The main character is someone who is so mentally broken that they've externalized large chunks of themselves. It's sort of like a depressed person ignoring the voice in their head shouting at them to be better, except the opposite.
I should have. I look weird. I thought I'd get used to it. It does say you look younger though.
Endgame
It also gave me a small negative to interact with the Plasmid at the end, since I had taken the pheromone(+3) but shaved (-1). Still made the check though.
I whiffed on a skill check with the Cryptofascist and when I reloaded the game he had disappeared. He's in the picture of the save file and everything but not when I load the game.
I whiffed on a skill check with the Cryptofascist and when I reloaded the game he had disappeared. He's in the picture of the save file and everything but not when I load the game.
Was it outdoors? If it was, he'll likely show up in the bar afterwards anyway.
I whiffed on a skill check with the Cryptofascist and when I reloaded the game he had disappeared. He's in the picture of the save file and everything but not when I load the game.
Was it outdoors? If it was, he'll likely show up in the bar afterwards anyway.
No, it was in the bar, and the game even went out of its way to tell me "hey you won't have another chance to talk to this guy."
What is Shivers? All the other characteristics I basically understand, but when I raised Shivers I started getting a bunch of really weird thoughts and images of the wind blowing through the city.
What is Shivers? All the other characteristics I basically understand, but when I raised Half-Light I started getting a bunch of really weird thoughts and images of the wind blowing through the city.
Shivers is you being a noir detective and getting hunches while monologuing about The City, She is a Cruel Mistress, etc etc etc
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
What is Shivers? All the other characteristics I basically understand, but when I raised Shivers I started getting a bunch of really weird thoughts and images of the wind blowing through the city.
Edit: Shivers, not Half-light.
Shivers is basically your sixth sense. It's the only skill in the game that's an actual superpower, as opposed to Inland Empire where you just think you have superpowers.
When you select a skill on the skills screen, look for an "info" button. That describes the skill in greater detail. It's easy to miss, so a lot of players don't see it.
Shivers is that moment in basically every detective story where the protagonist sighs loudly, lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag, and internalizes how the city is feeling at that moment.
Helpful to your case, who knows?
I ramped up my Empathy and Inland Empire so high my character is incredibly gullible and believes everything has a supernatural component.
Next run is going to be a facist Judge Dredd with a drug problem.
What is Shivers? All the other characteristics I basically understand, but when I raised Shivers I started getting a bunch of really weird thoughts and images of the wind blowing through the city.
Edit: Shivers, not Half-light.
Shivers is basically your sixth sense. It's the only skill in the game that's an actual superpower, as opposed to Inland Empire where you just think you have superpowers.
Espirit de Corps seems supernatural as well, it's basically Shivers for cop stuff. The hunches you get from Inland Empire are also generally more accurate than they should be.
So I'm a little late to the party on Disco Elysium, and holy hell is it living up to the word-of-mouth. I've always enjoyed pulling off disaster recovery in a game - pulling yourself out of a tailspin in the face of overwhelming odds, with success a fragile thing at risk of being lost again - and I've never seen it articulated so well on a personal level. Taking it slow (thanks in part to trying, perhaps unwisely, to Let's Play it with post-recording commentary) but it's the rare game where I don't feel passively encouraged to savescum and instead just roll with the results. The presentation of a fractured state of mind is oddly relatable, and I would love to see more games in a similar vein.
In a sense it reminds me of Consortium, where you're literally Quantum Leap-ing into another person and have to deal with the world reacting to them. Here it's figurative, but the effect is the same: you're not you, you're him, and his past informs everything that will follow. The only real question is what you're going to do about it. And that aside, detective-y games are like catnip to me and half the fun is figuring things out. It really is the game I've secretly wanted for years and never knew how to describe.
That said, I did have one minor early game question: is it actually possible to get enough money
to pay off the debt to the Whirling on the first day? Haven't found more than pocket change and nobody I've asked seems inclined to help a self-destructive amnesiac cop out (I can't imagine why). I'm assuming it requires siding with either the union or the company, or some very diligent scrounging.
