Jeff and Brad sit down with Jonathan Blow to have a candid discussion about The Witness. You might not want to watch this if you haven't finished the game yet.
GB: "what are you working on next? Is it going to take 6 or 7 years?" Jonathan: "No we're going to make a game with speedy development" 4 years later: "we're making our own compiler and language while we make our own game engine and a new game on top of that"
yea and the fact that he was crippled from the gamepad, had to talk, kept fucking up and still had 12 seconds left goes to show where those 6 years went
Damn that triangle pillar at the beginning area... Truly something only your future self would see as painfully obvious while your naive, former self would see as plain decoration.
+Edson Most of the time I've been stuck or seen people stuck on puzzles, it's because they are artificially imposing extra rules or restrictions onto puzzles, or dont fully understand the way that type of puzzle works. The different puzzles in the game are like different languages, and you need to spend time learning how each puzzle works. You need to understand what each puzzle is asking before solving them. I find that it is very helpful to look at the puzzles i've already solved, and use those to analyze how they work. Also, you can guess as many times as you want, so it never hurts to try different things.
What I like about this designer is that his goal is to make a game that he thinks is good and sticks to his principles. Unlike most other games made that crap all over the game in order to appease to the idiocy of the masses or put monetization as the only goal that matters. From literally the first moment playing this game you realize it's something different.
+Hornet "What is actually good" is inherently what you think is good; just because you didn't enjoy it doesn't mean others don't have the capacity to do so.
+Hornet You really need to share with us mere mortals this objective truth that you have found. It'd really make things easier if we all had this non-subjective understanding of what's "good" and what isn't, that you seem to have.
23:00 On trying to make an environmental puzzle only colorblind people could see 32:37 On handling playtester feedback (what, but not how/why) 1:16:08 On the only environmental puzzle that didn't get into the game (chrome sculpture)
This is an EXCELLENT interview, as someone who has loved playing The Witness for the weeks since it came out, beat The Challenge etc. (and had been following it for years prior). Very cathartic to finally hear Jon's thoughts after all this time :-) For anyone who has a passing interest in this game, though? Stay far away and come back later! This has HUGE spoilers in it and you really deserve to experience it for yourself :-)
OMG! What he’s talking about with the reflection in the sun temple! I have seen so many people who have seemingly no understanding of how a mirror works. Walking all over the place trying to find the light glaring on the puzzle like they have no idea that the light is reflecting off it.
It's amusing how many people have to justify not buying this game with some lazy criticism "This game is so pretentious" or "$40 is such a rip off" Hearing Jonathan discuss the development and design process (that spanned 7+ years!) is fascinating. Like the game or not it's impossible not to appreciate the vision and obsessive drive it took for them to deliver it. If that means the 'The Witness' is pretentious then we need more pretentious games.
R Fruit $40 is a rip off, you have to have some kind of physical reactions to doing puzzles to justify $40 for a puzzle when you can buy a bunch of other fun puzzles like 3D ones and those you can even keep and show to others.
I'm a funny boy and you are not!!!! I am a big fan of puzzles, like 3D puzzles. I didn’t mind buying those but this game is nowhere NEAR the value of $40. I wouldn’t even buy this game for $15. It stopped being fun after just 5 hours of playing the game but I forced myself to keep playing. Completed the challenge room without cheating it nor did I cheat on any of the other areas and it just was not worth it. Unless you get an actual kind of high off of playing puzzle games then this game isn’t worth shit and should be avoided.
@@Death_Incarnate I got a real high multiple times playing. It was fucking awesome and made me feel grate and relaxed just wandering the island, finding and solving puzzles, listening to the audio logs and searching for the ... secret puzzles lets say.
"I'd like our next game to not take that many years, and instead make use of the valuable asset that is the game engine we have now built." Then he goes on to build a completely new programming language for his next game.... :D Never change, Jon
I appreciate Jonathan Blow has an idea in mind and sticks to his convictions of making what he wants to make instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator of the masses. Good for him and in turn good for us because we get this gem treasure of a game.
Oh man this video was satisfying. Thank you for doing this with Jonathan. Was awesome to hear you guys dissect the game and the development process with him.
I know it's not really that interesting compared to the rest of the interview, but I still can't get over how amazing the sound design of the pillar room is - especially just as the pad is stepped on at 52:39
the part with the flower and the sign, where they ask what the significance of it is, i view it as a primer for the next area. it's glare and light. also, when they say the desert area isn't a water temple. literally puzzles with rising and falling water come on
Yeah and those are all over, there's another one that has glittering notes on music scale. It's just to tip the player off that you need to look for reflections in the desert. These guys were kind of dunces with their questions.
The bit where they're talking about people not realizing about the environment puzzles. I felt so dumb with this. I had seen these obviously not accidental shapes all over the place, and thought "that looks like a puzzle", and I assumed they were *clues* and so I screengrabbed them all, thinking that later on they would turn out to be the solution to some otherwise unsolvable puzzle. But they never were. And so I was thinking "these shapes in the environment that look like puzzles are really weird, what is the deal with that?". And then when I was nearly finished the game I started looking at faq type stuff, which i'd avoided till then, and I was like "OH MAN!". What a brilliant idea, to make the whole point of the game to induce as many "lighbulb moments" as possible, moments where you're working or whatever and you suddenly think "OH FUCK!" and you go and sit on the toilet, and try it, and it works! That feeling is amazing. I feel like Blow really captured lightning in a bottle with this game, I hope what he does next is as great as this and Braid.
