FAIR COPOTYPE
I’m sorry for playing DISCO ELYSIUM wrong
Most of the time, videogames let us hide behind a haze of false efficacy, fooling us that we could do astonishing things like reload a gun or do a chin-up. But Disco Elysium is different. It knows us. And, worse still, it knows we know it knows us, and it uses that cursed information like an emotional blackjack.
It’s never more obvious than in the moments where you try to pick the dramatic, cool options. Yes, there’s a chance you’ll defeat that wall of fascist muscle with a breathtaking disco spin kick; it’s just a gratuitously small one. Meanwhile, if you try to deal with anxietyinducing horrors the game flings at you as you would in real life, it’s no less merciless. On my first playthrough I was branded ‘Sorry Cop’, on account of my need to apologize to everyone. Returning to that save now makes me want to say sorry to past me for being so spineless, like some sort of hand-wringing temporal ouroboros of perpetual meekness, disappearing up my own pinched backside.
I’d love to tell you that it’s all worth it. That actually, the cracked mirror Disco Elysium holds up to your psyche will enrich and improve you as a person. That in order to rebuild you must first be torn down. But it more often feels like a public information film about the dangers of overconfidence. “Yes, you might think you want to be a zaddy. But have you considered the danger of accidentally telling your new partner your name is Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau?” On no conceivable level does this mean that Disco Elysium is anything other than intoxicatingly brilliant. It’s just that it challenges you on an entirely different level. So what if you can boss the fifth Pantheon in Hollow Knight? This is a game that can make you doubt your rightful position in the universe with a spiffing hat. It’s amazing that, even after all the complicated internalization, that there’s any resource left to build a relatable environment.
AMBROSIUS OF THE GODS
Revachol, however, is a real place full of richly-drawn people, thickened with the scar tissue of violence, revolution and corruption, like taking a holiday in a conflicting ideology. Despite being mostly repellent, it has a specific and special undertow that will keep you coming back, even if it’s like watching a painful video of last night’s karaoke. And the central relationship between your clown car of a detective and the neat efficiency of Kim Kitsuragi is a story in itself.
The result is something embarrassingly good: a game where the world, characters, or pin-sharp deflation of the player’s ego would all have been enough on their own. Taken together, they’re astonishing.
In order to rebuild you must first be torn down