I've made my way through the forest and into a park. I see a merry go round, a teddy bear. Strange noises. A man is sitting on a bench. He is good looking. He is smoking. I sit down next to him and accept the cigarette he offers me.
Feedback. Fade to black.
I wake up strewn on the ground. It is raining hard, and I feel dirty and hurt. Grandma's house is up ahead. I cannot run, but I make it there.
"Wolves are like dogs, but werewolves are like people..."
This is The Path.
Tale of Tales take their name from a collection of fairy tales by Giambattista Basile; with this fourth venture, and first commercially available game, they've created a work of art -- let's just get that out of the way immediately.
Comparisons of it can be drawn to a multitude of other games out there, some commercial, some not, but as a sum of its parts, and in the nature of its driving forces, it's probably best kept to itself.
In any case, the title is loosely based on the Little Red Riding Hood children's tale, as their first game '8' was on Sleeping Beauty, and it's terribly exciting to see a take on it with elements like horror and poetry involved.
The premise is this: seven 'Red Girls' live in an apartment together, and must go see their grandmother, who lives in the forest. At the first screen (there's no main menu), you pick one and take them on their own personal journey throughout the forest.
It is here we encounter something else unconventional about The Path: you're not 'supposed to' do what it tells you. In promotional material (i.e. the trailer above -- watch til the end), Tales' warn: "Stay on the path", something we see in the game's menu, too. On my first run with Ruby (my personal favourite Girl), I figured I should listen, like you would, so I went to grandmother's house -- note that the game uses the third person perspective while in the forest, but upon entering here, it takes on a first-person on-rails approach, and it works very well, feeding nostalgia for games of old. So, I find grandmother, lay down on the bed with her, and..."Failure", reads the screen.
See, what they've done is turn the very fundamentals of gaming on their head, here, and it took awhile for me to get adjusted. But I thank them for this.
Not doing what the game tells you is just the start of the experience, though. More or less you're thrown into the game, with only explanation of the controls (which are very simple and nicely done). Beyond that, what do you do? Where do you go? I could spend much of this review answering these questions, but figuring these things out this is truly a part of the game's magic, something I've never experienced in a video game before, not like this. Without any hand-holding, this lets you discover a fresh experience from scratch, and also serves to make you feel truly immersed in the world, high-end graphics be damned. In other words, you feel much more like you are in the forest, as opposed to feeling like you are in the game in the forest.
In any case, there is a recurring theme throughout these journeys which leads you to your endings -- I'll leave it to you to discover and interpret it yourself.
For all this innovation, though, The Path does adhere to some adventure staples, like collectable items (though they are referred to alternately as "memories", stored in your basket), secret rooms, and statistics, which result in a final ranking at the end of each girl's journey. However, this is not a bad thing either, and traversing the forest in search of everything is incredibily satisfying in itself, just as an experience and/or for the purpose of reaching a goal.
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