A Deep Dive Into The Path

this video is sponsored by Squarespace so you know how like everything is getting wiped from the internet because of how fast technology is moving and internet preservation is really important yeah well the path is a pretty cool game right the path is short horror game based on the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood was created by indie game Studio tale of tales in 2009 since then it's been subject to a lot of contention a lot of praise and above all a lot of theorizing the path is a wonderfully symbolic and metaphorical experience more interested in giving you Clues to piece together you're a narrative than presenting a fully formed and structured story it's dark really dark and very creepy at times it's a horror game yes but the horror doesn't come from jump scares or creepy imagery but from the themes the horror of adolescence the scary process of growing up and it's all wrapped up in a visually gorgeous package and framed around a modern day horror retelling of Little Red Riding Hood and unfortunately because of the outdated technology that it was built on the path is slowly being lost to time in today's video is a sort of spin-off slash opinion piece to my first analysis video about the path we'll be covering the history of the game's creation featuring a bunch of behind the scenes concept art game development stories and general fun facts it's basically an excuse for me to rant about how much I love the path again while also serving as a good way to Archive and document a lot of the development process of the game we'll be revisiting a lot of the gameplay and story beats and themes of the path so spoiler warning for that obviously it helps if you've played the game or watched a video about it but then again maybe you're a widow like me who likes watching long-winded explanations and analyzes of games that you've never played before so if so enjoy now without further kerfuffle come along with me for another trip down the path as a kid I was morbidly obsessed with the path and I ravenously consumed any and all content for it that I could reviews analysis gameplay videos you name it but with how obscure the game was even back then there was very little content for me to get my grubby little mitts on and years later despite the rise in long form video essay content on YouTube especially that relating to horror games discussions of the path were still pretty scarce which is why in November of 2021 I decided to make my own video about it and it's probably one of my favorite videos that I've ever made the reason why is because it means so much to me to see this game finally getting attention and in-depth discussions after all this time the comment section of that video is filled with so many incredible theories interesting details and just generally people gushing about the game which is literally the best thing ever after like a decade plus of pretty much nothing now I'm assuming that most people watching this video have played the game themselves or have watched a video about it but just in case I'll give you a quick summary of it the path is a short horror game released by indie game Studio tale of tales in 2009 the game of opens on a red apartment occupied by six sisters nine-year-old Robin 11 year old Rose 13 year old Ginger 15 year old Ruby 17 year old Carmen and the elder sister Scarlett at age 19. each girl represents a different age and stage of life for a girl growing up and as such they also represent the struggles hardships and pain that come with all of those life stages after selecting which girl you want to play as you're then placed at the start of a long isolated path in the middle of the forest your only objective is to go to Grandmother's house and stay on the path if you're a good little lady Plus student then do exactly as you're told you'll get to Grandmother's house and get a fail that's because to experience the actual game you'll need to go off the path as you take each girl through the endless forest and I do mean endless once you leave the path it's impossible to find it again she'll find and interact with items scattered around remarking on them and musing about her feelings on various topics there's no voice acting just scribbly text which complements the minimalist UI and gives the forest a quiet isolated feel there are several unique locations scattered throughout the forest and it's in these areas that each girl can find her wolf wolves in the path take many different forms from a Charming young man to a floating cloud creature to an actual werewolf each girl has to face her wolf and subsequently go through a nightmarish version of Grandma's house where the themes of her story are laid out in abstract and frightening ways the halls and rooms of the house bending and twisting into physical impossibilities after that you'll get a ranking and you can move on to the next girl until all of them are gone in the red apartment is left quiet and empty though it may sound a little bit dull you know just walking through a forest picking up objects everything in the game is carefully crafted to tell a story about each girl and her struggles from the items she picks up to the things that she says to the location she visits within the forest to the strange rooms found in Grandma's house the actual meanings of each ghost story are intentionally made to be open to interpretation by the developers but there are some common theories Robin is attacked by a wolf while trying to play with it the classic story of a young and naive child who learns about the concept of death and pain in a very real and uncomfortable way 11 year old Rose the story can be interpreted in a similar yet distinctly different way an innocent child with a quote unquote old soul who is treated as mature by her peers and the adults around her when in reality she's just a child who makes mistakes and doesn't know better and because of this she ends up getting hurt Ginger's story is right with themes of gender and sexuality and the confusing and scary process of going through puberty