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

[MRY]

Notable Steam reviews

It's interesting -- it seems like Steam reviews have some kind of critical mass thing going on, because the number of "likes" that my review has accelerated. It suggests that an interesting way to sabotage a game would be to write an unpersuasive but enthusiastically positive review on Day 1, have it upvoted by fanboys until it hits that critical mass, and then watch it sit forever as the most helpful review. Good thing for these guys it's felipepepe's magisterial review that took off instead.

Isn't there a simpler explanation, which is that your (great!) review fulfills the criteria of being <1 week old, and simply got lucky with its initial few likes, leading to a snowball effect as it became gradually more visible and attracted more likes? Like Felipe's review, it'll likewise disappear next week.
I don't think the general Steam user wastes a lot of time changing the default time filter, and those who do are probably looking for something more -- at that point they'd be too cognitively invested to be led astray by grandoise reviews.

This seems right. I hadn't realized the one-week deal. It just dropped out of that time frame, and I expect it'll dry up. Still, made it to 213 votes, which isn't too shabby. Less than a third of felipepepe's but that seems cosmically right. I still think the best review, though, is the one where a guy created a Walter Mondale user name just to have a meta-joke. Feels very Codexian.

 

[Harpsichord]

I'm just glad to see they finally made a game about the rest of us. It's about time that I get to play a game about being a drug addicted maniac who's out of his depth and perpetually dismissed by everyone around him.

It's tough to handle this fortune and fame, everyone's so different, but I haven't changed...

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Kasparov Boom shaka laka motherfucker had me in stitches, you madlad.

 

[Yolan]

Thoroughly enjoyed DE. I especially liked the fact that I ended with so many unsolved mysteries. It takes a lot of balls to be prepared to not even show significant amounts of content to a player on a given run / build. Not something you see very often these days. I'm an indie dev (TM) myself, and this is something really near and dear to my heart. Leaving things unshown, having that bit left over that the player doesn't see, somehow works together with what you do see, making it all that bit more engaging.

 

[Geisler]

That Escapist article tho.

“The two biggest favors anyone’s ever done me in my life are the political education from Estonian punk bands and what (lead designer and writer) Chris Avellone did with Planescape: Torment. Punk bands got me through my life until I was 27 or 28, and Chris Avellone’s contributions to video games got me past 29. I don’t think I would have had the imagination to think you could be so ambitious and literary in video games.”

 

[toro]

Thoroughly enjoyed DE. I especially liked the fact that I ended with so many unsolved mysteries. It takes a lot of balls to be prepared to not even show significant amounts of content to a player on a given run / build. Not something you see very often these days. I'm an indie dev (TM) myself, and this is something really near and dear to my heart. Leaving things unshown, having that bit left over that the player doesn't see, somehow works together with what you do see, making it all that bit more engaging.

Check the traps.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

And done. 27 hours on a very thorough playthrough. I don't consider the ending weak at all. Perhaps not grandiose and esoteric as first half of the game, but it matched my playstyle well (sober cop).

GOTY 10/10 would Jamrock shuffle again.

 

[karfhud]

I would've never imagined that I'll get to discover my new favourite game at 31, but then I booted up DE and here we are... I can safely put in on-par with PS:T, at least in my book.

Playthrough took 26 hours I think, tried to be as exhaustive as possible. Been running around Martinaise as an artcop.

Please, please let me play as Cuno in the DLC.

 

[buffalo bill]

Link a whole book, get "citation needed"

The author is an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist. There is a heap of good empirical evidence that having a poor cholesterol profile increases disease and mortality risk. There is no conspiracy in the medical community trying to trick you into not eating foods x, y, z. You cite a book, but the citation is garbage.

 

[Mortmal]

Link a whole book, get "citation needed"

The author is an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist. There is a heap of good empirical evidence that having a poor cholesterol profile increases disease and mortality risk. There is no conspiracy in the medical community trying to trick you into not eating foods x, y, z. You cite a book, but the citation is garbage.

No he's not anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist, i doubt you read nor understand any of it , i am not going to waste more time .Keep doing what tv, and pharmaceutical lobby tell you to do ,they certainly only want what's good for you, it would be conspirationist to believe otherwise, enjoy your statins and their side effects.

