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

[Zed Duke of Banville]

And ofcourse, Letterhead's race theory.

Measurehead

 

[9ted6]

Disco Elysium is a love story (or rather an aftermath of one), not a political statement of any kind you retards.

When the game is almost universally praised on reddit and much of that praise involves how progressive and hardcore leftist it is you might wanna reconsider.

I know reddit's retarded but we're also talking about a game made by literal Marxists. They can't all be misunderstanding it. Politically the devs said the commie path is the best one. Socially the conservative religious faction is the worst and made out to be even more evil than the fascists. You can't tell me they're not trying to say something.

There was no instance of ANY of the leftist tropes being forced on me.

The repressed gay detective who the game all but forces to be a socjus advocate while facing villains who are religious moralists and having to learn to check his privilege and curb his toxic masculinity to come to terms with loss doesn't sound leftist at all. It doesn't read like a Dontnod premise in any way.

Was the text too challenging? You got tired and couldn't read the last two sentences of my message?

The game doesn't really "pull the punches" on communism. In fact, it's pretty straightforward about it from get-go.

No, and it's arguably worse for it. Your typical internet commie will say communism is some utopia they've built in their heads and that every dictator was great and never killed anyone and that's all propaganda. At most they'll say it wasn't real communism and that communism would work if it was really tried.

Unless I've misunderstood, from what I've read the game acknowledges that communism's failed every time it's been tried yet rather than saying it wasn't real communism their excuse is that communism is about love and if you don't like it then you're hateful, racist or sexist. Empathetic people are communists so we should be communists even if it doesn't actually work. It's an absurd cope.

 

[Laz Sundays]

Did you just mash all possible options and wildly connected the dots?

..why?

None of that happens unless you choose it. Why bitch about variety if it literally isn't forcing you into choices that you don't agree with or see fit? Cause that kind of outrage over things that simply exist is more similar to.. well, more similar to how your leftie nemesii view things. You're not being objective at all.

 

[Grunker]

from what I've read the game acknowledges that communism's failed every time it's been tried yet rather than saying it wasn't real communism their excuse is that communism is about love and if you don't like it then you're hateful, racist or sexist. Empathetic people are communists so we should be communists even if it doesn't actually work. It's an absurd cope.

if this is it not a troll apparantly somehow the internet hosts an even deeper level of stupidity - i thought i had seen its bottom

 

[Terenty]

More and more it's becoming clear that people bitching about DE never actually played it.

Just play the damn thing I promise you won't turn gay or communist

 

[Infinitron]

An interesting pro-communist analysis of Disco Elysium: https://willknightauthor.tumblr.com...-happens-in-the-dolorian-church-in-martinaise

What happens in the Dolorian church in Martinaise is a profound bit of worldbuilding. At first Elysium seems like a normal, secular world, and if anything it’s surprising how absent religion is from it. Liberalism has become the religion. The only real reminder that Moralism was once a fully functioning world religion is the abandoned and broken church west of the lock.

But learning about the pale point, the history of the churches, it makes sense now. The pale is directly interacting with human thought and society because they are both manifestations of information in the universe, in an evolving dialectic. Dolores Dei pulled information from the future and literally expanded the world by inspiring others with her dream. She was, by the standards of our world, a prophet. The churches, built around nascent points of pale particles, are a social attempt to control the pale through the collective act of ritual dreaming. By dreaming the divine, humanity pushes back the death of the world, for a moment.

By the time the game takes place, that side of Moralism is long dead. The churches have been abandoned and their function forgotten. Moralism has degenerated into liberalism. The Revolution was a moment of mass dreaming, of the future manifesting itself. It was the best hope to push back the Pale, but the MoralIntern crushed it, and restored global stagnancy. Growing entropy is accelerating the consumption of the world by the Pale, and no-one knows what to do because there is no future, only past.

Harry though, depending on how you play him, has the potential to start the reversal of this process, if just in Martinaise. The man who has effectively dedicated himself to a kind of monastic worship of the Pale (unknowingly) is the first one to start the process. (Never give anyone too much credit, even Harry.) But if Harry helps the homeless ravers start a club in the Church, he is effectively helping to start a new ritual community with the same properties as the old Moralist Church, right under the pale point.

If you get Noid to warm up to you, you learn he’s a kind of organic existential philosopher. He even discourses with Tiago. He and the others don’t just party as a hedonistic act, they maintain partying as a kind of ritual act of life affirmation and contemplation, an attempt to transcend themselves and realize something new and powerful. In short, they are reaching into the future to create something new. It’s ridiculous 90s Euro club music, but the way they do it it’s as ritually powerful as any church service.

