Disco Elysium Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Prime Junta]

They decided to swith into photorealism ?

Lazy bums, they just don't want to get out of their chair to snap reference photos

 

[fantadomat]

It looks a lot better than any generic dev studio out there! I give it /10!

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Yeah, KVK did a good job of explaining the difference with how AoD did that.

Honestly I really liked the kind of checks in AoD, but I believe I’ve been pretty outspoken elsewhere on the forums about my opinion of the rigid nature of the system they used. In that sense I’m glad Disco went with rolls instead..

@Vault Dweller

Nah, AOD had hard skill checks. There were no rolls. There were no do-overs. There were no interesting failure states.

@Goral

 

[Prime Junta]

It looks a lot better than any generic dev studio out there! I give it /10!

Can confirm, place is rad.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Nah, AOD had hard skill checks. There were no rolls. There were no do-overs. There were no interesting failure states..

That is a caricature. Take the very first quest of Thief’s Guild, for instance.

You need to enter the inn. You can (1) walk by the front door sneaking from the guards, (2) climb with your bare hands (3) use a climb hook or (4) use a rope – I think you can fool the guards with streewise, but I’m not sure. Each of the choices have a specific check. Now suppose you build is so lame that you can’t pass any of the checks. The game still allows you to climb with your bare hands, the difference is that you take more time. Now, this have the additional complication that you don’t have the time to lockpick the dead merchant chest without fighting the guards first, but at least you take the map.

Another example is the bandit camp. If you try to kill the leader of the bandits with a critical strike and fail, the will knock you down and kick you. By avoiding the blows your dodge will increase by 5 points, but your Max HP is lowered by 2 points. You can call this a failure because from now on you can only pay the ransom for the hostage or kill them by other means – the other pacific options are closed. However, I always do that when I’m a dodger, because it is a good trade.

Yet another example is the outpost. Suppose you approach and act as if you are Sohrab, the loremaster they are expecting [Praetor Background + Disguise 3]. You will have to answer a couple of questions first [Persuasion 3] and [Persuasion + Disguise = 6] or [Streetwise + Disguise = 6]. Or you can explain that you are just a skilled loremaster looking for work. He will make a couple of questions [Lore 3] and [Persuasion 3]. Now you can either fix the machine or find a way to heat it until it explodes. In this case, you can convince the guards outside to enter it before the explosion [Streetwise 3]. If you fail in this crucial check, the Decanus and the rest of his men go inside and two guards remain watching over you. After the explosion, you and the two guards go to the ground. You can get up after the guards [Constitution 7] and they will kill you; get up at the same time [Constitution 8] and fight or get up before the guards [Constitution 9] and kill one of them.

There are dozens of failure-and-go-on scenarios in the game. You guys are too convinced that the game is much more restrictive than it really is because you are not used to be punished by failed skill checks.

 

[vota DC]

Tomorrow will be a month since the first part of the friday recap, also 10 months and half since the promise of the thought cabinet.

 

[Zombra]

Tomorrow will be a month since the first part of the friday recap, also 10 months and half since the promise of the thought cabinet.

We got a glimpse of thought cabinet stuff in the Tigranes preview, go check it out.

 

[Madawc]

Kasparov - will you be at Gamescom this year?

 

[fantadomat]

Fuck it is nearly two years since i joined the codex....and the game is not out yet.....18 more to go then.

 

[Ranarama]

Sick vape bro

 

[Kasparov]

Fuck it is nearly two years since i joined the codex....and the game is not out yet.....18 more to go then.

You might be eligible to buy smokes by the time DE comes out.

Also, sorry, no we won’t be at Gamescom this year.

 

[Abu Antar]

Fuck it is nearly two years since i joined the codex....and the game is not out yet.....18 more to go then.

You might be eligible to buy smokes by the time DE comes out.

Also, sorry, no we won’t be at Gamescom this year.

 

[Infinitron]

Also, sorry, no we won’t be at Gamescom this year.

Implicit admission that the game will be released before Gamescom?

 

[Black Angel]

being able to hold onto skill points until they're needed is bad game design

Why can’t holding on to skill points to spend them strategically in order to pass specific checks be good game design?

It can be, and is. Not just to pass checks either, but to dynamically respond to what the game throws at you in terms of combat, enemies, weapons etc.

