Zeph
Zeph
Virginia, United States
Currently Online
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109 Hours played
Not an excellent "game" but a phenomenal work of art

Disco Elysium is not a great game. It's clunky and doesn't explain its mechanics well and you're often punished for following the suggested course of action. And yet, with all that, it may be my favorite game of all time. I don't know if I have fun when I play DE, but it makes me FEEL. It has a message, deep and layered and complicated, it exists in constant conversation with both the player and itself. Loving this game is work, but it's work I've never been happier to do.




Rhetoric Medium: Success - Everything that follows will be poetic waxing and likely offers little not already contained in the summary above

Everything Disco Elysium contains can be boiled down to the two words in it's name: Disco and Elysium

First, Elysium: Not just the name of the world you play in, Elysium invokes the memory of the ancient Greek's blessed afterlife reserved for the righteous. Appropriate for an afterlife; DE itself is something of an epilogue. The main story has already happened; we do not play through the most important events in Elysium, we do not shape the world - we merely play the role in which we (the players) are cast in the ashes of what could have been. This feeling of afterlife is further reinforced by the ephemeral uncertainty the game's narrative enforces: having lost your entire memory, the main character learns about the world as the player does, creating a surreal parallel between the narrative and the experience of playing through the narrative. This result is a powerful harmonious ludonarrative backgroud which allows the game to speak not just to the character, but to the player and often itself.

Second, Disco: Finding joy in madness. Finding beauty in destruction. Having a staring contest with the void. Rage against the dying of the light. Dance like the world is ending. A middle finger to the status quo. Art. Life. Momentum. Disco.

An attempt at sober analysis

The mechanical star of Disco Elysium is the skill tree and thought cabinet. Disco's 4x6 skill system uses a tried and true foundation and builds on that to deliver an unforgettable gameplay experience. Because each skill has a narrative impact in addition to the mechanical, the skills you invest in reshape the entire subtext of the game. Invest in intellectual skills and the game offers you a cerebral experience, the world as understood through the prefrontal cortex. Invest in psychological skills and get a more emotional game, subtext colored (literally) by empathy and feeling. More points isn't always better - a high authority skill demands to be respected even over trivial slights; high electrochemistry will have be the voice of addiction calling you to indulge at every opportunity. Combined with a story where failures are often more interesting than success, and you get an highly re-playable experience that conforms itself to your choices in a way most RPGs can only dream of. The skill system plays on the ludonarrative as an expert musician, ensuring that the mechanics always present you the player with a response tailored to the protagonist as you've built him.

The characters around you all have individual motivations and backgrounds only revealed with passive skill checks - only a main character with high Espirit D'Corps can truly understand your colleagues in Jamrock. Only with high Inland Empire do you truly connect with your lifelong friend and necktie. The depth of these relationships is so tangible yet well concealed that any conversation about the game is sure to surprise even experienced players with paths-not-traveled and connections missed. For every theme woven through the fabric of the entire game, there's an additional depth that can only be revealed through multiple play-throughs. Characters who are one dimensional throwaways in one game can invoke powerful feelings of camaraderie in the next.

The above skill system would already be groundbreaking on its own, and it certainly pulled me in to the world, but the care and attention to narrative harmony doesn't stop at the mechanics. The art and music in the game is all approached from this holistic viewpoint - portraits are layered with meaning and symbolism. And below the surface of this meaning lurks the unashamed political commentary at the core of the game. You are constantly questioned about your actions; even ones encouraged by the game. Choose too many racist dialogue options, the game asks if you're a fascist; too much working class sympathy asks if you're a commie. Even when the game agrees with you it offers you scathing critique, asking you to follow the character's thoughts and words to their extreme end points. Similar to the skill system above, these political choices impact the mechanics of the game as well as the narrative. A fascist protagonist is constantly demoralized by their rhetoric, a liberal turns gibberish into cash; each an investigation into the very heart of the political stance.

The result is a thing of absolute beauty. The end of the communist vision quest moved me to tears. The final skill checks in the church if you help everyone filled me with a stillness so profound I spoke of nothing else for a week. On your first playthrough, none of this is evident. The game feels sad and plotting, following a man with no past and no future through the worst week of his life - but if you engage with the game on its terms, if you look for the beauty in decay, find meaning when the world screams that there is none; you can see this game for the masterpiece it is.

Disco Elysium is not a good game, but it is a great one. It deserves to be played if only out of respect for the art that it is. This game has lodged itself in my heart and there it will stay until my dying day. Disco Elysium is about hope in suffering, failing forward, navigating darkness with only the light of your cigarette, the bonds between us, the nature of humanity, and maybe solving a murder along the way.

This game does not hold your hand. It will call you homophobic slurs. It has engrained racism, misogyny, and violence that reflects the worst of the real world as an unflinching mirror. For those willing to look into that mirror and face the disgusting visage contained within, Disco Elysium offers something not found anywhere else in gaming. And for those who don't like what they find, it asks deep and rightfully unsettling questions about how we engage in the world. That makes Disco Elysium special, and my favorite game of all time - even if it's not the best.
Comments
/\/37RU/\//\/3R_w 30 Dec, 2019 @ 6:32pm 
pardon me, are you Aaron Burr, sir?
The Mad Queen 23 Sep, 2015 @ 11:47am 
:necropotion::pizzaslice: