The witness system. The Witness is a new word

The game has been tested onPlayStation 4

The creator of Braid spent more than six years developing his next project. First shown in 2010, the gameplay is not much different from gameplay in the final version, even the riddles remained the same in some places. But the scale, detail and elaboration of the environment improved every day. By adding hundreds of puzzles every year, drawing every location and giving each element a special meaning, Jonathan Blow finally released The Witness - the first of the main games of 2016.

⇡ Silent Witness

Initially, the development was planned to be completed in eighteen months - then there were much fewer mysteries, and the passage was designed to take five hours. Now there are more than six hundred puzzles, and we are unlikely to know why Blow finally decided to stop. Either the budget had come to an end (even though Braid made him a millionaire, he had to go into debt for The Witness), or he realized that there was nothing to add here.

In any case, it turned out, let's not be afraid of these words, a true work of art. This is an almost silent journey around the island, which is more reminiscent of a tiny planet - the locations into which the open world is divided differ from each other in color, climate, and atmosphere. There is no music here, only muffled sounds of nature and the steps of the main character. At first it seems strange, but after a couple of hours you realize that the music would have to be turned off sooner or later anyway.

The fact is that there are a lot of riddles here, and more than once you will encounter ones that will make you rack your brain. For some, you will even have to take out a notebook to write down or sketch something important. Don’t be surprised if you suddenly have a desire to take the pieces of paper to work to think about them during lunch or on the way, and then come back and sit your friends or family next to you... Neither music nor a plot are needed here - the puzzles are captivating on their own.

You don’t even pay attention to the absence of elements that seem absolutely necessary for every game. Instead, you concentrate on knowledge, study, understanding. On admiration - both for one’s own ingenuity and for something inside virtual world. This is facilitated by the ever-increasing complexity and the persistent feeling that there is still a lot of interesting and unknown things ahead. Here you can pass by an incomprehensible puzzle, and after a couple of dozen hours return and discover something new.

There are no explanations or pointers, no specific path, no constantly popping up hints. You are released to big world without any instructions, but they are not needed - soon you begin to figure everything out on your own. You see a screen with a riddle, try to understand its meaning, and solve it. Move on to the next one, more difficult, but still solved almost instantly. And so, gradually, you adopt the logic of The Witness and can use this knowledge in the future.

⇡ From simple to complex

To say that The Witness is just drawing lines and going through a thousand mazes different ways, unfair. Might as well be called Shadow of the Colossus a game about destroying monsters, and Portal can be described as shooting a cannon at walls. There's a lot more to all of these projects, though The Witness really puts puzzles above all else. And they actually involve drawing curved lines from one point to another. But this is not nearly as primitive as you might think.

In some situations, just looking at the screen with a riddle is enough to solve it. But very often you have to turn to your environment for clues. It would be possible to give some examples, but spoilers will only spoil the impression, because the beauty of the gameplay lies in research and the search for logic. Each new location It starts with very easy puzzles that allow you to get acquainted with the unique mechanics. The game gradually teaches the user and does it completely silently, without wasting words.

And The Witness constantly rewards cleverness. Either the next screen will turn on, then a new door will open, then a chest with a note will appear. She rewards differently than many modern games, does not give out points left and right for tournament tables, does not overwhelm you with achievements on Steam (there are only two of them). She remains a puzzle until the last minutes and gives gifts in the same mysterious way, without trying to offer banal praise. Because of this, the emotions it evokes are difficult to compare with anything: then you praise yourself for quick solution, then you shake your head, realizing that you’ve overcomplicated everything in your head.

There are often riddles that you linger on for a long time - at this time you are tempted to look at the passage. But as soon as you do this, the magic disappears before your eyes. You need to understand the logic, reach a solution on your own, try different options, or even better, just take a break. You will definitely get out of the deadlock if you go to explore other areas, take a break from the game, or switch to a completely different activity. Don't torture yourself - nothing is impossible in The Witness.

