Pathways into Darkness: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

 

The "best" ending.

      

Pathways into Darkness

United States

Bungie Software Products Corporation (developer and publisher)

Released 1993 for Macintosh

Date Started: 25 April 2025 

Date Ended: 24 May 2025

Total Hours: 31

Difficulty: Hard (4.0/5)
Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

     

Summary:

     

A well-designed first-person shooter, Pathways into Darkness has a couple of light RPG elements but wasn't really suited to this blog. You play the last survivor of a commando squadron sent into an ancient pyramid on the Yucatan peninsula, where a malevolent alien being is awakening after millennia of slumber. You must fight through hordes of enemies to plant a nuclear device at the bottom level of the dungeon. Along the way, you meet the ghosts of previous expeditions (as well as your own squad-mates), loot their stuff, and get more capable with a variety of weapons and alien crystals. A number of tricky navigation puzzles and limited saving round out the difficulty in this challenging, innovative, atmospheric game.

    

*****

        

It's amazing how a couple of days' break turns "I'm done with this game" into eight more hours of play. I checked my backup drive, and I had made a copy of the Macintosh hard drive I use in Basilisk about a week before the last entry posted. My character was on "I'd Rather Be Surfing," so pretty much where I was at the beginning of the last session, although less far along than that because the first thing I had to do was travel upwards.

      

Finding the crucial violet crystal.

            

I went up two levels to "The Labyrinth" and explored until I found the violet crystal, then made my way back down. This time, instead of rushing through the next few levels, I made sure to explore every corner and find every potion so I'd have a good stock for the final series of battles. I got so paranoid about needing every possible potion that I reloaded every time I got poisoned by a venomous skitter. This was a lot. I spent most of the 8 hours reloading on those levels and trying again. There was one corridor on "But Wait, That's Not All!" where I'm convinced it's impossible to make it without getting hit at least once, but I tried about 15 times anyway. When I finally admitted failure, curing the resulting poison was the only potion I used in the entire sequence of levels. I made it to the endgame with about 15 blue potions (heal), four bubbling red potions (speed up the character), and three pale violet potions (avoid damage for a time).

      

My least favorite part of the replay.

       

Eventually, I was back to where I ended the last session, trying to take on a sequence of rooms in which a dozen or more of each enemy type appears in the same order the player encounters them in the dungeon. As you wipe out each wave, a teleporter becomes available to the next area. There are 12 areas total, with no saving or resting along the way.

   

It took me maybe five tries to get through, and it only took me that many because I was stingy with my potions even though I didn't need to be. (Keep in mind, though, that I didn't know what the rest of the game would look like after this sequence of rooms.) With as many potions as I had, I could have healed twice in most of the harder rooms, which would have been enough on its own. I had enough red and violet potions to use one of them in all of the difficult rooms and still have a couple of spares. The effects of potions, by the way, are canceled when you go through each teleporter, so you have to use them when you arrive in the room, and there's no way to time things so they're active for two rooms.

     

Wiping out the first room in 10 seconds.

    

This was my experience with the various rooms:

   

• Headless. Trivial. One use of the green crystal (earthquake) wipes out most of them, and it's easy to dodge the rest and pick them off with the AK-47. No one who has made it this far is going to suffer a lot of damage here, except perhaps for the first time, when you might arrive utterly unprepared.

• Zombies. Also trivial. Another blast of the green crystal and a few AK shots.

• Phantasms. I've accidentally been calling these things "phantoms" for the entire game. Without the violet crystal, as I discovered last time, they're damned near impossible, since no weapon hits them and the only other crystals that damage them—blue, red, and black—only damage one at a time. With both red and violet potions, plus plenty of healing, you can just make it, but it's a good thing I went back for the violet crystal. It damages multiple enemies at once, in a sort of "cone" in front of the character. With it, they're all dead in a couple of blasts.

      

I can still barely see these bastards.

       

• Ghouls. Back to easy. Another blast of the green crystal and a few shots. Of the first four rooms, the player shouldn't have to use any potions unless he fumbles the phantasm room.

