A Frustrated Review of the Witness (ft. The Looker) | MNTM
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video I take a look at indie puzzle game The Witness. I regret this decision immediately.
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Contents:
00:00 1 - Introduction
03:41 2 - Presentation
10:34 3 - Gameplay
21:15 4 - Story? What story?
22:44 5 - The Looker
29:53 6 - Why I Hate The Witness
42:05 7 - Closing Thoughts
#thewitness #puzzlegame #gaming - เกม
Hey everyone! This is the first video I've done captions for so they might be a little jank. Let me know when they're borked and I'll get around to fixing them eventually. Thanks!
If you write a script, you can add it to your video and TH-cam will automatically generate subtitles.
Check "A PSA for Terraria Creators: Get some damn subtitles" by Terrasteel.
Much appreciate the subtitles.
I had *no clue* this is what the lake was supposed to function as.
I loved The Witness. I'm a slut for games with such exploration of their puzzle mechanics. I never got tired of them.
Its biggest problem truly is what surrounds said puzzles.
I like puzzle games but I just found The Witness too long. I have heard good stuff about The Talos Principle but I notice it has a similar time to beat.
@@YTKeepsDeletingAllMyComments Talos's world is way more compact, nowhere near as much running around. Also much more story and less pretentious despite being headier. Highly recommend.
@@smergthedargon8974 Thank you for the suggestion. I'll probably pick it up if I see it on sale.
I’m not a puzzle game player. I play action games and FPS games and I like to believe I am quite good at them. But The Witness is one of my top 5 favourite games of all time, having the time to play at your own pace and when you decide in a meditative and contemplative experience is such a nice contrast from the hyper competitive environment I also thrive in. It taught me something about myself and I just genuinely enjoyed it (didn’t use a single guide as well!).
@@YTKeepsDeletingAllMyCommentsI hated The Witness but loved the Talos Principle. The latter has a lot of really cool puzzle concepts and a very interesting story in my opinion. Definitely recommend playing it.
I like the witness for its visuals, cool puzzles, cool and clever game design etc. I also found out about the witness from Joe's review, but decided to play the game before finishing the spolier section of his review. You have done a really great job with this review too. I think, when just playing this game at a surface level, especially if you don't get stuck on too many puzzles or just look up a guide for any sections you have left at the end, its easy to finish the witness, turn it off and not play it again.
But the more you look at 100%-ing the game, be it the challenge in the caves, all the hidden movies and hidden audio logs, etc. the game asks you to take its themes seriously, and to try and ponder them. And I like the themes, they are interesting to wonder about, and I kinda get that different perspectives each have their own takes. I like the idea that some people can obsess over finding the hidden truth in a game (when compared to the story about Shakespeare), and that some people believe that the Witness has one super-hidden penultimate puzzle that is yet to be discovered.
I guess, with the whole time-wasting, accessibility thing, I guess I naturally don't mind it too much because that only really affects me if I'm going for the optional stuff. A straight main-playthrough of the game is usually fine and balanced enough. If I have further issue with the optional sections, "that's on me" - so I don't get too annoyed. I agree with people's further analysis that it can be pretty pretentious and up itself, but overall I'm just glad we have some good puzzles. Thank you for the review, worth a sub!
Jonathan blow has something of a history of being mad at the wrong people liking his game or the wrong people not getting it. An infamous example is blows previous game braid. Soulja boy liked and endorsed the game and Jonathan Blow was genuinely sad possibly angry that the wrong person got into it
I didn't know that, that's pretty funny
@@monotonallizard how are you doing so you decided to do custom levels in tresspaser
The game is really pretentious but something about the themes of discorvery/perspective/understanding really hit for me. I think you are right that this is kinda thin and doesn't really have much to say on it's own. I think the game want's to be viewed as a meditation where the contemplation is more important than the answer. In this way i see the secret ending is sort of deliberately unsatisfying to push this message but then it's like "yeah so what, it's deliberately unsatisfying". I think you are either captured by it's presentation in which case it really does feel larger than the sum of its parts but if you don't buy in then i totally get how it would just feel tedious and full of itself.
I love Portal 1 and 2 so I thought I would like this game. Big mistake.
What did you not like about it?
I did always feel that Joe's take on it being a joke on the player was a bit of a cope. Like, there's no way a game so clever in its design can be so far up its own ass that intestines become just another puzzle, yknow. But the more I've read up on what Blow been up to and things he said, I do believe he's just that serious about it and that's equally as funny as it is frustrating.
