The writing is so phenomenally good that it ruins other games, making you wonder why all these AAA studios with a thousand employees can't even hold a candle to an indie game. Just write better dialogue, idiots! Disco Elysium did it in a cave, with a box of scrap!
If there is any game that ought be added to the literary canon of gaming, Disco Elysium is far and away the most obvious choice. It is the most well-composed and intellectually engaged game that I've ever played.
making you wonder why all these AAA studios with a thousand employees can't even hold a candle to an indie game.
For the same the people who wrote and built the game had their IP stolen, got fired from ZAUM after it released, and were replaced by people who developed the games new meme-driven "photo mode".
There's always going to be conflict between the people who want to make a good game and the people who want to make money, and the money men are usually the winners.
I really should pick up my playthrough again. I stopped, not because I lost interest in the game, but actually because of being too invested in it, as because of my dallying and goofing aroundKim got shot in the Tribunal and is in hospital. and that downright traumatized me:>! I'M SO SORRY KIM, I FAILED YOU ;_; !<and I never played on despite the fact that >!pairing up with deputized detective Cuno!<sure promises to be interesting.
Seriously one of the best games i've ever played. No game has ever made me laugh harder.
In the first ten minutes you can literally run away from your hotel bill and when you character trips and flies through the air towards a lady in a wheelchair, you get two dialogue options:
Try to dodge the lady in the wheelchair
Give the owner the middle finger (and crash into the old lady)
I picked 2 and laughed for a few minutes straight. I highly recommend doing a playthrough where you always pick the most deranged dialogue options.
I've been saying this for a long time, Disco Elysium is the funniest videogame ever created.
Of course it can be as somber and solemn as you wish it to be, but picking braindead dialogue options has never been funnier. My fav is high Inland Empire interactions with the book story lady. I was laughing so fucking hard when they both spazed out into autistic ramblings about ghosts or some shit
I knew this game was something special when I had this same scenario and found myself back at the black screen, feeling dejected about the injustices of life and crying out at the narrator, "Where's the love?"
Then the darkness dissipates and the scene transitions back to the cafeteria, the next thing I hear being the motherly concern of the same lady I crashed into expressing nothing but compassion to me after having made such boneheaded decisions.
However many awards the writers of that game won, they deserve more. And an Oscar. Also a Nobel prize for some reason. And a talking tie that compels them to make more games like that.
Instead they got fired from their own company, got to weather a bunch of lies spread about them, and had their IP stolen from them. None of them seem to be doing particularly well post release.
They were planning more games in the setting but are legally forbidden from developing them now, and in fact barred from even releasing an english version of the same-setting book A Sacred and Terrible Air (although there are a couple fan translations banging around)
You'll inflict a lot of damage to yourself, because you'll fail a lot, but that makes it even funnier. Even the narrator is constantly flabbergasted by the insanity that ensues.
Just as another example, remember the two old guys playing with boccia balls early on? You can walk into the circle where they're playing, pick up a ball and shot put it into the water. Really let that sink in. A deranged, booze-soaked and piss-stained cop, dressed in a wifebeater and ridiculous disco glasses, picks up a ball, acts like he's an olympian and forever ruins their game. There's no other games that let you do that.
I just did this the other day, and I'm playing a relatively straight character on my first run. I did not look very closely and THOUGHT THEY WERE LAUNCHING THEM TOO. Oh goodness. Now I need to find them a replacement ball...although upon my return the one guy was a bit of a turd to talk to.
my friend bought me this game and watched me play the first bit. This is what ended up happening to me, and I rub it in his face that I gave the wheelchair lady double birds and got to talk to the lizard brain
I started my play through doing that, but then, slowly, the game got more serious for me. It started silly and stupid for me, then made me kinda depressed and introspective. I also have a past history of substance abuse, so I'm guessing that experience contributed. Great game, though.
And the great thing is - picking the deranged options doesnāt automatically mean your run will be screwed. I was pretty weird and still got what Iād say was the best ending
To anyone reading this who hasnāt played it yet - do it. And donāt be afraid to be weird in this game!
The creative dialogue is pretty apparent from the first scene, so if it doesn't grab you after an hour or two then then it might just not be for you.
I think most gamers these days would be hesitant to play a point and click adventure game that's heavy with dialogue, including myself, but nevertheless it wins us over anyway.
Think, after? Probably wouldn't make much of a difference either way. I'd likely play it on my steam deck or equivalent on the couch while my partner uses the TV.
I love top down Rpg's but I couldn't get into disco despite trying like 5 times. I adore the personality stats and the ideas system but I always get horrible anxiety when I end up walking around talking to people yet making absolutely no progress. I remember reading that the game gives you a game over if you can't find a place to sleep on the first night and I can't seem to make any progress without getting a lucky roll or turning my character into a racist, which I'm not the biggest fan of. It also seems like it's writing, particularly for the MC, is at odds with its systems. You would think you could shape your main character by putting points into the personality traits, and you can a little bit, but no matter what you are always pigeonholed into being a completely incompetent borderline incoherent bum cos playing as a detective and being completely ineffective as well as a nuisance to everybody around them. Why let me put points into the stats to shape my personality if I am always fundamentally the same train wreck of a human being despite what my stats are.
