Interview Robert Kurvitz talks about writing Disco Elysium on GameSpot Audio Logs

[Roguey]

That's not what was said, and that's not what was done in the game. Whatever though, keep being disingenuous.

Never has there been a more concentrated effort to shit on a game from people that haven't played it, or are simply butt hurt about the level of praise it's getting.

Every screenshot of DE I've read has dialogue that looks like it came from an Always Online twitter person, and not an actual person.

This can be a deceptive visual comparison, because in reality when you reach the state in the bottom screen, you will have already read all the dialogue that scrolled up. You're only looking at the bottom right corner.

It still has the same problem ShadowSpectre mentioned; you either have to always turn your head or move your eyes to the side to read the dialogue, and the repetition of doing this so many times irritates me.

As another example, this is how Kindle presents things

The font is larger, but when it comes to width, it's comparable in size to the Pillars screenshot. And you read it centered of course.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Roguey Not sure what to tell you. I've always found it more comfortable to read narrower paragraphs. There's a reason why newspapers print in columns rather than edge-to-edge.
This:

Is a lot more comfortable than this:

I improved your examples by centering the top image . See how much easier it is to read?

Not really. Doesn't make much of a difference from the original alignment.

This can be a deceptive visual comparison, because in reality when you reach the state in the bottom screen, you will have already read all the dialogue that scrolled up. You're only looking at the bottom right corner.

It's also deceptive because the text size is much smaller and it's all squeezed as far into the bottom right corner as possible. Contrast with Disco Disco. This is the equivalent position, with the area where new text appears (roughly) in yellow:

It's night and day.

But again, if it really bothers you so much to look to the side rather than down when you get into dialogue, who am I to judge.

 

[felipepepe]

Here you go:

I definitely prefer it this way, not only for making reading easier, but also for not blocking the middle of the screen.

 

[Viata]

I definitely prefer it this way, not only for making reading easier, but also for not blocking the middle of the screen.

Which I believe can be modded in some games, no?

 

[felipepepe]

I definitely prefer it this way, not only for making reading easier, but also for not blocking the middle of the screen.

Which I believe can be modded in some games, no?

Sure, but placing PoE's text there also shows how much more "snappy" Disco's text is.

PoE is as overwritten as an eroge, and dumps it on you in huge blocks. Just changing the layout is not enough, instead of dumping all that at once, Disco would break it in 2-3 blocks. Makes if flow better and give a pause between each sentence. Would help that last sentence land better.

 

[Viata]

Even if you break it in 30 blocks, it wouldn't stop you from feeling like you are reading an encyclopedia. The position of the texts has no relation in this case.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I definitely prefer it this way, not only for making reading easier, but also for not blocking the middle of the screen.

Which I believe can be modded in some games, no?

Sure, but placing PoE's text there also shows how much more "snappy" Disco's text is.

PoE is as overwritten as an eroge, and dumps it on you in huge blocks. Just changing the layout is not enough, instead of dumping all that at once, Disco would break it in 2-3 blocks. Makes if flow better and give a pause between each sentence. Would help that last sentence land better.

If you delete 90% of text PoE is actually not that bad (first one, Deadfire is horrible anyway).

 

[felipepepe]

Here's another example:

 

[Viata]

I prefer the top image, even when playing Disco I missed it.

 

[FeelTheRads]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the first one. The lines are not long enough to become hard to read. They're at readable size.
Whereas the second one splits short lines into two making you do more work to read them.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I miss the time we were talking about Communism and not fucking UI.

 

[Infinitron]

I think beyond ease of reading, it's possible that one of the reasons the Disco dialogue UI is appealing is that it follows the rule of thirds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I think beyond ease of reading, it's possible that one of the reasons the Disco dialogue UI is appealing is that it follows the rule of thirds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds

Yeah, and actually if you look at it, the second made-up Deadfire screenshot is not fit to the rule, while Disco itself is.

 

[FeelTheRads]

wah wah people keep finding things to criticize about the game that i liek

 

[ItsChon]

Every screenshot of DE I've read has dialogue that looks like it came from an Always Online twitter person, and not an actual person.

Lmao, more reading screenshots. Do you understand how stupid this sounds? If anyone was to make a comment about a game that was loved by the Codex, and based said comment on screenshots, no one would give a fuck about what they say. But no, everyone gets a pass with DE.

And tbh, the textbox being in the bottom center of the screen in PoE/Deadfire is definitely preferable to it being Disco style to the right. But in Disco's case, the latter is true. Both games were designed with one thing in mind, so the art and screen placement when dialogue is initiated will be constructed in such a way to reflect that. It's not as easy as just pasting something on the bottom or pasting something to the right. Regardless, Felipe did a good job of exposing Roguey's blatant misrepresentation (I say blatant, because there's no way he's this dumb).

 

[ItsChon]

Also, ShadowSpectre tagging tl;dr on my post after voluntary inserting himself into this discussion has to be peak levels of soy. Complains about the quality of posting and than refuses to back up the integrity of their opinion. 'K, stick to shitboxing. You don't seem to have any problems with reading a ton of text there.

Maybe because it's...vertical and narrow?

Spoiler

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

FeelTheRads you have to put yourself in their shoes. Here comes these obscure developers trying to revolutionize cRPGs with all kinds of fancy arguments and whatnot. It’s a romantic idea. Of course, it is also a fraud, since they promised the world and delivered a mediocre visual novel with no reactivity at all. In order to believe in such fraud, you need to be gullible enough. These people want to be duped. All the facts in the world don’t matter.

The stupid comparison with twitter should give any reasonable player a pause for thought. They didn’t even blink. That’s how gullible they are. Look at the original way I placed my text. It’s an old idea, but they didn’t notice because they have an insatiable appetite for illusion. That’s exactly what they wanted: to be told you have a groundbreaking sophisticated cRPG that does everything differently.

This phenomenon is not new in the Codex either. We watched this time and again. Remember that shameful way in which Undertale was promoted here by some pretentious posters? Felipepepe was one of its main defenders. Why? Is someone really surprised that he is now defending this game tooth and nail? The same Felipepepe that include all kinds of garbage in the GOTY pool and made it meaningless?

I don't think they even like DE. The only thing that matters to them is what the game represents. A symbol of innovation and thinking outside the box. It doesn't matter that the actual game doesn't work. What matters is that DE's developers symbolize something different. Facts be damned.

 

[FeelTheRads]

A symbol of innovation and thinking outside the box. It doesn't matter that the actual game doesn't work.

It would've symbolized something different if it worked.
The problem is they're pretending it's working.
Depending of the mental disability of the DE fanbot you ask, the game either has combat so it's no different than any other RPG, or it doesn't which FINALLY shows how everyone was wrong and there can be RPGs without combat.
And the funny thing is that both are wrong. It does NOT have combat and if it shows anything is that you CAN'T have RPGs without combat.

So, the only thing it symbolizes, or the only thinking outside the box here is pretty much like going "OK, we're so zany, we'll make a car without wheels! How will it work? Dunno, dude, I don't know how cars work!".

 

[Trashos]

From what I have heard, looking up and to the right gives us access to our imagination. Interesting to combine that with text that is located to the right, although I am not sure it means anything.

As far as the twitter controversy is concerned: In his books, Kundera often used love stories as the surface for his ontological investigations. Cervantes used humor for his individuality investigations. The surface can be anything that makes the more important matters immediately appealing, as far as I am concerned. If the DE people used twitter as an inspiration for their surface, the least I can say is that this is an interesting experiment (and I hate twitter, make no mistake).

This does not mean that they succeeded in what they tried to do, I do not know. I have not played DE yet.

 

[fantadomat]

People are going out of their way to just shit on the game,can't even praise the technical innovation the had brought in. Some people here really sound cringy while trying to self validate their hate for the game. Don't liking the game is one thing,there is plenty of chads here who just don't like it and move on. But some have gone full on batshit insane lol. The textbox thingy was pretty smart,it messhed well with the fast,sharp style of writing in the game,it was all dialogue and felt very fluid. For a game that is all text,it never flet boring like numanuma. Tho i do like the center text in a big box,it feels like reading a book,suits fantasy games the best in my opinion.

 

[ShadowSpectre]

Also, ShadowSpectre tagging tl;dr on my post after voluntary inserting himself into this discussion has to be peak levels of soy. Complains about the quality of posting and than refuses to back up the integrity of their opinion. 'K, stick to shitboxing. You don't seem to have any problems with reading a ton of text there.

