Disco Elysium

As with any good noir novel, what seems simple at first is far from being in Disco Elysium - and things tend to get incredibly weird, too. This title takes the ancestral mechanics of RPGs paper like Dungeons & Dragons, and articulates them in a strange way around a macabre intrigue mixing, poverty and society on the verge of collapse. Taking advantage of biting dialogue and taking place in an expertly crafted world, Disco Elysium incorporates unique gameplay mechanics - like the one allowing you to debate against 24 different sections of your brain - to create an experience that leaves a lasting mark on you. Somehow he manages to make the whole thing pleasant, and surprisingly often funny.

The premise of Disco Elysium is simple: A body has been discovered hanging from a tree in the backyard of an inn, and it's up to you to shed light on the matter in the 30 hours it takes to complete the adventure. But solving this mystery is far from straightforward, especially when a severe hangover left you with complete amnesia. You don't remember your name, much less that you are a cop on a murder case. Part of your consciousness, described as your old reptilian brain - which you literally strike up a conversation with - is trying to persuade you to give up on your quest, while your whiny limbic system staunchly opposes it. As you stumble around your ransacked room, it quickly becomes clear that this is not just a murder case, but a journey of resolving crises both on a personal and societal level. This magnificent RPG in isometric view constantly pushes you to think and benefits from a particularly stylized rendering.

Learn, Baby Learn

When you start Disco Elysium, the first decision you have to make comes down to what kind of detective you want to play: smart (Sherlock Holmes style), sensitive (like Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks) or rather fit inside (Marv way in Sin City). . Each of these personalities determines the base stats of your Nameless Detective, influences the decisions presented to you from the start, and is also an interesting and unique way to play. Starting the adventure with the first build allows you to instantly realize that you are in the city of Revachol thanks to your encyclopedic knowledge. By selecting the second category, this time you will have no idea where you are and will have to gather this information yourself. The beauty of Disco Elysium's skill system is that the choices you make always reward you in some way - a sensitive sleuth might not know where he is, but he has the possibility of questioning his tie in order to obtain clues. Yes, you read that right.

If these main categories don't seem varied enough, you also have the option of creating your own detective from scratch. The sheet defining the characteristics of your character consists of four distinct pillars: Intellect, Psyche, Physics and Motor skills. Knowing that each of them includes six wonderfully weird skills (like Encyclopedic Lore) that have their own bonuses. Want to earn the respect of a character? Spend your points in the authority stream. Intimidate a witness? Increase your physical level. Talking to that tie? Focus on this skill inspired by David Lynch's Inland Empire movie.

These skills aren't just passive ways of sending you down different paths - each one is like a distinct voice inside your detective's head, appearing in the dialogue window during conversations. If you favor empathy, this voice will likely advise you not to take interrogation of a victim too far, while if you choose chiaroscuro (a skill that allows you to question suspects in a more muscular way), your brain will probably encourage you to hit your interlocutor. This is as much welcome advice as it is a way to assess your progress: you get an extra skill point for every 100 XP points, by completing the objectives on your quest list or more simply by chatting with characters and discovering new information. You have to think carefully about how you want to use them, but never feel like you have to wait too long to get new ones.

This strong emphasis on skill management makes Disco Elysium a real video game UFO (the video game closest to it at the moment is in my opinion Divinity: Original Sin 2, imagining that turn-based combat turn be replaced by point and click scenario branches, worthy of the golden age of LucasArts). Solving puzzles goes hand in hand with controlling your skills, which boil down to interactions combining consideration of your statistics and dice rolls. The higher the number obtained for the required skill, the higher its percentage of success. Taking a central role, this mechanic is used to solve everything, whether it be dialogue choices, jumping over a chasm, or resorting to violence.

Let's be clear: there are no fights in Disco Elysium, at least not in the traditional sense. Swinging a punch depends on your detective's propensity to resort to violence, and the consequences of that action are usually verbal rather than physical. Most of the time, you are armed with your tongue (sometimes hanging tight) and your dice rolls. Your dialogue choices are often crucial to problem solving, not only when you interact with other characters, but also with the many voices that occupy your mind. This is a really fun way to take in challenging situations and a welcome breath of fresh air compared to more action-oriented RPGs. I even found progressing through dialogue and building my character sheet in Disco Elysium much more interesting than the monotonous approach of slaying enemies using yet another +2 blade.

