#THE WITNESS SWITCH HOW TO#

There's also the storyline-or rather, the mass of oblique audio recordings and suggestively positioned objects that could form a coherent storyline, assuming they aren't the trappings of a non-narrative thought experiment. This is balanced out by a couple of masterful (and insanely hard) specimens and by some opulently weird interiors, but it's sad nonetheless that the closing sections aren't quite the send-off the game deserves. As with the arrival of a bullet-sponge boss in an FPS, it's all about having the patience to proceed rather than the ingenuity.

#THE WITNESS SWITCH HOW TO#

The Witness falls slightly afoul of the classic endgame dilemma-there's a point where you stop learning, stop working out how to employ the techniques you've picked up in different contexts, and the challenge becomes too much a question of overcoming artificial obstructions. There are, alas, a handful of puzzles that aren't so gratifying. The ambiance is also immensely restful: there's no real score, just the seethe of wind in the canopy and the lilt of flowing water. These latter discoveries are among the most delightful The Witness has to offer. And there are puzzles that require you to actually use the environment itself in some fashion to proceed, a revelation that depends on your having soaked up enough of the game's visual language that certain things begin to stand out.

There are tricks of perspective that feel decorative at first, but which actually supply clues about the strategies that hold sequences together. There are puzzles that are effectively diagrams of the machines they’re tied to-I might trace the shape of a motorised stairway in order to lower it, while contending with the rules of any symbols on the board in question. There are puzzles that mimic shapes nearby, such that to solve them is also to create your own little artworks-a quietly significant invitation to collaborate in the world's making. As time goes on, you'll pick up on a delicate negotiation between the screen puzzles and the geography and architecture that surrounds them. The landscape is also more than it appears. The scenery might seem a distraction, but this would be a much less enjoyable game were it not for the opportunity to take a break in a clearing and watch the clouds pass by. The ambiance is also immensely restful: there's no real score, just the seethe of wind in the canopy and the lilt of flowing water, and the views are captivating. But you're never forced to tackle things in a certain order, and it isn't necessary to work your way along every thread in order to reach the finale. It's also easy, while roving the island, to run into a conundrum you lack the knowledge to solve. The premise of each puzzle may be digestible, but the devil is very much in the detail.

On the contrary, it's one of the toughest games I've played in years. That's not to say that The Witness is a breeze. Beyond a couple of text prompts to explain the controls at the outset there isn't a breath of actual exposition in the game. These are commonly introduced via banks of five or more screens that walk you through each facet of the new mechanic, beginning with a maze that's a square or two wide to demonstrate the basic principle. But then you start to encounter symbols on squares within each maze that impose additional requirements. Early puzzles are painless-you hold-click to zoom on a screen and activate a cursor, then draw a line through a grid layout from start to finish. The silent elegance with which The Witness cultivates your understanding in this way, the artfulness with which it feeds you concepts and layers them up into complex problems, is where its greatness lies.

The witness switch