Disco Elysium (2019)

Disco Elysium is a wonderful RPG that you should absolutely play. It has better writing than most games, and made me laugh out loud on several occasions. However, it's too aware of its own epic sense of worldbuilding. Sometimes it feels a bit self-indulgent and it slows down its own pace. The game particularly loses its sense of direction when the second game area opens up.

In some senses, it's a confusing game. You clearly cannot see all of the game's content in a single playthrough. However, the playthrough time (clocking in at around 25 hours or so) seems to discourage multiple playthroughs. Stanley Parable this is not. And yet, despite these foibles, Disco Elysium earns its place alongside that game, The Secret of Monkey Island, and KOTOR as evidence that games are art.

Disco Elysium is one of the most unique, interesting games I have ever played. I never expected a game, where there is zero combat of any kind, would keep my interest for as long as it did, or have me coming back with every free minute to play a little bit more. Like I said, this game is a "whodunnit?" mystery, but it goes so far beyond that, with some of the best writing I've ever seen in a video game.

As an alcoholic detective suffering from memory loss, you team up with straight-laced by the book Kim Kitsuragi to solve the murder that happened outside of a hotel. While you are solving this crime, you are also learning more about yourself, figuring out your past, and what kind of person you are now. You also learn about the town, the political powers that control it, and you can decide how political you want to get (or stay apolitical and stick to solving murders instead).

The game is a combination of point and click adventure, plus table-top RPGs. Certain moments of the game are called "checks" and they require you roll specific combinations via dice. You can improve your odds by equipping your detective with specific items or pieces of clothing to increase attributes, do side quests to gain more experience, or read books on different "theories" to become more aware and educated.

This game is dark. While it can be wickedly hilarious, it has a deep sadness to it that can make it a tough game at times to play if you are not in a mood. If you want something cute and cuddly, I'd stick to Kirby or Warioware.

I played the Switch version and overall thought it ran pretty well. I noticed it ran a little smoother docked vs. handheld, but the difference wasn't that noticeable. There were times where it "chugged" a little bit and the controls at times can be a little touchy when trying to examine areas or explore new areas, but it never felt game breaking. The art style is gorgeous and the music fits the theme. The voice acting is very strong as well.

Overall, I highly recommend this game. It's not the easiest game to play due to the overlying darkness of it, but the unique nature of it and the deep themes make it one I hope to replay at some point in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the world built by Disco Elysium as a character, a police detective, I got to gradually build and understand as I progressed. The game feels like a Point and Click style adventure and puzzle solving game, but with the added ability stats system of an RPG style experience that both shape the information you are fed but also how you take on solving the challenges you are presented.

You are given a full, rich world to discover, and plenty of choices to make in how you want to proceed in it. There's a lot of fun to be had in experimenting with the stats system, and how you can approach everything.

I will say it is a little rough on the edges however in some areas, especially perhaps in the Switch port that I played: -Some pathfinding confusion in navigating some areas -Some slow down and frame rate dips when saving, auto-saving, or when certain effects are happening, like it snowing. -The skill check system for completing tasks can be annoying at times, with progression feeling like it's tied behind lucky dice rolls or just save scumming. This coupled with changing your clothes to better optimize these skill checks can make this system feel tedious instead of fun.

Other than these small issues I found the game to be a really enjoyable experience with some solid room for replay-ability. I'll briefly touch upon the writing which incorporates most of the experience as a Point and Click style game. I've seen critiques online that the game's writing is bad, or pretentious, and that it delves into political ideologies in a obnoxious or one-sided manner. While writing tastes are subjective, I personally found these claims to be false.

The writing for this game while not always great or amazing, had many solid moments for me and felt creatively done. I can say the same for the voice acting being better than most games can offer. The game does often touch upon political ideologies but the game's setting and plot does certainly lean into it, and you can generally opt out of taking strong stances if you want, so I don't see how anyone could take it as a major issue in any sense.

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.