>The release of Pathologic will be postponed until Autumn, 2017.
JUST.
They've promised a standalone spinoff demo kind of thing is going to be released to backers soon though. The game also has a steam page now and looks fucking gorgeous.
I can't wait to see what these crazy slav fucks have in store for us
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proper rain this time too
>changing the exectutioner design
W h y
h
y
My body is so ready
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I kinda like it
I think it suits the game more. He looks more like some crazy russian occult figure now
I would like them a lot more if their heads were three times as large as they are currently. Something about the tiny heads relative to the huge haunch in the new design seems comical.
>The release of Pathologic will be postponed until Autumn, 2017.
Read the news today morning. Probably the biggest game-related blow I got in a decade. I was hoping (considering the recent flood of screanshots) that it might be coming sometime around christmass or spring. Fuck me that is going to be a long wait - Pathologic is currently the only game I'm actually trully, deeply "hyped" for...
Well, fuck.
I guess they have to do what they have to do. No point crying. But man I wish it wasn't true.
Because the original design does not work very well with the new graphics and art direction. It was highly abstractive, actually - to a point where many people did not even recognize it's supposed to be a person in a cloak.
That simply would not work in the new engine and with the new higher-fidelity models.
I'm not thrilled with the change either (there was something about the "derpyness" of the original Executors that I loved - it was both terrifying and fitting to their oddly passive role in the game, but what can you do. The new design isn't bad, and as far as I can tell it's not finalized either: I have seen them look differently in each screenshot.
What I don't like is the glowing eye. It just does not make sense and feels oddly "game-y" for the lack of better word.
They are just glorified bureaucrats in coats and masks. Why would their eyes glow? It's cheap.
>Something about the tiny heads relative to the huge haunch in the new design seems comical.
I'm very sure that is intentional. The original executors had quite a comical look to them as well.
>My body is so ready
Maybe I'm stating the obvious and spoiling the joke, but: "My body is ready" is a really odd choice of words for this game in particular.
To be completely honest, I'm not surprised it was delayed. This is Ice Pick Lodge after all.
How many stretch goals did they end up making anyway?
I completely missed the screenshots until today. I'm pretty impressed with how nice they look though. I just hope they don't have the same, stiff animations as The Void.
>To be completely honest, I'm not surprised it was delayed.
I knew this would happen, but that does not change the fact that I wished it had not.
I would not hope for much. IPL always had quite terrible 3D animations (2D animations, in Knock-Knock, were gorgeous, but also hand-drawn, so...). Yeah, the new screenshots look gorgeous, especially the lighting and weather effects and the architecture. Finally Cathedral looks like an interesting place, and not oddly misplaced afterthought.
Heh, I didn't even notice that but you're totally right. At the same time, I didn't get the whole town as body analogy until long after I had the map upgraded.
Dont look if you havn't beaten the original
They got enough for lucid dream sequences which they're being very cryptic about on the blog, even by their standards.
Think they missed out on the fully fleshed out Termitary and Abattoir goal though
I'm glad they made it to the Lucid Dream goal, I'm pretty curious about how they are going to handle a subject matter that is very interesting to me. But I think all the other Goals would just bloat the game's budget and lead to feature creep. I think they have enough on their platter as is.
I agree there. If the content wasn't part of the base funding level then it's probably tangental at best to the overall narrative.
The lucid dream stuff they talked about in the update a a few months was really intriguing. If any other dev was behind it I'd expect a boring text dump with a few filters over the screen, but I think IPL could really do something interesting with it visually. I also like the idea of it fleshing out the playable characters a bit more too.
I'm not surprised, really. Their latest screenshots are less than a month old, and they haven't shown any gameplay yet, even demo from Gamescom is more of a tech demo than anything.
And I don't mind, really. Let them take their time, I say, all their games had to be rushed, and it shows. pathologic remake might actually be their first complete game.
I love original Executors, but personally I prefer new design more. I like hunched over raven look, but new one fits the setting of the game much more. Bone is a very prominent material in Town's culture, so suits now actually look like something that belongs in local theatre.
