Disco Elysium Puns

I will mostly be talking about role-playing games but I think most of this is also valid for other narrative games

I love playing narrative driven games but i always feel like I'm expected to get the best possible result, regardless if your intentions are to leave the world a better place than you found it or to destroy it and rule as a tyrant. This encourages practices that are detrimental to game experience, such as save scumming and using guides or walkthroughs.

Then arrives Disco Elysium where I never felt the need, to do any of that for a few reasons:

1. The main character. You play as failed cop (or at least start as one) you are not interested in solving the case, instead you are going through the motions of doing your job so that you can afford alcohol or cigarettes. No one expects you to do any better so you don't. This translates well to the act of playing the game, it's fine if you anger a witness into not speaking with you or miss pieces of evidence.

2. The setting: The world is bleak, I honestly don't know much about politics so I won't delve too deep into it. For me it felt like this world was very similar to our real one, so accept that you'll have to do things you'd rather not for powerful people you don't like just to get by. You can't expect everything to go your way so you just live with your failures, in the game you can of course save scum to fix your failures and follow a guide to get the best ending but thats not what this world is about so why bother.

3. Humor: The entire dialog in the game is entertaining, but failure and the following process of recovering from that failure led to some of the most hilarious events

4. Game design: This is perhaps the most important, the game needs to be designed in a way that you can still progress even when you fail and Disco Elysium does this pretty well. There are two different kinds of dice checks, white ones that you can retry when you learn more about them or increase your skills (such as analyzing evidence) and red ones that you can't (such as dialog options in a heated argument). Red checks serve as branching points of the story depending on what skills you decide to invest in and luck while white checks are used as a baseline for what you absolutely need in order to progress.

I feel like I’m on the verge of a mental breakthrough into my own psyche. This game is doing something to me. It introduced me to mental concepts that are helping me understand something deep about myself and i feel like I’m so close to uncovering it.

I really liked the prevailing idea of thoughts and data 'floating' in the air and being able to affect the physical world with thoughts. There's lots of really unique ideas here.

Just wanted to say I'm blown away by this game and with it being on sale it's a no brainer.

I finished this game about a week and a half ago, and I have been thinking about it ever since. I enjoyed it immensely, shot up to at least top 5 games of all times by the time I was done. It made me feel a way only one game has ever made me feel the way it did. (The other was Lisa the Painful btw) It's a fascinating piece of art, but I'm having trouble really coming to my own conclusions about what this game is. What it means to me, and what I think the real core of it is. I have these vague notions, feelings that tell me that I know what it is, but I can't in my mind conceptualize them. I'm coming here to ask, what was your experience with this game like? What did you take away from it? I think in seeing what others have to say and how they were affected, it may help to conceptualize my thoughts.

Apparently the majority find this a fantastic game and even the greatest RPG ever made. I really don't see that and I really gave it a good effort and I tried to like it. But alas, I couldn't. If I have to force myself to play something that is just not worth it.

Do people find this a great game because of the extensive writing? Yes, there is a LOT of text to go through. Possibly the most in any game I played. But using a lot of big and obscure words and long winded descriptions doesn't automatically make good writing for me. If you strip away all the fluff there is not much left and much of it is political ramblings which I just don't enjoy.

As for the gameplay: I view this more of a point and click adventure game without the puzzles than an RPG. Yes there are a LOT of stats but they are very obscure requiring you to read the extensive descriptions to even try to understand what they mean. Most of them result in certain responses in dialog to come up. The problem is that you can in no way predict what your stats will give you.

For example: if you increase your strength in a traditional RPG you know you will deal more damage. If, in Disco you increase your Inland Empire stat you don't know how that will effect gameplay... at all.
Maybe someone else can, but I certainly don't. I didn't feel in any way like I own my character.

It doesn't help that my character and all the others are exceptionally boring. Yes, the voice acting is good, but that doesn't help bring these characters to life. They are just not interesting at all.

Then there's just silly things that make no sense like a cop having to collect tares to make (little) money and putting on nonsensical clothes to increase stats just to pass certain skill checks.

Its not ALL bad. I liked the graphics and environments and I thought the voice over work of the narrator was quite funny at times. In fact the little enjoyment I did get in this game was mostly from how the narrator delivered his lines.

But I'm afraid his great effort alone wasn't enough to get me through the game.

Hi! I’ve been wanting to play a good story game that lets me decide with my own choices. A friend recommended Disco Elysium for my switch and said it was great but didn’t really go into detail. I looked up the game and it looks super interesting but it looks like it can be kind of complicated. If anyone’s played it, would you recommend? Thanks!

I had COVID (I'm vaccinated, and all healthy now) and got two weeks off of work. With truly nothing to do, I decided to beat some games sitting in my backlog once and for all. My brain feels really fried and I probably won't touch a game for a couple of weeks but I managed to make a significant dent into my backlog and it felt really good to do so. I have a few other games I beat but they were more recent so I'll hold off on talking about those.

