Game review 21 November 2019, 18:58

author: Christopher Mysiak

Meet 2019's Most Amazing Game – Disco Elysium, a Quirky RPG from Estonia

[Review updated] A depraved cop investigates a degenerate industrial world, where racism is ubiquitous, the specter of communism fuels class struggles, and the good and evil are meaningless constructs. Disco Elysium, this year's most ambitious RPG

The review is based on the PC version.

These are the first words you will hear. Blackness truly surrounds them – there is nothing, only the letters. But the Ancient Lizard Brain that pronounces them is wrong. You'll have something to do in a minute. There will be the roar of a motor coach passing under the cafeteria and you will wake up – you will be brutally dragged out of the warm black. You've had your time. It's astounding it happened so late, really. Nothing could break you out of sleep. Neither the frosty air drafting in through the window that someone (I wonder who?) knocked with a shoe, nor the cursing, drugged kids on the backyard, not even the workers picketing at the gate of the nearby dockyard.

In any case, after the sudden awakening, you will not remember anything – where you are, what you're doing, what's your name. And above all – where's this monstrous hangover coming from. But don't worry about it. Your new partner, lieutenant Kim Katsuragi, who has just arrived – will quickly clarify the situation. In the cafe's backyard, a hangman's been swinging on the tree for the past week. Nobody know who's responsible for his ominous presence, but you, detective, have been assigned to solve the case – the orders come from precinct 41... Actually, this is your third day on the scene... but instead of gathering evidence and questioning witnesses, you were busy dumping your memory by chugging booze and sniffing anything you could get. But this ends now.

Time to find the shoe, put on your talking tie (what?), and start looking for answers. Who's to blame for the death of the hangman? Where did you lose your badge (and weapon, but let's not mention that)? Why does almost everyone in this filthy neighborhood look at you with disdain? And why the fuck are you such a mess?!

Wakey-wakey, detective...

That's how Disco Elysium begins. The game is serious, clever, morally ambiguous and, in principle, without elements of the supernatural – albeit full of fantastic, bizarre and often quirky themes or situations. This is an RPG that's one of the most unusual, ambitious and intriguing representatives of the genre released the last decade, if not more.

It's very reminiscent of the immortal Torment, even though it does its own thing in all aspects. It's an RPG that doesn't really quite fit the definition of an RPG... in any case, not according to our usual set of prerogatives defining this genre.

Let's take combat, for instance. There's none in Disco Elysium. Of course, conflicts arise quite often since the protagonist, as befits a policeman, mettles with other people's affairs, stays around shady individuals, and, from time to time, finds himself in dire straits. But forget about random encounters with random enemies. Forget traditional turn-based skirmishes, or the active pause, using strong and fast attacks, and obtaining deadlier weapons.

Let's say that you spurred an open conflict. First, I would like to congratulate – it's not an easy task in Disco Elysium. What happens next? The entire "combat" sequence will be resolved through dialogue. The game describes events – or rather the things that cannot be seen by looking at the otherwise sufficiently detailed 3-D character models – and gives the player choices precisely tailored to the conditions.

Here's an example: You decided to enter the yard by force and knock out the muscle, who stands in your way. This begins with a hard test of strength. You roll the dice... Success! The chic animation shows the bouncer getting punched in the throat and bending to his knees. Time stops for a moment, and a dialog box appears, offering further options: a right hook, or a spin-kick? If in doubt – the game will pronounce the inner voice of the protagonist (actually one of the voices) and offer you the best solution after testing various of his skills. And so it goes.

...we have a city to burn...

Perhaps you're now under the impression that the game is a paragraph, text-based adventure. Well... The ZA/UM studio did what they could to avoid that. We spend a lot of time on typical exploration of the environment, full of interactive objects. The perspective is isometric, and the actions of the protagonist are accompanied by neat animations (really, their number is remarkable for a game of this type), and the voice acting is really good. The whole is complemented by a nice color palette and good visual effects.

