Narrative choices in The Witness and in my game

Kyle Halpern

The story elements of the Witness are lacking if only because The Witness itself only has 1 story element. The fact that none of the world you are playing in is real. We can see this because when you beat the game it shows the player taking off plugs and looking around the room searching for the door in real life to leave the house he has been tested or experimented on. The problem lies however with the Witnesses story telling. The world around you has statues of people that almost look like they were frozen. However these people mean nothing to the story as well as all of the abandoned towns and environments that mean nothing to any plot concerning the town that one might initially have expected their to be. I think a solution to this would have been to remove the statues of people since they just mislead the player and tons help with any of the puzzles. I also think that I would have been more helpful if the movie theater at the bottom of the windmill played some clips that were metaphors for the players world not being real as appose to just general philosophy.

In my game world the player is crashing toward the sun. In order to teach players a story I believe the best way might be to show the sun getting closer or maybe the environment becoming more and more red as well as maybe parts of the room starting to light on fire. We could also have story elements by having people running around the room scared, or even having a captain explain the situation and what the player has to do in order to stop the collision. We could also reinforce the idea of fixing the ship by the a teleporter comming on line that would take you to the next floor.