• Nightmares. These are those flying fish that shoot electricity balls. They respond nicely to the violet crystal, but still, they do a lot of damage and it's easy to get overwhelmed with them. I found that I needed either a red or violet potion, or at least one healing potion, to get through this room.

• Oozes. For me, this was one of the three deadliest rooms. There are just so many of them, and they sponge so many bullets, that I needed either a red or violet potion, plus at least one blue potion, to get through it. It might have been easier if I had used HE rounds, but for simplicity's sake, I only made batches of SABOT rounds.

• Wraiths: These are the flying ghosts that can only be seen with the infrared glasses. For all that, they do very little damage, so as long as I remembered to put on the glasses (I didn't the first time, as I didn't know they were next), a couple shots with the violet crystal and my AK-47 were fine. 

         

I don't think of them as "hard," but they nearly got the best of me this time.

     

From this point forward, I learned that it was best to just use either the red or violet potion the moment I arrived, lest I make a mistake and have to replay the entire sequence.

   

• Shocking Sphere. Immune to everything but the gun, you just have to spray and pray. I usually could make it without a red or violet potion, but I definitely would have to use a blue one to heal.

• Skitters. Annoying, but they respond to the green crystal. Again, by now I was using a potion just to be safe.

     

The skitters lose their legs for a moment thanks to my green crystal.

       

• Ghasts. These are the worst. They have that "earthquake" attack, which does massive damage, and they are unaffected by the green crystal, so there's no way to disrupt them short of shooting them. When 12 of them launch that attack at once, there's really no way to survive unless you've slowed them down with a red potion or protected yourself with a violet one. Either gives you enough time to fill the room with lead. Even then, I needed a blue potion to heal.

• Venomous Skitters. Not so bad. Being poisoned sucks, but not for the amount of time it takes to clear a room. One blue potion at the end was fine.

• Greater Nightmares. This was the second-most difficult room for me. Their electricity balls can't be dodged, so you need some advantage until you can clear at least half of them.

         

I come awfully close to having to do all of this again.

     

The first time I made it through the end, I ran out of SABOT rounds in the last room, with three greater nightmares left. I had made at least a dozen magazines before I started, but you burn through ammo fast in the endgame. I had to run around the room and kill them slowly with the violet crystal. Then, after all of that, I forgot to set the damned nuclear bomb before accidentally wandering into a one-way portal back to "I'd Rather Be Surfing." Rather than make my way all the way back down, I reloaded and did it again, which took me a few more tries.

      

Note that I never used the black crystal. It instantly kills one enemy (the closest), but it leaves its corpse in place, which can screw up movement. You could even block yourself from getting down a crucial corridor with that. I don't think it's worth it. I also barely used the grenade launcher. It takes too long to load and too long to create ammunition for it. Oh, and while we're on equipment: was the gas mask used for anything?

   

Once the last Greater Nightmare is defeated, the djinn who's been orchestrating everything from the center of each room becomes vulnerable. I'm only half-joking in calling him a "djinn." Some commenters said that he's supposed to be the big alien bad guy who you're there to stop in the first place, but I don't think that's true. I think the alien is still slumbering. This guy is the spirit who came out of the bottle that the Cubans were looking for. The hint book calls him a "flaming smokey dude" and doesn't give any suggestion that he's the alien. I do wish I knew more about his backstory, though.

         

Whatever he was, he's dead now.

      

Once the djinn dies, he leaves an "alien gemstone" on the ground, which I suppose is a tick mark in the column for him being the alien, but if so, what happened to the creature that the Cubans brought in a bottle? In any event, the Cubans insisted that I couldn't escape without the gemstone, so I grabbed it. I immediately started losing big chunks of health, but I had been waiting for an excuse to use the lead-lined box that I found on a previous level, and this was clearly it.

     

This also seemed like a good place to set the nuclear bomb, which the game confirmed by allowing me to do it. I entered the code, including the new first three digits given to me by my dead compatriot. It was Wednesday at 03:29 when I set it, nearly a day and a half before the deadline. I set it to detonate in 30 hours.

 

This was about 28 hours more than I needed.

