Pathologic Thread

Yes, i agree, they did a marvelous job at keeping second game true to the predecessor, i meant that there are parts of the game that felt very much different.

I sacrificed Vlad Jr. as the Bachelor on day 8. Did I fuck up? He's the first character that's died so far.

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Nah FUCK Vlads

P1 or P2?
Anyway: In P1 no death is permanent safe for Eve. You can bring anyone who is sick back into the game if you have panacea or powder.
In P2... someone is BOUND to die. I'm impressed you got your first death on day 8. By that point, I had half of the city greeting me in the theatre.

I personally prefered to let Fat Vlad make the decision, because he IS the father, and a loving one at that, but... this is ultimately up to your own judgement.

P1, and he's dead dead. Mother Superior murdered him after I handed him over to her so she would let me into the Abattoir

Dead dead? As in - the character is gone. Not just an Executor standing in front of the doors?
I honestly did not know that can happen in P1 at all. Well... it has been a while since I played it.
If that is the case, I guess it's all right. Again: I'd send Fat Vlad rather than Young Vlad personally, just because it feels like torturing already deeply pained man with further cruelty seems really inhuman, not to mention that Young Vlad has his life ahead of him, while Fat Vlad is basically just looking for that one last act to redeem himself...

i hate how you cant give lara the man she wants

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There's an executor standing at his door, saying that he's dead for good. It's different from the ones standing outside the sick people's houses. I probably would have sent Fat Vlad in hindsight, but I was running super short on time, and I didn't talk to him first and see the option.

Well... then roll with it. Acceptance is part of the process.

I beat Pathologic 2 on intended difficulty without losing anyone
Disappointed there wasn't an achievement or talk with the Powers That Be
But, still feel proud

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I'm assuming that was not on your first run, right?

In P1, do I need to give medicine to sick people to keep them from dying or can I leave them sick until the last day and then cure everyone?
When do people start catching the plague?

No, absolutely not lol. I'd also watched a few Let's Plays before so knew a lot of things AND referred to a guide more than once. It was in no way due to skill, lol.
I got lucky with some shmowder finds and knew where to go. I only regret time-turning like 6 times which the game somehow knows because that was only time I got messages about not doing it in the loading screen.

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You can wait for the last day. The problem is, when they are sick you can't interact with them, meaning if you get a quest that requires interacting with them, you are shit out of luck and you'll likely won't be able to finish it.

Your Bound usually get sick when you fuck up the quest of the day. Other characters may become sick depending on how you handle some side-quests, but some of them simply get sick at certain pre-determined points of the story - reflecting in impact of the other two characters on the city.
Unlike in P2, there is no "rolling the dice" mechanic - everything is determined either by your quest handling, or just hard-coded into the time-line.
Safe for few rare occassions, character won't die when sick for multiple days. Death of main NPC's is very rare in P1. I knew only about one case - today I learned about a second one, apparently.

Thank you, friend

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I'm in my second playthrough of the game and I'm finding it actually really easy on default difficulty once you know what is what. I'm on day 5 and I'm sitting on seven schmoulders, literally enough food to last me for the rest of the game, 6000 moneyz, 50 bottles of water reserves, all of my equipment as upgraded as possible, supplies of crafting materials to last for five days, no character sick, and no deaths, and every single story thread resolved so far.

I can't wait to get back home and continue with the playthrough.
I don't think I will be able to do a no-death run entirely though. The abbatoir is going to get me a couple times, if nothing else will.

Scratch that: eleven schmoulders. Three from stashes, three traded in from little girls, three traded in from dead items shop, one from the hide and seek game, and one in exchange for the dog collar.
I did burn through two of them: one on Sticky after the house of death thread, and one on Andrey, because the fucker ALWAYS gets sick. It's crazy. I have never seen him NOT get sick on the first day of the outbreak, even though I always give him a plus tincture.

Bread is OP pls nerf

>takes up all of your inventory in 2
Nothing personal, butcher

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yeah it's really good but really cumbersome in 2, if you buy it and want to keep it around for awhile you're gonna run out of room fast

Well you're already doing remarkably better than I was on day 5 so I bet you'll make it.
I was able to keep my death score low until the late-end game when everything was infected or burned. I got jumped once by a knifeman while filling up water bottles, never even saw him...

