The Pathless is a rather interesting open-world game. It’s a rather short experience all in all, but it would be nothing without the game’s unique traversal mechanic. Once you defeat it, you unlock another plateau, and the game continues on that loop until it ends. Your job is to light several beacons around a plateau, making a wandering boss vulnerable before going to fight it. The land you get to explore in The Pathless is vast, and made up of several ‘plateaus’. It’s not a particularly compelling premise, but it gets the job done.

All you need to know is that there’s a whole bunch of darkness in this world, and your duty is to cleanse it. You’re Link in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You play as a hunter armed with a bow and arrow, charging in with the intention of reversing everything the Godslayer has done - something you’ll learn that no one else there has managed to pull off, via notes on their bodies scattered around the map. Basically, a being called the Godslayer has begun to corrupt the land, killing its people and spreading fire across what was once a peaceful, beautiful place. It’s all very generic fantasy fare to be honest, and I forgot most of it the moment I started traipsing about the open-world. The Pathless’ lore is spoon-fed to you the moment you boot up the game, via several passages of text describing the world you’re about to enter.

That doesn’t mean that it’s anywhere as good as those two games, but it’s still a really refreshing take on the open-world genre. Thematically, The Pathless feels very similar to Journey and Abzu too, only with a much clearer story to follow. I'm only mentioning this because the moment you boot up the game and see those dreamy visuals, and start dashing through the open-world with ballerina-like fluidity - those connections are going to make a lot of sense. Giant Squid is also made up of ex-staff from Thatgamecompany, who made Journey. The Pathless comes from developer Giant Squid, creatives of Abzu. The Pathless is an interesting take on the open-world, monster-slaying game

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