Zachary Talis > Blog

Oblique Details in The Witness (Part 2, oh golly)

March 27th, 2022

Be warned, full-game spoilers ahead!

These divots in the castle wall suggest a missing staircase.

One of the tower interiors within Castle. Blue flowers bloom beside a solved panel.

You can't solve this panel from a distance, which deftly prevents the game shattering to bits.

From an overhead wall, Castle's gate panel remains unlocked but empty.

This guided route is super lovely. A tree and shrubs block your view of anything but the vista. Vibrant bushes keep your eye dead ahead.

The path outside of Castle: a gentle dirt slope upwards towards a bright vista.

These flower colors overflow from the roof...

The top of Color Lab features colored rows of flowers. These rows extend to the rocky path below.

...and these flower colors elaborate upon the "tinted room" tutorial.

In Color Lab's pink-tinted room, flower rows demonstrate a manipulated perception of color.

This line of cruft suggests an eternal low tide...

The beach outside Jungle has a high-tide line of what appears to be seaweed.

...and this empty tidepool does the same.

On Symmetry, a dried-up tidepool rests above a filled-in-with-water tidepool.

Vases foreshadow the climactic symmetry sequence.

On the left, colored binary vases rest upon pedestal pairs. On the right, symmetry panels lay in similar pairs.

The panels emit tones of varying pitch. As you walk forward, the stereo image converges: two symmetrical sounds unify!

A labelled demonstration of Symmetry's stereo image illusion. The left side's low frequencies increase in pitch, while the right side's high frequencies decrease in pitch. As such, a wide stereo image thins out.

Take note of this dip in the wall, which accommodates a line-end.

Mountain's dual-path puzzle features an exit with a rounded divot beneath.

Same deal here!

A brick wall in Keep is shattered to make room for a rounded divot.

To hint at where ya need to go, Keep's flowery outgrowth hops a wall.

An arched flower bush extends over a wall that blocks the way forward.

Witness lumber divvied, right-to-left!

In Quarry's logging facility, a saw-laden conveyor belt sports planks of decreasing thickness.

This attention-seeking tree takes the place of a pillar in Monastery's grid.

The broken brick corner in Monastery features a tree trunk that greedily snags the spot of a pillar.

Curtains sway gently in the cool ocean breeze.

A close-up of one of Monastery's red dividing curtains.

An ever-accommodating wooden platform makes way for its rocky pal. Something about living with nature and taking things as they are...

The wooden bridge over Monastery's pond features a cutout for an adjacent rock.

Symmetry strikes again: solving this rotational vault puzzle moves us from cool blues to vibrant yellows.

An open vault door stands between a blue concrete interior and yellow mossy overhang.

A perch exists to tick overexcited players off: "this environmental puzzle is sooo close to working"

Quarry's train track puzzle as seen from above. Nearly solvable!

These arches remain in spirit.

A repaied bridge in Town utilizes the remnants of preexisting stone arches.

Here's the only panel in the game with a line that reflects sunlight back 'atcha.

Town's laser reflection panel has a tiny glowing line-end.

In the classic Tree of Many Faces: this face reads as a man's from one side, and as a woman's from the other. The man's even got stubble!

The tree as seen from opposite sides. Leafless background trees form the man's stubble.

A close-up of the geometry that makes the magic happen 🪄

A triangular divot in the tree makes the woman's nose pointier.

The width of this doorway lends itself to pretty framing.

The doorway besides Theater frames the theater screen perfectly.

Each sub-cable has hot, neutral, and ground sub-sub-cables.

The split-up cable beside theater used for the eclipse puzzle.

One last speculative detail: the big woman's releasing a bird!

As seen from the side, the outstretched woman statue appears to release a bird-shaped tree branch.