This is, by all technicalities, a quirky indie RPG about depression
an even better version of an already 5/5 game. an adventure game, a crpg (in the vein of planescape: torment), a detective sim, a sprawling choose-your-own-dementia jamboree, a dreary mucking-around in self-destruction, inner dreams, despair, love, hope (?!), and loads of politics. you're the sorry cop, the hobocop, the broke-dick disco king of dire debauchery. an absolute scumbag who, just maybe, wants the world to be better. you have the coolest partner, kim kitsuragi: a moral anchor of sorts—sympathetic, albeit amply capable of becoming... displeased with you. it all depends. there are many ways to blaze your trail through revachol. in the milieu of computer games, disco elysium is a rare flower reeking of human life, history, and the yearning of loneliness in a capitalist shit-world. breathe in the stink and let the heartless wind run its fingers through your hair.
Makes sense that most of the communist-chanting options are played almost as jokes, because no one believes those grand statements anymore. More than that, they can't believe. They almost lost their meaning. This town is more complicated than all of that.
The sense of longing and the pain that comes from nostalgia are not enough: the world, the people, society, they have layers and layers. Reality is broken, and the past holds too many traumas for everyone. But you can still peel most of those layers, and get to the bottom of the heart. It doesn't feel like a task or a chore in any moment, it's like the answers are always driving you forward in such a small and concrete environment. You HAVE to keep going!! Be the detective, untangle every mess in your life and roll those dice!!!
The sense of longing and the pain that comes from nostalgia are not enough: the world, the people, society, they have layers and layers. Reality is broken, and the past holds too many traumas for everyone. But you can still peel most of those layers, and get to the bottom of the heart. It doesn't feel like a task or a chore in any moment, it's like the answers are always driving you forward in such a small and concrete environment. You HAVE to keep going!! Be the detective, untangle every mess in your life and roll those dice!!!
When going into disco elysium, I really didn't have much to expect. for me, an ADD addled brain who generally dislikes primarily story focused games, it didn't sound very appealing. but the concept of an rpg with no combat sounded worth a try, and boy did it deliver. In short, disco elysium is a beautiful, human story that captures the best, and worst parts of humanity, being both sickly sweet and heart wrenchingly bitter. Its a game that gives me the same sort of joy I get from exploring real life abandoned buildings, having deep conversations with complete strangers, pondering the history of something completely insignificant, or even just contemplating on what's the fucking point of it all. Hats off to ZA/UM for this being their first game, what a fucking way to get your game career started.
CRPG developers, D&D GM's, crime novelists, screenwriters, and Christopher Nolan all fall asleep and dream of making something like Disco Elysium.
Harry Whatsapp
Kim Kitsuragi: You should kill yourself NOW.
Titus Hardie: You should kill yourself NOW.
Kim Kitsuragi: I NEED cock detective
Cuno: You should kill yourself NOW.
Garte: You should kill yourself NOW.
Sans Undertale: Can I borrow 500 réal
Kim Kitsuragi: You should kill yourself NOW.
Titus Hardie: You should kill yourself NOW.
Kim Kitsuragi: I NEED cock detective
Cuno: You should kill yourself NOW.
Garte: You should kill yourself NOW.
Sans Undertale: Can I borrow 500 réal
The Final Word In Not Wanting To Be This Kind of Animal Anymore Simulation
Disco Elysium is undeniably one of the most concentrated, and achieved, works to focus on individual introspection on the most granular level. It’s clear about it from the get go, it begins with a typical RPG character builder, then an inner dialogue, with the background of a pitch black screen, then the first steps in the game in a cramped hotel room, where the inner voices will be your first companions, and finally the first long dialogue tree being established with, of course, a mirror. There is an important detail revealed in this first contact, the main character doesn’t remember anything, not even his own name. If there is not a memory, not a past, only one thing remains, the current self. The absence and rediscovery of identity flow in a perpetual conversation from our protagonist to the whole of Martinaise and back.
Though its RPG abstractions may seem childish at first (and they are, as in imaginative), the game creates a system to represent the particular human being through their various voices/traits. It zooms into what seemed to be already atomic and divides again. It may look like a total misunderstanding of something that is impossible to classify, let alone gamify, though, the brilliance is in being unashamed of its decision, of using the system as a means to construct the being, and not as a goal.
The presence of a layer of humor helps to ease its mechanical premise, and it won’t take long to be delighted with the flavor that each voice has. This same humor helps to introduce its devastated world. Disco Elysium’s premise is an easy subject to throw in the misery well, yet the total opposite occurs. The at first chaotic mind of our detective turns out to be the perfect lenses through which to discover an hypersensorial world where each corner and conversation is a suggestive sign of life, past or present, still palpable regardless. As our job is that of a detective, our instinct will be of adventuring, exploring and, of course, talking. The conversations are soon revealed as labyrinths where each character traces a glimpse of their own world. A world so present and so alive in so many people that their existence and their connection end up weaving the tapestry that is the true human life of seemingly dead Martinaise.
The game is insistent on searching for life in the home of death. A commercial mall where no store survives becomes the place for a woman to give birth to roleplaying dice, even if the roleplayers and game makers are gone too. An abandoned church becomes the home of the night raves of the youth that wants to connect with the ethereal in their own terms. The human vitalism is evident, the melancholy of Disco Elysium is noticing that the unstoppable external interests to exploit Martinaise inevitably permeate every one of these lives.
After life -- death;
After death -- life again.
Though its RPG abstractions may seem childish at first (and they are, as in imaginative), the game creates a system to represent the particular human being through their various voices/traits. It zooms into what seemed to be already atomic and divides again. It may look like a total misunderstanding of something that is impossible to classify, let alone gamify, though, the brilliance is in being unashamed of its decision, of using the system as a means to construct the being, and not as a goal.
The presence of a layer of humor helps to ease its mechanical premise, and it won’t take long to be delighted with the flavor that each voice has. This same humor helps to introduce its devastated world. Disco Elysium’s premise is an easy subject to throw in the misery well, yet the total opposite occurs. The at first chaotic mind of our detective turns out to be the perfect lenses through which to discover an hypersensorial world where each corner and conversation is a suggestive sign of life, past or present, still palpable regardless. As our job is that of a detective, our instinct will be of adventuring, exploring and, of course, talking. The conversations are soon revealed as labyrinths where each character traces a glimpse of their own world. A world so present and so alive in so many people that their existence and their connection end up weaving the tapestry that is the true human life of seemingly dead Martinaise.
The game is insistent on searching for life in the home of death. A commercial mall where no store survives becomes the place for a woman to give birth to roleplaying dice, even if the roleplayers and game makers are gone too. An abandoned church becomes the home of the night raves of the youth that wants to connect with the ethereal in their own terms. The human vitalism is evident, the melancholy of Disco Elysium is noticing that the unstoppable external interests to exploit Martinaise inevitably permeate every one of these lives.
After life -- death;
After death -- life again.
It’s a nice bonus that the intricate and politically charged murder mystery plot is as thoroughly intriguing as it is; but for you, the protagonist of Disco Elysium, the main villain is yourself, specifically your (Ancient Reptilian) brain.
It’s an RPG in which the biggest obstacles can be just not saying the stupidest thing to a suspect, done through chance-based engagement with corners of your mind - logic, empathy, authority, volition, ‘inland empire’ (one of many Lynchian influences throughout) and many more.
Alongside the gorgeous painterly art style, the game’s key strength is its impeccable writing: the funny parts are funny, the narrator’s vivid descriptions are stirring, the characters and relationships feel incredibly real. It’s a game for people who love a really really really good book. Fuck it, Disco Elysium is literature.
Lastly, it’s just a gripping detective game in which piecing information together bares deeply satisfying results, and taking risks are, more often than not, met with rewards. A must play.
It’s an RPG in which the biggest obstacles can be just not saying the stupidest thing to a suspect, done through chance-based engagement with corners of your mind - logic, empathy, authority, volition, ‘inland empire’ (one of many Lynchian influences throughout) and many more.
Alongside the gorgeous painterly art style, the game’s key strength is its impeccable writing: the funny parts are funny, the narrator’s vivid descriptions are stirring, the characters and relationships feel incredibly real. It’s a game for people who love a really really really good book. Fuck it, Disco Elysium is literature.
Lastly, it’s just a gripping detective game in which piecing information together bares deeply satisfying results, and taking risks are, more often than not, met with rewards. A must play.
This review contains spoilers
[Holds up a mug that depicts a person of Samaran descent frolicking in a field of saffron flowers, buck-toothed and grinning feeble-mindedly.] What do you think of this? This your mug?
I've long been apprehensive about starting Disco Elysium. It can take a bit of time for me to settle in with a text heavy game and I have very little familiarity with CRPGs. It seemed so daunting to me, but I finally came around when my friend Larry proposed streaming Disco over Discord with him as my guide, helping me acclimate to the game's various systems and stop me from running past points of interest and dying in incredibly stupid, preventable ways.
I initially intended to build protagonistHarry Du Bois NAME UNKNOWN as a detective whose ability to perceive the true nature of the world also allowed him to observe the supranatural. Terrible. What a boring idea. Larry gently nudged me off this path by pointing out that it's possible to build Harry into a drug cop - as in, a cop who does (and benefits from) drugs. That spoke to me, so I dumped my stats into Psyche and Physique with a point each in Motorics and Intellect. During the early parts of the game, I let Half Light and Elcotrochemistry take the wheel. Disco Elysium is a smart game, too smart for me. I'm an idiot, and so building Harry in a way that was authentic to how poorly I'd interface with a world full of philosophers and revolutionaries felt like the most appropriate way to navigate the game. I'm the kind of guy who can pass a 17% check to shoot a body down but who will forget to equip bolt cutters to open a door and get a game over for it. I'm out here punching children, sizing people up by showing them racist mugs, and getting beguiled by mysterious women. I am a human animal. I am Harry Du Bois.
