Sorry Pathologic 2 fans, but I am one of those people, the ones who say how much they like the look of Ice-Pick Lodge’s pestilent immersive sim, but wish it was more willing to meet them halfway on the challenge front. It’s not simply that Pathologic 2 is hard. I don’t mind a game kicking my ass so long as it does it quickly. But the idea of playing a game for 40 hours only to spend that whole time slowly losing is just a bit too real for my liking.
But it seems Ice-Pick Lodge’s upcoming entry, Pathologic 3, might be made with philistines like me in mind, as it basically flips the entire concept of the second game on its head. Instead of being about trying to find a cure for a plague and failing slowly. It begins from the point of failure, then lets you backtrack through time to try and fix it.
Ice-Pick Lodge detailed the third game’s new structure and narrative systems—and why they’ve implemented them—in a Steam post. “People are sometimes so afraid of making mistakes that they reload saves, read walkthroughs, watch YouTube essays or quit entirely before reaching the end,” the studio explains. “In Pathologic 3 we decided to flip that concept and look at mistakes from the other side. What if any mistake could be undone — like in the fantasies above?”
Pathologic 3’s story is framed around an interrogation of protagonist Dankovsky, in what Ice-Pick Lodge says is “the middle of the story”. At this point, everything’s going wrong for Dankovsky: “No one trusted you. People barely learned to wash their hands, yet you had to invade their private lives: impose forced quarantines, curfews, burn down entire districts, punish those who broke the decrees.”
Forced to defend himself, Dankovsky can basically construct a narrative that frames him in a better (or, this being Pathologic, even worse) light. This allows him to essentially travel back in time and try approaching things in a different way to change the outcome.
There are two key mechanics at play here. The first is a substance called “Amalgam”, which allows Dankovsky to perform these time jumps. This can be obtained by completing quests, breaking mirrors, or euthanising patients beyond saving. So it’s a resource you’ll have to work for, but once you have it, you can start altering events that have already happened. “For example, jump from Day 5 to Day 3, save a doomed character, and return to Day 5 in an altered reality.”
The other important feature is what Ice-Pick Lodge call the “Mind Map”, which, lets you see how decisions you’ve already uncovered interconnect, thereby letting you figure out how to change them to get the solution you want. “If one decision bothers you, you can go back and change only that, leaving the rest of the day untouched—provided the events aren’t logically linked.”
Ice-Pick Lodge says this system isn’t a gimmick, but “the essence of the game”, and that certain locations, endings and plot points only become available through specific causal combinations. In addition, while the game won’t force you into a fail state, don’t expect the choices you’ll have to make to be easy. “We aimed for as few obviously good or bad decisions as possible.”
It sounds fascinating, and bold in a completely different way from the first two Pathologic games. In a world where answers and solutions are so readily available, it makes sense to build a game that acknowledges that, shifting the focus to asking what you think is
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