un jour je serai de retour prés de toi

[raven]

So I mentioned Disco Elysium, which I have now finished! Well - I've finished one playthrough, I feel like I could enjoy another half-dozen, but I have also spent literally all my evenings this week playing it so maybe I'm setting it down for a while in aid of... idk, literally anything else. (My book. gotta write a book, right.)

Anyway. I adore it. I really do. Disco Elysium is an RPG with that very traditional game mechanic where you put points into this thing or that thing and build your character that way. The thing is, none of these are combat-related or anything remotely sensible- they're things like "Electrochemistry" (how much does your character like drugs), "Shivers" (their wacky intuition), "Half-Light" (are they the sort of person who hauls off and kills people in a red haze), as well as some more normal things like coordination, perception, etc, but think logically consistent and also ridiculous. When they wake up at the start of the game, they're in a trashed hotel room with no memory, and it's your job to get them out of there and start figuring out who they are.

The thing is... well, spoilers, they're a cop. A mouldering, miserable alcoholic, who loves disco music - everyone who meets them that day complains about the volume of the night before - who's been sent to this place to solve the murder of a guy who was hanged in the backyard. The thing is: the murder is not about the murder. it's about Revachol; because this, this place, is a city called Revachol, on an island in the sixth distributary of a river. Revachol is under foreign control - its revolution a generation earlier was dismantled by coalition powers - and has been partitioned like West Berlin. And... what to say, really, to explain how impressive and lovely all this is? The game is about meeting the people of this city halfway between peace and war - more wars than one: there's a strike, also; there's the old communards who are grieving for what they lost; there's violence erupting between what the communards would call the anti-revolutionary forces of capitalism and the ordinary people of the city who are trying to get along in the Zone of Control- and also it's about one utterly hopeless human whose partner has left and whose world has collapsed. And it's very funny. It's extremely funny. You need take only one look at the wardrobe of the man whose body you are inhabiting to know this. There's a bit where Kim, his partner - not romantic partner, who as mentioned has left him, forever, ever, love is dead, all is lost, etc - intervenes in the middle of the whole crime-solving thing to tell him to maybe consider an outfit that matches. It is not typical of Kim to be concerned with other men's outfits. He's just extremely concerned.

Kim Kitsuragi, incidentally, is my boyfriend. He doesn't know we're getting married but we're going to be very happy together.

I am not doing a good job with explaining this game! It's just, it's so funny, and so weird, and ambitious, and beautiful as a watercolour painting, and totally unhinged. You can solve a murder. And another murder. You can also help a bunch of ravers start a nightclub, or a strange computer programmer find the secrets of the universe, or you can help the ravers with the secret of the universe and the programmer with the nightclub. You can help some doomed RPG writers finish their doomed RPG. You can sing karaoke. (Badly, says one of the audience members; he hasn't heard anything so bad since he last had his cluster headaches (I laughed so much I cried). You can add beauty to a wall, shoot the members of a tribunal, or put your face in a bunny rabbit and keep it there for a while. You can do all this wacky shit, and underneath it the game has so much to say about how people inhabit the places where they find themselves. I'm told there are lots of endings and whole cabinets of unhinged, but I suspect they all draw organic from Revachol. The city itself is the main character, and I love it. Though I do love [unnamed main character] and Kim, too. They are very good.

Anyway, I highly recommend it - and it's still £8 in the Steam sale, so it's a good time.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

DISCO ELYSIUM! I'm always excited when someone else discovers it.

I feel like I could enjoy another half-dozen

Can confirm. Your build drastically affects how you perceive the world and what aspects of it you even notice, as well as what options you have. And the game is constructed so that whatever you do, you'll miss whole swathes of it on any given playthrough.

I'm told there are lots of endings and whole cabinets of unhinged

I would say there are relatively few variant endings for the game proper, but so many different possible twisty side-paths on the way to getting there. And yes, cabinets of unhinged.

Kim Kitsuragi, incidentally, is my boyfriend. He doesn't know we're getting married but we're going to be very happy together.

It has been commented that Disco Elysium features one of the most powerful mechanics in gaming history: the desire to not make Lt Kim Kitsuragi disappointed with you.

and underneath it the game has so much to say about how people inhabit the places where they find themselves.

You may appreciate this review of it by an Iraqi gamer:

https://www.tumblr.com/adz/723839516676440064/an-iraqi-gamers-beautiful-review-of-disco-elysium

It is very much not a coincidence that this is a game made primarily by Estonians.

[asakiyume]

Wow, that is a GREAT review. Looking forward to actually playing.

[skygiants]

for YEARS i have been meaning to do another play-through because I accidentally constructed entirely the wrong character to succeed in making the rave music the Most Hardcore and I DESPERATELY want to dance at the club!! but also I am afraid to play again, because what if this time I don't manage to meet the Insulindian Phasmid!

[threemeninaboat]

Replay as Moralist. The whole sequence of Moralist after dancing in the club is worth it on its own.

[pauraque]

All right, I'm clearing the decks and starting this right after the games I'm currently working on. I am excited!

[raven]

Hurrah! So excited to hear what you think!

[asakiyume]

Ahaha, the tale of my trials and tribulations installing this is the time-honored tale of an Old on the internet. And my poor computer started straining after, like, the opening screen. Fortunately the tech-savvy rest of my family was able to show me how to reduce all the bells and whistles (e.g., I don't need the computer to vibrate, we can reduce the image quality, etc.) so the machine doesn't huff and puff so. Now I'm waiting for youngest kid to come and give me key pointers. THEN I can meet your boyfriend ;-)

[rydra_wong]

In case it's of interest, astrogirl had some non-spoilery tips for the game here:

https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/938306.html?thread=12191298#cmt12191298 (avoid the rest of the thread as it starts to contain spoilers)

It's generally very intuitive; it was literally the first video game I ever played (apart from Pac Man a few times as a kid), and I was generally able to learn how to do things by floundering around and fucking up (it helps that floundering around and fucking up is very much in the spirit of the game).

But there are a few mechanics which might not be immediately obvious, so the tips can be handy.

[asakiyume]

Thank you! I will definitely make use of those!

[raven]

Ahhh I am so excited to hear what you think of it!! Ahhhh! Also feel free to hit me up for pointers though I am sure youngest kid will be much better for pointers!

[sophia_sol]

thank you so much for explaining what this game is actually about and what the gameplay mechanisms are, I have heard many people have feelings about disco elysium but never any actual solid details, lol! it sounds like a fascinating experience to play