The lore of Revachol and the history of its inhabitants is a constant, as are a few details of Harry's past. You'll always start the game an amnesiac and a drunk, but it's entirely up to you how fast he recovers his identity and whether he sobers up or spirals further. You can stick to the main case or become inundated with side stuff. Meticulously cross examine witnesses and catch them in lies or employ unorthodox methods to get your way. It's a proper roleplaying game, where you have an incredible amount of control over who you want Harry to be. I played mine as a superstar cop who had to slowly relearn how to do his job under the guidance of Kim Kitsuragi, his partner. Kim and I never really got along, he's too by-the-books, whereas I've lost my gun and badge and am only making progress in the case despite myself. I tanked his confidence in me surprisingly fast and it barely ever recovered, and rather than repair that trust, I instead befriended Cuno, a street urchin who has been throwing rocks at a corpse (his "fuck gimp") for several days and deals speed. Of course I'd get along with him!
During a critical moment late in the game, I saved Kim from a mortal wound. By this point, I was playing Harry more competently. Working the case was reacclimating him to detective work, and becoming involved in the personal lives of the people of Martinaise was giving him a reason to live. He was becoming a better person, someone who might actually want Kim's respect. He was a Communist, and yeah like ok, he had six points in Fascism, but that's not who he is now! It made sense for me to throw Kim my gun. Then I looked up what happens if you don't, if it's possible to let him die, and read that (if you befriended him) Cuno would join you for the rest of the investigation if you leave Kim to his fate. I reloaded my save.
But I also want to experience Disco Elysium another way. I want to build a Harry who is intelligent, who gets along with Kim and admonishes people like Cuno. Who is perhaps less empathetic but more efficient. The deeper I got, the more I began to question what an approach opposite of mine would yield, how it would change the way other characters perceive me and if it would open up parts of the game I didn't even know where there. Larry played his Harry in a way that was very antithetical to my own, and it was fun to hear how often he'd remark "I've never seen this." The amount of agency Disco Elysium grants you over Harry's growth is impressive and provides a massive amount of replay value.
As for how you interact with Disco on a mechanical level, much of the game involves navigating dialog trees, or "lists" as some characters point out, part of a metatextual gag about the way Harry's cop-mind processes the world around him. Depending on your stat allocation, different forms of internal dialog can interject and open new actions and dialog options when speaking with NPCs, including some that are dependent on passing or failing checks. You can gain modifiers by putting on different clothing - which usually results in you looking like a psychopath - but I often took a shot on low probability checks just because failing them still resulted in something funny happening. There were even some that I passed handily that I wish I did fail just to see what would happen. Oh, I didn't pass my check to come up with a new name for myself? I guess I'm Fucke Waldez now.
Based on how you respond to other characters and what actions you take, you can unlock Thoughts. Each Thought presents a problem that can only be overcome by internalizing that Thought, which takes a certain amount of time and usually creates a negative impact on at least one stat for the duration but provides some kind of bonus once it has been internalized. You can apply quite a number of these in the Thought Cabinet, but a few of my favorites are Superstar Cop (which is of course my primary copotype, though there are others, like Boring Cop and Sorry Cop), Anti-Object Task Force (heals you when kicking things like doors and trash cans, very me), and Bringing of the Law Jaw. I regrettably did not unlock The Homo-Sexual Underground.
For those I didn't take - as not all of them are worth internalizing, and some I'm told can result in a game over - I still jumped over to the wiki to read the flavor text, because it's really good stuff. The writing in Disco Elysium is some of the best I've seen in any video game. It's consistently witty, got me to belt out laughing often, but is also capable of being very heartfelt and critical. It's hard to talk about without simply getting lost in the details of specific storylines and side cases, because it's just that good. I want to ramble about how Evrart Claire is ideologically agreeable yet clearly motivated by self-interest, or how Titus Hardie and his goons genuinely care about their community but practice vigilante justice. Titus would make a good cop in all the worst ways. Even an NPC as minor as a girl outside a bookstore or a working-class woman who challenges you to find out which kind of cockatoo you relate to the most (the fuckupatoo, clearly) prove to be surprisingly deep. Freaks like Measurehead, Idiot Doom Spiral, Garry the Cyrptofascist, Fuck the World and Piss F----- are going to stick with me for how bizarre and vile they are, just as much as Lilienne Carter and Trant Heidelstam will for being so wholesome. Joyce Messier may be an ultraliberal who works for a company that sent in mercenaries to forcefully end a worker's strike, but the amount of regret and wistfulness she carriers, as well as the adverse effects The Pale has had on her mental and physical health, make her endearing. And, yeah, I even like Kim. I mean, he's no Cuno - Boy Detective, gettin shit done Cunn-style. Probably why I didn't solve the case until he left!
I only wish I had something insightful to say about Disco Elysium's politics. Like I said, I'm not that smart. I grew up on a diet of Burger King and boiled chicken, my brain did not get enough vital nutrients to develop properly. To put it plainly: Revachol is a highly politicized city, and Disco likes to challenge the player's ideological line. I'm sure someone can write a whole essay about what Disco is trying to say about our world, all my bad brain is able to parse is that you should not ask more about race science when talking to Measurehead, you are not lulling him into a sense of comfort in order to spring some clever trap, you are in fact getting indoctrinated. Whoops!
Disco Elysium is a little slow to start, it takes a bit of time for its world and characters to really come into view, but when it does you'll likely find yourself every bit as encouraged to stray from the main path and explore all that the game has to offer like I did. It either takes a damn good game or an easy trophy set to get me to do that, and Disco is definitely the former. Anyway, it's about time I wrap things up. I had a lot to say about this. I have a lot to say about most games I've only gotten around to playing long after everyone else. That's good though, writing fills time, gives me something to do. If it weren't for this, who knows where I'd be. Probably out buying vials of blue stuff to stick places. That's not for me. No, I'm a word-man. I don't use particularly good words, but I do use a lot of them! I have things to say, god damnit. Important things!
... I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore.
I've long been apprehensive about starting Disco Elysium. It can take a bit of time for me to settle in with a text heavy game and I have very little familiarity with CRPGs. It seemed so daunting to me, but I finally came around when my friend Larry proposed streaming Disco over Discord with him as my guide, helping me acclimate to the game's various systems and stop me from running past points of interest and dying in incredibly stupid, preventable ways.
I initially intended to build protagonist
The lore of Revachol and the history of its inhabitants is a constant, as are a few details of Harry's past. You'll always start the game an amnesiac and a drunk, but it's entirely up to you how fast he recovers his identity and whether he sobers up or spirals further. You can stick to the main case or become inundated with side stuff. Meticulously cross examine witnesses and catch them in lies or employ unorthodox methods to get your way. It's a proper roleplaying game, where you have an incredible amount of control over who you want Harry to be. I played mine as a superstar cop who had to slowly relearn how to do his job under the guidance of Kim Kitsuragi, his partner. Kim and I never really got along, he's too by-the-books, whereas I've lost my gun and badge and am only making progress in the case despite myself. I tanked his confidence in me surprisingly fast and it barely ever recovered, and rather than repair that trust, I instead befriended Cuno, a street urchin who has been throwing rocks at a corpse (his "fuck gimp") for several days and deals speed. Of course I'd get along with him!
During a critical moment late in the game, I saved Kim from a mortal wound. By this point, I was playing Harry more competently. Working the case was reacclimating him to detective work, and becoming involved in the personal lives of the people of Martinaise was giving him a reason to live. He was becoming a better person, someone who might actually want Kim's respect. He was a Communist, and yeah like ok, he had six points in Fascism, but that's not who he is now! It made sense for me to throw Kim my gun. Then I looked up what happens if you don't, if it's possible to let him die, and read that (if you befriended him) Cuno would join you for the rest of the investigation if you leave Kim to his fate. I reloaded my save.
But I also want to experience Disco Elysium another way. I want to build a Harry who is intelligent, who gets along with Kim and admonishes people like Cuno. Who is perhaps less empathetic but more efficient. The deeper I got, the more I began to question what an approach opposite of mine would yield, how it would change the way other characters perceive me and if it would open up parts of the game I didn't even know where there. Larry played his Harry in a way that was very antithetical to my own, and it was fun to hear how often he'd remark "I've never seen this." The amount of agency Disco Elysium grants you over Harry's growth is impressive and provides a massive amount of replay value.
As for how you interact with Disco on a mechanical level, much of the game involves navigating dialog trees, or "lists" as some characters point out, part of a metatextual gag about the way Harry's cop-mind processes the world around him. Depending on your stat allocation, different forms of internal dialog can interject and open new actions and dialog options when speaking with NPCs, including some that are dependent on passing or failing checks. You can gain modifiers by putting on different clothing - which usually results in you looking like a psychopath - but I often took a shot on low probability checks just because failing them still resulted in something funny happening. There were even some that I passed handily that I wish I did fail just to see what would happen. Oh, I didn't pass my check to come up with a new name for myself? I guess I'm Fucke Waldez now.
