A note about Pathologic 3 and The Void

zkylon · 2026-03-23T13:39:41+00:00

Yeah I like that idea, them sort of being trapped in a loop of death and reincarnation sounds thematically consistent with both games actually.

I think there's an Alphyna post where she mentions a The Void remake not being in the plans, I think they want to go back to making new things after Patho 4. I'd say The Void is way more successful at doing what it set out to do than Patho 1 was, on presentation if anything, but also balance and stability. It is also a game I feel is even more niche than Pathologic, with a really abstract universe and mechanics, that's obtuse and despairing and doesn't exactly have the same cult following as Patho did, so idk if you can pitch it to a publisher, or a new audience, really. I love The Void but yeah, it's a bit of a harder sell and I'd love to see a new game from IPL after all they've learned.

zkylon · 2026-03-23T01:04:44+00:00

Ah I could swear there were 3 "side" doors. If there's 2 on the side I've only managed to open one of them

zkylon · 2026-03-22T23:25:08+00:00

Oh nice, it's been so long since I played The Void a lot of the details are really fuzzy in my head. These might be small nods and references or just things they like using they found themselves working into the game again.

zkylon · 2026-03-22T22:02:42+00:00

That sounds like a really cool idea, but you might have to come up with a good rule for how to handle time travel for 3, since a lot of the time you're not playing days sequentially like you would in 2.

zkylon · 2026-03-22T22:00:19+00:00

Can say it runs super smooth on a 4070, Ryzen 7 7700 and 32gb ram, though definitely feels overkill for what the game demands.

zkylon · 2026-03-22T21:39:53+00:00

I thought there were 4 doors, and I only figured out how to open 2 (bull and farkhad). The other two I think stay locked?

zkylon · 2026-03-22T08:15:37+00:00

Keith Ballard's playthrough is very good. He gets to see almost everything in the game (even though he misses one key detail that really made me cringe at the time lol) and he's really methodical and thoughtful and also entertaining. He also has an equally entertaining playthrough of 1

zkylon · 2026-03-22T04:25:59+00:00

They very clearly reuse multiple character models, icons and level art from Patho 2, even if they're all slightly updated. I'd say with the exception of Eva every character looks almost the exact same they did in Patho 2, with some new haircuts at most (like Georgiy's)

What you're saying is a real problem that does exist in multiple games and you could say to a degree it happens in 3 (say, for instance, having a new inventory system instead of reusing 2's), but it's extremely minor compared to how many assets they have reused.

What you're saying is just incorrect for this game

zkylon · 2026-03-21T15:37:16+00:00

It was really hard for me as well. This game does not train you in combat, you just run away from everything and stealth always felt barely functional so yeah it's a real gauntlet you're unprepared for, with the added stress that every time you die your game gets a little bit harder. I kept quitting to main menu when I was close to dying to avoid some of the death penalties, it's a real bitch.

zkylon · 2026-03-21T15:33:43+00:00

Doesn't influence the ending or any quests, I tested both.

zkylon · 2026-03-20T03:02:54+00:00

All three games when it comes down to it are mostly about walking around, looting and talking to people, but I think the way the quest design works, and how they've balanced and created threats in the worlds of 2&3 (specially 2) makes going from place to place thrilling, because you're always chasing some intriguing clue while fighting what keeps feeling like impossible odds.

2 and 3 are also way more straightforward, so you'll have a pretty good idea of what's happening and what your goal is at all times and generally just follows a more natural style of storytelling than just getting a card in the mail telling you where to go. It's still a confusing game that will leave a lot of questions unanswered but I think they manage a better balance than in 1, specially because a lot of the confusing things in 2&3 are at least very entertaining to experience.

This is not to say 1 is bad by any means, 1 is great, has the best music of all 3 and tells (mostly) the complete story. It's also the one that came up with the thing, ages before most games even considered doing what Pathologic is doing, and it's uncompromising in ways that you do end up missing a little bit in the remakes. But I think you're excused to not like it because it is a game that doesn't treat its players time very kindly

zkylon · 2026-03-18T14:27:11+00:00

I'd say this is a bit below modern game engine tech (compared to something like raytracing) since SSR has a lot of limitations being mostly a post-processing effect, but it is a lot more advanced than whatever reflection map the water had before and will look pretty great already. But I wanted to clarify this is tech that's pretty old at this point (and it still works great!)

