Pathways into Darkness

Last updated

Pathways into Darkness
Pathways into darkness-93 box art.png
Developer(s) Bungie
Publisher(s) Bungie
Platform(s) Mac OS, OS X
ReleaseAugust 1993 (August 1993) [1]
Genre(s) First-person shooter, adventure
Mode(s) Single-player

Pathways into Darkness is a first-person shooter adventure video game developed and published by Bungie in 1993, for Macintosh personal computers. Players assume the role of a Special Forces soldier who must stop a powerful, godlike being from awakening and destroying the world. Players solve puzzles and defeat enemies to unlock parts of a pyramid where the god sleeps; the game's ending changes depending on player actions.

Contents

Pathways began as a sequel to Bungie's Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete , before the developers created an original story. Jason Jones programmed the game, while his friend Colin Brent developed the environments and creatures. The game features three-dimensional, texture-mapped graphics and stereo sound on supported Macintosh models. Pathways was critically acclaimed and won a host of awards; it was also Bungie's first major commercial success and enabled the two-man team of Jason Jones and Alex Seropian to move into a Chicago office and begin paying staff.

Gameplay

The player character fires at enemies with a pistol. Along the right side of the screen are player status and inventory, while the bottom contains a message console. Pathways into darkness-screenshot.png
The player character fires at enemies with a pistol. Along the right side of the screen are player status and inventory, while the bottom contains a message console.

Pathways into Darkness is a first-person shooter and adventure game. The game interface consists of four windows. The primary "World View" shows the player character's first-person perspective. Players move, dodge, fire, and use weapons and items using the computer keyboard. The "Inventory" window displays items players have acquired, the "Message" window relates events and the in-game time, and the "Player" window displays health and energy information. The game clock runs constantly during gameplay, except when in conversation; the player loses the game if the sleeping god wakes after a set period of time. [2]

Players fight various monsters as they explore the pyramid's halls and catacombs. They may pick up weapons and ammunition left behind by others to supplement their arsenal. As additional levels are unlocked, new weapons become available, including machine guns and grenade launchers. [2] Players can absorb a certain amount of damage, but once their health reaches zero, they must resume their progress at the last saved checkpoint. Resting in place replenishes health but saps game time and leaves the player open to attack. [2] Scattered throughout the levels are other items players may use. Potions have different effects: rare blue potions, for example, rid the player character of poison and damage. Other items provide money, or points that increases the player character's maximum health. [3] Crystals can be used against enemies to freeze, burn, or otherwise harm them. [2]

Through the use of the yellow crystal, players can converse with Previously Living Sentient Beings or "PLSBs". [4] Conversations provide players with puzzle information, strategies for defeating monsters, and story background. Rather than relying on a branching tree of conversation options, players type keywords into a dialogue box. When a certain keyword (typically found in a previous statement by the dead person in question) is entered, the dead person will give a response. The manual gives a starting point by mentioning that all dead people respond to "name" and "death", by giving their name and describing how they died, respectively. [5]

Plot

Pathways casts the player as a member of a US Army Special Forces team sent on a mission to the Yucatán Peninsula. On May 5, 1994, a diplomat from the alien race known as the Jjaro appeared to the President of the United States and informed him that on May 13, an ancient godlike being sleeping beneath a pyramid would awaken and destroy the Earth. The only way to prevent this catastrophe is to prevent the god from awakening. The eight-man Special Forces team carries a nuclear weapon, with the goal of entering the ancient pyramid, descending to the bottom level where the god sleeps, and activating the bomb to stun the god and bury it under tons of rock.

The player character's parachute fails to open, and they fall unconscious in the landing. Awakening hours later, the player finds almost all their equipment inoperable. Reaching the pyramid on foot hours after the rest of their team, the player must complete the mission before the god awakens in five days. [6] In the pyramid, the player finds bodies of squad-mates, the remains of Spanish-speaking treasure hunters, and fallen members of a Nazi expedition from the 1930s who were looking for a secret weapon. Additional plot elements can be revealed by speaking to these dead, enabled by the yellow crystal.

