To Critics of The Path

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Aug 18, 2009

Filed under: Notices 118 comments

(This was going to wait until I began my series on The Path, but a couple of ludicrous comments have hastened my posting here. Fine. Let’s get this over with.)

People are shocked, shocked! that the “Shamus they thought they knew” could possibly like The Path.

Look, let’s get this straight right now. This game is filled with strange imagery. Very little of it is sexual. (SPOILER: Basically, the part with Carmen) It’s okay if you think the game is stupid or offensive or boring or just don’t like it. BUT, if you subscribe to this line of thought:

1) You saw this game and concluded that, despite the strange non-sexual images, it was simply about the literal rape of six underage girls…

AND

2) You conclude that this is the only possible conclusion that anyone could come to and thus EVERYONE sees this game this way…

AND

3) Despite all my previous thoughts on childhood, fear, and growing up, I was actually “into” the game because it was “all about rape”…

AND

4) You believe that since I like the game and the game is about rape and only rape, and so I must therefore “like rape” or “approve” of rape.

THEN:

Leave. Go away. No, don’t go down to the comments and tell me how much I disappointed you, because your opinion now has no value to me. If you think so little of me that my endorsement of this game leads you to such conclusions, then I couldn’t have disappointed you because nothing I’ve ever written before now has ever left any sort of impression on you. You should just leave and not come back.

Even if the game WAS about rape, my approval of the game wouldn’t be approval of rape. It’s possible to like the movie se7en without liking cutting the heads off of innocent people. And not everyone who watched Silence of the Lambs thought it was okay to eat people.

If the above forehead-slamming train of simplistic thought has led you to reject me as an evil man or a bad father, then I’m seriously creeped out by you. Bye.

Hopefully I won’t be hearing more from the “OMG Shamus likes rape” crowd, but fair warning: I will be mercilessly and unflinchingly deleting comments. I am not kidding when I say you people creep me out and you are not welcome here.

 


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118 thoughts on “To Critics of The Path

  1. mark says:

    OMG SHAMUS IS A RAPIST!

    RUN EVERYONE RUN!

    okay… seriously? people are reactionary idiots.

  2. Renacier says:

    Hear hear.

  3. SiliconScout says:

    same crowd that says if you play D&D you are a car carrying satanist if you ask me. Whack jobs all.

  4. JKjoker says:

    its funny that so many ppl start fighting about this game when in japan you can find the sickest things proudly displayed in stores… and, btw, as sick as they can get, hgames still manage to have better stories and characters than games sold in the US

    i havent thought much about the path but i think ill give it a chance one of these weekends just to try something different than the 1000th gears of war clone

  5. Mountain King of Bling says:

    Good points, but for one thing. Rape is likely to be the most common interpretation of “ravaging” events, since the original fairytale was cautionary against young women trusting strangers. The wolf is generally accepted to have represented a sexual predator in most versions, which is still referenced by “wolf calls” and “wolves on 2nd avenue.”

  6. Henebry says:

    Well said. I downloaded the free “prequel” and so far haven’t found it engaging (144 coins seems like a lot to ask of me. I got to 14 and said, okay, I”m ready for grandma’s house). Though I did find the imagery intriguing, especially the black-on-white stuff that looks like a photographic negative. Spooky indeed.

    But rape? Come on you all! Shamus is a parent who writes a gaming blog, not some shock-value member of anonymous on /b/.

  7. Super-Alex says:

    I don’t think it’s just about rape or that it makes you a bad person for playing it, but that game is seriously disturbing and tasteless. Especially when the girls all get killed at the end.

  8. WILL says:

    Holy spoiler alert on a fishstick, Super-Alex!

    Though I didn’t expect much else from such a downer game.

    Ok, seriously, you want a game with actual rape in it that isn’t porn? FEAR 2. Possibly one of the most disturbing scenes especially when you consider that Alma is the rapist… it makes sense if you follow the whole story, I promise. :P

    Oh, and there are spoilers above.

  9. Dupedoop says:

    THEY NEED TO HIRE ARTISTS WHO KNOW WHAT ANATOMICALLY MODERN HUMANS LOOK LIKE DAMN

  10. Jennifer says:

    People are freakin’ weird. I can’t believe you got this kind of response, Shamus.

    Heck, there was better civility and more sense in the comments of most people in that thread about the Objectivism in Bioshock. :P

  11. DigideryDingus says:

    Which was my other least-favorite comment thread on this site, Jennifer.

  12. Scott says:

    Don’t mind it; shrug it off, delete the lame comments, and move on. People who actually read your stuff know what you’re saying.

    And please don’t be hesitant to use the ban-hammer if anyone says anything terrible. This is normally such a nice community and I think all of the ‘old-timers’ would like it to stay that way…

    EDIT: I shoved an Oxford comma in there, somewhere…

  13. Corey Lavendar says:

    I’m sorry for my reactionary use of hyperbole. I know you’re not a rapist or anything like that, but I do believe you’re glossing over a few aspects of the game that are truly sick.

    1. Shamus says:

      Corey Lavendar: I’ll be reviewing the game in detail. If you stick around, you’ll hopefully see the game as I saw it.

      My view of the Path isn’t sunshine and lollipops, but it was a lot less about rape and a lot more about growing up.

      We’ll see where this goes.

  14. unitled says:

    I haven’t played it yet, but will get round to it at some point…

    I’m quite amazed at some of the responses in the previous post about this (even bearing in mind you deleted one!). Is this really how people respond to a challenging, intellectual piece of software?

    Your blog is better off without them, Shamus.

  15. fester says:

    Is it wrong that I just got a whole lot more interested in The Path because of this post and the comments that caused it? :)

    2) You conclude that this is the only possible conclusion that anyone could come to and thus EVERYONE sees this game this way…

    I’m reminded of certain religious circles I grew up in where specific things were bad (beer, D&D, Catholicism, Evolution, etc.) and it wasn’t open for debate or discussion. It’s a shame when people view the world in a such an extreme, polarized manner. They end up tilting at windmills and missing out on a lot of great things that life has offer such as fine Belgian ales, gaming with friends into the early morning hours, and clever, innovative video games from indie developers.

  16. Chad Cuts II says:

    Everybody’s talking about the rape or some shit, but my beef with that game is it’s such a bitch to play. I mean, I know you’re not playing it like you play a normal game, but you run so slow and the camera sucks and you can’t see where you’re going and half the time you can’t interact and you run SO SLOW.

  17. Badger says:

    @fester: What you said. Amen, brother.

  18. Jack Be Simple says:

    The Path: Horrific rape factory, buggy exercise in tedium, or avant-garde indie masterpiece that’s too much for the plebs? Text your vote

  19. Grant says:

    Hmm… Okay, I haven’t played the game so my opinions and observations are quite possibly invalid. I played the prologue and it did not interest me at all. A little creepy, but mostly just dull and pretentious.

    I looked at the links mentioned here and the forums for the game itself, to get an idea of what I was missing. I think the most common complaint is that the game is rape-themed. The second seems to be that the pacing is too slow.

    My theory is that more people would have liked the game if there were only one girl, instead of six. I think having one shocking story about rape and death would be good… artistic, original, etc. The idea of experiencing six similarly themed stories in the same setting… well, I just don’t see the appeal.

    For instance, I really liked the movie “Saw”. However, I have no urge to see any of the many sequels. While the violence and horror shown in the first one was interesting and original, any repetition of that would just be grisly. If I was made to watch all of the movies, I would probably come away from the experience with a negative opinion. On the other hand, I have no problem sitting through sequels normally… it is just the “unpleasant” genres that I would rather sample in smaller bites.

