Rock, Paper, Shotgun

19/03/2009 at 15:49 Rook says:

I’m really disappointed in the way that this game has been previewed, and what people have felt the need to leave out as it’s an “arty game”. And I’m not sure that jpg explains it better :p but the Mighty Boosh do a good summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMCRwQalRuQ&feature=related

19/03/2009 at 16:06 LionsPhil says:

“I am somewhat sad.”

See? True art is angsty.

19/03/2009 at 16:09 Clockwork Harlequin says:

What an absolutely lovely-looking game. I look forward to playing it (although, crass as I am, I’ll no doubt end up disappointed that it’s not a fps). . .

19/03/2009 at 16:55 Lewis says:

Gunrun: An excellent and measured response. Care share any details?

19/03/2009 at 17:05 Weylund says:

Gunrun – but I usually buy “iredimably” awful games. They remind me of home. In Iredim.

Why would the game need excuses?

19/03/2009 at 17:15 diebroken says:

Interesting, might have to check this out sometime (after Pathologic). Also, breaking news Far Cry 2 DLC is now available on Steam!

P.S. has anyone ever heard of/played Bloodline (not the Vampires one)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0crbU3xR5Is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOubiuu8Ibo

http://merlin.pl/Bloodline-uspione-zlo/browse/product/8,418638.html

19/03/2009 at 17:18 Rob F says:

I don’t see how anyone being “artists exploring a new medium” makes up for it being filled to the brim with fundamentally idiotic design choices. Inconsistent controls, stealing control, disabling controls and forcing the controls might seem like pushing the boundaries of what we expect from a game to some, but when it boils down to it – it’s actually just a bit of a rubbish thing to do. The only thing that particular element challenged was my patience.

Perhaps that was their intent? Hardly a justification if it is the case.

But I fear you’re making something of perhaps the smallest part of why I disliked it. Sure, it’s broken – man, I run an amateur game developer site, I’ve been playing games for nearly 30 years now, I’ve seen broken (and hardly been not guilty of releasing broken things myself) and I’m happy to overlook broken bits in games.

I’m more bothered by The Path being a bunch of depressingly (not -depressing-) predictable movie tropes wedged into a game format (yeah, I said tropes – I’m not afraid) and as I inferred above – coming off more like a first year art/film students first project. Wrapped as it is in sub Lynch cum Goth visuals for bonus points. I fear I couldn’t have rolled my eyes further back in my head at such priceless moments as discovering a bath in the forest y’know.

I don’t find it embarrassing that it’s done by at least one 40 year old because it’s broken, I find it embarrassing because it’s a load of old cobblers that runs perilously close to coming from the Torchwood school of adult but with a much more dour face.

19/03/2009 at 17:19 Lewis says:

Rob F: absolutely fair points. I’ll have to think of some counter arguments :)

19/03/2009 at 17:46 bansama says:

When you charge money for something, surely you implicitly promise polish?

Points to Eternity’s Child…

19/03/2009 at 18:13 Lewis says:

SteveHatesYou: if you use the term “wankery” to dismiss a piece of art, then no, not at all.

Anyway: from the official forum just now, by a user called “whatahorrriblenight2haveatroll” –

“You’re gonna have to patch in the ability to complete the game without getting your girls raped, or I’m gonna have to go Mr. Lawsuit on your ass.”

And it begins.

19/03/2009 at 18:20 Rob F says:

Lewis, What’s he going to accuse them of in court? Offending idiots?

19/03/2009 at 18:30 Matzerath says:

The Path is just what I was hoping it to be. It’s drenched in melancholy, with wonderful art design and music, its dark theme amusingly contrasted by atypical video-game trappings — the hazy ‘goals,’ the score tally at the end. It is dancing around a (slightly) hidden theme that most people would probably not want to play a video-game about — at least not on the emotional end.
It reminds me of City of Lost Children a bit, and an old short story by Joyce Carol Oates: ‘Where are you going, where have you been?’
In short, I find it a worthy 10 dollars spent.
(By the way, out of curiosity: Is buying The Path directly from their site a better Euro rate than the notoriously crappy Steam conversion?)

19/03/2009 at 18:51 Sciere says:

Yes, The Path is broken and it is meant to be that way. There are no game-stopping bugs of obvious “flaws” that hinder gameplay or progress in any way, it challenges you to break free of the gameplay mainstream titles have conditioned you to – to get into control as quickly as possible.

Most of the game you are an active spectator who is allowed to weigh in at the key moments. And your decisions lead to horrible consequences. They managed to put more atmosphere into the first five minutes of the game than I got out of BioShock or any other title I can think of.

It’s a tabula rasa in gameplay design, ignoring about everything a design handbook would recommend. It forces you to slow down and step back. I can relate to the criticism of The Graveyard, but not to the poetry in this. It’s pure, tragic and gripping beyond belief …

19/03/2009 at 19:09 Rob F says:

I’m not going to argue with your own personal view of the game Sciere, each to their own and all that but:

“There are no game-stopping bugs of obvious “flaws” that hinder gameplay or progress in any way”

comes across as a bit Iraqi Minister Of Information because it clearly is bugged in parts. Especially the parts where you’re meant to weigh in on events but the game can glitch out and leave you unable to do so for long periods of time.

If that’s not hindering progress, I don’t know what is.

19/03/2009 at 19:13 Rob F says:

Either keyboard, mouse or joypad. Not a combination thing, so you should be alreet.

19/03/2009 at 19:30 Rob F says:

And getting stuck in scenery was a deliberate design choice too, I suppose?

19/03/2009 at 19:33 Matzerath says:

I haven’t run into any ‘true glitches’ yet. Certainly not the venerable CTD, a lovely feature of most major releases.

By the way, regarding the poster from the game’s forum who was threatening to sue — further down he admits he’s trying to be the world’s most obvious troll. His screen-name is a little bit of a tip-off, I think.

19/03/2009 at 19:41 Meat Circus says:

I can’t help feeling that those who are interpreting this game as a ‘rape simulator’ might just possibly be projecting their own psyche onto it.

