Six Views on Disco Elysium
Jan. 5th, 2021 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaI finished playing Disco Elysium a few days ago and have about lost my mind trying to write some kind of pitch/review/thoughts about it without sounding too effusive or over-the-top or meandering.
I've probably failed but I can't hold it in any longer! Here's six different pitches for why this game is amazing! tl;dr oh my gosh please play it
0.
The simple pitch: Disco Elysium is a game where you are an alcoholic cop who lost all your memories after a totally bonkers night of drinking. You’re supposed to solve a murder. Also, your tie is talking to you. Hope that’s normal.
This sounds like some kind of bro-y screwball comedy, a la Dude, Where’s My Car? And it’s got a touch of that, sure. But unlike Dude, Where’s My Car?, it’s actually hilarious, and it manages to also be an actually-serious tense-and-dramatic story as well, and it’s also a 30 hour long visual-novel-esque RPG with a fantastically nifty stat system, and it’s also hands-down the best game I played in 2020. Probably the best novel I read, too, if you want to count it as a novel. (I do.)
1.
Disco Elysium is a Phoenix Wright game—in particular, it’s the interlude between games 3 and 4, except the implied/headcanoned alcoholism is *extremely* canon, and also you get to grapple with a bunch of unsolvable, overlapping sociopolitical conflicts, instead of just, y’know, existing in parallel lawyer dimension of Truth and Justice and stuff. But all of the goofiness? all the wild whodunnitry? the completely bizarre only-tangentially-related-to-the-main-case errands you get pulled into? that’s all there too. It’s the honky-tonky sometimes-minor-key sometimes-major-key remix.
2.
I’ve mentioned before that Aki Irie’s work, at its best, encapsulates a deliciously subtle sense of wonder—not quite magical realism, but the real made magical. A musician character says she can’t stand liars because their voices sound out of tune—surely a supernatural ability, if she can actually hear that? And the plot’s compatible with that reading—but it’s also compatible with, maybe she’s simply very good at reading people. We aren’t quite sure. Or there’s a teenager who talks to his shitty hand-me-down car, and the car tells him things in return—is the car actually telling him things? Or is he “talking” to the car the way I do sometimes, where I say “whoa Bessie” while breaking in heavy rain, because it’s just fun and funny and a little comforting? Again: we just aren’t sure.
Irie’s problem is that she hasn’t managed to actually weave all these threads into a whole—so they either get dropped with little fanfare, or they never manage to add up to anything interesting. And so I’m left craving, wondering, wanting… I don’t want the mystery solved, necessarily. I just need it to matter.
Disco Elysium marries the real and the unreal flawlessly. There’s a scene that made me tear up from the sheer beauty and surprise of the thing. I can’t say more without spoilers, but—if that kind of near-magic intrigues you, it’s here.
3.
Disco Elysium is everything I wanted from A Night in the Woods and Kentucky Route Zero and didn’t get.
This isn’t to drag the other two games too hard. I’m still not quite sure why I bounced off Kentucky Route Zero—the visuals were gorgeous, and it had some wonderfully resonant moments, but it always felt a little too distant for me to care. And A Night in the Woods, while it suffered from a bit too much preachiness and mouthpiecing on the part of its characters, had some real moments of beauty and keen insight.
But.
What did I want from those other two games? Portraits of people in beaten-down and overlooked rust-belt-y towns, in all their frustrating and wonderful complexity. A strong sense of setting. Something with both a powerful narrative thrust and plenty to explore, get lost in, wonder at.
Except for the rust belt bit, Disco Elysium nails all that. Turns out the rust belt bit was optional.
4.
And oh, that sense of setting. Oh, Revachol.
I’ve fallen head-over-heels in love with many cities in my time; I’m a city person at heart. But I don’t think I’ve ever quite fallen for a fictional city the way I fell for Revachol.
It also only works because the city’s history is so rich and present and deeply felt, written into the land itself. (There’s old bunkers converted into houses, walls still riddled with bulletholes, buildings that only go so high because anything taller got shelled in the war.) It’s modeled loosely after a post-Soviet eastern European city—with a history that’s as fraught as you might expect, wrecked by a succession of revolutions and failed uprisings, and still being tossed around between competing leaders and ideologies. “Every school of thought and government has failed this city,” one of your cop buddies says near the beginning of the game, while you’re standing together in a smoky slum, “but I love it nonetheless.” I loved it too, by the end.
