Wasn’t sure how to get this message across but I just wanted to thank you all for making such a great experience. You all did a great job and I’m glad games like this can exist in the industry. Still stuck on some puzzles but I’m looking forward to completing it!

We don’t know yet; we are working on that.

It´s the calm before the storm… :-P

Long story short, I really appreciate what you are doing. Looking forward to the release of The Witness, as well as your next games after that.

“it’s pretty obvious from the art style that their world is *NOT* supposed to look exactly like ours”

I personally like the way those animations look. It gives the world its own feel. I feel like it fits very well with the cel-shaded type graphics, and adds to the world. I mean, it’s pretty obvious from the art style that their world is supposed to look exactly like ours, so why should it act like it? I have to agree with Jonathan O., all but far less defensively, that I think it was intentional, that things are “supposed” to be animated that way, and not necessarily subject to OUR physics and gravity. I think the animations look great, and I think the team has a full workload between now and 0126, so I’d hate to hear they’re going to be spending additional time on something some people like and some people don’t, that may very well have been intentional all along. The one thing I (may) agree on is the bobbing of the boat in the water… but we don’t know what or where this island is, there could be any good reason why the water is perfectly still in this alternate world.

I personally like the way those animations look. It gives the world its own feel. I feel like it fits very well with the cel-shaded type graphics, and adds to the world. I have to agree with Jonathan O., all but far less defensively, that I think it was intentional, that things are “supposed” to be animated that way, and not necessarily subject to OUR physics and gravity. I think the animations look great, and I think the team has a full workload between now and 0126, so I’d hate to hear they’re going to be spending time on something some people like and some people don’t, that may very well have been intentional all along.

Amazing!

Don’t forget to post one absolutelly final Island Snapshot. A symbolic end. You deserve it and we deserve it. I think i will make another slideshow ( There was one many blog posts ago)

I replayed Myst 1 recently — the newly remastered full resolution, full 3D version — and I found it actually rather easy. Maybe this is because I had very vague memories of some of the puzzles from 25 years ago, but I think it’s more because the puzzle design philosophy that guided Myst has been mainstreamed and I’ve played enough puzzle games to intuit the solutions. And they do actually make sense in the context of the created world.

i don’t like hard games unless they have a point, a reason why they’re difficult

arbitrary difficulty is the worst thing in games imo

the witness doesn’t seem like it would have that, so that’s good

This game is supposed to be quite challenging.

I just hope the game’s revenue will not get hurt too much by completely missing out on Christmas sales. I will very probably buy it anyway. There are definitely some people though who spent lots of money in December and then in January, they are broke. :-/

It’s interesting to think that the original Myst is credited as being the “killer app” that caused many people to adopt the CD-ROM drive. Now this game (a homage to Myst) is gonna make me finally ditch my old laptop from 2009 and get a current-gen PC that can actually run it. I’ve seen quite a few people make similar comments: “Bought a PS4 just for this game.”

Though the phrase would probably make Mr. Blow cringe, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Witness became the “killer app” of this generation’s hardware.

Out of respect, I’d like to reiterate Ricardo’s sentiments here.

Having followed the game for so long, it’s clear (and I greatly admire!) that a ton of work has gone into ensuring the world is structurally, physically sound and evokes a true space. That said, I believe the stiff animations deny this sort of structural truth — that is, objects feel believable until you see them move. It appears as though everything is linearly interpolating between two positions and lacks the quality of physical objects affected by gravity (For example, the panel that slides up from the floor stops exactly at its end position, the boat lacks bob while moving through the water, and so on). Knowing there’s still a bit of time left on the project, if possible, I think putting extra attention on the animations would be well worth it!

Not him but I think I know what he’s referring to. Pause it at 1:08, tilt your head to the left and look again.

The game looks amazing; I’m really excited!

The Witness has been my most highly anticipated game for a couple of years now, and I’m so glad to hear that it is nearing release. It’s looking beautiful, and thought provoking.

My question is a bit of an odd one; my partner (who will be my wife in just 2 months) has issues with 3D games, particularly when motion blurs and intense perspective come into play. I feel that The Witness is a game that I want to experience by her side, but I am unsure whether she will be able to tolerate it without getting ill.

Long story short, is there an option to adjust the Field of View in The Witness? As an example, she can play Minecraft of the lowest FOV setting just fine, but struggles if it is any higher.

Thank you, I am very much looking forward to the game regardless :)
Josh

There’s a difference between the files we use for development and the files we ship with the game when it is packaged for people to play. The numbers I listed are for the packaged version; there, all the entities are packed into one file for efficiency purposes (and they are stored in a binary format, rather than text, which is how they are for development).

On your latest PlayStation blog post, you showed a comparison of file counts in the game. I noticed that you put 1 file for the entities. From what a recall from your previous blog posts (on here), I thought you had decided to have a separate file per entity in the game. I think this was when you were working on a concurrency system. Did you switch back to only having a single file to hold all of your entity data?

