Comment on The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made

jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• Schmoo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  The main character starts the game literally giving himself a traumatic brain injury by drowning himself in alcohol. It’s not really the kind of RPG where you can play a self-insert, the player character is an actual character with his own backstory. Not being able to make good choices because of the player character’s personal trauma and limitations is part of the story that the game is telling.

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  • unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    This is the clearest explanation for Disco Elysium I’ve ever read, thank you.

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  • AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    This says it well. I also like how the character’s fucked up backstory is inescapably linked to the fucked up backstory of the world he lives in. It it were just that he was a fuck-up, then it wouldn’t be as compelling. What I really love is that whilst he certainly is the victim of his own choices, it’s much more the case that he’s a victim of his material circumstances (rather like how I am currently still in bed due to a combination of poor choices, and material circumstances making consistent good choices very hard)

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• p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  So bad that I had to hop on a forum and go “Hey, so, there aren’t any good choices in the dialog tree, did I fuck up my character generation? Should I start over?”

  Your first mistake was thinking it was like any of those other CRPGS with dialog trees. No, you didn’t fuck up your character generation. Your character is a fuck up. That’s part of the story it’s trying to tell.

  How you engage with the game is figuring out how to un-fuck-up the character in a matter that is realistic. Or just ignoring whatever lessons the game gives you and continue down the same self-destructive path. Or somewhere in-between. All paths are have their creative stories to tell, and even being strange and weird with it can still lead to solving pieces of the crime you’re trying to piece together.

  Yeah, I don’t get games where “You want some fuck?” is a valid dialog choice.

  Because it’s fucking funny when you didn’t know what the actual dialogue entry was going to be, you took a gamble, and the “pay off” is that your character says the cringest fucking line to some woman he’s immediately attracted to. So cringe that even your own Volition (best fucking mental power, btw) is like “the words already left your mouth” as if he was already smacking his goddamn forehead right through to the other side.

  Your. Character. Is. A. Fuck up.

  If that bothers you, and you want to play something that involves some extreme power fantasy, where you can pick a class and play a completely silent blank slate, then this game is not for you.

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  • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    And I’m not interested in playing as a fuck up… it’s not interesting to me.

    Thank god Steam let me return it.

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    • lowspeedchase@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Seconded. Also the neckbeards downvoting you for having a civil conversation about a game but not enjoying it are a joke.

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      • Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I’m pretty sure it’s because they started off said discussion by suggesting that everyone who liked the story and dialogue had a traumatic brain injury lol. Very civil, that.

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      • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        neckbeards downvoting you for having a civil conversation

        That’s not at all what’s happening here, it’s the other way around. Most posts in here are from people saying they hated the game and comparing it games absolutely nothing like it, and then they are getting pissed at the people responding and explaining why they liked it and why it was good, and said neckbeards doubling down and saying Witcher was a better game or something when one is an interactive novel, and the other is a click-splat game.

        People are just being irritated with other people for not liking the same thing they like, and no surprise, the bulk of contention is coming from people who rather mindlessly cut down orcs with a sword so they don’t have to feel or think things.

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• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Hey, if you don’t have traumatic brain injury, what are you doing on Lemmy?

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• AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I enjoyed it because many RPGs are a power fantasy, where you’re an epic hero who saves the world. Some of them present you with a blank slate character you can shape however you wish, and whilst that can be fun, I find I have more fun when I’m playing a character with some history.

  In Disco Elysium, you’re playing as someone whose history is fucked up, so good choices often aren’t an option. He’s not a typical hero, and he’ll be lucky if he can save himself, let alone the world — the world is even more fucked up than he is, riddled with scars from a long dead, hopeful era. Even though at the start of the game, both the player and your character have no knowledge of history, you can’t escape it.

  A huge part of why I like it is because I can see what it’s going for, and I’m here for that. Even if I didn’t personally click with it, I think I would respect it for having things to say and committing to it. What’s an RPG that you have clicked with or loved what it was going for? If you’re not into Disco Elysium, then I suspect that your answer might be a game that would pull me out of my comfort zone in interesting ways.

  “dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.”

  I think this is a pretty harsh statement, but it did make me laugh, because part of why I vibed with Disco Elysium so much is because a couple years before, I actually bumped my head that I lost my memory and couldn’t even remember who I was.

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• TheSambassador@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I mean, it’s ok to not get it? It really does sound like you just don’t get it. If your example of why it’s bad is a genuinely funny, absurd result of a failed check, it might just not be for you.

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• ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Being insulted by Cuno and that other little rat faced fuck was a highlight for me

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  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The fuck you’re saying about Cunoesse? The Cuno will fuck your face up! With his maximum velocity fists!

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  • p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I’m so disappointed we came so close to having a Cuno RPG, only to have that ripped away.

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    • BenevolentOne@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      A lot of power fantasy RPG players would have really benefitted from this, they’ll have to stick with postal instead.

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  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Fuck Cuno

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• ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I mostly just hated that the story was largely delivered via info dump and nearly every character was a terrible person to the point of being grating. I don’t have to enjoy every video game, but I wish I at least understood why this one got this much acclaim.

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  • TheSambassador@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    That’s a really bizarre read, how do you come to the conclusion that every character was a terrible person? Even amongst the first 6 or so people you talk to, most of them are decent people living in a very poor area. I usually hate media where everyone is an asshole but DI is so NOT that that I’m just… Confused.

