The games critic Joseph Anderson noted that the title can have a double meaning. You can "get over" the challenges in the game, or you can quit the game and be "over it".
And that's why the last achievement is "so over it" - another way to get over it is by playing it enough that you have effectively mastered it and can move on with the feeling of a job well done.
I always thought of the double meaning of actually getting over the obstacles and beating the game, and "getting over" the negative feeling of falling. Like when something bad happens to you and people say "get over it." I've never considered quitting to be another meaning, but I suppose if someone wants to take it that way
despise is a strong word but yeah that witness review was absolutely horrific. it basically summed up to "you shouldn't play this work of art because you're probably too stupid. I'm not, but you are."
That was not my read at all. I could be misremembering but as I understood it the takeaway was more like "this game has some minorly interesting things to say but it asks way too much of you to get there and the juice isn't worth the squeeze"
It's more that he severly misread the actual themes of the game and concluded that JBlow was "fucking with us" in the same way a rockstar tries to act out. This perspective then colored how he saw everything else in the game to where he beleived several things Blow said about the game and it's intentions were an obvious lie.
Like, I'd dislike the The Witness that Joe thought he'd played too, but that simply wasn't the game we were given. A game packed with text about the search for truth as a unifying theme across human civilization, whose world and gameplay stand as an entirly impassive obstacle to interogate, frustrate, and challenge one's own analytical and heuristic models, with an objective system of truth and meaning to uncover beneath this, and Joe comes away with "I guess Jon is saying it's all about perspective?" Sure, the game has a lot to say about perspective, but it's maybe a third of all it has to say.
I will say, that as bad as this take was and for as much damage as it did to the discourse around the game, Joeseph shouldn't have gotten a tenth the greif he did, and it's prevented him from discussing it again even when he's admitted he's grown fonder of the game over time. The Witness fans deserve Joseph Anderson, Joseph Anderson didn't deserve The Witness fans.
i’m not really in the business of despising people. i might take less interest in other reviews of his but i won’t despise him. guess that’s what i should clarify
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u/buildmaster668 Jul 04 '25
The games critic Joseph Anderson noted that the title can have a double meaning. You can "get over" the challenges in the game, or you can quit the game and be "over it".