lmao
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/xAvyxak.png]
@âGaagaagiinsâ#p53119 @âcaptainâ#p53433
Ok let's debrief in this thread. My lingering questions:
What actually happens if Stakh survives past the inquisitor's arrival? I've played the game 3 times and never followed his path through the narrative for one reason or another. I can look it up but I'm wondering if other players have any insight
And is Aspity the revived corpse of Artemy's mother? I'm wondering how literal that mother stuff is. One if the game's eccentricities is the way things that one would assume are metaphorical are in fact literal
Also generally curious about your impressions captain
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@âyesoâ#p57971 And is Aspity the revived corpse of Artemyâs mother? Iâm wondering how literal that mother stuff is.
That is some choice theorycrafting, but in refreshing my memory^1^ by reading her [wiki entry](https://pathologic.fandom.com/wiki/Aspity#Pathologic_2), I would sooner say that, potentially being sent by and made of the earth, there is no one whom she is not the mother of.
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@âyesoâ#p57971 One if the gameâs eccentricities is the way things that one would assume are metaphorical are in fact literal
Still committed to Town logic, I see... It's not metaphorical _or_ literal. It's metaphorical _and_ literal. Heheh...
^1^ - I , of course, can't refresh my memory of something I didn't really fully comprehend on the first pass...
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@âGaagaagiinsâ#p57988 Itâs metaphorical and literal
yes you're right, that's more what I meant. My thinking: in the nocturnal ending she tells him she's his mother, and the reaction is genuine surprise. Artemy never knew his mother bc she died in childbirth, one would presume he'd have seen a photo at some point though. Then again, if she's a re-animated corpse she might not be in the most recognizable shape. Also, bringing to bear some pathologic 1 knowledge: the bachelor's story is about 'defeating death' and resurrection/immortality - which I suspect will be present when his route is added to P2 (everyone please buy know by heart)
I don't quite know what is literal and what's metaphorical in the game (if they can be distinguished, probably not) and the epic theater stuff muddies that further (and the video game mechanics do too). Did Anna Angel really give me her muscle/organ heart? for example. I guess in fact she did lol
Right on. Iâve been letting it percolate but I suppose by the end of the game I had already developed feelings regarding the previous 35 hours and can get something down on that. Trying to compose thoughts without referring to what youâve already written, this is going to be pretty scattershot:
Indigeneity, heritage, legacy, childrearing ... the phrase "it takes a village" ... my brain's vocabulary center feels clogged, I don't have the specific words to describe what else this game brings to mind. "Soviet politics" feels too culture-specific--obviously the writing is informed by that history but the human behavior responsible for Soviet-era infrastructure + authoritarianism + human rights violations is universal, a universality which I think the fictional nature of the setting (and theatricality / dramatic devices, etc) does well to convey. Game's got a lot going on, as demonstrated by the above posts in in this thread (started going through it but haven't finished).
One reason the game is so impressive is everything good about it is woven together, interlocked in a way that you can't really praise (or criticize) any one thing without acknowledging its place in the whole (the _udurgh..._).
That you only have so much time in the day to do everything and must wrestle with your inability to do it all is something I find really compelling. You have to disappoint people. Your old friends, the children, the authorities, those on whom it's important you make a good impressionâyou're going to let people down every day. Lara, Grief, and Rubin all died. _So I could save the children,_ I told myself. It's not what we might say "matters" in the grand scheme of the game's artistic project but I think it does feel worth pointing out. Then again it pretty well exemplifies the concept of _triage_ (you of course do a good amount of literal victim prioritization too).
The abattoir... what a space. Describing it with words limits its power.
I don't think the death system really worked for me, it mostly scared me into looking some stuff up. I figured taking the deal with the fellow traveler was bad news, and knowing I would thereby continue to have to deal with the consequences of death I didn't want to die 600 times in the abattoir; after a few tries there I did look up a spoiler-free guide explaining how to make it through the odonghe encounters (which I elected to do instead of adjusting the difficulty sliders). Other than that particular bit, though, I liked the pressure of the meters, the "difficulty." As I said not having time to go and do everything is a powerful feeling, and your time is so limited in part because you have to take care of yourself. The meters actualize your material poverty and in that more direct way puts you in the shoes of the Town's peopleâyou understand how hungry they are, how tired, exactly how valuable their stuff is to them, and don't want to steal from them or make them suffer, but are constantly presented with the option, and likely even the need, to do so.
