Pathways into Darkness - Introduction

The last great Macintosh exclusive. Many other great titles originated on this computer, but one by one they all seem to have been ported to other OSes. Only Pathways remains. At least in theory, I'll touch on that at the summary. Bungie, as you probably know, developed Halo, but before they created that monster of a franchise, they were making DOS and Windows gamers jealous with Marathon, a game which will sound very impressive when I get to it in 1994.

But in 1993 Budgie was nowhere near the beast it would become, it was a small outfit out of Chicago, making games for the very business focused Macintosh. Their previous two games were successes for a small company, 2.5k copies sold. The first game was Operation: Desert Storm, a fairly orthodox top-down shooter; The second was Minotaur: The Labyrinth of Crete, a multi-player RPG. Keep in mind for the latter that it could very well be that only 2.5k people were interested in a MP RPG back then, its not like now where those are what's left of the big budget RPG world.

The story is more interesting than the usual fair. In 1994, an alien diplomat has told the US president and his senior military staff of an ancient sleeping being (or a god, basically) trapped deep inside the Yucatan Peninsula, which is that point of the south-eastern, eastern side of Mexico. A temple is there, neither Mayan or Aztec, and around this temple are strange creatures. The god is awakening, and there are eight days to save the planet.

I play as a special forces operative, sent to detonate a low-yield nuclear device near the dead god's body, in order to keep it dreaming. The aliens are on their way to do more effective measures, but they're going to arrive in two and a half years. Unfortunately for me, the air drop doesn't go as planned and my equipment is mostly damaged or missing. I have to find the rest of my team, find the bomb, then place it at the lowest part of the temple I can descend to, and then maybe escape with my life. I have until 2:00 PM on Friday to detonate the bomb. No pressure.

The game runs in several small windows, like most Mac software of the time

Starting the game up, my character moves very slowly. A bit of the manual is telling the player to get used to dodging in this game, a wonderful prospect if my character remains as swift as this. There's no run button or anything like that. I start with only a knife, which I'm sure I've seen before, but I cannot remember where right now.

Doors function on Quake logic, walk up to them and they open. Which means if something looks like a door and doesn't open, it either isn't a door or you need to find a switch somewhere. There's no use key persay, instead you get a bunch of context stuff. There are chains mentioned in the manual, and I get the option to pull them after every move.

There are text boxes like these for everything important, assuming you decided against reading the fairly thin manual

Moving over a dead body allows me to search it, and if I had a certain crystal (which are very special items I understand) I could talk to him. This fellow is a nazi, with a Walther P4, some ammo and a copy of Mein Kampf. I wasn't expecting that. Double-clicking uses an item, otherwise you just have drop and examine. Its poor reading material because of the gravity of the situation and my lack of German language skills. I'm amused game, don't screw with me. For weapons you can do the usual number key for each weapon.

That rune there allows me to save

Items not attached to a corpse are picked up automatically. It flashes the screen. The whole corpse thing is a bit distracting, because I'm not used to having to deal with that. The only way I notice that is when I'm looking at the messages, which I'm not, because I'm watching out for enemies. Further, searching puts the focus outside the main window, so I have to click on the main window before moving again. Which is annoying for an action game. This is also the pause function, which is also annoying.

Glad we're starting off right on the enemy design

Soon enough I find a ladder up and the first enemies of the game. I'll give these guys something, the enemies are unnerving. It took me a bit, but I realized they're using some kind of seagull sound. Fighting as of yet is fairly simple. Shoot, dodge, try not to die. The Walther P4 I have is hitscan, but their attack is a projectile. One thing that's interesting is that the weapons use a magazine system. Fire enough shots and you reload. Automatically, of course, but I suspect you can do so manually by swapping out magazines in the inventory.

The game shares more than a little with survival horror games. The short draw distance and the low speed makes everything slightly creepy to walk around, not to mention all the bones just lying around. Ammo is just scarce enough and fighting enemies is just dangerous enough to be in danger of losing health. You can rest to restore health, but it takes about an hour to restore it all. (I have 6, but they have decimal points) Its more survival horror than Alone in the Dark, which doesn't have much surviving and its a bit too B-movie to be scary.

Check out all the ammo I don't have!

