Pestilence. Utopia (Pathologic 2). Suffering is fun!

The gaming experience in most titles is one of the things that makes the game unique and directly influences our perception of the game. This experience can be anything: pleasant, frustrating, calming, philosophical, or painful, unbearable and strangely pleasant.

I became acquainted with the Ice-Pick Lodge games relatively recently, about 2 years ago, if my memory serves me correctly. But I first heard about them much earlier, thanks to videos on YouTube. I was attracted by the fact that almost everyone praised them for their original concepts and approach to creating their games. And my first game, ironically enough, was a rethinking of the studio’s very first project – Pathologic, or Pestilence.

Remake? Remaster? Sequel?

We live in a time when either a lack of ideas or an oversaturation of content has led us to the phenomenon of remakes and remasters. A bunch of old projects from the 90s and 2000s are being re-released with support for modern systems or are completely remade by new developers for the modern market in order to “introduce new players to the great classics, combed in a new way.”. And the head of the studio, Nikolai Dybovsky, interestingly, spoke about this phenomenon like this:

Remakes are evil. I am officially ready to say this from the pulpit: there is no need to make remakes. This is bad.

Nikolai Dybovsky

So how did it happen that the authors of cult Russian projects, people who make each of their games unusual from any point of view, came up with a remake of their most famous game. Well, Dybovsky himself answered this question in the same quote:

But from an economic point of view, remakes and sequels work. People want to stay within the narrative they are familiar with, to which they are accustomed. That’s why people are waiting for remakes. Of course, we treat the universe with care. We understand that since we are doing a remake, we must respect the original source.

Nikolai Dybovsky

And yet, is the second part a remake, a sequel or something else?? In order to find out, I honestly bought the first part on Steam and played it for a couple of hours as a Haruspex so that the comparison would be as accurate as possible. And I received my answer. The Second Blight is the most correct remake, which not only managed to rethink, deepen the atmosphere, reveal the gameplay for the character, but also give new players a look at the classics of the gaming industry. Although a small snag immediately appears.

The game is not for everyone

Pestilence is a special game. This was mentioned in every review, video or video essay on this topic. Therefore, I will briefly present similar theses. Pestilence is a difficult, cruel game. It puts you in a state of “on the brink”, when the player literally has to balance on the brink of life and death, whether on normal difficulty or on “canonical” difficulty.

And this is good, it makes the game a challenge, which, if the player decides to take it on, will become an invaluable experience and will give a lot of emotions that he might not have expected from the game. However, this is bad for a product, which, to one degree or another, is any representative of modern entertainment. Therefore, let’s understand why, by taking the game apart and, hopefully, we will be able to understand its Lines in order to correctly dissect this subject.

Excuse me, where did I end up??

In order to understand all aspects of Pestilence, we need to start with a simple question – what is Pestilence? A tribute to a famous author? Funny words from the explanatory dictionary? Names of the main character in the third Gothic? None of the above. Pestilence is death that fights for life. What, nothing is still clear? Well, then let’s go to the other side.

The action of the game, as I already said, takes place in the steppes, in the City-on-Gorkhon, this is the river on which the City stands. The exact geographical location is not known, and judging by the game itself, people outside of it don’t remember it at all. The city is a typical settlement of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, when the virgin lands of nomads and indigenous peoples of the frontier began to be developed more actively than ever before. After all, why not – there is labor, there is plenty of land, and resources are never superfluous. So the City, in fact, lives by the same principles. However, it has a small difference.

The population consists of https://atlanticcity-casino.co.uk/ both indigenous “steppe dwellers”, the Way of Life, as they are called in the game, and ordinary townspeople who either came here of their own free will and are not connected with the steppe, or, which is not discussed, cut off from the Way of Life, although the latter is not at all certain. If everything is clear with ordinary people, then the Way of life is a different matter. In addition to the steppe people, there are other people in the Way… representatives, Worms and steppe brides. These are not exactly people, but to be precise – half people, and half – creations of the Earth.

And this is the kind of diverse population we encounter when we appear in the game. Although it is difficult to understand whether we are at the beginning or at the end.

Death is on the doorstep

The game starts from the end. The city will be destroyed, and we were unable to do very many “useful” things, according to… everyone. Including Mark Bessmertnik, director of the local theater. And when even people in the arts say that we failed our role, that says a lot. But, like any good production, we have the opportunity to rehearse our role again in order to try to play it better. This is where the game starts.

In the remake of Pestilence we play as one character. In the original, we were immediately given 2 scenarios, and after completing one of them, a third one opened. In this case, our hero’s name is Artemy Burakh, a surgeon who studied for 5 years at the capital’s school on the advice of his father, a local healer, Isidor Burakh. Yes, Artemy comes from the City-on-Gorkhon, and therefore he has some memories of how this settlement works. But, apparently due to the hectic life of the Capital, he forgot a lot, and he has to fit back into the special rhythm of the town. However, from the very beginning everything is not going as rosy as we would like. On the threshold we are met by Death – not ours, of course, but 3 people who considered us a murderer who committed two extremely monstrous and mysterious murders that night..

And then we will abruptly interrupt my nonsense and turn the arrows. Because this introduction ideally leads to another question – what is it like to play Pestilence??

Hurt

you are injured. Bleeding. You haven’t eaten for several days. Haven’t slept for about the same amount of time. And also you’re dying to drink. Your actions?

Most people in such a situation would most likely quit their skates in the next couple of hours, because the body needs resources to recover, and you spent them before… it’s not clear what. Apparently your head was drugged with something. And in Morea you find yourself in exactly this situation.

