Pathologic Analysis; Themes of a Dying Classic - a Video Essay

pathologic is a strange game those very little other way to describe it it's very beautiful very bleak and altogether very alien especially to Western audiences if you're familiar with myself or my videos you'll probably have some idea as to how the game progresses and its overall plot style and general execution if you're not I hope that I can summarize in this analysis video what this bizarre story is about in brief terms pathologic is a unique survival horror game released by Russian developers icepick Lodge in 2005 it focuses on the events surrounding a small town deep in the Russian steppe during the outbreak of a deadly plague playable characters are healers not warriors and the ultimate antagonist isn't something that you can defeat by shooting it up or hacking it to death there are no zombies there are no monsters the goal of the game is to find a cure for the plague ensure your own survival and ensure the survival of your allies Cain was critically well-received in russian-speaking countries winning multiple awards in Russia at the time of release it was subsequently released in english-speaking countries with an extremely rushed and notoriously botched translation the butchered English version didn't receive nearly so much praise it was generally ignored by most and the few reviewers that did try it heavily criticized it for its outdated graphics clunky gameplay and often incomprehensible dialogue despite this it still had enough popularity in the Anglophone world to become a cult classic a small number of fans attempted to mend the faulty translation even up to ten years after its release Rock Paper Shotgun wrote an extensive three-part article that described it as the most important game you've never played after publishing several other games icepick Lodge returned their efforts to pathologic they have since done two things the first was to start rebuilding the game altogether on an entirely different engine this remake is currently still in progress and a demo version called the marble nest was released in early 2000 17 the second was to re-release the original 2005 game on Steam with an updated translation and improved graphics if you bought the game entitled pathologic classic HD on Steam this is the version of the game that you're playing what's worth noting is that the translation here is notably different from the original 2005 version because of the aforementioned remake and the new surge in popularity that icepick Lodge is currently experiencing I anticipate that people might find this video prior to playing the game for the sake of those that haven't yet experienced it I want to preface this entire video with a spoiler warning this video will explore the major plot points of all three characters of the original game and is highly likely to contain spoilers for the remake - if you are interested in playing the game for yourself I suggest that you pause here that being said let's get down to the business of picking this great beast apart the way i roughly intend to tackle this is to split the analysis into several major parts the first is a description of the plot as experienced by each of the three major characters the bachelor the high respects and the de votre hsihu was later renamed the changeling the second is an analysis of the mechanics of the game including the health and infection systems the limitations of time the brutality of combat and the jarring nature of the economic system the third is an analysis of the game's architecture both the literal in-game buildings and the overall ways in which is a statics aid its themes the fourth is an examination of how each of the aspects intertwined together to form the game as a whole and a discussion of how effective it was at achieving its goals there are three playable characters in pathologic well technically there are four but we'll discuss the fourth later you're introduced the protagonists quite directly when a player clicks the new game button they find themselves in the middle of a theater looking down upon the three protagonists arguing between themselves as to who's solution to cure the plague is the correct one they each state their cases and each come to the conclusion that the others are wrong they refuse to work together this sets the tone for the game as a whole stage filled with strife against a background of plague and death there is a certain sense of hopelessness alongside the excitement and anticipation of starting a new game there's a feeling that these are characters on a stage acting out a pre-written part the outcome is already decided and their fate is a morbid one the lights dim upon the stage and the player is ushered towards the theaters exit where they choose their character to available at the start our Daniel Dan Cove ski The Bachelor and our Timmy burdock the heiruspecs clara that changeling or the de votre sin the old translation remains locked at the offset this is a sensible decision her story relies on knowledge of the game's universe gained from having played as the previous two characters the game generally hints that you play as The Bachelor first which is also the most sensible option in terms of storytelling Dan Cove ski is a medical doctor from the capital and a relative outsider to the town and its inhabitants his culture background and understanding of the world is probably going to be the one Western audiences can understand the easiest he views the game's world through the lenses of scientific discovery and personal ambition and his concepts of medicine are the closest to real-world medical science the game gives you a small blurb as to what Dan cough skis goals are and why he originally came to the town this allows the player some frame of reference in order to get into Dan cough skis character and make decisions that would match his outlook the player is afforded the opportunity to act out of character of course but in general the game presents the story in such a way as to make acting out of character feel unnecessary and kind of jarring the way in which the game subtly encourages you to act in character without actively forcing it upon you is something that I'll discuss in more depth later in the video the opening cinematic concludes and you find yourself in Dunn Cove skis boots standing in the house of another character Eva Yun you now have a clearer idea of why you came to the town you have been researching the nature of life and death and groomers have rich to you about an immortal man called Simon Kain he was hundreds of years old and lives in this strange backwater community given that your research hasn't been going so well meeting an immortal man isn't an opportunity that you can afford to pass up the scandal a clad IVA Yan gives you a brief introduction to the ten and begs you stay a little longer but in the way of old tall dark and handsome men you have more important business to attend to she gives you directions to the house of guru keikain the brother of the immortal Simon and your journey begins you are immediately greeted by two bizarrely dressed figures who each strike up a conversation the bird mast executor and the morphsuit clad tragedian their conversations are decidedly unsettling and replace a tutorial to the game these two characters actively break the fourth wall and in rant about terms describe how the game is mechanics function tell you about the different features of your character that you're going to have to manage including your health hunger and fatigue polls they tell you how the game's time system works and crucially they tell you that other characters will actively lie to you the manner in which this conversation is conducted becomes even more jarring when you realize that they're telling this to Dan calves ski the character as well as you the player further blurring the boundaries between yourself and your leather clad avatar these conversations are mirrored in the start of each of the other playable protagonists roots though altered enough to suit each character the next part of the game's faux tutorial is found when IVA suggests that you scare away some squatters behind her mansion if you attempted to do so it's highly likely that you'll end up in combat and it's also highly likely that you will die very quickly the combat is clunky awkward and frankly broken and the rewards offered are rarely worth the risk if you're anything like me you might attempt this once or twice and learned quickly to avoid all unnecessary combat altogether these opening interactions set the tone for the rest of the game you've got an overwhelming number of things to worry about you're distinctly vulnerable and you don't know who to trust if anyone it goes some way to already generating an oppressive and foreboding atmosphere even before any plague arrives it's understandable that a lot of people put the game down at this point after my first time through this unwelcoming beginning I didn't personally make a further attempt to play the game for several months once you get through this tutorial you're thrust into the game's unforgiving plot you quickly find out that Simon the immortal man was murdered mere days before your arrival an irony which isn't lost your main lead is the tans local doctor Isadora burdock you find was also murdered immediately before you can get to him you're a letter than a futile chase around the main areas and Families a town with a sense of frustration steadily increasing throughout adding to this sense of frustration is the scheming of these families against one another and the blatant extortion that some of the townsfolk attempt when they see a rich doctor from the capital your efforts are almost put to a close entirely by blood all gimm ski the head of one of the other three major families and a man that reacts in a distinctly hostile manner towards you no matter what conversational tactics you employ by the end of the first day there's a distinct feeling that the town itself is rejecting you when you eventually find out that it was a plague that killed Simon and Isadora rather than an actual murderer it feels like the whole day was a wasted effort people lied to you people misdirected you and your efforts would have been saved have you been told about the plague of the offset the animosity between yourself and the town is already becoming well-established becomes easy to recall the warnings of the executor ultimately the Kanes IVA and one or two others seem like the only people who are not actively trying to deceive you at all times you are also introduced to the various other people's that live in the town there are the distinctly European towns folk in the tall muscular Eurasian butchers and the adult who appear as strange malformed gremlin like creatures a further conflict is set up between the efforts of humanity on one side and the law of nature and a step on the other the butchers and the Adonis have a clear connection to the natural world which Dan coughs key does not have you can take an optional side quest to deal with a rogue butcher though its conclusion either requires you to exile the butcher to the step or straight-up murder him neither of which put you on the best of terms with the people of the step without quite even realizing it you're already being moved closer to taking a sight in this conflict as the first day draws to a close you swiftly find out whether you've managed to complete all your assigned tasks in time if you haven't the game will tell you that you failed and as a consequence one of your allies will become ill this isn't the standard RPG in which quests will wait for you events happen regardless of whether you're there or not to spur them on yourself if you don't succeed in driving the but forward one of your allies will take your place and as a consequence they will catch the disease I'll discuss how the game treats time in more depth later on in the video if you succeeded in your main mission of the day at the stroke of midnight you'll receive a written summary on the screen of the numbers of the Living Dead and missing you'll also receive an invitation to the theater where the tragedy and executor put on a summarized show of your actions during the day this is always treated with some dramatic irony and the jarring sense that the in-game characters are far too self-aware is brought forth once again the second day throws you against an immediate stumbling block the prices of all tradable items in the game immediately increased by five fold as the townspeople panic by all the remaining supplies your hard-earned cash from the first day means next to nothing as inflation destroys the worth of your money if you hadn't stocked up on food medicine and ammunition already you're going to be in for a tough time the most pressing quest of the second day is to find and present proof to the town's leaders that an epidemic is about to break out to get this proof you have to talk with the unreliable children of the town who eventually lead you to the house of the late Isidor burdock the town's deceased doctor you go inside and find dilapidated and broken rooms with only a single woman within the late doctor's house made in your conversation with her you immediately detect that she's infected and in a surprisingly nerve-wracking scene you have to flee the house before she or her sisters touchy there are no zombies there's no violent patient zero just three normal poor women hoping that you'll have a cure to their inevitable death and your doctors back there is no evil to defeat in combat there is no strength of challenge in which to duel your foe the only thing that you can do is to run and leave three innocent people to their fate this house suffice is as enough proof to the ruling families to declare a state of emergency after a surprisingly easy set of negotiations the governor Alexander Saburo is given emergency powers and declares a quarantine over the infected area this is your first resounding success since the start of the game and it comes with an immense feeling of relief you're given a decent reward of a pistol and some ammunition the first thing that many players do here is to sell it immediately so that they can buy a loaf of bread and stave off starvation and other few errors literally not starving to death is made to feel like an incredible achievement there are very few video games in which bread is considered more vital than a gun at this point it becomes obvious that things will rapidly spiral downhill for the town and either yawn contact C with a proposal to escape her plan is that you talk to another two characters the stomata and brothers and together attempt to board the last train back to the capital it just so happens that the Stanton brothers are also acquaintances of Dan coughs keys from University where they trained as architects and they're responsible for some of the more bizarre feats of engineering around the town they are also rumoured to being outlawed from several countries for their subversive ideology and for breaking of their law whether this is the law of humanity nature or physics is left pointedly vague after some cajoling the brothers agreed to follow you and you all agreed to sneak on board a train at sunset it's a truly disheartening moment when you approach the train and find armed guards standing beside it guards that you gave power to by declaring a state of emergency who then refused to let you leave because of the quarantine that you brought about your sense of success is swiftly stolen away the third day begins and the first district of the town pulls - the plague becomes surrounded by giant wooden warning barriers dead rats and volunteer militiamen you receive a letter from the Kane's stating that Simon's body has vanished as has the local medic in training a man named Reuben after a long search leading you to the top of the colossal monument known as the polyhedron you're led back down to a mundane house inside are more butchers and a corpse once more you kill all the butchers moving you still further into opposition to the peoples of the steppe these killings are proven pointless to the body you find is not Simon's the plot once again engenders frustration Reuben eventually contacts you and after a terse meeting proposes that you assist him in gathering infected tissue samples to examine doing so requires that you dive headlong into the infected district and if you survive eventually to the cemetery despite your tests that your research might be the only way to cure the town the militiamen at the cemetery extort you for a vast amount of money for the