KickStarter Pathologic 2 (AKA Pathologic remake)

[Verylittlefishes]

where is Nemo Soda though

 

[Jenkem]

never paying for an IPL game again

 

[Verylittlefishes]

never paying for an IPL game again

Hey, Jenkem, what is your side in RUS-UKR conflict?

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Just bought this on Steam for regulary price as a follow-up game to Weird West (which I'll finish tonight).

Hope I will like it.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Dybowski is still alive and says a lot of stuff about Pathologic

no, there is no release date for this.

 

[Wunderbar]

They are ditching open-world, survival mechanics (like hunger and tiredness), and scrounging for resources. Sounds like a total decline. Dybowski says he didn't want Bachelor's path to be "Haruspex but with different dialogues", but tbh I would've rather preferred that, than having a glorified walking sim.

The "non-linear timeline" prototype sounded sick, reminded me of link navigator from Forbidden Siren 1-2. Shame this concept was scrapped.

 

[Jaedar]

Dybowski says he didn't want Bachelor's path to be "Haruspex but with different dialogues"

I kind of agree with this. Bachelor should be different, but if they remove all the gameplay besides time management it's gonna suck.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Sounds like a total decline.

Sounds like incline. I wish they concentrated on story and narrative and not on second-hand survival gameplay. Viva Disco Pathologium!

 

[Wunderbar]

I'll be frank, I didn't like a single Ice Pick game except for Pathologic and its remake. So them trying to move away from survival mechanics and turning it into something less gameplay-focused and more artsy-fartsy is a big red flag.

 

[Wunderbar]

In fact, this whole artsy brand is the main reason Ice Pick struggle to stay afloat. Pathologic 2 is as mainstream as it gets, they just fucked up the marketing by branding it as some kind of "intentionally not-fun narrative experience".

They could've said "it's Majora's Mask with guns". Or "it's like Shenmue but instead of kungfuing badguys you shank them and take their organs". Or "it's like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but with lots of dialogues". Or "it's like Dead Rising in Mongolia". Yes, selling a high-concept game is an uphill battle, but instead of at least trying they actively sabotaged themselves by fostering this "artsy" stigma.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

In fact, this whole artsy brand is the main reason Ice Pick struggle to stay afloat. Pathologic 2 is as mainstream as it gets, they just fucked up the marketing by branding it as some kind of "intentionally not-fun narrative experience".

They could've said "it's Majora's Mask with guns". Or "it's like Shenmue but instead of kungfuing badguys you shank them and take their organs". Or "it's like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. but with lots of dialogues". Or "it's like Dead Rising in Mongolia". Yes, selling a high-concept game is an uphill battle, but instead of at least trying they actively sabotaged themselves by fostering this "artsy" stigma.

they didn't have PR campaign at all. tinyBuild turned out to be a shit publisher.

 

[HansDampf]

I always thought the "not fun game" meme came from the fanbase.

 

[toughasnails]

Mite still be gud. Maybe an open world investigation game like Paradise Killer. They could throw in some stealth gameplay or something else that would fit Bachelor.

Sounds like a total decline.

Sounds like incline. I wish they concentrated on story and narrative and not on second-hand survival gameplay. Viva Disco Pathologium!

This is p wrongheaded if serious. The survival mechanics, time management, all the tension and pressure that comes from them WERE part of the story. You are one finite human being in chaotic situation fighting against all odds, literally fighting against your own body's limitations which become painfully conspicuous to you. That never could've been transmitted as nearly as well through text.

But I guess we are at the old problem about difficulty and accessibility. I've not the brains to articulate the defense for difficult video games save that the games should be allowed to use the strengths their own medium rather than downplaying them in order to be novels or movies with some interactivity on the side. People don't have formulating the defense for novels that are difficult to read and require a fir bit of background knowledge, or for difficult modern visual art. You could say those lack accessibility too, you could accuse the authors and those who enjoy or defend them of elitism and so on... But alas nobody qualified bothers to articulate this for video games and so this debate goes on and on.

 

[RoSoDude]

Non-machine translation to English by Maksim:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dthaATQh2YGZx2yYiIHDN412jS5iocMW7aqPfUPjYu8

July report

Nikolay Dybovskiy/Maksim “maxkur67” Kuroshev (translation)
01.07.2022
https://vk.com/@icepicklodge-chto-bylo-i-chto-budet

On studio and its status

What were you doing all this time?