Investing heavily in a skill set before being aware of how that translates to gameplay is pretty silly, but has been reinforced in this millenium’s “no wrong choices” culture of game design.

I think AoD did pretty good job of giving players an idea of what set of skills to invest in, starting all the way from character creation where they highlight the skills needed to play the starting class/desired playstyle and character archetype. Naturally, every time you get enough SPs you'd want to immediately invest in those set of skills to ensure being able to pass the next encounters and checks. But people's tendency to get the optimal outcome drives them to hoard the SPs, encounter checks and/or fights, reload, increase the relevant skills, pass the checks/win the fights, repeat. So, I wouldn't necessarily attribute the ability to hold on to skills points as bad game design, more like degenerates are degenerates.

Fallout lets you hoard skill points, but do we ever hear it being a problem or bad design? I guess it's because checks in Fallout are (mostly) dice rolls, and because the skills range from 1 to maximum of 300. I'm not sure if this is an inherently good game design, because how would one know how to spend the skill points "strategically", to pass "specific" checks no less?

Still, I kind of like how New Vegas (although this is from fucking Fallout 3, anyway) forces you to spend every bit of SPs and perk point gained from leveling-up immediately. It probably can be modded out, but I think it's a viable solution to this whole 'metagame by hoarding SPs, finds unpassable checks, reload' debacle.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I think AoD did pretty good job of giving players an idea of what set of skills to invest in

AoD is basically choose your route... at chargen.

There are 4 guild each having different skills to focus on.

Once you set on what guild you want to join, you restart the game and build a character with corresponding build.

If you want to experience more compared to simply focus on what is supposed to be available on your playthrough, at least on 1st or 2nd playthrough, you will need to hoard skill points.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I can't believe an RPG with the name "Disco" in the title made it past the RPGCodex doormen. That ain't right.

 

[Kasparov]

I can't believe an RPG with the name "Disco" in the title made it past the RPGCodex doormen. That ain't right.

You’re being an owl about it.

 

[Zombra]

Investing heavily in a skill set before being aware of how that translates to gameplay is pretty silly

I think AoD did pretty good job of giving players an idea of what set of skills to invest in, starting all the way from character creation where they highlight the skills needed to play the starting class/desired playstyle and character archetype.

Yes and no. AOD gave you a sense of what skills to invest in, but critically gave you no barometer for how much to invest in each skill. The numbers had no context and were therefore meaningless. I took my recommended skills and a few more for good measure which I thought would give me more options, but it turned out I simply couldn't do anything. It sounds like DE will communicate better in this regard. I hope.

 

[AdolfSatan]

You fucking kiddin, mate? There was flavour text that would describe which level of proficiency you were attaining every time you would add a point. But that aside, just fiddling a bit in the character creation screen made it quite obvious that the range was 1-10.

 

[Zombra]

You fucking kiddin, mate? There was flavour text that would describe which level of proficiency you were attaining every time you would add a point.

There was, but it was not communicative. 1 point was like "starving baby" and 10 was "500x Chuck Norris" or some crap. It may have tried, but didn't map to actual game capability at all. Dude just picked 10 hilarious adjective phrases at random and then ranked them in order.

But that aside, just fiddling a bit in the character creation screen made it quite obvious that the range was 1-10.

Of course, but that still doesn't mean anything. Is a 5 skill in Barrelmaking "sufficiently competent to make a decent living"? Does that mean a 3 is "incompetent but able to hold down a job as a barrelmaker's assistant"? Or is 1 point sufficient to assume basic competence and it just gets better after that? Is every point twice as big a material increase, or is it a strictly linear scale? And what about the fact that all challenges get harder as the game progresses? Are we to believe that everyone in the starter town is just dumb and easy to lie to, while the next town over everyone is smarter, by simple virtue of being farther away from the PC's starting point? There's just no way to know without playing the game, and a strict pass/fail system leaves no margin of error.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Dude just picked 10 hilarious adjective phrases at random and then ranked them in order.

They weren't random.

 

[luinthoron]

I can't believe an RPG with the name "Disco" in the title made it past the RPGCodex doormen. That ain't right.

It snuck in under a different name.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

If memory serves, it was "No Quarter to Furries" or something like that.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

If memory serves, it was "No Quarter to Furries" or something like that.

Wasn't it No true furries.

 

[vortex]

It was No Torment: Truce of Furries .