DISCO ELYSIUM— THE FINAL CUT
Evan: A richly detailed roleplaying game about a deeply human shared experience: Losing your wallet.
Encyclopedia: The creation of an Estonian studio who’d never made a videogame before, DiscoElysium is a revolutionary detective RPG set in the imaginary city of Revachol, and in particular its impoverished dockside district of Martinaise, whose politics serve as a mirror of our own.
Drama: Good sire, you neglect what’s most important. DiscoElysium gives your skills a voice, and the more points you put in them the more likely they are to interject with their own observations, whether helpful (like when I point out a character who may be lying to you), or unhelpful (like whatever nonsense Electro-Chemistry is about to inflict upon us).
Electro-Chemistry: You both forgot what really matters. DiscoElysium open-palm slams you right into the poetic streaming consciousness of a shambling maniac who broke his brain with a whole lot of drugs. Yummy, yummy drugs.
Wes: It’s a marvel that DiscoElysium manages to make the warring voices of your brain funnier, more compelling companions than typical RPG followers. The way your skill points affect how active they are in conversations and how their dialogue helps you understand your character and the world around you—it’s just brilliant. I can’t think of another RPG that makes bad dice rolls so much fun, either. I never felt the urge to savescum in
DiscoElysium
because there was always a clever bit of dialogue waiting for me, even when I literally fell on my ass.
Evan: Exactly: the way that those different brain voices passively interject based on how much you’ve developed them—and the fact that they can still betray you and offer bad advice!—is genius and reflective of what it feels like to be human. A person with ‘Level 10 Empathy’ can still make a bad decision by listening to that empathy at the wrong moment. In this, I love how much Disco cares about what I don’t say. A numbered list of dialogue options shouldn’t be a series of cabinets you rummage through to get the stuff inside. What you say affects the world and reflects who you are.
Fraser: DiscoElysium was close to the perfect RPG when it first launched, but miraculously ZA/UM has managed to make it even better. In a huge free update, the studio added full voice acting, something I didn’t feel that was missing until I heard it. Even your internal monologue gets the treatment, with a superb performance from Lenval Brown giving your skills and inner thoughts even more personality. As a bonus, there are a bunch of political vision quests, too, which serve to create a climax for your journey of self-discovery. As challenging as some of the subject matter is, it’s an unmissable game.
Andy K: Still unbeatable. Every RPG I’ve played since, I’ve thought to myself: “I wish this was more like DiscoElysium”.
The sheer variety of ways to shape your character—and how people in the world react so specifically to what you’ve moulded this grotesque lump of copshaped clay into—makes it a role-playing experience like no other. I can’t remember the last time I was so completely consumed by a game’s setting and atmosphere either. I’m listening to the music from the Whirling-in-Rags (the extra dreamy
12pm version) as I type this, and I want to be back there, interrogating burly dockworkers, singing heartbreaking karaoke, and slowly piecing together what I did on my apocalyptic bender a few nights before. DiscoElysium is a truly singular game. There’s never been anything like it, and there probably won’t be ever again, even if ZA/UM makes a sequel.
I CAN’T THINK OF ANOTHER RPG THAT MAKES BAD DICE ROLLS SO MUCH FUN