Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] The Witness - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Video Game hosts Josh, Ryan and Paul are back with our Force a Friend follow up episode of The Witness. The Witness is one of the best puzzle based video games (according to Josh who picked it for Paul) and it’s time to find out what Paul thought. Will this unique video game land with Paul, or will this be a murder? There’s only one way to find out! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214 and Nate Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast, where we break down all things related to gaming. Today, we are going to be deep diving the 2016 first-person perspective puzzle game, The Witness. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he's calling in from the gaming world's slowest travel mechanic I've ever seen, going 0.5 miles an hour in a boat from The Witness, it's Josh. Paul, you're supposed to take your time and enjoy a canoe, okay? Boy, when a game gives you fast travel that's slower than running,

you might have done something wrong. It's about the journey, Paul. That is true. So anyways, I just kept rowing. That's exactly right. All right. And then joining Josh and me, he has no clue what we're talking about. He's never played The Witness.

He might feel about as lost as I felt on about a third of these puzzles. It's Ryan. No, dude. I know what's going on. Sure. I bet. You know, this is an interesting one because Josh has played The Witness. I just got done playing it and beating it here over the last week and a half or so. Ryan, you're just

going to have to do your best to jump in, ask questions, you know, let us know if we're being confusing or if we have to fill in any details. I think this one might be a little tough, but we'll see how it goes. All right. And then before we start breaking down The Witness, we would love everyone to come follow us on socials. You can find us everywhere at Video Gamers Pod. Josh has been putting in a ton of effort there with Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Go show him some love there. And then also, please consider supporting us on Patreon. It's a way for you to help support our show and what we do here. You'll get incredible perks like bonus episodes, shout out on the show, early access to our episodes. They're all ad free. You can go check it out at MultiplayerSquad.com. All right. So boys, we're going to cover The

Witness. If you are one of our newer listeners out there, the way that we choose our deep dive games is that one of us picks a game to cover that we're already familiar with. We pick a host that we are forcing to play that game. We give them about two weeks to play it, and then we get back together and record these deep dives. If you want to go back a couple Mondays, you can find the Force a Friend episode where Josh sets the stage and talks about why he chose this game. But Josh, why don't you just give us a little bit of a short reminder? Why is it that you wanted to cover The Witness? So we have covered a couple really good, just universally beloved games. And so I wanted to kind of take the chance on a game that I love, that I wasn't sure you were going to love,

just to kind of add a little spice to the force of friend. If it's always banger games that everybody loves, are you really being forced to play it then? And so I did. I wanted to take the chance to say, hey, here's a game that I have played that I really, really enjoy. I think this is a great puzzle game, Paul. I want you to play it, and I want to know what you think. And so that's why I picked The Witness. I know that you hadn't played it, or if you had, you only played it for like an hour before you refunded it, which I'm not sure bodes well for the results of this episode. But yeah, that's basically it. And like I said, we say it, but in case anybody is new,

I have no idea what you think about The Witness at this point. The only thing that you have told myself and Ryan is that you beat the game. That is it. I have no idea whether this is you hate me, you love me, or it's a, it's fine kind of thing, but we're going to find out. And that's what this episode is about. Yeah. And we're both huge puzzle game fans. I know Ryan enjoys them as well. We've done a couple puzzle games. We did humanity. We covered, uh, keep talking and nobody explodes operation tango. I think it's fair to say we enjoyed all of those Josh Ryan. I know that you liked some of those as well. Um, I'm very curious to see where this goes in this episode

because The Witness is such a visual game. And I think people out there who have already played it are going to fully understand what we're talking about. I think we'll do our best to try to explain how the game functions for anyone out there who's never played it. That way they can determine whether or not this is something that they might want to pick up and play as well. And then also just as a side note, if anyone decides to sign up on Patreon and if they choose to go with the legendary tier, you can actually hijack a host and step in, pick a game and pick a host. And that'll be a game that we deep dive as well. And word on the street is that we might have one of those coming up here pretty soon. So listeners will have to stay tuned in for that.

All right. Now, Ryan, when we did the Force a Friend episode, in the beginning of the episode, you're like, yeah, I'm going to check out The Witness. I'm going to pick this up. And then by the end of the episode, you're like, yeah, I'm not getting this. So why is it that you decided to not play the witness over the last week and a half when i did listen this uh feeble little mind of mine can only handle so much puzzle games so we got humanity out of the way a little ways back that was a great game i had so much fun playing that but there's just i don't know this is just a crazy year of games i'm i'm

enjoying my time of not being forced to play a game you know this is this is good man this is this is time where i can play what i want to play until maybe one of you listeners out there you know forces one of us to play so just keep that in mind you guys can do that just uh hit us up on our website there but i i just i'm so i'm honestly i got i got a hunt in uh next week i'm real busy with uh work right now trying to crunch down things and then you know i got a couple other games that i want to put some time in before i head out so uh so this one you didn't play any, like none of The Witness, Ryan? I watched some of The Witness. What a shocker.

Color me surprised, boys. How many apples? Do we follow the shade or not the shade? Oh, line up the dots? Oh, it's a puzzle game. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it definitely sounds like Ryan opened one video, clicked around, watched for about a minute and a half, and then probably closed it out.

All right. So let's start breaking down a little bit about how The Witness works for our listeners. And we'll also talk about what we think about it. Ryan, jump in if you feel like we need any clarification. So The Witness opens with no cutscene, no dialogue, nothing to read. They do not set the stage at all. You just get dropped into the middle of a corridor and there's a closed door and you see a little tile and you walk up to it. There's just a little decal that shows a mouse click. And when you click, it's very clear. There's just a little small path with a circle

that starts. So you click the circle, you drag your mouse to complete the path, and you click again, and the door opens. And that really is setting the stage for the rest of The Witness. Everything in this game is the same format. You walk up to a puzzle, you click your mouse button, you have to click and drag along some kind of path. However, as you play through the game, these puzzles are going to get more and more complicated. They're going to add rule on top of rule and perspective on top of perspective. And I think it's probably fair to say, Josh, out of all the puzzle games I've ever played, this is the most scaled back in terms of explanation. Zero tutorials. You just start

walking around and just start clicking things, right? This is one of the things that we talked about when I picked you for this. And so if people haven't heard that episode, it's a good idea to go listen to that one. But one of the cool things about The Witness is you are spot on. This game doesn't, it doesn't give you a tutorial. It just says, here's a world. And by seeing the world and just seeing what is in front of you, you figure things out. And so,

like you said, Paul, in the very, very beginning, you walk up, there's a door and there's this little thing next to it. And it's like a little circle. It looks like a thermometer if I remember.