Someone asked for pictures of the Lair a few weeks back, if they're still around I have a few more

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I decided to send Grace away from the Cemetery. Worked out better than expected. Her and Peter's interactions were pretty interesting. By her end game text, I'm not sure their relationship is platonic, at least on his end

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-Take a lockpick.
-Go to a random house door in a healthy district.
-Save.
-Use the lockpick and enter. Scour the premises. If there are two little girls, save. If there is one or zero of them, load, go to the next random house door and try there.
-Suppose there were two and you saved. Barter with both girls. There either is a shmouder, which you can exchange for, or there is not. If there is, you get it. If after that you have nothing to barter with, well, there you go. If you still have something to barter with for the other shmouders, you save and exit the building.
-Regardless, if you still want (another) shmouder, you, after reexiting the building, REENTER IT ONCE AGAIN (you won't need a lockpick, the door will be already open from the first time). GIRLS WILL BE THERE, BUT THERE BARTER ASSORTMENTS WILL BE RESET. So there could be new shmouders.
-Repeat as much as necessary.
-P.S. Keep in mind: on 12th day for Changeling, little girls are un-barter-able. Do your business on 11th day instead, if need be.

So how many endgings are there? Are the different enough to warrant a playthrough? I just finished, everyone is alive, and i went for follow path of dad, but shell the rose and cure the disease, stay in town to help the people in it

I think there are basically 3 endings, yours which is called the "Dirunal" (sp?), another one which is called "Nocturnal" which I haven't tried and another one which is basically the bad ending.
I found it more fun on the second playthrough but couldn't bring myself to do the nocturnal ending lol

From what I understand, the nocturnal ending is radically different from the one you got. Seems like it's pretty crazy. If you saved on Day 11 I presume you could just reload the save and not bring the papers to General Block and then get the other ending to see what it's like. I assume that would work.

In P1: Four. One for each main character, and one if you fail to save your bound ("Bad Ending"). As long as you have saved all your bound, you will get to chose between "Your" (characters) ending, or the "bad one" if you simply refuse to decide.
If you have saved all Bound for one or two of the other characters, they will be now present at the Cathedral and will present their cases: then you'll get to chose if you persue your ending, or one of theirs.

If you save bounds of a different character, but not your, you will still always get the "bad ending".

In P2, things are different. Basically there are two endings, plus one "secret one". It's based on a very simple decision: Spare the Polyhedron (as Klara suggests), or destroy it (as Algaya suggests).
The third, "secret" ending is the really bad one, and it happens ONLY if you accept the deal from the Dead Items Shop Man. It"s called "Day 12 cancelled".

I found this tree while walking around. I think it's an easter egg reference to the Void. The cage around it is also around some of the trees in that game.

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It clearly is a nod to The Void, but you also have to realize those cages are a real thing and you can come across them quite commonly all over the world. I think one of the artists in IPL just happens to be really, really fond of them.

There are, of course, many other small elements that clearly tie it to The Void. The mechanic of feeding trees, in fact the characters of Steppe Brides all together are clearly continuation of concepts introduced in The Void.

Most importantly though: The mechanics and ballance of them game themselves actually owe perhaps more to The Void than to the original Pathologic.

It's clear that the intention with P2 was to take the best of both of these games and combine it into one game. And as far as I'm concerned: that was a great approach, and for the most part, worked remarkably well.

we have this discussion every thread. Putting cages around trees is a normal fucking thing to do. It is to keep them growing straight

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Oh those are real? lol, I didn't even know. I haven't played it, just kind of watched some videos on it, it seems incredibly interesting but I don't think I'd last long playing it. The whole constant balancing of resources thing seemed really tough in that.

Ah, sorry, I must have missed those threads. Duly noted

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Deep Dreaming my faw track from OST, every time i got to the "introduction to Saburovs" moment it would always time so ideally that as soon as music went into "second phase" the shadows would appear.

youtube.com/watch?v=hAUTDP2qjxQ

I guess little girls never got told by their parents not to barter with a guy that just broke into their house

That thirst meter completes the screenshot

Yeah, the overalps are very, very real. It's hard how much is intended to be interpreted and how much of it is personal fetishes and preferences seeping through, but I'm pretty sure the decision to borrow from The Void's mechanics are very conscious and deliberate.