And it only works because Revachol’s characters are so well-drawn. Unlike many RPGs, their lives don’t revolve around you, and they’re not going to regurgitate their whole life story just because you asked. Some of them, you’ll never really find out their deal. Some of them, you’ll find out more than you wanted to—the nice old lady will say something that makes you wince, and it’s the kind of oof moment that feels all-too-real. There’s irritating young punks, and gung-ho startup founders, and union leaders, and scabs, and a weird bookstore owner who’s into crystals and woo, and a bartender who hates you, a widow, truck drivers, fishermen…
It all adds up to a portrait of a place that feels so real, it becomes a character in-and-of itself. I think, years and years later, even if I’ve forgotten everything else about this game, I’m going to remember Revachol.
5.
also kim kitsuragi’s accent is just extremely attractive i’m putting that out there
6.
also lavendre’s review is super good and is what convinced me to put this game on the list in the first place, so there's that :D;;;
I've probably failed but I can't hold it in any longer! Here's six different pitches for why this game is amazing! tl;dr oh my gosh please play it
0.
The simple pitch: Disco Elysium is a game where you are an alcoholic cop who lost all your memories after a totally bonkers night of drinking. You’re supposed to solve a murder. Also, your tie is talking to you. Hope that’s normal.
This sounds like some kind of bro-y screwball comedy, a la Dude, Where’s My Car? And it’s got a touch of that, sure. But unlike Dude, Where’s My Car?, it’s actually hilarious, and it manages to also be an actually-serious tense-and-dramatic story as well, and it’s also a 30 hour long visual-novel-esque RPG with a fantastically nifty stat system, and it’s also hands-down the best game I played in 2020. Probably the best novel I read, too, if you want to count it as a novel. (I do.)
1.
Disco Elysium is a Phoenix Wright game—in particular, it’s the interlude between games 3 and 4, except the implied/headcanoned alcoholism is *extremely* canon, and also you get to grapple with a bunch of unsolvable, overlapping sociopolitical conflicts, instead of just, y’know, existing in parallel lawyer dimension of Truth and Justice and stuff. But all of the goofiness? all the wild whodunnitry? the completely bizarre only-tangentially-related-to-the-main-case errands you get pulled into? that’s all there too. It’s the honky-tonky sometimes-minor-key sometimes-major-key remix.
2.
I’ve mentioned before that Aki Irie’s work, at its best, encapsulates a deliciously subtle sense of wonder—not quite magical realism, but the real made magical. A musician character says she can’t stand liars because their voices sound out of tune—surely a supernatural ability, if she can actually hear that? And the plot’s compatible with that reading—but it’s also compatible with, maybe she’s simply very good at reading people. We aren’t quite sure. Or there’s a teenager who talks to his shitty hand-me-down car, and the car tells him things in return—is the car actually telling him things? Or is he “talking” to the car the way I do sometimes, where I say “whoa Bessie” while breaking in heavy rain, because it’s just fun and funny and a little comforting? Again: we just aren’t sure.
Irie’s problem is that she hasn’t managed to actually weave all these threads into a whole—so they either get dropped with little fanfare, or they never manage to add up to anything interesting. And so I’m left craving, wondering, wanting… I don’t want the mystery solved, necessarily. I just need it to matter.
Disco Elysium marries the real and the unreal flawlessly. There’s a scene that made me tear up from the sheer beauty and surprise of the thing. I can’t say more without spoilers, but—if that kind of near-magic intrigues you, it’s here.
3.
Disco Elysium is everything I wanted from A Night in the Woods and Kentucky Route Zero and didn’t get.
This isn’t to drag the other two games too hard. I’m still not quite sure why I bounced off Kentucky Route Zero—the visuals were gorgeous, and it had some wonderfully resonant moments, but it always felt a little too distant for me to care. And A Night in the Woods, while it suffered from a bit too much preachiness and mouthpiecing on the part of its characters, had some real moments of beauty and keen insight.