Like Bethesda's RPGs, your attire also affects your skills, positively or negatively. By wearing a replica hat of Dick Mullen (a fictional detective), you can increase your encyclopedic knowledge by one point. A quick costume change can also come in handy when you need to make a seemingly complicated dice roll. So I happened to come across a strange graffiti in a particularly seedy part of town, requiring a substantial amount of "Thrills" - an ability that gives you goosebumps and allows you to "scan" the city. in order to decipher your immediate environment. My character originally had a low Chill rating, but putting on a pair of sunglasses and putting on another jacket, my die roll hit percentage reached 72%. Once the sequence was successful, I quickly put on my favorite clothes.

During these passages, a little additional thought is necessary in order to adapt your character's statistics according to the items you have in your inventory. You can also improve your skills (like speed) by using alcohol or drugs. These substances temporarily bolster one of the four pillars of your character sheet (one hour in game scale), but this comes at the cost of your health or morale, however. I never really felt like it was a risky business, and ended up using narcotics on a regular basis in order to get a nice little boost. In truth, while I would have liked to have had more opportunities to do so, I never really had to juggle the items in my inventory. I used the same outfit for a large part of the adventure, and would appreciate having to change more regularly. Fortunately, Disco Elysium has such a strong central plot that I never really suffered from this (relative) lack of difficulty.

In addition to improving your skills, you also have the opportunity to spend points in your Thought Cabinet, a unique mechanic that transforms abstract concepts like communism, memories of your favorite flavors, or thinking (wrongly) that you're a rockstar in a sort of mental inventory. An aspect that skilfully plays on the fact that half the battle in Disco Elysium takes place within your mind. By internalizing an unlocked thought during your wanderings, you can get a host of rewards related to it. While these can come in the form of stat boosts, XP, or unique attributes, they can also induce major negative effects, but part of the fun is just not knowing what benefits will come from your ruminations (which could for example concern a certain “volumetric excrement compactor”) according to their maturation time.

To give you an idea, after seven hours of maturation, the thought called "Wompty-Dompty-Dom Center" allowed me to get 10 XP points each time I successfully used my encyclopedic knowledge during a conversation. , but also decreased my suggestion capacity by two points because my brain felt that I was a "pretentious lazy". It is a wonderfully strange system, characterized by the appearance of a new, delightfully grotesque illustrative painting filling your screen (loaded with disturbing images reflecting a grim view of humanity and invariably reminiscent of the "Black Paintings" period of the painter Francisco Goya) each you "complete" a thought.

On the beat

The concept of society seems to have ceased for a long time in the streets of Revachol, once proud capital of the world in which you wake up. Martinaise, the district where you will spend most of your time, is a district plagued by anger and discontent, but also a captivating place. At first glance, no one seems happy here except a few power hungry individuals. This is a sumptuous representation of a decidedly ugly place, which will allow you to instantly get an idea of the world in which you will be brought to evolve for 30 hours. Snow falls gently on abandoned vehicles, dilapidated and neglected architecture haunts the streets, and shattered statues commemorating a long and legendary war tell us a little more about the place's busy past.

To discover the stories the city has to tell you (especially many), you will need to be thorough, using all of your character's detective skills, as they come to her. Small colored orbs are scattered throughout the environments, and clicking on each one allows you to learn a little more about this complex world. While the distilled information won't necessarily advance your investigation, it always turns out to be interesting. With Disco Elysium, the ZA / UM studio has created a truly fascinating universe - rarely will a video game setting have fascinated me as much as that of the city of Revachol. I rank it on par with The Colorful Continent of The Witcher 3 or the Wild West of Red Dead Redemption 2, despite the fact that it spans a much smaller area. & Lt; br / & gt; If the A game's world density can seem overwhelming at times, with maps filled with icons and vast expanses of land inviting exploration, this is never the case with Disco Elysium however. There is certainly a lot to do, but it encourages you to take your time and digest the information being offered to you at your own pace. As a detective, the thorny task of separating the true from the false is yours.

