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Pathologic, For Those Who Will Never Play It. Act 1.75. (Haruspex's Route) [PATREON PREVIEW]

🕑 Added 2025-07-30 23:11:35 +0000 UTC

Comments

Ruby Seals

Very good analysis and one I agree with! I'll be making similar points later on in the video, though more from the angle of acting, performative flow states, and how that causes us to really exist in the moment despite all the things around it which should make it feel fake. We're both pointing at the same thing though, namely the way low-effort flow states are meditative, sometimes bordering on the hypnotic. It's the same thing that makes slot machines appealing, but paired with different narrative framings which demand different emotional responses.

incelghetsis

(accidentally added this comment too early oops) that section on friction, you alluded to something i think is quite important to it without really mentioning it (attach a bracelet and inject me with soporil if this is mentioned elsewhere and I'm wrong), that friction produces another kind of emotion when you actually manage to grip it by its horns: meditation. Animal crossing, a game with a lot of friction and no real skill challenge, is a meditative game, as is grinding levels in an RPG and mastering patho's task management and route calculating. A repetitive, mindless, gruelling task of endurance that you slowly, slowly, get used to, becomes meditative, probably because you think less and less about the steps as they become second nature. What adds to the gruelling-ness, of course, is the narrative surrounding it, like if laundry had ethical dilemmas. Cleaning games like powerwash sim (my beloved) focus on meditative friction HEAVILY, for example, but that is like. the pure gameplay experience. Pathologic, as you get more and more accustomed to it, leans into that meditation too, and then sometimes even when you're super used to it, throws day five haruspex at you and sets you back into that initial, 'not used to the friction' push. idk just. a thought I had while watching the difficulty section. Very VERY good section btw, ur explanations of everything are super robust and are delivered very well!