Journey is a game about nothing.
You have played “Journey” before,
even if you think you haven’t. You and everyone you have ever known
has already set foot in this place, seen its dunes and walked its path. Let’s
do it all again, together this time. “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” is a
book written by comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell in 1954. In it was the first
proposal of the Monomyth, a proposed cyclical storytelling pattern that popped up over time
in societies with no contact with each other, spread out both across the planet and across
thousands of years. It’s more commonly known as the Hero’s Journey, the backbone of
stories that serves as an imperfect and not quite all-encompassing, but universal
pattern written into our very subconscious. Nearly every story you have ever
read has in some way fit these steps. Comparative mythology, the field, is exactly as it
sounds. It’s the study of myth itself, the stories that are spread and refined and changed and
perpetuated through every culture on the planet, and seeing both where they connect and where they
don’t. To analyze mythology on a practical level, comparison is not just helpful but necessary,
these stories otherwise being impossible to frame within our own existence. The people that made
them, spoke them, and changed them are long gone, any evidence that most ever even existed
in the first place entirely erased by time. In these individual myths are echoes,
wisps of minds we can no longer speak to, but in these patterns is conversation, webs of
humanity strengthening the bonds of people that never met and never had the chance to feel
just how like each other they really were. Mythology is a thing deeply important to
the story of Journey. It begins with you, a hill, and one single meaningful button: the
forward key. Being surrounded by barren desert, you’re given nothing but anticipation for what’s
at the peak. The walk is excruciating and long, slowing even further once you begin to climb
to the top. The camera, near the peak, starts to linger behind, leaving only your unnamed
character to see what’s truly ahead, until… Journey is a game where you
walk towards a mountain. If you enjoy artsy indie games,
you have Journey, in part, to thank for it. Games are still to this day
not treated quite like an artform by many, most especially in the West, but compared
to how it was in the past, games today have a much wider window of what can be expected of
them. In the wake of the games crash of 1983, Nintendo took over Western markets by
advertising games not to the whole family, but rather entirely to young boys. It was painted
from that moment on as a fancier version of a toy, and for the longest time, it was cursed with that
image with every single video game to release. For AAA studios, moving, intricate stories
were being made and released, but even those weren’t often treating video games as their
own medium, but rather just emulating movies via cutscenes with gameplay segments in between
them. They were able to separate the game and the narrative as much as possible, separating what
made video games video games, in order to isolate the cinematic story. The player and character, the
two agents that can affect the story, were parted. For any new medium or genre trying to break
through in popular culture, there is a fight for acceptance that needs to be won, but for video
games, they were already a step in the wrong direction. There had, without a doubt, been many
artistic masterpieces released before Journey: Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Braid, each
making somewhat of their own splash beyond the scope of just video game culture, but
while their artistic impact on what video games can be during their times was notable,
Journey’s impact was a relative explosion. Indie games, much like any other independent
art scene, is where those tried and true withmethods could really be broken. Wild
experimentation followed the indie game explosion, coming with the wake of the Steam
greenlight system, but throughout all of this, for years afterwards, not much progress
was made in the wider gaming community. Journey did not come early into that explosion.
Thatgamecompany, the studio to make Journey, is not even quite an indie studio. While they
began as one in the time before Steam Greenlight, still taking advantage of the general
increase in digital distribution methods, Sony took interest in them after the
release of their very first game: Cloud. From then, they were contracted to make
three new games for Sony’s playstation store. Journey is the third in that set,
with much higher funding, resources, and development time than most indie
games at the time had access to. What we had was one of the earliest examples of indie
developers being given access to real funding. Only after four years of the indie game
explosion did Journey finally hit the scene, showing up on the playstation store exclusively
in 2012. And yet, the moment it did, it broke the record for the fastest selling game in
playstation store history, getting several game of the year awards and placements, and
its soundtrack being nominated for a Grammy, the first ever video game to accomplish such a
thing. In this new and rapidly changing medium, the game to finally break through this barrier
of acceptance if even only for a moment is… well… Journey is not a long winding experience, being
beatable in less than 2 hours. It is not packed with stimulating gameplay, it is not even
necessarily a lush story, being entirely wordless and composed of very little explanation
at all, a game where your only goal is only to keep moving forward. And yet, in spite of going
against everything the larger game industry was trying to be, it has become one of the single
most influential video games of all time. You are an unnamed cloth creature, and your
goal is to get to the top of the mountain you see in the distance. The only thing you
know is how to move forward, and the first thing you’re shown is that you can briefly slide
down hills. Approaching the ruins of a building, you find one thing further: your character
climbs things *for* you. The basic movement controls seem to cover *everything* you need to
actually do in the game to progress normally: climbing, sliding, and walking. However,
you’re given something new, a scarf, one that allows you, briefly, to fly in the air. Beyond you is what seems to be a now
dilapidated temple in a small valley, one with a gate blocking your way. You speak,
via meditation, with some mysterious being; one that reveals a chunk of what this
place is and what happened to it. The mountain appears to be the source of all life
in this desert, of you and of all the other cloth beings you’ve seen so far. Past this gate
is 6 major areas, roadblocks and trials on your path to the peak of the mountain. First
in all of your challenges is [The Bridge]. In the first area of real gameplay, just
past the gate, your problem is simple: you need to cross a bridge, the bridge is not
built. Journey is a game with two controls and two controls alone that you always have access
to. Fate is a theme that pervades Journey, but unlike many games that try to separate
gameplay and story, it’s integrated into the narrative of how the video game feels to play as
well. The most dynamic and most in your control is your shout. This is the entire way that you’re
able to interact with the world, being able to heal the long-dead cloths stuck in this barren
desert, as well as your way to talk to them, being able to be carried and flown well above the world
for brief moments of lofty freedom before falling back down to the landscape. The only other control
that you always have access to… is moving forward. This scarf must be recharged not by waiting, but
by moving to the right spots in the environment, given energy through the tiny little cloth
friends you make, and giving you a short burst of freedom from the monotony of just holding
forward. This cloth gets progressively longer as the game goes on and as you find more of these
symbols, allowing you to feel more and more in control of your surroundings and encouraging
you to search and study the world you’re in. The bridge is contrasted heavily with the wall
you’re trying to scale. While the bridge stands immobile, the cliff is cast with an endlessly
flowing river of sand, making it feel not just unscalable, but actively working against
you. The only other bits of grey joining the bridge are metallic lumps in the sand, each
accompanied by a dusty ribbon reaching endlessly toward the sky. Your shout, like an extension
of soul, revives and resonates with the ribbons, allowing you to free your species from the
unexplained cages they were trapped in. As you look around for more, you might come
to notice something odd: there are bridges stretching out seemingly infinitely to your
left and right, all dilapidated and falling apart in their own ways. Despite being able to
see those other bridges spanning far beyond you, you can’t actually make your way to them, of
course you can’t. Those who have played video games for most of their lives and know about the
limitations of the development process know that there could never be a world where these are
explorable, but they are there for a reason. Each is their own story, their own path, one taken
many times before by people you will never meet, but one that you, the player, will never
be allowed to see here. An invisible wall of wind mounts the closer and closer you get
to either side, eventually pushing you away. While you’re allowed to see and allowed to
ponder, to explore them would entirely defeat the point. It is literally and metaphorically
out of bounds. Because, Journey is not a game about going sideways, a game about choice.