Based on how you respond to other characters and what actions you take, you can unlock Thoughts. Each Thought presents a problem that can only be overcome by internalizing that Thought, which takes a certain amount of time and usually creates a negative impact on at least one stat for the duration but provides some kind of bonus once it has been internalized. You can apply quite a number of these in the Thought Cabinet, but a few of my favorites are Superstar Cop (which is of course my primary copotype, though there are others, like Boring Cop and Sorry Cop), Anti-Object Task Force (heals you when kicking things like doors and trash cans, very me), and Bringing of the Law Jaw. I regrettably did not unlock The Homo-Sexual Underground.
For those I didn't take - as not all of them are worth internalizing, and some I'm told can result in a game over - I still jumped over to the wiki to read the flavor text, because it's really good stuff. The writing in Disco Elysium is some of the best I've seen in any video game. It's consistently witty, got me to belt out laughing often, but is also capable of being very heartfelt and critical. It's hard to talk about without simply getting lost in the details of specific storylines and side cases, because it's just that good. I want to ramble about how Evrart Claire is ideologically agreeable yet clearly motivated by self-interest, or how Titus Hardie and his goons genuinely care about their community but practice vigilante justice. Titus would make a good cop in all the worst ways. Even an NPC as minor as a girl outside a bookstore or a working-class woman who challenges you to find out which kind of cockatoo you relate to the most (the fuckupatoo, clearly) prove to be surprisingly deep. Freaks like Measurehead, Idiot Doom Spiral, Garry the Cyrptofascist, Fuck the World and Piss F----- are going to stick with me for how bizarre and vile they are, just as much as Lilienne Carter and Trant Heidelstam will for being so wholesome. Joyce Messier may be an ultraliberal who works for a company that sent in mercenaries to forcefully end a worker's strike, but the amount of regret and wistfulness she carriers, as well as the adverse effects The Pale has had on her mental and physical health, make her endearing. And, yeah, I even like Kim. I mean, he's no Cuno - Boy Detective, gettin shit done Cunn-style. Probably why I didn't solve the case until he left!
I only wish I had something insightful to say about Disco Elysium's politics. Like I said, I'm not that smart. I grew up on a diet of Burger King and boiled chicken, my brain did not get enough vital nutrients to develop properly. To put it plainly: Revachol is a highly politicized city, and Disco likes to challenge the player's ideological line. I'm sure someone can write a whole essay about what Disco is trying to say about our world, all my bad brain is able to parse is that you should not ask more about race science when talking to Measurehead, you are not lulling him into a sense of comfort in order to spring some clever trap, you are in fact getting indoctrinated. Whoops!
Disco Elysium is a little slow to start, it takes a bit of time for its world and characters to really come into view, but when it does you'll likely find yourself every bit as encouraged to stray from the main path and explore all that the game has to offer like I did. It either takes a damn good game or an easy trophy set to get me to do that, and Disco is definitely the former. Anyway, it's about time I wrap things up. I had a lot to say about this. I have a lot to say about most games I've only gotten around to playing long after everyone else. That's good though, writing fills time, gives me something to do. If it weren't for this, who knows where I'd be. Probably out buying vials of blue stuff to stick places. That's not for me. No, I'm a word-man. I don't use particularly good words, but I do use a lot of them! I have things to say, god damnit. Important things!
... I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore.
Disco Elysium is a brilliant and fantastic game, a combination of adjectives that are by no means an exaggeration to describe what ZA/UM managed to build. It was handled so neatly, sweetly, and full of charm. It's amazing how an RPG game without a combat system, which takes you through the process of investigating a murder case that requires you to read and take conversation options can end up as amazing and addictive as this. Everything is wrapped in an aesthetic approach, from visual to audio, which also deserves a thumbs up. There is beauty, there is despair, there is strangeness, there is madness, and there are emotional jumps that will make you fall in love with Disco Elysium as time goes by.
What makes Disco Elysium a beautiful game is first, Kim Katsuragi. Initially, Kim looked like a useless partner and added to the player's burden. He is ready to take preventive measures anytime and anywhere. Towards the end, Kim will always provide backup for the player, when solving cases or even when trying to solve mysteries about himself. He's a nice guy, after all. Kim's character is really formed as a helpful figure, but doesn't want to interfere too much in every decision the player makes.
Second, connections. I love every connection that occurs in this game. It's as if Disco Elysium started with each NPC moving individually but connected to each other in the end. You move freely in Revachol, but you don't know the big shadow that haunts you from every NPC there. Even as simple as a child named Cuno to a representative of port workers, Evrart Claire. It's like, I don't want to deal with you but I have to because you have something I need.
From my experience playing Disco Elysium, the first and second days felt more like "Go with the flow". Since the third day, every dialogue and action in the game creates a feeling of emptiness. Yep, it feels empty and raises hopes that there will be a bright spot in this mystery. In reality this feeling of emptiness is getting worse over time. It went like this until the last day. Disco Elysium closes the game with a 'blow' that was never imagined before, as if to close the case with the big question, "Why?"
What makes Disco Elysium a beautiful game is first, Kim Katsuragi. Initially, Kim looked like a useless partner and added to the player's burden. He is ready to take preventive measures anytime and anywhere. Towards the end, Kim will always provide backup for the player, when solving cases or even when trying to solve mysteries about himself. He's a nice guy, after all. Kim's character is really formed as a helpful figure, but doesn't want to interfere too much in every decision the player makes.
Second, connections. I love every connection that occurs in this game. It's as if Disco Elysium started with each NPC moving individually but connected to each other in the end. You move freely in Revachol, but you don't know the big shadow that haunts you from every NPC there. Even as simple as a child named Cuno to a representative of port workers, Evrart Claire. It's like, I don't want to deal with you but I have to because you have something I need.
From my experience playing Disco Elysium, the first and second days felt more like "Go with the flow". Since the third day, every dialogue and action in the game creates a feeling of emptiness. Yep, it feels empty and raises hopes that there will be a bright spot in this mystery. In reality this feeling of emptiness is getting worse over time. It went like this until the last day. Disco Elysium closes the game with a 'blow' that was never imagined before, as if to close the case with the big question, "Why?"
One of my favorite aspects of Disco Elysium is that despite the marketing and internet conversation around it being the based leftist meme game, it totally refuses to go down that obnoxious, pandering route. I see people (online politics nerds) talk about the game this way and feel like I played something completely different.
Whenever Harry says some embarrassing shit like "Communism is actually extremely good ya'll" the person he's talking to seems completely bewildered or just flat out ignores him. To me this reads as the game making fun of you, saying that no, if you say this shit to people in real life it is not based but in fact, cringe. Nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about, you weird internet creature. If you choose the option to internalize Mazovian Socio-Economics (Marxist-Leninism) the game openly ridicules you as borderline delusional for thinking you're the "communism builder" just because you're a very smart boy with the right opinions. Its only effects besides obnoxious new dialogue options for you to lecture people with are just stat penalties.
The truth is that you, the player (likely an online leftist), are probably kind of a loser dork who can barely keep your own life together, just like Harry. You aren't doing le epic praxis or owning the chuds. You might be a good person with the best of intentions, but you're still just a cog in the machine and, like Harry at the end of the game, you continue that role despite being Literally a Communist. This isn't a game about choosing your political alignment; That part of the game is basically a side show (most of which was added after release). Like its creator said, it's really a game about "reapplying for your job as a human being", with a spiritually hollowed out society haunted by the past serving as the context for this story.
But while the game perfectly portrays the seemingly hopeless and socially sterile time we live in, it also asserts that unexpected, beautiful things are still possible with moments like the Phasmid scene and the brief glimmers of genuine solidarity among its characters. The dice-rolling nature of the game itself asserts that while we have very little control over our lives, there is always possibility. The innate need for freedom and dignity among human beings can never be stamped out. As long as that remains, a better world is possible - even if we will never see it ourselves.
Whenever Harry says some embarrassing shit like "Communism is actually extremely good ya'll" the person he's talking to seems completely bewildered or just flat out ignores him. To me this reads as the game making fun of you, saying that no, if you say this shit to people in real life it is not based but in fact, cringe. Nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about, you weird internet creature. If you choose the option to internalize Mazovian Socio-Economics (Marxist-Leninism) the game openly ridicules you as borderline delusional for thinking you're the "communism builder" just because you're a very smart boy with the right opinions. Its only effects besides obnoxious new dialogue options for you to lecture people with are just stat penalties.
The truth is that you, the player (likely an online leftist), are probably kind of a loser dork who can barely keep your own life together, just like Harry. You aren't doing le epic praxis or owning the chuds. You might be a good person with the best of intentions, but you're still just a cog in the machine and, like Harry at the end of the game, you continue that role despite being Literally a Communist. This isn't a game about choosing your political alignment; That part of the game is basically a side show (most of which was added after release). Like its creator said, it's really a game about "reapplying for your job as a human being", with a spiritually hollowed out society haunted by the past serving as the context for this story.
But while the game perfectly portrays the seemingly hopeless and socially sterile time we live in, it also asserts that unexpected, beautiful things are still possible with moments like the Phasmid scene and the brief glimmers of genuine solidarity among its characters. The dice-rolling nature of the game itself asserts that while we have very little control over our lives, there is always possibility. The innate need for freedom and dignity among human beings can never be stamped out. As long as that remains, a better world is possible - even if we will never see it ourselves.