Right. And it's like, just horizontal. Right. Yeah. And it's like, so you click it and you just drag it to the side and the door opens up and you're like, oh, well that was easy. But this is the neat thing about the witness is that every puzzle

that you come across does not come with instructions, does not come with a tutorial. It simply starts very simple to where your brain just instantly understands, oh, okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. But by the end of it, you're doing these insanely complex, like deep thought provoking puzzles. And they started with such a simple idea. And that's one of the things that they intentionally did

in the development of this game. And I think it's one of the things that really makes it stand apart. And it's very intentional. The entire game nothing is labeled there is no map there's no compass this game does not give you anything the entire game you just walk with wasd you can sprint with with shift and you just use your left mouse button and that is the entire game right there uh ryan are you kind of intrigued at the idea of a game where you just jump in and start playing?

Or do you tend to like more structure where they kind of explain a little bit more and tell you what to do? Well, I was thinking because I actually I re-listened, you know, every once in a while. I'll listen to some of the episodes, you know, over while I'm working and stuff. And I listened to this one earlier today and i remember hearing josh read over the review where the guy was talking about how it's just it's a good game and it's not to take away from it but it's just not his type and the way it's described and the way it sounds for me i just that type is just not what i give me a little bit of guidance a little push or a little nudge on this path, and I'll figure it out. Just thrown into this world where I'm just wandering around.

Okay, how do I do this? What do I do here? What am I supposed to even solve? That's just not my style. It doesn't intrigue me or doesn't draw me in. I need something. Give me some substance, man. substance man so like the way that the witness programs the puzzles in order to teach you on the fly is where basically like once you get into the first opening area after you open that door

and you start solving some of the initial puzzles it might just be as simple as okay i see a tile with a white dot on the left and a black dot on the right. And I'm just going to draw a path straight up the middle. And it just kind of like flashes and you beat the puzzle. And then it opens the next puzzle right next to it. And then you click on that one. And maybe now it's got two white tiles, you know, and one black one. And you just draw a line right up the middle. And it flashes like you did something wrong.

And it might light up, you you know one of the areas and so it's kind of teaching you okay i have to separate the colors okay i'm going to drag a different path i'm going to block off the white tiles from the black and now i beat that tile now it'll open the next one maybe now they'll add a third color and now i have to drag and and draw my spaces to separate all three. So they do this in a very clever way where it's very intuitive. Now, as the puzzles get more complex, you may not figure that out right away, but they still program it into the game so that way you learn it on the fly without having to read a tutorial or anything like that.

I remember reading that explicitly, the guy who developed this said he did not want it to be like a Nintendo game where there's constant pop-up screens as tutorial. He just wanted to let players jump in and start playing. I love it. To be honest, it's like if you have never used a lever in your life and you see a lever, you're going to walk up to you like,

what's this, you know, and you're going to, you're going to walk up to it like, what's this? And you're going to poke it and you're going to maybe try to twist it first. And then eventually you're going to realize, oh, if I pull down on a lever, this is how it works. And that's the basis of how the witness approaches things. Before you know it, you might have six levers that are all stacked and maybe you have to push one horizontal so that you can move the other one down to where that gap is now and things like that. They always build off of that simple concept. But I love the fact that it is this intuitive interaction that you can just walk up on and your brain just knows, right? It's just, it's so simple at the time that there's really no like confusion for what they're initially showing you. And then it's a really neat progression to me to see how you take a concept that you

innately understand, like just drawing a line between two objects and then eventually turning that into something where it's like, you have to think at like a different level, you know? And that's what I think this game excels at. But one of the things that really makes it stand out to me is that innate, like this is just how our brains work. You don't have to think about the initial thing. It's giving you, it just puts it in front of you. And then you go, oh, okay. Dude, I mean, not to sound old, but this is like give a kid an iPad or a phone

and they pick it up within like two minutes, right? Like they just, oh, well, if I just start touching this screen and swiping my finger, that is what like the witness is to me. Like, honestly, it's one of the best comparisons I can make is it's just an intuitive process that we kind of innately just understand. And I'll get into some of the specifics about this down the road when we talk about some of the different areas. But the longer I played the witness, the more my brain calibrated to what the witness wants you to do. So in the beginning,

the game hits you with incredibly easy puzzles. Then when you're in the open world, I think the first couple areas are actually rather tough. But then once you kind of catch on to, and I'm not using gimmick in a bad way, but once you catch on to the gimmick, you approach a new area and right off the bat, know okay i know they want me to use this and i gotta look through this perspective and i'm gonna know how to do these puzzles so it is interesting that the longer you play in some ways the game actually gets easier it almost like rewires and reteaches you how to look at puzzles so all right so yeah go ahead i was just gonna say so would you say there's you know like a style to the puzzles within this game to where they continue on this trend of these things play off each other, like Josh was saying earlier, where it's just kind of continuous?

Yeah. And I would say almost all puzzle games are purely logic-based. You're very used to just logically knowing okay i have to do this the witness takes a very different approach where and josh teased this in the force of friend episode a lot of it is just based on perspective a lot of times you have to stand in a different place or you have to line certain things up and then activate certain things and and that's the method through which they approach puzzles and i've never played a puzzle game that works quite that way. And that's why in the beginning, I found some of the puzzles to be so difficult because you're not used to... Normally, when you look at a puzzle

grid and you got to draw a line and beat it, you're just looking at the grid, right? Like, how are these tiles labeled? You don't think to look in the background at the palm trees and draw your pattern around the palm trees and the reflections in the water. And that's actually guiding you. And so it almost teaches you to look more geometrically at all the puzzles. And I think that's like the catch of the witness where it's, that's where it's not like any other puzzle game I've played. Oh, wow. Okay. That Okay, that's really neat. It's very unique in that regard. So when you beat the little starting area, it opens into the, quote, open world, which I think is almost a little bit of a misnomer.

