Ice Pick Lodge has posted a new Pathologic Kickstarter update, this one about the use of objects as a part of "environmental storytelling" and how it hopes to make them "shimmer" by being both familiar and yet not quite what we'd expect. It's a bit strange, as you might have guessed, but that's appropriate; as Phil explained prior to the crowdfunding campaign, the original Pathologic, an open-world adventure originally released in 2005, was an intensely weird experience.
"Each element of the Pathologic game world, from a hat to a brick, actually belongs to several different 'planes of existence,' so to speak. This makes the art style interactive in its own right: the surroundings lend themselves to being interpreted in different ways, and each object is a small mindscrew you have to find a place in the big picture for," the update states. "This creates a robust and uncertain atmosphere that’s perfect for Pathologic. It’s always up to you to interpret what you’re seeing, to make it solid—and forging your own vision of a fluid world is what this game is about. It’s about double meaning, innuendoes, and the feeling that nothing is ever final."
There's quite a bit more to it than that, including images of mundane objects like a bed and a stove, and a fun description of two statues of Dream Mistresses that have almost identical features, even though their real-world daughters do not. "The human differences they used to have have worn out, leaving only the aesthetic and ideological dichotomy behind," the developers explained. "While the memory of them is deeply personal for many, their real human side was not important enough to be captured, leaving behind two statues with almost identical features."
I can't imagine how that's relevant to the game, but you better believe I want to find out. There's currently no release date, although the Kickstarter had an estimated delivery date of November 2016; more information is up at pathologic-game.com.
