Adventure Gamers - Forums

Terabin - 21 February 2013 03:55 AM

This looks awful. Based on the trailer: no NPC interaction. Puzzle-driven gameplay with repetitive puzzles. Soulless environments. No discernible story.

There’s clearly more than meets the eye with The Witness. It’s not going to be your typical Myst clone and dismissing it as such would be unwise—unless you really aren’t open to the loner on an island type of experience.

I thought the game looked beautiful and intriguing. The maze-like panels will not be the main crux of each puzzle, I’d wager. They’re probably something you learn the code to once you’ve completed a puzzle, or something like that.

From what I recall from interviews and blogs, the puzzles are in your perception of the environment—the angle from which you view things, the design of the architecture etc. Sounds a whole lot better than pulling levers and pushing sliders.

The way I take it the mazes are the puzzles and the solution to them is often found in the environment. So kind of what Orient says. It’s not just walking up to new panels and drawing a line from beginning to end.

As far as I understood it, the puzzles of The Witness will pretty much entirely consist of these line drawing puzzles. The reason for that is that JB wanted to design core gameplay mechanics that allowed the player to improve in their abilities. Like, when you play an ego shooter your core gameplay consists of shooting and over time you improve in it.

I feel that he could have done that while still using different kinds of puzzles. Just have a somewhat linear beginning where you teach people that the solution to puzzles can be found in their surroundings and you can have several types that evolve over time. I’m not convinced that it’s necessary to stick to the maze panels.

Now, I don’t really mind as long as there’s quite a bit of variation in them, but it can also be stimulating to find new stuff to play with, especially if the game is really 25 hours long with no filler.

“The Witness, to be released on the PC, iOS, and PlayStation 4… and eventually, several other platforms. “

Primate Ryan - 21 February 2013 08:04 AM

I feel that he could have done that while still using different kinds of puzzles. Just have a somewhat linear beginning where you teach people that the solution to puzzles can be found in their surroundings and you can have several types that evolve over time. I’m not convinced that it’s necessary to stick to the maze panels.

Yeah, but wouldn’t that still be like playing Tetris one moment and then Puzzle Bobble the next? Basically it would go against the very goal JB is trying to achieve: making an adventure game with core gameplay. What he apparently also dislikes adventure games for is that you can’t distinguish between what is part of a puzzle and what not.

Obviously, you even learn somewhat to follow certain rules in traditional adventure games: to pick everything up that isn’t nailed down, pay attention to your surroundings and exhaust conversation trees.
And after having played countless of adventure games you can see somewhat through the structure of the game, or encountering similar puzzles to those solved before may make things easier. But I feel this dosn’t necessarily result in an improvement in puzzle solving skills but rather in an accumulation of knowledge about adventure gaming tropes. Basically, adventure games become more predictable then.
I don’t think you improve in solving the traditional adventure gaming puzzles, at least not during one game, maybe over many ones, but then only because you manage to peek through the conventions and into the designer’s mind. You game the game then, consciously knowing it’s a game. And that’s because puzzles in adventure games always seem like discrete challenges that work in different ways, change the rules of the game as they see fit and therefore don’t build upon another and don’t allow you to improve in solving them like you can by playing Tetris or Sokoban.
Now I feel like I’m just rambling a bunch of nonsense. So I better stop now before I trip over my own tongue (or, eh, knot my fingers? )

Now, I don’t really mind as long as there’s quite a bit of variation in them, but it can also be stimulating to find new stuff to play with, especially if the game is really 25 hours long with no filler.

I also wonder how these line drawing puzzles will captivate the whole time. It’s hard to figure out how interesting and fun something will be to play before you get the chance yourself to do so. And obviously he doesn’t want to spoil the experience too much.

orient - 21 February 2013 05:11 AM

Terabin - 21 February 2013 03:55 AM

This looks awful. Based on the trailer: no NPC interaction. Puzzle-driven gameplay with repetitive puzzles. Soulless environments. No discernible story.

There’s clearly more than meets the eye with The Witness.

This.

No offence Terabin, but there is no way enough info from the trailer or any written article in existence for the opinion of “repetitive puzzles” to be justified yet. sure they all come down to filling line puzzles. but the magic of getting to that solution could be ANYTHING!.

It’s like saying braid all came down to just time manipulation….which sounds like a gimmick stretched thin. But in reality, he reinvented this feature in every chapter and made the game persistently challenging in a fun way. Sure you ended up pressing that shift key when you foudn the solution, but each solution interacted with the environment and enemies and physics in totally different ways every time.

