Pathologic 2

Pathologic 2 consists of many separate quests and points of interest which are not necessarily linear in nature. It is therefore possible that a player will not encounter some of the events described in this synopsis, or that they will encounter these events in a different order to that listed here.

The protagonist of the game is a surgeon named Artemy Burakh, also known as the Haruspex. The game begins at the end of a previous, seemingly failed run, on 'day 12'. The town is nearly empty, filled with bodies and the sounds of screaming. Artemy speaks to various characters and eventually makes his way to the Cathedral, where he is able to speak to the mysterious theatre manager, Mark Immortell, and request a 'second attempt'. This is granted, and time resets to Artemy on a train, travelling to the Town. The player controls Artemy through a series of strange dreams and visions, ultimately culminating in the game beginning for real. Through dialogue with a character known as the 'Fellow Traveller', it is revealed that Artemy was born and raised in the town but has not been back in many years. His father, Isidor Burakh, is the local physician and a leading member of the Kin, the native inhabitants of the steppe. He sent Artemy to the capital as a teenager to gain an education in medicine, but has now requested that he return, stating that 'great difficulties' are coming.

Upon arriving in the town, Artemy is greeted by three locals who try to kill him. In a cutscene, he kills the attackers. Nearby strangers in plague doctor suits tell him that the locals suspect him of killing an important resident of the town and that the attack on him was an act of revenge. It is soon revealed that, in fact, two people have seemingly been murdered. The first is Simon Kain, a prominent leader of the town and a man who had previously been assumed to be immortal; the second is Isidor.

Artemy is suspected of patricide and attacked by many of the townspeople, who have been driven to unusual violence by the recent events. Young women are targeted in particular due to old steppe legends of a 'Shabnak-adyr', a creature with clay legs who brings death. A local gang of children known as the 'Soul-And-A-Halves' request Artemy's assistance with finding a boy who poisoned their dogs, while an old friend of his known as Bad Grief requests assistance with a local man who has been injured. The leader of the town's economy and industry, a powerful man known as 'Fat Vlad', vouches for Artemy, and his innocence is restored.

At his father's funeral, Artemy discovers that his father seemingly died of a strange stab wound. He is urged to accept his father's legacy as a menkhu, a special caste of Kin folk with the right to cut open bodies. In doing so, he is given a list containing the names of seven local children, plus a strange steppe sigil that he is told means 'udurgh'. He learns that these are the children his father felt would be most important in 'rebuilding the town', and that they must be kept safe at all costs. Signs of an outbreak begin to appear in the village, including a strange rot on the sides of buildings and an ominous black cloud within his father's old bedroom. A plague known as 'Sand Pest' or 'Sand Plague' strikes the town, killing people within a day of infection and leaving the districts abandoned and rife with looters the next.

Artemy is required to perform daily tasks at the hospital in exchange for food and money, as food prices rise rapidly once the outbreak hits. It is revealed that the Sand Pest has hit the town once before, and Isidor managed to curb the outbreak by boarding up the infected district and leaving all those within to die. He encounters a young Herb Bride- a caste of Kin women who dance barefoot to encourage the growth of sacred herbs such as twyre- who seems to know him, and eventually tells him he is destined to kill her. Artemy is able to use his father's old equipment to create tinctures that increase immunity, and later can mix these with organs or blood to produce antibiotics and painkillers. He collects sacred blood from a crack in the ground in an ancient steppe village, and finds that combining this with tinctures produces a panacea that cures Sand Pest- however, there is only enough blood for two doses.

An Inquisitor, Aglaya Lilich, arrives in the city. She has been sent to save the town at any cost, and Artemy is warned by others that Inquisitors are inherently manipulative and dangerous. He continues to try and discover how to gain access to larger amounts of sacred blood, eventually learning that the only way to get enough to stop the plague is to destroy a tower known as the 'Polyhedron' which houses hundreds of children. The mysterious 'udurgh' refers to the Earth itself, which is leaking out the sacred blood due to being repeatedly harmed and nearly killed by the Town's presence. Destroying the Polyhedron will produce enough of this blood to cure everyone, but kill the Earth in the process, causing many of the 'miracles' of the world- including many aspects of the Kin- to fade and die. It is up to the player which option they choose- either the tower is destroyed and the town is saved (the 'Diurnal' ending), or the tower remains in place and the Kin retake the Town as their own (the 'Nocturnal' ending).

