What is this game?
In Disco Elysium, you play an alcoholic, amnesiac cop in the retro-futuristic city of Revachol. There's a corpse hanging from a tree outside your hotel room and everyone seems to think you're here to do something about it. You've been on a bender for three days and the locals think you're a joke, but not everything is as it seems...
How does it play?
It's a narrative role-playing game. You go around talking to people and inspecting the environment to try and solve the mystery. Hidden skill checks happen in the background that give you access to additional dialogue. There is danger and you can get hurt, but it's all narrative. There is no combat in this game.
Reviews:
When does it come out?
It's out on PC now!
Developer website:
https://zaumstudio.com/Yoinked OP from @Ninja Snarl P who put way more effort in than I did:
You're a cop. Possibly. It's something you're working out, anyway. You probably have a job to do. The downside? You didn't quite drink yourself to death, but your brain made a solid attempt at killing itself. You definitely have a name, you just don't know what it is. You do know you have certain skills, but they are some damned chatty skills.
Disco Elysium is... well, it's an RPG. No combat that I know of, but that doesn't mean you can't die. Seriously, if you fuck around too much trying to get your tie after waking up? Heart attack. Game over. And all of your skills? They have OPINIONS. Yes, in capital letters. Basically every ability you have will pipe up with commentary at some point, and you'll spend as much time conversing with the your Drama or Physical or Logic skills as you will talking to actual people. You're a fucky cop in a fucky miserable little town figuring out some fucky murder, all the while trying to reason with the fucky skills chattering in your head. Here's the main archetypes:
Or just go crazy with your own custom character! I mean, you'll BE crazy anyway, but at least this way it's your particular brand of crazy.
Did I mention the part where your skills and choices ripple out and constantly effect the game and story? And this story runs some 50-60 hours so... yeah, there's a lot of ripple there. Take this kid Cuno for instance. Trust me, you want to punch Cuno. *I* didn't punch Cuno, but I still WANT to punch him and now I can't and Cuno is King Asshole of the Asshole People. But now I just have to live with treating him like a kid.
Do you want the rebirth of communism that cleanses the world in fire? There's a mission for that. Want the free market to liberate the world from notions of equality? Yup, there's a mission. Want to prop up the status quo for some post-modern idea of eschewing standard humanity with generations of effort? Yeah, there's a mission there, but good luck actually accomplishing anything with it. Bully? Philosopher? Beggar? Monster? Saint? It's all there, and it all grows out from your decisions. Wanna be a nice cop, asking questions and helping people? Easy, do that that. Wanna be a brute who intimidates and bullies people into answering his questions? Go for it. Wanna get real high and figure out cases blasted out of your mind with ability-enhancing drugs? Not even a challenge. Do you like lots of magnesium? Smear it all over your body, man, nobody is stopping you. BE THE MAGNESIUM MAN.
Oh yeah, and your skills are constantly running checks during conversation, popping up to give you little useful pieces of insight or direction or just trying to outright bully you into some really stupid but entertaining actions. You also get active checks where you can take a chance on dice roll based on your skills; failure and success are both always options, although the ones with a 3% success rate maybe aren't a smart call. Sometimes it means you artfully execute a leap of at least several feet without injury, and sometimes it means you "escape" a conversation by literally running away from a conversation, launching into a flying backwards leap towards an old paralyzed lady in a wheelchair while firing off both middle fingers at an angry motel. No, this is not considered a success.
The art style is also pretty dang cool, if you're into that sort of thing. The game plays from an isometric perspective so it's not going to blow your graphical socks off, but it does a real nice job of really CONVINCING you of the grit and refuse you're sleazing through.
Currently, I have no fucking clue where the story of this game is going, but I'm dying to find out. I'm also shocked there isn't a thread on here about it, because this has every indication of being a properly amazing RPG coupled to some very unique art, world design, and writing.
Posts
So now I'm a nu-Communist, alcoholic, disco cop with an inexplicable feminist agenda.
I will be shocked if this does not end up my game of the year.
I am also Communist Cop! I wonder if this opens up additional dialogue options later.
Dialogue and actions, from what I've seen so far. Some of them are phenomenal :P
Dumpster diving spoilers
Anyway, people should be way more interested in this game and talking about it a ton. I'm currently running brainy cop with knowledge of just about everything except anything relevant to his own life, which is leading to numerous interesting internal discussions. I can ID a large group of men by their shoe sizes in the snow, but I can't remember where I left my gun. Or badge. Or clothes. And apparently basic things like "my name". And FYI? Calling in to the station to admit those things was, perhaps, not the wisest course of action. It was, however, unintentionally hilarious.
That union boss has offered to be super-helpful in all those regards, though. Oh wait, he's obviously scum and FUCK YOU BAD CHAIR, I MADE IT OUT ALIVE.