No need for specifics, just curious if it's doable.
So I'm a little late to the party on Disco Elysium, and holy hell is it living up to the word-of-mouth. I've always enjoyed pulling off disaster recovery in a game - pulling yourself out of a tailspin in the face of overwhelming odds, with success a fragile thing at risk of being lost again - and I've never seen it articulated so well on a personal level. Taking it slow (thanks in part to trying, perhaps unwisely, to Let's Play it with post-recording commentary) but it's the rare game where I don't feel passively encouraged to savescum and instead just roll with the results. The presentation of a fractured state of mind is oddly relatable, and I would love to see more games in a similar vein.
In a sense it reminds me of Consortium, where you're literally Quantum Leap-ing into another person and have to deal with the world reacting to them. Here it's figurative, but the effect is the same: you're not you, you're him, and his past informs everything that will follow. The only real question is what you're going to do about it. And that aside, detective-y games are like catnip to me and half the fun is figuring things out. It really is the game I've secretly wanted for years and never knew how to describe.
That said, I did have one minor early game question: is it actually possible to get enough money
to pay off the debt to the Whirling on the first day? Haven't found more than pocket change and nobody I've asked seems inclined to help a self-destructive amnesiac cop out (I can't imagine why). I'm assuming it requires siding with either the union or the company, or some very diligent scrounging.
No need for specifics, just curious if it's doable.
So I'm a little late to the party on Disco Elysium, and holy hell is it living up to the word-of-mouth. I've always enjoyed pulling off disaster recovery in a game - pulling yourself out of a tailspin in the face of overwhelming odds, with success a fragile thing at risk of being lost again - and I've never seen it articulated so well on a personal level. Taking it slow (thanks in part to trying, perhaps unwisely, to Let's Play it with post-recording commentary) but it's the rare game where I don't feel passively encouraged to savescum and instead just roll with the results. The presentation of a fractured state of mind is oddly relatable, and I would love to see more games in a similar vein.
In a sense it reminds me of Consortium, where you're literally Quantum Leap-ing into another person and have to deal with the world reacting to them. Here it's figurative, but the effect is the same: you're not you, you're him, and his past informs everything that will follow. The only real question is what you're going to do about it. And that aside, detective-y games are like catnip to me and half the fun is figuring things out. It really is the game I've secretly wanted for years and never knew how to describe.
That said, I did have one minor early game question: is it actually possible to get enough money
to pay off the debt to the Whirling on the first day? Haven't found more than pocket change and nobody I've asked seems inclined to help a self-destructive amnesiac cop out (I can't imagine why). I'm assuming it requires siding with either the union or the company, or some very diligent scrounging.
No need for specifics, just curious if it's doable.
Yes, it's doable.
Awesome, thanks
Mostly trying a semi-balanced build with a slight focus on talky skills, trying to avoid falling back into bad habits but boy is that spilled beer looking tempting. I'm only a few hours in and I already want to see what would happen with a different spread of skills/stats - not to do 'better' so much as to see what can change. It's rare when a game can shut up the min-maxer in me and get him to just go with the flow.
I don't have words for what I felt during the conversation with the
One of the failed businesses was a front for a snuff ring. Given how she's claimed to have killed people, that could explain quite a lot about why she suddenly showed up out of nowhere and why she's so messed up.
I finally got around to playing and beating this game. Loved it.
The phasmid showing up really made the whole ending for me, like just this sudden hard turn away from the depressing noir ending to have a moment of absolute alien wonder, and then getting back to shore and having Kim be like "this fucker just casually discovered a new species while closing this case".
Was there a way to get through the "tribunal" without a body count? Six people died for me.
I finally got around to playing and beating this game. Loved it.
The phasmid showing up really made the whole ending for me, like just this sudden hard turn away from the depressing noir ending to have a moment of absolute alien wonder, and then getting back to shore and having Kim be like "this fucker just casually discovered a new species while closing this case".
