You’ll do this for around five hours, with breaks for boss fights, then you’re done. Oh, and you also have detective spirit vision, which highlights important areas of interest and triggers puzzle nuances like mystic walls you can walk through. Your eagle can also be commanded to grab objects, which you’ll use in tandem with your archery powers to solve the game’s puzzles. Thankfully, it’s not just a marketing meme, as preening your companion heals it, giving the concept actual purpose. Very early on in the game, you’ll pick up an eagle that has an accompanying petting mechanic. It not only looks amazing in practice, but it’s fun to keep running and jumping, since the visual design of your hero sliding on the ground is sensational. The sensation is a lot like a vehicle-based game: it’s that smooth. If you’re already jumping, you’ll do this cool little ninja flip. If you’re dashing, you’ll get a quick boost. To keep dashing, you can pull back your bow and shoot at plentiful targets out in the sandboxy world, which constantly chain and grant you more meter. I know! The warning flags are flying high already, but keep reading. There’s a dash button, but it’s governed by an energy meter of sorts. Where Pathless differs from its ilk is the concept of constant locomotion. Although I’m fine with the “you create your own conclusions” strategy, I’m thankful every studio doesn’t try and pull a Christopher Nolan in every game: because not everyone can pull it off (not even Nolan, sometimes). It has a clear narrative (an evil Ganon-like force wishes to unleash darkness upon the world), which it benefits from. The Pathless, foundationally, is an artistic puzzle platformer that joins the ranks of Ico and RiME. Although the mood is whimsical, this is not a strictly “up to your interpretation” tale. It starts up swiftly, just how Giant Squad likes it. I had zero idea of what to expect from The Pathless, but that feeling of unease passed rather quickly. MSRP: $39.99 (PS4/PS5) / Part of Apple Arcade (iOS) While it had its limitations in terms of storytelling, I mean that more as a compliment, as studio Giant Squid clearly had a knack for creating beautiful worlds worth exploring.įour years later, and The Pathless feels like an extension of all of that groundwork. There’s some subtle signposting going on but the main intention is that you should explore essentially at random, using a sort of detective vision to spot puzzles you haven’t solved and check on the current location of the possessed Tall Ones.When Abzu came out in 2016, I blew through it in a day. Overall though, there’s not much narrative in The Pathless and, as you might gather from the name, it attempts to be as non-linear as possible. It soon becomes clear that in order to set things right you’re going to have to have rescue all of the ‘Tall Ones’ by activating special shrines dotted around the four regions of the game map.
The graphics aren’t very detailed, and the limited colour palette of cursed areas does get a bit monotonous, but the sense of exploring an untamed wilderness comes across well and feels very cohesive.
#THE PATHLESS FULL#
At full pelt you move at a blisteringly fast pace and the open world map design means there’s plenty of space to just max out and enjoy the silky smooth movement. When you’re running and shooting at the same time your character skids along on her knees, and cartwheels in the air, in such a satisfying manner we still haven’t got tired of it all these hours later. We’re not sure that really makes much sense even when you’re dealing with magic but it’s perfect video game logic because of how much fun it makes merely moving around. The rest of the time though you’re running around on your own, which uses up a quickly disappearing stamina bar, which in turn is refilled by shooting special targets that litter the island. This leads to you gaining an eagle companion who enables you to glide around for short distances and scope out the world below, a necessity given there’s not a proper map to help you.
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