The prevailing mood of Disco Elysium is so melancholy it is easy to forget how funny it can be. I was taken aback in my second playthrough by how often I found myself laughing because I didn't remember it being a particularly funny game—until I realized I was playing a goofier and less self-flagellating character the second time around. Not many games are so responsive to how you play that you can shape the tone of the story.
I don't really have any criticisms of DE in the usual sense, but I was sometimes put off by its cruelty. I mean that most games—even, or dare I say especially, the "edgy" ones—filter out certain parts of being human we would rather not contemplate. DE feels more realistic than other games not just because of its incredible worldbuilding but because it leaves all that stuff in. It is basically a stream-of-consciousness simulator in which you are forced to grapple with every nasty thought that flits through an unpleasant man's neurochemistry. On one hand, this allows you to build a level of empathy for the protagonist that is on par with great works of literature; on the other, it can lead to some ugly places. Pretty much any awful thought you have you are free to indulge—I mean this game lets you be a neoliberal for christ's sake. Bleak af.
For me, personally, the fatphobia that rears its head every so often (I think a character is described as "gelatinous ooze") crosses a line—I believe that this is a thing the protagonist would think, but am I convinced this is a thought the writers of the game needed to share? No, but then again, equally if not more terrible things are voiced in the game all the time, so I guess how that line is drawn is up to each player. Just be warned that, while I do think the game is designed with love for its characters and encourages empathy, it also requires you to confront an unusual amount of hatred and cruelty of a far more realistic kind than you typically see in games, and at times almost seems to take pleasure in rubbing your face in it. If only for the sake of accessibility, I do wonder now and then how much the impact of DE would be diminished if its world were just a tiny bit kinder.
I don't really have any criticisms of DE in the usual sense, but I was sometimes put off by its cruelty. I mean that most games—even, or dare I say especially, the "edgy" ones—filter out certain parts of being human we would rather not contemplate. DE feels more realistic than other games not just because of its incredible worldbuilding but because it leaves all that stuff in. It is basically a stream-of-consciousness simulator in which you are forced to grapple with every nasty thought that flits through an unpleasant man's neurochemistry. On one hand, this allows you to build a level of empathy for the protagonist that is on par with great works of literature; on the other, it can lead to some ugly places. Pretty much any awful thought you have you are free to indulge—I mean this game lets you be a neoliberal for christ's sake. Bleak af.
For me, personally, the fatphobia that rears its head every so often (I think a character is described as "gelatinous ooze") crosses a line—I believe that this is a thing the protagonist would think, but am I convinced this is a thought the writers of the game needed to share? No, but then again, equally if not more terrible things are voiced in the game all the time, so I guess how that line is drawn is up to each player. Just be warned that, while I do think the game is designed with love for its characters and encourages empathy, it also requires you to confront an unusual amount of hatred and cruelty of a far more realistic kind than you typically see in games, and at times almost seems to take pleasure in rubbing your face in it. If only for the sake of accessibility, I do wonder now and then how much the impact of DE would be diminished if its world were just a tiny bit kinder.
A true miracle
We all have that favorite form of media we hold dear in our hearts. A favorite game that invokes nostalgia or a favorite film that invokes a strong emotional response. Even with my unfiltered thoughts on Disco Elysium, I feel like I can never do it justice no matter what I say or can even write. It's more than a video game for me at this point but a brilliant phenomenon that has altered my life for the better. It came at the perfect time during one of my lowest points after losing two of my jobs during the pandemic and having no real direction in life once more. It's rare to feel that way about something someone else created, they'll never know how truly thankful and how important it is for you and that's okay.
"What's it like to miss someone?"
"What's it like? Good. And bad. An ache that brings you joy."
A world sundered by war and different ideals brought us to this point in time where the case truly starts. Essentially attempting to give yourself oblivion and forgetting yourself, it makes for a good reason for yourself to ask questions about the world itself. The world of Revachol and Martinaise fully bursting with colorful characters with their own fully realized stories of pain, triumph, fears, and regrets just like every one of us on this Earth. To appreciate the compassion and to fear the impatience of someone, Disco Elysium manages to invoke that emotion as if it was an actual person.
"Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart."
"See you tomorrow."
Even so illustrated on our very own detective himself, twenty four measures of our knowledge, our feelings, and our own physical urges provide him with the way of being able to piece together reality like we already do. There's a reason he became like this and it's not for the faint of heart either. Alongside him is Kim Kitsuragi, your partner and the perfect companion for you on this case. A stoic man who places their faith in you without being saccharine or overly dramatic makes it hard to ever think about disappointing him. Kim represents a second chance for us. Everyone thinks of you so lowly in the very start that it almost feels like life itself is an uphill battle but with Kim, it slowly becomes a rise into redemption or a descent into hopelessness. Kim won't stand by everything you do, he has his own ideas and motives and if you lose him, who else will you truly have?
“Every school of thought and government has failed in this city — but I love it nonetheless. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you.”
Failure is inevitable. We'll never make the correct decisions at the right time at the right place and Disco Elysium knows that. You don't actively fight but you learn everything you can instead. Some decisions are easy and can always come back to, some are difficult and some you can never come back from but even in the end despite it all, life goes on. The flow consists of exploring Martinaise, collecting trash, talking to the locals, gathering information and exploring new buildings and areas. Almost every location has a history to it and a story. A failed summer home by the coast, an old rundown commercial area lost to time, a church with an unusual quirk. Disco Elysium really fulfills a bit of wanderlust just exploring and putting the pieces together of what happened to the hanged man or the consequences of a failed world yet holding on. The text might be too much and the game may not be the fastest dopamine rush but it somehow feels extremely cathartic. A weight being removed from my overthinking and intrepid thoughts.
"This is a man with a lot of past, but little present. And almost no future."
There are a few things in life that truly keeps you going. Ambition, love, money, family, camaraderie of those you care about, realizing your ideas and dreams. I can truly only ever speak for myself when I said that playing this game during one of the lowest times of my life, a time where I just wanted to give up because the world was falling apart had kept me going. The world can feel scary, it can feel bleak sometimes but Disco Elysium reveals the true miracle, the speck of pure hope in humanity. Sea Power's existential masterpiece of a soundtrack helped present this too. The true human experience. Disco Elysium's tagline is "What kind of cop are you?" while it should really be "What kind of person will you be in the face of despair?". Even now I feel apologetic for expressing myself in an unusual love for this piece of media and even though I know it's not perfect, I can't stop thinking about it. One million words of excellence. Will any of us truly past the tests given to us by circumstance? Are we strong enough to push in the face of true horror? Will the flesh finally give out? I can only hope it does. It's all I have. The case is all I have now.
"This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive."
We all have that favorite form of media we hold dear in our hearts. A favorite game that invokes nostalgia or a favorite film that invokes a strong emotional response. Even with my unfiltered thoughts on Disco Elysium, I feel like I can never do it justice no matter what I say or can even write. It's more than a video game for me at this point but a brilliant phenomenon that has altered my life for the better. It came at the perfect time during one of my lowest points after losing two of my jobs during the pandemic and having no real direction in life once more. It's rare to feel that way about something someone else created, they'll never know how truly thankful and how important it is for you and that's okay.
"What's it like to miss someone?"
"What's it like? Good. And bad. An ache that brings you joy."
A world sundered by war and different ideals brought us to this point in time where the case truly starts. Essentially attempting to give yourself oblivion and forgetting yourself, it makes for a good reason for yourself to ask questions about the world itself. The world of Revachol and Martinaise fully bursting with colorful characters with their own fully realized stories of pain, triumph, fears, and regrets just like every one of us on this Earth. To appreciate the compassion and to fear the impatience of someone, Disco Elysium manages to invoke that emotion as if it was an actual person.
"Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart."
"See you tomorrow."
Even so illustrated on our very own detective himself, twenty four measures of our knowledge, our feelings, and our own physical urges provide him with the way of being able to piece together reality like we already do. There's a reason he became like this and it's not for the faint of heart either. Alongside him is Kim Kitsuragi, your partner and the perfect companion for you on this case. A stoic man who places their faith in you without being saccharine or overly dramatic makes it hard to ever think about disappointing him. Kim represents a second chance for us. Everyone thinks of you so lowly in the very start that it almost feels like life itself is an uphill battle but with Kim, it slowly becomes a rise into redemption or a descent into hopelessness. Kim won't stand by everything you do, he has his own ideas and motives and if you lose him, who else will you truly have?
“Every school of thought and government has failed in this city — but I love it nonetheless. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you.”
Failure is inevitable. We'll never make the correct decisions at the right time at the right place and Disco Elysium knows that. You don't actively fight but you learn everything you can instead. Some decisions are easy and can always come back to, some are difficult and some you can never come back from but even in the end despite it all, life goes on. The flow consists of exploring Martinaise, collecting trash, talking to the locals, gathering information and exploring new buildings and areas. Almost every location has a history to it and a story. A failed summer home by the coast, an old rundown commercial area lost to time, a church with an unusual quirk. Disco Elysium really fulfills a bit of wanderlust just exploring and putting the pieces together of what happened to the hanged man or the consequences of a failed world yet holding on. The text might be too much and the game may not be the fastest dopamine rush but it somehow feels extremely cathartic. A weight being removed from my overthinking and intrepid thoughts.
"This is a man with a lot of past, but little present. And almost no future."
There are a few things in life that truly keeps you going. Ambition, love, money, family, camaraderie of those you care about, realizing your ideas and dreams. I can truly only ever speak for myself when I said that playing this game during one of the lowest times of my life, a time where I just wanted to give up because the world was falling apart had kept me going. The world can feel scary, it can feel bleak sometimes but Disco Elysium reveals the true miracle, the speck of pure hope in humanity. Sea Power's existential masterpiece of a soundtrack helped present this too. The true human experience. Disco Elysium's tagline is "What kind of cop are you?" while it should really be "What kind of person will you be in the face of despair?". Even now I feel apologetic for expressing myself in an unusual love for this piece of media and even though I know it's not perfect, I can't stop thinking about it. One million words of excellence. Will any of us truly past the tests given to us by circumstance? Are we strong enough to push in the face of true horror? Will the flesh finally give out? I can only hope it does. It's all I have. The case is all I have now.
"This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive."
This review contains spoilers
In each of my subsequent playthroughs of disco elysium, I learn so many new things about this game that I feel like I'm playing it again for the first time. As I've become more and more familiar with the game, the parallels between my home state of West Virginia, and the slums of Martinaise have become clear as day. I realize that the developers were writing this story with the perspective of being born in the pre/post-soviet Baltic states, but both West Virginia and Martinaise are nowhere-ville places that once had a labor history, scarred by a failed uprising (The Battle of Blair Mountain) that was lost long ago, and has since succumbed to the cheap, short term pleasures of capital, and the fervent mental safety that fascism provides. Its these parallels that I think makes this game so important to me. It tears me up that things have come to this, but I also believe that the fight for equality will never stop.
YOU -- "But what if humanity keeps letting us down?"
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "Nobody said that fulfilling the proletariat's historic role would be easy. It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn't mean we can simply give up."
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "I guess you can say we believe it *because* it's impossible. It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
---
A 2 week old fetid corpse hangs from a tree, a ghastly sight; a human life reduced to a macabre piñata for small children to pelt stones at in a twisted idea of entertainment. The children themselves, a hopped-up junkie and a nameless orphan respectively, both the result of a broken system that has unequivocally failed them. The district of Martinaise, pockmarked by the remnants of revolutionary war, abandoned by the world at large, it and its people subject to the pissing contests of petty government officials to see who is lumped with the task of looking after the place, the site of a months-long, on-the-brink-of-warfare labor dispute that's about to boil over with the lynching of a PMC soldier who was meant to "defuse" the situation. All of this, left to the hands of a suicidal, vice-riddled husk of a cop who can barely get his necktie down from the ceiling fan without potentially going into cardiac arrest. Disco Elysium is an undeniably depressing experience that isn't afraid to cover the messy spectrum of humanity, from insane race-realist phrenologists to meth-addled children to every kind of ghoulish bureaucrat under the sun. The district of Martinaise, as fictional as it is, is a place I've seen before, reflected in the streets, reflected in the people, reflected in the system; an undeniably full-faced look at the horrors faced by those below, and the resulting apathy expressed by those above.
---
SUGGESTION -- Brother, you should put me in front of a firing squad. I have no words for how I failed you.
---
Every aspect of Disco Elysium reflects its overall theme of "failure". Martinaise itself has been failed by the institutions meant to help it, abandoned by the powers that be, who only intervene when it looks like anyone is trying to enact change. NPCs can reminisce on days gone by, of the tragedies in their past, or of their cynical rebuke of the future. The various schools of political thought you can adopt and their representatives are mercilessly picked apart, from the Communists too entrenched in theory to take notice of the suffering around them, to the frankly pathetic fascists who use their prejudiced beliefs to shield themselves from their own flaws. Our protagonist is constantly haunted by his past and even starts the game recovering from his own self-destructive ways, and on a gameplay level, the way that our intrepid detective can fumble the bag in nearly every way imaginable and still be allowed to make progress in investigations and sidequests is commendable. Failure is so integral, so vital to Disco Elysium that it's not only an aspect deeply ingrained in its story, but also its very gameplay.
---
VOLITION [Easy: Success] -- No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
---
And yet, despite this cloying cynicism and acknowledgement of the ugliness of reality, Disco Elysium is magical because of the fact that it ultimately believes that there is a world worth fighting for in the end. It would be incredibly easy to be defeatist in the face of such constant, institutional and societal failure we are presented with in Revachol, to be ceaselessly apathetic in the face of your own overwhelming shortcomings, to fall back into the comfort of old vices instead of facing our problems head on. Still, Disco Elysium has that fire inside of it, an untapped hatred for fence-sitting, for passivity in the face of oppression and valuing the status quo over any meaningful change. Roll up your sleeves and fight for a better future.
---
RHETORIC -- "You've built it before, they've built it before. Hasn't really worked out yet, but neither has love -- should we just stop building love, too?"
---
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "In dark times, should the stars also go out?"
---
RHETORIC -- "Say one of these fascist or communist things or fuck off."
---
Disco Elysium believes in the people. It believes in humanity, no matter how messy our supposed paragons are, or how flawed our beliefs and values can be, or how cyclical we can be in the face of it all. In a city plagued by an inability to move on, Disco Elysium says that there is always a possibility of change. If two broke Communists and a junkie wino can defy the very laws of physics in a slummy apartment, no matter how briefly, with the power of their faith and co-operation; imagine what we could do as a group. As a city. As a species.
Disco Elysium says that the cup is half full. Even if we won't see the own fruits of our labor in our lifetimes, it still looks you in the eyes and says:
"The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it," a conviction belted out by the youths of tomorrow.
"Un jour je serai de retour près de toi", written in bright burning letters across a market square.
"TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE/ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD--FOR NEW PEOPLE/IT IS TOO LATE FOR US," painted on the side of an eight-story tenement.
"Disco Inferno...," a lone voice belted out through a boombox's speakers across a frost-bitten sea.
---
MANKIND, BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "Nobody said that fulfilling the proletariat's historic role would be easy. It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn't mean we can simply give up."
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "I guess you can say we believe it *because* it's impossible. It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this..."
---
A 2 week old fetid corpse hangs from a tree, a ghastly sight; a human life reduced to a macabre piñata for small children to pelt stones at in a twisted idea of entertainment. The children themselves, a hopped-up junkie and a nameless orphan respectively, both the result of a broken system that has unequivocally failed them. The district of Martinaise, pockmarked by the remnants of revolutionary war, abandoned by the world at large, it and its people subject to the pissing contests of petty government officials to see who is lumped with the task of looking after the place, the site of a months-long, on-the-brink-of-warfare labor dispute that's about to boil over with the lynching of a PMC soldier who was meant to "defuse" the situation. All of this, left to the hands of a suicidal, vice-riddled husk of a cop who can barely get his necktie down from the ceiling fan without potentially going into cardiac arrest. Disco Elysium is an undeniably depressing experience that isn't afraid to cover the messy spectrum of humanity, from insane race-realist phrenologists to meth-addled children to every kind of ghoulish bureaucrat under the sun. The district of Martinaise, as fictional as it is, is a place I've seen before, reflected in the streets, reflected in the people, reflected in the system; an undeniably full-faced look at the horrors faced by those below, and the resulting apathy expressed by those above.
---
SUGGESTION -- Brother, you should put me in front of a firing squad. I have no words for how I failed you.
---
Every aspect of Disco Elysium reflects its overall theme of "failure". Martinaise itself has been failed by the institutions meant to help it, abandoned by the powers that be, who only intervene when it looks like anyone is trying to enact change. NPCs can reminisce on days gone by, of the tragedies in their past, or of their cynical rebuke of the future. The various schools of political thought you can adopt and their representatives are mercilessly picked apart, from the Communists too entrenched in theory to take notice of the suffering around them, to the frankly pathetic fascists who use their prejudiced beliefs to shield themselves from their own flaws. Our protagonist is constantly haunted by his past and even starts the game recovering from his own self-destructive ways, and on a gameplay level, the way that our intrepid detective can fumble the bag in nearly every way imaginable and still be allowed to make progress in investigations and sidequests is commendable. Failure is so integral, so vital to Disco Elysium that it's not only an aspect deeply ingrained in its story, but also its very gameplay.
---
VOLITION [Easy: Success] -- No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.
---
And yet, despite this cloying cynicism and acknowledgement of the ugliness of reality, Disco Elysium is magical because of the fact that it ultimately believes that there is a world worth fighting for in the end. It would be incredibly easy to be defeatist in the face of such constant, institutional and societal failure we are presented with in Revachol, to be ceaselessly apathetic in the face of your own overwhelming shortcomings, to fall back into the comfort of old vices instead of facing our problems head on. Still, Disco Elysium has that fire inside of it, an untapped hatred for fence-sitting, for passivity in the face of oppression and valuing the status quo over any meaningful change. Roll up your sleeves and fight for a better future.
---
RHETORIC -- "You've built it before, they've built it before. Hasn't really worked out yet, but neither has love -- should we just stop building love, too?"
---
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST -- "In dark times, should the stars also go out?"
---
RHETORIC -- "Say one of these fascist or communist things or fuck off."
---
Disco Elysium believes in the people. It believes in humanity, no matter how messy our supposed paragons are, or how flawed our beliefs and values can be, or how cyclical we can be in the face of it all. In a city plagued by an inability to move on, Disco Elysium says that there is always a possibility of change. If two broke Communists and a junkie wino can defy the very laws of physics in a slummy apartment, no matter how briefly, with the power of their faith and co-operation; imagine what we could do as a group. As a city. As a species.
Disco Elysium says that the cup is half full. Even if we won't see the own fruits of our labor in our lifetimes, it still looks you in the eyes and says:
"The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it," a conviction belted out by the youths of tomorrow.
