Bjorn

Pathologic - Remaking the best game you never played

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I've tried playing Pathologic, twice, and have barely made it an hour into it.  The three page RPS dissection fascinated me, and I want to experience this game.  I just bounce, hard.  I think I need to not play it as a game, but fuck around as an experience in it.  But that's something I struggle to do.

 

Now the wheels of a remake are spinning up, with marketing starting next month and a Kickstarter likely appearing in September. 

 

I'm a bit split.  Will a remake ruin what made the original wonderful?  Should I bang my head a third time against the impenetrable, brilliant mess it is suppose to be?  Or wait and see if Ice-Pick can capture the wonder and weirdness of the original without diluting it somehow, and losing its spirit.

 

Has anyone else even tried to play it?

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I made it through most of The Bachelor playthrough while I was really sick (because when else would you play this?) but approaching the end got to me because I knew I hadn't succeeded in the game. I'm interested in a remake, but (like that RPS author wrote) the broken-ness and rough edges really did contribute to the vibe of the game.

 

If people were annoyed by malaria in Far Cry 2, stay far away from this game.

 

Oh MAN, you've got me nostalgia-ing hard. The city is dreary and gross from the beginning but slowly becomes overtaken by disease. I recall breaking into disease ridden buildings and looting them for reagants, ammo, and food while avoiding exposure and fighting off inhabitants.

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What the hell is Pathologic? The 5.2 score is intruiging. Everything about it sound horrible/appealing.

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What the hell is Pathologic? The 5.2 score is intruiging. Everything about it sound horrible/appealing.

 

A bizarre Russian RPG where three healers arrive in a mysterious and surreal village right as a plague strikes.  In order to fully understand what's going on, you have to play through as each healer separately.  The game is in realtime, and does not care whether you attempt to "win" or not.  Events will continue to play out even if you miss, ignore or fail quests.  The atrocious translation makes it close to impenetrable for most non-Russian speakers (though I've only experienced the first hour or so, so I can't swear to that).  It also includes survival elements, like needing to feed yourself or you'll starve to death. The review scores all seem to be tied to how impenetrable it was.  It was Deadly Premonition before there was a Deadly Premonition.

 

On paper, it's everything I want from a game.  But it is really, really hard to get into.  I need to sit down with it again some night when I have the house to myself and just dig into it with no distractions around.

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Pathologic is fascinating and appealing in the same way as a horrific car accident - it's disturbing and repulsive, and yet for some reason you just can't look away. It's an absolute pain to play, particularly if all you've been playing recently are accessible modern shooters, as your character moves slowly, the animations are wacky, the inventory system is messy and the map/objective indicators (where used) are confusing.

 

Yet, it has a strange charm to it which is difficult to describe. Quinns, formerly of RPS, did a great job of it a few years ago in a 3 part series which starts here (some of the best video game writing there has ever been, in my opinion).

 

The game's writing does a lot for me - I don't know if it is the Russian-English translation or whether it's like that in the original language, but it reminds me of Kentucky Route Zero. Everyone speaks cryptically or metaphorically and it's never entirely clear what is happening, which just creates this great sense of mystery and tension as you explore this bizarre world. The visuals are poor, even for 2005, but it has a few nicely distinctive visual quirks like its map screen, the birdlike creatures who guide you through the story, and the bizarre and gruesome architecture of some of the buildings, particularly the abattoir.

 

But, as described above, the key to the game's appeal is probably its gameplay. It plays out across a series of days (not sure how many, I have never made it to the end) and there are various main and side quests to be accomplished within each day. Fail to do these quests and it won't prompt you to restart - it will just continue, and you might reach a point where you literally cannot win the game, which is simultaneously brilliant and unbelievably frustrating. As the game continues, a mysterious infection spreads through the town and it descends into complete anarchy. This means that resources after about Day 3 are incredibly scarce and you are almost always teetering on the brink of death. It's an absolutely nightmarish experience...

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I bought this some time ago, never got around to playing it. I guess I should.

