Despite being one of the most thought-provoking and haunting RPG series ever, Pathologic has always flown under the radar. Very few games offer writing and narrative threads that manage to balance weirdness and wonder quite like the original and its long-awaited 2019 follow-up. A third entry in the series is arriving next year, but to help fans cope with the wait (and to hopefully attract new players too) Pathologic 3 is going to be releasing a free prologue.
The original Pathologic saw you pick from one of three protagonists – the Haruspex, the Bachelor, and the Changeling. Developer Ice-Pick Lodge fully intended on following the same path with Pathologic 2 – it launched telling the story of the Haruspex, and was planning to add the other two characters as DLC. However, while fleshing out the story for the Bachelor, the studio’s ideas and ambitions swelled to the point where it will now be its own standalone RPG titled Pathologic 3.
The core premise of the series will remain in Pathologic 3. There will be a grim and bleak tone. The medical examination of characters will remain an important tenet. There will be challenging, difficult topics in its story and plenty of writing that will make you ponder and wince. However, with the Bachelor being a more experienced, powerful, and intelligent character than the Haruspex, the intense focus on survival in Pathologic 2 is being reduced and a new time travel mechanic is being implemented instead.
This will let the Bachelor relive decisions that have been made in order to correct them, or travel into the future to see the most catastrophic outcomes of the plague ravaging the game’s world.
Other new mechanics include the ability to impose quarantines, examine pathogens under microscopes, vaccinate townsfolk, and even set curfews on them in order to stop the spread of the plague. Woven into the Bachelor’s quest to stop its spread is his hunt for information on immortality.
If you want an RPG that feels unlike anything you’ve ever played before (that is unless you’ve played Pathologic 1 or 2 already) then Pathologic 3 is going to be that game. And it sounds like you’ll be able to get a taste of it fairly soon.
Ice-Pick Lodge has revealed that a free prologue called Pathologic 3: Quarantine will be arriving at some point in 2025. While that’s a broad window, I predict that it probably wouldn’t have revealed the prologue already if it wasn’t expecting to release it within the next two or three months. Quarantine “ties directly into the main game and partially overlaps with its intro, but has several unique scenes as well,” according to the developer.
As for the full game, that’s also currently got a broad 2025 window.
Until Quarantine and the final product arrive, our lists of the best horror games and best story games are packed with plenty more dark and atmospheric experiences.
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