We were at work. All this time. None of those who stayed at the studio by the end of 2019 had more than two weeks of vacation during that period.

But at first the progress was really slow. Haruspex's release was a hard one for the studio. Very hard. It was not only about the financial side, but also the moral one: everyone was extremely tired from crunch, burned out and barely crawled to the finish line. A significant part of the staff dispersed. IPL moved into slow regeneration mode. In such conditions, we had to solve three tasks simultaneously: to restore strength, without which further work was impossible; find a new source of income; and at the same time make the two remaining scenarios in good faith, without cloning the same game "just with different dialogues".

Then why have you got distracted by other projects?

Our first rescue plan sounded like this: we decided to postpone further work on Pathologic 2 and switch to several smaller projects: "Know by Heart", "Franz", “Neuro-tale” (which is now "Meta-telling" - we will talk about it another time). We intended to produce them quickly, solving several problems at once. The first is to get at least some funds for the development of Bachelor (the studio was very tight with finances). The second is to take a break from Patho2 and generally reboot the perception of this setting. The third is to cope with burnout by switching from large long-term production to small projects. And while that, also solve internal problems with management and distribute risks.

…but "quickly" hasn't turned out

Yes. "Franz" development was over-prolonged. Also because of having a sole head on shoulders, I have to deal with two projects — both "Franz" and "Bachelor". It turned out to be a much more difficult venture than seemed at first.

You mean the core team hasn't worked on Bachelor at all for these three years?

Correct. For a year, me and several folks from the studio worked on Bachelor's pre-production — the rest of the team were busy with "Know by Heart" and "Franz". We understood that fans wait for this — but we simply didn't have enough resources to produce a project comparable in volume to Haruspex. Then began to think about how to turn the situation around — come up with a concept that would allow us to make a new gameplay with the maximum number of ready-made assets and without expensive development of new systems. Such concept can't be invented hastly even in a fresh and vigorous state. This is a hard duty.

Why create a new game instead of a regular remake?

Firstly, not everyone is waiting for a regular remake. The world moves forward, and the development of the Haruspex showed that the “90s design” no longer works well in modern realities. On Kickstarter, we stated that three protags will differ significantly – and it was not just about different lines of dialogue.

I didn't want to make a clone of an existing game in principle, where the core gameplay of the Haruspex would migrate with the individual characteristics of this protag and, most importantly, along with his previous shortcomings. It is a combat system, and questionable economy and an attempt to imitate a living "open world" of a narrow scale with limited technical capabilities. The problem of large city's streaming on consoles, which raised its ugly head during porting, also hasn't disappeared. All of this needed to be taken into account.

Therefore, having recovered from the crisis, we began to brainstorm about how to, on the other hand, distinct Bachelor from Haruspex enough, and on the other, to stay realistic in terms of budget. At first we assumed that it would be closer to "The Marble Nest" — a game where the basics of survival are still there, but you don't need to trashdive, and the main emphasis was placed on the story and on personal depiction of the mind map, which everyone liked in Haruspex POV.

So we should expect something alike "Marble Nest"?

No. Even when designing "Bachelor in miniature", we had to create not a snippet of the "old" core, but a full-fledged gameplay. We took into account mistakes of previous development cycles and this time started without pernicious arrogance, cautiously & by the plan — with tessting of gameplay prototypes "in grayboxes".

We designed the first version as a purely cabinet game, truly "in miniature": in fact, the whole story there took place in one house, in The Stillwater. During episodical walks around The Town, the player received phrases-impressions. They appeared when some urban detail catched player's eye and swarmed in a form of word cloud, like in Sherlock (2010). They had to be caught like mosquitoes, then the result of such a hunt appeared on mindmap.

So we almost made Fruit Ninja, only with thoughts and phrases in the role of fruits — with a need for quick evaluation and catching the right ones. If the phrase turned out to be inappropriate, it was necessary to go hunting again. This gameplay still looks filigree to me; perhaps in some rudimentary form it may survive to the release.

I jokingly called this first prototype a combination of "Her Story" and "ШХД: ЗИМА". We wanted to play the protag-intellectual and display the process of critical thinking by means of the game UI. In essence, it would be a puzzle of memory, attentiveness and combination of impressions.

Sounds concerning. Especially for the fans of the old game.

