fontiago
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Unicorn Overlord
2024
Coming to this from 13 Sentinels it is almost precisely the opposite of what I expected. Where 13S has a phenomenal plot full of complexity, mystery, and deep characterization, UO's written like generic pulp fantasy—no, not even that, like a monster-of-the-week TV show apisiring to generic pulp fantasy. But where 13S's combat feels sloggy and bolted-on, UO's is consistently fun and reasonably engaging.
The core failing of the game is the fact that word, "reasonably". Although battles in the game are never boring, the systems promise far more than they're actually able to deliver. The game is stuck between two worlds: a stolid traditional Attack Magic Item Flee system and an FFXII-style fully automated luxury battlesim. It's straining towards the latter and it almost manages to grasp it, but the small gap remaining makes all the difference.
The goal of a system like this is to elicit in the player strategic thinking. Consider which characters complement one another's skills, which skills are useful in which circumstances, how to make a unit that's flexible, powerful, and effective against the present challenge. Find clever combinations of skills and equipment that exploit holes in your enemies' defenses. This is what Unicorn Overlord wants, and it's what it narrowly misses.
This is how a battle goes: your unit (composed of several characters) bumps into an enemy unit. Each unit is arranged on its own 3x2 grid, and each character has a set of active and passive actions they use under certain user-defined conditions in initiative order as long as they have resources. You can customize these before the battle, swap equipment with anything in storage, and the game will tell you how much net damage you will deal and how much you will take. Once you're satisfied with your setup, you hit go and the battle plays out automatically. Since resources are very limited, most battles only last a few "turn cycles" as they would exist in a Dragon Quest style system.
In practice, this system has a few critical issues. The first and most noticeable is the degree of variance in each battle. Whether hits are critical or miss entirely is up to the random number generator, which is of course quite sensitive to initial conditions—as indeed are the deterministic behaviors of a battle. This means that you can change a prospective battle from losing to winning often enough by simply rearranging your characters or toggling skills on and off arbitrarily, a practice which quickly overwhelms the amount of time you spend on actual tactical decisions.
The ability to change a unit's programming for each battle also erodes the gap between this system and something more traditional. With some finagling, you can usually choose fairly specifically which enemy will be hit by which attack, allowing you to essentially route around the automation and pre-plan a more standard RPG battle. That level of customizability undermines the conceit of programming.
At the furthest extreme, because you can swap any equipment with anything in storage before a battle or between battles, in principle the best way to play is to keep all your top-tier gear unequipped and just swap it on each unit before they fight and off once they're done. I couldn't bring myself to go to such noxious lengths most of the time, but I did keep a few "just in case" initiative boosters around.
I hypothesize that this game would be substantially more fun if you voluntarily chose not to change your unit's loadout after deploying them. I just wish this were something that was built into the game, rather than something players have to turn to upon discovering that the game doesn't live up to its own goals.
The core failing of the game is the fact that word, "reasonably". Although battles in the game are never boring, the systems promise far more than they're actually able to deliver. The game is stuck between two worlds: a stolid traditional Attack Magic Item Flee system and an FFXII-style fully automated luxury battlesim. It's straining towards the latter and it almost manages to grasp it, but the small gap remaining makes all the difference.
The goal of a system like this is to elicit in the player strategic thinking. Consider which characters complement one another's skills, which skills are useful in which circumstances, how to make a unit that's flexible, powerful, and effective against the present challenge. Find clever combinations of skills and equipment that exploit holes in your enemies' defenses. This is what Unicorn Overlord wants, and it's what it narrowly misses.
This is how a battle goes: your unit (composed of several characters) bumps into an enemy unit. Each unit is arranged on its own 3x2 grid, and each character has a set of active and passive actions they use under certain user-defined conditions in initiative order as long as they have resources. You can customize these before the battle, swap equipment with anything in storage, and the game will tell you how much net damage you will deal and how much you will take. Once you're satisfied with your setup, you hit go and the battle plays out automatically. Since resources are very limited, most battles only last a few "turn cycles" as they would exist in a Dragon Quest style system.
In practice, this system has a few critical issues. The first and most noticeable is the degree of variance in each battle. Whether hits are critical or miss entirely is up to the random number generator, which is of course quite sensitive to initial conditions—as indeed are the deterministic behaviors of a battle. This means that you can change a prospective battle from losing to winning often enough by simply rearranging your characters or toggling skills on and off arbitrarily, a practice which quickly overwhelms the amount of time you spend on actual tactical decisions.
