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

[Darth Roxor]

"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.

Says you. I was deeply moved by the image of my beheaded pet rabbit at the end.

A brilliant display of "show, don't tell" if I do say so meself.

 

[Kasparov]

A brilliant display of "show, don't tell".

That might escalate from cute to very bad in a matter of seconds if you do it in a crowded public place.

 

[J_C]

For Games to Evolve They Need to Get Political

ROBERT KURVITZ
ZA/UM
MARIA REINUP
ZA/UM
CHRIS AVELLONE

The next step in creating big narratives for video games can not be made without political side-taking. There is no such thing as great apolitical writing. It is a responsibility of writers which they take upon themselves. They choose a side and fight it. We see it in literature but there is very little overt side-taking in video game narratives. Games have pussy-footed around political issues. How do we get beyond mere indications, on to real political side-taking and after that to offering solutions?

"video games can not be made without political side-taking"
"responsibility of writers"
"no such thing as great apolitical writing"
"responsibility of writers which they take upon themselves"
"choose a side and fight it"
"How do we get beyond mere indications, on to real political side-taking"
"offering solutions"

What the actual fuck? I hope MCA didn't echo that sort of thinking in the panel. It's so wrong that I can't even...

Kudos to the developers for being so cunning, though. They've successfully tricked most of the Codex into hyping what sounds like a glorified political message.

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?

I can only echo what you said. What the flying fuck? This is so retarded, it does not have any grounding at all. If you look at the best written videogames, they are almost all apolitical. Not saying that one cannot write a great political story, but it is not a requirement at all. Can we know MCA's take on this? It would be world shattering if he agreed on this.

 

[J_C]

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.

I don't think this is what they were thinking when they said political writing. I think they were talking about actual politicals ideals which seems to be a must for a great story. It is not about translating a game mechanics into a political statement. It's like saying that slaying a goblin in Gothic is a political act, because it stems from racism toward goblins.

 

[Rivmusique]

If you look at the best written videogames, they are almost all apolitical.

Which?

 

[an Administrator]

If you look at the best written videogames, they are almost all apolitical.

Which?

Final Fantasy VII

 

[Alienman]

Is it time?

 

[Chateaubryan]

I don't think this is what they were thinking when they said political writing. I think they were talking about actual politicals ideals which seems to be a must for a great story.

I tend to think that every work of fiction has political roots. In that case *not* admitting that fact and *not* admitting that you're pushing on your own political views when you're writing a story - whether you do it subconsciously or not - is hypocritical. Once that is known, it's up to the viewer/player/reader to be critical of the content he's exposed to.
What is - or seems - apolitical and harmless is simply a form of validation of the current, represented political system.

 

[The Fish]

I think there should be a distinction made between recognising politics in games and recognising "politics" as defined by the new "egalitarians". Talk of political awareness, when mooted by young purple haired people, is a way of forcing race and gender consciousness on everyone when doing anything. Which would, they hope, have the effect of paralysing everyone lacking input from the new egalitarian oracles (those same purple hairs). The reason for suggesting that everything is political isn't so much a recognition of our innate political biases (say, how we portray communism in our grand strategy game) but rather it's suggesting that if you happen not to include black people in your game about medieval bohemia that it's a poltical political statement which harms black people, or something similar. Thus every game is open to accusations of racism and sexism and it's absolutely impossible for anyone to protect themselves because the methods of racism or sexism detection are so massively subjective and abstruse. The only way it's all sorted out is with appeals to authority, with the authorities being the ones who best clawed themselves down the privilege heirarchy and up the oppression hierarchy.

 

[J_C]

If you look at the best written videogames, they are almost all apolitical.

Which?

Dragon Age 2 duhh...

 

[Zombra]

More like the latter. In that sense we're blatantly like the Torments - you play a character. Your choices determine what that character is.

There are already two states of that portrait - when all the hundreds of portraits, that we need for the game, are finished - we'll go back and see how we can spice things up.
Sadly art is subjective and there will always be players who won't like how this or that was done.

You´re welcome to mod the face to suit your tastes.

Will the game actually make it easy to mod? Like, make a 180x320 jpg and put it in this folder? Players love to be able to do this.
If there are multiple portraits for the main character, it would be great to be able to mod those too. In this case, please make it clear what the different files should represent. Joe-drunk.jpg, Joe-angry.jpg, Joe-wounded.jpg, Joe-fanatical.jpg, etc.

 

[Fairfax]

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.

I think you misunderstood their points. They're not simply arguing for games to have more political themes, they want the game's writers to take openly take a side and "fight it", and after that "offer solutions". They're claiming that games cannot evolve without doing so.

Alpha Centauri is about building a society, so it'll obviously be very political, and the developer's biases will show in some way. As far as these games go, SMAC is actually pretty non-committal and objective. Example: a police state with a planned economy has crippling penalties, which are very consistent with real world examples, but the developers still made sure to include a faction that would thrive in it. And you don't have to take a side: you can go Frontier-Simple-Survival-None and do just fine. CivBE had a much stronger political bias and the game wasn't any better for it. If anything, SMAC is an argument against "overt side-taking".

Since this also involves MCA, what about Planescape: Torment? The universally praised central theme is completely apolitical, and the game doesn't favour sides or offer solutions when exploring any of its core themes. ZA/UM claims PS:T is one of the two main inspirations for their game, but their argument implies the game would've been better if MCA had made it more political, pushed his own political views and offered solutions to political issues.

And what about KOTOR2? The game only explores Star Wars issues and themes, not real world politics, and the narrative doesn't take sides. Here's an example:



Kreia is making an interesting argument against Jedi altruism, which is always taken for granted in Star Wars stories. MCA didn't want to push an anti-charity agenda. He considered it an interesting theme to explore, so even though Kreia herself has a very strong opinion, the game as a whole doesn't take a side. The player is supposed to answer the questions, not the game.

Anyway, I'm sure MCA didn't know what he was doing. He should be learning from truly superior writing:

For example, Kurvitz explains, suppose there is a black girl selling newspapers at a street corner. One of the lines you can say to her is “You’re black,” to which she will reply “Yes.” This by itself does not yet affect your Fascist counter. However, follow it up with “So what kind of music do you people listen to these days?” and it will go up a notch.

 

[Kuattro]

I think you misunderstood their points. They're not simply arguing for games to have more political themes, they want the game's writers to take openly take a side and "fight it", and after that "offer solutions". They're claiming that games cannot evolve without doing so.

Where might I've heard this before...

Oh yes.

Just in case, I'm not accusing ZA/UM of being Social Justice Apostoles. They might as well be white supremacists defending that games should teach everyone the 14 words and prepare them for race war. It would still be stupid.

 

[Naveen]

Translate every game mechanics into a statement and you'll realize they're inherently political.

But that's the problem, they are not statements. That translation is invalid.

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.

You cannot possibly believe that. Giving XP for quest resolution is a staple of storyfaggotry RPGs, which was a reaction to murderhoboing, which was a bad attempt at translating D&D, whose first system was, in fact, gold=XP, and killing monsters wasn't the most important source of experience or gold. And that system wasn't "inherently political," but a system designed to produce dangerous dungeons and (thanks to the always present threat of wandering monsters) constant game tension, where the goal of a dungeon raid was to go in, grab everything you could, and then get the hell out of there. The idea that any of these game mechanics or rules had a political translation is stupid. Just because you can imagine one doesn't mean it's there.

 

[MasPingon]

If you look at the best written videogames, they are almost all apolitical.

Which?

Is it a real question? I mean, it's so dumb I can't even tell.

 

[hello friend]

Unless you're a detective involved in high-profile politics-scented cases, you're pretty much a grunt, a ticket dispenser who wasn't smart enough to find a real job, you will stay a beat cop or an office drone despite your best efforts

Office politics

 

[Infinitron]

I think there should be a distinction made between recognising politics in games and recognising "politics" as defined by the new "egalitarians". Talk of political awareness, when mooted by young purple haired people, is a way of forcing race and gender consciousness on everyone when doing anything. Which would, they hope, have the effect of paralysing everyone lacking input from the new egalitarian oracles (those same purple hairs). The reason for suggesting that everything is political isn't so much a recognition of our innate political biases (say, how we portray communism in our grand strategy game) but rather it's suggesting that if you happen not to include black people in your game about medieval bohemia that's a poltical political statement which harms black people, or something similar. Thus every game is open to accusations of racism and sexism and it's absolutely impossible for anyone to protect themselves because the methods of racism or sexism detection are so massively subjective and abstruse. The only way it's all sorted out is with appeals to authority, with the authorities being the ones who best clawed themselves down the privilege heirarchy and up the oppression hierarchy.

