Analysis of The Pathless, the new success of Annapurna and the adventure that Fumito Ueda would sign

The moment you see a trailer or a picture of The Pathless, a magnetic effect keeps you stuck to the screen. It is one of those games that with just a few seconds of viewing, they remain impregnated in the retina and do not leave your mind until you are at the controls.

And as usual in these cases, disappointment does not take place when you take the controls. The Pathless is a wonderful adventure full of memorable moments, with delicious visuals and that once again demonstrates the great success of editors such as Annapurna Interactive when choosing your projects.

The huntress dance

Of course, what most attracts the attention of the game are those vertiginous trips at ground level or through the air, using the bow of the Huntress, our protagonist. Yeah it’s as fun as it sounds.

The island where the story takes place is full of targets to support us to shoot, get their energy and receive another boost for our career. By having a limited energy bar, it is necessary that we hit each one of them, in order to maintain the rhythm.

As with the previous project of Giant Squid, Abzû, and with the wonderful Marvel’s Spider-Man, a game in which scrolling is the main mechanic is essential that it is satisfactory. And boy it is.

The Huntress moves as we want, with a wide variety of animations and postures to hit the target in the middle of the race. In addition, with the help of our eagle companion, we are allowed to chain movements in a fantastic way. A delight.

Giant Squid demonstrated in Abzû and reiterated in The Pathless, the purpose of laying a line very similar to that seen in another renowned title like Journey: establish your own world.

The context of the story is simple, although much more direct than that seen in the previous work. We arrive at an island dominated by a demigod who wants to remake the world and to do so has corrupted the spirits that populate it. Our duty will be to free them from their torment and put an end to the villain’s plans.

An open island, huge and full of references to the events lived there. Murals, texts left by the corpses and places that do not hide what happened within their walls. Its history is rich and interesting and we can better understand how it got to the point where we are.

The soundtrack is also up to the task, with some songs with a voice that are not so brilliant, but which generally give a great solemnity to the world and offer a lot of intensity to the most complicated situations.

The perfect balance

If The Pathless doesn’t do something, it’s complicate life. He knows what he wants and fulfills it without giving it more laps than necessary. We have ample land at our disposal to explore, without any indication of what our next objective is or if we are heading in the wrong direction.

We just have to know that the next beast must be released and after a fairly aggressive encounter with it, we will have to prepare the area to free it from its torment. Three towers form a triangle and in the center of them, a gigantic vault that houses all the evil. If we manage to activate them, we will be able to face in a combat against the animal of turn.

Meanwhile, many puzzles await us to solve them. Apart from those necessary to complete if we want to obtain the pieces to activate the towers, we have many others that allow us to obtain improvements for our eagle, such as a greater number of flaps to rise.

The balance in each of them is brutal. They’re complex enough that you feel like you’ve really figured it out on your own and without taking too long. Little by little, you begin to understand its bases and you apply them to each of them through the arch, the main tool.

Our other companion, who is not a tool, is the eagle. It is the great support soaring through the skies, the friend who will help us to overcome the highest terrain and practically an extension of us. There will even be moments when we will not be able to count on her and we will notice her absence. If it is “soaked” with the evil energy of the beasts, we will have to caress it to clean its plumage, being able to use its abilities again and improving our relationship with it.

Together with the eagle we will live real moments, against the beasts, with truly spectacular final matches and that once again become a challenge that finds the exact point between difficulty and reward. The chases against these creatures are really worth it.

Having tested the work in PS5, we have been able to enjoy the benefits of DualSense with the game. The Pathless really takes advantage of the Sony console controller very well. We continually notice vibration throughout the device and each time we draw the bow to release an arrow, it feels like the trigger slightly resists lowering.

In this sense, it is an advantage for users of a PS5 compared to those of PS4, since the difference is really remarkable, being able to appreciate details as small as holding an arrow with the hand. In addition, we have a performance and resolution mode, which allows you to set different graphic preferences and looks just as wonderful in both ways. Of course, with the performance mode giving priority to the frames it is the most recommended mode.

Vida Extra’s opinion

The Pathless is not the most gifted student in the class, he is the one he has been attending throughout the course and the lesson is perfectly known. He collects the virtues of everything he has observed in other video games and applies it without problems in his own work.

Giant Squid’s work has the best of Ubisoft’s open worlds, the significance of Journey, and the spirit of Fumito Ueda’s games. All it shows us is a example of good work and affection for your product, during its little more than 6 hours of duration. The path that the study has opened we do not know how it will end, but the direction it has taken is tremendously promising.