The ability to change a unit's programming for each battle also erodes the gap between this system and something more traditional. With some finagling, you can usually choose fairly specifically which enemy will be hit by which attack, allowing you to essentially route around the automation and pre-plan a more standard RPG battle. That level of customizability undermines the conceit of programming.
At the furthest extreme, because you can swap any equipment with anything in storage before a battle or between battles, in principle the best way to play is to keep all your top-tier gear unequipped and just swap it on each unit before they fight and off once they're done. I couldn't bring myself to go to such noxious lengths most of the time, but I did keep a few "just in case" initiative boosters around.
I hypothesize that this game would be substantially more fun if you voluntarily chose not to change your unit's loadout after deploying them. I just wish this were something that was built into the game, rather than something players have to turn to upon discovering that the game doesn't live up to its own goals.
This review contains spoilers
they really should just commit to making a musical at this point
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Following up on remake's worst tendencies, the rest of disc 1 of final fantasy 7 is turned into a low stakes road trip game. Seeing the 7 party banter and have fun is enjoyable, it was my favorite part of this game, but it comes at the cost of making this game's pacing bizarre. Every town the party exclaims "let's hang out for a bit and have some fun!" even though all they've been doing is hanging out and having fun the entire game. Another downside to the hanging out is the character writing is way less consistent in this game than in Remake. Remake’s characterization of everyone was rock solid and well done, whereas stuff like Tifa and Aerith forming the weird Anime Girl Hivemind in most scenes they share here was really awkward. The additions of Elena, Yuffie, and Cait Sith were all really well done though, those three really shine in this game.
Every open world section between towns is completely cut off and unrelated to the rest of the game, and unlike FF’s last open world game, party interaction or dialogue is completely absent unless you’re on a sidequest. The maps are filled with Tasks to do, and none of it matters or even gives you much besides some light combat challenges or minigames (though the game is not in short supply of these, wow). Chadley and Mai are the only two characters in 90% of the open world, and while they’re fun, the world feels so strange and empty the entire game.
Despite my slight disappointment with the open world though, nearly all of my negative feelings on this game are centered on its story. Despite all of the fuss of the last game, this game rarely deviates from final fantasy 7’s plot, and even when it does it quickly snaps back into line, seemingly afraid you’ll actually have anything interesting to ponder during the 100+ hours it’ll ask of you.
Every emotional scene of the original is recreated here, but always with a terrible twist. Barret and Dyne are having a deeply emotional confrontation, the fight is compelling, the voice acting is well done, the scene is working BUT WAIT the camera pans from Barret clutching Dyne’s body to Palmer the goofy Shinra man in a dumb mech for a comedy boss fight in the middle of the cutscene for absolutely no reason. The return to Dyne after the fight as if the moment could still possibly work was so insane I set the controller down to just sit, stunned, for a minute. After a massively protracted dungeon, Red XIII is finally learning the truth about his father, the statue sheds a tear, the music is swelling, and the camera swings to the side to reveal an unhinged tribal caricature ghost man who opens the wall to lead you to a new dungeon about how the Cetra are now racist and so we can give the black materia Lore instead of it being part of the very obvious metaphor of the original.
These twists are all leading to The Moment though, the one everyone’s been debating about since Remake came out, Are They Going To Kill Aerith Again? And to answer that question, awful MCU brainrot has been introduced, with a new AU timeline where Zack is around (though it amounts to basically nothing) and Sephiroth 2 from the last game trying to combine the multiverses to ensure the plot of final fantasy 7 happens as it did originally (for some reason???) and fighting Cloud at a different edge of creation from the last game, and blowing a Sephiroth boss form from the end of 7 for good measure. All of this culminates in Cloud saving Aerith, but the game saying “just kidding” and killing her anyway. Even the scenes after her death are ruined by cutting the burial altogether, a completely baffling move.
In the end, I’m walking away from Rebirth with a bad taste in my mouth, but I still had fun throughout. Despite the open world feeling strange and the game feeling much too long, the gameplay part was pretty fun! Several of the minigames were engaging, the open world was good looking, andTriple Triad 2 Queen’s Blood was genuinely really fun. I really enjoyed the battle system this time too, it clicked way better for me this time than it did in Remake. It’s no FF13 ATB but it’s pretty good. It’s just a shame about the rest of it.
