There’s a unique feeling to games that explore a world that has already ended. Many games, like Breath of the Wild, have tried to capture this feeling. Recently, I’ve felt it most while playing both games created by Giant Squid, Abzu and The Pathless.

Both games by Giant Squid have a similar premise. In The Pathless, you play as a hunter who is the last in a long line of those who have come to the lands of the Tall Ones, seeking what evil has taken root there. In Abzu, you play as a strange diver who delves beneath the surface of the waves on a journey that will restore the ocean. 

Each adventure features a journey to restore a damaged ecosystem with the help of divine animals. There’s a word for that: pilgrimage. Giant Squid’s games feel like a pilgrimage to restore these forgotten and desolate lands. These games truly capture the feeling of exploring a ruined land and undertaking divine trials.

Questing For Restoration

Restoration is a major theme in both Abzu and The Pathless. In fact, it’s possible to view the games as the same quest happening in two different biomes, the sea and the land. These games even have a similar structure. 

In Abzu, you’ll traverse across the ocean to four special pools where you immerse yourself to bring back a great species of fish. After doing so, you’ll join a greater spirit, a shark, in a confrontation to vanquish the evil corrupting the ocean. 

In the Pathless, you’ll traverse across a series of four plateaus to restore four great spirits of the land. After restoring the spirits, you’ll travel with the divine spirit, the Eagle Mother, to confront the evil Godslayer.

The similarities here aren’t a bad thing. Abzu was the first game that Giant Squid made. While it’s very good, the Pathless has much more content to offer. There are more puzzles to solve and more to explore. These games are variations on a theme, and Giant Squid perfectly conveys the subtle tones of each.

Forgotten Rituals

You will find statues, murals, and steles aplenty in both Abzu and The Pathless. They are the signifiers that these places once had meaning to the people who inhabited them. Sometimes, this meaning can only be inferred. Other times, you can conduct yourself in the same way as those who came before.

In both games, Giant Squid crafts game mechanics and environments to immerse you in this feeling of performing rituals. In this way, you truly feel as if you’re participating in something that has a history and a tradition.

Pathless Lanterns

Throughout The Pathless, you will come across hidden lanterns and caches of gems that can be accessed by solving various small puzzles. Mechanically, this is a way to gain more gems, which gives you the ability to fly higher with your eagle. However, by engaging in these puzzles, you’ll feel as if you’re engaging in the lost rites of this land.

One simple puzzle you’ll encounter in The Pathless is recurring groups of unlit ceremonial torches at different heights. You can light the torches by visiting each in ascending order of height. Doing so will usually award you with the appearance of a spiritual floating lantern and some gems.

While the torch puzzle is straightforward, there is something to it that feels important. Even this simple task evokes the feeling of lighting ritual lanterns with incense or lighting candles at an altar in a precise order.

Many of the puzzles to reveal lanterns are simple but consist of some of my most memorable moments in the game. One puzzle has you ringing bells in a specific order in the branches of a unique sakura tree. Another puzzle requires lighting a pinwheel pattern of lanterns only visible in the spirit world. There are even puzzles that require you to visit the skeletons of giant animals, like a funeral process to honor the ancient creatures.

Personally, I will never forget lighting a string of torches to light the eye of a statue of Nimue, the Tall One in that plateau. These actions feel meaningful and significant in the land of the Tall Ones. They are varied and interesting enough to evoke the sense that these lands had many rituals and places of reverence. The ruins are all that remain, with only you to guess at what it might have all meant.

Abzu’s Meditations

Early on in Abzu, you’ll discover a statue of a shark seated like a man. There’s no gameplay indication you can even interact with it until you swim close. When you do, however, you unlock meditation.

By swimming to the shark statues in Abzu, the camera abandons your character as you meditate on the aquatic wildlife in the area. In this way, you can better view the wildlife in the area. You can zoom in on fish and turtles, sharks and whales, and even on aquatic animals like prehistoric ammonite.

Mechanically, the ability to meditate lets you spend time looking at the animals the game makers spent so long creating. However, as you progress through the game, the sense of ritual lingers here too. How many have come before you, to sit atop the head of the sacred shark statues and meditate upon the wildlife?

Meditation statues are not the only thing you can find in Abzu and not the only thing that feels like performing a ritual. In your time throughout Abzu, you’ll find ammonite shells scattered throughout the world. Interacting with them will store them in shrines that you can find in transitory areas. Each shrine tells you how many you’ve collected in a location and even gives you a sneak peek at what you’ll see later on.

While games are certainly no strangers to collectible quests, Abzu’s quest to collect all the ammonite shells feels spiritual, even if you don’t understand what it means. This is made more profound by The Pathless, which also has a version of the same ritual. Disconnected by worlds, your character in The Pathless can perform the same ritual in Abzu, not knowing why it’s important, but certainly understanding that it is.

Forgotten Sites

There is nothing quite like the feeling of being in a ruin. A place that may now only be seen as broken stone may have once been important.

In Abzu and The Pathless, Giant Squid creates many buildings and structures whose purpose has been forgotten. The ghost of their importance, however, lingers in the game. Each location feels brimming full of significance, and your journey through these lands may uncover it.

Pathless Ruins

The Pathless is full of ruins. The lands of the Tall Ones fell, and they fell so long ago that the only companion to the corrupted spirits in these lands is the bones of their followers. To progress, you’ll explore many of these buildings, sometimes not regarding them as anything more than a high vantage point. However, each building in the lands of the Tall Ones had a meaning and a purpose.

I remember when I received the “Bathhouse” achievement. I had visited a seemingly random building full of water to find either lightstones or gems. The achievement that told me what this place was before I ever thought to question it. This was when I realized that the environments in The Pathless were not crafted carelessly. Giant Squid built structures that had meant something to people now long dead.

The Bathhouse was not the only building that surprised me. All across the lands of the Tall Ones are buildings that tell a story. One building venerated Sauro and explained their worship. One set of steles explained why there are so many giant animal skeletons in these lands. There was even a place that revealed the secrets of the Godslayer. A location so remote I had to make an arduous journey to reach it.

There are so many interesting buildings with purpose in The Pathless, I can’t list them all. However, I will never forget reaching the shrine of the Eagle Mother. It is a temple at the peak of a high mountain that is so far away it doesn’t glow to indicate that there’s something to find. 

I ventured out to reach this mountain peak anyway. I made a grueling trek upwards, nearly plummeting several times and erasing my progress. When at last, I reached the top, the stele welcomed me warmly. Without knowing it, I had a pilgrimage to a shrine in a manner that many in this world before me had also made it. I can’t quite describe how wonderful that feeling was.

Abzu Temples

In the second major biome of Abzu, there is a place that is totally different from all the rest. Hidden among floating orange fronds were the ruins of a temple. Hammerhead shark statues, distinct from the meditation statues, lined pathways linked with oxidized chains. This place has a history, but we don’t get to know it.

This place is just one of the unique locations in Abzu. It’s not even the only temple. There is even one temple teeming with aquatic dinosaurs! These places are special, and they feel special. However, we’ll never get to know what the purpose of these places were or understand what significance they held.

It takes skill to craft a ruined society that you want to learn more about, but simply can’t. Giant Squid delivers this in spades. If you want to learn about the society in Abzu, you’ll have to consult the murals to understand their rituals and practices. Even then, that won’t explain everything. For instance, why does one mural seem to feature you? Was this culture prophetic? Like The Pathless, are you the next in a long line of voyagers who have all failed before? Or… have you simply lived so long that these people knew you before their collapse?

Ghosts of the Past

There’s something profound about discovering a battlefield. Breath of the Wild captures this feeling in its version of Hyrule Field. The Pathless does something similar, but it takes a more personal tone.

There are many battlefields in The Pathless and many other areas with small skirmishes. Unlike Breath of the Wild, the bones of those who died can still be found where they lived their final moments. One of the powers of the spirit mask in The Pathless is to see glowing orbs that hold the last moments of those who died here.