The Void's enormous success (and the one thing that sets it ahead of Pathologic 1) is how incredibly well it used the mechanics themselves to convey much of it's narrative. Now: the narrative isn't nearly as interesting as the one in Pathologic, because it lacks well defined characters and tends to be overtly abstract and metaphorical, but the notion of making player EXPERIENCE the story through the mechanics alone is absolutely masterful.

Pathologic 2 really does attempt to combine the two games: maintain the stronger, more concrete narrative of Pathologic 1, but employ gameplay mechanics to actually actively force player to EXPERIENCE much of the narrative like The Void did.

To me, this is the main reason why I see Pathologic 2 as such a dazzling success. This step is what makes it more than just re-itteration of the first game: it's a sizable step forward in mastering the medium itself.

You should give The Void a try though. It is harsh, in some ways more than Pathologic 2, but it is quite the experience.

Pathologic 1 uses its exploits (three major are getting done with non-time-specific quests for the day by dawn, purging infection without panacea or shmouder, and aforementioned shmouder farming; mastering melee combat could be considered as the fourth one) to get its point across at the very least in relation to Bachelor's route.

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Give me a gun.

Buy the bull instead

It probably is. Even if those cages are commonly used, they're not bended as much as those in games

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Isn't it normal to have such cages around the trees? At winter you put there plank and fibers to help the tree survive the winter.

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What do you think about difficulty sliders?
have you ever used them? Are they a good addition to a game? Is it okay to make it more approachable to casuals?

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youtube.com/watch?v=1xe2IxHFYwo
Skip to 4:00

they shouldve put the reviewer copy on retard mode so they could "enjoy the atmosphere" and talk about how much they enjoyed the walking simulator they played during their onions latte meeting

Three playthroughs without touching anything, then I set all sliders to minimum to easily get the dream achievement. I refuse to let Murky get hurt on a regular playthrough.

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but that would be false advertisement
and gatekeeping is just bad on economic and moral level

It's a pointless concession to morons. It does not help the game sales either. The difficulty was always an excuse, not the reason why the reviewers disliked the game.

The problem is: they would not like it either. Dybowsky has a pretty interesting note when he points out that actually, none of the concessions and polish they added to the game to improve accessibility and accomodate western main stream players has made ANY difference what so ever, and that people pretty much generally decided whenever they are going to like it or not even before they play.
Which reflects very well the actual reviews we got, especially the one by RPS, who wrote even more spiteful review AFTER the difficulty patch was released.
It's why the original and the HD release got BETTER reviews than the sequel all over the board.

There are more fundamental problems that the gaming journalism had with the game than the difficulty. The difficulty was just a handy excuse so that the reviewers did not have to be honest with their readers.

I will never not be mad at RPS.

>There are more fundamental problems that the gaming journalism had with the game than the difficulty
What were those problems? They didn't like the story? They don't like it's a game from Russia?

>There are more fundamental problems that the gaming journalism had with the game than the difficulty.
Mainly that games "journalists" are retarded?

Anyway, weren't RPS the ones who did that feature on the original Pathologic back in the day? Not that I agreed with it about everything, but it used to be quite a few anons cited that as their first introduction to the game. What a shame.

Neither will I.

>What were those problems? They didn't like the story? They don't like it's a game from Russia?
Short answer are no and yes.
Though to blame the pretty common and old industry bias against east-european games would obviously be generalization beyond acceptable.

I think the main problem is that the game is challenging. Not by difficulty - but by very nature. It challenges common expectations from "narrative-driven games". It challenges your views and values. It challenges your norms for gameplay mechanics. Your ethics. It constantly asks for investment. It tries to make you uncomfortable, it tries to change you, in some, even subtle way.

I think that is something that despite what they say, journalists really, really fucking hate these days. I think they have became more conservative, and more limited in their views than ever before. And most of all: they really can't be bothered.
I think gaming journalism has a fundamental problem with self-respect, and respect for their own job and medium they actually review.

The fact that the game is russian definitely plays a role. In part, the general derrision of the west towards the east has grown significantly due to the division on political issues, imigration and so on (though it always has been present).
But most of all, the problem is that it's just DIFFERENT. East and west just thinks differently. And that requires effort, investment, motivation to accept.

I think that is the real problem. The game is a problem. It does not fit anywhere, it does not let you remain where you are: it's this weird anomaly that nobody has the fucking wish to face.