    Maybe people who have reacted badly to the rape/death theme would not have minded so much if it was a smaller dose?

    What do people who have played the game think? Are the themes between the multiple girls similar or not? Is it worth playing all six? Am I completely wrong here?

  20. Norikue says:

    People actually thought all those things, Shamus? I’ve gone through the entire game once so far. You are right, they are the sick ones if that is what they are getting out of it. It’s a very psychological game, where it’s extremely open to interpretation.

  21. Sean Riley says:

    @Grant

    You really need to play a few of the girls to get it. There’s a rhythm and flow that comes out of the game only when played through — It manifests as a horrifying sense of inevitability. You know what’s coming, and are powerless to prevent it. Indeed, you’re empowered by fulfilling it.

    And like Shamus, I saw it much more about growing up than rape.

    A question for Shamus: In which order did you play the girls? Part of me thinks this is a big decider in the way people interpret the game.

    @Norikue:

    I don’t think anyone here is sick (except perhaps the guy whose comment got deleted in the previous thread). It’s a complex game, and intelligent, sharp critics have argued for the rape metaphor as the dominant symbol of the game.

    I just don’t agree with it.

    1. Shamus says:

      Sean Riley: Good question. I hadn’t considered the order to affect interpretations and impressions, but you’re right: It must.

      I did Carmen’s story first, but I can’t remember the order of the others. I actually played some and then abandoned them a few times, just experimenting with the game. Then I ran another to grandma’s without leaving the path.

      So, I saw a lot of the game before I saw all of the endings.

  22. Menegil says:

    Good Mother.

    It awes me that such stupidity is allowed to roam unchecked in this world. Stupidity and Banks. Nuke’em, I’d say.

  23. Rutskarn says:

    Seriously, what is it with the painfully stupid comments lately? First Fallout gays, now this.

    The only theory I have is that the Escapist forums are leaking onto your comment sections. One of these days, I really need to get an account on those forums just so I can (attempt, fail to) smack some sense into some of the idiots over there.

    Some guy was once flaming TF2 because “it has no story” and “its characters have no personality.” His favorite game, he claimed, was the online multiplayer version of Call of Duty Whatever Number They’re Up To Now.

    When people tried to point out the glaring inconsistencies in his argument, his response (and my paraphrasing serves only to clean up his flagrant typos) was “It’s just my opinion, bro. Jeez.”

    I mean, not liking TF2 because it’s a multiplayer game with no storyline is fine, but his favorite game had less of a storyline associated with its main campaign.

    Then he got really belligerent, and the argument sort of exploded from there.

    Oh, and if you see any thread with America in the title? Just stay the hell away and never look back.

  24. Heron says:

    Shamus: I’m glad you’re pointing out the idiocy of that kind of thinking. Not enough people do it these days.

    Also, what fester said.

  25. oep says:

    Interesting, I will check it out on my laptop on my way to blizzcon.

  26. Sean Riley says:

    @Shamus

    This is doubly intriguing, actually. I won’t know for sure until you’ve posted up all your comments, but it sure seems to me that we’re fairly eye-to-eye on The Path so far. My order was Robin, Rose/Ginger, Ruby, Carmen and Scarlet. (I forget now which one of Rose or Ginger I did first, because I couldn’t figure out which one was older.) That is: I worked up in age. This definitely reinforced the ‘growing up’ theme for me.

    But even with starting with the second eldest, you’ve reached a similar conclusion, it would seem.

    @Jennifer

    “Heck, there was better civility and more sense in the comments of most people in that thread about the Objectivism in Bioshock. :P”

    Oddly enough, I think Bioshock and The Path have an awful lot in common, thematically. Both are about the virtues of disobedience.

  27. Yar Kramer says:

    I played the demo version, reacted with surprise at the fact that it ran on my laptop at all, and cheerfully marched straight down the titular path to grandma’s house. :)

  28. Sean Riley says:

    @Yar Kramer

    Congratulations! You did what you were told, and you’re safe from the horrors of the world. You deserve a pat on the head for being a good girl.

    (Above meant to sound patronising, but not mean toward Yar Kramer. This is what the game is about.)

    Last thought for now:

    To paraphrase Roger Ebert’s rules of film criticism: A game is not what it is about, but how it is about it.

  29. acronix says:

    I haven´t played the game, but for all the stuff I have read in different forums, it seems like The Path has the same effect some art pieces have on people. People try to give it a meaning; each person has a different interpretation; then the debate arises: “What does this piece means?” “What´s it´s message?”. The only winning move is to ask the author, but of course, the authors never say what it means, using the the debate as a sort of auto-propelled advertisment, and so we are left in darkness with the authors laughing of our ignorance.

    I bet the makers of The Path are trying to conquer the world while we argue of it meaning!

  30. Yar Kramer says:

    @Sean Riley: Yes, but consider the fact that I was rebelling against what I, the player, was supposed to do. ;)

  31. Sean Riley says:

    @Yar Kramer

    To a degree, yes. But I think we’re meant to do both as players. You can’t understand the contrast without first obeying the rules and seeing what occurs. :)

  32. BaCoN says:

    Dude I’m not even sure there WAS rape in this game. Oh, sure, you can interpret Carmen as rape(if you want), but let’s be honest about who she is, what kind of character and persona she represents, and the situation she(which is to say ‘you’, the player) put herself in.

    Like. C’mon, guys. The game is interpretive to the max, but that means you should probably form your OWN interpretation of it. God knows I have. I’d LOVE to share that interpretation here, but… I fear spoilers. :(

  33. Jazmeister says:

    I’m looking forward to buying this still, but I expect to be irritated by the less “game” aspects of it – I interact by not acting? Really? Same with the graveyard. I’m very hopeful that I’ll have a good experience with it, though.

    You can play something, you can like something, without agreeing with it or condoning it. If you play as the Nationals in Battlefield Heroes, are you a Nazi? No!

    And in general, I resent people who attempt to argue with a critique on a game before they’ve played the thing. You’re defending/attacking an idea in your own head, not a concrete thing; give it up.

  34. DaveJ says:

    “I will be mercilessly and unflinchingly deleting comments.”

    You should be doing that anyway man, keep the people on their toes.

  35. BaCoN says:

    Yeah just because the game puts you in a situation doesn’t mean you should endorse it. Otherwise Prince of Persia would be about suicide, every time you pitched yourself off a cliff to “see if you could”.

  36. Draco says:

    Wow.

    I am dutifully impressed.

    This needed to be said.

    And I want to play the game -more- now, just to spite these judgemental stuptards.

  37. Kdansky says:

    Did I just miss a major flame war? You sound riled. It shows how many stupid people exist if you have to defend yourself for liking a horror art game about kids teenagers, their fears, growing up and POSSIBLY sexuality. I want to re-iterate what I said in the nude Fallout 3 thread: People take naked people and sex way too serious.

    We’ll just have to get used to the majority of people being morons.

  38. David V.S. says:

    When I was a teenager I never understood when people said that the government should stop using the death penalty because it was somehow like murder.

    ‘Cause, you know, I took up counterfeiting because the government prints money.

    Oh well. Once the party to burn the “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” books is scheduled, please let me know what kind of cookies to bring.

    (Personally, I could not stomach a game that involved an implied rape, but as a parent I also lost several hours sleep when my daily Bible reading included Second Chronicles 6:26-30. Just because I’m a bit sensitive does not mean I doubt Shamus’s ability to review a meaningful game well.)

  39. Dev Null says:

    Grrrr….

    But aside from the idiots who piss me off, there’s some intriguing stuff in _this_ thread. I’m still playing the game through on a first go, and it definitely looks like its going to take a couple, so I’m gingerly (sic) picking my way through these comments in hopes of not hitting too many spoilers. Thanks for mostly avoiding them folks. I can’t really return the favour and still make my point, but I’ve labelled the start of spoiler below.

    Here’s the thing. I too have been instinctively playing them chronologically by age, and I’ve only done the first 3 but it very much feels like its about growing up so far. And so far I’ve seen not a thing that seemed particularly sexual at all. I expect sexuality will come in later, as it does to real people growing up, but I don’t think its fair to call the game exclusively about rape if there isn’t any reference to sex in at least half of the content.

    What _does_ creep me out is the implicit violence against kids. And its _very_ implied.

    *spoiler warning*

    In my run through with Ginger she falls asleep in the the grass and sun after playing harmlessly with another little girl. And wakes up in the pouring rain, dragging herself around dejectedly. And completely beside the point that everything we know about Ginger says she’d _love_ stomping in puddles and getting muddy, she doesn’t move like a kid whos dejected because shes getting wet. She looks hurt. Now I’ve got no reason to believe she _has_ been hurt except for the way she moves, and in fact every reason to believe shes just been having a wonderful time playing in the woods because thats all I’ve seen, but the way she moves in this one short section still creeps me out.

    The other girls I’ve played at least could be interpreted as being hurt – though its by no means clear-cut and again there’s no indication of sexuality I’ve seen – and the way they move tears at my heart too. But hey! Duh! Does this mean that I condone little girls being beaten up by wolf-things? Need I even answer that?

  40. BarGamer says:

    “If the above forehead-slamming train of simplistic thought has led you to reject me as an evil man or a bad father, then I'm seriously creeped out by you. Bye.”

    Seriously, I LOLed. They’re like medieval peasants who cry out “WITCH! WIIIITCH!” or “DEVIL! DEEEEEVIL!” at anything even remotely strange to their limited world-view.

  41. He Be says:

    Whoa, when did this become about worldviews?

  42. BFG9000 says:

    Well said Shamus. Too many knee-jerks obviously led you to say what was obvious to everyone else in the world.

  43. Gengar says:

    Let’s try to separate the legitimate critics of The Path from the ones who think Shamus is a rapist.

    1. Shamus says:

      Gengar: Dang. Good point. I chose the title for this post in haste, and I chose poorly. There is plenty of room to criticize this game without suggesting bad things about its fans.

  44. BaCoN says:

    But… I LOVE the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant! Does THAT mean I like rape? Hardly. At least, I HOPE not.

  45. I’m pretty sure all these people who were whining about the “rape content” didn’t even play the game through.

    In fact, I didn’t interpret Carmen’s ending as rape. Loss of innocence (virginity?) – yes. A mistake – yes. But I had the impression that she just drunkenly decided it was a good idea to sleep with the guy, and later regretted that decision. Although it could count as statutory – how old was Carmen supposed to be again?

  46. SmiggitySmee says:

    You GUYS, you’ve got it all WRONG. Growing up is all about being traumatized and murdered! I MEAN JEEZ

  47. Rutskarn says:

    Kdansky: To the point, taking sex seriously and taking rape seriously are two entirely different things.

    Of course, their rape-related grievances were totally bananas, which is the grounds upon which we may mock them.

  48. Dondeier says:

    Sorry. I just read the review Flapinjak linked to and assumed it was a morbid rape simulator.

  49. Sho says:

    After reading about The Path here I googled a couple of reviews, most of which slammed the game (for being minimalist, for implied rape etc etc). They all seem to take what you termed the literal interpretation (in addition to being unable to tolerate simple interface), and looking through the comments on your post I was expecting to see a lot of similar views. At the time no one had said anything severely negative actually, which surprised me. But I see that that’s no longer the case…

    My girlfriend and I are both fans of this sort of horror and I really like the sort of symbolism involved, so I’m gonna buy this game.

  50. bbot says:

    Shamus, I am shocked. Shocked.

    Seriously, enormously, disappointed. Your opinion now has no value to me.

    When I read that you liked the Path, I was filled with joy. Finally, someone else who liked rape! A fellow rape enthusiast! Someone who understood me, a rape connoisseur, someone who truly appreciated non-consensual sex with children.

    And then you post this absolutely stunning reversal, a complete flip-flop of opinion, baldfaced, hypocritical, self-contradiction. Unacceptable, I say. Unacceptable! I will be unsubscribing from your blog forthwith.

  51. Melvin says:

    Okay but if they weren’t raped why are the girls always with a guy then it fades to black and then they’re all ashamed? I mean what else could have happened

  52. Kristina says:

    Did any of you know one of the founders of Tale of Tales is an admitted pederast? Just throwing that out there.

  53. Lever Up Down says:

    So are all of you who think there’s no implied rape blind, or just playing Devil’s advocate?

  54. Julian says:

    @Rutskarn: there really are some wonderful people on The Escapist, you just need to see past the hordes (HORDES!) of ZP fanboys, idiots brought about by March Mayhem and other events.
    That said, I did participate in that guy’s TF2 thread, to point out how wrong it was (I’m Clashero on the site), and tried to counter his “no personality” argument by presenting a picture of all 9 TF2 classes being backlit, and then showing a random picture of CoD4 online. Of course, it was easy to determine which TF2 class each silhouette was, but I asked him “Could you tell, at a glance, what weapon they’re using in that CoD4 picture?” Of course, it was impossible. All of them looked exactly the same, and you couldn’t tell what weapon it was. What did the idiot respond?
    “They’re all using the M4 :P

    And the CoD4 screenshot looks better than TF2. TF2 is too cartoony.”

    So, as I said: avoid the idiots (they’re rampant nowadays), and join some of the groups, which are more laid back and intelligent than the rest of the forums.

  55. Lever Up Down says:

    He had to be a troll, Julian. And a funny one at that.

  56. Sean Riley says:

    Lever Up Down:

    No, we’re perfectly sincere. I went in being aware of those who felt the rape metaphor explained the game, and found the implication incredibly weak.

    Wounding, yes. Even destroying, yes. The wolf bites and rips apart. But that doesn’t equal rape.

    Or to put it another way: Please explain how Rose’s wolf implies rape. Foggy lake plus weird, amorphous character does not imply rape. I guess you could take Robin’s wolf as a symbol of rape (she does ride with it between her legs, I guess) but that’s a real stretch.

    I admit, I’m staggered by how many people can’t see any other imagery in this game. There’s way more, to my mind.

  57. Sheer_FALACY says:

    People assume the story is about rape because people always assume Little Red Riding hood is about rape. Sondheim is less subtle about it than most. Combine this assumption with a girl waking up in the rain, obviously hurt, and the jump is very, very easy to make.

    The fact that in some or all of the cases it makes no sense isn’t a big deal at all – heck, for Ginger, there’s no reasonable explanation even if you don’t assume it’s rape. Maybe hers is explained by the pictures flashing by at the end, but if so I didn’t see it.

  58. Cthulhu says:

    I loved the Path, I thought it was the best indie game I’ve ever played. Also, I think stupid comments made by people on the Internet are well worth ignoring.

  59. Greg says:

    There’s only one good indie game: Gravity Well.

  60. Pinky says:

    I personally enjoy a game with a bit of the taboo in it, it shows the developers aren’t scared of public opinion, and aren’t trying to be PC in their storytelling, which I’ve had major problems with (I live in Australia, the home of politically correct gaming, with parents who never let me have any fighting or shooting games. On the PSX.) Unfortunately, I can’t afford The Path at the moment, since I’m stone cold broke.

    Oh, and Shamus? You might find this useful.
    http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20060405.html

  61. Friedman says:

    I just can’t imagine the creators of the game being subtle about anything, since the overt writing, programming, and art of the game is all so inept. It would be like giving a third-grader a free pass because his misspelled summer vacation essay is open to interpretation and loaded with hidden meanings.

  62. Grant says:

    There was a comment above about resenting people who comment on a game without playing it. I would like to point out that the original post was a review and a recommendation to play a game. The audience for that would be people who haven’t played it yet.

    I don’t want to waste a weekend playing a game that turns out to be just an awkward metaphor for how life is dangerous. I could read a few good books in that time about the same theme. I commented that I thought it would be too much of the same thing (a typical game is many hours long, and if it was all one theme it would get pretty tedious, I think). I wouldn’t watch 10 hours of a single movie.

    I would repeat my question… is there a lot of difference in the experience as you play? Could you get the basic feel of it in an hour or two and then quit, or would you feel that you had missed the point? Is it repetitive? Tedious?

    Grant

  63. Avilan the Grey says:

    Grant: Yeah, and I use that for the legitimacy of my comment:

    …I find this game intriguing on an artistic level (just reading about it) but it all comes down to three things for me:

    1) I am a tad sensitive when it comes to certain things; I can blow people’s brains out in FO3 24/7, but a game like this… No, it just feels too disturbing for me.

    2) “Childhood, fear, and growing up”? From what I can tell, I have never experienced anything that connects my feelings when growing up to this game. I was bullied mercilessly at school, for 7 years, but I still find my experience far less disturbing than this game. I guess I lived a sheltered life. I just can’t connect to this aspect of the game, as described, which means I basically miss out 90% of the point with it.

    3) Downer endings are something I loathe. I don’t see the artistic value in them. The reason for this is that it is basically a carbon copy of the daily news… Since 90% of all news stories in the entire world are basically “Downer endings”, I fail to see why it would be creative to make one in a game. I am a news junkie, and that means that “lost girls in the woods” per default means death, or worse, in my mind.

    Addition:
    Reading Susan’s review I question the statement of “fail”. If it is really an “open” game, why is walking on the path straight to the house a “fail”?
    (This is another reason I would not buy the game; since I would walk all girls straight on the path to the house, it seems pointless ;) )

  64. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Sean Riley (post 30) and Yar Kramer (post 29):

    I would do the same if I had the game. But then I am way too intelligent to go wandering where it was dangerous. Even as a teen (I was smart enough to actually read, and understand, the warnings about smoking and drugs that we were served in school and have always considered the ones that started smoking ANYWAY to be total morons). Basically, anyone that gets off the path (not the player, the girls) are Too Dumb To Live in my opinion.

    This might make Sean think of me as “a good girl”, while I will take away from the experience that “Wow I am smarter than the morons out in the woods!”.

  65. Zaxares says:

    @Avilan the Grey: I’d probably just march the girls on straight to Grandma’s House too, if only because when I play games, I always try to bring about the best outcome for all involved. (Evil villains and monsters excepted). I like rescuing the princess, defeating the evil Empire, and saving the world. Occasionally I may experiment with darker games, but at the end, I STILL like the good guys to win, and for evil to be punished/destroyed.

    I’m beginning to see that The Path is a game (art piece?) that’s trying to talk about life, about how it’s mostly a series of injuries and tragedies and betrayals that inevitably ends in death, and I can appreciate the message it’s trying to convey, but it’s a message that I reject.

  66. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Zaxares:
    I agree with you, this is the message. Luckily for most people it is a false one; most of us actually have lives that contain more than 50% happiness.
    This is also why I can’t connect it to my experiences of growing up. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

  67. Broggly says:

    Avilan the Grey:

    While the new is at least supposed to represent the world in a detatched objective style, art can be more concerned with the internal, emotional state of human beings. The artistic value of a downer ending is to explore how people react to despair, failure, frustration and so on, or to make some point about the failures that led to it. You yourself pointed out that terrible things are, if not a big part of life, then at least one fascinating for enough people it makes up the majority of the news.

  68. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Broggly:
    I agree with parts of what you are saying, and I understand that most artists nowadays use art as a form of therapy (if that makes GOOD art or not, is an entirely different discussion). The problem with your comment is that the purpose is pointless, IMHO, because it should be self-evident. To me it’s like the scene in Ghostbusters where the guy getting electrocuted screams “it pisses me off”. Basically, the answers to the question “how do people react to despair, failure and frustration” is an obvious one.
    (Although I must say I have wished for far different outcomes at times, like the final scene in Anger Management. To me, pulling a gun and blowing your girlfriend’s face off would have been a far more sane reaction than what the main character chooses to do; or at least just take the hint and dump her on the spot.
    Not to mention I would LOVE to see an episode of Candid Camera, where they guy punches the camera man out when the reveal happens…)

  69. Awetugiw says:

    Actually, now that you point it out, I must say I am kind of surprised that you like the game.

    Not because “Shamus condones rape” of course, but because as you explained before when you talked about Prey, using children as victims in video games is something you do not seem to like very much.

    The interesting part is of course, what makes the difference between Prey and The Path? Comparing the two there is certainly a difference, but determining exactly what makes them different is not easy. My guess would be that it is mostly about how necessary the violence against children is. Although The Path being more open to interpretation might also help quite a lot of course.

  70. Daemian Lucifer says:

    @Shamus

    What I find interesting is that you find the scenes in the path to be ok,yet you were so shocked once you saw child ghosts in prey.Yes,I know that path can be interpreted in different ways,but barb wire wrapped around a girl and screen fading to black?No matter how you interpret the story,it still is an image of a young girl being cut to death by razor sharp wire.And she is flesh and blood,not an etheral one.

    But dont get me wrong,Im not judging or attacking you.I just see this as an interesting phenomenon where images get processed differently just because they have different preludes to them.

    1. Shamus says:

      Daemian Lucifer: Wow. I never saw the barbed wire attack. I’ve played through as all the girls, but I never saw that. I’m sure I would have walked away from the game with a very different impression if I had. Interesting. Which girl was it? Perhaps I just misunderstood what I was seeing, or maybe we got different endings. I have to go through them again to collect some screenshots, so maybe I’ll see it this time.

      But that aside, I think the key difference for me was that in Prey I had to shoot little kids to get on with the game. That’s a bit different than inhabiting a kid and leading them somewhere where they then choose to do something dangerous. I realize it’s all the same thing: You push buttons and kids get hurt or killed. But one feels like I’m witnessing it or experiencing it, and the other feels like I’m doing it to someone else. In The Path I identified with the victim, in Prey I felt like the perpetrator.

      Still, that’s an interesting question, and you could adjust the parameters and try to hunt out where the turning point is. What if the player controlled both the victim AND the perpetrator, or had two characters and had to choose to have one hurt the other in order to proceed? What if they were both kids? I’m not sure where I’d draw the line.

  71. Broggly says:

    Daemian Lucifer: I guess it might be that in Prey, you’re expected to shoot at and kill children, while in Path, while you’re the one putting the girl in danger, the harm is done by the “wolf” rather than the player. You’re no more implicit in it than, say, when young Link gets pecked to death by cuccos.