And really, I'm just glad they're not using the model from Kickstarter reveal. Now that thing was actually comical.
I don't think the Steppe, the Abattoir an the Termitary are tangential to the original content, but I simply worry about stretching resources too thin and ending up cutting corners so much "the product starts to resemble diamond" as they aptly put it in their last blog post.
As for Lucid Dreaming... that can go both ways. Dreams are such a powerful and fascinating subject matter it may prove to be extremely difficult to do them justice (I think the developers are aware of that, considering Pathologic was first conceived in a dream, before becoming a table-top campaign and a theatrical play) - on the other hand I can barely contend my curiosity.
On a somewhat unrelated note, there is something that confuses the hell out of me though:
Pathologic had a playable demo at Gamescon. Where the fuck are all the reviews, articles, impression? There is absolutely nothing as far as I can tell.
Hundreds of game journalists must have played it there. Why aren't seeing anything about it? Pathologic is not just a completely obscure, largely russian-contained phenomenon anymore.
>Where the fuck are all the reviews, articles, impression? There is absolutely nothing as far as I can tell.
Too obscure. RPS had a short bit on the demo in their news piece on delay, and even russian outlets mostly ignored the thing.
But everyone who bothered to play the demo and write about it mentioned it's very creepy and atmospheric. Hopefully we'll get to see the thing in couple weeks when they're done optimizing it for alpha backers.
>Bone is a very prominent material in Town's culture, so suits now actually look like something that belongs in local theatre.
Sure, but that is also kinda part of the problems. Executors are not a native phenomenon of the town, they are servants and lackeys of the Authorities, who themselves are external powers to the town, aliens in a sense. I think their design should reflect that.
Just like tragedians, Executors are people in theatre costumes. Sure, they're meta characters in game's narrative, but those costumes are from local theatre. I can't give you a direct quote, but it's mentioned in game's dialogue at some point, I think second or third day for Bachelor.
They use the costumes for convenience, it covers whole body and mask is filled with something to filter the air.
Again though, Mark and his suite were not native to the city and it's culture as well. The servants of the Authorities picked up the theatrical masks to have something of a distinct uniform (and, presumably, for increased protection from the plague, much like real plague doctors marks that gave shape to the idea): but there is no reason why their costumes should reflect the native culture of the City and of the Steppe in particular. Odongs, the Steppe Brides, the Butchers - sure. But I not the Executors.
So, IPL is writing up a piece of the demo they showcased on the Gamescon conference, Adam is pretty much frothing at mouth with praise.
From the very little he said so far, it seems like there is larger emphasis on absurdity and humor, which does not surprise me. A lot of the writing is now done by Alpyna (or whatever her name was) and I remember her tone of writing from the ARG campaign to be snappier, "wittier" and a bit more absurd than Dybowskij's heavy reliance on poetry and metaphors.
It seems like it could be a positive change. I mean, the more Kafka it gets, the better as far as I'm concerned.
Disappointing but not unexpected, I guess. But's it's IPL, I know whenever it comes out it'll be something else. The atmosphere of the town screenshots is fucking perfect.
Adam needs to fucking play Classic HD and actually finish the game he so lovingly fellated those years ago. I mean I can understand the fear of it not being as good as he remembers it being now that the vagueness and ambiguity is stripped away but c'mon man, quit being a fagit and finish it.
>Postponed
NOOOOOooooOOOooooo!!!
I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, I fellate the game for almost ten years now regularly, and I still haven't finished all three scenarios in the original, or even one in the HD. So I don't blame him. Not so much because of spoiling of the memories (I had no such problem, in fact in the 15 hours of the HD remake that I had played I found the narrative aspect of the game to be as good, if not better than I remembered. But largely because finishing the bloody game is a MASSIVE time and stamina commitment. I had to force myself to play the game almost entirely in one long marathon when I first finished the first two scenarios - and I don't have the time or endurance for that again nowdays.