You'll also feel the urge to click on every item on the screen, as any item you can interact with can be highlighted by holding down the Tab key (which should rekindle some memories among veterans of the adventure genre). While it sometimes turns out to be deliberately obtuse in its dialogue or the way certain things are worded, Disco Elysium never conceals what you are supposed to do. The tasks are clearly listed in the menu and complemented with a generous amount of hints about the goals you are aiming for: an incredibly dense experience with a to-do list growing rapidly, but one in which I never felt lost. .

At the center of it all is the diversity of the characters in Disco Elysium and the way their stories intertwine with yours and that of the world they live in. Each new face is accompanied by a splendid portrait on canvas appearing to have been painted by a Francis Bacon in a daze. The characters are fleshed out and a quick glance at their faces or at the sentences they speak enlightens you on their life journey. We find for example Cuno, a rude kid (and a beautiful rot) who takes pleasure in throwing stones at the suspended corpse constituting the object of your investigation or even Evrart Claire, fat union leader seemingly cut in the same fabric as Jabba the Hutt. It is rare to cross paths with a caring person in Revachol, which makes bonding and nurturing a conversion bordering on politeness all the more special ...

The main one of these links remains the one that you will forge with your partner, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, who came from another police station to help you shed light on this affair. Initially, he is cold and rather suspicious of your methods. But I enjoyed watching our ties grow closer as the stakes rose. Kitsuragi's caustic humor and analytical mind shine through in his voice, and give him a reassuring tone during times of tension. But the same is not true for the entire cast of Disco Elysium. The vocal performances are a real roller-coaster ride: some turn out to be very accurate and fit perfectly into the game world, while others seem quite rigid and robotic, which has the effect of pulling you out of a different universe. very well built.

Regardless of their interpretation, the dialogues themselves turn out to be carefully written (we do regret some notable spelling mistakes, but this defect remains anecdotal when we know that the script contains more than a million words). Pungent and at times very funny, the lines regularly refer to the fog you find yourself in and never fail to call you to order when you've made a stupid mistake. The script doesn't shy away from tackling much darker and more serious themes with a cynical tone, given that many people in Revachol have racist and fascist beliefs and make no secret of them. The characters will thus pass from a revolutionary prose calling for the fall of the bourgeoisie to Kafkaesque psychoanalytic ramblings. These topics help broaden and enrich your mind, and cause you to question your character's place in the world as well as your own. Disco Elysium is as much a tribute to the noir novel as it is an assessment of your own socio-political inclinations.

The plot of Disco Elysium falls into two main parts: solving the murder for which you were sent to Revachol, and a more personal quest to try to piece together your past and find out who you really are, which intertwine here with societal issues. Telling you more about the plot would likely spoil the mystery - and I strongly urge you to experience the story for yourself. With so many twists and forks, there's a good chance you'll end up with a different conclusion than mine. A handful of throws of the keys did not allow me to obtain the desired result, and I look forward to retrying these sequences, in order to know their impact on the unfolding of the story. Although I left a bit more of the mess behind than I wanted, I was overall happy with the conclusion I got. If it is still difficult to conclude such a dense plot, Disco Elysium manages it handily (even if I was secretly hoping for a final revelation, another twist).

During those 30 hours of play, I read a lot in order to learn more about the world I found myself in and the poor souls that inhabit it. If it all seems a little too overwhelming, there is always an option to give up. Fifteen minutes after starting the adventure, I had my first game over after having cracked and given in to the whispers of my reptilian brain. Disco Elysium is a really weird game, which offers a rather dark, but incredibly stimulating experience that I can't wait to relive.

In the game we enter an incredibly detailed and complex world full of interesting characters, a gripping story and in-depth background story. In the middle of it all, we create our own police officer , whom we can design and individualize from the ground up through thoughts, clothing and skills, until he is really our hero. However, the complexity has a disadvantage: If you don't want to read and try out a lot, you will quickly be overwhelmed.

Serious inspector or bang-bang?

