Perhaps the smallest game appearing at the PS4 unveiling back in February was The Witness, something that is all about puzzle-solving in an open world. For the latest Conversation With Creators video, where various developers are interviewed about the PS4, Jonathan Blow, President of Thekla, Inc., discussed his upcoming game:
While Jonathan only provided three comments on the PS Blog, two of them are noteworthy, with the first replying to a user who semi-ranted by saying that The Witness “looks like a low definition Mist game,” “I don’t mean to be belittling to all the hard work you have put into the game but I have to think you should have put this on the ps3 or vita,” and it seems like all you do is “solve puzzle move on solve puzzle move on rinse and repeat.” Here’s Jonathan’s response:
Aren’t most shooter games “shoot guy, shoot guy, move on, rinse and repeat”?
I didn’t realize that solving a puzzle is somehow a less worthwhile activity than shooting a guy!
Secondly, someone asked if The Witness was anything like Myst, with Jonathan saying that it was “definitely inspired by Myst, in terms of the setting and the mood.” Blow then goes on to say that the gameplay is pretty different between the two, and he “always thought there was a lot of potential in first-person adventure games, and that potential never got explored when the genre died. So part of what we are doing with The Witness is going back to that, and saying, knowing what we know now, post-2010, about how to design a good game, what if we went back to this older genre and applied this design knowledge (and applied modern technology!)”
What are your thoughts on The Witness? Let us know in the comments below.