    Avilan: I guess it’s really a matter of taste (personally I only like downers if I feel it has a point and isn’t just there as emotional manipulation.) But you can’t deny that all kinds of great works have had huge downer ends, from Gilgamesh realising he’s doomed to die to Willy Loman crashing his car. (I was going to say “the Sopranos ending” but I don’t want to open up that can of worms…)
    Anyway, here’s a comedy video I think you’ll like.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_HESNR69Pw

  72. Roy says:

    To mention nothing of “the greatest love story ever told.” Romeo and Juliet both die at the end.

    And I don’t think that it’s particularly obvious how people react to despair, failure and frustration. In fact, the ways that people react to those things is particularly fascinating, precisely because people react to those things in so many different ways. Most people react to good things and happiness is relatively similar ways… they get happy. But despair and failure? That’s often seen as the real test of character. Do you wallow in it? Do you grimly accept it as fate? Do you fight back? Do you lash out at other people, retreat within yourself, motivate yourself to do something better? There are as many ways of reacting to despair and frustration as there are people facing them.

    And, of course, I think that a good portion of the ways that people will interpret the game probably has to do with what they’re bringing with them regarding their understanding of the Little Red Riding Hood myth. If you’re coming at it understanding it as a rape parable, that’s probably going to influence your understanding. And while some versions of the story are almost certainly about rape and/or the dangers of sexual availability (the Charles Perrault version, for example, is one that many people are familiar with, and is generally understood as a warning, originally had an explicit moral at the end: “As one can see by this, children, especially pretty young girls well bred and refined, would do well not to listen to just anyone, in which case it would be no strange thing if a wolf should eat them. I saw wolf, because all wolves are not of the same sort: some of them are quite charming, not loud or rough at all, cajoling sweet-talkers who follow young ladies right into their homes, right to their bedsides. But alas! Everyone knows these smooth wolves are the most dangerous of all!”), there are many versions of the tale that have other morals/messages. Some versions are actually more about the power of Red Riding Hood and her ability to overcome a dangerous situation, emphasizing her cleverness and ability to learn from her situations.

    For people who are really interested in Red Riding Hood and how the tale has shifted meanings and morals over time, I strongly recommend “Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked” which is a very interesting analysis of the tale.

  73. Nyaz says:

    *pats Shamus on the head* There, there. There are stupid people everywhere. Yelling at them feels good. They eventually go away when they get bored or hungry.

  74. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Ive played just with ginger for now,and the ending I got(with a mark of C)was the one Ive described.Ok,you dont really see the blood,and the screen fades rather quickly,but it was a barbed wire that was the girls ending.And Im pretty convinced that the rest end up in pretty gruesome ways as well.

  75. Awetugiw says:

    @Shamus post 74: The one with the barbed wire is Ginger. It is in the short “montage” at the end. It is too fast to really be sure of what is shown, but it does certainly suggest serious injuries caused by barbed wire.

    Several of the other girls also have something like that. Robin’s ending, for example, also seems rather bloody. (Although again, due to the speed at which the images are replaced it is hard to see what is happening exactly.)

  76. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Shamus:
    To me, it does not make a difference; after all you know what you are doing, leading the girl to the dangerous place. To me, that is just as bad as shooting her outright.
    (Btw gaming comparisons: Remember your reaction to the Tenpenny quest in FO3? I guess one difference here is that there is a genuinly good option, but that is per default the wrong one…?)

    @Broggly:
    Again though, I still don’t see the point with them.
    I remember a quote from Miller’s Batman Begins, where Alfred remembers Bruce as a kid, DEMANDING Alfred would change the story so that the bad people was tracked down and punished. I identify very much with that young Bruce Wayne, I guess.

    @Roy:
    Romeo and Juliet is a very bad story. It is only remotely interesting because The Poet wrote it; besides I do sort both of them (Romeo and Juliet) under “Too Dumb To Live”. Basically if they had not killed themselves over a stupid misunderstanding, they would have died due to lack of brains within a year anyway.
    …And no, I have never, and will never, find any kind of despair, nor any person’s reaction to it, “faschinating”.

    As for Red Ridinghood being based on Rape: That is a claim I find totally unfounded, and pretty weird. It is obviously a moral tale of doing as you are told, with a tagged on happy ending (most versions have the happy ending of the hunter cutting the wolf open, releasing the women, and sawing a boulder into the wolf instead (wolf being alive through all this) and then throwing him in a well and all three humans watch him drown).
    Basically, all hairy beasts are not men. Sometimes a wolf is just a wolf.

  77. Broggly says:

    re Romeo and Juliet, from what I remember (I did it in middle school but recently saw an old bowlderised [murcutio’s bawdy speech was cut] film of it) that interpretation is strongly encouraged. That priest keeps reminding Romeo not to do anything stupid, and that while love is great you shouldn’t go crazy over it, and compares all passions to drugs, being nice in small doses but too much will kill you.

    I think most people only feel the way you do about wanting stories to change when they find something wrong with the story itself. For example, The Cold Equations (http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/13-TheBalticWarCD/TheBalticWarCD/The%20World%20Turned%20Upside%20Down/0743498747__19.htm , Avilan I think you should read Flint’s introduction and afterword even though I can tell you won’t like the story itself) apparently inspired stories based on it where the characters figured out some obvious way the girl could live. For example, rather than chucking the girl out the airlock, they reduced the ship’s mass by throwing away chairs and the empty cabinet she stowed away in, or they used the blaster to amputate limbs until they were light enough to land. Not to mention all the complaints about how stupid it was to make a ship with a razor thin safety margin, or to write the sign “Unauthorized personnel keep out!” while neglecting to include “on penalty of death” or someting of the like. I guess that shows how much people prefer happy endings: we’re a lot more willing to suspend disbelief for them.

  78. Gary says:

    @ shamus #74
    I am now curious what you thought of the part in Fable 2 where you need to rescue the mage from the evil tower. There, you are forced to injure, criminally neglect, and kill completely innocent people. I damn near walked away from the game right then, because there was no way for me to be good without the game actually (and violently) punishing me.

  79. Sopping Topper says:

    You’re my hero, Avilan. I honestly mean that.

  80. Groundhog says:

    Just out of curiosity, how many comments of the aforementiond nature have been deleted by now? When I checked there were 40-something comments on The Path. Seems kind of low for an article which spurred such reactions. Could be just a couple of morons armed with the stupidity of legions, I suppose, but this post seems to imply there were a shitload of them.
    If you’d rather just forget about all this shit, though, feel free to not answer. I won’t pester.

    P.S.
    Someone might’ve already asked all this, but I honestly can’t be arsed to read through nigh eighty comments to find out. Sorry in advance, if it’s already been answered.

    1. Shamus says:

      Groundhog: There were only three comments. The one that was deleted and the two that I said to go away. None have been left in any thread since.

      This post was probably overkill. I read the three offending comments within a few minutes of each other, got pissed, and wrote this post.

  81. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Broggly:

    I have not looked at the link, but I know the kind of problems you mention; I have found many over the years.

    @Sopping Topper:
    Am I to be proud or insulted? :P

  82. Broggly says:

    I do see one comment with a big DELETED stamp on it, apparently because it attacked his family. The other posts which call Shamus a bad person are still there, because even if they do play the family card they’re at least not obscene or threatening.
    Only Shamus can say how many were just deleted with no traces left, but I’d guess he just did the one since from what I’ve seen him having to bring down the delete stamp is rare enough to be noteworthy in itself.

