If you haven’t played, it’s best to go in knowing nothing, so maybe don’t read on. Also, this post is kind of tangential to the game so it might be better in GD, but seems all game related things go here.
I’m a bit late to the Witness, but finished the main game and am working slowly on a completionist run. The audiologs and videos seem to be a variety of different perspectives on a search for truth. Fits with the gameplay I suppose.
Towards the endgame the audiologs begin to include chat from the creators of the island so you get their perspective on what they’re going for. One of them is this: The Witness: Discussion on Atheism - YouTube
Couple thoughts:
This seems to be completely shitting on a lot of the rest of the game. Are they just calling atheists pompous and without anything to back up their beliefs.
They complain about atheism mostly knocking down individual gods vs the concept of god. I don’t see how that’s even a coherent complaint. How can you known down the concept of god without getting into what god even means?
They seems to also be making a giant strawman about atheism making strawmen. About 3:30 in the guy is talking about how atheists just hate stupid bible stories. Most atheists I know just don’t see a need for god absent any reference to specific beliefs.
Do you guys have any quotes or talks along the lines that these people seem to be lacking?
Enjoyed the wonder the game provides, but this left a bad taste in my mouth.
Been a long time since I’d played the game, but I fired it up for a couple hours today to refresh my memory. It’s a clever game that I enjoyed, though much easier the second time, even 5 years later.
That discussion doesn’t seem to be shitting on the rest of the game. In fact all the logs I’ve found so far have been in roughly the same vein; lots of quotes from Einstein and his views on the spirituality of science. God is the laws of physics, etc., and mystery is the true core of religion, and something that theists and non-theists can share. Etc.
That said, I agree that it’s a misunderstanding of atheism. Atheists may spend a fair amount of time tearing down stupid religious beliefs, but that’s understandable given its dominance in the world. That’s not really central to atheism, though, just something that atheists commonly do.
The people talking make a bigger mistake, though. They are seeking out arguments against any possible god. Although I’m sure people have tried this, it’s going to run into the same problems as pro-theistic arguments: it’s all pseudo-intellectual garbage. Ontological arguments and the like achieve nothing. But likewise, arguments along the lines of “can God microwave a Burrito so hot that He cannot eat it” also have no real content.
The characters aren’t finding these arguments because the real thinkers have no need for them. It’s enough to say “I have no need for that hypothesis”. They seem to realize this to some extent, bringing up views by Feynman and Sagan, but they are somehow looking for more.
Are these characters supposed to represent Johnathan Blow’s views? Or is he at least presenting this as something worth considering? Maybe; or maybe these are just the kind of people who would build a place like this. I don’t know that we’re really supposed to sympathize with their views. Heck, maybe we’re supposed to see right through their absurd demands and conclude that their strawman view of atheism is inaccurate.
Well, not all of the puzzles were so easy. I’d forgotten that I never completed three of the areas. The bird song one I apparently just gave up on, but this time I persisted (it’s still damn annoying). The treehouse one wasn’t too hard, but I think I got bored with it last time. Finally, the central tower one was quite difficult, even just to get started. But eventually I powered through. I guess it’s on to the challenge room.
I hate the audio puzzles. The one on the sunken ship is total bullshit. I haven’t finished all the puzzles in the challenge room (I think only the rainbow puzzle remains), but the challenge itself was waaaay easier than I was expecting. Took me like 7-8 tries?
I don’t think I’ll finish the environmental puzzles. I finished 2 of the pillars, and even with understanding the directions of where they are it can take 10s of minutes or more just wandering around to find one. 10+ hours wandering around does not sound fun.
Hmm, I actually kinda forgot about the pillars. I assume you’re talking about the black monolith things. I haven’t yet figured out how to interact with them. Don’t tell me!
Really I just want to get the second achievement in Steam. I think that just requires finishing the challenge room.
If you’ve beaten the main game I’m surprised you don’t know about the monoliths. I’ll write the two things I have to say under two separate spoilers. I don’t think either is really a spoiler, but just in case.
Prior to my current run, the last time I played it was 2016, so I’m probably just forgetting their purpose.
I know about the challenge room because I looked up how to get the second Steam achievement. But only enough to know that it exists and the basic prerequisites for getting there. I’m currently playing through that area.
I think I’ll skip your spoilers for now, but I’ll just note that I didn’t enable all the lasers last time. Only enough to get into the mountain.
Side note: the first time I played I produced an immense number of post-it notes with various sketches on them. This time I used a tablet with stylus, and the Concepts app–which is a sketch app with infinite canvas, layers, multiple undo, and some other neat features. It’s been super useful in prototyping puzzle solutions.
Well, I got through all the main cave area puzzles, and after a lot of messing around found my way into the challenge area. Wasn’t able to finish it, but I think I’m pretty close. The music certainly doesn’t help with the stress!
I got through the challenge area after about a dozen goes. I have three takeaways from that. First, learning to identify which of the three coloured square separation puzzles isn’t impossible quickly is very helpful. Any time there is a 2x2 block in a puzzle with either three colours or two colours in a checkerboard arrangement, that grid is unsolvable. Second, I had very little practice at the triangle puzzles and it just took several runs before I was reliably solving them reasonably quickly. Third, the column puzzles I struggle to wrap my head around (pun intended), but find it helpful to throw in a quick solve attempt and then watch to see what flashes when the solve fails.
On my successful run, I actually screamed through everything. The second half of the music had only just started playing, and I was done long before the tempo picks up. Just didn’t get any puzzle where I couldn’t quickly see the solution, and for once the column puzzles didn’t do the “just one more square you missed” thing over and over again. Thought about running it again to see if it had just been a fluke, but decided to rest on my laurels.
I also beat the game too without deciphering a single monolith puzzle, and I solved most of the normal puzzles in the game.
I was aware that there were environmental puzzles, and I could see the puzzle motifs repeating in the environment. I had solved the maze area just before discovering one large environmental puzzle that was on the ground, and was in the mindset of environmental puzzles being solvable by following their path by walking on them. I spent about 15 minutes trying to solve one puzzle by walking on it in different ways and directions until giving up and deciding I was doing something wrong.
When I got to the top of the mountain, I thought what it was telling me was to go down into the river, and find a way to get into the river either by swimming or by a boat, so I could “solve” the river puzzle by following the path of the river physically. I never found a way into the river of course, because it’s impossible. It never occurred to me to try clicking.
Heh, yeah. Drawing a line between differing adjacent squares and counting lines that would have to leave a vertex were some of my basic paper strategies for these puzzles. These were small enough that I thought I could just solve them visually… and I was nevertheless not making progress. When I applied my normal techniques it was a bit of a head-slapper. Now they’re pretty easy to recognize. Can’t have a 2x2 checkerboard since the center vertex would need 4 lines leaving it (or 3 lines if there are 3 colors).
I was pretty good at these already. I play a game on my phone called Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, which has many puzzle types, including one called Loopy which is almost exactly this (though it doesn’t include broken links).