THE PATHLESS
Matt Nava on developing games all the way from Journey to The Pathless
“YOU CAN ONLY WIN WITH THAT RELATIONSHIP [WITH THE EAGLE] INTACT. I THINK THAT THAT SETS UP THIS COOL GAMEPLAY.”
FORMAT PS4 / PLAYERS 1 / PUB ANNAPURNA INTERACTIVE / DEV GIANT SQUID
After starting out as art director on Flower and Journey at Thatgamecompany, Matt Nava founded his own studio, Giant Squid, which made Abzû. It’s a strong portfolio. What’s notable is that even though these games have been great team efforts, his touch is clear in all of them. Now he’s serving as creative director on The Pathless, which feels like a clear evolution of Nava’s particular style of art game, but with extra mechanical, actionpacked depth.
“Everything I make seems to end up with a similar quality to it, and I think it’s just endemic to the fact that it’s me behind the wheel in some way. And so we have a lot of similar themes, a lot of similar game design ideas,” Nava tells us as we tear him away from working on the game on a rare rainy day in LA. “Each one is kind of stepping off from where the other one left and we tried to bring something new each time. The Pathless, in particular, is quite a big shift both in scope for the game and also kind of mechanical depth.” In terms of size, The Pathless is bigger than anything Nava has worked on before. Playing as
The Hunter alongside her eagle companion, you move through its expansive world at high speed, using a bow and arrow as you do.
OPEN RANGE
“When we started making this game, I was thinking to myself: what would be fun to work on? What would be interesting? What haven’t I done?” says Nava. “All of the games that I had worked on prior were these kind of contemplative and slow-paced things, and I wanted to imbue a sense of speed and exhilaration in there.” Which isn’t to say games like Journey or Abzû don’t have their quicker moments, but here’s it’s this idea of speed that’s being pulled very much to the forefront – making this an intense adventure from the get-go. “The Pathless has that as kind of a core idea,” says Nava.
The world of The Pathless has fallen under a curse that’s only growing worse, the source of which is rumoured to be on a mysterious island. When The Hunter arrives, it’s clear the island is festering, and a mysterious inverted volcano hovers ominously in the sky over its centre. In Abzû, you moved from area to area, but “we were like, what if we change the shape of the world in this game so that we knew the bounds of it from the very beginning?” says Nava on building the setting. “That kind of led us to this design where it’s much more of an open world, you’re on this big island, and you’re kind of exploring it in any direction you want.”
You’re not the first Hunter to come to the island to try to lift the curse. But you do have something they didn’t. “You quickly meet this eagle friend who accompanies you on this adventure to discover the source of this curse and to nullify it, bring light back,” says Nava. Using the eagle, you can glide to reach higher places. As you progress, you can reach higher and higher areas. You also need your bond with the eagle to purify the stronger creatures you come across in the game – who you have to keep up with and pepper with well-timed shots.
A BIRD IN THE HAND
“Whenever you encounter the main kind of antagonist, and the bad guys in the game, what they are trying to do is separate you, they’re trying to get the eagle and steal him away from you,” says Nava “You can only win with that relationship intact. I think that that sets up this cool gameplay but also a really interesting narrative for the game as well.” This ties into the team wanting to avoid Game Over states. Rather than failing if you’re separated, you’ll instead have to overcome that problem. “Every place where you would have had a Game Over in a more standard game we’ve figured out an alternative,” says Nava.
While you won’t be able to reach loftier heights until the eagle powers up, you can otherwise choose where you want to explore. You’re cleansing the island in real time as you go. “Literally like a hole in the clouds is gonna open up and light shafts come down onto the ground. Which is really neat, and it’s kind of reminiscent of ideas in Flower or Abzû,” says Nava. “But what’s really cool about it to me is that you just look out over the landscape and you have this visual of your progress in the game, because you can just be like ‘How much of the island is in
sunlight, and how much is in shadow? And where it’s shadow, that’s where I need to go.”
YOU HAVE MY BOW
“You have to have something that stands out from those big, high budget, high-quality games, and so we always start with trying to find that unique idea,” says Nava on why they decided to build the game around the high-speed archery. “For The Pathless the opportunity that I saw was a way to do aiming in a unique way,” says Nava. “[The] core thesis ideas of the game is, ‘what if you could move fast and shoot targets accurately?’ Which is something that is surprisingly uncommon in this kind of game.” As you explore the island, you’ll need to do both. “We have these things that we call ‘talismans’ in the world, and they’re basically these kind of floating targets, and they’re just distributed over the terrain. And as you shoot them, you gain boosts,” explains Nava. “But the way that you shoot them is you have this reticule that appears like a little icon around it [which] winds up like a little clock.”
Hold down i and The Hunter pulls back the bow string on the target. “The longer you hold it, the more that thing charges up until it’s 100%. And the amount that you charge it is the accuracy of the shot,” says Nava. “But if you let go too early, then it’s going to be 25% accurate or you know 30% accurate and the arrow will fly off.” But there’s a risk/reward too, as you can pull off quick shots to get maximum accuracy early. “At exactly 50% we have a tiny window of 100% accuracy,” says Nava. “You get a little extra boost when you do that type. So you can kind of wait for the more reliable shot, or you can go for these quicker ones, and just that simple mechanic makes it really fun to run, shoot these things, and keep your speed up because that change from making it so you focus on aiming to the timing mechanic allows you to keep your focus on moving the character.”
You can only target objects The Hunter wants to aim at – you can’t just run around the island murdering innocent animals. “We struggled with that for a long time,” says Nava. “At first we had mechanics for chasing down animals and shooting them. And it always felt weird.” The Pathless isn’t an open world sandbox for you to just play around it – the exploration serves a thematic purpose in service to the plot, of bringing light back and building this bond with the eagle and, by extension, nature.
“Instead we have mechanics where you can sneak up on an animal and cleanse it,” says Nava. “Kind of like the island that’s covered in this curse, all the animals that are in these shadowy areas [are too] and you have to do a prayer to extract this curse – and then they run around with you and become your friend.”
There’s also “bad guys that run around” that you have to deal with on the move – like the animals, you can knock them down and then cleanse them. Purification, as opposed to violence, is the name of the game here, and it feels like it fits with the game’s almost sacred atmosphere. “The loop even with the bad guys ends with you transforming them back to a cleansed state. So you’re kind of putting everything back together,” says Nava.
INDIE LABELS
As he’s been making small, arty games since Flower, we ask Nava how he feels about the evolution of the indie space. “What’s happened since then, is [that] the process of making games has been democratised. And now everyone has access to tools, the great tools to make games,” says Nava. “And the new question is: okay, how do you stand out in this now flooded market of games? And so I think more than ever, the value of a creative idea is paramount. You have to have something that is fresh and new. I think that’s the real strength of indie games. They
[INDIE DEVS] “COME UP WITH CRAZY FRESH NEW IDEAS ALL THE TIME BECAUSE THEY CAN KEEP THEIR SCOPE SMALLER AND THEIR DEV TIME SMALLER.”
come up with crazy fresh new ideas all the time because they can keep their scope smaller and their dev time smaller.”
That said, thanks to the success of Abzû, Giant Squid is occupying a nice space between small-scale indie and Triple-A projects.
“That’s where we’re starting to straddle that line,” says Nava, “and so far I’ve found that it’s a fun place to be because you can really say something unique with your game you can, you can have a unique message, you can experiment still, and do something that’s not standard. But you can make something that’s high quality if you push hard.”
We’ll get on the move in The Pathless later this year.