 

[Mortmal]

Corruption and credulity in medecine.

 

[tripedal]

Some more mainstream coverage, this time in The Guardian: Disco Elysium review – video game as first-person novel

The melancholic strains of music that float in combine with the painterly, impressionistic style to create a distinct and cohesive sense of place. The town is filled with nooks and alleyways, secret doors and high-rise elevators that lead to unmarked floors. There’s a feeling that this is a scene of tangled riddles, and that you, in your equivalent brokenness, might be just the right key to unlock them. The writing, by the Karelian-Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, skilfully builds on the themes suggested by the presentation. With a light touch, the dialogue explores everything from minor acts of everyday racism to entire systems of governance, all through the lens of the murder case.

It is rare that a video game so successfully allows its player to inhabit the mind of another, as in a first-person novel, but Disco Elysium executes the trick with alluring style. It is equally unusual that a game should eschew all traits of power fantasy, forcing its player to adapt to the caprice of chance. This is a quietly important game, singular in direction, filled with unexpected, thrilling effects on its player.

 

[Terenty]

So, did it sell well?

 

[axedice]

I don't think the ending wasn't rushed or sudden, on the contrary it was telegraphed many times over, starting with the shivers check. My only gripe with the ending is

Spoiler

warning - serious endgame spoiler

Spoiler

The Phasmid

I have no idea what to make of it. I mean yeah the way it was implemented fits the story but still I think I was expecting something a little less supra-natural. The deserter for example, a seemingly unconnected agent who on the contrary is actually very connected to the overall story from the beginning to the end did not strike me as an oddity. It was a twist finding him, yet it was written so good that it did not feel lame. The phasmid wasn't *lame* either, but it felt a little bit too disconnected from the overall story.

Writing is superb, quite possibly game of the century material. They set out to make "the most faithful representation of desktop role playing ever attempted in video games" and I am glad to see they delivered. It should be education material for game writers in the coming years.

I did a 4/4/2/2 playthrough which was great to learn all the backstory and now I definetely want to try a 1/1/5/5 for the sheer pleasure of disco. I wonder if there are as many physical / motorics passives as there were for int/psy, but I assume I won't be disappointed. Good job ZA/UM , eagerly waiting for the expansion!

 

[fantadomat]

disconnected from the overall story.

Really,in a world where the majority of it is eaten by a big blob of nothingness? I think that the supernatural elements of the game are very well written and feel realistic.

 

[axedice]

I have no objections to the overall supra-natural elements of the game, just with how they were implemented in the ending. Our encounter is connected to the "setting" , not the story. They are 2 seperate things. And I'm not saying it was bad, I'm just saying it felt a little bit out of place (unlike the rest of the story and its conclusion).

As for pale, our insectoid friend gives a very strong metaphor with the great oxygenation event. It is not nothing I think, rather a very strong anti-consciousness phenomenon.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Jimmious]

People please, don't fucking spoil. Don't talk about the ending so relaxedly in the open, go in the spoiler thread

 

[HanoverF]

Wearing everything but pants? What a prude.

Meanwhile It is impossible to completely avoid wearing pants in Disco Elysium!

 

[Zombra]

Still loving the game. Only two real disappointments:

* Screenshot functionality still doesn't work. Only able to get truly great screenshots during dream sequences.

* Still no evident reason for stat-locked skill system. Why not just start with 72 skill points to distribute as you like?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Finished my second playthrough of Disco Elysium, as a high-physique Cop of the Apocalypse. Eagerly looking forward to the next game from ZA/UM:

EIGHTIES ARCADIA

 

[Ensi]

I'll ask in the spoiler thread nvm.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Ensi just reload a save from before you met Ruby.

Spoiler

That’s what triggers the tribunal. Kim warns you not to go ahead with it unless you’ve taken care of all your other business. You then get a chance to ask him about all the major side quests that you still haven’t finished.

 

[Adon]

In the middle of the Day 3 and seeing how I'm unable to cross over to the fishing village until the third day, I'm starting to see how the game is railroaded. Not a dealbreaker as I've been immensely enjoying the rest of the game.

 

[HoboForEternity]

huh. here's a late review
https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/disco-elysium-review-pure-dynamite/1900-6417354/