tissue samples and attack you if you are unable to pay it becomes very easy to feel the seeds of animosity towards the town as a whole if you weren't already sick of the selfishness and shortsightedness of the townsfolk the fourth day ramps this up another further notch the town's leaders decide that the hospital and a mortuary must be set up however the obvious choices are rendered unusable due to sabotage a townsman interpreted the rumors of the plague being waterborne as a reason to destroy all the water supplies - a good deal of the town's houses dooming hundreds of people to die even faster there are only two usable buildings with their own separate water supplies the theater and the cathedral after more delving through infected districts and surviving plague-ridden houses you gain the keys to both buildings the theater becomes used as a mortuary for the dead and the cathedral becomes an isolation ward overcrowded and packed with panicked people interestingly the actors don't stop putting on plays in the theater despite it being filled with rows of corpses there's also a further quest on this day that requires you to shoot seven knife-wielding thugs in a row with a six shot pistol a feat that is next to impossible to achieve without being extremely lucky if you hadn't succumbed to the feeling about the games remaining days will be unyielding frustration and despair by now this might be the moment that you have a change of heart I'm personally convinced that this is Deb trolling but that's just me the fifth day begins with a further note of despair Alexander sapper of the governor to whom you have granted emergency powers has started mass arrests including of innocent people desperate and starving looters who merely wanted to survive a day longer like you did and your fellow protagonists and skilled surgeon artemiy Barok freeing these innocent people becomes extremely costly and it's nearly impossible to pre artemiy without murdering militiamen it comes at a terrible time - ribbon improves you that the tissue samples from corpses are useless and that only tissue samples from someone dead less than an hour would be useful for researching a cure or a vaccine artemiy is of course the only man with the cape to acquire such tissues he receive a reamer for thought the town's local moneylender is looking for aid and is willing to pay handsomely for it in order to free the arrested people cooperating with the moneylender is the only viable option she tells you about his daughter a girl named Veera has become addicted to the town's local drugs and his vanished likely into one of the various dens of iniquity whilst this isn't an entirely true story and the girl has her own reasons to escape the moneylender they do still care for one another's safety she agrees to meet him later that evening to assure him that she's safe and well and hasn't become caught up in the plague with such reassurances to the moneylender you are able to extract enough money to free those under mass arrest and free artemiy you tell art's me of your plans to make a vaccine and that you need a tissue sample in order to do so it isn't until you check your overhead map that you have another sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach artemiy agrees to meet you to give you a tissue sample at the same location that the girl agreed to meet her money-lending father when you arrive you find her corpse her freshly dissected heart and artemiy is nowhere to be found this was the point where I questioned my actual ability to save anyone which as a doctor brings a very unsettling feeling on the sixth day the streets become utterly chaotic bur once there were peaceful suburbs there are now knife wielding bugs the leper like infected and now amateur artists throwing Molotov cocktails at the diseased and anyone else that happens to get in their way this new band of arsonists are led by the moneylender in a call for revenge for his dead daughter and it caused into question whether they were stirred to violence by the actions that you yourself undertook you find out early this morning but the cathedral a place that was supposed to act as a quarantine barrier against the play became infected overnight everyone that sought safety there died once more you were presented but the fact that you have failed to save anyone the action taken by the town's leading families in response to this is to call up a quite literal witch hunt seeking the individual responsible for spreading the plague inside even the more rationally minded leaders seem to believe that there is a shab knock idea a living physical and body - the plague and that catching this person will stop it in its tracks you're sent on a task to check the blood of several of the women of the town presuming that one of them is this witch like creature the plot takes a further turned towards the supernatural as one of the children informs you that they've seen the sharp naca deer itself and that it's wandering in the steppe you find that it's a strange dull light creature which damages your health if you go near it happily hinting that this thing is the witch you are searching for many players at this point up to shoot it if you do the third protagonist Clara arrives and tells you that you've murdered a protected spirit Clara is of course also on your list of suspects for being the fabled witch however it turns out that her blood is also clear - you end the day once again without any major discovery and likely having harmed your cause more than helped it day seven heralds the arrival of another major character the Inquisitor aglaea lilyc her introduction comes alongside a cinematic of her executing multiple townspeople and gives her an air of danger it seems a distinct possibility that your failings will make her call for your execution - instead she turns out to be a surprisingly reasonable person and asks you to assist her in her investigations it mainly consists of a logic puzzle in determining who is submitting false reports and the statistics of the play the puzzle itself doesn't matter terribly much but the implication that even in the depths of the plague the townspeople are still actively damaging your efforts to help them is a particularly bitter pill to swallow and it helps cement your distaste for the town in its people this has brought up a second time during the same quest when you find out that the Inquisitor is the sibling of Maria Kane and once more family internal politics stole your effort to save the town the most depressing part of this day and in my opinion the game as a whole comes when you try to find your friend Eva yan you find that she is vanished and your few leads take you to the step with a presumption that the local butchers have kidnapped her after cutting a bloody score through more stat folk you find that she had never left the town she instead climbed to the top of the Cathedral and threw herself from it believing that the synthetic world contained within the cathedral and the poly was better than the real one only filled with corpses plague and betrayal there is no way to save her the focus of the eighth day is the investigations that you're able to launch in full with the glaze backing you are given the inquisitors authorisation to explore the gigantic structures sitting at opposite ends of the town the polyhedron on the abattoir and documented whether they harbor any infection despite your previously awful luck and your waning sense of self-confidence this mission is a surprisingly successful one you find artemiy again and he tells you that he is now managed to brew panacea one of the two only known methods of curing the plague you also find that one of the algum skee children but of the supply of panacea in order to sell it on at a larger profit but had a change of heart and gave the supplies away as gifts to other towns folk which whilst not necessarily helpful to you is a welcome break from the constant selfish backstabbing and extortion with enough dedication you can start to amass a panacea collection of your own something which is vitally important to the ending of the game the first structure that you climb to the top of is the polyhedron a massive bazaar wasp-like monument that dominates the western horizon it's the ultimate project worked upon by the Stanton brothers and appears to be built entirely from its own blueprint paper at this point in the plot it's inhabited by a gang of children who are unwilling to let you further inside but it does appear otherwise clear of any signs of plague it seems distinctly less intimidating than the abattoir and for good reason the people of the steppe who inhabit it are distinctly not your friends and when you take it upon yourself to determine if the abattoir is free of infection they quickly surround you and try to kill you your place is and always will be as an outsider to these people and you are unwelcome it's only with the intervention of the army that you're able to survive at all though their presence comes with more fear and depression than relief the ninth day is heralded by the marching of jackboots as the military arrives in full force the quests of the day are relatively straightforward the children the polyhedron want their own guns to scare off the soldiers from that preserved plague free micronation and in return allow you to explore within whilst you don't quite see the dreamlike sense of wonder and the fantastical world's free of plague about the children see you're struck by both the beauty and the potential of the bizarre structure and how it represents the pinnacle of humanity's achievements over nature highlighted by it being the single area within the game that remains entirely untouched by plague the remaining quests of the day concerned the different women of the town and an unsuccessful plot to assassinate the newly arrived general aside from alluding to classic Russian literature the main thing that this shows is the heavy-handed disinfection is to flamethrower squadrons aren't muted as friends and saviors to the town they've arrived with a brutal mission and the townsfolk correctly feared that that mission is to kill them all day 10 is where things previously hinted at with the Cain's supernatural influences and abilities become a lot more overt word gets out that Simon the deceased immortal man has come back despite the fact that Reuben has already dissected and destroyed his body to research the plague vaccine Yoda keikain appears to act and talk as if he is Simon a fact that is explained away as temporary insanity by the other canes however this explanation feels inadequate the other main quests of the day concerned the Stowe Mountain brothers who the general soldiers are now attempting to arrest you find Peter aasta.martin the architect responsible for the polyhedron standing in the midst of an inferno about to attempt suicide by jumping from a staircase to nowhere a prototype polyhedron in toking him down from his suicide he began to find out more about the polyhedron itself and how it stands as his ultimate achievement to find the laws of nature where then it can hold infinite worlds and might well be able to hold a human soul there are hints that this might be the key to defeating the plague or even defeating death itself such a goal surely has to be what all doctors strive for hell expressing a desire to literally defeat death itself is even a dialogue option in what I've done [ __ ] keys early conversations your final action at the end of this day is to order this infection his squads to burn a giant bull impaled on a spike at the far end of town many of the town's folk have gathered around to some form of omen though you suspect that they're uneducated in superstone his ways are once again contributing to the spread of the plague burning it to cinders seems like the only sensible option day 11 the penultimate day is when the chaos reaches its climax the military having lost 1/3 of their entire force to the plague begin a revolt against their commander a splinter rebel faction attempt to kill your friends and suddenly with your timely intervention and a lot of bloodshed that you stopped them you were assaulted by rebel soldiers for the bottles of panacea that you've managed to acquire you're forced to kill an entire squadron of soldiers before they shoot innocent townsfolk all the while the diseased and the looters and the arsonists murder one another in the streets the Inquisitor in a final effort to carry out her mission demands the plants the polyhedron suspecting it to be the source of the town's woes the canes can test this and remind you that the Inquisitor is herself the sibling of Maria Cain and accuse her of attempting to sabotage their family out of spite the Inquisitor eventually reveals that she plans to destroy the polyhedron with the explanation that she believes that its foundation was drilled so deep into the earth is to release a previously buried pathogen beneath this you discover that she does Harbor a deep resentment towards the Kanes and further still you discover that she'll be executed on her return to the capital unless she takes drastic action this has led her to believe sacrificing the polyhedron is her best choice at this point the discovery feels jarring the polyhedron has been the one thing free of the plague throughout the game it seems to defy the laws of nature and nature intent to release plagues and kill indiscriminately it seems to have protected the children within from the harsh world outside and in the rituals of the Kane's it seems to be capable of raising the dead in such a fucked-up and hostile town it feels like the only thing worth preserving at all this pits you against the Inquisitor and in turn aligns you further with the goals of the Kane's the 12th day feels like it should bring forth a sense of foreboding but instead the town feels eerily quiet there is no plague in the streets there is no chaos there is nothing but stillness there's nobody outside nearly everybody is dead and the few survivors are holed up inside their houses the general regaining control over his remaining forces has brought forth his canons some must be destroyed the polyhedron or the town itself the final day becomes a swift rush around the town to cure all your surviving allies you are also contacted by the high respects in the devotees who ask you to cure their allies as well if you cure all your own allies you get to argue your case about where the guns should fire if you cure another protagonist allies - you get elijah from the ominous powers-that-be if you cure all three protagonists allies you've received contact from the theater - I will discuss this in more depth later on as I think the importance of these meetings applies to far more than the Ark of any single protagonist as the evening rolls in you meet for a final time in the cathedral and argue your case about what the guns should destroy it seems pretty clear at this point that the town hardly seems worth saving the people have been hostile and selfish and undone nearly all your efforts to stop the plague the step folk have been equally hostile and attempted to kill you on multiple occasions the one thing in the town that seems to have any merit is the polyhedron a stretch of proving that man can defy nature and wind the proof that humanity can learn how to fly the proof that humanity can beat plague and truly defeat death preserving this outweighs by far the importance of one singular town you make your choice and the ending cutscene rolls [Music] [Music] [Music] personally I think that this ending is far more ominous than I was expecting musical tones are unnerving the lighting blood-red and it seems that Maria Kane has inherited the project of rebuilding the city under her own personal vision guided by the immortal souls of her family trapped within the polyhedron is this a good ending it's it's hard to say I personally felt that it really wasn't that I'd worked so hard to fight death and to build a utopia against everything that had opposed me and that it had been usurped by a selfish elite in order to further their own personal agenda I'm sure that I don't need to point out how many Russian people must have felt similarly after observing the events of the years following the 1917 revolution but at the same time I feel like I was admitting in big part of the undercurrent of the game if I didn't mention this at least once the dreams utopia are so easily usurped and spoiled if he felt exhausted enough up to your first run-through of the game you might put it down there and never really go back to it but this leaves a lot of unanswered