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    • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I think anime ruined a whole generation.

      Something about the really overly exaggerated and 2-dimensional character traits that require absolutely no nuance to understand because it makes for better translation through international markets for children, it just wrecked how a lot of people interact with media.

      The sad part is someone is reading this comment right now and furiously typing up a reply why their favorite story about a high-school kid with absolutely no personality being fought over by two jealous sci-fi/fantasy princesses for no reason is in fact, peek nuance and the highest form of thoughtful expression.

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    • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Because they were. Maybe not the first 6 people verbatim, but of the characters you have a significant amount of dialogue with, the only one who didn’t give me this impression was your partner. You run into the asshole kid, the other cops over the radio are assholes, the guy on the wall to the docks is an asshole, and beyond that, I didn’t take notes, but it annoyed the hell out of me.

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      • TheSambassador@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        To be fair, many people KNEW your character pre-amnesia. There are very valid reasons for many of them to treat your character like an asshole, because to be frank, he kinda was. This is a very big and very intentional part of the game. You’re also a cop coming to police an area that hasn’t seen a cop come around in literal decades.

        Garte, the hotel manager, doesn’t like that you’re being incredibly loud and trashing your room. He’s a bit of an asshole, but honestly with good reason, and he comes around if you make an effort to apologize.

        Lena, the Cryptozoologist, is really friendly and very charming.

        Cuno is a drugged out kid, he’s supposed to be absurd.

        If anything, Kim is impossibly accomodating and patient with you. Even if you’re an asshole to him. There’s a reason people love him and call him “best boy” because he’s got these little windows into his personality even through his stiff police exterior.

        There are some actual racist assholes in the game, but I feel very confident in stating that the vast majority of them are not assholes.

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  • False@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    There are a lot of characters who are good people. A lot of bad ones too . A lot of the good ones you’ve previously pissed off so they start out barely putting up with you talking to them (and you deserve that treatment frankly).

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• moakley@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I think the problem is that it kind of isn’t an RPG.

  It’s an adventure game with heavy RPG elements. Like the core gameplay clearly resembles old point and click adventure games. It’s just the experience and leveling system are also so central to the gameplay that it wouldn’t work without also being an RPG.

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  • MarcomachtKuchen@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I think trying to fit games into genres and people disagreeing with your reasoning is incredibly bad around RPGs.

    I’d argue disco elysium is a stellar example of an RPG especialls since I enjoyed role playing as someone who is incredibly far from my own mental state. A game with somehow gets me to roleplay someone so different is a prime example of a good RPG for me.

    But I get how messy the term has gotten. People argue about whether Dark souls or Witcher are RPGs, where both games have arguments for it beeing an RPG. Personality I think an RPG has an adaptility in the character AND the world in response to my choices. But I can totally see how others see it differently.

    For me personally I’ve set up that there are the traditional RPGs like Fallout, Baldurs gate and Pathfinder WoR. But there are also a lot of games which use a lot of similar parts of the RPG gene that I consider them RPGs aswell.

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    • moakley@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That’s fair. I guess what I’m saying is that describing it as “an RPG” doesn’t do nearly enough to convey what the game actually is. Like I can see the argument to say Elden Ring is an RPG, because it definitely has RPG elements, but you’d never describe it as an RPG without also mentioning that it’s an action game. You also wouldn’t describe Expedition 33 without mentioning that it’s a turn-based RPG.

      In the same way, I find it misleading to label Disco Elysium as an RPG without mentioning that it’s an adventure game. It’s at least as much of an adventure game as it is an RPG, and most importantly: it lacks combat. Combat isn’t necessarily a requirement of the genre, but if you asked a random gamer to name 10 RPGs, he’d either name 10 games with combat systems, or he’d name 9 games with combat and Disco Elysium.

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• GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  To me Disco Elysium was the next example of the “Art Game”.

  The game people bring up when discussing Game as Art, without actually explaining what makes it art.

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  • ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    without actually explaining what makes it art.

    Is that happening? Everyone endorsing the game even in this post are going on at length what makes it great. I could drop a 20-page thesis about the themes, plots and interwoven interactive narratives, but I am guessing you don’t actually want to read that any more than you want to play a reading game to begin with.

    Maybe… and hear me out here, maybe some of you just don’t like arty games and rather do mindless clicking and grinding. That’s fine, just understand what’s what.

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• orenj@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  That’s not what the detective said. He SAID “I want to have fuck with you”

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  • BenLeMan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    That correction makes you sound like a pedomorphic binoclard. 😅

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• BryceBassitt@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  You’ve confused basic with good, common mistake

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• Flamekebab@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I could see what it was going for but it felt like a chore to play so I stopped.

  The term "over-embroidered" springs to mind.

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• Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  By chance did you pick a character with a low intelligence? Because ability scores matter a lot.

  I sadly didn’t get to play much of it. I only had access to it for a limited time, and I did not get far at all.

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  • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    See, that’s what I was thinking. The reaction in the forums was it was supposed to be that way.

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• ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  ITT: lots of people who don’t like this kind of game saying they didn’t like it and getting pissed at people explaining why it was great.

  I weep for our species’ lost potential, which ironically was a theme of Disco Elysium.

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