Paired with another Austin Wintory score that's both somber and electrifying, The Pathless is equal parts calming and arresting. Trees bend in the wind, tall grass parts with your every stride, and rivers snake through the plateaus almost as fluidly as the huntress herself. Developer Giant Squid has taken the lush colors and clean lines of its previous game, Abzu, and somehow applied them to something much larger and more diverse without sacrificing any detail. Each plateau has a distinct aesthetic that evolves once you cleanse its guardian spirit, and every single one is breathtaking. This is partly thanks to the raw beauty of the environments you're running through. I have never wanted fast travel less in my life. This is the video game version of runner's high, and in the eight or so hours it took me to clear the game, it never, ever got old. I stopped obsessing over the reticle and started focusing on what was ahead of me, comfortably landing power shots all the while. I was a bit shaky and overly careful at first, meticulously aiming and timing shots while watching the target reticle, but within an hour or two I was ripping over hills and blitzing through forests without a care in the world.

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