Has there been a more descriptive one-word title for anything that comes close to the succinct, direct and perfect "Journey"? What more description do you need? You're a character and you're going on a journey. That's about it.
For all of Journey's elegance and attempts at creating an artistic experience, it's really doing exactly what video games have done since their beginning: there's an objective, obstacles and player interaction binding those two things together, but they're stripped down to their essence and laid bare. Video games have often been described as "running and jumping," but in Journey, that's all there is (OK, there's floating and "singing" too, but they don't really count). You're engaging in the most primal of video game actions, and putting aside all of the game's visionary excellence, it's as old-fashioned (in video game terms) as the Old Testament.
I admit that I bring up that reference for a very specific purpose: Journey is, in many ways, designed to be a religious experience. It's something that cuts through all layers of the game experience – the objective of the game is to reach a veritable shining Mt. Zion, and the pantheistic robes that your avatar wears put this journey squarely in the pilgrimage tradition. Essentially, the game's mission is to have your character go through a life's journey, beginning in the newborn spring, proceeding through the glorious summer, hiding from danger in the fall and struggling towards death in the winter.
This kind of spirituality imbues the gameplay with an elegant and simple quality that is very much to the game's benefit. If video games allow developers to give players a sense of grandeur, giving each simple button press and flick of an analog stick an outsized response on screen, then Journey is perhaps the most noble video game of all – you're given a great sense of fluidity and power that is still decidedly not a "power fantasy." Movements have the lightness of a dandelion seed in the wind, making the gameplay part of the glorious, beautiful whole.
Journey is very much "video game as experience" rather than "video game as challenge." Its worth is much more wrapped up in visual storytelling (the world of Journey is sand- and snow-blasted, with ruins liberally dotting the landscape), in audio and gameplay design, rather than making it about "stuff." There isn't a litany of collectibles or upgrade points or areas to scour for obtuse trinkets – the journey is everything there is. Experiencing this world, preferably with a human companion (the game randomly drops in other pilgrims into your journey, and your wordless concerto is far more engaging than more overt co-op systems ever could be), is the main purpose of the gameplay, meaning that the simplicity and the lack of significant challenge is woven into the overall context. The game is incredibly successful at making challenge something felt rather than something thrown at you, and that's quite the accomplishment.
Alas, Journey is really an experience admired rather than loved. I deeply admired the game design, which very subtly points you towards your goal through visual signifiers rather than overt objective waypoints. I admired the elegance of the whole thing, the beauty of it, the sound design – but I never loved it, and that's ultimately due to the game's oblique nature. Spoilers are ahead, so beware.
Basically, I couldn't help but feel that the somewhat obtuse nature of the game's design (no speaking or text of any kind, no concrete impetus for your actions, abstract visuals and especially the abstract sound design) was used as an act of covering up rather than an act of solid decision making. For all of the elegance that this design engenders, it really isn't saying anything by designing the game in this manner. Strip away the veneer of the "artistic," and what you're left with is a non-denominational spiritual pilgrimage, which, because of the game's obtusity, isn't really commented on. I am aware of what the human journey (for some people!) looks like, and I'm also aware that Spiritual Pilgrimages Are Things That Happen, but the game doesn't really take it too much farther than that. It gives you an experience while failing to comment in any significant way on that experience, and that ultimately makes the game feel a little bit hollow.
There's a point in the game where it had the opportunity to rectify this. I know that the length of the game is a common criticism (though I defy anybody to name another modern game that does so much in such a succinct amount of time), but if the game would have ended literally five minutes earlier, the game would have been making a very powerful comment on spirituality. Inevitably, though, the game gets too wrapped up in its own mysticism. Keep in mind that I'm an almost militant atheist: as your avatar struggles through snow drifts and windswept peaks on the way up to the final objective, it collapses and the screen fades to white. After a few moments, the sort of god-like creatures that you've been awakening along your journey revive you and carry you up to the heaven-esque afterlife that is filled, finally, with the game's only real sense of joy and escape. When you finally make it up to that shining light on the hill, you're immediately sent back to the start of the game, being "rebirthed" in the process (you even get a Rebirth trophy, in perhaps the most inappropriate use of achievements ever).
If the game had only ended with you dying on that hill! It would have been dark and nihilistic, sure, essentially implying the meaninglessness of existence, but then it would have been saying something outside of 4,000 years of religious thought. The game would have had a far more challenging and thought-provoking core, and would have been one of the most incredible critiques of the central tenets of religion in video gaming. Instead, it simply reinforces dominant religious ideology in a beautiful and elegant way, and that ultimately holds it back from having a ton of relevance.
Still, one has to review the game that exists, not the one that could exist. In terms of delivering a pure, visceral experience, Journey is one of the most successful video games ever, and deserves to be experienced by everyone at least once. It's a game that's accessible and brilliantly designed, even if it's not saying much of anything at all. That's a criticism that could be leveled against video games in general though – even if it's a little bit disappointing that Journey is a chemical reaction that doesn't quite break the test tubes, maybe it's too soon to expect games to really, deeply, say much of anything of intellectual rigor.
Join the conversation
I dunno, I think there are certainly games that have a lot to say about human experience. Dark Souls definitely asks some real questions about our perceptions of mythologies from a conceptual framework. Jet Grind Radio is also a wonderful kind of cognitive dissonance that works entirely because of its inability to be perceptive to what it wants to be. There are a few others, and I think that in the realm of child development, there's a level of intellectual rigor that occurs to the developing mind (while perhaps not so much to the developed mind). Rez is probably the first game that truly states something meaningful about games, though it largely does it through music and one could likely argue that it's less a game than an interactive art piece. Journey, though I haven't played it yet (I will, don't worry), does come off as trying too hard, but we'll see.
Chrono Trigger definitely holds a place of significance in my own intellectual evolution, even if it is not particularly challenging in terms of modern thought, it carries with me a sense of nostalgia that I cannot challenge. This may just be a limitation of my ability to see through my own past, however.