"Un jour je serai de retour près de toi", written in bright burning letters across a market square.
"TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE/ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD--FOR NEW PEOPLE/IT IS TOO LATE FOR US," painted on the side of an eight-story tenement.
"Disco Inferno...," a lone voice belted out through a boombox's speakers across a frost-bitten sea.
---
MANKIND, BE VIGILANT; WE LOVED YOU
It almost feels silly to call anything else an RPG now that this exists. It's a perfect culmination of the idea of injecting stats and rolls and modifiers into a game that actually lets you play a role, to define who this amnesiac man is and how he relates to the world he inhabits.
And what a world: broken and tragicomic, Revachol comes off at first glance as a bitter satire written by a disillusioned leftist. But the deeper you dive, the more it opens up into something haunting and beautiful in its own right, with even a faint glimmer of hope hidden among the ruins. No people is truly broken, argues Disco Elysium, while they still have hearts to care for one another and arms to link against their oppressors.
And what a world: broken and tragicomic, Revachol comes off at first glance as a bitter satire written by a disillusioned leftist. But the deeper you dive, the more it opens up into something haunting and beautiful in its own right, with even a faint glimmer of hope hidden among the ruins. No people is truly broken, argues Disco Elysium, while they still have hearts to care for one another and arms to link against their oppressors.
I joined my character on the journey to insaneness. He went mad I went mad, he got into depression and I still did not leave his side, I got depressed with him. Then I saw that this relationship was toxic and decided to abandon the game. After that, I have never seen that lunatic.
Oh, he's just like me!
Content warning for discussions of substance abuse and suicidal ideation.
I've been putting off writing this review for a while, because I think this is one of the most beautiful pieces of art ever created. More than any film, more than any song, and certainly more than any other video game. We all have some piece of media that feels wholly personal to us — if you haven't found yours yet, you will eventually — and Disco Elysium is mine. Nothing else has made me feel so seen, so understood; it's a very, very powerful feeling when you discover that you're not as alone as you thought you were. This is review #100, so fuck it. Let's do this.
My closest personal friends know about my struggles with alcoholism. Some of them are on Backloggd, but most of them aren’t, so this is going to be the first time a lot of you who only know me from here are going to hear about this. Some of the roughest years of my life kicked off in 2016. I’d grown up in an abusive household (surely a story for another time), and 2016 was the year that I turned 18. I worked as much as I could, neglected school as much as I was able to, moved out, and never looked back. It fucking sucked. It sucked slightly less than staying at home and having to deal with my father getting shitfaced and threatening to kill me every night, but it sucked.
In Canada, the legal drinking age is 19. We’ve got access to the stuff two years earlier than you Americans do. What that meant for me, with my big beard and sunken eyes and deep voice, was that nobody at the local liquor stores had been carding me since the eleventh grade. The laws have changed since then, and everyone now has to present ID regardless of how old they look — I had a fake in case they asked, anyway — but no cashier ever looked twice at me. So I had easy, consistent access to alcohol, and I gradually gained a dependence on the stuff. Well, I say “gradually”, but it was pretty fast. No pipeline for me, of having a drink before dinner turning into a couple, then a couple more; I drank as much as I could because it made me feel stupid, and then it made me fall asleep, and that was a pattern that felt better than dealing with my shriveling bank account and my constant desire to curl up and quietly die.
One day, probably about a year or two later — I know a lot of people mark the exact day they decided to start being sober, but I was going through my life in a complete fucking blur — I realized that I needed to either stop drinking, or it would kill me. I don’t know what triggered that thought, but I didn’t really care. I’d die, so what? Yeah, the thought was scary, but my life was shit. It’d be like getting upset over losing a quarter in the couch cushions. Oh, well.
Then, another thought hit me: you’re turning into your father.
That one got me.
Spite is a powerful motivator.
Disco Elysium came to me at a time where I was starting to settle into a sober groove. No more drinking, even though I still wanted it. If you’ve never dealt with substance abuse like that, imagine a big plate of your favorite food, constantly in front of you, and you’re not allowed to take a bite. Everyone else is always talking about how delicious it is, and how much they love it, and then they get weird when you try explaining that you can’t have any. People start talking about you behind your back, about how you’re “the guy who says he can’t have any”. Other people will actively bait you into trying some. They’ll tease you, call you a pussy, mock you for your boundaries. It’s shit. It’s fucking shit and it never goes away. I digress.
With time, it gets a little easier. You recognize the kinds of things that’ll set you off, that’ll make you want it. You learn to avoid them, you learn to cope with them. You make little deals with yourself, like how I swapped from booze to weed; the world’s no fun to take on completely sober, is my rationale. It’s the leaf or the sauce, and one of them is a whole lot fucking worse for me than the other.
The detective is in a very similar boat. He’s a man so subsumed by his addictions that he’s lost every part of him that isn’t defined by the substances he takes. His memory of who he is, what he believes, who he loves; it’s all gone, washed away beneath a tide of liquor and pills and powders and research chemicals. Ostensibly, the goal of the game is to solve a murder, but the real mystery is in uncovering who the detective is — was, perhaps — before he drowned every part of himself in drugs. If there’s nothing that can be remembered, it must be uncovered. If there’s nothing to be uncovered, it must be invented. Harry DuBois, Raphael Ambrosius Costeau, Tequila Sunset, the Icebreaker; who is he, really? Some of these? All of them? None?
As you play, the detective is constantly challenged to give in to his vices. It’s easy to take drugs. Beneficial, even! But everything in Revachol can be the catalyst for change, much as it can all be an excuse to keep things going as they are. The detective can begin the long, slow, arduous road to sobriety, doubtlessly inspired by his partner and friend Kim Kitsuragi.
Kim is one of the best characters ever written. He is everything the detective is not. He can control his urges. He’s got himself in order. What he sees in the detective does not impress him…initially. The detective, for all of his faults, has kept one thing true about himself; he is a damn good detective. Kim sees this. He latches onto it, and doesn’t let go. In the darkest times, in the hardest times, he reminds the detective that he is a damn good detective. The detective needs someone like Kim to ground him, and Kim needs someone like the detective to bring the case to a close. Getting Kim to trust you might be the greatest sense of achievement you will ever feel in a game. To be a constant fuck-up who eventually stops fucking up is a triumph, and Disco Elysium captures the feeling perfectly.
It’s no secret that Robert Kurvitz, the lead writer of the game, has struggled with substance abuse in the past. He once mentioned in an interview that he believed everyone else on the development team had, too. This is the kind of story that can only be written at this level of depth and nuance by people who truly understand what it’s like to find themselves at rock bottom and claw their way back up. It’s masterful. I’ve shed a lot of tears over Disco Elysium, and I know there are going to be a whole lot more to come.
I’m about five years dry, I think. My sense of time is all fucked up. It’s gotten easier to stay away, but not much.
Disco Elysium is still my favorite game.
Pirate it. ZA/UM got stolen from its creators by Estonian businessmen.
Content warning for discussions of substance abuse and suicidal ideation.
I've been putting off writing this review for a while, because I think this is one of the most beautiful pieces of art ever created. More than any film, more than any song, and certainly more than any other video game. We all have some piece of media that feels wholly personal to us — if you haven't found yours yet, you will eventually — and Disco Elysium is mine. Nothing else has made me feel so seen, so understood; it's a very, very powerful feeling when you discover that you're not as alone as you thought you were. This is review #100, so fuck it. Let's do this.
My closest personal friends know about my struggles with alcoholism. Some of them are on Backloggd, but most of them aren’t, so this is going to be the first time a lot of you who only know me from here are going to hear about this. Some of the roughest years of my life kicked off in 2016. I’d grown up in an abusive household (surely a story for another time), and 2016 was the year that I turned 18. I worked as much as I could, neglected school as much as I was able to, moved out, and never looked back. It fucking sucked. It sucked slightly less than staying at home and having to deal with my father getting shitfaced and threatening to kill me every night, but it sucked.
In Canada, the legal drinking age is 19. We’ve got access to the stuff two years earlier than you Americans do. What that meant for me, with my big beard and sunken eyes and deep voice, was that nobody at the local liquor stores had been carding me since the eleventh grade. The laws have changed since then, and everyone now has to present ID regardless of how old they look — I had a fake in case they asked, anyway — but no cashier ever looked twice at me. So I had easy, consistent access to alcohol, and I gradually gained a dependence on the stuff. Well, I say “gradually”, but it was pretty fast. No pipeline for me, of having a drink before dinner turning into a couple, then a couple more; I drank as much as I could because it made me feel stupid, and then it made me fall asleep, and that was a pattern that felt better than dealing with my shriveling bank account and my constant desire to curl up and quietly die.
One day, probably about a year or two later — I know a lot of people mark the exact day they decided to start being sober, but I was going through my life in a complete fucking blur — I realized that I needed to either stop drinking, or it would kill me. I don’t know what triggered that thought, but I didn’t really care. I’d die, so what? Yeah, the thought was scary, but my life was shit. It’d be like getting upset over losing a quarter in the couch cushions. Oh, well.
Then, another thought hit me: you’re turning into your father.
That one got me.
Spite is a powerful motivator.