questions did the plague really come from beneath earth what happened inside the abattoir how was the panacea created what the [ __ ] was actually going on with Simon Cain bachelor Dan Karski never really gets the answers to any of these questions the characters who could tell him have no reason to and often see him as the antagonist the only way to find out these answers is to play the remaining roots of the game and Boyd is the difficulty ramped up even further the high respects are to me Buraq disembarks the train as it arrives in the town having been summoned at the request of his father Isadora Isadora's latter seemed ominous as if he anticipated his own death the fact that artemiy assumed was suspicious and so he returned to the town as quickly as he could unaware that both Simon cane and Isadora have died he returns to find angry and distraught townsfolk and is immediately assaulted the townsfolk presumed that he has murdered them for the inheritance money he began your time is back slowly bleeding to death when I angry mob after you the same tragedy in and executor greet you and once more explained in mechanics in the game he began friendless alone done hunting money is far harder to come by than it was for The Bachelor and the constant threat of starvation hangs over your head your immediate place of refuge is in a set of disused warehouses which you swiftly find out have been taken over by a local teenage gang the very first quest you're given is to kill a rival gang member who turns out to also be a child you can be merciful if you like but the rewards for carrying out to the murder are extremely lucrative especially when you have so little resources you're even rewarded with a box of powder one of the two items capable of curing the plague an insanely valuable resource compromising your morals comes incredibly early in this scenario especially in doing the one thing that most videogames I write prevent you from doing killing a child your next source of refuge is with Vlad alguien ski the character who as dan cough ski was one of the most overtly hostile now he is one of the most welcoming and protective of characters that you run into and certainly one of the few who shows any signs of believing that you aren't a murderer with his help you go some way to clearing your name though you do run into Dan coughs kee who appears nevertheless guarded and suspicious having your former in-game avatar actively insult you is one of the stranger and most unique experiences but this video game provides your quests lead you throughout the town being jeered and occasionally assaulted by townsfolk unless you stick to the shadows in the criminal underground you eventually find your way to the house of your father Isadora and uncover a part of your inheritance you also meet a kid there who informs you of two things the first is the list of your allies who for artemiy are all children the second is that this kid heard a huge heavy step person sneak into the house to kill your father though the houses otherwise rank with sands it plagued this account of a creature or person carrying out the murder is confirmed by several other children despite all the evidence to the contrary regardless by the end of the day Dan kotsky assists you in clearing your name Simon and Isadora died plague and the pathogen is about to spread once more the second day brings similar economic turmoil and price increases as it did for the bachelor you're partially protected from this by receiving the remainder of your inheritance which requires you to deal with the thoroughly creepy Ospina a witch like step woman you're also taught how to use a new feature of the game gathering tire twine is a fictional plant halfway between opium and marijuana with both sides and immune boosting properties it's gathered by the step people and traded in the yurts outside the town you abandoned the use of cash in trading altogether here using either food or harvested human organs as tradable commodities to acquire this tyre as the Hara specs you also have the ability to harvest human organs in record time this is presented as part of the skills the heiruspecs has partially from his medical training and partially from his background as the son of the town's shaman / doctor you're also given the location to your father's old secret laboratory where bottles of herbal preparations to protect against the plague can be synthesized interestingly you can also take on a quest from Maria Cain on this day to provide the stampton brothers with enough turin to convince them to abandon their plans of escape this evidently works as the brothers of a late change of heart as found out in the bachelor scenario when they fail to show up to the last train out of town the stories have started to intertwine and continue to do so throughout the entirety of Artemis scenario day 3 begins and once more elder Vlad all gimm ski provides you with assistance he tells you about another secretive part of your inheritance triggering the start of Artemis main character arc your father wasn't just a Tad's local doctor but also the chairman like religious leader of the butcher's in the steppe folk you once more deal with Ospina who eventually directs you to the elder of the abattoir the de facto religious leader now that your father is dead he isn't yet ready to see you and you're forced to wait on his arrival whilst the town begins to descend into plague the other remaining quests on the third day consists of negotiating with the town's criminal gangs for some extra coin and assisting the bachelor in his scientific investigation of the infection as you help him more he becomes far more cordial towards you you have another ally that you can trust the overall feeling of the town despite his initial backlash is far less hostile and manipulative than it was towards the bachelor the fourth day involves more managing of conflict between criminal gangs however this time the gangs involved are made up of children and teenagers in an effort to reduce bloodshed you steal a weapons cache which includes a live and deadly firearms the children in the town we're going to use these on one another they don't [ __ ] around reinforcing the feeling that no one is innocent not even the kids the rest of the day ends very abruptly you attempt to help Rubin and the Batchelor examine a sample a particularly special blood the blood of Simon Cain immediately after acquiring the sample you're assaulted and arrested by town guards branding you a criminal for carrying out unlawful vivisection on Simon towns beliefs regarding vivisection are oddly specific only certain people are allowed to dissect bodies which are otherwise considered sacred to the trans folk your father was one of those people sanctioned to do so because of his position is a sort of shaman having not yet truly acquired your father's inheritance including this title your dissection of the dead is branded as a criminal act Reuben 2 is also branded as a criminal though appears to be better at hiding than you are you wake up late on the fifth day trapped in a Cell the same location that when playing as The Bachelor you carry out your daring rescue of artemiy in this version of events you break out of your cell yourself and immediately receive contact from Jankowski he needs to acquire the tissue sample from a still viable heart if you recall from demikhov ski scenario that this ends in the murder of the moneylenders daughter you'll finally get to see the other side of this tale as are to me you're still being hunted by the law you're in a position of desperation and the options for getting this still living tissue sample are incredibly slim you can choose to kill someone other than the girl but the options to do so are far harder and involve you spilling even more blood of multiple innocent people tragedy has already an accepted necessity and the easiest and safest option is to murder the girl they're also given an opportunity to delve further into the supernatural Vlad algum ski's son requests your assistance with investigating the tunnels beneath the town tunnels that he initially dug with the intention of finding a new cleaner water source than the river the tunnels are rounded and blood-red and resembles something more like veins and arteries of an enormous step creature than some form of cave system as you climb underneath you start to hear a ghostly ritual chanting of stadt folk at the end of the tunnel you find a diminutive humanoid creature with a rats head that calls itself the rat prophet the conversation is confusing and disconcerting and feels more dreamlike than real the boundaries between real and supernatural become far more blurry for you than they ever were for the Batchelor as the sixth day dawns The Bachelor requests your assistance once more there seemed to be something special in the blood of the steppe Bulls that makes them resistant to plague you're sent on another quest to find a seat bull bull and sample its blood the only place where one is available however is the abattoir the only way to get to one is to negotiate with the current de facto leader of the butchers a small child called taya ty chick her father was the foreman of the abattoir but is now deceased leaving a five-year-old girl as the Queen regent of the butcher folk the horror of selfish and unthinking child being the leader of a race of giant misunderstood and often violent people is bad enough but her immediate request is that you provide her with an frankly insane number of immunity tablets an act that is likely to leave you broke the blood sample that you get in return is of limited use at best you offset this loss by helping other towns folk and once more meeting the rat prophet he remains just as cryptic as he did before you've also got the opportunity to help Maria Cain and in this version the thing that she's attempting to do becomes a lot more obvious the town's ruling families are on the surface level operated by the man of the household but beneath this is the triumvirate of which like prophetesses that they are married to Maria is the next prophetess in line to receive the supernatural powers of her own and is setting up her rise to power co-opting the polyhedron and the creations of the stamens as only a small part of that this is a fact that the bachelor never really truly discovers day seven heralds the arrival of the Inquisitor and as before she carries out her executions of the town's criminals in an effort to restore order you find out quickly this time that she's awaiting execution in the capital and that her mission here is her last-ditch attempt at redemption you spent much of the day chasing after her in an effort to explain your criminal background before she acts keeps you as well when you finally catch up to her she appears surprisingly helpful to you and goes as far as to suggest your next course of action the elder of the abattoir is the sample of blood from a mysterious source which may assist in the investigation for a cure you are at last granted full access to the abattoir the actual appearance of the internals of the abattoir itself is something of a lap down as it appears in the game is a large and mostly empty cave system I have a feeling that this is something that the developers wanted to focus on more but lacked the time or the ability to implement their ideas by mixing turin with the blood sample gained from the tall and foreboding elder Owen the provisional head shaman of the steppe folk after your father's demise you create a bottle of strange dark liquid this is the first bottle of panacea the main true cure for the plague this is notably far more of a success than the bachelor ever really achieves in his scenario and in my opinion shows which side of the conflict that the developers leaned towards the eighth day starts with another set of urgent discussions with the Inquisitor it's imperative that the source of this mysterious blood sample be identified to find out you'll have to contact the elder of the abattoir again and to do that you must once more deal with taya Tai chick in the nature of most five year old so she doesn't allow you to do what you need until her whims are satisfied first in this case she wants to hear the ending of a fairy tale told to her by Clara the changeling after some searching you find Clara who reveals the predictably grim ending to the fairy tale and she seems to be on far too friendly terms with the alleys that you have been trying to protect remains nearly impossible to tell if she can lure cannot be trusted you're then allowed passage through to speak to the elder he refuses to share his secrets with you until you've proven yourself a worthy heir to your father's shamanistic titles tie a tight cheek also wishes to find the town's person responsible for quarantining the butchers of the such at the plague dooming many of them to infection and death it turns out that Vlad algum Skees son Vlad Junior is the man responsible however Vlad senior insists on going in his place dooming himself to the raft the butchers in the end the man that the bachelor found the most hostile and abrasive is one of the few men to make a genuinely selfless sacrifice in the entire game as day 9 arrives so does the military once more the jackboots marked down the streets as men with flamethrowers burn away the dead and the dying the general has little to say to you and overall this doesn't affect your plot very much the dealings of the town folk and the people from the capital aren't really relevant to your solution to cure the plague he wants more meat but the elder of the abattoir who challenges you you're given a poison to drink that increases your exhaustion extremely quickly and you must uncover what has happened two more missing supplies of this special blood before your fatigue kills you you were forced to complete a frenzy - across the abattoir all the way to the polyhedron and then back attempting to find help along the way you eventually run into Dan coughs kee assaulted and beaten by the butchers as seen in his route and this time it's your role to break him out of prison he tells you upon his release that he saw a butcher's running away with a special blood and that he didn't steal it himself when he returned to the elder with answers he begins to tell you of a step creation myth of a sock the bull of the world the significance of this and how it relates to the game is still at present a mystery though you do find out as the game progresses day 10 begins with a similar challenge the elder gives you another poison that increases your hunger at an exponential rate and then tells you to listen to the spirits which you carry out by sleeping on a sacrificial altar as the creepiest of tragedians whispers secrets into your ear a very theatrical representation of the voices of the spirits you then have to track down the butchers that stole the blood yesterday and kill them for the transgressions in doing so you earn more of the elders approval and hear more about the shamanistic beliefs the world itself has seen the flank of a giant cow previously content with humanity wandering upon its back like fleas but now surfaces humanity stopped their nomadic lifestyles and settled down with brick and earth and [ __ ] there's an implication that the plague is nature's attempt at fighting off humanity which has grown too bold and greedy leeching the earth from more than it can give there is a further implication that the special blood used to make the curative panacea is the blood of the great bull of the earth itself an idea compounded further by your map at the town beginning more and more to resemble a bull when a massive spirit like bull appears in the town and becomes impaled on a spike it's difficult not to see this as an omen on discussion with your allies you all come to the conclusion that the bull must be saved both as a symbol of the town's salvation and as a potential source for more panacea producing blood it's one of the few shots that you have to generate such panacea whilst the elder is refusing to allow you access to the blood beneath the earth saving this bowl becomes imperative to saving the town as a whole of course we all know what happens to the bull already the realization is gut churning when you recall that as Dante offski you order the bull to be burnt to ashes by flamethrower squads the eleventh day dawns with the elders final trial for you which is impossible without some outside help Clara offers her assistance and once more it's difficult to tell if she's genuine or if she intends to betray you cautiously you accept her promises of future