my efforts to listen to every Pathologic 2 related podcast episode and have a one sided brain argument with it has been stymied by these guys talking in French
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/le-grand-rattrapage/id1600054064?i=1000642586897
this is a job for @captain
âje pense que j'ai beaucoup abusĂ© le reloading my saveâ
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@âcaptainâ#p159857 le reloading my save
donât know whatâs up with that link. Hereâs the episode on YouTube
https://youtu.be/2495iXUlj0M?si=DhsVYpa81Hh8mQFw
the apple link worked for me at first, not sure what happened to it. @âGaagaagiinsâ#p159874 he says that at 4m15s in the video
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@âcaptainâ#p160004 he says that at 4m15s in the video
Oh shit they're Québécois aren't they
found an Italian one
Iâve listened to half of the QuĂ©bĂ©cois one and they have discussed very little of substance, itâs mostly them explaining what the games are and the names of the developers at Ice Pick. Iâll finish it but I donât think youâd have much of even a one-sided conversation with yourself on this one
Quebeckers are very easily amused. Just look at Just for Laughs Gags, one of the most Quebecois products ever made
sorry meant to like captainâs post not yours above gaagaagiins. Nothing against it, i just donât know anything about people from Quebec so I should stay neutral. On the other hand, wouldnât be right to un-like the post either, out of courtesy. Still finding my way around the new forum
Thank you for your transparency, my friend. Youâre a man of boundless integrity
weâre all nocturnal ending people here we should expect nothing less
Got the nocturnal ending. Can finally hang out in here. Still reading previous posts and I have more to say but good lord what an experience this thing was.
The good ending
great work weâre glad you had fun. Which characters did you hang out with? Any casualties?
Iâm quite surprised that the diurnal ending seems to be preferred by more people (at least outside this forum). I canât see what percentage of people on steam got that ending, only the nocturnal one. But most threads (on reddit, at least) seem to imply most people picked the diurnal. Iâm frankly a bit appalled at some of the ways people explain their choices. Itâs mostly people who say they hated the Kin or didnât much care for them versus the other inhabitants of the town. Taking a step back, this is probably a testament to the gameâs narrative design â the choices I made felt like authentic choices (which imo sometimes donât feel like choices but natural conclusions⊠âit had to be this wayâ). Choices in other games sometimes feel like I am being asked what my favorite flavor of ice cream is.
I think for this game in particular itâs important to share how one played the game and what ones priorities were, so Iâll start there. I had zero expectations for this game, I had seen thumbnails of video essays etc, but it was ultimately yesoâs post on this forum that made me think I should try it. I only knew that the game was tough and that I should just go with the flow when the going gets rough.
I died so many times that Immortell seemingly ran out of dialogue options. I beat the game with half of my health bar permanently gone. I made dumb decisions with money and trading at the beginning. Didnât know I could sneak until like Day 8. Had no revolver until Day 10. So combat situations were life or death. Staying alive felt difficult for 90% of the game, which made the game quite stressful but much more impressive. Entering an abandoned house to find stuff to sell at shops and hearing footsteps and then a âthere he isâ scared the fuck out of me. Sprinting frantically around a neighborhood to find people to trade with for food, desperately trying to find a bed to rest on, all the things I did in desperation all made this game a singular experience. There was no distinction in my mind between having to scavenge and progressing the story â I had to learn that the story is also about the people you donât get to talk to and things you donât get to do.
I reloaded saves once or twice at the beginning, then sort of regretted it. It felt wrong to redo certain days and make different decisions, felt like I was peeking under the hood when I shouldnât have, so I stopped after a while. I did modify the difficulty settings heavily towards the end â the last few days were agonizing and being revolver-less and at less than half health all the time meant I had to be extremely careful and even then, a single hit would often kill me. I couldnât have done the Abbatoir section otherwise. So I was well warned that the game was tough, but I think that the caution around reloading saves and changing difficulty makes more sense now that I beat the game. Abusing those things would certainly diminish the main conflicts of the game, as the settings themselves tell you.
Now, addressing some of the things said ITT:
Arriving somewhere and everybody either hating you for something out of your control or expecting the world from you because of it felt like the perfect way to introduce the player to this dichotomy. I noticed the Haruspex having to code-switch sometimes depending on who he spoke to and it was sometimes up to me to engage in badmouthing the Kin or defending them.
This game struck a compelling balance between making you feel like the protagonist of a story and being an agent of forces beyond your control. I think that the very last dialogue with Immortel encapsulates this where he asks who you are/what you are. At that point I was saying I am Burakj (canât remember what the answer was written like).
I could not read Immortelâs opinion on the fact that I asserted that I was Artemy. But him being disappointed makes sense. I think I answered âthis question is a trapâ when he asked me who I was, but I fully meant I was Artemy. The separation between the âplayer/actorâ and the âroleâ of Artemy in the story was one of the most interesting things about how this story was framed. Iâm still trying to make heads or tails of it.
At the end, I affirmed/felt that I âwasâ Artemy because I was responsible for the decisions he made. You are thrown into this town and become responsible for it, what that responsibility is and means is kind of up to you. This might be way off but I kept thinking about the phrase âbecome who you areâ â an affirmation of the things that tie you to the earth as well as your limited ability to fashion yourself at will. When I saw that Alexander Block was named after Antonius Block I thought hey maybe Iâm not going crazy. Maybe this is why the Nocturnal ending felt like it was the most life-affirming one of them all, and the one that showed that the Artemy did learn valuable things because of the plague. Though maybe the same thing could be said for the Diurnal one, I still havenât a clue what that one is.