I didn't find the secret on top of the mountain. In fact I found it almost by chance near the sun temple, where a stone aligns with a pillar in the ocean forming a circle and didn't even see the tail just for some reason clicked on the circle formed - MIND BLOWN ! :))) That was after all lasers were activated, and I was thinking to myself - why did he leave all those solutions to puzzles when they cannot be used anywhere ? The late find made it all the more interesting going everywhere and seeing how it has been dangling under my nose - some of them were just beautiful , others made the ordinary puzzles like the ones in the mountain and the castle even more interesting with all their extra layers.
If you plot the locations of the 6 Black Obelisks, you can draw lines between them that intersect near the lake. If you then connect Obelisks 1,3,5 via the intersection, and Obelisks 2,4,6 via the intersection, they form "inverted triangles" or "Y" shapes. Well, after solving all environmental puzzles for an Obelisk, it turns white. Do you remember what the white "Y" symbols do in a puzzle? They cancel out puzzle rules and thereby solve the puzzle. So if you find all the environmental puzzles on the island, and turn all 6 Black Obelisks into White Obelisks, then you form 2 giant white "Y" symbols on the island, which cancels out all the island's puzzle rules, and means you've solved the final puzzle - the island itself. Understand?
Loved this game, definitely one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. It's interesting to hear him talk about the narrative, I really wonder what it was like before they went with the non linear approach. It would really be a mistake for this to have a linear narrative, so much of the game is about the "aha!" moments, about developing an understanding on your own, the narrative should reflect that form and should require the audience to put forth the effort of piecing it together.
+Daniel Corona Exactly my sentiments dude. It wouldn't have been as profound and as striking if it had been really a linear, straightforward puzzle game. That feeling of discovery and extreme eureka euphoria have never felt so good as in The Witness.
If anyone was wondering how Brad did that screenshot to game to screenshot to game shortcut on the PS4 (around 1:14:30), all you have to do is go to Settings, System Storage Management, Capture Gallery, Select game, Select screenshot and press X to view the screenshot in fullscreen then double press the PS button on the controller and it will bring you to the game and double press the PS button again to go to the screenshot. Not really useful in any situation except maybe when playing The Witness. ...or you could just use your phone to take a picture. Hope this helps.
I experienced this game exactly how jonathan blow intended. The a ha moments occured for exactly as planned and it made this game phenomenal for me.Also solving the challenge is my proudest gaming moment.
I would like dlc alternate shadows for the player character, comedy voices for the audiologs, a heavy metal "challenge" LP, and for the statues to look at you funny. Also to be able to get into the spa for a bit.
I really want to watch this but can't because I've still not had the time to properly play The Witness, such a great game and awesome designer behind it.
I would love to ask Jonathan if the Treehouse sequence was inspired by Channelwood in Myst. I know he has stated that Myst was an inspiration from a world-building and design perspective, but this sequence, to me, almost seemed like a direct homage.
Could you guys please see about doing more of these things with more developers? I don't think there's anywhere near enough content like this out there, and we'd all love to see how pretty much any game comes together!!
I'm with you on the "different puzzle types make use of different parts of your brain" thing. I feel quite competent in most of them, the sound ones were very easy for me (though still satisfying). But I struggled a lot with the tetris blocks. It was fine at the beginning, but when there were 3+ shapes to draw, I would start drawing but then get confused as to which shapes I've already traced, if they were rotated or not, etc. So I cut out the shapes in paper and I would do the puzzles on paper first. The hedge mazes were hard, too, because I struggle with spacial orientation and would instantly forget what route I'd taken.
43:14 - The desert was one of the last ones I did. I actually though I needed to learn something before I could do it or possibly unlock something, a lot of other games you unlock stuff then you can do the puzzles and so I thought this might be the case here too. A lot of the other puzzles sort of had easy ones then hard as well so I thought it could be that as well. So I left thinking I will learn that later or unlock what I need to do it. My TV is pointed down slightly to avoid glare, so I didn't actually see the glare in the real world, so it's hard to tell if their is glare in the game, I decided to watch a video on something I previously solved, but wasn't sure why it was the answer, the drawing round the four sand stones early on in the symmetry area. I just repeatedly did the last one of these draw round the stones as it forces you to face the hill, I knew I had to draw round the environment, but I didn't realise it had to be the four sand coloured stones. I then realised the trick when he stood at a certain angle on the video, originally when I did these early on I wasn't sure if the game was glitched because it didn't make sense at the time I had only done a few puzzles, later I realised everything had a trick and it was just understanding that trick, so I decided to look it up on TH-cam. After finding a video with him stood in a certain position and it didn't force him to face a certain direction, I realised the trick. TH-cam then autoplayed the next video and there was a clip of someone walking past the screens in the desert on the next autoplay video, I saw the glare on my laptop screen straight away, but was annoyed with the autoplay because he said glare at the same time, and I didn't have chance to stop the video or think to because I was lost in thoughts about the tricks of all puzzles I had done at that point, so I'm not 100% sure if it was just my TV or if him saying glare made it obvious and I felt like I had cheated, but I think it was simply that my tv didn't show the glare in the desert area as well as my laptop. As it was really obvious on my laptop like so easy to see. I also realised I could have worked out why the old puzzles had worked if I had just tried to figure out the trick, just because I had done the puzzle didn't mean I couldn't work out the trick, so then I was kicking myself again, annoyed at my self for that too. I didn't look up videos again after that. Until I did all the lasers. But I only did some of the environmental puzzles. I looked up if there is a reward to doing the environmental puzzles, as I'm not a huge fan of the environmental puzzles, not sure why I just didn't enjoy trying to stand in the right place to get them to work. So I wanted to know if doing them was worth it and I stumbled on the secret door and then looked up if there is any other secret environmental puzzles, in which I accidentally found out about the cave too. I actually thought I had done most of the game after the lasers, par the environmental puzzle. So I didn't think it was spoilers, and felt I had done enough to look up some of the secrets, as I'm not so proud as to get no help ever, and felt I had done enough after the lasers, so since I had completed it, I guess I didn't care as much. The challenge was hard though. It took me 8 hours of repetitively trying to do that challenge. Finally I got fast enough at solving and an easy run that I did it. Listened to a lot of TH-cam at the same time. Ha.
