Alright. So I'm now a good bit of the way into this game— I've solved almost every puzzle obviously accessible from the main map, I've gotten a good bit into the "hidden"/pillar quest, and I just got the "main" ending. At this point maybe I should ask a question.

Am I actually enjoying any of this?

My reactions to this game are pretty complicated. I've spent about half the time devouring it with an emotion oscillating between fascination and glee, and an also fairly decent chunk of time just incredibly irritated at it. I seem to be externalizing the irritation a lot— I've gotten at least one response to my tweets about the game from someone who was sad because from my tweets they believed I wasn't enjoying it (whereas at the time I received this message, I very much was). Really, I've gotten a lot more happiness than irritation out of this thing, and there's obviously a reason I've been playing it more or less nonstop including weekends since it came out.

Still, I'm scowling at this game a lot, and I'm wondering why.

This might be more about me than about The Witness itself. I am a fairly grumpy person who is at a grumpy place in her life, so it's possible I'm letting small things get to me in a big way. It's definitely the case the things I've reacted negatively to have been… weirdly specific. Actually, almost all of the bad feelings I've gotten have come from the "dictaphones"— the hidden philosophy lectures. I was enjoying the game pretty unreservedly up until I hit the double punch of the BBC clip (the one I wrote the 3.html post about), and a really preachy cryptolibertarian bit about individualism in the quarry (otherwise my very favorite area). Those annoyed me. And then the annoyance stayed with me. The ideology was the main problem. I'd be looking at the beautifully composed visuals, and remember the clip about the inherent worthlessness of art. I'd come across one of the various statues that are supposed to be acting out allegorical scenes, and think about how the scene portrayed becomes kind of weird if you view it through the antisocial worldview implied by the quarry clip. I took the philosophy clips as a view into the creators' mindset, and knowing that mindset seemed to make the work lesser.

I later found out this probably wasn't necessarily an accurate view of that mindset. Apparently the dictaphone clips are not philosophically consistent— they contradict each other, in ways that apparently leave one with a clear impression that Blow or whoever picked the clips was trying to present a series of people earnestly working toward their own kind of truth without suggesting complete or even partial agreement with any specific one of them. I just happened to hit four or so in a specific order that seemed to be all coherent with one another, and also consistent with a reading of the game itself, and also consistent with the mindset of a stereotype of someone who would own a Tesla. So that's kind of nice to be wrong about. One of the things that frustrated me most about the dictaphones was that they lacked any sort of allowance for the idea the author might be wrong, which— well, maybe part of me wants to like a piece of art being completely secure in its convictions without hedging, but it was frustrating given that a thing Braid was really good about was expressing it felt conflicted about its own message.

Unfortunately, even if the dictaphones are less absolutist than I thought, they're still… well… bad. The delivery is dull and smarmy, the quotes are facile enough that regardless of viewpoint diversity I don't want to hear any more of them. Even if you remove the ideology it doesn't help; the game's ending (the one I've found, anyway) has a voiceover from all four dictaphone voices which contains no ideology at all, and it's still eye-rolly and distracting during an otherwise potentially interesting moment.

But, bad or not, they're only one optional part in a pretty large game. Why are they having such a big impact on how I view it? Similarly compare the "bird calls" section; this section is infuriating in a way no other part of the game is, due to a combination of the rabbit hole to kick off the area being awkwardly hidden, the puzzles themselves consisting of ear-piecing noises, and the puzzles (uniquely among all areas in the game) presenting instructions which are ambiguous. The ambiguity means finding answers which seem as reasonable as anything else but also are wrong, and then having to sit there trying to guess what the puzzle designer was thinking (while annoying chirps drill into your skull at irregular intervals). This is a type of puzzle design The Witness mostly wisely eschews. It's also the area I played right before doing the final area. So: On the day I did the final area I burned through two areas I found immensely satisfying; unlocked the final area; misread a piece of signaling at the entrance to the final area, thinking I needed to do one area more; did the bird chirps area; and totally crashed my mood. I then proceeded to do the final area— which is by and large pretty friggin cool— feeling sour, still burning with the thought of the bullshit the (relatively short) bird calls section put me through. Why is this my response?

I am a person who has been claiming for years that when it comes to art I would rather have something interesting than good. If you asked me, I'd say that I'd rather have something which tries for too much ambition and falls short rather than something that attempts a safe target and nails it. At an abstract level, I want to *like* the idea of a creator skullfucking the fourth wall by inserting an unapologetic unfiltered narration of their personal philosophy, even if I disagree with the philosophy completely. Despite these supposedly being my attitudes, the one single element (the dictaphones) that I didn't like in The Witness succesfully negatively colored my perception of the whole thing and my mood while playing it (as well as nearly dominating these play journals), and an all-day play session in which I completed the game was poisoned by the half hour or an hour I spent running the game's one bum area. Why?

It's possible The Witness sets up a scenario where these problems are going to be felt more intensely. At a simplistic level, there's a thing where the incredible polish and meticulousness of The Witness makes one element that feels lazy or out of place burn in a way it wouldn't for a game that was more slapdash overall. Let's ignore that angle though. A problem that interests me more is the nonlinearity. The Witness takes a radical approach to guided nonlinearity, letting you walk nearly anywhere and do nearly anything from the beginning, with gates being subtle and often not actually gates. This is one of The Witness's cooler elements, and it helps make the game's monofocus on puzzles palatable since it means you always have something else to do when you "get stuck". But, having taken this approach can also means the designers have abdicated the ability to guide the experience in a way that makes sure it "works". There's some clever design choices that keep you from doing the *puzzles* in an unfun order, but when it comes to story elements or dictaphones the designers don't have that level of control. This makes it possible for someone to do what I did— get the wrong four dictaphones in the right order, come to a wrong conclusion, and then (because it's all optional anyway) stop listening before their misapprehensions can be corrected.

As far as the puzzles go, it's also the case that The Witness almost never gives you any indication how *important* any one thing you do is— when you solve a puzzle, you usually have no idea if you're opening a new area, advancing the state of a single area, setting up a "black pillar" puzzle, creating the potential to see a pretty view, or doing literally nothing at all. When you get toward the endgame, you have to contend with the possibility that there are *entire areas*, containing entire problem sets, where it is unclear if there is any mechanical reward at all for completion. This is *generally* a cool element— it means you're constantly burning with curiosity at every unsolved mystery because the game hints that it's teeming with secrets and any one door could contain something amazing— but it also sets up the potential for frustrations you wouldn't have in a more guided experience. It means that if there's something you don't care about-- do I really need to do the bird chirp area? do I *HAVE* to enter all the video codes in the basement?-- you feel a pressure to power through it, because maybe you're losing out on something that secretly advances the endgame. And although going to a lot of work for something minor is actually pretty funny when you're enjoying the puzzles, ifyou force yourself to do a part of the game you actually don't *like* and the reward is something goobery, you're going to feel bitter about it.

Maybe?

Or maybe the problem isn't the game?

Like I said, maybe it's me? Maybe I'm making a big deal out of nothing? Maybe my emotional reactions are really about me having doubled my progesterone dosage a few weeks ago? Maybe this is *really* all about (don't ask) me being currently fairly upset at Elon Musk?

Or maybe it *isn't* me? Maybe this is universal, maybe this is how people react to art and video games? Maybe people in general will enjoy a game that does six things right, but not one that attempts and flubs a seventh? Maybe we're wired to punish ambition?

Maybe the human brain is just awful?