YES! Though I did it the other way around. I initially told Jr. to go because he seemed mopey about helping his father with his horrible industry and I thought it was pathetic. Then I talked to the father because I felt like if it had to be one of them in there, it had to be Big Vlad. Though I felt like there was enough room in there for the two of them :) At the very end Jr. was still talking about rebuilding and modernizing the business and I made a futile attempt at punching him.
I had three panaceas â I gave one to my boy Sticky, one Kahn (at Capellaâs request) and one for Taya Tycheek. I saved a Schmowder for Murky too. I hung out with all of them. I also liked the Changeling, who at first was unsure about. Hung out with Bad Grief previous to his âyouâre a puppetâ era â but in general. I sadly let Grace and Notkin die. I should have taken a better screenshot, but here:
I wish I could have saved Lara Ravel and Eva Yan.
One last thing â I adore this song from the OST:
the way the motif reappears in the track for when you are in the Stepps is chefs kiss I felt like the game was giving me a hint! Amazing soundtrack.
I will replay this game at some other point â hopefully Iâll be smarter next time. For example, I should have bought that bull!
hell I didnt know you could sneak until I read this post lol
yeah Iâve noticed that too. I think there are a few factors contributing to that: One is that people familiar with the original Pathologic might be predisposed to play toward that conclusion because that was the only ending available for The Haruspex in that game. There was no choice but to have the Polyhedron destroyed - the emphasis on indigeneity and class conflict are much more fully elucidated in 2. So some might assume that for video game design reasons the diurnal ending is the âgoodâ one. Another reason could be that the Nocturnal ending runs counter to most assumed general video game problem solving doctrine. Itâs âhurtingâ the town so has to be destroyed, is perhaps the thinking. Also, as you observe, thereâs sort of a cult âfandomâ kind of thing around the game that attaches itself to certain characters like their kpop stars or something, so saving the more congenial of them (rather than the pack of weirdos (I mean that affectionately) Artemy gets stuck with)) is a natural choice. And then lastly it could be because of just engrained assumptions of what has âvalueâ in terms of class, race, wealth, etc.
With that said, I think itâs really interesting that the game has the Kin make that last second plea to be spared. Itâs a great example of
because the plea probably runs counter to conventional logic and player assumptions, possibly asking them to completely shift their priorities after struggling through this enormous ordeal of a game, and to make perhaps an emotional or intuitive choice. Itâs also just good writing because of course the Kin know where they stand in that society and what their fate will likely be. I admit I found it affecting on my first playthrough
jesus christ the houses with the crying infants stressed me out so much. That whole plot thread with the babies is something
iirc thereâs a possible total of 7 panacea in the game, with an uncertain # of shmowders. Just enough to guarantee the safety of everyone on the list (except The Eighth and also you yourself ofc) if you can get them all. Which makes that event when the plague âstops playing to loseâ and just infects them all regardless a very funny(?) thing for the game to do
Is that who you thought you were hanging out with??? I will not elaborate
heated debate over original or 2 soundtrack. Both good as far as Iâm concerned
itâs well worth doing. Iâve played it 4 times and found new and interesting things each time. Would recommend you play the under-appreciated Know By Heart at some point! Best to go into that one relatively blind too (itâs not a stressful game though itâs pretty easygoing)
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I was heavily considering playing Classic HD instead of doing a second playthrough and this kind of sealed the deal for me. Iâm keenly interested on the next POV we will get on this story and whether it will change my opinion on what I did as Artemy. I want to do it all again and be smarter so i can explore/learn more.
But who wouldnât want to save the Odonghs??
I think this is spot on. The few threads I saw with people defending the Diurnal mention something along the lines of âI spent most of my game trying to save the town, I wasnât going to throw all of that away in the endâ
The biggest reason I want to do a second playthrough is because I felt like I kind of ignored pretty important throughlines of the story â I never fully understood the history/function of the polyhedron, the different factions of children, the role of the mistresses.
unrelated: if i remember correctly, you at some point meet the person who worked on the layout of the town, and i remember saying how confusing it was to navigate and she defended it in an interesting way, canât remember what she said though. anyways yeah running from people trying to jump me and finding myself stuck when i expected a fence or path was very funny/frustrating. the comparison to Death Stranding is interesting here (made by yourself iirc) â i found myself having to intentionally chart a path through the town similar to how i did in that game. my mind keeps comparing how i played this game vs. how I played skyrim way back when and im trying to parse out why i felt like this ONE town felt more meaningful than the many towns/villages in skyrim or other open world games of its ilk. maybe not a fair comparison given then genre differences but ÂŻ_(ă)_/ÂŻ
yep kind of kicked myself for not making more of those, it might have been to the frantic way I played the game but i did not know i was going to bring anything back from the abbatoir frankly⊠when i found i had the panacea on me I was quite surprised.
I stopped playing the game from day 8 for like 2 months, then went back and finished it in one go, so I think that ruptured the continuity for me a bit, though it made the ending no less impactful.
another unrelated thing â during the ending, you spawn at the polyhedron and to move forward you have to go to the cathedral. sticky was waiting for me there, then I was supposed to go in. I entered and for a brief moment i saw three herb brides and the inquisitor (i think?), however it reloaded and took me straight to Immortel for my last convo. was that a glitch? did i miss something important?
it might have been a glitch, but it doesnt sound like you missed anything. The component scenes of the nocturnal ending as I recall them are:
certain characters wandering out into the steppe and you can speak to them in the marshy area beyond the train station
visiting the polyhedron and talking to the people there
visiting the theater and talking with Mark
and as for questions about the nature of the Polyhedron and its true purpose: thatâs part of The Bachelor route. Likewise the goings on of the Mistresses is part of The Changelingâs. At least thatâs how it was structured in the original. Time will tell how Ice-Pick portrays them in future
