So far, Carmen’s is the only house where I’ve heard the “Safe Song” that plays when you stay on the path to Grandmother’s house. I look forward to your analysis of Ginger, my favorite of the characters. Although she accepts the wisdom (the grown tree), the acceptance causes an identity crisis. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal. Also, concerning the soundtrack, the “safe” ending for Carmen plays that little “la la la la la la” ditty all the way through, with a piano piece in the background, and it only begins to sound eerie towards the end, when you get the feeling that a game like The Path couldn’t possibly be playing something so light-hearted so repetitiously without some kind of sinister intent. First off, the room is found past not one but two doors with X’s on them, X for rejection. A glorious age for a girl. I think we can go ahead and say they had sex. He keeps working. But the sound file is called woodsman-sexmoan. In the character select screen she is seen posing with a hat, a possible foreshadow to when she takes the hat off the Woodsman Wolf. It’s super-interesting. The sub-conscious is weird). Like I said, I don’t claim that my understanding is the only one. The woodsman cutting trees down while Carmen is watching and getting drunk may simply allude to witnessing a terrible event – the woodsman destroying the tree(s) – and feeling guilty that she couldn’t stop it. Tale of Tales Wiki is a FANDOM Games Community. I’m still not exactly sure what that one was about. Here is my interpretation of the pool room (this, of course, does not invalidate anyone else’s interpretation). Rejection is a major player in the mental and emotional stability/growth of adolescents, and it can mess you up badly. personally, at 37 (a good age!) She’s just there. It’d be like saying everyone is a murderer because everyone COULD go outside right now and kill someone. Carmen’s character is very real, and as you degrade her I feel as if you degrade other woman who act like her in everyday life. Granted, the “X meaning no” thing makes a great deal of sense, but could she honestly take rejection that hard? A lot of the analysis people are posting here would fit in great with the rest of the entries on that page. Chances are, he doesn’t get to choose the trees that he needs to fell. All my niece (who is 5) EVER hears from anyone in our family, apart from me and my husband, is how beautiful and cute she. It looks like he’s a lonely simpleton who had a hot young girl throw herself at him. The fire is decidedly too close for comfort, close enough that you’d get a first or maybe second degree burn from it if you actually stood that close to it for very long, which implies that the wisdom, while valid, hurts. I also spent a lot of time bumping into random objects just to see what would happen. I fail to see how literal horrible, violent death is about growing up. The girl in white represents something which draws you away from things which may lose you your innocence. All of them could be correct, but many of them are a greater reach than others. Carmen is Torque's deceased wife and the mother of his children Cory and Malcolm. She flirts with him, swiping his hat and putting it on herself. You know, sometimes a huge wooden shaft penetrating a bed is just a cigar. And it always had to do with sex. It could simply mean that Carmen no longer exists as she was prior to her life-altering event. The Riviera Maya is one of Mexico’s hottest tourism draws. It was elevated and decidedly had the look of a throne, and standing atop a pile of mattresses decidedly implies sexual conquest, given the context. Fear which lurks around you whilst on the way towards the wolf to draw you back to the path, and which surfaces briefly whilst in the layer of the wolf before instantly retreating. Sure, he kept using his axe (on the trees) but he’s a forester and we just walked into his camp. Young teenage girls who behave like this are not evil lust succubi but human animals who are products of their environments. Carmen lay crumpled on the path to Grandmother’s house, arms and legs folded under her. I tried to resist. Of course I find the whole concept of sex outside a committed relationship being a bad thing utterly infuriating. Assuming the wisdom-tree perspective, the final room represents either Carmen embracing the wisdom of the woodsman, and the tree of wisdom now stands fully grown at the end of the day, however she is also suffering an identity crisis. While I do not consider it quite as likely as the explanation that they had sex, I am even considering the possibility that what “hurt” Carmen is not that they had sex, but that he treated her like a child, and as such refused to have sex with her. WOW! These are the unbelievably hot girls who would find the biggest, strongest, best-looking complete jerk they could get their hands on, and then endlessly whine about how “men are such pigs”. @ Maldeus Chairs in dreams and literature can frequently symbolize dismissal of feelings. Through this, though the GiW is constantly there. I may take something completely different away from it than somebody else does and in the absence of author comment nobody is wrong. Not to sound like a Shamus fanboy, but it seems like saying the Path is about rape is at best debateable, and at worst questionable. Finally, the red “X”es are also on the trees that the woodcutter has marked for cutting, before the end. Carmen’s path has something to do with sexuality, otherwise they wouldn’t have put so much of a “oh look how sexual and flirty she is, that silly girl” vibe in her little blurb. Which had nothing to do with deconstructing the game or discussion. You’ve got my interest in The Path back up and running again, after it took a steep nose-dive after hearing stuff like ‘rape simulator’ and ‘buggy piece of crap’, so thanks for that. But no more. From a warm and handsome man, perhaps. Off the beaten path in Playa del Carmen. Located about 30 minutes south of Playa del Carmen, Playa Xpu-Ha is a less well-known beach that is more popular among the locals. In the house there are noises but I think that it may just be the fact that she is dreaming and that it didn’t really happen. Cool series of posts about a much-maligned game. What kind of property investment do you need to have to get a place like that in your elderly years? She is fully aware of the heads that turn when she passes by. Your reading of Carmen reaks of “nice guy syndrome”. What this means is a fixed or at least aerial camera and the inability to run. It sounds unsure because, of course, she isn’t, and deep down inside she knows it. As a guy, I never understood the “dangerous is sexy” girl-thing. Mattresses as new duties/responsibilities comes from the “marriage bed” concept. Carmen is an ultimately tragic figure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp76VCOSDzQ, That is the girl in white > look at some of the other videos for the path and you might understand her part in it a little more :). And yes, with Carmen especially it’s very easy for me to insert my own issues. Peels me layer by layer. He doesn’t need to be as wild as she is, but it wouldn’t hurt. Sure, you may not get a picture-perfect ocean view or the people-watching experience of a sidewalk café on Quinta Avenida, the city’s buzzing pedestrian corridor, but instead you get delightful local flavor and truly memorable experiences – and you avoid paying inflated tourist prices. Maybe she’ll sneer that “men are all pigs”, and then go find the next wolf in her life. The artist have something he or she feels is important, but it is so convoluted, or over-provoking (or both) that most people just disregard it as “just another artist doing artsy things” and not even consider looking at it closer. That throws off the “X means no” theory and switches it to “X means target.” That makes the wisdom-tree interpretation much less likely. Get it as soon as Mon, Feb 8. (Because evidently I didn’t count as a man, since I wasn’t included in the “pig count”.) @Everyone: Following that statement, I do find this game suffers from the same problem that a lot of temporary art does and this tend to lead to two behaviors by the “simple masses” (of which I am a part): 1. I feel sorry for them at thirty-seven. A glorious age for a girl. The bed is where we go to end every day and yet arise from it anew every morning. If the tree represents wisdom, it means that the wisdom has been destroyed or possibly, going with the chairs, dismissed. Do we really need to call on the Power of Freud for this? Maybe it was on the path to one of the “memory objects”? When I first heard of this game, it was nothing but “OMG LOLI RAPE!” So, naturally, I was curious to find out what the hoopla was all about. In that instant, Carmen stepped through a door in time into a new reality - the reality of human life. But I can’t help it. I tapped the forward key, and with a motion that made me think of a drunken spider she raised an arm, rolled herself onto her back, brought herself to a sitting position, and stood up. I see the girls as individuals, but tied closely together because they are sisters. He almost completely ignores her, and doesn’t respond to her flirting at all. Haven’t played the game. I don’t think anything happened and I think he said no. You just stumbled into a three-year-old thread, pronounced the whole thing wrong for no reason, and then backed it up with same lazy ad hominem. FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by Amazon. (unless of course you decide to stick with the darned rape/perverted old man theory…sigh…in me and some other people’s opinion no way she would let him do anything even if she was drunk…he was too old and ugly to seriously be interesting at all to her “in that way” for all we know he could’ve been a friend that just happened to be older than she was or a relative same as in the various red riding hood stories and maybe she wasn’t really flirting with him at all…they hardly ever say if he is a relative but sometimes in the story the woodsman is a relative, right? I played the game (really briefly) and I had to find a discussion like this immediately. Parasailing Over The Ocean. Whenever Carmen approaches the woodsman, he will stop cutting the trees. The fact that we still, today, judge girls and women (who are single, and not cheating on anyone) as sluts if they sleep around is making me very angry. But inside she knows that all she wants is a little bit of attention. Carmen is … @Jattenalle: I think you’re on to something – the Girl in White (GiW) is definitely key to the story, in particular, in context with the Prelude (I keep coming back to that). I was angry at them at seventeen. I think the encounter with the woodsman was literal, and only Grandma’s house is figurative. So, basically, it seems to me that Carmen saw something horrible – an accident, a crime, a disease, or something less obvious – and blames herself in some way. She doesn’t go after men who abuse her unless that’s what she’s used to. A seed is planted, and it grows. Wait! And from the old, familiar vantage point of a child, she can’t help but seeing the tree in the pool. I find it unnecessary, boring, and simply a way to avoid saying things outright. Depending on your faith system something happens or not to the soul but either way it’s not about growing up. When Carmen reaches the Camp Site, she will find her Wolf in the guise of a lumberjack or woodsman. Placing the tree in the bed may simply mean that Carmen still dreams about whatever the tree represents, which is of course lost.