My favourite game was Arcanum for nearly a decade until I played Pathologic, which now shares equal first. I even cited Pathologic in early drafts of some of my academic writing (it did not make the final draft because there was just too much to say about it) to do with the instructive utility of fiction.
I have two questions, one short and one a bit longer.
What sister did/would you choose for breakthrough in the Void?
Secondly, It has been some time since I played Dankovsky’s scenario. I thought Bachelor Dankovsky was a great character; cocksure, clever, sharp-witted and blunt-mannered. He takes the burdens he’s given with resolve and faces the prospect of the unexplainable with courage. Also quite compelling were the Stamatin Bro’s; anyhow…
Dankovsky’s scientific positivism plays a big role in his character’s arc, particularly I guess a tension between his empricism and klara’s mysticism
It’s difficult to see what direction that tension takes at the end of Bachelor’s scenario, things get a little - translation notwithstanding - crazy. At first, (and moreso when I started playing through Klara’s scenario when Dankovsky corroborates her miracle), I thought there was a clear rejection away from what might be described as a crude physicalism or logical positivism, but playing through again I wasn’t so sure. Particularly, I look at the Polyhedron as a structure of idealogy, something that gels with Dankovsky’s project against death, and obviously saved in his scenario. In the end Bachelor selects the somewhat transcendent/ideological Polyhedron over the worldly, material town, but it didn’t ultimately feel as I expected it to; as representing the rejection of physicalism in favour of mysticism.
Obviously, the themes of religion and mysticism have been present in every IPL work so far but in a more explicit conflict in Pathologic (there are commandments, zealous brothers and Creators in Void but those ideas aren‘t set against an the same contrast)
Is there an implicit favouring of spiritual/continental approaches over the logical/analytic, or is the idea to take on a more holistic outlook?
I have my own ideas of course, but perhaps you have some input?
Anyway, I think you did a tremendous job with Pathologic (reminded of Camus’s Plague).
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Actually we're thinking of using the Kickstarter for Pathologic total rremake.
Stop posting, close the thread, call the police, have them come over to my apartment, and take my money