Brother None
inXile Entertainment
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2004
- Messages
- 5,673
Gonna throw so much money at this 's not even funny.
Maybe I should sign up for retranslation team?
Unfortunately Pathologic (Pestilence? My gut feeling is Pestilence is a better title but fuck it localization let's go) is both one of the very few games that deserves to be remade and one of the easiest games to screw up in the process of remaking it. Tweaking the pace of Pathologic's combat / movement / general gameplay could easily undermine the whole game if done poorly. They need to, for instance, somehow make knifing thugs less awkward without allowing the player to escape scot-free with ease (turning thugs into an easily gamed source of free money and food), or turn thugs into unrealistically capable ubermenschen, or make knifing thugs fun, or at any point cause the player to feel like an action hero knife fighter / gunman, and so on. And that's just the combat. Even simple things like upping the movement speed to decrease time spent holding W could potentially fuck up the game's emotional impact if done incorrectly.
You could fuck up the look of the game with shitty overbright specular maps, misuse of modern lighting effects, or (the most likely misstep) making all of the characters and environments look generically attractive or slick in that dumb video gamey way I can't quite describe yet hate with a passion. This game needs to somehow look fucking ugly and good at the same time, in an age where "scary horror game creatures" tend to look like normal mapped plastic dolls because designers are scared to death of modeling 3D entities with fewer than 15 million polygons, or covering those models in anything less than their best ultra-slick next-gen shader technology
I can't think of many games so susceptible to becoming shit if left in the hands of people who don't know what they're doing. Pathologic is a broken mess and it's still just that good. Ice-Pick are quality developers so I suppose if anyone can remake it successfully, it's them — assuming they don't fuck up the translation from the get-go. No pressure, dudes
Great news, in any case. I'm cautiously optimistic.
As much as I was disappointed by Cargo and Knock, I doubt I can find it in me not to pledge for a copy when the KS comes.he sounds like a most individual. will throw money at them
Hmm...coming from you, is this a positive or negative comment? :Dfuck this shit
Have you played it? I liked it a lot, but it was strange that they took so much time for it, unless they've been working on a lot of other things in the meantime. I'd equate it to a writer publishing a few short stories between his major novels, but I recall some devblog about how long it took them to be certain about the kind of game that they wanted to make it.He certainly knows his audience.
What went wrong with knock-knock?
Wonderful artstyle, indeed. This is the only teaser marketing timer bullshit site that has to ever have made me excited, having played the game I even know the reality of the vague hype text. I really hope this will turn out good and if successful that it will enable Icepick to make more extravagant artistic endeavours. The world needs more games like Pathologic and The Void.
Cargo was weird for me, it is as if their publisher told them to not make a dreary and bleak atmospheric game this time but rather make something fun. They made a game where you collect "fun" by kicking small "buddies" and if you acccidentally kill too many of them off the it ends badly with the devil turning everything into"fun". I'm just not sure what to make of it.I don't know about IcePick being in their prime still. Both Cargo and Knock-knock were rather mediocre imo.
The quotation in Voronika's second e-mail is from Ovid's Tristia. "Tristia" is also the first keyword for the secret part of the site; it leads to a picture.
Yeah, it seemed like a critique on the airheaded trash entertainment that makes up the bulk of video games today but just like many parodies and games made to mock it put itself on the receiving end of the jokes. The tone was almost unsettling and you could never tell when something was meant to be sincere or not. It was weird.I felt like cargo was supposed to be some sort of meta commentary on the state of videogames and how they've devolved when everything is about instant gratification and "fun", but it didn't really work for me.
Two emails i got after signing up to that site.
First:
Hi. Name’s Voronika.
Bet you didn’t expect a personal letter from me. Of course you didn’t. You thought you’ll submit an e-mail and receive ads from a company producing weight loss socks or dog wool coats. Or a startup, or something. Whatever were you thinking?
Don’t worry, I won’t be bothering you. Can’t write too often from where I’m at now. No, I’m not talking about a metaphorical afterlife — I’m simply stuck in the middle of nowhere, and the closest town that has a telegraph office is three days away from me. I’ve coded the site on my laptop, and then I took a flash drive with me to the only village nearby that has a cyber cafe and internet access. I’m not even sure the site is really on. I think local PCs work on coal.
So if you’re reading this that means I do still have some skills.
One of my skills is dying. That’s what I’m doing right now. Actually, same goes for you, but I’m way ahead; if you want to catch up with me, you’d better hurry since I know I’ll die this September.
Please don’t ooh me. Just listen.
I’m privy to a secret — no, it’s not a secret I have to tell the world before I die or else it dies with me. The opposite, really: there are quite a few who share it with me. But you don’t. They are special, you see, and you aren’t. You know that, right? And the secret — the secret shared by way too many — will keep living after I die. It’ll grow. Develop. Root itself in the world deeper and deeper.
Well, what if I don’t like that? What if I want to play rebel? My rebellion looks like a website with scantily clad girls and a bunch of pretentious slogans, yeah.
But I can’t offer you anything better, so here we are. At least they say I’m a decent artist. Enjoy my portfolio.
And don’t worry. I’ll tell you the secret. Just you wait.
Voronika,
http://feverishfeeling.com
P. S. Why not a blog, you ask? Because everyone knows that only fools and lunatics start blogs that aim to uncover deep dark secrets. Also because it’s easier to keep away a database of e-mail addresses than a domain.
Second
Hi.
It was so obvious: leaving the city means throwing my life out of the window. A curious thought when your life is already thrown in a trash bin because of a diagnosis, huh?
Deadly diseases are all fuss and trouble. Doctors are lost, friends are found—every night another one comes by to drink and talk. They feel obliged to try and save me. They feel like they can.
Don’t waste your breath.
And still it felt like there’s no life beyond doctors and friends when I left. Getting somewhere without a car? Being unable to take a hot bath? Watching mosquitos dance in the air instead of a video podcast or a TV show?
Sounds horrific. It really does.
But somehow there’s only one thing I really miss: marchpane. There’s nothing else lacking on the bogs.
I’m sitting on my cabin’s steps right now. Somehow I managed lock myself out—was too eager to slam the door, I guess. I also guess it means now I have a reason to go to town and send you this letter.
When I was a girl, father used to say that once you’ve got a key, a matching door will strike your eye soon. I wonder if my current state is a key too. What’s the reason for all this? What do my fever and shivering unlock? How does a sesame that lies behind my coughing and nightmares look?
It doesn’t look and it doesn’t unlock. Poor Peter is bravely guarding the doors to nowhere.
Well, sine me, liber, ibis in urbem. You will go, my little book, without me to the city. Father loved these words—a shame I don’t remember where the quote comes from and can’t google it from here. Every quote is also a key though, and it unlocks something. Or maybe not the quote itself, but rather something that has to do with it. There’s a door out there waiting for every word. And something important’s most certainly waiting behind that door.
So don’t throw this little book away. The mystery will be unveiled a couple pages later.
Voronika,
http://feverishfeeling.com
P. S. When you see a half-naked girlish silhouette on a bog, don’t fool yourself into believing there’s a face behind her mask.
Also if you go by second mail you can find something on site.