Return of the Obra Dinn (10/10): I can't think of a single thing I didn't like about this game. I played it as soon as my symptoms got better and I'm glad I did because this game would have been brutal with all the coughing and sneezing. I'll get into it later but it gave me the detective-like brain-thinky experience I was so desperately looking for after playing Paradise Killer (more on that later). The aesthetic is fantastic and my only gripe is that I wish I could play it again for the first time. Truly one of the best games I've ever played.

Disco Elysium (10/10): I got this years ago and got stuck. I put it down after that and hadn't touched it until, well, recently. With the Final Cut updates, I thought it was the perfect time to jump in and just like Return of the Obra Dinn, I thought it was perfect. Aggressively intelligent and creative in all the ways I never thought possible, this game is the reason why I don't ever need to think about Planescape: Torment ever again.

Wasteland 3 (7/10): I've never played either of the other Wasteland games so my expectations were something more in the original two Fallout games and the more I played. The more I played, the more I felt like I had a much better grasp on what makes this IP separate from Fallout. There's a lot of overlap to be sure but overall, Wasteland's sense of humor and reactivity in the story-telling made this one a whole lot of fun to get through. Especially with a friend.

A Plague Tale: Innocence (8/10): I don't know why but I had really low expectations for this. I guess seeing that Focus Home Interactive label had me (unfairly) thinking I was in for a janky and underwhelming experience but no, not at all. Because of those low expectations, I think this might have been the biggest positive surprise for me in years. Even with Disco Elysium fresh in my brain, the tragedy and darkness of A Plague Tale still managed to impress me. The visuals are also really impressive.

The Outer Wilds (6/10): I get it. I know people love this ga

I have no idea what to play next. This game was so fantastic, what do you follow an experience like this up with? Open to suggestions.

So what should I play?

Nothings quite scratching the itch. I thought something light and fun would do it, but nope.

Looking for something similar, as in very story driven with Rog elements.

I've started playing ME legendary, that might do it. Wondered about wasteland?

Help me find something that I will feel is as amazing!!!

Although I do still need to finish Valhalla...

After reading and listening to spoiler-free opinions and critiques of the game, the general design sounds right up my street, but I have concerns over the length, replay value and ability to meaningfully influence the game's story and characters (I don't mind being told a good story, I just value the influence some of the better RPG's offer the player).

Could someone address these concerns of mine, and give a verdict on the value of the game to a very stingy someone who tends to lurk for sales, rarely spending more than €20 on games?

If you like Disco Elysium you are likely to have good taste, so let me know your GOATs! I'll go first:

• Red Dead Redemption II • Persona 5 Royal • Disco Elysium • The Last Of Us Part II • Bloodborne

Can you give me some recommends on works similair to disco elysium in tone and atmosphere or in narrative style and ideas , heck it doesnt have to be similair at all i just need something with this writing quality and impactfu and thought provokingl ideas (it could be anything : games , shows , comics , books etc)

(The Final Cut, of course)

Probably low key game of the year.

Well played, Estonian game devs.

I got Disco Elysium on sale the other week, and even though I finished it the other day I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The story was amazing, the atmosphere was great, the characters and world were super interesting, and the game mechanics were fantastic.

I’m a big fan of RPGs, but after playing this game I wish there were more that focused on character interactions instead of combat. I was on the fence about this game at first because I thought there would be some form of RTS combat, which I personally dislike, but I dived right in once I learned how little combat there would be. Although some of my favorite games feature combat, I think going forward more games deemphasizing combat would be a good way to tell more kinds of stories in a more empathetic way. It also reframed violence to be more impactful than in most games, the crime you investigate and the sparse episodes of violence that happen along the way hit much harder when you’re not dealing death around every corner.

I love the character building process of this game, it doesn’t overload you with too much information up front, instead giving you just enough info to get a sketch of the kind of character you want to role play as, then you’re free to adjust from there. It also adds such a great amount of replay ability, I’m taking a break to process the game and my specific character choices but I’m really eager to dive back in. Another great thing about character creation is the extent to which the character you make is reflected back at you, but also the freedom to change and become someone else. During my play through I chose the first archetype and invested heavily in INT skills, decided to be a communist, and sobered up. And my sobriety and my political aspirations felt important, and showed that I didn’t have to spend the whole game with the destructive and hopeless feelings and thoughts I began the game with.

Disco Elysium has got to be one of the best games I’ve ever played. If you don’t mind reading I’d definitely recommend this masterpiece.

I love being a Stadia Pro subscriber ... Except that I hate buying a game for fear that it will be added to the Stadia Pro offer in the coming months ... Because, it is not uncommon for a game discount is added to the Stadia Pro library the following month (ex: Dirt 5, Darksiders 3 ...)

Anyone have any idea of ​​the odds that Disco Elysium will be added to the Stadia Pro offering soon?

Edit: Thanks for all your comments, i bought it!