I swear to god though: Once the remake is out, I'm gonna take three weeks holiday, quit my job if I have to, and I won't come out of the bloody room until I finished the game.
It's not just for my personal obsession with the game: Pathologic inspired me to as much creative work as most of the best of the books I've read.
I've fellated it for a mere 4 years and have been stuck on the last 5 days of Clara for almost a year now. We get the most upset at people who share the same faults as us, after all.
But yeah, with you on that. I won't see the light of day until either it's done or I bleed out from my eyeballs.
At least there's the playable alpha to look forward to.
Not sure how I feel about the new dialogue UI, though. The black background is kind of distracting.
Going to dump some leaked screenshots of the gamescom demo.
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I think they're going for black screen because they don't want for people in background to keep moving or just freeze in place when talking with someone important, since the time stops. Need to see it in action, though.
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Hopefuly the mechanics will be a little bit less exhausting this time around.
I'm really curious about the tonal shift in the writing. I've talked to some people, mostly Russians, who seemed a bit worried about the fact that Alpyna takes the actual writing helm while Dybowskij assumes the role of director, rather than lead writer. I've read her stuff (if you haven't, you got to check out the old ARG stuff they have done before the kickstarter, it was pretty damn awesome) and I liked it. It was more in tone with the style of their kickstarter update texts - a lot more absurdism, less metaphorical and heavy.
There are some things I will never get over though. I know the older translation was on absolute majority of levels plain WORSE than the new translation. I'm not a member of that "but the impenetrable nature and horrible errors made the game more mysterious and appealing" group.
But Laska will always be Laska, Ospina will always be Ospina Apiary will always be Apiary to me. The two names sound better to me (probably because I'm a slav, and they seem more natural to me, and the last one I think though unintended, was a translation masterpiece that added to the structure a whole new meaning.
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And finally, a sketch of what the new map might look like.
I have zero background in slavinism so a lot of the cleverness is lost on me, but having some experience with nipponese->english translations gives me a real appreciation for both reading things in the original, the sheer hair-pulling difficulty in finding just the right word or phrase, and also being able to see through the translation and figure out what the original was.
So I'm more than a little jealous of you. Though I will say that sinking 80 some odd hours into the Classic HD did kind of reset my defaults for the names.
I like the imagery in 'Termitary'; can you give me the lowdown on what makes Apiary such a masterpiece?
>tfw getting a physical map from kickstarter rewards
I don't care how many girls it scares away that thing is getting the place of honor on my wall.
This... this looks so fucking awesome. It's such a simple trick, simple way to make the space feel more real, but damn does it work. New Pathologic feels a lot more personal and intimate, which is something the original game lacked.
I REALLY hope the character details will be up to par though. I hope the characters in the city will be more mobile, have day/night routines, that we will - at least at times - see them walking in the streets. My biggest dream is that you can actually meet the other two main characters randomly on the streets at time - though I can imagine, that could be very hard to implement.
>Hopefuly the mechanics will be a little bit less exhausting this time around.
Don't count on it.
They've already hinted at infected water barrels and rotting food, and it's a given that the AI will be less easy to cheese.
>infected water barrels
>all the drunks are dead by the 5th day because you kept giving them infected water for bandages
PANIC
>I have zero background in slavinism so a lot of the cleverness is lost on me,
Not him, but a slav here. I don't think it's a matter of slavinism here. Laska basically means "grace" or "love" in most slavic languages, Ospina is derived from the word "Osa" which means Asp. Though there is (almost certainly) wholly unintentional detail of the word "Ospina" sounding a lot similar to the word "Osina" which in my native language literally means "Awn", but is more commonly known and associated with the phrase "Osina v prdely" - literally "a major pain in the ass". Which considering her character is very fitting.
Not sure what is so great about Apiary, beside it being simply a better sounding word than Termitary. Both seem equally apt at describing a structure where hive-mind-like organism live. I maybe it's about Apiary being a man-made structure, while Termitary is more of a natural phenomenon?
