Videogames can be many things- stress reliever, an escape window for a short while, and above all that, there exists a few rare titles that can act as a healer and calm your nerves with their soothingly beautiful presentations. Games like Journey, Unravel, ABZU, and GRIS have done that for me. The latest addition to this list of mine is from the creators of ABZU- Giant Squid Studio’s The Pathless.
The Pathless is a culmination of some of my favorite titles I’ve played over the years. If we take the skeletal structure of bosses in Shadow of The Colossus, combine it with soothing exploration from ABZU, then embed the shrines and the Ganon-corrupted Divine Beasts from Breath of the Wild, and then finally throw in the genius of the Grammy-winning wizard Austin Wintory, the result is The Pathless. Without any further ado, let’s dive into this one hell of a therapeutic stress-buster.
The Bow and the Bird
The premise of the Pathless is pretty simple to its barebones. You are put into the shoes of a mysterious Hunter, a master archer who must find a way to lift the curse on an island and foil the plans of a powerful evil being named ‘The Godslayer’. To fulfill her task she must free the beasts from the corruption of the Godslayer. Each beast inhabits a different terrain and has three obelisks that have been subjugated to the corruption. As the hunter, you will need to cleanse these obelisks by finding emblems. Similar to the shrines in BoTW, you will need to overcome certain puzzles to get them. Your ultimate goal is to cleanse the beasts and defeat the Godslayer once and for all.
To fulfill this Herculean Task, the hunter is equipped with a bow and a bird. With her bow, she can shoot talismans that grant her speed with which she can scale mountains in minutes. Running around at blazing speeds and gliding through deserts, snowy mountains, and beautiful grass fields make the experience quite enchanting. This is further bolstered by the hunter’s falcon who makes up for a formidable companion. I know we got games like Falcon Hunter and The Falconeer in 2020 but this game does the whole companion mechanic better due to its sheer simplicity. You can use falcon to scale high altitudes using its flaps and solve puzzles. Though there are fewer mechanics at play, they complement each other really well.
Tales and Talismans
A huge chunk of the game shares a common DNA with Breath of the Wild. But at its girth, the game resembles Shadow of the Colossus most mostly due to its breathtakingly beautiful and massive yet lonely open world. Unlike BoTW there are no enemy encampments, Guardians, or monsters to haunt you. The world is simply there for you to explore. There’s not a single soul except for you and the beasts. But that does not mean the world is completely barren. There are ruins all over the place and these ruins are often populated with glyphs and mementos that speak the stories of people who used to inhabit these lands. And at times, they can be pretty helpful in solving puzzles.
As mentioned earlier, the puzzles play a major role in those. They often implement simple mechanics in solving but from a logistic standpoint, they can be slightly challenging at times. The best part of all this is that the game does not tell you what to do next, you simply have to rely on your instincts and use your hunter sight (similar to Assassin’s Creed‘s Eagle Vision) to track ruins and towers with a red fog. You start a puzzle by approaching a red-fog area and tracking the locked emblem. To solve the puzzle and get the emblem, you may have to light things, unfreeze things, line-up heliographs, pull-down switches, or move objects using your falcon. Besides the emblems, you may also stumble across chests with golden currencies that will earn you more flaps for your falcon- allowing you to reach even greater heights than before.
To make things easier, the game populates its ruins with a variety of talismans that allow you to connect jumps, scale great heights, and move at incredible speeds. As the game has an always-on auto-aim feature, you can even shoot a talisman even if it is not on your screen. In total, there are over three types of talismans featured in the game- the red one fills a small portion of your stamina meter, the orange one gives you an incredible speed boost with stamina, and lastly, the ice-colored talisman propels you in the air. As there are no fast-travel points or minimap to guide you, talismans along with the hunter vision become essential tools for navigating in this pathless world.
Banquet with the Beasts
Unlike other games, the player cannot be killed in this game. There are no death or failure screens. However, there is a penalty for your missteps if you make any and the punishers of this world are the beasts themselves. Sprawling across 4 terrains, each corrupted beast resides in a giant fiery ball to which you should never tread closer to. However, if you get trapped in this fiery ball, you will be separated from the falcon. Then it all turns into a game of hide-n-seek. In this scenario, you will have to avoid the gaze of the beast by using environmental objects and retrace your steps back to the fallen falcon. If you get caught in the midst, you will lose some of the ‘golden currency’ that is used to obtain flaps for the falcon.
However, after restoring the lights to the obelisks using the emblems, instead of treading farther from the fiery ball, you have to dive into it to face the beast in an ultimate showdown. Each showdown consists of multiple stages. The first one is the chase. In the chasing sequence, you will have to chase down the beast and bring it to halt by shooting its eyes. To retaliate, the beasts will be bombarding you with fireballs that you need to avoid. Getting hit will cause you to lose stamina. Once you shoot all its eyes, you can bring it to a halt using the falcon.
After that, you will progress to a more aggressive stage, one that varies from beast to beast. But the goal remains the same that is to take out all the eyes of the beasts. This stage usually progresses in a large and wide arena with massive beasts in the middle. If you get thrown out of the arena, the clock resets, the beasts regain all of their eyes (sometimes heads) and you will be back to square one. The last stage is the one where you flee while avoiding the beast’s attacks. Though there are checkpoints in this one, it can get pretty tiring at times. Finally, you will be able to end the brawl with the falcon landing the final flow. The beast gets restored to its soul-like form and that particular region gets cleansed of the corruption.
The Pathless puts more emphasis on timing rather than aiming and the beastly encounters are quite indicative of that. One beast after the other along with its desolate open-world filled with sprawling puzzles may seem repetitive at times, but it never gets frustrating or stops being fun.
Pleasing Visuals, Phenomenal Background Score
The visuals and sound play a vital role in the breathtaking presentation of The Pathless. It balances minimalism with gorgeous lighting, reflections, and the sheer size of the world that we get to explore. It features the same FOV as Shadow of the Colossus and BoTW, so the camera angles never cause any troubles and succeed in making you feel quite small compared to the massive world. This allows the player to focus more on the surroundings and makes the puzzles more approachable. Besides that, it’s the terrains and the ruins that steal the slow. From snowy-fields to grassy meadows, everything looks so pleasing that you would never look for a fast-travel button.
Visuals aside, The Pathless is nothing short of outstanding when it comes to the background scores. Through short bursts, it manages to perfectly embody the surroundings that the player is in it. Through its visuals and audible cues, the game masterfully manages to keep the player aware and involved in its world.
On a side note, when it comes to the performance the game manages to give decent framerates with zero lags and minimal to no texture popping on the base PS4. Though the DS4 controller doesn’t support adaptive triggers and haptic feedback unlike the PS5 port of the game, the experience didn’t seem to be lacking in any regard on the current-gen hardware.
Real Talk
Through its breathtaking visuals and notable background scores, The Pathless masterfully crafts a cinematic experience that manages to keep the player thoroughly engaged in its world. The experience that it offers is easy on the eyes and lighter on the hands- thanks to its auto-aim feature that lets you put emphasis on your timing rather than your shooting. Its beastly encounters are fun to engage in and puzzles never become too overwhelmingly difficult. The most essential and amazing part of it all is its seamless traversal system that didn’t make me miss fast-travels. Its modest price tag and amazing campaign make it a must-play title that one should experience.
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