End Game Thoughts, Good and Bad and Rant

[Kira]

This is sort of my review, but it's loaded with spoilers and final thoughts. So, Spoiler Forum for a spoiler loaded thread.

So, I've really enjoyed playing The Witness. I've enjoyed solving puzzles on my own, despite wishing for a puzzle buddy like I had with my Mom back in the Myst days. But I had lots of "ah ha!" moments as mechanics clicked into place. I had my share of frustrations during the tetrimino puzzles, and my equal share of pleasure once I did their swampy tutorial (though I hate the inability to just leave that area opened up for walking around. The back and forth to redirect bridges! Ugh!).

I loved the environment puzzles and the crazy way they made me look for them in real life. Some made me angry because I knew they were there, could SEE them, but had no idea how to solve them. Like the one behind the Keep with the boat. Oh, how that made me growl. And the yellow flowers that needed the floor lit up to complete. Nothing pointed me to think that one was connected to the triangle marked pillar. Another growl. But the joy in finding one, in seeing one and figuring out the how, in recognizing them once you know what you're looking at. That was pretty cool.

The good? The art. Good lord, the art of this game. No wonder screenshots of the same things are repeated over and over. The art of this game is gorgeous, and as someone who'd heard in her younger days a smoke-wracked old lady voice gloat, "That's gorgeous!" about a piece of junk jewelry, I don't ever use the word. But there is none better for this game. Beautiful doesn't cut it.

The freedom to explore, to leave a puzzle that's got you stumped and return later. That was awesome. Even when I was stuck, I wasn't. Go somewhere else. Solve something else. Only towards the end when you've been all over the island do you really have to mull over what's in front of you in order to progress.

The puzzles themselves. I place those with the good. I needed some help from the walk-throughs, but significantly less than I'd expected going in. Well designed for steady progression.

There were MANY moments when I felt like Jack Skellington shaking the doll. "What does it mean? What does it mean?"

But let's talk about the End Game.

What. The. Hoolies.

The elevator ride? Beautiful, of course, but you never get freedom to control it yourself. That would have made it far more rewarding after so much freedom in-game. I'd have been content to end there if I'd gotten to sweep around the island from on-high, pausing to get a good look at something from a new angle. Maybe catching a last environmental puzzle on the way.

But no. No freedom. Instead the game gave me a ride and kicked me out. When I logged back in, was there any indicator of what to do to get my reward for doing all 11 lasers? No. Just a new game. Not even a New Game+ where I could go look for whatever I'd missed. So I could go SEE that statue that FINALLY rose from the lake. No. Brand spanking new game. So what do I do? I tried the gate's environment puzzle that was there the whole time before I opened the gate the first time around. (Hello, Myst's switches!) And viola. A resort with audio logs of credits. I felt like I was exploring someone's dream job of opening his own Witness themed hotel.

And at the end of that? At the end of this ending that was there from the begining? A real world cut scene around someone's apartment. Blow's? Some staged theater? Any answers? Final thoughts? Perhaps to all the philosophy and religious views I just experienced? Any final words to send me on my way?

No.

Just this guy, unplugging and stumbling around a house and yard, with little "fun" bits of The Witness scattered around. As if the whole game was, what? Me playing as this unknown guy plugged into the computer? That's it? To wake in The Witness' developers' base?

WHO thought that after all those video logs and audio logs, all the beautiful graphics and images, broad ideas that aim to open your mind and views and expose you to the words of some of the greatest thinkers in the history of human kind, WHO thought that cut scene could top it off?!!!

Fail. That cut scene is a fail.

And after it? It kicked me out. Again.

And like an idiot, yeah. I'm going to still try to go back in again and back up to the top of the mountain to work on the caves and the challenge. To get the last video. Maybe that one will be more rewarding. At least I'll get to do more puzzles.

[Broken calulator]

The game didn't kick you out. You can load your old file with all of your progress.

The audio logs in the caves will help explain the secret ending more though. Whether you like it or not I don't know. But I enjoy many of the interpretations one can take from it. Because it's not trying to be just a, "You were in a VR world the whole time!" twist.

But yeah really great game, I loved all of it. The art, the puzzles and the way it introduces all of the new mechanics. I loved how such a simple idea as drawling lines could be so complex and varied.

[Kira]

If the caves continue the narative or interpretation of it, I'll keep an open mind. But up to that point, it was a

Originally posted by Broken calulator:

"You were in a VR world the whole time!"

which after experiencing the rest, was just a big let down.

Unfortunately, it did kick me out. No way for me to know if that's what it does to everyone. But once it ended, after both the ride and the cut scene, I was out of the game, back to the desktop, and the game was closed. I had to go back in to see what the heck just happened to my game. I can reload it from the elevator door, which means to go back to the top of the mountain to do the caves I need to go all the way back up, moving the bridges in that dual puzzle bridge room. Then move them again to get back down to where I'd just been. And one more time (a pro by then) to do the final video. That's a lot of back tracking for my bonus puzzles and ending.

I agree with your point of the simple idea of moving lines being so interesting. I went into this game excited about it, and unlike some players I never had an issue with the puzzles on tablets. In some ways I thought that was a whole lot better than Myst style buttons that you may or may not notice. Myst puzzles were sometimes very obscure. "See the cave is shaped like a frog when you go backwards? And the noise you hear? That's the frog noise!" In The Witness, you're never left wondering if you missed something like that. The puzzle tablets were right there. You knew what you needed to do. The game was how do you do it. I enjoyed that a lot.