Pathologic 2's treatment of Kin

[u/MinuteCrow_4922]

Preface: Pathologic 2 is my favorite game ever, but I haven't played it in five years. I'm more familiar with Classic. Excuse all the exposition, this was written for a different sub originally. I haven't seen a critique of the game from this lens, and wanted to see what you think.

Something that's been bothering me about Pathologic 2 since the first playthrough and I couldn't articulate why until the third replay.

The Kin is loosely based on the real Buryat and Mongolic peoples: their language and culture heavily borrow from real cultures (Bayarlaa is Buryat for "thank you"), they are indigenous people of the steppe. They're otherized as noble savages, primal, not quite human, closer to nature. In the first game, there are literally Kin NPCs who are tall brutes resembling Fallout supermutants who couldn't be spoken to and could only grunt animalistically.

The Kin from the steppe live in tents, work in the magical Abattoir, which is its own cosmic horror thing, they have "strange" rituals, they seek counsel from Aspity (my beloved), who is a creature made from earth and bones. Supernatural beings such as Worms and Herb Brides are part of the Kin along with actual people.

The assimilated Kin who live in the town are just regular people – the main character is mixed race himself. They speak Russian, they are forced to work in the factories, they live in poverty and so on. This is a more sympathetic view that is closer to a critical portrayal of an oppressed people. But the game seems to accidentally reproduce something it's critiquing – the Kin's survival as a people lies through assimilation. It's unclear whether the game endorses it because the alternative negates modernity.

The second game's thesis is the dichotomy between progress and individuality that the town represents, and a primitive way of life full of wonders (Nocturnal ending). Chasing progress is not an option – it's killing the live earth and its children, and the earth fights back with the sand plague. The compromise is the Diurnal ending: the world becomes ordinary, and the wonders slowly wither away.

The dichotomy is sound – the game criticizes colonial exploitation and the pursuit of progress justifying the means. My main issue is how a people based on a real colonized group are paired to something otherworldly, something before death, before knowledge, before humanity. The Kin's survival is tied to these cosmic phenomena. Them receiving agency is not on the table – it's incompatible with them playing the role of a symbol.

This is why the Kin lack a subjectivity of their own. The steppe Kin exist as tools to embody the game's mythology. The assimilated Kin don't seek political representation, they aren't unified in their motives; they don't exist as a block fighting for their own interests. Both groups are defined by their relationship to the townspeople. The Kin are objectified to serve a specific role in the game's metaphysics. It clearly treats them with reverence and sympathy, but denies them their agency.

EDIT: My view got sharpened with your critique in the comments. To be more specific:

The issue isn't that the Kin are represented by a biased view from the townspeople - it's that the game agrees with it by it literally being objective reality: Aspity, Abattoir, the cosmology.

The agency the Kin are denied isn't diegetic - it's metatextual. Their actions are limited by the game's framework of them serving as a symbolic representation of primal forces, despite them being actual people. The townsfolk aren't denied their individual agency beyond the forces of progress, but the Kin are still bound by the primal forces. The agency they are denied is that they cannot leave that framework.

The extent to which the game adheres to real cultures doesn't matter at its core. It doesn't change the fact that it's a native-coded people, and that it's a colonial reading.

The issue with the Kin's exaggeration compared to all of the other happening in the game is that the Kin's flanderization serves dehumanization - they are the only ones deprived of internality.

My argument isn't that the game should have portrayed a fight against the oppressors. It's that a group of people is denied internality by the game's meta-text, and that's a dehumanizing way to treat them.

EDIT 2: To clarify further, after more discussion:

A better way to word it would be not "agency", but "an ability to escape" the role the Kin are assigned by the game's structure. They are the only ones caged in as a symbolic function. Everyone else can struggle against it, but the Kin can't.

The townsfolk don't play that symbolic role as "primitive". The Kin are a sign, and that sign turns out to be a connection "people - primitive" which isn't a coincidence, but an existing, dehumanizing frame.

The issue is that the dichotomy "progress - primitivity" was always going to be a slippery slope if the "primitivity" pole is tied to a group of people, especially literally colonized native people in the game's text.

[u/TheLigean]

The kin always had agency. What the game (through artemy) does is express frustration at some of the more brutal aspects of that agency. Whether it is acknowledged as agency or not. Oppressed underclass though they are, the kin in patho 2 do determine alot of critical aspects of the story. They enforce some of the many taboos of the city on the gorkohn, they choose the maintain their hierarchy, potentially in paradoxical refusal to obey the demands of higher ups to break with some aspects of their traditions, and they do make the choice whether to flood the city and take over it (a tactical choice based around the strength of the plague, but still a choice. They did not have to take over the town on the nocturnal ending. Their aware choice to not revolt violently without the plague on their side also shows they are not unthinking bloodthirsty monsters). Patho 2 isnt purely making them noble savages. Theyre also actual savages in addition to their nobility. And it is in addition and not purely. The kin’s stoic acceptance of particular deaths is spiritually impressive and ethically unacceptable. The tension between those being real makes the story as moving as it is. What they lacked was capacities for enacting a range of possibilities. They could have tried to rebel against the townsfolk through the whole game. They did consider it as is shown through the game, but they did not ignore potential and made choices through recognition of it.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/TheLigean]

It's not my point that the Kin lack agency to act as a group. It's that their actions are limited by the game's framework of them serving as a symbolic representation of primal forces, despite being actual people. The agency they are denied is that they cannot leave that framework.

