ON DIFFICULTY
We’ve always believed that games are a medium capable of delivering all kinds of compelling experiences—and that said experiences don’t need to be conventionally pleasant to be interesting and fulfilling.
Pathologic 2 was always intended to be gruelling, stressful, and bleak; we believe in ludonarrative cohesion and aren’t too fond of stories that are only dark and hurtful on the cover.
However, we also believe—even firmer—in player freedom.
Pathologic 2 was balanced around three principles:
- We want the player to always balance on the verge of death, but also always to have an opportunity to drag themselves out (perhaps loading a save or two back—that’s why the game keeps the full history of your saves)
- We want the player to be forced to sacrifice “cool and interesting” content due to their survival needs, to be always short on time and not being able to achieve an optimal playthrough. The story of Pathologic 2 is written to be caught glimpses of, not unfold completely
- We want the player to do things that feel clearly wrong, like voluntarily thrashing their reputation or using the healing items that could have saved someone. Among other things, Pathologic 2 is an exploration of selfishness—that video games often allow us to completely disregard as a factor
Judging by your feedback,
Pathologic 2 is actually balanced in a way that achieves all that.
However, we have received clear feedback that the game is too hard—and we don’t think that everyone who says that misses the point of the experience. People are different and have different attention spans and patterns. So we’re fine with allowing the players to tweak the game a bit to account for this fact.
Our games have always been in a curious spot. Some people only finished the original Pathologic and The Void using cheat codes. So while in theory these players agreed with our stance on games as a medium for creating compelling experiences, in actuality they didn’t really—well—experience what we had in store for them. Which is, of course, understandable. Not everyone wants a life-changing experience every time they launch a game. Sometimes people only want a cursory glance.
Well, we’d rather give people a tweaked experience than none at all.
So, in the coming 2-3 weeks we’ll introduce a difficulty slider to
Pathologic 2. You’ll be able to tweak the game mildly, within the limits of what we consider intended difficulty, and also set it the way you want, if you want.
But we hope that you don’t.
Pathologic 2 is supposed to be almost unbearable, otherwise the effect is lost. We concede that everyone has their own limits to push. But we strongly advise against making the game easy for yourself.
However, we do like the notion of giving you this freedom—and this responsibility. This way, the achievement of resisting the temptation and finishing the game on intended difficulty becomes even more true and vivid. And that’s the kind of effect we deeply appreciate.
