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Once again, it is nice for me to have a consistent format for these blog posts, but especially today I feel like I need to ask: do I really need to introduce this game?
/Disco Elysium/ is a role-playing game where you solve a murder. The murder is possibly politically motivated, or possibly not. You may or may not care about the grand scheme behind it, because you may or may not play as a communist, a fascist, or an anarcho-capitalist. Your character may or may not be outwardly depressed, or behave like a superstar, or claim that the world is ending. Or you may be just a regular boring detective. Maybe you simply have personal reasons to be broken and miserable? Either way, those choices don't even influence the gameplay. The gameplay is influenced by your skills, your Thoughts, and a few dice rolls here and there. That's one way to describe this game. I guess the question *"What is this game?"* can also be answered more laconically as: *"This game is a 10 out of 10"*.
Yes.
I will dedicate the rest of the section to just a few thoughts that I had, but they will involve spoilers. Skip this section if you haven't finished Disco Elysium yet! Also, skip this if you're looking for an objective review.
1. The CRPG format and its execution here is almost perfect in my opinion. The only gameplay mechanic that felt silly was the clothes. It's way too tempting to just hyper-optimize your outfit for particular bonuses in particular conversations. I did this, and I'm glad that I had that option (like, it's good that I have at least /some/ control over the dice rolls), but this does feel silly. At least I know that save-scumming is *not* necessary, as I always had more than enough alternative routes in case a dice roll failed, and the White Check is generous enough to let me /eventually/ retry failed dice rolls, so I did not see randomness as a problem but rather only as a strength.
2. You remember that YouTube video that got recommended to everybody about a year ago, titled "/The Most Profound Moment In Gaming History/"? Featuring /Metal Gear Solid 2/. I always thought that video was a bit silly. Don't get me wrong, that game is top-tier, and don't get me wrong, its themes did become more and more relevant over the years, but ultimately the "profoundness" of it just stems from a fictional Alex Jones-ish conspiracy theory. "Nothing is as it seems, the world is ruled by masterminds, you've been tricked all along". I think that's cheating, it's too easy to make a story /seem profound /by saying this type of thing. I believe that the real most profound moment in gaming history is Disco Elysium's conversation with <SPOILER>the cryptid</SPOILER>. Either that, or dancing at the night-club with Kim.
3. Let's say, you're like me - you don't drink or take drugs in real life - but you still want to get that /authentic/ Disco Elysium experience. Speaking from personal experience now. I highly recommend completing this game in the middle of the night, like, make sure to go to bed at 4 AM. Then wake up at 8 AM the next day. You should feel fucked up from sleep deprivation. Then try taking a nap. Now you've entered just the right mind space to /really/ process what happened in the game. I had some crazy dreams today, let me tell ya. Or maybe my brain is just messed up from <SPOILER>looking at the phasmid for too long</SPOILER>.
Sadly, I cannot recommend this game if you have only a weak laptop running Linux. Running it in Wine is abysmal, I only get 10-15 FPS, but also a ton of random graphics corruption. Meanwhile, running Windows on the same machine gets me a good 30+ FPS in this game.
You will get long loading screens, no matter what, but I think they are worth it.