Ruby is a depressed and angsty teenager dealing with both isolation from Piers her own age and disillusionment with adult Society additionally themes of disability trauma and even drug use are present in her story Carmen sees herself as mature and ready for a relationship but is used and likely abused by someone much older than her sadly in all too common occurrence and Scarlet is the mother figure of the family forced to be apparent too young due to her own absent parents lonely and isolated both no one to talk to the responsibility to look after and provide for her sisters is a heavy weight on her shoulders and that's only the tip of the iceberg like I said I made a one plus hour video on the game and I still didn't cover everything there's so much gorgeous and scary very imagery so many dissectable quotes So Many subtle details and this paired with the beautiful vibrant 2000s era Graphics make the game stand out as a true spectacle of Art and storytelling but I feel like I have unfinished business with the path the topic of Internet preservation has been coming up more and more recently and for good reason with the constant push for a shift into web 3.0 the death of Flash Player and the loss of thousands of websites because of their hosts going offline or their domain lapsing we're losing more and more of the internet recently in October of 2022 the tale of Tails Twitter account tweeted the path is discounted Halloween please play it before Microsoft kills it what do you mean exactly by before Microsoft kills it Windows updates with every update things stop working the path already broke a few years ago after a Windows update but that time we were able to fix it next time we might not be that lucky it's old software made with an obsolete game engine we'll touch on that obsolete game engine in a little bit but the point is the path and minigames like it that were made many years ago are slowly breaking and becoming unplayable even after completely breaking due to a Windows update and thankfully being fixed it's still incredibly janky it doesn't work on most Macs now the Steam Community for the game is filled with people struggling to get it to work and even then there are technical issues Galore the website for the path is fading out of existence as well with the development blog and Forum completely and accessible due to from what I can tell outdated code in the first path video we took a deep dive into the game itself but today I want to focus on the creation and development of the game how it was made the early scrapped ideas the abundance of strange and beautiful concept art the development process the merch thankfully tale of tales pretty extensively documented the creation of this game and it's just so cool and fun and interesting that I have to share with you guys now more than ever I feel like we just have to keep sharing cool things that we like online with each other lest they be lost to the rapidly advancing internet so let's get into it in 1999 auria Harvey and Michael salmon began creating websites art projects and multimedia experiences under the name entropy 8 Zooper they created an interactive virtual Garden of Eden for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art a commissioned remake of Olio leolinas her boyfriend came back from the war website and multiple interactive art pieces and websites about their relationship having met worked together and fallen in love on the internet the two often spoke of the internet as a place rather than a thing a virtual world where they could be together while in reality they were living in different countries after working as entropy 8 Zooper for several years and developing their skills as artists web designers and indeed game developers the two decided to create a game Studio together in late 2008 called tale of tales right from the jump the studio had a huge number of influences that shaped the products that they would go on to make Saint Balboa's cathedral which they lived near was one of their quote greatest influences as were biblical themes poetry and classic fairy tales the first game titled 8 was based on the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty it was the game that started the studio and being a visually beautiful and Rich walking simulator-esque game with subtextual and subtle storytelling it can definitely be read as a very early pre-evolution of the path actually the initial idea behind tale of tales was for their Mainline series of games to all be based on different fairy tales with numbers for the title but this never really came to fruition in 2005 came the endless Forest a peaceful art MMO where you play as a deer in an endless Forest to go for you in 2008 was the graveyard a controversial game where you walk an old lady through a graveyard and sit on a bench yes that's literally it and yes people were confused to say the least and in 2009 fatal an art game based on the place alone fun fact the character designs in fatel were created and modeled by takiyoshi Sato yes the takiyoshi Sato who was part of Team silent and did the character designs in CGI direction for Silent Hill one and two the more you know and it was also in 2009 that the path would be released but let's back up a bit because it had been in development for a long time before then the game was being workshopped as early is 2004 and in a gamedeveloper.com postmortem tot wrote quote the idea for the path is almost as old as tale of tales itself in a June 2002 business plan we presented our first project a dreamy Adventure game based on Sleeping Beauty as part of a series of games each based on a classic fairy tale and with the number and its title in another description of the ape project from October 2004 we expressed that we have plans for a survival horror game based on Little Red Riding Hood this game would be called 144. yeah the path was originally going to be a very different game it was going to be a survival horror game called 144 and you would play through 144 incarnations of Little Red Riding Hood the path was an idea born with a title 144 