Artemy has several vital characteristics: Life, Immunity, Hunger, Fatigue and Thirst. All of them will somehow ruin your fun, since managing these indicators is one of the main challenges in the game. In addition to this, the game has many other mechanics, some of which we will learn during the game, and others that will be shown and explained to us in the tutorial. Yes, unlike the first part, in the remake, at the very beginning the player is given training related to the prologue of the entire story… for 30-40 minutes. It’s not the most logical, but very atmospheric. In it they will show us how to chat, how to fight, trade and, of course, rummage through cabinets. Difficulties begin after training, when we leave the walls of a cozy train and go out into the city.

As I already said, we lost a lot of resources at the very beginning, but besides this, the environment also haunts us. You see, the steppe is a cruel entity in which a large amount of the so-called tviri blooms – something like opium grass, which during flowering intoxicates people’s heads, from it they begin to feel hunger and fatigue more and more often and. T. d. But what kind of moonshine is made from it, mmm..

These are the conditions in which we have to survive. And exactly what to survive. Unfortunately, Pestilence is not The Sims, where you start from scratch and build a wonderful life for yourself. Suffering is nothing at the beginning, and the further we go into the ford, the harder it is to move. Every day the conditions become more unbearable, and the tasks become more important and urgent. By the way..

Today is Wednesday?

The game has a day system. There are 12 of them in the game, and there is no way to stop time. This means that all actions need to be thought out in advance, not to engage in any unnecessary nonsense and not to run the longest routes. In the first couple of days the game gives all sorts of concessions, nevertheless constantly increasing the degree of tension. The city lives its own life, and therefore we must integrate into it, understand its work and generally not forget that the world does not revolve around us alone.

And it is precisely this time limitation that scares the most when entering the game for the first time. After all, as many are used to: you enter the game, you have a main goal – to defeat the king of dragons, the son of Akatosh – Alduin, for example. And despite the fact that nominally we seem to be in a hurry, time can calmly go on and on, day after day we will not receive reminders that, in fact, the fate of the world is at stake there.

Under such restrictions, secondary missions, the number of them in the game, look like a mockery. After all, in addition to the fate of the city, there are also people inhabiting it, which I already mentioned above. At some point you will even feel that the game is unfair and that it is deliberately making you suffer. Your head will start to pound..

Suffering is fun!

If anyone has played Dwarf Fortress, then you may remember the motto coined by the players "Losing is fun!", which, with a slight transformation, is also suitable for Mora. From the amount of information I provided above, you may get a strange impression of the game, as if it deliberately makes itself uncomfortable, unfriendly and repulsive, like a Russian forester at 5 am after a drinking session in the forest. But the point is that it is so. After all, according to the developers, the whole point is that the game should be unbearable to play. Each test should, if not physically, then mentally, bring the player indignation, fatigue or even rage. Which on the one hand seems like a very bad idea when you’re trying to sell a game that, logically, should be fun and interesting to play.

I won’t say that there is no second one in Utopia. The game is not without interest, in terms of style, history and morality it is generally ahead of 95% of the modern market, but for the majority it cannot be called fun.

But I dare say that this experience is the very immersive core that allows you to get emotions from the game, which are otherwise very, very difficult to get from interactive entertainment. Moral indignation turns into literally physical fatigue, the hero’s hardships become the player’s problems and Artemy Burakh becomes you, and you become Artemy Burakh. As an actor in the theater, you get used to the role, you become the one you play, and such a response can only be given by pain and suffering, in this case. And after playing, you will understand why such a comparison with the theater.

Elephant in the room

We can talk about the greatness of Mora in terms of presentation and gameplay for a long time, which is why I said so little about it, otherwise this text would not be nearing completion. However, I would like to mention a less creative aspect – technical.

Pestilence is a broken game. From all points of view. Optimization in the game is weak on both legs, and on any medium hardware with almost any settings it will drop frames, play around with frametime, freeze and, sometimes, crash. Bugs are a constant occurrence. Nothing criminal, but flying people, levitating extras above the floor, an unloaded house in front of the player within walking distance – even an SSD may not save you from all this.

The path of the samurai is full of secrets

On the most interesting!

The brokenness of some mechanics is also worth mentioning. Yes, this was most likely done on purpose so that life would not seem sweet to us, but the combat system is broken and cannot be fixed by any hands. Fighting with your fists is painful, because the tricks are not clear how they are lined up, the blocks sometimes work normally, sometimes they miss all the blows even with a full breath bar. Same thing with shooting. Even at point-blank range, cartridges sometimes don’t hit the target, and I won’t even talk about a shotgun or a rifle, because this is an atta. Therefore, if you did not strike first and the enemy did not die from this, then there is a high probability of your imminent death. Congratulations!

There are no games without problems. And there’s no point in looking for them either. However, I can’t remember very many games that managed to turn their shortcomings into advantages and “chips,” so to speak. Yes, I may not have said anything new about Pestilence, but I really wanted to share my feelings about this game, because this unique experience, unfortunately, costs many people due to obvious factors.

Clinging to the familiar, to something so understandable and pleasant, we can forget that a challenge is a flexible concept, and it is different for everyone. Pestilence is a unique example of a test that will be such for everyone who wants to touch it. But, like any good story, and in the game it is exactly like that, the game will give unforgettable emotions, feelings and experiences that the player will remember for a long time after finishing his run through the streets of the plague city. Don’t be afraid to suffer, don’t be afraid to lose, because no one will stop you from replaying the play again. However, remember that actions have consequences, and consequences may not always be obvious.

P.S
Thanks for reading. Pestilence has gotten into my head so much, but I still can’t figure out how to describe it. Therefore, I hope at least something in this text will be clear. Thank you in advance for the identified shortcomings, errors, or simply for your feedback about this miracle. Well, it’s pointless to give a rating here, I think those who played will understand)