f13.net

Yes.

You made a very compelling case, so I bought it. Lets see this weekend if your praise was warranted.  :awesome_for_real:

you rolled a 4 trying to get your necktie and died

I said this in discord about 5 minutes into the game.  This is the game that I wanted Torment (the new one) to be.  After a few hours now, I still stand by that statement.

Get Underrail for free if you buy it on gog.

Also, yes. I generally dislike the drug/alcoholic/morose stuff that's pretty core to at least the initial experience, but it's so well done I can roll with it. I'm pretty sure I'll be thorooughly seeing the 'wrong' way to play, but it's interesting af.

As far as Torment, that game fell utterly flat for me and I'm already engaged with this one, so...yeah.

IGN actually has a seemingly* decent review of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp8llWcWrc0


* I haven't played it myself yet

don't need IGN

"Yes" suffices.

"I want to have fuck with you".

I think I'm stuck, feels like I jumped the plot. Somehow I ended up in the Harbour and can't get back to the original area. I wasn't lead there by the plot, I made some jump that looks like it was unidirectional.


Game's too new to find an answer online...kind of a bummer since the game is excellent, like hitting a brick wall though.

Due to the art style, there's some areas where it's harder to see some of the paths. I'm pretty sure I know where you are, and there are some stairs in the area (near an NPC, who is sitting down) kinda southish I guess that leads you back near the start.

I'm guessing the death is because of the uncomfortable chair? I took damage there too, but usually there is some skill check somewhere in the dialogue tree that lets you avoid damage. Did you try all options?

I could probably get out of it, I survived the chair but he got me on morale. I could save scum it, but I don't want to roll like that.

I'll look for the stairs again, I tab the shit out of everything, surprised I missed anything!

Also, tab works like it should in these games, highlighting clickies. In case you guys haven't already done it out of habit :D

In this instance tab wouldn’t help because the stairs are just a path, not something you would click on to go to another zone.

Nope, my scouring of the level yielded the correct exit path. Dev comment I found:


So 2 more pro tips...

edited to add

Fuck you guys for making me fire up my 'doze box for this.

I have logged 4 hours.

This is a masterpiece. Fact. Period.

I wish some of you would use some words to actually describe what it is and/or what makes it so good.  Schild describes the game as "yes".  Sky talks about surviving some chair and not being able to find some stairs.  Velorath goes on and on about the benefits of the tab button.

Guess I will have to watch a review or something.

Noir Planescape Torment with a philosophical bent, with more text to read, even weirder and without D&D fights, basically.

If you want to see what the game is, yeah just watch a video or something. Plenty of that stuff around. The reason most of us like it is ultimately the writing. Even in our Discord channel I've been trying not to read or post too much because I'd rather discover as much of it as I can myself.

I watched about 30 seconds of a streamer playing on release day and bought it immediately.

"Yes" is an accurate review, unless you hate reading and rpgs. It's sofa king good.

Blind Faith. Just go buy the thing. Every single person who has it is enthralled.

Also, Yes.

Five hours in and I think I'm done.

This is just a pretentious book with an interesting character building system slapped underneath it.

I'm quite sure if you're loving it, you're loving it but I ain't loving it.  I'm bored.

Though it was alllllmost worth it for 'time to work in the shit factory.'  That was a damn good line.

(https://i.imgur.com/9Upi58x.png)

Welcome to the other side of asking you about VR.

:why_so_serious:

It IS interesting to see the divide this game causes.  It's getting rave reviews by and large, but boy, that minority that doesn't like it REALLY doesn't like it.  See it on the various message boards and in the few critical game reviews.

Yes

It's fantastic. Period. The only criticism is that it's "just" a glorified Choose Your Adventure and so if someone misses more "game", fine. Their loss.

But with that said, when something is praised THIS much, it is inevitable and human to feel compelled to add a few extra dislike-points to any negative feeling.

This is one of those games I'll watch a few clips of just to keep up with all you ruffians, but definitely not a game I would ever have any interest in myself.

people who don't like it are wrong

Well. That was a masterpiece. Now to play through it 20 more times.

I got shivers multiple times while playing this. Most recent one, the intercom conversation. Before and after suceeding the Volition roll. What a masterpiece.

It's hard to describe the game without spoilering a lot of it.
Mechanically it's basically Planescape: Torment minus all of the bits that sucked about that game (i.e combat) with a detective story (again telling you more would spoiler a lot) set in a retro (?) neo noir world with everything turned up to 11. The enjoyment of this game hinges on whether you are a fan of PS: Torment style walls of text. It's very well written text though.

You like noir, you like weird, you like the good bits of Torment then

At least two members of the creative team behind this are recovering alcoholics/addicts and it shows.

I never played P:T, so the reference is lost on me.  Still, I may give this a go when time permits.

It's P:T. P.T. is a silent Hill project.

Fuck acronyms.

JFC this game is good. And I'm still only 3/4 through day 2.

The rpg genre just got served.

One of my first comments about this game is that this is what we would've played 20 years ago if Morte had finished reading the tattoo.