I was under the impression this is like a rather large map. It is not. You can run from one end of the island all the way to the other, maybe two minutes. It might not even take that long. But there are several different areas that are all made up of different biomes. The game does not even label them. So if you search online, some people will call an area a marsh or a swamp. It's funny how even people online will use different terms for all this stuff. But there's things like a desert, a quarry, a treehouse, an apple orchard, things like that.

Every individual area has its own theme and its own rules for how you're going to beat a puzzle. Some of the areas are purely optional. You don't have to beat them. The game does not explain that because they don't explain anything at all. So sometimes you might be working on optional puzzles and you don't necessarily even know that it's optional but the required areas when you beat them you finish the last puzzle and a little box opens and a little uh device shoots out of it and then it shoots a laser up at the mountain or maybe one off into the ocean which i told josh that's that's the only time that you and I said anything where I just sent you a screenshot and I was like, I don't know if this is a glitch or not, but I got one laser shooting out into the middle of the ocean. Turns out it's not a glitch. It's just

part of the game. But basically over the course of the game, you're unlocking more and more of these lasers that all shoot up to the middle of the mountain. And then once you have enough lasers that are unlocked, you can go start the end game content. Now, Josh, what do you see as the pros and cons of having this kind of open world in The Witness? To me, the biggest pro is that if you are on a type of puzzle that is just not jiving with you, you can go somewhere else. And then they're giving you completely different kinds of puzzles, completely different thought processes, that kind of thing. It's one of those things where it really stood out to me that there was this one type of puzzle I just don't like, man. My brain doesn't deal with shapes very well. And you're trying to like

isolate these shapes, but then instead of trying to isolate the shapes on this grid, you're not looking at the squares. You need to look at the, like the negative spaces, like in between them, you know? And then I just remember thinking like, I don't like this is like geometry or something, man. Like this, I don't. So then I just went, you know what, let me, let me go wander over here. What's in the city over here. You know? And then it's like, you get to the town and then it's like, you, you know, you find, you know, a puzzle and you can kind of approach that. And now I'm looking at something that's much more visual, right? Where it's like, oh, I have to like, look at the way the light reflects on this one half of the puzzle. I can kind of see shadows on this half, which

tells me what's on the other half. Oh, this is kind of cool. Like, okay. Yeah. Like I like this visual style. And then, so let me do this for a while. And to me, one of the biggest failings in a puzzle game is when they don't let you progress. If you can't figure something out, because what do we do? The very first thing we do is we go to Google and we just say, you know, how do I beat this puzzle? And that takes some of the sense of accomplishment out of it, but it also takes away that learning process. And so the open world and the witness to me gives you that ability to just say, I'm not jiving with this right now. Let me go see what's over here and just get that kind of breath of fresh air. Yeah. I think one of the pros of this is I loved having all the

different biomes. That made it a lot of fun. Like, oh, I finished the desert. Now I can see these different areas. Do I want to go check out this castle or this treehouse or this bunker underneath the mountain? And I thought that was really fun. That's like a little bit of a carrot that keeps you exploring and looking forward to the next section. I think, and I have lots of positive things to say about The Witness, but I think my number one negative thing to say is that there are some areas that you can wander into very easily, like I did. I finished the opening area and ended up straight into the town and the funny thing about that is that the town is a compilation of every puzzle type yeah and so we if you walk straight into the town you're you have no idea how to complete these puzzles because it is impossible the game will

intuitively teach you all the rules but you have to start in the right areas first. And I accidentally ended up in the town. I tried to use Google as little as possible, but I did search early on the witness order of areas. And they're like, you need to do the symmetry area, then the desert, then the marsh. Well, the marsh is on the opposite end of the island. Nobody would ever go straight from the desert to the marsh. But even IGN's guide will tell you, if you're going to go to the marsh, you need to have zero knowledge. You can go straight there and you'll learn a new puzzle type. But if you looked at another area, they would say, before you go here, make sure you know how to do Tetris puzzles and symmetry and, you know, something else. So that's the only thing that I didn't like.

I almost wish that the game had, like, gates that would open where it's like, I can go complete any of these four areas. And that kind of teaches me this is the starting zone and I can do all four. And maybe, you know, once you beat one of them, then it'll open a gate to the intermediary area. And I think that's just a little bit of guidance like that, I think would go a long way for this game. And that's my biggest complaint. It's it's it to the easiest way to equate that is like, you can't do multiplication if you don't understand addition, right? Because three times three is really just three plus three plus three. And so if you don't understand addition, right? Because three times three is really just three plus three plus three. And so if you don't understand that base concept,

you can't just leap forward into like a higher concept. And you're right in that regard where you can definitely get to an area and just go, I have no idea what the heck is going on. You might spin your wheels a little bit to try to say, okay, well, did I not observe something? Or did I miss like the little, like the easy puzzle that kind of taught me this stuff? And I, there, there definitely is a world where you can be in an area that you're just really not supposed to be in yet. But like you said, Paul, the game does not tell you anything. So if you're in an area and you're fumbling around going, I can't do this. I feel like an idiot, man. Like, why can't I figure any of this stuff out? It's because you're not supposed to be there.

And the funny thing is I didn't want to look up guides, but when that was my first area, I was like, dude, I have drawn 700 lines on these four puzzles that I can find. And then finally, once I went and then did the symmetry area and the desert and the apple orchard, then it's like, oh, okay, now all these puzzles make sense. That's the hard part with those types of games, too, is because, I mean, we're all grown adults. We got careers and jobs and kids and everything. So going and fumbling through this stuff, you're literally just wasting your time because you're not even supposed to be in that area. You can't do anything there because you don't know what to do and you won't know what to do.

