The free demo/prologue Pathologic 3: Quarantine is out now, available for everyone on Steam to download and play. It’s not a demo in the traditional sense, of course. For returning fans, expect something the size of Pathologic 2: The Marble Nest, but different. For new players… well, this would be a heck of a place to start. Maybe go play Pathologic 2 first (or at least watch hbomberguy’s Pathologic is Genius, And Here’s Why video) and then come back when you at least know what kind of experience you are in for.
My fascination with the Pathologic series is well-documented. Back when I was the lead gaming editor over at Screen Rant I wrote I Tried CBD For Gamers & Played Pathologic 2 For A Month Straight, and on YouTube you can find my 17-part Let’s Play series Forcing Someone to Love Pathologic 2. I’ve played the original (fixed, not base) multiple times, and I’ve been looking forward to the launch of Pathologic 3 for years now. All that to say, I think I understand at least roughly 50% of what’s going on in this series at any given point, so let’s see what we can gleam from the Pathologic 3 demo.
Pathologic 3 Puts The Bachelor Under A Microscope
In Pathologic 2, players were always in the shoes of Artemy Burakh. This was a bit of a shift from Pathologic classic, which gave the choice of starting as either Artemy, Daniil Dankovsky, or, later on, Clara/Changeling. In Pathologic 3, during the majority of the game you are only controlling the Bachelor (that’s Daniil, for the uninitiated) but, during conversations, perspective suddenly shifts. You aren’t just controlling Daniil’s responses, but the responses of the person he’s talking to.
This is an excellent method for allowing players to really peel back the layers of Daniil’s personality. Not only do you get to choose from all of the arrogant, ignorant things the Bachelor is thinking, but you also get to see how those responses come off to everyone around him. Ice-Pick Lodge has found a way to force players to pay even more attention to the dialog in Pathologic 3 by doing this, as every chosen line of dialog from either side of the conversation might set the player down a path they cannot come back from. It’s excellent stuff.
Doctor Daniil Dankovsky Diagnoses Dumbly
In Pathologic 3, sick patients at the hospital must be diagnosed by the Bachelor before they can be treated. You aren’t Artemy any more, after all, so you won’t be cutting up any bodies like in Pathologic 2. Instead, players must first speak with the patient and get their medical history, then examine different parts of their body. Afterwards, you are presented with a list of possible symptoms and the corresponding diseases, and must determine what exactly is wrong to the best of your (read: Daniil’s) ability.
This is another fantastic method Pathologic 3 uses to make you pay attention. Every body part you examine costs time, and the assumptions you make at first might not be correct. Is that yellowing of the skin on this man’s leg, or does it just look that way because he works at a dye factory? Are those veins infected, or has the blood just pooled in the legs because the patient stands guard for a living?
Like always, time is always lacking in Pathologic 3. If a man tells you he doesn’t drink, do you simply put that on his chart? Do you believe him and move on to the next patient, or do you take the time to investigate his home? Is one man’s health worth the hours you could spend working on a cure for the entire town? These are the decisions that made Pathologic and Pathologic 2 so memorable, and that feeling returns in Quarantine 100%.
What Pathologic 3 Changes From Pathologic 2
In Pathologic 3, Daniil has a few interesting abilities that are completely new to the franchise. One is a metronome-like device with the power to dispel plague shadows (more on that later) and the other is the ability to “focus” and highlight things in the environment. At first this might sound like basic video game detective vision nonsense, and it partially is, but it also provides an interesting opportunity for exposition. Looking at certain items in this view causes words to appear around them, descriptors that explain what Daniil’s thoughts are when he looks at them.
This comes in handy during both home and medical observations, as once Daniil has Concentrated on something (Concentration is Pathologic 3’s word for Batman vision) he can then ask people about it, if relevant. It also helps to give insight on why players can no longer drink from water fountains, save their game at clocks, or rummage through trash cans like Artemy did. Daniil just sees the world differently.
The Town-on-Gorkhon in Pathologic 3 is very similar to how it was presented in Pathologic 2, but the way you explore it has changed. Players no longer have access to an entire open map at all times. Instead, the town is split into districts (which it was already) and you can only explore the district you are currently in. When moving between districts, a map screen opens and you must select the location you want to travel to. Then a red line draws your path until you either A) enter the area you selected, or B) enter an infected or dangerous district.
Infected districts in Pathologic 3 function basically the same as they always have – avoid the plague tornados, don’t let the infected people get close, try not to pay attention to the horrors around you. The introduction of the metronome allows Daniil to navigate these areas in a much more manageable way than Artemy did, although the linearity of each infected area makes getting through them a fairly simple process already. Most of the town’s districts are unavailable in the demo, so hopefully there will be less of this linearity in the final release.
The dangerous districts, on the other hand, are much more interesting. These are the parts of town that have descended into chaos and rioting. Pointing a gun at an approaching thug will cause them to put up their hands and back away, allowing Daniil a chance to escape. However, if you do this to the same person too many times they might assume you are out of ammo and rush you anyway. If Daniil pulls the trigger and actually shoots the attacker, a number of interesting things happen.
Apathy and Mania in Pathologic 3: Balancing Mental States
There are many actions which affect Daniil’s mental state in Pathologic 3. These are represented by their extremes, Mania and Apathy, and if Dankovsky’s mind moves too far in either direction he will become uncontrollable. Becoming too apathetic will prevent you from being able to do your job, and becoming too manic will prevent you from making rational decisions. Daniil can’t even talk to people if his apathy level is too high.