(Also, this is mostly a consequence of the game not being static detailed backgrounds anymore but FF7 has some truly incredible backgrounds, and shinra manor and the forgotten capital were some of the strongest in the original game. Rebirth shinra manor being one floor and a characterless basement and the forgotten capital being two screens long and filled with dementors from the last game was deeply disappointing compared to the remarkable atmosphere the original backgrounds had.)
((also holy shit 3D brawler is the hardest thing in the game by a huge margin, i think that minigame is evil))
-
Following up on remake's worst tendencies, the rest of disc 1 of final fantasy 7 is turned into a low stakes road trip game. Seeing the 7 party banter and have fun is enjoyable, it was my favorite part of this game, but it comes at the cost of making this game's pacing bizarre. Every town the party exclaims "let's hang out for a bit and have some fun!" even though all they've been doing is hanging out and having fun the entire game. Another downside to the hanging out is the character writing is way less consistent in this game than in Remake. Remake’s characterization of everyone was rock solid and well done, whereas stuff like Tifa and Aerith forming the weird Anime Girl Hivemind in most scenes they share here was really awkward. The additions of Elena, Yuffie, and Cait Sith were all really well done though, those three really shine in this game.
Every open world section between towns is completely cut off and unrelated to the rest of the game, and unlike FF’s last open world game, party interaction or dialogue is completely absent unless you’re on a sidequest. The maps are filled with Tasks to do, and none of it matters or even gives you much besides some light combat challenges or minigames (though the game is not in short supply of these, wow). Chadley and Mai are the only two characters in 90% of the open world, and while they’re fun, the world feels so strange and empty the entire game.
Despite my slight disappointment with the open world though, nearly all of my negative feelings on this game are centered on its story. Despite all of the fuss of the last game, this game rarely deviates from final fantasy 7’s plot, and even when it does it quickly snaps back into line, seemingly afraid you’ll actually have anything interesting to ponder during the 100+ hours it’ll ask of you.
Every emotional scene of the original is recreated here, but always with a terrible twist. Barret and Dyne are having a deeply emotional confrontation, the fight is compelling, the voice acting is well done, the scene is working BUT WAIT the camera pans from Barret clutching Dyne’s body to Palmer the goofy Shinra man in a dumb mech for a comedy boss fight in the middle of the cutscene for absolutely no reason. The return to Dyne after the fight as if the moment could still possibly work was so insane I set the controller down to just sit, stunned, for a minute. After a massively protracted dungeon, Red XIII is finally learning the truth about his father, the statue sheds a tear, the music is swelling, and the camera swings to the side to reveal an unhinged tribal caricature ghost man who opens the wall to lead you to a new dungeon about how the Cetra are now racist and so we can give the black materia Lore instead of it being part of the very obvious metaphor of the original.
These twists are all leading to The Moment though, the one everyone’s been debating about since Remake came out, Are They Going To Kill Aerith Again? And to answer that question, awful MCU brainrot has been introduced, with a new AU timeline where Zack is around (though it amounts to basically nothing) and Sephiroth 2 from the last game trying to combine the multiverses to ensure the plot of final fantasy 7 happens as it did originally (for some reason???) and fighting Cloud at a different edge of creation from the last game, and blowing a Sephiroth boss form from the end of 7 for good measure. All of this culminates in Cloud saving Aerith, but the game saying “just kidding” and killing her anyway. Even the scenes after her death are ruined by cutting the burial altogether, a completely baffling move.
In the end, I’m walking away from Rebirth with a bad taste in my mouth, but I still had fun throughout. Despite the open world feeling strange and the game feeling much too long, the gameplay part was pretty fun! Several of the minigames were engaging, the open world was good looking, and
(Also, this is mostly a consequence of the game not being static detailed backgrounds anymore but FF7 has some truly incredible backgrounds, and shinra manor and the forgotten capital were some of the strongest in the original game. Rebirth shinra manor being one floor and a characterless basement and the forgotten capital being two screens long and filled with dementors from the last game was deeply disappointing compared to the remarkable atmosphere the original backgrounds had.)
((also holy shit 3D brawler is the hardest thing in the game by a huge margin, i think that minigame is evil))
>look for a new ace attorney game
>ask Capcom if their game is satire or shonen
>they don't understand
>pull up a diagram explaining what is satire and what is shonen
>they laugh and say "It's a good game sir"
>buy the game
>it's shonen
>ask Capcom if their game is satire or shonen
>they don't understand
>pull up a diagram explaining what is satire and what is shonen
>they laugh and say "It's a good game sir"
>buy the game
>it's shonen
This review contains spoilers
Peak Ace Attorney ngl. I love this game. I can't speak to how much I love both of these games. If you love Ace Attorney, maybe you'll like this more. If you haven't tried AA at all, luckily you don't need any background to the franchise other than that this is ultimately a visual novel so be prepared for a lot of text!
I want to give so much thanks to the translators who put their heart and soul into giving each character such a distinct voice. Like. Reading Gina's lines are a JOY to read. They really put research into how these characters talk in relation to the time period DGS is set in, and also in relation to the character's upbringing.
A thing I love about Ace Attorney is their utilization of text. The games only have so many voiced lines, and so they bring life to their characters by animating the text as they see fit. It's great. It's wonderful. It's a masterclass way to showcase how a character sounds like without even having to make them say anything.
ALSO. They fucking WALK. I wish I could explain how amazed I was as I watched Ryuunosuke walk as he contemplated the jury's testimonies. (Yes, I know Edgeworth walks in AAI but walking in AAI is more of an actual mechanic than just pure animation like in the case of DGS.)
The cases are also such a joy to play through. I really loved the latter half of the game, though mainly it's since the first had to give us all that exposition to make it pay off properly. Having Kazuma "die" in 1-2, and discovering that it was not due to anything malicious tore me apart. Seeing Ryuunosuke embody everything Kazuma couldn't be --- with the way he slowly grows into being a defense lawyer. Watching Gina begin to turn her life around after 1-5 and seeing it get ripped from underneath her as Gregson was not only killed but be part of the very thing she was trying to escape from. The way Susato decided to go back with Ryuunosuke instead of sticking with Kazumi after he ROSE FROM THE DEAD. SHOLMES AND IRIS FOUND FAMILY. DGS is so good with presenting such a lovable cast that I genuinely missed them once I finished the game.
This game is so good, man. Will play again.
I want to give so much thanks to the translators who put their heart and soul into giving each character such a distinct voice. Like. Reading Gina's lines are a JOY to read. They really put research into how these characters talk in relation to the time period DGS is set in, and also in relation to the character's upbringing.
A thing I love about Ace Attorney is their utilization of text. The games only have so many voiced lines, and so they bring life to their characters by animating the text as they see fit. It's great. It's wonderful. It's a masterclass way to showcase how a character sounds like without even having to make them say anything.
ALSO. They fucking WALK. I wish I could explain how amazed I was as I watched Ryuunosuke walk as he contemplated the jury's testimonies. (Yes, I know Edgeworth walks in AAI but walking in AAI is more of an actual mechanic than just pure animation like in the case of DGS.)
The cases are also such a joy to play through. I really loved the latter half of the game, though mainly it's since the first had to give us all that exposition to make it pay off properly. Having Kazuma "die" in 1-2, and discovering that it was not due to anything malicious tore me apart. Seeing Ryuunosuke embody everything Kazuma couldn't be --- with the way he slowly grows into being a defense lawyer. Watching Gina begin to turn her life around after 1-5 and seeing it get ripped from underneath her as Gregson was not only killed but be part of the very thing she was trying to escape from. The way Susato decided to go back with Ryuunosuke instead of sticking with Kazumi after he ROSE FROM THE DEAD. SHOLMES AND IRIS FOUND FAMILY. DGS is so good with presenting such a lovable cast that I genuinely missed them once I finished the game.
This game is so good, man. Will play again.
This review contains spoilers
I wasn't crazy hyped up about this game but since I'm a huge Danganronpa fan I had always intended to play it when it came out and hearing Kodaka hype it up so much got me very excited. Unfortunately, it was pretty mid.
Good points:
- The visual design is amazing. Kanai Ward is beautiful and everything is spectacularly detailed. I loved exploring in my free time.
- The world building is actually very good, not just through the visuals but through the story itself. Each part of Kanai Ward that you explore has an interesting story to tell and the side quests, while not the most engaging gameplay wise, make it even better, with otherwise great additions to characters seen in previous chapters. And while the overarching plot isn't perfect, the lore beyond Kanai Ward and everything that's happened is actually very interesting and it was fun to see it develop through the story.
- The characters are all fun, quirky, and likable. Unfortunately the way they're developed and used in the plot leaves a lot to be desired.
