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

[Squid]

Haven't had time to beat this game. But 8 hours in and I think I'm finally running out of things to talk to people about on Monday night around midnight to 1 am.

Game's pretty damn neat so far.

 

[Ramnozack]

God damnit they put in this beautiful moment of Communism and I missed it. "A hug a day keeps the bourgeoisie away."

Spoiler

Edit: god damn the comments on that tweet though, I really don't want to live on this godforsaken planet anymore

Spoiler

"Don't hug people without their consent tho."
"I do agree. No hugs without consent irl."

You don’t like your fellow comrades, comrade?

 

[Will Zurmacht]

God damnit they put in this beautiful moment of Communism

Spoiler

"Honest working class plastic explosives..."

That one was so good I had to write it down.

 

[TT1]

Kotaku review:

https://kotaku.com/disco-elysium-the-kotaku-review-1839723176

Disco Elysium: The Kotaku Review

The most important thing about Disco Elysium, an oddly titled role-playing game that came out last month for PC, is that it’s funny. Set in a beautifully ugly world of smudged watercolors and throbbing noir music, Disco Elysium appears at first to be the type of game that might take itself too seriously. It seems nihilistic, dropping not-so-subtle messages that its writers believe everything sucks. Fascists bombed the city. The union leaders are corrupt. The cops are jerks. But there’s a warmth to the game that reveals itself over time, largely thanks to its fantastic sense of humor. Following a branch of dialogue is just as likely to lead to a long-winded treatise about communist philosophy as it is to result in your character dying from a heart attack because he got exhausted trying to remove his tie from a ceiling fan.

Disco Elysium is best described as a cross between the seminal role-playing game Planescape: Torment and a LucasArts point-n-click adventure like, say, Monkey Island. It’s an isometric RPG, complete with stats and equipment, but rather than battle guards and monsters, you have conversations. Trials are resolved through dialogue options rather than combat. Many of those dialogue options are locked behind Dungeons & Dragons-style dice rolls—failing, say, an Empathy check will make it tough to understand what someone is thinking—but most of this game is about reading oodles and oodles of text. It’s less traditional RPG, more visual novel. Perhaps the gamiest thing about Disco Elysium is a pair of life meters—one for health, one for morale—which will tick down when you, say, kick a mailbox, or drunkenly embarrass yourself. You can pick up restorative items for both meters, and if either of them drains, you’ll get a game over. But all you’ve really got is text.

The good news is that all the text is fantastic. Your character, an alcoholic mess who wakes up with no recollection of his past, quickly learns that he’s a detective who’s been tasked with investigating a murder in the decrepit city of Revachol. “Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being,” offers Disco Elysium’s marketing slogan, but it’s difficult to avoid the latter. Whether you’re trying to make amends with colleagues whose names you’ve forgotten or attempting to convince a smarmy union leader to help you find your missing gun, chances are high you’ll fall on your face. Early in my playthrough, for example, I encountered a teenage tweaker named Cuno with red hair and a penchant for foul insults. In order to show dominance and get Cuno to stop throwing rocks at the corpse of my murder victim, I took a swing at him, knowing that my physical strength was subpar. I failed the roll, which caused my character to deliver a glorious haymaker right into the air, toppling over and losing a health point. Cuno got a kick out of it.

An alternate-reality incarnation of my character might have connected that punch but perhaps would have lacked the mental fortitude to pass a later check and convince Cuno to chill out. If I’d made smarter decisions and succeeded at more dice rolls, I might have even persuaded him to become my junior partner and keep me company on a mission later in the game. There are maybe 30 or 40 characters in Disco Elysium, and many of them, like Cuno, are memorable, worth revisiting multiple times over the course of your investigation. Maybe they’ve got new things to say, or maybe one of your stats will be higher and offer you a better chance at a dialogue check you failed earlier. (You can retry many stat checks every time you put a point into that stat. You get those points by gaining experience and leveling up, which happens organically as you play.)

Your stats aren’t just good for passing dialogue checks, though. Each of them is a voice inside of your character’s head, chiming in to offer commentary during conversations and dull moments. Your Electrochemistry stat, for example, will encourage you to seek out and ingest as many drugs and alcoholic beverages as you can find. Encyclopedia will interject with lore dumps about Revachol and its history, while Drama will encourage you to lie to everyone you meet in increasingly hilarious ways. Some of the most interesting skills are the most specific ones, like Esprit De Corps, which gives you a psychic connection to other cops, and Inland Empire, which prowls the inner depths of your imagination and comes up with all sorts of disturbing conclusions. The interplay between these skills might be the best thing about Disco Elysium, full of clever quips and hilarious moments.

