NOT Subject to Pathologic Classic HD

Some games suggest that there are more and less authentic ways to play them. Pathologic and its sequel/remake/reiteration Pathologic 2 are pretty explicit in this regard. In the announcement for the sequel, the developers, dressed as surgeons, explain that they wanted Pathologic to be something like a machine with a particular use, a “stress behavior simulator, a “vaccine for your mind.” Which is to say, if it isn’t stressful then something isn’t working. 

While I played Pathologic: Classic HD this past week I kept thinking “this could more stressful.” I would look at my inventory FULL of straight-razors, needles, broken clocks, immunity pills, lock picks like I do at pennies in a handful of spare change - unnecessary, things to put back in the trash I fished them from. It was strange, feeling so wealthy in this world after struggling so hard in Pathologic 2 made me doubt myself as an inauthentic operator of a very fragile, trusting machine that *would* work me over if I just let it. Pathologic: Classic HD, compared to its sequel, cedes ground to power-hungry, power-gaming players until it has nothing left to pull out from under them. 

I was that abusive, domineering player throwing my indifference to the plague meter into its machine guts like a wrench. When there’s always medicine to buy with the coins and knives you find on the bodies of thugs you kill at night, who cares what I contract! I’m going into that house to get a meal or a nice hunting rifle tonight. But not before I hit the quick-save button :) 

It did feel inauthentic to play Pathologic like this. I was having fun but not as much fun as I could be having if I was suffering a whole lot more. I just kept thinking about its sequel the whole time. Playing the games “backwards” (another regime of authenticity, what order to play games in like never 3 before 2), I got an appreciation for how tuned the “stress behavior simulator” became when Ice-Pick Lodge let themselves iterate upon their system. Like reading a book, watching a film, or playing a game for a second time, going back proves fruitful. A good idea is worth doing again, it seems!

Pathologic 2 is heinous. It is a machine that works. What it does, if you become its willing subject, is tease you with the limits of life, sustaining a desperate, panicked moment of pre-death for the entire duration of the simulation. There seem to be less ways to be successful in Pathologic 2, meaning every player, every playing-subject (I’d like to call the position of the player as a structural element in design), is doomed, more or less, to the same fate if they are to fail. 

The idea of “deviant playstyles” isn’t diminished by a developer designing toward and insisting on an authentic style of play. And inversely, the possibility of performing a deviant playstyle in Pathologic 2 does not undermine (though it might poignantly criticize) Ice-pick Lodge’s vision of what it is to play Pathologic 2 authentically. This is also why adding the option to highly customize the difficulty of Pathologic 2 was completely unthreatening and nothing but a good idea. We don’t need to draw and insist on a binary between authentic and inauthentic like it’s a real division in gamer morality, and I don’t think it is fun or productive to act like developer intent isn’t at least interesting to consider and possibly worthwhile to attempt as we play.

But I know that I played Pathologic Classic HD inauthentically, and I feel bad about that. My 26 hour playthrough seems cast with a spiteful, domineering energy that I wish I could reconcile without playing it again, because it simply wasn’t fun anyway. Truth be told, I also know that I played Pathologic 2 inauthentically whenever I threw myself into a dangerous situation knowing that if things went bad I could always just use the less forgiving, but still reliable, save system. I played Pathologic 2 like a immortal time lord but the suffering I experienced, inversely to its prequel, was fun enough to subject myself to it once more

Pretty soon I’ll be playing through Pathologic 2 with some restrictions that I hope will allow the stress behavior simulation to effect me, to turn me into a specific playing-subject. Pathologic 2 is a machine I will willingly submit myself to, toss my soft body into the hard cogs of its machinery just to see what comes out still alive.