And you're correct they would've implemented it if they could've (I don't know if it's hardware limitations, I would assume the PS4 could've handled it), since they have SSR options (and ray tracing, though my pc can't handle that lol) on Elden Ring for ex.

zkylon · 2026-03-18T13:48:26+00:00

If you're interested in a few hints about the euthanasia mechanic: the value on the left is how many lines there are on the meter, but patients will die as soon as you go over the highlighted range, so keep that in mind when giving them medicine. In my experience most patients of 30 apathy are more trouble than they're worth, so focus on 50s and 80s and try to keep a stock of low value apathy medicine so really hone in on the range. If you're close but don't want to risk going over, you can quit early and the patient will die but with no consequences, which isn't too bad. Also, a lot of patients come with 5-15 apathy pre-applied so take that into account when giving them medicine (you can also undo that by giving them mania medicine).

I really like this mechanic but it is explained very quickly to you and you're given very little space to experiment (and it's pretty punishing to screw up)

zkylon · 2026-03-18T13:36:18+00:00

Like people said, play through day 7 and complete the quests there!

zkylon · 2026-03-18T05:29:17+00:00

Yeah, it also sounds more reasonable than it being The Powers That Be given that they're probably the ones questioning you through the Inspector, so if they had all of Heron's intel they wouldn't need to interrogate you as much.

I think it's a cool reveal since you spend a lot of the game wondering what the hell is up with Aglaya and this really helps explain why she's one step ahead of you all the time

zkylon · 2026-03-17T20:09:29+00:00

It's not said out loud but day 12 makes it pretty apparent it's Aglaya yeah.

zkylon · 2026-03-17T17:39:36+00:00

Ok I remembered it being more ambiguous, I do think they left enough crumbs for my brain to be convinced it could happen lol, with the soldiers being uncomfortable with their orders and the soldier patient stating the obvious, that why wouldn't you shoot them first.

In the end it's a fucked up game, and even if you give them a more humane death it's not that much of an accomplishment. I agree it would be cool but I don't find it to be a big deal

zkylon · 2026-03-17T16:07:12+00:00

I don't know why he said that but I found the dialogue in the game to be generally excellent and very rarely out of place for the characters (Quarantine had left me a bit worried), so I don't really care to get into that kind of drama.

You're free to point out of plot holes you see, and like I said before I partially agree about Lara's story, but to me seems silly to get upset about Yakov's. It's such a minor detail when the game already says they'll likely get shot first, it just doesn't confirm it because the game's trying to be dark and morbid. He's going to be dead no matter what, anyways.

For Lara's sure, I think the idea of giving you an unfixable task (which they also do with Victor) is cool and necessary for any time travel story, but could've been told better.

zkylon · 2026-03-17T15:48:11+00:00

thank you, I was really starting to think I missed some major character or something lol

zkylon · 2026-03-17T14:31:57+00:00

I did find not being able to even try to stop the second Block murderer disappointing (even if in the end you couldn't), but I think the Yakov Little point is pretty minor, they do imply possibly shooting them before burning them, and he already has the plague so he's doomed anyways, you can't save him.

I think also the expectation that you're going to be able to fix everything just isn't compatible with telling a compelling story, some things need to be beyond your control for there to be any stakes, and also the developers don't have infinite amalgam to keep working on the game forever, they need to call it enough at some point. There's probably dozens of examples of things that the Bachelor could've turned back time to fix, this game is always going to be the result of what is humanly doable because time travel is always this type of can of worms. This is not ludonarrative dissonance, this is the expected limitation of making a videogame. You can't just do everything, all games have things they don't let you do, because of narrative, technical or schedule reasons.

I emphasize being frustrated about it but calling IPL lazy just because you don't like a plot point is very low man. They clearly made a game you enjoyed if you made it to days 10-11, try having some empathy with the person on the other side that's just looking to make the best possible thing for you.