Journey is a game about moving forward. The eternal struggle of game design is reckoning
with the fact that even for the games with the most expensive of budgets, you can really do
very little. Freedom is a commodity slaved over for thousands of man hours for even the
smallest wisps of wide-scale interactivity, and so, for most games, games with a focus
on not just freedom but visuals, narrative, and making sure the gameplay is actually fun, the
best you can do is simulate the idea of freedom. The single greatest sense of control given to
the player at any given time is through movesets, quite literally the only means we have of
interacting with almost every video game in existence. If there is a character
and they go to places and do things, a moveset is necessary for games to function
at the minimum. The feeling of true freedom of movement has been sought after
since the very first platformer, and yet, it has a paradoxical relationship
with video games as a designed product. Nearly all games have what is, essentially,
a bubble of expectations for what the player can and will do over the course of its existence.
Movesets are one of the single greatest indicators of these expectations, and level design is
created not just in tune with your movement, but positioned actively against
it. It is, on a literal level, the source of conflict and true enemy combating
your sense of control. The bridge is not built, you need to find a way to cross it. In
any game focused on movement, a level that allows too much freedom becomes painfully
boring, while one that leaves too little, well… Beating the area is quite simple. On some machines
are, rather than small banners, ones that are monstrously large. The gaps between the bridge
are formed not by stone, but by a merging of the ribbons you’ve freed, allowing you to glide
to the top without very much effort at all. To call this difficult would be to outright lie,
but the conflict exists for reasons otherwise. By forcing you, the player, to interact with
this place, you’re given the time and space to mentally wander; to look at the bridges cascading
out from you, to find the hidden tablet, to learn the range and extent of your movement. Without
the need to interact, you lack the need to linger. At the top of the bridge is a spot for
meditation, and with it comes another meeting with a spirit of the past; however,
more important, is the gate to [The Desert]. The desert comes, in large part, with
an even simpler task than the bridge, just moving forward. While the actual
play area you can encompass is small, the desert around you is incredibly vast.
Compared to the cliffs before, you have almost too much freedom in vision. The desert stretches
seemingly infinitely around you in all directions, with the only thing breaking from the horizon
being the mountain itself. With it once again in your eyesight beyond the bridge, you can
start to catch a glimpse of something odd. Glowing lights seem to be coming from the
peak. One flies over and beyond your head to somewhere you can’t see, while others start to
crash directly into the sand. As it turns out, some of the lights to crash from the mountain are
the very same symbols that gave you your scarf, the biggest sense of freedom you’re granted
in the game. While from the prophecy we see that the mountain provides life, it
literally provides it in the gameplay. Even further, these upgrades tend to
be placed in spots that are difficult to reach on your own. This life piece
is stuck atop a collapsed building, and unable to reach it on your own, you
need to rely on someone or something else. The creatures you free are not just helpful
and adorable, but often necessary to reach your goal. With each to help you in
return, you bond not just emotionally, but functionally. You are made as much of a piece
of this environment as everything else, and these interactions give life in a very real sense to
this wordless desert you’ve been placed into. Even further, there’s one more aspect of the
game that I have not yet spoken about. While it can be played and completed entirely alone…
you can have a friend. This is a multiplayer game, or a… one more player game. There is no chat
function or means to even see the username of the other player until the very end credits, but
they’re there and you can interact with them. The one way that you can communicate, in lieu of
other options, is through movement. While it takes developers great deals of effort to make you,
the player, be able to affect the environment in interesting ways, that’s not the case for
other players. We, as sentient beings, are built to respond to our environment, and every form of
limited movement we have is a way to communicate to the other. The shout is the most intuitive
means. It can be used to catch the attention of your friend, but it also just be… like silly
and fun. Look at this, absolutely nothing of value is being transferred here. Is this why dogs
bark at eachother? I- I get it now, I think. The shout can also be used to give your
friend energy, and for your friend to give it back. The game, what is normally a push and
pull between flight and excruciating walking is tilted heavily on its side, letting you
literally lift eachother up above the endless desert for longer and longer. You can breathe
that freer breath only and entirely through collaboration and it makes these sweeping
dunes a playground instead of a marathon. But just as you’re finally soaking in the light
of the day… you cross into what seems to be a perpetual sandstorm. Two towers churn and churn
in an endless cycle, cast in the endless shadows caused by its own work. As you scale it with the
help of your newly freed friends, you see that they are the very things powering this creation,
trapped in a cage for an unknown amount of time. Their lifeforce is being used to make…
something, the heads of which seem to have some sort of life of their own. The segments
that trapped creatures earlier in the desert before are made from the same material, implying
that whatever is being made is designed for that very purpose. However, as you make it to the very
top of the tower, and through consulting the past divine spirits.. you’re finally able
to free them. Just past the towers, crossed with
the help of your newly freed friends, is one of the most enjoyable chapters in
the game. Scripted events in video games are often a way to get around a moveset. A
game consisting entirely of the same 4 or 5 button inputs, especially for a world
thats trying to be convincingly alive, simply cannot mend a real relationship between
the character and the world they’re in. When the player cant ignore the fact that Kratos can ram
someone through boulders during cutscenes while in gameplay he can’t climb a single rock, that
dissonance brings you out of the experience. At the same time, though, while many gamers
wish for and constantly ask for more freedom, more possibilities, more game in their games, it’s
moments like these that make blockbuster games what they are. Some games are based almost
entirely on completely scripted movement, only able to do the majority of movements in
the game, the things that make up the entire gameplay loop, at specific locations entirely
planned out for you. We exist mentally in two realities in gaming culture, and so,
AAA games simply make both a reality. The illusion of full control is handed to us until
the moment it gets in the way of the cinematics. In this section of Journey, you slide, smile (:)).
