For metafiction, to be a postmodernistic tool, it has to be used in the way, to show us exactly what you already told about postmodernism (highlighting how the structures, social norms and assumptions we make everyday distance us from the reality beneath them). In short, it has to show that the medium itself is the reality, is one of many realities.

Has The Path done that? In a way it has. The game showed us, how artistic can this medium be. It showed us, that this medium can be art. And also, very characteristical for postmodernism, it combined something artistical with something more common (like Eco’s The name of the Rose is written in form of a murder mystery).

But than again, modernistic elements are also present. It showed us how very important is the perception of a player. How every player forms his own reality.
And that goes also for the girls. Every girl has different impressions of objects they collect. And most important, they have different impressions of the wolf. This shows for me the fenomenological concept of reality.

So the question that pops out here is; Is it even possible to make something not postmodernistic in this postmodern time? The very idea to deny postmodern is itself postmodernistic. Isn’t it?

I don’t think postmodernism’s ‘basic element’ is quite so easy to define, though. Self-reference is certainly a common element in postmodern art, but I’d say it’s far from the most important or defining characteristic (though this is, by nature of the beast, highly open to discussion).

Postmodernism for me – and the closest I think anyone’s come to presenting a unanimous definition – is about highlighting how the structures, social norms and assumptions we make everyday distance us from the reality beneath them. This is why metafiction is such an important tool, because it focuses attention on precisely those cultural structures.

On that level I think we might say, in fact, that The Path is anti-postmodern in the sense that Tale of Tales proposes there IS no reality beneath the simulacra and assumptions.

All the same, this still renders The Path a game concerned with postmodern concepts, if not the proponant of the postmodern ideal I may have implied.

Pathologic, I would agree, is a fascinating game that I’d like to spend more time with.