Pathologic has been a weird beast of a video
game... franchise... for me when it comes to making YouTube content. Literally for years now, I've been wanting
to make a big video essay on the game to take it apart and share the myriad of thoughts
that I have on it with you. I've made this 45 minute long video on
"The Void" a while back -- the other ‘big' title by the same developer,
Ice-Pick Lodge -- and this one was already a juggernaut to
research, write and produce. And the result ended up being a video that
only covered about maybe 20% of what I could have said and gone into about
the game at the time. And this amount has already increased since
then. And I always knew that Pathologic would be
an even grander task to tackle in a video. Now, technically, I've already made a video
about it; but it was a short commentary, a good while
back that I released exclusively for my Patrons that was titled "Why You Should Play Pathologic" in which I, without any big script or anything, tried to get across what makes this game so
worth playing and... that I was planning to make a video on it,
at the time. I projected it to take a couple of months
but -- well, [Jonathan Frakes] It Never Happened! Not for lack of trying though! By now, I've attempted to write a video essay
on Pathologic multiple times and I've tossed far over of 10.000 words of
written script into the bin because I always ended up being unhappy
with the direction, approach and... just everything, it just never felt right. Which, I think, tells you a good bit about
what kind of game Pathologic is: it's, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant
video games ever made, but it's also a very strange one, a tough
one to approach and deciper and chew on. Because it really needs some dedication to
get into the game's very unique mindset. But hey! In May this year, after several years
of development, 15 years after the original Pathologic was
first released, Ice-Pick Lode blessed us with the "sequel",
Pathologic 2! I've been following the game's development
quite closely over the past 5 years, backed it on Kickstarter, played the Marble's
Nest standalone demo and played several Alpha and Closed Beta versions
before launch. And ever since the game released in the final
version, I've spent a lot of time with it, and what can I say? Pathologic 2, luckily, turned out to become
one of the best video games
I've ever played in my entire life. And in this video, I want to give you a
-- mostly -- spoiler free rundown of *Why* this game is so genius in my eyes
and why you should absolutely play it. I still intend to work on an exploration of
the game's story, themes, lore, symbolism and all that. But until that happens, this video is my attempt
at convincing you that this game is worth playing and that the developers should be supported,
so they stay in business. Sales for Pathologic 2 weren't exactly in
the regions of a Red Dead Redemption 2
as you can imagine and Ice-Pick Lodge has reportedly been
financially struggling because Pathologic 2 didn't get the attention
it damn well deserves. And I want them to eventually finalize their
vision of the plague-ridden steppe-town. So let's start with the big elephant in the
room question that people repeatedly ask
about Pathologic 2: Do I have to have played the first game? Nnnno.. you don't. In many ways, I actually envy you for not
having played Pathologic 1 yet, because your experience starting the game
without knowing what's going on in this town in which everything takes place
through the lens of the first game will be fundamentally different and...
maybe in some ways even *better*. But if you're worried that you're missing
out on previous story-elements that are necessary to understand
what's going on -- consider Pathologic 2 to be a remake -- a re-imagining of the first game's story. The events depicted in Pathologic 2 are exactly
the same incident as the one in the first one: a deadly pandemic hitting this town far out
in the steppe with you taking on the role of a doctor who
just so happens to be in town at the time. But it doesn't just overwrite -- retcon -- the
narrative of the first game and do it again. The first game -- happened. It's being acknowledged in Pathologic 2 on
several occasions, but you're also starting the events, the actual
same events of that incident "over", from the start. The whole thing is framed as being a stage
play in which you take on the role of one of its central... or ?supporting? actors. And the play played out in the first game
and now you... play it again because it came to a certain conclusion and
you wanna see if you get to a different conclusion. The game is quite meta in its presentation,
more on that later, yeah... The first game is also far... faaaar harder
to approach. It already felt clunky and hard to play back
when it was released and in hindsight, it's a tough beast to tame. Its gameplay often feels wonky and its system
are quite opaque, and getting into the rhythm in which the game
presents its story requires a massive amount of suspension of
disbelief -- especially from a modern point of view -- that needs a lot of effort to put in to build
it up. It *is* a fantastic game, don't get me wrong,
but it's also a title that's very hard to approach, especially from a modern player's perspective;
someone who is, y'know, spoiled by the development of video game design
in the last 15 years. So if you tell yourself "Oh hey, I'm gonna
quickly finish Pathologic 1 before I get to play 2", you might end up finding yourself in a dead-end! I can just tell you that it personally took
me years and several new approaches with lots of pauses in between to even finish
the first playthrough of the game. And yeah, there's three different characters
from whose viewpoints you experience
the events of the game and each one is essential to the game's story and each one takes many... many hours to complete. Also -- the translation in the first game
from Russian to English was notoriously bad, which got in good parts highly improved in
the re-released version called Pathologic Classic HD, which is the version of the first game I would
recommend if you're interested in checking it out, but the translation of Pathologic 2 in this
case is fantastic and it features some excellently written prose,
dialogue with so much nuance that it really makes it worth reading all
the dialogue very, very keenly and carefully. It is so well written that you can reliably
hear what a character thinks of you or other characters or events that have taken
place they're talking about from subtleties in their speech that's often
really meant to go over your head... especially as a new player who isn't really
in on everything. to make you feel like you are just one part
