#daniil sees how she heals people with her hands or kill | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

harpieisthecarpie · 10 months

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What's pathologic about? It sounds cool and I might want to get into it

okay hell yeah now is my time to shine! thank you for the ask you're giving me the excuse to ramble about my new hyperfixation to not-just-a-brick-wall (tho sorry to all my orv followers and friends for having to deal with my patho bs).

(IF YOU ARE A PATHOLOGIC GUY READING THIS: BE MY FRIEND, DM ME, I NEED PATHO FRIENDS)

Take my words with a grain of salt because I'm playing through Pathologic 2 and reading Pathologic Classic HD's transcripts right now, so I don't have the full perspective, but I should be able to explain the essentials in a way that will (hopefully) intrigue you.

Essentially, at the very bare bones, Pathologic is a psychological survival horror game where you play as one of three healers stuck in an isolated town in the Russian Steppe (in the early 1900's iirc), struggling to keep its citizens alive even as your own fragile life is in the balance. Of course, there is a LOT more, but that is the most basic of the basics.

Each of the healers has a vastly different experience with the town and relationship with its inhabitants that colors their perspective and solution to the plague, though I will try to avoid going into spoilers here. The various factions in the Town-On-Gorkhon will treat each healer differently, actively hostile to one while being pleasantly manipulative to another.

The Bachelor, also known as Daniil Dankovsky, is a pathologist and bachelor of medicine who is part of Thanatica, an institution in the City determined to defeat Death itself. He comes to the town at the behest of Isidor Burakh in order to learn from him and Simon Kain, a man the locals claim to be immortal. Daniil's precious Thanatica is under threat of being destroyed unless he can provide substantial results. Rather unfortunate that the two men were both found to be brutally murdered right before he arrives...

Daniil is an outsider to the Town and is treated as such, often being manipulated by the most powerful and belittled by the rest because of his lack of knowledge about the Town and its traditions. This leads him to becoming alienated from many of them and their culture. He can also be a massive asshole depending on how you want to play him (though each healer can) and my favorite characteristic is his habit of sprinkling Latin phrases into his speech without translating them.

The Haruspex, Artemy Burakh, is a local of the Town who was sent away by his father, Isidor Burakh, to become a surgeon. He never completed his degree, entering into the front lines instead, but he still knows how to cut people open (and fix them up). He returns to the Town after receiving a mysterious letter from his father beckoning him home. When he arrives, he is immediately jumped by three men.

Why? They were hunting down Isidor Burakh's murderer, whom people believe is Artemy himself. Patricide is a harsh charge, and Artemy soon finds himself known as the Butcher. This sends his reputation plummeting and makes his life just that much harder. Guy has shit luck, what can I say.

A fascinating element of this route is Artemy's relationship with the Kin, the native people of the Steppe, whom he is related to on his father's side. Isidor was a menkhu, a spiritual leader and healer in Kin society who is the only one allowed to cut into human flesh. Menkhu are the ones that "know the lines", essentially meaning that they see the connections between all things.Now that Isidor is dead, that honor and duty fall upon Artemy.

There's a lot of lore surrounding the Kin but I'll stop here because I will go forever if I don't.

Clara is the Changeling. At the beginning of the game, she wakes up in a grave. She can heal the dangerously ill with her hands, but if they're not on the edge of death it just kills them instead. She also has an evil twin who she has to chase after and keep from committing atrocities every day. Clara is going through some shit, okay?

I love her but I don't know nearly as much about her as I do the other two. She's an elusive little gal who speaks like she knows more than you because she does.

There is also the whole meta framing of the game as a play. Before you pick a character in Pathologic Classic, there's a whole scene on a stage where they argue about who has a better solution to the plague. Every night during the game there is a performance about the coming day's strife. There are characters called Executors, bird masks, and Tragedians, blank masks, that often speak to the player rather than the player character. Artemy "knows the lines" (THE LINES OF THE PLAY THE LINES OF THE PL-).

It gets more meta as the game goes on but that's spoilers.

I'm not going over the basic mechanics right now because I am TIRED but I'll get to them in the morning so stay tuned for that.

Pathologic Classic HD is the original with all three routes. Pathologic 2 is a sequel/remaster/reexamination of the first game that goes over the same twelve days but with a few changes. I've heard it's a bit more accessible than Classic HD, but so far only the Haruspex route is out. You do not need to play Classic before you play Patho 2. They are both usually discounted very cheap on Steam!

PLEASE, PLAY THE GAME IF THIS HAS INTERESTED YOU AT ALL.

PATHOLOGIC CLASSIC HD

PATHOLOGIC 2

(If you want to get into the game but don't want to play, there are lots of analyses and a few playthroughs on Youtube. I'll link some in a reblog of this!)

#pathologic #pathologic 2 #daniil dankovsky #artemy burakh #clara the changeling #im so normal im sooooo normal about this game #also i cant decide whether daniil or artemy is more Blorbo to me #i love them in different ways they cannot be compared #but i want clara to beat them both up

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