Yeah, I didn't have one of those ~moments~ with the river. I got out of the first area and noticed that yellow cart thingy right away, and it shone when I tried to activate it. Later on I found a big one on that town. For me it was just another part of the game from the beginning.
Omg. I never realised that the fourth panel of 'the challenge' was a map for the later area. I would have probably beaten it in 15 less tries. I also kept searching for a third puzzle in that second to last room a handful of times
Im late, played this on release and now again because ps+ reminded me of off it. This game is a masterpiece and i love it so much. Just one off the best games ever!
I see reviews of this game saying "oh there wasn't much to it, just a bunch of disconnected maze puzzles on an island and a ton of pretentious audio logs". These people haven't actually played the game. They may have done most of the puzzles and gotten to the end, but they haven't seen any of the hidden things, which means they missed the entire point. The audio logs are mostly just for ambiance, I would say they only exist to get you in the right mood. The puzzles I would say serve that purpose as well. If those are all someone found when they played this, I think they missed out on the entire experience.
Still only in the early parts of the video, but I wonder if the concepts of this game can be used to determine a user's learning style. The different types of puzzles all employ different logic and/or styles of reasoning, so depending on which ppl can/can't do or have an easier/harder time with, they could be more apt at certain types of reasoning. That aside, with all I've heard about The Witness (not all of which is very charitable), Jonathan Blow seems like a really reasonable, personable, and passionate guy.
did i miss something or did you guys leave out the movie theatre? i was amazed by the tarkovsky scene and the long video about awe is art. id have koved him comment on that.
I literally yelled "WTF!" when they opened the gate to the secret area near the end of the video - I never found that! Immediately paused the video and played it myself - mind blown. Jonathan Blow, you mad genius!
This is one of the best game ever for me, even thou i only did follow some youtubers. I want to buy this game, and try to play it through myself, but i think i will wait some time before i do it. I dont like war games because of the stress factor, it's because i have diagnoses such as stress and anxiety. I do like the game Minecraft too, and i have to play it on peaceful mode or easy to handle it. I do hope that Jonathan Blow will do more new games like this in the future. I would for sure be one of buyers. :) Btw, i'm 56 :)
@ Jonathon Blow, regarding color blindness, would it have been possible to write a shader that turned all red/green/blue pixels into a an offshoot of a different color?
The first time I saw the flower mosaic on the outside of a house on the village I thought "this looks like a colorblind puzzle". Sure enough, the reds and greens seem to allow a path to be made. I searched for a colorblind option but couldn't find one.
Does anyone ever get the other solution as teased by Jonathan Blow at 55:56? There is a suspicious wall at the yellow side under the stairs which is a little bit darker than the rest of the textures. Could be a hidden door. So I found a solution where the yellow line forms the way to the normal exit door, but unfortunately nothing happened.
Getting the blue platform to the exit door gives you one environmental puzzle when viewed from below; getting the yellow platform to the exit door gives you a different one.
They said this game would come to iOS right? Kind of interested to see how it makes that transition and if it would still keep the 40 dollar price tag with it onto the App Store.
43:45 anyone knows any information about this leaf on the desert tree? I've been looking for it online, but couldn't find when it appears. I don't have it myself (but I haven't 100% the puzzles yet, but then again this player on the video hasn't either).
Blow is an astute guy, but it's funny to see him miss a point that is very much "game design." Drawing the shapes to cast spells has many wonderful benefits: 1) physical immersion; 2) mental immersion -- snappily remembering shapes means better spellcasting; 3) as Jeff implies, there's a risk/reward mini-game: I can draw faster to cast spells faster, but will that cause me to fail? The best spellcasters ride on the fine edge of failure, and when they fail, do they back off and slow down, or can they keep it together? Spellcasting that calls for actual mental and physical fortitude -- sounds perfect. The system in Black and White was good enough to generally render this effect, despite its issues. Quickly drawing, knocking, and threading arrows past your party and into enemies in Skyrim VR feels great when you're hot. Playtesters will tend to recommend that you change features to be more like [famous game]. This is generally good advice, why change what works? Yet if you do this for every feature, you will end up with a copy of other games, so, like so many times in life, you have to know when to say "no." "I got this one without knowing why it worked." Yeah, that was the whole The Witness experience for me.
