#pathoblogging

I'm still chewing on the doomed lara stuff, I've only been glancing at posts since I am still avoiding endgame spoilers but i get the sense it's Controversial. like it’s certainly doing something! I do think there's value in a game like this in handing you a problem you can't solve no matter how much you try, and in not letting the bachelor even attempt obvious solutions that he doesn't think of, even if the player is screaming them at him. why doesn't he ask artemy to help on day 9? artemy is her actual friend and much more likely to be able to talk her down! WE know artemy can solve it! he solved it in p2! well, as the changeling says, the bachelor thinks he's the main hero. every healer always thinks the world is all on their shoulders, and the perspective of the game on some level is just about whether they're right (except they're always right, and also always wrong).

the bachelor can turn back time. he can try try again and save almost, almost everyone. insert marble nest quote here, right. he asked us, once more? but he still has blind spots. he can't actually become someone else. so does he have free will, even with his time travel powers? do we, playing this game?

pathologic to me is most engaging when it's about the constraints of free will. p2 looks you or artemy (or you, of course it's only ever you) in the eyes and says, none of this is real. you are being controlled, by children or the developers or the person piloting you around with their keyboard. and artemy says I don't care, I'll still do what's right. like, well duh, you're playing a video game! you're not free to do whatever you want! the actions you can take are naturally constrained by the game, because it's a game. but also that's real life. no matter how free you are the world around you dictates your options, or what you even see as options. the intersection of history and biography, to really inappropriately misquote c wright mills. and artemy's story, and his relationship with aglaya, is about still owning your choices even under those constraints, and accepting that you don't need to be free to be free. even if you're being controlled, you can make your choices out of love. and p2 as a game is constantly looking at you like, do NOT save scum you should LIVE with the consequences of your failures and we WILL punish you for dying and you can't wriggle out of it by 'reloading the game'.

and at the onset, p3 is like, fuck that, he's going to defeat death. he turns back time and saves grief and rubin and the saburovs and etc etc etc. but you can't save lara without dooming the town, circumstances don't allow it; the developers decided she dies no matter what. the bachelor has more freedom than anyone in his world has ever had before, more freedom than artemy, but the boundaries are still there, because there are always boundaries. that's life. he's just as much a puppet, even if only to himself. sometimes your free will is only constrained by yourself. he can't figure out how to save lara because that's how the game is written, and because that's the kind of person he is. maybe someone else could do it, but he can't actually make better choices no matter how many times i waste amalgam going back and forth from day 10. it's the classic tragedy problem: he would have to be someone else.

And re: lara's funeral like I get the immediate gratingness of the heterosexuality of it all. but like... they all remember the same story about her differently and they all claim to be in love with her, but they can’t agree on who she is. So was she someone different to each of them? or can you just not ever really know someone? what does it mean to love someone, then? or when someone is dead do they cease to be themselves and become the person you thought they were? what does that mean for the kains and their understanding of immortality? what does that mean for simon and nina?

the bachelor has the power to turn back time and save everyone. and you can save almost everyone in p3. you can save Eva, miraculously so! by seeing her. so like, there’s SOMETHING there right. you save ("save") Eva by seeing her as she truly was, and at Lara’s funeral no one sees her clearly. someone would have to understand her to save her but no one does, not her friends or the changeling or the bachelor, a guy who barely knew her. and there's this tension where the player knows lara, i've played two other games about her, and you kind of want to reach into the game and strangle these guys. and also what does it mean to 'save' eva in this context. and the way it ties into like... the line about her just being the bachelor's toy, and toys are always a direct line back to the free will again in these games...

ANYWAY. idk no conclusions i'm still pondering but I think it's interesting. god I literally have other notes. I was like “this game doesn’t have enough crazy set pieces” and karminsky’s assassination said hold my beer 🥰 really fun with the giant insane mirror shards shrouding his body that, like, no one really comments on. It’s also kind of hysterical that me failing to stop Peter from showing up to his brother’s twin switch assassination plot seems to…not have mattered at all? I mean maybe it mattered in some other way. I guess I have to go unkill karminsky at some point but I will admit Andrey, this was sick as hell

rubin threatening to shoot you a really great time for all. rubin/daniil stocks continuing to be through the roof. also the throwback of him sending letters with murderous intent. also bro you're going to go shoot a teenager with a gun? really??

absolutely gobsmacked by walking into the shelter and artemy is just chilling shirtless. thanks guys. daniil like are you .. okay?? and I’m having patho2 abattoir flashbacks. he’s not okay bachelor he got punched to death by worms 7 times.

there are like two blurry figures in the distance right after you get off the train that you can't reach and i'm sooo. who is that. it's not the powers that be too tall but somehow they just looked so Ominous. i thought it looked like aglaya but this could be wishful thinking i am aglaya pilled

yay introducing us to the kids immediately. love the train heart worm stuff (really love the dialogue where a kid describes a worm [odongh worm not worm worm] and daniil can try to correct them. about worm anatomy)

give me one bit of bad grief dialogue and i am happy forever

you can be mean to young vlad yay <3 i got so pissed off in patho classic the bachelor NEVER wants to be mean to young vlad.

i enjoy 'you died? there is no death--' when the shabnak gets your ass as like. evolution of pathologic death mechanics. patho classic you have quicksaves death actually means nothing despite the game's otherwise grueling nature. patho2 every time you die you are slightly more fucked and save scumming will never erase your death and you will always be marked by what didn't happen. patho3 we're essentially back to quicksaves you can die all you want but it's a game about turning back time...

also enjoyed the little film strip way of choosing where to pick your save back up. big fan of daniil's cinematic language vs artemy's theatrical

can you tell i died like five times because I kept accidentally hitting the 'throw matches' button at the wrong time and using up all my damn MATCHES. classic pathologic experience

changeling voice don't worry you won't get the plague. the shabnak will just make you insane and then eat you <3

you ever shoot yourself in the head and then discover you can time travel?

