Disco Elysium

[Thirith]

Disco Elysium has broken me for other RPGs, it seems. It has a wonderful world, great writing, actual themes, it doesn't feel like a sourcebook as opposed to a story. Also, there's no standard RPG combat, something that I've rarely enjoyed particularly. God, I love this game.

[Anarchic Fox]

Yeah, who knew so much could be done with skill checks alone?

I barely survived death by uncomfy chair, only to die from gun anxiety. I thought I was stuck for a moment, but further exploration of the docks area yielded an extra motivation-boosting item. Later, I opted out of the "become an immense racist" dialogue option, only for my Rhetoric skill to pop up and demand that I start the next Communist Revolution. I said no, but it does make me wonder, does the game actually have a well-developed story branch for such a niche option?

[Aja]

Damn. I should've bought this when it was on sale. I want to start a communist revolution. What platform is everyone playing it on? I've heard the Switch version is clunky and crashes a lot, but I've heard the same about PS5. Probably won't get it on PC since I'd rather have either portability of the Switch or better graphics of the Playstation.

[Thirith]

I’d be surprised if the graphics were very different on PS5 compared to PC.

[demagogue]

I said no, but it does make me wonder, does the game actually have a well-developed story branch for such a niche option?

If you follow one of these tracks then it can enable special events to trigger, and sometimes the dialog will be a little different. Like I became a capitalist, so there was a better chance of finding loose change and Egg Head called me Tycoon. So it's not like an entire story branch, just some nice window dressing like that.

But sometimes they can be tied up with the story, too; like the art related objectives being connected with trying to be the world's best art critic. It has rules, but in the end the game does what it wants, so it can play with the rules and bend them; and it's usually interesting, so easy to roll with it.

[Anarchic Fox]

Speaking of which, I just accepted my Conceptualization skill's demand that I become an art critic. Cool to hear that'll bear fruit. I can see myself doing additional playthroughs in the future that embrace one ideology, or maybe an Apocalypse Cop game, but for this first go I'm not choosing a side. Edit: Okay, I said that, but then my Empathy skill started espousing Radical Incrementalism, and I ate it right up. I am a silly person.

Aja: it looks gorgeous on my Linux rig with its six-year-old graphics card. It's a rare indie game that really benefits from current hardware.

As for my progress... some of my skills have become high enough to be antagonistic, like a Logic skill that damaged me (to my shock) when I got wistful about a ruined building. I've found a Mug of Racism that gives special dialogue options with racists, and my Damaged Ledger transformed into a Ledger of Shame and Failure after yet another breakdown. I keep it equipped most times, because of the Empathy bonus. The first two power-brokers I spoke with ran circles around me, but then the lynch mob showed up in my hotel lobby, and started spilling vital info from the mere fact I already had an accurate headcount, so... yay me?

I'm currently fighting the temptation to add to my collection of situational sunglasses.

[Thirith]

If you follow one of these tracks then it can enable special events to trigger, and sometimes the dialog will be a little different. Like I became a capitalist, so there was a better chance of finding loose change and Egg Head called me Tycoon. So it's not like an entire story branch, just some nice window dressing like that.

I believe that in the Final Cut there's a bespoke quest for each of the broad ideological leanings. It's not massive, but neither is it just a five-minute thing, and I really liked the one I got.

[Anarchic Fox]

I feel like the authors' viewpoint is some kind of alienated Marxism, but the game makes a good job of making all three of communism, capitalism and centrism look appealing. The authors understand why people would, on both an emotional and a philosophical level, be drawn to those options. I also appreciate that it doesn't hesitate to call the fourth, reactionary option "fascism."

I am really surprised by how difficult I find the quandary of whether or not to help the union boss, particularly now that the stakes have been raised. It's intimidation and corruption, but it's also so minor that not doing the task makes me feel like I value moral purity above actual people's lives.

[Anarchic Fox]

It's been a year since I played the game, my memories will be a bit hazy.

However, I remember feeling a bit betrayed by the climactic shootout. First of all, one of your main objectives throughout the game has been to stop this from happening, and you just... can't. All you can do is mitigate the damage a little, using only a third of your repertoire of skills. And the most important variable in the outcome, whether Kim is wounded or not, comes down to a couple of skills that a brainy or empathetic character wouldn't have developed. Maybe I shouldn't have dug into the mechanics of the scene when trying to save-scum an outcome with Kim, but no way was I playing the rest of the game with Kuno. This entire scene feels like the game abandoning the design principles on which it had been built, in favor of telling a very specific story.