This ties into the more general theme of Disco Elysium, that the human power to dream of a new future and then collectively act to bring it about is a powerful act of creation that pushes back the boundaries of the universe, and is necessary for our species to even survive. To crush the revolution, to crush democracy, is to crush the future. Elysium has killed God, but they haven’t gotten to the next stage of becoming gods.

Dolorian humanism ironically does not end up elevating human beings. Only the communards had a chance at elevating humanity to a level of creative consciousness that would allow them to tame the Pale the same way they used to with religion. And the revolutionaries, even though the Moralists never recognized them as such, were likely pulling from the future as much as Dolores Dei. Kras Mazov will never be recognized as an Innocent, but in terms of prophesying and inspiring people with a dream which could push back the Pale, he effectively was.

Now with the revolution at a low point, the world is in a kind of existentialist limbo, lacking the conviction of faith in either the divine or the future. The old is dead, but the new cannot be born. What happens in Martinaise is the beginning of the return of that faith.

I am not sure this is true though. That is, I'm not sure Robert Kurvitz ever intended that Disco Elysium's communist revolution was meant to be a world-changing historical movement on par with Dolorianism or something capable of combatting the Pale. Creating this scenario where a bunch of kids organizing a rave are secretly humanity's last hope against the Pale seems to suggest that Kurvitz would not view the bloody business of politics as the way forward.

 

[Grunker]

An interesting pro-communist analysis of Disco Elysium: https://willknightauthor.tumblr.com...-happens-in-the-dolorian-church-in-martinaise

What happens in the Dolorian church in Martinaise is a profound bit of worldbuilding. At first Elysium seems like a normal, secular world, and if anything it’s surprising how absent religion is from it. Liberalism has become the religion. The only real reminder that Moralism was once a fully functioning world religion is the abandoned and broken church west of the lock.

But learning about the pale point, the history of the churches, it makes sense now. The pale is directly interacting with human thought and society because they are both manifestations of information in the universe, in an evolving dialectic. Dolores Dei pulled information from the future and literally expanded the world by inspiring others with her dream. She was, by the standards of our world, a prophet. The churches, built around nascent points of pale particles, are a social attempt to control the pale through the collective act of ritual dreaming. By dreaming the divine, humanity pushes back the death of the world, for a moment.

By the time the game takes place, that side of Moralism is long dead. The churches have been abandoned and their function forgotten. Moralism has degenerated into liberalism. The Revolution was a moment of mass dreaming, of the future manifesting itself. It was the best hope to push back the Pale, but the MoralIntern crushed it, and restored global stagnancy. Growing entropy is accelerating the consumption of the world by the Pale, and no-one knows what to do because there is no future, only past.

Harry though, depending on how you play him, has the potential to start the reversal of this process, if just in Martinaise. The man who has effectively dedicated himself to a kind of monastic worship of the Pale (unknowingly) is the first one to start the process. (Never give anyone too much credit, even Harry.) But if Harry helps the homeless ravers start a club in the Church, he is effectively helping to start a new ritual community with the same properties as the old Moralist Church, right under the pale point.

If you get Noid to warm up to you, you learn he’s a kind of organic existential philosopher. He even discourses with Tiago. He and the others don’t just party as a hedonistic act, they maintain partying as a kind of ritual act of life affirmation and contemplation, an attempt to transcend themselves and realize something new and powerful. In short, they are reaching into the future to create something new. It’s ridiculous 90s Euro club music, but the way they do it it’s as ritually powerful as any church service.

This ties into the more general theme of Disco Elysium, that the human power to dream of a new future and then collectively act to bring it about is a powerful act of creation that pushes back the boundaries of the universe, and is necessary for our species to even survive. To crush the revolution, to crush democracy, is to crush the future. Elysium has killed God, but they haven’t gotten to the next stage of becoming gods.

Dolorian humanism ironically does not end up elevating human beings. Only the communards had a chance at elevating humanity to a level of creative consciousness that would allow them to tame the Pale the same way they used to with religion. And the revolutionaries, even though the Moralists never recognized them as such, were likely pulling from the future as much as Dolores Dei. Kras Mazov will never be recognized as an Innocent, but in terms of prophesying and inspiring people with a dream which could push back the Pale, he effectively was.

Now with the revolution at a low point, the world is in a kind of existentialist limbo, lacking the conviction of faith in either the divine or the future. The old is dead, but the new cannot be born. What happens in Martinaise is the beginning of the return of that faith.