assistance and make your way to deal with the elder you learned the final truths the people of the steppe have been sacrificing animals in the abattoir for hundreds of years beneath the abattoir is a pool of blood from thousands of sacrificed Oryx ice age giant bulls their blood has congealed beneath the surface for generations and it was only with the placement of the polyhedron a giant spike into the heart of the earth that the contagion was released mother the plague was caused by the build-up of the blood or by the stabbing of the earth but the polyhedrons foundations is left deliberately vague it was also the elder that murdered your father seeking to usurp the products family power or at least that's what you're told but once more it doesn't add up with what others have told you and it's never truly revealed as to who was lying to you you fall into a pit that quite literally represents purgatory and Clara offers you the soul of one of her allies in exchange for saving yours you make your choice doing a willing volunteer to death as you climb back from the pit and finally fight a hand-to-hand battle to the great elder your victory comes with the last part of your inheritance you are now the true ruler of the abattoir and will soon have access to as much more blood as you need to synthesize panacea for the whole town the final day brings the deserted streets much as it did for the batch of the story once more you're off the opportunity to cure your own allies and the allies of the bachelor and the changeling once more you're invited to visit the polyhedron and later the theater if you kill more people than just your own this time what must be done seems clear the polyhedron and the masa nations of the Kanes have disturbed the balance of nature and the breach of nature's laws by ramming an enormous spike into the earth has unleashed the plague upon the town the town itself including its heritage and the good people that made it can be preserved that the polyhedron is destroyed despite dummkopfs keys Presta stations you both know that as long as the town and the polyhedron both stand the plague will not end the canonical choice here is to bombard the polyhedron allowing the tan to return to its natural roots allowing its people to return to peace and allowing your allies the children of the town to inherit it and allow it to prosper again [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] arguably this feels like one of the most hopeful endings of the game though ultimately this means that the town continues in tradition as if nothing has ever changed I think that prior to getting into the changelings plotline I should explain the events that occur if you get the good and perfect endings from the previous plot lines the change link story presupposes that you know some of the plot twists you encounter here so once more you weren't that these are major spoilers of the game the good ending occurring if you save all your own allies and one other protagonists allies occurs when you receive a letter from the powers-that-be on the final day they invite you to ascend to the polyhedron and meet them an act that feels ominously like being summoned to an audience with God you climb to the top of the tower and find yourself transported to a genuinely alien and bizarre world two enormous children stand over you you're standing beside a sandbox they look down and you frightened and confused and demand an explanation as to why their doll suddenly came to life they tell you something that's horrifying in both its simplicity and it's obvious Ness this whole thing has just been a game all the suffering death and chaos was just the creation of statistic mines enjoyed by a couple of depraved children the whole thing was a fiction and all the suffering was utterly meaningless your actions weren't even your own you were merely a puppet in the hands of another as was every other character that you talked to if you're much like me at first you feel outraged and want to scream and rally against such injustice and such senselessness but of course to do so is to deny the greatest irony of the game you already know all of this you already know that it's a game a false and a virtual world you already know that all the suffering portrayed is meaningless you already know that you the character are merely a puppet being operated by you the player the game presents you with a true representation of the absurdity of your actions and leaves it entirely up to you as to whether you believe it's worth it to carry on after the amount of suffering even jarred to get to this point is rendered some pointless the decision isn't an easy one the perfect ending occurs after you've saved every named character in the town including all your allies and the allies of both other protagonists after being exposed to the disconcerting reality of the powers-that-be you're offered another somewhat gentler summons to the theater for one final play instead of the usual thespian performers overacting their lines you see the tragedy and an executor standing atop the stage they stride forward acknowledge one another and take one final bow as the curtains are drawn the play is over once more the pair break the fourth wall as they each in turn address you they ask you how you've enjoyed the play and openly acknowledge that the entire thing was a work of fiction contrary to the disconcerting meeting with the powers-that-be they seem quite reassuring about the nature of the world they know it's a fiction as they were the stagehands that enabled it they even acknowledge the powers that be is a fiction in themselves and what is perhaps the most impressive feat of fourth wall shattering the tragedy in then engages in conversation with you the player as opposed to your character in what is probably the most hopeful note of the game you can tell them that you'll take your protagonists actions as your actions assume their role and take center stage regardless of the absurdity of this universe it doesn't mean that you won't engage in it in the end you the player are the one to make the choice to save this fictional town entirely separately from the choices of your protagonists character Clara is the unlockable character of pathologic and for good reason she breaks the fourth wall in multiple occasions and seems to know what's about to happen in the town before the events actually unfold just like the player now does she has the players meta game knowledge as well as her own knowledge of the step which can lead to a very unnerving and confusing experience in the original 2005 version this coupled with the often income principle translation made her plot nearly impossible to adequately follow what's more is that there are enough changes to the mechanics that you can't just easily breeze through the plot with your knowledge of how the game works this is explained once more by the twin stage hands the executor in the tragedy in Clara wakes up in a shallow grave with no episodic memory of how she got there though some semantic memories of the town's background still intact she's informed of the people who view her as both a savior and a demon much in the same way that you viewed her was playing as Buraq or dank offski your reputation now falls at a constant rate punishing you if you remain idle for too long the first family to take you in are the suburbs a family that betrayed both Dan Kottke and Artem a thoroughly unto whom your former protagonists have no love for now however they provide your best source of hope they're convinced to protect and shield you and Caterina cyber over a morphine addled but still potent prophetess is convinced that you're her new heir instead of the antagonistic pigheaded people responsible for mass arrests you see two fearful and hollow individuals desperately hoping that they can stop the suffering to come you stumble over your words and accidentally seem to say that you're both a miracle worker and can cure with your hands and that any harm done to the people is being carried out by your evil identical twin Ally of course but it seems to service your needs and your adoptive family believe it you'd like to follow up these words with actions when you find some of them would be assailants that bertok for toff during his introduction you're requested to help them with your belief in the power of your miraculous abilities you attempt to heal a man only to break his neck enact the townspeople still revere you for presuming the dead man was a sinner your abilities are prude still further when in front of Dan Kowski you heal a man with nothing but your hands a feat that the scientifically minded bachelor doesn't handle well the last of your abilities manifests as a form of hypnotism someone's name and a secret about them you can entrance them to tell you various pieces of information a feats that you use on gurgi cane who immediately admits under this hypnotism to being fully aware that Simon was not murdered from the beginning and was using the convenient lie to manipulate the townsfolk and manipulate Tonkov ski the second day begins with your newfound family asking you to locate who the true witch of the town is prophesized to bring plague and death first suspicions fall on Ospina the bizarre occultist through various ploys manipulations and hypnotism you find that Espina also awoke in a shallow grave like you and also found that that world and the town simply accepted her existence like you she also reveals a great many evils that she is responsible for she is however not responsible for the plague the rest of the day is taken up dealing with the other town's folk choosing whether to lie or not about burdock's medicine making capabilities and choosing who to attempt to heal later in the day you meet dark offski who comments that you've been seen in two places at once your lie about your evil twin seems to have taken root in a far too real way the third day brings another witch hunt this time directed towards the mysterious Anna angel a character with whom you've had infrequent dealings as Barak and dank offski who comes across as unpleasant vain and selfish as Clara you find out the full story Anna angel the moneylender and several other townsfolk were probably for travelling Caravan that kidnapped children and via supernatural means stole the beauty and voices of children that they kidnapped this story would seem implausible if you'd heard it as dank offski however whilst playing as Clara this appears as a perfectly reasonable explanation is to add an angel beauty and appearance once more despite her relative evils Anna angel is not responsible for the plague a fact that continues to frustrate the suburbs who are becoming more and more desperate to find somebody to blame the fourth day brings another accusation of responsibility this time leveled a Griff the de facto leader of the local criminal gang you're unable to hypnotize him however it's still fairly obvious that Griff is also not responsible for the plague in your dealings with the local criminal gangs you're sent the same way as that you get to go to as Don Kowski though this time with your magical girl powers the fight feels far more even for the third time rrrow you've now met someone branded as a criminal who whilst not responsible for the plague is still responsible for some other form of evil a passion which is steadily becoming more and more important to Clara's interpretation of the world all of these people are also each hoping for some form of redemption something that Clara with her Joan of Arc stylings seems that she might be able to provide the first sight quest of the day involves Alexander Suvorov finally I write turning on burdock and asking you to assist in his arrest an event that you've already experienced the other side of was playing as Burak the second site quest involves Katharina Sabre over and her visions she suspects that the theater to be more than it seems and his terrible visions of what will happen if it becomes a hospital she asks you to assist in investigating mark a morsel the owner of the theater who she suspects is also involved in the plague you find mark colluding with Maria Kane with the suggestion that Maria tends to use mark and the theatre in much the same way as the polyhedron also is becoming more apparent that the theatre has as much power as the polyhedron or the abattoir Dave if each of these other buildings holds the importance for the previous two protagonists it's arguable that the theatre is the building that holds importance for Clara with all its toying with the fourth wall you make your journey to the theatre itself an inside find the familiar rap prophet character that you've met his verdict a character that Clara finds unnerving he goes on to tell you that you never had an evil twin sister at all and that you bear responsibility for all the quote-unquote evil actions done in your name it also becomes apparent that Katrina's visions have all come from the rat prophet himself calling very legitimacy into question the theater appears to combine the two opposing factions of the town the eccentric utopian dreaming of Mark immortal is met with the Earth's avatar in the rat prophet a synthesis that seems only made possible by the fourth wall breaking tragedians this synthesis made possible by breaking the rules of the game is mirrored in the remainder of Clara's story the fifth day brings a familiar quest progression the suburbs accuse another person of bearing responsibility of the plague in this case the trainee medic Rubin once more he makes her inquisitions and once more Rubin reveals his crimes the crimes in this case are that he's been dissecting and therefore desecrating Simon's corpse in order to build vaccines he also seeks redemption for this Redemption us providing by persuading your keikain to forgive him your Joan of Arc stylings increased still further were the other side crusts of the day your faith in your own mystical abilities and faith that you can provide people redemption easy to found something of a cult catalina encourages even this and encourages you to persuade various townsfolk to join you your missionary ideology fails persuade the Stamets and twins however who retained their high ambitions of utopia an ideology you perceive as akin to Lucifer before the fall the heir of the supernatural increases is the strange clay Alby no creature that you previously met as Don Kowski shows up the creature this time acts as a friend giving you useful predictions for the next few days to aid your survival including predicting the plagues movements and predicting ways to defeat it thank offski won't arrive to shoot at this time but certainly changes your perspective on the actions that you took as Don Kowski if you did choose to shoot it the final quest of the day is one with the most tragic consequences Katarina Saburo has a vision that everyone quarantined in the cathedral will die Maria Kane also has the same vision you tempt to avert this by sneaking your way into the Cathedral where you're greeted by an enormous crowds of townsfolk all begging you for salvation in your capacity as a new Savior you believe that you can provide them all with help and protection having seen what happens as Dimovski and artemiy you already know how this one turns out there's a moment of painful dramatic irony as you as Clara promised to save everyone whilst you the player know that everyone will still die the sixth day dawns with the news of the deaths in the Cathedral the ultimate failing of the town's leadership to keep the plague in check the suburbs become despondent fearing execution from the coming Inquisitor and you are swiftly disowned the townsfolk begin to fear and despise you blaming you for bringing the plague and to top all of it your evil twin shows up in earnest finally taking a physical manifestation that you have to chase away last you bring a district into permanent plague and death the day becomes a race as your reputation dwindles faster than ever proving your innocence is a plague bringer is nigh impossible that Don kotsky scientific seal of approval and throughout he seems like he's getting closer and closer to examining your evil twin instead a twin that seems to be more and more likely to be the plague incarnate in the end you clear your name but barely and are locked in then coughs Keys laboratory until the following day when you finally set free the seventh day and the inquisitor have already arrived your first task from the Inquisitor is a familiar one investigate the actions of two criminals and determine whether they very responsibility for the plague naturally