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

Prime Junta

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Siim-Kosmos? :D
 

Grunker

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Both satisfied with and disappointed in the ending.

The moment with your ex was utterly painful and beautiful, expertly written in all aspects. Even small things like her having her luggage - a fairly blunt metaphor for her escaping your grasp - was so well executed and without just batting you over the head with the imagery. While the tribunal was very... vanilla but ultimately satisfactory. I was afraid the game would dive too much into its postmodernist side with the facts and go into Lost-territory, pussying out of answering the questions of its own mythos because it had too little structure. Glad it did not do this. There's a lot untold, of course, but almost everything relating to the main story *is* answered, the story has purpose, it was not just postmodernist masturbation.

As a postmodernist work, it is, thankfully, more Paul Auster than modern deconstructivism. In fact, it is very little of the latter, which is ironic considering much of the criticism in this thread. Many times it is the opposite - earthbound, concrete and almost sincere to a fault (for instance, the culmination of the cryptozoology quest being a very banal point about whether Morell's love for Lena is a result of things outside of "herself" (her having seen the phasmid) or actual love of her) or the utterly straight played side-quest of the dead drunkard on the pier.

But the actual ending - talking with the deserter and the phasmid - left much to be desired I felt. There might be a few things I'm missing, but I felt as a metaphor the deserter was too much "reflection of Harry if he refuses to let go" and too little commentary on ideology and ideas. The latter I felt was severely missing from the midgame and forward. The game opens up with the seeming ambition of discussing ideas and ideology - not so much the specific ideologies it pokes fun at, but how much man is idea and how much he is impulse and material. How much ideology is a reflection of world analysis and how much it is simply aspects of personality and perspective. It seems to abandon this altogether in favor of its core story about Harry, the case and more easily accesible discussions about personal feelings, loss etc. The latter I think works very well, but it does feel like it fails to conclude much on its discussion of ideology. As such, ideology is reduced to a compelling part of the game's atmosphere - it fails to provide much thematic substance.

I realize it does attempt some discussion of ideology with the deserter as a centerpiece, but it feels more like ideology here is just a vehicle to talk about absolutism and lack of personal honesty (him being motivated by jealousy, shame and his personal failings rather than the lofty ideology he professes to be the cause), there's not much debate on idea/ideology in itself.

Mechanically, I also think the game falls short of true greatness - though it is certainly fantastic. It is not reactive enough to be called a masterpiece, but it does come close with the wealth of downright amazing ideas it pulls off. Which, in itself, is massive praise.
 
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KVVRR

Learned
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Apr 28, 2020
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594
What little spanish was in DE was decently done and well put within the game so I just assumed whatever non-english and non-spanish words there were were just from another language and not made up.

Props to them for putting in the effort, though. Call-me-mañana wasn't as good, but I could inmediatedly tell the Crabman was a spanish speaker from the first line he says to Harry. Lots of games and even acclaimed media with heavy use of the tongue just don't bother and just try to teach a (albeit good) actor some lines in spanish, and it never ends up good. Anybody who knows spanish and has heard Gustavo Fring try to be menacing in it knows this pain.

La Puta Madre is a great name for a mobster too. Cheesy but it works.
 

Arulan

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The quest related to the drunk on the pier took on a special meaning for me. I don't know how hidden this is, or whether it's what most people experienced, but...

I first talked to the wife of said drunk several days before finding the body. Not unlike other conversations I had, my player-character would grasp for ridiculous notions and significance. In this case, from my point of view, I willed a quest into existence. I wanted a missing person's quest, and I accosted this lady until she gave me enough information into making one up. The basis of which relied upon she doesn't know where her husband is right at this moment, but he's probably just at a bar, as usual. I believe your mind even tells you not to expect anything from this, and that it'll likely sit there in your quest log forever, uncompleted.

After hilariously and incorrectly telling her I found her husband -- the homeless person sitting on the steps, I had put this quest out of thought for a while.

When I eventually found her husband I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe that it all actually led to something, and as I found out a little later, to a pretty significant quest.

If there is one thing I think Disco Elysium is second to none is its ability to make even the most minute of details hold major significance. Every crazy thing that came out of my player-character's mouth had some truth to it, eventually.
 