So you got to, I mean, unless you get some crazy super brain like Paul does, but you got to learn the other stuff first before you circle around. So I don't know. Those are the things that on these games kind of turn me off a little bit sometimes. I love puzzle games, but those are the things that I don't want to waste time just being in the area that I shouldn't be in anyways. And I have no direction to not be there. See,

I look at it like tinkering with something though, right? It's kind of like, you know, you ever just tinkered with like a car, right? Or something. And you're like,

maybe I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but I'm kind of just poking around a little bit. I'm kind of, you know, seeing what this is like. Okay, cool. Like I don't have the confidence to like tear this engine down, but I don't mind like poking around a little bit. I'm kind of, you know, seeing what this is like, okay, cool. Like I don't have the confidence to like tear this engine down, but I don't mind

like poking around a little bit. And that's kind of what I equate it to. And then you go off and then you become the mechanic and now you come back and you're like, all right, baby, let's tear this engine down. You know? And so I don't know that it's time wasted necessarily. I mean, in the scheme of like beating the game, yes, maybe it is. But sometimes it's just fun to tinker a little bit. And The Witness lets you do that, which is kind of nice sometimes. You're not going to get real far, but it lets you do it. All right. Well, we're going to take a short break and then we'll come back and talk about some of

the individual biomes. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the biomes, Josh. We can talk about some of our favorites, maybe if there's any that stand out that we didn't really care for. For me, there was only one puzzle type that I really didn't like. The rest I actually found to be pretty fun and pretty engaging. To try to kind of set the stage and explain this whole idea of perspective and how puzzles work, I think maybe the apple orchard is the easiest one to try to explain on a podcast. So this is a very clever puzzle type where you walk into the orchard

and there's a tile and you look at it and all you see are basically paths that look like a tree. There's a trunk in the middle. It splits into different branches and then into little stems at the end of the branches. And if you look straight in front of you, you see a giant apple tree that has the exact same trunk, the exact same branches, the exact same stems as what you're looking at. And I can see that the apple is on the fourth stem from the left. So I can draw a path going up the trunk, up the proper branch to the correct stem, click there, and I beat that puzzle. And a little wire lights up, and then I can follow the wire to the next one. But then they start giving you little twists. Maybe as the trunk goes up into the branches, the branches cross against each other, but on my little tile, it's all still flat. So I have to visualize, okay, even though to me it looks like the third on the

right, it's actually on the second branch and then it's the third stem. So I have to know where to click and beat that puzzle. And then it really starts to get wild where there's a branch missing and I don't see any apple. But then if you go look on the ground, you'll find a branch that has an apple on it. Now you have to visualize where would that apple be if that stem was still on the tree. So that's kind of like what we're talking about with perspective in these puzzles. And that's also like how the difficulty ramps up where they give you an easy one to teach you the rules and then even sometimes just the second or third puzzle you're already getting

stumped because it does ramp up rather quickly um do you want to talk a little bit about the desert like you almost kind of mentioned a little i think that's what a lot of people would probably remember the desert for me i think was the second area that i ever went to maybe the third i can't remember but it's fairly early in the game and to, this is where I kind of had that moment of like, this is really neat how they're kind of going about this. In the desert, sunshine and shadows are the key. And you're looking at these puzzles, you know you have to draw this line on this grid, but there's a million combinations. There's nothing to direct you. What am I supposed to do here? And that's when you catch a glimpse, the sun kind of glares off of the screen, and you can see this shadow path, right? And then it's like, oh, wait, that's the path I'm

supposed to draw. And so you draw, and sure enough, like you said, Paul, then the little wire lights up and it connects to the next puzzle. Now that screen lights up, and then you go, okay, okay, now I get it, right? And they give you another easy one or something like that. But now you're on a screen where the, you know, the sun isn't reflecting off of it and it's just shadowed. And you're like, well, what the heck? So you start wandering around and maybe you run up these stairs and you look and it's like, oh, I have to have this high angle to catch the reflection. And now I can see where it's at on there. And then you run back down. Now you have to remember what the path was, right? It's not just standing right in front of you, right? So like you run back down and you trace that path and it unlocks the next one. Well, now maybe the next one,

you can see part of it, but there's a pillar that is blocking half the screen and just completely shading that out. And then you're like, well, what path am I supposed to draw now? So that's when you're like, oh, okay, well, this is like a mirror image. So I have to draw the path that's on the left side, but draw it on the right side or something like that. This is how the game progresses. Sometimes it's hard to catch the reflection, but the game is playing with that idea of reflections and shadow and light. Whereas in the apple orchard, it's playing with a pattern that's in a tree and maybe shade from other branches is blocking that. And that's this progression that I keep referencing in this game

with how these puzzles scale in difficulty. Josh is so excited to explain all this game. You have to experience it. I love problem solving, right? Like, honestly, it's one of my favorite things. I know that sounds weird and nerdy, but for me, I see a problem and like, you know, I can draw the line. That's no problem. But when the problem is, wait, why can't I see this half of the screen? That's when my brain starts to go into overdrive. And I kind of rub my hands together and I'm like, all right, let's do this boys. Let's figure this out. And that's why like, I don't like geometry. I don't want to play Tetris in my head. You know, I don't like Tetris, man. I've said that many times. Like, so there are parts of my brain where I just go like, I don't want to do this, man. But then there are parts where I do get excited.

Well, and especially in the desert area, once you do the initial puzzles, then it opens up a path where you're underground. Now you're doing things like activating lights that move across the screen. And now I have to run around and stand in the right spot and wait until the light is in the right position. And now I get a little glimpse of how to complete part of that puzzle. And maybe I can't even see the whole thing. And then you realize you can actually catch a glimpse in the reflection in the water. So now you're having to pay attention, not just to the actual puzzle above ground but also the one that you see down in the pool of water and you're activating all these lights and running around

trying to figure out where to stand and it does get rather complicated pretty fast and one of the things for better or worse i took i'm gonna say 45500 screenshots during this game, because I would catch a glimpse of how to complete a part of that puzzle. I'm not going to remember this. And so I would hit print screen and now I would open up paint. And on my second monitor, I've got that saved. And then once I find where to stand to see another little glimpse, I take another screenshot.