of the whole equation and not the central character
to whom everything is catered. And yeah, all these were elements that made
the first game also great; but this time, the English translation is
simply fantastic. So, starting with 2, you will begin the story
from scratch, just as you would if you started out with
the first game. But I must say -- in many ways, I find the
exposition, the way the story is presented to you and the way you,
as the player, are led through it, to be crafted more... efficiently... than
in the first one. It's probably one of the most original, surreal,
trippy and mind-bending tutorials I've ever played that doesn't even really fully feel like a tutorial. It's such a great narrative build-up as well
as an introduction to the game's basic mechanics and themes
in a playful way, It..it really works! I'm not gonna go into detail as to
why exactly I think that is, because that would spoil key elements of the game, but let me just say that Pathologic 2 features
one of the most brilliant uses of the
"in medias res" trope I've ever seen in a video game, or in any
story for that matter. In Medias Res, that's a story that begins
its first chapter somewhere at the height of the action,
where things are really going down only to then rewind back to the beginning
before everything unfolded. It's often used to give the audience a glimpse
of what's to expect, you know, to not bore people to death by slow
build up and everything -- but often times I find this trope a little
bit annoying, because it assumes that I don't have the patience
to "stand through" long phases of long build-up. But I kind of love that kind of storytelling. Anyway, In Pathologic 2, the opening is done
so mind-blowingly clever: it, at first feels quite on the nose, but it gets quickly across that this game
tells its story very indirectly and through seveal layers of... narrative
obfuscation if you will, that it constantly makes you question whether
what's depicted is a metaphor, or literal, or somewhere in between
or somewhere far off... Uncertainty is the natural state in this game,
not just narratively, but also gameplay wise. And it also strongly foreshadows the futility
of your own actions within this cataclysmic incident. And that... is one of the game's central themes. Pathologic 2, as I mentioned, plays out in
a remote city far out in the steppe in an undefined industrial age time-period
-- and location -- that is hit by a highly infectious and deadly
disease. The city is governed by three influential
families... or rather factions with different leading ideologies:
Humility, Utopianism and Preservation who will come into conflict with each other
over the course of the story. And you take on the role of Artemy Burakh,
son of the town's doctor Isidor Burakh and a surgeon who returns from his, not entirely
successful, medical studies in "Tha Capital" and who has a connection to the traditional,
indigenous Steppe ways of Healing. You are one of the few people in this town
with a semblance of professional medical knowledge, so your blood-tainted hands will likely become
an invaluable asset during this outbreak. The events of the game are separated in days
and -- that's an important factor --
time passes continously. The whole event plays out in real-time.
Every day goes from, surprise, midnight to midnight, but the things that happen in this town take
place no matter if you're there or not. This is not a game that waits for the protagonist
to show up: if you're not there, the plague, as well as
the cadre of characters involved won't wait for you. And everything will end in exactly 12 days. So make good use of your time: think about what you want to do and which
activities are a waste of your time, and don't sleep the days away. Time is a central currency in Pathologic 2. The town is built in an open-world fashion, where you
can technically enter every single house (which is not always legal and, town folks generally don't like you a lot
for breaking into their places and robbing them) and you will interact and talk with key figures
during the outbreak. I mean, you almost interact with with entire town;
you can talk with anybody and barter with anybody -- it really tries to not put any constraints
to what you can and can't do. Your actions will possible save...
or condemn lives and your choices will ideally determine....
or rather... influence, steer the path this outbreak might take. Mechanically, at its core,
the game has a strooong survival aspect. Everything is about surivial, really: your
survival, the town's survival, the families' and factions' survival, its
inhabitants and you constantly struggle with your own
hunger, thirst and fatigue. So you have to scavenge everything you can
find, including trash bins (I'm sure there's symbolism in that as well) and barter with pretty much everyone in the
streets, including the children... who are not as helpless as you might think
and who play a very important role
in the whole conundrum. The town really has its very own economy,
prices undergo massive inflation, because during a deadly plague, suddenly money
becomes pretty worthless. So most of the time, you're gonna find yourself
trading items that people want rather than paying them with cash money. And figuring out how trading with the townsfolk
works, which prices are reasonable and which ones
are cutthroat and who to trade with to get you what you
want is a central part of learning how this game
actually works and how to get ahead in the story and how
to, y'know, stay afloat. It's... quite clever, really. And let me clarify that: I, personally, are
not a big fan of survival games per se. Like, I've got nothing against the genre,
it's one that I respect and I completely see and understand its appeal. But it's just not my taste, it's not something
that I personally seek out for myself to play,
for enjoyment. And Pathologic 2 is, mechanically, a survival
game through and through and a rather tough one at that. But with this game, it surprisingly works
for me. And a big part of that is that the whole experience so perfectly interlocks all of its elements
within the game's metaphor that with this game, I don't just *tolerate*
the survival aspects, they actually captivate me. Playing the game for several hours and going
to bed after, I'll guaranteed spend the night planning and
strategizing in my sleep and waking up eager to get back into it. Even though -- or... no, in many ways even
because it is very unforgiving. It is a true challenge, but it is an *interesting*
challenge. Now, let's not beat around the bush for too
long and talk about difficulty, because this is where it gets juicy: Pathologic 2 is a game that is not. meant.