Best,
Chris

While that may now be the case, Rift support was shown on the blog shortly after the Vive post.

Personally, I’ll be getting the Vive, but with any game that’s having VR ‘retrofitted’, RoomScale is almost certainly not going to be key to the experience, if supported at all, at which point, there doesn’t appear to be any significant gulf between the two.

Jon may well have a preference, but I can’t see it being to the point of making The Witness VR exclusive to either device. Having said that, I can imagine some mind-blowing RoomScale puzzle games. Unfortunately, presumably it’ll be too niche to be the home of BlowGame3.

As far as I heard, VR support won’t be available at release. Also Jon mentioned, he only likes Valve’s VR soultion, so other VR devices might not be supported.

Absolutely, I’m definitely looking forward to playing this on Rift.

I do hope you’re invited to show more of the game in one of the future Playstation Underground videos.

Cheers from Brazil!

George got my point completely. I don’t mean to disrespect the hard work that the team is pouring into this game. I’ve been eagerly waiting for The Witness for a long time, and I’m sure it’ll be one the best games of the decade.

But sometimes, when you’re immersed in the creative process, one can loose a little bit of perspective. I just wanted to point out one of the, in my humble opinion, very few weak aspects of the game. If the animations could be improved, I think it would make a huge difference on the overall feeling of the final game.

“There were a few new tantalising details in the new trailer. Especially 1:08!”

Would you share what new details impressed you most about the trailer? I am interested to hear what most captured your attention at 1:08. I’ve re-watched it multiple times and the reflection and view are impressive, but am curious if you are seeing some detail that I’m missing!

“So cool at 0.25 that you are creating the line and the panel in the background is updating as you move!”

Thanks for pointing out that detail, I had not noticed it before. I saw that panel in the background and simply assumed it was the next puzzle, focusing on the fact that the walkway lit up and depress as the character moved forward. Also noticed some of the walkways have boards underneath, and some do not. Gives notion that your steps in this game indeed carry weight and importance.

Thanks again,
– mark

“If it had the same cost to price ratio, The Witness would sell for $375 ;)”
I’d pay that.
But I’d be one of a small group.
I hope they make the right choice for it.

With full price I meant $60.
“There are plenty of games that I’ve bought for $15 or less that are worth their weight in gold, and plenty more above $60 that I wouldn’t spend a dime on.” (what’s the weight of a game? sorry)
And that’s what I mean. It’s a relatively small game in terms of the team and budget behind it.
And I would agree that it would be worth anything they ask for it. I was just wondering if I could ask for my birthday, or wether that’d be too expensive. I’d pay anything for it myself.
I just hope they make the right choice and that they’ll make a lot of money of it.

Ricardo didn’t say there was a lack of professionalism, but rather implied the absence of a professional animator.

I doubt the designers intentionally chose to make the animations look stodgy and stiff. (Although they do deliberately make the island geometrically low-resolution, blocky, and angular.) Rather I surmise that they made a deliberate choice to concentrate on those aspects of design that most contribute to (or detriment) the narrative, flow, and visual appeal. This is art, after all.

If the team is at a loss for how to fill the time between now and January, sure, tweak away!

If only it had been 1026-2016 :P

Will there be some talks on youtube about the in’s and out’s off the witness just like you did for braid? I really hope so!

Maybe that anagram is a code to solve a puzzle inside the game?

DAM DAM DAHHH

I’m terribly intrigued by the statues – a pair in the trailer, and then another one in an image on the Playstation Blog…

I added the T to avoid the other Ryan doppelgängers, who is this “T.” fellow…

I added the T to avoid the other Ryan doppelgängers, who is this “T.” fellow…

Given that this was a $5m endeavour, and given all the detail that went into ensuring that environments aren’t clipping, I would say that the artificial look is probably an intentional part of the game’s aesthetic. The last thing I suspect is that any failure of this game can be attributed to a lack of professionalism.

I wanted to do a little bit of constructive criticism. There’s one thing that has bothered me since the first trailer: the animations of the non-organic objects look a little bit crude (the puzzle platforms, the boat door, the light cannon, etc.). From what can be seen on the trailer, they feel algorithmic and airy. They don’t feel like animated physical objects subject to gravity and physics.

Am I the only one who thinks the animations could benefit from tweaking by a professional animator?

If observation is as important as it appears, and playing the traditional game allows the view point to be locked while on a panel, does VR impede the ‘observation’ aspect due to lacking fixed perspectives?

Obviously the game is launching before the big three headsets will be widely available, but will support for the Vive be there at launch for those able to get one from the soft launch this holiday?

This is one of those questions where the answer is different for each game.

For The Witness, a lot of the puzzles have multiple solutions, because the main thing that matters is the general understanding of the idea behind each puzzle, and the way the game works, it is usually hard to solve the puzzle if you don’t have this understanding.