Neat, thanks. Well fuck though, I had had Apiary confused with the word 'aviary' for the last 5 years in my head, never once thinking about why that might be retarded. I guess I'd just gone with the cage associations.
I think you're on to something with the Termitary thing though. Can't fucking wait to see what that and the Abattoir will look like in the remaster, that place gave me the creeps something fierce.
>tfw all the good kickstarter rewards are way too expensive for me
also i finished the bachelors campaign in the HD a while ago and started the haruspex, but the game gets so TEDIOUS
should i finish the other two campaigns before the new one comes out
Haruspex might be the best of the three, honestly. I sure as hell loved it, shit gets crazy near the end.
It's entirely up to you if you want to finish the other two though, the remaster is supposed to be not just an update but a whole different beast. It is a slog though. I love it but it's mentally draining to play.
>Haruspex might be the best of the three
I'm going to take your word on this, because I'm six days in and still feel like Dankovsky's errand boy.
I promised myself back when summer started that I would start this game and finish it in one siting.
Time's running out Sup Forums, motivate me.
>I think you're on to something with the Termitary thing though.
I've recently realized just how insanely curious I am to see so many things from the game in the new execution. To see what Abattoir or the Rail station looks. To see what Capella, Laska or Eve look like. I've realized how much was actually really poorly presented in the original game, so much so that it made it difficult to actually judge what it is supposed to resemble. The train station is probably the number one offender on that.
Well, it's not going to get much less tedious. I'd say finishing one campaign is enough to get the most of the game. Of course, going further reveals a lot of the juicer stuff (in fact, pure storywise, Bachellor really barely scratches the surface of what is really going - like seriously, it's crazy. He is the single most clueless character in the damn city, right till the end), but I think you can postpone exploring that for the new one if you really are getting disencharted with the mechanics.
Look, you are asking us to motivate yourself to hurl yourself into a world of pain, tedium, mental exhaustion, frustration, clunkyness, and deeply, deeply depressing tales about decay and tretcherous nature of mankind.
RUN THE FUCK AWAY, DUDE. RUN BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE. Pathologic is a one way ticket only.
Get yourself into the mood first, get comfy, get headphones, get away from all distractions, don't even hope to get one route done in a single sitting.
youtube.com
It improves considerably when you start reporting to more interesting 'people'. Then again I actually liked playing rural murderalchemist wandering around picking herbs and brewing potions.
You get to see the inside of the Abattoir, how's that?
>tfw one more year until I get to prep the bull
>finish it in one siting
Completing just the Bachelor's route will take you ~24 hours.
Trying to play the whole game in one sitting would probably kill you.
Once again, I'll take your word for it and keep playing. I remember only getting really invested in the Bachelor's story after Eva died and shit started getting real.
>Completing just the Bachelor's route will take you ~24 hours.
I think one sitting means "playing nothing but Pathologic" still taking breaks from it. I hope. Otherwise it's really suicidal on many levels.
I'm a little fuzzy on what happens what day. Have you done the quest that required a still-warm heart in Bachelor's story?
>Otherwise it's really suicidal on many levels
Christ, tell me about it. Not to mention the toll it'll take on your psyche. Which I guess sounds pretentious if you haven't played, but it really takes a lot out of you.
Oh shit, steam page for the remake just went up.
Looks good.
If you're talking about the Haruspex quest where you have to either kill the herb bride or the butchers, then yes, I've passed that point.
I remember that in the Bachelor route the Haruspex kills the girl, but I decided to be a moralfag and kill the butchers instead. Not that it really made any difference.
Actually, it does make a bit of a difference. First of all - mechanically speaking: Bachellor get's pretty mad when you give the dancer's girl's heart, and he refuses to reward you. And story-wise: You are just prolonging her suffering AND basically ensuring all her customers will contract the plague as well. She is already infected dude. She is going to die. This way, she is just another disease vector / begging for mercy kill to happen.
I was short on time and the butchers were across town. I made the necessary incis...decision. Not that it matters either way, yeah.
