This weekend I finished my first playthrough of Disco Elysium, a primarily text-based game which involves investigating a murder in a fictional world.
It's difficult to know what to say about
Disco Elysium. The game has, as you may or may not have heard,
a phenomenal amount of text in it, and you will only encounter a portion of it on any given playthrough. Having been through it only once, I've seen only a fraction of the game's full text. And it has a lot to say.
There's no political scheme that makes it out unscathed in Disco Elysium, from the equivocating and ineffective centrists to the racist fascists to the nostalgia-brained royalists to the flailing and failed communists to the selfish capitalists. Revachol, the country in which the game takes place, is a former monarchy-turned-violent-communist-revolution where other, wealthier nations eventually decided to intervene and now Revachol is ruled by a coalition government of outsiders. Given this situation (the revolution was roughly fifty years prior to the events in-game), everyone has an opinion on politics here.
And the writing is remarkable! Incredibly descriptive, willing to make dark jokes which fit the characters at play while also creating moments of beautiful poignancy and pretty brutal commentary on the state of Revachol and what's been done to it and its people. There are truly lovely moments in Disco Elysium, but this is by no means a light-hearted or cozy game. Revachol, and the neighborhood in which the PC works in particular, is a pit. It's been made that way by the events of the last century, but a pit it is, and one that is teetering on the outbreak of further violence.
Furthermore, the PC, whose name I will not share for story reasons, is an absolute wreck of a man. Whatever you are picturing, it's worse. At least a dozen times I looked over my dialogue options and cringed at having to choose one of those. This guy undoubtedly should have been kicked off the force years ago, and muses at one point about whether or not he was sent on this case as a way to clown a rival police department (because he's such a loser). But the writers certainly have created a memorable character, and the PC certainly stands apart from stereotypes of competent lone wolf detectives. This guy wakes up in the opening scene of the game and can't remember his name or what the case is he's supposed to be investigating.
I really enjoyed getting the glimpses into the lives of the NPCs, which felt rich and varied, and you could really believe they had their own stuff going on when the PC wasn't around. Disco Elysium presents a colorful and believable cast of characters hanging around this struggling neighborhood in a struggling country trying to overcome both its past and its present. And it's hard to advance anywhere in the main story if you aren't helping some of these folks out; it's the connections with the people around him that help the PC succeed for the most part, and offering a helping hand to people who've long grown accustomed to being kicked while they're down is the only real way to start breaking down the mistrust and tension in the city.
Complimenting this triumph of writing is the artwork! Absolutely gorgeous; vivid, detailed, and full of so much character, both in the designs of the characters themselves as well as the captivating scenery. I was in love with the look of this game from the start and I'm still in awe.
Similarly, the voice acting here was great. Since the game is largely text-based, it really relies on the art and the actors to bring it to life, and they do not shirk. Each character voice is unique and appropriate to the given character; I can't think of any who stood out to me as weak links. A superb job by the whole cast.
My only complaint is that I was not in love with the gameplay. Advancing the plot, either in main quests or side quests, often relies on passing skill checks. Many can be re-tried ad nauseum, but will become locked once you've failed it, and can only be unlocked by investing XP in the necessary skill. The area you can explore is relatively limited, which means it's unfortunately easy to end up in the position of not being able to advance the plot because the checks are locked, and not being able to unlock the checks because you're out of ways to gain XP. It made parts of the game a very dull slog for me and I had to convince myself to keep going, at some points brute forcing my way through plot-necessary skill checks just to get things moving again.
The "thought cabinet" mechanic is also lacking. While it's an interesting concept and a great idea for story/gameplay integration (various events in-game can trigger thoughts which you can internalize for various benefits or drawbacks), it just doesn't work very well. It takes hours of in-game time to internalize a thought into the network--and time only passes when you're in conversation, so you can spent thirty minutes running around Revachol and not have passed a minute of in-game time--and you can't see before engaging with it what the benefits or drawbacks of a thought might be. So you may spend an XP and hours to internalize a thought only to realize it's useless, or worse, detrimental to your play style. Then you have to spend another XP to remove that thought. It's unnecessarily clunky.
However, having played it once and being more aware of the constraints of the gameplay, I probably will play it again, and hopefully avoid that issue, because the writing and characters in the game really do make it worth additional playthroughs I think. On the whole it's a very well-done game and deserves the attention its received.
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greghousesgf) wrote2025-07-08 11:03 am
