Asking The Witness to testify again

After starting to play The Witness back in March/April (see my prior blog post here), I quickly lost momentum and let it fall to the wayside. But I hate not finishing things I start, and the long Memorial Day weekend afforded me the opportunity to pick it back up and see it through to completion.

My plan started out with this kind of cheerful enthusiasm:

...But it ended kind of like this:

Actual screenshot from the game. This guy looks like he hates his life choices. I feel you, bro. The Witness will do that to you...

In my original review, I wasn't bored of the maze puzzles yet. Once you get upwards of about puzzle #300 though... they start to get really old, and there are diminishing returns on the "Aha!" feeling after each successful puzzle completion - especially when you compare it to the frustration each time you feel stumped (which becomes a more and more frequent occurrence).

Toward the very end, the puzzles get nutso-crazy hard:

You can't see it in this screenshot, but these puzzles are flashing multi-colors like a rave. And this isn't even the worst of them.

I found my patience growing very thin. My "little train that could" try, try again attitude quickly devolved into: F*ck this puzzle. F*ck this game and its creator. Just f*ck everything in general. 😠

But I still wanted to finish the game, because I wanted to figure out what happened on this weird island. Why are there puzzles everywhere? What is the deal with all the statues and philosophical recordings? In short: what's the point?

So I persisted - sometimes looking up solutions to puzzles I couldn't figure out within about 5-10 minutes because I just want this to be over. (What a great attitude to have when playing a video game! 🙄) But you know what? I did finish the game... and I didn't really get answers to any of my questions.

If I had to guess, though... I suppose the game is about perspective? There's a lot of deep life quotes peppered throughout the game (if you know where to look). The mazes themselves often require different perspectives to solve. There are even a lot of unrelated bigger picture things, if you happen to look at the world at just the right angle.

His shadow is juggling, see? There's optical illusions like this all over. That's really cool!

Even though I didn't get the concrete answers I wanted, maybe that's the point. It frustrates me, but it makes The Witness a true reflection of life. Sometimes it's easy; sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's really beautiful, especially when you catch it from just the right viewpoint. Sometimes it doesn't make sense. Sometimes you just want to give up. But you learn lessons along the way, and it's satisfying and agonizing in equal measures. It gives you plenty to think and wonder about and question. By the end, you're glad you went along for the ride... mostly.

My biggest takeaway? I never want to see a maze puzzle ever again, haha! 😒

For all my complaints though, the final challenge brought me a lot of joy. I couldn't beat it myself (it wasn't for lack of trying - it's extremely difficult), but frantically trying to solve randomly-generated puzzles to a timer of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is the most ingenious, cruel thing ever... and I love it. Props to this guy for managing to beat it just in time:

That will never stop putting an exasperated smile on my face. :)

-J