For me I realised about environmental puzzles in the town, I had done most of the lasers, and I just realised after doing most of the game, what would be the point of these lines under the walk ways of the tower. Most of the other puzzles had been built up to, as in there is easy versions, and progressively got harder, so I just figured the game would in it's own way point it out to me. But much like the desert area, it never made it completely obvious to me with some of the puzzles, same with a lot of the tricks to do the panel puzzles, once you got the trick, you got how to do the puzzles, but not all the puzzles were obvious to me, which is part of the charm of the game, a bit like a scientist you have to figure it out. On a side note they should really do a game in which people do jobs that scientist do, and how they have to figure stuff out. It would be educational. So because I had done so much of the game, and I sort of knew the game wasn't going to point the puzzles out to me as much, sometimes it did seem more obvious other times not, so I realised when looking at the bottom of the tower, the lines must mean something. I had tried clicking on environmental stuff before, but nothing happened. So I figured you couldn't do environmental puzzles. But when I clicked on the ones on the tower in the town after lining the lines up, it worked. I then realised I had missed a lot of environmental puzzles as I looked at the black pillars, which I thought was to do with activating all the lasers as well, typical of most progressive games, stuff unlocks the more you do. Originally when I looked on top of the mountain, did the drawing on the panel. Nothing happened, I just figured I needed to do the lasers before that would work and maybe something would come out of the water fall, or something would happen. I think the only way to make environmental puzzles more obvious to me, would have been to near the start have a panel built in to the floor, sort of half environment half floor. There was always little clues when I think about it with the tree blocking the laser in the Monastery, the mountain top puzzle. However I did the Monastery close to finishing the lasers, and I had originally tried environmental puzzles and nothing happened. So I figured this wasn't part of the game, till obviously I thought there can't be lines for the sake of lines on walkways on the tower. So I tried again. But after I looked back at the game, if I had realised environmental puzzles too soon, it probably would have ruined the pacing of the game a little for me. I would have been stopping clicking all over the environment, trying to get them to work, the game would have progressed so slowly for me it wouldn't have been as good. It's like with too much hidden loot in games with no real reward for getting that loot, you end up just spending so much time looking for loot, so you don't have to do it later in case it's important and it can make the game a little tedious, and slow the pacing to much, because you don't want to miss anything important for later in the game, that you just don't really enjoy the game as much. It's like OCD looking for stuff, which can be great when it's rewarding, but tedious when it's not. So I'm kind of glad I didn't realise about environmental puzzles till after doing the lasers, as I would have thought they were needed to complete the game. I get the point of easter eggs, I liked finding the videos, and the recorders, and I enjoyed this aspect I think it's more when I feel like I'm doing so much tedious work, standing a certain way to get it, that if that isn't rewarded with any value it doesn't seem worthwhile to me. Unlike the door at the start, hidden in the gate. The challenge puzzle for the video. That was awesome rewards, if most of the environmental puzzles lead to something like this. Then it would have been worthwhile to me, as far as I know they don't lead to anything significant. :)
1:00:47 I find it hilarious that the interviewers keep interrupting while John is doing the Challenge Room + explaining how it works but he just keeps on talking until they stop
![[Live] : ONE FIGHT NIGHT 24 “จาร์เร็ด vs กุสตาโว”](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ENNA-fsT67c/mqdefault.jpg)
GB: "what are you working on next? Is it going to take 6 or 7 years?"
Jonathan: "No we're going to make a game with speedy development"
4 years later:
"we're making our own compiler and language while we make our own game engine and a new game on top of that"
actually two games :D
6 years later: "we're working on our own OS and console"
@@gunderson1005 Pretty sure that was when he was frustrated with Windows again and slightly sarcastic but you never know with Jon ;)
Lol yeah. That's insane.
@@SETHthegodofchaos jonOs would be epic
Seeing Jonathan Blow getting excited and messing up at his own game during the musical segment is kind of magical.
yea and the fact that he was crippled from the gamepad, had to talk, kept fucking up and still had 12 seconds left goes to show where those 6 years went
I just beat that challenge and holy shit does he make it look easy!
he tried to make a puzzle only colorblind people can see? absolutely mad genius. I could listen to him talk about game design for hours.
what? no
EDIT : yes
oh wait
@@anselmschueler Calm down.
@@anselmschueler calm down.
@@anselmschueler noob
Damn that triangle pillar at the beginning area...
Truly something only your future self would see as painfully obvious while your naive, former self would see as plain decoration.
I loved the witness so much. It rekindled my love for video games. It had been years since I sat down and played a video game for hours at a time.
+r0wd3 Dragons dogma did that for me. Hopefully more character action games come out soon
+r0wd3 You know it isn't a video game, right? It's 600+ maze puzzles. You can go play those on the internet (or a newspaper) whenever you like.
+larsvontrier You should probably look up what a video game is man.
+larsvontrier Lol if you knew the other type of puzzle in this game you'd eat your words.
+Edson Most of the time I've been stuck or seen people stuck on puzzles, it's because they are artificially imposing extra rules or restrictions onto puzzles, or dont fully understand the way that type of puzzle works. The different puzzles in the game are like different languages, and you need to spend time learning how each puzzle works. You need to understand what each puzzle is asking before solving them. I find that it is very helpful to look at the puzzles i've already solved, and use those to analyze how they work. Also, you can guess as many times as you want, so it never hurts to try different things.
What I like about this designer is that his goal is to make a game that he thinks is good and sticks to his principles. Unlike most other games made that crap all over the game in order to appease to the idiocy of the masses or put monetization as the only goal that matters.
From literally the first moment playing this game you realize it's something different.
+shtik Too bad what he thinks is good, and what is actually good aren't the same thing.
+Hornet The statement in itself contains a logical fallacy. You realize this, right?
Rahf I don't think you know what a logical fallacy is.
+Hornet "What is actually good" is inherently what you think is good; just because you didn't enjoy it doesn't mean others don't have the capacity to do so.
+Hornet You really need to share with us mere mortals this objective truth that you have found. It'd really make things easier if we all had this non-subjective understanding of what's "good" and what isn't, that you seem to have.
How amazing would it be if Blow's next game is The Witness 2: This Time It's Personal. Same game map, but a completely standard FPS
Turn all panels into exploding barrels, drop into the island from a kooky school bus
Perfect April Fools game.
A minimap with assassin's creed style icons all over it
@@omyyer oh God I just threw up in my mouth a little bit
I was holding the mouse cursor over the youtube timeline and thought it was a puzzle
It's a shame this joke will eventually not make sense, but it still does in 2018
Oh God.
Everything is a puzzle.
@@AexisRai In the middle of 2019 too.
