Okay finished the Haruspex route of Pathologic Classic!
I need to play Clara's route to see the whole picture but I'm already fascinated by the differences between P1 and P2 in terms of characterization.
I think I like Pathologic 2 even more now considering how they improved on Artemy's route, I am sorry to say I didn't like it at all in classic... This is all just my personal impression after first playthrough ofc.
Ramblings about both Artemy and Daniil ↓
I think what bothered me about Haruspex was mostly just his attitude and his messiah plot. Once the first day is out of the way it's all smooth sailing for him, a bit too much so?? The only personal conflict he has is figuring out his father's exact wishes for him and choosing a sacrifice.
Killing anyone is treated as fair or something that needed to happen and the Haruspex is always shrugging it off...
And either option, Aglaya & the Town or Polyhedron... It just doesn't seem like he is that attached to either? So it doesn't feel like he is sacrificing much personally?
Like sure he wants to save the Town because of his messianic qualities, but that's again more about fulfilling his 'role' rather than genuinely wanting to save lives, or at least it read that way to me.
I'm sure it's meant to be both and P2 makes this far more apparent, but in P1 it elicited a rather squinty reaction from me.
Plus well yeah, getting rid of Polyhedron is pretty much just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, like yep he sure didn't care about that thing lmao so getting rid of it isn't such a difficult choice at all. The suggestion that the Polyhedron could be his Udurgh is kind of useless because the Town and Earth are far better candidates and fit with Kin beliefs better, which in this game Artemy pretty much doesn't doubt at all.
Maybe this is why the Bachelor is so present in his route?
Daniil did say he'd commit suicide if he lost, maybe we'd want to think twice about pushing him towards it...
But again! Does it seem like this guy cares ahhh haha... The dialogue option that is actually engaging with what Daniil said is pretty much there to make it clear to the player what the Utopian ending is and what it would be like.
Ngl at first I thought he was meant to be the 'sacrifice' until they said it's a woman.
Every time Artemy learned something about the Bachelor's motivations he'd write down in his diary like '...if it matters' since the player can always choose what ending to go with I guess.
I also find it curious that he can say that they are friends but still always writing only 'the Bachelor' in his diaries while Daniil switched to 'Artemy' and 'Burakh' during the final stretch.
The one-sided yaoi................ 🤔
At least Artemy doesn't get mad at him for ordering to set the mythic bull on fire, I guess their friendship did mean something to him after all at that point. Also when Capella tells him that he should ask the Bachelor for help with getting into the Polyhedron since the Bachelor 'fawns upon you a lot anyway' the Haruspex just goes 'oh yeah! ok' fjdghdjg...
Now that I think about it I DID like the Haruspex route for what it did with the Bachelor hahah, his dialogues and letters are just so good sometimes.
Like wow, I felt this.
Very cool, if i was Artemy I'd totally abandon my weird murderous calling for this.
Tangentially related... P2 had one moment that I remember from my last replay when Rubin, if kept alive, falls into a deep deserved sleep in his home, and Artemy just starts emotionally monologuing at him.
Like, P1 Artemy would never, but also it goes to show that he's still very much a repressed man here too, buying into toxic masculinity ideals who can't just talk to his friends about his feelings directly... The same character, but more complex. I want to make it clear that I DO like him and his motivations in P2 actually, and his personal conflict being more about the future of the Kin makes that game much more powerful to me than what his classic route was.
I heard that initially he was planned to be far more violent and dark, so maybe he could have been sort of a villain protagonist and this was changed later and this is why it feels a bit bland? Hmm...
Idk this is fun to me because meanwhile the Bachelor didn't feel that different to me in both games lmao.
A highly stressed educated guy who is just trying to prevent the spread of epidemic the 'right' way and then clinging to the only chance he has left to preserve both his ideals and his life.
He is a bit less polite in P2 at first (while still very much helping by warding off Rubin) but then rather quickly becomes more cordial to Artemy and vice versa (and wow it sure is nice when Artemy can actually be polite and friendly..). And the moment when he explains some of his personal deal to Artemy feels rather similar in both iterations mood-wise.
I liked his route in P1 a lot, surprisingly so, and I now understand why so many people liked him before P2 came out and afterwards too... There's just something very real about how he is the intelligent Capital doctor but with an extraordinary dream to combat death itself, possibly given to him by the Powers That Be due to these children trying to cope with people dying around them.
And instead of favoring him for it they hate him! They leave him with nothing but this final chance to fix things, even if that means destroying everything and rebuilding anew.
Daniil's desperation feels very real and thus more compelling, plus like... I mean it's pretty much confirmed that it's not just the Polyhedron and that the soil itself is 'rotten' (literally in the meta real world and through blood beneath the earth in the Town itself) and the decease could return again, sooo his ending doesn't look that bad comparatively.
I also appreciated how Maria (or uhh was it Nina talking through her here as well?) explained how their Utopia doesn't actually mean a 'perfect' place, more so just an impossible dream.
The Bachelor doesn't mind this at all, a detail I loved.
...Hmm that said maybe P1 makes it a little too easy for him to kinda ignore the Kin issue, he is only mad about their circumstances when it comes to Vlad choosing to doom thousands of the Kin workers inside the Termitary (which is just his doctor ethics). I mean it is realistic for him to ignore the implications of representing the imperialist side, he does mention his father was a military man too at some point I think... Still, he is very quick to accept the Kin's unique beliefs as something that has obvious merit, trusting the Haruspex with that side of things in both of their routes, and he doesn't make much of a distinction between them and regular Town people when it comes to patient treatment.
If anything it's probably a sign of how the writers weren't thinking that hard about this worldbuilding aspect at the time... even if I appreciated them showing the downsides of the Kin's society, I think those were done better than in P2 purely because it was a bit more realistic (I am talking about sexism mostly, such as selling their own daughters and not respecting their autonomy, plus the mention of Kin politics and different ruling clans rather than the hive mind situation implied in P2). Like, it is more obvious in P1 that wholeheartedly embracing the Kin's return to tradition isn't such a good solution for them either, but one that will likely happen anyway with Artemy and Taya as their new leaders.
And it could get trickier in Pathologic 3 I think, especially since most of us really appreciated the portrayal of colonization in P2 and would expect it getting addressed again in future games of other character routes, but we'll see I guess! Either way I look forward to that game a lot now.