Was there a way to get through the "tribunal" without a body count? Six people died for me.
Did you talk to it? The conversation is pretty thematically important, and it's a pity that it's locked behind a random check.
I finally got around to playing and beating this game. Loved it.
The phasmid showing up really made the whole ending for me, like just this sudden hard turn away from the depressing noir ending to have a moment of absolute alien wonder, and then getting back to shore and having Kim be like "this fucker just casually discovered a new species while closing this case".
Was there a way to get through the "tribunal" without a body count? Six people died for me.
People are always going to die at the tribunal. Minimum is 4 deaths I think but that’s all union guys.
I finally got around to playing and beating this game. Loved it.
The phasmid showing up really made the whole ending for me, like just this sudden hard turn away from the depressing noir ending to have a moment of absolute alien wonder, and then getting back to shore and having Kim be like "this fucker just casually discovered a new species while closing this case".
Was there a way to get through the "tribunal" without a body count? Six people died for me.
Did you talk to it? The conversation is pretty thematically important, and it's a pity that it's locked behind a random check.
Yeah, I got the full conversation. I love that the resolution to the entire Dora arc is a massive stick insect worldlessly imparting the notion in you that you need to move on with your life.
Still taking my time through this, but the deeper I dig into the game, the more I'm impressed by it. In particular with the task you get from exploring the end of the boardwalk, I noticed in the conclusion they heighten the mood by actually limiting gameplay elements you're accustomed to. Namely,
when you go to inform Billie about her husband's death, there's nothing to loot in her apartment, and even the worst of your impulses is just to abandon your responsibility. I didn't find any dialog options that got expressly political or willfully insensitive, it's just struggling with the simple, unenviable task of delivering awful news. There are no good ways to do it, just less painful ways.
This stood in contrast to every other apartment you go into, even about the investigation, and singles out the scene as effectively removed from normal play. "This is different," the game seems to be saying. "You're not here to do your usual Hobocop thing, you're here to do your job. The only thing that matters is whether you can stomach it."
"If you tell her 'two days maybe' it will be etched in her mind forever." That line, ironically, is going to stick with me for a long time.
I'm pretty sure that was a deliberate choice, and if so it was expertly done. Things in this game should be examples in design classes.
I just finished my first run through. That was a crazy experience. I am incredibly impressed at the plot line of this game, how well crafted it is. Reactions were awesome, as I tried to describe to a friend, it's like "What if Pixar's Inside Out - but depressed amnesiac addict cop?" And only right now do I remember, I never did find my gun...
I finally got around to playing and beating this game. Loved it.
The phasmid showing up really made the whole ending for me, like just this sudden hard turn away from the depressing noir ending to have a moment of absolute alien wonder, and then getting back to shore and having Kim be like "this fucker just casually discovered a new species while closing this case".
Was there a way to get through the "tribunal" without a body count? Six people died for me.
As far as the body count goes:
You can save Titus and Elizabeth and stop Kim from getting shot. You can kill all three mercs. Three of the Hardies will always die and a fourth will die if he's there, but whether he's there or not is beyond your control at that point.
The most you can accomplish by being good at conversation and logic is not getting people killed while you stall for just the right moment to say goodbye to your beautiful necktie.
I was originally a little annoyed that I have no way to stop Evrart Claire's plan of goading the mercs into killing his men and subsequently using that as a pretext to declare the harbor to be an independent nation with himself as king.
But then I remembered that stopping that plan was never my job in the first place. My job was to solve the murder. Preventing the formation of a rogue state is way above my pay grade.
I guess what I'm saying is I like that the game reminds you every once in a while just how powerless you are.
Is finding out I missed out on the necktie’s blaze of glory. They gave me a another Inland Empire neck slot item that also had a different stat up! How was I supposed to not switch to that?
My Inland Empire was too low to speak to my tie anyway.
And even if it wasn't, I'm sure my Half Light would have told me not to trust it. Why would someone be wrapped around my neck unless they were planning to strangle me to death!
