Review for The Pathless. Game for PC, Mac, iOS, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, the video game was released on 12/11/2020
From the creators of ABZÛ, The Pathless is presented on the market as a title capable of make you forget that you are playing a simple video game, deserving the definition of a work of art in motion.
Find out what convinced us about this peculiar title produced by Annapurna Interactive - also available on the brand new PlayStation 5 - in our review!
Simplicity in color
From the very first moments we were pleasantly impressed by the graphic style adopted by the Giant Squid team: as simple as it is rich in colors. Let's make it clear immediately, if you are a fan of photorealism, The Pathless will certainly not meet your tastes, yet behind an apparent simplicity lies hidden a surprising artistic direction that will captivate you from the very first minutes of the game.
The Pathless features a huntress who arrives on an island subjugated by an evil presence known as "The Exterminator of Gods" who wants to control the whole world in order to make everyone follow "one path". The title is in fact an open world in the third person which, however, leverages us various comforts to get closer and closer to the game world and make us perceive every single element that surrounds us. No minimap, no fast-travel and no compass. The only way we will have to orient ourselves will be a special vision that will indicate the areas of interest.
The journey will lead the huntress to meet a special eagle with whom she will share the entire game. The eagle can be caressed by calling it back to us with the press of a button. Taking care of our winged companion will allow us to unlock new moves, such as making more leaps in the air.
The protagonist must therefore, together with her new partner, free various lands from the hegemony that has misled the souls of four sacred animals. Such animals, now ravenous beasts, will constantly hunt us down. In fact, a large red sphere will be visible that will constantly move on the game map, forcing the player to often change their plans to free the three totems necessary for the purification of the earth.
If we are overwhelmed by a beast, we will lose contact with the eagle that will be found in the middle of the storm without being discovered. The uncertainty of such situation certainly makes Giant Squid's product even more interesting: for example, in one of the lands we managed to completely avoid the hunting encounter with the beast (with the exception of the boss fight at the end of the area, of course). Free the three towers and you can face the subjugated beast. Each boss fight is different from the other and they are all extremely enjoyable as well as compelling, thanks also to the excellent soundtrack of the title, which increases its prestige.
Orchestra in motion
The movements of the huntress are graceful and fast. Talismans, scattered throughout the island, can be hit with our bow to gain a boost of speed and thus allow us to run far and wide without stopping.
Each movement of our protagonist is equivalent to a harmonious musical accompaniment that changes the gaming experience into a title that proves to be a great example of videogame art. Each track of the soundtrack has been composed to convey the sensations that would be felt in really walking those vast and colorful lands present in The Pathless. Each instrument conveys the sense of adventure and the epicity of the struggle that is taking place, a journey along an arduous path, alone against the Eater of Gods, thirsty for power.
Even the songs made for the boss fights, if well analyzed, do not represent the classic sound accompaniment to the clash between good and evil, but rather a dance, a ritual to purify those animals now saturated with evil that need our help. In addition to exploration and end-of-area boss fights, The Pathless's soundtrack also welcomes the player during the most delicate exploratory phases, such as those dedicated to solving environmental puzzles.
As mentioned previously, every land is full of activities to do, none of them, however, is linked to a very specific order: we will be free to move with arrow shots wherever we want, transport you to the captivating music of the title. To free the three towers it will be necessary to obtain different totems, the latter obtainable by solving some puzzles, never banal and which, along with the musical accompaniment, you will be catapulted into the harmonious canvas painted by the Giant Squid team.
The Pathless on PlayStation 5
In our six hours spent with The Pathless we got to try the PlayStation 5 version. The title allows you to choose between two modes: performance or resolution, recommending the latter only if you have a 4K screen. On our side, however, we preferred the performance mode to have a fixed frame-rate of 60 frames per second.
To further increase the immersion of the player in the title they think about it the adaptive triggers of Dualsense, which are activated every time an arrow is fired, thus allowing to perceive the tension of the bowstring; there is also a slight support of haptic feedback, limited to the most intense moments of the narration, especially in the final moments where there is the presence of artistically even more intense scenes.
The Pathless is a videogame work that combines art, music and video games in a large moving painting. Don't be fooled by its apparent simplicity and don't snub it because it's not a triple A: the Giant Squid team has once again demonstrated that they know how to tell a story through well-thought-out music and stylistic choices. It will not revolutionize the industry for its gameplay choices but The Pathless tries to remove all those security stakes we are used to in the open world, allowing us to hear and see a superfine and curated videogame experience up to the end credits.
► The Pathless is an Adventure type game developed by Giant Squid Studios and published by Annapurna Interactive for PC, Mac, iOS, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, the video game was released on 12/11/2020