I disliked Cuno so much initially and now I have to struggle to not blurt 'Cuno don't fucking care!' at patrons. At *maximum velocity*.

Cuno was far, far too close to home. A wee fucking drugged up ned.

I played this for about half an hour and didn't really enjoy it. Never played Torment.

Eh, I'm interested but I don't want to pay full price.  Will wait for a discount.

That’s where I am as well.  I am not sure if it is my kind of thing, so I will probably wait.  I am already up to my tits in like 5 different games as it is.

I have no idea if I'll like this or not based on what you're all saying. I'm leaning to Ironwood's side but...

Guess I'll buy in a month or two.

edit. Watched a youtube of the first few mins. jfc how up itself is this.

So you bought it, right?

Trying to get steam on my laptop. I'm in spain with a different phone can can't remember my password. It's annoying.

Trying on GOG.

If this game were "up itself" in any capacity, it would've petered off halfway through. It doesn't. The game is not "up itself." It is largely the best writing in the history of gaming - with the absolute best cast of characters - and nothing even comes close.

I think I'm only about halfway through and I am loving the ride.  Trying to be a semi-serious detective, stay sober-ish, and get the job done on this initial run, but will have to try again with different skill configuration and just go nuts on some of the alternative approaches...

Kim is an amazingly well-written NPC partner and is amazingly tolerant of my shenanigans.

The horror that I, the player, shared with the main character as we realized that  was a fantastic gaming moment.

The number of painful typos and such are remarkably few and the writing is remarkably good for a tiny Estonian studio (though I hear quality control is a bit less good in the back half, but still, considering how huge the game is...).

I love the hell out of the skill system and the fact that there's no separate combat system from the dialogue interaction system -- that's brave and it pays off big time.

Totally. Even if for some strange reason the writing is not your favourite, this statement right here should not be overlooked.

spoilering this even though you may never encounter it at all

Up itself as fuck and also amazing.

This is the game people who love Torment think torment is.

Writing is the best I've ever seen in a video game by far.

I need help. Yesterday I played for 20 hours straight and even forgot to eat. Only stopped because I nearly fell asleep at the keyboard. Only thing I slightly dislike about the game is the walking Speed and how you maneuver the areas.

The *reality talk* between Joyce and you and the part about the pale is better than anything I’ve ever read in video games. This game is also a more succinct commentary about realpolitik and society than almost anything I’ve ever read. Period.

That I can enjoy this while making the in game world disco as fuck is just a bonus.

I went ahead and bought this just for shits and giggles because I'm weak when it comes to RPGs and I finished the Outer Worlds. It's a fun game so far but nothing ground breaking. As for the writing it veers wildly between pretty good and super, super pretentious. I can almost hear the writer talking about how smart he is for buying that thesaurus. It's kind of distracting honestly.

You and Ironwood can start a very small fan club around that opinion.

Well hiding end game progression behind two hard and very specific skill checks was a major downer. The end is also somewhat of a let down.

I'll probably keep going. Some of the systems are neat. Some are extremely annoying though. The writing is pretty good too except when it veers into the pretentious bull shit and I have to just try to get past it.

So far, it's a pretty mixed bag for me. Enjoyable enough to keep going but with a lot of "are you fucking kidding me?" stuff.

Once you get to the funny bits (many, if you've not found them then just stop) the pretensiousness becomes less grating, because this game takes the piss out of itself too.

The best thing about this game is it's sense of humour. the writing is directly related to that, but it's writing in general, rather than the specific prose.

Yes, let's keep things simple for the simple.

The goddamn intro is hilarious. If he didn't get to the funny parts yet, there's a problem.

It's hard for me to take anything in this game as pretentious when just about every dialogue choice gives you an option (or multiple options) to take the piss out of whatever was just said.

As a serious person playing the game seriously, it's hard to be serious and it's also hilarious watching the character try.

The pretentiousness gets dialed down after the opening thankfully. I'm enjoying the game though shit like dying from a heart attack from sitting in an uncomfortable chair is just dumb and doesn't add enjoyment to the game. The writing is pretty good but not nearly as mind blowing as people here would have you believe. Likewise the mechanics aren't anything special and have been in tons of other games. I do like the mind cabinet but think tying it to skill points was just silly. Thankfully I can save scum to get past pretty much any skill check I want so guess it doesn't matter in the end.

Genuine curiosity here, what's a video game you feel had better writing?

Have you ever tried not being a cock ?

Didn't like the game, stopped playing it.  It's not a big deal.  You can go ahead and play Star Wars with Twitch while watching I Am Legend 'cause you've never not liked anything or been dramatically different to the point of wrong before either.

You utter fucking arsehole.

For a pure RPG: The Witcher 3.
On a weirdness front: Deadly Premonition but I have a weird weakness for that game.

There are others as well. This game has good writing but you people are singing its praises like it's the most amazing writing ever seen in a video game and that's...not the case. When you wipe away the pretentious layers it's a fairly standard story with fairly standard NPCs.

