The Pathless's most eye-catching feature has to be its movement system: I know I was instantly drawn to the game when I saw footage of its main character sprinting over this huge grassy field, then going into a slide as she draws her bow, gaining a huge burst of speed on hitting one of the floating targets dotted all over the screen. There's actually a little bit more to the system than you initially expect: targets can be hit with more precise timing to get an even bigger speed boost, and those exact windows are naturally dependent on your current distance to each individual one, keeping you active and constantly trying to intuit when to let go of the trigger. Going for a more difficult shot and then fucking it up will slow you down more than if you'd just gone for the easy shot in the first place, and while none of the game's challenges ask you to think about it that hard, maintaining your momentum with no awkward breaks is intrinsically satisfying and presents you with a perpetual guessing game of how best to approach each target, which specific ones to go for and how to smoothly transition between grounded and airborne traversal. A lot of that natural pacing translates perfectly into the boss fights; even though they're not nearly as varied or surprising as I would've ideally liked, they provide meaningful shots of excitement, as well as a glimpse at just how special The Pathless could've been.

Because ultimately, the experience feels sadly torn between all the obvious potential of its overall premise and general execution, and all the different elements that are so painfully undercooked. The four area bosses that you will eventually fight also roam the world as you're exploring, and coming into contact with them triggers a stealth sequence where you need to dodge lights as you try to get back to your eagle companion. Mechanically, it saps the game of all its appeal, while also failing to elicit any sense of tension or worry for your pet with how bland and rigid the execution is (not to mention that the punishment for being spotted is inconsequential.)

This brings me to the much larger issue in that the bond between the hunter and the eagle feels incredibly anemic. It's clear The Pathless is specifically trying to fill the shoes of both Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian, but it doesn't do itself any favors with how much less organic and elegant it comes across by comparison. There's never a point where the eagle steps up from being a gamey mechanic existing solely for your convenience, to anything even resembling a living creature in the vein of Aggro or Trico. Moments of implied peril will just leave you cold when the eagle is so clearly artificial, always there at the touch of a button and with no unique behavior arising naturally from play. The way you're reliant on the eagle feels so specifically gamey and rigid that it actually ends up running directly against a lot of the story's themes: as you explore, you begin to understand that the people's over-reliance on the Gods and clear instructions for how to lead their lives is what lead to the slow decay of the world; but the way the game's message ends up boiling down to "find your own path or whatever" doesn't hit when, mechanically, the way you conquer every new obstacle is through some Deus Ex Machina power-up for your eagle (most evident in the final rematch you have with the main antagonist, where the game isn't asking anything new from you mechanically to overcome this previously unbeatable challenge, instead you just get buffed to shit in a cutscene.)

The game's impact ends up being so much weaker and more generic than it could've been, I feel, though from my perspective it also seems difficult to reconcile a lot of that potential without significantly more time spent in development. I can point out all these avenues for improvement, but making players feel shit is hard, and just like with the game's overall message, you can't follow a set blueprint if you want to move forward. While The Pathless gets too caught-up trying to reference surface-level aspects of more powerful games, I can give it some credit for at least trying.

(Footnotes: flaps are bad and hurt level design, having different arrow types to let you choose what an orb does rather than different orbs might've been more fun, puzzles are bland but it's cool how organically you can enter different locations from unique angles)

Reviewed on Mar 23, 2021


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