Chances are that today you have already made a number of choices. What you plan to eat, where you’ll go, who to speak to, when you will do tasks, and how you will do them. Life is all about our choices big and small, yet every choice leaves an unknown. How different would your life had been if you had chosen something different to eat for breakfast? Or, in an alternative philosophy, were you always fated to make that choice? On the surface, The Pale Beyond is a survival game about a ship crew that gets stranded in the ice, and you have to make the choices to keep them alive. Plunge deeper and you discover a game that will make you question choice and destiny.
The Pale Beyond sees your character, Robin Shaw, become the First Mate of The Temperance. The ships mission is to find The Viscount, a ship that was lost in The Pale Passage five years previously. The reason why is unknown to almost everyone on the crew, including Robin, and the nature of how this mission came to be is also shrouded in mystery. This is how every run of The Pale Beyond starts and it can be argued that this is a set fate in the universe. You may be wondering why fate and free will are core elements within The Pale Beyond. Read on but be aware there may be mild spoilers.
The Pale Beyond has 40 different ways that the story can branch, with these branches depending on your choices as Robin Shaw. It appears to be quite a lot of ways for the story to branch out giving the impression that you have a lot of free choice in what can happen to you and the crew as you try to survive. However, what is learned is that the are certain events that are always fated to happen. The Temperance will always get stuck in the ice, the captain will always disappear, and Robin will always become the acting captain. You can go back and select a different point on a branch and make different choices, but these core events will always happen. The Pale Beyond makes it clear you have no free will in this matter, even when it teases options that can never be taken. Much like having breakfast, really. Once you make a choice for breakfast on a particular day, the other choice that you were considering can never be taken for that time.
The Pale Beyond has quite a few moments like this, events that are always fated to happen no matter the choices you make. But there are choices you make that do have an impact on your relationship with crew members, and their survival. As you can imagine, resources are scarce on the ice and there are dangers around too. There are limited actions you can take in a day, and the resources you have access to will be set by some of the earlier choices you make regarding certain crew. You need to decide who to send to scout areas, go hunting, find resources. You also need to choose how to manage relationships with the more influential crew members, as their choices can alter the fate of the expedition too. All this while also making sure that the crew don’t succumb to wounds, frostbite, and scurvy as supplies dwindle.
Choice and fate are not mutually exclusive of each other. Just like in life, an impact of a choice in The Pale Beyond may not be felt for some time, no matter how minor it is. For example, when gathering resources you may only be able to pick food or a gun. At the time, you do not know what will happen on the ice in the future, but having that extra food after a few more weeks on the ice could be the difference between starvation and full bellies. But not having that gun could lead to other unintended consequences. Whatever choice you make, the fate of it is sealed.
The Pale Beyond is not the first game to deal with fate and consequences, but it is one that makes it easy to manage decisions. At any point you can select a point on a branch and reload the game from there, though you’ll lose the progress of the current branch, letting you see how a decision you made would play out if you make a different choice. In the much later stages of The Pale Beyond, provided you survive long enough, the question of fate and choice hits front and centre if you make a certain decision. This moment again makes you question free will and fate, as you learn about what has happened before and how cyclical the events of the The Pale Beyond actually are. The Pale Beyond is much more than a survival game. It is a microcosm of the wider philosophical debate of free will and fate that has been cycling through the eras.
