Musings on The Path
Also spoilers if you’re planning to play The PathIn 1997 Michael Haneke released a movie called Funny Games in which two boys, one of which can control the environment, take hostage, torture, and kill a family in their home. The director has stated it was meant to be a statement about violence in the media.
Now anyone who knows me well knows my disdain for this movie, for the admittedly shallow reason that it breaks my One Rule of Horror Movies that the villain cannot be more annoying than the protagonist. More to the point, while I think the film made the statement it was meant to, I don’t think it did it very well.
I bring this up only because Funny Games popped into my mind while I was playing The Path, namely because I rather thought The Path brought home that kind of statement about violence in the media more home than Funny Games did without really trying to. It didn’t make me ask any questions about myself, certainly. The Path, of course, has the advantage of bringing the viewer into the story better than Funny Games for the simple reason that The Path is a game, and Funny Games is a movie. The director, the actors and the characters have control of the movie, the antagonists more control than most, and the audience has none.
The Path is a horror game released by Tale of Tales in 2009. It’s a supremely surreal game and the makers haven’t made any statement about what it’s supposed to represent, rather saying that it’s up to the player to come up with their own interpretation of what’s going on. It draws on the story of Little Red Riding Hood (many incarnations of it) both visually and story-wise, as we play as one of six sisters traveling down the path between the apartment they share with their mother and their grandmother’s house. We are given a strict warning to stay on the path and indeed you can guide your chosen girl down the path straight to Grandma’s house, where she will take a basket of goodies to Grandmother and lay down next to her. End of game.
Can. That’s the key word there. You can stay on the path. However, in order to actually explore the game and interact with most of the things, you have to take the character off the path in search of her ‘wolf’. Every character has a certain spot in the woods that is hers and her ‘wolf’ is waiting there for her. Once you find the ‘wolf’, a cutscene happens and the scene goes black. When we gain control of the character again, she’s laying just outside of Grandmother’s house in the dreary rain. You can do little but guide her up the rest of the path where she limps with agonizing slowness to the door. Once inside, we switch to a first person view and depending on the girl, the rooms have been changed considerably. You walk through the house until you get to the girl’s room at which point the screen goes blank again and we get quick flashes and pictures of the girl and her wolf which seem to suggest the girl died rather painfully.
This is a very basic explanation of the game, it is extremely visual and as I’ve mentioned you don’t get any particular explanation of why and what and how, you’re presented with the environment and the girl and it’s pretty much up to you to interpret what you see from there.
I played the girls from oldest girl, who is 19 years old, down to the youngest, Robin, who is 9, and it was playing Robin that the game stuck with me the most, and where the Funny Games comparison popped up.
I’ve read a couple of posts and blogs talking about how they interpreted the game and what each girl symbolized and so on and so forth. I’m not going to get into my thoughts on the who and the what, at least at the moment, that isn’t the part of it that intrigued me. What each ‘wolf’ and setting and end game has to say about each girl didn’t interest me half as much as what it says about us, the player. Several people on the forum made reference to the girls’ actions bringing ruin down on them which I found interesting because the girls are the characters and can’t do anything without us guiding them. We, the player, are not passively watching anything going on, we’re guiding the actions of the girl, so what, exactly does this game tell us about....us?
As I said, this happened when I was playing Robin, who we find out through things she says and intros about her from the site, is a lively little girl who loves wolves. Her ‘wolf’ is the only one in the game that’s an actual wolf. It is this hideous, decrepit looking werewolf thing with spiky black fur and a permanent snarl that’s lurching around a cemetery.
Having played through all five of her sisters and therefore having all knowledge that this was going to end unpleasantly for her, I stood with Robin right on the edge of the cemetery and watched this thing for a full minute thinking; “You know if I had any concern for this darling little girl’s well being, I would turn her ass around and get her the hell out of her right this instant”.
I didn’t. I walked her forward and interacted with the wolf and watched her jump on the thing’s back and ride it around until the screen went black and we got a nice shot of this little crumpled up form just laying there outside Grandmother’s house. Then I clicked to get her to her feet and walked her into the house and watched her walk through it to the end scene where I got pictures of what looked very much like Robin getting eaten by a wolf. And I’d worked and played my way through her scenario in order to see this happen.
Sound cold to you? It does to me, most certainly. I could have turned Robin away at any point and sent her to Grandma’s safe and sound, but I didn’t. Why? Because I wanted to play to the end of the game. And I wanted to see what was going to happen to her, even knowing it was going to be horrible.
Even more bemusing, I think, is the fact while it makes me wonder about myself, it doesn’t really bother me overmuch. Hm.
Questionable
Pride