The game's ending changes depending on whether the player has a radio beacon to call for extraction, and when the nuclear device is set to explode. Forgetting to set the bomb, or setting it to explode at any time past the awakening of the dreaming god, results in Earth's destruction. The device's detonation before the player reaches a minimum safe distance results in a pyrrhic victory. The most favorable endings are achieved by leaving the pyramid with a beacon for evacuation at least twenty game minutes before the device is set to go off, or without a beacon if the game ends with enough time for the player to escape on foot.

Development

Pathways was Bungie's fourth game and third commercial title [2] after their previous game, Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete, sold around 2,500 copies. In the summer of 1992, Jones was living in dorms at the University of Chicago when he saw Wolfenstein 3D , a shooter game with three-dimensional (3D) graphics. Inspired, Jones created a rough 3D-graphics engine for the Mac that simulated walls with trapezoids and rectangles. [7] Originally, Bungie intended Pathways to be a straightforward 3D version of Minotaur, but they quickly found that the top-down perspective of their previous game did not mesh with the new 3D presentation. An additional consideration was that the developers wanted to create a game that did not rely on then-rare networks and modems, an issue in marketing Minotaur. [8] The rest of 1992 was spent tweaking the graphics engine. [7]

Work on the game's storyline and levels began in January 1993. [7] Jones recalled that starting from cliché plots, they moved towards "very interesting and unique but extremely difficult to understand stories". One of the plot ideas cast the player as one of a group of Roman soldiers who discovered a mountain spring that extended their lives. Every seven years one soldier would be picked to descend into the caves and bring back more water. If the leader died, a new one would be selected to undertake the journey to ensure their survival. "It was a very interesting plot since your quest wasn't necessarily virtuous, it didn't involve doing good things or saving the world," Jones said. "It was just you were chosen, more or less against your will, to become the next leader of this freak cult of immortals." The final plot occupied a middle ground between the simple and complex stories, because the developers did not want to force players to become deeply involved in the story. [8]

While Bungie founder Alex Seropian handled the business aspect of Bungie and produced the game's box art and promotional material, Jones programmed the game, wrote the story line, and contributed to the game's manual. [7] [9] Whereas Jones had single-handedly coded Minotaur, the small staff for Pathways was due to lack of money for a large team. [8] To speed implementation, Jones built a level editor for the game that allowed him to add objects, monsters, and walls to the levels. [7] The game's levels and mazes span 40 million scaled square feet. [10] Jones' friend, Colin Brent, did much of the art and creature design. This reduced Jones' workload and, in the programmer's opinion, improved the art. [8] Each monster was drawn by hand in different states such as stationary, moving, attacking, and dying. The drawings were scanned into the computer and added to the game; if there were problems, they were redrawn. Once the final drawings were complete, the images were colorized in 24-bit color using Adobe Photoshop. [7] Despite the game's advanced graphics, Pathways was designed to work on any Macintosh model; it was one of 30 applications that ran natively on Apple's PowerMacs on launch day. [11]

By July 1993 the game was behind schedule; only the above-ground portions of the pyramid were complete. Jones put in eighteen-hour days for the month leading up to the MacWorld Expo where the game was to be sold. He finished the game in a relatively bug-free state just before the Expo, and Bungie had 500 shrinkwrapped copies of the game available for sale at MacWorld. [7] Due to the game's difficulty, Bungie published an official hint book. [12]

Reception

Pathways was positively received. Inside Mac Games reviewer Jon Blum wrote that Pathways was "one of the best Macintosh games I've ever played". [13] Computer Gaming World described Pathways as "a dungeon crawl, pure and simple". The magazine praised the "simple, elegant and easy to use" user interface and "excellent" graphics and sound. Computer Gaming World concluded that while "somewhat weak on actual game play", Pathways was "a job worthy of a strong recommendation". [14] Macworld 's Steven Levy commented that the gameplay and graphics were extremely smooth. He singled out the creatures for specific praise, likening them to "something that might have come from a brain-merge of Tim Burton, Anne Rice and Hieronymus Bosch" instead of simple line drawings. [15] Criticisms of the game included the difficulty level; Blum found some segments too difficult and that it was possible to spend hours playing before realizing that the player had made an irreversible mistake. [13] [12] Reviewers also found the limited number of save spots and sparse ammunition frustrating. [14] [16] Jones admitted that the game was harder than he had intended. [8] The title received several awards, including Inside Mac Games' "Adventure Game of the Year" and Macworld's "Best Role-Playing Game", and was listed on the MacUser 100. [17] [18]