I’m just suggesting that maybe some of the kneejerk trollery upthread is from those who occasionally have dark thoughts about little girls and are beginning to be afraid that they can’t control it.

I know what I thought it was about. A difficult story to tell, but this game tackles it in an engaging and thoughtful way.

I strongly recommend this to anyone who’s occasionally looking for something a bit different from their games.

19/03/2009 at 19:42 Lewis says:

I think a lot of people I’ve spoken to about this have assumed I think The Path is flawless, because they can’t shut me up about it, but this isn’t the case. It has a number of issues which do seriously affect it, for me. The scenery-sticking and clipping are clearly problematic. I didn’t notice any *bugs* as such – never had a problem triggering any events – but there is a slight lack of polish in some areas. And the movement speed, and cumbersome controls, are going to be an issue for a lot of people.

I wonder if no one’s really had time yet to notice what I consider its biggest problem: Drama Princess. On first play through, I thought it was wonderful. The way your character reacts when you let go of the controls is absolutely fascinating. When I played through again, and nearly all the interactions were identical, I felt really let down. I thought the whole point was that the behaviour was “contextually random.” Instead, it seems like there are a couple of things the girls can do in a given situation, and the game just picks between them – so 50% of the time it’s not going to be noticable. Which makes me question why they even bothered to develop the system in the first place.

19/03/2009 at 19:49 Meat Circus says:

THIS GAME IS NOT ABOUT RAPE.

If you think it is, you’re the sick fuck, not the game designers.

HTH.

19/03/2009 at 19:57 John says:

@MeatCircus Sorry, meant to say DHGF. What do you think the game is about?

19/03/2009 at 20:09 Meat Circus says:

Growing up. Loss of innocence.

19/03/2009 at 20:23 Dominic White says:

I’m shocked, appalled, and slightly disturbed.

Not at the game, no – I’ve not played it yet. I’m talking about peoples reactions to it. A quick look around the bigger games forums shows a lot of people genuinely, seethingly furious about the very existance of The Path.

There are people calling for the deaths of the developers. There’s no shortage of ‘This is the most horrible thing ever made’ sentiment going around. It’s probably the fastest transition from 0-to-Angry Internet Men that I’ve ever seen.

19/03/2009 at 20:45 Lewis says:

Dominic White:

It’s something the developers expected and were prepared for. I had a discussion with Michael a while back where he was considering asking all reviewers to rate the game 0/10 and just be done with it.

It seems to be a game where very few people think it’s “okay.” The Angry Internet Men are on both extreme sides: many think it’s the second coming, many think it’s Judas (wow, that was an unexpectedly convoluted religious analogy). It’s probably the fastest I’ve seen a game being so heavily debated, outside the silly fanboy wars of Killzone 2 and MGS4.

All good art tends to split opinion somewhere along the line. I’d say it’s a sign of success.

Could you provide some links to these Angry Internet Men? I’m quite curious.

***

John: firstly, as has been pointed out and you’ve acknowledged, RPS gave it a positive review. DHGF is the only enormously negative take on it I’ve read, out of the seven or eight reviews that have appeared so far. Most are very positive.

Secondly, of course you can’t get a refund. That’s preposterous.

Thirdly, I took the game as being a reasonably blank canvas for you to project your own interpretations upon. I took it like this because that’s what the developers have continually said throughout its production. They are not “telling a story.” Think of it like the avant-garde movement in cinema: often, stream-of-consciousness collections of seemingly unrelated imagery, with no enormous purpose other than to spark the viewer’s imagination off.

It’s a game about rape if you want it to be.

“this is subversion for subversion’s sake” – is that necessarily a bad thing? If so, why?

19/03/2009 at 21:04 Lewis says:

Right.

Okay.

“I guess if you call getting beaten by a male stranger and then waking up with clothes torn “growing up,” more power to you.”

Certainly. Though it’s not really applicable here because NONE OF THAT HAPPENS IN THE GAME. I mean, seriously. Have you played it? The time skips, very intentionally, after the wolf encounter, so you never see what happens. The girls’ appearacnes after this are identical, aside from their stance and movement. And only 2 out of the 6 wolves are men. It’s often an idea to get your facts straight before you work them into a controversial argument.

“By encoding the rape with words like “growing up” or “loss of innocence” we’re doing exactly as society does with rape.”

Please explain what you mean by this.

“I think there should at least be some kind of warning on Steam pre-purchase. I have a couple daughters”

And I hope you wouldn’t let them play it, so no harm done, surely. Does Steam not have age ratings? I don’t know if the game went through any official bodies but in every press release ToT have sent out there’s been a very clear “this is an ADULT game” warning included.

19/03/2009 at 21:24 Sciere says:

It’s sad we’re on the couch playing games were grown men are blasting each other’s brains out with graphical violence in full view and a total disregard of subtlety, and when a little girl with desires of decay walks in the woods with implicit violence we’re all riding the high horse.

19/03/2009 at 21:32 Lewis says:

Alex – good to hear from you again.

I thought Fey was oddly asexual, actually. I genuinely wasn’t sure which gender “it” belonged to. Very feminine, but, y’know, no boobies.

I am indeed passionate about the game, but people are equally putting words into my mouth (one person over at N4G, comparing my review with yours, claimed they would “rather read a review that acknowledged the game’s flaws” even though I spent a good two paragraphs detailing them; another comment wondered how I could claim to love a game that I conceded had “overt problems.” I think the latter remark troubled me more). It’s a brave but flawed game. It’s the bravery (and the lovely little visual touches that you didn’t like because you HAVE NO SOUL) that gets me all talkative ;)

19/03/2009 at 21:46 Alex Lucard says:

@Lewish -with Fey? When in doubt, elves in a gothic-punk motif are usually androgynous males. This comes from having spent way too much of my youth with the a lot of monochromatically clad doom n’ gloomers. :-)

As much as I hate this game (and I really hate it), I’m very upset about people proclaiming the game as awesome or utter bollocks without even playing it. It should be “This SOUND awesome.” or “This SOUNDS awful.” I mean, if 1/10th of the people commenting on this game around the web actually bought The Path, ToT would probably have enough money to retire!