For Braid it was different, because in a platformer, if you don’t take steps to prevent the player from getting somewhere except under precise conditions, it is likely that in many cases they would be able to get there.

We have already improved that situation since we shot the trailer! (Andy put in some code to fix this).

Only one thing is kinda bothering me about The Witness graphics; the cables connecting one panel to the other look very rough, I can see the triangles on them. Sometimes I see the geometry folding in a weird way on those cables. Are you planning on fixing that?

Otherwise, this game looks absolutely fantastic. :)

Cheers,
Daniel

I doubt we’ll hear a price announcement any time soon. It’s always kind of messy to talk about pricing. For now they’ll probably be wanting to make sure the message is focused on what the game is as opposed to what it costs. Remember, plenty of people still don’t know anything about it.

Having said that, I don’t imagine we’ll offend anyone by discussing price here. One thing we do know is that the game cost about $5M to make. Braid cost $200k and sold for $15 on XBLA. If it had the same cost to price ratio, The Witness would sell for $375 ;)

Jonathan, a while ago I threw a puzzle design question at you and I have another one if you don’t mind. About a year and a half ago, you did a demo of the first section of the game, which culminated in a significantly more complicated puzzle embedded on a door near the tutorial area. The puzzle had some very interesting ideas that allowed the different mechanics that had been taught up to this point to play together to make clear, for example, which of the several starting points had to be the “right” starting point. The demo cut out before you solved the puzzle.

I was intrigued, so I decided to finish the puzzle on paper. After a bit I became “stuck” because the logic puzzle solver in me wanted to find the only logical path when it turned out that there were actually multiple paths (or, at least, multiple minor variations on the same path) that would fulfill all the given requirements. Once I got over the mental block that was preventing me from making a move that I knew HAD to be right, I was able to intuit an answer.

I’m guessing that the fact that there were multiple paths was a design choice, so here’s my question: when you design puzzles, is the idea that there be one logical solution important to you, or are you happy with any solution that gets across the main ideas that you were going for? For me, puzzles with one solution are more elegant to construct and more rewarding to solve, but I can see how it might be more important to you that solvers be able to “feel” their way to a solution, by trying to find a path, saying “Oh, no, that won’t work” and backtracking. Thoughts?

The Witness’ team has incredible taste. That, coupled with the years of effort you have poured in reminded me of this video: https://vimeo.com/85040589 (THE GAP by Ira Glass). It is great inspiration for all the rest of us that want to create interesting things.

Four months feels like a long time to wait, but there is nothing like a good video to pass the depths of winter. I hope to resist all the lures of spoilers on the internet while I work my way through the puzzles you have crafted.

Somewhere I still have a stack of paper of my maps and notes from Riven. I loved that game. When I first noticed the animal outline in the rock I had such a WOAH moment.

I am really looking forward to taking copious notes in the Witness too.

I can’t wait. =D

Congratulations on the release date and for all of the positive press. It is great to see the excitement building from all of your interviews.

There were a few new tantalising details in the new trailer. Especially 1:08! It has been a long wait but I feel these 4 months might be the hardest as it is so close finally.

Well done to the entire team.

Who knows. Maybe the 27th would be a better day to start so that you don’t have to contend with loud drunkards and fireworks in the background.

Please release at midnight on 0126-2016 regardless of timezone so I can spend the full Australian public holiday, mentioned by Stuart, devouring this game. I have been reading the blog since the beginning, so excited to be playing it soon!!

Thank you team for the blog updates and, of course, for the game! My hat is off to you all.

What does the term “Full price game” even mean? There are plenty of games that I’ve bought for $15 or less that are worth their weight in gold, and plenty more above $60 that I wouldn’t spend a dime on.

Jon Blow and team (keep in mind this is actually a fairly large team) have been working for seven years on this. Yes, it’s going to be worth whatever price they set. I’m hoping it’s not less than $30, or they’d be seriously selling themselves short.

Yep, in the first Myst puzzles were not very logical. But after that, in Myst 2 (Riven) to Myst 4, every puzzle has a logic, a context/history reason to exists ^^

http://puu.sh/kfduf/9c0b18983d.png

it pretty well echoes Jon’s sentiments regarding adventure games, which is really cool to see.

There were a few new tantalising details in the new trailer. Especially 1:08! It has been a long wait but I feel these 4 months might be the hardest as it is so close finally.

Well done to the entire team.

hope justin does better now that he’s not under pressure to make commentary and watch twitch and play the game and talk to you at the same time :)

Here’s a few more:

An article in Gamasutra: http://gamasutra.com/view/news/218953/The_Witness_Modeling_epiphany.php

Justin’s preview impressions in audio format: http://blog.us.playstation.com/2015/09/17/playstation-blogcast-180-witness-me/