Psychological Horror in The Path

I briefly discussed The Path on this blog already, but think that it merits further mention because of the relatively unique way it elicits fear from its players. Rather than relying on violent imagery and adrenaline-fueled gunfights, The Path employs seemingly-random and psychologically-frightening imagery to force a subjective, subconscious reaction that is frequently quite disturbing but simultaneously difficult to pinpoint. It is also an extremely memorable game, which definitely stays with you long after you’ve finished playing it.

The Path isn’t a horror game in the traditional sense – the game proceeds at the pace you determine, and the lack of direction lends it a kind of aimlessness that virtually all other horror games lack (since generally horror games are fueled by a base objective to wipe out an evil, encroaching force; though the encroaching force tends to manifest itself in different ways from game to game, the need to find, fight, and ultimately destroy seems to be a fundamental underpinning of most horror games). This is completely absent in The Path.

The Path is more about exploring the very concept of fear, and what it means to different people. The game’s overall creepy aesthetic and moments of hypnotic monotony contribute to this, but at the end of the day the game seems more interested in how you interpret – or fail to interpret – what it presents.

Which is a short cut-scene that briefly (and incompletely) follows each girl’s interaction with her “wolf” (the manifestation of all her deepest fears, located somewhere deep in the woods that the game explicitly instructs us not to venture into), and then a longer, first-person journey through the bizarre and terrifying and imagery-heavy hallways of grandma’s house. It is a powerfully subjective game, in the sense that it seems to offer players the chance to explore their own fears, as they become more and more immersed in the experiences of each girl and more and more invested in the storyline which they invariably create as they progress through the game. It presents fear in its most basic and primal form, deconstructed from more complex situations into a series of terrifying and seemingly-unrelated images that allude to past experiences and are left to the player to react to and interpret. The images are frightening – there’s no doubt about that. But why they’re frightening is something that will differ from player to player. It is an abstract, almost intellectual rendering of personal fear, that is starkly different from anything that I’ve encountered in the other games I’ve played.

I think this fact is reinforced by the unsettling ambiguity surrounding each girl’s interaction with her wolf, which the game makes no effort to resolve. The complete lack of any kind of satisfying final conclusion is scary in and of itself, and it is this murkiness which the player must somehow rectify and come to terms with.

There are no zombies gushing blood from their eyes, or armored aliens wielding AK-47s, but the trippy, psychological quality of the game – which reminded me a bit of horror movies like The Ring – makes for a truly visceral experience.