as the cyber elves that are now under scrutiny despite kicking you out it still seems difficult to truly blame them they appear more as pitiful shadows of people that initially good intentions resorting to increasingly extreme measures to deal with an impossible situation whether you do forgive them or not is entirely a personal choice the investigations take you further around the town dealing with Dan coughs can artemiy each of whom is having the worst possible lamp comes to their plot lines and each grown to hate the other with increasing degrees of animosity their inability to reconcile their viewpoints is taken and heightened to an all-out war something that seems very unnecessary during this final playthrough finding another solution than the ones they offer already seems like a far more sensible approach the eighth day brings another cat-and-mouse chase between Dan Koski and artemiy with each drug trying to actively kill the other your evil twin appears again and needs to be chased away once more the SOB Rob's disgraced or awaiting the inquisitors judgment the Inquisitor asks you to carry out another investigation into someone accused being responsible for the plague the elder of the abattoir you begin your discussions with him and you quickly come to learn of the blood beneath the earth that are to me later becomes aware of the elder also reveals that he is aware he is a fraud the earth has given him no good omens he asks you to confirm with ospina the witch like woman as to whether our to me is in fact the true heir to the step shamans legacy and upon finding out that artemiy is the heir he devises the trials that you play through as artemiy in order to attempt to kill him in a plausibly deniable fashion the ninth day brings the army in the flame to risk once just as we've come to expect side quests are also fundamentally unchanged from the past few days assist the bachelor and the heiruspecs to escape one another and find your hidden evil twin sister and drive her right before she establishes a permanent foothold of plague main body of the quest starts again with the Inquisitor as she makes her last desperate attempts to be the champion that's halts the plague commands you to investigate the polyhedron a task but the other two protagonists didn't complete until the final day in order to do so you have to talk to a gear geek Aine who in turn wants you to complete some tasks for him he pardons Ruben first the dissection of Simon canes body and reveals that the polyhedron is being used to harness Simon's soul he believes that the whole cane family must withdraw and allow themselves to die in order to allow the soul of Simon to possess them live again and truly bring about the new era of immortality the younger canes all also support the stand point though via different perspectives the children particularly view the polyhedron is the place to literally turn their dreams of personal power into reality you ascend to the top of the polyhedron and in familiar form are created by the two children the powers that be this is significant Clara meets the children a full three days before dong Kowski or Baraka do the children reveal to you their true nature one of them argue that you were one that would save everyone the other argue that you'd murder everyone unless you and your twin are born serving this dual purpose you remain a puppet in their hands aglaea too reveals that she was aware that she was a literal puppet in charge of deranged children playing a game she further reveals your origins a necessary function of the game and of the steps world you were being symbolic of the symbiosis between the town and the step between nature and civilization between tradition and progress finally she banishes you from the town casting you aside is one of the other tools to be discarded blaming you in your duality as the plague incarnate you take up refuge with the military commander it was already inclined to seeing you as a journal Ark figure he steps in to defend you where the Inquisitor would see you dead which is of course something that you used your advantage day 10 begins and again your side quests involve dealing with your evil plague spreading twin and assisting the Batchelor and the high respect to escape one another by this point there I have for one another's blood and fully intend to murder each other Dan Kowski also asks you to help find Ruben trainee doctor that attempted to go to the Kanes for redemption however he vanished along the way you quickly find out that he was captured by the commander's rogue soldiers and has been through various different places of the town after dodging more rounds of infection and meeting with Burdick you find Ruben trapped beneath the theatre he reveals that your magical touch brings forth a transformation of the blood with enough effort it causes the subjects blood to become like that of Simon Caine rejecting and becoming immune to the disease this forms the basis of your plan to cure the plague a small number of those devoted to Clara can sacrifice themselves in order to replicate large volumes of Simon's blood which can in turn be used to create panacea these people come premier allies the sinners each hoping to earn their Redemption by their sacrifice day 11 brings you into contact with all the familiar story elements from the previous paths the commander is losing control of all his men to the rebel forces The Bachelor is attempting to rescue Andray from execution and the heiruspecs is preparing chorus final confrontation with elder young in the true form of a miracle worker you said about saving all of the other protagonists from their follies you save a loyalist military commander who in turn intervenes to prevent the rebels from firing on dummkopfs key and Andre you visit burdock and persuade him to hold back on his fight against the foreman instead of this fight he persuaded the foreman to sacrifice himself to create more of Simon's blood you speak to each of the protagonists afterwards the Batchelor as we know believes the polyhedron must be preserved as the apex of mankind's achievement even if that means destroying the town though it is worth noting that the architect brothers argue that the polyhedron is a meaningless sculpture without the people of the town to interact with it the heiruspecs wishes to preserve the town and destroy such miracles in the name of preservation and tradition rendering the town just another normal village on the step your solution preserves both worlds though it does require the sacrifice of your chosen few in order to generate the magical plague carrying blood from which the panacea can be crafted you returned to the Inquisitor Aglaia to present your solution she immediately rejects it as barbaric and horrific you suggest a town preserved in a state of constant quote-unquote miracle but only by bringing innocent and not so innocent people to the sacrificial altar to harvest their blood you flee instead to the general who agrees to your plan you must then choose those you wish to sacrifice from amongst the characters that you were supposed to protect all but two of them have to die in order to preserve your miracle the final day of the game dawns and Clara faces the same options as the other two protagonists did chickens choose to save the allies of the other two protagonists as well as her own if you choose to save everyone you unlock further aspects the ending ones that have significant differences - done cuffs keys and barracks stories first difference is the meeting of the powers that be Clara has already met them once before on day nine and is aware of her status as a puppet in the hands of giant children this time however the children are actively scared of you you've defied their expectations and broken their game by your free will they wanted you to act as a plague but instead you have acted as a miracle worker albeit a bloodied and dirt soaked one furthermore you find out that the children aren't strange manifestations of a god-like power but instead are quite literal children they invented the game as a morbid way to cope with the death of a loved one the two were both just back from a family funeral the opening cinematic of the game is referenced lost children playing at funeral rites attempting to cope with things they're not yet able to understand instead of coming off as powerful and terrifying they seem small and powerless and second difference is the meeting with the tragedy and the executor in familiar form they take the stage and bow before you their audience however on this conversation with them you get to ask for more in depth questions they tell you the player that Clara's path was entirely about self-determination and choosing one's fate they also tell you about the other two characters and how those stories are also about freedom or the lack of it in those situations finally addressing everything in the most direct way possible they admit that there was no one in the town at all the only people that really existed were you the player and they developers there are other options to keep questioning and pushing them asking about inconsistencies in the plot lines demanding to understand how the miracle is to come about and finally within the game itself they even admit to you at these inconsistencies in the plot radoo to their limitations of budget and time as developers and not necessarily intentional parts of the story the final part of the game again lies in the cathedral the battle lines are drawn and the Batchelor the heiruspecs and the Inquisitor and the general all wait for you you and your evil twin are there to cast the deciding vote the fine cinematic for Clara shows a hopeful town life continuing on pleasantly for the children though with the slightly dark undertone of human sacrifices the means of preservation [Music] [Music] the game is concluded at last and you finally return to the fourth playable character the same character you played at the beginning of the game as you watch the protagonists on stage this character is you the player this time instead of being in the balconies watching the play below you're allowed to stand upon the stage itself you see a collection of rag dolls and puppets and in the center three protagonists each with ragdoll button eyes a booming voice of the developers calls out you did it it was a free choice we acknowledge the victory of the player it is indeed miraculous the exit is clear it shouldn't have happened the miracle must be real [Music] play is over curtains are drawn the actors and stage hands have left the building your final action of the game is to leave the state yourself your part is complete the pantomime is done I'm sure most of the description of the plot has left more questions than it provided answers the fact that even the developers acknowledge themselves within the game as much as I personally love stories of existentialist dread and death I don't think pathologic would be anything like the experience that it is without the mechanics to back it up I'm going to try to discuss how these mechanics build upon each other and interact with the story to provide the really unique and bizarre experience that the game provides pathologic is a punishingly hard game you don't just have a couple of pools to keep track of like health and magic but a whole collection of different statistics each of which have the potential to kill you if you [ __ ] them up the health pool is the most obvious it functions as your hip points and will go down with your Shopp stabbed or fall from height or in some other manner cause yourself injury if your reach is zero your character dies game over the more complex thing is that the other factors will also drain your health pool if you're infected your health will drop slowly over time if you're hungry or exhausted again your health will drop slowly over time there are only a few ways to gain healing items in the game so your health pool becomes an incredible source of stress and will rarely if ever be at its fullest unlike other games in which your protagonist plays the big dam here a role and regenerates health when you're not looking in this game you are incredibly fragile than delicate and constantly on the edge of some form of decay the main ways to restore your hip points are to use bandages gained by trading with hungover turns people or to take a swig of morphine before you sleep an expensive option as well as a reference to Bulgakov's morphine hunger is probably the next easiest pool to understand your character is human well sort of and needs to eat your hunger level is constantly decreasing over time and there's nothing that you can do to prevent this from happening the only thing you can do is say she ate your hunger with food a task that should be simple but often isn't different food types will satisfy your hunger by different amounts some foods are therefore worth far more to you than others though the game doesn't ever tell you the mathematics of it so it becomes extremely difficult to figure out which is the most economic decision whether the expensive chunk of meat is really worth double a loaf of bread for example if your hunger meter tops out it'll start draining your health pool as you starve to death there was an unused mechanic in the game that suggested some foodstuffs carried a risk of infection however this was not fully implemented the descriptions of items like milk and meat still show this the milk particular wavey is ominously described as appearing spoiled with blood like clots exhaustion is the next pool that has some degree of easily understood mechanics you wake up you carry out your daily tasks and the longer you're awake and a more vigorous activity you commit to you the faster your exhaustion Rises the main way to reduce your exhaustion is to sleep however that takes up time which you probably don't have you often find yourself running around the town at 90% exhaustion trying to desperately complete your tasks before you have to sleep there are other ways you can reduce your exhaustion like lemons and coffee however they damage other pools so significantly that the costs are rarely worth it coffee will take a chunk out of your health pool which renders its use pretty pointless unless you have healing items and lemons will increase your hunger by such a significant amount that the expense isn't really worth it I with an emergency these items more end up serving as temptations to take a short-term fix that we'd still longer-term problems rather than providing genuine solutions reputation is the metre that stands in place of morality a low reputation is gained by immoral acts such as killing civilians and a high reputation is gained by helping the poor or easing people suffering with analgesics when they've contracted the plague the reputation is also boosted by killing criminals which often leads you to hunting people down in the street like a low-budget Batman there are other less than moral acts that you can commit as the protagonists that will boost your reputation and other very moral acts that will lower it it instead serve as more as a marker for how the rumors about you were spreading and determines the townspeople's likelihood to trust you or kick you out if it drops too low you're barred from trading in shops if it drops still further you're attacked in the street the game encourages you not to go on murderous rampages for no reason killing more than a couple of innocents will net you in near irredeemable low reputation which utterly stalls your progress and makes you far more likely to run out of food starve and die the next two statistics of the most interesting but also the most complex immunity and infection immunity mostly saw is a protective shield against catching the infection you can take multiple different types of tablets to improve your immunity which might provide you a saving grace if you accidentally stumble into a plate cloud they're only moderately effective though and their benefit runs out over time and each pill also takes a small amount of your health pool to keeping your me and she constantly high isn't a viable option you're more likely to damage your health pool and blow your money than you are to save yourself but neglecting to attend to it puts you at significant risk of catching the near incurable plague once you become infected your immunity level is the main statistic that determines the speed at which the infection spreads the infection mechanic itself is the strongest defining characteristic of the game once you catch the infection your character starts coughing and your vision blurs for a few