Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

Disco Elysium has by far the best writing I've ever experienced in any game, and that's an understatement. I'm also a book nerd and have often found myself thinking, whilst paging through some novel: "well, the writing here is good, but it ain't no disco elysium". The characters feel real. Blood and meat, and bones real. Kim is so well-written he sometimes doesn't even feel like an NPC, but like a bro you're enjoying this experience with. The world, while being really unique also feels real and you learn it in the best way possible - with a character that has a story-justified reason to learn the world with you. It's masterfully clever. The art style is awesome (but that's also subjective), it kind of grasps at the moment in modern art evolution after all the Dalis and Picassos rulebreaking fun era and before all the 90s-00s putting weird stuff in a jar and calling it art era. The voice acting is the best I've ever heard, especially the narrator. How one guys can make 13 different characters sound at the same time distinct and the same is beyond me. Disco Elysium is trully a 'narcotic' experience that breaks your expectations and then picks up the broken pieces of them and build a marvellous collage. ELECTROCHEMISTRY(success): Did he just say 'narcotic experience'? Why are you still waiting, BRING. IT. ON! VOLITION(success): Don't listen to him. He's just attempting to share something. Truth is you will visit Revachol for a while and then leave it. As a guest, not as a local. You will not stay at the whirling in rags, you will not wear ridiculous ties. You will feel bad about leaving. You will wish you never visited in the first place. Then one day, you'll walk down a street in the evening, watch the sodium lamps radiate monocolor and then hear the tinhorns sound in your head. Then all will be fine again.

After listening to 10+ hours of inconsequential drivel from different NPC's, this bit of text from the game summarized the experience perfectly for me: " 'And, as you know, they have this very distinctive dress uniform with scarlet breeches and little cylindrical fur caps, I think these are called...' You daze off, as Trant tells you about the peculiarities of mounted police forces in central Occident." It's like the writer suddenly realized "What the heck am I even writing about here??? There aren't any mounted police forces or central Occident even in the game! Let's end the dialogue quickly this time. Oh my god I wrote the ENTIRE GAME like this..." There is just way, way too much information about things that don't matter in the context of the main quest, side quests or the world that you can interact with. There are many more problems in the game, but I'm very forgiving about general gameplay and design hiccups in a story driven game if the characters, the world and the story are interesting. It's a shame the game fails in that department, because it does have some potential. The art is good. A couple of the main story NPC's are written and voiced nicely. When I interacted with them, I was thinking the game would be so much better if all characters gave out such relevant information. Despite the 2 star review I'm willing to try their next game, if the writing is more focused on the immediate happenings of the game. The parts of the game where that happened, I enjoyed.

I like (mostly funny) click'n'point adventures, where you can goof around and I like RPGs (inparticular action RPGs), but I don't get this game. The game feels like a very slow and detailed version of King's Quest I. I don't feel free to goof around, since everything might have consequences. You can die, time is constantly moving and I might have messed up already two hours ago by giving a wrong answer or by leveling a wrong stat. So far the murder mystery story did not grab me either and the NPCs love to talk about fantasy racism and politics (without funny/clever/satirical connections to the real world - or I don't get them).

There, the heading says it all. This is, simply put, the best game ever made. It is hauntingly beautiful, quietly depressing, genuinely hilarious and existentially frightening. It juggles heavy philosophical ideas, wacky antics, absurdist undertones, a thrilling murder plot, a failed communist revolution and many, many more themes - and manages to do so in such a fantastic way that, once it all came together, I was left genuinely speechless. You know, the kinds of games where, after beating it, you just sit quietly staring at the credits rolling by while trying to find your way through all the emotions coursing through your body? I had that with Disco Elysium. I sat there quietly for a good 10 minutes just feeling it all. You probably already know all the essentials about the game: isometric adventure game where you play an washed-up amnesiac police detective/bum trying to solve a murder in a run-down part of town in a unique world. I hesitate to describe more, not least because the narrative has more branches than Yggdrasil and every run is guaranteed to be unique. One caveat: This game is text-heavy. Thanks to the Final Cut adding voiceovers to everything, it isn't as heavy reading as something like Planescape Torment, but you still need to be able to sit and enjoy dialogue upon dialogue without skipping through them, if you really want to enjoy this game. Also, you need to be okay with RNGesus screwing you over at the most crucial of times - a lot of outcomes in the game are decided by dice rolls, and if you're the type who rage-quit out of XCOM 2 because your sniper missed a 96% shot then this will probably not be for you either. If you are okay with the above then you can truly savor one of the most unique games ever made. As I saw a video essay term it: "There will never be another game like Disco Elysium". Truer words were never spoken. Play it. Something beautiful is going to happen.

Disco Elysium is an experience. While inspired by CRPG classics (notably Planescape: Torment, although you play as a drunken cop and not an immortal warrior), it’s very much its own beast with a unique atmosphere and smartly-designed mechanics. Being a narrative-driven game where everything is achieved through dialogue trees and dice rolls, DE is thoroughly well-written, and a great example of gameplay/writing integration. It goes to great lengths to let you forge your character’s personality as you see fit: the Detective will be a different person in each game, with events and conversations each time playing out in a new way. It’s pretty much impossible to see all the game has to offer in one playthrough, but DE cleverly encourages you to embrace your failures, as selecting terrible dialogue options or failing checks will often yield hilarious results! What I’d consider a design flaw though is that some skillchecks are needed to complete important quests… And if your character is not built for them, those can be nearly insurmountable, even with temporary modifiers applied. It can be frustrating. Still, Describing DE in terms of gameplay does not do it justice. It’s a dense and heartfelt experience, hard to sell without spoilers. It’s about psychology and politics. About the comedic and tragic aspects of mental illness. About the secrets people and places hold from you. About all the things we messed up and can never fix again. About all the hope and beauty left in the world. About so much more. It feels a bit “artsy” on occasion, but has so much to say and says it so well that you can’t fault it for that. So yes, Disco Elysium is worth your time and attention, for all these reasons and more (I haven’t even gotten into the stellar quality of the visuals, music and voice-acting!) Considering the issues around the studio that made it, they may never release anything else of this quality, but they still game us one of the best and most unique RPGs on the market.