All the action takes place in the Town-on-Gorkhon, a town with no further name located in an unspecified area of the steppe. The town culture represents a mix of Russian culture not long before the 1917 Revolution, and the ancient traditions of the steppe inhabitants which is full of strange customs and superstitions. The town itself is divided into a number of sections named after body parts, such as 'The Flank' and 'The Gut', which may become infected or abandoned throughout the game. The player's actions often directly affect which districts become infected and which remain healthy, and travelling through infected districts greatly raises the player's own infection risk.

The player must manage a variety of needs in order to stay alive, including Hunger, Thirst, Exhaustion, Health, Immunity and Reputation. Hunger can be sated with food which can be bought at shops, received from trade with villagers or stolen from NPC houses. Thirst can be sated with water, which becomes rare and often infected during later gameplay. Exhaustion can be managed with sleep- during which the player often dreams, which reinforce themes or directly progress the story- or with coffee beans, though these damage health. Health itself is affected by these three factors, and also decreases when the player is attacked, infected or if they take fall damage. Immunity must be maintained using tinctures or immunity boosters in order to avoid infection, and once infected antibiotics must be consistently taken until a cure can be found. Reputation is boosted by trading with others, completing hospital duties and treating infected patients, while reputation is harmed by killing innocent people, harvesting organs and looting houses. If the player's reputation becomes too low, shops will refuse to sell to them, townspeople will refuse to trade with them and they can be attacked on sight by other characters.

Pathologic takes place over twelve in-game days, which grow shorter as the game progresses. The player must save manually at clocks located throughout the town. If the player dies, they find themselves in the theatre, where Mark Immortell will explain to them that dying has certain consequences. These consequences stack the more times the player dies, and include punishments such as lower maximum health, faster increases to hunger and exhaustion, and more minor punishments such as the inability to hug other characters. These penalties cannot be undone by loading a previous save, and can only be removed by starting a new game or editing the source files.

In September 2014, Ice-Pick Lodge team launched a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter: according to the Kickstarter description, a remake was supposed to keep the overall plot of the game and the world of the original game, but with updated graphics and game mechanics as well as better AI and behavior model of the disease.[5] According to the promises of developers, the duration of the game should exceed 70 hours.[6] On October 7, 2014, the campaign ended with a total donation of $333,127.[7] This money was enough to fulfill the first super goal—the expansion of the in-game town. Initially, the release of the game was scheduled for autumn 2016. The developers claim that there are enough changes and innovations in the game to call it a separate game and not a remake.[8] On December 1, 2016, those who donated a sufficient amount of money to the Kickstarter or the game site were granted a demo version of the game called "Pathologic: The Marble Nest", which is essentially a separate game.[9] Later the development was extended until autumn of 2017. On March 14, 2017 "The Marble Nest" became available to everyone.[10] In August 2017, the development was extended until 2018, changing the Russian name from "Mor (Utopia)" to just "Mor", and the English one from "Pathologic" to "Pathologic 2". At the same time, Pathologic 2 also remains a new game, and not a continuation of the original.[11]

In August 2018, an alpha version of the game was released.

On March 28, 2019, it was officially announced that the first part of the game, telling the story of the Haruspex, will be released on May 23 of the same year.[12] The PS4 version released on March 6, 2020.[13]

On July 6, 2020, Ice-Pick Lodge announced that they were working on the second of three promised scenarios, "The Bachelor", stating it is to be released "in the foreseeable future."[14]

Pathologic 2 received "mixed or average reviews" according to review aggregator Metacritic, with a score of 69 based on 27 reviews.[15] Critics praised the game's unique atmosphere, but criticized its unforgiving survival mechanics and clunky combat.[17][18] In response to this, the game's developers added difficulty sliders to the game, allowing customisation of specific parameters in addition to overall difficulty.[19] GameGrin describes it as, "(...) very robust and makes the game much more accessible than it otherwise would have been."[20]

• Official website