Certain actions and events, like making a difficult decision, being insulted, or killing another human, can drastically change your mental state at a moment’s notice. Drugs can counteract this, but only temporarily. The previous two sentences can also be applied to Pathologic 3. Items such as Morphine increase Apathy, while things like Camphor and Tobacco increase Mania. There are no items which reduce either mental state.
When Daniil kills a person on the street with a gun in Pathologic 3, the screen buzzes and snaps back into place like its AV cord was jiggled. The body is gone. Daniil doesn’t see it any more, it simply doesn’t exist to him. His mind has wiped it out completely. Nothing is left but a deep feeling of apathy.
What Do Story Mean Tell Confuse Pathologic 3 Help
Can a demo have spoilers? Maybe. If you haven’t gotten to the ending of Pathologic 3: Quarantine yet – and you are actually going to play it, not just read about it – you may want to skip this section. Or maybe not. I’m not your boss, and I’m not actually going to spoil anything because none of us Pathologic fans pretend to really know what’s going on all the time. Much like I discussed a few weeks ago with our column on Twin Peaks and Link’s Awakening, Pathologic is interpretive.
Towards the end of Pathologic 3: Quarantine, Daniil is asked to both repeal and possibly enact a series of different decrees in order to prevent the disease from spreading while also keeping the town from rioting. I spent an agonizingly long amount of time deciding what series of decrees, in the right order, would propagate the best results. What’s really interesting is that you aren’t just changing today’s decrees; you can change what happened the day before, or the day before that.
Once the decision is made, the world shifts. I’m still in the same location, but the situation has changed. The people in the room are different, because this is the timeline that was borne from my new decrees, my decisions. Daniil can tell the difference, but not very many others can. Pathologic 3: Quarantine’s ending tells players that they were always right: in Pathologic, there is never enough time. However, the Bachelor can utilize this.
In Pathologic 2, Artemy Burakh saved his game by finding clocks. At the end of the Pathologic 3 demo, Daniil Dankovsky uses these clocks to travel back in time. The actual implications of this, and how interconnected all the game systems will be, remains to be seen. However, I think anyone familiar with Ice-Pick Lodge should feel rather confident that the developers are doing exactly what you’d want them to with this new entry in the series.
Additional Pathologic 3: Quarantine Secrets & Details I Noticed (Uncategorized)
There is a lot of information hidden in Pathologic 3: Quarantine. Here is a list of all the small things I noticed that will (I hope) assist in painting a larger picture of the final game. Some of these are related to story events, some are related to the larger Pathologic lore, and some are just weird things that I saw.
- Interacting with any water basin with a mirror will cause Daniil to purposefully break that mirror.
- After speaking to Artemy, Clara, and the Changeling, you get a Steam achievement called “Talk to ALL the other protagonists.”
- Speaking of Steam achievements, I noticed one Twin Peaks reference in Pathologic 3‘s Steam achievements. Not sure if there’s more yet, but you can click that link to see if the Reddit thread I started has had any updates.
- Clara/Changeling seems to have knowledge of all of the events of Pathologic 2, but Daniil does not.
- You get to see scenes in the big city Daniil is from, including an impressive and rather imposing set-piece that sets the tone about as well as Artemy’s giant bull vision did.
- Daniil refuses to raise his weapon unless he is in an area with enemies. This seems like something that will be subverted at some point.
- Talking to Eva seems to have some sort of sedative or meditative effect – time passes quicker than it should when you are talking to her.
- Pathologic 3 on Steam offers both keyboard+mouse and controller support. I began playing with a controller. About an hour into the game, suddenly moving the left thumbstick began controlling my PC’s audio levels out of nowhere. It was very disconcerting and at first I thought it was some kind of Ice-Pick Lodge sanity effect. It was not, and I finished out my playthrough on keyboard+mouse.
- I had to do a good bit of graphics/setting tweaking to get the game running in a stable, non-slideshow fashion. This also felt like some sort of Ice-Pick Lodge-esque sanity effect, especially after this same PC was running Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 with no issues.
- I fundamentally did not understand the on-screen UI meter at any given point and at this point I am afraid to ask.
- Daniil has a boat in his house that is identical to the boat the kids were playing with outside (you’ll know what I mean when you get there). Given how important children are in the Pathologic universe, this seems important.
- I talked earlier about how Daniil doesn’t rummage through trash cans or drink at spigots. Instead, he kicks them. I think doing this slightly raises Mania? Unclear at the moment, need more experimentation.
- Daniil has multiple devices revolving around creating medicines in his office, but they are unavailable in the demo.
- Locations like the Train Station, the Polyhedron, and most of the Town’s zones are unavailable in the demo. That being said, you do see the Polyhedron in the distance during certain points.
- There is a curious lack of Mark Immortel and/or any giant talking rats. Perhaps I have missed them.
Pathologic fans: We are so back.
THIS WEEK’S RECOMMENDED MEDIA:
- We were featured in a Redfin article! Check it out here: 18 Unique Things to Do in Savannah, GA: A Local’s Guide | Redfin. As a lifelong lover of this city I was happy to provide my own thoughts, and I can confirm that all the other recommendations listed are pretty great as well!
- [READ] Valnet Blues: How Online P*** Pioneer Hassan Youssef Built a Digital Media ‘Sweatshop’ by Umberto Gonzalez for TheWrap.
- [READ] The Half-Life Delusion by Matthew Weise for Recap.
- [READ] We ran the wrong headline about Trump firing the FTC commissioners by Sarah Jeong for The Verge.
- [WATCH] Heretic by Beck/Woods, Shiny Penny Productions, and Catchlight Studios on HBO Max.
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