot of people ever played, much less heard of. What I think is much superior in that game is that all those puzzles were unique, logical and naturally blended in with the world making the entire experience very cohesive. I also have not seen much of the Witness but it all looked very detached from anything in service of creating a common theme across all puzzles.

I like puzzle games so I'm obviously interested to see what The Witness has to offer.

The art direction looks georgous but I'm not big on puzzle games... who knows. There hasn't been a lot of info about it, I follow Jonathan Blow on twitter and he spent more time complaining about Windows and Visual Studio than anything else.

I haven't forgotten it. I still know nothing about it.

They talked about it a lot, maybe a little early, but as it goes with any popular medium there are other things to discuss and nothing new known about this game so the discussion died down.

If it's worthy of further discussion the game will create that on it's own, I suppose.

Really excited for it.

@humanity: Thanks for spreading the word! I never played that one, but from your description it sounds like what I like most about those sorts of games.

One of my favorite moments in any game ever was the puzzle in Riven that was you really just tinkering with a broken toy, but it ends up almost passively teaching you the entire number system of that word. Basically, it was what blew everyone's mind about Fez... well before Fez.

And now I have another game to play while I wait for The Witness! ;)

No way! I'm still very much interested in playing it when it's released...whenever that may be.

I'm really excited for it, there just ain't much to talk about. I believe in Jon Blow though. He'll deliver.

I don't want to get too excited in case it gets delayed again, but I am looking forward to it. I'm a fan of Blow.

Of course I didn't forget about it. Nothing to talk about other than what we saw before, though. I'm just eagerly waiting.

Definitely excited for it, it's just a "ready when it's done" game. Apparently the dev team redid the entire beginning of the game, the part they originally showed off to the press. Taking longer than expected but I'm sure the PR will ramp up again once they have an idea of when they're actually releasing.

I'm curious to try this one out. Not to be antagonistic but I just could not stand any of the writing/story of Braid and from what they've shown of this game it doesn't have that style of storytelling. Braid's puzzles were fun though, and I'm certain JB can make good ones again.

I honestly know really nothing about it besides the fact that Jonathan Blow is developing it. I'd play it. I'm excited!

There are occasional updates on the blog on the website, though most of them are on technical aspects of the game (it seems like they built their own engine, which I think is a bit nuts for a game like this). One update from August said that "we are definitely in finish-the-game mode...", and the latest update states that they're currently working on making sure that autosaves don't make the consoles hitch up. That kind of optimization seems like one of the very last thing you do, after all the content is done and everything else basically works like it should.

If I were to guess, probably Q1 2015 at the latest, and maybe even before the end of the year. Don't hold your breath, though, it'll come out when it's ready to come out.

What is the goal of such an aggressive title? To draw attention?

I never forgot, but is a Jonathan Blow game, and the dude seems to be really perfectionist and pay a ton of attention to detail.

I am in no hurry and if this game turns out to be half as good as Braid was it will already be awesome.

Hopefully it is good. I liked Braid a lot.

I WILL NEVER FORGET ABOUT THE WITNESS. Erm, I mean, I have been waiting patiently for years.

Also, if you guys want a Mystish game, check out Ether One.

I'm excited for it but I don't think it will be out anytime soon...

I've been following it for a while now, still very much interested. From the shots on the devblog and the few videos around, I'll probably be happy just to walk around in that world for hours, it looks really good.

Maybe it's just going to be cancelled since the internet is full of horrible people.

Same here. I liked the concept of Braid, but man did that story ooze pretentiousness

Cautiously optimistic about this one

It has been the game I've been generally most hyped for ever since it was first revealed 4+ years ago. I soaked up every detail about it until about 2 years ago when I decided to go on a quasi media blackout about it so that nothing would be spoiled for me and it would remain as fresh as possible for when I play it - to the extent that I chose to watch the E3 trailer with only my peripheral vision because I don't even want to really drink in and enjoy the visual style until my personal playthough. I've pretty much never gone to such lengths to protect my eventual experience of a game I'm excited about, so yeah, it's pretty important to me.

My hype has subdued slightly in the last 18 months because the vast myriad of possibilities of what I imagined the game could be from the outset seems to have reduced down and I've also in that time learnt of Jonathon Blow that he values and is excited by pure puzzle games probably more than I am, leaving me to worry that what he's clearly excited by with this game won't completely align with what I value most. If this game were only clever puzzle games I'd be disappointed to be honest. Given Jonathon Blow's own studied, careful game design and deep thinking I'm frankly expecting The Witness to say something about the human condition and/or the nature of the universe and that's why I value him more highly than many other game designers. (I don't want/expect this from every designer by the way but I'd love to see more games aim for these heights of exploration in addition to just the fun). So I'm a little bit cautious in my approach to thinking about it now, but I'm holding on to the fact that's he said that The Witness will be very spoilerable, which makes me think there's more than meets the eye about this game.