Disco Elysium came to me at a time where I was starting to settle into a sober groove. No more drinking, even though I still wanted it. If you’ve never dealt with substance abuse like that, imagine a big plate of your favorite food, constantly in front of you, and you’re not allowed to take a bite. Everyone else is always talking about how delicious it is, and how much they love it, and then they get weird when you try explaining that you can’t have any. People start talking about you behind your back, about how you’re “the guy who says he can’t have any”. Other people will actively bait you into trying some. They’ll tease you, call you a pussy, mock you for your boundaries. It’s shit. It’s fucking shit and it never goes away. I digress.
With time, it gets a little easier. You recognize the kinds of things that’ll set you off, that’ll make you want it. You learn to avoid them, you learn to cope with them. You make little deals with yourself, like how I swapped from booze to weed; the world’s no fun to take on completely sober, is my rationale. It’s the leaf or the sauce, and one of them is a whole lot fucking worse for me than the other.
The detective is in a very similar boat. He’s a man so subsumed by his addictions that he’s lost every part of him that isn’t defined by the substances he takes. His memory of who he is, what he believes, who he loves; it’s all gone, washed away beneath a tide of liquor and pills and powders and research chemicals. Ostensibly, the goal of the game is to solve a murder, but the real mystery is in uncovering who the detective is — was, perhaps — before he drowned every part of himself in drugs. If there’s nothing that can be remembered, it must be uncovered. If there’s nothing to be uncovered, it must be invented. Harry DuBois, Raphael Ambrosius Costeau, Tequila Sunset, the Icebreaker; who is he, really? Some of these? All of them? None?
As you play, the detective is constantly challenged to give in to his vices. It’s easy to take drugs. Beneficial, even! But everything in Revachol can be the catalyst for change, much as it can all be an excuse to keep things going as they are. The detective can begin the long, slow, arduous road to sobriety, doubtlessly inspired by his partner and friend Kim Kitsuragi.
Kim is one of the best characters ever written. He is everything the detective is not. He can control his urges. He’s got himself in order. What he sees in the detective does not impress him…initially. The detective, for all of his faults, has kept one thing true about himself; he is a damn good detective. Kim sees this. He latches onto it, and doesn’t let go. In the darkest times, in the hardest times, he reminds the detective that he is a damn good detective. The detective needs someone like Kim to ground him, and Kim needs someone like the detective to bring the case to a close. Getting Kim to trust you might be the greatest sense of achievement you will ever feel in a game. To be a constant fuck-up who eventually stops fucking up is a triumph, and Disco Elysium captures the feeling perfectly.
It’s no secret that Robert Kurvitz, the lead writer of the game, has struggled with substance abuse in the past. He once mentioned in an interview that he believed everyone else on the development team had, too. This is the kind of story that can only be written at this level of depth and nuance by people who truly understand what it’s like to find themselves at rock bottom and claw their way back up. It’s masterful. I’ve shed a lot of tears over Disco Elysium, and I know there are going to be a whole lot more to come.
I’m about five years dry, I think. My sense of time is all fucked up. It’s gotten easier to stay away, but not much.
Disco Elysium is still my favorite game.
Pirate it. ZA/UM got stolen from its creators by Estonian businessmen.
If there’s anything in this world worth keeping alive, it’s love.
In the void that is Revachol, we see the light of love and hope slowly fade away. It is up to us to cultivate and nurture that light so it does not die. Love is not dead! As you read this, you are alive and breathing, and it's up to you to seize what remains and fight for it. We can no longer wait for some great revolution that will fix all of our problems. If you truly desire a revolution, you must create the conditions necessary to birth it!
Disco Elysium isn’t just a game about what political faction you align with or finding out who lynched the man behind Whirling-in-Rags; it’s a story about love and why we must hold onto it, even in the darkest of times. I understand that nowadays, with the current state of affairs, it's hard to believe in love and hope. It's difficult to place our hope in a future that seems to have been stolen away from us, yet that's precisely when we need it the most.
I choose to believe in love. I choose to hold on to the hope that a better future is possible, no matter what, because I believe it is. The people we know, the community we live in, and the world we inhabit are worth fighting for. Disco Elysium taught me that fixing the world and making it a better place isn’t just about picking up a gun and waging some violent revolution; it’s about cultivating community and caring for those in it. That’s where the true beauty of Disco Elysium lies.
I believe the way this game conveys that message is quite powerful. Disco doesn't make some grand showy gesture beating you over the head with its message; instead, it laboriously takes the time to show you that the world you live in is beautiful and worth fighting for. It spends the time showing you the inner lives of those around you and has you helping them, one person at a time.
There is one specific character that I feel best embodies this: Cuno. Cuno, at first, is seen to be an irrational, difficult, vulgar, and poorly-behaved child, which leads you to inevitably hate him. As you learn more about Cuno and his home life, however, you realise there’s something greater at play. He doesn’t act out for the hell of it; he is the way he is because his father is a drunk who’s fallen down on his luck due to becoming a victim of the system giving up on him and his son. He’s left with no choice. The system has abandoned Uuno and his son, leaving them both to fend for themselves and pick up the pieces. Which sadly isn’t uncommon in Revachol and the real world as well. It’s perhaps one of the most striking and poignant stories in the game. I eventually went from despising Cuno to feeling empathy for him, as I did for many others in Revachol when I learned their stories.
I believe this approach to storytelling and character writing is incredibly effective, and the best part about Disco Elysium is that these kinds of stories are all over the game. This goes to show how much love and care was put into humanising the inhabitants of Revachol, which helps make the world feel alive. Because of how well the game fleshed out its world and characters Disco Elysium was successful at conveying the message that this world is worth fighting for. Not only was I captivated by this world, but as the game drew to a close, I found myself deeply invested in the wellbeing of these characters and the city.
As I learned about these stories, Revachol’s history, and the many political factions vying for power, I realised that this game was never about solving a murder or finding which faction is "correct." It was about learning to love those around us and working together to create a better world, one step at a time. Creating a better world was never an unattainable goal conjured up in the minds of idealistic and "ignorant" kids. It is a possible reality, but it demands the working toiling masses of the world unite and work hand in hand in creating this future. It is on us to seize the future and lift eachother up when we need it most.
Never give up on fighting for this future. It is only dead when you allow yourself to be convinced that it is.
In the void that is Revachol, we see the light of love and hope slowly fade away. It is up to us to cultivate and nurture that light so it does not die. Love is not dead! As you read this, you are alive and breathing, and it's up to you to seize what remains and fight for it. We can no longer wait for some great revolution that will fix all of our problems. If you truly desire a revolution, you must create the conditions necessary to birth it!
Disco Elysium isn’t just a game about what political faction you align with or finding out who lynched the man behind Whirling-in-Rags; it’s a story about love and why we must hold onto it, even in the darkest of times. I understand that nowadays, with the current state of affairs, it's hard to believe in love and hope. It's difficult to place our hope in a future that seems to have been stolen away from us, yet that's precisely when we need it the most.
I choose to believe in love. I choose to hold on to the hope that a better future is possible, no matter what, because I believe it is. The people we know, the community we live in, and the world we inhabit are worth fighting for. Disco Elysium taught me that fixing the world and making it a better place isn’t just about picking up a gun and waging some violent revolution; it’s about cultivating community and caring for those in it. That’s where the true beauty of Disco Elysium lies.
I believe the way this game conveys that message is quite powerful. Disco doesn't make some grand showy gesture beating you over the head with its message; instead, it laboriously takes the time to show you that the world you live in is beautiful and worth fighting for. It spends the time showing you the inner lives of those around you and has you helping them, one person at a time.
There is one specific character that I feel best embodies this: Cuno. Cuno, at first, is seen to be an irrational, difficult, vulgar, and poorly-behaved child, which leads you to inevitably hate him. As you learn more about Cuno and his home life, however, you realise there’s something greater at play. He doesn’t act out for the hell of it; he is the way he is because his father is a drunk who’s fallen down on his luck due to becoming a victim of the system giving up on him and his son. He’s left with no choice. The system has abandoned Uuno and his son, leaving them both to fend for themselves and pick up the pieces. Which sadly isn’t uncommon in Revachol and the real world as well. It’s perhaps one of the most striking and poignant stories in the game. I eventually went from despising Cuno to feeling empathy for him, as I did for many others in Revachol when I learned their stories.
I believe this approach to storytelling and character writing is incredibly effective, and the best part about Disco Elysium is that these kinds of stories are all over the game. This goes to show how much love and care was put into humanising the inhabitants of Revachol, which helps make the world feel alive. Because of how well the game fleshed out its world and characters Disco Elysium was successful at conveying the message that this world is worth fighting for. Not only was I captivated by this world, but as the game drew to a close, I found myself deeply invested in the wellbeing of these characters and the city.
As I learned about these stories, Revachol’s history, and the many political factions vying for power, I realised that this game was never about solving a murder or finding which faction is "correct." It was about learning to love those around us and working together to create a better world, one step at a time. Creating a better world was never an unattainable goal conjured up in the minds of idealistic and "ignorant" kids. It is a possible reality, but it demands the working toiling masses of the world unite and work hand in hand in creating this future. It is on us to seize the future and lift eachother up when we need it most.
Never give up on fighting for this future. It is only dead when you allow yourself to be convinced that it is.
He went over to the map and studied the northern part of the city, with his back to his visitor.
"Being a policeman," said Szluka, "is not a profession. And it's certainly not a vocation either. It's a curse."
A little later, he turned around and said:
"Of course, I don't mean that. Only think it sometimes. Are you married?"
"Yes."
"Then you know."
