Hey everyone! This is the first video I've done captions for so they might be a little jank. Let me know when they're borked and I'll get around to fixing them eventually. Thanks!

I had no clue this is what the lake was supposed to function as.

The thing about The Looker is that if you love The Witness, you'll love The Looker, and if you hate The Witness, you'll love The Looker. It's tailor made to appeal to anyone who has any strong opinion on the game it's based on.

I love how this entire review can be somwhat summarized with just "It insists upon itself" completely unironically.

Its peak.

Jonathan blow has something of a history of being mad at the wrong people liking his game or the wrong people not getting it. An infamous example is blows previous game braid. Soulja boy liked and endorsed the game and Jonathan Blow was genuinely sad possibly angry that the wrong person got into it

I like the witness for its visuals, cool puzzles, cool and clever game design etc. I also found out about the witness from Joe's review, but decided to play the game before finishing the spolier section of his review. You have done a really great job with this review too. I think, when just playing this game at a surface level, especially if you don't get stuck on too many puzzles or just look up a guide for any sections you have left at the end, its easy to finish the witness, turn it off and not play it again.

But the more you look at 100%-ing the game, be it the challenge in the caves, all the hidden movies and hidden audio logs, etc. the game asks you to take its themes seriously, and to try and ponder them. And I like the themes, they are interesting to wonder about, and I kinda get that different perspectives each have their own takes. I like the idea that some people can obsess over finding the hidden truth in a game (when compared to the story about Shakespeare), and that some people believe that the Witness has one super-hidden penultimate puzzle that is yet to be discovered.

I guess, with the whole time-wasting, accessibility thing, I guess I naturally don't mind it too much because that only really affects me if I'm going for the optional stuff. A straight main-playthrough of the game is usually fine and balanced enough. If I have further issue with the optional sections, "that's on me" - so I don't get too annoyed. I agree with people's further analysis that it can be pretty pretentious and up itself, but overall I'm just glad we have some good puzzles.  Thank you for the review, worth a sub!

i actually found the "secret ending" before even leaving the first area and i was very confused.

Unironically, I never even heard about the Witness, and instead only knew about The Looker, thanks to Live streamers. I thought that you were talking about that game at first, until it was mentioned it was a parody of it.
Great review, love the explanation of how this video came to be thanks to the Getting over it Review. Gave it a nice segway between videos.

The game is really pretentious but something about the themes of discorvery/perspective/understanding really hit for me. I think you are right that this is kinda thin and doesn't really have much to say on it's own. I think the game want's to be viewed as a meditation where the contemplation is more important than the answer. In this way i see the secret ending is sort of deliberately unsatisfying to push this message but then it's like "yeah so what, it's deliberately unsatisfying". I think you are either captured by it's presentation in which case it really does feel larger than the sum of its parts but if you don't buy in then i totally get how it would just feel tedious and full of itself.

One of my favourite parts about this game is how every single person finds different puzzle mechanics easy or super hard. I seem to be one of the very few people who has an easy time with the Tetris blocks and the atomic star signs, but I can‘t for the life of me make the star pairs and symmetry puzzles happen.

Great video! I played the witness around 7 years ago and I loved the shit out of this game. Looking back at it I do agree with most of your points. It's still a game I want to remember fondly, but to be honest I was one of the most pretentious adolescents out there and the way this game takes itself serious and is super pretentious with showing the player the hidden knowledge and perspectives, I do kinda get why I was drawn to this game back then. Thank you for your take on it, your channel looks highly underrated for the quality of the content, Imma leave a sub :>

Great video, I always felt that the witness on a gameplay and puzzle design was interesting but the more deeper and more philosophical angle was extremely pretentious. Like I remember on a old giantbomb cast where they where talking about the game that it always felt like Jonathan blow was over your shoulder and being smug saying how smart and deep he is, but I always felt he kind of was a dumb man's idea of a smart person since their was very little meaning behind his ideas and mostly did things to seam smart ( like the whole thing being a dream or the random quotes) these same fault are also felt in his other game braid with how asinine some of the secret puzzle are. Also based on some of your complaints on the game you might like the Talos principal a simple portal-like puzzle game with actual deep discussions and some fun puzzles with out of the box ideas

To be fair the looker is a game that people who like the witness enjoy and people who hate the witness enjoy so having more positive reviews make sense =p

the looker reminded me of a myst clone pyst, it's like a law of nature, pretentious puzzle games have their evil twins and knowing that might help you to admire it more. But perhaps there could've been a better comparing material for the video, like a standalone game that excels at what witness tried to achieve and not just some snarky parody, something like antichamber that tries to make you think outside the box rather than falling in line and following the lines the way someone wants you to follow them without ever telling how to do it right. The Witness is a quite narrow minded game to say the least and I understood it thanks to your video.

Would you ever consider maybe talking about (or even just playing) the “The Thing” game? I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Great, thought-out review. You sure deserve way more views

Thanks for mentioning The Snowman, what an absolutely insane film that everyone should see if they wanna see truly bad cinema

While I love The Witness, it reminds of that quote that every man is an island or something.

It’s like the game is a digital representation of Blow’s brain.

I would love to hear your opinions on the Pathologic games!

How is this channel still so small, this is legit high effort content