Pathologic 3: Quarantine preview — He who does not gain time loses it

The Bachelor, Daniil Dankovsky, has failed to save the town of Gorkhon from the Sand Pest. Of the 25,000 who lived in the Steppe town, only 417 survived. The immortal man, a promising example of The Bachelor’s war against death, perished in the plague. A miracle of human ingenuity done in by the mundane. But with one miracle could come more. Like the patching of fabric, time itself can be manipulated to reach a more desirable outcome. There will still be death, and a lot of it, but if Dankovsky can be in more places than one, maybe he can save the town. Or meet his own end in the process.

Pathologic 1 & 2 Review — To suffer is to know

Three healers arrived in town today. The Bachelor Daniil Dankovsky, who meets with an immortal man to defeat death. The Haruspex Artemy Burakh, returning home at the behest of a dire letter from his father. And finally, the Changeling Clara, who knows all. You can take on the role of

GamingTrendDavid Flynn

I certainly didn’t expect the announcement of Pathologic 3. Pathologic 2 took a massive amount of effort and time to create, and even then only featured one of the original game’s three playable characters. The Bachelor’s route was planned as DLC and, long story short, that campaign is now its own game. GamingTrend was sent the demo for that game, Pathologic 3: Quarantine, early, so here’s what we thought of it.

The demo begins with Daniil in the capital, about to be interrogated with regards to what happened in Gorkhon.  During the interrogation, you suddenly switch points of view and are now the one asking the questions. This happens a few times in the demo and it makes for some really interesting scenes. It used to convey Dankovsky’s madness, cruelty, or poor understanding of Latin without trapping the player in certain dialogue options. I’m the kind of person who’s always nice in games because being mean makes me feel bad, so it’s a good way to get across his character.

The majority of this demo will see you diagnosing three patients, all infected with the Sand Pest but also another illness that’s somehow holding the plague at bay for a time. To do this, and hopefully make a vaccine against the Pest, you need to interview them, examine them, then make a conclusion. Patients might not be so forthcoming with their symptoms, however, so you may need to make the trek to their home, through riots and plague, to properly assess them. As you reckon their symptoms, you’ll check off or cross them out in your notebook, with the list of possible illnesses narrowing down. Once you choose a diagnosis, you’re locked in on that patient for the rest of the day. Once every patient has been diagnosed, the only way to tell if you were right is to wait until tomorrow and see if the death toll is lower than usual. These vaccines will only work for the day, as the Sand Pest is constantly mutating, so you have to save as many people as possible in the moment while also working towards a larger solution.

I really like this gameplay style. Artemy had surgery as his mechanic, but this feels a lot more involved and complicated. Conversely, The Bachelor is much less of a people person, and there’s not many NPCs to talk to or even Bound to protect, as far as I’m aware. You can certainly care about the people you’re diagnosing, but at the end of the day they’re a means to an end. In all likelihood, they’ll probably be dead by morning regardless.

In addition to taking care of your patients, you’ll also need to take care of yourself. Daniil does have a health bar, but more of a problem is his mental state. In the menu and at the top of the screen, there’s a meter that represents his current state, with one side representing mania and the other apathy. You don’t want to lean too far into one or the other, but the demo has you constantly creeping towards apathy, and you need to use drugs, kick trash cans, and take moments for yourself to swing it back around. If your apathy gets too high, you won’t be able to talk to any NPCs. Let it reach the end of the scale and The Bachelor will end his own life right then and there. These games get very dark, but I feel like that’s a new level, especially since you have to watch the animation play out from a first person perspective. I’ll always respect artistic intent, but I do hope the final game has some way to disable this animation or skip it because it can be really disturbing. 

I saw this animation several times, because combat has been made even more difficult in conjunction with this mental system. All the usual hallmarks are still there, you’ll take quite a while to load a single bullet into your revolver, let alone fill the chamber, and enemies can kill you in just a few hits. You can intimidate them for a moment by pointing your gun at them, even if it’s not loaded, but that’ll only work a few times and they’ll chase you relentlessly. You need to think twice before killing anyone, however, not just for the morality but also for Daniil’s mental state. Ending a life will send him plunging towards apathy, and we don’t need to talk about what happens when he gets too apathetic again. 

I did find the combat section in the demo to be a bit too oppressive, though that could be because I messed up somewhere in the lead up to it. These games are always balancing acts, and Pathologic 3 looks to be way more complicated than the rest. There were mechanics I simply did not comprehend, such as Time. Apparently you can take time from various sources, though I have no idea what this does yet or why you need it. It seems like you play the game non-linearly, the end of the demo had me moving from day 5 to day 3, but I’m unsure if Time as a resource is needed for this.  They did a great job of tutorialzing the diagnosis process, but I think this part needs some work.

Fans may notice that the visuals have improved over 2, though there are certainly still some imperfections here and there. At the very least, there’s upscaling options so the game can run at decent framerates. It helps that Pathologic 3 isn’t open world. Instead of exploring, you’ll walk to the exit of a district, then choose a destination from the map. That’s not to say there’s no walking around in real-time, as encountering an infected or unstable district on your route will require you to walk through it manually. We’ve already discussed the more violent areas, but encountering plague will require you to carefully navigate the streets, using a device to temporarily open up paths. I never came close to becoming infected, if that’s even possible in this demo, but these walks are still very tense and make you feel incredibly cruel by avoiding desperate, infected people like, well, the plague. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this demo. It feels much more polished than the other games, even if the voice acting is still pretty rough and some mechanics need better explanations. I didn’t feel constantly exhausted like I did in 2, and more like everything was a puzzle to be solved given enough thought or trial and error. It’s interesting how Ice-Pick Lodge can make the same time, place, and situation feel vastly different simply through a change in perspective, and I’m really looking forward to the full game.