The Pathless release date confirms the open-world archer game is a PS5 launch title

Open-world eagle-petting archer game The Pathless will arrive on PS5, PS4, PC, and Apple Arcade on November 12. 

Developer Giant Squid, which you may know from Abzu, confirmed the release date today through a PlayStation Blog post. Until now, The Pathless has been vaguely scheduled for a 2020 release, and while it will also be available on other platforms, it's no coincidence that its final release date lines up with the PS5 launch. The PS5 version will support 60 FPS visuals, and creative director Matt Nava says you'll feel "the force of every arrow shot with the DualSense controller’s haptic trigger effects." 

We last saw The Pathless at the August PlayStation State of Play presentation, where its first proper gameplay walkthrough showed us the general structure of the game. You play as a huntress bonded with an eagle companion, and together you explore a gorgeous minimalist wilderness in search of temples, obelisks, and cursed spirits. By solving temple puzzles and repairing obelisks, you can weaken the malicious spirits so that you can hunt them down in flashy chase sequences. Before they're weakened, however, you need to hide from them, which adds some good old-fashioned stealth grass to the mix. 

Combat and movement are built around archery, with the Huntress shooting down floating idols to refill her sprint meter and maintain her momentum. Exploration is also tied to your relationship with the eagle: if you keep it happy by cleaning and petting it regularly, it will carry you over and cross obstacles. If anything, our eagle might get sick of us because we'll inevitably pet it too regularly. 

Our list of PS5 launch games is slowly filling out. Here are all the other games that will be available on November 12. 

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.