I had to take so many in this game because I am very bad at remembering two to the right, one down, two to the right, three up, over one, down five. I'm not going to remember that. And so there were times that I'm scribbling and scratching on paper or using screenshots. They also start throwing weird stuff at you where you can't enter the puzzle from the front. So, for example, this is where the game plays a little bit with perspective. Maybe I can see the puzzle tile, but there's some kind of obstacle in between me and the tile. And I can now no longer draw across the tile if it's going to like cross paths with the object in front of me like almost

imagine if i were to hold a stick between you and a game board and the game piece can't move beyond that stick even though they're not actually touching it's just your perspective so then you have to like learn the solution to the puzzle but now i have to stand on the back side of the tile and draw it in reverse trying to remember and mirror it in my head so like i i think the witness is the hardest puzzle game i've ever played i'm guessing you're probably going to say the same i i kind of hinted at that when we talked about it because you said how do these you know on a scale of like one to ten how do these puzzles go and i said they started one but they go to like an eight or a nine, man. Like some of them, yeah. I mean, but that's the thing is that they will play on your memory. They will play on your visual acuity. They will play on your audio,

like your sense of pitch. You know, I have no pitch, man. The audio puzzles absolutely baffled me in this game. Like, you know, and we can talk about all the different kinds of puzzles. You kind of have to just see them and experience them to understand how they work in that regard. The point of this is it really does mix up things and these biomes have their own flavor. And that's the really neat part is if you're in the desert, you're playing with light and shadow. If you're in, you know, the forest, you're playing with audio. If you're playing in the castle, you're doing this not on a board in front of you, but like a chess board where you have to change the way you think about this is no longer two-dimensional, it's three-dimensional

and things like that. So that's kind of the beauty of all the different biomes is they each have their own flavor and kind of an idea that they focus on. Yeah. So like when I was saying that the game almost recalibrated the longer I played. So you walk into an area and you see leaf shadows on the tile. Okay. I know this puzzle has to do with those shadows. And then you go to the next area and it has some other mechanic. It clicked for me after I had done about three biomes. And I remember when I walked into the bunker, before I even saw the first tile, I see this big, giant blue window.

And then behind that, there's a big green window. And right away, I know I'm gonna have to stand behind the right color and look at the puzzles. It's gonna change the color. And sure enough, I walk straight up and I see a type of puzzle I had played before where you have to separate the different color tiles. And the first one works like a charm. The second one I try to complete. It fails. I take eight steps back, look behind the blue one, and now the blue filter has now changed the colors. So now maybe the white tiles and the blue tiles now look the same. So I actually have to group those together and separate

the other colors. And then the next puzzle, guess what? You got to stand all the way back and look through both the green and the blue windows. And that was where I started walking into a section and it just clicked immediately. Okay, The Witness, I get it. I understand how you work. And I already know. It's a neat moment, isn't it? And that was when the game played best. Yeah, it's a really neat moment when you go like, I'm figuring this out, man.

It's like the guy that's learning karate and the master's training him. It's Mr. Miyagi and Daniel's son, right? Daniel's getting all ticked off because he's like, wax on, wax i want to learn karate and then mr miyagi's like show me wax on he goes to punch him right and it's like that revelation moment yeah you kind of have that in the witness where you walk into an area and you're like i i know what you're doing now you know and you can start just like really attacking it at that point that's pretty neat that that's cool when you get uh like you said that revelation moment where you point that's pretty neat that that's cool when you get uh like you said that revelation moment where you can walk through this area that that puzzles in

the past that you've built upon have just racked your brain and and almost calloused you towards you know this moment to where you can come in and use i'm ready i know this i can do this you know and and you know what to do you You're able to figure it out. And at least even if you don't know exactly what the puzzle is, you know what the steps it would take to figure it out. So that's pretty neat. Yeah. One thing that I did want to mention is my favorite area by far was the tree house. Now, this game only has 11 biomes. And if you play through the whole game and do all the puzzles yourself, this game only has 11 biomes, and if you play through the whole game and do all the puzzles yourself, this game's probably going to be anywhere from like 20 to 40

hours. The treehouse, I don't think I had to look up a single guide, and I flew through that area in like 12 minutes. It just clicked. I thought it was so much fun. The catch of that area is that you run up some stairs, so you're up at the level with all the trees. And as you complete a puzzle, which has this whole mechanic where you have to separate all these different color suns where only one pair can be with each other, but then there's multiple ways to beat the puzzles. Maybe it's to the left, maybe it's to the right, maybe it's straight, but whichever way you complete the puzzle, now it adds the next puzzle based on where you exited the last puzzle. So you have a little bit of control of where you want these paths to start growing. And then you have to start like angling them and

aiming them to get to the right areas. So you can kind of see like in the distance, okay, there's a door. But now as I'm beating these puzzles, I can actually control which way they're building. And if you make a mistake, you kind of realize, oh, I'm at the end of my path and this doesn't lead anywhere. I must've made a mistake with one of the turns. So you go back, resolve some of those puzzles in a different way. And I thought that that was really fun and really neat. One thing about The Witness is when you give someone 11 areas that have 11 different puzzle types, you're going to have your favorites and you're going to have ones that you hate, right?

I love watching cooking shows and everyone says it every time on Iron Chef. If someone says I'm making something three ways, they always say that's a bold move because it gives us two more things to criticize. No matter what, two of them are not going to taste as good as the other. So the witness kind of leans into that fully. I hated the swamp. I will flat out say I hated the Tetris dude,

the Tetris puzzles. I was ripping my hair out and I finally hit a point that I said, I don't care if I see a Tetris puzzle i am straight up going to the guide i am not going to waste a single second on these and for the entire game after i did like the first third of the swamp which took me like three hours i just skipped every tetris puzzle from there on out that's the only thing that i cheated on no and that's and honestly if somebody picks up this game and they're playing it, if you get to a part where you're like, I hate this, don't, don't suffer, man. Like there's other great parts of the game, you know? And that's, like I said, maybe you don't have to complete that right now. You can go do something else.