 

    

I should mention that you can't save during any of this. From the moment you enter the 12-room sequence, you can't save until you leave the level and find the first rune on "I'd Rather Be Surfing." It's a bit nerve-racking.

    

The trip back to the surface was otherwise simple. I just had to make my way from one ladder to the next, killing the rare individual enemy who had spawned since my first pass through the area. I thought the authors might have flooded the dungeon with monsters, but they didn't. I could have set the bomb for 1 hour. Because I had plenty of time and I had to go through that level anyway, I stopped on "Beware of Low-Flying Nightmares" long enough to collect the 11 gold ingots behind the locked door, for which I now had the key. A German soldier was dead in the room; his fellow soldier, Walter, had shot and killed him when he saw the gold in the room.

      

I came to save the world, not get rich, but I'm not going to complain if I get rich along the way.

       

I thought about going back to Captain Muller to see if he had any new dialogue now that I had all the gold, but I couldn't remember where he was, and none of the dead NPCs so far had responded to anything I'd done in the environment. I did verify that Captain Muller's plan wouldn't have worked; gold ingots do not fit inside the Cedar Box.

   

At length, I returned to the Ground Floor. The alien gemstone allowed me to open the door to the exterior. Beyond that was a pointless final battle against half a dozen ghouls. When I walked down the hall, the game took over, indicating that the extraction team picked me up and took me to safety. A few hours later, the bomb detonated and buried the "dreaming god."

       

The game then briefly switched to an exterior shot of the pyramid, which detonated.

      

Wait for it . . .

     

Finally, I got my endgame statistics and score. I'm not sure how much treasure I missed. I had an expert marksmanship badge (on the M-16) in the Army Reserves, so that part of me is always going to be a little irked at an accuracy rating of 68%, but honestly, I'm just glad I got through the game. 

     

How do yours compare?

     

I took a video of the final battles, setting the bomb, and escaping the dungeon (omitting most of the walking back to the ground floor). Watch below if you're interested:

     

        

After I won, I reloaded and played with some of the ways to lose the game. Each results in a simple message:

         

If you don't set the bomb in time.

If you set the bomb but don't make it to the exit before it goes off: a "Pyrrhic victory."

If you set the bomb and make it to the exit in time, but don't leave enough time for extraction.

      

As we've discussed, Pathways doesn't really meet my definitions of an RPG. The only way it comes close is the skill level that it assigns to each weapon. Every time you "level up," you do more damage, and at a greater distance. But with only two "level-ups" per weapon, and with every character essentially guaranteed to reach maximum level in all of them, it fails my fourth criteria: "Players must have some control over the rate or details of development."

   

Nonetheless, I'm glad I played it. I enjoyed the challenge. I whine a lot about how I'm not good at action games or first-person shooters, but I don't really have any basis of comparison. I'm probably better than I think I am. I had a moment in Pathways when I was leaving the dungeon. I was heading down a hallway and heard the unmistakable sound of a skitter shooting a missile at me from behind. I instinctively dodged to my left just as I heard the sound of another missile being fired by a second skitter. I waited for the first to fly by on my right, then dodged right and watched the second sail by on my left. I then turned a corner and continued on my way without even turning around. That felt pretty badass. I enjoy those moments of satisfaction when you realize that you've "gotten gud," and I appreciate a game that offers the right sorts of audio cues, visual cues, and controls to help you get there.

   

On a GIMLET, I give it:

   

• 6 points for the game world. It tells a fun, original story, backed up with environmental cues and NPC dialogue. It also leaves a few mysteries open to interpretation. I wouldn't say that the player's actions "measurably affect the game world," but otherwise, I wish most RPGs did as well with their stories. 

• 1 point for character creation and development. It barely deserves that. There's no creation, and the only development is through those weapon skills, which are essentially automatic.

• 5 points for NPC Interaction. This is perhaps the first game I've played in which all NPCs are dead. You don't often see keyword-based dialogue in first-person shooters, nor the delivery of complex lore and clues through NPC dialogue. Pathways is definitely RPG-like in this category.

     

I grew to love this part of the game. NPC lore is both interesting and vital to success.

