Disco Elysium is both ancient and new, and this makes it fascinating. It is a video game made entirely out of good writing and tabletop skill checks. Both of these things are older than the personal computer, and yet seeing them here like this, together with so little else to back them up, reveals anew that they are all that we ever actually needed.
More than any roleplaying video game I've seen, Disco Elysium feels like one-on-one campaign with an excellent, if slightly overzealous Dungeon Master... one who is perhaps a bit too invested in their worldbuilding, but is the sort of narrator who can spin any failure into something entertaining, make any success feel triumphant.
What the dungeon master hasn't quite mastered is how to bail the player out, and while they know how to offer the player multiple solutions to a problem, they still make the occasional, unfortunately impactful mistake. There are kind of A LOT of ways to softlock the plot of Disco Elysium if one doesn't save-scum their checks, which they shouldn't, because that would undermine the entire point of them. If there WERE a physical, human dungeon master at the table, they'd be able to fudge the dice so that the player DOESN'T land themselves with an unwinnable save because they didn't invest in the nebulous "shivers" stat in order to pass a rather high shivers check that is flat out required in order to complete the game. It's a rather costly oversight, and is only one of many things that can lock a player out of the endgame if they prioritize sidequests before chasing down the point of no return.
Even with its back-to-basics tabletop approach, the video game part of Disco Elysium finds a way to disrupt to proceedings. Disco is a game with a whole lot of walking, and a classic isometric CRPG perspective. Its implementation becomes... fiddly and tiresome, to say the least. The worst thing about Disco Elysium is without a doubt the simple act of walking around in it. The movement speed often adds to the atmosphere but in a game that involves this much repeated traversal of the same, unchanged areas it eventually became quite grating. It's always a shame when the worst part about a game is the actual playing of it.
In saying that I do not mean to belittle Disco Elysium. It is not only a good story but a good game. The player is not just along for the ride on someone else's book, but even if they were... it's a damned fine book.
More than any roleplaying video game I've seen, Disco Elysium feels like one-on-one campaign with an excellent, if slightly overzealous Dungeon Master... one who is perhaps a bit too invested in their worldbuilding, but is the sort of narrator who can spin any failure into something entertaining, make any success feel triumphant.
What the dungeon master hasn't quite mastered is how to bail the player out, and while they know how to offer the player multiple solutions to a problem, they still make the occasional, unfortunately impactful mistake. There are kind of A LOT of ways to softlock the plot of Disco Elysium if one doesn't save-scum their checks, which they shouldn't, because that would undermine the entire point of them. If there WERE a physical, human dungeon master at the table, they'd be able to fudge the dice so that the player DOESN'T land themselves with an unwinnable save because they didn't invest in the nebulous "shivers" stat in order to pass a rather high shivers check that is flat out required in order to complete the game. It's a rather costly oversight, and is only one of many things that can lock a player out of the endgame if they prioritize sidequests before chasing down the point of no return.
Even with its back-to-basics tabletop approach, the video game part of Disco Elysium finds a way to disrupt to proceedings. Disco is a game with a whole lot of walking, and a classic isometric CRPG perspective. Its implementation becomes... fiddly and tiresome, to say the least. The worst thing about Disco Elysium is without a doubt the simple act of walking around in it. The movement speed often adds to the atmosphere but in a game that involves this much repeated traversal of the same, unchanged areas it eventually became quite grating. It's always a shame when the worst part about a game is the actual playing of it.
In saying that I do not mean to belittle Disco Elysium. It is not only a good story but a good game. The player is not just along for the ride on someone else's book, but even if they were... it's a damned fine book.