Then the murder investigation turned out to be inconsequential too, but I was fine with that, since the game is more about the main character's struggle with addiction and despair.

[Thirith]

The first time I played Disco Elysium, Kim was wounded in my game, and it felt absolutely right. For one thing I'd developed something of a rapport with Cuno, for another, I was much more of a fuckup than Cuno, so who was I to judge? I'd failed Kim, and not only in the shootout, so I was more than ready to give someone else a chance at what I felt could be redemption, because if Cuno gets that chance, even I could perhaps get one, eventually.

Not being able to stop the shootout from happening felt entirely right to me. Disco Elysium isn't about me being the hero, me saving the day. Mitigating the damage a little sounds like the small graces that my character could expect at best, on a very good day.

I don't think that the murder investigation turns out to be inconsequential, because it tells you something about the failures of Revachol to figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together.

[Anarchic Fox]

For me the feeling of betrayal didn't come from my being ineffectual in the shootout; that was entirely in line with my character. It came from the fact I couldn't avert the shootout, or change its nature beforehand. One of the mercenaries has been agitating a crowd for a week, but cannot be touched. The other two have unknown locations, precisely the sort of thing you should be able to investigate in a game where you play a detective. Even the most empathetic character can't convince the Hardy Boys or the union boss to take the threat more seriously, and not even the most deranged Superstar Cop character can side with the mercenaries.

The game turned its back on its prior expansive freedom, one of its strongest attributes, for the sake of this one scene.

[Thirith]

I have to say that this didn't bother me. I agree it's somewhat railroaded, but while the shootout always happens, your actions have an effect - as you say, you could end up with Cuno for the last part of the game, and that's not inconsequential. At the same time, it fits for me that your agency, your ability to make bigger changes in the world, is limited.

[demagogue]

The People Make Games team made a video on all the legal troubles wracking ZA/UM and complicating the development of DE2. It's a fascinating story and they do a good job telling it, including interviews with key people.



The overall message I got was that both sides of the dispute were in the wrong in some respects. Robert went off the grid right after the release of DE right when he needed to tend to what was happening to the business the most, and the business people filled the vacuum in very smarmy but not necessarily illegal ways.

The really damning factoid against Robert was when he asked for the source code in very dodgy circumstances, heavily implying that he was going to take it to help boot strap his own game studio, which he ended up actually doing (sans the code). Even if he is the heart and soul of the game's world and ethos, there are some lines you can't cross if you're going to be part of a team in good faith.

Everything about Ilmar's interview was definitely dodgy from the perspective of a true believer, but businessmen gonna business, and of course you have to distinguish what's smarmy from what's actually illegal and what's against the interests of the shareholders, i.e., violating his fiduciary duty. It wasn't clear that the smarmy things he was doing was actually bad for the financial stability of the company, and there were a lot of other actions he was taking to make sure DE got released and marketed to help become the success it became, which is somewhat inconsistent with someone just trying to gut the company and run. But I don't know all the law involved, so I won't predict how the case will come out. But I wouldn't be surprised if everything he did didn't rise to the level of illegality or breach of contract or whatever. (There's also the bit about helping the other guy avoid paying his liability from another case. There might still be something there if the facts shake out that way.)

One thing working in his favor is just how informal the company was, still run like it was an artists' cooperative. The point of formalizing things isn't to give up on your values but to protect your values. If you run things like a coop, you're putting yourself at risk of not only getting screwed over, but not having anything like documentation or procedures to protect yourself.

Long story short, I think the lesson here is: if anything like this--where you're trying to be an organization that has both an ethical/artistic mission but also trying to be a sustainable business--is going to actually be sustainable, you need to have good people that are on board with both sides of the coin, they need to share the values of the organization AND they need to have financial and legal sense about how to make a business run and protect itself and its mission. That's the lesson from Looking Glass Studio's early demise. That's even a lesson I sometimes see working with the Darkmod team in giving unofficial legal advice. You need to have both sides of the coin, or it either loses its soul and becomes like any other soulless studio, or it loses its stability and can't sustain anybody working for it, or it destroys itself in acrimony and warring factions. If you skimp on one side, things can fall apart fast. That's just my take.

[Aja]

I'm interested in watching this. I assume it doesn't talk about the plot too much? I put DE on hold, but I do plan on finishing it.

[Starker]

Not at all, actually. There's only a passing mention of Kim Kitsuragi from what I can remember.

[Anarchic Fox]

Thanks for the summary, Demagogue. I generally can't make it through video essays. It's good to have some perspective of the post-DE state of the company and creators.