Nevertheless, a wonderful critique that put to words some leftover frustrations I had with this game, hope it spreads around more
the looker reminded me of a myst clone pyst, it's like a law of nature, pretentious puzzle games have their evil twins and knowing that might help you to admire it more. But perhaps there could've been a better comparing material for the video, like a standalone game that excels at what witness tried to achieve and not just some snarky parody, something like antichamber that tries to make you think outside the box rather than falling in line and following the lines the way someone wants you to follow them without ever telling how to do it right. The Witness is a quite narrow minded game to say the least and I understood it thanks to your video.
i actually found the "secret ending" before even leaving the first area and i was very confused.
I got the game for free on PS Plus and I went into it blind only having heard "It's good." I couldn't really get through it, I just hit a point where I had had enough, it's way too long. There was some stuff I really enjoyed about the game but it wasn't enough to make me play through it. I might have really enjoyed it if the game was shorter as I do enjoy puzzle games.
Also never trust a girl who doesn't like sandwiches.
Edit : Yeah, I mostly agree with you, I especially liked noticing the environment puzzles and if the game had like a 6-8 hour play time I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.
How is this channel still so small, this is legit high effort content
Would you ever consider maybe talking about (or even just playing) the “The Thing” game? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
Yeah, one day. Not until all my current projects are finished though.
Great video, I always felt that the witness on a gameplay and puzzle design was interesting but the more deeper and more philosophical angle was extremely pretentious. Like I remember on a old giantbomb cast where they where talking about the game that it always felt like Jonathan blow was over your shoulder and being smug saying how smart and deep he is, but I always felt he kind of was a dumb man's idea of a smart person since their was very little meaning behind his ideas and mostly did things to seam smart ( like the whole thing being a dream or the random quotes) these same fault are also felt in his other game braid with how asinine some of the secret puzzle are. Also based on some of your complaints on the game you might like the Talos principal a simple portal-like puzzle game with actual deep discussions and some fun puzzles with out of the box ideas
I loved the Talos Principle! I've been meaning to give the sequel a try too.
Great, thought-out review. You sure deserve way more views
the worst thing about the witness is that i want more puzzles of this type, and there aren't a lot. some very basic logic puzzles that get more and more complex. i'm so sick of escape room type puzzles that just have nonsensical BS solutions and never escalate in complexity.
i really enjoyed Taiji, it's basically the witness in 2D, without the pretentious crap.
Hey Monotom! I've loved all your videos and am eager to see what you do next, whether it's "shorter" videos like this or more deep dives like the JP videos. I don't always 100% agree with your analysis, but that's part of the fun to hear how you walked into something you thought wouldn't be for you to give it a fair shake, and enjoy listening to you all the same. Although I will agree sometimes The Witness does go a bit too far at navel gazing, with The Looker even using most of the same monologue about the captain of a ship before turning it on its head.
Since you've mentioned in things like Stay Out of the House about other "stalker enemy" games like Alien Isolation, I'd be curious as to if you've tried Amensia the Bunker or other games of that ilk. Or for something more psychological, something like Fear and Hunger (if you can get past the issue of YT censorship). Keep up the awesome videos, I'm looking forward to more!
Thanks! You're in luck, I recently played Amnesia: The Bunker and have a bit to say about it so that'll be the next video. Otherwise Alien: Isolation is still the gold standard for that kind of game. The recent Resident Evils have been kind of disappointing to me but the original Resident Evil 3 scratches the same sort of itch, even if it's very rough around the edges these days.
Fear and Hunger is a game I really don't like due to the RNG of the coin flips, though the setting and presentation is super interesting.
To be fair the looker is a game that people who like the witness enjoy and people who hate the witness enjoy so having more positive reviews make sense =p
Absolutely on-point discussion IMO. I'm glad to hear the best part of the game was the one I never found, I guess 😂 (by the time it was tutorialised, I was far past ready to be done and assumed it was just a "lolololol stupid nerd thinks all questions have answers, guess what, they don't, have fun in my puzzle mountain" moment).
I hold that there is a good version of The Witness, and it's Outer Wilds. Which is still a frustrating game at times! Just, much less so.
Joseph Anderson is ironically The Witness of videogame essayists, his Witcher stuff was just baffling, someone talking for so long about something without never understanding it
Thank you.
I'm curious what you believe was misunderstood. I watched both videos all the way through with someone who has read The Witcher and neither of us had any complaints. He's been wrong about lots of things before, so I'm wondering what we might have missed.