2020 BUDDY
There is a video review of the game that uses this as a thing.
23:00 On trying to make an environmental puzzle only colorblind people could see
32:37 On handling playtester feedback (what, but not how/why)
1:16:08 On the only environmental puzzle that didn't get into the game (chrome sculpture)
This is one of the coolest things I have ever seen; a true creative genius laying out his methodology on a true masterpiece. Incredible.
This is an EXCELLENT interview, as someone who has loved playing The Witness for the weeks since it came out, beat The Challenge etc. (and had been following it for years prior). Very cathartic to finally hear Jon's thoughts after all this time :-)
For anyone who has a passing interest in this game, though? Stay far away and come back later! This has HUGE spoilers in it and you really deserve to experience it for yourself :-)
+Paul Grzymkowski (paulogy) Agreed.
OMG! What he’s talking about with the reflection in the sun temple!
I have seen so many people who have seemingly no understanding of how a mirror works. Walking all over the place trying to find the light glaring on the puzzle like they have no idea that the light is reflecting off it.
It's amusing how many people have to justify not buying this game with some lazy criticism "This game is so pretentious" or "$40 is such a rip off"
Hearing Jonathan discuss the development and design process (that spanned 7+ years!) is fascinating. Like the game or not it's impossible not to appreciate the vision and obsessive drive it took for them to deliver it. If that means the 'The Witness' is pretentious then we need more pretentious games.
R Fruit $40 is a rip off, you have to have some kind of physical reactions to doing puzzles to justify $40 for a puzzle when you can buy a bunch of other fun puzzles like 3D ones and those you can even keep and show to others.
Bernd Anders I got it for free, just saying $40 is a rip off.
@@Death_Incarnate I think that it's totally worth the $40 if you're a huge fan of puzzle games, but if you arent as into them, just get it on sale
I'm a funny boy and you are not!!!! I am a big fan of puzzles, like 3D puzzles. I didn’t mind buying those but this game is nowhere NEAR the value of $40. I wouldn’t even buy this game for $15.
It stopped being fun after just 5 hours of playing the game but I forced myself to keep playing. Completed the challenge room without cheating it nor did I cheat on any of the other areas and it just was not worth it. Unless you get an actual kind of high off of playing puzzle games then this game isn’t worth shit and should be avoided.
@@Death_Incarnate I got a real high multiple times playing. It was fucking awesome and made me feel grate and relaxed just wandering the island, finding and solving puzzles, listening to the audio logs and searching for the ... secret puzzles lets say.
Great video, and this makes the wait for GDC even longer. The GDC dev interview shows are always some of the best GB content.
+Myggen Myggen I agree and GREAT interview Jeff !:)
I’ve put 45 hours into the game at this point, and there are still things shown in this video that I hadn’t seen or thought of.
"I'd like our next game to not take that many years, and instead make use of the valuable asset that is the game engine we have now built."
Then he goes on to build a completely new programming language for his next game.... :D Never change, Jon
I appreciate Jonathan Blow has an idea in mind and sticks to his convictions of making what he wants to make instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator of the masses. Good for him and in turn good for us because we get this gem treasure of a game.
Oh man this video was satisfying. Thank you for doing this with Jonathan. Was awesome to hear you guys dissect the game and the development process with him.
I know it's not really that interesting compared to the rest of the interview, but I still can't get over how amazing the sound design of the pillar room is - especially just as the pad is stepped on at 52:39
Agreed. Feels like a true ending.
The sound design in the entire game is masterclass. Best footstep sounds in a game ever.
Thanks for doing this Giant Bomb and Jonathan. Fascinating to listen to, very much appreciate it. I absolutely love this game.
the part with the flower and the sign, where they ask what the significance of it is, i view it as a primer for the next area. it's glare and light. also, when they say the desert area isn't a water temple. literally puzzles with rising and falling water come on
Exactly what I thought; a great preview if you catch it.
Yeah and those are all over, there's another one that has glittering notes on music scale. It's just to tip the player off that you need to look for reflections in the desert.
These guys were kind of dunces with their questions.
The bit where they're talking about people not realizing about the environment puzzles. I felt so dumb with this. I had seen these obviously not accidental shapes all over the place, and thought "that looks like a puzzle", and I assumed they were *clues* and so I screengrabbed them all, thinking that later on they would turn out to be the solution to some otherwise unsolvable puzzle. But they never were. And so I was thinking "these shapes in the environment that look like puzzles are really weird, what is the deal with that?". And then when I was nearly finished the game I started looking at faq type stuff, which i'd avoided till then, and I was like "OH MAN!". What a brilliant idea, to make the whole point of the game to induce as many "lighbulb moments" as possible, moments where you're working or whatever and you suddenly think "OH FUCK!" and you go and sit on the toilet, and try it, and it works! That feeling is amazing. I feel like Blow really captured lightning in a bottle with this game, I hope what he does next is as great as this and Braid.
Thanks for the interview guys, this was such a treat.
Really really excellent video! I don't know what it is about him, but I love listening to Jon Blow talk about basically anything. Thanks!
This is still a fantastic video four years later. Really good conversation, chill, and great questions.
This is such a great idea! Will watch the whole thing tonight!
what the hell? he missed 4 times during the challenge and still finished it... i had the impression that it was so much less time.
ikr... When I played, as soon as I missed something I was like "oh, I won't have time to finish anyways, let's start again"
No there two songs that play that last about 7 minutes so when you do it time yourself at least 7 minutes
He finished first part very fast, that's why
Oh shit, I am suuuuper excited to watch this.