That's what you get for spending too much time picking flowers, I guess. It's one of the few times a time limit feels like it's used correctly. Some days you have enough to do the longer, proper thing. Some days you don't.
>story-wise
I find Ice-Pick is phenomenally good at fucking with white knight instincts. The Void especially. It's a little thing that probably goes unnoticed by a lot of people but if you've got bullshit 'must protect that smile' urges they're really very good at hitting you where it hurts.
see also: Eva
Are you talking about the dancing girl in the pub or the girl who was with the westernmost odonghe? Were they both infected?
Was I supposed to know this?
I know the pub slut was infected, you kind of already know how that quest is going to end if you've done the Bachelor first (killing the butchers instead is a relief of an alternative). Pretty sure the twyre bride isn't, though.
They capitalize on them a lot. A whole lot could be said about how IPL is a living proof that gender stereotypes can be incredibly valuable tool and a meaningful subject to talk about, rather than being a mere "laziness", "lack of creativity" or "pandering". In both Pathologic and The Void, feminity plays an incredibly big role (quite literally, in case of Pathologic). They know what strings to pull and where to kick when necessary - though you might notice the protective instincts and white-knighting is not criticized. Just... fucked around with.
I'll never forget the sense of terror I got when I learned that Fat Vlad decided to turn Lara's Shelter into an infection ward, the furious desperation when the dumb suicidal broad refused to take a stance that could fucking save her life, and the immense relief when I learned I can declare her house unsuited because her water wasn't running - thus saving her life.
And then later she asked for the gun and I nearly fell out of my chair.
The Void was a bit darker in this respect, I think. But then again, with just how abstractive the game was, I never felt quite as close to the characters in the game, not even the nameless sister.
I'm talking about the pub girl, Hunchbacks daughter. The one you are asked to bring back home in Bachelor's route. Yes, she is infected. I'm not sure how would you know as Haruspex (I'm really fuzzy on the details of his route), but as Daniel if you bring her heart that fucking moron Rubin, you'll see her heart teeming will the pathogens.
>that fucking moron Rubin
>"I'm going to turn myself in"
YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING DIPSHIT NO
Yeah, I've been trying to think of an angle to lit-crit-analysis-wank The Void for ages now, it definitely deserves it and I'd personally enjoy taking it apart bit by bit, I don't think it would lose the magic or anything under proper analysis.
I suspect I've actually had this conversation with you in another thread ages past, but the way Sister Death and Eva mirror each other as selflessly suicidal yet tragically ineffective was interesting. They're both tired of being protected and want to be of use but end up being TOO selfless. Maybe literally too pure for this sinful earth? Pathologic is debatable, but The Void definitely isn't a world that allows that kind of action.
I can't help but wonder if they'd thought about giving Sister Death an ending where she ascends you if you give her enough color, or if they always intended for her sacrifice to be ultimately meaningless.
So... a bit late to the discussion, but the reason why they decided to call the Termitary a Termitary, rather than Apiary, is because there is a whole massive wordplay with the "the Termites" (Haruspex's Bound, named after the Termitary but also after the so called "Termites": a group of exceptionally talented children identified by Lewis Terman, psychologist who focused on psychology of gifted children.
And this is probably why people should not complain about the changes done to the translation. There is a hidden meaning, allusion, reference, word-play, in-joke or actually spoiler hidden in plain sight in just about everything in the game.
That is really interesting, thanks user. Sounds like a trip to wikipedia is in order.
Now that I think about it, women play a pretty fucking important role in Pathologic. Three of the biggest forces acting on the town (sand plague, the inquisition, the mistresses) are represented by powerful female characters.
It makes me wonder what the internet feminist types will make of the reboot.
I suspect they won't even hear about it, let alone talk about it. It's not really the kind of thing you can pick up on a whim just to bitch about. Thankfully.
I'm so glad The Void went under everyone's radar and before the whole shitstorm really started blowing.
>YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING DIPSHIT NO
:..