Disco Elysium starts rather clichéd with the memory loss of our main character. In this case, however, this amnesia is necessary so that we really have a blank sheet of paper in front of us that we can design ourselves. Our hero doesn't even know his name when he wakes up with the hangover of the century after a night of partying in a shabby hotel. Only our partner, who is waiting for us downstairs in the dump, explains to us: We are police officers and should solve the murder case of a hanged man together with him .

Too bad that we lost our clothes, our badge and our service weapon while drinking and now everyone in the coastal district of Martinaise knows that we are an emotionally broken alcoholic. We are initially treated as such, but through dialogues and observations we learn more over time about police work and the people around us. This allows us to restore our honor as policemen - or just keep drinking and have a lot of fun with everything.

If we allow it, the weird humor of Disco Elysium constantly comes through in the dialogues - for example, when we introduce ourselves everywhere as a disco supercop or when we incorporate a brisk "peng peng" with a pistol finger gesture into our conversations, which our partner is half into drives insane.

Complex world without clichés

The great strengths of Disco Elysium are the complexity, variety and breadth of themes, characters and stories. If we want to fall asleep at night while an ancient reptilian brain is arguing with our limbic system about our fate in our head, that's wonderfully absurd. On the other hand, when a two-meter giant tells us about his race theory, which makes us inferior in his eyes, it is oppressive and disturbing.

Each figure looks like an independent character and not a cliché decal . The XXL racist is a big black man and the local thugs have a clever lawyer at their side who gives us a lot of trouble without any violence. The main story also scores with surprising twists and turns: apparently suspects turn out to be innocent and apparently uninvolved characters develop into key characters.

Disco Elysium does not shy away from serious topics such as politics, racism, drug abuse or sexual violence and also creates a world that is refreshingly different for a role play. Instead of the Middle Ages, the focus is on the early modernity of the city of Revanchol, which lies in ruins after a revolution, while different political currents fight for power. We find ourselves between communists, moralists, conservatives and more, some of whom hold very extreme views. We can try to specifically help factions to victory or play them off against one another by working for all sides or by abstaining as best we can.

What we do, however, always has consequences for our relationships and history. Everything is interlinked - the story of revanchol, the workers' strike at the port, political intrigues and of course the murder that we want to solve. However, such a wide variety of possibilities also requires many explanations. Except for a few passages that are set to music , they are mainly in text form , and only in English.

Disco Elysium is therefore not for the lazy to read and even pure school English is hardly sufficient here. Even with a good command of English, one sometimes does not understand completely, because every small text contains an incredible amount of information and saves the role-play with explanations necessary for understanding.

Skills and mind games

Since there is no fighting in Disco Elysium, everything is based on exploration, examining objects and dialogue. We steer our character through the open world with a click of the mouse (there is no fast travel function, but the hero can sprint with a double click) and light up interaction points with the tab key.

There we collect important evidence or draw conclusions. We can then take them up again in the dialogues. By the way, there is no time acceleration . If a certain interlocutor is only available at a certain time of the day, we have to kill the time reading case files until then.

In addition to dialog options, there are also challenges when interacting with characters, in which dice are rolled like in a pen & paper role-playing game. But that is not the only thing that determines our success. It also depends on previous questions, discoveries and our abilities. While we are investigating, we are given skill points in the game, which we can distribute across a total of 24 skills such as logic, observation, physical strength or our body language.

At the beginning of the game, we can also choose between three classes that start with a bonus on certain talents. The thinker, for example, has a tendency towards logic or rhetoric and less towards brute force. But then we can still expand our police officers as we want. The system is very flexible because in addition to the skills there is also the so-called thought cabinet.

While exploring or in dialogues, we keep picking up on thoughts that we "think through to the end" in the background by activating them and letting a little time pass. The highlight: Every thought gives powerful bonuses to skills, but we don't know which ones beforehand. In the end, we can win clear advantages (e.g. +1 on logic) or have bad luck (-1 on empathy).

In the latter case, we then have to invest a skill point in order to forget the annoying thought again. In addition, we regularly find items of clothing such as coats, shoes or trousers, which in turn bring bonuses and penalties for the skills. This means that our policeman is extremely versatile and can be constantly changed while the game is running and adapted to specific situations.

