Incline Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - a hardboiled cop show isometric RPG

[IHaveHugeNick]

The problem starts with the ruleset. If they would cut one of the attributes and group skills under Int/Mental/Physical, it would work much better, without any additional scripting and playtesting for extreme builds.

Right now, it seems that some skills are only tagged as physical, because they wanted 6 skills per attribute. So you can make a protagonist with dumbass attributes, but he'll end up having decent level of skills that clearly require brains. And those skills talk to you, often mixing with dumb dialogue.

All four stats cover different parts of your brain, though. The voices that talk to you in your sleep--the reptilian brain and the limbic system--are Fysique and Psyche. Motorics gets the cerebellum, the motor cortex, and all the sensory bits like the visual cortex, auditory cortex etc... Intellect gets the frontal lobe.

The groupings make sense and the balance is good. High fysique and motorics both open up a lot of shortcuts. The problem is that the short descriptions for each base stat are oversimplified and/or misleading when you're going through character creation. Although it's easy to figure that out once you go to the next screen to pick your signature skill.

Oh the descriptions make sense. Well that's nice.

Meanwhile, my 1 Int / 6 Phys supermoron cop couldn't understand concept of money and he would take metaphors like "elephant in a room" literally. But ruleset skill groupings gave him high Electrochemistry. So after saying something clearly indicating huge intellectual disability he would then launch into sophisticated description of how drugs work using advanced educated language.

Yes, the groupings make total sense and the balance is good.

Maybe you should actually try to play the game you are shilling you armchair theoretician, instead of analyzing the gameplay based on descriptions on a website.

The ruleset very will might work most of the time, but it definitely has issues with low Int setups.

 

[Jenkem]

IHaveHugeNick i believe not knowing what money is and all the day 1 stupidity is scripted and part of the 'hangover' your character is experiencing, it's not tied to the INT stat

 

[Tigranes]

It's possible that the ruleset works shittily when you try to play a Fallout low INT style dumbass, I'd have to check it out myself. But ranting that Kyl von Kull hasn't played the game roflmao

I don't know why he has to lay it on thick with these repeated anguished screams lashing out at those around him. We are all comrades here, Nick my friend, just relax and accept the communardism

 

[Butter]

I don't get why THE SQUAD gets so ass mad when people say this is more of an adventure game than an RPG... First of all you literally go around and click circles to get information and use items in an adventure game manner. Secondly, why be mad at that? Adventure games are fun and have always been the counterpart to RPGs in the oldskool days. Adventure games with skill checks and stats and stuff but aren't RPGs are still good. You are going to tell me that Quest for Glory series are bad because it is labeled an adventure game? Pathologic 2? Beautiful Desolation?

This debate isn't going to end. Next time there's a Codex Top 70 poll this game is going to get votes and people are going to still be arguing about whether it should qualify. It seems to me so borderline as to fairly be included as an RPG.

 

[the mole]

If we are taking 1 int as being in the bottom 1/6th of intelligence, that's 16.5 percent of the population, maybe even people browsing the codex at this moment

 

[Butter]

If we are taking 1 int as being in the bottom 1/6th of intelligence, that's 16.5 percent of the population, maybe even people browsing the codex at this moment

I'm sure niggers don't browse the Codex.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Jenkem In that case our Estonians are only larping experienced heavy drinkers. The first thing one checks after blacking out is the wallet.

 

[Terenty]

It's possible that the ruleset works shittily when you try to play a Fallout low INT style dumbass, I'd have to check it out myself. But ranting that Kyl von Kull hasn't played the game roflmao

If you read descriptions of skills under INT its clear low intelligence doesn't mean dumb as rocks here. It mostly has to do with the investigation part of the game i.e. how you handle vitneses, evidence, crime scene etc.

What remains to be seen is how difficult it is to crack the case with low int skills vs high

 

[HeatEXTEND]

you should be able to zoom out, though.

