Disco Elysium

 It's time to discuss yet another one of the internet's favorite games. It's not that I hate covering these things, it's that I always worry I'm going to say something that's going to get myself in trouble. I guess I don't have enough followers for that. 

Of course, we all know how things can go when you have a difference of opinion with the rest of the internet. All it takes is not liking a game everyone loves to set off a firestorm. That's especially true with some of the more obscure or indie games that tend to have very passionate fanbases. At the same time, I kind of understand some of the backlash to some of these "hot takes." There are so many attention seekers out there that it's hard to tell whether someone genuinely believes these things or whether they are just trolling. Fortunately for me, my opinion on this week's game isn't completely off from what most people seem to think. Unfortunately, it's also one of the first times in the six years I've been doing this that I have to broach one of the "forbidden" topics. 

You can't discuss Disco Elysium, initially released for PC in 2019 before being ported to consoles in 2021, without wading into the realm of politics. The game was developed and published by ZA/UM, a company created by Estonian novelist and musician Robert Kurvitz in an effort to adapt a tabletop RPG he had been working on into a game. It was also set in the same world as Kurvitz's published novel "Sacred and Terrible Air," a world that was apparently born of countless gaming sessions with his friends as a teenager. Look, there has been a lot of controversy surrounding Disco Elysium, controversy I wasn't really aware of until after I played the game. I'm really not going to go into it here, but there's a lot of bad blood between the people responsible for the game and the studio that doesn't in any way effect the way I am going to score it. 

From what I've read, it seems like an intensely personal and political situation, one I definitely don't want to discuss. As it is, we have enough politics to talk about with the game itself, as Disco Elysium's narrative is very heavily focused on dueling political factions. It also frequently prompts the player to provide their political opinions through the main character, with certain conversations allowing your character to respond with far left, left, centrist, right, or far right answers. It's not something the game hides, anyone that has any knowledge of politics will know exactly which option corresponds to which. That being said, you also aren't pushed to choose one and the game doesn't try to cast one path as the "correct" one. In fact, I think it does a great job of pointing out the flaws of and poking fun at all of the political positions. I don't know the guy, but based on research it seems like Kurvitz has some political beliefs that some people might find controversial. I have to give credit where its due, this doesn't come through at all as his alleged positions are skewered just as much as any other position. 

While politics play a major role in the story of Disco Elysium, the game is about solving a murder at its core. You play as Harry DuBois, a detective in the Revachol Citizens Militia, who has been dispatched to the Martinaise district of the city to investigate a killing. It's the year '51, almost 50 years since communist revolutionaries overthrew the Suzerainty, essentially a monarchy, and established the Commune of Revachol. This commune didn't last long, as it itself was overthrown by a coalition of other nations six years later. Even all these years later, Revachol is still recovering from the invasion and nowhere is this more apparent than the coastal district of Martinaise. The area is still in a state of disrepair, many of its people live in poverty and struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. The bullets may have stopped flying decades ago, but the political factions involved are still very much at war. This has lead to the area becoming a powder keg, where one small spark could ignite full fledged violence in the streets. The people of Martinaise prefer to police themselves and greatly distrust the RCM, the sort-of-officially appointed police force. All of this would make investigating a serious crime like murder a challenge for even the most elite detective at the top of his game. And Harry...is not at the top of his game. Upon arriving in Martinaise, he proceeds to get absolutely hammered drunk, leading to him blacking out and him giving himself retrograde amnesia. The game starts with you waking up in a trashed hotel room at an establishment called the Whirling in Rags, unsure of who you are or where you got there. It's up to you, alongside your partner Kim Kitsuragi, to solve a grisly lynching while simultaneously putting together the pieces of your life.

While it's labeled an RPG, Disco Elysium is very different from traditional examples of the genre. There is no combat to speak of, with the entirety of the game focused on using conversation to get proceed through the game. I know I've talked about this before, but I don't really have that much familiarity with tabletop RPGs. I've been told DE is essentially a tabletop RPG in video game form, but I can't really speak to that. The game I've heard it most compared to is Planescape: Torment, but I've never played that so I can't really comment on that either. To me, the best way I could describe it is it feels like a combination of an indie walking simulator and the conversation portion of the Mass Effect games (albeit with much better dialogue). 

You do still gain experience points to level up, which allows you to power up one of 24 skills. These are tied to one of four primary stats, Intellect, Psyche, Physique and Motorics. All of these skills will help you in some way, whether it's allowing you to recall critical information during a conversation or determine if someone is lying to you. These are also tied to skill checks that come up in conversations, with higher stats in certain abilities making specific checks easier. None of the skills are more important than the others and there are maybe two or three checks throughout the game that absolutely require investment into certain abilities. Not having enough points into a certain ability may change the way you have to play the game, but you can almost always find a way to do what you need to do. You can further increase your skills by internalizing thoughts in the "thought cabinet," which can be expanded with skill points. Once you learn a specific thought, it takes a certain amount of in game hours to fully add. Once complete it will provide you with statistical and other bonuses. I kind of like all of this as it prevents min maxing and eliminates the whole "ideal build" thing that most RPGs have. This is definitely a tabletop RPG thing and as a console RPG veteran it was kind of odd to get used to, but I think it was an overall positive.