Jumping to conclusion with a man who obviously is a great game designer would be a bit premature at this point.

What we can tell from the video is that the game looks beeautiful. and thats a good enough start until more gameplay is fully revealed.

Idrisguitar - 21 February 2013 01:53 PM

Jumping to conclusion with a man who obviously is a great game designer would be a bit premature at this point.

Obviously? We’ve seen one game, a platformer. Okay, it’s a platformer with a unique concept but that hardly gives him credentials as a great game designer.

What we can tell from the video is that the game looks beeautiful. and thats a good enough start until more gameplay is fully revealed.

I can show you hundreds of beautiful looking games which turned out to be awful.

Oscar - 21 February 2013 03:28 PM

Idrisguitar - 21 February 2013 01:53 PM

Jumping to conclusion with a man who obviously is a great game designer would be a bit premature at this point.

Obviously? We’ve seen one game, a platformer. Okay, it’s a platformer with a unique concept but that hardly gives him credentials as a great game designer.

What we can tell from the video is that the game looks beeautiful. and thats a good enough start until more gameplay is fully revealed.

I can show you hundreds of beautiful looking games which turned out to be awful.

I said that: it looking beautiful was a START. Please let me know if you are still unsure of what I mean, because whoever that response it to, its certainly not me.

And as unless you know nothing about game design, its hard to say with a straight face that Braid isn’t a great example of game play design in both innovation, variety, and execution. Whether you hate it or love it.

And you ARE a great designer even if its ONLY ONE game. Just like Jeff Buckley is a great musician, and Heath Ledger is a great actor (didn’t really like his other performances other than the big one.)

But if you wont accept the above, then I will happily concede it as being merely my opinion.

I’m just trying to provide a balance to the negativity in a topic on a game that people have only really been given a view of through a glass floored boat. No-one has gone swimming just yet, so let’s not claim we are going to drown.

Well, I’m intrigued. While I confess I’m a bit leery if ALL the puzzles boil down to variations on the line-drawing thing, I’m a sucker for first person exploration in interesting enviroments.

I enjoyed Myst Uru almost exclusively for the ability to freely roam through beautiful environments. The puzzle aspects were no great shakes (some were, IMHO, downright idiotic). Any time I resort to a walkthrough, and STILL can’t believe the solution to a puzzle (and still find it tedious in the extreme to execute) that constitutes a major failure in puzzle design, IMHO. Yet I still enjoyed the game, and would go back to it even after “solving” everything.

So for me, what we’ve seen already IS sufficient to intrigue me. Even if the puzzles get repetitive, as long as I can keep exploring, I’ll likely be happy for quite a while.

Idrisguitar - 21 February 2013 03:51 PM

I said that: it looking beautiful was a START. Please let me know if you are still unsure of what I mean, because whoever that response it to, its certainly not me.

Looking beautiful isn’t a start at all. That’s what I meant. From my experience a pretty game is no more likely to be good than an ugly one.

And as unless you know nothing about game design, its hard to say with a straight face that Braid isn’t a great example of game play design in both innovation, variety, and execution. Whether you hate it or love it.

So where’s the variety? You can go back in time, that’s the innovation. I’m not convinced by the execution because I feel it didn’t suit a quick-moving game where you don’t have time to think.

But of course, I know nothing about game design so what do I know? 

Oscar - 21 February 2013 04:20 PM

Looking beautiful isn’t a start at all. That’s what I meant. From my experience a pretty game is no more likely to be good than an ugly one.

NO more likely? I’ll certainly agree that a pretty game is by no means a guarantee of quality gameplay, or even a very strong indicator, but I’ve encountered precious few ugly games that turned out to be great. Perhaps I’ve just not tried enough?

In a short trailer in this kind of event there wasn’t much to show except that it looks beautiful. Kind of impossible to judge the rest of the gameplay but judging from Braid the game won’t be shy about using very difficult puzzles.

Some new pics and details on The Witness:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/10/16/the-witness-on-ps4-tiny-details-in-a-very-big-world/

25-40h game? That’s… big

Even if this is JUST a Myst clone with a few new ideas sprinkled in, I’m pretty excited. I would play a Myst spiritual successor with next-gen graphics on a console for sure.

But I’m sure this will be more than that, at least a little bit.

Only hope for AG , this game should be an example to follow.
Will get it for ps4.

New drooling footage