The instrument and musical idea associated with it is removed from the score entirely, meaning that the oboe and its melody can never be heard again for the rest of the game, and is replaced with the sounds of nature. Upon defeating the first boss of The Pathless the player chooses to engage with, Cernos from the Forest Plataeu in this case, the music enters Act 2 and does something unexpected.

In his YouTube video explaining this system, Wintory makes a point to note that the game tracks the player's location alongside the score which allows for seamless musical transitions, as the new biome's instrument picks up right where the previous left off. However, things get really interesting once the player defeats their first boss and enters Act 2. Each combat encounter implements more dynamic music by taking those instruments and expanding their orchestration to better follow the tension of the battle. The Forest Plateau is represented with the oboe, the Redwood Steppe with the double bass, the Great Plains with the bamboo flute, and the Mountain Tundra by the bass clarinet.

Related: 2020's Most Underrated Video Gamesĭuring Act 1 of The Pathless, each biome (and its boss) is represented with its own instrument. Some examples of this are the ' Bounding' layer which adds percussion and other instrumentation when a player maintains a certain velocity for a certain amount of time, as well as the Stalk Events (red storm) having their own musical identity. The score is split into three acts that are separated by a biome's boss and feature a specific instrument to represent each biome. While working through each act, the team included various ways to add variety and avoid repetition with its minimal use of music. To start, it's crucial to understand the representation of the system that is pictured above.

The pathless forest plateau