to. empower. you. And it is a game that is very often not "fun",
at least not in the traditional sense, but if it's played the way it's meant to be played, then Pathologic 2 will stress you out and
make you truly feel like you are just barely surviving, barely getting by while already
frantically trying your best. This is how you're meant to feel -- and there
is a point to all this. This is one of the key aspects of what makes
this game such an incomparable experience like, honestly, like nothing I've ever played before. Comparing to the first Pathologic, because
the way it's realized in the second one is so much more refined and so much more on
point to get this across, that it actually quite surprised me when the
game was finally released. And I... yeah I'm firm about this: the intended experience works even a lot better
than it did in the original even. There are several key changes in the game's
design that firmly drive this home. The closest comparison that I can draw with
other games to this is, for example, "This War of Mine", a game where you take charge of a group of
survivors in a warzone that constantly, and through gameplay instead
of scripted events, forces you to make tough, often unpopular
and harsh decisions for the survival of your group. Or Frost-Punk, by the same developer -- which
is a game that, when you're doing everything right and are
winning, is... is a neat town-builder at best. But if you start getting in trouble, and running
low on resources, and y'know doing thing wrong, making mistakes, this is when the game really starts to shine, because it plays with harsh decisions and
their consequences in the face of death and starvation. Pathologic 2 drives on the same tracks, and
it is phenomenal at this theme. But we're all extremely used and conditioned
to "empowerment" in video games. When we hear "In this game, you play a doctor
during the outbreak of a plague", we intuitively expect us to be "The Hero"
in the end. Sure, there's gonna be hardships, but we're
used to be the one who saves the day in the end, and who defeats the plague and will be honored
for their great efforts etc. etc. And Pathologic 2... [sigh] I mean, it's kind
of a spoiler, but it does not do that. It quickly suffocates this notion that you're
sent in to save the day, because after 2-3 days already, you'll find *yourself* struggling with your own resources so much that you'll end up having to abandon questlines
that you actually found interesting, and having to abandon people that you wanted
to save, simply because you don't have enough time
to get everything done and save your own hide. Will you run across the entire map to sell
these organs you're carrying around to the guy who buys them for a good price? Because it *is* gonna give you a lot of valuable
resources for it that you *dearly* need, but you will also find yourself super exhausted
and hungry when you arrive and you've also wasted a lot of time. Or will you maybe pay the boatman to carry
you half across town but pay for it? But that's expensive! It's a constant struggle and you constantly
have to evaluate what actions will cost you. And there are more currencies than just money. Y'know, if we extend the idea of currencies,
like, certain objects and their usefulness, time, fatigue, all that kind of stuff, all this is currencies that you intuitively
have to consider for each action you take. And even though in the first days, the game's
already showing its teeth, it gets a lot tougher over time. I mean, there is a plague that's breaking
out and its getting worse and worse over time
despite your best efforts. I'm trying not to go into too much detail, because discoring what happens is a crucial
part of the game and super interesting and often-times really
jaw-dropping; also in it's presentation, the game is fricking
beautiful, like I'm really impressed by how well they
pulled this all off, like visually and graphically and aesthetically,
is.. it's just [chef kiss] But yeah, I'm digressing! Umm, a lot of people were thrown off by the
steep difficulty of Pathologic 2 -- so much so that the developers added difficulty
sliders in a later patch with which you can adjust values like how
fast you get hungry, fatigued, how much damage you do and take
and how expensive items are -- you can really customize the game a lot
with this -- but I want to try and, for now, plead to you
to leave them untouched during your first playthrough, even though I can guarantee you that by that,
the game will be incredibly tough. Pathologic 2 is trying to be... far more realistic
in how it plays out consequences without catering to power fantasies. I've seen a lot of people complain kinda like "Oh my god, I got infected and then I tried
to heal myself with antibiotics and they're incredibly expensive but it almost
did nothing -- this game is broken!" Which... really, I get why we feel this. I get why we feel this game is broken because
of that, because when you compare it with other games,
usually for you, the player character -- around whom the narrative is spun,
for whom everything is built, y'know -- there's often a different set of rules by
which something like a deadly plague operates; because you don't want to throw the player
off and the player has to be the savior in the end, right? So we have to build in some safety mechanics
so the player doesn't get tossed off a cliff like every other "unimportant" side-character...
y'know? But hey, seriously, think about it: You. Just. Got. Infected by one of the most
deadly plagues in existence. What do you expect? Have a shot of vodka to
cure radiation poisoning? Nopenopenope. Pathologic 2 really makes it clear that....
you've... literally just been infected by one of the most deadly plagues in existence. Deal with it. Or... yknow, don't. And just die! If you were to contract the, say, Spanish
Plague in real life, well, I've got bad news for you,
you'd be just as fucked. But well... while your next days after, y'know,
contracting the infection would certainly not be pleasant -- they'd sure as hell be... an extraordinary
experience, wouldn't they? And yeah, without wanting to spoil anything
-- getting infected in Pathologic 2... it... it sucks, but it also leads to some
damn interesting... experiences... twists and turns... This is what it's about: Embrace Your Mistakes! Think about this: If you're a tabletop RPG player, you know
full well that when you have a good Storyteller or DM, rolling a critical failure often leads to the most interesting role playing experiences. Sure, frustration goes along with it, but
it's also... extraordinary! In video games -- Death is very often treated
as a state of "Well, you failed, so you better reload and
try again, because that is not how the story played out, let's do it right this time!" [gunshot] But Pathologic 2 is one of those games where
you have an exceptional DM. Death, or more precisely, failure, leads to
the most interesting experiences. And let me tell you this: Death is not the
end in this game! If you play through these entire 12 days "flawlessly", you will end up with a far less interesting
experience than if you ended up teeth-grindingly fighting
for survival, trying to save people from dying at a hair's
breadth, only to get infected yourself by the plague and finding out that you've nearly been doomed
to death, that trying to get rid of your infection is
so costly and extremely, frustratingly inefficient and then finding that you sacrificed your
last antibiotics that didn't even do shit to keep yourself alive for just a bit longer which made you ultimately unable to save another
infected person that dies
*BECAUSE OF YOUR CHOICES*! But that also includes the other side of this
coin, because if you know that your choices *truly* matter and can truly, y'know, pull you deep deep down, then doing the right choices and succeeding
is so. much. more. rewarding. Because it doesn't just feel like the game
just leads you to the path of success on rails, but it really feels like *you* understood
the systems and the city and what's happening, and you understood what was going on and *because*
