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

[Shadenuat]

AoD writing technically is not great. Witcher 3 is AAA game and those wouldn't experiment with skills. Plus it's fully voiced to have dialogue trees so long.

there was game where skills matched the narrative and setting: VTM.

DE imo is just a restoration of a forgotten tradition in a way.

 

[AwesomeButton]

AoD writing technically is not great. Witcher 3 is AAA game and those wouldn't experiment with skills. Plus it's fully voiced to have dialogue trees so long.

I'd argue about AoD, because AoD relies completely on its writing for creating atmosphere, drawing the world and the characters. The graphics are that basic. It's even more of a text-based adventure than Disco Elysium, even though it has a combat system.

Witcher 3 wouldn't experiment with skills - ok, but does it have good writing? Yes. Does it experiment with dialogue reactivity? Not nearly to the same extent.

 

[Shadenuat]

A game with full VO can't have this level of dialogue reactivity.

AoD relies completely on its writing for creating atmosphere, drawing the world and the characters

it relies on choice. It's a little bit different.

 

[AwesomeButton]

A game with full VO can't have this level of dialogue reactivity.

Excuses, excuses. It can, if it's not an 100-hour open world game.

 

[TT1]

So, where are the DLC/ expansions?

 

[Shadenuat]

A game with full VO can't have this level of dialogue reactivity.

Excuses, excuses. It can, if it's not an 100-hour open world game.

in fantasy land.

DE has what, 24 skills? that's possible 24 interjections in every dialogue which can interact with each other and sometimes overlap or replace each other.

in fact it's so many, that Zaum couldn't hold it more than for a single big location, which is why fishing village feels smaller and second half of the game is so rushed. they ran out of avellone-juice.
you can also feel disparity between some of the skills (I had 2-3 interesting Sneak checks during high-yellow run)
now imagine voicing dat shit.

voice acting is death for dialogue reactivity.

 

[vota DC]

Don't spoil anything for me but is it possible to miss key story details? I'm at the end of the first night and Kim is telling me that we missed some details. Does this happen no matter what??

About the interviews he will always say that Union boss knows more. But his comments will change a lot: he will comment if you don't do the interview and he will comment if you don't even inspect the body.

 

[Luckmann]

voice acting is death for dialogue reactivity.

I'd argue that it's the death of so much more than just dialogue reactivity. You can't rewrite recorded lines - it immediately becomes economically prohibitive. Each description, each line, each reference comes with a very tangible price-tag attached to it. A quest should have the minimum amount of dialogue attached to it in order to be cost-effective, if everything is voiced, incentivizing reliance on quest logs and compasses.

You can't integrate DLCs or expansions properly, either, because you'd need new VOs to apply on top of existing, established characters, which is likely to be jarring. Major patching goes out the window because you can't rework a quest or add substantial fixes post-production. You can't patch in a new NPC to commemorate the passing of a co-worker, or add a new quest to celebrate some event, without it costing thousands of dollars. Practically all modding - even by the developers themselves - goes out the window, because it'll stick out as a sore thumb without proper VO work, which is practically impossible without a private studio or money or both.

Full VOs are the fucking devil.

Don't spoil anything for me but is it possible to miss key story details? I'm at the end of the first night and Kim is telling me that we missed some details. Does this happen no matter what??

About the interviews he will always say that Union boss knows more.

It is literally impossible to get everything out of the socdem slug on Day 1, anyway, making it always true that he knows more.

 

[Shadenuat]

It's not 1 and 0 thing with no green envy.

VO forces writers to exercise finesse in their writing. It makes them STOP and sometimes it's good. And it adds to the multimedia medium of the vidyagames genre, allows to add even more power to the lines said.

But ultimately, it is shackles. You may avoid some mistakes and don't drop to lowest point where writers suck but still write ton of shit u have to integrate into the game and player has to sit through it; but neither you can reach the highest point freedom would allow you to.

I think it's good experience for vidyagame writers to have worked with shackles on and off.

For DE anyway, I think writing could have been more refined and they could have cut some fat off. But it's mostly about overlapping skills: sometimes dialogue becomes too bloated, like when Encyclopedia just gives you lore dumps, while some other skills actually work better for complementing dialogue in question.
It works the best during situations like when one skill calls another skill on bullshito and they interact with each other; but works meh when after every dialogue line you have 2 succeses and 1 failure and they sometimes tell same thing or thing tangential to the dialogue in question. Perception sucess: the birds are chirping outside. encyclopdea: it happnd in winter of 1888. actual interesting skill: btw this is what NPC feels.
sometimes it can be funny how you can't avoid some details because say perception is too high; but like any joke, it is not funny when it happens too often.

 

[BlackGoat]

Is there anyway to afford that street light in the pawn shop?

 

[GloomFrost]

I think the whole conceit of stats talking to you & the Thought Cabinet would be a largely pointless gimmick if it weren't (1) written superbly, and (2) a large part of development resources dedicated to making sure they are fully integrated into every situation, quest, dialogue, throughout.

We already saw that (it being a pointless gimmick) - the much touted NPC interjections and relationship system in Deadfire! And in the end, everyone was: "so what?"

I dont know what you saw in Deadfire but there was nothing there like a thought cabinet or talking to your stats in it. What "relationship system" got to do with anything is also beyond me.