Not far enough it doesn't. And then it has the audacity to Greatly zoom out for some damn "cutscene". That's ass. Compare this to UR, it doesn't zoom at all and it fits nicely; zoom would be sweet but it'd be a luxury; Not a constant annoyance because of the lack of. This is the type of shit that sets apart a lovingly crafted masterpiece from "ideas". My point is the gameplay part, everything from the UI to movement to clicking on shit, is shit. The voice acting is wasted on me, might be good for those so inclined (pun not intended fags) but that ain't no VTMB. If this is an RPG so is DS
and Diablo

Spoiler

DnD he says :D

 

[Owlish]

It's cool and all but let's be honest, this is more of a comic book than an RPG

 

[Alienman]

Jenkem In that case our Estonians are only larping experienced heavy drinkers. The first thing one checks after blacking out is the wallet.

So true

Then the pure angst wash over you.

 

[Owlish]

just finished it i loved it!

i really want some kind of source book for the tabletop setting because it was *so* cool and i have *so* many unanswered questions

I found a source book for it, it's called "slightly jazzed up postwar Germany with steampunky doodads (gadgets & such)"

 

[Lord_Potato]

Ok, today I played DE for 4 hours straight. Almost finished day 1. Decided not to load savegame even if I fuck up... and I did fuck up a lot. Propably I'm the worst detective ever, but no matter. It's fun as hell!

Gonna continue tomorrow, now I have to get some sleep before work. It's good the weekend is near.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

How would this game run on a potato i3 laptop with integrated grafix?

it's fucking unity. like shit.

is this worth 40 euros, tell me the truth

Let's see when the first person clocks 120 hours, if any.

 

[Jinn]

While I wouldn't have any trouble playing this if it was labelled an Adventure game, here's the things that make it an RPG in my eyes.

- Stats and stat progression that effects gameplay.

- Varied equipment that effects stats and gameplay.

- Varied consumables that effect stats and gameplay.

- Varied roleplaying options in dialogue that effect gameplay, outcomes, and character development.

I'm not saying that these reasons should make this universally accepted as an RPG, but for me these make it undeniably an RPG from my perspective. I'm probably missing a couple other things that make it stand out as and feel like an RPG in my mind, but this is just a quick post I wanted to make while the topic was at hand.

 

[Tigranes]

In a world where market price reflects actual quality, Disco Elysium would be $40 and Underrail would be $99.95

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Steam says I've clocked 16 hours and I'm near the end of the second day, fwiw.

 

[BlackGoat]

Yeah, I don't know how people are finishing this in 15 hours, unless they're skipping like... the entire game. I would certainly be curious to see what a 15 hour first time playthru of this game looks like tho

 

[HeatEXTEND]

In a world where market price reflects actual quality, Disco Elysium would be $40 and Underrail would be $299.95

 

[Tigranes]

OK OK, but you realise in such a scenario there would also be no piracy and thus fantadomat would have to kill himself

 

[ItsChon]

People that finished the game in 15-20 hours must have either skipped a lot of content or perhaps their build was bad so they failed some of the interesting checks which opened up new options and dialogue. That being said, I've put in about 20 hours and I'm at the beginning of day 5, I probably have about 10 hours left, if that, so it's not too crazy to believe. The game definitely doesn't have 60 hours worth of content though, 30 seems about right. Perhaps 35-40 if you're a slow reader and you take too long to figure shit out. It's well worth the 40$ price tag, and even though I haven't finished the game yet I'm already comfortable saying it's the third-best RPG I've ever played (behind Underrail and Planescape: Torment).

Something that I feel like would have benefitted the game is some sort of encyclopedia where we can look at the lore/info we collect regarding the world. Not only would that have served to make the game experience longer, but it also wold have helped establish a better understanding of the world. Keeping track of all the names and the stuff that's happened in the past is actually tough, and I like to think I'm someone who does a great job of piecing a story together. I hope someone is updating their text because once I'm done, I'm making a thread where someone can hopefully explain the different nations and politics that are in the world. Has a map of the entire world been released yet?

