there's this stereotype floating around
that Russians rarely smile and are
generally pretty gloomy people and as
much as I want to tell you otherwise
it does have some roots in reality I
mean look at our culture our history
look at this Soviet architectural legacy
we have to live with every day and you
might see where it's coming from even
our idea of recreation somehow involves
suffering here ask Tom Hardy
this experience isn't meant to be
enjoyed it's supposed to be endured hell
I dare you to check out our cuisine like
this thing for example it's called
holodets it's and it takes forever to
make and then it looks like this and in
that regard
pathologic a 2005's game by Icepick Lodge
is a distinctly Russian game much like
holodets it's borderline unapproachable
I know I know plenty of games out there
pride themselves for their unforgiving
difficulty but none of them do this
shtick quite like pathologic it's nothing
like soulsekiroborne games or whatever
the hell we are calling them these days this
game is not fair it isn't supposed to be
mastered it is as far from power fantasy
at the game could possibly get it is
pretty amusing for me to see people
argue whether these games frustrating
design decisions are intentional or not
when I know for a fact that Nicolay Dybowski the lead developer at the IPL
casual refers to his projects as torture
devices Pathologic is tough cruel
even Pathologic is a game about trying
your best and failing it's about
trusting people and being punished for
it it is a game about disillusionment
and futility of your actions and it's
not just the story this design philosophy
defines pretty much every aspect of the
game there are always some problems that
demand your attention you're always
running out of something
whenever you might think that you're
getting a hang of things Pathologic
reliably finds some new and creative
ways of kicking you in the balls which
probably makes it a closest thing we got
to a realistic Russia simulator
anyway I don't feel like digging too
deep into the game of the whole in this
video but if you're interested I
strongly suggest you to check out the one
by Hbomberguy um can I take a minute
to gush over his video well of course I
can this is my channel I can do whatever
I want so here I go
you see in Russia videogame
discourse sort of falls behind when
compared with some western countries it
might be a huge generalization on my
part but at least to me it seems that
as of right now not many people here are
all that interested in discussing video
games
as something more than just entertainment
and for that there are several reasons
that I'm not going to discuss right now
long story short there is a lot of this
and not a lot of something like this and
as someone who both speaks English and
is also super nerdy about video games
I sort of naturally gravitated towards
the foreign critics and as much as I
love their stuff I've always been
somewhat upset that almost none of them
played my favorite game ever I always
wanted for people outside my country to
see all the bold and innovative things
pathologic did all the way back in 2005
way before experimental indie games of
today sadly whenever pathologic did find
itself in someone's crosshairs it was
usually something like great atmosphere
cool story never made it past the opening
hour and then one evening I casually load up
YouTube only to be greeted with this bad
boy in my recommendations to be
completely honest I was kind of nervous
when opening this video after all this
thing here might be the biggest
moment of exposure this game I'm so
passionate about has ever got since it
was released but all of my concerns were
uncalled for this guy gets it and I mean
he really gets it there is just
something so incredible satisfying to me
see in this British dude picking up such
a weird and alienating piece of my
culture outsiders barely even
heard of and making a genuine attempt at
appreciating it and then making this
full-length feature film of a YouTube
video to tell people why it is so
special and somehow this thing is way
more entertaining that any video about
pathologic has any right to be so please
I beg of you with tears in my eyes
fucking watch it I try not to overlap
much though I'll have to give you a
really short story recap to make my
point anyway in pathologic
you take control of one of these three
guys called healers
as they arrive in this strange rural town not
long after the town gets struck with the
deadly and highly contagious disease and
you're tasked with dealing with it and
by dealing with it I mean that to have
to walk around the town talk to people
and do your best not to die off one of
the bazillon reasons ranging from
starvation to being burned alive
by this good fella each of the three
routs lasts for 12 in-game days which
means that on top of the other things
you'll have to constantly worry about
the time limit Plus during your first
day as any of the characters you'll get
this cryptic prophecy telling you to
keep a select group of people safe that
game refers to as bound and this is
important remember this there is a lot
going on on the story  thematically
determinism versus free will
traditions versus progress rationalism
we are so spiritualism
not to mention pathologic's dark
exploration of human nature in face of
extreme circumstances those topics are
worthy of their own discussions but this
is not what I want to focus on in this
video what I really want to talk about
is one small choice you make towards the
end of the game but to get to that we
need to talk philosophy first there was
this guy called Albert Camus
and as the world was going to shit
during the 20th century with all the