Bad points:
- Mystery labyrinths suck. What made class trials in DR fun was that they were discussions, and while not always the case progression through them for the most part felt natural. What's more, they served as vehicles for characterization of not just the protagonist but everyone else. Mystery labyrinths don't have that, with most of the actual mystery solving having Shinigami ask Yuma a question, and then him answering and going on a long explanation. Having your investigation partner go into the labyrinth with you was cool I guess, especially in Vivia's case, but it wasn't used to its full potential. Combined with the fact that the suspects of each case don't actually appear in the labyrinth as more than strawman arguments, you don't really get anything interesting out of them either, which makes it worse when the grand majority of them are as flat as it gets, which brings me to my next point...
2. The character writing. I know Kodaka can write killer characters, and Raincode was a massive disappointment for me on that front. The main cast is all likable but are severely underdeveloped unless you do their quick time events, but what makes it worse is that they hardly interact amongst each other. Chapter 4's conclusion could have been heartbreaking but I couldn't find myself caring about Yuma and Vivia's sadness and gratitude toward Yakou because I had spent the last three chapters outside of the agency solving completely disconnected cases on my own. The case-specific characters and peacekeepers are all really cool and interesting but they instantly get discarded afterwards through death or imprisonment, aside from the few that do get those aforementioned side quests. It makes me think that the initial three chapter cases, settings, etc could have been expanded to take up a more important part of the world/story. I'd play the shit out of a game where the central story revolves around girls from the high school. Anyway, the only characters that felt fleshed out by the end of the 45 hour game were Yuma and Makoto. The thing is Yuma was incredibly bland most of the game, and up until the last chapter his arc but revealing the truth was just copy and pasted from Saihara's in V3. On that note- and this isn't a criticism, because the two games have wildly different stories- but Raincode putting the revelation of the truth (with compassion, of course) on a pedestal was very jarring after Kodaka's last big game ending with the idea that it doesn't matter what's a truth or a lie, but rather what you take from it.
- The epilogue bothered me. The revelation of Kanai Ward's greatest secret should be all means bring about some good, but it should also bring about plenty of turmoil because that shit would completely rock anybody's brain. I'm not sure how far after Chapter 5 the epilogue is supposed to take place but anything short of like two years feels unbelievable. Like the townspeople just do not seem as bothered as I think they should be that they are not only literally artificial but they had outright slaughtered their human counterparts and Amaterasu had kept this a complete secret from them for three years and also had them eat human flesh. It also feels ridiculous that Makoto did all that to cover the truth up only for body cream and nutritious ramen to be so easily found as solutions. It's just meh as fuck.
Overall, I had a good time with Raincode, but I thought it played it too safe. The characters are safe, the cases are safe- I need Kodaka to scalp me again. The last chapter did have some of those "oh my god holy fuck" moments I miss from Danganronpa, the two that stood out to me the most being the meat bun reveal and the pink blood one (that gagged me so hard in particular, it felt like knowing V3=53) for the first time. I will say, that, overall, Raincode makes much more sense as an narrative than any DR game, and while there's at least one deus ex machina per chapter for every time Yuma completes a mystery labyrinth, there aren't many moments where you'd think "this is fucking ridiculous" (again, like the blood reveal), but I think, if it did have more of those moments, i would have enjoyed it a lot more.
Good points:
- The visual design is amazing. Kanai Ward is beautiful and everything is spectacularly detailed. I loved exploring in my free time.
- The world building is actually very good, not just through the visuals but through the story itself. Each part of Kanai Ward that you explore has an interesting story to tell and the side quests, while not the most engaging gameplay wise, make it even better, with otherwise great additions to characters seen in previous chapters. And while the overarching plot isn't perfect, the lore beyond Kanai Ward and everything that's happened is actually very interesting and it was fun to see it develop through the story.
- The characters are all fun, quirky, and likable. Unfortunately the way they're developed and used in the plot leaves a lot to be desired.
Bad points:
- Mystery labyrinths suck. What made class trials in DR fun was that they were discussions, and while not always the case progression through them for the most part felt natural. What's more, they served as vehicles for characterization of not just the protagonist but everyone else. Mystery labyrinths don't have that, with most of the actual mystery solving having Shinigami ask Yuma a question, and then him answering and going on a long explanation. Having your investigation partner go into the labyrinth with you was cool I guess, especially in Vivia's case, but it wasn't used to its full potential. Combined with the fact that the suspects of each case don't actually appear in the labyrinth as more than strawman arguments, you don't really get anything interesting out of them either, which makes it worse when the grand majority of them are as flat as it gets, which brings me to my next point...