In a stark contrast to the pulling tension of movement in prior chapters, you’re sliding down a
seemingly endless valley descending to the core of this ancient civilization. Shifting movesets
is a common trope in platformer games, with games like Super Mario Odyssey founding its core
gameplay on it, movesets that would not be robust enough for a full experience, but in brief doses,
give a nice break from the usual gameplay loop. Oftentimes, there’s a scripted events button, most
often called “interact”, the thing that gives you permission to actually leave some effect on the
world around you, only in incredibly limited ways. Press F to pay respect, press X to [“Shaun!”],
press middle click to- [spiderman explosion meme]. Even for things like opening doors or shelves,
anytime you interact in a specialized way, your mind connects itself for the briefest
of moments to the world you’re in. For games not specifically movement focused,
this is often literally the only way to create an amount of adventure or tension
with the world you’re moving around in, moments where control is actively removed
from you for the sake of tangibility and narrative and stakes. Many of these full
well could be triggered automatically, but it’s given to you not just to add
some interactivity, but also because it’s not that much more limiting than your regular
moveset. Yes, it’s basically a mini-cutscene, but it’s not like you’re necessarily much freer
than that in most narrative games normally. While you can jump any time you want, there’s only
very specific points where it actually matters. The camera can sometimes be moved freely, but
the level is aligned to have one or more specific chosen places for you to go. Navigation is put in
your hands, but to a defined waypoint conveniently handed to you on a map. Any game with a linear
narrative, with a place that starts at A and goes to B can only give you so much freedom. In a truly
interactive world, anything could hypothetically happen, but we simply don’t have the ability to
create something like that, even to this day. Everything done to give players a sense of
control, to add difficulty, to give variance is ultimately an illusion. Nearly every game with
a story to be told is an exercise in linearity, in fate, and we simply put that thought away
to be able to engage with the world. The arguably free-est game of all time in a genre
that best emulates the feeling of freedom, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
actually understands this idea more than nearly any other game in existence. It’s known
for its ability to be tackled and progressed in a million different ways, with endless physics
interactions and enemy nuances and places to go, cleanly and evenly distributing content
all across the entire game world. However, if you look at the linearity
chokepoints, the parts where you start at A and need to go to B, there is only one
true required destination in the game. Point A is Escaping the The Great Plateau, and point
B is defeating Ganon. Nothing else is truly, absolutely required. Freedom is much
more possible in Breath of the Wild because the entire game is the journey,
without a moment of required destination. Journey is a very linear game. It is perhaps
one of the first capital W capital S Walking Simulators to ever exist in the way we think
of them now, a term for a game that you simply move and interact through rather than fully
playing within. However, in truth, most games are merely a few steps removed from being the very same way. Journey, in contrast to the ever pulling desperate need to hide that feeling from its audience, decides to bare itself openly. And in that embrace, it explores what our limited control on these worlds can really make us feel. While the entire game is linear
like a path through the forest is, this chapter is closer to a rollercoaster. You’re
given small differences in paths you can take, some of which give you more pieces of life, but
this entire section is meant in large part just to be fun. After the disheartening visual
of that endless prison factory sandstorm, you’re able to tangibly feel the newfound
freedom of the creatures you freed, them joyfully weaving in and
out of the sand alongside you. And this game is just beautiful, right?
I can speak at length about symbolism and gameplay mechanics and everything, but you
don’t need me and my words to experience this excellence. It’s present on the face of
it. The music and environmental design and adorable cloth creatures and- it’s just
so fun. You’re overwhelmed with it all, soaking in this synthesis of so many different art
mediums and forms of entertainment combining that you forget… oh… yeah… I’m going
somewhere. I’m going to the mountain. This moment of staring at the mountain is an
inflection point; one of the most beautiful shots of the game, but also one of the most
sobering. You’re so awash in the fun until it hits you just how temporary this moment
is. It holds on this view for more than long enough to bring you back to the moment, back
to your goal. You begin to slide down again, but this time you know that it’s soon going
to end. The dunes get steeper and steeper and steeper and steeper until you’re completely out of
control, careening towards the heart of the city, but… you don’t get to see it yourself. With
the briefest moment of feeling somewhere, you quickly fall down, down, far below the
ruins, to a place where, for the first time, the Sun isn’t shining over you; a place where
the mountain has no influence. At the end of every chapter up until this
point, you’ve been granted visions of the past, given to you by what seems to be goddesses or
old spirits. Each spells out one new passage of an ornately told, but ultimately simple
story. As previously said, the mountain, some time long ago, suddenly gave birth to all
life in the desert, pieces of light forming the species that you’re a part of. Ribbons
too, sources of power and further life, sprouted out from the sand. With this power
sprouted buildings, bound by this living cloth and made traversable, filling and powering
structures to expand this growing civilization. Either built or formed directly by the light,
towers sprung up, and given power by the influence of the mountain. However, right at the peak of
this civilization, a rot seemed to manifest. Life began to fundamentally break down, to be
hunted and captured by giant metallic snakes, from a place seemingly entirely unknown.
And, with no way to fight against them, the civilization, just like you,
quickly fell into a dark ruin. As said, Journey is a game about fate, and unlike
most games to come before, it understands that truth. These narrative video game worlds are
caught eternally in a pulling tension with each other, all due to one thing and one thing only:
the fact that you, the player, exists. In order for this world to exist at all, it needs to
be justified. Budgets must be set, developers must work for months to years, and for projects
geared to actually make money, it must be designed for the consumer. For that to be interesting,
the story and gameplay need to widely appeal, and for that to happen at all, the world that
you’re in must be in a state of constant conflict. In these underground chambers, the only things
to guide you are the tiniest cracks of light able to shine from up above. Enough sand has fallen
into this place to make it as much a desert as everywhere else, but there is a certain protection
that everything to have found itself fallen down here has. While the world up above is vulnerable
to erosion, the desert consuming itself and returning everything to sand, the structures and
more importantly the creatures here remain safe. Your newfound friends, in between the cracks
of light, all take their time to guide you along your path. The not-so-moving ribbons
are also distinctly different. While on the surface the sunlight is abundant, it only
exists in the smallest of pockets here. So while this is merely open air, the life below
the surface more closely resembles sea life: seaweed and jellyfish decorating the
chambers on your path beneath the surface. On average, the video game worlds we play in are
hellish, and it is due to our presence within these places. Many games and shows wrestle
with this concept, this aura of conflict that surrounds the main character that seems to
cause suffering to everyone around them. Nearly every story told necessitates this in at least
some way, but in the case of Journey, an entire civilization had to rise and fall all just to
give you a reason to be here. The underground, though, seems to stand in sharp contrast to the
conflict of the surface. In hiding from the light, these creatures have found an oasis, perhaps the
only beings in the city still left alive. Which makes you remember… there’s a reason that
this civilization died. It’s easy to forget that danger exists
here, because for the majority of the game, it simply doesn’t at all, not towards you at
least. These creatures, ones that likely came from the underground by evidence of the statues
around you, prey and feed on the life energy of you and your species. What comes next, in
stark contrast to the rest of the game, is a stealth section, avoiding the first enemies
to ever exist to you, more than halfway through the entirety of Journey. Light, what was
just earlier a guide, a source of life, is now a death sentence. The search lights of these
metallic creatures spell disaster for anything to get in their way. But in that proposed danger,
this newfound tension, there is one small issue. While most games hinder progress in
a way that feels like you’re the lone being fighting against greater threats,
using resets and quote unquote “deaths”, it is impossible to actually die in
journey. You cannot fall off of the map, you cannot be reset, you cannot even
take damage in the traditional sense. While most games give you a moveset and use
difficulty as a means of controlling it, Journey removes difficulty in place of the actual
core of progress: giving or taking away movement. When you get caught by these terrifying metallic
creatures, you aren’t killed. Everyone knows that’s a farce, just the fail state that has
to be put into a game for stakes to exist, the conflict that needs to happen; you are fated
to reach the end of the game. When you’re caught in Journey, you do not die. Instead… you lose the majority of your scarf. A massive chunk of the only tie to freedom
you have is violently ripped away from you. And, once you’ve been caught, you can
never get it back. The rest of the game is made permanently more restricted, more
uncomfortable, less free. In that way, Journey is more punishing to mistakes than
almost any video game out there. And yet, despite you being punished, the truth of
the matter never changes. You have a fate, and that fate has been inscribed into both
stone and stars. You will reach the mountain. With patience and a bit of luck, you can make it
all the way through the underside of the city. You’re saved at the last second by a field of
protective runes, and, in one final meditation, your civilization’s story is put to rest.
Entirely unable to fight back against the menace of the metallic creatures, the dead fell
into and were covered by the ever building dunes. The sands of time only built higher and higher,
until any trace of their life only existed through innumerous small graves dotting the landscape.
With the influence of the light fading away, only small wisps could manage to return to the
ground once again… wisps that came to form you. The Tower is where past, present, and future
combine. Despite the fall into the underground feeling unplanned, like an unexpected mistake, you
find yourself exactly where it is you need to be: a tower constructed specifically for you to find
it. While the past of this civilization has caught up to the beginning of your story, this tower
seems to know where it continues from there. Following the theme of light as water, your
goal is to ascend by unveiling new tablets, and with each comes more energy that bouys you
further and further towards the top. However, on each of these tablets is something very
interesting: depictions of every single chapter of the game, every exact step you
have gone through to get where you are now. Comparative mythology has something
of a holy grail for comparativists, those who fixate on similarities over differences
between myths. If comparison is the goal, then the ultimate achievement would be to find
something of an origin point. The “protomyth” is a hypothetical story, event, or commonality
between us as people that led to every branching myth that we’re aware of today. It could either
be a literal event or universal part of our world, like the sun rising and falling in the sky, or
something more universal, some undeniable part of our very minds that seems to create these
patterns and seems to endlessly pass them down. it could have been something within our minds that
naturally bent those concepts. There is almost certainly no single protomyth, but
likely a combination of many things, either worldwide events or universal parts
of our world mixing together with our minds, combining the things that bind us externally
and internally all in one. Collections of words spiraling and interlinking into a web
much stronger than any one person could make. What is spoken about now in Comparative
mythology is protomyths as patterns: each one a common point in that
growing constellation of storytelling, each one analyzed to its own specific
origins and delved into with the goal of finding what makes it so special. You had what
may have appeared to be many different routes, thousands of potential bridges, but the world
knew exactly where you were destined to go, and now you’re here. And finally, at the top
of this tower, when filled to the brim with light… you’re finally able to meet this spirit
physically, outside of visions, face to face. What surrounds you, through a vision, is the
mural. *The* tablets shown to you, the past, present, and now future combined into one full
circle, a circle at the top of the tower. You see the fall of the civilization, your arrival, your
trials, your triumphs, all in one unbroken cycle. Perhaps more importantly though, you
also see something else… what’s beyond. There is just one more segment past this
point, one without a clear ending given: right beyond this tower, right through the gate
ahead of you, is the M- The mountain is not a place that you survive. While every other area in the game uses brief
moments of extra movement to make you feel free and hopeful, the mountain is where all hope
goes to die. Your scarf, the source of power lifting the chains of this world begins, slowly,
to freeze. In fact, everything living around you seems to already be long frozen. You can briefly
bring them back to life with a shout, what would normally give a flourish of energy, but they soon
return futilely back to their lifeless state. Insurmountable winds blast through the cramped
crevices you’re forced to trek through, a seemingly endless valley that has taken the
lives of creatures far stronger than you’ve ever been. Your weakened state only
makes the trek seem more impossible, your only chance of moving forward coming
through the towering gravestones that litter this long-deadly path. Each death of some
great being before you grants you a mere few extra feet against the crushingly strong
forces trying their hardest to hold you back. In most games, when it comes to death, control
is in no way actually taken from you. We get to glimpse into a hypothetical world where
it happened for all of a few seconds, your impact on this world fading and that world fading
alongside it, but it’s understood from all parties for what it really is: purely imaginary. It cannot
possibly give you permanent consequences without some way to find a real, satisfying conclusion.
Everyone simply engages in the fiction within fiction that death has consequences, that there
is tension and a reason to fight with desperation. If death truly means the end, then the only
true death in a game is not when you lose to the game’s world, it’s when you succeed. When
the game has no more reason to exist, a true, final nothingness casts over everything. In
that way, death in video games often has very, very little stakes up until the very end of
the intended experience… Each straight through the mountain pass is
unbearably long. You’ve been without any powers for the entire game, but only now have
you truly felt powerless. The frost consuming all life on the mountain is creeping its way
on to you, your cloth frosting at the edge, your shouts weakened, and your flight becoming
increasingly shorter. The wind doesn’t stop you, but it does slow you, and in this
place, that is just as dangerous. While the underground is the
home of those serpent monsters, they have no reservations about being
in the sky. You see them hovering, hunting in the distance over and over, the
life lucky enough to avoid the frost falling right into the hands of these monsters.
