Disco Elysium

[Riggswolfe]

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.*

[Sky]

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

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

[schild]

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

[lamaros]

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:

The emotional basis of the standard detective story was and had always been that murder will out and justice will be done. Its technical basis was the relative insignificance of everything except the final denouement. What led up to that was more or less passage work. The denouement would justify everything. The technical basis of the Black Mask type of story on the other hand was that the scene outranked the plot, in the sense that a good plot was one which made good scenes. The ideal mystery was one you would read if the end was missing.

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.

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.

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

Dude chill the fuck out

[lamaros]

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

Why?

[Jeff Kelly]

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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

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.

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: (...)

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.

[Jeff Kelly]

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

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

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.

It's not magic realism.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[schild]

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.

[Sky]

I sort of agree with Riggswolfe here.

Logic: No shit, Lieutenant double-yefreitor obvious.

[Jeff Kelly]

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

[lamaros]

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%.

[Jeff Kelly]

whatever, fine

[Riggswolfe]

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.

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.

[Samwise]

the game has two main focuses

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.

[Riggswolfe]

the game has two main focuses

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.

[Yegolev]

Looks like we are making game literature great again here.

[Samwise]

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.

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

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.

[schild]

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.

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

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.

[Tebonas]

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?

[Cyrrex]

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.

[Tebonas]

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.

[Rendakor]

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[lamaros]

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.

Likely me too. And I love it.

[Zetor]

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