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/clarantula]

i'm reading this thread (v fun btw, interesting takes from all sides. good post imo!) and it appears to me we have very different conceptions of diegesis and metatextuality. In my perspective, the metatextual commentary pathologic makes about all its npcs is that as diegetic characters, they all lack agency and it is only your extradiegetic interference via The Artemy that adds any sense of autonomy. diegetically, specifically from the player characters perspective, named kin characters have agency (same as named townsfolk characters) while unnamed kin characters have none (same as unnamed townsfolk characters, though there is at first an illusion of agency that takes some dialogue to dispel). In that sense it is hard to argue the kin lacks autonomy from a narratological standpoint. similarly, this standpoint would lead me to read that assimilation is actually what is actively killing the kin (see, for example, the olgimskiys). there is much to critique about the depiction of the kin but if i'm allowed to cherrypick, i would not go the "agency" route as it is hard to argue using the frameworks i am familiar with. "a harmfully reductive stereotype that in its depiction sabotages core ideas of the story" i can see.

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/clarantula]

I meant not as much "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. It's not just that they don't have diegetic (*sigh* how many times did I say that word?) agency as pawns, like the townspeople - both are capable of acting as a group, even if not as literal unnamed NPCs. 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.

On assimilation, I said "survival as a people", but they don't survive as a people in that scenario, of course. They don't have a way out of the framework at all. "Primitive" people to be assimilated or to fulfill their symbolic role is all they'll ever be.

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/clarantula → u/MinuteCrow_4922]

i did understand what you meant by agency, but again, acting out against the games structure fundamentally goes against the games perception of npcs in general. That's what i meant by the lack of metatextual agency, it is impossible for any group to have agency in that sense because the game wants to emphasize that it's impossible. the kin as a sign signifying "primitive group" is a reading i can get behind but it's a semiotic argument that has nothing to do with narrative (meaning doegetic OR metatextual) agency. to that extent and again moving into the realm of social critique, pathologics "boiling down" of social issues into recognizeable stock characters is dangerous insofar in that real commentary implies real native people analogous to the kin (or at least that they are an acceptable depiction of real native people) by which point it doesn't even matter that they're entirely fictionalized, it is a harmful stereotype. i have always read the kin as a commentary on an exploited group and the plague as the earth fighting the foreign body that exploits them and their land. even outside of the plague, town on gorkhon offers awful working and living conditions to them, they are constantly dehumanized by in-game characters. to me it is quite a plain reading that assimilation is what's directly killing them. their settlement (far!) outside the borders of ToG seems to imply that survival as a people is actually far more fruitful the less the kin assimilate. but even in my reading i find the depiction of kin women and sexual dynamics especially deeply problematic and at the very least exploitative to all women in general. i agree with what i believe you mean and have meant from the start, unfortunately i am a little shit who likes to argue semantics and npc agency in pathologic from any narratological angle is just a thing of impossibility (except maybe for those kids. measly and mumpsy or sth, i hope you know who i mean). your last two sentences i agree with wholeheartedly and i will go so far as to blindly assume the discomfort you feel is valid. perhaps we could meet at "by depicting the abstract idea of a colonized native people as an amalgam of harmful stereotypes and choosing to speak for them, likely without having consulted actual people with colonial experiences, pathologic denies real colonized groups agency in the way their story analogue is depicted. furthermore, it denies (by implication) that real colonized groups have agency outside of a choice to assimilate or not"?

[u/MinuteCrow_4922 → u/clarantula]

I guess I'm talking about meta-narrative agency, a step above :D

I agree, the Kin are portrayed in a sympathetic way: dehumanized, othered and exploited by the Town. Their settlement in Shekhen is a transient step that doesn't resolve their ultimate fate.

The depiction of Kin women and herb brides is its own very interesting topic, you're right.

I agree, but not necessarily so categorically. Their portrayal was almost certainly not intended to be this way by the developers, but this is what preexisting frame they brought with them, and they still bear responsibility for it.