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KickStarter Pathologic 2 (AKA Pathologic remake)

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Oct 5, 2012
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13,582
Codex 2014
Third and fourth teasers:



"When a person lives in one place for a long time, they imbue it with their soul."




"The day is over. The stage setting has changed."
 
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:bounce:

Looks great. Cautiously optimistic about the rewrite of the dialogue. The original game felt like playing a Dostoevsky novel and was full of philosophy that worked well largely because of the atmosphere of constant anxiety, dread, and occassional hope that reminded me a lot of classic Russian literature. And the passions of the characters were very believable and touching despite the fantastical events taking place. Hopefully IcePick will manage to recreate the magic of the original. If not, there is always Pathologic HD, which already has a fixed English translation IIRC for those of you who want to experience this gem and can't into the tongue of Mother Russia.
 
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What a cool vignette.

I wonder if this scenario will actually appear in the game
as a fail-state
It has some interesting implications regardless.

I found some Russian footage, and have to say that I am less cautious about the rewrite now. It definitely reads like something straight out of the original game, and the English translation seems to be accurate and carries the tone very well. Fantastic stuff.
 

Beastro

Arcane
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May 11, 2015
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Never played the original (yet), but from what I've seen in these clips this remake has lost a lot of the originals charm by going in the direction it is.
 
Joined
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Never played the original (yet), but from what I've seen in these clips this remake has lost a lot of the originals charm by going in the direction it is.

What direction do you think this remake is going in? Genuinely curious (I've stopped following the remake for a while, only came back to it with the recent blitz of media and teasers).
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
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Never played the original (yet), but from what I've seen in these clips this remake has lost a lot of the originals charm by going in the direction it is.

What direction do you think this remake is going in? Genuinely curious (I've stopped following the remake for a while, only came back to it with the recent blitz of media and teasers).

The character models and dialogue windows, or lack there of, don't feel right.

The other had more of an otherworldly feeling that contrasted well with the RL pictures (especially their often very odd, glaring looks) and other profile images used throughout the game.

Just zooming into seeing the face of the models loses something of that disjointed, surreal quality the game seems to have. Hopefully I'll get around to trying the original to see if this opinion holds up.
 
Joined
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Never played the original (yet), but from what I've seen in these clips this remake has lost a lot of the originals charm by going in the direction it is.

What direction do you think this remake is going in? Genuinely curious (I've stopped following the remake for a while, only came back to it with the recent blitz of media and teasers).

The character models and dialogue windows, or lack there of, don't feel right.

The other had more of an otherworldly feeling that contrasted well with the RL pictures (especially their often very odd, glaring looks) and other profile images used throughout the game.

Just zooming into seeing the face of the models loses something of that disjointed, surreal quality the game seems to have. Hopefully I'll get around to trying the original to see if this opinion holds up.

I do miss the portraits. If I had to guess, I'd say that they weren't originally a stylistic choice, but a way to represent the character of the NPCs (since the shitty 3d models couldn't do the job.) Hence the odd, overly expressive looks you mentioned - Gryph's sneer, Georgiy's anxious stare - are meant to carry across the defining traits of the various characters. The remake's models seem to be pretty expressive, though, so I think they are a good substitute. I would concede that the game would be better off with the addition of portraits, though.

I would definitely recommend playing the original and making up your own mind, though. From what I have read, the remake will be different enough from the HD version to warrant playing both.
 

Beastro

Arcane
Joined
May 11, 2015
Messages
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If I had to guess, I'd say that they weren't originally a stylistic choice,

Funny how those little things crop up in works. I think it also explains why remakes, passion projects and such are often bad being giving full backing that means less of a creative struggle making them. Much of supposed genius is often ad hoc adaption and just making due.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.pcgamer.com/the-pathologic-remake-is-already-disturbingly-good/

The Pathologic remake is already disturbingly good
Hands-on with Pathologic's self-contained Marble Nest demo.

Insomnia helps me critique videogames. When I can't sleep, I think about games. When I think about games, I measure my favourites by how often they cross my mind after I've finished playing. The complicated lore of Dark Souls, appreciating Silent Hill 2's ending as an adult, the Keyser Söze moments of BioShock or Braid or Knights of the Old Republic all stand to mind as pertinent examples. For the first time in a long time, I experienced this again on Friday. Before bed the following evening, I played the introductory demo for Ice-Pick Lodge's Pathologic remake.

Those of you familiar with Pathologic will likely understand why. Without further explanation, you'll know that the 2005 survival roleplayer-cum-psychological horror game was deeply flawed, that it lacked direction, was at times unbearably slow and looked like a game from the '90s. Furthermore, its awkward at best and careless at worst translations made certain conversations entirely incomprehensible. And yet somehow none of this mattered because when it worked, boy did it work well.