Well there you go. It's the pretentious layers I like ;) Other than that half-joke though, I'm more critical of the writing in DE than some others in this group. The ending in particular is weak, but I've always loved fiction dealing with personification of aspects of the personality, and that's a small enough pool of things that when one comes along that's written even moderately well, I'm likely to be a fan.

No, it's not a big deal - so I have no clue why you took it so personally.

I don't understand the Star Wars with Twitch comment tho.

You had to be there.  Someone many years back made some thread about SWG, it was getting twitch added in, the bees knees and all that.

And also, Schild hates absolutely everything, until there is something he likes and then that is the best thing ever and everyone else is wrong because reasons.  Apparently DE is that thing just now.

Oh, twitch the mechanic, not the streaming service

The rest of your post is just patently untrue.

I really enjoyed the game until the final stretch then it good pretty bad, unfortunately.


That was a pretty big let down to be honest. Especially in comparison to how strong the game was before that and how many different options it gave you to solve quests.

I appreciate Schild's intensity of enthusiasm for the things he likes. I am not sure he fully appreciates sometimes that the things he likes are plausibly unlikeable. But then he wouldn't have the entertaining and vividly-expressed enthusiasm for the well-liked things, in all likelihood.

I don’t know if I like this.

(https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/626/354/cea.jpg)

Ok, it's not a meme but it might as well be!

It works equally well in the other direction.  It’s almost as endearing as his lack of ability to recognize it.

Anyhoo, he sold me on it this time. I got the game. We'll see what happens next.

Are you confusing story and writing?

Because this is like, kind of a laughable (read: lazy) answer.

I get writing is a personal thing but there's AT LEAST 20 games I can shit off the top of my head that would've been a better - or at least arguable answer.

Edit: I'm not trying to insult you here - I genuinely believe you're confusing story and writing. Which is entirely reasonable. Disco is not the best STORY in the history of gaming. But I've played all the previous "best written games" and the bar just got put at world record pole vault level and everyone else participating is crippled.

Just FYI a lot of this is hidden behind skill checks and the REAL reason he did it will either make you laugh and think it's awesome or put you even further off.

Let me put it this way. I cared about many of the characters in the Witcher 3. You could make a case that for some of them I had the benefit of knowing them in two prior games. And that is true. But the character I cared most about was Ciri and she was introduced in that game. (I hadn't read the novels until a year or two after the Witcher 3.)

 I care about none of them in this game. Some of them are sort of interesting but not one of them has connected with me on an emotional level. I chalk that up to writing. You may call it story but I think it speaks to how the writers of this game failed to make the characters resonate. The stuff that for you make this a well written amazing game are the things that for me make it pretentious and hard to bear at times. I'm probably going to finish the game but I doubt I'll ever touch it again.

Pros: Some good writing almost in spite of itself.
Some intriguing world building.
A somewhat interesting story.

Cons: Thought cabinet is basically just feats or perks but they don't tell you what you're getting and they cost skill points to get more of and even to change out if you don't like one you got.
Way too many skills.
Too many skills have pretentious names.
No emotional connection to the story. A major fail in the writing. I don't care about anyone in this game.
The writing too often veers into the pretentious. I find myself skimming some of the writing in this game because of it.

Edit: I thought I'd add. I cared more about Parvati in the Outer Worlds than I care about any character in this game.

Oh I know why he really did it but that explanation is still unconnected to the main story and absolutely mindboggingly stupid.

tl;dr. Yes, you are confusing them.

More like, for me viewing them as separate things is meaningless.  If the writing is crafted exceptionally well but fails on a story level I'm not going to judge it as amazing writing. I'm going to judge it as "pretty good" which is the case here. From the standpoint of an English professor, the writing is great. From the standpoint of the job it is supposed to do, tell a story, it's only so-so for the reasons I went into.

On another note, I just hit what is probably a dead-end in the game for me and I'm not sure I can be arsed to get past it. It's...horrible game design.

There's multiple ways to find Ruby.

Quid pro quo, Clarice. Which skill names are pretentious?

As far as I can tell the only way to get to her is through that insane Shivers check.

As for skill names:
Inland Empire makes me groan. Just call it gut feelings or hunches or roll it into one of the 5 other pyche skills.
Espirit De Corps just call it Police Knowledge or, again, roll it into another skill as it's way too focused. It could easily be combined with Authority and maybe visual calculus if we really want to consolidate the obnoxious number of skills.
Visual Calculus. It's just fucking forensics. One of the few skills that should be a skill and not rolled into another skill.
Volition. It's just fucking morale. Another one that can be kept as its own skill.
Electro-chemistry. It's just drug knowledge. Also silly as it's own skill at least as used in this game.
Shivers. It's gut feelings. Should be combined with Inland Empire.
Half-light. Fucking really? It's intimidation people.
Nothing under motorics is too bad except the name of the attribute itself. It's not pretentious, it's just dumb. Motorics.