Bluntly stated but basically true. People are associating "politics" with the obnoxious quasi-puritan finger-wagging of SJWs.

But does anybody here really hate a movie like say, Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron with its openly pro-class conflict message? Not bloody likely.

 

[Kuattro]

Some of us also have problems with the "great writing must take sides" part.

Fuck having a single conversation in two different threads, by the way.

 

[Infinitron]

Fuck having a single conversation in two different threads, by the way.

Time to annoy Fairfax, then.

 

[Fairfax]

Fuck having a single conversation in two different threads, by the way.

Time to annoy Fairfax, then.

FFS, again with this shit?

 

[Lurker King]

Whether we're speaking about games, movies, books, etc. everything carrying world-representations (and naturally, bias) is basically political.

The fact that any world-representation can involve some sort of political assumption is trivial. The real question is whether from the fact that fiction cannot be completely neutral it follows that it should be completely biased. The answer is no, because if your game is just a means to propaganda, the writing will come across as form of psychological-conditioning dogma that treats different points of views as caricatures. Despite what the fanatics from the left says, we should always strive to achieve objectivity.

I tend to think that every work of fiction has political roots. In that case *not* admitting that fact and *not* admitting that you're pushing on your own political views when you're writing a story - whether you do it subconsciously or not - is hypocritical.

Hypocritical is thinking that the lack of perfect impartially justifies everything goes mentality. Not even physical instruments are 100% accurate, but you don’t see physicists arguing that this lack of perfect objectivity implies that anyone can make their your own calculus.

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

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.

Which is a good or evil way? One could make a very convincing case that the NCR are an evil faction, if not the evil faction of the game; and Caesar's Legion and/or House are the real good guys. The great thing about how Sawyer designs his games is there is nuance to all the characters and factions, so depending on your world view, you might agree with and support them, or not. But there is no black and white where one side is clearly "good" and the other is entirely "evil". The NCR has a lot of blood on its hands for the massacre at Bitter Springs, for example, and they are also causing problems in Freeside. And if none of those three factions are to your liking, then there's always the Yes Man route. If you don't know what choice to make or don't want to make a choice, then Yes Man is the neutral position where you support no one (but yourself).

This is why Sawyer's games like FNV and POE are superior to 99% of the other games in existence. "Good" and "Evil" are well balanced, and nuanced.

 

[Fairfax]

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.

Which is a good or evil way? One could make a very convincing case that the NCR are an evil faction, if not the evil faction of the game; and Caesar's Legion and/or House are the real good guys. The great thing about how Sawyer designs his games is there is nuance to all the characters and factions, so depending on your world view, you might agree with and support them, or not. But there is no black and white where one side is clearly "good" and the other is entirely "evil". The NCR has a lot of blood on its hands for the massacre at Bitter Springs, for example, and they are also causing problems in Freeside. And if none of those three factions are to your liking, then there's always the Yes Man route. If you don't know what choice to make or don't want to make a choice, then Yes Man is the neutral position where you support no one (but yourself).

This is why Sawyer's games like FNV and POE are superior to 99% of the other games in existence. "Good" and "Evil" are well balanced, and nuanced.

The Caesar's Legion is nuanced? You mean the faction that supports slavery, rape, terrorism and mass murder? The one that condemns technology and medicine and uses child soldiers? I'd like to see this "convincing case" for them as the good guys, because Sawyer went out of his way to make them evil.

 

[Skittles]

The Caesar's Legion is nuanced? You mean the faction that supports slavery, rape, terrorism and mass murder?

You mean the Codexian faction?

 

[Fenix]

I think we should just sit and wait for a game's release, I have too little information about this "politacal game writing" thing to make any conclusion.
Except yeah, there will be a lot of points to discuss after release.