(Almost) no game over

But you don't have to worry about getting stuck somewhere due to the wrong specialization. If we lose when we roll the dice, this does not automatically mean game over. It goes on anyway and failure sometimes opens up interesting opportunities for us . When the huge racist doesn't let us by, we attack him, for example, despite the low percentage chance when rolling the dice, lose and then receive the tip from an observer to talk to him about his flimsy ideology, which in turn opens up new options for us Bringing success closer.

We only fail completely when our morale or health drops to zero. This happens when certain statements in the dialogue - such as a sharp remark about slouching our service weapon - hit us particularly hard or we injure ourselves physically. Even then, at the last moment, we can still take one of the healing items that we can buy cheaply or often find in the world.

Disco Elysium basically goes on and on, which avoids frustration . The free storage system contributes to this - if we run into the wall at one point, we explore even more, question other characters or do one of the numerous side tasks until we have further improved our skills. It's just a little annoying that we have to find out most of it ourselves. There is no tutorial or help function for role-playing beginners.

Small studio, big game

Disco Elysium proves that insulation optics can still be contemporary today . The different areas of Martinaise also look very detailed and varied from above. Dilapidated ruined houses, dusty shops or the occasional snowy or rainy coast are kept in an artistic style and the portraits also look more like small works of art instead of functional character pictures.

The lighting provides a real boost to the atmosphere. In the evening, colorful spots dance across the room in the bar, and street lamps bathe the dark surroundings outside in a warm light.

Disco Elysium offers a very classic role-playing experience that still feels very modern and different. For an indie project, the scope is also impressive: If you want, you can spend up to 50 hours on the main story, exploring and sideline activities and then start the game again from the beginning to try out other skills, solutions and ideas. Disco Elysium is becoming an insider tip for us in 2019 .

These are the first words you hear. They are actually black - there is nothing else but letters. But the Ancient Lizard Brain which utters them is wrong. You'll have to do something in a moment. You will hear the roar of a motor coach pulling up to the cafeteria building and you will wake up - you will be brutally dragged out of the warm blackness. It is surprising that it will happen so late - that you did not let the frosty air rush through the window, which someone (I wonder who?) Knocked out with a thrown shoe, or cursing truly shoemaking children in the yard, or even the picket workers at the gates of the nearby shipyard.

Anyway, after a sudden awakening, you will not remember anything - where you are, what you are doing here, what is your name. And above all - why you are tired of this monstrous hangover. But do not worry. Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, who has just arrived - your new partner - will quickly clear up the situation. In the cafeteria yard, a dead man has been dangling for a week, hanged from a tree growing there by unknown perpetrators, and you, detective, have been assigned by the police station in district 41 to solve the case. Actually, you've been on the scene for the third day ... except that so far, instead of collecting evidence and questioning witnesses, you've been busy resetting your memory by gulping down and sniffing in . But that's the end of the good.

It's time to find a "defenated" shoe, tie your talking (sic!) Tie and start looking for answers to some questions. Who is to blame for the dangling deceased's death? Where did you miss your police badge (and gun, hush)? Why is almost everyone in this miserable neighborhood looking at you disrespectfully? And why the hell have you brought yourself to this state ?!

Wake up detective ...

This is how Disco Elysium begins. The game is serious, intelligent, morally ambiguous and basically devoid of supernatural elements - although full of fantastic, bizarre and often bizarre motives or situations. An RPG game that is one of the most unusual, ambitious and intriguing representatives of this genre released in at least the last few years.

This position evokes some associations with the immortal Torment , although it basically does everything in its own way. It's an RPG that doesn't really fit the definition of an RPG ... at least not by the indicators we used to identify representatives of this genre with.

Let's look at such an aspect as the combat system. He's not in Disco Elysium . Of course, there are conflict situations, the protagonist - as befits a cop - pricks his nose into them, turns around among the dark-star types and from time to time puts himself in danger. But forget about random encounters with random enemies . Forget about traditional skirmishes in turns or with active pause, about using skills such as "strong attack" or "charge", about equipping the hero with more and more deadly gear.

