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

[Prime Junta]

You're making a game about a piece of shit deadbeat policeman in a hellhole district of a hellhole city, it's up to the player whether he'll solve the case (I assume there's one grand case that drives him, as in LA Noire) and how he will solve it, ending up as a bum yet again or perhaps raising to glory

Um... how could that kind of story possibly not be political? Fuck, noir is political to the core. Read any Dashiel Hammett?

 

[Roguey]

Nothing wrong with a game with explicit political themes, though a problem arises if you're making a role playing game and force the player to choose a side.

Josh Sawyer has spoken against punishing players for choosing evil options by the way.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Failing a quest because a building has no wheelchair ramp will make me truly understand the plight of wheelchair bound people.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah, we can see how games evolved by doing this in Mass Effect:Andromeda and basically every Bioware games since DA. Since when getting political makes any kind of creativity more valuable? It's very disturbing when they speak about it like it's the most obvious thing in the world. This is some heavy SJW retardiation and todays biggest problem of the industry. What the flying fuck is this madness?

Quoting Kurvitz: "The problem with games isn't that they're infected with politics, it's that they're infected with bad politics."

 

[Naveen]

Behead all video game writers.

 

[Kasparov]

Being aware of politics is not the same as deliberately injecting them in everything that moves.

It's like writing history. Being aware of your own biases, because you are not a fucking robot, doesn't mean you don't try to look at things with at least a modicum of impartiality.

And that's not even mentioning my main gripe, pretending that my way is really the only way, and everything else is mush.

Politics can allow for better stories, and "sending a message" can sometimes make a story truly great. Saying that if you are not trying for that you are just wasting your time (especially in entertainment) is stupid.

And ignoring politics just for the sake of ignoring it is counterproductive. Again - you´re flailing your bat at some abstract politics. Do you know what role the political plays in No Truce With the Furies?

 

[Kev Inkline]

Kasparov Marat Sar

amirite?

Thought the guy on the left was promoting a new VTM game by Paradox.

 

[Gondolin]

Um... how could that kind of story possibly not be political? Fuck, noir is political to the core. Read any Dashiel Hammett?

Hammett was moral, not political.

 

[Prime Junta]

Hammett was moral, not political.

If Red Harvest isn't a political novel, I don't know what is.

 

[Infinitron]

I guess I might be more concerned if I hadn't become familiar with what's known on Twitter as the "Irony Left" during the recent US election. First time I learned that lefties had begun using the word "liberal" as a pejorative. Really funny guys.

Only in the USA does "liberal" mean "leftist". Liberal parties are right wing parties.

Yeah but these guys on Twitter are Americans. I'm not on their side but a game made by Chapo Trap House types would probably be entertaining as hell. I don't know if Kurvitz belongs to that group exactly but he seems similar.

 

[Kuattro]

And ignoring politics just for the sake of ignoring it is counterproductive. Again - you´re flailing your bat at some abstract politics. Do you know what role the political plays in No Truce With the Furies?

No, I don't. It might be subtle, intelligent and brilliant and make the story ten times better. That is not my problem, and I don't think I've said anything to make you think that.

Is not explicitly taking sides "ignoring politics"?

 

[Gondolin]

If Red Harvest isn't a political novel, I don't know what is.

It's a moral novel. The Continental operator cleans out corruption without siding with any party or any political ideology.

 

[Gondolin]

Yeah but these guys on Twitter are Americans.

Maybe they're finally learning. We can always hope.

 

[Gondolin]

That´s funny. You bash political and yet political means jack shit without context. We can have this conversation again after you´ve played the game (or suffered a Let´s Play on Youtube or Twitch)

Spoiler

Or go on - base your opinions on those of others - Roxors´ perhaps. He´ll be delighted, I´m sure

And this thread about your game has devolved into a stupid political debate (to which I am contributing). What does that say about the future of your game?

 

[HoboForEternity]

i don't see the problem with fiction being political. almost everything can be tied into certain beliefs, tradition, views, etc that extends to politics.

the thing to keep watch is if a piece of writing in any media is a mere piece of propaganda, or something that actually give knowledge to the user, show some insight into some other views of the world and enrich one's knowledge based on the author's interpretation.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah but these guys on Twitter are Americans. I disagree with their politics but a game made by Chapo Trap House types would probably be entertaining as hell. I don't know if Kurvitz belongs to that group exactly but he seems similar.

:sincerity alert:

Speaking as someone who is pretty far left as politics go, from the mainstream perspective anyway, but hovers somewhere along the blurry line between revolutionary Communism and mainstream-ish revisionist/reformist Eurocommunism (largely depending on how angry I am on any given day), I can give you my perspective.