That is my theory, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe it's hysterical, overblown, and bitter. But I think that is the root of the issue.

Yes. The original review of Pathologic was the reason I started reading RPS regularly.
The new review of Pathologic 2 was the reason I stopped for ever.

TLDR:
New generation of gaming journalists are more conservative and more narrowminded in their own jobs then the ones ten or fifteen years ago. Pathologic 2 is a game intended to provoke in unusual ways, which does not bond well with people who are very conservative and rigid in their ways. That is why it was met with such a derrision.

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I wish I had that one with "It's simple. Don't be an asshole" saved.

here's my old copypasta i put together to help anons get better framerates outta the game.

Here are some technical fixes I managed to find online that night help with the game’s poor optimalization:

steamcommunity.com/app/505230/discussions/4/1653297026044456968/ This fix manages npc’s AI range, meaning they will travel smaller distances and their walking animations will trigger from smaller distances (you will need to get closer to them)
I haven’t personally tested this, but some might find it useful.

steamcommunity.com/app/505230/discussions/4/1653297026032363521/ official tips for fighting some performance issues

Third tip is making the game use more of your RAM. Because, get this, pathologic 2 only uses 1 gb of your ram by default. THIS ALWAYS RESETS AFTER A NEW PATCH ISNTALLED, SO YOU NEED TO CHANG THE RAM SETTINGS EVERY TIME A NEW PATCH COMES. Here what you need to do: Go to C:\Users\\AppData\LocalLow\Ice-Pick Lodge\Pathologic 2\Settings

Right-click on the file called ExternalOptimizationSettings and click “edit”

Scroll down till you see settings called “SmartAllockMemoryStrategy”

You will see Max and Min Memory. We want to change the MaxMemory values, which should be set to 1000000000 by default (1gb of ram) and change it depending on your available ram. I have 16 gb of it, so I changed the settings to 13000000000 (13 gb of ram)

This is by far the most crucial settings to change, the game will run smoother, will smaller loading times. I haven’t tinkered with the other settings because I don’t want the game to do thing like, I dunno, messing up my memory allocation or anything. But the SmartAllockMemoryStrategy values seem to work fine and there doesn’t seem to be any RAM leakage after closing the game, so this solution works. Some user reported he got problems after upping the ram so make a txt. file backup so u can change it easily if something goes bad.

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I remember getting 2 or 3 on my bachelor playthrough, one of them was for doing the quest where you have to stay in an infected building for an hour. the others, I cant recall.

Why are the slavs the only ones capable of creating truly unique and beautiful experiences?

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Anyone else get absolutely terrified when they entered Isidor's house for the first time in patho 1?
The silent zombie women that corner you out of nowhere when you explore the corridor bedroom freaked me out so hard

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That is not true. America made games like Bastion or Homeworld, Japan made games like Shadow of Colossus, Silent Hill 2 or CaveStory.

I have some theories on why slavs tend to make proportionally more such strange experiences than other regions, but it really feels dishonest to say that they are the only ones doing such work.

That shit was spooky.
EVERY infected house was spooky. the fast music, the horrific visuals, and the fact that often whenever i entered one i could hear someone moaning in pain. scary shit.
Abandoned houses with looters were spooky as well, entering the house and seeing them run down the hall towards you always made me just leave the house instantly

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Yes. that one fucked me up. Noped so hard I had to step away from the computer afterwards. When you see the bloody sheets, youre like "ow fuck" then you talk to the woman youre even more ow fuck, then you walk away when she goes zombie and youre shitting yourself, then you turn around to get the fuck out, then you see someone else, and you just realized you found the sisters and youre really fucked

The Sand Plague is a true monster

Pathologic 2 was supposed to be equally, if not more creepy in the infected houses, but after feedback from Marble Nest, they have decided to dial it back a LOT.

I dont know what it is, but whenever I see Nikolay I just get really happy.

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really? whys that?
what did they look like in the marble nest?

It was not that much about how it looked as about how it sounded. The sounds were just... insanely creepy, it's hard to describe. Also, the stains on the wall moved, which was fucking creepy as hell when you realized. I never understood how exactly was it supposed to work, but I think they started forming vague skull-shapes as the infection gradually approached the point where it breached your immunity.
I could never decide if it's ingeniously creepy, or kinda funny.
Anyway, the infected house in Marble Nest was so unnerving that quite a few people complained, and frankly I kinda agreed. So did the devs. It was not supposed to be a full on horror scene, and perhaps more importantly, the effect would actually wear off much faster than if toned down.
But god the sound is still haunting me.

