Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Disco Elysium

[Serious_Business]

"Existentialism as a creative modus is inherently politically neutral" - is it though? Most existentialist thinkers except the most religious ones tried to make existentialism "political", or at the very least social in nature. If you talked Sartre, which is "the shittiest of them all", then existentialism has to be a highly engaged, political project. On the other side of the coin, you can't think Dostoevsky is apolitical ; his characters feel political anxiety as much as they feel religious angst. I'm not going to discuss all the possible authors here ; ultimately the point is that existentialism is not a coherent philosophical movement, as you well know. I'm not sure if it means anything to label it a "creative modus". Who "creates existentially"? What does that even mean?

Ironically I do suppose the reference to existentialism is as archaic as the presentation of DE's political culture. The fact that they draw a fictional universe is probably the reason why they can't go very far in terms of political commentary. Politics become an abstract thing, just like existentialism tends to be an abstract thought. You get decontextualised politics and decontextualised existence. Of course, most contemporary fiction is guilty of this, on a much more larger scale. It's why it tends to be so infantile in the first place.

I haven't even played the game more than a couple of hours, just finding an excuse to discuss the terms here. If it's a "didactic tale", what exactly is it supposed to teach us? That "games can be art"? You need to elaborate on this. What do you think, that I'm going to find out myself by playing the game?

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Your turn now, game has both conflict and combat, why do you insist it's not an RPG? Does it needs trash mobs, available to engage at will, in order to meet criteria?

I already explained that - it cannot be an RPG because it has neither RolePlaying nor Gameplay. Roleplaying options in this game are nonexistant because it all amounts to linearity poorly camouflaged with illusion of choice, and gameplay is smoke and mirrors were wacky failure states are manufactured to create an illusion of challenge.

If you're going to make such broad, blank statements, the burden of showing examples also falls on you. Please stick to the main plot branching and prove what you said is true. You can start with how you handle the corpse, seeing as that's the first major one.
Unfortunately, we have to do a full autopsy in order to elevate from monkeys throwing poo at each other.

Far as I'm concerned, DE a visual novel where you use dice roll to turn the pages, layered on top of point&click adventure with no puzzles.

You're playing as a detective solving murder, puzzles are everywhere, and not just in a literal sense.
I mean, thus far you're just raving without any sense and throwing labels around. If you can put together a well thought out case, we could possibly go somewhere with this.

I assume you're actually keen to have a discussion.

 

[Prime Junta]

If it's a "didactic tale", what exactly is it supposed to teach us?

That even the worst failure and saddest excuse for a human being can be redeemed through sobriety and hard work.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I assume you're actually keen to have a discussion.

He's keen to trigger people.

 

[felipepepe]

If it's a "didactic tale", what exactly is it supposed to teach us?

That even the worst failure and saddest excuse for a human being can be redeemed through sobriety and hard work.

Yeah, it's a game about failing and still having the willpower to go on. Basically, this:

So with Willpower, you give yourself commands, and not only is your body not able to do them but your mind is unable. So say you try to “concentrate on this thing for 40 minutes”, and then you’re just not able to do that. Or say what you want to do is “call her and say that you’re sorry” or something, and your hand just doesn’t raise. So sometimes you’re on the backseat in your own mind, and I think that with pen and paper role playing I’ve really pursued that kind of feeling – to make it hard for players to play their character. I think video games are in this unique position to show how the human psyche works, and that’s what we really want to do.

Source

That's the game for me.

Dark Souls has this lore where the chosen undead is basically the player that keeps trying no matter how much he dies to demons, until he finally wins. Disco Elysium replaces the power fantasy with more relatable issues: failure, cringe, romances, disappointment, cringe, vices, etc...

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Your turn now, game has both conflict and combat, why do you insist it's not an RPG? Does it needs trash mobs, available to engage at will, in order to meet criteria?

I already explained that - it cannot be an RPG because it has neither RolePlaying nor Gameplay. Roleplaying options in this game are nonexistant because it all amounts to linearity poorly camouflaged with illusion of choice, and gameplay is smoke and mirrors were wacky failure states are manufactured to create an illusion of challenge.

