The church questline was the greatest most HARD CORE thing I have ever seen in a video g*me.
Also communism, lots of communism. Unfortunately also fascism, moralism, humanism and liberalism :ooooooooooooooh:
It's definitely a 10/10 masterpiece, though I wouldn't include it in my personal GOAT like New Vegas or Dragon Age Origins because it got too realistically depressing at times.
NO NATION BUT TRANCE NATION - NO WAR BUT CLASS WAR
The satire of ideologies in DE is genuinely some of the most biting satire in that regard anywhere. The satire of communism hits particularly hard because it comes from a place of real experience and affection.
communist quest spoilers
I love how clear it is Harry has no place calling himself a communist and how goofy he comes across during the quest. He's some dumbass cop who lost all his memories and decided he's a revolutionary, the one true communist actually. I love how he'll bring up communism in nearly every conversation regardless of the context. He'll loudly and openly mention he hates the bourgeoisie, just so everyone remembers. It's such an accurate portrayal of some baby leftists I always smile in those parts.
I love how he gets a little thrill whispering that he's a fellow traveler to some of the union guys. I love how he meets with those two students thinking it's an org, when it's just a glorified book club. It's just so good.
Then the final part, meeting the veteran revolutionary who calls Harry out. Harry keeps saying "yeah I'm a communist like you." and veteran replying that Harry is a dumbass cop who doesn't know what he's talking about.
It's so good. It's coming from experience and a place of understanding. The devs are just so good. A few lines should just be accepted theory, like how communism is like getting a degree in truth, or that that one line about zero percent of communism has been built.
more spoilers
Then the final part, meeting the veteran revolutionary who calls Harry out. Harry keeps saying “yeah I’m a communist like you.” and veteran replying that Harry is a dumbass cop who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I like how while this is true, it's also true that (depending on how you just played the game) Harry is someone who just spent the last week among the people, learning about their plights, helping where you can, while the deserter is miserable and hateful, and has completely isolated himself from the working class and any sort of mass struggle, just wallowing in despair at how bad the rest of society has become and how terrible everyone else is for letting it happen. You're both lousy communists for the opposite reasons.
What I love about the book club
spoiler
For just a second their theories work and even Kim is amazed
And at the end with the
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Phasmid "Do it, for the working class"
Gotta love it when
Disco Elysium communism spoiler
You join an org and it's a glorified book club which mostly just critiques stuff like media, argues over weird almost posadist (without the nukes) theory, doesn't actually read theory, is extremely academic and splits constantly.
Also gotta love Kim Katsuragi.
same as above
You bring him to a communist meeting, despite being basically a socdem, and not only doesn't complain, but is implied to actually have fun when Harry and the students discuss theory.
If it helps you sleep at night there's an Espirit de Corps check and a Shivers check that suggest the RCM have a plan to initiate "The Return" i.e. a second communist revolution
Both of those skill checks are notoriously unreliable though and often describe imagination
only good cop to ever exist
No dissing communist&sober!Harry :ooooooooooooooh:
Disco Elysium is the only game I've ever played where the writing is actually comparable to a good book. The only one. It's my favorite game of all time, no question. The ending still tugs at my heart strings, somehow so depressing and desolate and realist while also being hopeful and admiring the beauty that is life itself. Un jour je serai de retour près de toi
Uh actually have you played [embarrassing anime game]?
Disco Elysium really puts every other "well written" game to shame. The ones whose writing is widely celebrated are revealed to only be about as good as a high tier Marvel movie, and the genre of games that focuses really hard on the writing is dominated by low-budget softcore porn.
It was going to be a book but the writer's mentor said it wouldn't sell well, so they made it into a game together.
That makes sense, although I for sure would read this as a book! I know the creator of this universe also has a book in Estonian that I am salivating for an English translation of!
Oh man, I've heard that Disco Elysium is either a prequel or sequel to another book that has yet to be translated to english, which sounds dope
I was just going over the wikipedia article. Yeah, they had first wrote a book in the universe that only sold like 1000 copies.
Really interested in a translation. Could be a fan fic translation for all I care.
There are strikingly few games with good writing and I've noticed nearly all of them are beloved by leftists
Yeah the only thing that comes close to the quality of writing that I've played is Planescape: Torment, and even that's not quite at the literary quality of Disco Elysium.
its been a long time since i played it, but i loved Grim Fandango for similar reasons
That quest has to be some of my favorite sci fi world building of all time.
I loved the whole game, but what stuck with me the most was the beginning, learning how awful you are. I'll put it in spoilers even though it is early game stuff, but learning that you have
spoiler
left the body hanging from a tree for several days and pawned your service weapon without you having any choice about it
made me realize that this was different from what I was used to.
