15th Journey - The One Where I Explored Out of Bounds

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Journey!

I ended up missing the official event time due to being busy with other things (didn't feel too bad about it, I had already planned to make this a more light-hearted journey), so I ended up doing it today instead.

I ended up pretty much alone through my whole Journey and I didn't really mind at all.  Sometimes when I take my annual Journey it's a chance to reflect on things, to think about life and how I relate to hardship, companionship, and things like that.  This time it was more of a playful exploratory hike.

The two things that defined my Journey this time were going "out of bounds" as well as "charge-boosting".  Out of bounds refers to the areas behind and outside of the stage proper, which you can reach in various ways depending on the level (often involving flying over the windwalls, or clipping through certain points of level geometry).  Charge-boosting refers to an interesting flight technique (requires either white cloak, or a good buddy) whereby you can "accumulate" downwards flight energy and then expend it to fly upwards.

I took some photos this time!

Here's me going out of bounds in the "Broken Bridge" first level.  There are two ways that I know of to clip out of bounds here, one involving a "head bonk" into a certain spot, but this time I did it by doing a big charge boost up and over the level bounds.  I seem to have gotten a lot more comfortable with these boosts and it was really rewarding to sail over the edge of the level.  You can actually go out of bounds in the chapter select as well, but I've forgotten how to do that...

Another shot in the back of Broken Bridge.  There's a floating tapestry up in the sky here!  I think this what they point the camera at in the history lesson cutscene, probably.  The sand dunes here are really huge!

I didn't go anywhere notable in Pink Desert (nowhere to go out of bounds that I can remember of), and I wandered around a bit (I always have trouble remembering the landmarks in PD), but I managed to do a charge boost up to the top of the end tower without climbing it the conventional way, which was fun!  There are two types of charge boosts -- one where you can charge for an arbitrary amount by pressing against certain walls / corners, and a second type where you simply use vertical height and flight power (often aided by scarf fliers) to do a sort of "boomerang" motion where you go down for a while and then come back up.  This was the latter.

Now we're here in the sand surfing area -- specifically, the mid-stage "rest stop".  There's an interesting charge boost spot here on the right side and you can use it to fly up to this invisible ledge far up in the sky.  The rest spot is also a place where I like to practice the flier-assisted charge boosts, as there's two groups of fliers that you can use to help you charge up.

It took me a little bit to remember how to get out of bounds in the Pink Desert -- you get there after the "drop" into the final area of the level, by climbing up onto the scaffolding and then making your way gradually upward until you can clip through.  The Pink Desert easily has some of the most fascinating OOB areas because of the abundance of extremely glittery sand.  It often manifests in very steep cliff walls which you can scale.  They look really interesting!

More really shiny sand cliffs...

Probably the best shot I got from this session.  It looks like there's glitter everywhere!

Here I found what looked like "the edge of the world", where a floor plane cuts off into nothingness.  It's interesting seeing it billow in the wind.

The out of bounds area in the Undergound level is a bit scary because it can be easy to get lost, and I have some not so great experiences in there, so you have to be careful.  I spent some minutes wandering around quite lost in there, but managed to find my way to some interesting sights.  This is an interesting shot of the scaffolding high up in the level, from out of bounds.

Wandering around out of bounds has a much different vibe here because of the murky haze effect and the vignetting at the edges of the screen.  It's a bit dreamlike and I was happy to find any sort of landmarks that indicated that I was still in the general area of the stage and not at risk of being lost to the darkness that can consume you if you wander too far..

Another interesting area viewed from out of bounds.  Looks like some sort of liminal space?

This was really cool too!  Unfortunately after I jumped down from here I got trapped in a nook and could not escape -- ended up having to reset and chapter select out.

 

In the Tower level, I unlocked the first water level (with the fliers) and then charge-boosted all the way to the top!  That was fun and I impressed myself with how well I was able to manage the charge-flying.  It's definitely something that takes practice, as you have to manage a number of different things all at once: You have to point the camera down, you have to press forward, but also diagonally to the side to keep turning, you have to hold or tap R1 (or X) to fly, and you also have to hold down O and repress it every so often, to shout and activate the fliers.  It's actually for this reason that inverted Y-axis camera controls work much better, because for fancy flying it's way more common to want to tilt the camera down rather than up, and it's easier to do that and press R1 / O at the same time if you press the stick forward rather than back.

 

I didn't remember the OOB areas in the snow level too well...I got up to the first set of initial ledges at the beginning of the level, but wasn't quite sure where to go from there.  It's a shame because I remember other companions showing me some really cool things back there.  I tried the "headbonk" entrance later, but I may not have had enough scarf length due to the chapter select reset, so I decided to just press onward.  Maybe I'll have to look this up for next time and try to play around in this area some more.

I didn't linger too long in paradise since it was nearing dinnertime, but I did play around a little bit with meditation jumps -- if you perform a certain technique, you can do a leaping "squat", which can cause you to slide off of slopes while sitting.  It can lead to some fun rides as you fall down sloped mountains!  There's a fun opportunity to do it at the end of the game at the final plateau as well, and the "superman glow" effect from the golden pillar of light actually activates as well, so you fall down off the slope like a glowing shooting star!

And after all that, I walked into the light and called it a day.  It was a nice fun Journey, and I felt good to be able to explore the OOB areas by myself.  I've been to many of those places before, but most of the time accompanied by a chaperone...I feel like going by myself and refamiliarizing myself with all of the various ways to go out of bounds has really helped me know my way around them better.  Sort of like how if you're just following line-by-line directions to go somewhere, you won't necessarily remember your way next time, but if you're exploring a neighborhood and mapping it out yourself, you get a better sense of where everything is.