pathologic is a russian survival visual novel / walking simulator first released in 2005, and then remastered in 2015, and currently being remade as pathologic 2. it has been talked about at length — here's codex entry's pathologic for those who will never play it and hbomberguy's pathologic is genius, here's why, for starters — and i'm only a casual fan, so i won't discuss the story or gameplay much. we all know patho. but it seems there's a facet of the game no one really mentions: this game looks fucking beautiful.
this isn't gonna be an essay or anything, i'm just gonna gush and showcase screenshots and go "see! see!!" and it's up to you to decide if i'm insane or not. think any austin's odd and unremarkable places. also i played the remaster (aka classic HD), but i'd love to poke at the original some time to see how it looks. also also i'm focusing on just exteriors for now. now let's go. come walk around the town with me.
i'm gonna start with a detail that might be "objectively wrong" to like (← in jest). and then we'll move to the big picture stuff but please hear me out.
as everyone knows at this point, i have a distaste for photorealism. i think realism in game graphics has diminishing returns and ps3 era graphics were/are as realistic as things really needed to get; anything newer doesn't really look impressive anymore, it just serves to bloat file sizes into the hundred gigs. and the closer we get to reality, the further from uniqueness. "imperfections" stand out as such, rather than quirks of the style. it all feels very risk-averse.
in a game, a fence is equally effective whether it is a realistically modelled tridimensional object or a flat image. it isn't its volume that blocks your passage after all. and like any theater production, ice-pick lodge is very economical with its resources.
all that being said: i love the crunchy textures and i love getting close to things and seeing their flatness.
you see this everywhere: objects (or "objects") that are pure textures, no 3d model or even normal mapping. a flat low resolution texture playing the role of a fence or a door — cardboard cutouts on a set. throughout the entire game, you'll always be aware of the fact you're looking at photos stretched across geometry. all the world's a stage in here.
the houses and npcs of no importance, the filler, are also part of the artifice. they're all identical within their role. they're not people, they're not houses anyone lives in. they're a chorus.
come onnn do you want me not to talk about the impossible structures?? the stairways to heaven, three ruins among the town as if they were unremarkable, and the polyhedron, looming, enormous, mysterious.
(also hi, can we talk about the way the polyhedron's silhouetted here? we can because it's my page. i'll get to that!)
but even the more mundane architecture is incredible. i don't know anything about that, but there's a great internal consistency with the buildings. the town is displaced in time, refusing to be pinned down to any moment in our reality, but everything feels like it was born out of traditions and movements. and every "important" building — the ones you'll visit time and time again — is unique and stands out (important for gameplay too but shh).
the areas around the factory and train station are particularly cool as well. i like the industrial feeling.
the town is covered in a miasma, like the plague itself.
we all know about a short draw distance to optimize performance. it's a visual trick i adore, and is done beatifully here. paired with the bloom and the way buildings slowly reveal themselves as silhouettes, it makes the game look hazy and sickly.
look at the pale ghost of the tree and the rest of the mansion. also shoutout to the green tint the sky acquires on infected districts... i really love the greenish skyboxes. in fact, i love all skyboxes in this game. don't forget to look up once in a while to see those beautiful clouds.
(the rain doesn't make for pretty pictures [and i don't know how to stop it with the console] but its ambiance is incredible. i love the thunder and lightning...) and look at the spectre of the cathedral. it's so imposing — its buttresses make it remind me of a spider. of course this would be the center of operations for the inquisitor — and an interesting contrast to the cramped and mundane town hall where the general is found.
what even is there to say. after deciding i needed to make this page i began to open the game just to get screenshots at different places and times (btw if you're gonna mess with gametime it's better to do it starting on day two, because you're instakilled at midnight if you don't actually play through day one's quest). i never spent much time loitering around the factory district while playing, especially not late at night (there are muggers and stuff!) and it's just so. the palette turns monochromatic, nearly inky, and the buildings seem nearly hostile.
the re_wire [0/1] command lets you view the meshes as wireframes, artifice fully revealed.
and with fly [0/1] you can try and fail to escape the town, see the borders, the train track that ends in nothing. or clip through buildings and see from otherwise impossible angles. (i also used it for some screenshots while zooming across town, but i mostly focused on eye level photos as in normal gameplay).
there's also sepia [0-1 0-1], which adds a color filter, but i didn't particularly like anything, and again i just wanted to highlight the typical views around town.
what's up with these things inside the polyhedron.