Disco Elysium

So, I finished the game last night. What a ride. I laughed; I cried; I became Dance, the destroyer of worlds. I still think the politics are more grim than funny, for me they're really not that far removed from the real world and the real world is Not Fun. Which is maybe why I alternated between Sorry Cop and Apocalypse Cop so much (with a tiny sprinkle of Art Cop thrown in for good measure).

There were definitely some bugs in the PS4 version that I played but only one that caused me to almost rage-quit (one character refused to show up at the appointed time no matter how many buildings I went in and out of, no idea how it fixed itself but it did eventually).

Somehow, in the middle of playthrough number three, my character became... inadvertently racist? I swear I didn’t internalize the terrible racism thoughts, but at some point — I suspect due to lacking skill points in some of the thoughts that would have warned me — I ended up only having dialogue options that would alienate poor Kim!

Everything ended up OK, though. It was probably payback for choosing to be an ultra-liberal who loves money.

I'm not enjoying this. The pungent voice isn't by itself appealing to me, but where it really feels like a slog is the sheer amount of dialogue I struggle to maintain interest in. Maybe I should try to suppress my min/maxing urge and only pursue dialogue options that interest in me?

absolutely not a min/maxing game, imo. especially not on the first run

you’re meant to fail, mortifyingly and hilariously, at times

Well I'm stuck in this game after several hours and I'm a bit cheesed off about it. Can't seem to progress at all

What bit, dl? The bug I mentioned was with The Pigs not showing up, had to do a bunch of going in and out of locations and reloading the game before it fixed itself. And if it's not a bug but you getting stuck I could maybe give you a hint?

Leee, it's a ridiculously text-heavy game, which is good for me as I love text adventures, but maybe not good for a min/max type. And yeah, you do have to learn to not choose every single dialogue option - definitely go for the ones that interest/entertain you, or the ones that suit the playstyle of the run you're doing.

i def think this looks like the sort of thing where if you like that sort of thing it's gonna be the best thing of that sort of thing but if you don't like licorice it ain't happening

So without wanting to spoil anything, there's a day when Kim goes away to do something and during that time there's a check that fails to appear and you can't progress the game until he comes back. Had to do a lot of digging around Reddit to work that one out

This game is yes, very text heavy. I often find myself playing it till the wee hours and falling asleep. In a way that's cool though cos you can play it at your own pace

Not sure if I'll play it through twice though. can't imagine it being especially different the second time round. Maybe?

I'm playing it through as a Physique/Psyche apocalyptic cop: my failures are the most entertaining part of the game. Next time, high intellect pedant, so I can lecture the characters of Revachol on correct thought. But perhaps I'll wait a year before returning.

Okay so I completed this tonight and uh... well that was... tonally abrupt. It just kind of ended with a grouchy argument and a "well I guess that about wraps it up, let's go home". But disappointed as I felt that, despite having done a he'll of a lot, there were still things I'd wanted to do, things to explore, checks to be tried. But no, you meet the perp, chat to him for ages then meet your colleagues and then go home..
I figures I'd try again immediately with different skills, but there wasn't anything strikingly different about my encounters or conversations beyond a few things. I found myself barrelling through dialogue trees and skipping lots of cues because I can't really be bothered to listen to everyone say the same thing again... I dunno, should I keep going in this way, or is it a waste of time? Maybe give it a while and play again?

I'm enjoying this a lot more now, now that I've figured out some of the mechanics and how to progress through the checks. Also, I've found some tasks where the wiring really does move me. I will say that it's hard to fully commit to role play, and the minmax urge can be hard to resist (thankfully I have the thought that gives you extra XP for Commie responses).

Finished!

As to dog latin's point: I agree that the narrative pace slams into a wall at the end, and as far as murder mysteries go, having the two most damning suspects not even in the picture until lateish in the game is unconventional -- and I had quite a few additional skill points left over that I hadn't spent yet.

BUT, I was still transfixed by the exchange with the Deserter, for reasons aesthetic (that voice) and for the cautionary tale that (I think?) the game was trying to tell? Like, I was trying to be a pinko, but then comes this comrade with revolutionary bona fides, washing away all the ultraleftist posturing that I'd been engaged in prior... but he's basically a fascist, an example of this idealized past, a symbol of Communism done right that's incredibly seductive and evil.

The UI sux though.

lol ah hell the spoilers.

this game is pretty clunky on the switch - it lags, you can see graphics loading, it has full-on crashed a couple of times (which i don't think i've ever seen happen on a switch game at all before) - and there's so much loading! there's a part where you have to go back and forth between two characters to compare their stories, and they're in the same building, but there are three load points in between them, and it takes so long just to travel from one character to the other!

that being said, i love this game to point that i don't even care about all of that. it's so good and fun and weird. it looks really nice when you zoom in all the way, but i have to keep it mostly zoomed out most of the time so i can see where i'm going and what's around me.

Yeah, that's partly why I caved and got it for the PS4, though god knows when I will actually play it.

The load times even on the PS4 were quite infuriating.

finally got a bug that kept me from advancing (nothing was interactable, including doors, so i got stuck in a space i couldn't leave) and the worse part it was in a section of the game where you can't save, so now i have to do that whole chunk over

i think i'm near the end though? really enjoyed the part of the game with the church and the electronic musicians

Yeah loved that bit. Shame about the bugs. I really wonder if I'll replay it and if I do whether it'll be a very different experience or not

YEKOKATAA THE PLACE TO BEEE!

Dialogue heavy RPG’s not typically my thing, so this being almost entirely dialogue was a tough sell, but I was looking for something low stress last Sunday afternoon and took the plunge. Totally grabbed me, found myself playing way too late into the night this week. Just finished it up. Easily the best writing in a game I’ve played. Kind of a Pynchon thing going. A+, glad I picked it up.

I played the “definitive” version. On PS5. Load times were super snappy (could see that being obnoxious otherwise) but still hit a few, thankfully not game-breaking, bugs along the way.

A TV series of Disco is in production on Amazon Prime

Well that is entirely unexpected, but I’m curious.

honestly i would take a whole season that is all about converting the beat down building into a ghostly EDM venue

somehow i never finished disco, but i'm close. i had a computer change just as i was near the end and don't really feel like starting over again.

Easily the best writing in a game I’ve played

same. i have never so consistently smiled or laughed or just paid attention to writing in a video game before. It's hard to pull off for 20 hours! the breadth and depth of it is very impressive.

The church/club section was definitely my favorite bit. Once that peaked I honestly would’ve been totally satisfied if the game ended right there. But there were some great things to come. Loved the phasmid stuff.

I picked the brainy path, seemed like the obvious choice for a dialogue driven game, but I am super curious about how this plays out as a physical character. Probably run through it again down the line.

yeah, it would be nice to just run over the big racist dude who blocks the bridge pretty early on.

that reminds me, though, that the only way the writing/story occasionally lets me down is the caricatures of the different paths you can go down, communism, fascism, the union, etc, are sometimes just a little too exaggerated and oversimplified. i think it works for the most part, though, because in general, the game does a great job of making you feel a little bad about every decision you make, like everything you do is both kind of a good decision but also clearly not what you should be doing, all the time. it's so fucking good

Measurehead (lol) is just very committed to his race realist ideology

did anyone else play the shameful way i did? if there was some kind of important skill check and i had a reasonably good chance of passing but instead failed, i'd re-load and do it again until it worked

:(

Oh totally. I was rarely onboard with any of the didactic political paths and the game makes a point of calling out the dangers of centrism and/or not choosing sides all the same. Like there aren’t really “good” options most of the time, it’s a big mess, everything’s challenged. It kinda rules.

I still ended up as a maybe half assed communist, apocalyptic art cop.

That was an xp to Karl’s previous post, but yes, I scummed and reloaded constantly to pass a check.

Why I mentioned how great it was that load times were zippy on PS5 lol.

I wouldn’t be able to stomach it, but seriously interested in how the game plays out as a full on fascist, racist meathead. Surely all points lead to some same-ish kinda endpoint, but I wonder what kinds of divergence are built into this thing.

What’s great is I can perfectly imagine Kim hating your guts in that scenario and constantly talking shit in the most moderate way

Kim is one of the best sidekicks in game history, although it is difficult to directly compare them to like, Luigi

Haha, for real, I was bummed on the days Kim wasn’t around. Dude was my ROCK.

I know it's possible to offend Kim and he disappears for the rest of the day, but I'm not sure if you can keep doing that

Playing this and really enjoying it. I’m on day 4 and haven’t had a drink yet - is that bad? Anyway I love everything about this game. Just resolved the church disco situation.

Recently finished this, it absolutely rules and is one of the most engrossing gaming experiences I've ever had

So it turns out that most of the original creators of Disco Elysium have been involuntarily pushed out of the company, including Robert Kurvitz, the lead designer and writer(!)

This is super fucked up, but unfortunately not particularly surprising for the indie games industry. https://t.co/Op1R46drgJ

— Joachim (@JDespland) October 1, 2022

Every week I have a moment of sadness realising there is no game like this and that I cannot play it again for the first time.

Church disco situation is a classic in a game of classics. I think Evrart Claire saying “Harry” is the best part of the game though. An Evrart Claire x Phoenix Attorney type crossover would be my dream game.

A friend gave me this game as a gift (PS4 hard copy that I'll play on PS5), so I guess I'll have to play it now. Hoping it will be a fun game to go through with my wife, after we finish Inscryption (been taking that verrry slowly, only just got to act 2).

Excellent wife game. Wish I could rope mine into single player games

Just got this to play on my 8yo's Switch when she's asleep. Very barely into the game but enjoying it greatly, though I have died numerous times already because I didn't understand how to raise my health from 1 point and thus keeled over after kicking heavy curtain, etc. I do feel it could restart you after death from just before the thing you did that killed you, though maybe I have taken more of the arcane backstory onboard by clicking around every point of interest in the bookstore four or five times.

I absolutely love the fact that if you min/max your character, you are vulnerable to some of the absolute silliest ways to lose a game imaginable (at one point I lost the will to continue because I put on a cost that was too dirty)

yup!

I hadn't played for a while and tried making a character that was uh, not physically inclined, and managed to accidentally electrocute myself by trying to turn on the ceiling fan in the first 30 seconds

Started this last night, created a mostly average character and in an hour we got as far as the ground floor of the hostel. I think my wife bailed, the amount of dialogue makes the pace too slow for two people (with different reading/processing speeds). While normally dialogue (and especially the process of exhausting dialogue options) is my least favorite part of a video game, and it appears to be the entire game here, it's obviously extremely well-done and I think I'm going to keep playing on my own.

I do like the skill checks/dice rolls, it really gives that feeling of playing D&D without the awkwardness of having to play D&D with people.