I am not sure this is true though. That is, I'm not sure Robert Kurvitz ever intended that Disco Elysium's communist revolution was meant to be a world-changing historical movement on par with Dolorianism or something capable of combatting the Pale. Creating this scenario where a bunch of kids organizing a rave are secretly humanity's last hope against the Pale seems to suggest that Kurvitz would not view the bloody business of politics as the way forward.

The game literally ends on a critique of nostalgia that uses communism as a primary example. You can read anything into anything with enough word salad, but you have to ignore pretty large chunks of the actual text in DE to make it a communist manifesto.

The truth is that the political criticism in DE is used for jokes and, honestly, memes. On a pie chart, when DE actually puts on a straight face and talks serious, personal stories and human introspection takes up much, much more space than political discourse.

 

[Hydro]

On a pie chart, when DE actually puts on a straight face and talks serious, personal stories and human introspection takes up much, much more space than political discourse.

Very much this. Lost husband and crazy lady were the highlights for me. Hell, even Cuno. Interacting with all these characters is the heart of this game.

 

[Roguey]

More and more it's becoming clear that people bitching about DE never actually played it.

Just play the damn thing I promise you won't turn gay or communist

I played it and it's definitely a commie game written by jaded communists. But it doesn't force communism on you true enough.

 

[Harthwain]

Unless I've misunderstood, from what I've read the game acknowledges that communism's failed every time it's been tried yet rather than saying it wasn't real communism their excuse is that communism is about love and if you don't like it then you're hateful, racist or sexist. Empathetic people are communists so we should be communists even if it doesn't actually work. It's an absurd cope.

First of all -

.

Secondly - I think you don't understand how cope works in Disco Elysium. It is supposed to be absurd, because the whole logic (for all ideologies) is cranked up to eleven.

Here is my quote on communism from the game:

RHETORIC - This seditious talk sounds like communism. (Just so we're on the same page: Communism is basically wanting to kill the rich people or deporting them to a labour camp in southeast Graad. But don't say that out loud if you're a communist.)

 

[luj1]

True Reddit game

 

[KVVRR]

I am not sure this is true though. That is, I'm not sure Robert Kurvitz ever intended that Disco Elysium's communist revolution was meant to be a world-changing historical movement on par with Dolorianism or something capable of combatting the Pale. Creating this scenario where a bunch of kids organizing a rave are secretly humanity's last hope against the Pale seems to suggest that Kurvitz would not view the bloody business of politics as the way forward.

I don't think he meant it because the story just had them stomped out months (or years?) after conception. But what is there does support the theory that the pale can be stopped or delayed with the hope it brings, the same way the enthusiasm the ravers exude would do so too. This is straight up confirmed in the novel where the only two instances of the pale receding/stopping even if for a second happen with the literal ghost of communism and a paranormal take on Egghead.
Or at least that's my take on it. It's not necessarily the politics of communism itself that stops the pale, but rather the hope for the future it brings. No other ideology truly brings such hope in the setting, the fascists are stuck in the past, the moralists are stagnated in *incremental, slow change* and the ultraliberals are out for themselves and nobody else. Wether or not it's viable it's another matter altogether, but the game itself calls atention to this when the two commies in the reading club mention communism being a sort of religion that replaces the hope for the divine with hope for humanity itself.

 

[9ted6]

I am not sure this is true though. That is, I'm not sure Robert Kurvitz ever intended that Disco Elysium's communist revolution was meant to be a world-changing historical movement on par with Dolorianism or something capable of combatting the Pale. Creating this scenario where a bunch of kids organizing a rave are secretly humanity's last hope against the Pale seems to suggest that Kurvitz would not view the bloody business of politics as the way forward.

I don't think he meant it because the story just had them stomped out months (or years?) after conception. But what is there does support the theory that the pale can be stopped or delayed with the hope it brings, the same way the enthusiasm the ravers exude would do so too. This is straight up confirmed in the novel where the only two instances of the pale receding/stopping even if for a second happen with the literal ghost of communism and a paranormal take on Egghead.
Or at least that's my take on it. It's not necessarily the politics of communism itself that stops the pale, but rather the hope for the future it brings. No other ideology truly brings such hope in the setting, the fascists are stuck in the past, the moralists are stagnated in *incremental, slow change* and the ultraliberals are out for themselves and nobody else. Wether or not it's viable it's another matter altogether, but the game itself calls atention to this when the two commies in the reading club mention communism being a sort of religion that replaces the hope for the divine with hope for humanity itself.