it could have turned out very differently the name 144 encompassed the spirit of the project somehow that number came to symbolize a girl's restlessness the sound of footsteps on dry leaves the smell of pine trees dim sunlight through filtering clouds we once had the notion that there would be 144 Red Riding hoods and the play would play each one each time the story would lead to death we came down from that illusion and narrowed the cast down to six girls each representing a different aspect of a girl's life the number six was decided upon somewhat arbitrarily by dividing the number 144 and considering the Aesthetics the number six provided and how six girls could fit into a chronology of growing up from age 9 to age 19. there's actually a very early website that you can find for the game back when it was called 144 This creepy veiny Branch background and a bunch of Red Riding Hood Stories and poems also fun little side note there are also 144 flowers to collect and the game is a fun nod to the game's old title another interesting fact about the game and its very early stages is that originally it didn't have any text at all when the girls picked up items or found locations of Interest they would remain completely silent and look I have a pretty high tolerance for obfuscated themes and vague metaphorical stories but having absolutely zero text in the game would have made it a very confusing experience even more so than it already is the text that the game does include is sparing but so incredibly effective at conveying the themes and giving us insight into the characters in in their psyches thank God for the original testers who played through the game and were so confused that to2 had to add text for them to even understand what was going on you're the real MVPs or should I say mvts let's move on in 2005 toot began looking for a production budget for the game but were ejected by several Belgian Arts funds like many of their projects they struggled a bit to get 144 off the ground at first and even after receiving a ten thousand dollar Grant from a us-based Arts organization money remained a pressing issue throughout the production see tot up until this point had mainly dabbled in small-scale experimental games having something of a disdain for the mainstream gaming market and a preference for more Artistic Endeavors more experimental projects cost less money and appeal to a smaller more Niche audience of our enthusiasts and it was more within their comfort zone with 144 however tot saw an opportunity to take a risk both artistically and financially and make their first large-scale commercial game essentially they had their very own chance to go off the path quote at the very start of the project we we weren't really sure if the path was going to be a commercial title or more of an artistic experiment as we continued to refine the design we realized that the concept had several things that spoke in favor of commercial exploitation it was going to be a horror game thus easy to categorize it by the market unlike 8 for which the main problem with Publishers was that its genre was undefinable in the path we knew we were going to have stylish dark girl characters at a time where Gothic Lolita style and pop surrealism were very trendy cult Rockstar Jabo had agreed to do the soundtrack but most of all we felt a sort of obligation to at least try and make this step towards a market instead of safely playing in the margin up until the day of the launch we had no idea how well this was going to work but we decided to take the risk over the next few years they would manage to secure about a hundred thousand Euros from various funding bodies and organizations this was obviously a blessing as it allowed auria and Michael to make 144 the large-scale commercial project that they wanted but it was also a bit of a curse several parties had sunk big money into this project and the pressure was mounting Michael described the loan in one blog status update as sort of Damocles that was hanging over their heads additionally they struck a terrible deal with one of the funding bodies where they apparently owed them a hundred percent of their income until the loan was paid which is insane and scary I don't know how that's legal they found very clever ways to work with their Indie budget though 144 was set in a forest so they could use the environment rendering system from the endless forest and one of the first assets added to the game was a reworked model of the protagonist from a which would become the girl in white they were also able to use drama princess a sort of AI character engine that they created for eight they'd continued to develop it over time and from what I can tell by the old archived website for it it was essentially an engine that would help code characters to behave autonomously rather than using AI learning to make characters behave realistically the focus was on behaviors that could portray different personalities and intelligence through random and Rich behaviors even the manual of the path mentions that the characters are controlled by drama princess which allows you as the player to control them but also allows them to interact with the world themselves in interesting ways without your input in the topic of the drama his engine leads us into the topic of the actual engine that the game was made in a super old and now defunct software Called Quest 3D okay I'm not going to mince words here Quiz 3D is a bit of a bastard it was already a pretty obscure software when the path was in development but it's been defunct for several years now meaning that with every internet update the game becomes more and more irreparably broken it's also just impossible to extract anything from I really wanted to take a look at all of the gay models and textures and images that are within the game files but they're all in CGR format and aside from Quest 3D there are very few programs that can open these files like even after downloading an archived version of Quiz 3D myself I ran into era after era and just couldn't open them if there's anyone out there who knows more about CGR files or how to open them definitely let me know I spent hours trying to get it to work and to no avail so lost media I guess you guys are all super smart I feel like there's definitely someone out there who knows how to crack a CGR file open so definitely let me know anyway the Quiz 3D is frustrating and kind of broken nowadays back in the early 2000s it was the perfect program to develop the game in Oreo and Michael already had experience using it to make the endless forest and its main draw was allowing developers to see changes in code implemented in real time and using flowcharts and graphs instead of code with trt's development style which very much lit the aesthetic shape the game and mechanics seeing the visuals and how the game flowed in real time as they developed it was key plus self-admittedly they weren't coders they were artists who wanted to make a game a struggle that I'm sure many of us relate to rip to all the times that I installed unity and then uninstalled it a week later because coding is hard 2007 is when production really started funding was secured all of the building blocks were in place the path development blog was started up and planning began for a marketing campaign after all of this was to be a commercial Endeavor word needed to get out about 144. tot managed to secure a booth at GDC which was a great opportunity to get some eyes on their project but there was one problem the name quote it was then that we decided we needed a more descriptive title for the game however dear the cryptic 144 was to us we found we had to give up on being obscure and do as much as we can to make it easier for the audience to connect to our work the name was changed to the path in TOT forged ahead with their booth there are tons of really cool pictures of it they only had a little small area dedicated to the part that there were some really cool printed images of Ruby and the girl in white inside picture frames they're quite similar to the ones that are actually on the Grandmother's House website which is just really cool tot also released a bunch of super cool and limited edition merchandise to try and drum up hype for the game and yes the only reason I'm talking about this is because I think the merch is super cool and pretty and interesting and I never got to get any so I'm just living vicariously through these photos that Sue me there were these Limited Edition USB sticks with Ruby Rose and Robin printed on them with black and white ribbons tied to them respectively there was a CD of the game's music composed by force and Jabo complete with beautiful cover art and CDR they also shipped it as a package with a path t-shirt which is pretty cool to be honest I think they probably could have done more in terms of shirts since there's so much great art to use but the merchandising was a self-admittedly homemade affair on a fairly low budget so you know there was a collector's edition CD again with absolutely beautiful cover and CD art the CD actually has that super striking early Ruby concept art which is incredible it just looks really great it was also packaged with these Polaroids of each of the girls and then of course there were the big old posters they're basically almost life-sized and they're truly epic some of them were even actually signed in doodled on by Oreo which is really neat I genuinely do wonder if there are still some of these out there I know posters are kind of easily destructible objects they don't tend to last a long time unless you take really good care of them so I wonder if they've all been kind of lost to time or if there are still some floating out there after all the convention and Conference appearances as well as the merchandise tot didn't have very much budget left for marketing but one really cool thing that they did do was make live Journal blogs for all of the characters obviously this was completely free and while I can't say it was the most effective at actually marketing the game these accounts remained pretty obscure they still stand as super unique and pretty pioneering examples of a multimedia gaming experience I wouldn't necessarily call it an ARG but it was kind of ARG like in its presentation of the girls as real people expressing their real thoughts when in reality all of their posts were fictional and just World building and giving hints about the game and its themes honestly there's so much going on in these blogs that it could be its own video but let me sum them up for you and share some interesting posts and interactions Robin's account is all cute and pastely with a little pixel cat for a profile picture pretty standard stuff for a kid her age she writes in one post quote I heard something howling in the forest today I was just walking on the path going to my favorite grandmother and then I heard this strange sound like singing a singing wolf I love Wolfies I wish I could just run into the forest and go hug him he's probably fluffy and warm and so much fun to play with in another posterior marks that it's her birthday and in a comment notes that her grandma told her to come to the house for a very special birthday party likely a nod to the birthday cake and balloons in Robin's Twisted version of Grandma's house Rose's live Journal is very pretty and sweet with a pink bunny header and an Angelic cherub as her profile picture as a contrast to this aesthetic one of her first posts titled Paul thing reads quote I saw a dead little bird today in the forest sad face it was all wet and sad and it hardly had any feathers it probably fell from the nest or was pushed out by its brothers and sisters current mood sad as the comments note this is a reference to the robin found in the cemetery within the game as well as an illustration of rose's empathy towards animals and nature as well as her innocence another comment solidifying the theme of rose's extreme naivity and innocence reads quote of course we stay on the path always well most always and there's no wolves in the forest and even if there were they wouldn't do