Disco Elysium - Insane Drunken Cop Simulator RPG GotY 2019

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I mean yeah, the rules aren't there to be arbitrarily followed, they're guidelines for making comeplling stories.

One way to write a compelling story. Not the only way. Not even the traditional way. That was a very specific subgenre of mysteries. Detective stories don't have to be framed as a "can you solve it yourself" puzzle. They can. Let me give an example, Monk is fairly close (as I recall) to that ideal of a show where you can reason out who did it. I may be completely wrong, I remember it through the dim haze of childhood when my parents made a game of trying to predict who it was, but that was my impression. Columbo, on the other hand, gives it away right at the very start. It's about the getting there. Disco Elysium has the mystery. I was mystified most of the time. But the point wasn't the end goal, though I was satisfied to get that, it was the prose, the unionland politics (I may care a lot more about that than other people, I'm heavily invested in the West Virginia Coalfield Wars), the worldbuilding, and so on.


This is one of those things where I doubt a sequel could contribute much. I'd rather see other people try to mimic its approach towards RPG design but flesh it out into more of a game instead of a visual novel that makes you keep rerolling. My favorite part of it, mechanically, was it breaking down charisma and intelligence into all of its different little components, including some really unconventional stuff like Inland Empire (best stat).

Here's a stat idea that I think might have been in a Fallout game: animal whisperer. Like Empathy but gives insight into animal behavior instead of human motivation.

I do think Drama was poorly written. It just boiled down to "I know in my gut they're not lying" instead of describing what about their face/behavior implies honesty/deceit.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I don’t care about Ronald Knox and his gay ass rules, but I see what you mean now and I dislike it too.

After going into a detective story binge, the rules are mostly for not repeating gotchas that were novel when they came out but were picked up by hacks for being surprising twists. Like having the pov character be the killer was bullshit in Heavy Rain, and in books it boils down to "I'm going to have weird phrasing for two lines in the book during the crime, and you should pick up in it and remember it when there are no more suspects".

Articles in question:
https://videogames.si.com/news/disco-elysium-dev-zaum-layoffs (https://archive.ph/FGblU)

https://videogames.si.com/news/disco-elysium-dev-zaum-layoffs-last-writer-speaks-out

(https://archive.ph/ls5J8)

There's always the thick layer of irony when commie organization can't get anything down due to internal politics.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

I feel like the game would had been better if it had half the length. As it is, it takes way too fucking long to replay, and the quality drops in the end, with a lot of info dumps with the extra sin of needing to pass skill check for them.

I never got that far. I thought the start was promising, but when the game had me pick up trash for pocketmoney so I could afford a bill, it annoyed me. I get what this is saying. The commentary about poverty and hobos. I've seen kids live off of that in brazil, collecting large bags of trash for money. I get that I can get jap to sacrifice his car doodad to pay for me.

But when the game had me collect trash it gave me time to look at the game and realized the game was really, intentionally ugly. Now it's good to make bold design choices. It's easy to identify a DE screenshot even if you haven't played the game. But it's such a commie approach to make you wade through so much shit and vomit color to play what is supposedly a leasure activity. I don't think I got very far into the second day.

Hoe many days are there?

Also if the ending part was really rushed and not as well made it is more of a true successor to planescape torment (minus final encounter which is quite legendary with planescape).

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

After going into a detective story binge, the rules are mostly for not repeating gotchas that were novel when they came out but were picked up by hacks for being surprising twists. Like having the pov character be the killer was bullshit in Heavy Rain, and in books it boils down to "I'm going to have weird phrasing for two lines in the book during the crime, and you should pick up in it and remember it when there are no more suspects".

There's always the thick layer of irony when commie organization can't get anything down due to internal politics.

I think I'm the only person who liked Heavy Rain, so here goes.

That ending was the best twist you could do that uses the medium in a new, interesting way. That character came off as a good guy in the parts where you play him. By playing his part of the story you feel close to him, and at the same time it makes you realize that you're only playing a small part of a game's character's life. Once the reveal is made it seems obvious in retrospect, and it was just that you would never consider him a suspect because of the rules of how games work that made you miss it. It seems very realistic to nut-jobs/serial killers where they act one way in most situations and partition off that murderous part of themselves in order to pass in the normal world.

Disco keys in on the same thing but with the trite amnesia angle rather than doing the shifting POV like a film thing that Heavy Rain does. You'd love to have a "solvable" crime, but the games were more about the characters' experience in getting to the solution. Disco's ending was much bigger bullshit than Rain's, at least the killer was a part of the story instead of gated off so even if you wanted to go investigate, you couldn't. Those geographical story gates were cool for world-building, but terrible for being a decent game. And I say that as someone who loves it, it's just more of a novel you click around on than a game.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I never got that far. I thought the start was promising, but when the game had me pick up trash for pocketmoney so I could afford a bill, it annoyed me. I get what this is saying. The commentary about poverty and hobos. I've seen kids live off of that in brazil, collecting large bags of trash for money. I get that I can get jap to sacrifice his car doodad to pay for me.

But when the game had me collect trash it gave me time to look at the game and realized the game was really, intentionally ugly. Now it's good to make bold design choices. It's easy to identify a DE screenshot even if you haven't played the game. But it's such a commie approach to make you wade through so much shit and vomit color to play what is supposedly a leasure activity. I don't think I got very far into the second day.

Hoe many days are there?

Also if the ending part was really rushed and not as well made it is more of a true successor to planescape torment (minus final encounter which is quite legendary with planescape).

I'm so used to hobo economy that I haven't thought of that as a message. I'd say the game looks more surreal than ugly. It's not eye raping (most of the time) and the urban decay is pretty fitting for a slav shithole with too much history of countries messing with it. I think there were five days and the ending is more anticlimactic than rushed.

That ending was the best twist you could do that uses the medium in a new, interesting way. That character came off as a good guy in the parts where you play him. By playing his part of the story you feel close to him, and at the same time it makes you realize that you're only playing a small part of a game's character's life. Once the reveal is made it seems obvious in retrospect, and it was just that you would never consider him a suspect because of the rules of how games work that made you miss it. It seems very realistic to nut-jobs/serial killers where they act one way in most situations and partition off that murderous part of themselves in order to pass in the normal world.

I didn't hate Heavy Rain, but the issue with the twist (and the reason like three versions of it are mentioned in Knox rules) is that of course having the detective involve himself in the story makes sense, making the twist very cheap. And you'd usually just not think of it due to having the character words to the audience be built on manipulation. It doesn't help HR also has internal monologue that also misleads the player, as if the character knows he is being controlled.

You'd love to have a "solvable" crime, but the games were more about the characters' experience in getting to the solution.

My issue is that it might as well have been a freak accident than what amount to a commie incel since that will at least reinforce in trying to give meaning to random events. Instead it's just disconnected.

 

[RurkerHivemind]

Dunno if anyone posted this but some dude whose name may raise some red flags but otherwise has some great opinions have made an hour half video on Disco.

It goes against the grain of the fanbase and even got a guy who uploaded it on the DE Reddit suspended entirely for it.

I seen a short LP of the game and after this video I may consider getting the game.

Disco Elysium Video

 

[WULULULULU]

Wasn't the point of DE is that there is more to a person than just the ideology they claim to follow? Unless I have been forgetting stuff, do correct me.

 

[RurkerHivemind]

Wasn't the point of DE is that there is more to a person than just the ideology they claim to follow? Unless I have been forgetting stuff, do correct me.

That and Harry is a broken man who is forced to do a job he needs to solve and is easily persuaded and had to have Kim as his wrangler.

 

[NSJAP]

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Wasn't the point of DE is that there is more to a person than just the ideology they claim to follow? Unless I have been forgetting stuff, do correct me.

I thought the point was that Harry du Bois is a SUPERSTAR

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

it was a good video. missed the part with the communist students and the back room in the hotel. those two things added alot of context to the game and they very much mislabel.

also the timestamp at 59:18 had me laughing after recent events.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Disco Elysium has made me seriously consider wearing muttonchops.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

There is a soul that's DEEP and IMMENSE

 

[Barbigny2.0]

Wasn't the point of DE is that there is more to a person than just the ideology they claim to follow? Unless I have been forgetting stuff, do correct me.