19/03/2009 at 21:54 Fat Zombie says:

Damnit, when did this conversation get so heated?

Anyway. I’d like to latch onto something someone said: Noby Noby Boy. Say what you like, but in my view it’s the most fun I’ve had with art in a long time. If it can be classed as art, that is?

19/03/2009 at 22:07 Hidden_7 says:

The way I see it so far (I’m only at Ruby) it’s about growing up and painful lessons in that process, not rape, though I can see how it’s potentially possibly to read it that way, I wouldn’t say anyone who did see that reading was sick in the mind, but I think clinging to that as the ONLY interpretation is a tad short-sighted.

Loss of innocence yes, but so far I’m reading it as a little more specific than that, loss of various aspects of innocence? The youngest, I forget her name, lost that naivety of youth where you trust everything and nothing can go wrong. Rose (second youngest) lost that sense of wonder, of abstract free-floating thought. I’m a little unsure of what the third girl (I must bet better at their names) lost, a trust in certain others? A trust in ones own discernment, confidence in outlook on world? The arrogance that you’ve got it all figured out and no one else does usually lasts a little longer than that age though, so I’m not sure. And like I’ve said, I still have three girls to go, so this theory may not hold, especially since I’ve only got a clear impression of 2/3 so far.

19/03/2009 at 22:28 Zanthox says:

So far so good! I’ve been following this game for a little while now and after only 30min or so as Robin (figured I’d play in order youngest to oldest) I can’t focus on my homework and want to get back to it.
Most of the things other people seem to complain about (the controls or how the game plays it self at times) are the parts I really enjoy, its all about seeing the interaction.
I’ve also never wanted to yelled “yeah I got another flower b*tches!” so much in my life, even though I know that isn’t the “right” way to play this game.

19/03/2009 at 22:32 Meat Circus says:

I withdraw the ‘sick fuck’ comment, since it wasn’t aimed at thoughtful commentary such as yours, John.

It is of course perfectly valid to interpret what happens to at least one of the girls off-screen at the very least as metaphorical rape.

But people in this thread and elsewhere are getting hysterical at seeing on-screen rape and murder that does not exist.

Calling this game a ‘rape simulator’ is absurd and offensive.

19/03/2009 at 22:37 John says:

Here’s how it worked for me. I bought it at midnight (EST). I went to bed at 4am. I got a drink of water somewhere in the middle, which means I played it for at least 3 1/2 hours. I’m not sure how much more I need to play it to develop an opinion.

And in that time the screen faded to black 4 times, with the character waking up beaten each time. Since a darkened screen is the default cultural motif for sexual contact (watch more network TV if you disagree), it didn’t take too much analysis to realize what the games creators are implying. And Lewis, in my interaction with the game the strangers were all male. Maybe if I’d played one more time it would have been different.

I didn’t go into the game with any preconceptions except that it would be incredible. Hell, I refreshed the web page from 11:45 until midnight. I purposely veered away from any pre-release commentary for the very reason that I didn’t think anyone would get it.

I went to bed disappointed, and grossed out.

When I read Alex’s review today, it articulated many of the weird feelings that surrounded the game for me.

@Lewis, as you well know any conversation to define art is a muddled one. That said, just because people are discussing it doesn’t mean it’s good art, or even art. It just means that people are discussing it.

I’m not a prude. I’m not Jack Thompson. I’m allowed to say this game bothers me without being characterized as a wacky internet extremist fundamentalist who thinks Pac-man is demonic and gory.

But having (yes, it’s true) actually respect the comment threads on RPS (comparatively speaking) I’m actually quite shocked that more people here aren’t pissed off at this game in an intelligent-not-ripping-heads-off way. The Path misrepresents games as art. It doesn’t show rape, but it implies it. Not getting raped…er…seeing a darkened screen is, by the game’s parameters, a failure. The fact that it’s “brave” doesn’t mean that it’s good otherwise we’d all still be playing Postal. Just because you hit someone over the head with a sledgehammer doesn’t mean you can fence. There are more effective ways to elicit emotion than the sexual violence this game metaphorically (or otherwise) presents. (Photopia comes immediately to mind.)

“Loss of innocence” and “growing up” are difficult themes to capture in a video game, if only evidenced by the number of games that deal with those themes (which is to say, next to none). Kudos to Tale of Tales for tackling them, but aren’t there better, more interesting ways of employing those themes that do not rely on (implied) sexual violence against women? Can’t we deal with those themes in games without little girls being virtually violated, shown or otherwise?

And, does The Path get a free pass on morality (and, I might add, game mechanics/stability?) simply the game is being framed as art?

19/03/2009 at 22:43 loci says:

After 5 hours “experiencing” …im very disappointed.
The gfx may look good as a screenshot but are quite poor when playing. (gfx in granny’s house are terrible)
Music begins to get annoying after 10 mins.
Atmosphere is pseudo gothy and twee (who said this was a horror?)

19/03/2009 at 22:51 Meat Circus says:

@John:

“with the character waking up beaten each time. ”

How do you know the girls were beaten? They awaken dressed, with their clothing intact, unbloodied and unbruised. They’re clearly shaken, and cold, and wet. But it’s possible to be all of those things without being the victim of a violent sexual assault.

19/03/2009 at 22:55 LionsPhil says:

Matzerath: I can almost hear Jaqui Smith scrabbling to get at the Steam transaction logs.

19/03/2009 at 22:58 Cooper says:

I bought this this evening, given that I decided I owe it to my (misplaced, and often jarringly so) faith that games can be an important cultural medium.

The Path disappoints somewhat. To say ‘it’s not about rape’ seems a cop-out to me. It’s very much in the vein of adolescent growing up / loss of innocence tales – which are hardly new (as the Red Rising Hood theme clearly shows) and certainly not rare (the vast number of films, books, songs and tv series dedicated to this shows). Sex tends to feature often in these tales.

Now, I have my own reserves about that genre as a whole, largely due to shallow Hollywood attempts to deal with what is a complex bundle of knotted issues (not least the fairly awkward notion of childhood innocence in the first place) – but it remains a productive one.

It is nice to see games broaching such issues. This is to be encouraged.