us any harm wolves only attack if they feel threatened she also remarks about not being able to climb the Tower and the playground in the comments of the sisters chime in with Carmen and ginger remarking that they're able to climb up with ease and Ruby noting that she can't climb up either but loves to hang out there clearly a reference to the fact that the playground is where she finds her own wolf when Rose asks how to find the playground Ruby comments the trick is not to look for it just wander around and suddenly you'll run into it I think there's a sign along the path that points in its direction this is not only a little meta-jerk about how the game is played because is yes 99 of the time it would just be randomly stumbling around in this forest and blindly run into something that you didn't expect to be there but it's also actually true there's a playground sign that you can find about halfway down the path tempting the girls to go exploring in a post about seeing a figure in the myths that scared her so much that she had to run away one commenter noted that Rose should tell her grandmother about it she replies I love her dearly but she's sick and in bed and whenever I ask her something like this she just Smiles With Tears In Her Eyes Ruby's blog is about as emo as it gets unsurprisingly but there are a couple Banger quotes in here I love wandering through the forest at night It's So Silent even nature holds its breath night is a space where the soul can expand I guess because there's nobody else around the world seems so much bigger at night how come loneliness feels so comforting it's Sunday it's raining I feel so lazy it's quiet in the city the church bells are tolling causing the raindrops to fall little wet splashes of holy water against the window stifling me what on Earth would I rather do than stare at the drops on the glass nothing not that it feels good it just keeps me paralyzed there's also a post on this blog and on Rose's Blog the referenced Ruby dying her hair black and her original hair color being this big secret that no one can know the main end joke is that her hair secretly used to be green because of this comment she left you know just a little bit of Ruby lore for all the fans out there Carmen's blog reveals that she's a lit epic gamer with lay epic gamer references to be fair this was 2009 it was a different time and finally on Scarlet's blog called Scarlet's world she talks about getting lost in the forest after following a bright light and hearing music and not her wolf found playing the piano in the old theater as well as the fact that while in the forest locations of interest can actually be identified from quite a while Away by the bright white light that fills the Horizon in one foreboding post she writes quote ever since the beginning of the year I've had this strange feeling of uneasiness on one hand it feels like nothing is changing anymore like the entire world is frozen and on the other it feels like something big is going to happen something spectacular my ears are ringing with the sound of an orchestra tuning the instruments in preparation for a symphony it's maddening honestly the live Journal blogs are well worth checking out the posts range from Eerie and ominous to just random everyday thoughts and the banter between the sisters and even their grandma and the comments is really fun and endearing we don't really get to see the girls talk that much especially with each other in the actual game so it's really cool to get a deeper glimpse into their inner worlds there are tons of meta references and jokes and interesting little Lord tidbits and overall it's just a really fantastic early example of the sort of multimedia arg-esque World building of all the people that I've talked to about this game very few people actually know about the live Journal blogs and even I neglected to really talk about them in my original video I wanted to shed a bit of light on them here because of how interesting and inventive they are especially for a game back in 2009 and especially for how obscure it was and speaking of characters let's speak more about the characters I love Segways Ruby was the first sister created and essentially shaped how the rest of the cast would look since before her they had no idea what direction they wanted to go in oreo was heavily inspired by the paintings of fukuede and Audrey kawasi and and this is definitely reflected in this early concept art of hair which is a lot more abstract from the sketches and early Concepts it seems that auria had a pretty strong grasp of what the character would look like from the get-go though the long sleeves didn't end up making it to the final design there was actually a bit of drama that went on during the creation of Ruby tot had initially planned to pass all the modeling work off to other artists once they had finished designing to speed up the process but they weren't happy with any of the results the first model was a lot more detailed and almost creepy in terms of the style but the second was a bit too cartoony and sweet looking quote we ended up searching for people and wasting a lot of money in the process we had tested several modelers to work with us and had high hopes of finding someone that we could work with permanently but it didn't work out the problem was that we knew far too well what we wanted by that time model design style dolls but not cartoons kind of a creepy cute look Gloria eventually just decided to buckle down and do all of the models herself which is how we got the iconic red girls that we know today Robin is the most classic red riding hood of the sisters and she was actually inspired by an outfit that Michael's daughter wore and the likeness is uncanny right down to the patterns on the boots fun fact Michael's daughter also designed the tiny little icons referred to as pictograms that are used throughout the game her drawings can be seen here in their original form before being redrawn for the final game Oreo states that Ginger is her favorite of the red sisters and that her appearances heavily