The world of Pathologic 2 is coming apart and it doesn’t look like you’re going to save it. You’re not even sure it deserves saving. The son of a local doctor, you’ve returned to your plague-ridden hometown. Growing up, you knew it as a curious place, but since the sickness struck, it has grown supremely unsettling. Kids wander the street in dog masks. Men outfitted with flamethrowers are burning the infirm and corpses alike. You begin to dream of the town, and sometimes as you walk among the dilapidated buildings during the day, you wonder if you’re still dreaming. What you see is too surreal to believe.
Pathologic 2 requires some special explanation. What started off as a remake of the 2005 psychological horror adventure has grown into what can more accurately be called a reimagining. The original Pathologic was critically respected for its grueling survival mechanics and jet-black tone, but it largely flew beneath the radar in the West due to a poor English translation and janky gameplay that was the result of indie studio Ice-Pick Lodge biting off a bit more than they could chew.
“A lot of the game’s ideas weren’t fully realized due to our inexperience and other limitations,” Alexandra Golubeva, the narrative designer at Ice-Pick Lodge said. “We wanted to reforge it into a more holistic experience, with gameplay and story having a stronger connection while preserving the uniquely bleak and thoughtful mood of Pathologic.”
The resulting game is called Pathologic 2 because it’s both a modernization of the original and a considerably more ambitious effort. The character you play, the Haruspex, isn’t in the 2005 game. He follows his own unique path, learning details of his father’s recent death while also trying to keep the town from descending into complete chaos. There are a suite of fresh gameplay elements, from big ideas like how your reputation grows or deteriorates across various neighborhoods to the fact that you can now mug townsfolk without hurting them. The game looks like 2019, too. Muddy textures have been replaced by lifelike character models and haunting lighting effects.
On the matter of whether Pathologic 2 is more welcoming than its predecessor, Golubeva said that “the mechanics are better explained, introduced gradually, and we generally give the player a bit more time to get to know the game’s world before it all descends to hell.” In short, Pathologic 2 doesn’t want to totally confound you, but once you’ve got your sea legs, it’s an intense experience.
The fundamental conundrum you face throughout the game is what you should prioritize next. Your health isn’t great — your health is never great — but you think you can hold up for the rest of the day, so you have a few choices: you could craft some medicine in order to aid a few friends, go scavenging for supplies in a hostile district, or delve further into the town’s mysteries.
Time is your most precious resource. You’re very unlikely to be able to do everything that needs doing before the day is over, which means your friends could die, or you might go broke or miss out on a one-time event that reveals some crucial piece of information. You don’t know for sure what the consequences of your choices are going to be.
Golubeva said that “this constant tension lies at the core of the Pathologic experience.” It makes for challenging play, but a more forgiving experience would be incongruous with all the horrific stuff that’s happening in the town, where the plague manifests as harrowingly large swarms of flies and harvested organs can be used as currency. “Success” is a relative term, and discovering how to achieve it is far from straightforward. It wouldn’t make much sense if it were.
“Tragedy and loss are valuable, poignant, and potent experiences, and we cherish opportunities to be exposed to them through the safety of art,” Golubeva explained. “There are a lot of brilliant games that make you feel good about yourself, which is awesome. But at Ice-Pick Lodge we also see the value in a different lesson: that you don’t have to achieve perfection and that there is value in ‘suboptimal’ stories.”
The player is unlikely to discover all of Pathologic 2’s secrets, but that’s because it resists that kind of approach. It’s a game that encourages immersion. All you know is that you’re trapped in increasingly nightmarish environs, trying to make it to the next day, and hopefully helping some people along the way.
Maybe you can save the town, if you’re able to keep your wits about you. As you open a door to reveal a figure wrapped head to toe in bandages, that does not speak but follows you wherever you go, you begin to seriously question your odds.
Pathologic 2 will be available for PC on May 23, 2019.
Recommended specs: