that you've agreed to participate in not because of technological limitations but because of artistic choice this doesn't mean however that you can't still commit to the role you do have observe the avatar you've decided to control and feel alongside them over the course of their journey sympathize with them inhabit the persona they represent and in that share some amount of their journey with them you are not using them like a tennis player uses a racket you are using them like an actor uses a script when you are playing final fantasy vii you are not cloud strife and no one ever really thinks you are rather you show cloud strife with your own unique and personal performance of him and likely only yourself as the audience literal role-playing but again what about those moments where you remember that it's all fake that you never actually had any real part to play in the story other than to recite the words laid out for you by someone else that it's all quote unquote meaningless well in the case of something like pathologic it's pretty simple you own it with its constant menus meter management tense encounters with brain dead ai in a janky as hell world that's about as far from grounded as you can get we can't help but be confronted with its artificiality non-stop why can't i walk faster why are my knife attacks like that why do i need to eat a three-course meal every NUMBER_TOKEN minutes because that's how the game is designed don't like it cry more because you aren't going to win an argument with a computer at least not without cheating with the command console the audience is constantly aware that they're playing a video game it's so transparently fake and held together with duct tape that you can't help but keep it at the forefront of your mind but that self-awareness of how fake this is can paradoxically help immerse you in a way the uncanniness of it falls to the side because of course it's uncanny it is a fake reality that you have decided to engage with once you accept that though you may find that it actually doesn't change much rather highlighting that unrealness serves to allow and even encourage you to buy in further by reminding you every so often that this is something made with human hands to show you something they thought was worth seeing and say something they thought was worth hearing as a result that deliberate alienation serves not to disconnect you from the story but rather merely shifts who your gameplay-centered animosity is aimed at while actually playing the game i never really got mad at any of the characters except vlad the younger PROFANITY_TOKEN hell dude cause they are ultimately just people reading a script less than that even in-game models depicting text no matter how vile their crimes they aren't real and never were they are very much worth thinking about worth examining and analyzing like any great work of fiction but never really worth earnestly hating any more so than a scary shadow this isn't to say however that i never felt sincerely angry while playing pathologic because i definitely did however my frustration was always focused on precisely one source and one source alone the game designers because the events may have been fake but it was still very much a real thing they were doing to me you PROFANITY_TOKEN pieces of PROFANITY_TOKEN to be fair i signed up for it as i keep emphasizing i did commit to
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