![]() Seeing as the game has received reviews deriding it as little more than a “walking simulator” or worse, “budget Skyrim”, I have my work cut out for me if I’m going to back up this enthusiastic praise. In my view, Pathologic 2 is the most creatively ambitious exemplar of these values to emerge since Deus Ex in 2000. In my last post I discussed the ImSim design philosophy as primarily defined by simulated systems-driven gameplay which promotes player agency in overcoming challenges. Pathologic 2 tasks players with inhabiting the role of a plague doctor in an otherworldly town somewhere in the Russian Steppe, which is achieved with a comparable level of fidelity to Thief’s laser focus on embedding the player into the life of a D&D rogue, while at the same time realizing Warren Spector’s dream to create a game that acts out the goings on of just One City Block rather than a vast open world, more similar in scope and depth of interactivity to Ultima Underworld’s Stygian Abyss than The Elder Scrolls’ world of Tamriel. the Deus Ex prequels, Dishonored, Prey) on the surface, Pathologic 2 takes after the spirit of games that inspired them. ![]() While sharing little in common with modern ImSims (e.g. What I actually meant was how Pathologic 2 builds on the ideas and principles of the Immersive Sim and takes them in a bold new direction. I probably will give it a look now given how deeply enthralled I’ve been with its sequel, but I can’t really comment on the comparison. ![]() Oh, you thought I was referring to the original Pathologic with that? Yeah, no I’ve never played it myself. It’s a game that intricately weaves together meticulously tuned and crushingly tense survival gameplay with an enigmatic and layered narrative to produce an experience like no other, building on what came before it and reaching for yet greater heights. ![]() Pathologic 2 is in a sense both a sequel to and a reimagining of its predecessor, acknowledging what previously transpired but staging a do-over – literally, as both games employ a theatrical production as a metanarrative framing for their events. Pathologic 2 was released by Ice-Pick Lodge in 2019 as a follow-up to their 2005 debut Pathologic, a cult classic game about survival and healing in a strange Russian Steppe town ravaged by plague. ![]()
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