Journey

[Cagliostro]

This is a PS3 only game, and only by download. I picked it up last night and keep thinking about it. Has anybody else played through it yet? I want to discuss it.

If not, you should if you like games like Ico and Shadows of the Colossus, or if you liked the prior game from the same company, Flower. It's in a similar vein. Very sparse, and a lot of interpreting is done by the player. And it tugs at the heart strings.

Avoid spoilers like the plague if you are thinking of picking it up. It is beautiful and an emotional experience. You are a robed figure heading into the desert to get to a mountain that looms ahead. And that's all I'll say, other than that it is multiplayer, but only minimally, and the experience is definitely better playing with someone else that you communicate with only through a sound and a symbol.

The bad news - it's only about 2 hours long, which could stretch to about 3 with some amount of exploration that isn't necessary. It's $15 which is less than the price of a DVD, and if you consider this "game" more like picking up a DVD of an odd but enthralling movie, then it makes more sense for the pocketbook. I know I for one want to go through it a few more times before it lands on the backburner, but I also want to push my wife into trying it. I understand playing solo (signing out of the playstation network before starting) is a different experience entirely than finding a random person in the desert to journey with, so I know I'll at least get one more playthrough, and at roughly 2 hours, it isn't that big of time commitment. But it is pretty impressive. And I wanna discuss it with someone, dammit.

[lorin]

first time in my many years I actually wished I had a playstation or ever wished to play a game. pretty cool from what I saw on Youtube.

[peter]

Started playing it today Cag. It's beautiful! Just a dreamlike dance of relaxation and beautiful arabesque scenery - minimalist and pared down to the core....... I was moved for the first time in ages by a game. Stunning!

[Cagliostro]

So glad to hear it! Yeah, it definitely had a profound effect on me. They've also released a couple other games like Abzu, and Sky on mobile devices. Neither has really done it for me like Journey did though. It was such a perfect little life.

[peter]

Absolutely! Finished it today, totally in love with this charming little lady and will certainly be going back to replay it very soon. I have Flower on the same disk which apparently is also very good. I loved the whole minimalist style, especially how at no point were you ever told where to go - but you just seemed to intuitively know. A little bit of gaming magic.

[Cagliostro]

So my simple interpretation of the game is as follows.

Spoiler

It's basically a life. You start not knowing anything, and you start to get the hang of movement and communication and such. Then you start to recognize others and you get stronger and springier, and you/your scarf gets taller. You glide through life for a while, and then things start getting harder, and then (the mountain) your body starts to slow down and down and the cold creeps in, and eventually you die. The next section after you fall is a kind of afterlife (a bardo in my interpretation where this is a bit more tied to Tibetan Buddhism) where all is wonderful again, and then a Buddhst kind of rebirth, and you start all over again. It's beautiful. And like Buddhism, the only way to stop going through the cycle of samsara is to stop playing. But going on to other games isn't exactly nirvana.

[peter]

Forgot to hit the keys - so advance warning .......

SPOILERS!!!!


I've watched some of the interpretations posted on YouTube Cag, and they essentially follow yours but with a sort of metaphorical history of the world/a world over-layed on top of it. The little cut scenes seem to outline some kind of history in Bayeaux tapestry form about the rise of a civilisation that for whatever reason, falls prey to disaster and the encroaching sands that we encounter in the beginning of the game. Our little heroine [and one vid actually thought it was a man and referred to her as 'him' and 'dude' [ ] in this line of thought seems to be some kind of 'saviour' sent by the spectral beings in white [six in number] who she encounters on her journey back to the mountain. Certainly the Samsara angle features in these explanations as well as a re-birth of the Larger journey of the world as a whole.

Metaphorical Parallels as related to our world and it's decline........I don't know. Might be getting a bit deep for me on that one, but I'm willing to bet that this is a game that like say Shadow of the Colossus, would yield more and more secrets upon repeated playings, the hidden meanings of it's creators intentions revealing themselves as more and more secrets are discovered. For example, all of those markers, said to represent the tomb-stones of those lost in the disasters, can be seen in ever higher and more inaccessible locations as you progress. I didn't trouble to go after them, content just to run with the game going forward - but what do you discover if you do. Apparently, in addition, you can somehow achieve the 'white robe' of the Guardian Spirits [I believe if you collect all of the additional lengths to her 'scarf' and save them to the end of the game, without loosing them to the 'sky-crockodiles' ...don't know about this but apparently....]

In addition, what about the on-line version; by all accounts you can meet other players [only one at a time I think] and briefly travel together, helping each-other. Apparently real-world friendships have been generated in this way, your being informed of the names of those who you have met during your journey, only at the end when you have reached the Mountain.

All sounds very cool to me and I'd love to try it - but I'm essentially a loner in games so probably won't [and my internet connection is notoriously bad] - but I'd love to investigate the world for all of its deeper hidden secrets.

[Returning to Shadow of the Colossus, have a gander on YouTube for a vid about a group of dedicated secret searchers and the long-running thread they posted over years of playing nothing but this game. Convinced of the existence of a seventeenth 'secret boss' they scoured every inch of that empty landscape, developing ever more complex ideas about the hidden meaning of the game [why for example, would the writer put so much effort into developing a sand-box with virtually nothing in it?] and secrets that would only be revealed to the persistent acolytes - Easter eggs for the truly faithful. Did they find any you ask? Go find out! But there is something almost messianic about these peoples dedication, don't you think. I can see our little Journey achieving this kind of following by the truly dedicated.