  83. Groundhog says:

    @Broggly:
    Ah. I haven’t really been around long enough to know how he handles deletions. I expected the posts in question to just disappear, rather than actually get flagged as such(though that would lose the warning effect, I guess). I think I misinterpreted the situation, in that case.

  84. Daemian Lucifer says:

    @Avilan the Grey

    Check the origins of little red riding hood(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Riding_Hood),and youll see that it not only has rape(bestiality rape no less),but canibalism as well.Also,the earliest known written version ends with wolf as a winner.It was the grimm brothers that gave the story its happy ending where only the wolf dies.

    @Groundhog

    If I remember correctly,not all the deletions get the stamp,just the ones that are followed with a ban as well.

  85. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Lucifer:

    Note that that is only one of many “Interpretations” (and it’s just a FYI, not listed as the “true Interpretation”), done by “modern” people who tend to severely over-analyze things. Because surely a wolf can’t just be a wolf, it must be a symbol of sex. Because if it wasn’t, the one doing those Interpretations would just have a dirty mind…

    I tend to disregard all of those kind of “Interpretations” since they tend to be made by people pushing their own agendas and reflecting their own hangups.
    (Compare, for example, those who say that Tolkien hated women because of the lack of strong female heroes, or that he hated colored people because all Orcs had black skin).

    And I know about the original ending; hence the wording “a tagged on happy ending”.

  86. MelTorefas says:

    I tend to overract to anything even remotely related to rape. This is something I know about myself, and I *like* Shamus’ works a lot, so I deliberately avoided continuing to read his review of the path (which in all fairness made the sexual aspect sound pretty major at least to me), because I KNEW if I replied it would come across just like the posts Shamus is decrying. I’m sorry to see others didn’t exhibit such restraint, since I don’t believe any of those things about Shamus are true.

    That being said, you people and your “this is just like religious people, this is just like such and such group of people, you’re all whackjobs if you thought that” comments… I seriously hope you can see how hypocritical you are being. Your comments are almost as annoying to me as my own irrational rantings at Shamus would have been if I had posted them.

  87. J to J says:

    I have a friend who was raped, and seeing the way the girl carried herself after the fadeout, it just… I don’t even want to talk about this.

  88. mc says:

    J to J: I can understand why you wouldn’t, but is it any different than any other story depicting rape? /To Kill a Mockingbird/ is the first that comes to mind – it’s not really anything new.

  89. Roy says:

    Sometimes a wolf is just a wolf, but given that we actually have the words of some of the early authors to go by, and that the most popular versions of the story are Perrault’s and Grimm’s, and Perrault makes it *very* clear that he’s not talking about wolves as wolves, I’m not sure I see the value in saying “the wolf is just a wolf.” I don’t know… should we pretend that Aslan is just a lion? That the play within a play in Hamlet is just an idle distraction and nothing more?

    Again, all one has to do is read Perrault’s own words to see exactly what he was talking about. Learning about who he was and the society he was living in helps, too.

    Sometimes a cigar is a cigar, but sometimes it’s a not-so-subtle metaphor, too.

  90. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Roy:
    From the Wiki:
    “Although no written forms of the tale predate Perrault,[3] the origins of the Little Red Riding Hood story can be traced to oral versions from various European countries and more than likely preceding the 17th century, of which several exist, some significantly different from the currently-known, Grimms-inspired version. It was told by French peasants in the 14th century as well as in Italy, where a number of versions exist, including La finta nonna (The False Grandmother).[4] It is also possible that this early tale has roots in very similar Oriental tales (e.g. “Grandaunt Tiger”)”
    Perrault was not the first; all he did was to rewrite, or write down, material already there and most likely imported with the crusades from the orient…
    So basically, sometimes a wolf is a tiger?

    As for Aslan, yes please, lets pretend. I totally lost interest in the tales when I was a kid when I found out that they were just a non-subtle way of cramming a certain religious belief down my throat.

    @MC and J to J:
    I would not assume s(he) have read that book. I haven’t.

  91. Greg says:

    Heh, been reading the comments above on being the perpetrator of a violent action versus not. Reminds me of people arguing about this when the game came out. I think my favoriate comment on it was

    “There is no way a reasonable person could think of this game as a rape-simulator, at worst it’s a being-raped-simulator, but I don’t think it’s even that” Sadly I can’t attribute it :(

  92. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Greg:

    I don’t think it’s a “rape simulator”.

    It’s a piece of art with some extremely questionable points Basically, what it comes down to, is that it claims that having Free Will sooner or later ends up killing or abusing you severely, and that it is somehow a necessary part of the process of growing up. Which is not only depressing, but utterly false.
    Especially since apparently not causing the girls harm is considered a “failure” (again, I would immediate lead all the g irls straight down the path, after all it is the intelligent way).

    …Something just occurred to me:
    It’s Pan’s Labyrinth all over again, isn’t? A young girl Too Dumb To Live, and we have to watch her suffer through horrible things just to make some sort of artistic point?

  93. Avilan the Grey says:

    …Something else occurred to me:

    I would not have had nearly as many objections to this if the “You FAIL” text would not have appeared if you just walk straight down the path. It is the very implication that if you do not get the girls hurt in some way, and preferably ravaged, you fail that is the most disturbing of all.

  94. Sheer_FALACY says:

    The girl in Pan’s Labyrinth was too dumb to live? What? She was in a shitty situation, and was either a) making up a fantasy world or b) actually living in a fantasy world, depending on your point of view. I don’t know where stupidity came into it beyond the expected.

    And while some of the girls in The Path seem to make poor decisions (Robin, for example), others don’t seem to (Ginger).

  95. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Sheer_falacy, re Pan’s Labyrinth: Well to be fair only one main point; the ogre’s dinner table.

    (And the main point is that portraying pointless suffering, or at least suffering far beyond reason and what has been deserved, does not good art make. Nor good entertainment).

  96. Roy says:

    I didn’t say that Perrault’s version was the original, though. I said that it was one of the most popular versions of the tale. I didn’t claim him as the originator of the tale. Nobody knows where the tale originated, because, like many folk tales, Little Red Riding Hood style tales exist in almost every culture across the globe. You were, however, trying to suggest that it was modern criticism that had somehow injected sex and rape into the tale. Unless we have very different ideas of what constitutes “modern”, this is clearly false. Perrault was obviously making a derivative work when he wrote his version, but the fact remains that he was injecting sex and rape into the story as far back as the seventeenth century. Whether the tales Perrault derived his story from were about sex or rape, we can’t be sure, since all we have are second and third-hand versions, but we can be pretty sure what his version was about, since he told us.

    You’re free to dislike or ignore that, if you want, but when you do, you’re engaging in the very behavior you were criticizing: you’re letting your hangups and agendas influence how you read and interpret the story.

    Which is fine, if ironic.

    re: 98
    I totally agree with that.

    re: your Main Point

    That makes me sad, and I think we’ll have to agree to disagree. If all you’re seeing when you watch Pan’s Labyrinth is “pointless suffering”, then I think you’re really missing out on a beautiful, if sad, film. Some of the greatest works ever told involve tragedy or suffering. If you’re unwilling or unable to see past that to see what the point is, I think you’re really missing out on some incredibly powerful and moving works.

  97. Daemian Lucifer says:

    @Avilan the Grey

    Religious belief?What religious belief?I never saw religion in the stories Ive heard/read/saw as a kid.

