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

[PlanHex]

Kasparov do you guys know exactly what they are objecting to and why, and can you share it or is it spoilers for the new content?

 

[Harthwain]

Wait, wasn't Disco Elysium released in Australia before? Or did they just realize the game is about playing as drunk drug addict?

 

[Humanophage]

Imagine being a grown man, and still having some out of touch boomers deciding what is okay for you to watch or play. Imagine being an australian.

Imagine being a grown man and playing consoles.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm pretty sure that the next will be same setting, but different story. I mean, dude, they got a whole unique world unexplored and you want them to do sequel about cop in some disctrict of some little city?

I'd say just continue the story. DE feels like a very good prologue.

Kurvitz said in an interview that the game is significantly scaled back from what their initial scope was. If you read their old dev diaries, there is talk about the world map covering the whole city of Revachol. So yes, there is much more of Harry's story and this of particular case to be told.

The ending of DE is in fact what was supposed to be the ending of a first chapter, with the tensions rising between the corporation and the strikers. There is also Klaasje's story that should be continued, which seems to get into some high level espionage motives.

 

[Kasparov]

Kasparov do you guys know exactly what they are objecting to and why, and can you share it or is it spoilers for the new content?

Not really my purview. I believe they wouldn't have let vanilla Disco Elysium through their customs either.

Because. You know.

the game is about playing as drunk drug addict?

 

[PlanHex]

Kasparov do you guys know exactly what they are objecting to and why, and can you share it or is it spoilers for the new content?

Not really my purview. I believe they wouldn't have let vanilla Disco Elysium through their customs either.

Because. You know.

the game is about playing as drunk drug addict?

Ah ok, I thought it might get banned from steam and everything.

 

[Tigranes]

Australian censorship board has been famous for decades - it's not people who necessarily understand film, or video games, or children, but they have somehow developed a super strong sense of what is right and wrong to censor and the conviction that they won't just let whatever go. They're a whole thing & have been for a long time.

I'm usually in favour of people taking their jobs seriously and actually doing what they're supposed to do, but it doesn't work well when the entire existence of a censorship board in today's media industry just doesn't make much sense.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I'm looking forward to my Final Cut playthrough. I'm going to play it as an utterly depraved piece of filth, in stark contrast to my first playthrough as a regretful cop seeking redemption.

 

[Infinitron]

More previews: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/d...-black-and-white-movie-to-color/1100-6489042/

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut Is Like Going From A Black-And-White Movie To Color
Disco Elysium's developers say the new version of the game is much closer to their original vision than what they shipped last year.

When fledgling developer ZA/UM set out to make what would become Disco Elysium, to some degree, they didn't know what they were getting into. The game as it was released is set in a single district of the fictional city of Revachol, called Martinaise, but in its original conception, the game would have spanned five. Scaling back became a necessity for the relatively small team at ZA/UM if they ever wanted to get their RPG out the door--but after a successful launch and more than a year of additional development time, Disco Elysium is about to become much closer to what its creators originally intended.

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is set for release on March 30, and it significantly expands the game ZA/UM released in October 2019. Along with releasing on PlayStation 4, PS5, and Stadia (ZA/UM says it plans for Switch and Xbox One and Series X|S versions in the future), the Final Cut adds new quests, new characters, and myriad small changes throughout the game that will allow players to solve problems in new ways. ZA/UM gave GameSpot a look at the Final Cut during an online preview event ahead of its release, which gave a sense of some of the tweaks, while showing off the real crown jewel of the enhanced version of the game: full voice acting.

"I would even go so far as to say that it's sort of like having seen a film in black and white, and hopefully having liked the film, and then coming back to that film after the director has sort of reworked it and created his dream version of the film and seeing it in full color, all of a sudden," voice over director Jim Ashilevi said during the event. "I would say the difference is that vast and dramatic."

It was no small feat--as Ashilevi explained, Disco Elysium contains about 1 million words that had to be voiced, about the same amount as is contained in all the Harry Potter novels, or twice as much as is contained in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The Final Cut features about 59 actors from countries around the world, he said.

"Revachol really is sort of like the capital of the world. It is a gigantic melting pot of different cultures, different languages, different political views," Ashilevi said. "It's a huge melting pot for all of those things. And we really needed the voiceover to emphasize that aspect of Disco Elysium. Because you do get a sense of it without the voiceover, when you go through the game as if you're reading a novel. But the voiceover read, it does have to be a game-changer in that regard. So I would say that having brought all these different languages and accents into the game and giving you the opportunity to actually hear that symphony of accents really does make a huge difference in the way you experienced Disco Elysium."

While the fact that Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is fully voiced should drastically change how the game feels to play, it's not the only addition to the game. The Final Cut also adds four new quests that expand on the characterization of the protagonist through the political alignment players bring to him.

These additions are called political vision quests, which allow you to further expand on Disco Elysium's Thought Cabinet mechanics. Depending on the choices you make through the game, the Thought Cabinet elements you focus on, and the way you interact with other characters, you'll get access to one of those four quests.

