“Atonement” is the composition for the sixth level of Journey, known as “The Temple”. In this level, the player must build cloth bridges to ascend up a large tower, along the way restoring magic to the area and reflecting on the journey thus far.

“Atonement” is a very warm track both in tone and orchestration, with an uplifting melody and the return of the cello. This is due to the fact that the level itself is return to the warmer color pallet and tone of the previous sections of the game, compared to the darker blues and greens and more sinister nature of “The Tunnels”. The contrast between the two is stark.

“Atonement” is very interactive with the game, with music cues only continuing once the player has activated another part of the temple. For example, one of the most memorable scenes in the whole game, the emergence of the cloth whale, is paired by a music cue with the cello that Wintory calls “The Guo Waltz” (after Tina Guo, the cello player on the soundtrack). The track is sprinkled with these sections that are specific to certain parts of the level. While the tracks beforehand had specific music cues as well, “The Temple” called for specific cues for everything, leading to the player’s in-game rendition inevitably being vastly different than the soundtrack version. As Wintory put it in his text commentary

It was the first area of the game that felt like I was communing in a deeper way with the environment itself.