But Myst had a clear narrative impetus, a hook to draw you into the experience, to give you a reason to care. The obvious touchpoint here seems to be Myst, the blockbuster adventure game from the '90s that sent you to a similar island. Likewise, there are no signposts explaining anything about the game's setting or narrative impetus. The circuit puzzles stubbornly refuse to explain themselves understanding the rules governing them is a matter of trial and error (and error and error), piecing together functional heuristics by inference and work. I feel like I might be halfway through it. I've sunk hours upon hours into The Witness. To tell you the truth, I'm less than confident. I think that's what you're supposed to do. By traveling to different parts of the island, you come to understand different rules, then return to apply those rules to more complex puzzles you couldn't solve before, eventually opening new paths, activating mysterious machines, and figuring out what in God's name is going on here. The puzzles are stretched across the landscape, with different locations revolving around different sorts of puzzles, each adding a different rule to the basic circuit-completion idea. This is The Witness: A set of circuit puzzles on a ruined, abandoned island. You are greeted by more island, and more puzzles. The pull and push of the tide somewhere in the distance. Lush, overgrown with foliage in impossibly bright hues, and quiet. In response, the game gives you a tunnel, and then an island. Given all the pressure, it's hard not to imagine The Witness as an answer to Blows' detractors. Its successor has the dual pressures of being good and reaffirming the legitimacy of Blow's standing in the gaming world. But Braid positioned Blow as a controversial and important studio. I'm not convinced that Braid has aged well-so many of its ideas have folded so neatly into the "indie aesthetic," so far as such a thing exists, that it feels almost unremarkable eight years later. To say people have high expectations for The Witness, coming Tuesday on PC and PlayStation 4, is an understatement. More than five years in the making, The Witness is the second game from indie developer Blow, whose breakout 2008 hit Braid arguably ushered in the modern indie games movement.
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