Tale of Tale’s The Path is officially released today, and now available on Steam. Last week I wrote my impressions of the peculiarly evocative art project – trying to present a mixture of the opinions that formed in my brain, about a game that deserves attention/confusion. The twist on Little Red Riding Hood has you take six sisters on a journey through the woods on their way to Grandmother’s House. However, heading straight there isn’t how to play. It’s all about deviating from the task, and the path, and getting lost in the woods. It’s £7.25 on the UK Steam, $10 in the US, and 7,90€ in Europe. Do I recommend it? I do, but I sort of squirm in my seat at the same time. Well, read this, it explains it better.
Related Stories:
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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.
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Grr… type error … s/gost/worlf/;
@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.
Okay, I just replayed Ruby, and it seems I forgot about some pretty obviously disturbing stuff. Spoilers naturally follow.
So yeah, as you enter the area you see the man dragging what looks like a body wrapped in carpet into the forest. You can wander over to it, but can’t interact, which I thought was a shame. When you sit next to the wolf, he gives you a cigarrette – this is the main thing I initially picked up on, as Ruby had earlier stated she wanted to take up smoking to shorten her life. Probably as a result of thinking about this, I missed the next bit: while Ruby coughs and looks away, the man looks her up and down, and smiles menacingly.
I’m guessing this is where the rape stuff comes in. But I’m pretty sure there’s no other allusion to it that’s so strong.
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.
The thing that really struck me about the game was that damn basketball court at the end. There was no context to the thing and it ended up feeling like a point in and of itself, like those episodes in sci-fi and genre T.V. where the protagonist is having some kind of feverish dream, except the dream turns out to be the real world. You’ve had your metaphor, but now it’s time to deal.
Which was when I started thinking; what if the game really is about rape. It’d make sense: the atmosphere’s set-up to fill you with dread, particularly that one gut-wrenching moment when you realise what’s about to happen, and you’re powerless to stop it. Afterwards, as you shamble along to a place where you feel safe you’re left with the unanswered question of why it happened and a feeling of guilt; a need to ask yourself “Is it my fault? What could, should I have done to make it stop?” Then, when you finally reach your Grandmother’s house the world falls apart. It really did happen and there’s nowhere safe anymore.
Of course I could just be reading far to much into things, but if I am right and The Path is set up purely to try and give people some insight, some merest sliver of understanding of what it feels like to encounter the “wolf” then I hope it can achieve those goals and do so far and wide.
Also, does the hypocrisy of a bunch of kids who use rape as a synonym for ‘own’ or ‘pwn’ complaining that this game is insensitive to it’s subject matter really piss anyone else off?
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.
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.
I absolutely agree. I find it telling that some people are jumping to the most obvious conclusion and not attempting to look beyond that explanation, because perhaps they’re not used to looking beyond the obvious. That in itself is a statement and criticism of the way society seeks quick, easy answers and tries to find ways of quickly pigeonholing things so that you don’t need to think about them too much.
I also think that people are assuming because The Path is coming packaged in the form of a videogame, it should be fun, because that’s what their preconceptions and experiences tell them what a videogame should be. I don’t think the purpose of The Path is for the player to have fun. It’s to make them emote and challenge what they think.
You might reasonably argue that this makes it a poor game (or isn’t what you want from a videogame), but I don’t think that’s a failing on the part of the game or the developers. The Path cannot be judged on the same terms as Far Cry 2 or Empire Total War. To do so would utterly miss the point.
I think it’s a fascinating piece of game-making, because it challenges what you think a videogame should be and do, and for this alone, I recommend it in the strongest possible terms.
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.
Having now got a couple of hours into the game, I’ve got to say there’s nothing I’ve seen that would present any problem in any other medium.
Red Ridding, on UK TV last night, asides from referencing the fairy tale in the title was an infinitely more distrubing study of childhood sexual truma, Neil Jordan’s movie In the Company of Wolves, covered the same ground regarding nacesent violent sexuality in fairy tales and in literature, well, check the best sellers list and booker prize winners if you want to find unsettling and distasteful, though utterly riveting, material of this kind (the God of Small Things springs to mind, though only as that’s what I read last).
As it’s a game, I suppose people assume A.) You are activitely engineering these events, you’re not, at best you are a powerless observer, B.) Children will play this game. Not so much on this trend, but I’m willing to bet that the tack the mainstream complaints will take. My perspective would be that children are far more likely to busy slaughtering their way through Resident Evil 5, than playing this niche title, clearly labelled as mature content.
That said, my rig is not overly new but this game ran as a flick book for much of my play time and when it wasn’t the tech letting things down the lack of things to actually do, made boredom almost overwhelm any other emotional reaction I might have. As many have noted up trend it doesn’t have to be this way just because it’s an indie game with a small team.
That said, it’ll be interesting to see what they do next. Gaming needs more poets.
