Why do people like Disco Elysium's writing so much?

[maximusriley]

I have never played a game where there was so much of a disconnect between my perception and the general opinion. It won a bunch of awards for its story, people whose opinion I respect praise it highly, but IMO the writing in it is shit. Not mediocre, not sup-bar, but absolute shit.

I can't see it for anything other than self-indulgent, incoherent, disjointed verbal diarrhea. There are way too many unnecessary walls of text, most of the jokes are juvenile and flat, and it really feels like something written by a second year lit student. Someone who just spewed out every thought he's ever had in his head with precisely zero consideration for whether or not any of them make sense individually or fit together as a coherent whole.

So what was it about it that people liked so much?? Can someone please explain the phenomenon to me?

P.S. And before someone tells me to go play Call of Duty or whatever, I'm a person who loves story-heavy games, and loves to read (as in actual books, with pages and shit). I bought Disco Elysium with every expectation that it would be an amazing experience; instead it turned out to be the biggest disappointment of my gaming career.

 

[Falksi]

I can't comment on Disco Elysium as I've yet to play it. Wall of text (or WOT) games aren't my cuppa cha anyway. I much prefer games which are paced more interactively, and where text is far more bitesized so that I'm constantly prompted to think. As a side note, "No Truce For The Furies" was SUCH a better name.

But with that said, I can give my opinion on why people like Disco:

1. It Saved Dancing
Who doesn’t dance when they hear disco? The genre was one of the most influential and infectious musical styles of the 1970s, and it made social dancing popular again - introducing a new freeform style. Whereas previously you’d have to bring along a partner to dance with, disco was every man and woman for themselves. Disco dancing was the first time people could go onto the dance floor as an individual, allowing for more freedom and expression. Plus you didn’t have to worry about stepping on your partners toes!

2. IT CREATED THE MODERN DJ
It’s the first time that DJs really selected music in response to the crowd. Mixing techniques and the rise of DJs as we know them started in New York City in the 1970s. In the UK, we still had the classic cringey wedding-DJ style of announcing songs over a microphone, which meant the dancing stopped. The New York DJs wanted the flow of music and dance moves to continue all night, so the trend began of using headphones to listen to the incoming record and mix songs together to keep the rhythm going. That way, people could truly lose themselves in the music.

3. IT INVENTED THE REMIX
Remixing doesn’t only come out of disco – there was a culture of it in Jamaica too – but the art really took off in New York in the 1970s. Salsoul (a popular disco record label) in 1976 commissioned a remix of Double Exposure’s song Ten Percent, an explosive moment in music making. The key difference was they invited a DJ, Walter Gibbons, to remix the record for the dance floor specifically. This proved pretty scandalous for the time, and lots of producers were up in arms - but the DJs were in a much better position to do remixes because they were actually at the clubs, selecting the music for the crowd, and knew what made people dance. So remixes, which are now ubiquitous, came to the fore thanks to disco (whether you like them or not!).

 

[deama]

What's meant to be good writing in your books then? Give an example that's a video game, not a book though.

 

[Jasede]

People are easily dazzled by what appears to be insightful. You'd know this if you'd ever read a few scientific papers.

As for DE, communists aren't known for their good taste. If their product supports their ideology, it is good. If it doesn't, it is bad.

Unlike us humans, communists are incapable of liking anything made by people they disagree with.

 

[Junmarko]

Can someone please explain the phenomenon to me?

You need to use drugs before playing it judging by the fanbase.

 

[Jasede]

It's so deep, dude.

 

[just]

playing disco elysium is like reading hentai manga with 200 panels of build up and no sex at the end

anyway, to not be offtopic

 

[Narushima]

Every time I've played a game praised for its writing (genuinely going in with a positive attitude), I've ended up annoyed, almost angry at it. It's always vacuous and, as you said, very "second year lit student".

 

[Roguey]

Disco Elysium is a reading game for people who hate reading i.e. twitter addicts.

 

[Marat]

Why do people like Disco Elysium's writing so much?

Because they don't actually understand it. To convince themselves and others around them that it's not beyond the scope of their intellectual capabilities they will praise it, not knowing that once you get passed the "verbal diarrhea", the proper contents of the text, it's meaning, is at best substandard. At least that's the explanation for why majority of gaming community sings praise about this game. Much the same like people who normally would tell you that some stupid-ass infantile movie about superheroes in skin-tight suits is the best work of cinematography ever will praise some artsy-looking movie with shits for contents and meaning, instead of admiting they don't understand it. They will pretend it's oh sooo deep and thought-provoking because it looks like it is - an illusion that fades once someone intelligent takes a look.

As for people who aren't inbred, half-cooked imbeciles and they liked the game: De gustibus non est disputandum

 

[Jasede]

Way to go rating someone retarded who wrote the same thing you wrote in different words.

