As you explore each of The Pathless’ four main regions, a giant red orb of a storm shifts around the land if you’re caught in it, you and your eagle are separated and you must find your way back to them in a rather basic stealth scenario in which you must avoid the boss’ gaze. The bosses provide another obstacle before you even fight them. Its striking beauty becomes more apparent after you defeat each boss - freeing a region of a curse also lifts the overcast around it, letting the sun shine and brighten up the gorgeous greens of the land and deep blues of the sea surrounding the island. The Pathless’ world is a very naturalistic one - lush forests lay near massive cliff faces and the winding paths up them, and as you reach new heights the weather turns the land into a frigid tundra. It’s all delivered in pretty standard video game-y conventions, but at least it's a story I wanted to seek out as I stumbled upon a monastery littered with skeletons or a dilapidated building that turned out to be an important library. Little bits of lore dropped as written records of the island’s dying citizens’ last thoughts flesh out the Godslayer’s surprising backstory and grip on the world, and often give some context for why a building I found was in ruins or why so muchmust death lay before me. It’s well-trodden territory, to be sure, but I still found myself consistently engaged and wanting to learn more. The Hunter’s path takes some familiar fantasy storytelling trappings involving a god-slaying figure, adds some intriguing elements in the margins, and marries them with beautiful character design, like the striking three-eyed visor of the Godslayer or the many-limbed behemoths that are the cursed versions of the world’s guardians, the Tall Ones. Mythic QuestThat freedom of exploration is at the heart of what the Pathless does well, but you’re not just aimlessly wandering around its beautiful world. The Pathless never really tells you what to be looking for, but its visual cues are easy to understand and then apply to increasingly complex puzzles, making even the smallest excursion valuable in some way and often finding fun new layers for repeated puzzle concepts as the adventure goes on.
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Each location I went to included at least a few notable puzzles, often employing standards like using my surprisingly strong eagle to move parts of the area around to line up a perfect shot, or to run past a series of lanterns in the correct order. “It made each place I ventured intriguing, from crumbling monasteries to dinosaur-sized skeletons to abandoned settlements, because I never knew what collectibles, puzzles, or stories it might hold. Two main collectibles in particular are plentifully hidden throughout the world: Crystals, which are needed to increase your eagle’s ability to reach new heights, and Lightstones, which are often collected after some intricate but satisfying puzzle and used to cleanse a cursed watchtower in each region.
And while you can wander aimlessly, there’s plenty to guide your way and reward your curiosity. But a missed shot here or there rarely tripped me up as I said, The Pathless is all about blazing your own trail around its world, and each failed hit was an excuse to improv my way into a new direction. I never fully mastered the half-fill shot, even despite the PS5’s adaptive triggers offering some haptic indication to let me know when to release.
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It freed my mind up to think less about the specific points I was shooting at and more about how to move through the gorgeous landscapes ahead of me to create constant, forward momentum. Go Your Own WayBy removing the challenge of aiming and instead putting it on button timing and quick thinking as you decide the route you want to carve out, The Pathless goes all in on the idea that getting from point A to B should be fun, fluid, and with as little hindrance as possible. You just need to hold the right trigger down to fill up a meter, or if your timing is good, let it fill up precisely halfway to get even more speed.
Instead, the forgiving third-person camera lets you swing it around to auto-target gems. The shooting doesn’t require a lot of skill because developer Giant Squid has completely removed the worry of precision aiming.
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