seconds a heart sinking feeling as this is a mechanic that is nearly irreversible it makes your game a lot harder as soon as you have the infection it starts slowly draining your health pool the greater the level of the infection the faster the drain and your health pool becomes the infection always constantly increases even with full immunity you can only slow it down you can never truly stop it there are antibiotics that you can buy for extortion at prices that will reduce the level of infection but aside from being prohibitively expensive they also take out a huge chunk from your health pool to use even once you've done less the infection will still creep upwards anyway there really isn't a permanent fix only temporary solutions at least until the late game the only ways to cure the plague are the children's powder and pasilla items so rare and so important to the story that decided to use them becomes a major decision even if you do use them it doesn't stop you catching the plague again later on individually each of these mechanics have some minor degree of difficulty curve to get used to however in combination together you end up with a [ __ ] of different statistics to worry about there is never a time in the game where at least one of these isn't at a critical level which really contributes to the feeling of dread isolation and decay you're constantly reminded that you're living on the edge and even a few small and isolated mistakes will cost you dearly often so far the die on the line that you don't realize how much these small mistakes have added up other games often instill a sense of dread by monsters or jump scares or having your protagonist walk around in true horror movie style always slightly slower than your thriller monster but pathologic doesn't even need to rely on that even without the SRAM ranked covered infected townsfolk or the whispering calling of skull-faced play clouds still provides a nerve-racking and horrifying experience it reminds you of just how fragile your life is and just how easy it is to lose it these are enough to turn a lot of players off the game the sheer complexity is daunting as is the ease at which you'll die the complexity is intentional however and part of the reason the game definitely isn't for everyone you have to be willing to experience a significant virtual level of suffering to play it it doesn't engage you to make you feel like the badass hero it makes you feel crushed and desperate this in turn feeds to the point the pathologic wasn't designed to be a fun game but that's the point that I will come back to you later I don't feel that it's too profound a point to make that Russia and the Russian public probably have had some of the most intense experiences of economic shifts in recent history it's hardly surprising then that a game made a Moscow will have an implosive economy as a primary mechanic of the game money is surprisingly easy to come by the first few days of each protagonists storyline give relatively large amounts of money to play with in the realm of thousands of coins initially this seems like a lot you have more than enough on day one to buy some ammunition in a possible weapon and keep yourself stocked up on food and supplies new players will likely be lulled into a false sense of security by this there are a lot of character stats to manage but they all seem easily kept in check a loaf of bread only costs 140 rubles and your quest rewards are in the realms of thousands the carpet is then pulled out from underneath you on day two the plot line justification for this is that the townspeople hearing about the outbreak of the plague immediately panic by all the available supplies in the town supply no longer meets demand prices for goods skyrocket and the economy undergoes hyperinflation costs of most Goods increase over ten times over the course of one night if you hadn't prepared and panic bought everything you needed already you quickly find yourself starving and close to death at this early point in the game it's likely that you'll have a fair bit of money but not a lot in the way of actual items you won't have had time to buy anything and if you trust your economy to remain stable money generally is more useful than bartering once you find out how useless money is in this situation becomes apparent that shops are no longer a viable way to get supplies everything is too expensive quite enough food to survive and God help you if you want to buy pharmaceuticals instead your hand is forced into a more primitive bartering system with the locals drunkards will trade you for bandages for water to cure their hangovers militiamen sometimes have food and immune boosters they'll trade for weaponry and most strikingly children seem to have a stockpiles of ammunition and opiates that they'll trade for random junk items you find in the garbage we pushed into desperately bleating through bins and scavenging rubbish Nord find something that you can use to trade removing the safety net of wealth adds an extra layer in security to the game and presses you into feeling constantly vulnerable I'm not the only person that sold my only gun on it's ammunition for a loaf of bread I'm sure the state of vulnerability forces your hands still further if you're feeling particularly pressed you can raid houses for food and other supplies looting the dwellings of the Dead is often a high-risk strategy where you might end up killed by other looters or infected by the plague whilst looting the houses of the living will make you a criminal either way you'll find yourself stealing from civilians and taking away their means of survival in the name of continuing your own if you have a strong conscience or sense of self-awareness it becomes apparent that you're quite literally no different from the desperate criminals that you're hunting down at night you're stealing the items fundamental to the people's survival doing them to die in order to keep yourself going to find a way to save them the hypocrisy is soul-crushing when you think about it for too long the overall effect of the economy mechanics are to create an unstable and insecure background in which survival becomes downright impossible the world that you're given is such significant scarcity that you can't afford to be the big damn hero it reinforces the notion that heroism is mostly about the means to be heroic often the best that you can hope for is simple survival and often that too will be at the expense of others despite video games placing you the player in the role of the protagonist pathologic does its best to make you feel like an ordinary person without special significance the most effective way it does this is the use of time as a mechanic most other games particularly RPGs will have quests and plots that are built around the player as protagonist the all-too-familiar situation of explore every room before triggering the next boss leads to a feeling of security and power as well as disrupting the flow of the plot you were the master of the universe that you were playing in you trigger the next events when you are ready to do so and if you want to mess around and explore the world first then you're welcome to do so pathologic isn't nearly so forgiving you have a limited time period to complete your daily tasks each single in-game day is about two hours of real time despite two hours seeming like a long period the days are all still frantic attempts to do everything possible one or two early mistakes can delay your progression through the day leading to a slow sinking feeling of dread as you realize that you have ten minutes left to complete 30 minutes worth of tasks this leads to a sense of long-term stress and desperation that you don't get from other similar time-sensitive mechanics like quick time events or two-minute missions regardless of what you do during the day the game will progress without you you have a limited amount of time to complete all vital aspects of the main plot if you don't the plot continues on you don't get an instant game over but those that you're protecting do get sick and you're left with even less evidence of uncovering the mystery of what's actually happening in the town you can't afford to run up and explore the step nor can you afford to explore every nook and cranny of the polyhedron of the abattoir the world is just fast enough that managing to negotiate the city is in itself difficult and a time-consuming task success often involves a lot of forethought and prior planning and in my case more than a few instances of save scumming time is never on your side even if you plan on a perfect run of the city in the most efficient manner possible you're still pressed for time it's just tight enough that you can always have a background feeling of strain but never quite so short as I actually get your adrenaline pumping in a feel-good heroic sort of way it contributes to the feeling of constant background dread knowing that the risk of failing and losing areas where the progress is always a distinct possibility it serves to make you feel small and relatively insignificant in the face of the game's world this theme of the importance of time isn't new nor is it entirely unique to pathologic Gary Gygax of Dungeons & Dragons Fame stated that you cannot have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept whilst this is obviously a controversial statement there is still some merit to it time is the main thing that increases a sense of tension if you have a character without any limitations in terms of their time they can gladly piss about doing meaningless legwork when those supposed to be saving the world they can also spend a long time grinding for experience or doing otherwise fruitless work and the and effects reduce the focus on the story even other games that have dark themes and execute them well don't have the same constant background stress generated by constantly trying to keep your eye on the clock as someone who works in a medical field I have to say this felt very true to life in terms of the nature of the stress low intensity but constant and unyielding and adds the sense of insecurity in dread icepick Lodge I've used the mechanics of long-term time limitation in the other games most notably in the void which similar notions have played out you have limited resources you're in danger of starving and time is against you this does introduce some potential flaws in these games save scumming is not only tempting but in some cases downright necessary mistakes are fairly unforgiving and by the time you've realized you've made a mistake you might be too far down the road to correct it and you might easily have overwritten a save file from the point to undo it this is definitely enough to put a lot of players off it was enough that I had difficulty getting to the game at all on the first playthrough but I'm still overall glad that time works in this way as it definitely makes the game feel more brutal and therefore more rewarding and the times when you do succeed your first lesson in the combat a pathologic occurs within the first few minutes of playing as the Batchelor Eve tells you there are two strange men in her garden and as a gallant gentleman you go to scare them away if you choose to initiate combat you're introduced to the clunky awkward scenario that is fist fighting in pathologic once more the game does not go out of its way to make you feel special you're not stronger than your opponents you can only take about four or five hits before you're dead you can't do flashy martial arts you can't do flips and kicks and spin around in midair you can't really even effectively defend yourself you were a doctor not a trained fighter and so you don't have significant combat skills or at least as the post-hoc justification I'm using for why the combat plays out as it does you're about as strong as any other individual enemy in the game and with the very first combat setup as a two versus one fight you're harshly reminded that you can't take on many people at once you're not strong enough and your punches are pretty limited stopping power the high likelihood is that you'll die on your first attempt which often is within minutes of starting the game a bitter pill to swallow but a lesson to the player nonetheless when fighting experienced fighters like militiamen criminals or soldiers you're at even more of a disadvantage these enemies often hit harder than you can easily chase you down and will more often than win in a toe to toe fight combat therefore becomes desperate more about who can kill who first and most brutal and quick way rather than about pretty choreography weaponry therefore becomes a quick priority vivre winning the fight becomes more about getting the drop on your enemy honor and fair fighting don't play a part toll when combat is so desperate and when every single encounter is potentially a deadly one even the ones that aren't immediately deadly might still kill you later on down the line two hits might reduce as much as half of your health pool which when coupled with infection starvation and exhaustion might be enough just to push you over the edge that you can't survive it when you can instead shoot your enemy in the back and avoid the [ __ ] of resource management involved in restoring your health this becomes the Alphaeus solution to most combat situations this sense of desperation and brutality adds to the overall background of despair that the game portrays there's no glamour there's no glory there's only desperation and utterly unnecessary death having said all this there are definitely aspects for the combat is distinctly lacking the animations an attack timings for each enemy repeat like clockwork and with a lack of variety of each enemy it becomes very easy to anticipate the combat timing to the point where a skilled player might find it trivial there are also some enemy encounters that feel artificially difficult knife wielding criminals have a one hit kill ranged attack at the start of a combat animation that feels very arbitrary and some enemies like rats have such broken hip boxes that they feel as irritating as the cliff races of morrowind I would personally still argue that the overall effect of the clunky combat enhances the game's themes rather than detract from it in a similar way to the Silent Hill franchise but mostly this is an opinion based on taste rather than any objective evidence those of you who have played the game probably know what I'm talking about when I say that at heart pathologic resembles more walking simulator than an RPG this is hyperbole of course but at times it really does feel that way the entirety of the gameplay takes place in one single town a large but nevertheless limited arena there are no fast travel options taught from the scene with the powers-that-be there's no exits from the town either you got to explore pretty much the entirety of the boundaries of the town on your first day and with one or two notable exceptions there's not really many large new areas for you to explore the structure of near enough every quest from the game is very straightforward navigate the town talk to a character navigate to another part of town talk to another character rinse and repeat there's a sense of monotony in this but one that feels more akin to despair than boredom just like the dredge of realizing that the rest of your life is laid out in a nine till five factory machine must the challenge of the game comes from plotting your course through the tan trying to dodge potential sources of danger your running speed isn't particularly high and as previously discussed your time ellipse is extremely tight trying to do this efficiently becomes the main challenge especially when the districts of the town become beset with play clouds criminal gangs and arsonists the slow movement speed and the effectively endless walking forces even paying attention to your surroundings at all times you get to know the town intimately and you get to see the slow creeping changes the cancerous red growths on the size of buildings the boarding up of Windows as families abandon their homes the air of desolation as entire districts are left out to rot it adds to the sense of foreboding in a way that you would otherwise not have if you had as faster sprinting running and gunning style peace there's quite literal pacing sets the tone for the rest of the game and slow dark and brooding and fosters a further sense of dread it's being compared before to 2001 a Space Odyssey which is a comparison that I don't disagree with the slow pacing sense of frustration and monotony are integral to the