-The Man Who Went Up In Smoke, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo
The Name of This Club Is DISCO ELYSIUM
Can't in good conscience give five stars to a work that went out of its way to airlift in the chapo cunts to do ironic/tenuously deniable racist impressions and reserves a special thanks for chrs avll*ne in the end credits, but...did kind of love it nonetheless, in spite of itself - bourgeois indulgences and all.
EDIT: They actually got rid of the chapos and Dasha for the final cut I was wrong, bumped up a half star lol
"Being a policeman," said Szluka, "is not a profession. And it's certainly not a vocation either. It's a curse."
A little later, he turned around and said:
"Of course, I don't mean that. Only think it sometimes. Are you married?"
"Yes."
"Then you know."
-The Man Who Went Up In Smoke, Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo
The Name of This Club Is DISCO ELYSIUM
Can't in good conscience give five stars to a work that went out of its way to airlift in the chapo cunts to do ironic/tenuously deniable racist impressions and reserves a special thanks for chrs avll*ne in the end credits, but...did kind of love it nonetheless, in spite of itself - bourgeois indulgences and all.
EDIT: They actually got rid of the chapos and Dasha for the final cut I was wrong, bumped up a half star lol
According to my records here, I have played somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 video games now, and I'm pretty sure that this is the only one that's made me actually reflect on who I am as a person and think about my future in any meaningful way.
I am flatly in awe of this game. Can you imagine if we lived in a world where there were even five titles a year that were this good
I am flatly in awe of this game. Can you imagine if we lived in a world where there were even five titles a year that were this good
A game about ideology that offers up a pretty unique experience. Don't recommend this to fans of Nier Replicant tho cuz it requires you to think a bit.
it's my favorite game of all time, but now with full voice acting, some new areas and "political vision quests," plus improved animations, some new music, controller support, more supported languages, and more
My wife made me play this, she laughs that I'm much like Harry Dubois and she's Kim Kitsuragi. I take a deep dive into myself and realize that we're not all that far from the broken down alcoholic we control, and his choices seem all too relatable to us, no matter how functional we are at the time. Harry's pretty functional too, he's well, wired, often too much, needs to escape the cruel reality that surrounds him. Luckily my wife's still around, let's not reach that point.
I should not have shaved
Do it for the picture puzzle. Put it all together. One conversation at a time.
"Yes. Sometimes it's better to let people come to these conclusions themselves."
The best way to describe Disco Elysium is greatness. I'm not talking about certain aspects about it. Not the main parts or just the climax. Everything about it is carefully constructed and well-written. From the moment you get introduced to the main character, conflict, subplots and from the very last minute after you finish the game. There's a minute precision and care on every detail of the game, it's truly amazing. The mystery's well-thought out, the process is methodical and every angle is considered. Locations are memorable. B-b-but what if it sacrificed enjoyment for writing? Overdone joke but you just have to see it. The prose and dialogue are witty, humorous, wild, and organic. Every character have distinct personalities, motivations, and beliefs and contribute to the overall picture the narrative is going for. It's incredibly refreshing seeing how the characters interact and there are consequences with every choice you make even if you attempt to avoid them. What's at stake is believable. "Okay but you're just talking as if the game is objectively great and not coming from your own opinion." You know me, I prefer reading books, and visual novels now so this type of game works for me. There are 3 things I want from creators. First, I want them to be ambitious, I meant that I don't want to see them holding back. Go ahead make me uncomfortable and I'd prefer that instead of thinking what-ifs, and buts. I want them to commit in their vision in the way that they can only do. With countless other things out there and ideas recycled, there's still room for originality. Secondly, I want the story to be thought-provoking. It could be any topic but I want it to tackle grand ideas and down-to-earth ones. It wouldn't matter if you couldn't learn or reflect about anything from it that's relevant in your life. Lastly, it must make me emotional not that it's necessary. It'd be pointless if it's forced out of me but I want just a bit of everything. Joy, sadness, anger, catharsis, frustration, empathy, regret, etc. Such is life and how art is best experienced.
Well no surprise, they succeeded in every single category with ease. I already love stories these kinds of stories and glad that it still surpassed my expectations even with minor inconveniences and shortcomings. So go ahead and let yourself soaked with it's rich world and characters. Disco Elysium is a self-discovery journey awaiting you.
The best way to describe Disco Elysium is greatness. I'm not talking about certain aspects about it. Not the main parts or just the climax. Everything about it is carefully constructed and well-written. From the moment you get introduced to the main character, conflict, subplots and from the very last minute after you finish the game. There's a minute precision and care on every detail of the game, it's truly amazing. The mystery's well-thought out, the process is methodical and every angle is considered. Locations are memorable. B-b-but what if it sacrificed enjoyment for writing? Overdone joke but you just have to see it. The prose and dialogue are witty, humorous, wild, and organic. Every character have distinct personalities, motivations, and beliefs and contribute to the overall picture the narrative is going for. It's incredibly refreshing seeing how the characters interact and there are consequences with every choice you make even if you attempt to avoid them. What's at stake is believable. "Okay but you're just talking as if the game is objectively great and not coming from your own opinion." You know me, I prefer reading books, and visual novels now so this type of game works for me. There are 3 things I want from creators. First, I want them to be ambitious, I meant that I don't want to see them holding back. Go ahead make me uncomfortable and I'd prefer that instead of thinking what-ifs, and buts. I want them to commit in their vision in the way that they can only do. With countless other things out there and ideas recycled, there's still room for originality. Secondly, I want the story to be thought-provoking. It could be any topic but I want it to tackle grand ideas and down-to-earth ones. It wouldn't matter if you couldn't learn or reflect about anything from it that's relevant in your life. Lastly, it must make me emotional not that it's necessary. It'd be pointless if it's forced out of me but I want just a bit of everything. Joy, sadness, anger, catharsis, frustration, empathy, regret, etc. Such is life and how art is best experienced.
Well no surprise, they succeeded in every single category with ease. I already love stories these kinds of stories and glad that it still surpassed my expectations even with minor inconveniences and shortcomings. So go ahead and let yourself soaked with it's rich world and characters. Disco Elysium is a self-discovery journey awaiting you.
CARA! QUE OBRA-PRIMA SUPREMA!!!
Todas as análises e críticas que eu vi não estavam exagerando nem um pouco sobre o quão bom esse jogo é!
O sistema totalmente único de diálogos e habilidades, todas as possibilidades e variações narrativas, a exploração livre, detalhada e recompensadora, o jeito que ele consegue sempre manter seus diálogos interessantes e dinâmicos, sabendo muito bem como interseccionar o fator cômico ao sério, toda a teia de informações que se interconectam ou se dividem em ainda mais perguntas e opções investigativas... CARA, COMO ESSE JOGO É FANTÁSTICO!
Importante destacar, claro, que esse jogo é 90% leitura, então se for jogar, vá com a mesma vontade e determinação de ler um livro.
Com isso tudo dito, não tem como eu deixa de mencionar o quanto me dói MUITO saber de todo o problema que os desenvolvedores passaram e de como isso vai atrasar ou mesmo inviabilizar uma sequência ou jogo no mesmo estilo (óbvio, dificilmente mantendo a mesma qualidade também). O que nos resta é torcer pra que toda essa treta se resolva, mas, até lá, recomendo piratear o jogo (ou pegar ele no preço mais barato possível), pra evitar mandar dinheiro pros caras que deram golpe nos Devs.
E antes de fechar, claro:
KIM, VOCÊ É O MELHOR PERSONAGEM DE TODOS! NÓS TE AMAMOS!!!
Todas as análises e críticas que eu vi não estavam exagerando nem um pouco sobre o quão bom esse jogo é!
O sistema totalmente único de diálogos e habilidades, todas as possibilidades e variações narrativas, a exploração livre, detalhada e recompensadora, o jeito que ele consegue sempre manter seus diálogos interessantes e dinâmicos, sabendo muito bem como interseccionar o fator cômico ao sério, toda a teia de informações que se interconectam ou se dividem em ainda mais perguntas e opções investigativas... CARA, COMO ESSE JOGO É FANTÁSTICO!
Importante destacar, claro, que esse jogo é 90% leitura, então se for jogar, vá com a mesma vontade e determinação de ler um livro.
Com isso tudo dito, não tem como eu deixa de mencionar o quanto me dói MUITO saber de todo o problema que os desenvolvedores passaram e de como isso vai atrasar ou mesmo inviabilizar uma sequência ou jogo no mesmo estilo (óbvio, dificilmente mantendo a mesma qualidade também). O que nos resta é torcer pra que toda essa treta se resolva, mas, até lá, recomendo piratear o jogo (ou pegar ele no preço mais barato possível), pra evitar mandar dinheiro pros caras que deram golpe nos Devs.
E antes de fechar, claro:
KIM, VOCÊ É O MELHOR PERSONAGEM DE TODOS! NÓS TE AMAMOS!!!
The arthropods are in silent and meaningless awe of you. Know that we are watching — when you're tired, when the visions spin out of control. The insects will be looking on. Rooting for you.
And when you fall we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky funeral. In honour of your passing.
...In honour of your will, lieutenant-yefreitor. That you kept from falling apart, in the face of sheer terror. Day after day. Second by second.
DETECTIVE
ARRIVING
ON THE SCENE.
And when you fall we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky funeral. In honour of your passing.
...In honour of your will, lieutenant-yefreitor. That you kept from falling apart, in the face of sheer terror. Day after day. Second by second.
DETECTIVE
ARRIVING
ON THE SCENE.