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

Salvo

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Mar 6, 2017
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1,395
I wonder if the differences between release and this version are going to be large enough to warrant a playthrough. One of DC's biggest flaws is that there's not really much replay value. We'll see, I guess, it's not like there's a lot of stuff to play right now.
 

Kasparov

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There's more stuff out there, but a lot of is about Disco Elysium the Console Game. Google at your own peril.

Disco Elysium is getting even more political
We chat to ZA/UM about political vision quests, accents and listening to your clothes.

SxKZD8K6PWNBiFwAybasvS-320-80.jpg


Disco Elysium, our 2019 Game of the Year is poised to take its final form this month. More quests, a new location and full voice acting—over a million words—makes it a hefty free update. The response from players, says lead writer Helen Hindpere, is a big part of why the team is returning to Revachol and its amnesiac detective. They embraced the way it dove into challenging subjects, and ZA/UM wants to give them even more.

"It seems that, oddly enough, people do like politics in their games—especially when it’s offered as a way to shape your character in a RPG."

Politics seeps into every part of Disco Elysium, and your journey through Revachol's ideologies is just as meaningful as the main story, but it doesn't really get its own conclusion. Political vision quests will cap that journey by exploring these ideologies even further, while also putting your dedication to your chosen ideology to the test.

"Each vision quest comes to a point where players are encouraged to stop and reflect on where the quest is leading them," says Hindpere. "Are the solutions offered by your fellow ideological companions tangible enough? What is the best way to leave your mark on the world?"

Disco Elysium's biggest puzzle is your forgetful detective's identity, so ending your political quest with a final moment of self-reflection feels appropriate. The mark you leave on the city is tangible, too. The map will physically change, explains Hindpere, "as a sort of direct metaphor of the way politics has the power to shape the world." You'll be able to customise the statue looming over the traffic jam, for instance. Along with the world, you'll also be able to tweak yourself, finding new clothes and ways to earn XP.

This has also been an opportunity for the team to address a criticism some players had: that political dialogue options often took things to comical extremes. It's fitting for a game with such an eccentric protagonist, but ZA/UM decided to give the vision quests more "heartfelt and serious" moments, and more nuance. There's room for the detective to grow and mature by the end of them. But there will still be laughs, Hindpere promises.

Different strokes
What's also reassuring is that these quests aren't being forced into the same mould, even if they have some common themes. The ultraliberal path lets you build a personal brand, for instance, while the communist track inspires you to begin a movement. They have different lengths, though, and some are chatty, some are more visual, and one of them will take you to a new hidden location. It's an urban area, which Hindpere says reminds her of Berlin. She doesn't give away much more about it, but adds that it's accompanied by a new track from British Sea Power, which she describes as "hopeful and strong, like the mammoths of history marching through time". That will be a new experience for my ears.

British Sea Power actually put together two new tracks, Advesperascit and Ignus Nilsen Waltz, and you can listen to both of them now.

Every quest will have unique elements like characters you won't be able to chat to otherwise, so your choices will lead to an even more distinct journey—you'll have yet another reason to return and try a different ideology on for size. And like most of Disco Elysium's cast, these new characters will reveal more facets of your personality, making things bubble to the surface that can potentially change how other conversations play out. This way, their impact lingers even once you return to the original story.

Kim Kitsuragi will join you on these new quests and will of course have plenty to say about your misadventures. It wouldn't be right if we couldn't bring our BFF. He's not the only character who's been expanded, either, and the new conversations aren't exclusively related to just ideologies.

"I've described these new bits as political vision quests, but in a very Disco Elysium fashion the conversations won't revolve around a single topic," says Hindpere. "You'll be talking about love, sexuality, hope, ambition, and even about certain geological features specific to our worldbuilding. There's an opportunity to get close and intimate with characters who have thus far seemed unapproachable. Let's say that once you share the same ideology many barriers disappear, allowing you see a different side of many important characters."

Every character, new and old, has been given a voice. Every line is spoken, even when it's just your subconscious, which serves as the game's narrator and constant companion.

