I'm pretty certain if you asked me what the best game ever is, I'd probably say Disco Elysium? Not really in the sense that it's flawless or smarter than any every other game, though perhaps it is smarter than any other mainstream-focused western RPG. It's just this feeling I get both while playing and thinking back on it, how it's bigger than its own state of reality. It manages to do everything so successfully, and a lot of that is obviously subjective, but it's difficult to describe the game as anything but this triumphant experience where every moment that occurs within it lives with you afterwards. I talked a bit about this in my Mother 3 review about how in the Mother series' every minor NPC has meaningful dialogue, but Disco Elysium makes that almost feel untrue by comparison. Sometimes the seams show themselves, especially if you circle back through the dialogue or partake in savescumming, but I find even the seemingly inconsequential dialogue reverberating through my being -- elevated by bespoke, unforgettable voice work.

I'm sure someday some other game will replace it for "best game ever" in my silly little brain, or maybe that status will slowly decay on its own as those sorts of declarations often do. Regardless, I can't see Disco Elysium not continuing to be an incredibly special game, at the very least for the way it weaves meaningful, intelligent, and compassionate dialogue with actively engaging RPG systems that genuinely do advance the genre, and maybe even mainstream gaming as a whole, beyond being primarily violence and dopamine simulators.