Is finding out I missed out on the necktie’s blaze of glory. They gave me a another Inland Empire neck slot item that also had a different stat up! How was I supposed to not switch to that?
You missed out on more than that.
Well, maybe. There are several failable points west of the water lock that Horrific Necktie really wants to see you succeed at, like making a new rave club, such that if you fail and have him on he actually pipes up all "what, no, that'd be sweet, c'mon bratan" and it clears the white check and gets you a +1 because your necktie is pulling for you.
Regarding Inland Empire, there was one really interesting moment in the church that stood out to me, other than the whole rave club sidequest:
When checking the stained glass mural of Dolores Dei, Encyclopedia is transparently in awe of her as it recounts what it knows. This makes some sense given the apparent connections to Harry's ex (the 'apricot-colored light' was a none-too-subtle clue), but there's also quite a bit of academic knowledge of her. Inland Empire, for a change, views her with skepticism and even hostility, and it only made sense when asking whether there was anything terrifying about her - which revealed that she became a brutal despot that crushed dissent at home and abroad.
Other than being a bit of backstory, this was a clever bait-and-switch given the alleged supernatural qualities of Dolores herself. Inland Empire is consistently the one ready to believe in the mystical and weird, but I think it's also a skill that deliberately avoids the consensus opinion and considers what's not visible at a glance. Most of the time this is unnecessary - businesses in a slum sometimes just fail, and that drunken lout passed out in bed isn't going to violently defend his meth stash - but when someone is willfully concealing something, it's the first to pick up the scent. If the accepted truth is Dolores Dei is an otherworldly saint of interisolary travel, betrayed by one of her bodyguards for being so unnatural, then to IE the reality must be something else - that of a cruel conqueror at the head of a colonial power.
And the brilliant thing is I don't even know if any of this is true. Harry's own sense of loss warps his perspective from the get-go, and IE could be overcorrecting for that, as Volition did with Klaasje. I honestly think a lot of the overt dialogue about politics and society is surface-level, covering a deeper discussion of root-level human impulses: why we think what we think, and the actions that follow these thoughts. Harry is our stained glass window into the world, and part of the challenge of the game is to understand how each colored pane shifts and distorts the light coming in.
I've got nitpicks, and I'll do a longer post once I've actually finished the LP, but this is going on a list of all-time greats for me.
Out of curiosity, what was your starting build, @Stolls?
Did kind of a semi-balanced build, favoring Psyche (4), followed by Intellect and Motorics (3), and lastly Physique (2), with Volition as the signature skill. Had no idea what to plan for, so just went with a guy earnestly trying to piece himself back together with a half-remembered investigative skillset. Surprisingly, I haven't actually put any points into Inland Empire, yet the base stat was enough to get the tie talking. Esprit de Corps also doesn't seem to need much to serve as a translator for what Kim's really thinking.
Second playthrough's definitely going more of a raving nutter who's inexplicably perceptive, like, 10% of the time. People will express concerns, I'm sure, but who has time for niceties with the apocalypse coming?
Everyone's stories confirms that an Intelligence/Motor Skills playthrough, while fun, is also incredibly rote at times.
One of the things I like about the stat system is that to a large extent you're choosing what kind of game you want to play. INT plays a game about knowing things and connecting ideas. MOT plays a game about noticing things and having quick reactions and insights. FYS plays a game about breaking things and toughing it out. PSY plays a game about intuiting things and connecting to people (note: under certain circumstances your necktie can be people).
MOT is just about "the only sane man" among the stats, and to the extent that INT gets weird, it either gets artsy and fartsy in equal measure or jams the hell out of the Codex button every time you get notified it updates.
But you can still crank your Encyclopedia up to insane heights to learn the bizarre history of the world and dompty your wompty, and that can be fun. Like, walk up the back way to the dockyard gates and Encyclopedia will put up a thought bubble that kicks off a conversation with Kim about a politically significant paint job on a car. You just need to fight the impulse to pull all your conversational responses out of a well, actually.
