The Path Fan Song

The Path (fan-song!) by Hope Squad

Walk along the path
If you stray there’s no looking back
Take her back
Take the other by the hand, or you may
Make break for it and run the other way
It’s okay
You’re really, really lost, but it’s okay
Maybe you’ll stay among the trees or find something new
Is there someone there who’s looking for you?

How did you lose your way?
The simplest path is the easiest one to ignore.
Take heed of what they say!
Straight and true – safety is easy!
Your grandma is waiting for you.

Take another breath
Take a breather – get a little rest
Lay in a field of flowers so immense that you get
Dizzy when you see you’re not done yet
And every turn you take
Seems to lead you back by mistake
Misty Lake
Clouding up your mind until you can see
The size of his incisors – bigger than me

When is it going to end?
I thought I saw something shiny – you’d better investigate
But not til you find a friend
And maybe he’ll make for good company
Back at your grandma’s house

Where are you going to now?
Now that you’ve thrown yourself willingly
Off of the path?
Hanging your head in shame
Shame on you – making us worry!
Your grandma’s still waiting for you.

9 thoughts on “The Path Fan Song”

  3. Well, I played through it (for the 5th time) last night and took notes for each girl. I wrote down what recurring themes or images I saw when I played that character. Then I was like, “Man, I’m sweating the small stuff and not looking at the bigger picture.” So I went to bed in hopes of clarity the next morning. BUT ALAS!

    I’m well aware that asking you would kill my own interpretation of your work, but I’m tired of milling over my own interpretation. I want to know what you guys intended! What is the significance of the Girl in White? Why is Ginger’s wolf the Girl in Red/ how does Ginger die? How does Ruby die? When you get to Grandma’s house, are you already dead? There are a few reviews out there that think this is a horrible game where you send all 6 girls (even the 9-year-old) off to get raped and murdered. Are there any instances where this is true? Ruby’s wolf looked really skeezy, I wouldn’t put it past him…

    Go ahead and email me if you’d rather not spoil it for others who may read your blog. I *am* going a little crazy trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

  4. I’m certainly not Michaël, but I think the game is about going crazy trying to understand what’s going on.

  5. Keiko, we work very much on instinct. We do what feels right. We can try to explain why it feels right. But I’m not sure if that would be relevant or if we even could communicate it in a comprehensible way.

    Just don’t try to make everything make sense. This is not science. The Path is not a riddle. There is not a single answer, a single conclusion. In a way, that is what our work is about. About the fact that many things can be true at the same time. And the confusion that results from this is something we need to learn to live with, we think. Instead of forcing ourselves to accept a simplistic solution that sounds logical, we should try to embrace complexity, even without fully understanding it.

    That’s of course the very upper meta-level of the work. There is a lot more concrete stuff going on closer to the story, the tale of Little Red Ridinghood. Don’t obsess over the deaths of the characters, focus on their lives. I’m not even sure if they really die. Or if they even existed. It’s a story, you know, it’s about you, about how you feel. It’s not about Ginger or Ruby. It’s about you.

  6. You know, I had a sinking feeling you’d say something like that! XD

    How about a compromise? Since there are lots of different versions of Little Red Riding Hood, could you tell me which versions are specifically referenced in The Path? For example, I didn’t understand the “path of needles” reference until someone told me. I thought Ruby was just really into heroin.

  7. We used several version for reference. Charles Perrault’s version was the most important. But that one doesn’t contain the path of needles and the path of pins.

    Don’t worry. We will talk about our interpretation more at some point. But don’t expect it to ever be very clear. We really do enjoy the ambiguity of it all and it really does not mean a single thing to us.

  8. Though it doesn’t have particular relevance to The Path as far as I can tell, http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrPathNeedles.html may interest you, and other readers, as a thorough explanation of the possible origins and meanings of the “path of needles” and “path of pins.”

    I imagine that Girl is White is in The Path, first of all, for the sake of her appearing in all of the fairy tale games as a linking character (like the KT hidden in the cover of Kate Bush albums) and secondly as a way to integrate a number of navigational features into the game itself, rather than them being options that one selects in menu or something that just happens with no “in-story” explanation. BUT that doesn’t mean that she cannot serve other, non-technical purposes as well.

    And I’ve just this evening experienced Yezhik v tumane (Hedgehog in the Fog) for the first time. Brought to mind The Path, for a number or reasons; even if their major themes are different the experience of being lost and disorientated in a forest of painted, abstracted foliage is similar (more so for the last of those with the shots of the ravens in the treetops in Lisa i zayats/Fox and Rabbit).

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