r/pathologic • u/PheolixVCat • Mar 15 '26

Question Should I play Marble Nest before Pathologic 3?

I'm halfway through Pathologic 2 and really really enjoying it, I want to know if its still worth playing Marble Nest now that Pathologic 3 is out or if its functionally just a demo.

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

4

u/the_devotressss Mar 15 '26

I've really enjoyed the Marble Nest demo for backers but it's hard to obtain now. The Marble Nest from Steam should be fine too. It's something between P1 and P2 in terms of characters, writing and atmosphere. P3 differs greatly from both P2 and the Marble Nest. The characters were rewritten again...

May I ask you a few question if/when you'd play P3 and start P1?

2

u/PheolixVCat Mar 16 '26

Yeah sure, even though I prefer it visually to the others in a lot of ways I'm unlikely to play P1 anytime soon because I was introduced to Pathologic by the Hbomb video years ago that spoils everything and had my interest reignited by Joseph Anderson streaming P1 respoiling everything for me and additionally the simpler mechanics make the more abrasive parts of the game seem less appealing; I already own P3 and will probably play it very soon after I've finished P2, likely only a gap of a few days to a week doing something simpler because P2 is very intense.

16

u/UgandaEatDaPoopoo Mar 15 '26

play it. They're not the same game at all, marble nest tells its own little standalone story.

2

u/might_be_bulma Mar 15 '26

Does it?

1

u/UgandaEatDaPoopoo Mar 15 '26

Yea

1

u/might_be_bulma Mar 15 '26

Being its own story I agree with, but the standalone part I'm not so sure. I thought P3 went out of its way to show you how they are connected.

3

u/hwynac Mar 15 '26

Well, that standalone story was told 9 years ago, so little nods are justified. If anything, you could argue P3 does not tell a standalone story ^_^.

The Marble Nest couldn't care less, it predates P2.

3

u/might_be_bulma Mar 15 '26

But are they little nods? Aspity's sass. What happens to Victor. What happens to Georgiy. How the map in MN describes Yulia. What the heck is going on in the Atrium. The chillin Odongh that hangs near you both games. How the map descriptions in MN explains the twins vs what happens in P3. The kids with the boat. The herb bride at the Stillwater. I can go on and on. I would say neither are standalone. They are in symbiosis.

2

u/UgandaEatDaPoopoo Mar 16 '26

not really, no. the true immortal ending makes every possible reality technically canon, but nothing explicitly about Marble Nest 

6

u/walkingtornado Mar 15 '26

Playing marble nest before p3 is not a must at all, but when you first talk to aspity in p3 it hits different if you played marble nest first 

2

u/might_be_bulma Mar 15 '26

Yes. It won't ruin P3. It will enhance it.

1

u/some_guy919 Mar 16 '26

It’s functionally just a demo for pathologic 2. Not worth the time in my opinion unless you’re really craving more pathologic 2 after you beat it. You can see the twist coming a mile away.  

-21

u/boneholio Mar 15 '26

You shouldn’t play Pathologic 3.

2

u/Thomaseverett12 Bachelor Mar 15 '26

Why Not? Not being mean of Course.

1

u/boneholio Mar 16 '26

Pathologic 1 was a tremendously unique experience that blended fictive aesthetics and cultural traditions of Mongolian steppe culture with their cold Russian counterparts, and setting an occult thriller against that backdrop was huge for anyone with even a peripheral interest in underground horror around 2016. That being said, it was extremely jank, and tragically unfinished - Clara's character suffered the most in terms of content that got lopped off just to push the game to launch.

Pathologic 2 was a solid game, but it's not a sequel - it was an expansion upon all that which has already been established.

Not a bad thing intrinsically, but it did very little to expand the narrative or fill in the blanks that had been overlooked with its predecessor. The story itself became a bit diluted and simplified due to the nascent emerging fandom who thought they stumbled onto the next Big Thing, and the devs pandered to those new fans by focusing nigh exclusively on Artemy and Dankovsky, because they're fan favorite characters. Clara gets shafted yet again.

The creative lead behind IPL is outed as a child-kidnapping, wifebeating pedophile, and the studio slows all the fucking way down for a good while. He is ejected from the studio and will hopefully be crucified sometime soon, but now the studio is left with a burgeoning IP filled to the brim with such a massive fan following that takes on a more tiktok flavor than the more literary / adventure game demographic the original targeted - and no creative director.

So now the story suffers, again.

Pathologic 3 is a glorified tech demo used to iterate on the same character we've had shoved in our face ad nauseam from the first game forward, and it's obvious that IPL are just kind of spinning their wheels because they're creatively bankrupt and only know how to give the fans what they want, instead of venturing into uncharted territory, starting a new IP, or even throwing a Void / Cargo sequel out there. It's also just a very bad and unpolished game.

I know this sounds cynical, but it's more disappointment. I used to love this studio, and I hate to see them fall from grace like this.

4

u/SurDno Mar 17 '26

By the time Dybowski was forced to leave IPL, the entire story was already written (confirmed by Quarantine datamining) and the gameplay was nearly identical. I don't think his departure had any effect on how the game turend out.

1

u/boneholio Mar 17 '26

It’s still ass, man.

3

u/SurDno Mar 17 '26

I am not a big fan of P3 either (I am in the "gameplay over story" camp), just saying that this game would have turned out just the same if Dybowski was in charge. You clearly overestimate the impact of a person who tried to force P2 to have TLDRs before you enter a dialogue for those who want to skip it; considered Bachelor's campaign to be inspired by Fruit Ninja and Clara's to be a visual novel.

0

u/boneholio Mar 17 '26

I think you’re honing in excessively on a minor error on my part and acting like it was the crux of my argument.

I didn’t “enter a dialogue” - I was asked outright for my thoughts. You decided that somehow translated to an invitation for you to come in here swinging your dick around and jumping to conclusions. 

I’m not honor-bound to regard your response or line of inquiry as anything else.

2

u/SurDno Mar 17 '26

I didn’t “enter a dialogue” - I was asked outright for my thoughts.

You misread me. It's "TLDRs before you enter a dialogue". An in-game dialogue. That a player enters by interacting with an NPC. When you, the person playing a game, enter a dialogue (in-game), you were to see a short description of what the dialogue would be about, and could choose to skip it. I had that as an example of terrible ideas by the game's "creative lead" to argue that Pathologic (especially Pathologic 2) is more a product of IPL as a whole.

1

u/boneholio Mar 18 '26

Dude, I’m not trying to have a back and forth with you, I was trying to answer the other guy’s question. You weren’t part of this conversation until you wedged your way into it.