In Disco Elysium you incarnate a detective after a really bad hangover. You lost your memory. The main plot will revolve around solving a murder case but you may also opt in to piece back what you did in the past few days or solve several quests, some of which feel odd to perform for a detective. The game is centered around mature themes, livened up by humour. This largely sets aside some RPG codes such as the usual combat focus and choose to rely entirely on skill checks and dialogues. There are a lot of checks which will open thoughts or extra dialogue options to shape up how your character reacts to situations. This goes further with the thought cabinet feature: depending on dialogue choices you will get to select some thoughts that will provide boni and mali while opening up some more dialogue choices. For exemple you may get to think yourself as one of the "cop types". I really enjoyed the roleplay potential. I find it hard to impersonate characters with D&D alignment system but here the wealth of ideas and opportunities really helps. Skill description for exemple all come with supposed malus at high skill level. Admitedly I didn't felt these malus, however it inspired me to roleplay. My character specialized in composure (the ability to hide his feelings and read others) so I decided that he would always refuse to acknowledge being wrong. When prompted to give my opinion on things I had no clue about (which happens a lot when you lose memory!) it would lead me to digging myself in deeper in ridiculous lies and bad faith answers. Thought cabinet and in-game situations helped develop this aspect. As a little downside the main quest line was built oddly. This largely relies on passing white checks (skill checks you can retry, one condition being to increase the relevant skill). Checks can be made easier by talking, exploring so there's no hard lock however it led me to juggle with equipment to boost skills and spend points on skills I didn't want to.