Pathways sold more than 20,000 copies, [12] beating expectations and making it Bungie's first commercial success. [19] It was the third bestselling Macintosh title of the first half of 1994 after Myst and Sim City 2000 , [20] with projected seven-figure sales for the year. [9] The game made Bungie enough money that the company was able to move from Seropian's apartment to a dedicated office in Chicago's South Side. [17] At their new location, the Bungie team expanded and began work on another first-person shooter, Marathon . Interviewed by Inside Mac Games, Jones said that he did not believe that there would ever be a sequel to Pathways. "There's a lot of reasons for that, one of them being that I tend to dislike sequels," he said, "A lot of cool things have happened with the rendering technology since Pathways shipped, and it suggests some different products which don't really fit into the Pathways world." [8]

Pathways would later be bundled in a box set with the Marathon series in 1997. [21] A Mac OS X port of the game was produced by Man Up Time Studios in 2013, members of whom were early Bungie fans that became acquainted with the company through Pathways. [22]

Related Research Articles

<i>Myth</i> (video game series) Video game series

Myth is a series of real-time tactics video games for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. There are three main games in the series: Myth: The Fallen Lords (1997), Myth II: Soulblighter (1998), and Myth III: The Wolf Age (2001). The Fallen Lords was developed by Bungie, and published by Bungie in North America and Eidos Interactive in Europe. Soulblighter was also developed by Bungie, and was published by Bungie in North America and GT Interactive in Europe. The Wolf Age was developed by MumboJumbo, and co-published by Take-Two Interactive and Gathering of Developers for Windows and by Take-Two and MacSoft for Mac.

<i>Marathon Trilogy</i> Video game series

The Marathon Trilogy is a science fiction first-person shooter video game series from Bungie, originally released for the Classic Mac OS. The name of the series is derived from the giant interstellar colony ship that provides the main setting for the first game; the ship is constructed out of the Martian moon Deimos. The series is often regarded as a spiritual predecessor of Bungie's Halo series.

<i>Halo: Combat Evolved</i> 2001 video game

Halo: Combat Evolved is a 2001 first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox. It was released as a launch game for Microsoft's Xbox video game console on November 15, 2001. The game was ported to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in 2003. It was later released as a downloadable Xbox Original for the Xbox 360. Halo is set in the twenty-sixth century, with the player assuming the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. The Chief is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence. Players battle aliens as they attempt to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.

<i>Star Wars: Dark Forces</i> 1995 video game

Star Wars: Dark Forces is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1995 for MS-DOS and Macintosh, and in 1996 for the PlayStation. The story is set in the fictional Star Wars expanded universe and begins shortly before the original Star Wars film, before flashing forward to a year after the film's events. The game's protagonist and playable character is Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working on behalf of the Rebel Alliance who discovers the Galactic Empire's secret Dark Trooper Project, which involves the development of a series of powerful new battle droids and power-armored stormtroopers.

<i>Myth: The Fallen Lords</i> 1997 video game

Myth: The Fallen Lords is a 1997 real-time tactics video game developed by Bungie for Windows and Mac OS. Released in November 1997 in North America and in February 1998 in Europe, the game was published by Bungie in North America and by Eidos Interactive in Europe. At the time, Bungie was known primarily as developers of Mac games, and The Fallen Lords was the first game they had developed and released simultaneously for both PC and Mac. It is the first game in the Myth series, which also includes a sequel, Myth II: Soulblighter, set sixty years after the events of the first game, also developed by Bungie, and a prequel, Myth III: The Wolf Age, set one thousand years prior to the events depicted in The Fallen Lords, and developed by MumboJumbo.

<i>Myth II: Soulblighter</i> 1998 video game

Myth II: Soulblighter is a 1998 real-time tactics video game developed by Bungie for Windows and Mac OS. Published by Bungie in North America and by GT Interactive in Europe, the game was also ported to Linux by Loki Entertainment. It is the second game in the Myth series, and a sequel to Myth: The Fallen Lords. In 1999, an expansion pack, Myth II: Chimera, was released. Developed by the Badlands mapmaking group, in association with Bungie, Chimera is set ten years after Soulblighter. Originally released as a free download, Chimera was later published by Bungie as part of the Total Codex bundle, incorporating it into the official Myth canon. In 2001, a third Myth game was released, Myth III: The Wolf Age, set one thousand years prior to The Fallen Lords, and developed by MumboJumbo.

<i>Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete</i> 1992 video game

Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete is a 1992 role-playing adventure video game for Macintosh by Bungie; produced by Jason Jones and Alex Seropian.

<i>Dark Castle</i> 1986 video game

Dark Castle is a 1986 platform game for Macintosh that was originally published by Silicon Beach Software. The original game was designed and animated by Mark Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay with Real Sound by Eric Zocher. In Dark Castle, a young hero named Duncan tries to make his way to the evil Black Knight, dodging objects as well as solving occasional puzzles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Seropian</span> American video game developer

Alexander Seropian is an American video game developer, one of the initial founders and later president of Bungie, the developer of the Marathon, Myth, and Halo video game series. Seropian became interested in computer programming in college and teamed up with fellow student Jason Jones to publish Jones's game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. The two became partners, and Bungie grew to become the best-known Apple Macintosh game developer before being bought by Microsoft in 2001.

<i>Realmz</i> 1994 video game

Realmz is a fantasy adventure and role-playing video game first developed and published by Fantasoft in 1994 for the Apple Macintosh as shareware. Fantasoft released a Microsoft Windows-compatible version in 1999, and a science fiction role-playing game based on the Realmz engine, titled New Centurions, in 2001. Realmz was originally written by Tim Phillips on a Macintosh IIsi; he also wrote four game scenarios, including the introductory scenario "City of Bywater". Other original scenario contributors were Jim Foley and Sean Sayrs.

<i>Marathon Infinity</i> 1996 video game

Marathon Infinity is a first-person shooter video game, the third in the science fiction Marathon Trilogy by Bungie. The game was released on October 15, 1996 and included more levels than its predecessor Marathon 2: Durandal. These levels were larger, and formed part of a more intricate plot. Marathon Infinity, unlike Marathon 2, was originally released only for the Apple Macintosh. However, Bungie released the source for Marathon 2 in 1999, allowing the development of the open-source multiplatform Aleph One engine that is also compatible with Infinity. In 2005, Bungie released the trilogy to the public as freeware, allowing the games to be freely downloaded. In 2011, Bungie released the source code for Marathon Infinity itself, preceding an official Aleph One-based port for iOS the next year that is available free.

<i>Marathon</i> (video game) 1994 video game

Marathon is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Bungie, and released in December 1994 for the Apple Macintosh. The game takes place several centuries into the future in outer space and sets the player as a security officer attempting to stop an alien invasion aboard a colony ship named the Marathon.

<i>Lode Runner 2</i> 1998 video game

Lode Runner 2 is a puzzle-platform game released in 1998 for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. It is a sequel to Lode Runner and its remakes. Like the earlier Lode Runner's Rescue, Lode Runner 2 has isometric-perspective 2D graphics. It was developed by Presage Software and distributed by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows and MacSoft for the Macintosh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason Jones (programmer)</span> American video game developer and programmer

Jason Jones is an American video game developer and programmer who co-founded the video game studio Bungie with Alex Seropian in 1991. Jones began programming on Apple computers in high school, assembling a multiplayer game called Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. While attending the University of Chicago, Jones met Seropian and the two formed a partnership to publish Minotaur.

Mac gaming refers to the use of video games on Macintosh personal computers. In the 1990s, Apple computers did not attract the same level of video game development as Microsoft Windows computers due to the high popularity of Microsoft Windows and, for 3D gaming, Microsoft's DirectX technology. In recent years, the introduction of Mac OS X and support for Intel processors has eased porting of many games, including 3D games through use of OpenGL and more recently Apple's own Metal API. Virtualization technology and Boot Camp also permit the use of Windows and its games on Macintosh computers. Today, a growing number of popular games run natively on macOS, though as of early 2019, a majority still require the use of Microsoft Windows.