AwesomeButton

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
reflection of Harry if he refuses to let go
I never thought of that guy in such a way. I saw him as a relict of a past age. Like what they said at some point in the game, or in a dev diary - we may be living our everyday lives in this century, but if you start visiting attics, basements, houses in the countryside, you may easily travel to the past century. Why was he together with the phasmoid - they were both fiction come alive, in equal measure real an unreal, remembered and forgotten. Finding him felt like the most surreal moment of the game - as if the characters had done time travel, but not through a made up techno-magic device, but through their own, real effort.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Oh: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/632470/view/2209523289103349404

The Great Internationale Announcement and Working Class Update

A BIG SALE, more languages, better performance, patch notes

4f86c8a8a5524be2955c8fe982727cf06f266c2d.png


¿Estás listo? Prenez un verre mes amis. Начинаем... We're going international! (Are you ready?) (Grab a glass my friends.) (We're starting...)

Disco Elysium is being translated and localized into new languages, hot and fresh off the tongue. Even better is that it's being done by you – our wonderful community.

We're working with hand-picked teams of dedicated fans to ensure they have everything they need to get you the game and its million words in your language. It's properly happening. In full and with flair. Nothing can stop The Great Internationale.

The languages currently in progress are:
  • Spanish
  • Korean
  • Russian
  • Portuguese-Brazilian
And that's not all… We've teamed up with Testronic Labs, a translating powerhouse with internationale prestige, to add two more languages to that list:
  • French
  • German
You want more? So do we. That's why we've opened up a new website that lets you vote on which languages we should translate the game into next. The community decides! You can also track the progress of the translations that are already in the works on that site.

http://internationale.zaumstudio.com/

We can't thank you all enough for the love and support you've shown so far. Nothing keeps us going more than your kind words and seeing your incredible fan art and fiction. We hope to keep up such beautiful exchanges long, long into the future.

Starting with our...
Working Class Update!

We've been working hard on optimizing Disco Elysium so that it runs on as many hardworking machines as possible. No matter how old or low-tech they may be!

If you found that your computer struggled to run Disco Elysium before then this update will hopefully remedy that. Many more people can play for the first time, or have a much better and smoother experience than before. This one's for all our bratan keeping it real by booting up games on their ancient potato machines.

With this latest update, Disco Elysium's minimum specs have been dropped down to Mariana Trench levels. That goes for both the Windows PC and Mac versions.

New PC minimum:

Windows 7 and DirectX 11 compatible video card (integrated or dedicated with min 512MB memory). 2GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo, 20GB hard disk space.

New Mac minimum:



    • MacBook Pro: from mid 2009
    • MacBook Air: from mid 2012
    • iMac: from late 2009
    • Mac Pro: from late 2008
    • Mac mini: from 2009
* An OpenGL capable system
* The higher fan speeds are normal effect, fans run faster when 20% or more of CPU capacity is used.
* These are the oldest tested machines, we cannot guarantee all different specs run but we tried to push specs as low as possible without sacrificing gaming experience.


We're determined to take it further too. We're going to try to keep optimizing so low that we break through the crust on the other side of the planet. Show us your scrapheap calculators and rusty adding machines and we'll give it a go. Disco Elysium for all!

Patch notes!

Patch notes for version PC version c9a92687 and Mac version 0cfead62 (viewable in the F1 menu, bottom right)
  • First - moved to a new version of Unity, which itself has tons of optimizations and goodies.
  • Hunted, found and fixed weird cases on some resolutions where the last word of the sentence was missing. Like …
  • Corrected some typos and some wordings, to mean things. To say stuff.
  • Literally, hundreds of optimizations throughout the game and graphics engine, to streamline the code and to make it less resource hungry. To reach a wider audience.
  • Fixed some animations - like fixing out of sync hands.
  • Fixed some other animations - running and walking around after consuming various liquids
  • Fixed broken menu navigation functionality. All that was accessible is still accessible.
  • Updated end-credits. Play it through to see some new names!
Take care and stay safe folks! Remember to report bugs here.
 

Dishonoredbr

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Cool. I might able to play.. I undestand english but it's so much text that's quite tiring to play for long times.
I JUST HOPE, they have some good Portuguese-Brazilian translator.
 

Tigranes

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Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Oh, I missed the delightful language debate!

Tolkien's conlangs aren't really based on any real-world languages, although they are influenced by them. High Elven is phonetically and structurally somewhat similar to Finnish, but there isn't anything a Finn would recognise there – "Aï, laurië lantar lassi surinen / Yeni unótimë ve ramar aldaron" doesn't look or sound at all like Finnish to a Finn, diphthongs notwithstanding.

