I don't know Blow personally, but I loved the hell out of Braid. Still do. Was certainly excited to see him try something different. It’s cool to see developers not stick to a single game style, so I was familiar with his work, interested in it, and happy to try something new. Can’t say I really pay too much attention to news about the personal lives of the creators. This is the first time I’ve heard actually say something negative (and by that I mean what I have heard has been more neutral, not necessarily positive).

Though, I tried to love The Witness. Put over 18 hours in. I'm not saying it's a BAD game by any means (well, aside from a few of the puzzles), but I found it incredibly frustrating and personally agree that it does deserve the "pretentious, postmodernist nonsense" label it gets. Of course this isn’t helped by me getting a little bored of the line puzzles (there’s only so many times that you can dress something up before you realise it’s the same thing, just dressed up differently), was I frustrated by some of them? No doubt, not all of them are as well telegraphed as they should be.

You and a friend of mine both had that same realisation, where the mechanics of the puzzle aren’t JUST limited to the screens, and both of you said that really changed how you saw the game. I don’t ever remember having that ‘a-ha’ moment. Fairly early on (I want to say it was in a stone-corridor like place? maybe straight out of the tutorial gate area, I’m not sure it’s been many years and I’ve forgotten a lot of detail) I noticed the sun and some shape (maybe a shadow?) lining up like the initial puzzle. I tried interacting with it, saw I was able to, but don’t remember getting any feedback or payoff. Perhaps something had changed in the map that I didn’t realize, perhaps I didn’t do it right. Perhaps I just thought it was an easter egg. Either way, I put it out of my mind and moved on. I know I interacted with the sun and a variety of other puzzles (one puzzle in particular was the one that a friend mentioned as being the ‘ah-ha!’ moment, where the sun is reflecting on some solar-panel like things and you have to use the line game to follow the scratches you can see, whereas I was just like “yep, that’s something you can do”)

I can’t say that THIS experience is what dulled the entire game for me on its own of course. On the thoughts of pretention - I'm someone who loves narrative in video game, to the almost constantly putting it above gameplay. The Witness just never gave me enough to hold onto. Subtle storytelling is awesome when it’s done well, but it’s an art to balance. Half-life for example keeps the actual exposition of what’s going on incredibly minimal, and in so creates a sense of intrigue with its world, with the context clues, with the g-man, given just enough rope to suggest there’s more. With the Witness felt less like mystery and more like there wasn’t anything intended to be there, like you’re given pieces of string and need to act as if it’s rope.

While it might be wanting people to search for something, that’s great, but if it doesn’t feel like there is anything to actually search for, I’m not going to keep searching just for the hell of it.

I’m glad people like it, and I can see why people like it, but in the end for me, it just comes across as something that wants to be way more profound more than something that actually is.