2. The character writing. I know Kodaka can write killer characters, and Raincode was a massive disappointment for me on that front. The main cast is all likable but are severely underdeveloped unless you do their quick time events, but what makes it worse is that they hardly interact amongst each other. Chapter 4's conclusion could have been heartbreaking but I couldn't find myself caring about Yuma and Vivia's sadness and gratitude toward Yakou because I had spent the last three chapters outside of the agency solving completely disconnected cases on my own. The case-specific characters and peacekeepers are all really cool and interesting but they instantly get discarded afterwards through death or imprisonment, aside from the few that do get those aforementioned side quests. It makes me think that the initial three chapter cases, settings, etc could have been expanded to take up a more important part of the world/story. I'd play the shit out of a game where the central story revolves around girls from the high school. Anyway, the only characters that felt fleshed out by the end of the 45 hour game were Yuma and Makoto. The thing is Yuma was incredibly bland most of the game, and up until the last chapter his arc but revealing the truth was just copy and pasted from Saihara's in V3. On that note- and this isn't a criticism, because the two games have wildly different stories- but Raincode putting the revelation of the truth (with compassion, of course) on a pedestal was very jarring after Kodaka's last big game ending with the idea that it doesn't matter what's a truth or a lie, but rather what you take from it.
- The epilogue bothered me. The revelation of Kanai Ward's greatest secret should be all means bring about some good, but it should also bring about plenty of turmoil because that shit would completely rock anybody's brain. I'm not sure how far after Chapter 5 the epilogue is supposed to take place but anything short of like two years feels unbelievable. Like the townspeople just do not seem as bothered as I think they should be that they are not only literally artificial but they had outright slaughtered their human counterparts and Amaterasu had kept this a complete secret from them for three years and also had them eat human flesh. It also feels ridiculous that Makoto did all that to cover the truth up only for body cream and nutritious ramen to be so easily found as solutions. It's just meh as fuck.
Overall, I had a good time with Raincode, but I thought it played it too safe. The characters are safe, the cases are safe- I need Kodaka to scalp me again. The last chapter did have some of those "oh my god holy fuck" moments I miss from Danganronpa, the two that stood out to me the most being the meat bun reveal and the pink blood one (that gagged me so hard in particular, it felt like knowing V3=53) for the first time. I will say, that, overall, Raincode makes much more sense as an narrative than any DR game, and while there's at least one deus ex machina per chapter for every time Yuma completes a mystery labyrinth, there aren't many moments where you'd think "this is fucking ridiculous" (again, like the blood reveal), but I think, if it did have more of those moments, i would have enjoyed it a lot more.
it has Meddy
The Witness
2016
cera's review DIRECTOR'S CUT:
this is one of the most beautiful games i've ever played, not just in aesthetics but in what it teaches the player. don't get me wrong, there are things that i actively hate about this game, as well as some of the outside factors surrounding it (if you know you know). but the truth of this is that the game is still so good that it blows past all of that and makes it seem like trash littered around the most gorgeous hike you've ever taken: the bad things are mere footnotes in comparison to what you can see.
people will tell you the witness is a game about puzzles. it's not. it's about linguistics and semiotics and meditation. it's about observing.
all of the best art in the world is art that acts as a mirror for us to see parts of ourselves in. sometimes good, sometimes the things we fear, but the most powerful thing is when it allows us to see things about ourselves that we didn't understand in the first place, the things we couldn't put into words but knew were true.
the answers you needed were always right in front of us, you just didn't know it. we were just looking at the wrong things, at what people told us were important. stop looking. stop.
this is one of the most beautiful games i've ever played, not just in aesthetics but in what it teaches the player. don't get me wrong, there are things that i actively hate about this game, as well as some of the outside factors surrounding it (if you know you know). but the truth of this is that the game is still so good that it blows past all of that and makes it seem like trash littered around the most gorgeous hike you've ever taken: the bad things are mere footnotes in comparison to what you can see.
people will tell you the witness is a game about puzzles. it's not. it's about linguistics and semiotics and meditation. it's about observing.
all of the best art in the world is art that acts as a mirror for us to see parts of ourselves in. sometimes good, sometimes the things we fear, but the most powerful thing is when it allows us to see things about ourselves that we didn't understand in the first place, the things we couldn't put into words but knew were true.
the answers you needed were always right in front of us, you just didn't know it. we were just looking at the wrong things, at what people told us were important. stop looking. stop.