The caveat is that you can’t play Disco Elysium like you might play a standard RPG. Most games with dialogue options encourage you to explore them all, with RPGs like The Witcher 3 signaling that optional text will always be white and text that advances the conversation will always be yellow. There’s no downside to asking every question and exploring every possibility. In Disco Elysium, however, even the optional dialogue can have very real consequences—ask someone about something too brusquely, for example, and you face the very real risk of shutting them down forever. Call someone a fuckhead and they might remember it every time you speak to them.

The sheer number of role-playing possibilities in Disco Elysium is mind-boggling and often overwhelming. You can play as a pinko communist, an apathetic centrist, or a fascist herb. You can miss major quests and story moments if you choose the wrong paths or don’t get to them quickly enough. (Disco Elysium unfolds over the course of about a week, with time passing only when you have conversations.) Dialogue options that at first seem like throwaway jokes can lead to gut-wrenching quests, and people who seem delusional might reveal themselves to have the sharpest minds in Revachol. I’m still not quite sure what I could have done with the man I stumbled upon in a truck container who was so rich that he was literally glowing, but I’m glad I was able to go on a pseudo-date with that hard-boiled fisherwoman. She seemed lovely.

Later in the game, once you’ve started to understand all of Disco Elysium’s systems and you just want to see the ending through, the thrill dissipates. It becomes a little too easy to min-max the game, save-scumming or swapping out your equipment just before each skill check so you can boost your chances of passing. The final act railroads you in a way that’s disconcerting compared to the pure freedom of the rest of the game, and some of your choices don’t appear to matter quite as much as they should in the broader scheme of things. Still, this is a tremendous game, one I’d recommend to anybody who likes their games to be heavy on the text, hard-boiled, and hilarious.

There’s unexpected joy in the little moments of Disco Elysium, like trying to crack your straitlaced partner Kim Kitsuragi’s shell. Kim at first seems like the perfect foil to your antics—a frequently exasperated, by-the-book cop who wishes he hadn’t been saddled with an alcoholic, amnesiac mess. But over time it becomes clear that Kim has developed a soft spot for your hero. At one point, the two of you might find yourselves staring at the bullet-filled wall of an apartment building, the remnants of a mass execution that had been carried out decades earlier. You might stare at the wall and nod, pensively. He’ll nod, too. You’ll nod harder. He’ll nod faster. You’ll nod furiously, and look over to see him nodding so much that he’s actually sweating. Keep nodding and you’ll actually take physical damage—maybe even enough to cause a heart attack and die—but you might earn his respect in the process. You might even get him to smile.

 

[Prime Junta]

LOL at "fascist herb." Is this a thing or did Schreier just make it up?

 

[TT1]

LOL at "fascist herb." Is this a thing or did Schreier just make it up?

I dont have any idea about this "fascist herb". Dont remember it in the game.

The review is a little bit cold, for me. In the comments section he sounds more enthusiastic, but the review per se is kinda... bleh.

 

[Infinitron]

9/10 https://www.pcgamesn.com/disco-elysium/review

Disco Elysium review – a new standard of RPG writing
This feverish meditation on loss pushes its genre in exploration and conversation

In a shanty town of tarpaulin and corrugated steel, a drunk is telling me a story about how he slipped and fell on his arse. I pick the cocky conversational response: “I would’ve landed on my feet. I have feline reflexes.” Turns out this is a hidden skill check against my sense of Savoir Faire, which replies: “No, you don’t.” I just got burned by my own psyche.

The drunk continues with a peremptory “whatever”, and there’s no discernible gameplay impact. But I laugh out loud, despite being a little hurt on my character’s behalf. I feel like I understand him better, and that I sympathise with him more.

The drunk rambles on, and a story that began as a light hearted, relatable tale of alcohol-induced misfortune takes a tragic turn as the consequences escalate: he loses his comfy house, his glamorous girlfriend, his lucrative job. The drunk blames all his current misery on that one heavy night. Guilt stings at having been so blasé in my initial reply, but there’s just a touch of ambiguity about his story, an attitude of backward-looking self-pity, and a hint that he had options to explore – and perhaps still does – which make him not unalloyedly sympathetic. This is what Disco Elysium is like.

