Pathologic 3 is one of 2026’s most ambitious reboots

As a long-time fan of Ice-Pick Lodge’s Pathologic, I’ve been getting increasingly anxious as the release date for Pathologic 3 — the latest entry in the original 2005 game’s reboot series — approaches. It’s been a rocky couple of years for developer Ice-Pick Lodge, which released Pathologic 2 in 2019 with the intention of adding in what is now Pathologic 3 as a DLC expansion. But between the studio relocating from Russia to Kazakhstan amid the war in Ukraine, the controversial departure of long-time creative director and studio co-founder Nikolay Dybowski, multiple delays, and some surprising announcements regarding gameplay changes, I wasn’t sure Ice-Pick Lodge could successfully execute another trip to the Town-on-Gorkhon, the memorably unnerving steppe village where the series takes place.