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?