Perhaps the most compelling game world ever created, Disco Elysium expertly immerses you in its struggling world. Its gameplay flaws, specifically its pacing, often grew frustrating, but the game’s narrative integrity cannot be understated. Each time I uncovered new characters, areas, or story beats, I was completely hooked. The quality of the writing is evident not only in the world’s detailed human society, but in the heartfelt characters and uncanny situations you discover. For the first time ever, I considered replaying a game immediately after beating it.
You begin Disco as a drunken, washed out hoodlum waking up from a full-on blackout in a disgusting hotel room. You remember nothing. Completely hungover, you find a man downstairs who appears to have been looking for you. Slowly, you realize he is your partner on an investigation, and that you are a cop. The body of the murder victim has been hanging from the tree behind your hotel for a week now, and none of the locals seem to respect you whatsoever, especially the hotel owner, who claims you owe him hundreds of dollars, of which you have zero. Sucking up the hangover, you set out to solve this war-scarred city’s murder through lengthy dialogues with the locals, slowly recovering who you are along the way.
Due to my character’s alcohol-induced amnesia, I opted to confront the citizens of Revachol with only the most non-threatening questions- avoiding any risk of havoc or confusion. Very shortly I realized Disco Elysium is not built for this strategy. It is not a game where you get to interact with people in your own way. Instead, the player is forced to interact with essentially every NPC they come across in order to progress the story.
Progression comes from stat checks that force you to spend a skill point if the roll is unsuccessful, leveling up the required skill in order to take another shot at the check. It grew frustrating waiting out story material because of an unlucky skill check, but in the early game you have plenty of time and new skill points to uncover and come back to try again. It’s in the late game where these checks become frustrating, and several times over I found myself wandering through Revachol trying to figure out how I should pass the time, or finding something that will level me up so I can retry a skill check. In my 34 hour play through, I would say about 4-6 hours were spent in this purgatory of not knowing what to do, or just not being as engaged by the world because I was desperately trying to progress. Maybe I just didn’t understand what I was doing, but it’s 100% worth mentioning because those moments are what would usually cause me to accidentally never come back to a game after putting it down.
Fortunately, by the end of its first day(of five), this game had hooked me into its cold, foggy world, boasting a literary depth, a chaotic world history, and a somber, reflective mood. The game takes place in Martinaise, a battle-scarred district of Revachol that has been almost entirely ignored by it’s rulers, leaving the dockworkers union to help protect and manage it’s residents. Digging deeper, you’ll find a massive amount of history behind this society. Informed not by books or objective means, but the small-minded and emotional people around you, who all have different views on where they live and what the world should be. The relatively small open world is also packed with environmental history. Some of my favorite story moments came from the environment, such as one where you see physical evidence of a firing squad, dozens of bullet holes on a wall, your skills determining the many different military forces that could have been killed here. Was it the communards from the last war? Or the victims of the communards the war before that? The futility of life is something the writers communicate very well, and being inside this protagonist adds another layer of human desperation to it all. I’d never spoil the moment, but learning about the larger world’s natural situation, and the scientific makeup of everything, really showed me that the writing is on a different level, and that the literary effort of a game world pays off in spades. It’s full impact doesn’t really come until after you beat it, where it’s depth sits with you, and your understanding of Martinaise is likely to be more than that of so many real places you’ve been to.
This grim, hazy society functions as something much, much larger than the player. Your player-character(who’s name is technically a spoiler) doesn’t get to save the world, the city, or the town. In fact, he seems to struggle for a reason to save himself. A small, alcoholic fish in a nearly frozen pond. The amnesia-ridden opening is certainly a tired trope, but learning about this character’s past in turn effects how you view the society and world around him. It took me a while to understand that I am not playing a version of myself, but my version of this character. He has his traits and problems, and I’m supposed to be curious about that enough to dig deeper. Slowly discovering his past, both distant and recent, was a blast, and I never would have expected how much I’d grow to love this guy.
The skills you unlock determine his inner voices. Perception may point out things in your environment, or subtle behaviors of characters. Logic will remind you of what you already know and make connections you may not have noticed. Encyclopedia will drop meaningless lore on you in the strangest of circumstances. There are also some other more unique skills that I won’t discuss that focus more on the inner turmoil of your character, or his physical connection to his environment. Each of these skills are given unique voices, and are, like the rest of the game, very well voice-acted.
Until I replay this game and discover more of its content, I can’t make many definitive statements on this game, but the quality of it’s writing is certainly in the S tier level of gaming, and I will gladly continue to ponder how it was accomplished.
You begin Disco as a drunken, washed out hoodlum waking up from a full-on blackout in a disgusting hotel room. You remember nothing. Completely hungover, you find a man downstairs who appears to have been looking for you. Slowly, you realize he is your partner on an investigation, and that you are a cop. The body of the murder victim has been hanging from the tree behind your hotel for a week now, and none of the locals seem to respect you whatsoever, especially the hotel owner, who claims you owe him hundreds of dollars, of which you have zero. Sucking up the hangover, you set out to solve this war-scarred city’s murder through lengthy dialogues with the locals, slowly recovering who you are along the way.
Due to my character’s alcohol-induced amnesia, I opted to confront the citizens of Revachol with only the most non-threatening questions- avoiding any risk of havoc or confusion. Very shortly I realized Disco Elysium is not built for this strategy. It is not a game where you get to interact with people in your own way. Instead, the player is forced to interact with essentially every NPC they come across in order to progress the story.
Progression comes from stat checks that force you to spend a skill point if the roll is unsuccessful, leveling up the required skill in order to take another shot at the check. It grew frustrating waiting out story material because of an unlucky skill check, but in the early game you have plenty of time and new skill points to uncover and come back to try again. It’s in the late game where these checks become frustrating, and several times over I found myself wandering through Revachol trying to figure out how I should pass the time, or finding something that will level me up so I can retry a skill check. In my 34 hour play through, I would say about 4-6 hours were spent in this purgatory of not knowing what to do, or just not being as engaged by the world because I was desperately trying to progress. Maybe I just didn’t understand what I was doing, but it’s 100% worth mentioning because those moments are what would usually cause me to accidentally never come back to a game after putting it down.
Fortunately, by the end of its first day(of five), this game had hooked me into its cold, foggy world, boasting a literary depth, a chaotic world history, and a somber, reflective mood. The game takes place in Martinaise, a battle-scarred district of Revachol that has been almost entirely ignored by it’s rulers, leaving the dockworkers union to help protect and manage it’s residents. Digging deeper, you’ll find a massive amount of history behind this society. Informed not by books or objective means, but the small-minded and emotional people around you, who all have different views on where they live and what the world should be. The relatively small open world is also packed with environmental history. Some of my favorite story moments came from the environment, such as one where you see physical evidence of a firing squad, dozens of bullet holes on a wall, your skills determining the many different military forces that could have been killed here. Was it the communards from the last war? Or the victims of the communards the war before that? The futility of life is something the writers communicate very well, and being inside this protagonist adds another layer of human desperation to it all. I’d never spoil the moment, but learning about the larger world’s natural situation, and the scientific makeup of everything, really showed me that the writing is on a different level, and that the literary effort of a game world pays off in spades. It’s full impact doesn’t really come until after you beat it, where it’s depth sits with you, and your understanding of Martinaise is likely to be more than that of so many real places you’ve been to.
This grim, hazy society functions as something much, much larger than the player. Your player-character(who’s name is technically a spoiler) doesn’t get to save the world, the city, or the town. In fact, he seems to struggle for a reason to save himself. A small, alcoholic fish in a nearly frozen pond. The amnesia-ridden opening is certainly a tired trope, but learning about this character’s past in turn effects how you view the society and world around him. It took me a while to understand that I am not playing a version of myself, but my version of this character. He has his traits and problems, and I’m supposed to be curious about that enough to dig deeper. Slowly discovering his past, both distant and recent, was a blast, and I never would have expected how much I’d grow to love this guy.
The skills you unlock determine his inner voices. Perception may point out things in your environment, or subtle behaviors of characters. Logic will remind you of what you already know and make connections you may not have noticed. Encyclopedia will drop meaningless lore on you in the strangest of circumstances. There are also some other more unique skills that I won’t discuss that focus more on the inner turmoil of your character, or his physical connection to his environment. Each of these skills are given unique voices, and are, like the rest of the game, very well voice-acted.
Until I replay this game and discover more of its content, I can’t make many definitive statements on this game, but the quality of it’s writing is certainly in the S tier level of gaming, and I will gladly continue to ponder how it was accomplished.