Fuck Rubin. Seriously, fuck that guy.
Yeah, we had this discussion in an earlier thread. I thought about. Each of the characters were driven by slightly different motivations:
Eve was driven to her "pointless sacrifice" by jealousy. She, like all the noble women of the city has the gift of clairvoyance and miracle giving, but her talents are entirely overshadowed by Maria and Capella. She is also obsessively in love with Stamatins (or at least one of them), and she also feels like she is losing them to Maria. Her suicide is a desperation attempt to become relevant to the city.
Lara is apparently driven by guilt and self-loathing. I'm not sure if I got this right, but I think her father was a deserter, executed by the General Block. I think the shame of that is what drives her self-esteem so low, and she compensates by martyr-like altruism.
Nameless Sister... is a trickier one. Characters in The Void are much less psychological. I think she is simply symbol of (feminine) generosity - and like all principles in The Void, it eventually goes full ad absurdum.
I think the one thing that ties all these characters together is the theme of (lack of) perspective: a form of blindness. For whatever reason, they become tunnel-visioned - and in IPL's account, that NEVER seems to work out well. Narrow-mindness eventually always leads to selfishness and disregard of others true needs, even if its in a guise of a selflessness.
That is at least what I took from the game.
By the way, did you know you can revive Sister Death in The Void and ascend her? It's virtually impossible without cheats, but it can be done.
You're probably right on all of those points. I wish I had more to say but it's been too long since I've played and you can't exactly flip open to a certain conversation to reread it a bunch of times until all the possible meanings sink in like you can a book. So all I've got to go on is half-assed memories and the stuff I read on here.
I think unfortunately you're forced to fanwank a lot of the Sisters' personalities based off their colors and their chambers rather than the bare handful of lines they speak. Hemingway's dignity of the iceberg and all that. Or maybe it is pure wank, I don't know.
I've got a save file in The Void where I swear I can save her, I'm gonna do it. One of these days...
Any rate, the thread's coming to an end it seems. Thanks for humoring me as always, it's good to talk IPL when this board gets shit.
what a shame they didn't keep the red and polluted looking ground from the first game.. it really fit with the creepy industrial theme
>Now that I think about it, women play a pretty fucking important role in Pathologic.
Vital. It's the women that are the true driving force behind everything. Men who act, but women who really initiate everything. Nina was the true strenght of Kain family, just like Capella is the true moral and principal driver of all things Olgimsky, and Saburov really does not do anything without the consult of his wife.
Then you have the towns sharpest rationalist - Julia, and the towns most benevolent, kind, cool and in all ways perfect Inquisitor (and never let her hear you call her otherwise).
The game plays the standard "women are fragile, intuitive, manipulative, kind, opposed to violence, emotional" concept and runs with it into a whole new direction: rather than denying it, it celebrates beauty in it, while still offering enough lee-way to not look one-sided.
I think that much like The Witcher - but even in a more clever way - the game poses a big problem for the contemporary moral preachers. On one side, there is a LOT to hate: the abundance of submissive, manipulative, extremely feminine characters, a fairly liberal dose of nudity and sexualization (The Void was even worse in that regard).
But on the other hand: nobody can ever claim the games to patronizing, too generalizing, or lacking in diversity. It just kinda goes to show how the entirely gender-and-sex-based moral panic is completely misplaced and stupid: the problem is, and always has been, solely in the QUALITY of writing and characters, never the underlying or overaching "political narrative".
The Void takes both genders to their extremes, I think. The Sisters embody the best and worst of traditionally feminine qualities in varying combinations (the "women are fragile, intuitive, manipulative, kind, opposed to violence, emotional" you mentioned) taken to extremes, while the Brothers do the same for traditionally masculine qualities (aggressive, masochistic, commanding, obsessed with control and order).
The uneasy truce between the two of them feels like an abusive relationship, the women unable to refuse gifts of affection or break free but also the men unable to survive without the Sisters, and aren't even considered Brothers unless they have one and would be killed on sight.