No, it's about Robert Kurvitz trying to V-Effekt Left-Hegelian ideology into your brain. He's probably succeeded with you if you're framing your question as such.

 

[WULULULULU]

No, it's about Robert Kurvitz trying to V-Effekt Left-Hegelian ideology into your brain. He's probably succeeded with you if you're framing your question as such.

Wrong. Leftism, not even once.

 

[popnloch ness monster]

Wasn't the point of DE is that there is more to a person than just the ideology they claim to follow? Unless I have been forgetting stuff, do correct me.

Yes, if you're a communist. The less of a commie you are, the less there is to you as a person. René got a fair shake, but he's black and gay. If he'd been a shade lighter, he'd gotten the dumb racist retard coward treatment or the dumb snivelling racist retard coward treatment outright. It's pointless of me to even put it as as such, René only exists to "own" the people who'd sympathise with him. Measurehead and René are ways of cutting the same disdain in two different ways.

All the politically middle-of-the-road characters give a hint of that they'd be communists in other circumstance, that's the game's way of letting the player know it's ok to sympathise and treat them as "persons with more to them than the ideology they represent".

 

[WULULULULU]

Yes, if you're a communist. The less of a commie you are, the less there is to you as a person. René got a fair shake, but he's black and gay. If he'd been a shade lighter, he'd gotten the dumb racist retard coward treatment or the dumb snivelling racist retard coward treatment outright. It's pointless of me to even put it as as such, René only exists to "own" the people who'd sympathise with him. Measurehead and René are ways of cutting the same disdain in two different ways.

All the politically middle-of-the-road characters give a hint of that they'd be communists in other circumstance, that's the game's way of letting the player know it's ok to sympathise and treat them as "persons with more to them than the ideology they represent".

Huh, because the rest of the thread's posters seem to point otherwise, or maybe because they are commies in denial.

 

[popnloch ness monster]

Huh, because the rest of the thread's posters seem to point otherwise, or maybe because they are commies in denial.

It's a passion project of a commie/anarchist "book club". It consisted of Kurvits and a bunch of other 30-40+ yo eternal male dilettantes and 14-15yo art hos with daddy issues. Very typical stuff of that type of milieu, those who know know. Helen was the high performing alpha bitch of the club's teenage pussy posse, the Ghislaine to Kurvits' Epstein, a ride or die with the longevity.
All I'm saying is they wrote what they knew about and treated the subject matter in the manner they were given to treat it, nawmean?

 

[Barbigny2.0]

Me when I'm confronted with Hegelian Dialectics:

Huh, because the rest of the thread's posters seem to point otherwise, or maybe because they are commies in denial.

"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure." - Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

I hate to be the person that tries to tell you how to "correctly" interpret a piece of literature, but this is the explicit ideological underpinning of the people you're engaging with. It's all just general enough to be totalizing in scope but also reductive enough to give their materialist sublation the faux sheen of scientific rigor. This is especially useful to the authors of speculative fiction like this so they can preempt any consideration of a "reactionary" character not engaging with their paradigm: "he believes those things that we don't agree with only as one of the predetermined ideologies under the current mode of production, he just hasn't yet/can't/won't attain[ed] revolutionary conscience." Hegel was a shill for the Hohenzollerns, and his thought provided an empty shell for whatever legitimating ideology that you might want to create. Marxists got there early on, fascists later. You and I could establish a Dialectic of Autism if we so desired.

I'm not attacking the literary merit of the game, mind you. As this thread has shown, and its other commendable elements notwithstanding, this is probably one of the few pieces of media to effectively employ the distancing effect. By way of counterexample, I challenge you to watch a Brecht play and not immediately see the propagandist behind the curtain.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Well boys

I finally did it

I shaved my beard into a friendly muttonchops pattern so I could look like Harry du Bois/Detective Rapahel Ambrosious Cousteau/Tequila Sunset the End of All Things/Some Kind of Superstar in real life.