![]() The vivid and varied use of color helps to bring the natural elements of the island itself to life, even though is a strangely isolated and empty locale. Visually speaking, I love the art direction. ![]() The attention to detail here is truly impressive. It could have been easy to make an island like this feel too large, too easy to get lost or even boring because things are too spaced out - or conversely needlessly crowded if puzzles were slapped too close together. This kept me perpetually digging around, looking to unlock the next mystery both great and small. I was surprised at how many clues to just what was going on were out there in the open, even if I did not originally recognize them as such. It is perfectly acceptable to shrug your shoulders at a puzzle and come back to it later if you are so inclined.Īnother tip of the hat to the overall island design is how the story elements and mysteries are baked into everything. What I mean by that is despite the rules regarding each of the challenges, the island itself is just begging to be explored. The island itself is wonderfully developed, and some puzzles are just not ready to be solved. Part of this is due to the expert pacing as new deviations and rules are gently implemented so as to avoid ridiculous difficulty spikes, but they are applied regularly enough that the current challenges never really grow stale. I admit that The Witness is probably a little long for my tastes, given its style of play, I was thoroughly impressed with the fully three dimensional world filled with challenging but generally fair puzzles. Just how long would it take for The Witness to grow repetitive due to having too many similar puzzles? That was the question I was initially asking myself. When I heard there were hundreds of puzzles that could span dozens of hours of gameplay, I was immediately a little concerned. While amnesia is a popular theme and an almost 'too easy' game mechanic (after all, the game does not need any sort of knowledge of backstory - they come in the same blank slate their character does with this convention), The Witness handles all of it rather well. While not all of the puzzles are created equal, there are many here that are quite memorable as your character wakes up with no memory of how you arrived nor even who you are. That there are hundreds of puzzles that bring so many unique formulas to the mix is a spectacular achievement in and of itself. The strange and abstractly beautiful island is filled with a variety of puzzles that both fit and at the same time are unique from one another. Truth of the matter is, The Witness is a difficult game to simply describe, but it is undoubtedly a powerful one that fans of puzzle games will undoubtedly love. What The Witness does best is create a structured world full of freedom, which seems like a conflicting way to describe a video game.
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