you read it correctly and *you* took the right turns -- you succeeded
and you helped someone, genuinely. It's one of the best example of "Narrative
Effort Justification" that I've ever played. If you end up breaking into houses because
you're so hungry and can't find or barter food anywhere to
get you through the day and it gets critically close -- and then during that break-in you end up killing
some harmless, innocent person *in self-defense* while you were trying to scavenge their possessions... [sigh] it puts you in these impossible situations and all these choices the game notices and
remembers and takes into account -- y'know, without a generic "Clementine will
remember this." And let me say that again:
death is not the end! That is very important in considering how
to approach this game. Because you usually try to avoid dying in
a game so much so that we, y'know, save-spam or go back to an older save if we know "Oh,
we might not be able to do it!" but trust me: play it out! Even if it gets
critical, play it out and try to survive and try to do your best and embrace it... 𝖊𝖒𝖇𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖊 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍! So to fully exhaust the narrative potential
of this sadistic gauntlet run, I highly recommend going into the game
in the same way I usually recommend
going into The Void (The other game by Ice-Pick Lodge) Start the game as blindly as possible but approach it with the mentality that you
"play out your mistakes". Do not try to save-spam. Do not try to reach for the "best" solution,
because that doesn't really exist. It's a "role-playing" -- play it out! Expect to fail, but do everything in your
power to try and prevent your own failure (except y'know, cheesing the game) and Pathologic 2 will be an experience unlike
anything you've played before. Failing is not only okay in this game -- it's
the point. So if you're wondering why this game is so
frustrating because your Doctor-character character is
not able to take on 5 angry townspeople charging at you in a knife fight... you've been spoiled by video games because
the answer is right in your question: You're a doctor -- you're not a Navy SEAL. THUH CUMBAHT... is one of the aspects of Pathologic 2 that I saw very often bickered about by critics
as being frustrating and punishing. And yes, it *is* frustrating and punishing
-- but as I've said: That *is* the point. I've also read it being described as "janky" -- but as I just said, you... are a healer, you're
not a fighter. If you compare this game's fighting mechanics
with the original in which physical confrontations felt like
a half-finished half life mod, you can still clearly see the intention behind it. It's meant to be something that costs you dearly. Engaging in a fight was designed to be very
likely to hurt you, and every injury needs to be treated and the material to treat those injuries costs
valuable resources that you're already running low on all the
time. But -- in the original, the combat was also
very clear-cut and easily learnable. Especially if you would save-scum, you could
quickly find ways to hunt bandits at night without taking any damage all the time, for
instance and by that, break the economy and always
have your pockets filled with money and resources. It was... controllable. Which sounds good,
but it was to the detriment of the actual experience the game intended to get across. While in Pathologic 2, you can, sure, get
better at the fighting and optimize and learn, but its jankiness is designed on purpose. It's not the type of jankiness where it feels
like the developers didn't know what they were doing, but the fact that your body feels sluggish,
that you feel disorientated by the camera sway, when you go in to the actual brawl and especially
when you take hits -- and also the feeling that when your opponent
gets the drop on you, it's very hard to recover and sometimes next
to impossible to recover and get back in control over the fight.... this is all on purpose. It's supposed to feel
nasty, it's supposed to feel like something that
is not a joy, something that you don't *seek*. The game -- through loading screens, through
tutorials and through the things characters tell you
constantly really tries to hammer it in that fighting
is something that's - as much as you can - supposed to be avoided. This is not a shooter and this is not a beat'em'up! And you're not a character that's meant
to end lives or punch people to pulp, but you're somebody who's supposed to save lives. Such is your skillset -- and that's how fighting
in this game feels like. Like it's not your nature. After several hours of play, and very likely
some unfortunate confrontations that made you end up losing your life
and getting punished for it, I naturally became extremely wary of confrontation in comparison to the original where I got
on top of the confrontations and turned into a Batman at night who just
hunted bandits for reputation and money. Here, I tried to avoid being seen at night
as much as possible and *only* when I got a really good chance
of getting in there without being hurt I would take the chance -- but it still ends
up being something that feels very risky... for the reward that you get. Yeah, the fighting... I personally think
the way it is solved in this game is fantastic. It goes, as everything, as I keep saying,
perfectly in line with the game's central metaphor. [slashing, beating] [Bandit] Stop that! Anyway... Pathologic 2 is... an exploration of selflessness and selfishness. And it constantly gets you in situations where
you have to take incredibly harsh and painful decisions - but these situations do not arise from a fixed,
pre-written script, but they arise from the gameplay directly,
from the systems, from the mechanics. And if the developers would have made the
game so easy that, y'know, you would have a Call-of-Duty like "just enough
friction to make you feel mildly challenged, but never too much so that you could actually fail", all of this would go straight down the drain. Pathologic 2 is the beauty of disempowerment,
perfectly executed. Because very few games actually go to the
length to explore the complex emotions that lie within failure and shattered hubris. Experience this, emotionally, first hand. Like -- in most games that get the player
to make "moral choices", it mostly comes from the game putting you
straight into a situation where, y'know, have to make a choice, a direct binary choice. Like, often there's the classical greek-tragedy situations: "Oh, you can only save one of two people - you
have to pick now which one!" And that's great stuff, especially when you
have to choose in a heartbeat and live with the consequences. But -- you know, it's very constructed, it
*feels* very constructed, it feels like somebody wrote that and just
laid that in front of you and now pick! You, as the player, are being led to the choice
on rails, and as I said, it's in most cases very binary. But Pathologic 2 is a game that is so finely
balanced that these situations, these moments where you have to carefully
consider your actions and their consequences, they regularly arise from this intricate pool
of interlocking systems while always being clear enough that you often,
naturally, through deduction and observation have a solid grasp on all the ramifications
without the game having to spell it out for you. When you're an immortal observer, like in
most games, a participant that is telegraphed to be likely
"fine" throughout the rest of the game, there isn't really anything at stake, right? And that makes it hard to truly feel the weight
of your decisions. Only when you as a player, have everything
to gain or lose does this really come into play, it... yeah, it bears the risk of being frustrating,
true, but it's also [bsspppghh] beautiful. Because a moral choice simply gets so much
more gravitas if there are actual, real stakes and those stakes arise organically from what's
playing out in front of you -- and y'know, behind the screen.