For me, though, The Path fails.

The gameplay elements which jar with the theme are welcome. I read this as a statement on how staid gameplay will never be able to cover such issues, which I believe games must to move forward. But that’s me reading what I want there, I imagine.

I don’t think that hiding behind worn out gothic stylisations, shallow visual metaphors (or just seemingly purposefully abstract and/or surreal), visual effects tropes (such as the paint splashes on the screen) helps the situation. What I was left with was something that felt less like poetry and more like “Emily Strange goes through adolescence as rendered by Mr Lynch”

That being said, I’m glad it exists. I’m glad people hate it. People hated Lolita and they even hated American Beauty. I would similarly hold none of those up as any kind of standard of how to approach such issues, but I wouldn’t deny them either.

19/03/2009 at 23:03 John says:

@Meat Circus: yeah, maybe I read into it. But I didn’t need Alex’s review to articulate my feeling that these girls were being raped. I thought that the second time it happened. As I said, I didn’t read any pre-release material hinting at it at all. And I don’t play Civilization and think “that unit is raping that other unit by walking on top of it.”

In fact, I swear this is the first game I’ve ever thought, “Hey, that’s rape.” Oh, and I guess there was that one Japanese anime game a friend bought for me in Tokyo. I think the title translated out to, “Rape Rape IX: Robotic Tentacled Schoolchildren Many Times!!!!!!!!”

So I’m not sure where I came up with it. I can assure you rape was not on my mind before I played the game. I was thinking, “Man, Eternal Forest was awesome and kind of boring. I hope this is awesome sans boring.” For Tale of Tale’s next game I’ll be thinking, “Man, I hope this is awesome sans boring. And rape.” I guess.

19/03/2009 at 23:05 Meat Circus says:

@Alex Lucard:

I agree with you on this point. If there’s one real complaint I’d level at The Path it’s that I occasionally found it a bit dull. Given its subject matter and tone, that’s quite striking.

19/03/2009 at 23:12 Alex Lucard says:

@Sam – I’m not a fan of first person shooters. It’s not a style of gameplay I enjoy.

And rape and murder is all I felt The Path was. Walk walk walk walk flower picking walk walk walk walk rape. very slowly walk very slowly walk very slowly walk very slowly walk DEATH.

Or walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk walk OH HEY IT’S GRANNY.

Really when 90% of the game is walking and the other ten percent is divided between metaphorical rape and murder there’s not much else TO talk about save for the glitches or the screenshot where Carmen disappeared from the game (Not involving wolf) and I was left looking at my screen going “Is this part of the game? No, crap. It’s a bug.”

19/03/2009 at 23:19 Iain says:

I think I should point out that the “Success” and “Failure” screen after the completion of each chapter is an ironic statement on the behalf of the developers. (And that’s not me making an assumption and trying to defend the developers – it says as much in their review guide.)

I’m not going to comment on the specifics of the game here, because I’m reviewing it elsewhere, but one thing about this debate strikes me.

We all, as gamers, like to strike parallels between videogames and other forms of entertainment media as being just as “worthy” as cinema or the kind of TV you get from HBO. So why are subjects like rape that are commonly dealt with in TV, books and film alike mysteriously taboo for videogames? Isn’t that a double-standard?

And isn’t the implication of violence (sexual or otherwise) a far more mature and affecting way of dealing with it than graphically splattering it all over our monitors? From the reaction I’ve read in this thread, it clearly is, and I think that’s a good thing, as it shows that the power of the human imagination far outstrips what can be shown on a screen, and that maybe we ought to be questioning the use of violence as entertainment in all our media.

19/03/2009 at 23:25 Cooper says:

“By the way, I liked Lolita and American Beauty. I also like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. I even really liked Requiem for a Dream even though I’ll never watch it again. But The Path feels yucky(ier) for some reason. Perhaps it’s because I (the game player) is more complicit than just being an observer.”

Which I think may be the important point. Which, I imagine, is why John had those uncomfortable responses. This can be an uncomfortable theme, as it it, moreso when you (as player) are nominally in control. I’m not gonna unravel that too much. But, suffice to say, I think that’s a false dichotomy. Games are much more linear than we would have.

In ‘The Path’ there seems to be two choices. Follow the path and fail, veer off the path and meet ‘the wolf’ (and, possibly, get raped). I felt less distrubed than you may have a) because I know this is a game, the same way I know Lolita is a novel and b) I know that (and could sense that) my actions had very, very little effect upon what would happen in the game.

Yes, the game was disturbing (although, for me, moreso because of what I throught was a deeply shallow way of broaching the theme) but then so is a lot of theatre, film and literature. This is not bad thing.

Disturbing isn’t bad. Maybe that allows some people to call it art, not entertainment. Games which are disturbing disturb doubly, as few games are, so that jars with our preconceptions of games.

This does not mean that games should not broach these themes.

19/03/2009 at 23:30 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

Aaaand where’s this rape everyone’s talking about?

19/03/2009 at 23:51 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

Correct me if I’m wrong, and there will be spoilers here, but aren’t there multiple wolfs? I had the game end three times, and each time it said I met the wolf. There was the smoking guy, the flower girl, and the piano man. Have I not encountered the rape wolf yet?

20/03/2009 at 00:04 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

Oh. Well, games like this feed a lot from from user feedback. Rape is never mentioned in this game at all, so any instance of rape you may find from this game all comes from your own mind.

Heh, thinking about it, ridiculing this game for having adult subject matter is pretty ridiculous when you think about it, but also pretty genius on ToT’s part. Since it truly is up to the player to interpret certain events, ToT can’t be blamed for anything.

If you see rape, then you wanted rape. That’s all there is to it.

20/03/2009 at 00:12 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

Lewis: I took it as a great opportunity for her to start something she wanted to try. Earlier in the game she said she wanted to start up because it would shorten her life span. For me, there wasn’t anything really sinister about it. The joy of the surrealist experience.

20/03/2009 at 00:17 Lewis says:

We’re getting spoilerific here, aren’t we? Still, it’s worth discussing.

She’s a confused, unhappy kid. She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s vulnerable, despite her hardy exterior.

I need to play her again. Any notion of rape faded into insignificance at the thought of her taking up smoking and inevitibly dying of her habit many, many years later.

I say that as a smoker, oddly.

20/03/2009 at 00:18 bansama says:

nut I think there should at least be some kind of warning on Steam pre-purchase.

There was. If you read the product page. Bolded to stand out, the blurb quite clearly tells people that this is an adult game, not suitable for children.:

The Path unsuitable for children. Despite of its origins in fairy tales, The Path is decidedly a game for the mature mind.

Who’s fault is it really, if people buy this game without reading the product page and then get offended by it?

20/03/2009 at 00:21 Lewis says:

Oh christ, this topic is so popular that my comment-aiming is all fucked up. Work it out yourselves.

I’m perversely pleased that a tiny obscure indie non-game is generating such fascinating discussion. This is *wonderful*!

20/03/2009 at 00:43 Larington says:

Theres a question left open by a brief appearence of alcohol and I think it says more about the dangers of the consumption of said beverages than it does anything else.

Besides, its possible even in this case to just assume that its the mother of all hangovers going on and not something… else…

In any case, this product (Is it a game?) challenges me in ways that other interactive entertainments do not, surely this is a good thing. To test ourselves and how we interpret things and see what the result is.

20/03/2009 at 00:48 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

unclelou: What images would those be?

20/03/2009 at 01:11 Gabanski83 says:

Wow, nice to see a game create so much discussion.

I’m toying with the idea of buying this; what kind of game is it? Can someone describe it, as I’m getting confused signals all over the shop here. From the game blurb, it seems to be a dark twist on the original Red Riding Hood story, which, like many original fairy tales, already had grim and disturbing/upsetting connotations. But then, from reading comments on here, I’m not sure what to think of the game. Is it more of a psychological horror game, where it plays on your thoughts, ideas and perceptions to upset you, or what? And why do people find it upsetting (without going into spoilers, if possible)? Is it because it makes you think, and you don’t like what comes up?

20/03/2009 at 01:21 LionsPhil says:

So it’s a Japanese dating sim in reverse?

20/03/2009 at 01:36 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

Gabanski: It’s an extremely surreal game. A lot of things go on, but most of what goes on is never really clear. It’s really hard to describe without giving my interpretation of it.

Don’t listen to the people who say rape is in the game, and don’t listen to the people who say rape is not in the game. That’s the whole point of being surreal, of being thought provoking, what happens is what you get out of it, and that’s the joy of it.

It’s a wonderful brain exercise, it’s a neat way of comparing your psyche to others, as well as a wonderful test of your patience.

One thing I can say about this game without a shadow of a doubt, is that moving is tedious. Walking is terribly slow, and running isn’t very effective as your view is darkened and your view in front of you is severely limited when you run more than a few seconds. Aside from that it’s a wonderful experience.

As an example of how open to interpretation this game is, I’ll let you know that I still have no idea where exactly people are seeing rape in this game. I’ve played through every scenario, and the epilogue, and can’t find where people are seeing rape. I collected most items (items you find lying around give you a little bit of insight on your character, for the most part), went into the game knowing people saw rape within at least one of the scenarios, and I still can’t bend my brain enough to spot rape anywhere within.

So, as I’ve said, go into this game with an open mind, without the thoughts of others weighing down your imagination.

Also have a lot of spare time because moving around really can be a chore at times.

20/03/2009 at 01:56 Gabanski83 says:

@ Hajimete no Paso Kon:

Cheers, that’s just what I wanted to know. Think I’ll give this a shot.

20/03/2009 at 02:14 Alex Lucard says:

The more I talk with people about the game the more I’m noticing a pretty distinct pattern.

The people who are seeing the game as “rapefest ’09″ (myself included) seem to be people who are more aware of the original source material of Little Red Riding Hood and how it is indeed a metaphor for assault/murder and then eventually it became a metaphor for rape and then over the centuries the tale recieved a happy ending.

From my own personal experience, I’ve had to write a lot of folklore articles, papers, and the like and so I’m pretty intimate with the lore. So when a developer gives me review notes saying “This game is meant to be a return to the original roots of the game” and then you get the various imagery and scenes that we do, it’s almost impossible not to make that leap to “rape rape rapey rape.”

However, it seems that people who didn’t recieve the reviewer only material from TOT or are less familar with the hitting you over the head symbolism in the original versions of the tale, the rape intepretation seems less obvious and for some, totally outside their comprehension of what happened.

I’m actually starting to get really creeped out by some of the people linking to my review who have somehow missed my commentary about any rape aspects being metaphorical and that nothing graphic is shown and then writing that you hear or even see things. I have no idea whether it is good or bad that these people are disturbing me more than The Path itself. Afterall there’s enough in this game that you can hate on than to make stuff up.

20/03/2009 at 02:50 Matzerath says:

Alex — sorry to keep bugging you on the matter of your review (on two sites!), but this whole controversy is endlessly fascinating to me. I understand you weren’t trying to get on a righteous soapbox about this game, but the tone of your article is such that it is easily co-opted by liberal/conservative firebrands as proof that this game is a hideous ‘rape-game,’ which it really isn’t; such statements immediately draw comparisons to that ACTUAL Japanese rape-game that made a big stink for Amazon recently. I think the difference between those two games are pretty obvious (though admittedly I didn’t play the Japanese one — did you write a review for that one?). Basically you’re saying ‘The Path’ is as offensive as folklore, which is kinda funny.
People are citing established classics of other mediums like ‘Lolita’ in this game’s defense, which is cool; I used Clockwork Orange as a comparison, and you agreed that it’s the fact that video-games are interactive that makes such things more offensive — one is leading the girls to their doom.
(Lolita spoiler-alert below.)
Well, take Lolita. Aren’t you just as complicit by reading that book beginning to end? The main character makes his intentions very clear from the get-go, so by the time he deflowers (well, thinks he deflowers but others have beat him to it) Lolita, it’s certainly a foregone conclusion.
Anyway, this is all a hell of a debate. Myself, I just love weird little arty-farty independent games. I can also hardly wait for ‘Zeno Clash’!

20/03/2009 at 03:13 Alex Lucard says:

Matzerath -

The funny thing about my tone is how long time readers are taking it compared to how people who have only read that particular piece by me are. I’m generally considered one of the most laid back people my readers and friends know. I think newcomers are definitely reading more emotion and even anger into that review then their actually is. I’m both amused and disturbed by the firebrands,

With a book again, it’s a totally passive experience. you didn’t write the book. The Path is an active one. You make the choice to interact with the wolf. It is totally YOUR decision as to what happens. If Lolita were a Choose Your Own Adventure or you could pick the ending that would be closer to it.

With a book or movie it’s more voyeuristic and with The Path you make the choice as to what happens and as such are an accessory to what happens to them. For those choosing to view the rape aspects of the game, that’s a pretty unsettling thing to think about.

20/03/2009 at 03:20 Iain says:

@Alex Lucard:

So when a developer gives me review notes saying “This game is meant to be a return to the original roots of the game” and then you get the various imagery and scenes that we do, it’s almost impossible not to make that leap to “rape rape rapey rape.”

I have to agree, it’s a natural conclusion to jump to – it did occur to me when I was playing the game,
and given the sensationalist nature of a lot of our news media these days (“WAR! RAPE! KIDDIE RAPE! MURDER! TERRORISM! DEATH! GLOBAL WARMING! ECONOMIC MELTDOWN!”) it’s also the conclusion most other people have been conditioned to reach first, but I have to stress that it’s not the only conclusion you can come to. Interpreting it as (and I quote from your review) “nothing more than one giant metaphor for rape” is horribly one-dimensional.

Unfortunately, given that most of the people inclined to vent spleen on this kind of thing (politicians, talk show hosts, etc) will never play the game but still pass judgment on it regardless, I think it’s all the more important that specialist journalists don’t just stop at the first conclusion they draw and provide a balance the mainstream press have no interest in. After reading your review, I understand how and why you reached the opinion you did, but I don’t agree with it.

20/03/2009 at 03:39 Alex Lucard says:

@Iain

You’re right. It’s not the only conclusion you CAN come to. But it’s the only one *I* came to. And it was the same conclusion everyone else I showed this game to came up with. I asked about a dozen people their thoughts on this before I wrote the review simply because I was looking for another interpretation from my staff and friends. When I didn’t get one, I wrote the only thing I could. That whole unanimous thing kind of did it for me.

It’s totally cool that you don’t agree with my opinion, but as long as you can see how I came to it, that’s what is important just like, in talking with others I can see how they came to their interpretations even though I strongly disagree with that as well.

20/03/2009 at 03:51 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

.pdf? Yuck.

20/03/2009 at 03:59 Matzerath says:

Yup, you sure showed them!

20/03/2009 at 06:04 Daniel says:

Well darn, I was really hoping to play this because it sounded interesting, and was not expecting performance to be an issue at all. But the game is unplayable at any graphics level on my laptop that can run most games fine =(. This is once piece of art I’ll apparently need to spend a thousand for some ridiculously over-the-top-for-the-graphics rig to experience.

20/03/2009 at 08:52 Lewis says:

Daniel: the system specs are pretty low, really. 2GHz single core, 1GB RAM, GeForce 6600? Lower than any mainstream game released these days.

Alex, to go back to your point about people going into it with knowledge of the original tale, I think that rings quite true. And I think the people who aren’t reacting in that way tend to be the people that have had some prior experience of the game. I was tasked with writing a preview a few months ago, so I’d spoken with the developers at length about what they were trying to achieve and what themes were explored in it. So going into it knowing that part of their design philosophy was very specifically not to have the game be “about” anything led me to conjure up a variety of different interpretations. Rape was certainly one of them (funnily enough, Carmen’s woodcutter alluded to it far more strongly than Ruby’s bloke, for me).

I’ve already given you my opinions on your review. I think it did come across more angry and bitter than you perhaps intended. And having spoken to you about it since, I have a much better idea of where you were coming from.

Also, I’ll just reiterate again: you’re friends with Jarboe! Man!

20/03/2009 at 10:32 Tei says:

*SPOILERS*
*SPOILERS*
*SPOILERS*

On my first run (with the one girl with wood legs), I got “hunted” by the gost, and found a knife and other stuff, and played with a (?) ghost. I have see the wolf hide a body, so I suppsed him kill his victims. I was not killed, but I was near the grandmother house on the floor, so I supposed that I escaped the wolf, of the wolf is exploring new ways of decay ( destroy a person psyque trough rape, and watch that person decay ).

I kind of antagonize the whole Goth thing. But I am a geek.

I was “playing with the demon” before losing control on the character. So on some degree, I have to blame myself for my first girl to get raped by the wolf.

*SPOILERS*
*SPOILERS*
*SPOILERS*

20/03/2009 at 10:36 Tei says:

@celebdae: have you fixed that by now? try to delete that file, and let Steam redownload it, or If you have a crazy OS like Vista, try to change the compatibility stuff of that file. Or maybe google for it. It could be a shaders thingie or some driver uncompatibility.

20/03/2009 at 10:59 Meat Circus says:

My reading of Ruby’s encounter with the wolf is that it’s all about the cigarettes.

The man doesn’t behave in an aggressive way towards her, she willingly leans into his open arm. I see no evidence of force or even unwillingness on the part of Ruby. Everything that happens (whatever it is) she does so quite voluntarily.

20/03/2009 at 11:29 Lewis says:

In terms of the “is it about rape?” argument, well, I’m increasingly positive that it’s a debate ToT predicted and played up to. There’s literally nothing in the game that explicitly describes any event. Is anything even particularly alluded to, in a strong sense? I wonder if they’re trying to say something about the power of suggestion, and how strongly it evokes emotional responses from people.

There was a study, wasn’t there, where people were shown footage of a car accident, then interviewed afterwards. In actual fact, the accident was a very minor shunt. The responses were thoroughly interesting. When people were asked “when the cars collided, how much glass was there?” replies were invariably “none” or “not much.” Those who were asked “when the cars smashed into each other, how much glass was there?” responses were generally very much the opposite.

The Path is less overt in its approach, but I wonder if, by playing up to the social panic about letting your kids talk to strangers or go off exploring on their own, it triggers off the same part of the brain that simply makes stuff up. People are saying “but it’s obviously about rape!” I’d invite those people to look really carefully at what’s shown in the game, and think about what their interpretation says about the nature of the human psyche.

Because I’m almost certain that’s what Tale of Tales were doing.

20/03/2009 at 12:12 Meat Circus says:

I think it’s certainly true that we’ve all been playing the developers’ meta-game, even those of us who haven’t played The Path.

Fighting over interpretations, and what might or might not be implied in The Path, and what mightn’t even be acceptable in games as an art form is clearly a discussion they were hoping to evoke.

Given the range of emotions this game has managed to evoke (anger, disgust, despair, hatred, confusion) I’d say Tale of Tales’s project has been a huge success.

20/03/2009 at 12:56 Paul Moloney says:

I’m absolutely dying to read this thread, but since I’ve only played the game for an hour or so, I’m trying to avoid as many spoilers as I can.

:
:
:

One thing, though – I’ve played the young girl with the good (name forgotten – I think she’s the second from the right on the selection screen). Much has been made of the wolf. I’ve seen him in the graveyard, but he hasn’t spotted me. So the wolf doesn’t appear to be dangerous unless I skip up to him – something I naturally don’t plan to do. Am I missing something here?

P.

20/03/2009 at 13:20 Meat Circus says:

@Paul Moloney:

Yes, I’d say you were missing the ‘goal’ of the game which is to interact with the Wolf.

20/03/2009 at 13:30 MeestaNob! says:

(have not played the game)

So all encounters are up to the player? Could one then interpret this game as an accurate simulator of the guilt some rape victims feel after an incident in that they feel its “their fault”, whether or not the situation was truly of their own doing; i.e engaging a stranger, taking a different route home that usual, allowing curiosity to dictate a different set of actions rather than the cautious self preservation defense mechanisms that a person would normally have present (such as accepting a gift from said stranger).

The player then carries over these feelings between girls up to the point where by the end the player is (or feels) like their own worst enemy, constantly allowing themselves to be used by strangers in a world where everyone is a stranger to one another yet co-exist peacefully.

I think this is one reason why it resonates so strongly with John Walker, as its possible that many of the young people he would have worked with would have had similar experiences and come from backgrounds of gross breaches of trust – a small link between his experiences as a social worker and the overwhelmingly bleak sense of doom and misery prevalent in the game.

So, games!

20/03/2009 at 14:10 Larington says:

Yeah, the definition of game is something I’ve been wrestling with since I did an assignment that involved analysing the difference between two games that were rated differently using some form of Ludology. My eventual conclusion was that the better rated game gave the player greater choice… Which kind of figures into my (Current, at least) definition of games, where I’ve stripped away any assumption for notions of fun, good or bad or anything like that and stuck with something thats broad but fairly accurate – That a game consists firstly of some form of representation of a world (Pac Mans maze or Shadow of Chernobyls locations, the world can be abstract) and secondly of decision making.

This has both those elements. To an extent the decisions you can make in this are controlled, but thats the case in all games which need various boundaries (Both physical and intangible) to constrain the player into a given experience.

I’ve learned that you can walk away from the wolves before you interact with them, and though the path gets hidden when you’ve drifted away from it, the girl in the white dress will occasionally lead you back to the path… However, just because you’ve met the wolf instead of interacting with it, doesn’t suddenly mean you’ve passed with that character – The game requires you to interact with the wolf in order to proceed.

Meanwhile:

MAJOR SPOILER MAJOR SPOILER MAJOR SPOILER

I don’t understand the blood on the dress of the girl in white in the epilogue, it makes no sense to me, nor for that matter does the wolf in the flowers that looks like the girl in white but wears a red dress instead.

MAJOR SPOILER MAJOR SPOILER MAJOR SPOILER

20/03/2009 at 14:16 Meat Circus says:

@oceanclub:

Yes, it is odd and counterintuitive, and I think that’s what has made a number of people very uncomfortable: the player is complicit in what the wolves do, whereas the girls seem remarkably disinterested in their fates.

That said, the game was quite clear that you should GO TO GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE AND STAY ON THE PATH.

You’ve already failed to follow the game’s initial instruction, so it’s not a huge step from there to having a play with the wolf.

20/03/2009 at 14:22 Meat Circus says:

Also, Jim, I would strongly doubt that all games have *nothing* in common.

I’d suggest that structured interactivity is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for a thing to be a game.

20/03/2009 at 14:29 Meat Circus says:

As I said, necessary but not sufficient. But if you can’t interact with it in a structured way, it definitely ain’t a game.

20/03/2009 at 16:12 Larington says:

I have a personal definition of games purely to inform my decision making process, because there are inevitably going to be some flaws in all the definitions of games (And I’ve read about 10 of them thus far, damn uni is turning me into a filthy academic…), rather than as an attempt to pidgeon-hole the medium which is what some of the folks coming up with these definitions seem want to do.

To put it another way, its basically a guide for myself, when designing a game, make sure I get the decision making process & motivations and the world (Whatever kind of world it might be) ‘right’ and to a certain extent a lot should follow on from that as a consequence – I confess I’m yet to put that fully to the test.

20/03/2009 at 16:25 Meat Circus says:

@John:

It sounds like now you’re basically saying you don’t like its core aesthetic, which is fine. But you’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to justify a dislike which ultimately a simple one.

As it happens, I’ve found that the verfremdungseffekt of the music and visual effect add to the estrangement you feel when the girls meet the wolves, which just makes it all the more unpleasant.

20/03/2009 at 16:51 John says:

@Meat Circus: My thinking has changed from “This game is about rape.” to “There is rape in this game, and a lot of poor design choices.”

I like the slow-walk, although it builds in annoyance with repeated play, but think it’s a bit of place in this game and better used in something like The Graveyard.I like the limited field of vision when running. I like the exploration aspects, but I think Endless Forest does it with a greater sense of wonder, and SotC with a better sense of abandonment.