You can just Google it, but don't slam your head against a wall. If you're not having fun. I mean, this is a video game. It's meant to be enjoyable. It's meant to be fun. And if you're getting to a point where you're like, I don't like the swamp either, Paul. Legitimately, that was to me one of the worst. It's not fun. But you know what the beauty is? There's going to be people out there that are like, this is great, man. I can totally visualize these pieces together. And it will just absolutely click for some people. And that, I think, is the neat thing is that everybody's brain works differently there's weirdos out there that would love the swamp area and they're gonna be like oh that's my favorite part like i don't know what you guys were talking about man the swamp was my favorite yeah exactly by far i loved all the biomes equally

all the biomes that i played as much as any other, for sure. Oh, dude, the Tetris puzzles, without going into details, you have to draw a pattern that matches the Tetris pieces. But they have to be inside the pattern. What you draw, yeah. I straight up considered for about eight seconds, do I just grab paper and scissors and start cutting out Tetris pieces, draw the grid so I can just move around these Tetris pieces to figure it out? Because I can't just do it from my eyes onto the screen. I got to be able to touch and move

things around, or I'm going to just cheat and look at guides. And I'm like, I'm looking at the guides. I'm not going to do, yeah, I'm not going to go in full arts and crafts mode. All right, well, let's go ahead and take our last break. And then we'll come back and talk about some of the end game content. All right. So Josh, you are famous for not beating games. I think in your entire life, you've beaten like three games, everything else, maybe four. You inevitably get enticed by some shiny new game and then you run over to that one. So you never actually descended into the mountain, correct? I made it to the mountain.

I remember starting my descent in the mountain and then I saw something shiny and went, ooh, let me go see what that is. And so I saw something shiny and went, ooh, let me go see what that is. And so I never beat it. I do know that there are, there's like, I did talk about this, that there's this neat revelation moment in The Witness where, you know, you kind of get this reveal and we can talk about that in a little bit. And I do know what that is as far as that goes. But yeah, I never actually completely beat the game and got like the end

credits on it. Well, let me just say this. Ryan and I tease Josh about this mercilessly, like getting 80% of the way through the campaign of Starfield and just quitting does not compute in my brain. I don't get that. The first time Josh played Cyberpunk, he got to the final mission and then just quit, even though that's the highlight of the whole game. Let me tell you, the absolute peak of The Witness is right before you go down into the mountain to do the end game. I kind of wish the game just ended there.

I think that The Witness up to that point is so creative. It is so unique. It's challenging, but fun. It's the perfect puzzle game. And then once you start the end game content, this is when I think that they just got too cute. Because prior to that, what is the challenge of The Witness? It's figuring out how to beat the puzzle, right? But then once you figure out the rules, you know what to do. Maybe it takes you one or two tries, but then you figure it out. Even just to unlock the mountain, you go to the top of it and there's three latches that you have to unlock.

There's a big old puzzle on the ground. There's statues and you can kind of tell right away, okay, I'm going to have to stand in the right spot where I can click and draw my path to the three latches to make them unlock. But the challenge of this puzzle is you have to be pixel perfect in where you stand. So it's where I draw the line. Nope, that doesn't work. Okay, I have to exit puzzle, tap the W key just to move forward a millimeter. Try again. Okay, well now I'm forward enough, but now I can't go to the right. So then I have to move forward a millimeter. Try again. Okay, well, now I'm forward enough, but now I can't go to the right. So then I have to tap to the right.

Okay, well, now I'm stuck again. And now you're just a hundred times over tapping one direction to be on the exact pixel. I found that to be rather uncreative and just irritating for no reason. And then without going into all the late game puzzles, I did send you guys a video where I just said, I just want you guys to be able to see this

when I'm talking about it for later. Some of the puzzles just start spinning really fast. So you just can't see it. Like I have never once felt dizzy or queasy, even in VR. But there's something about trying to stare at this puzzle that's now spinning 7,000 RPM, and I can't even really see it to complete it. And then it started making me feel a little dizzy,

and I was like, this stopped being fun. This is no longer unique. Now they're just making it hard through artificial means. And I felt like um that kind of diminished the game a little bit for me if i had quit after the first 11 biomes i would have said this game's like a 10 out of 10 once i started doing the end game i was like i have to beat this game for this deep dive but i did not really enjoy much of the end game content i felt like on a graph it just got gradually more

and more and more fun. And then it dropped straight down for the last couple of hours. There's a difference between challenge and aggravation. And that's a fine line for a lot of people. I mean, we see it in like the Dark Souls games and things like that, where it's like, I like a challenge and I like the idea of trying to overcome this puzzle, but when you get into just frustration area, there's no benefit to that whatsoever. Yeah. Now, there was stuff down there that I thought was neat. They start wrapping the tiles around columns. So now I have to sidestep and walk around while completing this puzzle that's normally 2D, but now it's like circular i thought that was neat so there is fun stuff down there i did also laugh because they

threw in some puzzles that you can't cheat on so there's a timer and they randomize the puzzles and so you can't look up solutions it's a little bit of a gatekeep to make sure you know what you're doing and um that did include Tetris puzzles, which, thank goodness, it only took me three tries. I remember thinking in that moment, oh gosh, if they're going to force me to do really complicated Tetris puzzles, I'm going to get pretty mad. But I actually made it through that relatively quick. Before we move into our last couple of things here on the show, is there anything else here that you want to talk about, Josh? Any mechanics or anything we haven't mentioned?

I do want to quickly, because I know we're running a little bit long. I do want to talk about the revelation moment. The cool thing in this game that is, it's one of those things where this is in the game from the very beginning, but you don't realize it until the game, until you kind of basically beat the game. So if you don't want to hear that, skip ahead, I don't know, two minutes, it won't be much. But one of the really cool things about The Witness witness and I absolutely love, and I've seen this in a few other games is that from the moment you start the witness, there are puzzles that exist that you

didn't even know exists. And the cool thing about this is in the sky, you might see the sun and there's some clouds, right? If you click on the sun and you draw a path through the clouds, that's a puzzle. So all of a sudden you start to realize that there's all these puzzles in the environment that you have been walking past and through and had zero idea about any of this. You're on this journey. You're learning all this stuff. You're learning how to overcome these puzzles and how to observe the world. And then it's like the game says, you thought you knew, but you didn't. Or it's like you knew, but you didn't just take that to the next level.

