Thousand Threads opens outside a tent in an unknown land, a dirt path presenting one potential way forward. If you stray from it, odds are a wolf will take notice and attack; you might fend it off with a stick, you might outrun it, or you might accidentally lead it to a house and watch in horror as it attacks the two randomly generated occupants that were sitting calmly a moment before, minding their own business. You might seek out more people and start performing little odd jobs for them; you might also return to the path and find the dead body of the region's mail carrier, still carrying a sack of undelivered letters.

It's a hell of a setup for Thousand Threads, a first-person exploration game that, over several hours, delivers on few of the promises these opening minutes set up. Nothing I experienced in the game after quite matched the excitement I felt in those opening minutes up to the point where I found the dead mail carrier. That's not to say the game isn't charming in places, though--this large open world has stories to tell and sights to see, even if they emerge at an achingly slow pace.