    

• 5 points for encounters and foes. The game has a satisfying number of monsters with different strengths and weaknesses, just like an RPG. Its non-combat puzzles are less interesting, but I gave an extra point here for what some gamers call "level design," which otherwise doesn't have a place in the GIMLET.

• 3 points for magic and combat. It comes down to shoot and dodge, with some additional tactics offered by the crystals.

• 5 points for equipment. You have an escalating series of weapons, crystals, potions, and a few special use items. I appreciate that the game offers a textual description of each.

   

Some of my late-game stuff. I used the red velvet bag for treasure and the canvas bag for stuff I didn't think I'd be using again.

      

• 1 point for an economy that only contributes to your final score.

• 3 points for a main quest with no role-playing options or side-quests, but at least some alternate (bad) endings.

• 6 points for graphics, sound, and interface. I thought the graphics were great here. I don't know what else I would ask for. Sure, they're clearly not "modern," but in this case, I don't know that more advanced graphics would really add anything. The keyboard shortcuts were intuitive and responsive, and the sound quality superior. I offer particular praise for the clear, informative automap.

        

I would pay extra for most 2025 games to offer such clear maps.

      

• 6 points for gameplay. It's a little bit nonlinear and a little bit replayable, but most of the points here go for the satisfying challenge and the enjoyable length.

       

That gives us a final score of 41, not bad for a non-RPG being rated on an RPG scale. I don't know what a first-person shooter addict would give it, but I think it's near-perfect for its scope and intentions, and particularly for its era. I struggled whether to subtract any points for allowing the player to enter a "walking dead" situation, as I almost did, but I don't know. My own mistakes turned a game that wouldn't have lasted much more than 20 hours into one that lasted about 30, which still isn't too bad. I don't think it's necessarily poor game design to force a player to learn from his lessons, as long as he doesn't lose too much time in doing so. I don't punish Ultima for making you wander from town to town to find a key NPC, so I'm not sure Pathways deserves any point reduction for making the game unwinnable if you similarly miss an NPC in a corridor, or use too much ammunition, or what have you. It's not like it doesn't give you enough save slots.

       

Looks to me like there's only one valid pathway.

            

Richard Mulligan offered a mostly-positive review in the November 1993 Computer Gaming World, essentially calling it a fusion of a "dungeon crawler" and id's Wolfenstein 3D. He felt that the difficulty was extremely uneven throughout the dungeon but that the interface worked great and that the game offered crisp graphics and atmospheric sound. "Overall, a job worthy of a strong recommendation," he concluded. Inside Mac Games review Jon Blum said in September 1993 that it was "one of the best Macintosh games I've ever played!" Despite that enthusiastic endorsement, he had some qualms about the difficulty; he echoes my own sentiment in saying, "I'm almost tempted to say that Pathways is too hard, but then again I did solve it."

     

Fans of Halo and Bungie's other modern games should be grateful that Pathways did so well; an old G4 article credits the title with keeping Bungie alive. Author Jason Jones took his experience with Pathways and used it in the Marathon series (1994-1996) and then the Halo series starting in 2001. (In between, was the Myth strategy series.) We won't encounter them again as a developer, alas, although they did publish Paranoid Productions' Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis, a 1996 RPG.

    

While I was researching the game and looking for solutions to my problems, I found this 28-video series by YouTube creator Jeoku, and I want to offer it particular praise. This is the way I would want to do videos if I had the time (or if I were a vlogger instead of a blogger). I've never understood the appeal of watching other gamers play games instead of playing them myself, but his "in-depth" approach is one I can get behind. As he goes through the game, he stops frequently to consider aspects of history, technology, and mythology. As he encounters each new enemy, he reviews what Bungie has to say about it in the hint book and analyzes its strengths and weaknesses. He frequently pauses to show maps and explain his strategy and to introduce outside content from articles, reviews, and message boards. It's hard to imagine more comprehensive coverage.

   

With that, we have at least emerged from the darkness. It would be funny if there were an equal number of upcoming games with the word "light" in them that I could put on the list as a contrast, but developers curiously seem to avoid it. We'll just have to metaphorically acknowledge that the light at the end of the 1993 tunnel is starting to faintly appear.