I'll admit I was a little confused by the ending, not when I actually went for it but in the process of choosing one: I thought, _Well... I want to help the Kin and the children. Destroying the Polyhedron wouldn't seem to help the children... but although the Polyhedron protects the children from the plague, is it not just a bandaid on a bigger problem, a problem which affects everyone else regardless? And it is furthermore the **source of the problem**._âalso some kids outside your lair even flat out ask you to destroy it because it acts as a kind of Neverland for them, a place where they can hide from Real Life and never grow up, which didn't sound great to me.â_The Polyhedron is like "an arrow in Earth's flesh," and... when you get an arrow in your chest, yes, pulling it out causes bleeding, but that doesn't mean leaving it in is a good idea, right? That's not how healing works._ But then the group of Kin showed up outside the bar on the way to finding the Inquisitor's papers and made it clear they wanted the Polyhedron to remain where it was. I dunno, this wishy washiness on my part isn't really important nor did it affect how I feel about the game in total, but it was a point of some confusion.
As far as themes of connection and lines and thread goâPathologic 2 does the same thing Death Stranding does, but it did it first, and more cogently, and that's only 20% of what's going on in Patho. I love Death Stranding still, but boy howdy. You know?
At one point I stopped the game to go and transcribe a late-game dream conversation between the Bachelor, Changeling and Haruspex because it felt poignant (one about touch vs. blood vs. mind). I hope they make the Changeling route!
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@âyesoâ#p57996 in the nocturnal ending she tells him sheâs his mother, and the reaction is genuine surprise.
Not how I interpreted his response, but like the best of the dialogue in the game it's pretty open. She does call him "son," but a couple lines later she calls him _essegher_, "father." I read Aspity as the personified Earth, the mother of the Kin, the Boddho who everyone mentions. Aspity does finish her speech saying she'll caress your step...
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@âyesoâ#p57971 What actually happens if Stakh survives past the inquisitorâs arrival? Iâve played the game 3 times and never followed his path through the narrative for one reason or another. I can look it up but Iâm wondering if other players have any insight
I didn't follow his narrative on this playthroughâI did get to a part where it says you can find him hiding around Grief's warehouses but I wasn't able to track him down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r8k7G7D1_8
I never had a dream that I needed two bottles for, what was that about?
[What's this referring to?](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/1263-p2-tips-n-tricks-n-emotional-support-no-spoilers/47)
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@âcaptainâ#p58079 a dream that I needed two bottles
Under certain conditions it's possible to get 2 doses of living blood before being able to get inside the abattoir. This is signaled by a particular dream
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@âcaptainâ#p58079 Whatâs this referring to?
I think it's possible to climb up out of the tunnels below the abattoir and out through little Vlad's taboo well without encountering the udurgh. Which would be a real shame lol
And thanks for taking the time to write your detailed thoughts. Glad you mention how the game foregrounds the 'material.' In fact I was also thinking about pathologic and death stranding as both insisting on the player having focus on physical space/geography, the health and functioning of the body, and what the player character's presence and actions mean to others in the world both socially and, again, materially - all to an extent that's wrenching much of the time. They're worlds apart in terms of budget and I suppose tenor/emotional register, but it seems like they've both landed on surprisingly similar convictions about gameplay and it's interweaving with story and theme. What had me thinking about this was playing Know By Heart which is much more of a familiar art/indie game, where the gameplay is much, much more pared down and frictionless, while still attempting a similar narrative - and I find it to be quite good, but much less, idk, like I just read a confused but mind-altering novel. When I try to think about similar art/media experiences I've had, I think of certain novels and maybe a few films - actually probably just one film (satantango) - rather than other games; and I don't really understand why that is, given that there's a lot of undisguised videogameness in Pathologic: always dealing with health bars and consumables etc. Whereas Know By Heart, in which all that stuff is recessive, seems more like another indie/art game, and for better/worse that's where it's positioned in my mind.
