Cheating in Fez

The Fez train has finally pulled into the station and like so many others, I am on board. Years after the game was announced by Phil Fish, its creator, it finally sees the light of day on the Xbox Live Arcade. While I have heard the buzz, I largely entered into Fez completely fresh. The perspective-flipping vertigo and riddling took me completely by surprise. I walk away from each play session part overjoyed at the game's creativity and partly deeply frustrated. I tried hard not to spoil Fez for myself and look up cheats. I really did. I remember Jonathan Blow's attempt to dissuade the use of walkthroughs for Braid and I took his words to heart. I turned off the game entirely and walked away, giving myself time to think and come at Fez with a new perspective (pun intended). Finally, in a sudden bout of what I can only call entitlement, I cheated.

First I looked up how to get just one little cube, the one atop the lighthouse if I remember correctly. Then, while browsing some gaming forum, I saw mention of water levels. The world was even deeper than I thought! I kept poking around, against my better judgement, and saw mention hidden messages and an entirely different language. I found a copy of the Fez alphabet, and that was it. I was engulfed with a desire to learn about the hidden world I had only scratched myself. I wanted, not solutions necessarily, but knowledge. I wanted an arsenal of tricks to ready myself for the puzzles I would encounter. I fell down the walkthrough slippery slope.

Once I had the alphabet, I could easily translate the lettering in the world. But when I found a hovering obelisk filled with letters, I figured it would take too long to translate so I looked up its meaning and, I want to say by accident but I might be denying the truth, the solution. At first I wanted to the busy work of translation, then I just wanted to skip past the thought process entirely. "I would have figured it out eventually" I rationalized.

I did stop looking up walkthroughs at some point, partially because a good deal of the game is still cloaked in mystery for many of those who spend their time posting answers to puzzles online. Other aspects of the game I learned about but am intentionally avoiding, both because I want to find a solution on my own and I want to take my time with the more bizarre parts of Fez. I still find the game incredibly alluring. I have no doubt I can still enjoy the game regardless of my cheating ways. Indeed, maybe I am enjoying it more. The time it takes to go back and forth to areas, and even figure out how to retrace one's steps, is agonizing. Or I could just be rationalizing my behavior again.