Tale Of Tales has become known for making similar sweeping statements about the essential nature of videogames. Some, like this correction of the common comparison between videogames and cinema, are insightful. Others aren’t so – a blog entry named ‘Ten reasons why computer games are not games’ has been roundly criticized for being muddled. But whether right or wrong, what they have done is stimulate much constructive discussion about videogames’ relationship with other cultural forms, and their need to be valued for providing the framework for a new artistic language.

To that end, Tale Of Tales is also insistent about the importance of realtime 3D – in fact, that it’s the most creative new technology since oil on canvas. “The thing is, much like oil on canvas, realtime 3D allows people to say things they couldn’t say before,” says Samyn. “It adds the ability to say multiple things simultaneously and let the viewer decide the truth of that moment and location.”

moscallout“In a way you have to make your avatar suffer to be able to make progress in the game. It’s a failure game – there’s one goal and you must not do it!”/moscalloutFittingly, therefore, The Path is struck through with ambiguous characters and situations. For a start, players’ relationship with the Red Riding Hood sisters is uncertain – are they playing her, or playing with her? It’s hardly an unfamiliar idea – many other games, from Metal Gear Solid to Paper Mario, play on the relationship between player and player character. But The Path’s non-linearity means that it’s the players that initiate the horrors they face, not the game structure, because from the very start it’s possible to run straight to grandmother’s house. But that would be boring. “In a way you have to make your avatar suffer to be able to win or make progress in the game,” says Samyn. “To even have a game!” says Harvey. “It’s not a horror survival game, but the opposite,” adds Samyn. “It’s a failure game – there’s one goal and you must not do it! That’s the premise of the whole game.”

Beyond the ability to walk around and observe the world, what players will be able to do is so far unclear. The clearings, in which the player will encounter characters like the wolf and a mysterious girl in a white dress, as well as things like a scarecrow in a field of flowers, will solicit interaction of some form, but it’s a feature that Tale Of Tales has recently had to entirely rethink. The first prototype for the game relied on a proprietary engine Tale Of Tales developed called Drama Princess, which governs NPC AI. At Drama Princess’ core is a relationship system, which allowed them to create a minigame about getting on characters’ good sides, as well as a dance game.

“It turned out to be a lot of fun. There were plenty of things to do all the time,” says Harvey. “And that was the problem with it. The Path’s story is meant to be about the emotional struggle of a girl growing up, about the destruction that coincides with temptation, about the inevitability of death and so on. And we really want to go there, to explore these emotions.” The result was that they found the game was distracting the player from its themes, because they were concentrating on the mechanics rather than the characters. And because players had lots to do, they felt they had control over the game. “The Path is not about having control and doing exactly what you want. It is about the conflicts between what you can do, want to do, should do, and are seduced to do,” says Samyn.

The developers have therefore taken the controversial decision to strip out a lot of the interactivity and let it be managed by the Drama Princess system, even down to some of the behavior the player character exhibits. “You never know exactly what your avatar is going to do – we hope this creates a feeling of concern in the player that is appropriate for the game,” says Samyn.

For most mainstream games, such a move might seem disastrous. But, then, is The Path actually a game? “Probably not!” says Samyn, cheerfully. “But it’s going to be a game in that it uses games technology and requires game-like interaction. Most of the interaction you do in the games we’re interested in working with isn’t game-like anyway – it’s walking around and looking at things. Only a very small percentage of time is doing rules-based things and getting rewards.”

Even if its nature might diverge from being a videogame in the strictest sense, Tale Of Tales’ grasp on what makes videogames distinct from other media makes The Path consequential. While so many videogame makers continue their obsession with aping cinematic ideals, Tale Of Tales is attempting to build on what makes videogames unique: interaction. And while so many other artists working with videogames merely produce scratchy mods or exploit glitches in NES games, Tale Of Tales is making original work with high production values.

Ultimately, the success of The Path as a piece of art and a videogame will be two different issues. But whether it works in either cultural arena, Tale Of Tales’ solution for allowing it to both express the themes and story it wants and afford players interactivity is likely to teach a lot about how mainstream videogames can tell stories.