(http://forums.f13.net/Smileys/classic/ohisee.gif)

for someone that plays games to become attached to characters, it sure is wild you're dismissing about 75% of the cast of characters because you think they have pretentious names

If you're referring to how the skills sort of "talk to you" uh...well...I find that bit itself pretentious and annoying. I get what the writers are going for but Planescape: Torment did this type of story much better. Assuming I don't just give up in irritation at this "We're going to gate a character needed for the main quest behind an insanely high skill check for a skill you might not even have" bullshit I may give the game a review.

If I was forced to give it one right now I'd probably give it a 6/10. It has some clever elements to it but when you look deep most of them are really the same stuff we've seen before just hidden under a layer of pretentiousness. The characters are interesting but don't resonate emotionally. Not a one of them. I occasionally get intrigued only to find out they're really just exposition machines and once you've gotten all you can from them they never change what they have to say from what I've found. A lot of the depth is hidden behind obnoxious skill checks which are mostly set too high so unless you specialize in that skill or find hidden bonuses you're forced to save scum if you want to see it. The story is kind of neat, I like the central mystery but how you go about solving it is more annoying than anything else. It's like an old point and click adventure game where you're forced to just kind of stumble around and click on every single thing in the game in hopes of finding a lead. Not literally but that is how it feels. Just getting the body down was a huge pain the ass because you had to do it in only the way the writers wanted. That's a major issue I have with this game. It railroads you a lot. You don't really have much choice. I think, in general, that's part of the theme of the game but reflecting it in the game mechanics is problematic.

The amount of times you're saying pretentious makes you seem pretentious.

As far as I know that's not the case.


That check and the subsequent savoire vivre check were the only two I save scummed because I had literally run out of skill points and experience points to collect by this point.

I'd have to get drunk to raise my Shivers too because I went for a smart and charming character. It's been...interesting. I get through most dialogues relatively easily but an uncomfortable chair was a mortal threat to me and I had to go buy medicine to talk to the Union boss...

So, I finished the game tonight. It was a mixed bag but overall I'm glad I played it. The ending was...odd.


I am curious if some of my choices would have changed anything. Such as my decision not to arrest some people, for example. Not curious enough to replay it though. It was interesting but I don't think it has much, if any, replay value.

Also, I stand by my earlier comments about the Ruby search. That shivers roll was bad design. Yes, you can make it much easier by doing lots of side quests but forcing you to do side quests for one roll was more bad design. Don't force me to do filler content to get past a skill roll.

You can find her without the shiver roll. There's another entrance. So your hate is misplaced there.

The shiver roll unlocks two entrances. Even after replaying I have not found anything that unlocks a third entrance or that unlocks one of the two entrances I know with a different check.

The Shivers roll gave me access to a ladder or a basement entrance. I scoured the internet looking for another option besides looking at the mural and never found one. So if there is one, please inform me of it as I'm curious how you found something apparently no one else has.

Failing the shivers roll can also unlock the basement entry.

How often do you need to fail it? I failed that check four times without anything happening? Or do you have to get certain dialogue?

I don't get any hate for the end of this game.

There are annoyances when you do things out of expected order with repetition and bugs, but the end of the game is great.


Will play it again in a few months as a different character type.

Also, this is the only rpg I can remember playing where I didn't give a fuck about min maxing at all, or even spending my skill points. I had around ten unspent at the end of the game. And quite a few quests and checks unsolved and not OCD stressing me.

The problem with the end of the game is you have that asinine Shivers roll then the entire rest of the game is a railroad. To my knowledge, you can only effect how badly the Tribunal goes. You have no peaceful options that I was able to find either through gameplay or from searching the internet. Then afterwards you're basically led by the nose to the killer. And the killer's identity breaks one of the cardinal rules of mystery writing.


That said, I did like A) the song that played while you ride the boat and B) the very final scene which seemed to be determining your character's future even if it felt like it ended abruptly. Everything else about the end was quite unsatisfying because of the stuff I mentioned.

I disagree with almost everything you've said.

You seem to have a vastly different idea about what the game cares about. It's not really at all about your narrative agency, it's about your psychological reaction to the world. It's not a sandbox. The whole game is "on rails".

Also what the fuck kind of mystery writing have you read that you think that's some cardinal rule. The opposite is the rule, if there's a rule.

Uhh...pretty much any good mystery writer will tell you this. You don't drop hints and clues then go "HAH! JUST KIDDING! THE KILLER IS A CHARACTER YOU'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN BEFORE AND HAVE NO WAY OF KNOWING ABOUT!"

If a mystery writer pulled that shit they'd be ripped apart by critics. It's literally mystery writing 101. You can drop in red herrings and false clues of course, but you don't just have the core mystery be utterly unsolvable because the audience literally never sees the real clues or the real killer.

As for your other observations. Perhaps the game is simply a psychological study and narrative agency was never a goal. It gave the illusion, at least early on, that you had some narrative agency only to yank it all out from under you from the moment you're asked to click on the mural to find Ruby. And here's my bigger issue. Other games have studied your psychological reactions to things while still giving you narrative agency. It's doable. This game chose not to do it. So for me it made the ending unsatisfying for the most part as I was just led from set piece to set piece with very little input into events.


As you can tell from my spoiler, this game's characters are already fading from my memory because they left very little impression on me.

You are so wrong about mystery writing. The only rule of mystery writing is that the mystery needs to be engaging enough to keep people reading. And that you don't have clues and hints in place that let the reader solve it in advance otherwise they will, and the energy disappears. Mysteries are not puzzles.

Also this game is really funny. You don't seem to engage with any of its humor though - explicit and implied. I hate to say this as it's a stupid expression.. but this game is just not "for you". You don't seem to enjoy what it does, nor understand why the rest of us do.

We'll have to agree to disagree on mystery writing.

https://writepop.com/writing/mystery-writing-tips (https://writepop.com/writing/mystery-writing-tips)


There's lot of others like this. You're literally the only person I've ever spoken to who is like "it's cool if the killer comes out of left field and wasn't so much as hinted at or even seen until the very end."Even police procedural shows introduce the killer during the first half of the show. They may mislead you about who it is but they don't just drop him or her as a surprise character in the last ten minutes. An argument can be made that this is more of a crime drama as opposed to a mystery they expect the player to have agency in or get invested in.

As for the humor, sometimes it was humorous. Some of the humor fell into the "trying way to hard" trap for me. In particular, everytime my character fell asleep and those voices started speaking I went through it as fast as possible because I found them annoying usually.

Am I the only one who didn't think this game was about solving a murder?

at one point i forgot the murder was a thing so no

Guys, I think Riggswolfe didn't like it.

I liked it more or less. I don't regret playing it. I just don't want to fall down on my knees and worship it as the most amazing game that has ever been written like some people do. *tries hard not to look at Schild.*

Cool, just wanted to clear that up, because it is a pretty dern good game.

I sort of agree with Riggswolfe here.

The conceit of Disco Elysium is that it’s a murder mystery. It’s the reason for your character being in Martinaise in the first place and it’s the narrative “glue” that holds the story beats together. It’s noir style. It’s a satirical take with weird characters and set in a sort of magical realism. The story is also a vehicle for lots of commentary on humanity, philosophy, ideology and politics.The A plot is still a murder mystery though and those follow certain narrative conventions. It even ends like a murder mystery, with the main character explaining what happened, how it happened and why, just like in any Agatha Christie novel.

Then there’s the game mechanics, if you do sort of an “adventure RPG” style game players will have certain expectations. For me it was that you should be able to complete the game with a few different builds, that the game should offer up different “paths” depending on your choices and that the quests can be completed in different ways. Like in a Black Isle/Obsidian game or in Planescape: Torment.

It’s even “weirder” here because the RPG system is heavily integrated into the story and narrative and used as an actual narrative device. Sort of like in a “choose your own adventure” style book. So turning DE into a pure adventure or “narrative game” wouldn’t even make sense because DE being a sort of RPG is one of the aspects that makes the game click.

For me the most disappointing aspect of DE has been the resolution of the A plot. The solution follows none of the narrative conventions of the genre, the actual murderer has no connection to the story or any of the characters and he isn’t even a part of the DE world until you sort of find him at the end. There’s no way for you to discover him or even realize he exists prior to the resolution of the game’s mystery. He’s not a part of the in game universe. Even the weird stick insect plasmid is more connected to the in game universe than the murderer because you can actually find out a lot about it even if everything about it seems like it was thought up by a lunatic.

Mechanically the game even road blocks you from finding it out early and on your own by gating off an area of the game until all plot beats have been played out and there’s only really one solution to the quest. Which clashes quite a bit with at least my expectations going into the game.

I’m still very happy with it because the characters, dialogue, commentary and little vignettes have been really great. It’s a game where they’ve taken great care and attention to detail to world building, characters and dialogue.

Ancient Reptile Brain: The A Plot is self-discovery. The murder mystery only exists as a reason for you to talk to strangers.

It's not a fucking murder mystery. It's got a whole different much of mysteries.

It is quite noir. Probably better to say hard boiled and post-modern. Noir crime very often has nothing to do with solving the crime in some satisfying way (often there isn't even a crime to solve).

To quote Chandler's very well known words:


Stop giving a fuck about the ending so much (it's still brilliant).

It's not a satire. So desperately not a satire. (even if it has quite a few satirical bits).

It's not magic realism.

[Deleted literature discussion because fuck it. Stuff is not as simple as you want it to be].

Someone has told you this is a "classic RPG" and "like Torment" and all you can do it judge it relative to games you've played in the past. It's doing it's own thing. It's not perfect but if you think the ending is a huge let down you just don't get it.


I can only conclude that you didn't read half the text in the game, if you think that the murder had nothing to do with the other game characters, the world, this history, the particular moment in time, and the messed up relationship your character carves out with the world and himself.

Tl;dr: Your expectations were wrong and you're hung up on them. Let it go.

