binz
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This review contains spoilers
My Disco Elysium was, like I think it is for many people, about trauma and how we wield it against ourselves and others. I've been abusive in relationships. I've been an alcoholic. I've been codependent, which was as addictive as alcohol and did at least as much damage. I've never drunk myself into amnesia, but I know how it feels to suddenly not know myself.
This game doesn't give a solution to the horror of your trauma. It doesn't say we'll all get through together, or that everyone will be healthy and happy if we work hard to be. And that's its most beautiful and impressive accomplishment, I think: it just reminds you you can choose. Some choices will make you kinder. Some choices will make people leave you. Sometimes the best choice you have is to just stay alive, even though you hate yourself and everything you've ever done, because if you can keep choosing, maybe someday you'll have the choice to not hate yourself.
Don't get me wrong: I love a story about how people can come together to build the loving systems we need, and care for each other in a world to which we are purely incidental. I think that's often true, and you can accomplish it sometimes in this game. But the constant truth is, we can't force those things to happen. Our efforts will, sometimes, fail. Then we choose what we do after we fail. Until an incomprehensible and unstoppable cosmic force destroys reality as we know it, we can choose. And Disco Elysium gets how incredible and terrible that is better than any other story I've encountered.
This game doesn't give a solution to the horror of your trauma. It doesn't say we'll all get through together, or that everyone will be healthy and happy if we work hard to be. And that's its most beautiful and impressive accomplishment, I think: it just reminds you you can choose. Some choices will make you kinder. Some choices will make people leave you. Sometimes the best choice you have is to just stay alive, even though you hate yourself and everything you've ever done, because if you can keep choosing, maybe someday you'll have the choice to not hate yourself.
Don't get me wrong: I love a story about how people can come together to build the loving systems we need, and care for each other in a world to which we are purely incidental. I think that's often true, and you can accomplish it sometimes in this game. But the constant truth is, we can't force those things to happen. Our efforts will, sometimes, fail. Then we choose what we do after we fail. Until an incomprehensible and unstoppable cosmic force destroys reality as we know it, we can choose. And Disco Elysium gets how incredible and terrible that is better than any other story I've encountered.
This game was a surprisingly timely lesson for me about making art. I regularly get hooked on my own ideas but disappoint myself with the execution. I don't iterate enough, I don't push away from my first thought, I don't kill my darlings.
I love the concept of this game. And while the first few missions were clumsy at best and boring at worst, there was just enough that I thought could become compelling that I didn't want to give up. They have a novel (no pun intended) hook with their main character, and the internal and external worlds he inhabits. But we waste time on mechanics that feel bad and interactions that do nothing but tell you where to click next. You only get to the fireworks factory halfway through the second act, and the game ushers you back out before you can buy anything. I don't really care, or care to guess, what decisions led to that. I don't know why they didn't push further or cut chaff. It was just sad that a spark of inventiveness and expression existed, but wasn't fed.
I finished the game and wondered, what did they want to say other than "we like this idea"? What about autonomy and oppression? What about the power of creation? Not that all art has to be Mariana-Trench-deep along every axis that one can judge art - but I want the art I consume to say something more than "I just think it's neat." I want to say more than that with the art I make.
I love the concept of this game. And while the first few missions were clumsy at best and boring at worst, there was just enough that I thought could become compelling that I didn't want to give up. They have a novel (no pun intended) hook with their main character, and the internal and external worlds he inhabits. But we waste time on mechanics that feel bad and interactions that do nothing but tell you where to click next. You only get to the fireworks factory halfway through the second act, and the game ushers you back out before you can buy anything. I don't really care, or care to guess, what decisions led to that. I don't know why they didn't push further or cut chaff. It was just sad that a spark of inventiveness and expression existed, but wasn't fed.
I finished the game and wondered, what did they want to say other than "we like this idea"? What about autonomy and oppression? What about the power of creation? Not that all art has to be Mariana-Trench-deep along every axis that one can judge art - but I want the art I consume to say something more than "I just think it's neat." I want to say more than that with the art I make.
Thank god these games got better.