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

[Hydro]

"What's Disco Elysium?"
"Isometric rpg."
"Like old Baldur's, Fallouts and such?"
“Umm kinda. With much better C&C minus combat”


?

ftfy

 

[SpaceWizardz]

"What's Disco Elysium?"
"Isometric rpg."
"Like old Baldur's, Fallouts and such?"
"Umm, no."

If people know what Baldur's Gate is they probably know about Planescape Torment.

 

[vota DC]

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

That Is Harrier Du Bois, not the game itself that Is filled by politics and intrigue.

 

[KVVRR]

The game has nothing to say about centrism/moralism beyond sneering.

I'm not too sure about that, for me it feels like moralism is by far the political faction that was portrayed in the the worst light through the game. While every other of the 3 political thoughts seem to be made in a jokey fashion, even if dressed in sad or pathetic colors, the moralist thought doesn't do that. It's dry, calling people who believe in it as not having any personal beliefs, and the mere thought of any deviation as a child playing with a toy that must be reprimanded. Nothing is wrong in the world, and nothing is evil about moralism. God is in his heaven. Finishing every political quest rewards you with the world or yourself changing because of your actions; but not the moralist quest. The only reward for correctly finishing that one is a game over screen.
Maybe it's portrayed like that because it's the only faction that genuinely, truly won and it's currently ruling over the place. They're the ones supposed to be making things better and it's obvious they aren't; thus the game doesn't pretend like they aren't holding the entire city down at gunpoint 24/7. Everyone else lost, got shot in the head or fucked off.

 

[Laz Sundays]

"What's Disco Elysium?"
"Isometric rpg."
"Like old Baldur's, Fallouts and such?"
"Umm, no."

If people know what Baldur's Gate is they probably know about Planescape Torment.

Sure, I'd call Disco the true spiritual successor to Planescape. Highlighting its uniqueness. But you can put PS:T in the same basket with others for obvious reasons, while DE is an entirely different beast.

 

[Vormulak]

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

We get so many retards thinking Disco Elysium promotes communism than you looked like yet another one. The game doesn't really "pull the punches" on communism. In fact, it's pretty straightforward about it from get-go.

Can we agree that disco is a good cyoa (adventure) game? And main theme isn't about politics at all. Quest for Glory had more RPG elements than Disco (+combat). Still great game

It's not a game, doesn't have any gameplay.

 

[Vormulak]

People who call Disco an isometric rpg are to be blamed for the dissonance. You're the ones putting emphasis on being punctual when it comes to genres. So why are you then bitching at others when they load up Disco - which you described as isometric rpg - and they see a visual pointclicky novel instead. With strong rpg elements, sure, huge part of it is c&c roleplay but it's still not eligible to share the same tag with Fallouts, Icewinds, etc.

Make up your mind already. If tagging matters so much then stick to it all the way.

DE doesn't have choice and consequence in any meaningful sense, you can complete the game by mindlessly selecting dialogue options and skipping all the text. Also the game only has a single ending.

 

[Laz Sundays]

People who call Disco an isometric rpg are to be blamed for the dissonance. You're the ones putting emphasis on being punctual when it comes to genres. So why are you then bitching at others when they load up Disco - which you described as isometric rpg - and they see a visual pointclicky novel instead. With strong rpg elements, sure, huge part of it is c&c roleplay but it's still not eligible to share the same tag with Fallouts, Icewinds, etc.

Make up your mind already. If tagging matters so much then stick to it all the way.

DE doesn't have choice and consequence in any meaningful sense, you can complete the game by mindlessly selecting dialogue options and skipping all the text. Also the game only has a single ending.

So even more reason to not call it "iso rpg"

 

[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.

 

[Hydro]

So both commies and capitalists are butthurt. Bravo DE.

 

[Laz Sundays]

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.

You are looking at old european ideology through modern western eyes. It is not the same. There is a mountain of difference between developers and their modern western audience. It is only looking like it's the same thing on paper. Older generation had more awareness and taste. European commies are nowhere near the western ones. Metalhead chicks in Europe look EXACTLY like ultraliberal neofeminsts. But the difference is mindblowing. It is a proof of decline? But it's simply not a valid proof that the game is an agenda-heavy Panderverse. I played a goddamn noir detective without a single problem, superficially amusing or using the politics and ideology of others to get the info I need. Was only truly interested in the Pale, the Rave, and solving the goddamn case. At no point did the game try to ruin that experience.

I used racist lines to get to the Lorry driver. Game allowed me to explain it's an interrogation tactic (another thing that modern leftists are unable to fathom, while we're at it), warned me that if I stared at the abys too much = the abys will blablablah. Kitsuragi understood it, game understood it and we all moved on.

As a natural Human can-opener, I dug through said Kitsuragi's dialogue and found out he's a homo. Game allowed me to never mention or refer to this ever again.

There was no instance of ANY of the leftist tropes being forced on me. Every trace of it was suggested, not demanded or forced. I was the only peacock looking clown in the game, due to ludicrous hobo wardrobe, walking around. Maybe we can call that one a flaw? Who gives a fuck. Game's linear in story and in progress, but it is a great fucking ride. Transparent dialogue, one of the best dialogue systems ever created.
THERE IS NO LEFTIST PANDERING. THERE IS LEFTIST OPTION BUT ONLY A LEFTIST WOULD SEE IT "EVERYWHERE" CAUSE THEY'RE FUCKING CLICKING ON IT.

 

[Laz Sundays]

By all means, anyone here on the Codex, take the challenge:

Find one example where the game has forced you into choosing a leftist trope. One. Find it, post it, pics or gtfo

 

[ind33d]

By all means, anyone here on the Codex, take the challenge:

Find one example where the game has forced you into choosing a leftist trope. One. Find it, post it, pics or gtfo

i took more damage from saying "cock carousel" over and over than from the final boss

 

[Vormulak]

By all means, anyone here on the Codex, take the challenge:

Find one example where the game has forced you into choosing a leftist trope. One. Find it, post it, pics or gtfo

The entire game rags on white men, especially RAYCISTS.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

If you claim any of the cuckservative bullshit, all it says about you is that you purposefully went out of your way and dug deep to find tongue in cheek jokes, and purposefully went along that path not focusing on anything (same way you can do with others). Must be something deep inside you, you're coping about what you are, in reality way too insecure about yourself.

I played that game as a drug addicted retard who likes to have fun and has his heart ripped out, and that really was the meat of the game. Unless I count telling Garte about the cock carousel or occasionally funny lines about fascism. And ofcourse, Letterhead's race theory.

 

[The Last Blackguard]

Been a while. Last time I was in this thread, ZA/UM still existed.

Good(?) to see some things don't change.

 

[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.