Organically from the gameplay. And also importantly, are also clearly readable
and telegraphed to the player. You need to be able to understand them, not
just being blindly bludgeoned over the head. But Pathologic 2 is excellent at that. It makes it feel like your choices are *your*
choices and not a checkbox in an underlying
"choose your own adventure" that somebody else has pre-written for you. Now, thids game does contain quests,
in the quite traditional sense, that get triggered by all kinds of events,
conversations with people, things happening around you, ect. You get to keep track of them with this beautiful
Mind-map and with map-markers on the map and you can also look around with like a,
sort of, like, a Eagle-Sense to see in which direction your map-markers
are. So that's quite modern and all rather standard. But the way quests are designed and structured
in this game undermines the ... typical completionist mindset you're taught
by the vast majority of video games out here. Like -- we're used to, if we get quests, to
simply assume that finishing every quest in our list is -- of course -- a good thing! We're often even conditioned to compulsively
hunt for this checkbox-filling behavior. But Pathologic 2 isn't so straightforward there and often uses this compulsion to turn it
on its head. Because first and foremost, it doesn't just
want you to blindly run from icon to icon but it wants you to... listen, to understand
what's going on here and *then* decide if the task at hands is
actually worth pursuing and if your actions in doing so might have
a desirable outcome and effect on you and the people involved. Which means that, sometimes, not finishing
a quest, is actually the better option. And this will feel... backstabby to a lot
of people, because we're not used to this. But it's not like the game blindfolds you
and pulls you on thin ice and then laughs at you -- because if you end up finishing a quest that
will have a negative impact on the world in the end, then you've definitely overlooked a good handful
of big red flags that the developers waved right in front of
your face. Like, let me give you and example here -- and if you would like to avoid getting spoiled
about an important twist in a quest about ⅓ into the game, that's
completely fine. So I'll show you a timecode here and you can
skip ahead to that and just miss out on this. So at some point, your friend
Lara Ravel will ask you to help her in establishing a
Shelter for the suffering in her house. And since the running water supply has been
destroyed, she asks you to organize one of the big barrels
of water that are placed all over town for her endeavor. So you go out and find one of those barrels. But you realize that since water got really
sparse, and some vandals overnight have spoiled some
of the water in the barrels in town, guards are being posted in front of them. So you approach them and talk to them. And they tell you that they first want you
to test if the water in the barrels is clean or murky -- contaminated. And once you did that it turns out that the
guards with clean water barrels won't for the love of god part with them,
even for Lara's good cause. Only the guards where it turns out that there's
brackish water in the barrels will agree, because they don't need it anymore, and drive the barrel over to Lara's Shelter
if you agree to that. Now when I played this, this just... didn't
feel right. Why would I send contaminated water over to
Lara? But it was a way to "end" this quest. But I thought there's probably a different
solution that I haven't seen, so I decided to decline for now and since
I had more urgent matters at the moment, I took care of some other quests first. And eventually, at the end of the day, realized
that I ran out of time and in my quest-log... the mindmap,
I got the ominous "Some things aren't bound to happen"-marker. Which feels like I... failed? The questline ended in the conclusion:
"I didn't bother with the barrels. "Did I make the right choice?" So... I talked with some of my friends who
also played this game, and found that, some of them actually felt
so drawn towards completing the quest that they ended up sending the murky barrels
and that -- well surprise -- ended up contaminating the shelter which means
that during the next day, Lara's district -- and HER -- were infected
by the plague! I looked some more into it online, and yes,
it's correct: not finishing this quest...