    As for free will will kill you,thats just one interpretation.The other interpretation is that its not the girls that are dying,but their youths and innocence.

    As for wolf being a wolf,a wolf that eats a woman,disguises as her,feeds the leftovers to her granddaughter,asks the granddaughter to undress and lie in bed with him,is surelly not just a wolf.

  98. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Roy:

    Oh yes we disagree alright :P

    I do stand corrected about the “modern” statement, however it is one of those things that modern analyzers of a specific breed WOULD do and HAVE done no matter the source: “Batman and Robin symbolizes a gay relationship!” etc.
    I also must admit that I never had heard of him before this thread; I was only aware of the the Grimm version.

    As for my hangups; I have a few, obviously. :)
    …See below.

    As for tragedy and suffering; It is true I have a hard time seeing through that, but that I guess is how my brain works. I have begun to understand that many people need these stimuli (if only through media, not inflicting real suffering on themselves) in order to see a point, or to experience something special, just like some people need to write about it. I need neither.

    I am probably extremely simple minded since I do not enjoy these things but on the other hand I don’t need the stimuli in order to “get” what they try to tell me. To graphically watch someone suffer for 90+ minutes only strikes me as pretentious and deliberately “artsy for artsy’s sake” at best, and disturbingly obsessive at worst.

    Besides I have never really understood the definition of “Powerful” and “moving” in this context, to me “powerful” always tend to imply physical or emotional torture that hits you in the gut and makes you sick for no reason, followed by a message that hopefully is clear enough that you could have told it from the beginning, without the suffering, or is so muddled, or coming in from so far left field, that the suffering you watched was pointless anyway.

    From the reviews I have read of this game, they seem to mix and match the two: Apparently it is about growing up, which is a terribly message, since it is just not true that you HAVE to be mentally and physically ravaged and die a horribly and nightmarish death in order to experience life correctly (which is what the creators of the game insists, and I can’t help but wonder what caused the creators of the game to think it did; what horrors did they experience growing up?), or it is that you should not do what you are told, and that you end up tortured and dying a horrible death because you disobeyed is a GOOD thing. Not exactly a good message, either.

    (I admit I even had a hard time with Lemony Snicket. Maybe it’s a cultural thing (although I am sure Bergman would disagree); The popular child books in this country all contain strong, independent and happy childen who never gets punished for being strong, independent and happy. Pippi Longstocking FTW :P )

  99. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Lucifer:

    Religious belief? It was you who brought up Aslan, was it not? If not, I apologize.

    See my post to Roy; I just don’t do well with overly tragic symbolism; I tend to get stuck on the obvious. If it is “only” their “youth and innocence” that dies, it is only slightly less disturbing. Very slightly. It still boils down to “Life is suffering, you can’t do anything about it and the more you try to enjoy it the worse it gets. Now go and die”.

  100. Vladius says:

    Goodness, you guys are already in a debate over religion or something? Stop talking.

    I like the game. It would be pretentious, but it doesn’t take the whole “goth poetry” thing too far.
    To think that the entire game is about rape is just projecting your own insecurities. You can read as much depth into it as you like. I just think it’s creepy. (Floating-cloud-zombie-lake-wolf-boat was the most disturbing, in my opinion.)

  101. Sopping Topper says:

    It’s not that the entire game is about rape. But to say that there’s no implied rape is to deliberately cover your eyes.

  102. Blackbird71 says:

    @Daemian Lucifer(102)

    As an FYI, C.S. Lewis is most widely recognized not as an author of children’s books, but as a Christian author, having written many insightful works on the subject of the religion. Some of these are simple and straightforward (Mere Christianity), while others are illustrated through narrative form (such as the Screwtape Letters, in which a lesser devil receives instruction on techniques to tempt man).

    The Chronicles of Narnia were written as an allegorical tale of certain biblical events as well as a way to teach religious prinicples to children in a way they would understand. The character of Aslan is an allegorical figure of Christ, as he sacrifices himself to save another, and in doing so defeats death itself. Prince Caspian is a retelling of the story of Moses and the Israelites, and so on. The stories themselves are filled with themes of faith, compassion, forgiveness, love and respect towards others, etc. If you missed these themes, then I’m afraid the deeper meaning of the books was lost on you, but this is why others connect religion with these stories.

    @Avilan the Grey (95) Unless you were physically restrained as the books were read to you, I think it unfair to say that they were “crammed down [your] throat.” If you read them willingly, then it must have been because you found something worthwhile in them. Does something good have to be eschewed simply because it’s connected to a belief you disagree with? That seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if you ask me.

  103. Sylvia says:

    Meanwhile, moving right along…

    I thought this What a Wonderful L4D might not have crossed your radar yet…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7_Ta7vVW-c

  104. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Blackbird:
    Well I did finish the first book (Lion, Witch, Wardrobe), but I lost the interest in the later books.

    …Anyway, no more of topic from me.

  105. neriana says:

    Many fairy tales have very strong sexuality in them, whether metaphorically or literally. In the original Sleeping Beauty, she wakes up because she’s giving birth to the prince’s kids.

    Little Red Riding Hood has been dissected more than any other tale I’ve seen. For a while, it was fashionable to say “it’s all about teh rape!” Imo, that’s certainly there, but that’s just a starting point. But for me, that’s not the most compelling reading. I do think it’s about sexuality, however; if you’re a girl, do what’s right and OBEY or something very very bad will happen to you. If you are lucky a man will rescue you from the very very bad thing, but it was your fault in the first place — for daring to grow up. It’s one of those stories that tries to make little girls stay little girls forever, because female sexuality is scary. (Yes, I am a feminist, and before anyone tries to make wrongheaded assumptions because of that, I’m a feminist with a boyfriend, and I hate having to put that disclaimer there.)

    You know the story about Persephone, who’s taken away from her mother and has to stay for 6 months in the underworld because she got hungry and ate a pomegranate? In ancient Greece, pomegranates were considered a very, um, sexual fruit. One of the earliest written versions of this tale (I can’t remember which, sorry), has Persephone choose to eat part of that fruit even though she’s not all that hungry. It just looks so… yummy. And she feels a duty to go back to her mother, though Hades is also very… yummy. She wants to grow up. She wants to experience her sexuality. But she does still love her mother, and feel a duty to her mother, and while the underworld and Hades are seductive they’re also frightening…

    I haven’t played The Path. If it just has girls being punished for leaving the path, rather than growing and changing, then it’s got a bad message and it’s also bad art for being so silly, simplistic and reactionary. If it’s that growing up is purely painful, especially if you’re a girl because there’s something inherently scary about adult female sexuality, then that tells me a lot about the creator’s hangups and I’m totally uninterested. If, however, it says “something happened here, these characters chose to change and there were some unexpected consequences, some good and some bad, and it’s up to you to figure out what exactly it was and how it happened,” then it does a very good job of imparting what fairy tales and myths were actually about before Disney got its hooks into them.

  106. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Neriana:

    First I must say that I had to think for 10 seconds before realizing why you had to put the disclaimer there. I didn’t make the connection, at first.

    As for Persepone; I don’t know where in Greece the myth originated, but Athenians and their “hangarounds” had a far more screwed up relationship to female sexuality than say the Spartans (for all the faults of Sparta, like slavery and setting out kids to wild animals, they had these weird ideas of women partaking in sports, wearing short skirts, and openly flirt with men, etc. Many Athenians considered Spartans as sexual deviants for so openly (for both sexes) displaying their heterosexuality).