Yup, I think his video on the Witness is really bad lol. I tracked down some tweets and comment he made after though and he said that the game grew on him and he remembered it more fondly as time passed on. I think that’s the main issue JA and this guy have, they rushed through it. I took my sweet time and played it at my own pace never chasing a goal I had set for myself and I can honestly say The Witness is in my top 5 games of all time.
@@emeraldcymophane7461 ah, well, its just a bunch of annoyances and smoll things, like the vids being too long in an obnoxious way? speaking from personal taste, obviously, but if i was to point one mayor eyebrow raising "but" would he idea that he thought the scoia'tael are annoying or something like that, which is a... come on, dude, they getting colonized, its a bit absurdist to expect them to be saints
but i watched it loooong ago when they came out, so dunno
@@luk4aaaa have never played The Witness tbh, despite having seen a bunch of videos about it over the years for some reason 🤔 so can say much one way or the other... uhhh... seems and easy to 100% game if you care about that stuff 😗
I do have played The Looker a couple of times and really like it
Funny how you mention Josepth, and with regards to the Witness and other games with "developer intentions" I think Darkest Dungeon would be another good game to look at (not only just cause he covered it but I heavily disagree with what he had to say about it)
Darkest Dungeon is designed to be one long struggle. Joseph just didn't seem to understand that your characters are meant to be disposable. He wouldn't stop complaining about it being turned based either.
I've put about 20 hours into Darkest Dungeon over the years, and there are a lot of things I love about it like the visual design and the dungeon crawl, but I can't get over how so many of the combat mechanics feel cruel just for the sake of being cruel. After a certain point it stops being fun for me.
I had no idea about the lake.
Unironically, I never even heard about the Witness, and instead only knew about The Looker, thanks to Live streamers. I thought that you were talking about that game at first, until it was mentioned it was a parody of it.
Great review, love the explanation of how this video came to be thanks to the Getting over it Review. Gave it a nice segway between videos.
Can you tell me the stories you think did the "it was all a dream" thing right? It'd possibly ruin them but im very interested in knowing what you know, you've consumed more stories
Edit: lovely video/words, your thoughts on the witness were really interesting
It's kind of impossible not to ruin them by giving that part of them away, but there are two that spring to mind: the Westworld TV show and the 2017 video game Prey. They didn't treat the twist as inherently satisfying in and of itself, they both gave it a narrative purpose, and they didn't erase or reset all that had come before upon the reveal either. Plus the twist was built into the premise of both from the very start in smaller, interesting ways, so it felt less like a sudden shock and more like the final piece of a puzzle falling into place.
I loved the witness when I saw a few screenshots of it. Then I noticed it's by the same guy who made Braid, and my excitement vanished. Braid is so up its own ass I can't stand it. Purple prose, the game. _It means whatever you want it to mean but also whatever you think it means is definitely wrong,_ that's pretty much what Blow said about it. Trying so hard to look like it says something profound while not having much to say at all.
So when I learned that the witness is hundreds of back-of-the-cereal-box line puzzles in very pretty environments, I thought _"of course it is."_ Some time later randomly watched the Joseph Anderson's video and my assumptions were confirmed. And now, yours did it again.
Great review, but I disagree with your point on The Secret of Psalm 46. When I realized I had to listen to it in full to do the puzzle, I was very annoyed, but the talk itself was geniunly so captivating, that waiting for the puzzle became secondary. If there is anything I took away from The Witness in general, is that Shakespear doesn't exist, and I wouldn't be blessed with that knowledge if I wasn't forced to hear that talk.
Besides that, I don't think the point of the environmental puzzles, was to be solved systematically, as they give no reward or progression. Solving the ones you find organically on your playthrough, and leaving the rest behind seems like the best experience.
I absolutely loved The Witness, but also at the time I was unemployed, between uni semesters, and desperately needed something to take up a LOT of my time.
i personnaly like the witness for its environment and exploration, the puzzle were fine until they began to feel like a chore
Laundry Files mentioned!
13:30 Okay hold on. If I may intrude here. This is a point in your argument I flat out HARD disagree with.
You talk about puzzles being shut down like it’s a “mechanic” and like it’s “something that bogs down the experience because nothing is gained”. I say that’s flatly untrue. It’s literally AVOIDANCE of a gimmick. It forces you to only try to solve a puzzle when you think you know the solution rather than to guess and check. You will NEVER shut down a puzzle if you KNOW the solution and that’s only possible if you know the question.
Take the trees with the apples for instance. If those puzzles didn’t shut down, you could just visit every branch with ease and eventually get to the end without ever knowing the apple was there to begin with.
In my opinion, that sort of thing is literally NECESSARY in a game that’s trying to force you solve the “gimmick” it’s not unnecessary and annoying because it doesn’t exist for people who are solving the puzzles correctly.
To add to that point, the audio puzzles you claimed “were easy, and straightforward”. You didn’t claim those were annoying. Yet you may not have even realized that those puzzles ALSO shut down if you’re mistaken, making you go back a step.
So ask yourself why aren’t you complaining about those puzzles?
They shut down like any of the others.
(The only place I think the argument is justified is the freakin desert water because oh my goddddd that place sucked)
The Witness pulls the good ol' "Oh dear! It's all so complicated!" fallacy that you see from a lot of pseudo intellectuals that like to sound more smarterest than everyone else. Also, genuinely love this vid! Very well organized! I liked the talk on the accessibility options especially. I once tried to get into a cool online web series that had amazing story telling but couldn't because it included too many flashing lights. I brought this up to my friend and he brought it to one of the devs/authors for the project and you know what? A day later a patch went out that let you slide the brightness down and reduce the flashing lights. Proper thoughtful people actually engage with criticism and work to improve. Much appreciate the video!!
oh, hey, i was wondering if you were going to mention The Looker
I think the game is intensely clever. But you see, the problem is, that I'm not quite as clever.
AND the game makes me violently motion sick for some reason.
So I hate it.
The Witness just made me uncomfortable from the start. It made me feel like a lab rat dropped into a maze. The problems clearly built on each other but in a really hostile way that clearly wasn't meant to increase my enjoyment but so the game could make sure I was actually "smart" enough and didn't solve any puzzles by accident...
This always gave off pretentious, secret lore ARG vibes. I can appreciate it came out before "games desperately attempting to generate lore content" became an entire industry through.
This is one of those really rare channels where I genuinely look forward to every time. ❤
Saying something like, "You are just drawing lines on a grid", is a dumb thing to say.
You are trying to take away all intent and then say "Ha! See how boring it is?".
The purpose of "just drawing a line" is to solve a bigger puzzle given where not just any line can be drawn.
No better than writing random words on a crossword, or writing random numbers on a piece of paper (sudoku).
The fun is in the problem solving which is what most people buy a puzzle game for, to solve puzzles.
Also, you say there are a bunch of useless puzzles around that do nothing and while that is somewhat true I would say that is mostly false.
I would categorize the puzzles in 4 different ways:
1) Puzzles that help you learn the different types of puzzles
2) Puzzles that further progression into your exploration
3) Puzzles meant to challenge yourself
4) Secret puzzles
And I would say the former 1 and 2 types appear way more often than the latter 3 and 4 types.
Having watched this whole video now, it's kind of interesting that... while I don't actually like the game and while I think Jonathan Blow can be a bit up his own arse at times (having watched lots of interviews over the years), I agree with almost nothing in both your video and especially Joseph Anderson's video.
There's a third lengthy essay about this game that I thought was way more on point, but it's a controversial one, since it tears Anderson's video to shreds in a rather rude way. But methods be damned, it is the best video of the three - because it's made by someone who understands the game far better than you or Anderson. In my opinion.
And just to make it clear: I can't stand actually playing the game. No horse in the race. But better arguments and deeper insights wins the day when it comes to essays. It's only fair.
The video I'm talking about: A Refutation of Joseph Anderson's "The Witness - A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play"
Please no one be rude to that person. Make it about the ideas, not a slapfight.
Someone I agree 100% with. I love the video you mentioned (minus the end where they riff on Anderson but hey) and it made me feel like I wasn’t alone in liking the game since everyone hates it apparently lol.
Sorry not watching your friend's review they look like the last person I'd want to take seriously lmao
@@ddd-op5wy "friend" - it's just a video I bumped into a long while ago and it's got interesting perspectives. Talk about being a shallow, judgmental weirdo.
@@ddd-op5wy why would you not want to take them seriously?
30:20 - ... Please tell me that pun wasn't intentional.
What an idiotic take.
You really need to drop that 5 minute long section where you give your life's story and a behind the scenes documentary on the production of this video, just get to the point mate. Too many youtubers do this crap and it's BORING.