Open-world archery game The Pathless received a new trailer at today's Playstation State of Play, and it's achingly gorgeous.
The trailer opens with a closer look at the masked hunter in action. She sprints effortlessly over the game's verdant hills, and by shooting floating idols, she can refill her energy bar to maintain momentum and add in acrobatic leaps. The hunter's eagle companion also ties into movement: it can carry you over great distances while gliding, and even bring you upward as long as you have feather charges to spend. You can improve your eagle's ability to fly by collecting crystals, which ought to add another incentive to check every nook and cranny. More importantly, you can – and need to – pet your eagle to keep it clean, happy, and ready for flight.
Speaking of nooks and crannies: there's no map in The Pathless, so you have to examine things yourself using the hunter's spirit vision. This reveals new objectives on the horizon, including puzzle-packed temples, obelisks, and cursed spirits. By collecting obelisks and returning them to obelisks, you can make cursed spirits vulnerable and set off to fight them.
These spirits seem to be the big, area-specific targets in The Pathless. Until you finish the matching obelisk, you can only hide from them. But once they're weakened, you bring them down in hunt sequences reminiscent of Horizon Zero Dawn. Shoot idols to keep your energy up, hit spirits' weak points to wound them, then face off in arena-style boss battles. That's not necessarily how every spirit fight will play out, but it seems to be the template – and it looks mighty cool.
The Pathless is coming to PS4 and PS5 this holiday season.
