u/mankeg

This is a bit of a two-parter. I want to kind of tell my general story of playing through the game and then I have some general questions I would hope could be answered so you can just skip down to that if you'd like. Also, feel free to ask me anything or share your own story because I'd love any chance to dwell more on this stuff.

This past Sunday I clicked on a random YouTube video essay about puzzle games because I love them and was bored. I couldn't tell you what the video was actually about though because only a couple minutes in they brought up The Witness, I paused the video, checked the Steam page, and saw it had good reviews and was on sale for the summer. So instead of spending an hour of my time watching that video essay, I just spent the last three days of my life starting and completing The Witness.

Excuse my rambling and any varying level of detail I give. My brain is fried and I discovered that the worst part of playing such a wonderful game is not being able to spend every hour of your day with videos or discussions with the community to fill in any gaps of knowledge you know you must have, so this post is my finally being free and I can assure you that I will be spending the rest of this week reading other posts and watching many videos.

Starting the game:

I got through the tutorial area and found my first audio recording and triangle puzzle after investigating what the second solution to that one gate puzzle was for. I did the next set of puzzles when following the trail and then immediately veered off toward the water skipping the tree puzzles for now. I liked the puzzles in the building there that got more droopy and after leaving I saw and promptly ignored what I thought was a pile of tires.

The island where you have to line up the rocks and stuff in the background cemented me into really loving the game especially knowing I had only started. The yin yang koi fish / plant roots also got me into the mindset of appreciating the art and looking at it from different perspectives.

Then I pissed around in the sandy area for 15 minutes without figuring out how to solve any of those puzzles although I suspected it had to do something with the circles that reflected the sun when standing in specific spots although I could not think of a way to translate that to the red puzzle boards.

I believe that was when I made my way to the town area where I spent the rest of my first day. I briefly saw another tire pile and while looking up at the tower saw some suspicious circles and lines and honestly got a bit spooked when the thunder sound played after 'solving' it. I did a few laps around the tower getting a couple more before I followed the trail of embers and found out that they weren't tire piles and I should probably pay more attention moving forward.

I also did something a bit dumb while in the town. I solved maybe 80% of the puzzles before leaving. I don't remember which exactly I didn't solve that first time around, but I remember loving the one where you have to trace out the path through the building with debris in the way and I thought all three solutions to the panel above the shipping crate area were awesome.

Needless to say, I still enjoyed the other areas with similar puzzles, but I regret not waiting until my toolbox was full to tackle the town. This also instilled in me to not make any guesses or any sort of brute forcing if a puzzle had an element I hadn't seen because I wanted the full experience of actually learning the stuff first before using it.

Day two is more of a blur. The colorful marsh and I had a toxic relationship where I would come over, solve a puzzle or two, get frustrated and walk away, and then come crawling back later. I had been activating lasers but still hadn't checked out the mountain. I think around this time I realized how cool it would be for the sun to be used in one of them black pillar puzzles. It felt like a Portal 2 Moon shot moment just waiting to happen, so I glanced up every now and then to see if things seemed to be lining up.

I went and did the apple trees. Was randomly picking up some of the more obvious pillar puzzles every now and then. I did the hedge maze area. Those were fucking sick. I remember getting through the first three and seeing the last one looked normal with a gravel ground and thought "well what could they possibly use to distinguish the right path from the rest of the maze? Maybe sound?" and then I by chance got almost all the way through the correct path without hearing a sound difference or seeing anything so turned back to go to the start to try and again and pay more attention but I took a different way back and the louder gravel sound played and I was ecstatic. Then the secret service guy statue scared the shit out of me and the light up floor puzzles gave me an aneurysm.

In no particular order, I knocked off the quarry place, the tinted glass flower place (I think I left having taught myself rules of additive and subtractive color mixing that just aren't true and disprovable by elementary school arts class), and then I came upon my greatest enemy. I have come to the conclusion that I am much more tone deaf then previously thought.

I thought that first puzzle in the jungle area was neat because of course I can distinguish a high and low note. And then they introduced a mid note and I could not tell you, gun to head, whether a note was high/mid or mid/low. I could distinguish enough of it all that just a little guess and check got me through the upper puzzles, but I spent longer on those second set of puzzles with all the distracting sounds playing then I did on the goddamn record player puzzle (but I'll get into that more later). I spent an hour and a half switching between headphones and speakers, closing my eyes, recording a snippet with my phone and replaying it while I walked around my place, and I debated with myself if it was a better experience to brute force my way through it all just to say I looked nothing up or to just look up hints/solutions. I ended up looking up hints which brought me to Reddit threads just saying to pay attention to the sounds which was less than useless so I just ended up forcing my way through the rest.