No I think you're just trolling. Calling communism the divine savior of humanity is in no way a leftist message obviously.

Cause that kind of outrage over things that simply exist is more similar to.. well, more similar to how your leftie nemesii view things. You're not being objective at all.

True but saying "You don't have to pay attention to it and can just ignore it" is also the argument of most woke types when it comes to this shit being put into games.

Sure if I don't take the Gay perk in New Vegas I won't know that the majority of important NPCs are gay, but just because I don't take it doesn't change the fact that the majority of important NPCs are gay and the reason for it from Sawyer himself was to pander.

As far as I can tell DE never allows you to seriously refute its message. You either have to agree or ignore it. If the game let you be an ardent communist supporter but also ardent opposer and both options were given the same weight I'd have no problem.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

The game isn't about politics at all and yes it's very ignorable. Unfortunately, lots of spergs don't have any life experience to either relate to or understand the actual topics Disco Elysium explores deeply. That is the meat of the game, that is what makes it good. The politics shit was always for the lulz on the side.

 

[Laz Sundays]

See, I never managed to muster enough fuck about deeper meaning behind political ideologies like you people do. Idk what's so attractive there that you constantly end up making it to be a super important aspect. They're all the same u moron, using cheap marketing tricks to "hide" it as something "better than other ones". It's always just another tyrannical government system based on money, power and control. And it achieves it's goal by securing these 3 things, no matter what name they call it. That's the sad part, people actually believe there was a variety. There never was.

After the WW2 (aka bunch of Jews playing Risk irl), Jewsip Broz Tito banned practice of Orthodox Christianity, for example. Do you think he replaced it with anything humanitarian? Communists literally replaced church pictures with Tito's portraits, gospel with a custom cocktail of Marxism, church songs with Party and Tito songs. It's the same recipe, ffs. Derping about ideologies and falling for them is utterly naive and pointless. They never were and never will be used as anything else but a suit, reskin, a flavor to mask the same old (and extremely efficient) triangle of Money/Power/Control. Why would you bother with it when you're never gonna see it accurately in our reality? Where is this dreamy sway of Muh Ideology coming from, and why are you always falling for it?

"You don't have to pay attention to it and can just ignore it" -....

I didn't pay attention to it because I was too busy solving a case, collecting fucking tare and reforming my Harrier. Into a man ready to grow up and start doing his job. Albeit still sniffing speed, who would rather spend his time making Raveolution with kids, making them NOT start a druglab and respect atleast some form of law and order - and researching Pale, rather than being another indoctrinated moron who seriously falls for any of the different flavored propaganda that all regimes use to make you subscribe to it, so you can feel fuzzy while they milk you and send you to die for them/simply kill you or ban you out when you oppose.

Do you also think Democracy is OG in it's modern implementation, hm? Or any different looking now than how Real Life Communism turned out back then? Please. IF YOU WERE PLAYING DISCO TO LOOK FOR ACCURACY OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY AND WAYS TO DEBATE IT, YOU'RE A FUCKING CLOWN.

KYS.

And speaking of Gay in Disco - there is precisely ZERO DIFF between Disco gay enconter and choice and that of a ToEE's pirate dentist faggot. They're respectful, secluded and only relevant if you fucking want it to be, so stop making it wilder than it is. YOU AREN'T BEING OBJECTIVE.
THIS ISN'T A GAME MADE IN THE DEGENERATE FASHION. Probably because it wasn't made by fucking westerners, cause you people are losing your fucking minds, let alone tastes and common senses.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

I didn't even know there was some gay option in Disco, Harrier enjoyed a quiet date with a woman in my playthrough.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

After the WW2 (aka bunch of Jews playing Risk irl), Jewsip Broz Tito banned practice of Orthodox Christianity, for example. Do you think he replaced it with anything humanitarian? Communists literally replaced church pictures with Tito's portraits, gospel with a custom cocktail of Marxism, church songs with Party and Tito songs.

https://hercegovackiportal.com/2024...je-prema-katolickoj-crkvi-pocinili-partizani/

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I didn't even know there was some gay option in Disco, Harrier enjoyed a quiet date with a woman in my playthrough.

You weren't paying attention, because Harry is very attracted to the smoker in the balcony and that's part of the events you need to go through to progress in the game iirc.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

 

[Hydro]

because Harry is very attracted to the smoker in the balcony

Hehe, or rather you are