And I thought that was one of the coolest things that you, Paul, you talked about the tree house area, right? If you're on the ground and you see the big, bright yellow tree house, you can see that all of a sudden that creates a path down a tree around the swamp. And if you click on the underside, which is not a puzzle, you realize that the world around you is a puzzle. And I thought that was just one of the coolest moments in a game to say like, I can't believe I didn't take this to the next level all this observation and learning they teach you and then you realize like all of that and i

still stayed inside this box and i thought that was just one of those really really neat video game moments man yeah because you beat it the first time and they basically just fly you back to the beginning and all the puzzles reset so that's like the first ending but then in the very opening area that's where you can draw with the sun through the clouds and all that uh and that unlocks like the second ending but then there's still a lot of achievements that you can unlock so you can keep playing the game and and do all that if you want i did do the first two endings and then that's where I stopped. Yeah, I will say before moving on. And this is not this is getting a little bit nitpicky, but I think Ryan, this is going to resonate with you.

Oh, wait on me. Hey, I'm still here. Everyone. Ryan is still on the show. I'm still on the show. I'm falling asleep. Yeah, I'm trying. It's your fault, Ryan.

I ain't got no. You could have played this. Ryan did take his headset off and I thought he was going to like walk out of the room for a minute, but he was just fixing his hat. I will say that when you're doing a puzzle in The Witness, there is no progression. You either know what to do or you don't.

There is no way of like working toward the solution, if that makes sense. Like you just kind of stare at it and have to figure it out when we played humanity for instance that is a little different because you feel like you're making progress like okay i i was able to get the first goldie but then the second goldie fell off this ledge but i know the first half of my markers are correct so let me restart the map keep my markers and now i know to start changing them after the first half of my markers are correct. So let me restart the map, keep my markers. And now I know to start changing them after the first part. So there's a little bit of like,

you feel like you're getting somewhere. The witness does have a little bit of that spinning your wheels in the mud where you're just kind of staring and I don't know what to do. And you can't beat the puzzles by brute force. That's impossible. But the game also throws at you that if you do a puzzle wrong, it makes you go back and redo the last puzzle. So that's kind of like a built-in mechanic. So you can't just force your way through them. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But for me personally, I like when I feel like I'm getting there.

And in The Witness, you either just get it or you don't. So it's a little bit more of a binary. Ryanyan do you feel like you kind of understand the witness is there anything here we need to clarify you guys definitely i mean obviously uh josh is very passionate about it and the way he described it you know i'm unfortunately an easy sell my wife tends to not let me answer the front door because uh salesman will give me a hook, line, and sinker. Look at this cleaning solution, baby. It's the best. Look at this, honey. Look, I invested our life savings.

No big deal. No, it's – from what you guys said, maybe I'll hop in. I know it's not the most expensive game. Get it and play it Josh style. Just play it Tale of the and uh sign off there but i i do i i do enjoy uh i do enjoy puzzle games but i like like you said paul i like to have that progression i liked i loved inhumanity where like you said the gold is you get the one you're like oh where'd he go off and you replay it oh okay and you can correct it and work on it and then you get it done you're like sweet all right that's tinkering yeah lots of tinkering

little adjustments little here and there uh fine tuning if you will um that's what i enjoy in a type of puzzle game or you know things like that so um yeah there's a lot that i heard from you guys describing it i feel like i'm almost a listener that hasn't played. So I'm sitting here just absorbing what you guys have to say about it. I'm enticed, but also some parts of it turn me off. So it's definitely one of those that if it's your type of puzzle game, I think a lot of people are going to love it. And then kind of there's that middle area where you may like some parts of it, like, you know, you didn't like the swamp,

you know, you hated the swamp. I personally, you know, love the swamp, of course, obviously. 10 out of 10. 10 out of 10. But yeah, no, so I'm, I probably won't get it anytime soon, but, you know, I'd love to check it out at some point kind of

see what you guys you know all the hubbub was about that you know because if josh is passionate about a game it's probably a good one so i'll probably still check it out at some point so i guess i would say to kind of like summarize my thoughts overall i enjoyed this game a lot there is so much fun to be had all right if you like puzzle games you will like the witness i think that they just it just it for me personally it just went a little bit too long they tried to get a little bit too creative and it backfired in my opinion i'm sure there are people who love how complicated it gets when you're staring at a spinning tile and trying to complete it. I just didn't love the last part, but on the whole, I still enjoyed it a lot. Josh, you kind of accidentally backed your way into

what I think is the best way to play it. Just quit once you unlock the mountain and then leave it at that. Any follow-up questions you have for me, Josh, on, on my thoughts on this one? No, I mean, honestly, I will say that I'm pretty impressed that you beat the whole thing. Number one, because this is, we've had a few listeners say, Hey, I forgot I had the witness. I picked it up off of Epic or something like that. And I love that. Like people are like, yo, this game's not easy, man. Like I played it for two or three hours, but now my brain hurts. And it's like, I, I like that.

Like to me, that challenge, the witness is like the dark souls of a puzzle game to me. It is like, honestly, it is like, if you overcome this game, that's an achievement to me, you know, portal to super fun, super chill. You're not bragging that you beat Portal 2. But the witness, that's an accomplishment, man. That's saying my brain works on 11 different levels. And I was able to take a simple concept, expand on that, and do all that. So I will say, I have to give you kudos because you beat this game. I think you said you beat it in like 19 hours, something like that. And I was like, dang, Paul, that's why you're the smartest one of us.