The second prototype was a story with a non-linear narrative, where 12 days were placed on purpose not in chronological order but mixed up, as in Pulp Fiction. The subconscious desire to cogently imitate sensations of a deadly tired person. The player could move between different days, as if "remembering" what happened on eleventh day and what happened on sixth. The bachelor existed in its own time realm, the player in its own, and The Town, with its inhabitants and events, in its own realm, and these three states occasionally "visited each other".

For example, a volunteer hired by Dankovskiy on the seventh day was also present there when he returned on the third day. This is, let's say, not an issue yet — but how should they behave during their meeting, which is chronologically the first, the second for the player, and for the protag the third, obviously? Dialogues were written from the fourth realm, "the reality of the author", where the same volunteer on the third day could know what would happen to the Bachelor on the seventh day, and the Bachelor could not react to it — and so the idea of changing the active hero during the dialogue appeared and remained in the final version. But in general, that approach was too confusing. Brains were melting not only for playtesters, but even for us.

And now there's a third concept?

Yes. It’s not the Town or even The Plague that concerns The Bachelor, but Simon, specifically the question of how he technically achieved immortality, and this question is directly related to different time realms that I wanted to show through the gameplay. It was only during the playtests of the second prototype it turned out that due to the "ragged montage" the player completely lost the flow of time! In most cases time was so complicated that the player stopped noticing it. And we wanted them to be able to compare different perceptions in the moment, in a short interval. After that, we focused on what tricks and methods make the player experience time in a short interval, like in Nolan's "Memento".

At the same time, this time flow must coexist with tactical "street" gameplay: it is affected by interaction with infected zones, particles, and objects.

If you were working on an acceptable prototype for so long, how much would it take for a full release?

Firstly, "Know by Heart" is out, and "Franz" is already on the way — a lot of the team is free now. And secondly, at the end of last year we entered into an agreement with a large well-known investor. And despite how feverish the world is now, our agreements are still in place. Therefore, we expanded the team and this year we took up production in full force.

OK, what's up with the production? At what stage you are?

We are testing the third prototype right now, and its structure has actually been approved. In close inspection it still doesn't satisfy all of us. But it's normal. By the beginning of October we are making an alpha version. Since mid-August, we are launching intensive production of new assets and gameplay systems.

Now the release window — probably the question concerning you the most.

In this report I must apologize not only for the chaotic info about the state of the project, but also for optimistic timelines that were once announced: all this was due to a unclear assessment of our capabilities and assumptions about what exactly we are releasing. I already wrote that a year and a half ago we were on the verge of death and were ready to release a very modest game with "cabinet gameplay", just to keep our promise and produce at least some kind of release.

When asking "when Bachelor will be released", most people assume a game comparable to Haruspex in scope. 25 people worked on Haruspex, not counting outsourcers — the maximum of people who worked in the studio at a time. At the same time, 25 people (and the budget mentioned above) is not a lot for a game of such format.

But the situation changed, opportunities changed, prototypes were tested. Since we now have an adequate budget, and a relatively proven prototype, and a sufficient number of employees, which continues to grow, we will be able to announce an adequate timeframe after the alpha.

About Bachelor

How different a Bachelor will be from Haruspex?

Daniil Dankovsky works with the technology of mortality: he is interested in how a person "ends" in a natural way and what can be done about it. Immortality and death are the topics that primarily rest on how time works. The aging processes of the body are associated with its irreversible and irresistible course. But time works much more complicated in the modern scientific picture of the world (the foundations of which were laid just at that very historical moment, by the way — Einstein, Planck and Mechnikov are conditional contemporaries of Dankovsky, and he, as an intellectual, should be aware about their works).

Therefore, the Bachelor must perceive time not in a philistine way, but differently; perhaps as a tool — by changing his attitude to time, he begins to understand what it is not the physiological immortality of the cell, but the immortality of a person as a thinking unit.

It is on the problem of death, immortality, time, being lost in it and managing it (or its perception) that we want to focus in Bachelor's story. The gameplay changes are also connected with this: what the protag can do in our model of the world, what he can influence, and what, on the contrary, is not so important for him.

What's left out:

Openworld

The first Pathologic (and Haruspex's route that inherits it) tried to imitate life. That is, the natural, very philistine perception of reality: time flows linearly and unstoppably, the hero wants to eat and sleep, can't be everywhere at once. We wanted people to perceive the fantastic situation in The-Town-on-Gorkhon as natural, "realistic". To make the game feel as real as everyday life. Twenty years ago, such task seemed really daring and important — the perception of videogames was completely different, the process of human interaction with the game was different.

