KickStarter Pathologic 2 (AKA Pathologic remake)

[34scell]

Why bother with budget engines now days? 5% royalty or whatever seems like a small price to pay to make sure your game doesn't run half as well as it should.

 

[Perkel]

Why bother with budget engines now days? 5% royalty or whatever seems like a small price to pay to make sure your game doesn't run half as well as it should.

Because they are usually open source and you can do anything with them and don't come with shitload of stuff that brakes when you change something in it.

I mean i am currently trying to make 2D game. Instead of choosing Unreal/Cryengine/Unity i am using simple pygame that has built in simple tools to draw produce sound and handle input without me doing anything. Then i write my own UI handling, text handling etc and i have complete control over what i am doing so i am not constrained by anything.

 

[LESS T_T]

"I have built this town, Bachelor. It's very unusual, you have to admit."

And the backer demo is coming this Friday.

An exclusive demo of Pathologic will be released to a large number of Kickstarter backers this Friday, developers Ice-Pick Lodge have announced. (Journalists can also gain access to this build for preview purposes - please contact Lewis Denby at lewis@gameifyouare.com for more information.)

The demo - a specially crafted 'vertical slice' of the game - gives fans an early taste of Pathologic's weird and warped world.

To celebrate the milestone, Ice-Pick Lodge have released two new teaser videos for the game - with another new video to follow each day this week on its YouTube channel and various other platforms.

Teaser 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKwI6hwa574

Teaser 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQnoFLowwe0

Pathologic mixes roleplaying, adventure and survival mechanics to tell a dark and dreamlike story. In an old settlement on the steppe, attempt to survive, investigate and cure a mysterious disease. Immerse yourself in a cast of fascinating characters. Care for the sick while solving the riddle of what's killing them. But in the decaying world of Pathologic, staying alive for long enough might be the biggest challenge of all...

Fans who pledged $80 or more will be given the chance to explore a region of the town, in what is set to be a complete re-imagining of Ice-Pick Lodge's 2005 cult classic of the same name. The Moscow-based developer raised $330,127 on Kickstarter in 2014, promising a version of the game re-designed from the ground up - with an expanded town, new characters and storylines, and revised game mechanics.

Fans who pledged $45 will be also be given an opportunity to play an early version of the game at a later date.

Pathologic will be released for PC, PS4 and Xbox One in the Autumn of 2017.

 

[LESS T_T]

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."

 

[Lithium Flower]

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.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Lithium Flower]

What a cool vignette.

I wonder if this scenario will actually appear in the game

Spoiler

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.

 

[Starwars]

Didn't watch the whole video but it looks pretty damn promising I have to say.

 

[Beastro]

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.

 

[Lithium Flower]

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]

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.

 

[Lithium Flower]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

why is everything brown

 

[Ranarama]

why is everything brown

Such is the colour of the brown and bloody Twyre. That of the Sand pest and the rotting meat of the Steppe. The stain doesn't cover the land, but is every part the full depth of it. Too many here serve Suok, consumed and consuming. How could it be otherwise?

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

is it lovecraftian like quake, quake is the only kind of brown that i can accept

 

[Lithium Flower]

is it lovecraftian like quake, quake is the only kind of brown that i can accept

It is Pestilence. It is Utopia. This town couldn't exist anywhere else.

 

[Morgoth]

Nice, thanks for the reminder. Downloading The Marble Nest (((demo))) right now.

 

[Baron Dupek]

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...

 

[Brocken Jr.]

A neat article by the developers about how they're approaching sound design. Features a nice audio track you can listen to while reading. http://pathologic-game.com/blog/en/screams-and-whispers/

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

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

 

[Infinitron]

Bubbles' last piece of content: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...tactics-end-state-demons-age-and-more.113791/

alphyna, I believe you've been waiting for this for quite a while.

 

[Infinitron]

What's this, then? http://labs.ice-pick.com/en/

 

[sexbad?]

because "caelpia" and "flock" surely mean anything at all