There is also the shipwreck puzzle. I don't remember when I stumbled across it but after immediately picking up on the water dropping sound and nothing else after half an hour, I didn't want it to be a repeat of the jungle puzzles so just looked up some hints (useless again. Just saying to listen to the sounds) and ended up on a full solution YouTube video. This video had the fully taken apart sound clips for you to clearly hear the different notes of the two different sounds. If a friend had sent it to me, I would have believed it to be a practical joke because I still could not hear distinct differences between the high/med/low notes even while staring at the literal sound spectrum plots shown in the video. I ended up just trying a handful of combinations of collecting all the dots until it worked.

To wrap up the second day, I finally visited the mountain after turning on all the lasers, I unlocked the door, and got to the second light bridge puzzle before calling it. I remember thinking I was being very smart solving the puzzles in the pile of garbage in the center of the first room and then immediately deflating when I realized it was just a required part to progress to the next room.

Today, my third and final day, started with getting to the bottom of the mountain. The biggest thing that stood out was the column puzzles that made me want to puke from all the motion. It didn't help that my mouse would sometimes just freeze/accelerate and send me spinning around for a second before stopping. The Willy Wonka elevator ride was not what I expected. Once it ended, I reloaded my save and it was while on my way up I noticed the pillar puzzles built into the bottoms of the light bridges so I did those and then then saw extra keyhole puzzle on the bottom of the box at the top while leaving which sent me right back down to do the stuff to end up in the cave area.

The cave area rules. It's got a nice atmosphere, I found the puzzles to be fun because you're just applying everything you've learned like a solid end of semester exam. I think it was when I attempted the orange triangle pillar puzzle and nearly barfed from spinning around that I decided to take a lunch break. When I got back, I tried with it some more, gave up and finished everything else in the area, and then just needed a change of scenery so went back to hunting down the pillar puzzles.

I haven't been pointing them all out but I had been knocking out the pillar puzzles as I went. At this point, I decided to make a directed effort so I went around to each pillar and would take screenshots of a side, go in that direction getting all of them, and then come back to repeat that with another side. I think I had maybe ten left before going back into the caves.

I got lucky with some bullshit on the orange triange pillar. I had given up on thinking like five minutes before so that was a purely vibes based solve. By this point, I was exhausted and could barely hold a thought from two and a half days straight of strainging my brain wrinkles, but that damn record player rejuvanated me.

The first attempt I didn't realize there was more to do after the first three screens. The second I got all the way to the two sets of three before the 'maze'. It was by the fifth attempt I was entering a flow state and was getting into the maze just fine but I think they purposely didn't give you much practice with the triangles throughout the game just so you'll have to learn fast during this bit.

My strat for the maze bit felt a bit wrong but it was working. I was just sprinting full speed into every single wall and barrier and flicking my mouse like I was playing Warzone until I saw a screen lit up. I then wasted a good bit of time after doing both triangle puzzles because I didn't know there were only two until I investigated outside and saw the pillars lit up.

I was probably eight attempts in at that point when I got very very lucky and that fouth puzzle that, as I learned, told you the layout of the maze had a near perfect 90 degree angle solution with the orange dots right next to each other which I noticed lined up with what I saw in the maze and clued me into how that would help.

After a couple more tries, my biggest enemy was just the pillars. I love In the Hall of the Mountain King but Lord it does not help you think like a donut (and cure motion sickness) when trying to solve those pillars. I took a ginger candy and ice cream break to calm my mind and it did wonders because my chakras cleared and I solved that thing first try after that.

Then I loaded up that eclipse video and was immediately suspicious of that perfect white circle on the screen so looked around until I saw the line up and thought I'd get that puzzle done. After five minutes, I realized this would make for a good break to just listen to the lecture. After another five minutes, I realized I couldn't relax because I'm an anxious person and the constant "shimmering" sound of the puzzle line and knowing I could mess it up at the end and have wasted my time meant I couldn't enjoy the lecture, so I instead took a shower, did the dishes, and cleaned up my room while waiting. (I fully intend to actually listen to the lecture which did sound interesting but will do so probably from the comfort of a youtube video playing while I lay down)

I also deduced the use of the code for re enabling the light gate and was giddy that I was right about the sun being used in a puzzle and I assume it was under my nose from the start. What I can't I was excited about was that ending "cutscene". I watched a man detach himself from his piss jug and then walk around while being stoked about circles. This honestly left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I've listended to most of the audio logs and picked up on some of the more obvious themes of philosophy and changing your perspective and I think I understand what that scene is getting at, but the complete 180 in mood from playing the game to a guy pogging at the fact that his dick and balls are circles and lines like the puzzles just kind of ripped me out of any emotional feelings I may have been having.