game's story and the crawling speed makes it all the more grueling again though this is mostly a matter of taste this form of slow dread is definitely not for everyone and there are more recent games that arguably do this sort of thing better but personally I think this makes for an excellent experience and at the time of the game's release this was relatively unique multiple different per tag Ernests allowing for multiple points of view isn't a feature entirely unique to pathologic but the manner in which it's executed is still interesting instead of switching between different carriages for different parts of the narrative rien cigs actly the same story three times over from three different perspectives in most stories this would lead with a lot of redundancy however in pathologic it works the way in which it functions differs from other works of fiction for example in A Song of Ice and Fire there are multiple different characters and perspectives fleshed out though you as an audience member are given the benefit of hearing the whole story you can observe the dramatic irony on stage whilst comfortably being in the position of having most if not all of the facts you can appreciate the perspective for the characters that you empathize with but at the same time you're removed enough from the drama that you can see what the characters should have done to avoid the trouble that they find themselves in and as is often the case argue about it ceaselessly online pathologic doesn't want to put you in the position of a passive audience member sitting back and allowing the story to happen around you you're constantly pushed at the position of your character and as the game even prompts you to say your actions are their actions it's a distinctly uncomfortable experience when you realize that the dramatic irony roll pot is happening to you and that this time you are the idiot acting without all the facts the nature of the narrative necessitates that most of the cast will hide large parts of the truth from you if not just downright lie depending on the protagonist who you're playing as Ospina will always lie to the bachelor the Stoughton's and utopians hold no great love for the Harris pecks and the Kane's outright hate Clara you're given a very limited and biased set of information to work with and the game succeeds in persuading you that you're making the right decisions with what information you have on hand each time you play you feel like you're doing the right thing and are working towards the correct solution to the town's problems and each time you're led to vastly different conclusions the advantage of the three character narrative is that the characters can lie to you in one narrative but you still have two other separate narratives to find out why some mysteries are never solved by one character leaving their narrative entirely in the dark about something forever however are revealed to another character in full this is effective in its delivery nothing feels too contrived and it also increases the sense that no one is to be entirely trusted the bachelor scenario is the easiest for an outsider to get to grips with because he's an outsider to the town himself though his goals quickly delve into the abstract you give him the information of the town being home to a miracle an immortal man and instead find that it's home to a different miracle a tower that could allow all of humanity to achieve immortality you a trained doctor are given a chance to defeat death all together and achieve utopia you're pushed by increasingly stressful situations into making brutally utilitarian decisions quarantine and lock away some people to prevent the spread of disease agree with a decision to help trap the butchers in the abattoir and you are eventually pushed to the conclusion that the polyhedron a stretch with the power to reforge reality is something that can save the world and thus vastly outweighs the lives of a single town you set aside your compassion for individuals in order to chase the dreams of utopia in order to save everyone else it's a decision that entirely makes sense especially if you become jaded towards the individual townspeople being stupid ignorant self-serving all ailments of the soul that can be cured by utopian society built with the power of the polyhedron the heiruspecs takes a little bit more time to get used to but judging by the opinions of people familiar with the game tends to be the most sympathetic protagonist once you get past the unusual occult rituals and the harvesting of human organs his story is the most personable he is a direct connection to the town his family is old and well-known and the set of allies he has to protect her old children this leads to a distinctly human element to his story which is something that the lacking and the other protagonists he also has the clearest hero's journey of the three he starts out as an unwanted outcast quickly overcomes metaphorical and literal challenges faces off in combat against the man representing his adversity and creates the true cure to the town's plague his solutions are far less lofty than the bachelors but as a consequence feel far more grounded and reasonable the differences you make are concrete your focus is on the trans people who are figuratively and literally your children to care for your success isn't measured on theoretical arbitrary lives saved on the scale of society as a whole but on who you help in the immediate present the dreams of the polyhedron therefore feel distant and unnecessary and saving the town feels far more noble a goal this is of course precisely the opposite of the bachelors viewpoint The Changeling scenario is as may be obvious by now extremely weird it relies a meta game knowledge and actively addresses the player very directly very early in its plotline the but translation makes it even more difficult to fully get into but the overall narrative is one of preservation of quite literally choosing to constantly continue the game her plotline and faction is one of contradiction she wishes to preserve both polyhedron and the town and prolong the stalemate of the game eternally the way the game's writing lends you to this conclusion being the correct solution is really via a very small set of characters the characters that Clara interacts with are all quote unquote humble people in some cases like Lara reveled this is by their nature or in others like Ana angel this is due to regret over past crimes regardless of who she is interacting with the common themes are played and replayed whilst people have power they look for violence and retribution against others and once they lose it they become humble and willing to work together towards a common goal even if that means via acts of extreme self-sacrifice Clara's path finds inherent nobility in the self-sacrifice and in the idea of coming to gather in the face of adversity however for this to happen there has to be adversity Clara therefore acts as both the crusader against the plague and as the plague itself in order to generate this adversity to allow for the townsfolk to express their in Annabelle severe martyrdom the parallels with the player playing the game are also apparent here both the main force fighting the plague but are also the person causing the plague to happen by playing the game at all the ultimate theme of Clara's scenario is that the game itself with its struggles is the thing that truly has value rather than taking any one sight in the fight being able to identify this final theme at all is something of the game's plot can't immediately present to you as much as it's possible to intellectually understand the premise it requires actually living through the emotional experience of multiple different points of view and gradually finding out backgrounds of characters you never initially thought about it requires not only nuance but the discovery of nuance for oneself the whole point of Clara's scenario is to deliver the final emotional gut punch when you realize that you yourself are just as bad as the powers that be you're the one generating the virtual suffering by playing the game at all and that just maybe there is still some inherent Beauty to the struggle despite the amount of suffering that it causes in this way pathologic it presents itself more as an experience than a game in the traditional sense of the word which I guess is an awfully pretentious way of saying hey look it's art the soundtrack of pathologic is distinctly weird it's a combination of faux step language chanting heavy industrial beats and occasionally off-putting diss current screams this is and rad is not a design choice fully replicated in the remake the opening menu soundtrack sounds something like this compare it to the opening menu music from the reboot which is composed of ominous step chanting [Music] whilst I would like to say the opening music of the original is something contributes to the game it feels honestly more suited to a cyberpunk dystopia story rather than a nineteenth-century plague story this is probably the most discordant with the rest of the game's themes and I mainly mention it as something I don't feel work so well especially is it's the first thing with a new players introduced to when starting it does at least add an extra layer of confusion to the anachronistic aesthetic of the game but overall it still didn't feel in entirely a correct fit the rest of the soundtrack fare is better though is still a bizarre when you first start playing as dank offski this is the soundtrack that you were greeted with you it's not dramatic or bombastic it doesn't really evoke movie theater backgrounds in the same way most modern Triple A games attempt to do doesn't make you feel like a hero not even as scared hero running away from monsters for me at least it just introduced a distinct sense of um the ease dread isn't quite the right term but it certainly feels off and it builds enough over time that you feel more and more discomfort without quite knowing why there are a few other motifs built for different areas of the game all of which run on a similar theme of slightly disconcerting mixes of industrial beat and discordant step chant the summing tents about the repetitive mix which to me felt distinctly alien take for example the effect districts and track [Music] [Music] [Music] there isn't a single aspect of this that makes me feel comfortable it doesn't even help me believe in a heretic protagonist narrative it feels bizarre and alien and intrusive and at least to me like I'm treading somewhere that I don't belong my first foray into the game is The Bachelor this is a perfect atmosphere to set up by contrast the theme played in the steps feels almost peaceful there are elements of pipes and drums and a feeling of something ancient and tribal but as far less claustrophobic and disconcerting than the theme of the town itself [Music] [Music] [Music] the feeling of primitive instruments wind rustling through the tire and distant drumming feels a lot more hopeful it seems the heiruspecs is scenario far more the step feels more like home and as a consequence the world feels far less like an impressive force I could go on further with the different variations and themes used for each town area when infected and not infected but I want to move on to discuss the other areas of pathologic soundscape there's all the usual Foley of course like gunshots explosions footsteps the barking of dogs all of which aren't the most high budget triple-a level quality but serve their function appropriately what I really want to address here though is all the other strange choices of the sound that that file presented at the game one of the first examples this the player will notice is the sound of children laughing or crying if you take good or bad reputation effects respectively at first it seems like a bizarre quirk though eventually it becomes apparent that these are in fact the voices of the powers that be as they play with you they're dull the only other places that you hear the same sort of children's cry is at the top of random staircases littered around the town these are prototypes of the Star Martin's attempts to build the polyhedron and they brush up against the edges of the game's reality just enough to get a little closer to the powers a neat touch and one that's not easily noticed on the first playthrough there are other audio effects that trigger when you take certain actions climbing underground for instance or standing near the standing stones beside the town as artemiy will allow you to hear the voice of your father chanting in the games step language which i think is a really neat little narrative device given that you don't get the opportunity to hear these things as the bachelor it drives home the point of the world is supernatural for some people and not others the parts that I find most effective though involve the absence rather than the presence of background noise the final game of the day especially is devoid of anything beyond your own footsteps on the soundtrack the first few days begin with normal ambience for the town crying babies dogs barking occasional people yelling in anger and this quickly gives way to the anguish screams of those dying from the plague and that is equally quickly accompanied by the sounds of explosions of malt of cocktails and the firing of guns by the time the military arrives to your ears quickly become used to detecting them hiss so flamethrower fire and knowing where to avoid it the final day however has none of these it has a distinct sense of emptiness and this whiplash between disorientating and distressing sounds of chaos and death should feel like a relief when it finally vanishes but instead it's not it makes the feeling of an absence in the town more potent the world feels vanished and lost and a prompts you to consider that nearly everyone that mattered in the town has already died the use of silence leaving the player to come to this realization on their own something that I really found effective and horrifying the first major thing that you notice about the town is how limited and isolated it is on one side there is an impassable river on the other side an endless step that would be death to traverse there's a once a sense of claustrophobia and agoraphobia together you're trapped in this small landscape of a singular suffering town and yet the alternative is a vast uncaring blank grassland that stretches into nowhere imposing and intimidating in its magnitude you're forced to remain in the very circumscribed map with your opportunities to explore remaining extremely limited the towns map is one of the more interesting reveals in the game as you begin the game it appears like any other in-game map once you begin talking to the town's residents you find that different districts of the town are named after different animal parts the rib the spleen the mouth etc at first this seems like an odd quirk of the game another reference to the town's source of cattle meat is slightly morbid names contributing to the uncomfortable background loke body horror it takes some time for the map to slowly change in the game subtle changes but enough highlights that event it becomes slightly easier to see the town as something else which is then cemented by the eventual overlay of a giant bull over the in-game map polyhedron forms the horns the wealthy district forms the head the middle district and train station from the chest and front legs the poor district in the abattoir from the back legs in the rump this is certainly the way the Harris back sees the town the town is soo OCH the bull guard upon which the world was built growing to the step religion when playing as the bachelor you begin to see further aspects of the map to attach the great sleeping bull of the town as the polyhedron appearing at first as a strange womb like structure which by the end definitely appears to have an embryonic thing growing inside it the conception of a new utopia awaiting its chance to be birthed into the world whilst playing as the high respects this image appears more grisly and gory the polyhedron instead of a womb appears as a foreign spike rammed into the earth the embryo instead acting as a parasite to steal away its lifeblood Clara of course sees things both ways at once the town itself is an anachronistic mess of couple together houses turn-of-the-century heavy industry and pre civilization standing stones becomes very disorientating to try to get any sense of where and when you are the characters use early 1900s weaponry but dress in modern jeans and biker jackets and make