I picked up Journey when it launched for the PS3 a couple of weeks ago but was otherwise detained until this afternoon. I've now played it through once and have quite a lot to say about what this game is, what it achieves and what it might lead to.
The question is, where to start. Ok, the game. Journey is short. The first play through for me lasted barely two hours. However, the visuals are some of the most thematically coherent and sumptuous I've ever seen. Sliding down sand dunes, climbing mountains and exploring tunnels which feel like they're underwater (but importantly they aren't) is some of the most fluid gameplay I've come across in a long time. There's no hand holding and the dozen or so small arenas you explore are exercises in flawless level design. The feeling evoked by Journey is one of the afterlife. It's about a whole lot of themes, for me at least, it's about redemption, the afterlife (perhaps sheol), an Eden that's fallen. It's also about who I am...how I explore, how I treat those to whom I owe nothing but from whom I can gain nothing except a distant connection; a meeting of eyes over heads at a party.
I highlight the subjective element of Journey because it comes close to being a piece of art in that modern sense - in which meaning lies in the eye of the beholder. I think the subjective interpretation of what Journey is about is its most important contribution to games. Its second most important contribution to games is a unique implementation of online play. Throughout most of my game I was accompanied (or I accompanied) another character. Identical to me in appearance and making the same journey as me this Other could sing to me in the same way I could sing to it - single, limited, notes which, cobbled together, might help me understand that we should follow or pay attention to what the Other is doing. I couldn't decide whether, if at times, I was actually playing with an AI...except at the end it revealed I'd played with eight other players....8. Astounding. Each of them was cooperative, helpful and patient (as was I with them). I say this because somehow Journey created an environment in which this was the natural response to finding someone else in your game.
Of course there was no mechanic for harming anyone else but you could ignore them at will...yet none ignored me and I ignored none of them. We discovered the world together and, without the ability to communicate, aided one another without being asked to. Now I need to say I've encountered a huge number of trolls online and sometimes wondered if the fraction of morons was as high as one in four...And now I'm left wondering if this poor behaviour is just as much about environment as the cooperative culture created by Journey. Remember, in Journey, you can't even speak with the Other.
Could other games, even ones which use violence as the medium of their story telling, re-create this kind of cooperation?
Journey is a lonely place and I think that helps. The world is a ruined world and I think that helps too. But I think the most important thing is the nature of the puzzles, the calm of the environment and the wonder of the Journey itself.
Journey is compelling. It is unique and offers hope that people can come together (for games no less!) as companions of strangers for the sake of art. Could you ask them to do that? Maybe, but Journey manages to create a work of art that you play with Others. Wonderful and I shall be playing it again the next time I have a spare hour or two - maybe I'll see you there, singing in the sand.
Recommended.
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