Before we continue talking about the gameplay, we have to further set the stage on which the action takes place. As mentioned previously, Martinaise is a political tinderbox with various factions embroiled in a nebulous struggle that continuously shifts in form. Its current form is that of a labor dispute, with the dockworker's union on strike, protesting their current contract with the Wild Pines Trading Company. This time though, their demands have been taken to the next level: they want every member of the union to be on the WPTC board of directors. Like, every single one. The company representatives are absolutely not okay with this, leading to both sides being at a stalemate. This stalemate has led the union representatives to close the Martinaise harbor gates, leading to a massive traffic jam of truck drivers. Scabs have also begun to flood the area, counterprotesting for their "right to work," while the local Wild Pines representatives are at their wits end. So, when someone ends up dead, naturally it's a major problem and both sides who are trying to pin the death on one another. 

It's even worse for the everyday people of Martinaise, who are stuck in the middle of the conflict. It's against this backdrop that Harry and Kim must conduct their investigation, interacting with characters representing each side of the conflict and everyone in between. Any of them will help you in some way, provided you help them as well, but all of them will be essential in solving your case. You can also go out of your way to help members of the community, allowing you to gain further information and experience, though this will often take you far out of your way. Each day has limited time, though said time only advances during conversation, and you are on a five-day clock to complete your investigation. Saying why would be a bit too much of a spoiler, but Friday is a big day in the world of Disco Elysium. I managed to do most of the sidequests, but I really do like the idea of altruism making the game more difficult while also providing more of a benefit.

At the end of the day though, Disco Elysium is more about its characters and world building than gameplay or even its story. Martinaise really does feel like a poor neighborhood still unable to recover from a war a generation ago. The poverty, the drug use, the excessive drinking, it all feels very real and it's denizens also help with that atmosphere. First, you have the leaders two primary factions, with the pompous Joyce Messier representing the Wild Pines and the slovenly Evart Clare in charge of the union. These two have critical knowledge about the case and your background, so you will be interacting with them a lot. Both characters do a good job of encapsulating the best and worst aspects of their respective viewpoints and they simultaneously give you compelling reasons to help them while also kind of making you feel icky for doing so. Many of the citizens of Martinaise sympathize with or are outright associated these groups. Titus Hardie, a union member and vigilante group leader, serves as Clare's right hand, both antagonizing and helping Harry and Kim throughout their investigation. The scab leader, who doesn't really seem like a labor organizer, seems to sympathize with Messier and her corporate overlords, almost to the point it feels like he's on their payroll. 

Some of the characters you interact with will help you with your investigation. You will spend a lot of time talking with Cuno, a street kid who hangs around the crime scene and generally causes chaos. He isn't exactly keen on talking to a cop but getting him to open up will yield a wealth of information. Garte, the disgruntled manager of the Whirling in Rags, will help Harry piece together the events of the previous night (a night that saw Harry cause substantial damage to his establishment). The enigmatic Klaasje is critical in both the investigation and Harry's personal journey, although you always get the vibe she's not quite who she says she is. Others will ask for help with tasks around town that won't help you at all with your case, like investigating a cursed building or finding a mythical creature. There are so many characters to converse with that I could go all day naming them. Even minor characters have deep, well designed dialogue trees that make them worth talking to for one reason or another.

As mentioned previously, there is no real combat in Disco Elysium. Almost the entirety of the game is based on talking to other NPCs to gather information. On one hand, I found it made the gameplay a little one note. On the other, the dialogue trees are so deep and the dialogue is so good that it really makes you want to keep digging for more. I've heard so, so much about how great the writing in Disco Elysium is, it's a large part of why the internet loves it so much. I always take that sentiment with a grain of salt. I've come to realize that in the internet age, when someone says a game has "good writing" it really just means it's a game they like. Some use it as a cudgel, a way to tout their taste as superior and belittle others. Some use it almost as a justification for liking a game, while others throw it out as a talking point when they can't really define what it is about said game they like so much. In the retro gaming world, we have the additional layer of folks not understanding the difference between writing and translation/localization. It's why all of these years later, people are trying to convince themselves that the writing in Chrono Trigger is "brilliant." 

