The Pathless

The Pathless is yet another title published by Annapurna Interactive with these simplified, stylized visuals. This one was developed by Giant Squid who are also known for Abzû and last year's Sword of the Sea. The studio was founded by a few former people of Thatgamecompany, known for Flow and the 2012 hit Journey.

The truth is a pathless land

The Pathless presents itself as kind of a relaxed, atmospheric experience (like Journey) but getting anywhere in a timely manner requires repeated input -- at least until you get enough "flap" upgrades for your eagle to glide across the regions -- and boss fights are intense. Half the game is solving puzzles but they barely require thought to figure out.

You play as the Hunter who has arrived to an island cursed by the Godslayer. Your task is to cleanse the spirit animal of each of the island's four regions to then finally face the Godslayer himself. There's not a lot of spoken lines in the game, and what there is, uses a made-up language (that does sound a bit like some Native American tongue). I was surprised to see Laura Bailey and Troy Baker listed as the voice actors in the credits; I hadn't expected top tier actors. To me, it feels kind of a waste to have them yap nonsense but I guess the project wasn't a big one -- they were probably done within a day or so.

Austin Wintory seems to be a composer often attached to titles like this. He was in fact on Flow and Journey as well. The music of The Pathless does sound extremely professional but at the same time it's like instruments being played without any main theme or particular melody. None of it was memorable.

Straightforward adventure

You have a stamina bar that you can use to sprint but it empties quickly. To restore it and to gain a burst of speed, you shoot at the talismans floating everywhere (and are targeted automatically). If you're good at timing it, you can charge your bow only halfway to do a skill shot for quicker shooting. The risk is that if you mistime it, a partially charged shot will most of the time miss and you get nothing. Soon enough you also get an eagle companion who can carry you for a bit. Puzzles reward you with either lightstones for unlocking the boss fights or yellow crystal things that eventually give the eagle flap charges to lift you up.

Learning the movement tech is necessary to beat the first phase of each of the region boss encounters. In the phase you chase down the boss and it tends to take quite a bit to catch them. The Pathless features no hit point model: getting hit instead sets your progress back. For instance, the snake/hydra boss regrows its heads if you keep getting hit by its attacks.

In the second region I started to wonder if the game would get old due to it not having all that many mechanics and things clearly repeating. I'd say it straddles the line. It helps that the puzzles are so easy. You don't have to be a completionist to beat the game, either -- the first boss takes only 3 stones and the rest 6 each to unlock -- but if you do collect all the 60 or so lightstones and get the blessing of each animal, there's an extended ending scene after the credits. The only thing that ended up annoying me was The Pathfinder's Tale achievement that requires finding all the Pathfinder-related lore entries. It's not a difficult achievement but in the forest region's location I had missed one of the bodies which was hidden in a dark room. I was working towards seeing an Abzû easter egg (completely not worth it for the effort it takes) so I had to backtrack to the first region anyway (no fast travel) but it was still bothersome -- especially because I didn't know what I had missed before finding it.

Before unlocking their fights, the bosses are present in their region as a traveling red storm. If you get caught within it, your eagle gets separated from you and you'll have to sneak to it while the boss is trying to find you. If you get caught, you'll lose part of your flap progress, potentially even losing a whole flap. The stealth encounters are not too hard: just make sure you're not in the direct path of the boss and never move while its vision cone is over you. It's better to avoid the storms in the first place, though. They usually quickly dissipate and go somewhere else if you flee from them when they get close.

The Pathless was an okay time. A bit more depth in the mechanics would have made it actually good. One small thing that would've helped the boss fights, is a dodge move. While you wouldn't need it anywhere else in the game, I felt naked for not having an instantaneous horizontal evasion.

Also: the game ran really well for me. I guess with the simple graphics it's not a that big of a surprise but I have played Unreal Engine 4 titles with so much worse performance. I don't think The Pathless stuttered a single time.