Never Stop Firing, the level in which I've been for a while, has three paths, and by the second path I figured out the gimmick. There are two chains, and in the center is a path you're supposed to go. You have to activate both chains. This gets me the yellow crystal, the one I can use to talk to the dead. Kind of figures they wouldn't let you go too long without access to that ability.

What a charming man

Back to the starting area, I talk to that German soldier. The dialog system is comparable to Ultima, type in a keyword and if its one they're supposed to know, they'll answer. The game tells you two to get started, name and dead. He doesn't remember his name, but apparently he got shot in the back by their captain, Muller. Asking him about the door tells me he had a musical instrument to open the door. I guess I need to find that? Must be another door leading there then. Other than that, he doesn't tell me much besides that.

The abominations are very considerate, marching single file

There was one other path forward, another ladder. This leads to another room, except this time, there are many, many more enemies. Before there were one, or multiple were spread out through a large room. Here they come marching after each other, in single file. I have to use the knife a lot here. Its a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

The book doesn't count as a treasure for some reason, I would think people with a morbid interest in Nazi Germany would want a first edition

Its at this point that I get more health. This game has RPG-elements. In addition to the dialog system, the more points you get, the more health you have. Two points of health for every 4 points. Points are gotten by getting items, some key, some random treasure. I get better in weapons just by using them, no idea if that connects to the crystals yet.
Not long after I leveled up, I see another corpse. He doesn't tell me anything, because he's cold and he can't remember. But he does have ammo. And man, do I need it. The amount of enemies here are getting to be too much. So much that I realize I should have saved more ammo earlier. I guess I'm restarting. Oh, well, its not that much of a replay yet.
Fighting with the knife requires a deal of finesse. You need to get one of the headless, or zombies in a corner, then stab them enough times that they don't strike back. This is tricky, because you have to get them at the right time to not just get shot by their attack. These rounded corners, which I haven't mentioned yet, seem to be there purely for decoration, because enemies can't shoot past them. This nets me enough ammo to last a long time. Enough to get past all those pesky guys I was having trouble with. Funny, the big encounter I was having trouble with, one with multiple zombies, were guarding a few clips of ammo.

Note the "zombies" on the left, with the blue headdress

That group with the zombies is actually a trap, since the door closes behind you. That's not something I expected because before this, there were two rooms that looked like they were traps. An area on the north side and a more obvious one with a save rune in the west. Each having two doors on the opposite side. Just the way its developed, really. It really seems like it when I first breach a room and get nothing but enemies. Yet, in the opposite side (guarded) is another dead German. This one is in better shape than his friends, actually telling me what's going on and complimenting my skills with the P4. There were four or five of them down here, he bought it helping one of their wounded escape. I have the names Jochaim, Hans and Behrens. Jochaim was wounded, Hans has the ammo and Behrens is quiet.

Some ammo on the ground, a good chunk of it is more well-hidden than this

Going back to that cold soldier tells me nothing with the names. I guess he really can't remember. Otherwise, there's a ladder up, but nothing much else of note here. Its curious, for a game where I'm trying to go down I sure am going up a lot. I'm liking it so far, but there are some issues. The level design isn't really exciting. While there are some shortcuts, once the enemies are all dead its mostly just slowing walking throughout a cleaned-out place. Any novelty from the unusual comic book style graphics is quickly removed once you've been in the game a while.

Some other points:
*This doesn't really feel like any other game I've played chronologically yet. Partially due to the Macintosh's design, partially because the game has a bunch of features that are sight unseen at this point.
*There is no music and the actual combat sounds are very limited, there's no sound for the knife. I do get a sound if I try to search where there's nothing to search.
*Sound keeps cutting out after some time of play. I have already had a horrible crash. The joys of Macintosh emulation.
*Dying gives you a fancy death message, which might be the first game to have that, depending on if you count Faceball 2000/Midimaze's "Have a nice day" message.
*Enemies show up where I've already killed everything. I have no idea if this is intentionally happening because I triggered a trap or if they just respawn. If its the latter its not as bad as it could be, but still annoying.
*I didn't have a good place to stick it in, but this game uses a save point system, like the later Marathon games. All of them.
*The dead bodies of enemies don't have anything on them, but the game still tells me when I walk over them. I'm curious if this will actually mean anything later.

This Session: 1 hour 20 minutes