I didn't find the secret on top of the mountain. In fact I found it almost by chance near the sun temple, where a stone aligns with a pillar in the ocean forming a circle and didn't even see the tail just for some reason clicked on the circle formed - MIND BLOWN ! :))) That was after all lasers were activated, and I was thinking to myself - why did he leave all those solutions to puzzles when they cannot be used anywhere ? The late find made it all the more interesting going everywhere and seeing how it has been dangling under my nose - some of them were just beautiful , others made the ordinary puzzles like the ones in the mountain and the castle even more interesting with all their extra layers.
It was the first secret I found too ^^
If you plot the locations of the 6 Black Obelisks, you can draw lines between them that intersect near the lake. If you then connect Obelisks 1,3,5 via the intersection, and Obelisks 2,4,6 via the intersection, they form "inverted triangles" or "Y" shapes. Well, after solving all environmental puzzles for an Obelisk, it turns white. Do you remember what the white "Y" symbols do in a puzzle? They cancel out puzzle rules and thereby solve the puzzle. So if you find all the environmental puzzles on the island, and turn all 6 Black Obelisks into White Obelisks, then you form 2 giant white "Y" symbols on the island, which cancels out all the island's puzzle rules, and means you've solved the final puzzle - the island itself. Understand?
Great game. Great video. Thanks guys!
This game was very challenging. I'm going to play it again soon. Great game... bring more of these please.
Love this- first time seeing it. Very cathartic to see Jon do The Challenge- like others below me have said.
Great content. Giant Bomb really nailed a relaxing format with this interview.
The challenge section was pretty funny haha nice interview, The Witness it's already my GOTY.
I always come out of a conversation with jonathan blow inspired to be a game designer
The trees in this game... they are so real I cant even....
Absolutely loved this game and hope it's popularity can rekindle the puzzle genre
Just bought it through Steam sale and it is worth every cent; and now, I can finally watch this with satisfaction.
I love this format.
I can't wait for The Real Witness Masterpiece Edition. Maybe the red herrings in the hydroponic pepper-growing area will be removed.
He is a genius for sure. I wish I could do what he can do...
Loved this game, definitely one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. It's interesting to hear him talk about the narrative, I really wonder what it was like before they went with the non linear approach. It would really be a mistake for this to have a linear narrative, so much of the game is about the "aha!" moments, about developing an understanding on your own, the narrative should reflect that form and should require the audience to put forth the effort of piecing it together.
+Daniel Corona Exactly my sentiments dude. It wouldn't have been as profound and as striking if it had been really a linear, straightforward puzzle game. That feeling of discovery and extreme eureka euphoria have never felt so good as in The Witness.
Best video ever! seriously..
Now this is the best format so far for Quicklook EX.
What an excellent video.
If anyone was wondering how Brad did that screenshot to game to screenshot to game shortcut on the PS4 (around 1:14:30), all you have to do is go to Settings, System Storage Management, Capture Gallery, Select game, Select screenshot and press X to view the screenshot in fullscreen then double press the PS button on the controller and it will bring you to the game and double press the PS button again to go to the screenshot. Not really useful in any situation except maybe when playing The Witness. ...or you could just use your phone to take a picture. Hope this helps.
That secret house thing you visit at the end blew my mind
Th Witness was a hell of an experience, love it so much
I experienced this game exactly how jonathan blow intended. The a ha moments occured for exactly as planned and it made this game phenomenal for me.Also solving the challenge is my proudest gaming moment.
Best video on youtube. Hands down
I would like dlc alternate shadows for the player character, comedy voices for the audiologs, a heavy metal "challenge" LP, and for the statues to look at you funny. Also to be able to get into the spa for a bit.
I really want to watch this but can't because I've still not had the time to properly play The Witness, such a great game and awesome designer behind it.
I would love to ask Jonathan if the Treehouse sequence was inspired by Channelwood in Myst. I know he has stated that Myst was an inspiration from a world-building and design perspective, but this sequence, to me, almost seemed like a direct homage.
Could you guys please see about doing more of these things with more developers? I don't think there's anywhere near enough content like this out there, and we'd all love to see how pretty much any game comes together!!
First game I genuinely bought. After 2 minutes of footage viewed.
Thanks for Braid also.
These games are delightful.
This is beautiful.....wish Riven was like this.
Awesome. Love the game.
I'm with you on the "different puzzle types make use of different parts of your brain" thing. I feel quite competent in most of them, the sound ones were very easy for me (though still satisfying). But I struggled a lot with the tetris blocks. It was fine at the beginning, but when there were 3+ shapes to draw, I would start drawing but then get confused as to which shapes I've already traced, if they were rotated or not, etc. So I cut out the shapes in paper and I would do the puzzles on paper first. The hedge mazes were hard, too, because I struggle with spacial orientation and would instantly forget what route I'd taken.
This game is phenomenal. Had such a great time playing it and i truly consider it a piece of art! Jonathan Blow is a genius!
43:14 - The desert was one of the last ones I did. I actually though I needed to learn something before I could do it or possibly unlock something, a lot of other games you unlock stuff then you can do the puzzles and so I thought this might be the case here too. A lot of the other puzzles sort of had easy ones then hard as well so I thought it could be that as well. So I left thinking I will learn that later or unlock what I need to do it.
