PATHOLOGIC 3

Terminus Est

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On the face of it, the Pathologic games are a mix of RPG, immersive sim and survival horror that tell the story of a remote steppe town in an unknown era and part of the world enduring 12 days of a deadly epidemic. Saying that, however, is rather like explaining chess as a tactical game about trapping the king. The details really matter; very few games are so thematically rich. It's fitting, then, that Quarantine — the free prologue and demo for Pathologic 3, set predominantly during the fifth day of the epidemic — squeezes more into three or four hours than most games pack into 30.

As much as anything else, the Pathologic games are about the ambiguity of perspective. The original offered three playable characters (the Haruspex, the Bachelor and the Changeling) who each experienced the town's plague in different ways, interrogating the idea of a single universally experienced point of truth. Pathologic 2, both a remake of sorts and sequel to the original, was intended to retell the story from all three perspectives. As the scope of the game grew, however, the developers ended up focusing solely on the Haruspex. The Bachelor, Daniil Dankovsky, takes the spotlight in Pathologic 3.

“The Haruspex's route is the route of reunification with one's birth town, family, traditions,” art director Elena Alt explains.

Where the Haruspex ultimately places himself within the town, the Bachelor is an outsider, with no interest in it as anything other than a unit of analysis — an object to be dissected, used and categorised. “The Bachelor is an antonym [to the Haruspex],” says narrative director Alexandra 'Alphyna' Golubeva. “He is a man who divides the whole. He thinks in completely different categories. For him, the town is not a living, breathing entity.”