Robert Kurvitz talks about writing Disco Elysium on GameSpot Audio Logs

Interview - posted by Infinitron on Tue 14 January 2020, 00:21:59

Tags: Disco Elysium; Robert Kurvitz; ZA/UM

GameSpot launched a new interview series back in April called Audio Logs, which seems to be focused on in-depth game design discussions with developers. Yesterday they published their first Codex-relevant episode featuring Disco Elysium lead writer & designer Robert Kurvitz. It's actually the most interesting interview with Robert that I've seen, especially the first half where he talks about the things ZA/UM did to make the game's writing as engaging as possible. That includes the design of the dialogue UI itself, which is inspired by Twitter. To keep the player's attention, dialogue is written to be aggressive and personal, with critical information repeated multiple times by the protagonists's various skills during key moments.

In the second half of the interview, Robert talks about the creation of the Thought Cabinet. Since the game has been a success, he already has ideas about the next iteration of the Thought Cabinet concept, such as having thoughts have an impact on their neighbors in adjacent slots in the cabinet. He'd like ZA/UM's next game to like what Baldur's Gate 2 was to Baldur's Gate - bigger and more action-packed, with more combat and other physical sequences (still implemented via dialogue, of course). It's a very cool interview and only 17 minutes long, so check it out. Hopefully GameSpot will have more of these that are relevant to our interests.

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