"Our goal is to expand the boundary of emotional experience that games can communicate," Jenova Chen, ThatGameCompany's co-founder and creative director told me following my preview session of Journey. And in the span of 30 minutes, I would run the emotional gamut from fear to confusion to acceptance and back to fear. Clearly, the journey is both metaphorical and literal.

The game opens with the fading of a white-hot sun, the dimming light revealing vast sand dunes. A beacon of light, emitting from a far-off mountain barely visible in the distance instilled in me a sense of urgency. Silently I stood for a while, ignoring my instincts in an attempt to soak it all in. There we were, the sand and I, alone. It was an almost comforting bleakness.

As I took my first steps forward, pushing the sand out in front of me like a sheet with a pocket of air trapped under it, I made it my goal to reach the light. Walking up and down dunes small and large, I eventually stumbled upon what I could only describe as a shrine. Suddenly, my character was surrounded with an aura that highlighted the folds of my clothes and gave me a the tiniest bit of a scarf.

As it happens, the game is less about me and mostly about that scarf.