The Witness - Jonathan Blow (Braid) is making an adventure game
 

Colour me intrigued.

http://the-witness.net/news/

Not much beyond a few concepts on the site as yet, but there are some more details on the intended gameplay in a recent talk (early adventures like Myst apparently among its influences)...

Blow has an interesting take on game design. If Braid is any indication, this could be good.

Interesting! Thanks, ND. Will certainly keep an eye on this.

I really liked Braid...I hope this turns out to be good!

That guy is an incredible game writer/designer. I will be looking forward to this.

Braid was already partially an adventure game. Really looking forward to this.

I haven't played Braid yet, but the fact that he's calling this not an adventure but an "exploration puzzle game" has me excited. For years I've been calling Myst a "puzzle exploration game", because what I get from it really isn't the same as what I get from other adventure games. And in the past few years there haven't been many good exploration games (The only ones that pop into mind offhand are The Path and Small Worlds, and the latter is really short.), so I'm hungry for one.

I'm very happy at Jonathan Blow's choice of genre ;) I'm sure it will be very interesting indeed. The concept art looks great. You can already tell that everything within this game will be there for a reason, and extremely well thought-out.

http://the-witness.net/news/?p=9

I just saw this link over at kotaku. I'm looking forward but I'll try keep my expectations low.

So its using a realtime game engine?

Blah. A Myst game? Do not want.

Whoa man, how'd you get access to my webcam? HACKER!

Love the style of the concept art. I was blown away by Braid, and I believe this is something to watch in the future.

@phantom & dairy: We Already Hate Your Game (TM) :shifty:

You know, it's early days, but Myst seems to be only one of several influences and knowing Blow there will certainly be some deep gameplay mechanics that are explored in various ingenious ways.

Dismissing this as Blow's Myst I'll wager is much like dismissing Braid as a Mario clone...

But... what's wrong with Myst?

Well, this could go either way. The tech screens aren't anything inspiring, but the concepts are. Maybe it will have a good soundtrack like Braid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYb5ql2zYyg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMDEmbhjfnY

I think the music in Braid wasn't original but I didn't really care. They were very calming themes, and it worked.

I think there's nothing wrong with Myst per se, but as a sub-genre it's not to everyone's taste. Personally I can't see it influencing the game in a way that I would consider negative.

saw an update from PAX:

http://kotaku.com/5631002/a-tantaliz...eator-of-braid

"Tantalizing"? Either I am missing something, or this looks like the most unimaginative Myst-clone ever. Just walking from one standalone puzzle to another of exactly the same type through otherwise empty environment? I guess, it coming from the mind behind Braid, we can assume it's only seen a snippet of something much more complex, but that'd be only that - a guess. (And Kotaku reports they didn't particularly emphasise the Jonathan Blow connection at the PAX presentation, so they must have thought the footage is interesting in itself...)

Strange, this is the first time I see that screenshot despite following development on Blow's blog for a while - and subscribing to Kotaku's RSS feed. Looks like a golf course with a giant LEGO windmill as painted by Monet :)

I'm also a bit worried that it will turn out too Myst-like, but I doubt Blow would bother with it unless he had something to add to the genre. If you look at screenshots from Braid, it's an almost archetypal platformer - level layouts based on Donkey Kong and Super Mario, "the Princess is in another castle" etc. Yet the game, when played, is anything but typical.

So, who knows what kind of tricks he has up his sleeve this time? I seem to remember Blow saying that he wanted to explore storytelling, which wasn't really one of Myst's strong points (while I do respect those who enjoyed the narrative in Myst, personally I couldn't care either way about the family squabbles of magic book people).
My guess is that he'll use the Myst-like elements as a recognizable framing device, with the island and logic puzzles spread around to discover, and then somehow subvert our expectations.

Disclaimer: Speculative rambling ahead
The title could indicate that there's some sort of investigative element. Is the player The Witness, if so, what are we witnessing? Perhaps the game is toying with the Myst-clone cliche of exploring an abandoned location where something has happened, and the player gradually expose the facts of said event.
What if the event hasn't happened yet? What if the clues were only evidence of something still underway? Or maybe its about clues being misconstrued entirely? I'm thinking along the lines of meta/anti-mystery films like The Conversation, Blow Up and The Draughtsman's Contract. Though I may just be projecting my own design interests onto Mr. Blow's project, since I now realize two of those movies were among the inspirations for my current game-in-production ;)

Edit: And only after writing all that, I read the article and watch the video :). Puzzles look a bit samey, I had expected more physics stuff. And the journalist already made pretty much the same point about Braid vs. Mario and Witness vs. Myst, sorry for the redundancy.