IS the right choice here! It should seem "duh!" but the way we're used to quests operating
in video games, it simply isn't. It's extraordinary. And there are a good bit more quests like
this where, if you just blindly follow the map markers and don't actually pay attention what's going
on in front of you and what people are doing and saying; you're going to doom your friends to death! Or... maybe that was your agenda all along? Totally viable, it's really up to you... nobody's
stopping you! And this, I mean all this, is ultimately why
I find this game so genius. Because through its gameplay, it makes you
learn so much more about yourself". It, y'know, really makes you think! So, some of you might have opened metacritic
in another tab and realized that Pathologic 2 only received
around 6.2 average score by game critics, which is something I'd like to discuss a little bit. Because the bigger of a medium video games
becomes, the more we hear the argument that "video
games are art and supposed to be art!" Now, we can talk for hours about if "video
games are art and which video games are supposed to be art
and which aren't?" and we could go on with shouting at Roger
Ebert... But in essence, this argument often goes in
really bonkers regions, where the qualifier for what's art and what's not hasn't really anything to do with the claimant's
interest in art but more with... excluding something they
like from a group the don't. So in that sense, if video games are art,
then Pathologic 2 is art, but Frogger and Pac Man, as well as Call of
Duty: Black Ops 2 are all ... also art. So game critics, because their job,
first and foremost, is to evaluate games as a consumerist good
for validity in a global market economy -- with the current state of the video game market, the majority will simply never rate an extremely
polarizing game like Pathologic 2 with a 90% or higher score, because it simply
won't appeal to everyone. So in principle, there is nothing really wrong
with giving this game an... giving this game an """objective""" 70% score -- aside from the fact that measuring something
highly subjective, such as video games in an """objective""" numerical score is its
very own can of worms -- because if you measure a game like this by
broad masses appeal, and compare it with the current best selling
titles out there are, you will find that Pathologic 2 fundamentally deviates from these norms these games have put up in
a thousand and more ways! But low review scores don't contradict that. They don't contradict the fact that this game
is exceptionally artistic in nature. And... that's subjective, but.. it is! It's a game that tears a leg and an arm out
to employ the medium it's set in to its absolute full potential; to use every
tool available to craft a story that's truly impossible to be told in any
other medium. And to me personally, that is about the peak
of "video games as art". It just gets extremely infuriating to see
that in many instances, the very same crowd that keeps screaming for
video games to "please become more art!", shoots a masterpiece like Pathologic 2 in
the groin in review scores because it dares to employ player engagement
in an unconventional way to tap into emotions we're not used to challenge
during gaming. [gunshot] When that happens -- [gunshot] a part of me just sadly withers away and dies. Art, first and foremost, is supposed to make
you think things that you don't think every day and feel things that you don't feel every
day. Yes, you will feel frustration, hopelessness
and despair when you play the game the way it's intended
to be. [chuckling] I've experienced it first-hand. But that's the inherent point here: Pathologic 2 dares to take the player
on this journey of hardship which is... breathtaking if you think about
the fact that it goes as far as that it can to make this horrible plague-incident
not just audio-visually, but emotionally immersive. [chuckles] It dares to go and explore emotions such as
frustrating, anger, despair, hopelessness... but explore them and not just merely regard
them as something that is to be avoided, something of a negative state that the player
should never go into, but it says: "What happens *if* the player
goes into it, and what can we learn from that "about ourselves, and about the story?" And that's the beauty of it, it's meant to
make you feel things you don't otherwise get to experience. But hey, I also don't want to appear like
I'm, y'know, gatekeeping. This is not a "if you move the difficulty sliders you have not only cheated the game but yourself"-blabla situation. No no no -- I want as many people as possible
to experience this game. Obviously, you should also "know thyself": there are many different reasons for why this
intended experience by the develoeprs might just not work for
you, personally. And I think Ice-Pick Lodge has addressed that
quite well in their statement "On Difficulty" when they released the update that included
the adjustable difficulty levels. "However, we have received clear feedback
that the game is too hard "and we don't think that everyone who says
that misses the point of the experience. "People are different and have different attention
spans and patterns. "So we're fine with allowing the players to
tweak the game a bit to account for this fact. "Our games have always been in a curious spot. "Some people only finished the original Pathologic
and The Void using cheat codes." And little side-note here: The first playthrough
of "The Void" that I ever finished was with the officially-released
"slightly easier mode" and it allowed me to explore the game that
I probably wouldn't have been able to, otherwise. So yeah, there's a confession: It's valuable,
it leads to... growth! "So while in theory these players agreed with
our stance "on games as a medium for creating compelling
experiences, "in actuality they didn't really—well—experience
what we had in store for them. "Which is, of course, understandable. "Not everyone wants a life-changing experience
every time they launch a game. "Sometimes people only want a cursory glance. "Well, we'd rather give people a tweaked experience
than none at all." I couldn't agree more with this stance and I think this approach by the developers
is a wonderful way of addressing the response on the game's steep
difficulty and how it was received by many players. Each time you move a slider in the game's
settings you get an estimate on how far you will aberrate
from the originally intended experience. But even if you decide to put the game to
absolute baby titty mode, you still get to explore an amazingly crafted,
intricate and stunningly beautiful virtual place, get the chance to get to know all the characters who you're gonna be intimately familiar with
after a while and... [Bachelor] What do you call such a man? A
slave. You call him... a SLAVE! Yeah, not much to add here. Making it really clear why, if it's possible
for players, to attempt to play it "The Way It's Meant
To Be Played", while also giving them the option to adjust
it to their own preferences if needed. Hell, in the release video of this patch,
all the developers almost talked about is how excited they are that you can make the
game even harder! And just another example: I personally know
people who, due to, for instance, Generalized Anxiety
Disorder, would simply never be able to play this game
in its original state without it literally inducing panic attacks; which is definitely not the intended experience. But because the developers delivered the possibility
to ease the impact of some of the game's mechanical stressors it has become approachable for these persons and they're now adamant fans of the game that... well just like me, really... never seem to
shut up about it. So yeah! The beauty of difficulty, raising
the stakes, which might force you to Crime and Punishment
in the Doomed City -- but without the elitist gatekeeping! [gunshot] [gunshot] Now, this... was the main point I want to
talk about in this video. There are many more aspects about Pathologic
2 that I think are genuinely brilliant. Like the incredibly complex constellation
and interrelation of dozens of characters that, Jesus, took me a long long time to even unravel
for myself. And you gotta realize that this story -- this is a story that has been refined for
one and a half decades by now. Pathologic 2 took the first game almost as
a blueprint and built upon it. Quite effectively. You know, you can take its story just plain
literal and you'd already get a good time. "Pathologic 2 is an incredible simulation
of a deadly plague in an isolated settlement." Signed! BUT IS THAT REALLY WHAT IT'S ABOUT?! If you want it to be, it is. But also if you want to, you can write several
philosophical, sociological and political dissertations on the basis of
this tale, because man this game rich with lore, backstory,
history and symbolism, you name it. There is a lot of it... symbolism I mean... and some of it feels qure on the nose, like for instance the city's districts being
