Pathologic 2 tells the tale of a city ravaged by a deadly plague through the eyes of three characters: the Haruspex, the Bachelor, and the Changeling.
Today, developer Ice-Pick Lodge has announced that it intends to split Pathologic 2 into three separate parts, each focusing on a different character, so it won’t have to delay the game’s launch any further.
Developer Nikolay Dybowski sat in front of a camera to deliver the news to fans and Kickstarter backers alike. You better turn on the English captions if you don’t speak Russian.
Dybowski explains that due to many reasons for this decision, mainly the economic crisis in Russia that caused a critical investment deal to fall through. “The fact that we’re this close to completion is an achievement in and of itself,” he says.
“And so we’ve made a tough decision to not prolong the wait even further, and release the game in parts. First, we’ll publish the Haruspex’s story, while the Bachelor and the Changeling will come out later.”
Some fans might be disappointed by this decision, but Dybowski claims Ice-Pick Lodge has analyzed enough Steam data to know their players take the time to play each story slowly and in sequence, instead of experiencing all three stories at once to see how they differ.
“We don’t think it would be right to force into waiting the people who will play this game slowly, steadily, iteratively, step by step,” he said.
But there’s a second reason behind this decision. Pathologic 2 is the first game Ice-Pick Lodge is developing in close collaboration with the players, and fan feedback is vital to the process. The feedback “seriously changed our understanding of how modern gamers approach video games,” Dybowski admits. As a result, the game has become “slightly less obscure, more convenient to play and accessible.”
“It does not mean we’ve abandoned our original vision. Not at all. It’s still an experiment, still novel. We really hope you’ll appreciate it when you play it and learn the underlying ideas. But we need to modify our approach to presentation a bit,” Dybowski said.
Pathologic 2’s first chapter, the Haruspex’s storyline will be released in Q2 2019. The two other parts, the Bachelor and the Changeling, will be “released later” and will implement any feedback fans might provide.
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