Communists, generally speaking, know just how far in the margins they are. We know what regular people think of us. We also know that ever since the USSR went (whatever date you want to slap on that -- for some it's 1991, for some it's 1953, for yet others it's as early as 1928) the prospect of a Communist revolution, globally speaking, looks pretty remote. Victories are few and far between, and the best we usually get is some particularly odious reactionary (person or party) getting knocked down a peg or two, only to see a wishy-washy-soft-left party continue doing more or less exactly what the odious party was doing, except with better optics. (<cough> Trudeau <cough>) And this whole thing with Communism suddenly being cool again is kind of ... unsettling actually. At least for me it is.

Lots of us also need to try to reconcile some fundamentally irreconcilable things. Most of us aren't full-time professional revolutionaries sacrificing their all for the cause and the Party in the Leninist ideal. (No, not even many of the ones who pretend to be on Twitter.) We live lives in a fundamentally immoral, amoral, and exploitative system, cogs in the great capitalist machine just like the rest of you, and some of us are actually pretty successful at it. Attempts to deal with this fundamental dissonance -- as humour, or through art, or through writing, or whatever -- can yield interesting results.

That means that you need a certain amount of self-awareness and self-irony to cope, which makes it difficult to tell exactly how serious any given comrade is being at any given time.

:end sincerity alert, back to shitposting:

 

[Iznaliu]

Yeah but these guys on Twitter are Americans. I'm not on their side but a game made by Chapo Trap House types would probably be entertaining as hell. I don't know if Kurvitz belongs to that group exactly but he seems similar.

You are seeing the communists; they use 'liberal' as an insult as shown by this political compass (this isn't mine)

liberal | cuck
-------------------
racist | statist

 

[KILLER BEAR]

It doesn't exist.

propaganda-->agenda pushing

Say you play a game that has a political message that is in agreement with *your* views, it's done in a clever/subtle way and it makes sense given the game's setting. Would you be opposing it?

 

[an Administrator]

Yeah filling the game with political agenda is ok as long as it's my agenda xDDDD

 

[KILLER BEAR]

Yeah filling the game with political agenda is ok as long as it's my agenda xDDDD

I didn't said "filling" but just putting a message in a gentle way. If you are not subtle about it that would hurt your own message after all.

 

[Kasparov]

That´s funny. You bash political and yet political means jack shit without context. We can have this conversation again after you´ve played the game (or suffered a Let´s Play on Youtube or Twitch)

Spoiler

Or go on - base your opinions on those of others - Roxors´ perhaps. He´ll be delighted, I´m sure

And this thread about your game has devolved into a stupid political debate (to which I am contributing). What does that say about the future of your game?

Again you call it a political debate. You are not contributing to anything political, unless "I think fiction should be apolitical" counts as such. Also - moral polarities are set in a political setting. You can´t really discuss morals or morality without mucking in the dirt with the rest of us.

 

[Prime Junta]

"Damn, I wish I was engaging in some political activity here," thought nobody ever while playing Doom.

"Damn, the writing in this game really fucking rocks," thought nobody ever while playing Doom.

 

[Chateaubryan]

Whether we're speaking about games, movies, books, etc. everything carrying world-representations (and naturally, bias) is basically political. Everything rewarding the player for conducting one type of action over another is political.

Basically, even Sawyer's system of not penalizing the players for their evil choices is political. It's basically a statement : whether you choose to solve this quest in a good or evil way, you will be rewarded : the only path that carries no reward whatsoever is not resolving the quest, ie : inaction. There's your world representation right there : acting towards a resolution is inherently good, taking a stance is inherently good, while staying to observe outside resolution is basically stagnation. Infer from this what you will.

Take a look at Alpha Centauri's political paradigms for example : would you have translated ecology / fundamentalism / democratic social engineering choices with the same bonus and penalties as Firaxis did?

Translate every game mechanics into a statement and you'll realize they're inherently political.
Now I'm waiting for you fuckers to come with some twisted and fucked-up examples.

 

[Gondolin]

Again you call it a political debate. You are not contributing to anything political, unless "I think fiction should be apolitical" counts as such.

It encourages people to keep debating.

Also - moral polarities are set in a political setting. You can´t really discuss morals or morality without mucking in the dirt with the rest of us.

So take a moral stand. Or give me some insight into politics. Don't bother taking stands that will be out of fashion 10-20 years from now.

 

[Kasparov]

Also - moral polarities are set in a political setting. You can´t really discuss morals or morality without mucking in the dirt with the rest of us.

So take a moral stand. Or give me some insight into politics. Don't bother taking stands that will be out of fashion 10-20 years from now.

The way you phrased your early posts suggests you do not wish anyone to take any moral stands.

Also - it is strange you would sort of criticize "stands" of which you know nothing about - you haven´t played the game nor read the book. I would argue that the way they are presented in No Truce will indeed stand the test of time, because they are done well. The difficult bit right now is arguing over that because the topical work of fiction has not yet been published in whole.