You play a detective who wakes up after a night of obliterative drinking with a purged memory and a shattered psyche. As a player knowing nothing about Disco Elysium’s weird and imaginative world, you learn about its history, politics, and unique physics (ooh) alongside your character. You emerge with an apocalyptic hangover into the Martinaise district of the city of Revachol, where a dockworkers’ strike is only the most obvious of many simmering local disputes. You have to solve a complicated murder case while navigating them all, despite your condition.

The fragments of your mind try their best to help you along the way, offering an endearing cacophony of advice – sometimes unreliable, sometimes conflicting, always well-meaning. They are a cast of characters in their own right. Volition is the determined grown-up in the room, Electrochemistry a slice of id forever seeking altered states, while histrionic Drama addresses you as “sire” or “my liege”.

These fragments are also skills into which you can invest points, the main purpose of which is to interact more successfully with the world. You might need to check against your Endurance to examine a rotting corpse without vomiting, or your Physical Instrument to beat up a racist security guard. If you hit certain skill thresholds, the corresponding voice will analyse someone’s statement for factual accuracy, hinting at, and sometimes unlocking, new directions in the conversation.

So these checks combine with your own diligence and judgement – how thoroughly you search a room, how deftly you navigate an interrogation – in getting Revachol and its citizens to give up their secrets. Disco Elysium does a decent job of making such secrets available to all builds so no approach is materially better than another: multiple skills may apply to a given situation, and many problems can be resolved in multiple ways (pry open a rubbish compactor or convince the hostel manager to give you the key, for example).



Your efforts are tested in several story-critical conversations with witnesses and suspects. It is magnificently satisfying to succeed in these inflection points because you did the groundwork. People will lie, deflect, and employ sophistry, charm, and ommission to make you doubt your case against them or their friends, and you may or may not be able to shoot them down with logic, evidence, and rhetorical tactics of your own. You need to not only ask the right questions, but resist the common RPG temptation of asking every question you can, in order to keep a witness compliant.

This is an RPG without combat, but which takes exploration and conversation to genre-pushing new heights. As you might imagine, you spend a lot of time navigating dialogue trees as they unspool on a backdrop of cassette tape, so the writing has to do a lot of work.

Fortunately, it’s consistently superlative. It is among the very, very best writing I’ve ever seen in games. Your shattered psyche and total ignorance of absolutely everything, even the axioms of reality, is a unique premise of which Estonian indie ZA/UM takes full advantage: no one’s told your sense of Rhetoric that you can’t persuade a shipping container to open its doors, or your Savoir Faire that you can’t teleport up a ladder.

Spoiler

On a less abstract level, you can exhibit a range of personality traits – or ‘copotypes’ – and take a range of political positions. Judge Dredd fans can go around saying “I am the law”, while apologising for your character’s many, many screw-ups can get you branded a ‘sorry cop’. You are invited to opine on political and cultural issues, beginning with the dockworkers’ strike in the very earliest dialogues.



These personal and political traits add wonderful flavour to dialogues, but they also have a gameplay impact in that they can unlock ‘Thoughts’ (as can many other interactions). You can equip Thoughts to boost your skills and gain a range of other bonuses, as well as maluses. Defend ultraliberal economics often enough and you’ll get the chance to consider Indirect Modes of Taxation, which will cause further ultraliberal dialogue choices to generate money, but cost you a point of your Empathy skill to equip. Again, every position gets ridiculed.

Disco Elysium tries and succeeds in striking a number of different moods. One of those moods is humour, which got in the way of my role-playing a bit, because it’s so hard not to pick the funny option. In my first playthrough I put points into intellect and psyche skills, intent on role-playing a quick-witted rhetoritician. That all goes to piss when I’m able to request a handout from a rich lady by simply screaming “MONEY!!!” at her in capital letters. I won’t spoil the rest of the conversation, but I can’t remember the last time a game made me laugh so hard.



But Disco Elysium is so much more than just funny. It is angry. A missing person’s case in an impoverished fishing village concludes with some of the game’s iciest social commentary and its deepest humanity – yes, every position is criticised, but one senses that ZA/UM is more animated by some than others. If not that, then at least I was more animated by certain criticisms than others. Either way, it’s welcome. There needs to be room in this medium for games that are willing to provoke.

Disco Elysium is also bittersweet. My alcoholic amnesia has erased the feeling of missing someone, so I ask a chilled yet melancholic truck driver about his family after bonding with him over poetry. He says it feels: “Good. And bad. An ache that brings you joy. I think of them a lot. I dream up these silly scenarios, in great detail. Of living with them. It comforts me.”



I once thought that isometric RPGs struggle to evoke a sense of atmosphere compared with games that take a more immersive first- or third-person perspective, but Disco Elysium has done it. Haunting, crystalline music and carefully deployed ambient sounds, like lapping waves and rustling reeds, brilliantly support your sensory voices when they invite you to stop and drink in a scene, as they often will. Perception tells you what you hear in different directions, while Shivers can attune to the thrum of the city, flying across its frigid bay to bring you stories of its people. Revachol isn’t a traditionally pretty place – it’s all boarded-up businesses, broken masonry, and reinforced concrete – but it has more character and authenticity than most gaming locales. I love it, because I feel like I know it.

My first (fairly completionist) playthrough – that of the intellectual centrist who imagines himself a rock star – took me a solid 35 hours. I’ve started a second, focusing on physical and motorics skills and championing ultraliberalism. A few key conversations and interactions have gone more differently than I had expected, and while the major story beats haven’t changed, my knowledge of what happens is actually keeping me engaged because I know how to do things better or differently. Enough has changed for me to happily finish a second run.

And these are trivial imperfections in a shining gem of a game. There’s so much more I want to say about Disco Elysium, but a lot of it risks spoilers, and hey, you get it by now: This is one of the best games of the year. Please play it.

Disco Elysium review
An utterly original RPG that sets new genre standards for exploration and conversation systems, and a brilliantly written tragicomedy about our inability to release the linchpins of our identity. Even when they hurt us.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

it's not a new standard, because most won't live up to it since different RPGs focus on different elements. Not every RPG is going to focus on having a million words with ultra reactivity and their resources will be spent differently.

 

[Prime Junta]

Zero Punctuation reviews Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which is so boring that he reviews Disco Elysium instead.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/v2/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-zero-punctuation/

 

[Will Zurmacht]

I denied Harry ecstasy in the arms of his fishfu because the fucking game had got too far into my head about remaining pure for Dora the Ex Whore-a.

 

[Tigranes]

it's not a new standard, because most won't live up to it since different RPGs focus on different elements. Not every RPG is going to focus on having a million words with ultra reactivity and their resources will be spent differently.

Don't worry, Disco Elysium has got you covered by not actually having 'ultra reactivity'. That particular crown still belongs with Alpha Protocol and Age of Decadence.

 

[Utgard-Loki]

is she dogwhistling at me? i have not even finished the revacholian nationhood thought.

 

[tripedal]

Found on twitter:

 

[Prime Junta]

That's some d fanart. Kasparov

 

[vota DC]

Found on twitter:

We must redone Lord of the Rings replacing Theoden with drunk cop and Grima with thought cabinet.

 

[turkishronin]

How's the combat in this game

 

[Prime Junta]

How's the combat in this game

guns are op, it's one-shot kill most of the time

 

[HoboForEternity]

How's the combat in this game

combat module sold separately

 

[TT1]

How's the combat in this game

Pretty good. One of the best FPS I've ever played.

This can be or not from the game:

 

[TT1]

From reddit:

 

[Prime Junta]

DAMN it, now I need to play RDR2

 

[Popiel]

From reddit:

Oh shit. My headcanon Bulbasaur from now on definitely.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

DAMN it, now I need to play RDR2

You should, Arthur is a great character and the game overall is very rewarding for its story, atmosphere and companions.

Plus it's got the best combat I've seen in an RPG.

 

[Prime Junta]

DAMN it, now I need to play RDR2

You should, Arthur is a great character and the game overall is very rewarding for its story, atmosphere and companions.

Plus it's got the best combat I've seen in an RPG.

It's not out for the PC yet though, is it?

 

[Adidas-Clichèd Cringe]

Just came out actually. Epic exclusive until December though, if I remember right.