 

[Lemming42]

Not played the game but the writers seem like living, breathing counter-arguments to those anti-bullying weeks that schools do nowadays. We need a pro-bullying week so these little shits get knocked about a bit and have their egos beaten out of them. It's too late now, it needed to happen when they were kids.

To stay on topic:

 

[Butter]

It's not a deep game. It's not a very interesting game philosophically. Planescape: Torment offers more to think about in a single area than Disco Elysium does in its entire span. However, the act of reading Disco Elysium is pretty fun. The prose is snappy, the jokes had a pretty good success rate for me, and it was refreshing to be able to play such an abject loser. The art style and music also help to create a unique atmosphere of melancholy. When characters talk about Revachol's best days being behind them, you can fully imagine it.

There's unfortunately a culture of dipshits who only heard about Disco Elysium because commie game journalists gave it such gushing coverage. These people are eager to pontificate on the depth of Disco Elysium's social and political commentary in words they only misunderstand, and their insufferability has rubbed off on the game to some extent. It should also be noted that Disco Elysium ultimately fails as a detective game, as the story is on rails and doesn't allow you to actually solve the murder yourself.

 

[GarrisonFjord]

I bought Disco Elysium with every expectation that it would be an amazing experience

It's all just garbage (whatever I/you/they like).

One way to look at it: new == interesting.
Where "new" is relative to the individual, therefore so is "interesting".
Replace "new" and "interesting" with whatever adjectives you want.
All praise/derision is rationalization of feelings, nothing more.

Better be disillusioned. Neither positive nor negative.
You find something that you don't like, you move on.
You find something that you like, stay awhile, then move on.

 

[TemplarGR]

Cause they have no taste.

 

[Marat]

Way to go rating someone retarded who wrote the same thing you wrote in different words.

Maybe I'm retarded, how can you know?

And it's your bullshit about communists which earned you the rating. It betrays you as one of those people who are so confounded that they WILL see what they want to see and it will just happen to reinforce their nonsensical views. You can't even tell the game doesn't even remotely attempt to make a political statement. You just see the word "communism" and start foaming at the mouth about communists this, communists that, communists aren't people.

 

[Prime Junta]

n00b: "Hey Codex, explain why you like <redacted>"
Codex: Explains in great length and detail why it hates <redacted>, then goes off on a tangent about Communism

Don't ever change, Codex

 

[bec de corbin]

You don't have to be a communist in it if you don't want to, but I'm sure you all knew that and aren't just angry at something that allows for the possibility of people disagreeing with you

 

[Prime Junta]

To answer the OP's question... I can't, really. It's like asking someone to explain what's so great about Monty Python's Flying Circus. You either get it or you don't, and there's no way to explain it if you don't.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I have never played a game where there was so much of a disconnect between my perception and the general opinion. It won a bunch of awards for its story, people whose opinion I respect praise it highly, but IMO the writing in it is shit. Not mediocre, not sup-bar, but absolute shit.

I can't see it for anything other than self-indulgent, incoherent, disjointed verbal diarrhea. There are way too many unnecessary walls of text, most of the jokes are juvenile and flat, and it really feels like something written by a second year lit student. Someone who just spewed out every thought he's ever had in his head with precisely zero consideration for whether or not any of them make sense individually or fit together as a coherent whole.

So what was it about it that people liked so much?? Can someone please explain the phenomenon to me?

P.S. And before someone tells me to go play Call of Duty or whatever, I'm a person who loves story-heavy games, and loves to read (as in actual books, with pages and shit). I bought Disco Elysium with every expectation that it would be an amazing experience; instead it turned out to be the biggest disappointment of my gaming career.

Cause none of that is true. The writing is not self-indulgent, disjointed, juvenile or flat. Either you have totally alien tastes compared to most people who like it, or you played it in some other language and the translation's been bad.

 

[Takamori]

It provided enough entertainment in a standard where low standards for writing is the norm. It does all right and it was a fun journey to follow through, fulfilled its roll as a video game, it provided entertainment. We could argue the quality of the product and so on, standard video game discussion.

If you come through video games medium expecting deep insight regarding politics, culture, economy anything that requires you to pick a fucking book and study for a extensive time and not just square through some retarded article on the internet than I'm sorry to say that you have a total lack of self awareness and/or is a lazy fuck that want to value yourself as a intellectual without putting effort.

 

[JarlFrank]

People are easily dazzled by what appears to be insightful. You'd know this if you'd ever read a few scientific papers.

As for DE, communists aren't known for their good taste. If their product supports their ideology, it is good. If it doesn't, it is bad.

Unlike us humans, communists are incapable of liking anything made by people they disagree with.

I'm the exact opposite of a communist and I liked it.

I guess it's mostly because I can relate very well to the protagonist, who is a middle-aged washed-up guy with an alcoholism problem who can't let go of his past and is stuck in a perpetual downward spiral which he combats by being an edgy bastard who pretends not to care.

 

[JarlFrank]

It's not a deep game. It's not a very interesting game philosophically. Planescape: Torment offers more to think about in a single area than Disco Elysium does in its entire span. However, the act of reading Disco Elysium is pretty fun. The prose is snappy, the jokes had a pretty good success rate for me, and it was refreshing to be able to play such an abject loser. The art style and music also help to create a unique atmosphere of melancholy. When characters talk about Revachol's best days being behind them, you can fully imagine it.

Yeah, for me the thing that drew me in was the atmosphere of melancholy and the ability to play a character who's a complete anti-hero. Harry is a character I could connect to, and the melancholic mood spoke to me a lot. And especially any scene involving Harry's ex hit home for me. The game's world drew me in and left me with a nice bittersweet feeling.

There's unfortunately a culture of dipshits who only heard about Disco Elysium because commie game journalists gave it such gushing coverage. These people are eager to pontificate on the depth of Disco Elysium's social and political commentary in words they only misunderstand, and their insufferability has rubbed off on the game to some extent.

The funny part is that all the political commentary is satire, or at least all of that which comes out of Harry's mouth. Whether you decide to make your Harry lean left or right, authoritarian or libertarian, it's all just a parody of real positions taken by these political factions. It's clever as a joke, but it's not deep political commentary. It's the video game equivalent of political compass memes.

 

[Bohrain]

I played it about half an hour, refunded it. It was a miniscule amount of content I read, but to me it didn't reek like bad prose, just the kind I don't like. I've seen plenty of bad prose in video games and it's usually in the form of stilted dialogue, purple prose and characters doing shit that makes absolutely no sense given their motivations and context. Disco Elysium didn't give me the feeling of a complete amateur being on the wheel like Tyranny did for example. If you find the idea of having arguments with your subconcious thrilling it's probably a decent experience. But personally I'm not a fan of stories where the tangible reality is kinda just an irrelevant setpiece and all the relevant happens inside the protagonist's head.

 

[Harthwain]

I can't see it for anything other than self-indulgent, incoherent, disjointed verbal diarrhea. There are way too many unnecessary walls of text, most of the jokes are juvenile and flat, and it really feels like something written by a second year lit student. Someone who just spewed out every thought he's ever had in his head with precisely zero consideration for whether or not any of them make sense individually or fit together as a coherent whole.

Bullshit. I get someone not liking the absurd kind of humor the Disco goes for, but the description of the Homo-Sexual Underground alone disproves your claim:

You see mysterious strangers in the night. Leaning against unlit doorways, engaged in hushed conversation. A shadowy cabal exchanging looks, whispering in dark alleys and unmarked locales. A radical cell conspiring against the state -- and perhaps even against man and woman. Was that a secret handshake? What’s going on? Who are these secretive people? How will they accomplish their sinister and world-altering goals? And most importantly -- are you *one* of them? You could be. Maybe you forgot...

Or the three racists:

It starts with the Lorry Driver, who is your typical racist. Then you meet black supremacist with a French accent who brings forward his pseudo-scientific Advanced Race Theory. This is funny, because you'd expect this kind of rhetoric from "White Power!" white man (hence the reason Measurehead is black). Him having a French accent I read as a jab towards modern France. Lastly, he is the supreme racist (like, the peak of racial supremacy) and is put in stark contrast to the "usual racist" - the Lorry Driver, which is also the point he himself makes. After that you can find the third kind of racist: the cryptofacist aka "our lucky racist", which is an inside joke that you can make between the main character and Kim.

So we have three kinds of racist, supremacist and cryptoracist in game. I am certain that their whole reason for being is because they are all parts of the whole joke chain (and it's probably also the reason why there are no "serious" facists/racists in game, since they populated the world with three characters of this kind just to make that joke happen). You can tell there was a bit of thought put in there.

The absurd humor in Disco makes the politics work, because, like JarlFrank said, it's all one big joke, even when it comes to ideologies. And Disco doesn't really take sides here - contrary to what some people may claim - because it shits on all ideologies at one point in time or another. It was funny to have the option to say: "Dios Mio!" (Draw a cross.) "A LIBERAL!". Or read how Rhetoric talks that what makes you a communist is "saying things like [...] "impale all people who have more than 25 real in their pocket, "literally murder all human beings regardless of their political beliefs" - that kind of stuff".

The way I see it either the absurd humor is not up your alley or you are taking the game way more seriously than you ought to and than it treats itself. Or, like GentlemanCthulhu mentioned, you didn't play in English. Because I can only talk about the English version.