The Witness was in development for a long time. You might think that part of the reason things took so long was that some of the game’s core design ideas mutated along the way. But a video I shot in 2010 shows that Jonathan Blow’s focus was firmly locked into place even then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ198qkDhVY
The video below comes from IndieCade 2010, which I covered as a freelancer for IFC six years ago. In it, the man who created Braid talks about his aspirations and intention for The Witness. A month before I saw Blow’s talk, Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo played an early version of the game at PAX Prime. Most of the puzzles in that opening section stayed the same but the overall look the game would evolve more over the next half-decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLu7jBLqDds
In his Indiecade 2010 talk, Blow said that The Witness wouldn’t be done for at least a year. It took a while longer but the end result is a beautiful one-of-a-kind game that appears to prove out the beliefs that Blow espoused five years ago.
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