I mean, the game has the audacity to hide a full, unedited clip of the last ten minutes of Andrei Tarkovsky's film Nostalghia, in which a man tries to carry a lit candle across an empty mineral pool, fails several times, succeeds, and then dies - a possible metaphor for the Sisyphean nature of human existence (or perhaps an analogue to solving The Witness' puzzles?). Thus, the end of your journey becomes the beginning, and the beginning leads to the end - the very cycle of epiphany. You could have found it within minutes of starting a new game, but without the knowledge the island provides, you probably passed right by it without a second thought. The line puzzle hiding this door has been here the whole time. Hidden here, before you solve your first real puzzle, is access to the true ending of The Witness, where the real nature of the island is revealed and you get the game's version of a credits sequence. This is evident right away, as you take your first steps out into the introductory courtyard. But think about the nature of the game: now armed with all of the knowledge of the island, you're set to see the puzzles that gave you a hard time before in a whole new light, while perhaps sussing out even more tricks than you did previously. It's easy to think of this as one last middle finger from Blow as you end where you started, the words "Start a New Game" flashing on the screen, beckoning you to hop right back in and solve the same puzzles again. You enter an ethereal Wonkavator that takes you soaring above the island, and you get to watch as every single puzzle in the game resets, all of your hard work is undone. You're solving puzzles, activating lasers, making your way into the bowels of the mountain, and you finally finish the last few trials at the end of your journey. Now, you're seeing lines everywhere, as well as new images created by a fresh perspective (opens in new tab). Suddenly, The Witness was blown wide open - everything I thought I knew about the game was changed in an instant. I started seeing them everywhere after that moment: in the sky, on the ground, while wandering around the island in the boat.
I did, and what I saw took my breath away: a maze puzzle built out of the environment itself, with a big circle at the start, and a tiny nub at the end. Head to the top of the castle and look down at the maze below, he said. For me, it was a text I got from my friend. For some, it's at the top of the mountain, staring down at the river below. The moment when it happens is different for everyone. Each of these videos offers a different glance at the same reality through a different lens, and all of them can be interpreted as 'true' by people who believe in them.Īnd then, while you're wandering around the island after a dozen hours or so, solving puzzles while staring at the same pieces of architecture, the same clouds, the same trees for a while, something happens. Additional videos provide different modes of thought - one shows new agey gurus speaking of finding one's self, another shows a lecturer from the 1950s discussing that universal truth exists somewhere between science and the abstract, and to devote one's self to one or the other exclusively misses the forest for the trees. Clifford who discuss the nature of doubt. Audio diaries also include teachings of the Buddha, or philosophers like William K.
The witness mountain puzzles code#
A code hidden behind that first complex puzzle door seems inconsequential at first, until you use it in a makeshift theater found underneath the windmill, which then plays a video describing scientists as the "true driving force of humanity".īut that's not the only truth that The Witness provides. One of the diaries mentions the life-changing process of seeing the smallness of the Earth from space (known as the overview effect (opens in new tab)), another mentions a quote from Arthur Eddington describing the scientific impossibility of entering a room. Meanwhile, you're likely noticing those aforementioned stone statues and audio diaries, trying to piece together some semblance of meaning on this island.
But as you explore, you begin to make some order out of chaos, figuring out where various puzzle 'concepts' are located by noting landmarks, and taking the knowledge gleaned from those places and applying them to trickier puzzles throughout the island. This continues while you play, as you notice that some areas are currently inaccessible to you because you lack the knowledge to interact with their puzzle grids.
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