Here’s my review of The Witness I wrote on Steam
The Witness is easily the best game that I’ve played.
The biggest thing I appreciate about this game is that everything that is in the game feels very intentional. There is no “insert this stuff in the environment just because it looks cool” kind of elements in The Witness, everything that’s in there is there for a reason, no matter how subtle the reason is. There is no “because it’s just a game!” reasoning in here. Some of the reviews on the internet tend to divide their reviews on separate independent parts, like: “Part 1: Gameplay”, “Part 2: Audio Design:” , etc, etc, but it feels kind of incomplete to do so, since in this game, none of that aspect exist in isolation, it’s the way the gameplay AND the sound design AND the environment design, etc mix together to deliver what the game is trying to communicate to the player is where the real magic is present.
A common disclaimer that comes along the game is “warning: this game is not for everyone”, which is true, but that’s probably true for almost every game out there. I see a lot of reviews talk about the lack of explicit story being the reason why the game “might be not for everyone”, but after having completed the game twice, I’m fully convinced the game is far better by not having a story explicitly narrated at the end of the game. From my experience, the game is about the experience of attempting to understand the world, and what it is like to search for an answer to the questions we have about the world around us, and thus attempting to understand the world out of your own motivation. My experience deeply resonated with [spoiler]the clip of Richard Feynman where he says “ ‘are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics?’ No I’m not, I’m just looking to find out more about the world” and “I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing that to have answers which might be wrong … but I don’t have to know an answer, I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things” [/spoiler] and that felt like a direct explanation of what I was doing in the island. Now after all that, if at the end of the game there was a voice-over narrating: “here’s the meaning of the game: …”, it would’ve ruined the experience completely, because the whole point of the game is to navigate and search for answers out of your own motivation, that’s what makes the experience strong. The only thing I have to say about whether this game is for you or not is: to ensure not to approach the game with the idea of completing the game as fast as possible and then moving on to the next game. It is a game where you sit back, observe what’s happening and forming your understanding based on it. There will be areas in which you will be stuck, and sometimes, like in real life, the right answer is to walk away from the area to a different area, and come back to it later and approach the problem with fresh eyes.
Overall, it is the best game I’ve ever played which will stand the test of time, and I’m very glad that I had this experience.