A lot of gamers conflate "good writing" with "any writing that talks about philosophy or politics," which I think is why the DE gets so much praise in that regard. All that said, I do think the writing in DE is actually very good, especially when it comes to dialogue. It's particularly impressive when you consider how extensive the dialogue trees are, and the options Harry has when speaking. He can be a good cop or bad, a capitalist or a communist, hot headed or levelheaded, or any combination you see fit. Every choice you make will impact you in some way, though some cause more ripples than others. This is also where your skills come in, as Harry's internal monologue will often help him make the "correct" choice in more difficult situations. Putting points into the encyclopedia skill, for instance, will allow Harry to recall information that can be used to his advantage in conversations. You may spend a lot of time doing the same thing, but at least that thing is well done.

While I understand why people love DE, there were a number of issues that prevented me from enjoying the game as much as others seem to. This might be a bit of a controversial take, but I absolutely hate the art style. Art is perhaps even more subjective than writing, so you may love the pastel artwork and muddied colors, but it just isn't appealing to me. I get it, Martinaise is supposed to be a gritty and dirty world and this impressionist art style is supposed to represent that. But to me, the blend of colors and muddy graphics make the game hard to see. I had to zoom in as tight as possible to keep myself from getting stuck on objects. It's not a huge deal, there isn't anything that's going to kill you or pits to fall in, but it's still frustrating. Even without that, I just don't like that style of art, though I recognize I'm in the minority there. While I love the characters as a whole, there's one I'm not sure how I feel about: Harry. It almost feels like the developers weren't sure whether they wanted him to be an avatar for the player or his own character. I think they leaned towards the former, but it kind of made a lot of the revelations about him feel flat. I don't want to give anything away, but there's a huge plot twist about why he has become the way he is and I didn't feel like I knew enough about him as a character to really make it hit. The game spent so much time essentially making Harry an avatar for me that I didn't really care all that much about him. Honestly, I find I have this problem with open world games in general. However, it's compounded here because DE is far more narrative and character driven than those games typically are. I have to give some credit here, a lot of the dialogue options really got me thinking about my own feelings and beliefs. But even in those scenarios, I always felt like I didn't ever know if I should respond with what I was thinking, or what I thought Harry would be thinking.

The biggest problem for me was, and it's a big one was that DE just wasn't all that fun to actually play. That may be a bit controversial, it may sound a little bit contrarian, and it's hard to really explain, but something about the moment-to-moment gameplay just felt like a chore. It's odd to say, because I felt like I had a good time playing the game, but not in the way I typically enjoy playing video games. I complain a lot about modern video games feeling like movies, but i almost feel like DE would have been better off as an interactive movie where you can stop and make dialogue choices. The conversations were great, but just about everything else just isn't enjoyable. Harry walks incredibly slowly and because the graphics are so muddy, it's hard to tell where you are walking. Again, you aren't racing against time or running from enemies or anything, but it's still frustrating and it slows down the pace of an already slow game. Martinaise isn't a very large area, but I found it annoying to traverse and I didn't realize you could fast travel until much later. Selecting items or NPCs to interact with felt almost random and I started a lot of accidental conversations with Kim when I was trying to put my cursor over the correct object. With so little to actually do, the controls should not be nearly as stiff as they are. Just about everything I did when I wasn't in a conversation felt like more of a chore I had to do than something I actually wanted to do. A lot of things just feel rushed or unfinished, like there were a lot of quality control issues. That extended beyond the gameplay, I don't usually talk about this stuff but I've never had a game crash on me as frequently as this one did. 

That being said, DE is an RPG at the end of the day and it hits a lot of the points that titles in the genre need to hit. It has a strong story, exceptional characters and an amazing world. It has some of the best dialogue I've ever seen in a game and provides a unique premise. I really do like the setup of having to solve a complex murder case in a tense atmosphere while also contending with amnesia. I really wish I could elaborate more about the story, but doing so would involve a lot of spoilers and I want to avoid that. I really think you should play Disco Elysium but be warned: it's going to require some patience and it's not for everyone. It has stiff, unresponsive controls and a pace that's much slower than what most gamers are used to. The former was a problem for me, though the latter wasn't. 

This is going to be a tough game to score, so I am going to look back at an older review as a point of reference. When I reviewed Nier: Automata, I had to weigh gameplay that wasn't my favorite against storytelling I really liked. I ended up deciding that since it was an RPG, the story would be weighted more heavily, as it's such a critical part of the genre. I think I am going to have to do the same thing here. I think I said I gave Nier a 10 for its narrative and something like a 7 or 7.5 for gameplay. DE is another 10 on the narrative front, but it's closer to a 5 on gameplay. You really need to have patience with this game to get the most out of it. Even with patience though, I just can't bring myself to put this game on the pedestal that the larger internet discourse seems to put it on. It's still an outstanding game and a must play for the narrative alone, just know what you are getting into before you start.

8.5/10