Disco Elysium review
In dark times, should the stars also go out?
Disco Elysium. For a CRPG of its type, it is surprisingly well-known -- perhaps for its brilliance. The unique dialogue system with witty political humour, the beautifully ruined world, the post-impressionist art -- it all comes together in a one-of-a-kind game… no, *experience*. Chances are, you know all of this already, and don’t need me to repeat it. Instead, this article will be about how I played it.
It started out rough. When interacting with me even briefly, it’s easy to see that I usually try to be “good” to the point of being “boring” -- for example, I am radically anti-drinking and believe in never skipping lectures. This directly translates to my experience in gaming -- if there is a “choose your own adventure”, I *will* play as The Hero™ and do absolutely no evil no matter how “dull” that route is. The beginning Disco Elysium was a blunt hit on the head.
When you wake up into the world, you are already in shit. Deep shit. You can’t be “the good guy” here -- no matter what you do, the cloud of neurotoxin and an air of *disco* will linger. When I talked to someone for the first time and there was no sane option -- a thousand apologies and a sincere promise to fix *everything* -- my initial instinct was to just close the game. Which I did! Then a month passed, and I gave it a second chance. And will forever be glad I did.
The past isn’t your to choose. But the present is. You *can* be nice and make the world better “one hug at a time”. Sure, a penniless heartbroken alcoholic “detective” with amnesia and *a lot* of questionable history is a very long title to get rid of, perhaps too large to ever truly put behind you. And it’s not like you can really change anything, being pseudo-police with barely any local foothold. But there is something beautiful in fighting it all, “precisely *because* it’s impossible”.
Zooming out, we get to the world. Oh, the world. The lore is extremely detailed, with fictional technologies, countries, ethnicities -- and slurs to call them. It feels almost, but not quite, entirely unlike our own, with a fun mix of time periods too. Flintlock pistols with aerostats and radio!
Martinaise, the place you explore, is a poor sight to behold. Kids on the streets with access to drugs, a workers union as the only semblance of authority, and a vaguely sinister foreign occupation always hovering somewhere in the stratosphere. All while ruined buildings remind you of a lost war. Yet among the rubble, life goes on. It feels like a core theme of Disco Elysium -- no matter how dire the situation is, all isn’t lost. Teenagers try to build a club at an abandoned church, the aforementioned union aims to create a community centre. After all, a check failure can be just as interesting as a success.
Though it is marketed as a murder mystery, Disco Elysium is far from one. You’ll solve it all eventually, but what *surrounds* your quest is the meat of the game. The most beautiful moments were the small interactions with random people and the side quests. Exploring an abandoned commercial area, framing a racist for corporate espionage… there are tons of fun encounters, each of them branching into countless variations of events and forming a unique, unforgettable journey.
When I first tried Disco Elysium, I thought that I got myself into a pretentious, nihilistic “boo hoo everything sucks” type of story. I was wrong. It is one of the most hopeful games I have ever played. To me, it was a game about doing your best in a world where nobody can. About moving on and turning over a new page in life. About the sky, the world, and being alive.
And, without a doubt, it was *HARDCORE TO THE MEGA*