world wars and economic disasters and
whatnot as science deepened our
knowledge yet failed to provide us
with ultimate answers and people in
general became more and more
disillusioned with dogmas of the past
this guy came up with the philosophy of
absurdism well of course even back then
the idea that life is meaningless wasn't
all that new but it was him who wrote
what many consider to be the main staple
of this philosophy I am of course
talking about his 1942 essay the myth of
sisyphus as you might have already
guessed his outlook on life was pretty
grim life is absurd the universe is
silent and indifferent to our pleas and
where do we go from that in his work
Camus described three possible
outcomes first one is well it's suicide
not exactly what I call a
perfect solution but neither did he to
Camus an act of end in one's own life
was seen as merely an escape from
existence a declaration of one's defeat
second solution is what favored by
many thinkers from Kierkegaard to
Fyodor Dostoevsky they believed
that the only thing left to do when
faced with a lack of meaning is to find
something anything to believe to be in a
religion a spiritual idea or anything
else really this approach requires this
irrational leap of faith that Camus
considered antithetical to absurd he
called it a philosophical suicide
this option never worked for me
personally and believe me not due to
lack of trying
third one is offered by the man himself
in his essay he called Sisyphus an
absurd hero someone who acknowledges the
meaninglessness of both his task and his
existence and finds victory in this
realization he writes Sisyphus
proletarian of the Gods powerless and
rebellious knows the whole extent of his
wretched condition it is what he thinks
of during his descent the lucidity that
was to constitute his torture at the
same time crowns his victory there is no
fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn
he continues the struggle itself towards
the heights is enough to fill a man's
heart one must imagine Sisyphus happy to
Albert Camus this embrace of the absurd
is the only reasonable way to live with it sounds cool right wouldn't it be
nice to actually experience something
like that firsthand and not just read or
hear about it and go yeah I guess that
works for me but actually experience it
if only there was some sort of medium
some art form that could have put you in
someone else's shoes by exposing you to
some kind of interactive system or
something like that I don't know anyway
back to pathologic as the story
progresses and the epidemic ravages the
town the Inquisitor a governmental
official that specializes in making
problems go away
arrives in attempt to provide a global
catastrophe later on the Army joins the
party with enough artillery to make the
whole town disappear overnight on the
twelfth day both the army commander and
the Inquisitor gather at the local
cathedral  to decide the fate of the town
and if all are your bound are safe and
sound you're also invited to offer your
solution to this crisis that is how the
game ends you arriveat the meeting
and present a way of preventing the
pandemic that you come up with during
the last 11 days leading to one of the
four possible endings however during the
same day you will receive letters from
other two healers who you didn't choose as
your protagonist they're each tell
you that they found their own ways of
stopping the disease they'll ask you to cure
their wards
so that they could too visit the
cathedral and offer their solutions and
let me tell you this might be the
hardest though optional quest in the
entirety of pathologic you see there is
only two kinds of medicine that can cure
the plague both of which are incredibly
rare the only way you could make that
happen is by going through the entire
game without using or selling any of
those items while doing everything in
your power to acquire them this might be
one of the two or three times my habit
of pathological hoarding was rewarded
yes I'm looking at you every other game
in existence so this option is something
for only the most dedicated of players
and what do they get for their efforts
well if you actually managed to help
other healers they will be invited to
the cathedral as well and you'll be
given an option to choose their
solutions over your own and see other
endings which is kind of neat I guess
but there is more
if you assist it at least one of them
you'll get a latter from this mysterious
entities referred to as powers that be
inviting you for a talk it doesn't
really matter what character you're
playing at this point of the game you
should be already aware of them they are
the ones who persecute radical thinkers
like say Stamatin brothers they're the
ones who threatened Bachelor's work at the
capital and they're the ones who sent
both the Army and the Inquisitor as a
Russian player playing a Russian game my
brain instinctively without me even not
in that made this connection powers that be
are this universe's equivalent of the
Soviet government that resides somewhere
at the capital by this time you've
already got a few increasingly ominous
letters from them reminded you of your
duties but this one feels somewhat more
personal and even childish and what's
even more strange is that the place you
are invited to is polyhedron
this impossible superstructure that
according to some rumors is capable of
making children's games and dreams come
to life and that I totally forgot to
mention prior to this
you get there and
yeah I honestly get it why so many
people were turned away by this twist
you work so hard to get there only for a
game to reveal to you that it was all in
vain this whole thing is nothing but the
children's game and pathologic's universe
is just as absurd as their own as you
leave the polyhedron provided you help
both other healers you will receive
another letter this time is from the
makers the people who executed the whole
thing but aren't they yeah sure why not
how bad could that be this time you're
invited to the town theater as you arrive
you are greeted by these two the
executor and the tragedian you've met
them before we are supposed to be
performers at the theater that also
serves as a tutorial characters and even
orderlies at some point what those two
could possibly want from oh so that's
what they meant when they call
themselves the makers those two are a
stand-in for the developers who invited
you to discus the experience you had
with their creation this fella will even
go as far as to mock the character for
being nothing but the children's toy and
then you have the option to tell him
that it is in fact you
the player who stands in front of him
then he will ask if you still wish to go
on with your quest knowing that it was
all in vain and it is this simple choice
that really got to me and stayed with me
for so many years now I've known people
who outright told this guy off and
quitted the game never to return
and honestly I get where they're coming
from
nowadays we have all those capitalistic
practices in popular culture with its
abundance of sequels prequels quadriquels
spin-offs and extended universes so
people are conditioned to expect
everything within a fiction to make
perfect sense
that's why everything in existence now
has its own wiki explaining every single
detail of the made-up worlds that's why
we have all those obnoxious nerds on the
internet arguing about lightsabers and
power levels and whatnot and that is why
we have things like game theory and
cinema sins people are more interested
with the content of the stories rather
than the ideas
presented but here none other than the
creators of the game directly
acknowledged that the minute to
minute details of its plot aren't all
that important all that's left are ideas
it's all just a kids game
within a play within a video game and
none of this is real but your experience
with it definitely is what you've seen
what you felt the conclusions you
arrived at while reflecting on this game
is what truly important pathologic fully
embraces the cosmic absurdity of it's
universe and challenges you to find the
meaning for yourself in spite of it it
is a game that allows you yourself and
not just your character to become an
absurd here of course it isn't the first
and definitely not the last time games
commented on players decision to
continue playing Bioshock famous would
you kindly twist or say the ending of
Spec Ops the line could both serve as an
example of that but in those games at
least to me it feels like a shallow
edginess you're being scolded for
experiencing them in an exact way you
should experience a video game you know
for playing them and it's not like
you're given any real ways of disobeying
unlike those other games hell I can easily
think of one particular game that also
happens to feature a mustachioed
objectivistic Hovard Hughes inspired
arrogant dipshit keen on giving you
orders that you can and probably should
question pathologic on the other hand
isn't interested in judging you for your
decision to continue playing it actually
offers a complete inversion of that
instead of it being generally enjoyable
game that shames you for enjoying it pathologic is a torture that actually
though in an unusual way
rewards you for sticking around I cannot
remember the other time a game filled me
with so much determination as this one
did as I was making my way to the
Cathedral to witness its finale many
games out there try to build up tension
and remind you of how important your
quest of saying in the world or whatever
is but here it is you who ultimately
decides that your journey had any
significance one can reply to that by
saying how are you even calling this a
choice we all know how choices in video
games work what changes if you pick one
option over the other
to which I say well nothing really the
choice is in fact meaningless you can
tell him that you fed up with this
nonsense and just keep on playing as if
nothing happened or you can choose the
other reply and quit the game
right after but that sort of part of the
charm after all the real game is what's
happening between you and them and it
isn't just me I can't quite recall
anyone making this connection with the
philosophy of absurdism but the raw
emotions and feeling of determination
this game forces on its players is
something that I see in virtually
everybody who gave pathologic a fair
chance perhaps I am reading a bit too
deep into this but to me this tiny
little interaction seems to be both a
philosophical statement about existence
and the meta commentary about art of the
whole and for a game that bleak and
depressing it could not have been any
more optimistic anyway that was the
video thank you for watching I mostly
did this so I could lie to myself that I
was productive during the lockdown but
if you feel like listening to my mumblings
is your cup of tea let me know and
maybe I'll make more
maybe I'll tackle something more
mainstream next time though I really
want to compare pathologic one with its
sequel / remake so maybe I'll do just
that I have this Firewatch thing
happening in my life right now except
instead of watching fires I do some
engineering communication engineering to
be precise and due to pandemic my shift
is going to extend greatly so even I
don't know when I'll be able to upload
next time anyway please stay home take
care and maybe I'll see you next time
