After a random google search on Pathologic, I stumbled across a surprising screenshot:

http://www.jeuxvideo.com/screenshots/im ... 35_032.htm

This is from an old preview, claiming that the status pictures of the characters would change according to their actual state. It looks like an earlier status screen, since the bars are much more basic. There's even bars for stealth.

Imagine what that would have been like. You start the Haruspicus scenario, he gets into a knife fight, you're heavily injured and told you're bleeding heavily. And when you check your status screen, you see that. You'd be running for bandages! But if you know the game, you know you don't bleed, and that you can save bandages for treating... starvation... injuries . That could have added so much more pressure than a bunch of bars ever could.
They must have included disease stages as well. When Burakh decides to hug some diseased so he can shock Aglaja by claiming the panacea didn't work, it's obvious. Aglaja comments on your godawful dying look, reminding you how the status picture does nothing to make you feel terminally ill.

I can see why they scrapped it. Wouldn't they need extra pictures for stages like "very sick, low health", and "not sick, half health", "slightly sick, half health"? If you took health damage from starvation, you couldn't show "low health"-pictures with blood gushing out of your character's mouth. Or worse, what would it look like if you were very sick, but at full health?


I'm still very curious how far they would have taken that, and how far it was finished, what the different stages were, and what Daniel's and Klara's pictures looked like.
Do you know if these pictures are still available somewhere, if there are more screenshots, or if they are even present in the game and just not used? I'd like to access those portrait pics in the game files anyway, would be nice if someone could point me in the right direction.

What do you think about this? Or do you know about other things that were planned or made, but not put in the game? Are there more early screenshots to look at?

I would also love to see any content that didn't make it into the game! The stories behind the development of Pathologic have been nothing but interesting so far.

In one of the interviews Nikolai Dybowski (the mastermind of IPL) said they decided not to include images of sick/injured characters, because for the portraits they used photos of the real people, and it would be a bad sign to show them as sick or injured.

Sounds superstitious, but IPL games have always been connected with a lot of mysticism.

Didn't expect that, very interesting. Sounds like something the people from the town would say in a cryptic language . Which just shows how IPL's beliefs rubbed off on their work. Is that interview on their site?

Although I wonder why they had it already finished, implemented and presented to the press before they changed their mind. Or if Dybowski himself had second thoughts. I could never find a picture of all of IPL, but there was one of him, and it looks like he lent his own face to Burakh. Not sure on this, you guys probably know better. So they zombie-fied at least him for this feature.
It's fun imagining if out of all three, it was Daniel's actor totally fighting against having his pictures used that way . By the way, who is he? And who is Klara in real life?

Unfortunately, no, that interview is not on their site, and I can't find the source now. If you can read Russian, here are the scans of a more recent one, where the interviewer quotes him on that.

Yes, Burakh is Dybowski and Daniel is also one of the devs. In this thread Dybowski (NorD) says that the devs lent their faces to the main characters, because they didn't want virtual deaths and killings to affect other people. He never said anything about Klara though. All in all, they are still very secretive about whose photos they used in the game, even for secondary characters. Some of those people are actors of a small theater, some have nothing to do with acting or game industry at all.

http://vk.com/id1990005 - this is Klara, for example

You can browse game .vfs files with extractor/plugin mentioned here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=5302
However, I extracted some of them and didn't find any extra character photos so the devs probably didn't include them at all.

Also, I have always wanted to ask whether the Stamantin twins photos are pictures of one person making different poses or of two actual twins. It seems silly, but you never know with Ice-Pick Lodge.

As far as I know, it's one person.

Thanks for the reply. Come to think of it, I suspected the Stamantins to be one schizophrenic person for some reason until I saw them together somewhere in the game.

So, just coming back to let you know I appreciate your replies and didnt forget about it.
I'm stuck in a small remote town right now, so when the internet goes down for weeks, nobody notices or cares enough to get it fixed . Also, you'll think they're talking in your language, but you can hardly figure out what they're saying. Sounds familiar?

Seeing what went on behind the scenes isn't often so interesting as it is here. Makes you wonder what IPL thinks about the first Mortal Kombat Can't read much of it yet. But that's a nice incentive to get on with learning russian, thanks

I'm not into hurting people, but I actually think that picture of Nikolai is kind of attractive. His face is very handsome and expressive!

I wonder where the developers' superstition against "injured" photos originated. Maybe it's not a superstitious thing at all but an adherence to theater traditions of some sort. Unlike in films, theater actors can't normally just change their appearance to reflect injury without heavy makeup dressing between scenes.