A few hours into my climb, I hit the first of Cairn’s seemingly insurmountable walls. The cave formation I’d descended into housed surfaces denser than anything I’d encountered on the face of the mountain. It was impossible to sink a piton into, meaning I’d have to effectively do a free solo climb to overcome it and progress.
At least, that’s what I told myself. And so I threw myself at the jagged and uneven edges of that crystalline cavern. I tried and failed to find decent handholds and steady footing in the cracks of the walls. I slipped and fell a lot. Aava, Cairn’s protagonist, slipped and fell a lot too, and as she did she scraped the bandaging off her digits, bloodied her feet, and screamed in frustration and contempt. Contempt at the choice I had made to stick her in this cave, and maybe even the choice that she’d made to climb Mt. Kami in the first place.
I think Aava and I are made of the same stuff, though, because we both bullishly pushed on. Eventually, we cleared that cave. We climbed its walls and came out on top. And you know what we were greeted by? An alternate path. One that appeared a whole hell of a lot easier than the path I’d made Aava take up. And you know? Deep down, I had known there must’ve been some other way up. I had known that Cairn threw down this gauntlet as an option and–perhaps because the game’s development team understands the kind of masochistic, self-flagellating person who would play a game this demanding–they knew I’d pick it up and run with it rather than look for a way around.
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