Hands On With the Beautiful, Mysterious World of 'The Witness'

For most of my time at E3, I roamed the showroom floor. Sometimes, I ducked into a closed-door demo; other times, I tested out indie creations with developers explaining their concepts. The whole experience was loud. Overwhelming. Chaotic.

So when I sat down in a nearly empty room for an hour to play The Witness, the highly anticipated sophomore game from Jonathan Blow, the first thing that struck me was the quiet. This is a game of patience and focus

To begin, there’s no guide or text to explain your goals when you drop into this world. No wisecracking companion, and not even a thought bubble from my character. For about 20 seconds, I wondered if this game was going to be too opaque, too abstract for my mental state at the time. Then, I was nonverbally presented with the controls in the shortest, simplest tutorial I’ve ever seen, and released into the game Read more...