Mind – Path To Thalamus : beautiful vistas, puzzles, and pretentiousness

TurinTur · August 11, 2014, 2:00pm

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsvME_tN-Cw
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/08/11/mind-path-to-thalamus-review/

First impressions
-Wow this game is beautiful!! You have to watch it.
-Wow this game is really pretentious! A mix of guilt trip, philosophical inane ramblings and cheesy “deep” lines.
-Puzzles aren’t bad, they scale up smoothly and they seem to be easy generally speaking, it isn’t a “hardcore” puzzle game

The game is lacking in options, I have to edit an .ini to have inverted mouse and you can’t change the volume / sound mixing.

flyinj · August 11, 2014, 2:07pm

Saying the writing is pretentious is giving it too much credit.

The writing is just downright fucking awful. It’s a damn shame as the rest of the game is really quite good.

Bandersnatch · August 12, 2014, 12:16am

Pretty sure Sophia is in the barn.

Teiman · August 12, 2014, 1:24am

Pretentiousness is showing a taint of mental seamen, after mental masturbation, in public, for a forced public.
Life is a madman running on a house getting rekt by a earthquake, while eating chinese fortune cookies for answers.
PhiloSophia is a cat not interested in the answer, but new querys. All the answers form a hard to swallon (and disgusting) ball of light.

The video make it look like a myst game, but in real time. Maybe is a new genre, Real-Time Myst Game (RTMG).

Sten_Friberg · August 12, 2014, 8:47am

You fascinate me.

TurinTur · August 13, 2014, 2:30pm

Finished. I had to check youtube to solve 1/4 of the second to last puzzle.

Yep, writing was awful. I still recommend it just for the woaah vistas (dev should make a VR version) and the enjoyable if not mindblowing puzzles.

flyinj · August 14, 2014, 4:41pm

Today they patched out almost all the dialog. And, as an added treat, they posted a statement from the writer.

It seems in the beginning like he’s admitting that he has absolutely no talent and is apologizing for putting us through his masturbatory ramblings… but then in the end he’s promising to write an even better script that they will patch in later. He even says the fucking awful voice actor they used is “excited” to voice act this amazing new script.

Ugggh!

Clive Cussler:

The scriptwriter for MIND, Luka Nieto, has a few words for the community:

"When I wrote the script, I did it around a game that was already essentially done. Of course, the story had already been thought up during development, and the design of the game reflects it, but how much of the story would be explicit was still on the air. When I got the job, we decided to design the storytelling with a simple premise: you would get a snippet of the story each time you solve a puzzle. We were so much inside the box of development that we couldn’t see it, but we got too carried away with that premise and resorted to way too much padding, repetition and off-the-point philosophical disgressions. All I can say is our intentions were good; we knew it was filler, in a way, but it was meant to accompany you while walking. Also, the pretentious text does tried to pay off in the end —I won’t spoil the ending, but the early levels in particular were certainly supposed to sound annoyingly pretentious. Obviously, we went way too far. Essentially, the feedback is clear: neither the filler nor the disgressions worked as intended.

We aren’t changing our vision of the game, but we are adjusting the script so that our vision of the story is clearer and also so that it’s less intrusive to the gaming experience. Right now, you’ll get an update that cut outs pretty much all the filler, the repetition and the unnecessary disgressions. But soon, in September, you’ll get another update with a re-structured script and lots of redone voice work, which will have a more appropriate tone and register. Both I and Greg Nugent, the voice actor, are really, really eager to work on all of this. Although we already have plenty of ideas on how to improve the script, we would love to get direct feedback from our players, so we have created a Reddit thread in which you can voice your own specific concerns. As long as you are constructive, we accept any kind of criticism, however harsh. We really do want to improve the game.

We hope today’s update and the more thorough update next month will greatly improve your experience of MIND: Path to Thalamus. As I am not the man who designed it, I can say that it is a beautifully designed game, both visually and in terms of the puzzles. The story was meant to support it, not detract from it, and we hope that that will be the case soon."

Miramon · August 15, 2014, 6:20am

Very sad little apologia.

Giaddon · October 30, 2014, 8:10pm

What the Fudgelstiltskin, this game is awesome!