Look at it from this point hosting a game of Planescape and having your players learn to speak Planescape slang v.s. having your players learn to speak Klingon. You could play PST without looking up the words or having an in-game wiki. They make sense in the context and fit with the rest of the spoken language of the game (...) But imagine a setting where everyone speaks some variant of English language, but they call the queen Héamecwyn. Even if you make up a fictional language, you have to think about how the people in that fictional world would adapt to encounters with that language. If that word for queen was in daily use, probably they would adapt it somehow. You know, unknown language v.s. unknown language adapted to English, still following English grammar.n.

I think these are both great points that work together. It's notable that when somebody thinks Tolkien's High Elven is directly derived from Finnish, that's usually the impression of people who don't speak Finnish. When Tolkien dropped foreign languages into the actual content of the stories, the hard work behind the scenes made sure that every language gave off a distinct feel (and didn't sound fucking ridiculous), but readers also experienced them as eminently foreign. You could nerd into it and figure out what the language was structured as, but most people just moved on and were OK for it. So it worked at both levels. The reader could say "oh they're speaking that Elven thing again" and move on while getting a sense of the flavour.

PST could also do this because (1) as mentioned above, a lot of the cant is evocative of English thieves-cant that has a pretty big popular culture footprint, so it's pretty familiar for a lot of people; (2) the game doesn't actually require you to interact with the language in great detail. It's not like spell names are conjugated using the cant so that you need to know precisely what berk is or whatever. Most of the commonly used jargon in PST itself is also limited to flavourful expressions, rather than proper names. So you rarely have a point where you need to sit and learn that hardasfuckarium is a synthetic metal derived from notcarbonitas produced by the use of muskmachina in order to figure out what this fucking quest is telling you to do and why your loot keeps breaking.

That said, it's hard for me to assess why some people went apoplectic about Duc or boiaderos when they were seemingly OK with jink and pike it.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
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Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
I mean a high percentage of those cant words are actually just English slang. Barmy, kip, etc.

Yeah, again because Planescape cant seems to draw from English thieves' cant (specific questions of accuracy aside). I suspect that it has enough of a footprint in popular culture that English speakers will find it pretty familiar, though that's my supposition. The implication would be that you'd want to go with Tallcastles and Bigtowns rather than, well, Minas Tirith.

The thing is, though, gamers over decades and decades have seemingly been perfectly fine with tons of exotic made-up names with no immediate resonances (unless you know the referent language or something). People rage at Duc for Duke in POE1, but I never saw anyone complain about Eora. FF6's Espers or A New Hope's Mos Eisley are fine too. There's plenty of more tongue-twisty examples out there. So would Star Wars still have been just fine if Stormtroopers were Wehrmachtsomethings and the Death Star was Nova Something? Is it more acceptable when used for proper names and more annoying when blended into daily expressions?

I can understand the visceral reaction when you sometimes see some jargon and you go "holy shit that's dumb, just call it a fucking spade". I just find that what triggers people seems to vary a huge amount with not much consistency. So OK, somebody finds boiaderos in Disco moronic, but seems to me that there's no halfway objective critique going on there.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Been out of the loop, what's going on with book/sequel/DLC?

Last I heard the English translation was in rough draft state but knowing how perfectionist these guys are they will likely want to polish it up a fair bit before publishing, also I don't know how high a priority it is for them. I'll ask, I'm quite keen to read it too.

They've been talking fairly openly about the sequel they're going to make, but have not divulged any details, in any case don't expect it any time soon, these guys like to take their time. No current plans on DLC AFAIK. They've been focusing on milking this on a few more platforms and localisations.
 

HoboForEternity

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Last I heard the English translation was in rough draft state but knowing how perfectionist these guys are they will likely want to polish it up a fair bit before publishing, also I don't know how high a priority it is for them. I'll ask, I'm quite keen to read it too.
book? like the translation of Kurvitz's the great and terrible air?
 

HoboForEternity

sunset tequila
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
:dance:

I hope they fixed physical books imports by the time it releases. Due to corona, the local store that i use to buy imported books have cut off their less mainstream books. I don't want digital because i am kind of a boomer when it comes to books. Physical is more portable and practical than reading on a tablet. Plus in public you're less likely to get robbed because of your book instead of expensive tablet or kindle devices.
 

AwesomeButton

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Although his reasoning has more holes in it than Belgian lace, and he has studied history from marxists - spoiler alert: marxists have failed at understanding history - it was interesting to see how he goes about defending his point.
 

Verylittlefishes

Sacro Bosco
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So the last I've heard of the Russian localization (which a lot of people are starving of), it will be done by patronage of Alphyna who was narrative designer of fucking Pathologic 2. I'm very pleased to hear this.
 

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