If I have one criticism of the games' character creation system, it's that stats dominate skills a little too much in determining what kind of person your character is going to be.
Of the thirteen skill points you gain in character creation, only one of them can be assigned to a specific skill. The rest are all determined by your stats. That puts a real limit on build diversity.
If you come up with an interesting idea for a character, but the four skills you need to focus on in order to bring your vision of that character to life are each governed by a different stat, then you're pretty much locked into making a boring all-arounder build. Even then, your four skills will be capped at six. You can maybe increase each of them by 1 using apparel, if you're lucky and there are no apparel slot conflicts. If you want to increase them more than that, you'll need to consult a walkthrough to find relevant thoughts, which is not a great feeling because at that point you're borderline cheating.
The system was probably limited this way on purpose, to prevent players from screwing themselves over by building their character exclusively around niche skills and ignoring all the more practical ones. But I sort of want the game to give me enough rope to hang myself, so to speak.
Oh geez, even the Skills have voice acting now. That's... that's a lot of voice acting. I'm almost tempted to invest heavily in Encyclopedia just to hear all that useless trivia.
I've played for perhaps an hour, and so far the voice acting is very good. I'm not sure I'll get through the whole game listening to all of it; on the whole, I prefer to read in text-heavy games, because the voice acting is just so damn slow in comparison, but I like that the NPC performances don't over-emote. Subtext remains subtext.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Posts
I should have. I look weird. I thought I'd get used to it. It does say you look younger though.
Endgame
Wednesday evening spoilers:
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Edit: Shivers, not Half-light.
Shivers is you being a noir detective and getting hunches while monologuing about The City, She is a Cruel Mistress, etc etc etc
Shivers is basically your sixth sense. It's the only skill in the game that's an actual superpower, as opposed to Inland Empire where you just think you have superpowers.
When you select a skill on the skills screen, look for an "info" button. That describes the skill in greater detail. It's easy to miss, so a lot of players don't see it.
Helpful to your case, who knows?
I ramped up my Empathy and Inland Empire so high my character is incredibly gullible and believes everything has a supernatural component.
Next run is going to be a facist Judge Dredd with a drug problem.
Espirit de Corps seems supernatural as well, it's basically Shivers for cop stuff. The hunches you get from Inland Empire are also generally more accurate than they should be.
Pray for dear Hobocop’s life.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
If you have low Shivers. If you have high Shivers it shows up all the time, though it's usually just flavor.
In a sense it reminds me of Consortium, where you're literally Quantum Leap-ing into another person and have to deal with the world reacting to them. Here it's figurative, but the effect is the same: you're not you, you're him, and his past informs everything that will follow. The only real question is what you're going to do about it. And that aside, detective-y games are like catnip to me and half the fun is figuring things out. It really is the game I've secretly wanted for years and never knew how to describe.
That said, I did have one minor early game question: is it actually possible to get enough money
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Awesome, thanks
Mostly trying a semi-balanced build with a slight focus on talky skills, trying to avoid falling back into bad habits but boy is that spilled beer looking tempting. I'm only a few hours in and I already want to see what would happen with a different spread of skills/stats - not to do 'better' so much as to see what can change. It's rare when a game can shut up the min-maxer in me and get him to just go with the flow.
I don't have words for what I felt during the conversation with the
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Was there a way to get through the "tribunal" without a body count? Six people died for me.
This stood in contrast to every other apartment you go into, even about the investigation, and singles out the scene as effectively removed from normal play. "This is different," the game seems to be saying. "You're not here to do your usual Hobocop thing, you're here to do your job. The only thing that matters is whether you can stomach it."
I'm pretty sure that was a deliberate choice, and if so it was expertly done. Things in this game should be examples in design classes.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
As far as the body count goes:
The most you can accomplish by being good at conversation and logic is not getting people killed while you stall for just the right moment to say goodbye to your beautiful necktie.
But then I remembered that stopping that plan was never my job in the first place. My job was to solve the murder. Preventing the formation of a rogue state is way above my pay grade.