 

[Lithium Flower]

Ok, this has been an experience. Holy fuckity-fuck. Below are my un-proofred, hardly comprehensive - or comprehensible - thoughts. Generally no spoilers.

I guess the best way I can explain how enchanted I've been by the game is that my first play-through, a burnout, sociopathic bad lieutenant (Keitel, not Cage) cop that I've built to mostly fuck around, get immersed in insanity, try to crack the case, and maybe find redemption somewhere along the way, ended up having possibly the most engaging character arcs I've ever experienced in fiction, maybe doubly-impressive by the fact that said arc wasn't just a linear sequence of events set up by the developers but rather a combination of my choices and the skills I chose to invest in but also very much the bulletproof fucking feelings the game managed to instill in my heart-brain. My character redeemed himself (sort of) and made peace with his past (a little) and became a better person (definitely) but it easily could have gone the other way. I could have completely burned out, entirely ignored the case, or failed to develop the shred of self-awareness I initially got to lose myself further. Instead, my guy found something resembling personal salvation (maybe madness? complacency? catharsis? or...) I expected this game to be an interactive character study, and it certainly exceeded my expectations in that regard.

I've managed to close the case pretty conclusively, although many of the peripheral variables ended up far from optimal. The ending was very cathartic, but actually I found a lot of the events in the game extremely cathartic - a lot of it is due to the fact you start at absolute rock bottom and when you do anything above expectations pretty much no one expects it, least of all your character.

Noteworthy thingies

hello friend TEST

1. I acknowledge that the game is not meant to be savescummed (then why have a manual save/load system instead of something with a semblance of, dare I say, game design to it, like a Pathologic 2-style save system? But I digress) but I also intend to play this game a finite amount of types and didn't want RNG to sabotage the feats this particular character was meant to be very good at (for example, I will probably never play another high-physique character in this game, so I really wanted to see what all these mystically high Shivers checked had in store in this playthrough). Thus I devised a simple system: I would make a manual save upon leveling up, and then I would only ever load those saves. This meant that if I failed a check and felt strongly about it, I had the option to replay a chunk of content - which usually served as enough of a deterrent not to do so - which meant rolling passive checks again, which meant getting a different, sometimes less optimal outcome. I certainly only got the conclusion I got due to this system, so perhaps it made the game too easy, but I am happy enough with this compromise.

2. There seems to be a lot of variation in game time, indeed. Hellion said their first playthrough took them 35 hours whereas it took me 19 - but bear in mind that I was explicitly rushing the game at a certain point (both because that's the kind of character I was playing and also because I wanted to leave a lot of stuff untouched for my later playthroughs) to the point of ending the game a day earlier than Hellion had. I had to solve a diff:20 shivers check to get a kind of shortcut in the story, so I can only imagine it would have taken me longer if I ended up doing something else - or if I took the time to explore more of the game with a different character. Still, its clear to me that Kurvitz' estimated length of "60 for the average playthrough" is very likely an exaggeration, which I had expected - Robert seems very infatuated with his own game, which is both a good and a bad thing.

3. Besides smaller confrontations, like the Cuno and Measurehead stuff, I only came across one proper combat setpiece (meaning multiple armed combatants on both sides, stuff like that.) It didn't have many options once the shooting started, either - I certainly expected more after reading the devblog. Basically boiled down to: check to take a shot, then check to dodge returning fire. Didn't have opportunities to use Visual Calculus to plan cool avenue of attacks, or Savoir Faire to flank the enemy, just shoot/dodge. I am not listing this as a criticism because it didn't bother me - combat is certainly not a major part of the game, and when it comes to physical and mental danger to your character there was certainly plenty of it everywhere else - and to the game's credit there was at least one option in that scenario that I saw in screenshots/trailers and couldn't personally access, and likewise at least two armed confrontations judging by the preview content that I missed. I also never recovered my gun, so maybe I would have gotten more opportunities for shooty-shooty had I an earlier access to a firearm.

