That’s why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there’s something inherently violent even about dice-rolls.
This is a game where you may die in the first three minutes. Sometimes you’re a cop with the words “fuck the world” written on your back. You’re trying to solve a murder case despite not remembering your own name. You might end up partnering up with a violent, particularly foul-mouthed teenager who throws rocks at the corpse of your murder victim when you first encounter him. You can unkowingly enter a nodding contest where you break your neck if you’re not careful enough. You may have conversations with you tie, and the breeze tells you when you’re in danger.
A common experience many of us share is that when playing roleplaying games, it’s hard to actually stick to the character you decided to build. We tend to go for the “optimal” or “right” decision, the one we think gets us the good ending or the most loot. It often takes dedication to remain faithful to your original concept, as the game might severly punish you for being a jerk, and you end up disappointed.
“Become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being” – is how its developers sum this game up. In this case, it’s hard to accomplish one without the other. This may annoy some, but it’s near impossible to play this game right. Your character hit rock bottom, and the game supports your choice of letting him stay right there just as much as it promotes personal growth and progression for him. You stumble and fumble and mess it up over and over again.
This is what is called a *conversation*. You don’t have to be guarded right now.
Disco Elysium is a text-based isometric RPG. It’s been described as a cross between the formative Planescape: Torment, and any point-and-click adventure game. You have skills and equipment and stat checks to pass, but there’s zero combat. Instead, you have conversations. Unlike many other RPGs, this one doesn’t allow you to discover all of your options during a single conversation: offend someone, and they might never talk to you again. If you fail an important skill check (most of which, by the way, can be retried over and over again as you level up), or happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you might miss out on whole missions or plot points.
Why do you think you had to bludgeon yourself into oblivion? Or did you not sense yourself — marinating? Poured so much over yourself… Got a bit “carried away” did we chef?
It’s hard to find such an accurate and tactful portrayal of mental health in video games. You have 24 Skills to choose from, and not only do they help you pass the Dungeons & Dragons style dice-rolling skill checks, they also have their own voices in your head. You’ll hear them argue and suggest different things to say and do. When you decide to listen to one of them more than the other, they get stronger and louder: if you keep bashing people’s face in, the suggestion of physical violence starts occuring more and more amongst your options. You also encounter various Thoughts which provide one of the main means of flexible character customisation: you can be a fierce communist, melancolic centrist, or a fascist. You may decide to be neither.
You’re facing tough odds here. Alcohol withdrawal makes it considerably harder.
The fascinating thing about how the game portrays addictions and substances is that you don’t have to use them. They give your character a temporary boost, raise a learning cap for one of your skills, and then they damage yor health and morale in the long run. Certain ones only become noticeable and interactable after having used them once before. Even though your character is an alcoholic mess, you can play through the game without ever touching the bottle, slightly amping up the difficulty.
(That is, of course, if you choose to ignore the literal voice of your addiction telling you to drink, snort and smoke everything you can get your hands on.)
There is nothing.
Again.
I read relatively quickly, therefore fully text-based games with little to no voice acting tend to sweep by me in a blur. Disco Elysium has a few line of voice acting, always the first couple of ones in a new dialogue, and at the beginning I expected to just speed throught those and skim the text as I usually do. This game, however, convinced me not to, so much so that occasionally it would be the hope of hearing the rasp, primordial voice that keeps narrating your dreams and occasional deaths that drove me forward in the plot.
The same goes for most of the characters: while you may not see your own face clearly for the first half of the game, supporting characters are portrayed with painstaking care. Voice acting, blurred brushstrokes of watercolor visuals and outstanding writing makes most of them and their storylines gut-wrenchingly memorable.
Whatever made you this way – you can be damn sure it’s *your* own fault. Do it. *Really* criticize yourself. Who knows? You might uncover something of importance from your guilt-ridden past!
The ending is slightly anticlimatic and railroaded as some of the choices matter less than it was implied, and once you get the hang of the mechanics, the game is easier to min-max or save-scum. Regardless, the writing is outstanding, and all of it is delivered with such an absurd, brilliant sense of humor. Disco Elysium might have failed spectacularly if it took itself too seriously – amnesiac cop as a protagonist, throbbing disco music, noir and nihilism. Nevertheless, it chooses to be funny.
Every school of thought and government has failed in this city — but I love it nonetheless. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you.
Revachol is a city of smudged watercolors and nihilism. All leaders are rotten and corrupt, fascists bombed the city, the everyman struggles to get by. Your memories are swallowed by a haze of alcohol and regret. Everything sucks.
And yet, you might end up going on a date with a local fisherwoman. In the end, you’ll end up confronting the single memory that would literally kill your character on the first day, if discovered, and eventually live and grow through the pain of it. You might just provide your local bar with the most stunning karaoke performance they’ve ever heard. Your thoughts talk to you, the colors are vibrant and living on their own, and since the world is much more than what you’d ever imagine, you may meet a living miracle.
Summary:
- Score: 9/10
- Liked: amazin writing, great characters and humor, good replay value, stunning visuals
- Disliked: ending is railroaded, feels rushed, less traditional RPG, more visual novel
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