based on Matilda from Leon the Professional looking at a side by side you can absolutely see the similarities it's also been revealed in this post that Ginger is smaller than her younger sister Rose which she isn't happy about details like this and like the fact that Ruby's run speed is just slightly faster than all of her sisters are so small and subtle you add so much to these characters and their stories around the same time auria made a blog post about the movie Ginger Snaps which features puberty and periods as well as lycanthropy as Central themes so obviously a huge inspiration for the path engine just specifically as a character Rose was inspired by an anime of all things specifically serial experiments Lane which is reflected in the two characters similar hairstyles her skirt was originally much longer as seen in the concept images but was eventually made longer to reflect her characterization as a sort of old soul Aura also added the Red Lace at the bottom because she thought it looked like veins creepy it's in the reveal post for Carmen that we find out that all of the red sisters are heavily modeled off of dolls not just as in they look similar but as in oreo literally took photos of dolls and modeled the characters over top of them to exactly match the proportions as a doll fan I was super excited by this I don't know what the exact doll used here is but it kind of looks to me like a risen Soul doll of some sort I'm sure there'll be some bjd enthusiasts watching this that knows way more about it than me so if you know feel free to leave a comment anyway despite being referenced off a doll Carmen was apparently the hardest character to model even having to be scrapped at first because of how difficult her topology was to work with she got there in the end though finally Scarlet as Oreo put it first born but last made the way Theory speaks of scarlet is something that I find really interesting quote I think some of my weariness rubbed off on her she was made in such a lazy way forced to grow up before she was ready she is a serious young lady more images of her are shown in the gallery and on Flickr she's looking a bit frightening in the wallpaper but I think it's just her way of dealing with a frightening World let us all wish her well there's a certain weariness a certain distance even a certain pity prison here that isn't with the other girls maybe it is just the fact that crunch was sitting in heart at this point and Scarlett is a product of that or maybe her story really is so sad that her own Creator came to pity her Scarlett was inspired by the films of ingma Bergman and the mannerisms of his lead actress specifically love ulman again as with the other girls there's definitely a resemblance between the two especially with the matching hair and similar fashion senses also it's kind of hilarious looking at how prim and proper her final appearances versus her original concept art I don't even know what this was meant to be the little poofy antenna things are sending me let's move on to the main attraction the Wolves there's a mood board for Rose's Cloud wolf which uses a lot of cloud and water imagery and also has this terrifying picture with the caption he has no face lovely on the cloud Wolf auria Road the clad wolf appears like the Wither he doesn't mean to hurt anyone he just is he's beautiful like a thunderstorm you can only sit back and admire the destruction he causes every time I see the scene with rose on the lake tears come to my eyes no I don't know who he is no one does least of all her or me she aspires to know she loves because Pure Love is All Rose knows Scarlet's wolf is based off of this reference picture on the mood board almost to a tee also the wolf was originally called boy toy wolf instead of the FAE wolf which seems to indicate that the initial intention was for the Fey wolf to be a Romantics figure despite the Romantic connotations this piece of concept art still makes it clear that the Ethereal Fae wolf is a menacing figure there's also this just absolutely incredible concept art of Robin's werewolf I can't describe how much I love this the way he's drawn is so simultaneously Goofy and silly and absolutely terrifying which definitely fits in with the story arc of Robin thinking this wild animal is cute when really it's dangerous it's just so great Commons wolf is interesting he seems like the most overtly menacing and predatory of all of the Wolves especially when combined with the very dark themes of her story but interestingly auria writes quote The Woodsman as quiet and wants to be left alone in the forest to do what he does best chop obsessively at trees that never fall the girl in white sometimes stops by to make sure he's okay maybe they live in the forest as a family in seclusion I just think of him as being as Square as the cube he was extruded from he's not very tall not really very assertive and Carmen is way too much for him to deal with on that day throughout the rest of 2007 tale of tales would take the game to a few other conventions and conferences including game connection where they were able to set up a cool little booth with these iconic posters and a playable version of the game this appearance was super successful and it got a really positive reception which was desperately needed comfort for Tot at this point who had every thing riding on the financial success of this game they even pitched it to valve and Sony neither of which were willing to put the game on their platform because they saw the artsiness as a liability this was back before steam allowed basically anything on their platform and the PlayStation Store had the quality control of a potato undeterred by their ejections tot continued to work on the game and its marketing resulting in a four-page article in Edge magazine called playing wolf which was obviously super helpful for getting the game out there as well as just incredibly cool in general whoever designed the sprue deserves a raise this is wonderfully creepy work and captures the game perfectly in 2008 tot returned once more to GDC