#pathologic 3

[qff-44]

Маленькая помощница

[guygonefearfishing]

Artemy burakh

Number one best character trait you can give to any character is profound kindness. Number two is huge bitch. Number 3 is dumb of ass. They should all be the same person.

[eb0nydeath]

mental illness simulator Finallly

[the-astronome]

I really got struck by a persistent narrative of the Bachelor being “broken into pieces” which we saw in the demo. The Inspector tells him several times that it feels like he talked to several different Bachelors on a span of two hours, he says that Dankovsky’s personality seems to be split. He can also say that he only wants to help Daniil to be one single entity again.

If you, playing as the Bachelor, break a mirror, one of the possible voice lines is “There was one big Dankovsky. Now there are many smaller ones.” (my own translation from Russian, haven’t played the demo in English).

One of the loading screens (it’s also a promo art as far as I remember) literally shows Bachelor’s reflection in a shattered mirror.

Do you remember what Mark Immortell said about his view on immortality in P2? He said immortality is achieved through splitting oneself into separate beings, i.e. if the body and personality do not exist, then it is possible to overcome death.

So, are we witnessing the consequences of Dankovsky’s attempt to achieve such kind of immortality..?

[permian-tropos]

so today i saw the tweet above and i’m opening with that because it made me want to stop being quiet about this issue

Pathologic 3 has been (perhaps obviously, and I’m a fool for not noticing) using AI generated art

this is the tweet I saw that called attention to it:

yes the man has too many fingers if you look closer, what a fucking frustrating thing to miss when I was peering at it wondering if it was lore, wondering who he was supposed to be—Daniil even comments about the man in the poster

I have heard IPL has had financial trouble partly caused by Nikolay Dybowsky, and that after he left bc he’s a groomer and domestic abuser who tried to kidnap his son from the kid’s mother, and finally got into legal trouble for that, I assumed they were going to be struggling a bit. But they also have to put something out for the fanbase to drum up interest which leads to maybe cutting corners.

Actually, I’d heard that AI art was used in one of Dybowsky’s smaller projects, Franz, I didn’t play it myself bc frankly what I heard of it sounded like it was playing as an abuser and justifying your actions, and not in a way that critiques abuse, but perhaps just a self-indulgence for the dev. If it had AI art that meant it was lazy too.

When he left I hoped that the artistic laziness would maybe leave with him too. IPL always presented themselves as caring a lot about art, and Pathologic is very much about the fact art is a connection between creator and audience.

Pathologic draws from the special verisimilitude of the theater; it’s obvious that anything happening on a stage isn’t real, but it feels a certain kind of emotionally real because it’s being performed live, because there is pressure on the performers to get it right. Cleverly, Pathologic flips this dynamic on its head by making a game where you are the actor and the story feels more real because of the pressure you feel to perform it right.

Which is exactly why AI art is so destructive to the message of the game. If the stage isn’t deliberately crafted, there is no meaningful interplay between creator and player. It’s just reduced to another commodity to Consume, an experience being sold to you. I think I can speak for a lot of the fandom when I say that Pathologic felt special and I stuck with it all these years because it managed to be much more than a product and commodity. We crave real art.

I’m so disappointed that this is the direction IPL is going after finally getting rid of a really toxic presence in the studio. They had a chance to revitalize this game and it feels like they’re wasting it if they’re generating art assets (and who knows what else!) with a machine.

[guygonefearfishing]

Hohohooooo you already know who it is...!!!!

[inkedberries]

what's up with that mr. little amirite?

[pathologicalshitposter]

this is how Quarantine goes, right?

[erlkonigstochter]

Now that I’ve played some of the Pathologic 3 demo and know Daniil often kicks and hits things to relieve stress, I am 100% assuming that all those slamming garbage bin noises that startled the shit out of me in Pathologic 2 were him. He was just one street over having a tantrum while Artemy limped around looking for herbs and trying not to get stabbed again.

[pseudoquiddity]

Cool to me that in P3, all the patients you diagnose are interesting to talk to and are instantly sympathetic. Filat especially, despite the fact that it's implied saving his life gives him the time to rile up townies who then go and light fire to the Stillwater. But this makes sense because we dedicate so much time to sketching out a profile for him. At his core he's someone who views all people as equal and we can see how someone who will argue with a friend against racism will also argue with his Doctor about the freedom of all people under quarantine. We know that he's impoverished and we also see how it has both led him to this conclusion (poverty is inequality, the Kin are unequally poor) and led him to be the person who guards the Termitary and keeps the Kin inside (he needs food, not just for himself). But also he lets people slip out when he can. Which is kind but also a major contamination issue.

He just comes off instantly as a Real Guy, with a strong belief that exists in conflict with his environment, whereas I don't think literally any NPC in the Haruspex's route ever felt "real." They were all deeply representative of concepts and split into two groups - Kin and Townies, and those two groups were split into other smaller groups, but still they were more symbols than people.

I know people harp on Daniil for stereotyping and categorizing, and sure he does that to an extent, he's his own man with his own intense biases and feelings, but it's pretty key to his outlook on life and ideology that he sees people as individuals. It's clear to me that, as the natural contrary to Daniil, Artemy sees people as cultures, as "types of groups" influenced by environment and circumstance, all of them worthy of life but regardless, all of them a mass (partially inspired by the two conflicting cultures in Artemy). Now Daniil can get to know a man, really get to know him, then see him later at his own ambush and think: I understand what reasonable and emotional line of thinking got you to this place and I fucking hate you for exercising your freedom in this way.

[guygonefearfishing]

Can I please be known as the pathologic mPreg guy? Please please pelas ple pleaseeeeeeeee

[rsmrnn]

Conversations

[popoludniowy-kawior]

i love pathologic 3 quarantine. i need more

[ultra-baklan-the-ovosh]

pathologic 3 bachelor route situation is crazy

[likopinina]

the apathy-psychosis meter teased for pathologic 3 bears the implication that while the bachelor's mental health is dwindling rapidly, artemy is just... okay. he kills three people, has a dream about it, wakes up and goes about his day. dankovsky is fighting the horrors, artemy is getting a really good deal for a smoked fish at a playground

[darcyq0]

The exhibit of a healers trio