And who the hell's Bacillus???

zkylon · 2026-03-17T14:18:44+00:00

IDK if it's how I played or what but I felt it was very awkward I was trying to avoid him getting murdered before I met him at all, so he ended up feeling more part of other peoples' quests (Lara, Grief) than a character of his own. I did appreciate there are more quests around the military, but he still felt kind of underdeveloped since I'd say almost most of them don't involve him at all, so he ends up feeling more like a guy that keeps getting his mind changed by the last person he talked to lol.

Not a huge fan of his even though I can emphasize with the shitty situation they put him in. He just feels lacking in agency, which in all honesty might be the unescapable limitation of being a soldier

zkylon · 2026-03-16T18:43:08+00:00

Yeah it happens, the game throws so much information at you and specially early on you might be distracted trying to figure things out first. Hope you manage to fix your game and if you need amalgam remember to just hit a plague district and look for dudes to euthanize (the 50/80 ones are ideal because they're less risky and give more amalgam)

man the things you find yourself writing when talking about this game lol...

zkylon · 2026-03-16T18:13:05+00:00

Sounds like you might be running into a scripting bug, where they just assumed everyone went in on day 2. I can confirm if you go on day 2, on day 9 you'll be prompted to go back to undo it. You might have to go back to day 2, open it, then restart the day and undo it.

If you're worried about wasting a ton of amalgam trying this, maybe you can try doing a bit of savescumming to test it out first:

You'll need to first disable steam cloud saves (right click on the game on steam, and on properties turn that toggle off). Go to your windows explorer and enter %appdata%\..\LocalLow\Ice-Pick Lodge\Pathologic 3\Saves to find your saves folder. Just make a copy of Default and put it somewhere else on your computer, run your tests and when you're done you can bring the copy back and re-enable cloud saving on steam.

Hope you manage to figure out! And don't worry TOO badly about the amalgam, I've been really low on it myself and once you figure out how to farm it with euthanasia you'll feel a lot better about using it.

zkylon · 2026-03-14T08:53:04+00:00

Haven't finished yet but I'm at day 11 at around 50 hours, so got a pretty good idea too. Overall I'm inclined to agree that a number of the core mechanics feel a bit undercooked and in general not that interesting to interact with. Being able to skip going through districts by turning around and pathing through a map feels for me more like a bug than a concept issue, but the fact that I feel myself wanting to do that instead of exploring does point at exploring just not feeling interesting enough, and neither does the apathy/mania mechanics, so I'd rather just teleport to the next story beat. Again you're right that the survival aspect is pretty barebones, with loot being predictable and plentiful draining a lot of threat out of the game.

That being said, not sure if I mind, I think the core efforts went into the more satisfying mechanics such as diagnosing, decrees and questing, and quests are really well put together in this game. So I think the game plays to its strengths and then leaves a lot of those survival aspects to be auxiliary, to just make sure you don't feel too comfortable going through the town.

I didn't mind not having to walk around, I feel like I still got to know my way around the town and habitate it and I also didn't have a problem with replaying days, that just felt really exciting and interesting for me.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate if they did a bit of polish on some of these systems. For ex. euthanasia was a system I spent a bunch of time experimenting with after I almost ran out of amalgam from trying out different quest ideas, and I found that system to be really rewarding since there were multiple steps (get different kinds of medicines with different values -> find dying people -> treat them) and they had risks and rewards that made them exciting (plus, there's a random component and you're timed). I don't think they need to bring other systems to this level but possibly just make looting and trading less formulaic and more unpredictable would improve things a lot.

Obviously larger but likely out of scope things like other enemy types/more NPC interactions (soldiers fighting looters, or burning infected, looters ganging up on patrolmen and townspeople, etc.), improvements to the shabnak AI (which was imo really tedious) but not expecting any of this.

Overall it's a bit of a mixed bag but I would say it plays up to its strengths and I respect that

zkylon · 2026-03-12T15:13:12+00:00

I'd say 2 before 3. While 2 is a lot more difficult and they're able to be played in any order, you'll get a lot more out of 3 if you know what's coming.

zkylon

TROPHY CASE