named after body parts: the spleen, the marrow, the backbone and the
gut. But once you start applying this allegory
and start thinking about it, it become indefinitely meta. This is very similar to The Void, where the
structure of the Void resembles things like uterine imagery
and brain synapses; but what does it actually mean? What's the
real metaphor here? Is this town really a town? Or just an allegory
for something? Pathologic 2, as I said, can be read blunt
and straight up, or you can start reading into its metanarrative and get forever lost in a labyrinth
of narrative depth. Pathologic 2 is 4D chess of
literary video game analysis. And the way this city was designed, rendered,
staged... hell, the lighting is pretty much always so
striking -- I-I-I just find it's so fucking beautiful! And here's the thing: it's so incredibly full
with details that bear meaning and supports the game's
themes and story. Like I just talked about lighting: You've probably noticed the striking close-ups
when you engage in conversations, right? Super minimalistic and focused on everything
that's necessary at this very moment with no excess garbage; almost pitch-dark
background, clear and bright dialogue font and the character portraits close-up and highlighted
through dramatically staged lighting. This is that character, in the current dialogue,
being in the spotlight. I said that the whole thing is framed as a
theatre performance. All the lights are dimmed right now,
the whole theater is dark and the entire focus is on that actor right now. And the lighting that hits them is deliberate
and nuanced, full with detail again. Here's an example of two different "Herb Brides"
you meet several times throughout the game. One is rather reticent in character and the
other is more... forthcoming, almost assertive -- and you can see these differences of character
represented in how they carry themselves and how the lighting frames them in the dialogue-close
ups. This is the case with every character: the
spotlights positions, intensities, angles and colors and objects that obstruct the light
to cast shadows on them, they're not just placed randomly or to just
look nice, but there's a lot of thought put into how
to stage and light each "actor" to support the character
and the role they play. Keep an eye out for that, it's really fascinating! Also... it's one of the few games where a
smaller character actually looks up to you -- ultimate dad simulator! But yeah, this ... holistic approach to crafting
a game; having every single aspect of its design,
from mechanics and gameplay systems, over visual design, graphics, lighting, sound,
voice directing, writing, you name it. Man, even the item descriptions in this game
are so deep and tongue-in-cheek, it puts a Soulsborne to shame. I love this, because it leaves me room to
find my own meaning in it. When you start interpreting games
by Ice-Pick Lodge, people will come and tell you "No, wrong analysis,
it means this, not what you said." And, well, they're frankly wrong.
There is no one meaning behind the story. It's more like a Tarkovsky film where it's
more about metaphors over symbolism. There is no finite meaning to its imagery. It's open for individual reading and interpretation and that's what makes it so
fascinating and enthralling. It's that type of story that you experience
once at a certain point in your life and you pick up on certain things
and read something into it... and then come back to it maybe several years later,
as a slightly, or vastly different person, -- y'know, you might have grown a little bit,
personally, in the meantime -- and you suddenly find completely different
things in it that matter to you, and suddenly the whole game starts meaning
something completely different. And all of these interpretations of you and
of other people are completely valid. I don't know, there's only a handful of stories, no matter if it's film, literature or video
games, that worked like this for me. And Pathologic 1 was definitely one of them,
just like The Void was. Like, my video on The Void, in some ways, offered a probably rather unique reading on
the game in parts. And I found it super exciting and humbling
after I released it to actually have the people from Ice-Pick
Lodge reach out to me and they told me that they really enjoyed
my personal reading of the game, because they've never quite looked at it from
this exact angle, but that it ultimately made them also look
at their own work from a completely different perspective and it was completely valid as an interpretation. And well, Pathologic 2 is, once again, exactly
this type of storytelling, all over again. Just seriously on a scale that
blows the roof off. I saw an interview with the devs where someone
said that "If you want to play Tarkowski's Stalker as
a video game, "this is a good place to go for" and I couldn't
agree more. I used to think that back when I played the
original. There's something about this confined space in which the laws of nature are strangely
subverted and varying ideologies and philosophies approach
the problem, this extraordinary situation people are exposed
to in different ways, their own ways. And none of which is "the right way" but each
of which leads to different results
and thoughts and solutions that are fascinating to observe and study
and think about. That people can discuss for decades,
and still not come to a "fixed" conclusion. The fact that this here though is a game -- it turns this experience to an extremely
introspective journey -- for yourself. Because you're the one who does it,
you're not just observing. And well, the harsh reality of survival is
the catalyst to unlock... lizard brain responses from you, the player. It's like holding a dark mirror in front of
you. It's so chock full of story, lore, meta-narrative
and meaning that, as I've said, I've been biting my nails over it for years
to write a comprehensive analysis / interpretation on it and nothing even felt close to satisfying
or making it justice for myself. Iiiiiiii'll get there. I hope. I want to. So, let's wrap things up: You might have noticed that, in the first game,
I mentioned that you play one of
three different characters: The Bachelor, an outsider, medical student,
who approaches the plague and deals with the town with a very scientific/academic
standpoint; The Haruspex, a surgeon and herbalist who
was brought up and educated in the traditions and lore of the Indigenous
Steppe folk; and the Changeling who.... can... no I won't
unveil that here and now what she can do Clara is just Clara.... you'll have to
find that out for yourself. Whereas.... in Pathologic 2, you apparently
only play as The Haruspex? Well, this is because Ice-Pick Lodge, at a
certain point in development decided to release the three playable characters
piece by piece, episodically. With the Haruspex being the first. As far as I'm aware, this was in big parts
a financial decision of a small studio because they dearly needed revenue from sales
to keep going with the production of the game. At first, I was confused that it was the Haruspex
that was chosen to be released first, because Pathologic 1 used to strongly nudge the players
towards starting with the Bachelor. And it is, if you think about it, the most
"logical" approach, from a storytelling perspective: Playing an outsider of the town first makes
exposition to a newcomer much easier, y'know? The more I thought about it, the more I liked
the decision, because in my personal opinion, I feel Artemy
Burakh actually makes for a much more intriguing and engaging first playthrough, thematically. I can't go that much into details, but I can
safely say that when playing Pathologic 1, it was actually during the Haruspex' playthrough -- getting to know the town through his lens
as someone who grew up here and who's known to the locals and has direct
ties to the families and all that, that made me both warm up -- as well as get
far more deeply acquainted with the whole constellation -- much moreso
than during the Bachelor's playthrough. And also... Dankosvki... is kind of a prick. But he's a prick that I'm actually really
excited to play at some point. Like, I find it far more enthralling to get
to know this cocky bastard from an outsider's perspective, to have him
grind your gears and patronize you repetitively -- and then play him yourself. I also think it says a lot about how great
Ice-Pick Lodge are at character writing that you have this guy, who pretty much everyone
agrees is a total dipshit, but also pretty much everyone I know adores
him... somehow. Idunno -- he's just an acquired taste... just
like the whole game, really. [harrumph] But yeah, I think releasing the characters
in this order is a fantastic choice -- [Mark Immortell] Look, there will be a happy
ending! You'll eve believe that you've won! [Mark Immortell] No guilty conscience either.
