Episode 4 of The Witness starts by the statue in the village, where Episode 3 stopped. Basket gets the windmill turning again, then meets one panel after another that gives no clue about what it wants. Two recordings play long passages along the way. Nothing new gets solved, and the video ends near a door that still won't open.
The windmill again
The commentary opens on the windmill: it "used to be running when I had turned the other way and now it's actually not running at all." Back at the orange panel in the floor, the line goes the other way. "So the windmill should be running."
Panels with no hints
A green panel set in a door, with colored marks on it, takes a few lines. "Nothing actually errors." Close by, a black panel on a wooden door has rows of colored dots. "No clear indicator of what I'm doing wrong." Then: "How many possibilities are there? A lot is the answer." The verdict on both: "We'll come back to that one also."
Into the building
Stairs lead up onto an orange roof and down through an open hatch. "I can get in the building, amazing, so I don't need that door anyway." Inside, a cream three-by-three grid hangs on a wooden lattice. Line after line runs out from the start at the bottom right. "No, I can't loop back over myself." None of them works.
Deep thoughts
Two small yellow objects sit on the floor nearby. A recorded voice reads a long passage that ends "Augustine of Hippo, circa 400," and a second one ends "Richard Feynman 1963." The commentary's verdict: "That was very deep for my puzzle game, but cool."
Shapes, a hole and blue panels
Upstairs, a lookout shows the windmill turning and a round hole in the ground. Back outside, a panel on a wooden wall has a small yellow shape on it. "Here's the shape, let's make that shape." Lines go around it, but none works. The hole turns out to be a shaft with wooden scaffolding at the bottom. "Is that the basement thing that I saw in the other area? Perhaps."
By a lake, blue see-through panels stand on posts, each with two ends on the right. None gives way. "In the beginning of the game, it seemed like I could figure things out."
Where it ends
Past the first panels of the game, a glowing green cable leads to a door behind red bars with a gray panel on it, the door that "wouldn't let me in. It still seems to be the case." The commentary works out that "it wants me to do both of those, but I can't run over it and then come back." A teal panel beside the door raises a new idea: "Is this where I should be starting this thing?" The view drifts down to a lake with palm trees, and the video ends there. The dot panels, the grid, the shape panel, the blue panels and the door are all still unsolved.