This is a CRPG that does away with most of the systems-based interactions in its world, such as combat or crafting, to focus purely on story and investigation. This tends to make a game shorter, but there’s quite a lot here.
I absolutely love the bits of reactivity everywhere. It’s not necessarily all intricately connected, where your actions in one scene completely change the actors in another. But there’s a wealth of little callbacks all over the place. Reading a book that you find on the ground that teaches children about the alphabet is already funny, but getting to discuss that same book later, in a book club for intellectuals, is an even more hilarious payoff. The player engages with lore in the same way, such as how a certain light-bending man ties into the concept of “infra-materialism”. It’s great attention to detail.
It’s astonishing how many extra observations and quips link into dialogue from player skills as well, often seeming to trigger some helpful tangents. On rare occasions, even your clothes can affect what characters say to you. The “thought cabinet” system, where the player internalizes ideas (like becoming a fascist, or suicidal ideation) can also influence dialogue directly… though this was probably rare too. The thought cabinet is primarily a source of stat bonuses and penalties, but it provides some extra flavor for role-playing.
The dice-rolling skill check system is interesting, and I’ve gone back and forth on it a bit, but I don’t think it’s quite ideal. The red checks, which cannot be repeated if failed, are great. The consequences of failure are often too hysterically funny to even consider taking back by reloading a save, and nothing livens up a run like a catastrophic failure that affects the story. Crucially, it also won’t hurt in terms of experience gain or tangible wealth. When you’re worried you might have a hard time beating some final boss if you don’t collect some full set of legendary equipment, it may be harder to swallow the failures along the way, but in Disco Elysium, the whole game is about failure.
Unlike the red checks, the common white checks often feel like needless delays. Failure on them isn’t some either-or development, but something to make you spend skill points in places other than where you wanted to, so you can attempt the checks again. I preferred to specialize in specific types of skills, such as brain over brawn. But while I probably missed a thousand passive Physique rolls in conversation — something that, more than any other feature, adds some interest in a second playthrough — it was pretty unlikely that I would leave a white Physique check unfinished by endgame. I usually didn’t try to save-scum them when I had no hope of success, but if I could equip enough items to get myself to a 25% chance or so, I probably would — just maybe not right away.
To nitpick a bit, I also found it annoying to organize clothes for skill point bonuses. The list of incomplete checks on the map screen are also kind of a useless mess.
I like the ambiguity around the skills like Inland Empire, which seem to be psychic powers of a sort. Are these “para-natural” powers real, or is my character just crazy, deluding himself into irrational explanations for undeniably good instincts? These skills can at times reveal or foreshadow information you don’t otherwise know (but perhaps can’t prove), but also (particularly in Inland Empire’s case) tends to gullibly suggest the most irrational choice in every circumstance, and might just as likely lead you astray. One might assume it to be fake, then, a matter of coincidence, but it’s also clear that the world of Disco Elysium is not our world, and some things can’t be explained away so easily.
Having your tie say wacky things to you was a bit much, though. Kinda forced, and not that funny, at least most of the time.
The character writing is generally great, from the player character, to Cuno, Joyce… but Kim most of all. As your partner, he really changes the experience of the game. He’s likeable, and if you have any empathy, it’s hard to contemplate actions that would make things difficult for him. He’s a very effective tool at keeping you from just playing out yet another murderhobo role.
Disco Elysium is a very political game, but it’s not always easy to attribute specific beliefs to the writing team. I know there were some Marxists, but I don’t know how many cooks were in that kitchen, or how varied they were ideologically. The player’s own views are not assumed. There are many themes about leftist perspectives — armchair intellectualism, obscuring personal sensibilities in class-conscious language, use of violence, coping with hopelessness… but sometimes it feels less like self-mockery and more like actual cynical liberalism. Sometimes.
Events in the story could make the case that incremental capital-friendly development is the humane path forward, while a character might suggest that this is just a mask for more relentless violence and injustice. Simply observing that injustice exists will already make the game seem like pinko commie drivel to a lot of people anyway — and it’s far more than any other games offer there — but the game doesn’t really try to set up proof for any one perspective.
Other parts of the story were less appreciably executed to me. You do a lot of accounting for messes your character made before the game even started. It helpfully sets the tone for everything to follow, but it isn’t quite as fun as making excuses for all the deaths you became responsible for by failing a red check.
Much of the story revolves around the character’s obsession with his old ex. You kinda have to either hate her and blame her (or even all women) for everything that’s wrong in the world, or refuse to acknowledge the failure, and continue to hopelessly grovel to get her back. It may be fitting in a storytelling sense, that you have choices but they’re all constrained by your obsession… but I didn’t feel like I saw enough of a sympathetic or interesting side of her to warrant that behavior. The relationship is dead on arrival, but you can’t move on, even though it seems like it would be nicer to just date Lilienne. The brain understands the story, but the heart doesn’t.
There are interesting things to be said about the culprit of the case you’re trying to solve, but it fucks up the classic rules of a detective story by having the killer be a character who didn’t figure into the tale at all until they were revealed in the final act. As it goes: “The mysterious stranger who turns up from nowhere in particular… whose existence the reader had no means of suspecting from the outset, spoils the play altogether.”
There’s also a last-minute surprise twist, but while very cool, it felt a bit cheap in hindsight, as it was a very convenient find for the player in saving their own reputation.
The studio behind the game has recently seen some controversy, with the original creators apparently having been forced out. The dust has yet to settle on that story, but it would be a shame for the creators to be pulled away from their intellectual property, as the depth of world-building was one of the best parts of the experience, and I would have loved to see other sides of it. I still want to know more about Dolores Dei. I want to explore the pale.
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