Man, you must have participated in that gay zoomer pool party the other night and gotten your ass fucked so hard to be this butthurt by me, personally. Roguey already blew your arguments out of the water with photographic evidence. My preference is centered text within view and the action above. If you want to pretend you are playing an RPG when you are actually reading a visual novel, be my guest, but don't start crying out for attention when people disagree with you.

Also, this me doing you all red-blooded and cool after eating a nice, large, juicy steak --after you've been sipping the soy kool-aid and needing more butthurt:

Spoiler

 

[ItsChon]

Roguey already blew your arguments out of the water with photographic evidence.

What? You must have TL;DR'd past that too, as you're making no sense. His screenshots were shit, as was shown by Felipepepe. He was posting shitty modded screenshot versions that are fundamentally different to that of the Disco Elysium system, and every one of his posts basically amounted up too "I prefer this. Don't you prefer this?". Whatever though. Cute that you have to cite Roguey to defend you because you don't have shit to say to defend your own ideas.

My preference is centered text within view and the action above.

Okay? I wasn't making an argument about whether or not text on the bottom is better than text being on the right. I was responding to this absolutely low IQ and completely retarded post regarding widescreen support and having to move your head rofl. I even said above that the text being centered with action above looks better in PoE 2, and many other games for that matter. You're the one over here making strawmans.

The Disco text is all right-sided on the screen. So on a widescreen monitor, you have to physically turn your head or eyes to read it properly, then center back for the game. It's shitty design. IE and Fallout design is superior as the text is centered and also narrows into a nice readable column. You can also see what's going on in front of you as you read, instead of having all that writing off to the side like that in DE, where it takes up the whole length of the screen vertically.

If you want to pretend you are playing an RPG when you are actually reading a visual novel, be my guest, but don't start crying out for attention when people disagree with you.

Lol? Look at this nigger right here. Makes an intellectually dishonest post and gets mad when he gets ass blasted for it? Just as many people would have shit on me if I started complaining about FO's lack of support for resolutions that are at 1920x1080 and above. That's what you did by bringing up widescreen monitors lmao.

I don't give a fuck if people disagree with me, but when people that haven't even played a game start talking out of their ass, yeah I'm going to call them retarded. Sounds like you're the one that's mad.

Also, this me doing you all red-blooded and cool after eating a nice, large, juicy stake --after you've been sipping the soy kool-aid and need more butthurt:

Wow, you sure got me. I like how you completely abandoned all the stupid shit you were saying before, because you realized it's indefensible and wanted to cash in on some cheap brofists from the anti DE crowd.

 

[Roguey]

Lmao, more reading screenshots. Do you understand how stupid this sounds? If anyone was to make a comment about a game that was loved by the Codex, and based said comment on screenshots, no one would give a fuck about what they say. But no, everyone gets a pass with DE.

It's an overly-expensive visual novel with a random number generator. Watching someone else play it gives you the same experience as playing it yourself because that's all there is to "play."

 

[ItsChon]

with a random number generator.

That's a ton of combat systems. Hell, FO's combat system is a random number generator that determines your chance to hit by taking into account a few stats. What's the difference between watching someone press the attack button and you pressing it? If you can't see the false equivalency here, you're not smart. There is a fundamental difference when it comes to playing something, versus watching something. No one would try to seriously argue that playing The Stanley Parable and watching a YT let's play of it would be the same experience, but that's what you're trying to do here.

EDIT: And this goes for all other visual novels. The medium in which you experience a game or a movie or whatever else fundamentally changes what said game, movie, etc is. Niel Postman for fucks sake.

 

[Roguey]

with a random number generator.

That's a ton of combat systems. Hell, FO's combat system is a random number generator that determines your chance to hit by taking into account a few stats. What's the difference between watching someone press the attack button and you pressing it? If you can't see the false equivalency here, you're not smart. There is a fundamental difference when it comes to playing something, versus watching something. No one would try to seriously argue that playing The Stanley Parable and watching a YT let's play of it would be the same experience, but that's what you're trying to do here.

EDIT: And this goes for all other visual novels. The medium in which you experience a game or a movie or whatever else fundamentally changes what said game, movie, etc is. Niel Postman for fucks sake.

DE's "system" is extremely simple and you either die or get some sort of narrative reactivity from the outcomes. It's not at all like the complexity that's involved with an actual combat system.