RoSoDude
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2016
- Messages
- 750
Looking at these two screenshots in more detail:
It seems to me that this chart is an actual changing UI element as you progress into the game. My guess is that the game models the effect of your chosen policies on contagion and unrest, and if either of them get to critical levels you have a fail state (town extinction). Since these effects are modeled several days into the future (with the effect of each intervention likely varying one day, two days, three days out etc. rather than being a static and immediate effect), you must intervene to be able to even progress further into the game. This is why you are able to see into future possibilities -- these are events that are predicted by the game's future modeling engine, as influenced by the matrix of decrees you make to affect the course of the epidemic. Whether these perceived future outcomes are scripted or come as a result of cumulative contagion/unrest variables remains to be seen. My prediction is that each new day will have a new set of confounding factors (outbreaks or violence in particular districts, shortages in food/water/medicine, worker strikes, new sources of plague spread) that can be addressed in each day with your available resources, while at the same time you are attempting to make progress on a vaccine.
In changing the scope of player's actions from on the ground exploration/gathering/combat/medicine to discrete interventions that affect the entire town over multiple days, Ice-Pick Lodge is devising gameplay constructs that can be more nuanced in time than "heal guy -> reputation go up, kill guy -> reputation go down". In the former paradigm, the player must be able to see discrete effects of any individual action -- to communicate that a choice in gameplay affects reputation, it must be applied instantaneously. For scripted quest choices like sending suspicious water barrels to Lara's would-be shelter or instead having them all confiscated, the consequence is seen in the next day cycle and has no concrete knock-on effects days later (besides how they affect character illness or player choice, of course). By contrast in Pathologic 3, a choice like removing suspicious water barrels may increase unrest for two days and taper off, but tamp down on an explosion of contagion three days later. Balancing these two variables will be the key to success. Where Pathologic 2 focused on the complexity and depth in the spatial simulation of the epidemic, Pathologic 3 appears to focus on complexity and depth in the temporal simulation of the epidemic.
This is not a walking simulator or a visual novel with some riddles to solve in dialogue. If anything, I expect to be impressed with IPL's ability to interweave a story with narrative richness on par with the gameplay nuance suggested here. Pathologic 1 obsessives will surely complain (as they did with Pathologic 2) that concessions to player agency constrain the authorial intent of the story as-written, but those of us who appreciate the thoughtful intersection of gameplay and story will enjoy IPL's artistic vision for this game. I am so on board.
It seems to me that this chart is an actual changing UI element as you progress into the game. My guess is that the game models the effect of your chosen policies on contagion and unrest, and if either of them get to critical levels you have a fail state (town extinction). Since these effects are modeled several days into the future (with the effect of each intervention likely varying one day, two days, three days out etc. rather than being a static and immediate effect), you must intervene to be able to even progress further into the game. This is why you are able to see into future possibilities -- these are events that are predicted by the game's future modeling engine, as influenced by the matrix of decrees you make to affect the course of the epidemic. Whether these perceived future outcomes are scripted or come as a result of cumulative contagion/unrest variables remains to be seen. My prediction is that each new day will have a new set of confounding factors (outbreaks or violence in particular districts, shortages in food/water/medicine, worker strikes, new sources of plague spread) that can be addressed in each day with your available resources, while at the same time you are attempting to make progress on a vaccine.
In changing the scope of player's actions from on the ground exploration/gathering/combat/medicine to discrete interventions that affect the entire town over multiple days, Ice-Pick Lodge is devising gameplay constructs that can be more nuanced in time than "heal guy -> reputation go up, kill guy -> reputation go down". In the former paradigm, the player must be able to see discrete effects of any individual action -- to communicate that a choice in gameplay affects reputation, it must be applied instantaneously. For scripted quest choices like sending suspicious water barrels to Lara's would-be shelter or instead having them all confiscated, the consequence is seen in the next day cycle and has no concrete knock-on effects days later (besides how they affect character illness or player choice, of course). By contrast in Pathologic 3, a choice like removing suspicious water barrels may increase unrest for two days and taper off, but tamp down on an explosion of contagion three days later. Balancing these two variables will be the key to success. Where Pathologic 2 focused on the complexity and depth in the spatial simulation of the epidemic, Pathologic 3 appears to focus on complexity and depth in the temporal simulation of the epidemic.
This is not a walking simulator or a visual novel with some riddles to solve in dialogue. If anything, I expect to be impressed with IPL's ability to interweave a story with narrative richness on par with the gameplay nuance suggested here. Pathologic 1 obsessives will surely complain (as they did with Pathologic 2) that concessions to player agency constrain the authorial intent of the story as-written, but those of us who appreciate the thoughtful intersection of gameplay and story will enjoy IPL's artistic vision for this game. I am so on board.
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