Criticism/Suggestions

Basically the one major thing that slightly detracted from my experience was the resource economy. Like other reviews mentioned, its pretty lax. There are a lot of factors contributing to it, so let me explain:

1. Your main source of income are fucking loot containers scattered everywhere around the map. I really hoped/expected this game would avoid the loot-based munchikinism of other CRPGs but okay. This unfortunately encourages a pretty stupid way to play the game, as talking to people advances time and digging through trash for dollarz doesn't - ignore everything and run through the map collecting garbage, then proceed with, like, doing police work and shit. This also means that, since there are no consequences to looting containers, being a cop that doesn't dig through trash and steal everything in sight is just strictly less optimal - the game doesn't even acknowledge that you are a thief, its just something you do I guess. Hard solution to this? Relegate some of the reale from trash to quest rewards, and penalize clear acts of theft with penalties to your rep with Kim. Easy solution to this? Just make it so that picking up coins and bottles off the floor, as well as digging through containers costs the same amount of time as advancing dialogue. That way you can actually prioritize whether or not your are thieving/hoboing shit or doing something useful with your life.

2. Abundance of drugs. Maybe my electrochemistry was just too high or something, but I had all of the drugs all of the time. You can buy alcohol and cigarettes for a few reale each at the Fritte - okay, whatever. But then you have to consider that each drug has a whopping 5-6 charges, so really, that 2.5 reale for a pack of cigarettes is going to keep you going for a while, and if you find a free pack (which you will if you go through every container for free shit like the game encourages you to) you can basically maintain a cozy +1 to intellect for an entire in-game day - the entire game if you use it tactically instead. And the amount of speed in the game...I found two (again, that's like 10-12 charges of the shit) through quests - cool - but then I looked at the back of a random lorry and it had two more in it! The only substance that I thought was properly rare was that psychedelic anti-radiation drug, of which I only found two, one through a check. My suggestion? Reduce the amount of free drugs in the game to just 1-2 and keep the rest behind the gates of reale. It would be nice if the charges were reduced to 3 as well, because even then I think you would be swimming in drugs.

3. Abundance of medicinal supplies. Remember, the major consequence of drug use - and its only mechanical limiting factor, really - is that they hurt your health and morale pools. So if you have a ton of healing items all the time, the drugs really lose their teeth. Health items are dirt cheap: 90 cents for 1, 2.5 for 3, and that's not counting the many you will find while looting containers. I would very much like to see the prices increase to 1.5 and 4 respectively (which, coincidentally, would mean that that you might actually be in a situation where you could only afford the economically less optimal option) and reducing the amount you find "in the wild," because as it stood I was swimming in drugs and healing items at all times, and usually had quite a bit of cash to spare as well.

Really, by just adjusting a few numbers this whole economy thing could easily be tuned into shape, but I don't know if the devs would care to implement any of these suggestions. I am just a nobody, after all, screaming into the void. Please help me.

Anyway...

God is in his heaven; Revachol forever.

 

[Kev Inkline]

People that finished the game in 15-20 hours must have either skipped a lot of content or perhaps their build was bad so they failed some of the interesting checks which opened up new options and dialogue.

Are you saying that one's going to miss a lot of content by having a bad build? I thought of intentionally gimp myself on the first go by doing some unbalanced build like high psyche and motorics but low int, phys.

 

[aeroaeko]

So can I play as a dialogue heavy character and do a pacifist run?

 

[Mortmal]

People that finished the game in 15-20 hours must have either skipped a lot of content or perhaps their build was bad so they failed some of the interesting checks which opened up new options and dialogue.

Are you saying that one's going to miss a lot of content by having a bad build? I thought of intentionally gimp myself on the first go by doing some unbalanced build like high psyche and motorics but low int, phys.

You clearly miss a ton of content with some archetypes, i noticed low perception is an extremely bad idea for exemple, yet thats on of the archetypes.Also int seems king, there's some point of the game that seems cockblocked if you dont have logic and rethoric.