Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

The Church was apparently built around a hole into the pale, but, what is the pale? Just an awesome piece of art.

A creatively dark detective story which lets you overcome (or not) the deeply felt crisis the protagonist lives through. Minced with roleplaying elements from pen and paper games, even my second playthrough feels live and vibrant.

Did a 360 kick on a huge meathead then died by kicking a postbox. Great game

Playing through it it's clear this game is a labour of love. From a gameplay and mechanics perspective it's all what Planescape Torment and all its clones should have went with: if your game is not about simulating combat, it's silly to tack your mechanics on top of a butchered version of D&D or a clone of it. It's like when you ask someone "have you tried NOT playing D&D?" and they actually considered it. The game's plot is not that deep, but it's lived intensely by its characters. If this were a detective novel, on a scale from "Poirot" to "Maigret" it stands firmly on the latter end of the spectrum. The game's approach to politics is refreshing. Althought you can taste the gauche sensibilities of its makers, the game doesn't loom a "correct" ideology over you by which everything is ultimately judged (except for a deep compassion for the human condition). The game is famous for "letting you be extremely fascist or communist", but I think it's a bit misleading. While the game will not comment about your choices, neither in condemnation or praise (indeed, your character will absolutely stand behind what you choose to make him say), it makes light a bit of how ultimately hollow political posturing is (and won't even lock you in your choices; you can, after all, say the ultrafascist thing at one time and the ultracommunist thing at another). At the same time, it portraits with grace how much these beliefs mean to different people; even the super racists are depicted humanely. As I mentioned before, if there's one overarching ideology throughout the game is that being human is painful and thus you should have a bit of mercy for other people. In our lifetime we only get to play a finite number of games. I for one am glad that I got to play this one.

This game is so well written and with such good voice acting that I find myself frequently laughing outloud while playing it. The game mechanics are based on dialogue choices and checks related to a series of skills that you can upgrade with XP and through itens and actions. Simple enough and very story driven, what really makes it shine is the exceptional story, voice acting and art.