So I can see how you and others appreciate aspects of this game that I find out of place or just poor choices.

But I still think it’s naive to say this game is absent of at least the implied rape of under-age girls. It may not be about rape as an overarching theme, and it of course is not shown, but a guy meets a little girl in a forest and then looks her over and then the screen blacks out and she has to drag herself to Grandma’s house? They’re not having tea and discussing the Queen.

Although, it’d be great if someone released a Hot Tea patch that does in fact show them having tea. And then also makes you walk faster.

20/03/2009 at 17:17 Iain says:

My feeling, and the feeling of a lot of people in this thread is that you’re attempting to interpret literally what is clearly meant to be allegorical.

You would have thought that only one of the “wolves” being an actual wolf would tip people off that it might pay off to think beyond the literal… but obviously not.

20/03/2009 at 17:26 Matzerath says:

Well, if anything, all this backlash will probably lead to a permanent banning or ‘M’-rating on all games that contain a ‘fade-to-black’. Thank God! How dare they face me with the reflected abyss of my own soul!

20/03/2009 at 17:58 Daniel says:

Oh, I know the system specs are ridiculously low. That’s why I didn’t even worry about performance when I clicked to buy, but lo, the game runs terribly.

20/03/2009 at 19:40 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, trying to put a concrete story to a game like this is absurd. If you are giving your point of view on the story, that’s fine. Saying other people are wrong on their view, and trying to convince them that your view is correct is crazy.

20/03/2009 at 19:50 Tei says:

@Hajimete no Paso Kon: Of course, IS ABSURD, but what you expect? we are humand, the f**** brain is a machine that the whole purpose is to search patterns on the chaos. We see faces on the cars, and of course, cars have no faces. So we can’t stop our brain to try that with the history. And anyway, we don’t have to accept anything the surreall people say. We can’t disagree and reject his opinions, and take a no-surreal stance.

20/03/2009 at 20:05 Meat Circus says:

Think of Tei as Brechtian estrangement.

20/03/2009 at 20:49 Paul_M says:

@Larington – there is signification to menstruation and the hymen breaking with obvious connotations to the movement through the liminalities of childhood and adulthood. This is referenced throughout the path – which, incidentally, is a brilliant game!

20/03/2009 at 21:34 Meat Circus says:

Odd little arty-farty horror game gets a 200-reply thread. Who knew?

20/03/2009 at 22:11 Hajimete no Paso Kon says:

That’s the power of intelligent discussion my meaty friend.

20/03/2009 at 23:38 Matzerath says:

Yes, this is much more edifying than arguing over who’s screwing whom in Left 4 Dead.
(Three sleeping bags and four people? Oh my!)

21/03/2009 at 00:39 Matzerath says:

FYI, The Path is a top seller on Steam right now.
(Ender’s Rape — ewwwwww!!!)

21/03/2009 at 04:41 Otacon9001 says:

Ok, so I’ve just played through ruby’s story after carmen’s. With ruby’s story with all rooms I can’t see anything to do with a sexual act. Like at all. If you go along with what is shown in the house (beers being shown from a fridge, high school, then a car) you could (could, because different people infer different things) infer that maybe after high school finished, something bad happened between her and mr smoking charming, but i just can’t see anything sexual at all. See what she says when she is in the wheelchair. “you only take a boy where you want to go, then leave him for something else.” and the car “friends you can just turn on and off”. maybe you could see the motor in the house as her speeding towards her death, but I didn’t see anything to allude to rape. Just breaking up with a boy after high school. But admittedly, I have no idea how the carpet lump comes into it, I don’t know.

22/03/2009 at 18:21 Iain says:

For those that are interested in a less literal take on each of the wolf encounters, feel free to read my analysis here.

Obviously, it’s packed full of spoilers, so I wouldn’t recommend reading it unless you’ve finished the game.

22/03/2009 at 21:00 malkav11 says:

I don’t think that rape is clearly (or unclearly) implied at all. In fact, if it weren’t for the way the visuals and music are arranged in the wolf scenes, and subsequent Grandmother’s House Lynchian nightmares, there’d be no reason to assume anything bad had happened at all. Every girl deliberately enters into the situation and appears to be enjoying themself before they wake up in the rain (if that whole thing isn’t a dream sequence, which seems more likely.)

06/04/2009 at 18:01 Spludge says:

Since my first comment, I’ve gone played it again. And some 200 other comments were posted, and I feel kinda responsible for that.

(Warning: spoilers ahead. You have been warned)

I would also like to add a small qualifier to my comments: I’m not a psychologist, childhood or otherwise. I have experience dealing with children who have been exposed to trauma through volunteer work I do, though I don’t know enough about most of them to tell you what trauma they’ve been exposed to. (It’s emotionally safer. Learned that lesson the hard way.)

I also have a friend who was sexually abused by her father when she was young. She’d be the same age as the oldest of the girls in the game now.

I’d say the game (it sounds a little hollow calling it a game) only implies rape once. No, not the wood-cutter. Not even the cigarette-smoking biker fellow.

The wolf. A predator, in a place of death. Even the cutscene there is shot shaky-cam style, frantic, disorienting, confusing. I was left with the sort of “what is happening” here feel. I’d imagine that’s the sort of feeling a sexually abused child would feel.

Everything else? Consequence. I can be a little more solid with my discussion with this, as I’ve seen it in my friend. She’s hooked up with older, “dangerous” guys before, ala that charming young gent and his ominous carpet. She’s gotten lost in her own worlds before to the point where it dragged her to dangerous places (light being), got drunk before the legal age and “messed around” with a guy (wood cutter), sought the approval of that absent father figure through trying to excel at a task (The piano teacher)

(I still haven’t figured out the Wolf in the field, though)

And always at night, the nightmares.

It’s not a definite thing, and like everyone, my reading of the game is tempered by my experiences, and in this case my experiences with a friend who was exposed to something no-one should ever have to go through. In many ways, we were spared. My friend exhibited many more behaviors which would have scared the bejeebers out of me in a game.

Again, restating my qualifications: none. Bar experience.