How The Witness fooled us all with a postmodern bait and switch

I love The Witness. It’s a great game. But the more I play it, the more I’m sure that Jonathan Blow was taking the mick out of everyone with it. In an interview with The Guardian, he said he wanted to make video games for people who read Gravity’s Rainbow. Widely considered to be Thomas Pynchon’s magnum opus, Gravity’s Rainbow made TIME magazine’s list of “All-Time 100 Greatest Novels.” Pynchon’s book is a great big amalgamation of beautifully messy imagery that leaves you absolutely clueless as to what actually happened by the time you put it down. Hm…

Video essayist Joseph Anderson posted a video back in 2016, called “The Witness: A Great Game That You Shouldn’t Play”. In it, he attempts to come to terms with Blow’s shenanigans, but never quite does. What I found most interesting about Anderson’s video was his focus on the fact that The Witness absolutely does not respect the player’s time in any way, even though it emphatically claims that it does.

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