If you're going to make such broad, blank statements, the burden of showing examples also falls on you. Please stick to the main plot branching and prove what you said is true. You can start with how you handle the corpse, seeing as that's the first major one.
Unfortunately, we have to do a full autopsy in order to elevate from monkeys throwing poo at each other.

Far as I'm concerned, DE a visual novel where you use dice roll to turn the pages, layered on top of point&click adventure with no puzzles.

You're playing as a detective solving murder, puzzles are everywhere, and not just in a literal sense.
I mean, thus far you're just raving without any sense and throwing labels around. If you can put together a well thought out case, we could possibly go somewhere with this.

I assume you're actually keen to have a discussion.

I'm afraid that's not how burden of proof works, fella. If you claim game has some features that I somehow missed, fair enough - demonstrate that they exist.

To get refresh your memory, here are some thing that I missed, so demonstrate that this game has:

- open world
- map is as big as sizeable chunk of the first Pillars with 5 times the content density
- explain how I managed to beat the game without even looking at Thought Cabinet that was supposed to be a super deep and important feature
- go over some of these so-called puzzles and explain precisely what makes them hard to solve apart from dice rolls

 

[Heroic Liberator]

To get refresh your memory, here are some thing that I missed, so demonstrate that this game has:

- open world
- map is as big as sizeable chunk of the first Pillars with 5 times the content density
- explain how I managed to beat the game without even looking at Thought Cabinet that was supposed to be a super deep and important feature
- go over some of these so-called puzzles and explain precisely what makes them hard to solve apart from dice rolls

Nice strawman, comrade. None of these are requirements for a RPG (or a game that is not a visual novel in general).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

To get refresh your memory, here are some thing that I missed, so demonstrate that this game has:

- open world
- map is as big as sizeable chunk of the first Pillars with 5 times the content density
- explain how I managed to beat the game without even looking at Thought Cabinet that was supposed to be a super deep and important feature
- go over some of these so-called puzzles and explain precisely what makes them hard to solve apart from dice rolls

Nice strawman, comrade. None of these are requirements for a RPG (or a game that is not a visual novel in general).

Puzzles are required to demonstrate that it's not a visual novel, but actually has gameplay, you know, the G in the RPG. As for the rest, those are the claims developers make about their game. Since we have so many experts who supposedly understood DE better than I do, I'd love to hear an explanation for why I didn't find these features anywhere.

 

[bataille]

"Existentialism as a creative modus is inherently politically neutral" - is it though? Most existentialist thinkers except the most religious ones tried to make existentialism "political", or at the very least social in nature. If you talked Sartre, which is "the shittiest of them all", then existentialism has to be a highly engaged, political project. On the other side of the coin, you can't think Dostoevsky is apolitical ; his characters feel political anxiety as much as they feel religious angst. I'm not going to discuss all the possible authors here ; ultimately the point is that existentialism is not a coherent philosophical movement, as you well know. I'm not sure if it means anything to label it a "creative modus". Who "creates existentially"? What does that even mean?

Why did you doubt that the modus is politically neutral without understanding what I meant? What I meant is that the characters are the goals in themselves and not mouthpieces for certain things that needed to be said, hence the authorial neutrality: the characters' positions organically stem from who they are, not dictate what they should be. The focus is shifted from what to who; from the object to the subject.

This whole paragraph (and the one after) is born from your misunderstanding of what existentialism is; existentialism is not an existentia. Sartre, Kierkegaard, Camus, etc. and the content of their worldviews are concrete existences. Existentialism, however, is a set of sensibilities, a modus that dictates the aforementioned shift in focus. In other words, you're existentialist not because of what you say, but due to you putting the most value on the subject. So existentialism is a coherent movement: it's the return to the Self. Selves, however, may vary.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

If someone wants to go over the so-called roleplaying options in this game, I'll be happy to hear an answer as for why maxing strength makes me roleplay a pharmaceutical researcher. I have been to many pharmacies and never saw Conan The Barbarian behind the counter, but perhaps it's different in Estonia.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Electrochemistry: let’s get high as a kite and fuck everything that moves!

