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if you have time to answer another question.... since I found out about Pathologic I have been totally engrossed with the atmosphere of the game. Its writing, specific color palette, music and overall story, they all combine perfectly (in my opinion) to form a complete experience.
What I am wondering is did you have specific things that inspired any parts of the game (writng, color palette, plague, etc) or the game itself as a whole? I'm thinking things like: books, films, art pieces/installations, music/sound pieces, dreams, experiences or whatever else you can think of. Or maybe nothing!? Ha ha....
Well... This is a long story. Actually the answer is "none" - which means that there was no book or song which
suddenly made me to see the situation and world of Pathologic. But not exacty so.
Pathologic (in Russian it is called "Pestilence (utopia)") burst out of my "chamber theatrical experiment" named "The Rebellion".
"The Rebellion" was a result of a long evolution of my experiments on D&D sessions. I fell in love with D&D when I was 15 years old - The Iron Curtain fell just a year-or-two ago, so we knew nothing like this before! It was a perfect form for all those dreamers who tried to role-play their invented worlds in a real life. I gathered a company of my old friends and became a "dungeon master". But we couldn't buy any designed modules (thank God for it
), so I had to invent them myself. I was brought up in a family of theater critics, so since my childhood I spend a lot of time in this environment; my parents worked with the best theater directors in Soviet Union helping them to pull their great performances through the buhrstone of official censorship. So I knew how a theater director works to make a masterpiece.
Very soon I understood that i'm sick of rolling dices and counting whether "a +7 THACO beats a beast with AC 6, if a spell with (-1) etc". I excluded dices from my games and when I was 17, our "sessions" turnes into full-grown chamber plays with a really serous problematic and high requirements to artistic role playing of the character. I called these sessions "nocturnes", because we usually played a short situation in a night.
"The Rebellion" was our last game. It burst out of my passionate reflections about the real possibility of an "ideal country" with an ideal state (a very Russian theme, you know...
). Studying at historical faculty, I searched for such examples, I was analyzing the reasons of eternal failing of such attempts - to create a fine country with noble, honest and sincere rulers which were also artists (forget Nero) and poets! Wilder's "Ides of March" made a great impression on me.
So "The Rebellion" was performing a cosy kingdom with a brilliant ruler at the helm. He wins a terrible war by a miracle, repelling the aggression of terrible enemy; then he restores the country, building towns, creating universities and really recourseful structure of officials. He is a worker and an artist and he is really excited about everything goes so well and his country is turning into a real gem (or rare tree). People love him, but he does his best to stay sane and rejects any attempts to worship him. So, he succesfully walks on the razor edge. Suddenly he is told that a rebellion emerges in a far away town.
He feels insulted! He doesn't understand,
why? What the hell do they want?
Being a noble man, before equipping a punitive expedition, he decides to sort it out. He wants to understand. So he sends a party of 5 very different people (nobles, officials and analytics) who must examiine the situation and make their verdict. He says that their desicion will be his decision. So they travel through the country, in the meantime discovering what innovations that young king Alexander has implemented. During this way they have to change their point of view several times, so that on arrival they should hesitate about lots of things...
This was the most complicated of my games. I was also very excited about the plot - like Alexander, I felt that this is the first time I created a real composition! But my "party" didn't share my feelings )). They had no scholarship, being technicians - and I required some "authentic" behavior - every day (this very game was divided into 15 sessions) thay had to solve the matters of life and death, playing people invested with absolute power. So I started to prepare tons of materials for each session to help them. I prepared some visuals, artistic and musical references, I wrote some texts and "letters" from capital they had to receive each day. I kepy it all on my hard drive to show them it all on the monitor during the session.
Very soon I understood that:
1) I don't need the incompetent party any more, addressing to some "ideal player" while working
2) my collection of references looks looks very much like a computer game...
So this was the way to Pathologic. Suddenly I
saw it like a "what should it be instead". "The Rebellion" was my invention, a product of my mind. "Pathologic" was something
real and separate to me.
Did I answer your question? )