This diegetic style of exploration is what gives The Pathless its name. There’s no map, no markers, no compass, and you’re instead made to rely on visual navigation as you look for points of interest in the world from vantage points or using your Spirit Vision ability (which is what The Pathless calls Eagle Vision, or Detective Vision, or Witcher Vision, or whatever you want to call it), which highlights points of interest in a red hue from a distance. Your path forward in every new area of the world is activating a number of obelisks, for which you require Lightstones, and these Lightstones are found by exploring the world and solving environmental puzzles.Įxploration is organic and pulls you right into the game’s world. There’s hardly any combat in this game, with your bow mostly used for moving around and solving puzzles. "Thanks to its fast, fluid, and speedy traversal system, the simple act of moving about in the world of The Pathless is an absolute treat."īesides traversal, exploration and environmental puzzle solving are what will define your time with The Pathless. Thanks to this fast, fluid, and speedy traversal system, the simple act of moving about in the world of The Pathless is an absolute treat. Combining your abilities with your eagle’s to chain together multiple dashes, glides, and jumps can take some getting used to, but pulling off these combos and watching the Hunter flit through the world at incredible speeds feels incredible. The traversal system is one that’s easy to get into, but holds just enough of a skill cap. Shooting the emblems is a mostly automatic process, and the game automatically locks you on to them, saving you the act of manual aiming, and instead letting you focus on speed and placement. Meanwhile, your eagle companion can also help you hover, and depending on how much you’ve upgraded your abilities, flap its wings a number of times to take you to greater heights. By holding down the left trigger, the Hunter begins sprinting, which drains a stamina meter, and shooting emblems scattered throughout the world refills the stamina meter, and with the right timing, can provide a speed boost or launch you higher in the air if they’re shot while you’re airborne. The focus, however, is very much on gameplay, most of which revolves around an accessible yet incredible traversal system. What you do find is captivating enough though, and creates an aura of mystery that elevates the narrative and the game’s world to solid heights. There isn’t much of a focus on active storytelling, with only a handful of cutscenes interspersed throughout the story, and most of the lore and backstory is handed to you via accounts and text boxes that you find scattered throughout the world. The narrative setup is a simple one, and the story itself isn’t particularly unique, but The Pathless tells it quite effectively. " The Pathless is an experience I’m unlikely to forget about anytime soon." Accompanied by a reborn avatar of the Eagle Mother, the Hunter has to travel across the land to free the spirits of the guardians, and ultimately defeat the Godslayer to rid the world of his corruption. The Eagle Mother, the land’s guardian spirit, was defeated in battle by the Godslayer, and her children, guardians of different areas of the game’s world, have become corrupted and are in thrall of the entity. You play as the Hunter, a master archer who’s taken it upon herself to rid the land of a decaying corrupted inflicted upon it by an evil, ominous entity known as the Godslayer. And like those games, The Pathless is an experience I’m unlikely to forget about anytime soon. Like those games, it puts its focus almost entirely on organic exploration and puzzles, not on combat. Like those games, it builds up a mystical world through a mostly wordless narrative, with just the right amount of lore drops and storytelling. While playing The Pathless, I was constantly reminded of some of the best, most arresting games I’ve ever played- Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Like those games, The Pathless has a serene, desolate quality to its beauty.
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