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.
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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.
Not necessarily. The wolf encounters are entirely opt-in. Nothing and nobody will hunt you down. The whole point is that it’s a choice the girls make: to beome involved with the thing that will be their downfall.
@Paul Moloney:
Yes, I’d say you were missing the ‘goal’ of the game which is to interact with the Wolf.
I have to say I fall on the side of those more familiar with the folklore.
I haven’t seen any releases from ToT, but I know the metaphors of Red Riding Hood, which means that I am much more likely to read rape into the game.
But, as with some good works, this game leaves a massive hole for player interpretation. I, personally, find that a bit of a cop-out, but it’s interesting to see the different reactions.
(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!
“Yes, I’d say you were missing the ‘goal’ of the game which is to interact with the Wolf.”
It seems strange to have a goal that is entirely counter to the player’s instincts! (A bit like a FPS where the “goal” is hug your opponents.)
P.
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:
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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.
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There is no “definition of games”, nor underlying theory that can explain them, because there is no one thing that all games have in common. Have a read of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance to dispel some of those impulses to “define” games.
@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.
@Jim Rossignol:
The Path feels more like a game to me than say, Noby Noby Boy did.
Games are like porn: I know it when I see it.
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.
Structured interactivity is a condition for all kinds of things, it can’t exactly be used as a basis for a definition of what games are.
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.
@Lewis, what do you think happens during the faded to black screens? Before this thread, what did you think the game was implying.
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.
I realize that any critique I make of this game on this thread is now tainted by my admittedly frantic freak-out rape posts.
But after this discussion I would add “complicitness” or “accessory” to the themes of the game. You can avoid the wolf. You can stay on the path and go to Grandma’s house.
But I feel like there are other games that illustrate this more subtlety and effectively (Shadow of Colossus, BioShock/System Shock 2 come immediately to mind). Faded black screens aside, I feel like The Path continually knocks me over the head with “I AM AN ART-GAME,” from the soundtrack to the scratchy-etchy filter to the AmMcGee ascetic, to the “GO TO GRANDMA’S HOUSE (but don’t if you want).”
I think I had such high expectations for The Path, and from the comfort of my game-designer armchair I can see better ways of doing the same thing. This thread just makes me want to play SoTC, or maybe Darwinia.
@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.
@John – I don’t think it’s implying anything. I think it’s a very intentional blank canvas for people to splatter their thoughts onto.
@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.
@John:
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.
It’s your right, but I don’t think it gets you very far.
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.
Hehe, a Hot Tea patch, I like that. Well, the idea of it obviously.
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!
I quite like that idea:
MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and the reflected abyss of your own soul.
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.
Mine’s smooth as a baby’s rear, playing on a ramshackle old P4 3.2GHz. Weird.
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.
I wish I hadn’t read the ‘rape’ impressions from other people before I finished, as I wasn’t getting anything like that from the game beforehand, and I felt it coloured my later experiences.
I’ve played through the game, now, though. I do think that the /only/ suggestion that anything bad happens to the girls is the part of waking up on the path in the rain and shuffling slowly into the house. That’s the only thing that suggests anything unpleasant has happened. Without that, each girl’s wolf encounter is simply making a new friend. Particularly Ginger’s, for which I really can’t see the following scene as what others seem to think it means.
I’m not quite sure what the scene in the rain actually is, but considering it is common to all of the girls, I don’t think it’s actually meant to be suggesting anything as literal as most people have been interpreting it as.
@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.
I have no idea what you just said.
Think of Tei as Brechtian estrangement.
Well I understand that since it’s based on Red Riding Hood that SOMETHING bad happened — it’s a cautionary tale, after all. But it’s still open to interpretation by whatever twisted psyche is playing the game.
Personally, when I have a fade-to-black sequence and wake up outside in the rain, I’m pretty sure it means I drank a lot of beer and then unwisely followed with some whiskey. But of course I can never truly be sure of this.
@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!
Odd little arty-farty horror game gets a 200-reply thread. Who knew?
Don’t quote Samuel Clemens in MY house!!!
That’s the power of intelligent discussion my meaty friend.
Ahh, thought I was missing something and umm, wonder if I would’ve been better off continuing to miss that particular something. Heh.
Yeah, quite pleased with how the discussions in this thread have turned out, makes quite a change from usual internet faire and all the better for it.
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!)
I too have thoroughly enjoyed this thread, and it has certainly made me rethink the game and perhaps cozy up to it more than I would have had I not engaged here.
I’m not terribly keen on being pegged as the literal dumb guy who doesn’t get it…I’m well aware that rape is being the metaphor. I mean hell, this isn’t Ender’s Rape – I don’t believe a little girl is actually getting raped because of this game. I just think that even as a metaphor it’s a bit overbearing, even if it is limited to a few of the girls.
But oh well. Whatever. This has been fun. Off to the next game.