Stray/unformed thought just now about Pathologic and Death Stranding: interesting how by having to think so often about 'yourself,' you also attend to you role and relation to others, and consider how much good you have the potential to do, and how much you can fail them. The fail them part is much more ferocious in Pathologic of course - in Death Stranding you get the job rankings and likes etc, which has it's charms but doesn't mean nearly as much...
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@âcaptainâ#p58076 Lara, Grief, and Rubin all died
this is a particularly meaningful brutality you experienced lol
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@âcaptainâ#p58076 Iâll admit I was a little confused by the ending
I remain a little perplexed by it too (in a good way). I'll try to articulate my feeling about it: I think it's that the polyhedron is a truly legit world/mind changing work of art, which resonates with the general urge to deterrritorialize the town, wipe it clean and remake it. It comes from the town rather than the steppe, but it's sort of transcendent rather than another bourgeois artifact.
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@âGaagaagiinsâ#p18013 There is, again, yet more to say about the ideological and cultural conflict at the forefront of this story, here, when it comes to difficulty from a game mechanic perspective and how it shapes the narrative and the experience the player ends up having. According to his indigenous philosophy Artemy is simultaneously a toenail clipping of Mother Boddho as well as a part of that cohesive whole. More on that in a sec but according to the Town philosophy, much like a lot of real world settler colonial, European derived philosophy, places certain forms of demands on both individuals and communities. In many ways how Eurocentric philosophy views the separation-cohesion of individual and community is a kind of have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too expectation being placed on most people by the ruling class. If you are of the non-ruling classes there is almost no real way you can win when caught up in this dichotomy. As an individual you are liable for everything bad that happens to you. As an individual it is your greatest duty to simultaneously ensure your own success while also not being a burden to the community. Any way individuals rely on community is fundamentally exploitative, or dishonorable, a sign of weakness, or just frankly distasteful and shameful. And somehow at the same time itâs still seen as necessary for individuals to Of course, if you are of the ruling classes, your individuality is perceived as virtual godhood, you justify the existence of the community around you by how it serves you. Overall the individual and the community are constantly placed in conflict with each other, itâs individual vs. community, community vs. individual, individual vs. individual, and community vs. community. Because, and donât ask me to cite my sources, ensuring that these tensions cannot ever resolve and cannot resolve and this is just the nature of existence are part of what perpetuates the material conditions required to perpetuate the capitalist mode of production. The two tumours artificially grafted on to the sacred site must keep producing canned meat, because, if they donât, you are a bad person, and if you, as an individual, rebel, it is your fault when you are killed as a result of your (individualistic) opposition to the social order.
[b][i]y[size=14]y[/size][size=15]y[/size][size=16]y[/size][size=17]y[/size][size=18]y[/size][size=19]y[/size][size=20]y[/size][size=21]y[/size][size=22]y[/size][size=23]y[/size][size=24]y[/size][size=25]y[/size][size=26]y[/size][size=27]y[/size][size=28]y[/size][size=29]y[/size][size=30]eah, DUDE!!!!!![/size][/b][/i]
This idea of the living contradiction is key. Looking back I'm surprised more of the dialogue with e.g. Danky Dan or Saburov or whoever wasn't designed to rub the player's nose so to speak in how much the colonizers don't understand the philosophy of the Steppe, and to have the player be able to voice their disagreement with these characters on account of Artemy's new perspectiveâsurprised in a good way as I think this would have been too easy or on the nose on the game's part. Even before Artemy comes to understand his Kin's apparently contradictory outlook he knows the Town authority figures are doomed by their one-dimensional perspectives on The Problem (and everything else they've ever done).
I was at first resistant when told by the Termitary Kin that they wanted Artemy to be their leaderânot ready or willing to accept my role as a necessary component of this community body, not wanting to become its operational headâbut on the other hand when Saburov or the Kains or the Stamatins or the Olgimskys explained their grand plans for maintaining control or even for what they thought would be helpful to the Town, I just thought, _nah dude, let me do the thinking here. You're lost._ (no idea how much sense I'm making here if any, sorry)
On that note I ended up dooming just Vlad Jr., Big Vlad got away to my disappointment. I'm glad one of them was punished but like you said above Gaagaagiins it was in a way dissatisfying to play into Vlad Jr.'s performative guilt/sense of atonement.