This is a place that drains everything. You’re given, on occasion, reprieves from
the endless winds. One, a narrow ravine, peppered with the graves of
your fallen brethren; another, a heated lamp, restoring your life for the
rest of the trip ahead, and one further, a river frozen in time, caged off from
the chaos of your surroundings. However, with each oasis you’re given, the next
stretch through hell is harsher than the last. Each and every field comes
with less cover, more danger, and constant winds. While you start with at least
the assurance of protection from the monsters, you quickly enter a wide open space past the
ribbon bridge, one patrolled by an especially insistent monster. Your primary form of cover is
the corpse-shells of ones that came before it, single segments as the smallest
shelters from everything around you; not strong enough to prevent the frost, but just
delaying long enough to keep pushing forward. Past the final oasis is what seems to be the
final sign of civilization: a pass on the side of the mountain, one that seems to be impossible to
actually exist. This was something built entirely for travel, for making this exact Journey, having
to be built by someone or something that cannot be killed by the perpetual snowstorm. Even then,
weather has taken its toll over the years, with holes carved out from the path. The wind is
at its harshest here, being nearly impossible to just barely inch your way to the next piece of
cover. But, finally, bending the temple wall, you’re left with a stunning sight: the
mountain peak, closer than it ever has been. The path here has already worn you down, and
there is nothing to hide behind anymore. There is nothing in sight but snow, the peak,
and the countless graves surrounding you. Each before you a traveler, one much like
yourself, and each one succumbing to the impossible odds. The wind doesn’t just push you
back, but throws you violently back and forth, taking everything in your power not to tumble,
wasting your final ounces of energy. The game, through all of the freedom introduced, has
been stripped back down to you, a hill, and one single button. And even then,
that button is starting to fade too. As you push forward, slower and slower, the
graves begin to thin, from many to some to few to eventually none: you being the furthest
to have ever made it. Your body begins to slow, and as it does, the light of the mountain
seems to disappear. Able to be seen from the very beginning of the game, despite how
close you are, it’s infinitely far away now. The camera patiently lingers behind you
as you slow to shuffle, then a drag, then a crawl. Your control in the
world, the life of this universe, falls away. The traveler collapses.
You’ve suffered a true death. In a game spent chained to the ground, moments
of freedom coming in the briefest of flashes, the ground has become entirely impossible
to see. You are infused with light, saved by the spirits that have guided you along
to the point where you are now. As if you’re in resonance with the world itself, nearly
everything from the creatures to the very air you fly through recharges your flight.
While toiling away in the belly of the city, dodging monsters and having your sense of
freedom literally ripped away from you, your scarf now often flows entirely off
the screen, becoming nothing more than an afterthought. Every single moment of this, both as
the traveler and as the player is pure euphoria. With everything in the game until this point being
built on restriction, your freedom here feels, tangibly, like divinity itself. The shackles
of gravity are undone before your very eyes, and the narrative is transferred into and
through your control on the game itself. Every section of the game is revisited for brief
moments. You glide above the land bridges, slide down the snowy mountainside, swim up
through the faux-water, grazing the jellyfish and riding alongside the cloth version
of the very monsters that hunted you. These obstacles exist only for the sake
of play, entirely optional now and yet something most people willingly choose to do
again, gliding their way through memory lane. In what feels like the first time since
the desert that you’ve seen the full sky, now a perfect blue, the land left to fly over
seems to finally be running out. At one final gate overlooking a small pond of water is a
divine beam of light, like a god themself is staring right down upon you. And, much like the
burst of energy to make you ascend the first time, you are engulfed in a pure glow as you
make your way across the final gap, a complete void below you, hardly
even noticed. Finally landing at the peak is a somewhat
sobering moment. The scarf you were given at the very start of the game dissipates,
jumping and flying no longer a necessity. Again, you are left only with the shout and the forward
key, and just one more place to go. That light you’ve been chasing is now surrounding you
entirely, near-blinding and all encompassing. The walk, nearly as slow as the crawl up the
mountain, is, this time, a peaceful moment. In a way, though, you’re walking to your death
in both. Whatever is inside the mountain is the end of the world, the end of your influence
and as such the end of all reason for this place to exist. The sound of everything
but the music fades away with the light, the medium itself consumed by the
destination being finally reached. Our view into this universe, the camera, lingers
behind, behind with the walls meant to hold the traveler, not us, within the game world. They
begin to walk on their own, into a place we aren’t allowed to, or perhaps aren’t able to see.
As the glow of the mountain consumes them whole, all that’s left is the pure white light,
as everything finally comes to an end. When the game first released, there was a relative
chaos in story interpretation. Despite being such a smashing success for hardcore, casual, and
non-gamers, very little consensus was reached on what the story was actually specifically
about. Journey is a game about mythology, fate, and prophecy, it’s a game about friendship,
about life and… deserts. It’s a game about cycles, or… something. But if you were to
interrogate the core of the game, the soul at the very center of what is trying
to be told to you… you run into some trouble. Theories circulated about religious
interpretations and all other sorts of things, but even those were hard to specifically
justify in one way or another outside of imagery, for the simple fact that there is no
textual evidence to really support anything. It’s impossible to argue semantics when
an idea itself isn’t particularly present. What Journey undoubtedly is, however, is a deeply
moving experience. There must be something tangible in the process that Journey takes us
through, something so core to us that despite no actual information existing to latch on to,
we experience something very real regardless. What each person gets out of the game’s
experience seems perfectly tailored to them, each detail to stand out being a natural
reflection of the landscape of that person’s mind. Despite the beautiful visuals and
soundtrack and clear intentionality, Journey seems to simultaneously be a blank canvas.
The natural conclusion to come to eventually is that Journey, the game, was designed not to be
a creation, but to be a process of creation. As you’ve likely pieced together by now,
while the game isn’t quite about mythology, mythology is important to Journey for a
reason. While the backstory of the game is given to us via hieroglyphs, it’s deeply
important to note that it does not end with the civilization turning to dust. It continues
into our time, the one we get to play through. The story in that tower of light we ascend
is not a separate story, it’s a continuation, left off at the exact moment that we arrived.
Most often, prophecies and hieroglyphs serve as symbolic representations of much more
complex stories and moments and feelings, remnants left over from lives so nuanced that
they could never be accurately represented. However, with each tablet revealed as you ascend
the tower, you may realize that despite each entire chapter of the game existing inside of
one single picture each, the entire summation of its story is shown more or less without leaving
really anything out. In chapter 1, you arrive in the desert. In chapter 2, you construct a bridge
made of cloth. In chapter 3, you move through a desert and up a tower with your cloth creature
friends. In chapter 4, you slide down a hill. In chapter 5, you enter the underground
city and avoid the metal snake monsters. The game of Journey and these prophetic
glyphs have the same amount of dialogue and plot progression. In the case of the
backstory, speaking plot point for plot point, it has even more story than the game has. The only
real difference between these tablets and the game of Journey itself is that one is written down
and one is made for us to play through. Journey is not a cycle of the monomyth, like every
other iteration of video game narrative, yet another reincarnation of the hero’s journey with
different names and faces and story beats within that structure. Instead, it is, in a literal
sense, the Hero’s Journey. The structure itself. Journey being named as simply as it
is is not some random artsy choice, it is the entire point of the game. What
is presented to you is a literalization, a world constructed entirely for the purpose
of symbolizing and showcasing the simplest, most beautiful painting of the monomyth
that you yourself can take part in. One of the single most talked
about elements of the game, and perhaps the most important for the
sake of its emotional impact is the game’s original soundtrack. Each track is beautifully
tailored to every moment, being filled with an anachronistic blend of timeless strings, modern
ambient, distant horns and drums and woodwinds, making every song feel as big and as small
as it needs to be at any given moment. If you were to look up this soundtrack as many,
many people have, you’d get something that hardly exists at all in the game of Journey itself:
names. The soundtrack has names for its songs, as most do, but rather than calling it something
as brutalistically simple as Gameplay 1, Gameplay 2, Gameplay 3, and so on, or as
individual as Resurrections, Starjump, and Reach for the Summit, the song names are
all connected in a deeply interesting way. Nascence, The Call, Threshold, The Road of
Trials, Temptations, Descent, Atonement, The Crossing, Reclamation, Nadir, and Apotheosis,
with 5 confluences weaved between them. There are exactly 17 songs that play over the course
of the main game, with nearly every single one named in some way in relation to the steps
of the Monomyth. Not anything within the story, but the structure of storytelling itself… however.
If you’re familiar at all with Joseph Campbell’s 17 steps, Apotheosis is not the final one. In
fact, it is hardly past the halfway point. Out of the song names presented, only 6 or arguably 7 are
actually steps in the Hero’s Journey specifically. The Call, Threshold, The Road of Trials,
Temptations, Atonement, and Apotheosis, and arguably the Confluences themselves.
Between these are songs of additional meaning and significance. While the game
is undoubtedly a realization of this cycle, it has more to speak on than just a recreation
of it, and we can peek into these cracks through the meanings of the remaining songs…
including the 18th and final one. Nearly all stories play pretend in a very
specific way. They assume that the world being opened to your mind is one that has existed
for thousands to millions to billions of years, that we are being shown a brief window into
a long-living place. Even further we enter into the life of someone that has lived
for many years before this point as well, often implied to have a life stable enough most
of the time as to not require a story being written of it, only the most conflict-ridden
points of time being given that distinction. However, for the traveler in Journey, we come
to learn by midway through the game that we were not joining this being as it arrived to this
civilization: it was born at the very spot that we began controlling it. Nascence is the first song
in the OST, the very opening to the game. The word means “To come into existence”. Each confluence
coincides with the meeting of the goddesses, or potentially past spirits if the composer’s
view holds some weight. The three songs after the Final Confluence, where you learn of your fate
to face the mountain head on, are The Crossing, Reclamation, and Nadir. Reclamation is a song that
plays in the few spots of oases on the mountain, those brief moments of warmth that allow
you to keep moving just a bit longer. As for the The Crossing and Nadir,
they seem to be steps borrowed from more modern interpretations of
the Hero’s Journey: The Approach, a conflict you must face as you get close to your
destination, and The Ordeal, the final conflict that decides whether you live and grow or die
where you stand. Nadir is an astronomical term, meaning “lowest point”, a place that, in game, is
the highest you’ve ever managed to get to. It’s the song that plays as you do die where you stand,
the peak closer in sight than it has ever been. And then… there’s the credits. The next step in
the Hero’s Journey, the one we don’t get to see, is “The Ultimate Boon”. In the monomyth, this
is the thing that was ultimately sought after, the reason for the entire journey. It is,
presumably, what is inside the mountain. As on the nose as it is to state this,
the game is literally about the Journey and not the destination. It is only a
showcase of the middle of the Monomyth, that journey into the unknown world,
and it’s for a very specific reason, one we’ll speak about in a moment. What we
do get to see, however, is the journey back. The credits are scored by the song, “I Was Born
for This”. Unlike every other song in the game, this one has lyrics. Each section of the song is
sung in a different language, the native tongue of various famous myths and historical figures. The
first is from The Aeneid in latin, then Beowulf, The Iliad, the Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, and
the tagline of the song, “I Was Born For This”, being the final words of Joan of Arc, speaking
to destiny and fate. The song is a connecting point of cultures all across time and nations,
and serves as the backdrop for the journey home. Our traveler, now a being of pure energy like
the ones we’ve seen throughout the game begins to fly back – fly back through the mountain, down
the tower, under the city, over the ruins, beyond the factory, above the dunes, and back, right
down behind that very first hill in the game. We watch the night time slowly turn
to day as the credits come to an end, and as the sun peaks over the sky… we’re back to
the starting menu, seamlessly connecting to the very beginning of the game. Just like it’s your
fate to reach the mountain, it’s further your fate to do it all over again. Due to the short nature
of the game, it’s not just possible but fairly common to decide to return to it and play through
the entire game again in one sitting. What begins as a life changing experience becomes a comforting
one, its soundtrack, visuals, and co-op experience being a welcoming hug and trip down memory lane; a
way to re-experience what you originally had, and to pay mind to each and every moment of not just
the literal journey, but your internal one too. And even further, very importantly, you
get to share these moments with a nameless friend. These artistic storytelling cycles
manifest over and over and over in different people and places and structures, but
art as a whole happens as a community, and Journey gives you the ability to do so.
While everyone was new to the game around launch, there is still to this day hundreds of
people online that serve as shepherds for newer players. Often adorned in the white robe,
the one you get for collecting all life pieces, they serve almost as a tour guide. They
show you what this world has to offer, what to collect, what to see, and where to go.
Even for a pair first travelers, the moments shared together far outweigh how they feel to be
experienced alone. There is truly two different video games played here, changing entirely
in its DNA the moment you have a companion. The mountain’s design is rather special. It
has two peaks, but is rounded off at the top of both of them. As revealed in the design notes,
the mountain is shaped this way for a reason; it’s meant to resemble the embrace of two people,
two bodies in a state of permanent connection; the source of life, the power of the
mountain is, in a way, love itself. Art is the interaction between two or more minds.