But.
What did I want from those other two games? Portraits of people in beaten-down and overlooked rust-belt-y towns, in all their frustrating and wonderful complexity. A strong sense of setting. Something with both a powerful narrative thrust and plenty to explore, get lost in, wonder at.
Except for the rust belt bit, Disco Elysium nails all that. Turns out the rust belt bit was optional.
4.
And oh, that sense of setting. Oh, Revachol.
I’ve fallen head-over-heels in love with many cities in my time; I’m a city person at heart. But I don’t think I’ve ever quite fallen for a fictional city the way I fell for Revachol.
It also only works because the city’s history is so rich and present and deeply felt, written into the land itself. (There’s old bunkers converted into houses, walls still riddled with bulletholes, buildings that only go so high because anything taller got shelled in the war.) It’s modeled loosely after a post-Soviet eastern European city—with a history that’s as fraught as you might expect, wrecked by a succession of revolutions and failed uprisings, and still being tossed around between competing leaders and ideologies. “Every school of thought and government has failed this city,” one of your cop buddies says near the beginning of the game, while you’re standing together in a smoky slum, “but I love it nonetheless.” I loved it too, by the end.
And it only works because Revachol’s characters are so well-drawn. Unlike many RPGs, their lives don’t revolve around you, and they’re not going to regurgitate their whole life story just because you asked. Some of them, you’ll never really find out their deal. Some of them, you’ll find out more than you wanted to—the nice old lady will say something that makes you wince, and it’s the kind of oof moment that feels all-too-real. There’s irritating young punks, and gung-ho startup founders, and union leaders, and scabs, and a weird bookstore owner who’s into crystals and woo, and a bartender who hates you, a widow, truck drivers, fishermen…
It all adds up to a portrait of a place that feels so real, it becomes a character in-and-of itself. I think, years and years later, even if I’ve forgotten everything else about this game, I’m going to remember Revachol.
5.
6.
also lavendre’s review is super good and is what convinced me to put this game on the list in the first place, so there's that :D;;;
no subject
Date: 2021-01-06 07:15 am (UTC)i'm soooo delighted that you enjoyed DE so much, it really is a gem~ :D :D :D
additional nonsense, if you're so inclined: there's a nice documentary that talks about the Thought Cabinet design/build, and the creators also put together a small list of influences which includes some delightful looking books~~
no subject
Date: 2021-01-06 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 12:46 am (UTC)edit: IT'S ON THE SWITCH??? aw fuck yes looks like this is my therapy game for the month between sephiroth :D
anyway mwah at this post. <3 i feel the love in it and why it'd resonate.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 09:35 am (UTC)it won't be out on Switch until this summer, alas, but rest assured I'll be yelling and hyping as soon as it's out~
no subject
Date: 2021-01-09 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-07 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-08 01:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-24 09:28 pm (UTC)I also agree that DE succeeds in giving a sense of place in a way that KR0 really fails at. I really want to write a Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective mystery for that setting, just as a chance to explore the world more and think more about it.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-07 08:35 pm (UTC)The KR0 sense-of-place thing was such a weird thing for me to experience, personally—I lived in that area for a long time, like, I picked out my town on the in-game map and everything, and while I didn't need the game to just be a photo-perfect replication of where I lived, I expected it to feel like a place where some people lived? and the game just didn't get there for me.
I have never heard of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, but having just googled it, this looks super interesting / relevant-to-my-interests, thank you. Do you have any opinions on a good place to start with them? (The page I'm looking at has "Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures", "The Thames Murders & Other Cases", "Carlton House & Queen's Park", and "The Baker Street Irregulars." If they're all equally fine I'll just pick at random :P)
no subject
Date: 2021-06-08 02:10 am (UTC)And you should definitely start with the Thames Murders, if possible. I don't think there are spoilers between games but it's the first in the series & the simplest (the later games add some gimmicks that are neat but... Better to start with the basics, I think). Also, the dynamic pricing for games on sites like Amazon is weird for games, so I def recommend looking on boardgamegeek if your local shop doesn't have it. There's limited replay value, so it usually isn't hard to find a secondhand copy.