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@âGaagaagiinsâ#p18013 I donât gotta prove my Gamer Competence to no one, not even Pathologic 2
idk what's wrong with me but I should have taken a page from you in retrospect (I have not platinum'd sekiro but I don't think I have anything I need to prove... hmm....)
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@âyesoâ#p18086 also just curious: what were your methods of survival? Did you work in the theater/hospital for money? Did you rob anyone? Loot any houses?
i worked at the hospital for money, always claimed my reward, never stole from houses with people living in them
[color=red][they'll know][/color]
i tried at times to overtrade/let go of what i could afford to but it was difficult, i mostly performed the equivalent of telling a cashier to keep the change (not a perfect analogy but you know what i mean)
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@âyesoâ#p36604 Just curious if other pathologic gamers are finding any other points of comparison.
Death Stranding as already mentioned, which I was probably being too hard on. The texture afforded by the multiplayer/likes system and the utterly depopulated world impress upon the player the sense of isolation and distance from people it wants the player/people to overcome, in a context more appropriate or at least relevant in a different way to this big digitally connected world of ours (though as you mentioned it is in other ways completely different)
Thinking about it more, but otherwise what immediately comes to mind is more philosophical writing than art, unfortunately I just haven't experienced that much.
[This album.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVD3JzUtQYA)
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$$$$$$Steam key giveaway megathread 100% FREE!!!$$$$$$
maybe this isn't a good idea but I honestly wouldn't mind giving out my GOG login info (over DM) for anyone who wants to download the offline version of the game and can't spare the cash (though during recent sales it has been incredibly cheap AND supporting Ice-Pick is a good idea...)
might send the census bureau an email to see if I can change my religious affiliation to the pathologic 2 one
And remain curious about what any Disco Elysium players may think about the contrast between the two games. For as much as I love DE, playing them in close sequence diminishes it v Pathologic 2 a little. Its politics seem like more of an aesthetic, and pathologicâs, while not really altogether sensical, and also florid, I mean it at least points to real stakes. I mean, I know itâs still a set up and fake, but the DnD setting-ness is apparent in DE, and the rich guy sentimental âspiritualismâ is overbearing in Death Stranding, but P2 seems closer to being meaningful, at least imo. I'm trying to think of coherent reasons why
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@âyesoâ#p58082 What had me thinking about this was playing Know By Heart which is much more of a familiar art/indie game, where the gameplay is much, much more pared down and frictionless, while still attempting a similar narrative - and I find it to be quite good, but much less, idk, like I just read a confused but mind-altering novel
Definitely going to get to Know By Heart within the year. I guess it's marginally deflating to hear it isn't more of that
Pathologic feeling, but that it isn't is a healthy sign for Ice-Pick I think. The observation of P2 being built around explicit video game systems (managing bars) is indeed intriguing, and confusing as you mention.
You could argue a version of the Likes system makes it into P2 with the reputation meters, though it is directly affected by player actions while DeStra's system leans much harder on "multiplayer." I agree it's less potent in the latter, at least as far as it converges with the "actual" narrative going on, though knowing the numbers were tied to other players (and given the past 15 years of Internet Like conditioning) I have to admit it did affect me. (Honestly didn't intend to make this thread a Death Stranding/Pathologic comparison lol)
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@âyesoâ#p58084 It comes from the town rather than the steppe, but itâs sort of transcendent rather than another bourgeois artifact.
I would think also that the ones interested in keeping things the way they are (i.e. not destroying the Polyhedron) would be the ones on top of the power hierarchy, but you pose a good theory. Supported by the fact that the Town bourgeoisie are, despite having been responsible for its creation, all pretty freaked out by its presence, or at least admit that whatever it now _is_ is something beyond their conscious control (they are aware it is responsible for the plague after all)
I did get Disco Elysium at the same time as P2 but intend to wait to dig into it. Your comment has me curious!
Obviously spitballing and demonstrating my ignorance but does DE's falling short of P2 politics-wise owe to DE's attempt to describe in words everything that's going on? Maybe there isn't so great a difference in form between the two. P2 is fairly wordy of course but because it is also so theatrical and elliptical I wonder if the knowledge brought to bear by the player is more elegantly able to fill in the gaps than in DE, where there are no gaps and the sociopolitical mosaic as described by the game is not intricate enough (disregard as hot air if inaccurate)
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@âcaptainâ#p58418 more of that
> Pathologic feeling
that's what the remaining 2/3 of _Pathologic 2_ are for
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@âcaptainâ#p58418 DEâs attempt to describe in words everything thatâs going on?