Things are way more complicated than they initially seem. A very good thing for a noir detective story!
I unlocked Art Cop and immediately put that in my thought cabinet. I am also going to Bring Back Communism! There are also certain dialogue options unlockable with Joyce where shit started getting wild. I also have at least 3 tasks that I have to do once Kim goes to sleep, because he wouldn't approve.
I love this game so far.
@Honk if you're worried about having to pass checks all the time...you're not wrong, but it also isn't tedious. The game handles most of the checks for you passively in the background, and a failure doesn't lock you out of the conversation, it just usually means something different or funny happens. I would watch some gameplay and see if it's your thing, but most of the RPG fans I've talked to absolutely adore this game.
this game sounds amazing!
I'd never heard of it before. I just spent my gaming budget, so it's going to have to wait, but this shot up to the top of my list.
Edit: Figured it out. Turns out the big pulsing dot over my head, you know, means something.
This is phenomenal.
It's not really at all the type of RPG where you have to have certain skills to progress. The automatic skillchecks are much more about molding the story to your character than blocking progress, as most of the options for the direction you take comes from exploration and conversation; they also happen in the course of conversation, so they never interrupt the flow of the game. The active skillchecks are much more rare, and most of them are "white" checks, which can be redone later, as opposed to "red" checks, which can only be tried once.
To take your example of tying your shoelaces, the game starts out by you actually having to find one of your shoes. My guy started out pretty high in a skill that lets him analyze visual info to reconstruct events, yet I failed a 90%+ active skillcheck to analyze why the window in my room is broken. With a little bit of exploring, I went outside and found out "somebody" (myself) had thrown the shoe through the window and it was sitting on the balcony. So I got a little colorful commentary about a broken window, but completing the "quest" came down to exploring, not passing a skillcheck.
The being said, you can literally die if, at the start of the game, your character struggles too hard to get your tie from the ceiling fan. You don't need the tie that I'm aware of and you basically start the game with 0 HP, but it's how the game shows you that failing badly enough hurts either your HP or your morale. Events that can damage your character are much more rare and the game has both restorative items and events, but the game also does a lot of warning you if something is risky.
So far, I have yet to see anything resembling something like needing X skill level in lockpicking to progress. You might fumble the attempt so badly you take morale damage or you might have some big skills boosts to the check from talking to people or you might have just seen the key somewhere, but if you really need to get through the door, there's going to be a way. It might not be graceful or delicate, but you can do it regardless of your skills.
Awesome! I just want people to know about this great game, so thanks for that!
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
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Do not understand this game but it sure is an insane ride.
And a person to
Obsidian should take note.
I'm proably not as far as you, but I believe there is a large mural to the west that has a Shivers 20 check on it. That seems to be what I need to do to progress. I'm sure there are other ways as well, but the mural was the most obvious.
There seems to be a bug, where if you restart the game, possibly without fully quitting, a flag does not get unset and you cannot pick up your right shoe. I just assumed my detective was bad at finding shoes.
Steam Badger A greasemonkey script for better gifting and peering
Fuck you, brain, we're supposed to be a team!
Punching him almost worked. Almost.. Now I have to suck up to him.
Right now, the only thing I actively dislike is the journal screen showing you the available skill checks. It's not particularly clear where these checks are and the descriptive labels are minimal. Yesterday it took me a couple of hours to realise what "Pile of clothes" referred to. Even if they don't want to give you clear waypoints like there are in most games, they could've made this more helpful, or if they didn't want to do that, they could've at least made it interesting. As it is, it feels unfinished.
Also, concerning the object of your investigation:
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
You can apparently solve the case without getting the body down, so that's probably fine.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
*rolls up sleeves* Yep, this one's going to be good.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I think it's more to show the player that choices can hurt/kill you, so keep that HP/morale up (seeing as you wake up at 0 on both).
Restarted now, gonna definitely have to keep a careful eye on morale now.
You can soft lock the game by getting to him without enough morale
Yeah, restarted, and taking a more step-by-step approach (like dealing with the body)
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
About the convo with the big guy:
Oh boy don't I know it. I save scummed the hell out of that conversation.
Surely it hasn't fallen into the hands of children, playing about with a loaded gun...
Sticking it in their mouths...
PSN: TheBrayster_92
On top of that I suppose there’s no way I could finish this before outer worlds on friday.
Probably when your brain starts telling you backstories about how the construction company that makes the crane you are walking by got its name from an obscure bird that has since gone extinct. Then maybe you've pushed the encyclopedic knowledge of your brain just a bit too far...
maybe?
But the big things to remember is that you can heal both HP and Morale, even in the middle of a conversation, as long you have a restorative item for that category. And it's really easy to tell if you do, because you'll have a number above your HP or Morale telling you how many points of each you can restore using the items in your inventory.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods