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The Witness

The clue that there was something incorrect should take been that I was writhing around on the floor, sobbing. Nonetheless at the time information technology made perfect sense. When you lot're ambushed by approximately one-half a million Tetris-style bricks that won't end haunting you and taunting yous even equally y'all first hit them and screaming at them to become away, this kind of thing happens. Sometimes y'all just want to be left solitary, safe from the torment, and be immune to in one case over again alive in a manner close to the way you see fit. Then the sweat that was pouring and the tears that were flowing merely didn't seem like that big of a bargain. Scratch that: They weren't a large deal at all.

It's only at present that I can wait back on this that I realize I had a problem. A big problem. I was addicted to Blow. Or, maybe more accurately, I was hooked on doing lines.

In both cases, I guess I should explain (in case there's whatever confusion), as a result of Jonathan Blow's new video game The Witness.

Yep, I had fallen into a trap I didn't know could still ensnare me at my historic period of level and experience: I had get so invested in a game that information technology was taking over (and ruining) my life. I've spent plenty of fourth dimension with games in recent years—as a modest sampling: Civilisation (as always), BioShock iii, even Fallout four if you lot want to become more than contempo—and when I was a kid, I was fifty-fifty more than fond to playing anything and everything new, the instant it came out. Merely The Witness is the kickoff game in a decade, or mayhap longer, that returned me to that youthful, terrifying level of crazed devotion I thought I'd manage to carelessness.

While I was playing the game in most of the month since its release, it really bothered me. Now that I've "finished," it'southward clear why that is: It'southward the whole signal.

Lines aligning

Looking at information technology from a altitude, The Witness is not hard to unpack on its almost elemental level. You begin in a dark tunnel, trudging ever frontward toward a glimmer of lite that eventually resolves itself equally a simple shape: a circumvolve with a short horizontal line continued to it. By selecting the circle so dragging the pointer you fill the complete shape, and then something happens. In this case, a door opens and yous move on, earlier long facing something that'due south slightly more advanced (a line with a 90-degree turn). Solve that i and before long you're in the broad, vivid, beautiful island, à la Myst, where you'll encounter literally hundreds of puzzles like these.

The Witness

They get a lot harder very quickly, of form. Sooner than you might expect, you're progressing from basic mazes to challenges involving separation (there must e'er be a line between all the black and white squares); symmetry (your line is matched, in mirror image, on the other side of the board); color pairing; connect the dots; my personal ligne noir, shape matching, in which the figures you describe must outline one or more geometrical forms you're provided (in theory—though the difficulty I had solving these left me seriously wondering); and plenty more.

But even though its riddles rapidly evolve from mild to maddening, The Witness is structured and then that you always have the essential tools yous need to solve them: Built-in tutorials guide you gracefully through new concepts over half a dozen puzzles, for example, and when ideas are combined, yous get a chance to acquaint yourself with the new human relationship before things outset getting really nutty. Accident may exist a gleefully evil sadist, but he's a fair gleefully evil sadist.

The Witness

He'due south not necessarily an overly obvious ane, however. During the course of your time on the isle, you'll discover what appears to be a story: a community frozen in fourth dimension, with people changed into statues while doing ordinary, everyday things. Who are they? Why are they here? And can yous assist them—or is your destiny to become ane of them? These questions are non hands answered, even if you discover many of the audio and video recordings scattered effectually that investigate the scientific and spiritual relationships that seem to underlie the land's logic. All the same, y'all'll ponder them as yous motility from one section of the island to some other, either trying to track down the next hint you need or giving yourself a respite from your nowadays frustrations by doing something easier for a few minutes.

Straight, simply non narrow

Don't focus besides much on matters like these, though. The Witness really starts proving itself in hostage once you approach the final area of the game, the mountain, and discover something that shows y'all that the very globe itself isn't what y'all've always thought it was. A squiggly line, on a sign planted on the rock next to you, turns out to be exactly the same shape—when seen from hundreds of anxiety above—as a lake and river you've traversed probably dozens of times. What happens if you have your cursor and treat them equally if they're a puzzle of their own? What indeed.

It'south at this precise moment that The Witness becomes something closer to brilliant, every bit yous're inspired to backtrack and reconsider everything yous've looked at across the whole game with this new data. And of a sudden zilch is the aforementioned. Yous're seeing these lines everywhere. On a rails at the quarry. On the side of a shipwreck. At the shore of a lake. And in places y'all wouldn't remember they'd even exist possible. I felt a chilling thrill at discovering one that ought to have been impossible (suggestion: wait up), simply that ultimately made perfect sense.

The Witness

Whether it's computers, music, movies, sports, or something else entirely, there'southward something out at that place that transfixes us, that drives the states against our amend judgment (and, in many cases, common sense) to explore and sympathise to its fullest. Whether the so-called "ecology puzzles" in The Witness could really exist is non the issue (because they can't). Just what Blow and his team have done, in a manner I've never quite seen anywhere else, is capture the spark of controlled insanity that'due south waiting inside all of us to exist tapped. Devote much of your life—peradventure even too much of your life—to a pursuit, and you really practice commencement seeing it and hearing information technology everywhere. And then what y'all exercise yous?

Hither, at least, there'due south no pick: Y'all have to keep going. And its 2 endings suggest the places where this may lead: ane to disaster (of a sort), a solitary, deplorable plough of an endless bike, and one to release, where you're forced to integrate your fixation into your existence. Is the real tragedy living forever in your delusion or snapping out of it? What remains one time y'all've abandoned all you idea you lot were?

The Witness

The Witness, then, is no mere puzzle game: It's a circuitous existentialist drama that compels united states of america to examine who are and how—or if—nosotros can be improve, and what we're prepared to practise to bring about the outcome we want. It demands you consider your every activity within the framework of how information technology contributes to your obsession, and then that the process of doing so becomes your obsession. Possibly you lot can escape from that, maybe you can't, but sooner or afterward you lot're going to have to face information technology. A friend of mine celebrated his "success" at completing the game with what he assumed to be the highest possible score, simply to be drawn back in weeks later when he realized he missed something—and at present, once more, you can't pry him abroad from it. It'south the "beginning-person solver" equivalent of Sid Meier'south classic "simply one more turn" gameplay model, but worse. In Civilization you might have a better chance of chirapsia down the Babylonians once and for all if y'all hang on just another few minutes, but in The Witness there'due south not much tangible difference between finishing 50 pct of the game and, assuming such a affair is even technically possible, 100 per centum of the game.

In absolute terms, anyhow. But for those who run across the work, even in pursuit of a nebulous goal, as its ain reward, the two aren't even in the same universe. When asked in 1923 why he wanted to top Mount Everest, George Mallory replied, "Considering it'south at that place." The Witness reminds us that we're no different today, no matter what mountains we long to climb.