So relax, man of fate! and on that note -- Trotsky-Murder-Weapon-Lodge
did a fantastic job with this first part already. Playing through the Haruspex's viewpoint of
the Sand-Pest incident will already take you ...hmm... 25-40 hours -- as an estimate. And that is for one playthrough. And I can tell you that I rarely had a game
that I finished once and I couldn't wait to directly start another playthrough to see
how it would unfold differently with the things that I've learned and how
to improve it. Idunno, there's just something that just
pulled me right back. So at a price tag of around $35, you will
already well get your money's worth -- plus you have the knowledge the devs are
working on two more unique storylines that are gonna be released in the future,
which will enrich the game beyond measure in the near future. So .... if any of this peaked your interest
for the game and you can afford it, please consider supporting Ice-Pick Lodge,
because I really want this studio to stay afloat. Not only because I want the game to be finished
at some point for, you know, my own enjoyment, but also [breathes] they damn well deserve
it! And just for clarity: Despite me gushing without
filter for the entirety of this video, that is already god-knows-how-long, this is not a sponsored video! I really just...
want people to not miss out on it. I really just love this game and the developer. And now, so finally, in case you are someone
who has decided that you have not played Pathologic 1, yet, but you are firmly set that you want to experience
the first one before starting #2 -- definitely go for the Pathologic Classic HD
version available on GOG and Steam (because that's the best version of the game
you can get) but I'd also like to offer an alternative,
in case you want to experience the story without necessarily having to bite your way
through... y'know months of learning the harsh reality of its
gameplay and systems -- I highly, hiiiiighly recommend you SulMatul's
channel on which he has a playthrough
of the entire game. He's one of the YouTubers out there that is
known for his extensive coverage of Pathologic, as well as its sequel, and I can only say
that his commentary in his complete playthrough of all three characters of Pathologic 1 is
extremely enjoyable. It's, no seriously, it's one of my favorite
"Let's Plays" on the entirety of YouTube; it is chill and pleasant to listen to, but it's also full of background knowledge
about the game by someone who played this game obviously
passionately for many years but without littering you with information
out of nowhere, but he organically discovers the game with
you, with the viewer. He's asking the right questions at the right time
-- it's really enjoyable to watch. And fittingly, I think, he's actually a Doctor
in real life, so that's probably one of the most ideal Pathologic
experiences you can get. He also made a couple of really good long-form
video essays on Pathologic, The Void and Pathologic 2 -- jealous there that you already completed
them -- as well as a really helpful, spoiler free
"Newbie Guide" on how to approach Pathologic 2, which I can also recommend looking into before
you play the second one to give you a little bit of a primer. But alright -- Is there anything I've missed? Heck yeah there's a lot that I've missed. There's so much more I want to talk about,
Pathologic-wise, but in this video, as I said, I only wanted
to cover the main reasons for me why I think this game is absoltuely frick-tastic
and you should play it. I'm gonna end this largely unscripted video
here and let you decide if you want to try it out for yourself. Do you have any questions? Feel free to ask
in the comments -- I'd love to discuss the game with you, and you'll probably find some ardent fans
rushing to help rightaway. Because that's really also one of the things
that I've noticed with Pathologic,
and Pathologic 2 as well -- those who came to love this game... simply
can't shut up keep chewing people's ears off about it. Evidently. А под конец к Ice-Pick Lodge: От всего сердца вам огромное
спасибо за усердную работу над Pathologic 2. По моему, игра эта - просто
шедевр! Heyyyy, thank you that you made it all the
way here. I seriously didn't intend this video to become
this long. Initially, I honestly wanted this to be a
10-12 minute quick "Hey this game is great, get it!"
commentary-type video that just ended up getting bigger and bigger
while I was making it. Like, I just had a lot of thoughts and feelings
on Pathologic 2, okaay? As of now, the game is available on Steam
and GOG.com for Windows; links are in the description. And lastly, but importantly, this channel
is funded by the support of my Patrons. Without their help, I couldn't go on. So if you want to help me out as well with
my work and help this channel stay afloat consider pitching in over on Patreon. A special thank you this month goes out to
these immortality-seeking Top-Tier supporters: [patreon.com/RagnarRoxShow] Thank you so much for watching. Until next time... ta ta!
That one dude opened the floodgates on YouTubers doing videos on this game, huh?
How is thsi game for people who don't really enjoy horror/terror?
I easily get scared by jumpscares and wtv but I might give this a chance.
Does it have many jumpscares or stuff of the sort?
One fucking hour video to tell me why I should play it?