@wolfskind: Still 10 more hours for Steam...

I loved Braid, and I gained even more respect for Jonathan Blow due to his comments on Microsoft's original 'always online' plans for the Xbox One. If you've never seen that moment, here it is. I think I'm going to have to buy this. Never expected his follow up to Braid to be 40 dollars, but I never expected it to contain so much content either.

Up on Steam now...

Well I wasn't interested in this...as I don't own a PS4 and the news on Xbox One release seemed to be erroneous. Somewhat surprised to see its specs on PC aren't crazy and I should be able to run it. My only concern is if I will beat it....

After about 2 hours with the game, I can share some thoughts about it. Putting it in spoiler tags just in case.

I must admit, I wasn't really too fussed for this game.. And I also wasn't really a fan of Braid.

But the QL got me interested, and I ended up buying it. Also... it's pretty great!

As others have said, stuff does "happen" with how you solve the puzzles.

Not all puzzles are panels. There are also a fair few rule-sets to learn for the ones that are panels, and maybe the ones that are not. Also...Perspective/Perception plays a part (even fairly early on). I guess they are trying to teach you that kinda of stuff with the shadows that Brad points out in the QL.

@believer258: Yeah i really should have read this thread before buying it...

@omano: What do you mean? It's being universally praised..

After playing 2+ hours, I can say that it's not as good as my first 2+ hours of Talos Principle. Actually, I'd say it leans more towards Antichamber than Talos. There's still some very good stuff going on in Witness. The open-world nature of the game can get a little frustrating though.

Also, is anyone else having PC framerate / stuttering issues? I'm above the recommended requirements.

@beachthunder: The open world aspect is a huge mistake imo. I basically followed the quicklook up til finishing the little tutorial puzzles teaching the blocks and dots and then proceeded to wander around for a good 45 minutes running into either no puzzles or puzzles I had no knowledge about how to solve.

There was a good 25-30 minute period where I did literally nothing but walk because I was incapable of solving anything I came upon. Still seems like a really cool game but was a little annoying right at the start.

Also yeah definitely having framerate issues when I should not be. I'm either at or slightly above recommended specs.

I agree, I had a much better time with my first two hours in Talos than my first two hours in The Witness. At this point, I don't even really want to go back and play more of this game. I think it's just something I need to be in a specific mood for, and today wasn't the day to play it. I'll try again later, but so far The Witness just hasn't grabbed me like I hoped it would. It actually made me want to go and play the Talos expansion pack.

I'm also having some sporadic frame rate hiccups, and my machine significantly exceeds the recommended specs.

@qreedence: Thanks, something along those lines is what I wanted, although I still think something should have been shown in the Quick Look. I like the idea of wanting to keep your mysterious game under wraps, but I also need a promise of something more than solving mazes on panels.

After the Quick Look, I was pretty flabbergasted as to why people weren't also wondering what Jonathan Blow was thinking. Who really wants to look at panels and solve mazes for tens of hours, even if the environment is pretty? But the more I saw people going nuts over it, the more my curiosity was starting to get the best of me, and I was going to go against my better judgment and buy it just to see what Brad was banging on about, but it's looking like the PC version is having some weird performance issues that are going to save me $40 for now.

Seriously, though, a little more information about what else the game has to offer would have been appreciated, from anybody.

I love the idea behind Talos principle but I just hate the aesthetics - the way it looks like someone modded puzzle solving into Serious Sam. If the Talos Principle looked more like The Witness I'd be way more onboard with trying it.

@humanity: That's really too bad that you'll refuse to play a game simply because of the way it looks. It's a puzzle game, and one of the best games I have played in recent years to boot. Oh well.

@mike:You make it sound like the way a game looks is some sort of arbitrary afterthought. Aesthetics play a huge role in creating interest for your game and appealing to a wider audience. This isn't some radically new concept in game design or anything. Graphics are one of the key elements people judge games on, right up there beside story and gameplay. It's even more confusing hearing something like this coming from you seeing as you are a very vocal PC only enthusiast and often comment how dated some console games look. If I wanted to be really reductive I could just as easily quip that hey, it's equally too bad the devs didn't put more effort into making their game world look better because from what I saw the puzzle part looked really solid. It's just a completely subjective, personal preference though. I didn't like the design, and I wouldn't want to spend 8+ hours in that setting. Glad you enjoyed it though.

@humanity: I'm not sure why it's confusing, there is a big difference between something looking dated and outright refusing to play a game solely on how it looks.

@mike: Ahh see and theres the rub! There is no difference. You don't play something when it looks dated, because you don't like the way it looks dated. Similarly someone might not watch a movie if it was filmed really poorly despite an interesting plot. So basically it's confusing because you're taking two contradictory stances on the same matter. Like I said though obviously this is a highly subjective thing, I'm sure you can understand and relate to this as a person who likewise plays a lot of games and likes some but doesn't like others for various reasons.

That's actually not true, I play plenty of games that look dated. Just because I say something looks bad doesn't mean I won't play it and enjoy it. You incorrectly assumed that because I comment about a game looking bad, that means I'll never play it.

@mike: Sure, of course, my points stand about everything else though. Although in service of not dragging this out forever I think we can both just agree to disagree.

@mike: @humanity: For what it's worth, The Talos Principle is one of the best looking games I've played on my PC in my honest opinion... That first world's skybox was beautiful. Probably the best skybox I've seen in a game yet.

I'm really curious about The Witness and am following everyone's perception of it. I'll probably get it after I finish Talos because I love keeping puzzles around, that I can hit up every now and then.

@flashflood_29: IF nothing else the Witness should have you covered with the puzzles from everything I'm hearing!

Updated the list with USgamer's review...

Not that it matters too much, but it's sort of odd/ a bit of a bummer to me that the game has an 80+% on Steam, and yet 4 out of 5 of the highlighted reviews are negative. Earlier it was actually 5 out of 5 being negative. Steam has always been bad at highlighting reviews though, Darkest Dungeon had something similar recently. Meanwhile games with highlighted positive reviews are largely jokes/ memes anyways. Meh.