Verylittlefishes
Sacro Bosco
I died 150 times already before reaching day 4 and this shit is running on 15FPS on my top PC.
End of Day 9: Notkin not infected.
Day 10:
Good job. But then, I wasn't expecting it to be that hard if you know what you are doing. A large part of the challenge the first time through is not knowing the game mechanics, and having to figure stuff out as you go. And spending a lot of time on pointless activities, because you don't know what is important*.0 deaths. Saved everyone*.
It wasn't even that hard. Maybe I got lucky rolls. I also knew what to expect this time and how to prepare.
I've finished the original 3 years ago and don't remember it having so many obtrusive theather elements as you say. Maybe the remake went overboard.Just clawed my way through to the finish line... Many people died...
Couple of random thoughts on the game:
I found speaking to major NPCs was often a bit disjointed in terms of presentation- you initiaite dialogue and the NPC is delivering VO of a subtitled line yet the actual conversation you're partaking in is completely different. It's offputting to say the least and an odd choice.
I’d definitely do a lot better on a second playthrough now I have a better grasp of the mechanics. Honestly, I think my main takeaway from this game is that I really wish someone would make a game like this but without the theater trappings, just keep it grounded - the atmosphere was really great but I truly hated being constantly pulled out of the experience through some of the dialogue.For me at least, it's not the game's difficulty that I think stops people getting into it but the whole theatre trappings and frequent fourth wall breaking. Honestly, at times, when I was getting repeatedly killed in a tough spot and having to repeat a section of gameplay, I could have done without Mark Immortel's paragraphs of rambling about nothing in particular. It's not limited to him though, even some of my characters responses seemed fourth wall breaking, add in the whole mythology of the Kin (oh, hey, here's some half naked chicks and various weird creatures we're not really gonna explain till the eleventh hour). Likewise, the Foreman dude and Aspita? can be a bit laborious to talk to - I got the gist most of the time, but riddles, interwoven with the "everyone is an actor" fourth wall schtick just really kept pulling me out of the experience; it's so rare that you'd get anything approaching a straight answer that I honestly found conversations both tricky & irritating to follow at times.
I found trying to learn about lore, characters and town was at odds with the "actor" stuff, on the one hand, the game is trying to raise the stakes through the plague, on the other, Artemy magically revives upon death, which the game further blurs by insinuating that when one Artemy dies, another steps in. Really felt this undermined attempts to up the ante, with the town's inhabitants' lives apparently on the line, while Immortel's exposition & Artemy #2's appearances (as a separate interactable NPC) undermine any dramatic tension in the story (or at least distracted from it, replacing it with confusion) as it's at all least partially fake? Add in the tradgedians & plague doctor orderlies and yeah, the whole thing's weird (not in a good way, in a riddle that never gets explained way), like the game & story are trying to head in two opposite directions.
But I still enjoyed the game quite a lot. At a certain point you start to get a better feel for the game systems and sort of hit your survival stride, you get a handle on the day to day mechanics and all seems well... Up until Day 10 at least. I did not like that foreknowledge pretty much gates the final days of the game. I was doing pretty well up until Day 10, then it felt like hitting a brick wall; food was near non-existent, the plague was all over the place and most army soldiers were grouped up which made it difficult to pick one off and swipe a ration. Essentially, I was in a inescapable hunger-induced death spiral and I had to go back like to a save 2 days prior in order to formulate a strategy to overcome Day 10; which involved hoarding food.
Ending convo with Lara was particularly bleak - I’d busted my arse trying to keep her alive after she got infected, then she’s just stood on that structure with a tragedian or two: “Oh hey, I heard you adopted some kids”. My character’s response: “they’re dead, I don’t want to talk about it.” And that was that, just damn... Murky only died cause she was on the opposite side of the map and I couldn’t physically drag myself over there in time without croaking it and Sticky died to bad RNG.
I also didn't like discovering that fire, either from a flamethrower trooper or an arsonist, will completely eliminate the plague from the player character. Surviving an arsonists thrown molotov is relatively easy, and the small amount of HP damage you take in exchange for avoiding a potentially gamelong struggle pretty much trivialises the plague's threat to the player, so long as one of these fire sources is accessible.
Played a snippet of Marble Nest - is this thing a copy/paste of the beta thingy from the Kickstarter? Notably, I found the Bachelor’s dialogue and interactions there seem much more… human legible than some of the conversations that Artemy got into, shame he doesn’t have a full campaign here.
https://nationworldnews.com/video-games-in-2021-with-ice-pick-lodge-game-world-observer/No news, just a reminder that in May in will be 3 full years since the Haruspex' campaign release.
Uh... "Donation" is supposed to be Dana Kirilenko. Auto-translation errors or something.What are you going to strategically focus on in 2022?
...
Donation, We P. planning to work hard onEthological 2: Bachelor, There are many things to do.
we are planning to release Franz On Android and iOS in 2022.
Ice-Pick Lodge have struck a deal with an investor called Magnifier. Magnifier's managing director says that "they see a huge potential in Pathologic's universe".
2024 is the year of Daniil Dankovsky.
Friends.
The troops of the country in which we live, whose history and culture we respect and love, have started fighting in Ukraine, where our friends and colleagues live, with whom we have worked together for these years.
Our studio, "Ice-Pick Lodge", has always stayed out of politics. We cherished the fact that our studio produces Russian games, makes a contribution to the Russian culture, helps the reputation of Russia, gives someone a reason to be proud that interesting and worthy works are being created on this land. Now we see that a crime is being committed on our behalf.
This is not only a declaration of our position, but first of all an appeal to our Ukrainian friends - five of whom participated in the creation of our games. We have never voted for this Government and its political course. We have never supported and do not support its illegal and bloody actions. Thank you to those who believe in our conscience and our compassion.
Be strong. Let's hope for the peace talks to succeed. This nightmare should be over soon.
Nikolai Dybowski, Airat Zakhirov, Sophia Bodrova, Vitaliy Aleksashin, Elena Alt, Dana Kirilenko, Nikolai Ponomaryov, Maksim Kolosov.