Well, if you skip every Tetris puzzle, to be fair, that's like a sixth of the game. So I did straight up just chop that chunk out of the game. Yeah, I thought that it's a great game. I think the real question, though, is, is this game worth the $40 price tag? Because for the size and the scope of this game, all right, it's not terribly short, but for $40, you know, you could spend that money on other games. And there's a lot of puzzle games that are available that are a lot cheaper um i looked up some of my favorite puzzle games light matter is seven bucks braid is 15 portal 2 is 10 uh super liminal is 20 baba is you 15 the return of the obra din which i really respect but did not find fun yeah even that game is 20 bucks the talos principle is 30 the witness might be the most

expensive puzzle game that's where it's like oh would i rather spend like 40 on three of those other puzzle games or spend it on the witness personally i picked it up on steam sale which we talked about how that doesn't happen often for $10. This is a no brainer. Absolutely pick it up. 40 might be stretching it a bit. I don't know that I would spend 40. It's tough because you don't know if you're paying $40 for frustration or if you're spending $40 to experience what is, in my opinion, one of the best puzzle games ever made, you know? And so there is that, like, it's a little bit of a gamble in that regard. If you can pick it up on sale, which I'm pretty sure you can, or if you see it on third-party sites, that makes it,

in my opinion, like you said, a no-brainer. As much as I love this game, I will say that it maintaining a $40 price tag usually makes it tough because it's hard to know if this game is going to click with you. And if you pick it up and go, well, if I don't like it, I'll just refund it under the two hours. You won't know within two hours, I think is the problem. Yeah. That's the thing. This game has like a long trial period. You can only refund it in the first two hours but you're not really going to understand the mechanics until probably hours four or five that that's probably where you'll actually get a sense of the game yeah as far as make love marry or murder this is where we always rate the game you know is it a make love game or you recommend playing it and then you drop it is it marriage material

do we not recommend just murder it i i'm i'm sort of cheating here but what i wrote down was on sale it's a mary if you have to pay 40 i'm gonna say it's make love because i i really struggle paying 40 for what is... I mean, cover your ears, Josh. I know you hate mobile games. There are puzzle mobile games that are 70% as good as The Witness that are free. I didn't cover my ears, Paul, and I heard that!

It's a little hard for me to shell out $40 knowing that I could get something similar. It's not as good right but i can get it for free or a couple bucks and you can play it on the couch yeah yeah or in the bathroom or you know wherever so yeah so i i said mary up to 20 bucks beyond 20 i would say is make love but it's by no means a murder i would never murder this game it's's a very, very good puzzle game. Arguably the best. I still prefer Portal 2.

I think that the fun of something like Portal 2 exceeds the fun in The Witness. I don't disagree with that at all. Like I said, and we talked about that on the Force of Friend episode where I said, I can't really compare these two games because they're just different. They're so different. Yeah, they really are. Yeah. Puzzle game, like even Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, that's technically a puzzle game,

but it's really a social game. Like it doesn't even- This is a pure puzzler, right? Yeah. This is the heart of the genre when you say puzzle game. The Witness is like, Talos Principle is another one that comes to mind for me. Yeah. All right.

So time to look at the leaderboard all right ryan i know it's not going on your leaderboard because you didn't play it this is going to be interesting to me because cost does not come into play when you're when you're placing it on the leaderboard and i get what you're saying with with the make love marry murder paul so i'm really curious to see how it's going to fall yeah so what i said on the force of friend episode is that i thought i would like it more than humanity humanity is my highest rated game on our leaderboard which by the way you can see at video gamers pod.com we are now looking at 103 games on our deep dive list josh i figured it would be above humanity which is my highest rated puzzle game at 44 i figured it would be above humanity, which is my highest rated puzzle game at 44.

I figured it would be somewhere in the low 30s. I guess 30s, I think, if I remember right. Yeah. And looking at the list here, I am going to put it above humanity, but not quite that high. I still want to keep it in the 40s. When I look at my games in the 40s, I've got Rocket League, Halo Infinite, Tribes of Midgard, The Forgotten City. I still like all those games more than The Witness. So I'm going to put it one above Humanity. It'll be above Humanity, Ibn Ab, Terraria, Dungeon Defenders, and Raft.

These are all still games that I absolutely love. This is high praise. Ranking number 44 out of 103 may not sound great it's still pretty good but honestly when i look at my list i like all these games down until you hit about 70 70 is where i'm like okay this is actually now like mediocre mid games you know so that's where i'm gonna to lock in the witness. I'll put it in at number 44, 44. I'll take it. Are you gonna, are you gonna put the witness on your leaderboard, Josh? I did not actually think where I wanted to put this. I don't think you're off base,

to be honest with you. Um, I mean, if you're somebody that's, you're just like absolutely in love with puzzle games, like all the like i get that um i think i am i i compare it in one way to the forgotten city because that is in a way like you're solving a mystery i think i'm like right in the mid 30s to be honest i think i would put i i would put the witness at 35 to be honest so we're not we're not really far off in that regard you know what i mean uh this the witness is not like a top 10 game is it in the top level of puzzle games yes and we've said it a few times i think it is one of the best puzzle games ever made so if you said josh what are your top three puzzle games i you'd say, oh, The Witness, Portal 2, and Talos Principle.

Maybe not in that exact order, but those are the three that I'm going to throw out when somebody's like, I'm in the mood for something different. So in that regard. But in the grand scheme of things, puzzle games are work, man. This is not fun. Again, we make the Portal 2 reference. Portal 2 is just a good fun time man it's going to rank super high on everybody's list because of that the witness is a different beast it's very very good at what it sets out to do but i don't expect a high rating from that

you know in that regard so i i think it's spot on yeah like we our last deep dive was metal gear solid five okay the witness call it the best puzzle game of all time it it does not hold a candle to something like metal gear solid five because that kind of game let's just talk about here come on now yeah that game just clicks with all of us in a way that no puzzle game ever will as much as i love and i adore puzzle games give me open world give me rpgs give me space epics those games are just always going to beat puzzle games no matter what all right well guys i think we finished our deep dive any final comments anything else we need to throw in at the end of this episode you didn't murder it paul and that's all i care about i really honestly i i did not know what you were going to think, man. And I said that before I, there was a,

like a 50, 50 chance that I was like, Paul might hate this man. Like this might be a straight murder and just go, this game's terrible. I don't like that. It doesn't give me any direction. I don't like this, that, you know, no story, any of that stuff. So the fact that you give it the praise that you gave it to me as a win, um, I'm glad that you got a chance to play it like all the way through and kind of get that experience, which is also what this is about. Um, and I'm with you, man. I think you're spot on, on your take, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. Great, great fun game. Maybe just a little bit overpriced, you know, arguably and, arguably and highly recommended, especially if it's on sale. All right.

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