"Anything that needs to be narrated went to an actor called Lenval Brown," says voice director Jim Ashilevi, "and Lenval Brown is sort of the backbone of Disco Elysium: The Final Cut. His voice is going to carry you through the whole journey. His voice is the voice you're going to hear in your sleep, as you play Disco Elysium."

Speak your mind
Brown's contribution took eight months to record, amounting to a whopping 350,000 words. On his own, he's responsible for about a third of the entire game. Your subconscious has a lot to say. And from what ZA/UM has shown off, his performance is spot on. Deep and gravelly, it's slightly menacing, but also authoritative, because your subconscious knows what's going on even if you don't.

"Recording one million words during a pandemic hasn’t been easy—there’s been countless last minute rescheduling emergencies, plus the added strain of working over a distance," says Hindpere. "But I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved. The outcome feels lush and colourful—it’s a pleasure to walk around in this babel of voices and discover what the actors have added to the script."

Revachol is an interesting city to listen to. It's a city full of cultures coming together and occasionally clashing, and the accents of the characters reflect this. ZA/UM uses those accents to bring out certain traits. Hindpere mentions that John Steinbeck's influence on the character is why Titus Hardie had to be American, and loud-mouthed Cuno just wouldn't be the same without his Scouse accent. You might be happy to know the abrasive urchin no longer sounds like he's talking inside a steel drum, but he still sounds like Cuno.

There are 284 characters with voice lines in Disco Elysium, though Ashilevi notes that not all of them are human. There's your "horrific necktie", for instance, which the director adds "will have some things to say from time to time." The horrific necktie is voiced by the same person as the reptilian brain and limbic system, Mikee Goodman, which chatter away while you sleep. In the original version, they ended up being two of the most memorable voices, so I've got high hopes for the necktie. Like Ashilevi, Goodman also serves as a voice director. The team don't all give performances, but many of them do work in other creative disciplines beyond their role at ZA/UM.

"We're not a classical videogame studio," says Ashilevi. "ZA/UM is an art collective. I would say we maybe have more in common with the Wu-Tang Clan than your average videogame studio. Meaning, much like the Wu-Tang Clan, all of the members of ZA/UM have their own creative careers going. And then, when we come together under the umbrella of ZA/UM, that's when we create the best works of our lives."

You'll be able to take a trip to updated Revachol from March 30, when Disco Elysium: The Final Cut launches. If, however, you fear change, you can pick your VO mode, choosing to play with only the original voice acting, the new stuff except for the narrator, or the whole lot. And then that's it for Disco Elysium—it'll be complete. I'm looking forward to my revisit, but I'm even more excited about what ZA/UM's planning next.
 
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commie

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Divinity: Original Sin 2
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut classification rejected in Australia
The extended edition of ZA/UM's RPG was due to release on PS5 and PS4 in the country on March 30

The Australian Classification Board refused the classification of Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, the expanded edition of ZA/UM's hit.

Classification is refused for games that "depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified," the board said.


Disco Elysium depicts drugs and alcohol addiction -- in 2018, GamesIndustry.biz talked to ZA/UM lead designer and writer Robert Kurvitz about the studio's exploration of alcoholism.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut was due to release in Australia on March 30 on PlayStation 5 and 4, and on the Xbox family of consoles and Switch later this year, marking the title's debut on consoles.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...inal-cut-classification-rejected-in-australia

Australia will be free from crypto-communist degeneracy.
 

Larianshill

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Feb 16, 2021
Messages
1,719
Imagine being a grown man, and still having some out of touch boomers deciding what is okay for you to watch or play. Imagine being an australian.
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,689
Wait, wasn't Disco Elysium released in Australia before? Or did they just realize the game is about playing as drunk drug addict?
 

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
I'm pretty sure that the next will be same setting, but different story. I mean, dude, they got a whole unique world unexplored and you want them to do sequel about cop in some disctrict of some little city?

I'd say just continue the story. DE feels like a very good prologue.
Kurvitz said in an interview that the game is significantly scaled back from what their initial scope was. If you read their old dev diaries, there is talk about the world map covering the whole city of Revachol. So yes, there is much more of Harry's story and this of particular case to be told.

The ending of DE is in fact what was supposed to be the ending of a first chapter, with the tensions rising between the corporation and the strikers. There is also Klaasje's story that should be continued, which seems to get into some high level espionage motives.
 