To take your mind off what is happening, you can try to find well-hidden audio recordings. These are voice recorders from which the voices of popular video game actors can be heard, such as Ashley Johnson, known for her role as Ellie in The Last of Us. They read out the words of people who lived in different eras and became famous for completely different things. These could be the words of astronaut Russell Schweikart or philosopher Aurelius Augustine - voice recordings are often closely related to puzzles on the parts of the island where they were found.

And The Witness delights not only with the interconnection of all elements, but also external design. Every stone, every bush, every tree is placed manually, and the surrounding world is fraught with many secrets that have nothing to do with puzzles. A tree sticking out of a rock in the reflection on the water surface turns into something else, and a hole in the wall from the right angle takes on the outline of an unusual figure. The large, unnamed island is one of the most detailed and mysterious locations in a video game in years.

At one time, Braid gained success and fame, which opened the doors to the industry for many independent developers. The Witness will also not be forgotten soon, if only because its creators managed to achieve a fantastic immersion of the player into the world without using a plot, cutscenes, division into missions, pointers, training and other traditional elements. Throw away all your expectations and get ready to discover - you won't be disappointed.

Advantages:

• a huge island with many secrets and mysteries;
• a large number of exciting puzzles;
• great visual style;
• an environment worked out to the smallest detail, all elements of which are interconnected;
• It's very difficult to tear yourself away from the game.

The Witness is a 3D video puzzle game created by Jonathan Blow of Thekla.

Description

Inspired by the game Myst, The Witness allows the player to explore the island with open game world, filled with a number of natural and man-made structures. The player progresses by solving puzzles based on interaction with mazes presented in panels throughout the island. The rules and end results of solving the individual mazes are part of the puzzle, which the player will have to navigate through both visual clues throughout the island and audio logs the player can find.

Blow included as little instruction as possible to accommodate players' desire to understand the rules of these puzzles for themselves and, near release, explore the island. Final game will have about 650 puzzles, however, if the player wishes, he is not required to solve them all to complete the game.

Although the game was originally announced back in 2009, The Witness has a long period of development.

Gameplay

The Witness is an adventure puzzle game with 1st person view. The player, as an unnamed character, finds himself on an island with numerous structures and natural formations. The island is divided into ten sections, located around a mountain, which represents the final goal for the player. Within each section, the player will be faced with numerous puzzles, and once the player has completed all the puzzles in a section, golden towers will appear throughout that section and shed light on the mountains.

The player only needs to complete part of the puzzle in the game to complete that goal and reach the final goal. The final game will have over 650 puzzles, which Jonathan Blow estimates will take the average player about 80 hours to solve. Blow also believes that less than 1% of players will be able to complete all the puzzles.

Puzzles within each section are based on similar themes, with early puzzles in sections designed to help the player identify the theme and understand how to solve puzzles later. All puzzles are based on the mechanics of tracing a path through a maze as a route; The goal of these puzzles is not always to simply complete the maze, but to find the correct path that completes the puzzle row correctly. For example, one puzzle involves finding a path that successfully divides marked white and black areas on a panel.

While many puzzles will be obvious, placed on panels around the island, other puzzles can be visually incorporated into the game's architecture, such as a tree whose branches mimic paths, or like symbols that appear as decorative elements on walls and floors buildings.

Puzzles in this part of the island are presented in a non-linear manner and with open world nature of the game, and the player may encounter puzzles whose rules are not yet known. However, players are not required to complete the puzzle, and can leave it at any time and wander into any other area to solve the puzzles there.

The specifics of PC gaming are such that before you begin, you must first familiarize yourself with its system requirements and relate it to the existing configuration.

To do this simple action, you do not need to know the exact technical characteristics of each model of processors, video cards, motherboards and others components any personal computer. A simple comparison of the main lines of components will suffice.

For example, if a game's minimum system requirements include a processor of at least Intel Core i5, then you shouldn't expect it to run on i3. However, it is more difficult to compare processors from different manufacturers, which is why developers often indicate names from two main companies - Intel and AMD (processors), Nvidia and AMD (video cards).

Above are system requirements. It is worth noting that the division into minimum and recommended configurations is done for a reason. It is believed that the implementation minimum requirements enough to start the game and go through it from start to finish. However, to achieve the best performance, you usually have to lower the graphics settings.