You connect to the artist, but you can also use art to connect to each other. In this game,
there is no reason not to keep moving forward, no specific thing keeping you tied to this
world, except for another player. You can mess around with someone, sit around, do cute
little rituals, explore, their presence, the presence of another living being to experience
this art with gives a whole new dimension to it. Not many games out there have co-op with
strangers against no opponent at all. We’re so often compared against each other for the sake of
play and competition, but we all see and know the consequences of that. Online play is so commonly
seen as unfixably nasty, but Journey is this oasis of almost intimacy with each other. You’re
only able to communicate in shouts, you don’t even have the privilege of a name, a customized
look, anything that states that you are a person outside of this place. No, to them, and them to
you, both are just travelers on the same path. By removing our individual senses of identity,
we exist in Journey in the *context* of Journey. Our need to feel special melts away into the
sand. All we can do is take this path together. Once the tools and societal pressure to be
competitively selfish disappears, we become as we always have been; travelers together,
helping eachother across wind, sand, and snow. While the song names are based off of the
steps of the Hero’s Journey, what’s important to note is that a lot of what happens in those
steps are simply not communicated in Journey’s actual story. The Hero’s Journey as a story is
not based exclusively on external conflicts; just as much as the hero struggles with the
outside, they struggle from within as well. And yet, our nameless, wordless, expressionless
traveler simply can’t provide that for us. In lieu of the protagonist having that progression,
that conflict is placed on you, the player. Most games place you in the position of the
observer, feeling secondhand emotions from the actions and reactions of the protagonist. However,
outside of those brief moments with the goddesses, you are the only being controlling every
action the traveler takes. It only exists to be an extension of you, a tour guide through
this world, and a way to tangibly interact with it. Truthfully this is the goal of all stories,
to be a conduit to move you, to change you, to give you new perspectives and ideas. It’s
simply that, like everything else in Journey, it does away with any need to pretend. The
directness of this game, through game design to story to philosophy, all serves to connect
with you more than any game to come before or after. The names of these songs are as much about
each individual section of the world as they are mission statements, detailing the emotions that
each song wants to evoke in you and you alone. While the world you travel through is digital,
the journey you take within yourself is real. Each moment of connection, each detail of this
world lives within you, a projection of emotions and friends and beauty casting into the inside
of your mind, becoming real for those fleeting moments where everything else seems to fall
away. The music swells and you soar in flight, the world darkens and you shrink yourself. You
embody this vessel, these living clothes for your soul to wear if only for a moment, one moment
bridging your life before and your life beyond. You are the being that has existed long before
this story, in a universe that came into existence an inconceivable amount of time before you
did. Journey is merely the special world, one that you transport into for exactly
as long as you control the traveler. Once you’ve found the ultimate boon, you return back to
yourself, having changed, if only in a small way. It is hard to imagine, even today, that this
game was the success it was. I’ve spoken of so many weird, fascinating, life changing
artsy video games in my time on this channel, but absolutely none have had the universality
and popularity that Journey did. As said before, it was not quite an indie game itself, at
least not in the way we think about it today, but its origins were unique and
rooted in indie game design. You could attribute its success to its
uniqueness at the time, its budget, its support from Sony, but that simply doesn’t
tell the full story. 2012 was a year much like any other. The same companies produced
the same monumentally popular AAA titles, series tried and tested and proven to sell
year after year after year. And yet, in the same breath as the titans of Black Ops, Far Cry,
Halo, and Mass Effect is Journey. This single, wordless game made by a small group of people
that shied away from every single known aspect of what a successful game could be:
this is the thing that broke records. No, in my opinion, what made this game successful
is the very foundation of why it was made. Every game is inherently exclusionary in some way.
Even for the most popular games out there, run through board meetings and playtesting and
studies to be as widely appealing as possible, an invisible wall surrounds every game
in existence, as well as video games as a whole. Be it difficulty or learning
curves or just price, there is more to get into and way more to learn before you
can even begin to enjoy gaming as a whole. Journey is a game that doesn’t even last 2 hours.
The controls are painfully simple, the puzzles are easy, the gameplay is borderline nonexistent, and
the story is entirely wordless. Yet in this game, in this world is the connection point of all of
humanity. A net cast out across space and time, the invisible patterns that have existed
within us since we as a whole have existed. A story constructed of and built on a cycle that
builds bridges between every single one of us. Journey was developed, like many
of the most interesting games, by people with experience in other
art fields, multi-media developers and creative visionaries that simply crossed
paths with video games rather than a life lived within them. Each walk of life brought
differences, uniqueness in experience, but in the process of creating Journey,
they focused on what makes them similar. Journey is a wordless playground, walking
and flying through the cosmic structure that binds us all, and through that universality,
through that connection to the souls of everyone to touch this barren desert, it achieved
what no video game quite had before. It broke through. It became the source for artsy,
story-centric indie games to sprout out from, a place for each cycle to begin anew,
with genuine hopes that these artists might actually see a reward for their efforts.
Journey, in a way, has become a protomyth. A lineage of unique, weird, scrappy excellence
can be traced both to and beyond the game of Journey. Just as it was fed into by
thousands of years of storytelling, it has continued the path to many of
the most beloved games of all time… It’s my belief that most progress humanity
finds, in both the biggest and smallest ways, is eventually inevitable. If it weren’t Journey,
there was a chance that another game would have followed that did more or less the same thing:
open up the consumer market for games that reject the need to just be toys and to blend gameplay
directly into the message. It’s not like Journey was the first to try it, or thatgamecompany would
be the only group of people to do it. However, with that different timeline would come
different games. If it would have taken another year, many of the chains of
influences would be entirely broken, so many art products only being possible
in the briefest of times and circumstances. To me, no video game narrative can or should
be a movie or a book. You do interact with these worlds, even if through tiny button
prompts or just walking the way the map guides you. The fact that you do the inputs,
you guide the camera, you control the pace, it makes you a conduit. There is a connection
that forms between yourself and this universe that no other medium we have ever made can quite
capture the same way. Journey could be nothing but a video game, and it understands
that fact. That means something to me. In its simplicity, we’ve come to fill in
the details. In playing as the protagonist, we’ve come to fill that internal
world. In taking this Journey, we’ve come to change ourselves by the end.
Inside our minds are inscribed patterns, tropes and beats and moments that bind
all of us together; myths all borrowing the millenia of earth and winds and water that
carved out the narrative worlds we all travel through. They manifest in different forms,
but their core is what draws all of us in. In truth, nearly every story is about climbing
a mountain. They struggle in different ways, face different trials, may have their journey be
shifted and changed and layered through all sorts of complexity. They might make it, or the very
well may die along the way. You as the character are birthed from life, and upon completing your
journey, you’re awarded with returning to it, no longer existing, your purpose, your fate
as the protagonist, successfully fulfilled. Your fate was scribed onto digital screens
with modern glyphs, your fate sealed by proofreading and deadlines, a being controlled
by the creator or creators of your universe. Those stars interlinking between us create
the constellations in Journey’s sky, the millions of dunes formed from bits of
dialogue from every character to ever exist, crushed and repurposed and reimagined in the
minds of the people, the gods, the mountain, who modeled it. Each atom in the world of
Journey has been dissipated and reassembled in every story you’ve ever read, stretching back
to the first human and forward to the eventual last. The Hero’s Journey is now something you
don’t just see, but do. We have all taken this Journey before through someone else, but now
we can do it ourselves. We can set foot in this place like we never have before. The
question is… Would you like to do it again?
…and what that nothing can mean for us.
Support me on Patreon (please): https://www.patreon.com/user?u=74033438
Join the Discord (there are furries there): https://discord.gg/Nt6BhKKee7
Thumbnail by the ever-talented artist, streamer, gamer extraordinare RigorMarcy:
https://rigormarcy.carrd.co/
https://www.twitch.tv/rigormarcy
Free high quality download of the thumbnail (and variations) for desktop backgrounds (be sure to send Marcy a thanks): https://www.patreon.com/posts/130857423/
Music Used: https://pastebin.com/5fxgpBzc
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:59 What is Journey?