PS: I'm pissed off. Not at you and Rig, but for you. How you can't appreciate when this game does so well... you're reallly missing out.

Dude chill the fuck out

I did literature at uni. I'm chill. I'm enjoying the conversation.

Why?

The whole text feels like you are angry and there's no point in being angry just because I didn't like two minor aspects of the game. That's all.

I get that the game is not really about the murder investigation. For me though it also matters that that aspect of the story makes sense, even if it's not really what the story is about. I'd actually compare Disco Elysium to Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Judge and His Hangman (feel free to get angry at me for that weird comparison). The Judge and His Hangman is not really about the murder investigation. It's about the protagonist, the stupid bet he made with his friend 50 years ago and about the moral dilemma whether or not it's OK to frame someone for a crime he did not commit as a means to punish him for past vrimes he did commit.

DE uses the murder as a narrative device to talk about other things, I get that, just like Düprrenmatt used the murder investigation to pose a moral dilemma and elaborate on that. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann is not really about a stay at a sanatorium just like Death in Venice is not really about writer's block and Umberto Eco's whole body of work is basically using some sort of story to comment on something else (usually with lots of footnotes)  It's a common trope.

I'm just really miffed that the resolution of the plot makes no sense and has no connection to any of the story. It's just a a pet peeve or minor complaint.

Logic: No shit, Lieutenant double-yefreitor obvious.

Still I'd want the murder mystery to be at least loosely connected to the rest of the game and make sense.

What exactly is your point? (No, seriously I don't understand). The narrative conceit is that you are a cop who had been tasked with investigating a murder. It's just that you were apparently so burned out, depressed and at odds with the world that drinking yourself into oblivion seemed like a much better idea to you instead. Now you've woken up totally hung over, don't remember anything and now there's another cop downstairs who has come to "help" you solve it. So it seems like a decent idea to actually try and solve the murder you have been ordered to investigate while you try to find who you are and exactly what has happened the last week.

I get that the game is not really about the murder it's just there to give you something to do and to drive the story forward but it's still the reason why you are there in the first place and also the reason why any of the people talk to you. I just wish the resolution to that made more sense.

Look, Umberto Eco's (hey, I like him) body of work is full of meta-narrative and allusions and is quite post-modern and yet the actual plot of his books makes sense and is narratively coherent even though it's never really the point of the story.


I would agree that it has elements of post-modernism. I'd not be happy with the label though because post-modernism as I understand it is an equal opportunity critic of all kinds of ideologies and of human nature, objective reality etc.. DE to me seems to be partial to at least certain ideologies and world views though. It seems very much to be opposed to centrism, its definition of moralism (the Moralintern) and multi-national political organisations and it offers a lot of discourse on philosophy, aspects of reality and so on. It seems to be in favour of marxism/socialism though and that is something which doesn't really fit the modernism label IMHO. I don't have a degree in literature or phiolosophy though, so what do I know.

That's why I'm more partial to the "magical realism" label even though it might not be the best fit. Most post modern literature I know takes no sides, the authors of magical realism did though. It also fits with the topic of conversation because a lot of the authors of the magical realism era where commenting on ideology, political philosophy and political reality while offering an actual point of view and opinion on it.

Accidentally hit post on the first part so this will be a two-parter.


I can't help but do though. I also didn't think that the end of the game was bad. The whole dialogue with the plasmid is fucking brilliant for example and even the discussion with the straggler itself is well written. I just didn't like the resolution of the murder mystery.


What else then? It's not fantasy, I wouldn't consider it to be (retro) sci fi/futurism or alternate history, it's certainly not surrealism. It has elements of post-modernism but it also has a point of view and takes sides and is not just a deconstruction of objective reality and ideology. For me the game is much closer to Thomas Mann, Günther Grass, Ernst Jünger, Allende or even Kafka than it is to Foucault, Beckett or Eco.

Maybe now that I think of it post-modernism might fit better but I always consider post-modernism to take no sides and to be a criticism of "everything" and DE isn't that.


Look, the "if you didn't like it you didn't get it" defense is lame and I think you are a better person than that.

Also my point is not that I'm disappointed that it's not a classic RPG. It's about the expectation you necessarily have when a game is of a certain genre. Including RPG mechanics into DE was a deliberate decision of the dev team. They could have made any other sort of game instead, e.g. a pure adventure or a walking sim or a visual novel or anything else really. They chose an RPG instead because they probably thought that the RPG mechanics added something to the sort of game they'd wanted to make (and they were damn right).

Unfortunately certain genres come with certain expectations and conventions. The way DE ends breaks with some of those expectations is all. Subverting expoectations is always a bit dangerous because it tends to piss people off irrationally (like me).

e.g. you probably have all the info you need to solve the game by day 3. I know I did. Other RPGs would have planned for that contingency and simply let you do that, other RPGs would also have made it so that quests that are central to the plot have lots of different solutions to enable lots of different character builds to solve them. DE doesn't. It wants the story to play out as it was written. This requires that the tribunal happens and so the game road blocks you from reaching the final island until after that has happened.

For me it's a point where expectations about a certain genre of game (i.e. lots of choices and different paths for solutions) clash with what the game's focus was. That is basically all. The fact that one distinct skill check was essentially a road block for progression though really pissed me off to be honest. Especially because it would be an easy fix.


You misunderstand me. What I'm saying is that the murderer as in the suspect/perpetrator has nothing that connects him to the story. The murder itself has lots of repercussions for basically everything. The murder is the catalyst that leads to all kinds of things and it puts events into motion that are both cataclysmic and unstoppable. The murderer though is basically not even a part of the universe until the end. I'd probably have been much happier if the actual murder had stayed a mystery/ambiguous or an open case with several plausible suspects (Murder on the Orient Express style). Ambiguity would have been favorable to me instead of presenting a person that basically didn't exist until the end.

The actual murder mystery doesn't really matter it's just a vehicle to drive the story forward. Either leave it ambiguous (there were lots of people who had motive) or at least put in the work to make it narratively coherent and somewhat connected to the rest of the world.

An actual murder mystery would give you hints and tidbits about him. Maybe you meet him in act 1 (procedurals do this a lot) and then forget about him, maybe people talk about him (even if it's just: "there's that weird guy that lives on the islands off the coast") maybe you find hints and bits and pieces about him. Something that makes him less of a classical deus ex machina (out of universe but necessary to conclude the story). Or simply leave it ambiguous and offer up a few likely suspects. Klaaasje had motive, as had Ruby,  the union or Hardy and his boys and probably otzhers as well.


I appreciate this game a lot, actually it's just that one or two things really pissed me off. It comes more from a place of love though. I'm pissed off because the rest of the game is so great and I'm also pissed off because it would have been easily fixable without taking anything away from the rest.

The game is utterly brilliant when it's about reality, philosophy, ideology, (real)politics, characters or the world building. It's hilarious and funny and it pisses me off to no end because it challenges a lot of my own points of view. The talk with the gay Moralintern bureaucrat for example who you meet at the appartment of the boheme smoker is basically an all out critique on multi-national political organisations and especially the EU. The whole scene still pisses me off on a fundamental level, because it is both entirely true but also describes the only option an entity like the Moralintern would actually have given how the political landscape is shaped. The game actually does a great job in offering you both the critique and also all of the reasons why the way things have played out make sense or sometimes even have no alternative because the alternative wozuld have been even worse.

No one is evil or good or especially incompetent. Everyone has a 'rational' reason why they act the way they do. The state of the world is fucked up regardless even though there is no evil mastermind actively plotting something. Lots of people made lots of rational and - from their point of view - correct decisions and the interdependency of the world and the law of unintended consequences simply made it so that the outcome was bad regardless.

It is simply Georg Jellinek's "normative power of the factual" at work here. Take Joyce for example, she has lots of regrets and she's not content with the way the world has turned out to be, she also had lots of valid reasons why she acted the way she did and doing anything differently wouldn't have necessarily meant that things would have turned out any better. It's still a shit situation though with lots of bad consequences and actual harm done.

DE is among other things a critique of "pure" philosophies or ideologies and contras them with the murky grey areas and chaos of actual reality and it does this really well without being either cynic about it or completely detached.

I thought I'd butt in and add my (much shorter than Jeff Kelly's) two cents:

The murderer makes sense once you meet him. You find out his motives (sort of), why he is there, his ties to the city and specifically to Klassje (think I butchered her name, oh well.) However, as Jeff Kelly points out, he comes out of left field. He is never hinted at earlier in the game. He just appears when the game needs to wrap up the murder mystery. Had, for example, Ruby turned out to be the murderer I'd have been fine with it. I'd also have been fine with several other people. I spent a lot of the game thinking Klassje (or whatever) had done it. Why? Because we meet and interact with them. We're given enough clues to see plausible reasons why several people may have killed him. The union boss, Titus, Klassje, and Ruby come to mind. However, we're not ever given so much as a hint that the analogue to the Japanese soldier who was on an island and didn't know World War 2 had ended was even there, let alone the killer. The closest I can think of is my character once or twice wondered if the shot could have come from somewhere further away, like a balcony in the city.  The murder mystery part of the game just does not work because the ending isn't well done and it's blocked by that skill check.

That said, I get that it's not the central point of the game. It's basically just the excuse for your character to go out talking to people and maybe get some memories back and figure out who he is. But it being handled so poorly sort of sours the rest of it for me. I did like the end, at least the part where he met up with the other cops and they all talked things over. My playthrough at least ended on a semi-positive note. I also felt like I had a feel for what my version of the PC was like, why he'd fallen so low and how it had impacted his life and his police unit. I appreciated the inner journey he went through. That part of the game was well done. It was just the "plot hook" that fell on its face and caused dissonance for me.

The Maltese Falcon was a terrible story because it was all about finding a valuable treasure and it turned out that it wasn't that valuable after all.  Dashiell Hammett needs to go back to mystery school.

