First of all: I recognize that anyone on this forum is likely to be very biased in favor of Pathologic, but I'm figuring that the greater knowledge of the game everyone here is likely to have will hopefully outweigh that.

I just got The Void from Steam a couple weeks ago, and while I haven't played it a whole lot yet (maybe about 10 hours) I'm finding it very interesting, and Pathologic sounds interesting as well, from what I've heard. At first I thought it wasn't going to be readily available to me in the USA, but then I found out that it's on Direct2Drive at a pretty decent price.

So a few questions: just how terrible IS the English translation? I've heard very mixed things. Is it bad in a way that will just make the dialogue seem strange and goofy, or is it bad in a way that will actually hamper understanding of the story and events?

How "scary" is it? I get pretty immersed in games, especially games with a first-person view and this has pretty much made it impossible for me to play a lot of horror games. No Resident Evil or Silent Hill for me, and something like F.E.A.R. is right out as is, sadly, Bioshock. The Void isn't too bad in this respect (at least so far) due to the surreality of the setting.

How does it run on newer machines? I saw a thread in here about problems on dual-cores. I have a quad-core machine. Is that going to be problematic?

Annnd... I think that's all the questions I have for now. I appreciate any feedback anyone can give me. Thanks!

First of all, there exists wonderful Pathologic's "Let's Play" thread on SomethingAwful: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... genumber=1
Have fun:)

Translation varies in quality. The important thing one should understand is that there are several distinct levels of translation in the game. Artemiy Burakh (the second character) was done by a translator we know. I heard he lives in English-speaking country, so his work was probably quite good. He did a few days of Dankovsky (the 1st charcter) and some jornal entries too. I am sure that the fifth day is his work.
The rest was passed on to two agencies. As you probably understand, the agencies that translate things like washing machine manuals and legal documents may or may not be able to translate literature properly. One of the agencies did a job of average quality for Dankovsky's scenario. Nothing especially impressive, and besides there were some funny features like "salvage" instead of "salvation", but all in all, text was understandable (if you read carefully).
However, what another agency did on Klara's scenario was often unintelligible. Play at your own risk.

One more disadvantage of such cheap translation turned out to be the difference in names. Many people and places in game have names with an obvious meaning: "Seine", "Mark Immortal", "Abbatoirs", "Tanner's District". They got several different translations (foreman/elder, Abbatoirs/slaughterhouses, Apiary/Termitary, Tanners/Leather). Names that were not translated got several different transliterations (Catherina - Katerina - Catherine; George - Georgiy). Now, I tried to fix this as much as I could during the testing, but the mistakes were far too numerous. The best I could do was making a glossary for German translators, who were very confused by our English translation and couldn't understand many things.

Sample translations:
Dankovsky, day 2: day 7: Burakh, day 4: Klara, day 1: day 3:

Well, if I decide I want to play the game, I don't want to spoil it by reading/watching a Let's Play of it. I've already spoiled myself a bit more than I should have on The Void in reading reviews before I bought it and perusing the forums here since then.

Thanks for the samples of text, though. Most of it makes sense, but some of Klara's is definitely... odd, to say the least. Hmm, I'll have to give this more thought. Or maybe I'll just wait until the translation project is complete or it is clear it never will be. It's not as if I don't have many other games, including The Void, to play in the meantime.

Hmm, those Klara translations aren't as bad as I was expecting. In fact, it really makes me want to play Pathologic again - for the third time

Sure, the translations are not bad. At times.

LMAO

I only played the Bachelor scenario and a bit of the Haruspex's scenario, and while the translation could be tiring. There are various grammatical errors, some sentences lacking sense, inconsistencies, the feeling that something got cut out (I remember there was a day or two in the Bachelor's scenario where instead of the usual quest descriptions there were only simple one-sentence summaries). However, all these did not prevent me from enjoying the game, and I think I managed to understand most of what was going on. (At least what was possible to understand from only one scenario).

I know what you mean about the scariness, and I think you're pretty safe. I played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of Earth and while I loved the game, for me each session with is was usually a run from one checkpoint to the next, forcing myself to go forward in spite of the urge to turn it immediately off (because it was scary, not bad). In Pathologic, it mostly depends on some surrealistic elements of the setting and some disturbing themes (death, disease, etc.) and the contemplation of aspects human existence. Nothing suddenly jumps out to eat your head, no guts and blood splattered everywhere around, no dynamic movie-like camera tricks to keep you on edge all the time. Some locations are more eerie than others, some moments more dynamic, but you should have enough time to get used to the game, know how it works and what to expect.

My machine is far from new (four or five years now, and it wasn't any high-end thing back then); the only technical thing was some bug with I think nVidia drivers involving the lighting - I had to turn of the grass in outside-game settings before attempting to shoot a gun or light a lamp outdoors lest the game should crash. That didn't happen too often, so while a nuisance, it was not a major one.

I recommend trying it out just because it is something very different from the usual stuff, so it has some merit even if you don't enjoy it. I myself had a hard time getting into it - it was lying on my shelf for two years and over that time I made several tries just get through the first day, ultimately only playing the first scenario just recently, and finding it very rewarding and interesting after all.

And that Klara impression is priceless.