    I do think you overstate the anti-female statement in LRRH; it is partly that, but it is partly, and I feel mostly, just a tale to teach kids to not do anything stupid; the world of myth is full of those, like the one about the spirit horse that tend to live by streams and lures kids to ride it and it runs down in the water and drowns them (Swedish tale). As tempting as it might be to over analyze that one (“riding, nudge nudge huh huh”) it is simply a tale to keep young kids from wandering too close to large streams without a grownup to look after them.

    As for the rest; again I have not played it, but from this site, and all other reviews and comments, I have gathered that it is a case of your second example: “Growing up is purely painful”. Small parts of it seems to be the last example, but the horrible ending of all the girls definitely kills that theory.

  107. A fan says:

    Super-Alex:
    August 18th, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    I don't think it's just about rape or that it makes you a bad person for playing it, but that game is seriously disturbing and tasteless. Especially when the girls all get killed at the end.

    Thanks superAlex, you blamey idiot for giving me the greatest game ruining spoiler you could have sayed.Why the hell did you have to say that?Here I was reading about a game I can barely wait to upgrade my computer for and bam!The girls die at the end.I hope you’d die in a gruesome way numbnut.

  108. mario l. says:

    I wasn’t able to find the exact translation of an aphorism of Franz Kafka that surely is most appropriate here, so I will try to translate it myself.
    “There are no fairy tales which are not bloody. All the fairy tales come from the depths of blood and anguish”

    In addition to this, the usual interpretation of the fairy tale of little red hood, is about sex. Really. No wolf.
    In particular the colour of the hood is the symbol of sexual maturity (a girl who just had the menarche), the tale was used to scare the little girls to make them ready for the risks of life, and surely there are hundreds of things more dangerous of a wolf.

    It’s a pity that my pc is too old to play this game, because it really interested me. All the symbols and the metaphors in fairy tales are very powerful.

    p.s.: I hope my english was intelligible enough.
    :-)

  109. Avilan the Grey says:

    @Mario:
    Of course the Hood is an addition to the tale (to symbolize what you say it is, for sure) added by Perrault for that exact purpose. HE meant it to be an over-the-top symbol of deflowering / rape, but he is not the only one telling the tale, and certainly not the first one.

    On a personal note I suspect a lot of this is what these days is what we call “Getting crap past the radar” and “Parental service”; meaning the same tale, as told by the same person, has two different meanings to the kid in the audience and the adult. The adult, or teen, recognizes the hint towards “don’t follow strangers, and don’t sleep around”, while the kid only hears “Do as you are told, or evil beings will kill you”.

    And all fairytales are bloody. Of course they are. Wether it is Jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella, the one with the boy that tricks the giant to cut his own belly open (I don’t know the English name for that one)…
    Part of that is what was considered proper for kids to hear;
    These days we get all weird when the kids play violent computer games.

  110. Mario l. says:

    Well I think that the difference between the violent and bloody videogames and the violent and bloody farytales is that the first ones do not have any pedagogic purpose, so it simple to say to all that violence is an end to itself in videogames.
    Too often is forgot the cathartic side of videogames (which, I admit, helped me through a lot of bad times) or the fact that most of them are only a way to unwind, not a creed.

    More over, it’s not right to intrepet the whole world through the lens of a single videogame.
    They don’t want and are not meant as a unique key to understand and live life.

    This game in particular is more like a deforming mirror, that let’s you see the world in new, unexpected ways. Even if you don’t like what you see through that mirror.
    And I think that as with the books, more a videogame is capable of pushing you away from your original way of thinking the better it is.
    If a game is capable of such deed, then it is not just entertainement, but it is something more.
    :-D

  111. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Mario l.:

    “Well I think that the difference between the violent and bloody videogames and the violent and bloody farytales is that the first ones do not have any pedagogic purpose, so it simple to say to all that violence is an end to itself in videogames.”

    Not true.What about wolfenstein 3d?It is bloody,but teaches an important lesson of killing nazis on sight.

    But seriously,some ww2 games do teach a bit about the war,so arent just violent for the sake of it.

  112. Greg says:

    @Avilan the Grey

    I didn’t intend to imply that you thought it was a rape simulator. Just that some people have claimed that and the comment that it’s closer to a being raped simulator amused me. In fact I’d call it neither.

    That going off the path represents excersising free will, doing so inevitably leads to harm to the girls is a valid interpretation. If that is what they intended then the you fail screen is not only misguided in the way you suggest, but also a attempt on their part to railroad you into excercising free will, which seems somewhat bizaare.

    However you could equally interpret it as saying that making decisions and experiencing the world is a good thing (thus you lose if you do not do this) which inevitably leads to some negative consequences (hands up who’s never made a mistake) but these aren’t necassarily the end of you.

    One interpretation I read had girls all as the same person. Each time one was unmade by their wolf the new one was made, in the way that a person remakes themselves constantly in response to their experiences. Seeing things this way a questionable moral about free will inevitably leading to your death or abuse becomes a moral about it leading to your experiencing new things which change you.

    I’m not saying that interpretation is right either (especially when it goes on to claim that these girls are all the grandmother) but there’s more than one (dozen) ways to see this.

  113. thexplodingnome says:

    I think the point of the game is not that it’s interesting to watch girls get raped or shredded, but about the attitudes that brought them there. Granted, I’ve only played as two girls so far (Carmen and Ginger), and I got the happy “fail” end with Carmen, so I could be missing something. But here’s what I got from Ginger (spoilers, obviously)…

    Like her sisters, Ginger is instructed to stay on the path, which, though safe, is boring. If you play through without straying from the path, it seems as if you have failed at experiencing life, that you are still naive and innocent, and that you have not yet grown up. Indeed, that may be true.

    So when you play through again, you stray into the forest. It appears that nothing you come in contact with can harm you. For a while, you feel invincible. Eventually, you come up to a barbed-wire fence. You crawl under it without harm, proud that not even this can stop you. Soon after, you encounter the figure of the previously trustworthy, helpful black girl, only now she is clad in red, not white. You run after her, but you can barely catch up. When you finally do, she pulls you to the ground, beating you easily.

    You wake up in the rain, dejected. You are no longer unbeatable, unstoppable. What’s worse, the one who beat you was someone you trusted (your wolf). You can no longer find the strength to return to forest, where you once seemed so carefree. All you can do is continue onto grandma’s house (which is perhaps adulthood or maturity?) or back home (childhood?).

    If you go on, you end with the red-clad wolf-girl savaging you with barbed wire. Whether that alludes to something literal (maybe Ginger was led by the girl back over the barbed wire fence, and where the girl made, Ginger didn’t?) or symbolic (having realized she can be deeply wounded or killed?), I don’t know for sure. Probably, it’s open to interpretation (personally, I prefer the latter).

    Ultimately, I got a C for this scenario. It was definitely jarring to hear a congratulations after a truly disturbing sequence, but in some ways, it’s an echo of maturation. On one hand, you’ve grown wiser about the nature of life, and rarely does wisdom come painlessly. In Ginger’s case, we lose our delusion of invincibility, albeit in a terrible way. We also understand now why we were told to stay on the path, a choice we never could have appreciated before now.

    Wow, that was a way longer interpretation than I anticipated. Anyway, I do wish there was a way each girl could have a possibly happy, or even bittersweet ending – like maybe a C grade could be completely tragic, B could be bittersweet, and A could be redemptive? If this really is a game about maturing, could we see how we could recover from the blows of growing up? Or maybe the creators are saying there is no way to recover, and my theory is shot to hell? Yeesh, I hope not.

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