by Kate Welch
This is the story of my overwhelmingly emotional playthrough of Journey.
I played the first half of the game more or less on my own; I ran into a couple of fellow travelers, but our time together was brief.
Then, one night, I began the second half. Almost immediately upon starting, I was joined by an anonymous someone and we ended up beating the game together: slogging through the elements of the wastes, dodging the dragons, stopping and calling loudly when we got separated, waiting for one another to unlock new areas, nudging and singing to each other as we travelled.
At the very end of the game, after you collapse in the snow and enter The Afterlife or Paradise or whatever you want to call it, we goofed around together, expressing what limited exuberance we could to each other. We flew and surfed and played, but never strayed too far, and I found myself looking for his white song bubble to make sure he hadn’t continued on without me. He hadn’t.
When we were done, we landed together on the snowy platform just short of the crevice. We both knew we were about to beat the game. My friend started to run circles around me, mashing his song button — our established form of urgent communication. I had no real way to tell him goodbye, so I walked in the snow to form the shape of a heart. He walked the same path, then drew an even bigger one around it.
Then we turned and walked into the light together, and the scene faded on our two shrinking silhouettes.
Kate Welch is the web UX lead at ArenaNet, trying to help ship a video game. Previously, she was a game reporter on YouTube, where her most constructive feedback was usually suggestions about where exactly in the kitchen she should be standing.
Return to Journeys: A Curated Collection of Writing on thatgamecompany’s Journey