reference to wars that could easily be anywhere from the Napoleonic to the Second World War these design choices served to reinforce that the town is both warped and unique it combines too many conflicting eras of history together and a mess that really should be unstable and yet seems to work the bizarre combination of things that should be in conflict and yet aren't the situation Clara finds beautiful and is trying to save the architecture of the town is also disorientating it's reminiscent of recent Moscow architecture in many ways each of the large town flats is similar to 1960s central Russian design and their aesthetic functional a little bit too big and blocky slightly edging on the brutalist this is seen even more strongly in the design of the heavy industrial plants enormous buildings functional and in elegant brutal and huge and imposing seeing the factories grafted onto the side of the ancient mountain of the abattoir feels like it's already generating a conflict the cost of the new worlds being levied in the environment of the old one it reminds me of the large toxic smell to rooks on Russia's outskirts like Cara Bosch or by the time any of the protagonists arrived in the town the abattoir in industrial meat works have already been shut down as a consequence there are large sacks of meat just hanging and rotting in the air all the way across the outskirts of the town meat is cheap here and there's a slowly overwhelming sense that human life is just as cheap and disposable as the meat of the cattle that the town feeds from by the time the plague arrives the numbers of bodies abandoned in the streets mirror the Saxon meat hanging lifeless limp and most worryingly just another normal part of the landscape the speed at which the player becomes desensitized to this is in my opinion heightened by the fact that the worthlessness of life and meat is highlighted from the very beginning this certainly helps tonkatsu key story where the sanctity of individual human life quickly takes second place the utopian dreams of saving the abstract many recognizing on an intellectual level that something should feel horrifying whilst not actually feeling the emotional itself is definitely key in developing this outlook given the prominence of the town's architecture taking a significant role in the plot I don't think I can avoid talking about the creations of the stamens the obvious mark of the stamens mad design presence of the town is obviously the polyhedron its design is starkly different to the brutalist functional yet warped architecture of the rest of the town it stands on its own gliding mysteriously into the sky supported by its own staircase built from its own architectural blueprints it resembles the abdomen of a giant wasp hanging above the town with his stinger raised in threat in the post Stalinist era of the real world Soviet Union architects were given slightly more free rein to create surrealist bizarre buildings the theater at veliky novgorod is a prime example of this this particular abstract building style amongst others was used by architects and artists to criticize the regime which in turn led to a clampdown of all abstract art in Russia and the attempted arrest of various subversive artists I don't think it's too far a leap to assume that the stamens wish to flee from the in-game authorities is a direct reference to this this bizarre creation mimics real-world surrealist architecture and is designed with much the same goals in mind aesthetics begin to take precedence over function the purpose of buildings altogether is called into question and like all good forms of art it elicits extremely strong reactions in people the citizen of the town either adore it or detest it its purpose becomes more and more clear as the game progresses it quite literally bridges the gap between the abstract and reality by being an abstract art made real and it's therefore entirely appropriate that this is the building that forms a bridge to other abstract concepts like the dreams of children the idea of immortality and the building of utopia despite having a cast of over 30 major plot relevant characters pathologic nevertheless manages to make each one filled distinct and unique the vast majority of characters have their own house room or workshop filled with artwork and items representative of their personalities let's take the first NPC that we meet in the game is an example Eva yan her appearance gives us an initial impression of a fairly classic scantily clad videogame female deuteronomist but as the game progresses we quickly see that this isn't quite all there is to her her mode of dress makes her look like she wants to be an exotic dancer rather than a daughter of minor nobility and within the first few conversations with her we learned that she's something of a romantic with a clear infatuation with the bachelor from the far-off capital like many young people Shira Mantis ices the foreign and exotic and has a fascination with the concept of idealism even if she doesn't yet fully understand it it becomes increasingly clear that the bachelor with his talk of science and his utopian dreams begins to represent all the romantic notions of a better world that she dreams of putting aside her somewhat clumsy attempts at seduction we see her infatuation become increasingly strong as does her association between idealism and salvation this is a thoroughly unsurprising development even the paintings in her house act as a pretty clear representation of her view of the world there is an image of a dark coated man who looks like The Bachelor holding and providing comfort to a vulnerable woman it's little wonder then as the batch of the scenario plays out that Eva becomes increasingly desperate for this semblance of salvation Eva's final moments are spent on the balustrade of the Cathedral as she commits suicide in the hopes that she can give soul to a dead building and gain salvation by contributing to the Utopia despite the initial stroke I'm seeing Eva kill herself everything portrayed about her until that point leads us to feel that this conclusion was almost inevitable we know that she's a dreamer we know that she fantasizes about far-off places and exotic heroic people and we that she desperately wants to be saved and we see her fall far more and more in love with The Bachelor or at least with the utopian concepts that he represents these subtle aspects of her design hint that her ending is going to be tragic and when it finally is there's a feeling of resignation and depression rather than a wailing emotional grief a further example of character portrayal from the high respects of scenario is Vlad algum skeevy elder he's a very large very well dressed nouveau riche industrialist almost the epitome of every capitalist bourgeois stereotype this appearance gun is immediately distressed from the bachelor and the change link which is entirely appropriate for characters that have pseudo socialist and egalitarian ties whilst playing as the Harris backs we get to see his personality in more detail he's a newly wealthy man his house being relatively small yet overfilled with expensive furniture there are several pieces of artwork hanging on his walls which can easily be interpreted differently according to which character you're viewing him as the first portrait you see when you walk into his house is that of an a dong a strange steppe creature we can see that he has ties to the steppe even if he styles himself as a master of it he's a local ruler rather than a foreign one we can also see images of the abattoir soaked in the red earth whether you see this as nourishing life blood as the remains of thousands of dead bulls is entirely subjective finally we can also see images of his ghost-like female figure near his bed space I can only presume that these are portraits of Capella's mother the previous and now deceased mistress of the earth a character that is rarely if ever mentioned when Vlad the elder makes his suicidal sacrifice on his son's behalf it comes across as something unexpected to the bachelor but when playing as the heiruspecs it feels like it makes more sense despite the trappings of wealth we can see that he's a native man of the land and is more a part of its people and the family of Earth than anything else the final example I want to draw from here is from Clara's scenario in Katharina Sabre over the design of the entire Sieber of household is barton and small reflecting the ascetic attitudes of both Katharina and Alexander the dark cloud mistress is always wearing black appearing to always be in mourning calling to mind feelings of a state of lost grandeur not dissimilar to a character's like war and pieces maria Bolkonsky her falter in conversation and her Haggard tired appearance betray family's fallen state long before we learned about her opiate addiction and her sense of resignation towards her fate feels once more entirely appropriate and unsurprising when she finally gives up her life the painting that hangs on her room dominates the background a large black spider with a tragedy and masks upon its back suggesting deceit betrayal and darkness foreshadowing both her betrayal of Clara and the betrayal that she felt at the hand of the rat prophet the last feature of character design that I want to discuss is something that I suspect wasn't entirely intentional by the developers the obtuse and cryptic dialog I mentioned before that the dialogue of the game was initially translated in a very rushed and botched way and must this was addressed in the re-release it still remains intriguing and bizarre even the original PC manual was dark and difficult to comprehend the first conversation with Gertie Kane in the original translation includes lines like the following this is an extremely cryptic and long-winded way of saying Simon came was murdered go look for his killer but it belts perfectly on the aesthetic of the game everything is told in half-truths metaphors and whispers and you have to actively work to understand what's going on I personally felt that the botched translation was actually something that helps this feeling of being lost in an alien hostile culture and was almost sorry to see some of the changes in the renewed translation but that's mostly a matter of my tastes being quite pretentious the effect is still to combine mystery with the sense of classical dialogue making the player feel that they fall into a Dostoyevsky novel which was something that I very much enjoyed in this final section of the video I'm going to attempt to address how all of the elements have discussed combined to give the final bizarre almost incomprehensible piece this is where I'm going to be at my most pretentious so I apologize in advance there are two main questions that really need to be asked when analyzing any game the first what did the developers set out to do and the second what did they actually achieve in this particular era of gaming in 2017 I think we've come fairly far as a culture especially with the rise of indie developers in the creation of bizarre experimental games in 2005 at the time of pathologic release the market was very different and it's worth noting that every review praised it for its originality and its concept and its execution I mentioned this because I feel that the larger number of experimental indie games now will dilute just how impressive the original ambition and achievement of the game was at the time of its release the ambition of the developers is in somewhat convoluted terms laid out in the first two pages of the original user manual as battling as this is on the first read through the summary version is that the game was designed as an experience of difficult decision-making in a resource poor and limited world from this I don't think it's too far to extrapolate that the goal was to create a sense of unease and tension not to create a sense of fun I'm not going to be the first pretentious [ __ ] to try to claim that games don't have to be fun but I think this is a really important part of pathologic Sulur most games are fun most games are relatively mindless entertainment that we used to unwind and distract from gazing into the figurative abyss for too long which is a good thing most games are enjoyable experiences even the scary horror games like amnesia or outlast are still fun in a Halloween spook and adrenaline rush kind of way pathologic is not fun I personally found it immensely satisfying but calling it fun isn't an accurate description at all there are moments of scare and the flight of adrenaline but those are just vastly outweighed by the sense of drudgery futility and depression as the town falls apart around you despite your best efforts your sense of feeling like a hero is belittled and taken for you at every turn the constant failures filled raining and the numbing sense of inevitable decay weighs heavily no matter how well you play the game so even if a fan so fond of the game can't recommend it on it's fun value what is the point of engaging with the game as I've suggested earlier if most forms of entertainment are a way of avoiding staring into the abyss for too long pathologic aims to do the polar opposite it takes your head and forces you to look hard into the bleaker parts of the human condition and I'd argue that it succeeds in drawing you in but more of an emotional tie than any of medium would allow why jump into such a potentially painful experience I'd argue that the reason to engage with it is the same reason that people read Dostoyevsky or attend checkups plays or watch Schindler's List or more recently play things like Lisa the painful it's not fun it's not entertaining per se but it still feels meaningful the array of emotions that most other forms of media provide are far more wide-ranging than that of video games which still struggle to provide experiences beyond childlike hero fantasies flashy lights and explosions plumbing the darker depths of human emotions isn't something that most games are brave enough to try and for all its flaws I think this is an admirable goal for the developers to try to achieve so did the developers set out to create an enjoyable game I'm pretty sure the answer is no they did not they set out to create a game that was intensely bleak designed to make the player feel small insignificant and perilous in the face of an overwhelming foe they designed the entire game is an experimental art piece quite literally using a lot of theater conventions along the way while still butyl izing the medium of the game by directly engaging the player now given the answer to question one is such a [ __ ] weird and unusual thing for a game to do I don't blame most players for being put off by this it's not a game that is designed for a wide wide audience and even the people that do get something out of it aren't going to always be in the mood to want a metaphorical boot stamping on their emotions for 40 to 60 straight hours despite this though I think this is an intensely valuable experience and if you do like the sort of thing then you will love this game to address the second question does the game achieve what it set out to do I hope that my arguments throughout this overly elaborate video essay are enough to persuade an entire audience that yes they did but it is definitely not a game without his flaws it's old clunky buggy has multiple occasions where the verisimilitude is broken once you understand how the mechanics work like any game it is possible to abuse them it feels dated and would be likely to fade entirely to the obscurity of time if it wasn't the upcoming remake despite this I genuinely do believe that this game for all its flaws achieves its ambition of being a unique artsy bleak experience and succeeds in inducing the emotional turmoil in the player that the developers intend whether that's something for you or not isn't something for me to decide but if you are interested I'd highly recommend at least giving it a shot I'll leave the links to this team and GOG store in the video description as well as a link to the remakes website thank you for spending your time watching this video I sincerely hope that you will enjoy this game

Channel: SulMatul

Views: 461,695

Rating: 4.9028287 out of 5

Keywords: pathologic, ice pick lodge, let's play, gaming, horror, survival horror

Id: stH9JSnGH9Q

Length: 125min 30sec (7530 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Calpsotoma]

I'm going to watch another 2 hour video on a game that I don't think is that good.

[u/[deleted]]

this guy does such good essays. i really like the video where he talks about heroism.