this time with a properly playable demo this old footage is super neat it shows a very early version of the red apartment with all the other girls as Shadows since Ruby was the only playable character at that time it also has the very early version of the logo they ended up changing this because they felt that it looked too generic and Industrial and commissioned a new logo to look more foresty and naturey the locations in the game were just as important as the characters and a lot of thought went into them tot noted that the work of Avent L especially on Disney Sleeping Beauty was a huge inspiration when it came to the environments of the game and that's extremely evident in the mix of deep blacks and neon Hues as well as the sharp and angular shapes that make up the fantasy Landscapes it's that mix of bright saturated color and Eerie darkness that the path does a fantastic job at capturing this early piece of concept art shows Ruby on a forked path likely a holdover from when the game was going to be more structured and story based similarly these rough concept thumbnails drawn by Stacy Diana Clark have a more narrative look to them with paths archways and bridges perhaps a Remnant from when the original plan was to have the forest be a linear guided walkthrough experience rather than a flat endlessly looping level this color study gives us a glimpse at the various Aesthetics that teoti were playing with early on the first and even second look remarkably similar to the light and Eerie forest in the endless Forest but they ended up leaning more towards the third color swatch here giving the forest a more dark and ominous Vibe definitely the right choice grandmother's house itself had a lot of thought go into it this floor plan lays out all the possible rooms and how they interconnect with each other showing just how complex and Labyrinthian the house is each of the girls nightmarish version of Grandma's house got its own mood board filled with reference images and notes to figure out the visual look and themes some ideas didn't make the cut for example Roses Run never featured red snow and a replica doll of Ginger was never seen under the bed during her run on the other hand some things were translated almost directly into the game this shot of a triangular room from the Holy Mountain is an exact match for one of the rooms in Robin's run the iconic red bathroom from The Shining features in Roses Run and this image of a red and yellow gem with an upper level looking directly down into the gym was basically replicated one to one and Ruby's playthrough there's also a bunch of more detailed concept pieces for various rooms and areas within the house most of which didn't make it through to the final game still they were clearly helpful in cementing the visual look and Vibe of the maze-like house and you can definitely see traces of them within the final product my favorite is definitely this red room that looks like it's covered in blood it reminds me a lot of the various Rusty and bloody rooms in Ruby and ginges runs this lineup of images illustrates really clearly the brilliant usage of color in Grandma's house with each girl having a clearly defined color scheme to match the themes of her story roses is bright white rubies is a garish neon red Scarlet's sickly green Carmen's as warm orange and yellow gingers is dark Rusty red and brown and Robin's is dark blue and black also fun fact one piece of behind the scenes artwork actually shows us where the Red Sisters live when the bus drops each girl off at the start of the path you can faintly see a city towering in the background but it turns out that Not only was the city included but their actual apartment was as well though it's almost impossible to see from the path and definitely impossible to reach during normal gameplay the game was launched on the 18th of March from the hotel room in San Francisco where Oreo and Michael met in person for the first time quote we released our Seven Daughters from our hotel bed and checked email on our laptops over and over again to see the messages flow in it was a joyous moment a year after the release of the game teot would reflect on its reception both commercially and critically as of 2010 the game had sold over 50 000 copies but had only made about 130 000 Euro from a 300 000 Euro budget thankfully they were able to pay back their insane evil loan within about half a year but unfortunately the path left them quote virtually broke and was considered a commercial failure despite this they felt extremely proud of its critical reception the majority of Publications that had covered the game were extremely positive about it and trt felt that they had helped to popularize games as art or rather art as games to The Wider public and to their credit I think that's absolutely true obviously games have always existed as art but they were some of the earliest adopters of the near as a place to create and share games and artwork ever since the entropy ate super days they've been pushing the boundaries and using the internet as a canvas and a new way to create and tale of tales was just an extension of that despite how relatively Indie and obscure they were compared to the bigger game studios their influence can still be seen and felt in the industry today while reading through their afflictions and musings about how many of their games failed to catch the attention of the gaming messes how it was almost impossible to succeed as an indie Dev how they continually failed to break even I can't help but think if the path was released today it could have turned out a lot differently I'm not saying that Andy devs have it easier now or honestly have ever had it easy but I think the gaming public are much more aware of the Indie space now I regularly see Indie Games especially horror games get pretty good traction on Twitter and YouTube We're living in a world where like eight hour horror video game analysis videos make up like 30 of YouTube content so I think if the path came out today things could be different that isn't to say that the path