I Miss Paths

Feminina O'Ladybrain

Oct 31

Extremely minor spoilers for The Pathless

Butch:

Hey, you're right! Nice music in this one!

Played about fifteen minutes. Looked around, met a dying eagle...thing....went through a door, took a mask off a skeleton (because of course I did, who wouldn't?), shot some stuff, ran through a field towards some gazebo that had, like, red stuff on it and put the shield thing the eagle gave me in it and the red stuff went away.

That's what I did.

"Thanks, dying powerful eagle thing! I shall take this last gift of yours and totally use it before I even know what it is!" World's doomed.

I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.

I'm annoyed that I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Yes, I'm only fifteen minutes in, but I have some annoyance.

There's nothing wrong with plopping a player in a place and not telling the player what exactly the fuck is going on if that makes sense. Take a game like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. The whole point of that game is "weird shit happened, no one gets it." The player not getting it makes sense. See also a game where "what is going on" doesn't matter all that much, like The Unfinished Swan. You're in a white room. There's ink. Whatever. Go with it.

That's not what we have here. Here, we immediately get "legend...end of the world...serious legends...island...where there is this legend" and we are the last, greatest hope for humanity in terms of dealing with this legend. Right? We are not just some dude (dudette? I think she's a dudette) who stumbled upon this island. We WENT to this island for REASONS, and yet we, the players, do not KNOW these reasons. There's a disconnect there, and I don't like it.

Music's nice, though.

Feminina:

The music is very nice!

I was willing to roll with not knowing anything, because even though, as you say, it seems that heroes have been coming here trying to save the world for years, it also seems that none of them have ever come back, so it's not like we could really prepare based on prior information.

Or maybe that was just my interpretation, because the information we're actually given is sparse. But my experience is less annoying if I just assume the character, like me, has no idea what the hell is going on, and we just go with it together.

We went to this island because our people have tracked the source of evil (or whatever) this far, but no one has returned to tell us what the actual island is like, is basically my take. We're hoping to do something to help, because somebody needs to, but we have no idea what actually needs to be done.

Mysterious eagle spirit giving us a thing that apparently fits into another thing? OK, fine, why not.

So I'm not particularly troubled by that aspect of things.

And the music really is very nice.

Butch:

Still, some of those previous folks knew SOMETHING. I did get a piece of lore there, something about the god killer and the eagle mother or something, so that dead guy obviously could recognize some of the key players, you know? God killer, eagle mother. Those sound like key folks.

But then, maybe I was just off last night. In that mask place, there was that slab that, apparently, had words on it. I spent way too long pummeling it with arrows, wondering why nothing was happening, before I realized that wasn't a target on it, it was a prompt to press O.

One of those nights.

What should I do now? Go back and get another eagle thingy?

I LIKE PATHS!

Feminina:

Yeah, sometimes paths are nice.

But yes, keep looking around for those thingies the eagle gave you, and then find places to put them. All will become...uh...slightly less unclear.

But don't go back and ask the eagle for another one, she (assuming its the Eagle Mother) doesn't have any more. You can find them by wandering around looking for things that glow red in your ghost vision or whatever we'd call it.

Butch:

Though ghost vision is a little misleading. Right there by the skeleton two pots were glowing green. "LOOT!" thought I, yet there was nothing I could do. Disappointed.

Feminina:

Yes, it IS kind of misleading at times. Things will show up that you can't actually do anything with. Just a decorative ambient glow, I guess?

The pots, I never figured out anything to do with...some other things seem like you can't do anything but then later you realize they were important, so I'm not sure if they just have the glowy pots to let you know sometimes things glow, or to be a red herring to make you doubt that glowy things are important (sometimes they are!) or what.

Butch:

I will continue to check out anything that so much as flickers. It's how we do. You never Jamrock Shuffle away from glowing things.

I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

Feminina:

It will become clear! -ish.

Someone will come along and tell you something.

Butch:

Ooo! There's other people? That'll be good.

Feminina:

Well...sort of. I mean, don't get excited for a bustling downtown or a romance option or anything.

Butch:

Man....no romance? Sigh.

Will someone at least tell me my swag is on point?

Feminina:

Not so far.

I won't rule it out, I'm still only in...I don't know, somewhere in the middle. Maybe someone who appreciates my swag will show up.

I can hope.

Butch:

"somewhere in the middle."

I have a feeling we aren't really going to know where we are in this game. You might be almost done! Or not.

Feminina:

Very possibly true, but see how you feel once you've...uh...gotten some eagle symbols into places and stuff.

Butch:

Oooo! Other symbols! Other places! Other stuff!

But no romance. Boo.

Feminina:

Not a hint of it so far.

I suppose I am on a mission to save the world. No time for dalliances.

Butch:

Dude, like that's stopped us before.

Feminina:

Figures we pick NOW to get serious about focusing on our career and the feature of humanity.

Butch:

Not sure why we have. We've proven multiple times we can dally like hell and still save the world.

Feminina:

That's definitely a highlight of the resume.

Take Fallout 4, where I romanced literally everyone who would look at me, including robots and the walking dead, and still managed to...uh...whatever it was we were trying to do there. Actually that's not the best example of us saving the world, which was pretty screwed long before we showed up, but whatever went wrong, it was definitely unrelated to my romantic escapades.

Butch:

Not the best example, as I think that ended with us blowing up MIT, which, you know, fifty fifty outcome.

Feminina:

You win some, you lose some...

Butch:

Yup. Save the world, blow up MIT...six of one, really.

Feminina:

So then I had to go into the rabbit hole of our discussion on "what WAS the end of Fallout 4 anyway?" and oh yeah...it never really had one.

But we definitely did blow up MIT. I'm going to go with my optimistic read that I walked off into the sunset with synth Shaun and my 6 lovers and we founded a postapocalyptic utopia somewhere.

Good times.

Butch:

Oh, I think I did that, too. With Piper and Curie.

Six lovers? I'll stick with two. Think of how many caps Valentine's Day would cost with six. Totally impractical.

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