I'm wondering if it's partially the presentation and mechanics being more readable as an RPG vs _Pathologic 2_ being this not really like anything else type of game. Pathologic feels sort of purpose-built around what it's conveying to the player. So maybe it just feels more novel for that reason. I think it might also be that DE contains familiar ideological perspectives: fascism, liberalism, communism, etc and _Pathologic 2_ doesn't really use those multi-valent terms. You get to something like an ideology or at least a set of convictions through action, observation, and argument, not by openly apparent game mechanic choices (which happens in DE). I don't really even know what the nocturnal ending is. I guess it's mystical avant garde Maoist? Lol I don't know. At least it's 'on the other side' of exploitation/inertia. I'll hold back on my read of DE in that regard bc this is not the DE spoiler thread. I'm sure you'll see where that game stops short
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the presentation and mechanics being more readable as an RPG
And to be honest this is what kept me from believing the hype about DE: "Can one of these classic isometric RPG-looking games with mechanical tropes endemic to that form really be that boundary-pushing??" I'm much more interested in it now than before and that's not to say my first impression of it was fair at all, but I could imagine its being bound in that RPG skeleton being limiting.
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mystical avant garde Maoist
lmao sign me up
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@âyesoâ#p69396 didnât quite get some important things
Interested to hear what those things are (or feel free to link to the podcasts)
@âcaptainâ#p69486 I donât want to be unkind because thereâs a lot going on in the game and thereâs so much missable stuff, + everything is open to interpretation, but they seemed to think that âsaving the townâ was the one viable goal of the game, and that Artemy was like making friends with the residents and helping everyone get along (their take in following the lines). They missed what was going on with the Kains, and the covert purpose of the polyhedron - but now that I think about it, maybe thatâs not learnable in P2 and is Pathologic the original knowledgeâŚ
But the podcast people found some cool stuff I didn't know, like one of the death punishments being that corpses have doll stuffing instead of organs, and that there's a hidden microphone functionality lol. So I'm grateful they discovered those things
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@âyesoâ#p69618 But the podcast people found some cool stuff I didnât know, like one of the death punishments being that corpses have doll stuffing instead of organs
........................wait, what
Is that all corpses?
I know I encountered something like this but I thought it was because the corpses in question were odongh, and I can't remember if this ever happened with corpses of any other race. That being said I also can't remember if the corpses containing doll stuffing in question were real, or if they were whether or not there was implication that the doll stuffing in question was indeed doll stuffing or if it was a creative representation of poor Artemy's hippocampus trying to do him a solid and provide him some blessed localized dissociative amnesia
Have we ever talked about how this is a good videogame
@âGaagaagiinsâ#p69626 they describes as: they died so many times that imortell accused them of not taking the game seriously so he threatened to
make the world less real, and thereafter everyone had doll stuffing guts
@âMorphic Residentâ#p69631 I genuinely canât remember if it would have been more or less just a coincidence that I mostly would have only encountered odongh corpses after having triggered that (cause I sure died a lot specifically while fighting odongh) or if Iâm misremembering how and where I encountered it, or if there are potentially other conditions for seeing it, or perhaps even conditions for reversing itâŚ?
Definitely feels supportive of the specialness of this particular videogame that we can even have this conversation one way or another
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@âMorphic Residentâ#p69618 (their take in following the lines)
hmm yeah that's not it
On the other hand I do get the Polyhedron confusion. It is easy to interpret it as like a big moth lamp drawing children away from the world they will have to reckon with as they grow older and toward something "not real" (it also has a giant hornet needle stuck in the heart of the town). But like you said in an earlier post that line of thinking ignores its transcendent quality, that it may represent complete metamorphosis for the town and its people.
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but now that I think about it, maybe thatâs not learnable in P2 and is Pathologic the original knowledgeâŚ
perhaps also a factor....
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hidden microphone functionality lol
What!
Cursory searches lead me to wonder if this is about trains