5:32 Nascence
6:54 The Bridge
11:36 The Desert
15:07 The Dunes
21:20 The Ruins
27:17 The Tower
30:02 The Mountain
40:10 Analysis
53:48 Conclusion
58:59 Ending
1:00:18 Support
37 Comments
If you enjoyed this essay (I put my whole soul into it), consider subscribing to my patreon. It means more than you could ever possibly know.
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=74033438
JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Nt6BhKKee7
Free high quality download of the thumbnail (and variations) for desktop backgrounds (be sure to send Marcy a thanks): https://www.patreon.com/posts/130857423/
Secret video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUn69JuyUrM
and while im at it, i'm allowed to recommend all of you a song as a treat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpgwDyD3V2I
❤
this game is just . . . . . . . . . . . . . . you cant put it in words.
OMG I love Journey
Makes me tear up a lot, the soundtrack~
Dude… Apotheosis makes me cry every time.
If you like thi, try "Gris" and "Aer, Memories of Old" and "El Shaddai"
Love this game so much I grabbed someone's fan made shirt of it. And I basically never buy game merch (official or otherwise)
I was just a teen, playing the most famous games, the ones everyone knows about. Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed, GTA, Need for Speed, Skyrim… Then came Journey. It was the first time, probably, that I really saw video games as more than entertainment. Instead of fighting enemies or chasing thrills, I was just there taking my time, contemplating my environment, letting the music sink in, making my own interpretation of the silent story…
The game is so short, it has little to no replayability, yet I kept coming back to it. My brother didn't understand, after all, it's just a game about climbing a mountain and you can't do a lot of different stuff in it. Yet there it was, my first step into the world of artsy games. Journey motivated me to look beyond the big AAA blockbuster releases, to find the niche but moving tales often told by smaller teams, and for that I'll ever be thankful.
HOLY SHIT THE JUDGE IS BACK! ITS BEEN SO LONG 😭😭😭
AND NOW THERE IS A sEQUEL!
Now do ABZU
.
10:10 what is the name of the song at this part?
No way, I'm watching this as soon as my exams are over😓
This video is an amazing journey
Also probably the best one you've made so far
A beautiful video, as always. (ps, please at some point look at OneShot and potentially Kenshi, they're both super interesting games in ther own ways!)
I was going to say that Journey wasn't the first walking simulator, but it seems that Dear Esther's commercial release was around the same time (although, as a mod, it was earlier).
36:52 stfu, the music is playing
Aaargh cursed judge video about one of my favourite ever games. This is gonna be goooood. I'll take a seat…
I remember when me and my brother got this game back in the day, and I will never forget the way it made me feel.
Journey had such an impact on the kind of storytelling that I love.
Hyper Light Drifter almost feels like a combat, open world version of this game as it uses similar storytelling techniques.
the monomyth isnt actually a thing,the author cherry picked alot while writing the book, see brandon sandersons(big fantasy author) thoughts on it if you want to learn more
5th Video essay today lets go
"what's the deal with sand dunes?????"
Hi! It's me, Freddy Fazbear! Hear to leave this comment under a video essay about a game! Har har har har har, har har har har haaaar. Har har har har! Har har har har!
Journey is on my Steam queue to play. I'm hoping I enjoy it as much as Gris.
Lies, it’s about sand
I got so super lucky in my first play through because I both had the same person with me the entire time AND they were streaming it, so I can go back and watch whenever I want
amazing video
I’ve been patiently waiting for your return good sir
Damn, I need to play this with my gf.
Although I need to find a gf first..
20:20 The first time I played this game, this moment quite literally took my breath away and I think I said "oh, wow" out loud
me and my friend actually inspired by this game because of how amazing the game is when making our final year project 3d animation. idk if The Cursed Judge allows us to post links but here's our animation
https://youtu.be/KOzmdcSrbgI?si=bR7RP-hlDWcsRwxv
The interpretation of the story as you recount it at the start of the Ruins chapter is very different from my own. I'm really curious now if yours is the outlier, or if I'm the minority.
I never saw this as a battle with some hidden serpents from underground — it always very clearly read as a drought or shortage of the natural resource that was the cloth material, which led to conflict. As the fighting intensified, the ancient civilization constructed giant war machines; machines large enough to carry people (either as pilots or for deployment in the battlefield), culminating in the use of a giant superweapon that eradicated almost all life. … Am I crazy? Is this not how everyone knows the story??
yippee, new cursed judge video
It is hardly a unique experience, and yet the simple way in which the style of Journey's multiplayer contributes to it's story – the way players interact with it – goes to create a unique experience for every player. The moments when you connect with someone randomly in a chapter. That moment of "wait I think I see someone" and the socialization that follows. Your collaboration with each other to move forward. The uncertainty when you lose track of each other, either to be reunited or the lingering of their absence. It in and of itself does not make the story, and yet I nearly lament for anyone who did not benefit from experiencing this game with someone at their side. It is not gamebreaking to play it alone, yet the silent comradery experienced with someone else sharing the journey with you enriches it in a profound way. Some of my core memories of Journey are BECAUSE of those moments. Even so far as my strongest memory being due to a misconception i held during the snowy ascent. I somehow believed we needed to "keep each other alive" by pulsing energy to each other, and my companion responded in kind. While i didnt believe either of us would die without it, I felt we needed to to ensure we made it through. It caused the moments where we got split up or one of us got spotted by the flying serpentine machines to feel that more dreadful, Because We Needed Each Other.
There are too many things about this game to praise. Even just hearing someone talk about it is enough to brint me to tears.
Cheers mate 👍
The game is a glorified screensaver where your primary interaction is holding up on the controller.
I have no idea why people get really excited at the prospect of going on a commute in games.
I have never played a game where the best part of it was travelling in a straight line for an extended period of time.
I'm not even against the idea of a walking simulator style game in principle. So long as I'm actively engaged in looking for something in the environment, or having to navigate the environment in an interesting way that has consequences I think that even limited interactivity can elevate something that would otherwise be mundane, but I don't see any reason why this game is special outside of looking pretty.
Maybe I just don't understand why someone would find the idea of seeing another player in an empty environment with no means to directly interact with them or influence the environment has merit.
Seeing other people's experiences documented, all I can think of is that I'd never really be able to have a similar experience because I just wouldn't find it emotionally resonant.
I feel similarly about Team Ico games, which just don't appeal to me because I find the art style and world building fairly bland. It's like they couldn't decide between photorealism and impressionism and decided to do both simultaneously, leading to everything looking really inconsistent when you can make out what you're even looking at behind the excessive bloom filters.
Holy lord, the ghost drops another instant classic