I really like the idea of starting out in a timeline where daniil tried to flee town and as a consequence things get completely fucked even more quickly than usual

daniil is too smooth especially bc i have the textures turned down and the flip-around dialogue keeps making me confront it

i think it was done by mistake but the few bits of tragedian dialogue where the line breaks were preserved were interesting in that it makes the meter much more obvious to me, someone who is just terrible at meter

bachelor please tell me more about inducing hallucinations in laboratory conditions.

okay i was supposed to go to bed twenty minutes ago. i enjoyed it, excited for the full game. for obvious reasons like in quarantine the demo has to cut off RIGHT when you get to the time travel mechanic but i'm so curious how that will actually feel to play.

i think there's clearly enough stuff to manage even without the full on walking around/hunger meter stuff. in that running out of matches sentenced me to death several times so that's promising lol. AND you can still trade drugs with kids for bullets

as a game opening we're not reaching the heights of patho2's insanely atmospheric prologue but i can accept that lol.

i'm having soooo much fun. the face I made when I said to myself hey why is that tragedian standing like that, looked over and--OH THERE'S BAD GRIEF'S CORPSE! so delighted to be told he thought a lot about his last words and then when the time came they were pathetic. bad grief i care you. i am really enjoying the criss crossing across days mind map...don't worry bad grief i did immediately go straight back to day 4 to save you....I love how much of intro day 5 is just wandering around, learning the bachelor pathetically failed his attempt to flee the town, got thrown in jail, every major character is dead, and it's all your fault and you've been wasting your time and everyone hates you bachelor!! you fucked it all up!!!

i THOUGHT i could see aglaya standing in the distance when I got off the train...a scary woman from the capital you say?? could bad grief/aglaya stocks be up?

day 11 really tested my patience. supposedly the ration quest is un-bugged now but I still had to do a lot of futzing around to get things to trigger so I think the logic of it is still fucked. AND when I went back after doing the rot ending to get the children out of the polyhedron I had to spend a really tedious hour+ troubleshooting the nina quest, because if I didn't do it in a very specific order nothing about it would work. crying. got so sick of running back and forth through the same damn plague districts. on the other hand, completely worth it for getting to talk to nina in victor's body, the all time high point of any patho game? also SO glad to hear that aglaya was going to kill victor to stop nina from coming back and then couldn't bring herself to do it. girl that's insane. may finally write the aglaya and nina 'worst sisters to ever do it' fic i've been meaning to forever.

anyway i was feeling very annoyed with the game when I finally got to day 12 the first time and was immediately hit by the polyhedron stuff so fuck it i forgive all. the polyhedron set piece was soooo cool. pathologic not a game i love for its aesthetics usually but that looked SO GOOD, great use of the game mechanics, got genuinely emotional about the bull. had the very funny moment of talking to aglaya's shadow on the wall before ever meeting her in game, but that's time travel for you! this is the first time in any of the games the polyhedron has felt Truly Magical to experience, which I think really sells the bachelor getting fully taken in by it.

was truly being punished by the game because I managed to miss talking to aglaya on day 11 entirely and did not meet her til day 12. and then she told me to my face she expected to meet me yesterday and would have had more to say lol. girl i was looking for you i'm obsessed with you!! had to ask reddit to figure out i'd just gotten to lara's house too late in the day and missed her. and that was why that quest kept restarting every time i redid the day i guess lmao. also the fact that she met artemy on like day 2 and also immediately came to an understanding with him...... artemy/aglaya stocks are also through the roof!!!

also i think they disabled the 'get so apathetic you pull out your gun and shoot yourself' mechanic in day 12 but the bachelor got so depressed after his talk with aglaya about destroying the polyhedron that i literally had to reload because I was out of stimulants and was moving so fucking slowly i just gave up lmao. so similar effect really! in character considering the discussion!

ending tally so far: escape, rot, miracle seeker. I'm actually shocked by how much of, like, an ending ending you still get with my CURSED BY THE EVIL STREET save, I was kind of expecting it to just cut you off but you get what seems to me to be the whole ending, just with an extra kick in the teeth! like maybe i'm missing some stuff but it doesn't FEEL incomplete. it kind of worked with all of them I've done so far lmao, I was going to break out the save editing hammer but I actually am enjoying the experience of getting different endings with a big BUT.... attached to them. like is standard miracle seeker that the bachelor gets to keep his lab but he decides to leave anyway? going to have to start pulling up LPs to compare. it is kind of like...I actually can't imagine being satisfied with ANY ending where the bachelor gets to skip off happily back to the capital to work in his Defeat Death lab. like, that is just not how this ends. doing escape was like, yeah no you deserve to lose the thing you were trying to save with your cowardice, and rot is like, you tried too hard to save something unsaveable and now the town and your career are dead! perhaps me and the cursed street are working together to curtail his future!

i was like it's going to start to feel like a big swerve for them to be like 'and by the way, FUCK thanatica' once I get an ending where the polyhedron survives. although...uh....from what I can surmise about what's going on with the simon of it all maybe not.... I need to figure out how to get true immortality but i'm feeling a little burnt out on futzing around with this game's dependencies so maybe i'll let them get a few more hotfixes out first. and I do want to try out some of the more worrying things (how fucked is it if you ask the rat prophet to save lara. well i'm going to find out!)