The Witness will support Valve's VR tech

Despite some early pessimism, The Witness creator Jonathan Blow is sold on the idea of Valve's VR prototype and his upcoming puzzle game will fully support it.

Ozzie Mejia

January 25, 2014 4:00 PM

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Jonathan Blow's The Witness is centered around the idea of exploring a large, mysterious island. Given its bright and engaging visual style, it makes sense that the Braid creator would want to experiment with the idea of virtual reality. In particular, Blow has been intrigued by Valve's VR prototype and is working with the company to help it work with The Witness.

"Last year I was pessimistic about VR systems in the near future, since the ones I had tried didn't seem to offer much (certainly not enough to justify wearing a bulky headset all the time and fighting back feelings of Nausea)," Blow wrote in The Witness blog. "But I was fortunate enough to get a sneak peek at Valve’s virtual reality system. It is so much better than anything else I had used that I was instantly very excited by it. Right away I could see games you might design for this system that had been impossible before; so it isn’t just a matter of the system being very immersive (which it is) but that it can take video games in general to a new place."

Blow has been working with Valve's VR device since November, keeping developments top secret due to the prototype's secretive nature. He notes that the entirety of The Witness is 'theoretically playable' on the device, but acknowledges that it greatly affects performance. Blow also hopes to get his game working with other VR tech, noting, "we will be supporting this device (and any similar devices) with The Witness."

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?