finished up my patho2 replay and there IS something interesting about like...the very end of patho2 offers you the chance to leave the narrative, take off the mask of artemy, etc. if you choose to walk out the dressing room door you don't get a little cutscene and you don't get the credits. you're addressed as the player or the actor and thanked for your performance and told that you're free now. none of the patho3 endings quite let you break out in that way—in true immortality it's still /daniil/ doing it. (it's just like, well, whatever that means at this point!) every patho3 ending in fact funnels you DIRECTLY back into the story via the mirror room—in a weird way pathologic 3 never actually feels like it ENDS, because every ending presents you with the chance to try again and do something different (like we're back in the marble nest. good job, that's your fate....he begged us, once more?). you never actually break out of the loop.
and I keep coming back to the fact that I was so shocked the escape ending was actually possible in patho3—in classic or 2 it is so self evident that You Cannot Leave The Town. if you try to run away in patho2 it's another way for the game to throw up a boundary in your face. and patho3 felt at the beginning like it was predicated on the doomed-ness of the 'flee the town' bachelor route quest in classic—the first bad timeline we're put into is the one where daniil tried to flee and was thrown in jail. so, I don't know, something about how even if daniil can escape the town he can't actually escape the story. artemy is in some ways about what it means to be trapped and find love in what you're trapped in, daniil is about....you think you escaped but did you really? you think it's over but is it really?