My TV is pointed down slightly to avoid glare, so I didn't actually see the glare in the real world, so it's hard to tell if their is glare in the game, I decided to watch a video on something I previously solved, but wasn't sure why it was the answer, the drawing round the four sand stones early on in the symmetry area. I just repeatedly did the last one of these draw round the stones as it forces you to face the hill, I knew I had to draw round the environment, but I didn't realise it had to be the four sand coloured stones. I then realised the trick when he stood at a certain angle on the video, originally when I did these early on I wasn't sure if the game was glitched because it didn't make sense at the time I had only done a few puzzles, later I realised everything had a trick and it was just understanding that trick, so I decided to look it up on TH-cam. After finding a video with him stood in a certain position and it didn't force him to face a certain direction, I realised the trick. TH-cam then autoplayed the next video and there was a clip of someone walking past the screens in the desert on the next autoplay video, I saw the glare on my laptop screen straight away, but was annoyed with the autoplay because he said glare at the same time, and I didn't have chance to stop the video or think to because I was lost in thoughts about the tricks of all puzzles I had done at that point, so I'm not 100% sure if it was just my TV or if him saying glare made it obvious and I felt like I had cheated, but I think it was simply that my tv didn't show the glare in the desert area as well as my laptop. As it was really obvious on my laptop like so easy to see. I also realised I could have worked out why the old puzzles had worked if I had just tried to figure out the trick, just because I had done the puzzle didn't mean I couldn't work out the trick, so then I was kicking myself again, annoyed at my self for that too. I didn't look up videos again after that. Until I did all the lasers. But I only did some of the environmental puzzles. I looked up if there is a reward to doing the environmental puzzles, as I'm not a huge fan of the environmental puzzles, not sure why I just didn't enjoy trying to stand in the right place to get them to work. So I wanted to know if doing them was worth it and I stumbled on the secret door and then looked up if there is any other secret environmental puzzles, in which I accidentally found out about the cave too. I actually thought I had done most of the game after the lasers, par the environmental puzzle. So I didn't think it was spoilers, and felt I had done enough to look up some of the secrets, as I'm not so proud as to get no help ever, and felt I had done enough after the lasers, so since I had completed it, I guess I didn't care as much. The challenge was hard though. It took me 8 hours of repetitively trying to do that challenge. Finally I got fast enough at solving and an easy run that I did it. Listened to a lot of TH-cam at the same time. Ha.
Yeah, I didn't have one of those ~moments~ with the river. I got out of the first area and noticed that yellow cart thingy right away, and it shone when I tried to activate it. Later on I found a big one on that town. For me it was just another part of the game from the beginning.
*SPOLIERS Immediately :) Just an FYI.. Btw watched the entire video and nice glimpse into Jonathon Blows mind. Great Video.
Wow, a line at 1:09:08 (on the left corner).
I noticed that too while watching the video and was a little disappointed he didn't see it.
Jonathan blew my mind!
Omg. I never realised that the fourth panel of 'the challenge' was a map for the later area. I would have probably beaten it in 15 less tries. I also kept searching for a third puzzle in that second to last room a handful of times
Dude same. Word for word.
Amazing video! GB4L!
The Witness is a masterpiece.
Im late, played this on release and now again because ps+ reminded me of off it. This game is a masterpiece and i love it so much. Just one off the best games ever!
I see reviews of this game saying "oh there wasn't much to it, just a bunch of disconnected maze puzzles on an island and a ton of pretentious audio logs". These people haven't actually played the game. They may have done most of the puzzles and gotten to the end, but they haven't seen any of the hidden things, which means they missed the entire point. The audio logs are mostly just for ambiance, I would say they only exist to get you in the right mood. The puzzles I would say serve that purpose as well. If those are all someone found when they played this, I think they missed out on the entire experience.
Still only in the early parts of the video, but I wonder if the concepts of this game can be used to determine a user's learning style. The different types of puzzles all employ different logic and/or styles of reasoning, so depending on which ppl can/can't do or have an easier/harder time with, they could be more apt at certain types of reasoning.
That aside, with all I've heard about The Witness (not all of which is very charitable), Jonathan Blow seems like a really reasonable, personable, and passionate guy.
did i miss something or did you guys leave out the movie theatre? i was amazed by the tarkovsky scene and the long video about awe is art. id have koved him comment on that.
_I wasted one hour to draw a short line._
I literally yelled "WTF!" when they opened the gate to the secret area near the end of the video - I never found that! Immediately paused the video and played it myself - mind blown. Jonathan Blow, you mad genius!
+Kaffeebohnson
Mind BLOW :p
This is one of the best game ever for me, even thou i only did follow some youtubers. I want to buy this game, and try to play it through myself, but i think i will wait some time before i do it. I dont like war games because of the stress factor, it's because i have diagnoses such as stress and anxiety. I do like the game Minecraft too, and i have to play it on peaceful mode or easy to handle it. I do hope that Jonathan Blow will do more new games like this in the future. I would for sure be one of buyers. :) Btw, i'm 56 :)
Wow I never knew there was a way to get on the ship wreck. Even when you think you know everything about this game, it manages to surprise you! 😯❤️
Obviously late but that "Maybe in The Witness 2!" made my eyes shine for a moment...
@ Jonathon Blow, regarding color blindness, would it have been possible to write a shader that turned all red/green/blue pixels into a an offshoot of a different color?
What a cool and intelligent guy. I wish there were more people like him in the indie games scene.
Watching Jonathan fail at challenge puzzles gives soo much sadisfaction xD
The first time I saw the flower mosaic on the outside of a house on the village I thought "this looks like a colorblind puzzle". Sure enough, the reds and greens seem to allow a path to be made. I searched for a colorblind option but couldn't find one.
the witness was at PAX one year, near the Monaco booth without any explaination of what it was. i played it and it was interesting
Does anyone ever get the other solution as teased by Jonathan Blow at 55:56? There is a suspicious wall at the yellow side under the stairs which is a little bit darker than the rest of the textures. Could be a hidden door. So I found a solution where the yellow line forms the way to the normal exit door, but unfortunately nothing happened.
Getting the blue platform to the exit door gives you one environmental puzzle when viewed from below; getting the yellow platform to the exit door gives you a different one.