All this, however, doesn't change the fact that Disco Elysium is brimming with text. Well written, clever, bright, superbly constructed, with a specific atmosphere with a touch of black humor here and there, but nonetheless – in quite terrifying quantities.

People that choose high psychosocial abilities for the protagonist will be most affected by that. In Disco Elysium we spend more time engaged in inner dialog that chatting to NPCs. There are 24 different skills available – and the tests of this skills, performed with every other sentence, are responsible for the lion's share of the text in the game.

Each "skill" is a kind of a separate voice in the hero's head (remember the talking tie?), and each of them has something interesting to add, even during the blandest conversation on interaction with the environment. If that bothers you, consider that ZA/UM did not follow the footsteps of inXile, and – differently than in Torment: Tides of Numenera – tried to avoid overwhelming the player with too large chunks of text. Here, the messages are short, embellished with different colors and graphical elements to make a bit sexier – in the end, however, the amount of text may give you a headache.

But it's not a huge issue when the quality is alright. The writers demonstrate rich vocabulary, coming up with some fun metaphors, and serving some pretty specialized language from different areas. Then, there's the setting. Before developing the game, the members of the studio spent several years (!), creating a universe of Disco Elysium during RPG sessions – and this really paid off. Reading about all the nations, races, important figures and events can make you dizzy. ZA/UM can be proud of the universe they created – still, the sheer amount of text can be overbearing.

...or does the city has a detective to burn?

Someone maay ask, "Can't we just ignore parts of the text?" Fair point. Disco Elysium, in some respects, resembles a point-and-click adventure game. The game world is limited to one of the districts of the city Revachol. The locations are rather cramped, and practically everything there – from characters, to items, to decor – has been placed with purpose. The plot is a very compact, too. It revolves around the murder case, which, expectedly, has ever wider implications, but it basically brings the entire game to a single "main quest."

You won't even be doing traditional side quests; all the cases that have the seeming of side activities can introduce new threads to the investigation. On top of that, there are elements of non-linearity. The creators gave us some freedom in formulating conclusions based on the collected evidence, in search of subsequent next clues, and numerous problems have more than one solution. Simply put, ignoring any information is impractical, because everything may be relevant. More – it's even advisable to be rather meticulous with reading all the descriptions.

Unless you don't care about a successful conclusion. Disco Elysium offers a lot of room to maneuver for the character's personality; nothings prevents us from sealing the fall of the protagonist, leaving him in the same mess as we find him in – if not worse. And then, if you really don't feel like reading a lot, you can simply create a dumb brute – playing such a character, you will only see the basic descriptions of things, and there will be little pondering over serious matters. You'll miss one of the most important aspects of the game, but...

No truce with the furies

When I'm trying to come up with creations that I could compare Disco Elysium to, I see three games. The first two I already mentioned: Planescape: Torment and Torment: Tides of Numenera. ZA/UM, like the Black Isle studio, following in the footsteps of inXile Entertainment, used the formula of an isometric RPG to create something completely different than most representatives of the genre. The authors almost completely eliminated combat, and subordinated the character development system to the story telling, which is the absolute foundation of the game. Moreover, the story involves themes and ideas straight from serious literature, rather than electronic entertainment. By extension, they've elevated their work to nearly high culture – hence contributing to ennobling the entire medium of video games. And they deserve high praise for that.

And the third creation I'd compare Disco Elysium to is The Infinite Jest from late David Foster Wallace. The book is considered an outstanding piece of literature, belong to the gems of American prose, a mandatory reading for anyone claiming to be a man of words. At the same time, it's definitely not an easy read. Even if you're not afraid of lush sentences and vocabulary that could be challenging for the most literate person, it wouldn't be difficult to feel intimidated by the sheer volume of the thing And it's similar with Disco Elysium. It's a wonderful game that every fan of the RPG genre – even every player looking for something more than empty entertainment – should get to know themselves. Remember, however, that reaching the finale may be mentally exhausting.