In conclusion, I looked up the number of total puzzles in the game and am apparenlty short a few of the non-pillar puzzles. I'm sure I didn't find every single audio log, and I wrote up this post as a way to take a break and kill time while dinner cooks and plan to jump back in and enjoy the sights while looking for all the leftover bits and maybe pausing to respond if anyone stumbles across this post.

QUESTIONS:

What is the community's idea of the 'story' of the game? It struck me as more about themes than a story so feel free to share anything like that

What were y'all's favorite bits? Whether it be puzzles or cool sights around the island

Did I miss anything obvious? I know I have a few normal puzzles left to do somewhere and will get those and any remaining audio logs on my own time. I did find a few logs in the caves with the cool 'behind the scenes' stuff.

What is the community's thoughts on circle guy at the end? I assume part of it is just the meta joke of that's how the devs/players feel after walking away from the game and seeing 'puzzles' everywhere.

And I can't think of anything else so feel free to ask me any questions because I'd love to talk more about my experience.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

Beautiful game. Lovely puzzles. Cool subtle mystery. I would have paid double the full price. I wish I could have been there when the game came out and the community was figuring it out hand in hand. And believe me I will be spending the next few days watching and reading plenty about the iceberg of elements I surely overlooked or didn't think as deeply about.

NO THEY FUCKING DID NOT.

THEY KEPT THE NOODLE LIMBS FOR THE ADVENTURE TIME SKINS.

THEY DID IT BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING HOT AND I AGREE AND WILL NOT ACCEPT OTHERWISE.

I’m using a bit of hyperbole but how common of an opinion is this?

Like I’m confident that with a better in-game way of marking suspicions (assigning a few suspected names for a face) and not confirming fates unless the player specifically asks / opts in would have encouraged more actual piecing together of clues.

It’s pretty hard to solve a mystery a second time around that you already know the answers too so why make a system that encourages corner cutting? Presumably it’s to keep you engaged and motivated that you’re on the right track, but who else is paying $20 for a mystery game if they don’t want to solve the mystery.

Even a simple limitation or warning like “hey, I see you’re literally just trying every single name until it locks in, maybe don’t do that if your main goal is to engage in the story“

I dunno man. My playthrough was five hours. To somewhat make notes in-game, I would do things like when I knew I who the Russians were but not who was who, I would just assign one name to each to cross them off the list and then go back and make corrections after learning more. I did the same for the Indians and the Chinese and the Stewards and the Midshipmen and a good few times I would get random auto complete three fates correct because while solving something else it turns out I got lucky with a random name assignment

Anyways

And here are just some of my thoughts, if you care.

When I say I wasn't spoiled, I mean that yesterday I saw the thumbnail of a random video essay on the game titled "something something mystery game", wanted to play a mystery game, saw it was on sale, and I sat down a smidge over six hours ago and just completed all the fates.

First of all, love the art except a lot of the times it was sending my sight for a trip and I would need to take a lap and remember that real life has details and isn't vague outlines. I played the first 10 minutes with it set to Sharp thinking it was a bit too.. sharp (duh) and realized it really should be played on Smooth like it's on an old computer. So yeah it was unique and will be memorable.

As for the actual gameplay, I almost quit at one point. Off the bat, being forced to wait a whole minute or however long for every scene while the music plays out was immediately frustrating. Especially with the 'first' chapter you do being extremely simple I felt I was going crazy seeing the straightforward scene of a man shooting another man and then having to stare at that for another 30 seconds. Oh and the fuckass "follow the smoke trail" bodyception bits where, because I just bloody saw where I need to go, I would walk straight to the next body, wait a little bit, and then realize that the dumbass stupid trail was doing loop-de-loops and only moves when you're close enough to it. (I wanted to blow my head off when the next body to go to would literally be one foot away and the trail would do a whole lap first)

What didn't help is that I had no intention of trying to solve as much in each chapter before finding another; I wanted to get access to all of my clues first, and then solve my mystery like any sensible person. It was about two-thirds of the way through the chapters that I considered quitting and refunding the game, but instead I took a short break. Then I finished the chapters, took a much longer break, and actually enjoyed myself going through each chapter in order steadily churning out deductions.