isn't popular though in fact I think in recent times it's actually had a bit of a Resurgence I wouldn't say it's a cult classic hit necessarily you know you don't see people ranking the path with you main Nikki or rule of Rose or Cry of Fear Etc but there are still like fan blogs solely dedicated to the path there's tons of fan art some that was made during its development some that was made shortly after it was released and there's actually Lots coming out today over a decade later and yes all of it is amazing there are tons of cosplays of all the different characters with amazing accuracy honestly the sheer Talent of cosplayers Never Fails to amaze me and of course there are analyzes coming out like I said at the start of this video one of my happiest moments was seeing all the discussion that my video started but I'm far from the only one who's made a video or write up about my theories and speculations the path has started so many discussions it's got people to think about these themes and how it relates to their own life or Society in general and any piece of art that gets people thinking like that is a big achievement after the failure of their second big commercial game Sunset which they worked even harder to make appeal to the gaming masses with unfortunately poor results tale of tales announced that they wouldn't be making games anymore they've been bouncing from Project to project in recent years mainly art exhibitions and 3D projects and websites but excitingly they've recently been working on a remake of the Endless Forest using Unreal Engine you know instead of Quiz 3D might be hated this is exciting not just for players of the Endless Forest but for fans of Toot's work in general of course I'll respect their decision either way but I can't help but hope that them getting back into the endless Forest may be means a return to their making games whether it comes from them or another Indie Dev I would really love to play another path Style game and I would be really interested to see how it would fit in today's gaming climate maybe it would be another commercial failure proving their artistic and thought-provoking games like the path will never achieve the mainstream success that their more overtly video gaming peers do or maybe just maybe it would flourish because people really do love to be immersed in strange Dark Worlds they like challenging stories and themes and they like to consume art who knows how it would end up but the moral of the story is support indie games and also preserve things that you really like on the internet the Lightning Fast advancement of the internet is very quickly leaving games websites software and articles Obsolete and effectively erasing them from existence so make a write-up about an old game that you played take screenshots and archive them record footage share links to Old websites the more we preserve now the more we can look back and enjoy these wonderful pieces of art for hopefully generation to come anyway this has been another long-winded rant about obscure game Lord that no one asked for and thank you so much to you guys for watching I really appreciate it I know this is a little bit different it's kind of like a sequel to the first one or like a companion video I guess I haven't really done any videos about like the law behind games but honestly I just thought it was really interesting because the path is just inherently interesting in like every aspect so I wanted to share with you today um and I really hope that you enjoyed it definitely let me know if there are any other similar games to the path like I said honestly I just I love that game so much and I feel like there are definitely similar games out there so yeah definitely let me know if you know of any feel free to like leave a comment and feel free to leave a comment if you have any suggestions for video topics you want me to cover in the future I'm always Keen to hear your suggestions before we wrap things up I just want to give a huge thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video Squarespace gives you a super powerful online platform that you can use to create a website for anything connect with your audience and generate Revenue through gated members only content manage your members send email Communications and leverage audience insights all on one super easy to use platform with powerful blogging tools you can categorize share and schedule your posts as well Squarespace has heaps of great e-commerce capabilities for shops and small businesses Squarespace extensions can help you manage inventory promote products streamline bookkeeping reconcile and file sales tax and ship items across the globe display posts from your social media on your site and automatically push website content to your social so your followers can share it too create a community with a fully integrated commenting system that supports threaded comments replies and likes go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com Izzy's to save timson off your first purchase of a website or domain thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this video a huge thank you to my girlfriend overlords over on patreon David Martinez tin Tibet Oliver LOLs caramel coffee bean blue Mayfield Electro kitten Katrina likes baby stuff Fitzy Jorge Cruz Michelle Olson strawberries Matt lrj a riddle wrapped in an enigma hidden by a question mark Doug Dana homegardner Charlie B Simon John Leach Rin pain Dragon Xavier araujo Helm hamburger hand dozo blend Sheriff whiskey the febru librarian estrium Vortex Jesse Chisholm fish00 grip Gunderson and Joe Bradshaw thank you guys so much for the support it means the world to me if you want to join these guys over on patreon link will be in the description and yeah um thank you guys so much for supporting me thank you for watching the video and I really hope to see you in the next one bye [Music] thank you

Channel: Izzzyzzz

Views: 495,990

Keywords: The Path, Tale of Tales, Analysis

Id: fBXkap_L26w

Length: 40min 2sec (2402 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023