But such a rich complex of sensations is embedded in the phrase "open world" (some of which, of course, remain), so it's better to clarify. There will be no continuous streaming of The Town: now protag locally arrives to the point he needs to be, solves a problem there, then moves to another (in space and time). There will be no mass of artificial little men who tread the streets, pretending that they have some business. It won't be possible to engage in combat with any passerby. There will be no stats that mimic physiology — instead, there will be a system to help in time control.

Haruspex-like survival (hunger, exhaustion, poverty)

The three protags of Patho differ in the way they solve the problem of "survival", i.e. victory over their limitations (including mortality). The rough Haruspex solved it unconsciously, through love. He (the material protag, a man of family and responsibility) kinda expanded his body, his individuality to the limits of the whole town, which became his new vessel. Becoming a father to people who, strictly speaking, are not his children by blood, restored the broken ties of the town as a body. Moreover, the player literally did this in the gameplay, interacting with the town "by muscles", from the everyday, physiological side.

The rational Bachelor solves it in the opposite way: he is an egoist and a man of intelligence, an analyst — therefore he does not connect what has been disassembled, but, on the contrary, breaks the world into its component parts. He comes to the Town to make sure: some individual, homo sapiens, has learned to live forever. To understand this "trick", the technique of achieving immortality, he needs to reconsider the basic categories of the world: the nature of time, space, causation.

And Dankovskiy, too, must go beyond his ego "during the gameplay", dividing the unity of his life path into parallel, mutually exclusive parts. The fight against the epidemic rests on the denial of reality, which by default seems to be the only true one: it was created that way, just understand its structure. The method of pragmatic struggle against evil is possible only in this plane.

The story of Bachelor is about the need for a new synthesis of a fragmented and rethought world. This is what occupies my mind most of all now: it seems that without a systematic habit for this operation, it will now be impossible to survive at all. So we can say that survival, as the genetic code of the game, has also been preserved. Only now it is real, not imaginary.



Fights & roaming townfolks

The combat system has never been Pathologic's strong point, alas. We never wanted to make complex action gameplay: imaginary people could be killed just to emphasize their vulnerability. Everyday world of the Bachelor I imagine is more conventional than Haruspex's. The streets won't be empty — but I much prefer when folks just prop up poles or sit on benches. As soon as they begin to move, their artificiality and limitations immediately become apparent. As I thought so in 2002, I still think now. Each time I surrendered and allowed to add active behavior routines and each time regretted it.

Barter, looting & speculation

It's not the Bachelor's way. Due to the position that he occupies in the Town (a well-known person, a respectable guest, the lead of the headquarters for combating the epidemic), he should not have problems with material support — even during general impoverishment and a lack of essential products. This should not occupy him, he has different concerns. I can still reassure those who like to save up and suffer from a lack of valuables — there will be a lot of economy in game. I myself am terribly fond of accumulating game values in conditions of scarcity, enjoying successful acquisitions — it’s just that now this economy will be tied with other values: time, people and facts.

What's left:

Visor usage & plague clouds

I want to close the old gestalt and finally do what wasn't possible in 2005 nor 2018. In classic Patho the players, it seems to me, did not physically feel the danger of infection. In fact, in the game, people, including the protag, were infected "by the will of script" and the game simply threw a lot: got infected or not. Because of this players did not quite feel that working with infection is working with the environment. I wanted to ensure that any interaction with any object entailed a risk of infection that could not be reduced in any way. But it turned out all the same that the person played not with a sense of danger, but with the meter. Now we are working on how to fix this and create a feeling of a constant presence of risk "in the air", without explicit labeling: now when you step into an infected area fasten your seat belts and swallow a pill.

Particles of infection will become smarter and will play a much larger role than in the old Patho and Haruspex scenario. More types, more complex behavior. And the core of interaction with the environment will be locating, measuring & interaction, an endless dance with the plague.




New districts statuses

Bachelor moves not only linearly from the past to the future, but also in moments, independently designing a mosaic path: a point of memory or assumption, a specific place at a specific time.

But due to the lack of a clear indication in districts' statuses ("healthy, infected, boarded up"), The Town is now divided not so much into areas with quests, but into different states of air, of emptiness. Particles of infection are present everywhere, but evolve depending on specific coordinates in space and time. We just checked this thing in the prototype and it met all our expectations: personally, I actually feel on almost tactile level that the disease is alive, changeable, it breathes and moves. This is a more modern and complex mutation of old "dances with clouds".



Actually non-linear narrative

Remember how in the classic Pathologic the pressure of uncontrolled time prevented you from completing all the quests, participating in all events? For Bachelor this applies too. But since he has confused time, and he studies its fabric, sometimes the Bachelor will manage to manipulate it. Or maybe it's just confused memories and perception of reality? Or is the narrator not so reliable at all? However it be, we will be able to pre-plan the "time before the physical death of the protag" allotted to us, return to the days already lived through and live out in them what we did not find the first time. But of course this won't be free.

The script is actually split into three key roads: an investigation into the immortality of Simon Kain, an investigation into the origins of the Sand Pest, and a thorough dip into Thanatica. Each day, each of the roads offers a detail that enriches the original hypothesis. The more such hypotheses protag reveals, the more final answers he will have access to.

Volunteers

I was mortally tired of the majesty status and lofty eccentricity for the majority of the "chief townfolks". They are already dear to me like family (and they will remain in the script, how else without them), but they are ill-suited to solve momentary tasks to combat the epidemic. Therefore, about two dozen new, simpler folks will appear in the game. Bachelor will be able to take them as volunteers so that they can relieve him of the routine and save him precious time, which is definitely not enough to cover entire game. In fact, he will have to divide and multiply in order to cover at least the bulk of the facts with other people's eyes and hands, which will complete his brewing hypotheses.

Other than that, there are new places. One so distant from The-Town-on-Gorkhon, the other — somewhere deep inside.

I'm definitely intrigued by a lot of what's mentioned here, but wary about the removal of the open world and survival aspects of gameplay, as those were done brilliantly in the Haruspex route. As much as IPL has impressed with their innovative direction in the past, they'll have to reinvent the wheel if the Bachelor route is to live up to it. Still, I'm hopeful it won't be just a walking simulator and we'll still have something relatively hardcore.

 

[Jenkem]

I share some of the same concerns expressed here in regards to changing the gameplay but I kind of agree that it is dumb for the bachelor to be scrounging around in trash in order to survive. He's there in some 'official' capacity and is often interacting with the high-level people on site. Why would he be having to deal with survival (outside of the plague itself)

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Sounds like incline. I wish they concentrated on story and narrative and not on second-hand survival gameplay.

Except it's the survival gameplay that gives the narrative context and immerses the player in the world
And therefore it is what grants the game depth

Viva Disco Pathologium!

 

[Jenkem]

and what if the survival gameplay of haruspex was replaced with something else for dankovsky?

 

[Verylittlefishes]

And therefore it is what grants the game depth

Story is what gives the game depth. The gameplay of Pathologic always has been retarded.

 

[Infinitron]

https://teletype.in/@icepicklodge/yTGUUXjmwZ_

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

And therefore it is what grants the game depth

Story is what gives the game depth. The gameplay of Pathologic always has been retarded.

What, no.

What gave Pathologic depth was it's integration of story into the mechanics and vice versa. You are trying to cure a plague or at least live to see another day. The characters are scared of the plague and act according to their nature. Because the plague is a real and tangible threat to the player and you have a time limit plus the chance of people dying to the plague it sells you on how bad everything gets as society collapses slowly. And Pathologic does this all without some overwrought cutscene telling you everything is bad. It shows you. Not only that, you experience how bad it is for yourself. And you end up doing more and more irrational things to beat the time limit as things get more desperate and plot critical characters just start dying.

I honestly can't think of any other game where plot and mechanics harmonize into one as effectively as Pathologic. That should be the future of games as an art form. Not psuedo intellectual 8 hour movies from woke hipsters.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

I'm a pretty old fuck now. As someone who regularly watches the chinese cartoon women play video games I was surprised to see this. I hope this gives Pathologic 2 the bump it needs.

 

[Psquit]

I played pathologic 2 in 2021, peak pandemic panic! Shit was the most "immersive" shit I feel while playing a game. Looting plagued houses then screaming like a girl when a plague victim reaches out to you. Pathologic without the survival aspect that made it special is a huge red flag for me since that's the game at its best (definitely not the combat).

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

https://roloslavskiy.substack.com/p/the-travnitsi-of-the-slavlands

I'll just leave this right here.

 

[Wunderbar]

IPL just announced their next game. It's a mobile... tamagotchi-like... toxic relationship simulator. Yep.

 

[Jenkem]

TAKE THAT, PUTIN!