To be clear about my annoyance with the forced waiting, I understand that the main reason for it is that you're meant to be looking around and taking notes of who's where and what they sound like and what they're doing, but I wasn't taking any notes and going through the story out of order and having to wait forever between seeing the next bits meant a serious case of not caring. I solved the obvious bits as I went, took a lot of mental notes, and after getting through all the chapters just had a ton of "unknown person stabbed/speared/fucked silly by beast"

Anyways, I sat back down for my proper session of solving and have never made so many (correct) assumptions in my life. I see a guy with a knife? That's probably someone who works on the rigging. Fancy hats? That's your Captain's Mates. Saw a couple Stewards had the same shirt so I guess they all do. All the Indians are together. All the Russians are together. I saw a balding looking geezer and immediately thought "that's a fucking George right there" and it was correct. I didn't know what having circles all over you had to do with being from Guinea but I figured a guy looking like that would go by a single name.

It also seemed to be a whole lot of telling white people apart by what they sound like and non-white what they look like. Not saying it doesn't make sense. I just didn't think I would be sitting in my room alone today saying to myself "oh fuck if I've ever seen a Persian before, that's what they'd have looked like" and then clocking the Irishman after he says two words

And I do appreciate that there were so many clues. Like seeing the wedding ring on the lady's finger cements who is who between her and the Miss, but I also had just assumed from the get go that the younger woman wasn't married.

There was one elephant of an issue though. Brute forcing and guessing. One example of just guessing even though it felt wrong was the case of the Surgeon and the other three on the boat. I assume when asked the fate of four people at once, it would be too simple for it to be the same for all. Like I put down Africa for the doc because he said he's in Morroco, but was just kinda disappointed when, out of the big list of places to choose from, I put down the same for the rest as a guess and it was right. I get they were on the same boat, but I thought there might be some different clues saying they dropped some off somewhere else or something. Then there were multiple cases of "there's two or three people of this nationality left so just run through the combinations" (which I fully understand is on me for solving that way)

I will also add that I wasn't the biggest fan of what I considered more ambiguous fates. Like who shot the man accused of murder. Obviously, it was the Captain. I'm here doing insurance or whatever for the Company. The Captain orders the execution. As soon as the next three fates were marked as solved, I knew I had that one wrong and went back to look at who the actual shooters are. Believe me, I really thought that was neat seeing who actually did the kill shot, but it did seem odd. (also, was there a lore reason for everyone else missing?) And then there's the distinction between getting eaten and drowning. Like how is it safe to assume that this creature that is on the offensive is eating all the guys it specifically grabs but also just leaving to drown anyone it happens to knock into the water.

Oh and the guy who gets exploded so hard that there is no body really tripped me up. Unless I misunderstood something, the guy directly touching the tip of the cannon explodes but his body remains for you to inspect and such but the guy behind him was turned to a fine mist.

For a good while, I also kept having issues with trying to find the technically correct cause of death and being confused but I got over that once I remembered that I was doing insurance. Like sure, the guy died from bleeding out or other medical complications but if you put this in a court of law, the murderer and the weapon used was the guy with the sword who cut off the leg (but then this confused me again with the whole bit of the Captain not being considered the killer for the execution)

Finally, that epilogue sucked. I was forced to do more waiting and waiting and finally have the super secret final chapter revealed just to do a lot more waiting between scenes and not really be shown anything at all (seriously, did I miss some story implication here? the reveal is that "The Bargain" was the reason the exact reason the Kraken left and maybe is why the ship showed up after all these years???)

TLDR:

Overall, I enjoyed it. Well worth seven bucks although not sure I ever would have paid full price for it except just to support indie development. It's memorable, well polished, and nostalgic. The story was fairly straightforward but that tends to be the case when things are told non linearly (because it would just get too confusing too quick otherwise) and I fear that the only twist that the final chapter revealed to me was realizing the prickly merwitches had four teats instead of the previously, ignorantly assumed deuce. Also, that fellow in the watch cap sure was a right cunt, aye?

Oh and I am completely open to any sort of explanations for things I missed or simply explaining things from a different perspective.

(or at least a single week)

Everyone is going on and on about how bad the ending is including people trying to support Goose.

This is because with months and months between episode releases, this show has now been going on for years and fans have all that time to create so many theories and stupidly expected the finale to be an hour straight of every single theory being explicitly addressed.

The story of the show isn’t that complicated and never has been. And the entire runtime of the show is five hours. It taking years to release was a limitation of needing to release eps to sell merch to make money to continue working on future eps.

In an alternate world, this show could’ve been made in its entirety and released all at once and been heralded as a concise character drama using elements of computer science and soft sci-fi to convey this story with general inspiration from I Have No Mouth.

Personally, I will think of it as such and appreciate the work Goose did in knowing what story they wanted and seeing it through in such a short amount of time.