Why Journey Is Still A Masterpiece Ten Years On

gamerant.com:

For many of those outside the industry or who don't count playing games among their hobbies, it can be easy to see video games as vacuous, violent, and repetitive. Of course, this may have been more true a decade or so ago, before the medium became as mainstream as it is today and attitudes began to shift more profoundly. Game stories are making their way to wider audiences and showing skeptics that there can be more to the pastime than shooting and explosions. The upcoming TV adaption of The Last of Us is a classic example of this cross-platform transition, and might bring even more people into the realm of video games after its release.

While narrative-focused games were nothing new ten years ago, Journey's release made plenty of players and critics sit up and pay attention, and hailed a new era of creativity for the medium. Journey provided an experience for gamers that was purely magical, that transcended aspects that can traditionally divide like identity and geographical space, and that provided a cohesive and beautiful adventure unlike any other. The game was a masterpiece when it was released, and it remains a masterpiece to this day.

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Thatgamecompany pulled off something miraculous when it released Journey in 2012. The developer created an experience that could be shared, that felt emotionally charged, and that was truly impactful in a game that didn't have a single word of dialogue or barely any characters. The story was gleaned purely through environmental factors and an extremely limited number of cutscenes. Despite its elements of cooperative gameplay, players could barely interact with each other except for musical chimes. The other player that gamers