First official trailer for The Witness

as seen in today's PlayStation 4 announcement:



(Watch it in HD + fullscreen if you have the bandwidth!)

78 Comments:

  1. So, puzzle mechanic speculation time!

    Not much to go on for the unmarked tablets (external clues involved, I’m guessing), and the black-and-white dots were previously explained somewhere. For the green dots: they’re sort of tetris-pieces that need to cover the areas your line divides the tablets into. The dots themselves do not necessarily have to fall into the corresponding tetris-piece, however. For the folding bridge puzzles: I was thinking of some sort of symmetry rule, or having to go around dots of a certain color in certain ways, but nothing seems to fit all the solutions there. So, no clue on that. Seems to be on the more devious side.

    • Oh, cool with the green dots, I thought it was just corresponding to the sum of green dots equals the area of the partition (though the tetris condition works and is more interesting as an added constraint.)

      My only guess for the folding bridge is that each partition has to contain an even number of each color’s dots, at least that’s the only thing I can think of immediately that would hold on those visible puzzles.

      If anyone didn’t see the black/white, I believe you just need to make sure no black and white occupy the same partition.

  2. The trailer is amazingly put together…I imagine it must have been quite stressful to put it together for the PS4 conference…
    In any case, I’m glad you shared this, and I can’t wait to try the finished product!

  3. Well, I have a Windows machine with a Core 2 Duo and a Radeon 4850, and a newer Linux machine with a 2500k but no discrete GPU, and I hope I can play this on one or the other by the end of this year.

  4. Wow, the visual art and the music of the teaser looks so amazing, if the puzzles are deep and incredible, just like Braid, i will explode. I can’t wait :DD!!

  5. It looks absolutely beautiful and intriguing, I think with this trailers and all the posts you’ve created, you would find it hard to pique my interest anymore than you already have. It looks like you’ve created a world that people (read: I) will want to explore and immediately (from showing someone failing the ‘simple’ line puzzle) I can see how the puzzles are going to incremently teach us the mechanics. Good luck with the rest, and don’t let the trigger-happy reactions put you off.

  6. I’ve noticed a room with plants illuminated by a bright green light. AFAIK, plants use red and blue parts of the spectrum for photosynthesis, so they will probably starve on a green light diet.

    • I’m thinking that Jonathan Blow knows about this and made it like that for a purpose; after all, this is a game where everything has a purpose.

      • Wow. What an amazing insight.

        That struck me in my heart.

        Why are games so caught up in teaching players about their own rules when there’s so much about the universe which already exists that can be taught?

  7. Hey!
    You went this way i proposed year or two ago to make gfx not so realistic, but more like painting (torchlight or Battlefield Heroes), same with clouds.

    I watched the trailer and it looks beautiful! Amazing work!

    Congratulation on being on PS4 conference too!

  8. BTW Can u pls publish more Concept Arts? I

  9. This is resurfacing feelings of nostalgia from my favorite childhood games–Twinsen’s Odyssey or Myst, for example. The art direction is stunning; whoever is responsible is serving you well.

  10. After I saw the trailer, I scoured the web for more information — reading Stephen Totilo’s initial (spoilery!) impressions has made me really interested in this game.

    What kind of atmosphere will it have? Looks like the mood changes along with the theme as you move throughout the island, but do some sections affect that ‘creepy’ Myst-like mood that sets the player on edge?

  11. Is there a chance you could release a blog post on the rock formation/cloud asset pipeline?

  12. Any ideas on the lyrics? The song had me hooked, but the words are driving me crazy. Any hints, Mr. Blow, or must I guess? (Not that I have any problem with guessing.)

    • The song is “Glass Window” from the group “Mediaeval Baebes” (http://www.mediaevalbaebes.com)

      Lyrics from an unofficial site:

      “Through the glass window shines the sun
      Through the glass window shines the sun
      And I so young

      Through the glass window shines the sun
      Through the glass window shines the sun
      How should I, how should I, how should I love?
      How should I, how should I, how should I love?

      The silver is white, the red is the gold
      The robes, they lay in fold
      They lay in fold
      How should I, how should I, how should I love?”

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