PlanHex

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Tigranes

Arcane
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Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Australian censorship board has been famous for decades - it's not people who necessarily understand film, or video games, or children, but they have somehow developed a super strong sense of what is right and wrong to censor and the conviction that they won't just let whatever go. They're a whole thing & have been for a long time.

I'm usually in favour of people taking their jobs seriously and actually doing what they're supposed to do, but it doesn't work well when the entire existence of a censorship board in today's media industry just doesn't make much sense.
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
I'm looking forward to my Final Cut playthrough. I'm going to play it as an utterly depraved piece of filth, in stark contrast to my first playthrough as a regretful cop seeking redemption.
 

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
More previews: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/d...-black-and-white-movie-to-color/1100-6489042/

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut Is Like Going From A Black-And-White Movie To Color
Disco Elysium's developers say the new version of the game is much closer to their original vision than what they shipped last year.

When fledgling developer ZA/UM set out to make what would become Disco Elysium, to some degree, they didn't know what they were getting into. The game as it was released is set in a single district of the fictional city of Revachol, called Martinaise, but in its original conception, the game would have spanned five. Scaling back became a necessity for the relatively small team at ZA/UM if they ever wanted to get their RPG out the door--but after a successful launch and more than a year of additional development time, Disco Elysium is about to become much closer to what its creators originally intended.

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is set for release on March 30, and it significantly expands the game ZA/UM released in October 2019. Along with releasing on PlayStation 4, PS5, and Stadia (ZA/UM says it plans for Switch and Xbox One and Series X|S versions in the future), the Final Cut adds new quests, new characters, and myriad small changes throughout the game that will allow players to solve problems in new ways. ZA/UM gave GameSpot a look at the Final Cut during an online preview event ahead of its release, which gave a sense of some of the tweaks, while showing off the real crown jewel of the enhanced version of the game: full voice acting.

"I would even go so far as to say that it's sort of like having seen a film in black and white, and hopefully having liked the film, and then coming back to that film after the director has sort of reworked it and created his dream version of the film and seeing it in full color, all of a sudden," voice over director Jim Ashilevi said during the event. "I would say the difference is that vast and dramatic."

It was no small feat--as Ashilevi explained, Disco Elysium contains about 1 million words that had to be voiced, about the same amount as is contained in all the Harry Potter novels, or twice as much as is contained in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The Final Cut features about 59 actors from countries around the world, he said.

"Revachol really is sort of like the capital of the world. It is a gigantic melting pot of different cultures, different languages, different political views," Ashilevi said. "It's a huge melting pot for all of those things. And we really needed the voiceover to emphasize that aspect of Disco Elysium. Because you do get a sense of it without the voiceover, when you go through the game as if you're reading a novel. But the voiceover read, it does have to be a game-changer in that regard. So I would say that having brought all these different languages and accents into the game and giving you the opportunity to actually hear that symphony of accents really does make a huge difference in the way you experienced Disco Elysium."

While the fact that Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is fully voiced should drastically change how the game feels to play, it's not the only addition to the game. The Final Cut also adds four new quests that expand on the characterization of the protagonist through the political alignment players bring to him.

These additions are called political vision quests, which allow you to further expand on Disco Elysium's Thought Cabinet mechanics. Depending on the choices you make through the game, the Thought Cabinet elements you focus on, and the way you interact with other characters, you'll get access to one of those four quests.

Picking one quest excludes you from the others, and not all the quests are the same length or have quite the same impact--but all of them will have effects on the later game. According to lead artist Kaspar Tamsalu, the aim for the political vision quests is "culmination and catharsis."

"For some players, these political vision quests will indeed offer self-expression, role-play, an act, while for others, it offers a way for true introspection," Tamsalu explained. "Unlike in real life, the video game allows one to reload a save game and try to resolve a complex situation in a different way entirely, and through this process, the player will undoubtedly open themselves up to different and sometimes opposing points of view. This opens the way toward empathy. Sure, we’re getting a bit deeper into the political side of the game with these political vision quests. We’re also getting a bit deeper into the mind of (the protagonist), and poke a bit deeper into the tapestry that is the history of the world of Elysium."

"I can say that by completing each of these quests the player will undoubtedly meet new people, learn something new about people they’ve already met previously in the game, learn something new about themselves, uncover--let’s call them secrets--about the world of Elysium," Tamsalu said.

Other changes to Disco Elysium in The Final Cut bring a variety of improvements. The game's frame rate has been increased, Tamsalu said, and The Final Cut includes fast travel to make getting around Martinaise a little easier. There's new art and music in the game to go with the additional content. And ZA/UM has worked to make The Final Cut easier and more interesting for streamers, with a mode that replaces copyrighted music. Twitch integration means fans watching streamers play Disco Elysium can vote on actions and dialogue choices. There's also a feature that will allow stream viewers to vote to either increase or decrease the player's stats, altering how key moments in the game might play out.

Taken together, the improvements and additions to Disco Elysium in The Final Cut bring the game in line with ZA/UM's original vision--not the pie-in-the-sky conception with a sprawling city and real-time tactical combat, but the involved, novelistic version it spawned, and which Disco Elysium came close to hitting in 2019.

That's why ZA/UM poured so many resources into fully voicing the game, Ashilevi said: The developer wanted to create the best version of Disco Elysium it could, and make it as approachable as possible for players, especially if they were playing it on their couch.

"We wanted the existing game to shine in its full glory, rather than rush off and go wild with expansions," he said. "Disco Elysium was already complete, all that was missing was the political quests branch, which is now added to the story. Thus it made complete sense for us to pour most of our resources into the aspect of the game that still had the greatest amount of untapped potential--voice over. Up until now the game mainly stood on the shoulders of two giants: the writing and the art direction. Now we finally have that third pillar built in the form of full voice-over, which not only complements but also elevates the strongest features of the writing and artistic style of the game. With those three pillars supporting the experience of moving through the story the player finally gets fully immersed in the game the way we wanted them to be immersed in it in the first place."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/03/19/what-is-disco-elysium-final-cut/

‘Disco Elysium: The Final Cut’ comes out March 30. Here’s what’s new.

Despite rumors of a delay on the horizon, developer ZA/UM promises “Disco Elysium: The Final Cut” is coming out March 30. With it comes big changes, including fully-voiced dialogue, console versions, new quests, fast travel, new locations and characters, making it the definitive version of the popular indie role-playing game.

“Disco Elysium” first released in 2019 to critical acclaim, taking home four awards at The Game Awards that year. Since then, ZA/UM — a studio based in both Estonia and the United Kingdom — has been hard at work building “The Final Cut.”

For the first time, “Disco Elysium” will be playable on console, with PlayStation 4 and PS5 being the first console versions to release this month with “The Final Cut.” This definitive edition will simultaneously launch on PC. If you already own the original game on PC, “The Final Cut” will be available as a free upgrade. Later, the team plans to bring “The Final Cut” to Xbox, Switch and Google Stadia as well.

Although ZA/UM remained tight-lipped on what new locations the definitive edition will introduce and how many new characters there will be, the biggest additions are the political alignment quests. In “Disco Elysium,” your political alignment (i.e. communism, fascism, moralism or ultraliberalism) develops over the course of the game depending on your actions, and each comes with specific perks (such as gaining bigger and better bonuses from drinking alcohol). The four political alignment quests will be tied to whatever identity you’ve developed, and you can only play one quest per playthrough. These quests will also open up new areas to explore and new characters to meet.

After one [in-game] day, you can embark on one of those quests,” ZA/UM art director Kaspar Tamsalu said. “Each quest incorporates different characters you might already know in the game, and offers you brand-new ways to interact with them. [The quests] will also tell you something new about the game world or show a different aspect that you might not have seen during the vanilla Disco Elysium experience.”

A handful of smaller changes are coming, too, including some tweaks to the art, such as updated character portraits and new animations, along with the ability to fast travel — which is huge news considering it is a slog to slowly move from one end of the map to the other in the original game.

For the uninitiated, “Disco Elysium” has an incredibly unique setup: The protagonist, Harry, has skills which you can upgrade as you play, taking the form of voices in his head. Each skill is part of his psyche, such as his logic, empathy or pain threshold — and they all have a personality. In “The Final Cut,” these voices in Harry’s head will all be voiced by actor Levi Brown, the narrator of the game, who ZA/UM says spent eight long months in the studio to record the huge amount of lines.

The rest of the dialogue is voiced too, including the inanimate objects that speak, such as Harry’s necktie. In terms of word count, there are more than 1 million words, according to ZA/UM, which is more than all of J.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” novels put together. Voicing everything was a huge undertaking, with 59 total actors, particularly because of the many accents and backgrounds that Disco Elysium includes in its multicultural world.

The four political alignment quests will be tied to whatever identity you’ve developed, and you can only play one quest per playthrough. (ZA/UM)

We’re a small studio,” voice-over director Jim Ashlevi said. “The sensible thing to do would be to outsource the whole thing, maybe get three or four different studios to handle that, and then just sit back, relax, have a drink and wait for the Dropbox link or the WeTransfer. But that’s not us.”

Jim calls ZA/UM an “art collective,” and compares his team to the Wu-Tang Clan, in that each person has other creative endeavors, both personal and professional, outside of creating video games. Many of them have theater, film or television roots, and covid-19 proved a challenge, halting many of those other projects. But it also meant that when it came to “Disco Elysium: The Final Cut,” they could commit fully and pour their hearts into it.

“When we come together under the umbrella of ZA/UM, that’s when we create the best works of our lives,” Ashlevi said.
 

PlanHex

Arcane
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I'm looking forward to my Final Cut playthrough. I'm going to play it as an utterly depraved piece of filth, in stark contrast to my first playthrough as a regretful cop seeking redemption.
Shit, I was thinking about getting sober sooner and being even more sorry, but this sounds like a good idea too
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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I can recommend that. My first playthrough was a completely unapologetic "in-it-for-the-lulz" Electro-Chemistry cop, and it was great. It almost makes Harry more tragic if you constantly deny that your shitty existance is shitty.

I was disappointed in the Electro-Chemistry skill itself though. My other skills ended up being more interesting. There were too few interactions, and they were rarely meaningful or fun
 

Ghulgothas

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Meat Cop, 2-1-5-4 all the way. Physique never steers you wrong, and Motorics is what makes you even remotely competent.
 

prengle

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Oct 31, 2016
Messages
355
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut classification rejected in Australia
The extended edition of ZA/UM's RPG was due to release on PS5 and PS4 in the country on March 30

The Australian Classification Board refused the classification of Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, the expanded edition of ZA/UM's hit.

Classification is refused for games that "depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified," the board said.


Disco Elysium depicts drugs and alcohol addiction -- in 2018, GamesIndustry.biz talked to ZA/UM lead designer and writer Robert Kurvitz about the studio's exploration of alcoholism.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut was due to release in Australia on March 30 on PlayStation 5 and 4, and on the Xbox family of consoles and Switch later this year, marking the title's debut on consoles.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...inal-cut-classification-rejected-in-australia

Australia will be free from crypto-communist degeneracy.
Discochads.... Your reign of terror finally comes to an end.... or something idk i didnt really think this post through fuck....
 

Larianshill

Arbiter
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Feb 16, 2021
Messages
1,719
Reaction Speed, Shivers, Empathy and Volition all talking not only in the same voice, but also the same tone is really disappointing. Sure, this tone might fit Shivers, but it will be jarring to hear Electrochemistry, Drama, Savoir Faire talking like this.
 

Terenty

Liturgist
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Nov 29, 2018
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1,367
Yeah, i imagined all those thoughts to be more chaotic and crazy considering you're playing a fucked up drunkard, not this sleep inducing narration
 

Larianshill

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Feb 16, 2021
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Jesus, I suddenly imagined that Klaasje scene voiced like this, with a monotone voice arguing with itself. I really hope the game will pleasantly surprise me.
 
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KVVRR

Learned
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Apr 28, 2020
Messages
594
This was what I feared when I heard that they would be dubbing the skills too. The voice is excellent, but it doesn't fit all of them, and certainly not if he uses the same tone of voice for every one.
At least Cuno does sound better
 
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