It's early days yet, but the Pathologic remake—not to be confused with last year's Pathologic Classic HD—has already made some significant steps towards smoothing the edges of its source material while retaining the despondent charm that elevated the original to cult status. By way of a Kickstarter alpha demo—released to backers last week—The Marble Nest is a self-contained, indirectly-related sliver of story that sees you assuming control of The Bachelor—a doctor (one of three playable characters of the first outing) who's out to prevent the spread of the Sand Plague.

The demo begins with you peering out of a first floor window into a cluttered garden full of fallen leaves and barren trees. A plague doctor, long-beaked mask and all, stares up at you alongside a towering fire and a strange child talks in riddles about your perceived failing as the town's so-called saviour. As you explore the rest of the building, things seem off: motionless bodies lie strewn in the hallway and a live bull commandeers an entire upstairs room. It becomes clear this is in fact a nightmare, and you awaken in the same house but in better shape. A short bit of exploring reveals things aren't much more pleasant in reality.

From here you wander the town's thoroughfare, conversing with its civilians, fumbling over permanent dialogue choices, and discovering just how desperate things have become under the grip of the Sand Plague. The circumstances have rendered real money redundant, therefore you engage in avaricious trade-offs with unscrupulous folk for bandages and painkillers; you hear rumours of cults plotting against you; and discover the town's mayor-of-sorts is losing his mind. At one stage my lacklustre decision making sends a child to his death as I inadvertently fail to take him under my wing while diagnosing his dead father. Later, a stranger rips a woman's heart out and presents it to me as a misconstrued peace offering. The game balances its twisted set pieces and foreboding tone perfectly.

It's these subtleties in relation to the game's world that are particularly reassuring at this stage—the original Pathologic didn't give a toss about your missteps and as such was stronger for it. This demo only provides one day's worth of activity (the first played out in single day segments, whereby criteria was reset at the end of 24 in-game hours), but regardless of who you pursue and how you pursue them, you get a sense that this world lives on; that you're existence is trivial and the game wants you to know this at every turn. Even at this early stage, Pathologic's writing is better, its visuals are vastly improved, its pacing is still cumbersome but intentionally so. What's more, its nods and doffs of the cap to its forerunner are blatant, crude almost, but are still somehow never too on the nose.

Familiar masked folk parade around the church grounds, long-nosed plague doctor orderlies stalk every corner, armed soldiers guard the town's exits, an Odongh camp lies just beyond the town's boundary, and the children—who you won't meet just yet—are housed in an impossibly structured building in the distance: this is Pathologic as you might expect 11 years on, but enough has changed to keep things interesting. Inventory management returns in the form of a block system similar to the one employed in Diablo 2, but, interestingly, the demo segment spares combat.

Telling more would spoil the finer details, but the Pathologic remake undoubtedly has me excited. I unashamedly loved the original, though, which likely means it'll remain a love/hate game for most even now. Similar to, say, Deadly Premonition, the original has accrued cult status even though it is a fundamentally flawed game. I'm not convinced the remake is on course dissuade its detractors (I imagine it'll continue to be a nightmare for review scorers too) but those who are on board have a lot to look forward to from hereon. The fact that Pathologic's second coming already features in my outlying twilight reflection is testament to that alone.
 

Baron Dupek

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This is the first page of the English manual of Pathologic
According to the world statistics quantity of population on the planet comes to 6 bln. It witnesses of an extreme density of population and as a result of natural resources shortage.
At critical point there turn on natural mechanism of population limitation. Natural cataclysms and outrages of new, unknown before diseases prove the said above. Judging from that we think it is necessary to higher up the level of people training in critical situations.
Hereby we offer for your attention the simulator of a human being behaviour in the condition of pandemic. “Pathologic” is the initial game prototype of the simulator.
The environment assumes lack of scientific progress and public evolution of the most primitive level; the disease and methods of fight with it are extremely conditional.
The simulator is oriented first of all at a mechanism of taking right decisions. The simulator is presented in electronic format.
Description: - two CDs for installation and support of the simulator; - a package with manual. Before installation and start-up the work with the simulator, please, look through the manual attentively. It will help master the given didactic materials and increase your chances to survive accordingly.
Good luck, IPL Laboratory

somewhat remind me my LPs...
 
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Self-Ejected

Drog Black Tooth

Self-Ejected
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Feb 20, 2008
Messages
2,636
why don't they just port it to source engine 2.0 or something

the game looks way too much like a half-life 2 mod, it would be a perfect fit
 

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