Didn't know about this, thank you very much!

no problem, the first two guides can also help, but they talk about things like changing the AI level for npcs, like the radius of their walk paths. So far the smart alloc memory strategy was always a good thing to change and I never got any heavy technical problems by tinkering with that particular setting. A lot of anons reported it made their games run faster. It doesn't physically make the game use more ram because it doesnt change it if you check the task manager, it has to do with some other technical hoopla I suppose. It cuts down on loading times and gives you about 20 fps extra.

How’d you manage that?

other user here, it's pretty easy to rig the system when you know what to do. I often loot houses on night 1 of the first day, selling organs gives you amazing cash, memorize where the children caches are, they will give good loot you can exchange for schmowders, or sometimes they'll have the powders in them as well. It usually boils down to being time efficient and knowing where to look at a proper time

Like fucking what?
Here, I'll help you, you can mark your "gems" here.

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I'm not entirely sure, to be honest. What I do know is that I had the advantage of knowing where most of the stashes are from the get go. Also, at every single day, I'd make rounds around every single grocery store to buy any nuts and raisins they would have, as a trading base. And I would always keep enough of a value in nuts/marbles/raisins to be ready to buy a powder at any moment.
Then... I traded. A shitton. Every third kid carries a salted fish or an egg, which are riddiculously cheap to buy - you can easly build a surplus of up two or three stacks of fish and one stack of eggs A DAY - not counting what you actually eat.
I have roughly memorised which trade chains are profitable and which aren't.

Also, I "exploited" the shit out your health system. That is to say, I would push myself to endure hunger and exhaustion, often bleeding out upwards of 70% of my health before going to bed: because morphine-aided sleep will let you regen all of it in four to five hours of sleep. That freed a lot of time and lot of resources for more trading.

Oh yeah, and I meticulously managed my inventory, never throwing things away, making periodic stops at places with safe stashes (Lara's, Fat Vlads etc...). I also saved up every single broken ampule, bloody rag and so on, and then traded them in in the Dead Item shop.

And... that was it, basically.

Better to die in the playground, than on the battleground

>commierunes

This chart was a hell to get through, open up the cyrillic keyboard on google translate and get to work

It is better to die for the Powers That Be, than to live for yourself.

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There are English titles printed sideways on those games that got an international release.

Honestly, the game is not THAT hard on the intended difficulty. Yes, you might have to loadscum or do a second playthrough, but it really adds to the experience.

hey knucklehead, you know who I AM?! I can make frickin miracles

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Thanks for writing out your thoughts, user, I appreciate it. I'm sorry I don't have time to reply in the detail you deserve right now, I just wanted to say thanks for writing that out. Hopefully I can catch you around another one of these threads.

Wait, so if a single one of your bound die in P1, you always get the bad ending? That's kind of bullshit desu, since the masks tell you on day 1 that sometimes the right choice might be to let someone die

Those someones are the other characters' Bound

fuck. I assume Eva doesn't count tho, right? I still let Vlad Jr die, so I'm fucked anyways

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Eva doesn't count, no

In reality, that is EXTREMELY unlikely. Unlike P2, where death comes rather swiftly, in P1 the likelihood of an adherent dying is virtually none, and I'm pretty sure even if you do see someone actually, seriously, not-tag-your-it dead for deadsies, it's never YOUR adherent, or he is simply crossed out of the adherent list entirely, meaning he was not expected to survive.

As far as I know, there are only two characters that can actually DIE-DIE. I did not even know about the second one until very recently.

In all of the real cases, your adherents will get sick, but not dead. Which means they are out of the game until you can "buy them back" with a miracle or two.
You can't really completely screw yourself into a bad ending by one mistake, ever. But if the mistakes start to pile up (and they will!), you may run into simple problem of not having enough miracles on your hands to fix them all.

So you can fuck yourself in the long run, and you can very much lock yourself in a bad ending, but not by ONE mistake.

Neither does Young / Fat Vlad for Haruspex. I don't know if anyone can croke for realizies in P1.

*Roll Credits*

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