It's weird how the church quest is an incredible side quest and almost 1/4 of the game for me yet it's completely optional and missable
Really? Doesn't it reveal clues for the main storyline though or am I misremembering?
Only that
spoiler
Evrart is planning to use drug money
but that is also information you can obtain in another way
Oh wow I missed that entirely in my playthrough. I was always wondering just how corrupt can a guy that never leaves a shipping container really be? His whole life is dedicated to the shipping terminal. Dude’s not going to cross the dockworkers or leave the community.
Evrart spoilers
If you needle Evrart enough he will drop his cheerful facade and talk about how fiercely he hates the bourgeoisie, how they cause nothing but poverty, and how he doesn't believe fighting them should require any sort of moral standards. He's willing to do anything to fuck the ruling class over.
Do you by chance have a link to where I could read the dialogue or watch a youtube video of it? Or even a guide on how to get to this in game? I'm really curious
Actually I asked someone who's played it more than I have and this is what they told me.
There's a hidden task where you can act as a third-party between Joyce and Evrart. Talk to them back and forth and carry messages between then. He eventually lays out why he hates the wealthy so much.
Thanks! More the reason to play again. Joyce is a well written character but I hate her and I couldn't bring myself to help her on my first playthrough.
I've read reviews written by obvious liberals who thought Joyce was supposed to be admirable lmao
Yeah the thing about disco elysium is that its sort of a left wing dog whistle. If your a communist the game seems very obviously communist but if you're not it seems politically ambiguous, at least based on what I've read from discussions on it.
I can't seem to remember the exact circumstances that lead to Evrart being honest with you. I do remember that if you outright call yourself an ultraliberal to him, he will instantly drop the pleasantries and say "get the fuck out" and that he doesn't believe you. When you first meet him, he also outlines the entire plan he has for the union to take over, and says he will "fuck Wild Pines." Your Perception will have a dialogue where it's mentioned Evrart doesn't swear often, suggesting he really does hate the bourgeoisie.
spoiler
i'm not sure if i just got him to that point or a preceding point, but i think i just had a whole chat with him where he knows about the drugs, justifies the corruption as funding the union cause by any means necessary, and has already started back-channelling all the companies who ship with Wild Pines to have new contracts ready for when the dock is completely worker-owned.
He also definitely said "Fuck Wild Pines"
Yeah, the thing about Evrart is
He's a true believer, but he's become so slimy no one can belive him.
Now his brother is a fucking piece of work though.
I got some of that but not quite your take, but your take makes sense. The parts Evan told me where so that I thought maybe he just adapts to what I want to hear, but with the other bits you lot posted he seems to be much more antagonistic and class conscious than I thought.
spoiler
During the conversation with the deserter, he can mention that Evrart has a twin brother, Edgar, who's the real mastermind behind the whole thing. They switch places from time to time and the only way to tell which one you're interacting with is by picking up on slight differences in his portrait.
spoiler
Edgar doesn't have the lazy eye? and they nominate each other and step down before the term ends so they can keep being re-elected?
I'm playing through it for the first time. It's actually quite tricky because during most of my gaming I'm also listening to podcasts or YouTube, whereas with Disco Elysium I want to fully focus on everything. I keep screenshotting the dialogue to send to my girlfriend, who's probably quite confused without full context.
Unfortunately, I had to take breaks (or binged the game for goddamn 10h) when I played, because my focus on the dialogue made me feel overwhelmed lol.
A masterpiece in writing.
I feel that I took a whole saturday to finish the 2nd half of the game just cause I got so sucked in and lost track of time
Lol i keep screenshotting bits of dialogue so i can, at some point, dump them here.
When I first got the game I had no idea the chapos were in it. I lost my shit hearing Felix do his tier one operator voice as the strike breaker
hexbear :solidarity: disco elysium
distancing themselves from chapo
For the better, with no offense met. Glad the Chapo boys got to be in it, but the voice actors for the rerelease did a much better job.
God yes. I guess it was fine having Matt voice a container guy that most people probably never met, but Felix voiced a plot critical character and that had to be replaced. Though I will give them that you could actually justify his lackluster performance in the beginning.
Matt voiced the union rep / gang leader guy who you have to interact with over multiple days
fucking really?
I was waiting for them to show up, and I cannot imagine Matt voicing Hardie lmaoooooo
He voices the character with a kind of southern drawl too. Believe me I was very surprised with the Final Cut
yeah Matt's performance of BIG DICK COPS is not, let's say, convincing. Plus the game is now fully voice acted which very much elevates the entire experience.
The dancing in the church was some of the best animated dancing in
computer gamehistoryThere needs to be more dialogue options that are explicitly insincere. Sometimes you gotta tell people what they wanna hear but I don't want the game thinking it's my actual sincere take