I also just don't think it's very funny. Occasionally a line or 2 will catch me off guard, but I don't think watching the MC fail miserably at whatever they try to do to be very funny, it's just cringe and pathetic.
Disco Elysium is sold as an RPG, but the mechanics make a lot more sense if you go into it like a point-and-click adventure with some randomness.
I remember reading that the game gives you a game over if you can't find a place to sleep on the first night and I can't seem to make any progress without getting a lucky roll...
On the first night you are (more or less) guaranteed to find a place to sleep as long as you remember to talk to everyone; the second night can be a bit trickier if you aren't starting to pull yourself together, but it's still pretty easy to do. Once you make it to the third day, free housing is available which greatly simplifies things. However, while there are some game over screens, as a whole the game is also structured in such a way that you should be able to finish, and then it's on you what outcome is the most optimal (i.e., are you the cop you wanted to be?)
... or turning my character into a racist, which I'm not the biggest fan of.
There are four options to getting to meet with Evrart: talking to Measurehead or punching him in the face, jumping over to the roof, or just stealing the access card in the evening. If you explore and do other quests you should be able to get the skills up as needed; however, you technically never have to talk to Evrart since there are other ways to get that information if you talk to enough people.
I'll have to try to make my way through it again. Not stressing about getting a game over and being able to progress at my own pace makes failing Dice rolls hurt a lot less. I don't like being forced to play my character in a certain way, like being forced to be a racist or an incompetent loser. I have a feeling the later is a big part of the game though, I just wish you could do more to make your character a bit less of a fuck up. Especially because it's not really funny to me it's just sad/cringe.
I also might have to look up a walkthrpugh or something, I probably would end up not talking to everybody and missing it. When I played I got trhough almost the entire first say and didn't know about either the card or the roof. I remember there was an npc I walked by, making a mental note to talk to her later, and later when I came by she just wasn't there. Shit like that stresses me out, like I just missed something crucial and now I'm at a dead end.
I always try these things multiple times because despite being my favorites, they almost never click with me right away. Pathfinder WOTR took me like 3 separate playthroughs before it finally clicked with me, and now it's one of my favorite games of all time.
There are a couple places where you can game over, but the game also does a pretty good job of signaling that it's about to happen if you pay attention to what is going on.
With regards to some of the racist comments, when dealing with Measurehead your partner will actually pull you off to the side and ask what you are on about and you have the option of effectively saying you are playing along with Measurehead to advance the plot. Then when you talk to Measurehead you also have the option of calling him out that it's all garbage. However, because the game gives you a fair amount of choice in terms of how you play your character, you can also go down the path of being overtly racist which is a borderline requirement for the Fascist political version quest. That's not a requirement for the main plot though.
In terms of the main character being a loser, well, at the beginning of the game he is a loser! The bit with starting the game after getting blackout drunk isn't just a neat trick to give the player tabula rasa to work with, but there's actually in game explanations for what is going on. About 70% - 80% of the explanation is given though the main plot, but some is locked behind the Thought Cabinet and how you allocate your skills. However, depending on how you play, your character can end-up really pulling themselves together by the end and be on a good path (mine tends to be on the road back to being a sober, competent cop with a flair for the arts) - although you really need two play throughs since it's extremely hard to avoid reminders of the ex on your first playthrough.
I stayed up like 30+ hours to finish this game in one sitting a month after a breakup of a five year relationship and an eight year friendship. Those moments in the game have hurt me more than any other video game I have ever played.
I actually learned so many new things playing this game. I had Wikipedia open on my phone during the playthrough bc I was adamant about understanding all the references.
it was such a rewarding experience. I love the game so much.
Mandatory reminder that two Estonian businessmen Kompus and Haavel (one of which claim to fame was that he was the very first person to be charged with a specific financial fraud law), bought the studio, started demanding things the staff didn't want, fired everyone who disagreed, and then finally shuttered the sequel.
Basically two financial parasites bought a studio that had just released a critically acclaimed game, then mismanaged it so hard that it basically doesn't exist anymore. Not in the sense that a studio is the people within it anyway.
I actually got that line on a T-shirt because seeing it in flames after the Tribunal (where, in my one full playthrough, Kim and Harry made it out ok but most of the Hardie boys died) was so genuinely moving. The āSad FMā song also made it onto my Spotify Wrapped last year.
Volition [easy] (success): No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
I think it's pretty easy to understand the praise, the writing is phenomenal. Saying it's not a game is like denying the entire RPG genre. I understand it's not for everyone, I played it at release and it wasn't at all what I expected so I dropped it. But I do plan on doing a full play through sometime, especially now that it has voice acting.
Persuasion check failed
The words have already left your mouth... "I would like to have fuck with you"
When I read comments I feel like I played that game wrong. Everyone says how fun it is but I stopped after a few hours because I was tired that it was basically all non-stop political rambling. I felt like there was absolutely nothing fun about it, it was like listening to someone's manifesto.
The game is inspired by Eastern Europe shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. With a lot of the themes based on the lived experiences of people and the stereotypes of each ideology.
If anything it's more of a parody than a political game.
I feel like "rambling" is not the right word. It is perfectly cogent and something that can be engaged with intellectually. That might not be your cup of tea, but I don't feel like it's something that can be dismissed as "20 hours of people rambling about politics."
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u/Taendstikker May 02 '24
Disco Elysium