Pathologic: My Thoughts So Far

“I have no idea how to stop it. No-one does.”

I consider myself to have a pretty firm grasp of the English language: I enjoy writing, and do it on a regular basis.
However, the time I have thus far spent with this game has left me unable to describe it the way that it makes me feel.
I can say in short that I am thoroughly ‘enjoying’ myself, in that it is what I have always wanted: a game where your choices matter and you have to struggle to eke out even a bleak, hopeless existence for a few more hours.
I can say without hyperbole that this game will challenge your soul.

For the first five minutes I felt safe, even in spite of the game’s name. I knew nothing about the game, and I didn’t want to know anything. I enjoy going into games blind.
Past the first five minutes, I have never felt safe again since in this game; if one can call it a mere ‘game’. This is a vision of what such interactive experiences can be: at the moment the industry is, in my opinion, hamstrung by the fact that they are referred to as ‘games’, meaning they are merely more than throwaway experiences to have some fun with. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with such games, I love them myself, but it is games like my favorites: The Witcher series, Life is Strange and now Pathologic that make you think and consider your actions. Pathologic thus enters the realm of my favorite games due to the choices you can make and the fact that the game respects your intelligence and never, beyond a few strange hints given by masked figures on the first day of survival, holds your hand or tells you what to do. Unlike The Witcher and Life is Strange, however, Pathologic is not fun to play. And that’s not a problem, due to the nature of the game.

It is incredibly difficult to describe how this game makes you feel: it is unnerving, bleak and terrifying. Not terrifying in the sense that many modern games are, relying on cheap thrills and jumpscares to make the player scream or yell and their heart pound for a minute, but in a totally different sense. There are six different survival aspects working against you all the time; Health, Infection, Immunity, Hunger and Exhaustion. The first day, I felt like I was juggling these aspects pretty well. However on the second day, I was staggering around, starving and exhausted, looking desperately for food that I could share with others. This leads me on to the other thing that Pathologic does: break you down the longer you play.

The atmosphere is brilliant, simply impeccable, but it’s horrible, at the same time. Most games claim to offer immersion, few of them actually do. Pathologic offers a completely different type of immersion, one I never knew could exist in a ‘game’. Pathologic consists of walking through a strange town filled with beautiful architecture: every step tires you just a fraction more, and the longer you walk around, the more risk you have of collapsing and dying of exhaustion, just trying to complete one more task. Eventually you come to the conclusion that you can’t save everyone, can’t do everything. I have read many historical texts and accounts of people who commit atrocities in the name of survival. It is hard for people to understand the choices they have made in an age of prosperity; I feel like this game, while not possible to recreate the actual feeling entirely, comes pretty damned close. I betrayed my own morals to save myself for one more day: the food I was supposed to gather for a woman I made off with and ate for myself, otherwise I was going to die. I gave children razor blades for a single bullet, which I used to shoot a crazed man: a man I couldn’t help. The game is irrepressibly bleak and depressing, and as such it’s not for people who play games for fun, which sounds crazy in itself. It’s an experience, more than anything. Pathologic demands that you cast your soul into the fire, and your goal is to come out on the other side alive, no matter what that does to your soul as it burns the longer you survive. Pathologic is unique; horrible and beautiful all at the same time.

Each day is self-contained and each day grows more and more difficult as your troubles progress. The gameplay is repetitive yet the story is so well-written, the characters so interesting, that you want to go on. Most of the time the characters speak in strange riddles, and as others have said, half the dialogue options so far as the Bachelor character is you asking “What the hell are you talking about?” This adds to the allure and mystery of the game: I haven’t gotten very far, but I am enjoying trying to wrap my mind around riddles even while the game drains me emotionally.
If you are a person who dislikes text-heavy games, then you will not like this game.
If you are a person who dislikes depressing, horrifying atmospheres, then you will not like this game.
If you have read through this and decided that the game sounds amazing in all it’s bleak existentialism and challenging notions of life, death, morality and miracles, and all it’s uniqueness, then buy it. Read no more about it, buy it, and experience it for yourself, just as I am still doing now.