Nick: you must be a pharmaceutical researcher.

 

[The_Mask]

If someone wants to go over the so-called roleplaying options in this game, I'll be happy to hear an answer as for why maxing strength makes me roleplay a pharmaceutical researcher. I have been to many pharmacies and never saw Conan The Barbarian behind the counter, but perhaps it's different in Estonia.

I'm sure you're joking, but I'll take your question 1% serious, and toss over the fact that there are plenty of bodybuilders that fit the Conan "part" who know quite a lot about nutrition, ways to develop their muscles, plenty of biology and quite a bit of chemistry.
Also on the flipside, you don't have to be the stereotypical image of a barbarian (or Conan) to exibit strength/power. Knowing where to hit, practicing how to hit can be more important than raw strength in a hit.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I've been high as a kite many times and I have yet to experience my inner voice explaining to me how various drugs work using scientific language. But I'm sure it's definitely a thing that happens to drug users and it's totally not the case that developers simply wanted to support physical characters but had no idea how to do it, so they jumbled together bunch of idiotic skills and called it a ruleset just to push physical character through the game.

bodybuilder know a lot about nutrition

That would almost be good point but I'm pretty sure drugs consumed in Disco Elysium aren't of nutritious kind.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Asking whether a game belongs in this or that category is pointless and stupid. Only shopkeepers need to do it to know which shelf to stick the box in (virtual or physical).

Instead, look at what characteristics a game has. The Mass Effects for example have cover shooter, cinematic, and RPG characteristics. Disco has CYOA and RPG characteristics. IE games have RTS and RPG elements. This leads to an understanding that's more accurate, more useful, and more nuanced than simple pigeonholing.

Ask yourself why you need categories in the first place, grasshopper.

In 1979, the first Choose Your Own Adventure book, The Cave of Time by Edward Packard, was published, and this was followed within a few years by the publication of gamebooks that built on CYOA by adding RPG elements. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain was among the earliest gamebooks and received a digital translation in 2016 that adapted the original format to the computer medium. Disco Elysium is another attempt, if perhaps inadvertent, to create a gamebook for the medium of computers rather than the medium of print. You ask why categories are necessary, but you yourself find it necessary to refer to genre categories such as cover-based shooter, CYOA, RPG, and RTS. If Disco Elysium combines CYOA and RPG characteristics, then it falls into the genre of digital gamebook, and acknowledging it as such, rather than pretending it is a fully-fledged RPG, would have averted about half of the pointless arguments surrounding the game.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I've been high as a kite many times and I have yet to experience my inner voice explaining to me how various drugs work using scientific language. But I'm sure it's definitely a thing that happens to drug users and it's totally not the case that developers simply wanted to support physical characters but had no idea how to do it, so they jumbled together bunch of idiotic skills and called it a ruleset just to push physical character through the game.

Electrochemistry is your dopamine pathway: how sensitive you are to drugs, how easily stimulated you are by big titties. It also knows the kind of things that you tend to pick up over time as a habitual drug user, or even a semi-regular drug user (like at least a few members of the ZA/UM team before they discovered sobriety, or me before I discovered working for a living).

 

[Tigranes]

I've stopped following Nick's objections closely, but it's not even whether what he says is specifically right or wrong, just most of what he raises seems rather tangential to what I actually enjoy and appreciate about Disco Elysium. Yeah, sure, it doesn't really have combat, sure, you could argue it's not a real RPG, sure, it doesn't exactly have BG2-like build replayability, etc, etc.

And now what's the problem? The skills don't map accurately onto the latest scientific explanation (and/or Nick's experience being high)? OK sure whatever, we might as well go back to talking about how Might should be called something else because oh my god high might wizards have strong spellpowering muscles so dumb, I'm not exactly breaking out my cache of peer reviewed neuroscience articles to critique this game

 

[Prime Junta]

You ask why categories are necessary, but you yourself find it necessary to refer to genre categories such as cover-based shooter, CYOA, RPG, and RTS.