I get motion sickness with Witness but with GTA i did not. Whats could be the cause for this? Any guesses experiened games?
They said this game would come to iOS right? Kind of interested to see how it makes that transition and if it would still keep the 40 dollar price tag with it onto the App Store.
arrgh, i have so many questions that werent made here!!!
43:45 anyone knows any information about this leaf on the desert tree? I've been looking for it online, but couldn't find when it appears. I don't have it myself (but I haven't 100% the puzzles yet, but then again this player on the video hasn't either).
The tree is contains several hidden images if you look at the branches from the right angles. I think that's it, and the leaf doesn't do anything.
It occurs to me I could replay The Witness now, since I forgot all the rules. Port it to Switch please! (With touchscreen support)
Blow is an astute guy, but it's funny to see him miss a point that is very much "game design." Drawing the shapes to cast spells has many wonderful benefits: 1) physical immersion; 2) mental immersion -- snappily remembering shapes means better spellcasting; 3) as Jeff implies, there's a risk/reward mini-game: I can draw faster to cast spells faster, but will that cause me to fail? The best spellcasters ride on the fine edge of failure, and when they fail, do they back off and slow down, or can they keep it together? Spellcasting that calls for actual mental and physical fortitude -- sounds perfect. The system in Black and White was good enough to generally render this effect, despite its issues. Quickly drawing, knocking, and threading arrows past your party and into enemies in Skyrim VR feels great when you're hot.
Playtesters will tend to recommend that you change features to be more like [famous game]. This is generally good advice, why change what works? Yet if you do this for every feature, you will end up with a copy of other games, so, like so many times in life, you have to know when to say "no."
"I got this one without knowing why it worked." Yeah, that was the whole The Witness experience for me.
'we spent a lot of years not relaxed...we figured theres a better way to do this'
For me I realised about environmental puzzles in the town, I had done most of the lasers, and I just realised after doing most of the game, what would be the point of these lines under the walk ways of the tower. Most of the other puzzles had been built up to, as in there is easy versions, and progressively got harder, so I just figured the game would in it's own way point it out to me. But much like the desert area, it never made it completely obvious to me with some of the puzzles, same with a lot of the tricks to do the panel puzzles, once you got the trick, you got how to do the puzzles, but not all the puzzles were obvious to me, which is part of the charm of the game, a bit like a scientist you have to figure it out. On a side note they should really do a game in which people do jobs that scientist do, and how they have to figure stuff out. It would be educational.
So because I had done so much of the game, and I sort of knew the game wasn't going to point the puzzles out to me as much, sometimes it did seem more obvious other times not, so I realised when looking at the bottom of the tower, the lines must mean something. I had tried clicking on environmental stuff before, but nothing happened. So I figured you couldn't do environmental puzzles. But when I clicked on the ones on the tower in the town after lining the lines up, it worked. I then realised I had missed a lot of environmental puzzles as I looked at the black pillars, which I thought was to do with activating all the lasers as well, typical of most progressive games, stuff unlocks the more you do.
Originally when I looked on top of the mountain, did the drawing on the panel. Nothing happened, I just figured I needed to do the lasers before that would work and maybe something would come out of the water fall, or something would happen. I think the only way to make environmental puzzles more obvious to me, would have been to near the start have a panel built in to the floor, sort of half environment half floor. There was always little clues when I think about it with the tree blocking the laser in the Monastery, the mountain top puzzle. However I did the Monastery close to finishing the lasers, and I had originally tried environmental puzzles and nothing happened. So I figured this wasn't part of the game, till obviously I thought there can't be lines for the sake of lines on walkways on the tower. So I tried again.
But after I looked back at the game, if I had realised environmental puzzles too soon, it probably would have ruined the pacing of the game a little for me. I would have been stopping clicking all over the environment, trying to get them to work, the game would have progressed so slowly for me it wouldn't have been as good. It's like with too much hidden loot in games with no real reward for getting that loot, you end up just spending so much time looking for loot, so you don't have to do it later in case it's important and it can make the game a little tedious, and slow the pacing to much, because you don't want to miss anything important for later in the game, that you just don't really enjoy the game as much. It's like OCD looking for stuff, which can be great when it's rewarding, but tedious when it's not. So I'm kind of glad I didn't realise about environmental puzzles till after doing the lasers, as I would have thought they were needed to complete the game.
I get the point of easter eggs, I liked finding the videos, and the recorders, and I enjoyed this aspect I think it's more when I feel like I'm doing so much tedious work, standing a certain way to get it, that if that isn't rewarded with any value it doesn't seem worthwhile to me. Unlike the door at the start, hidden in the gate. The challenge puzzle for the video. That was awesome rewards, if most of the environmental puzzles lead to something like this. Then it would have been worthwhile to me, as far as I know they don't lead to anything significant. :)
I never realized on my own what the point of the lake was ... eventually I got it spoiled. Which was after I had finished other things (the videos).
1:00:47
I find it hilarious that the interviewers keep interrupting while John is doing the Challenge Room + explaining how it works but he just keeps on talking until they stop
Great format!
What a legend
have you people noticed that there ir a paper cup on the table that make a puzzle with the markings on the table at 1:22:56 ?
I want to buy some of that art that is in Blow's office. Anybody know where I can get some Witness art?
+Kiefer Looks like they made a blog post that links to high-res files to be able to print out: the-witness.net/news/
+Scott Zibble (Assuming you meant the puzzle art)
I have just found out from this that you can go faster in puzzles on gamepad
This guy soooooo badly wanted to talk about that freakin branch in the bonsai room and never got around to it I feel kinda bad 😂😂😂
Why did you blur out the Adidas logo?
This game looks amazing!