Let's say you managed to lead to an open conflict. First of all, congratulations on this considerable achievement at Disco Elysium . What happens in this situation? The entire combat sequence is resolved via the dialog. The game describes the events - at least what is impossible to see when looking at fairly detailed three-dimensional character models - and presents the player with choices precisely tailored to the conditions.

I serve as an example. You decided to break into the shipyard area by force and knock out the dribbler standing in your way. This begins with a difficult test of the ability to apply force. You roll the dice ... Success! An elegant animation shows the bully punching his throat and bending to the ground. For a moment, time stands still and the dialog box presents variants of the further course of the fight. Will you correct with a right hook or a turnover kick? If you hesitate - the game will speak with the hero's inner voice (actually one of the voices) and tell you a better solution, having tested his various skills. And that's how it goes.

... we have a city to smash ...

Perhaps a murmur passed through the audience: "Why, it must be some kind of a bad act!" Well ... ZA / UM Studio did what it could to remove similar associations. We spend a lot of time here on the traditional isometric exploration of areas full of interactive objects, the protagonist's actions are accompanied at every step by eye-catching animations (probably there have not been such a richly equipped game of this type yet), dialogues are to some extent voiced - often by unexpectedly talented voice actors - and the screen sparkles with quite a wide range of nice visual effects.

All this, however, does not cover the fact that Disco Elysium is a game loaded with text. A text wonderfully written , intelligent, colorful, perfectly building a specific atmosphere with the use of a note of humor thrown here and there - but still present in horrendous amounts.

The "victims" will be especially those among you who will equip your protagonist with highly developed psychosocial skills. In Disco Elysium, you spend roughly the same time talking to NPCs with internal "dialogues". The character sheet here consists of 24 different skills - and it is the tests of these skills, performed in the background with almost every second sentence, that account for the lion's share of the text in the game.

Each "skill" is something like a separate voice in the hero's head (remember the mention of the talking tie?) And each has something interesting to suggest during even the most trivial conversation or interaction with the environment. If that worries you, please find it comforting that ZA / UM did not follow inXile's footsteps and - unlike in Torment: Tides of Numenera - tried at all costs to avoid hitting the player with huge blocks of text. Here, the messages are short, with colors or graphics that make the message more attractive - but in the end, the number of characters to be learned may be overwhelming.

And it's not too bad that there is a lot of content - its level is also important. The writers show a rich vocabulary, give the player a tasteful metaphor every now and then, and do not spare specialized vocabulary from various fields. Added to this is the description of the represented world. Before they started producing the game, members of the development studio spent several years (!) Creating the universe in which Disco Elysium takes place during their RPG sessions - and you can see it at every step. You can get dizzy reading about all these nations, countries, races, important figures or historical facts. ZA / UM has the right to take pride in building the world at the highest level - but this whole text, however entertaining it may be, can become weary in the end.

... or maybe this city has to smash us?

Someone will ask, "Can't we just ignore parts of the text?" Good question. Disco Elysium in some ways resembles a point-and-click adventure game. The game world is limited to one of the districts of Revachol city, the locations have been tightly packed, and basically everything in them - every character, item, even decoration - is there for a reason. The plot has a very compact composition. It consists entirely of the murder case mentioned at the outset - a case which, of course, becomes wider and wider with time, but in fact reduces the whole dozen-hour-long "adventure" to just one main mission.

You won't even experience traditional side quests here; all threads that appear to be optional activities can contribute something to the overarching investigation . With all this, the game is obviously non-linear, at least to some extent. The creators leave us a bit of freedom to draw conclusions based on the evidence gathered and look for more clues, and many problems have more than one solution. So, in short, it is not advisable to ignore any information, as everything may turn out to be important. In fact, it is advisable to painstakingly un-click - and read descriptions - of everything that is interactive.

Unless you don't care about achieving success. Disco Elysium offers a wide range of possibilities for character play, and nothing stands in the way of sealing the hero's fall , leaving him in the same life gutter as he was in at the beginning of the story - if not deeper. Besides, there is a simple way to significantly reduce the amount of displayed text. It is enough to create a myoma with a brain the size of a peanut - by playing such a character, you will only see basic descriptions and no one will bother you with the hero's internal experiences. And that you will miss one of the most interesting aspects of the game ...