I refer to genre characteristics, not genre categories. It is fallacious to think of genres as mutually exclusive categories. Such are only needed for marketing purposes. Things can belong to multiple genres at the same time, depending on the particular mix of characteristics they have.

“Is X a RPG?” is a fundamentally stupid question. “Does X have RPG characteristics?” is a much more intelligent one and leads to followups that can further deepen understanding.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Is X a RPG?” is a fundamentally stupid question. “Does X have RPG characteristics?” is a much more intelligent one and leads to followups that can further deepen understanding.

Robert Kurvitz Thought on Socialism with RPG Characteristics for a New Era.

 

[AwesomeButton]

"Existentialism as a creative modus is inherently politically neutral" - is it though? Most existentialist thinkers except the most religious ones tried to make existentialism "political", or at the very least social in nature. If you talked Sartre, which is "the shittiest of them all", then existentialism has to be a highly engaged, political project. On the other side of the coin, you can't think Dostoevsky is apolitical ; his characters feel political anxiety as much as they feel religious angst. I'm not going to discuss all the possible authors here ; ultimately the point is that existentialism is not a coherent philosophical movement, as you well know. I'm not sure if it means anything to label it a "creative modus". Who "creates existentially"? What does that even mean?

Ironically I do suppose the reference to existentialism is as archaic as the presentation of DE's political culture. The fact that they draw a fictional universe is probably the reason why they can't go very far in terms of political commentary. Politics become an abstract thing, just like existentialism tends to be an abstract thought. You get decontextualised politics and decontextualised existence. Of course, most contemporary fiction is guilty of this, on a much more larger scale. It's why it tends to be so infantile in the first place.

I haven't even played the game more than a couple of hours, just finding an excuse to discuss the terms here. If it's a "didactic tale", what exactly is it supposed to teach us? That "games can be art"? You need to elaborate on this. What do you think, that I'm going to find out myself by playing the game?

I have something on those subjects, but all in due time.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If it's a "didactic tale", what exactly is it supposed to teach us?

That even the worst failure and saddest excuse for a human being can be redeemed through sobriety and hard work.

That explains why so many codexers can't get it.

 

[Taurist]

You level up by finishing quests, and use your levels to build up your skills and stats so that you can advance in the game. Its an RPG.
The central issue is that clicking "Is he telling the truth? [Savoir Faire 72%] is by nature less fun than chucking a fireball at a group of Kobalds. This is something that all RPG's with power dialouge (persuading Laanius for example)kind of get silly about. For the most part it is kind of possible to play this game while skimming if not outright skipping much of the text and just selecting on the Power options.
This is something that no RPG with power dialouge has been able to get past. On the whole, I find the humour, worldbuilding, art, and quality of writing more than enough to get me past this central weakness though. I mean if we arent considering the flavour text or visuals or whatever then a game like Silent Hill is just wandering around like an asshole looking for key items isnt it?

 

[Lutte]

it tracks character state and world state, it's not focused on puzzles, the mechanics are stat and RNG based, and items give stat boosts rather than being used to solve puzzles.

Is True Love a RPG?

 

[Prime Junta]

Is True Love a RPG?

I don't know and I don't care. It's a stupid question.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I want to move to the really important questions.

Does DE suffer from not having combat XP?

 

[Binky]

If it's a "didactic tale", what exactly is it supposed to teach us?

That even the worst failure and saddest excuse for a human being can be redeemed through sobriety and hard work.

It taught me that booze, ciggies, drugs, and violence get the job done. And about letting go of the past and moving on.

Rene can't get over the downfall of the monarchy. The deserter can't get over the failure of the revolution. Raphael Harry can't get over the love of his life leaving him. Hell, Martinnaise still bears the scars caused decades ago.

 

[Van-d-all]

Is X a RPG?” is a fundamentally stupid question. “Does X have RPG characteristics?” is a much more intelligent one and leads to followups that can further deepen understanding.

Robert Kurvitz Thought on Socialism with RPG Characteristics for a New Era.

It's an RPG with Chinese Estonian characteristics.