The subversion is itself undermined by the script's continuing insistence on sticking with the most hackneyed lessons possible, but I appreciated the game's willingness to skew its own vanity, along with the inherent selfishness and haughty righteousness of the guilt complex.įortunately, Path to Thalamus' puzzles and settings stand apart on their own, provided you're prepared for the slow pace inherent to meandering through its spaces. I'd rather not reveal how the narrator's contrition is so dramatically subverted, except to say that Path to Thalamus forces its protagonist to stare at his own troubled reflection. Nevertheless, the final level may not have worked so well had the previous few hours not been so insufferably earnest. This is due in part to the voice acting, which doesn't communicate the solemnity the writing calls for, and in part to the lead's self-pity, which made me wish the narrative canvas had been painted upon by a subtler brush. This is a heavy-handed story it takes itself so incredibly seriously in the way it slathers on the pedantic metaphors, and in the narrator's own wistful recollections, some of which are difficult to listen to. The losses were the result of his weather obsession, the specifics of which are only hinted at as the man narrates your journey through his brain. You assume the role of a comatose storm-chaser, grappling with his guilt while stuck inside his own head, facing the loss of two loved ones with a single name. That weather motif is one of several ways Path to Thalamus ties its puzzle-solving to its story. There will be no tomorrow if this day cannot be turned to night. Not only do you discover on your own how to make it rain, but you also discover what that rain means for the world around you, and what it means for escaping your comely mental prison. Discovering how you influence the world around you is intrinsic to the experience. Making your way through this world means carrying wire-mesh orbs and dropping them in designated regions in order to affect the weather, turn day to night, or make walkways corporeal. Here, you wander through various surreal locales-meadows crisscrossed by stone walkways and dotted with pillars, floating islands connected by glowing portals, and beaches topped with sunny blue skies. Mind: Path to Thalamus owes a debt at least in part to Myst and its sequels, games that twisted your brain into knots when you weren't admiring the surrounding beauty and pondering the mysteries you were unveiling. And it's that narrative that provides both the game's fall from grace and its ultimate salvation. Like many other games that appear on Steam and float in and out of the collective consciousness, this is a metaphysical journey that prioritizes discovery over solution, and it's a largely successful one, leading you through one gorgeous environment after another so that you might ogle the view and wonder about its meaning within Path to Thalamus' larger narrative. Mind: Path to Thalamus is easy to classify but difficult to parse, a first-person puzzle game that's not about the puzzles but instead about what they stand for.
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