The Witness Review (Flippy_D)
Don't waste your time.
A boringly self-important game that takes breathless delight in how clever it is - which would be completely forgivable, if it didn't stop being at all satisfying about halfway through.
Pros:
- Pretty world
- Fairly original
- Some good puzzles
Cons:
- Quite a lot of bad or tedious puzzles
- Basically no story
- Grim pseudo-intellectualism
- Variable (though infrequent) voice acting
The Witness is very... hollow. The world is shallow, you are weightless, and your actions mean little. Contrary to the store page summary, you do not 'regain your memory' or 'find your way home'. I don't think these are spoilers, because they are absent entirely - the subject of your memory or journey simply doesn't come up. Some Googling suggests that this is perhaps partly referenced in a secret post-game area, but: too bad! That's not the game! You have to put it in the main bit!
The story, if you can call it that, is sadly a pretentious bust. Recitals of abstracts from astronauts and 15th-century theologians do not a narrative make. Not even if they are (as one indeed is) 8 whole minutes long. The ending is a dire disappointment that made me wish I hadn't bothered persevering. I even unlocked the secret ending, with its corresponding real-life video, but all that did was make it more apparent in a truly toe-curling manner that the supposed intelligence is all affectation. Real 17-year-old film student stuff.
I could bear with the poseur philosophising (some of the quotes are nice!) and the abstraction and the quasi-mysticism if the game was itself fun to play. But it's not. Again, and in typing here I now realise this is the binding theme, The Witness is simply desperate to show you how clever it is. When it isn't. A recurring sin is that obfuscation is mistaken for acumen. The difficulty curve more generally is off-grade and poorly designed, with low levels of the satisfaction payoff that it should provide. The many layers of mechanics do not change that the core challenge is repetitive, and occasional dynamic features are clunky.
If I had paid full price for this I would be really annoyed. Don't bother. For better servings on religion, philosophy, humanity, voice acting, story, and puzzles - get The Talos Principle instead.