Picking one quest excludes you from the others, and not all the quests are the same length or have quite the same impact--but all of them will have effects on the later game. According to lead artist Kaspar Tamsalu, the aim for the political vision quests is "culmination and catharsis."

"For some players, these political vision quests will indeed offer self-expression, role-play, an act, while for others, it offers a way for true introspection," Tamsalu explained. "Unlike in real life, the video game allows one to reload a save game and try to resolve a complex situation in a different way entirely, and through this process, the player will undoubtedly open themselves up to different and sometimes opposing points of view. This opens the way toward empathy. Sure, we’re getting a bit deeper into the political side of the game with these political vision quests. We’re also getting a bit deeper into the mind of (the protagonist), and poke a bit deeper into the tapestry that is the history of the world of Elysium."

"I can say that by completing each of these quests the player will undoubtedly meet new people, learn something new about people they’ve already met previously in the game, learn something new about themselves, uncover--let’s call them secrets--about the world of Elysium," Tamsalu said.

Other changes to Disco Elysium in The Final Cut bring a variety of improvements. The game's frame rate has been increased, Tamsalu said, and The Final Cut includes fast travel to make getting around Martinaise a little easier. There's new art and music in the game to go with the additional content. And ZA/UM has worked to make The Final Cut easier and more interesting for streamers, with a mode that replaces copyrighted music. Twitch integration means fans watching streamers play Disco Elysium can vote on actions and dialogue choices. There's also a feature that will allow stream viewers to vote to either increase or decrease the player's stats, altering how key moments in the game might play out.

Taken together, the improvements and additions to Disco Elysium in The Final Cut bring the game in line with ZA/UM's original vision--not the pie-in-the-sky conception with a sprawling city and real-time tactical combat, but the involved, novelistic version it spawned, and which Disco Elysium came close to hitting in 2019.

That's why ZA/UM poured so many resources into fully voicing the game, Ashilevi said: The developer wanted to create the best version of Disco Elysium it could, and make it as approachable as possible for players, especially if they were playing it on their couch.

"We wanted the existing game to shine in its full glory, rather than rush off and go wild with expansions," he said. "Disco Elysium was already complete, all that was missing was the political quests branch, which is now added to the story. Thus it made complete sense for us to pour most of our resources into the aspect of the game that still had the greatest amount of untapped potential--voice over. Up until now the game mainly stood on the shoulders of two giants: the writing and the art direction. Now we finally have that third pillar built in the form of full voice-over, which not only complements but also elevates the strongest features of the writing and artistic style of the game. With those three pillars supporting the experience of moving through the story the player finally gets fully immersed in the game the way we wanted them to be immersed in it in the first place."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/03/19/what-is-disco-elysium-final-cut/

‘Disco Elysium: The Final Cut’ comes out March 30. Here’s what’s new.

Despite rumors of a delay on the horizon, developer ZA/UM promises “Disco Elysium: The Final Cut” is coming out March 30. With it comes big changes, including fully-voiced dialogue, console versions, new quests, fast travel, new locations and characters, making it the definitive version of the popular indie role-playing game.

“Disco Elysium” first released in 2019 to critical acclaim, taking home four awards at The Game Awards that year. Since then, ZA/UM — a studio based in both Estonia and the United Kingdom — has been hard at work building “The Final Cut.”

For the first time, “Disco Elysium” will be playable on console, with PlayStation 4 and PS5 being the first console versions to release this month with “The Final Cut.” This definitive edition will simultaneously launch on PC. If you already own the original game on PC, “The Final Cut” will be available as a free upgrade. Later, the team plans to bring “The Final Cut” to Xbox, Switch and Google Stadia as well.

Although ZA/UM remained tight-lipped on what new locations the definitive edition will introduce and how many new characters there will be, the biggest additions are the political alignment quests. In “Disco Elysium,” your political alignment (i.e. communism, fascism, moralism or ultraliberalism) develops over the course of the game depending on your actions, and each comes with specific perks (such as gaining bigger and better bonuses from drinking alcohol). The four political alignment quests will be tied to whatever identity you’ve developed, and you can only play one quest per playthrough. These quests will also open up new areas to explore and new characters to meet.

“After one [in-game] day, you can embark on one of those quests,” ZA/UM art director Kaspar Tamsalu said. “Each quest incorporates different characters you might already know in the game, and offers you brand-new ways to interact with them. [The quests] will also tell you something new about the game world or show a different aspect that you might not have seen during the vanilla Disco Elysium experience.”

A handful of smaller changes are coming, too, including some tweaks to the art, such as updated character portraits and new animations, along with the ability to fast travel — which is huge news considering it is a slog to slowly move from one end of the map to the other in the original game.

For the uninitiated, “Disco Elysium” has an incredibly unique setup: The protagonist, Harry, has skills which you can upgrade as you play, taking the form of voices in his head. Each skill is part of his psyche, such as his logic, empathy or pain threshold — and they all have a personality. In “The Final Cut,” these voices in Harry’s head will all be voiced by actor Levi Brown, the narrator of the game, who ZA/UM says spent eight long months in the studio to record the huge amount of lines.

The rest of the dialogue is voiced too, including the inanimate objects that speak, such as Harry’s necktie. In terms of word count, there are more than 1 million words, according to ZA/UM, which is more than all of J.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” novels put together. Voicing everything was a huge undertaking, with 59 total actors, particularly because of the many accents and backgrounds that Disco Elysium includes in its multicultural world.

The four political alignment quests will be tied to whatever identity you’ve developed, and you can only play one quest per playthrough. (ZA/UM)

“We’re a small studio,” voice-over director Jim Ashlevi said. “The sensible thing to do would be to outsource the whole thing, maybe get three or four different studios to handle that, and then just sit back, relax, have a drink and wait for the Dropbox link or the WeTransfer. But that’s not us.”

Jim calls ZA/UM an “art collective,” and compares his team to the Wu-Tang Clan, in that each person has other creative endeavors, both personal and professional, outside of creating video games. Many of them have theater, film or television roots, and covid-19 proved a challenge, halting many of those other projects. But it also meant that when it came to “Disco Elysium: The Final Cut,” they could commit fully and pour their hearts into it.

“When we come together under the umbrella of ZA/UM, that’s when we create the best works of our lives,” Ashlevi said.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I'm looking forward to my Final Cut playthrough. I'm going to play it as an utterly depraved piece of filth, in stark contrast to my first playthrough as a regretful cop seeking redemption.

same plans!

 

[PlanHex]

I'm looking forward to my Final Cut playthrough. I'm going to play it as an utterly depraved piece of filth, in stark contrast to my first playthrough as a regretful cop seeking redemption.

Shit, I was thinking about getting sober sooner and being even more sorry, but this sounds like a good idea too

 

[Grunker]

I can recommend that. My first playthrough was a completely unapologetic "in-it-for-the-lulz" Electro-Chemistry cop, and it was great. It almost makes Harry more tragic if you constantly deny that your shitty existance is shitty.

I was disappointed in the Electro-Chemistry skill itself though. My other skills ended up being more interesting. There were too few interactions, and they were rarely meaningful or fun

 

[Ghulgothas]

Meat Cop, 2-1-5-4 all the way. Physique never steers you wrong, and Motorics is what makes you even remotely competent.

 

[prengle]

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut classification rejected in Australia
The extended edition of ZA/UM's RPG was due to release on PS5 and PS4 in the country on March 30

The Australian Classification Board refused the classification of Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, the expanded edition of ZA/UM's hit.

Classification is refused for games that "depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified," the board said.


Disco Elysium depicts drugs and alcohol addiction -- in 2018, GamesIndustry.biz talked to ZA/UM lead designer and writer Robert Kurvitz about the studio's exploration of alcoholism.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut was due to release in Australia on March 30 on PlayStation 5 and 4, and on the Xbox family of consoles and Switch later this year, marking the title's debut on consoles.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...inal-cut-classification-rejected-in-australia

Australia will be free from crypto-communist degeneracy.

Discochads.... Your reign of terror finally comes to an end.... or something idk i didnt really think this post through fuck....

 

[Deadass]

 

[Larianshill]

Reaction Speed, Shivers, Empathy and Volition all talking not only in the same voice, but also the same tone is really disappointing. Sure, this tone might fit Shivers, but it will be jarring to hear Electrochemistry, Drama, Savoir Faire talking like this.

 

[tripedal]

That was certainly not what I was hoping for...

 

[Deadass]

meh u can always switch back to classic mode

 

[Terenty]

Yeah, i imagined all those thoughts to be more chaotic and crazy considering you're playing a fucked up drunkard, not this sleep inducing narration

 

[Larianshill]

Jesus, I suddenly imagined that Klaasje scene voiced like this, with a monotone voice arguing with itself. I really hope the game will pleasantly surprise me.

 

[KVVRR]

This was what I feared when I heard that they would be dubbing the skills too. The voice is excellent, but it doesn't fit all of them, and certainly not if he uses the same tone of voice for every one.
At least Cuno does sound better

 

[Xamenos]

Well, I can't think of a text-heavy game where full voice-over was an improvement. Disco Elysium seems no different.

 

[Terenty]

Watched the footage another couple of times and the full voice acting not only seems to be a pointless addition, but actually quite detracting to the whole experience.

If you wanna listen to the voices then you have to stare at the almost static screen with a looped animation that has nothing to do with what is being told and described by the voices and that's frankly very jarring.

 

[prengle]

they should've given their 70 bajillion dollars to me instead of blowing it on chapo trap house voice acting or whatever the fuck

 

[GloomFrost]

REALLY disappointed with how Cuno sounds now. Completely different voice and intonation. I mean "fuck does Cuno care" literally became an iconic day one meme and its already ruined. And of course 1, one (ONE!!!!!) monotones voice for completely different skills is 100% pure stupid decline. Is it going to be be the same voice for all of the 24 skills?? Damn the final cut is not even out yet and its already so underwhelming. Why did I have to watch that video? .