The Path of Totality
I’m under the weather. No fever, but a stuffed head, extremely tired, that kind of thing. Not terrible, but it leaves me unable to read any of the work-related stuff I really ought to be readings. (Like an article on how to solve the truth maker problem for presentism using distributional properties. Yeah.) So last evening, while trying to kill just a bit of time before going to bed, I was looking for a game that wouldn’t be too strenuous. I saw The Path of Totality. I tried it. And it perfectly fitted the bill! It’s friendly, simple, forgiving. Just the kind of thing I’m able to play right now.
The Path of Totality is set in a landscape that the author describes as being inspired by Dartmoor. Fun fact: I once got lost in the mists on Dartmoor, just like the protagonist of this game! Okay, that’s not quite true; I didn’t get lost, because we turned back when we saw a thick mist was gathering, and there were enough landmarks to find our way back to Wistman’s Wood, after which it was only a matter of following the path back to the car. But the mist was really thick, came up very quickly, and getting lost would have been a real possibility if we had tried to finish the walk we were originally planning. I could relate to the game’s setting, then.
I had more trouble relating to the game’s time. Of course it’s a fantasy setting, and its history does not have to line up neatly with that of our own world. Still, one expects historical details to fit together. Here we have, on the one hand, a world where people can accurately predict solar eclipses as to both time and location with astonishing accuracy (an 18th century achievement), as well as not-too-rich commoners who explain that they have shelves and shelves of books at home (something that requires, one would say, late 19th or early 20th century mass production capabilities). But on the other hand, the world is ruled by feudal lords who don’t want the peasants to be educated, and there is no sign of post-Scientific Revolution technology. I didn’t know what to make of this!
Of course, the game is mostly interested in the story of five people who travel together. Although it seems to give you a choice about whether to travel together, this is fake: for fun I replayed trying to push my companions away at every point, but you’ll still end up travelling with them! The game then follows a rather rigid patterns, where every evening you can ‘befriend’ one of your companions by asking them some questions about their background. You can sometimes choose between being nice and being nasty, but the nastiness of just that, and it’s hard to find a reason to ever be anything than nice to everyone.
In fact – and although in my current state I did find this kind of fine – I’ve got to say that everything is a bit too nice. These five people traveling together under really stressful circumstances do not, at any point, experience any tension. Nobody wakes up grumpy. There are no disagreements. Everyone is happy to share everything about their lives, and then they say ‘thank’s for sharing such personal information’… which made me feel like I was listening to some kind of support group rather than people in an informal context? You can fall in love with and hook up to someone, but it’s a zero anxiety process – which makes it really unlike falling in love. And it doesn’t even trigger jealousy in the person whose companion you are suddenly taking from their side; not even the smallest, quickly repressed jealousy that a kind and wise person might have under such circumstances. (If you’re on holiday with your best friend and they suddenly start spending their time and nights with someone else, it’s surely natural to take a little while to adjust even if you’re happy for them.) The niceness is so strong, in other words, that the characters become unbelievable and uninteresting. They have varied backstories, but they are totally interchangeable as people. Which again makes it strange to fall in love with one of them, since they are all at bottom identical.
On the other hand, I thought the puzzle sequences rescued the game from being cloying. They add tension and danger (even though I’m fairly sure you can’t fail, though I didn’t try) and made a nice change with the conversation scenes. The pixies, the bog, the mist: all good stuff, and well-paced. I also like that reaching the eclipse taught me about an astronomical effect that I had never heard of before and that seemed well-fitted to the research capacities of the protagonist. (I was half-afraid that I would discover Eddington-style evidence for general relativity, which would have been unbelievable, but the author was much smarter than this!)
I had a nice time. It was pleasant and uplifting. I won’t particularly be remembering this romance, but maybe that wasn’t even the point?