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Wow just read the first page of the RPS article, this game sounds nutty. I can't tell whether I should read the rest of the series, because it mentions spoilers, or whether that doesn't matter because I might get too frustrated to ever see what's spoiled anyways.

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The Kickstarter is live, and apparently there are a lot of people who want this.  It's already over $118,000, and I think that's all within the first day.  RPS also has a nice long interview with Ice Pick Lodge. I love this bit:

 

I ask if it is inspired by elements of Russian urban landscapes and life.

 

“Partly, yes. If you come to Russia, you will see Pathologic.” Not a quote that’s going to make it onto the tourist board’s website. “Like Russia, in Pathologic, everybody dies in the end?”


Isn’t that true everywhere in the world?

 

“Yes, but in Russia – faster.”

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So, uh, I got really drunk (like didn't know where I was the next day drunk) last night.

 

After sorting myself out I have found the following bits of evidence:

 

 - I rented then bought the same film with Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd on Xbox Video

 - I finally unlocked the 'win 50 games of Last Titan Standing' achievement on Titanfall

 - Donated 200 dollars to the Pathologic kickstarter... 

 

I don't even play PC games.

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Somehow that seems incredibly fitting given the nature of this game.  Did you cancel the pledge?

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No, given how determined I must have been at the time - I don't save any of my password details in my browser so I would have had to login to kickstarter and Amazon to get the credit card details in there. I feel I owe it to whatever drunken madness was going on in my head to stick by it.

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Yes. But not in the XXX sense.

 

The film is meant to be a parody of Romantic Comedies by pulling apart cliches in the genre. The problem is - like parodies in video games - just because you point out that something is bad doesn't make it funny if you still funnel us down the same shitty experience.

 

I really like the cast though and there are still a few laughs in there.

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Have watched the kickstarter video a few times now. I was really impressed by some of the animations, like reloading the revolver and opening the drawers, and by the music (tho I gather that was in the original game?)

 

I really want to donate but KS won't let me for some reason. I'm sure they'll have no problem hitting their goal without my money but still, slightly irked

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Oh shit, when did they update it to say they are thinking about releasing it on Xbox One?

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Hmmm, now I kind of want that board game.

 

But hey - potential support for the Xbone or PS4 is good as I am more likely to play it that way.

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Pathologic was rad. For me Pathologic triggered an understanding of the possibility that games can be something more than id-level "fun." Pathologic is not a "fun" game at all, but there is something deeper and more satisfying to it that you don't often encounter in games. Buried underneath the bad UI, tacky translation and janky controls there is a strange emotional truth to it that you usually only get from other media. Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now and Schindler's List are not "fun" films. Metamorphosis, Anna Karenina, and The Brothers Karamazov are not "fun" novels. Games have a hard time appealing to something other than the instant feedback, positive reinforcement and constant reward associated with what people call "fun" that I think they often miss the opportunity to use gameplay to actually represent something worth a shit.

 

But damn that game was broken. I guess that kind of added to the charm.

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Ice-Pick announced that Pathologic Classic HD (goddammit video game naming conventions) is going to get released this month on Steam and GoG.  The remake is creating enough alterations to the core story/experience that they also wanted the original preserved, so it's got an engine update (new resolution support, blah, blah, blah) and new actual translation, making the previously impenetrable game slightly less so. 

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I'm psyched! I feel like I learned about this game maybe 10 years ago and I've wanted to play it ever since. I'm definitely going to at least buy the "Classic HD" version. I'm impressed that they were able to manage it without significantly impacting the development of the remake!

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Looks like Bjorn linked to the three-part RPS review of the original Pathologic in this thread's OP. If you don't mind spoilers, I found it to be a very compelling write-up. That and a few old LPs on Something Awful were what got me hooked.

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From the RPS article in the OP:

On my first runthrough of the game I was impossibly relieved when I got given a revolver and six bullets, because it was the solution to my impending starvation. I took it straight to the nearest corner store and swapped it for a bottle of milk and a can of vegetables. The next day food doubled in price.

 

This sounds really unique.  I don't know if I want to play a survival game this difficult, but on the other hand I am completely enthralled reading about it.  Maybe I should give it a shot?  Is it really frustrating?

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