Disco Elysium (2019)

Not a review because I try to be a bit more in depth with those, but I had to ensure Disco Elysium wasn't without anything on Grouvee!

Far from Eurogamer's reviewer's analysis, I think this might be the first game that let me truly project myself into a game! My cop, a communist to the bone, but authority proud collides with a cursed member of the infraculture and is brought to tears. That's to put it lightly - he throws a conniption fit. He later explains to her in the dead of night that it's just those goddamn neoliberal surroundings weighing on his soul. They both know that that isn't true. His major job role is to defend the interests of big business and his beliefs unactioned might as well be mere rock and roll posturing. His belief in ideology isn't a lie, but his emotional investment is. I might only share the beliefs, the depression and the tears, but I got to introduce those into a completely foreign world and interact with characters in quite a comprehensive, uncompromising way. My gaming commie dreams have been fulfilled. If, I suppose, those dreams were to play myself lachrymally spilling over a fantasy land just as broken as our own.

If the week I sunk into this is anything to go by, I think gaming is sometimes my own abyssopelagic zone; far away from the bright lights of reality. At least it''s a tincture more stimulating than total unwaking. The hours playing this seemed to accelerate out of perception as quickly as the in-game days. Playing as an alcoholic mess on screen was a bit like my own self-destructive bender; addictively simulating myself to avoid my own quest list. I felt a bizarre connection with the game.

So it's good. Very good. Not completely revelatory, though. 2019 is one of the best years for gaming I've ever experienced, so Disco Elysium flirting with the top of my 2019 list, is no small feat! I would place it slightly below Outer Wilds and Heaven's Vault - just because of a few deficiencies.

I do think I should have played The Outer Worlds first, (a now not so original take), since everyone's raving about it as an RPG and its writing, but... I've just played Disco Elysium, baby. The writing is some of the best I've ever encountered and there's no combat in sight! Could it have used an editor? Perhaps? It's quite refreshing to have something so experimentally unhinged. It does suffer slightly from dialogue as a 'tidying-up mechanic.' Whilst there are consequences for so many dialogue options, I wish I was't encouraged to 'complete' dialogue where it might be more interesting otherwise. For instance, I quite wanted to hide my retrograde amnesia from my investigative partner in crime. Whilst I think that's vaguely possible for a short time, all the active XP-generating actions are achieved contrariwise. Why should I not just clear up those options? It's inherently hard to reward inaction.

The soundtrack and visuals? Mwah!

My big issues issues are with the skill checks and railroading in the story. This flirts so heavily with being Warren Specter's 'single city-block immersive sim' that it's painful. There's so much darn reactivity - so many colours to use that blend in fascinating ways, but the principle lines of the colouring book are set.

I take issue with skill checks conceptually. They're a great tabletop nod to uncertainty in the real world, but access to a % chance of pulling something off should only really be available if you're proficient in that skill in the first place. We're not all the same cookie cutter person with an expert proficiency in everything just temporarily closed off. This would prevent the nonsense skill granting-clothes changing. It's just not role-playing. Perhaps I'm wrong and there's more skill check locking off than I think.

Much better is that your chosen skill proficiencies determine the voices in your head you speak to. Not to mention you can internalise thoughts as part of your identity during the game. Both actually shape the prism through which you view the world. There are also those small things like not being afforded the ability to see drugs in the world unless your electrophysiology is actively seeking them out. Anything that helps counter those Bethesda RPG design principles of allowing you one perfect playthrough wherein you're everything to everyone is just excellent. Even 'playstyle' RPGs that just surround an objective with obvious alternatives just strike me as boring design (sorry Outer Worlds). Role playing should be about what you can't do as much as what you can.

The game also feels like it loses something when you later find yourself doing anything other than the murder investigation. It's too... familiar RPG territory. Again, you're rewarded for what you do, not for what you don't, which undermines role playing someone who would avoid being side-tracked. Even then I still had its presentation and writing. There was just the chance for something more. Perhaps a role playing experience that made a playthrough of the Outer Worlds an impossible proposition, not just hard.

And apologies, Outer Worlds. I'm working on you. I'm sure you're great.