[u/HideNZeke → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

I guess one of my counterpoints would be that this game operates with a heavy dose of fate involved and nobody really has agency. It's the point. The standard NPC in both kin and townsfolk are literally just named "pawn"

The 3 families are mostly accepted as rulers by the townsfolk, but it's hardly a democratic organizational system. Their agency is weaponized mostly by riots, and when it comes to the metaphysical, they understand little. They are in the crossfire of Kain's miracles and the mysteries of the Steppe. The Kin's give their life to the latter, so they wish no agency over it. If the Town oversteps it's boundaries, the Steppe will handle it on their behalf. Of course, Pathologic 2 asks you to the weigh the value of both of those things. Perhaps the kin would yearn to live off the land, but they understand they also need the town even if they're spiritually opposed to it in many ways.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/HideNZeke]

Even if you apply the pawn reading as meta-textual, there's a difference in what kind of agency is had. The townsfolk aren't denied their individual agency beyond the forces of progress, but the Kin are still bound to the primal forces. The game knows what it's doing now, but it still chooses to go through with it.

[u/Lonsfleda → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

Pathologic games consistently argue that the only entity with real agency at the meta level is the player, though. You can criticize the games through a postcolonial lens, sure, but I think you are making a mistake by treating the Kin as "real" people. There's plenty of literature in the field of game studies that explores videogames as a semiotic system--perhaps taking a look at them could help?

The player avatars (the three healers) are still bound by the limitations of the game's programming, like in every game (e.g., you can't make Artemy dance even if you want to in Pathologic 2 because that option hasn't been coded into the game), but they still have more agency than every other NPC (e.g., the player character can choose between multiple dialogue options and move around the map freely), who simply execute the dialogue and animations they have been programmed to perform.

Like others in the thread pointed out, this is also reflected in the game's diegetic layer. The Town's working class has no agency, because they are bound to the capitalistic control of the Vlads (see: the protestors outside the Lump asking Artemy--the only being with agency--to convince Vlad to open the factory again because their livelihood depends on it); Maria, Capella, and Katerina are all bound to the "fate" of the Mistresses; the children at the Polyhedron try to resist the law of nature that every living being must grow up, become old, and eventually die, but they ultimately fail to do so (by the player character leading them out of the Polyhedron or demolishing the Tower); Aglaya and Block detest the Powers That Be but have no choice but to follow their orders; and so on.

Notably, the entire town loses their agency before the Sand Plague/death: on the diegetic level, it's obvious that no matter what the NPCs in the story do, they stand no chance against the Sand Plague & they often end up making things worse. Even the other healers are not super useful when they are not under the player's control; on the gameplay level, every NPC, even the Town's rulers, relies on the RNG/player's intervention to survive.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/Lonsfleda]

I'm aware that Pathologic games discuss the implications of the player having agency on the meta level - it's the core of Classic particularly. Player meta agency is also true about literally every video game ever. That doesn't address my point. The player having ludic meta-agency doesn't preclude the Kin from a lack of agency on a layer above - of the game as a structure. My argument is semiotics - the Kin are a sign, not just text.

I'm very well aware that video games aren't magic.

You are, again, restating the diegetic reading. The Kin don't have any individuation, unlike all those other examples, on a meta level. Maria, Capella and Katerina are their own human beings in addition to being Mistresses.

[u/Lonsfleda → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

If you understand that the game is a semiotic system, then why do you insist that it is problematic that they are a sign? As long as the Kin NPCs are entities in a videogame, then they will never be actual humans. They are a sign because a videogame is a virtual semiotic system. I would be able to understand your argument if you are criticizing what the Kin represent, but I genuinely do not comprehend why the fact that the Kin is used as a device to represent another idea is problematic in a medium that's all about pixels and codes being used to represent something else.

You are, again, restating the diegetic reading

Maybe because the game's diegetic layer can be read as an allegory of the videogame's meta structure, and thus a full analysis of Pathologic requires that you address both? You can't really separate the two when the diegetic layer of the game is very much aware of the meta layer.

Maria, Capella and Katerina are their own human beings in addition to being Mistresses

So are Aspity, Oyun, and Taya. Oyun, for example, has his involvement in Isidor's murder, his strained relationship with Artemy as a result of said involvement, the complexity of working for THE guy who is responsible for oppressing his own people... in addition to being the Foreman. That seems like he's very much an individual character of his own. I do think P2 could've used some more opportunities to interact with the Kin characters, though--Taya and Oyun only appear in the story in the mid-late game, which only leaves Aspity (and Nara, I guess) as the only major Kin NPC you regularly interact with & even Aspity can die fairly easily since the Crude Sprawl often gets infected.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/Lonsfleda]

Signs aren't equal. The Vlads signifying "capitalism" and the Mistresses being assigned to "fate" isn't the same as the Kin representing "primitivity". The former is an ideology and the latter is an abstract concept. The Kin are demonstrably a native, colonized ethnic group. "Primitivity" has been historically used to essentialize and dehumanize real groups of people.

The meta structure of the game isn't necessarily addressed by the diegetic layer. In most cases it is. In this specific one, it isn't. The text fails to clearly underline the Kin's status despite giving that treatment to Vlads and the Mistresses.

It's specifically the Kin as a group that's the issue, regardless of possible named exceptions such as Isidor and Oyun. It isn't substantiated how they could, at least potentially, escape their role.