Totally different thing. Nice try though.

Now, if the Maltese Falcon was as valuable as everyone thought it was but it was stolen by a character that wasn't even in the movie up until he showed up and just took it, then it'd be closer.

I think it's wild that one of your big gripes with the game is that a character came out of nowhere and was the killer. Is that like, too realistic for you or something? What exact purpose does wanting something to be more fantastical serve? In real life, the killer is typically someone close or someone that doesn't show up in the story until they're found. That's like, kinda how murder works.

But also, don't bother answering this seriously, I genuinely don't want to continue the conversation while you're complaining about a lack of tropes.

Apparently anything short of 159% enthusiasm for every aspect of this game gets you ridiculed.

The game is buggy, leans on the skill system unevenly without really telling you in advance, has a lot of redundant running around, (seems to) lacks agency in your characterisation options of your prior relationship, blah blah...

People are "ridiculing" a particular bug-bear you have with the game that seems (to a few of us) absurd. It's not because you don't like the game 159%.

whatever, fine

We'll never see eye to eye on this. I think it was bad storytelling for reasons I've mentioned over and over again. The Maltese Falcon example I used is actually a really good comparison. In some genres this would be perfectly acceptable. However, the game has two main focuses: Your investigation and your character's psychological journey. The second one was handled pretty well for the most part though, as lamaros mentions, it doesn't give a lot of agency in certain key ways. The investigation, however, was not. It plays like a murder mystery. You interview suspects. You collect evidence. You try to piece together people's stories to figure out who is telling the truth and who is lying. You discover some cover ups such as the Hardie boys protecting Ruby. And in the end, it's all a waste of time because the murderer has zero connection to any of it.

I think this is fundamental to why your opinion of it is different from a lot of other people's.  Most of us read the murder investigation as a macguffin that drives the main plot; you read it as being a main plot and therefore had wildly different expectations for it.

If when reading the Maltese Falcon the focus for you was this fabulously valuable object and the main plot was about answering the question of "who's going to get rich at the end?", the ending would fail to meet your expectations and you'd be disappointed.

I first saw the Maltese Falcon when I was about 12 and loved it. But yes. Perhaps my expectations were wildly different. Likewise, in a movie like Seven (or similar books) I'm not bothered by how the serial killer isn't usually a character the cops interview early on or whatever. Because it's a different genre with different expectations. It's also worth pointing out a movie is fundamentally different from a game with wildly different expectations. I love the Maltese Falcon but if it was a video game that ending might irritate me.

It doesn't matter. I enjoyed the psychological part of the game. I think overall the game would have been better as an adventure game than as an RPG. It just lacks agency for your character which isn't as big of an issue in adventure games. In those games you expect the plot to be fairly linear.

Looks like we are making game literature great again here.

In describing this game to people I usually describe it as an adventure game first and foremost, just with RPG-ish elements that open up different dialogue trees.  Like, if I were going to compare it to one game, it'd be Sam and Max.  It doesn't play like an RPG at all, "skills" notwithstanding.

That's probably a better description for the game. It definitely doesn't have an RPG feel.

I mean, it does. It feels like a CRPG. It doesn't feel like an RPG where you make your own personality-less character and wander around, ironically, being a hobocop.

It just doesn't have combat. Otherwise it's not far removed from Baldur's Gate and its ilk.

Agree to disagree. It uses RPG systems but Samwise really hit the nail on the head. It's an adventure game with some RPG elements. If someone had described it to me that way I don't think I'd have had the kind of disconnect with the game I did.

Before we get hung up an labels, we've had Adventures with RPG elements since at least  "Quest for Glory", never diminished the quality of those games. Why start making a fuss about it now?

I don't think he is making a fuss, he is just saying those are not the kinds of games he usually likes.  Same generally goes for me as well, which is part of the reason I have not picked this up.  Might pick it up out of the bargain bin eventually.

Ah, makes sense. Since I like both it wasn't that much of a deal for me, but if you like only one and not the other I see why marketing it as an RPG could be a problem.

I'm in the same boat; if I had heard it described as an Adventure game with RPG elements I would have completely avoided it.

For me, it's about expectations. If I'd gone in knowing it was a fairly linear story that could only be solved in one specific way I wouldn't have felt a growing disconnect as I continued to play the game. With an RPG I expect to have more control of the narrative and hopefully have more than one way to approach a problem. The more I think about it, the more I realize it really was more or less an adventure game with an RPG skill system put on top. A system with too many skills on top of that. Samwise really hit the nail on the head with that description of his.

I probably still would have picked it up but I'd have waited for it to be on sale because adventure games have very little replayability for me. They're too linear for my tastes.

Likely me too. And I love it.

Disco never dies, rise from your grave!

So an update to the game just dropped today, called the "Final Cut"... it's no big deal, it's just adding full VA (and there are a lot of words in this game...) and basically a DLC's worth of new content. Oh yeah, it's also free.

Deets: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/632470/view/3021326294553985547
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5vyZ04MNrQ