<i>Battle-Girl</i> 1997 video game

Battle-Girl is a 1997 multidirectional shooter video game developed by Ultra/United Games and originally published by Power Media for the Macintosh. In the game, players assume the role of the titular character taking control of her Soyuz 1183-A BattleCraft to save the Great Machine by eradicating malicious programmers released by Terminus, a weapon of Chaos. Its gameplay uses a two-joystick configuration reminiscent of Robotron: 2084.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First-person shooter</span> Video game genre

A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of games helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.

Bungie, Inc. is an American video game company based in Bellevue, Washington, and a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company was established in May 1991 by Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones after publishing Jones's game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. Originally based in Chicago, Illinois, the company concentrated on Macintosh games during its early years and created two successful video game franchises called Marathon and Myth. An offshoot studio, Bungie West, produced Oni, published in 2001 and owned by Take-Two Interactive, which held a 19.9% ownership stake at the time.

Pool of Radiance is a series of role-playing video games set in the Forgotten Realms campaign settings of Dungeons & Dragons; it was the first Dungeons & Dragons video game series to be based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules.

References

  1. ↑ "Pathways Into Darkness". Bungie. Archived from the original on April 16, 2000. Retrieved February 3, 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Deniz, Tuncer (June 1993). "Sneak Peek: Pathways Into Darkness". Inside Mac Games ., archived at pid.bungie.org.
  3. ↑ Bungie (1993). "Player Window". Pathways Into Darkness Manual. p. 19.
  4. ↑ Bungie (1993). "World View Window". Pathways Into Darkness Manual. p. 16.
  5. ↑ Bungie (1993). "Conversations". Pathways Into Darkness Manual. p. 24.
  6. ↑ Bungie (1993). "Story Introduction". Pathways Into Darkness Manual. pp. 1–3.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Deniz, Tuncer (December 1993). "The Making Of: Pathways Into Darkness". Inside Mac Games .
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rouse III, Richard (October 1993). "IMG Interview: Bungie's Jason Jones". Inside Mac Games .
  9. 1 2 Marti, Carmen (February 17, 1994). "Game boys: Blazing 'Pathways' into computer-game industry". University of Chicago Chronicle. 13 (12). Retrieved March 17, 2010.
  10. ↑ Harris, John (December 11, 1993). "New games to put on the 'wish' list". The Advertiser.
  11. ↑ "Power Mac – 30 Native Apps Shipping, 150 Total". Newsbytes.
  12. 1 2 3 Mahin, Bill (March 23, 2000). "Monsters in a Box". Chicago Reader . Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved March 19, 2016.
  13. 1 2 Blum, John A (September 1993). "Review: Pathways Into Darkness". Inside Mac Games .
  14. 1 2 Mulligan, Richard (November 1993). "Pyramid Power!". Computer Gaming World. pp. 122, 124. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  15. ↑ Levy, Steven (January 1994). "Macworld Hall of Fame; Best Role-Playing Game: Pathways Into Darkness". Macworld : 99.
  16. ↑ Savignano, Lisa Karen. "Pathways Into Darkness - Review". AllGame. Archived from the original on November 15, 2014. Retrieved February 22, 2023.
  17. 1 2 "Bungie History: Primordial Soup – Pathways!". Bungie. Archived from the original on April 26, 2008. Retrieved March 16, 2010.
  18. ↑ Levy, Stephen (January 1994). "The 1993 Macintosh Game Hall of Fame". Macworld : 99.
  19. ↑ "Bungie". Icons. Episode 318. December 9, 2004. G4TV . Retrieved July 14, 2010.
  20. ↑ Landis, David (September 22, 1994). "New movie service gets rolling". USA Today . p. 5D.
  21. ↑ Crotty, Cameron (December 1998). "20 Unforgettable Games". Macworld . p. 75.
  22. ↑ Dague, David (April 9, 2013). "Bungie : News : Community Focus: Man Up Time Studios". Bungie.net . Retrieved December 20, 2020.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.