I guess what I'm saying is I like that the game reminds you every once in a while just how powerless you are.
And even if it wasn't, I'm sure my Half Light would have told me not to trust it. Why would someone be wrapped around my neck unless they were planning to strangle me to death!
You missed out on more than that.
Other than being a bit of backstory, this was a clever bait-and-switch given the alleged supernatural qualities of Dolores herself. Inland Empire is consistently the one ready to believe in the mystical and weird, but I think it's also a skill that deliberately avoids the consensus opinion and considers what's not visible at a glance. Most of the time this is unnecessary - businesses in a slum sometimes just fail, and that drunken lout passed out in bed isn't going to violently defend his meth stash - but when someone is willfully concealing something, it's the first to pick up the scent. If the accepted truth is Dolores Dei is an otherworldly saint of interisolary travel, betrayed by one of her bodyguards for being so unnatural, then to IE the reality must be something else - that of a cruel conqueror at the head of a colonial power.
And the brilliant thing is I don't even know if any of this is true. Harry's own sense of loss warps his perspective from the get-go, and IE could be overcorrecting for that, as Volition did with Klaasje. I honestly think a lot of the overt dialogue about politics and society is surface-level, covering a deeper discussion of root-level human impulses: why we think what we think, and the actions that follow these thoughts. Harry is our stained glass window into the world, and part of the challenge of the game is to understand how each colored pane shifts and distorts the light coming in.
I've got nitpicks, and I'll do a longer post once I've actually finished the LP, but this is going on a list of all-time greats for me.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Did kind of a semi-balanced build, favoring Psyche (4), followed by Intellect and Motorics (3), and lastly Physique (2), with Volition as the signature skill. Had no idea what to plan for, so just went with a guy earnestly trying to piece himself back together with a half-remembered investigative skillset. Surprisingly, I haven't actually put any points into Inland Empire, yet the base stat was enough to get the tie talking. Esprit de Corps also doesn't seem to need much to serve as a translator for what Kim's really thinking.
Second playthrough's definitely going more of a raving nutter who's inexplicably perceptive, like, 10% of the time. People will express concerns, I'm sure, but who has time for niceties with the apocalypse coming?
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
One of the things I like about the stat system is that to a large extent you're choosing what kind of game you want to play. INT plays a game about knowing things and connecting ideas. MOT plays a game about noticing things and having quick reactions and insights. FYS plays a game about breaking things and toughing it out. PSY plays a game about intuiting things and connecting to people (note: under certain circumstances your necktie can be people).
MOT is just about "the only sane man" among the stats, and to the extent that INT gets weird, it either gets artsy and fartsy in equal measure or jams the hell out of the Codex button every time you get notified it updates.
But you can still crank your Encyclopedia up to insane heights to learn the bizarre history of the world and dompty your wompty, and that can be fun. Like, walk up the back way to the dockyard gates and Encyclopedia will put up a thought bubble that kicks off a conversation with Kim about a politically significant paint job on a car. You just need to fight the impulse to pull all your conversational responses out of a well, actually.
Of the thirteen skill points you gain in character creation, only one of them can be assigned to a specific skill. The rest are all determined by your stats. That puts a real limit on build diversity.
If you come up with an interesting idea for a character, but the four skills you need to focus on in order to bring your vision of that character to life are each governed by a different stat, then you're pretty much locked into making a boring all-arounder build. Even then, your four skills will be capped at six. You can maybe increase each of them by 1 using apparel, if you're lucky and there are no apparel slot conflicts. If you want to increase them more than that, you'll need to consult a walkthrough to find relevant thoughts, which is not a great feeling because at that point you're borderline cheating.
The system was probably limited this way on purpose, to prevent players from screwing themselves over by building their character exclusively around niche skills and ignoring all the more practical ones. But I sort of want the game to give me enough rope to hang myself, so to speak.
Did anyone here try Hardcore mode before? Is it actually fun, or does it just makes things needlessly harder?
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods