we persevere with pathoblogging. day 10/11
I'm still chewing on the doomed lara stuff, I've only been glancing at posts since I am still avoiding endgame spoilers but i get the sense it's Controversial. like it’s certainly doing something! I do think there's value in a game like this in handing you a problem you can't solve no matter how much you try, and in not letting the bachelor even attempt obvious solutions that he doesn't think of, even if the player is screaming them at him. why doesn't he ask artemy to help on day 9? artemy is her actual friend and much more likely to be able to talk her down! WE know artemy can solve it! he solved it in p2! well, as the changeling says, the bachelor thinks he's the main hero. every healer always thinks the world is all on their shoulders, and the perspective of the game on some level is just about whether they're right (except they're always right, and also always wrong).
the bachelor can turn back time. he can try try again and save almost, almost everyone. insert marble nest quote here, right. he asked us, once more? but he still has blind spots. he can't actually become someone else. so does he have free will, even with his time travel powers? do we, playing this game?
pathologic to me is most engaging when it's about the constraints of free will. p2 looks you or artemy (or you, of course it's only ever you) in the eyes and says, none of this is real. you are being controlled, by children or the developers or the person piloting you around with their keyboard. and artemy says I don't care, I'll still do what's right. like, well duh, you're playing a video game! you're not free to do whatever you want! the actions you can take are naturally constrained by the game, because it's a game. but also that's real life. no matter how free you are the world around you dictates your options, or what you even see as options. the intersection of history and biography, to really inappropriately misquote c wright mills. and artemy's story, and his relationship with aglaya, is about still owning your choices even under those constraints, and accepting that you don't need to be free to be free. even if you're being controlled, you can make your choices out of love. and p2 as a game is constantly looking at you like, do NOT save scum you should LIVE with the consequences of your failures and we WILL punish you for dying and you can't wriggle out of it by 'reloading the game'.
and at the onset, p3 is like, fuck that, he's going to defeat death. he turns back time and saves grief and rubin and the saburovs and etc etc etc. but you can't save lara without dooming the town, circumstances don't allow it; the developers decided she dies no matter what. the bachelor has more freedom than anyone in his world has ever had before, more freedom than artemy, but the boundaries are still there, because there are always boundaries. that's life. he's just as much a puppet, even if only to himself. sometimes your free will is only constrained by yourself. he can't figure out how to save lara because that's how the game is written, and because that's the kind of person he is. maybe someone else could do it, but he can't actually make better choices no matter how many times i waste amalgam going back and forth from day 10. it's the classic tragedy problem: he would have to be someone else.
And re: lara's funeral like I get the immediate gratingness of the heterosexuality of it all. but like... they all remember the same story about her differently and they all claim to be in love with her, but they can’t agree on who she is. So was she someone different to each of them? or can you just not ever really know someone? what does it mean to love someone, then? or when someone is dead do they cease to be themselves and become the person you thought they were? what does that mean for the kains and their understanding of immortality? what does that mean for simon and nina?
the bachelor has the power to turn back time and save everyone. and you can save almost everyone in p3. you can save Eva, miraculously so! by seeing her. so like, there’s SOMETHING there right. you save ("save") Eva by seeing her as she truly was, and at Lara’s funeral no one sees her clearly. someone would have to understand her to save her but no one does, not her friends or the changeling or the bachelor, a guy who barely knew her. and there's this tension where the player knows lara, i've played two other games about her, and you kind of want to reach into the game and strangle these guys. and also what does it mean to 'save' eva in this context. and the way it ties into like... the line about her just being the bachelor's toy, and toys are always a direct line back to the free will again in these games...
ANYWAY. idk no conclusions i'm still pondering but I think it's interesting. god I literally have other notes. I was like “this game doesn’t have enough crazy set pieces” and karminsky’s assassination said hold my beer 🥰 really fun with the giant insane mirror shards shrouding his body that, like, no one really comments on. It’s also kind of hysterical that me failing to stop Peter from showing up to his brother’s twin switch assassination plot seems to…not have mattered at all? I mean maybe it mattered in some other way. I guess I have to go unkill karminsky at some point but I will admit Andrey, this was sick as hell
rubin threatening to shoot you a really great time for all. rubin/daniil stocks continuing to be through the roof. also the throwback of him sending letters with murderous intent. also bro you're going to go shoot a teenager with a gun? really??
absolutely gobsmacked by walking into the shelter and artemy is just chilling shirtless. thanks guys. daniil like are you .. okay?? and I’m having patho2 abattoir flashbacks. he’s not okay bachelor he got punched to death by worms 7 times.
did literally say to myself “I think it’s probably a bad idea to go to a second location with Georgiy at this juncture” and then did it anyway. He just LOCKS YOUR ASS UP UNTIL YOU SHOOT YOURSELF?? nonstandard game over of all time. i actually think they should have made you either wait it out until your apathy hit 0 naturally. and i'm NOT just saying that because then I might have quit out and not broken my fucking amalgam shard again.....