 

[the mole]

People have been writing books for years, and people have been writing dialogue for years, they just added about 20 more checks in dialogue for speech related things, where other games added dialogue checks for all your skills even combat skills come up in dialogue in many games

There is nothing revolutionary about this game, it's just the dialog portion of most rpgs with the combat stripped out

 

[BlackGoat]

Gotta say -

Negative: Can't use numpad to select dialogue options.

 

[Luckmann]

There is nothing revolutionary about this game

Sure it's not revolutionary.

It's still good.

 

[the mole]

That's fine, I just don't understand the need to lie about things, if you're a dialogue fag then this is probably your goat

 

[HeatEXTEND]

$40 for such a highly praised game seems quite reasonable, compared to $60 for any kind of new AA-AAA game.

What the fuck? That kind of cash will get you both UR and AoD. The value stat here is completely out of whack and I'm very disappointed with you. This is some grade A BS.

Then DE comes out and demonstrates a completely different direction for the evolution of RPGs.

You people are fucking insane. UR and AoD heralded the everlasting drip of incline while people bitched and moaned; then this drivel gets a placard for pushing RPGs forward? This is some bullshit. It's not refining or expanding on anything. Fuck you.

 

[Tigranes]

UR costing 10 just made every other game worth about 8 cents, i wouldnt use it as a baseline for market value

 

[Tigranes]

A question from someone still back in Day 4, a fairly simple one about the boardwalk area

Spoiler

I'm supposed to check out the area as a possible sniper spot, but I found & reported the fellow there before I activated that task. I can go to Land's End and properly scout out the area, but the boardwalk, there's nothing to do anymore except the trashcan? '

Or do I have to first 'check out the mural more closely'? Because I've talked to the dude and looked closely at both walls with no new option.

Second option.

Ehhh, I'm soft-stuck with that mural, though.

Spoiler

I have a lv20 Shivers check with the Feld Mural, and only a couple of situational bonuses from looking at the Southern Mural and such. I've talked to everyone/thing in the surrounding areas, I know my target left the village, I found the clue object the target left behind, I talked to the washer woman, I did the whole geometric map analysis thing back at the Whirling. I have open quests related to the Church where I got some way and now can't open the fucking freezer even with the special tool, but I can't imagine that would be the bottleneck.

So I must be missing something very basic about progressing the main quest via the mural? Hep

 

[ItsChon]

A question from someone still back in Day 4, a fairly simple one about the boardwalk area

Spoiler

I'm supposed to check out the area as a possible sniper spot, but I found & reported the fellow there before I activated that task. I can go to Land's End and properly scout out the area, but the boardwalk, there's nothing to do anymore except the trashcan? '

Or do I have to first 'check out the mural more closely'? Because I've talked to the dude and looked closely at both walls with no new option.

Second option.

Ehhh, I'm soft-stuck with that mural, though.

Spoiler

I have a lv20 Shivers check with the Feld Mural, and only a couple of situational bonuses from looking at the Southern Mural and such. I've talked to everyone/thing in the surrounding areas, I know my target left the village, I found the clue object the target left behind, I talked to the washer woman, I did the whole geometric map analysis thing back at the Whirling. I have open quests related to the Church where I got some way and now can't open the fucking freezer even with the special tool, but I can't imagine that would be the bottleneck.

So I must be missing something very basic about progressing the main quest via the mural? Hep

Spoiler

You're not gonna be happy about this.

You basically need to pass the Shivers check to continue the game. I'd say just save scum the check. You can also do the freezer thing so that you can get enough points to level shivers, and then retry the check till you get it. There are probably other things you can do or look at to increase your chance at the shivers check but I don't know them off hand.

 

[Tigranes]

Thanks. Wow, I am not happy with that. Seems like a dumb bottleneck. I'll figure it out.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Thanks. Wow, I am not happy with that. Seems like a dumb bottleneck. I'll figure it out.

You can get up to +15 on that check (maybe more) for completing side quests in the area. Chase down some phasmids, solve a not so suspicious death, all the church stuff (try unplugging the ice cream machine to make the check easier), ask the fisherwoman out on a date etc...

 

[deama]

Spoiler

I'm not sure if this is just dumb luck, or it was maybe made that way, but I did that shivers check twice in a row at 23% chance and I passed them both?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

$40 for such a highly praised game seems quite reasonable, compared to $60 for any kind of new AA-AAA game.

What the fuck? That kind of cash will get you both UR and AoD. The value stat here is completely out of whack and I'm very disappointed with you. This is some grade A BS.

AoD was $30, and Disco's got more aesthetically pleasing stuff in it. Partial voice acting, more music, snazzier graphics. $10 difference isn't unreasonable given the fancier production. Underrail is shameful however and you should feel bad bringing it up among a pair of prestigious RPGs. And of course you're talking about the full price of AoD, naturally, because all fans of RPGs clearly purchased both AoD and Disco at launch for full price, right? Right.

 

[ItsChon]

Underrail is shameful however and you should feel bad bringing it up among a pair of prestigious RPGs.

Excuse me? Shut your whore mouth you filthy new-fag. Underrail is amazing and filled with content, better than both AoD and DE.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Underrail is shameful however and you should feel bad bringing it up among a pair of prestigious RPGs.

Excuse me? Shut your whore mouth you filthy new-fag. Underrail is amazing and filled with content, better than both AoD and DE.

Underrail is literal garbage for number pushers to touch themselves while playing. That's like trying to compare ToME to a proper RPG. Yes, it might technically be classified as one without diving too far into "But what is an RPG", but in your heart of hearts you know it's just called an RPG so munchkins can feel good about their murderhobos.