The lore messages left by the dead tell the story of these places. In places where mass amounts of bodies lie, you’ll see the last messages of those who died there. Soldiers, monks, brothers who turned on each other, and lifelong friends lie alongside each other.

By reading these messages from the fallen, you’ll make sense of historic events. You’ll find the site where the Pathfinder’s followers fought a bloody battle to free him from prison. In the last region, you’ll find the soldiers who died unearthing the Godslayer’s sword. Sometimes, messages are simply from lowly monks who lay dying. 

The places of mass death are particularly compelling. Some who died speak zealously. Others mourn their deaths or doubt the reason they were called to die, even if they were zealots. Some are so upset that they reveal secrets in their final moments that others would prefer remain hidden…

Perhaps one of the best examples of how The Pathless uses the last messages of ghosts comes from a set of trees. Each region has one unique tree that stands out from the rest. In the first plateau, the domain Cernos, you may come across a white bark tree distinct from the rest in the area. The lore messages in the area make it clear it was part of a ritual to birth something new. The bodies around it make it clear that the followers of the Godslayer tried to stomp out.

The first tree is not finished growing. It is notably smaller compared to other trees in the background. Across the lands of the Tall Ones, you can find other such trees. It becomes clear these trees are places of importance, and their plantings were a part of a ritual. This ritual was likely a symbol of renewal.

While there are two smaller trees in the first two regions, the last two regions have much bigger and grander sakura trees. No bodies lie nearby and these appear to be places where whatever ritual was being done was successful. Visiting these trees and finding their hidde lanterns feels special, like paying homage to the sacrifice and acknowledging the ritual’s success all at once.

Forgotten Connection

The Pathless and Abzu are both intensely spiritual journeys. An important part of any spiritual journey is the communion with the divine. Each game pulls this off in different ways to craft a special experience. In each game, Giant Squid offers a final profound form of connection with the divine to culminate the religious experience they’ve crafted.

Abzu’s Ascension

The climax of Abzu sees a miracle as you restore the great white shark and set out to destroy the evil that has plundered the waves. Alongside the shark, now burning with silver energy, you burn brilliant gold. You move faster than ever before and have a more powerful boost that can send you rocketing out of the water. Behind you, a trail of fish swims after you, following your every move. You’ve ascended.

This is the climax of your spiritual journey. Like the shark, who you have followed since the start of the game, you have had revelations and symbolically died and been restored. After restoring the ocean, your body is restored, as the shark is also restored.

In the end, Abzu tells a story of awakening to your potential. Your connection with the shark and with the power of the ocean saves you both. Together, the both of you restore the ocean.

The Pathless’s Gifts of the Tall Ones

Your spiritual journey in The Pathless may culminate much sooner than the game’s ending. In each region, you’ll need to collect lightstones to liberate that location’s corrupted Tall One. However, after freeing a Tall One, a monolith will appear with holes for the remaining lightstones in the region. Collecting these stones will allow you to gain a gift from the Tall One of that region.

These gifts are the culmination of your devotion to a Tall One. In finding all the lightstones of a region, you have seen all of their secrets and performed all of their rituals. In reward for your steadfastness, you are met by the Tall One, who leads you on a chase through their region. At the end of your race through the plateau, the Tall One leads you to one last place of spiritual importance: the place of their death.

Upon receiving the boon of a Tall One, their skeleton appears and becomes tangible. It is a haunting and beautiful form of connection. The last rite of communing with a Tall One is witnessing their death.

You do not need to collect all of the lightstones in a region to progress to the next one. Therefore, choosing to do so is a conscious choice that carries weight. In the end, your character’s effort is rewarded. If you collect all the Lightstones in the game and receive all the gifts of the Tall Ones, the game will have an extended ending. This ending is only possible because of your effort and because of the pilgrimage your character undertook.

Pilgrims Rest

Abzu and The Pathless are games that masterfully convey a pilgrimage to restore a lost land. In these games, Giant Squid crafts intricately detailed worlds whose details have been lost to time. By playing, you can find and restore what was lost.

These games are well worth your time. If you’ve ever craved the feeling of discovery and spiritual connection, these are the games for you.