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Overall I fucking loved it but there was a few parts of the ending that felt a bit anti-climatic. I get they wanted to structure the story is such a way that even players who fucked the investigation up could find the killer, but it is weird that there’s really no way to really solve the case before shit goes down and then you just, find the guy. But I guess that feeds into the narrative that no single person is really in control of much outside of themselves.
Also didn’t like there wasn’t a “I’m turning I my badge” option for Harry (if there was one I didn’t see it). That seemed to fit the best into my RP. But idk maybe Harry wants to sober up entirely before he makes such a decision. I did get Kim to agree to be my partner tho which made me happy. I also also expecting as sort of “trial” at the end where my psyche makes an analysis of what kind of cop I turned out to be, but we just got in the motor carriage and left.
Kinda tempted to reload a save from before I encountered Ruby cuz I’m pretty sure there’s shit I missed, I was playing things kinda safe cuz I was sorta RP Harry as trying not to fuck things up and I think that bit me. Also I’m bummed I never got to meet with Steban again, don’t think I timed that right.
Anyway I’ll probably do a fash play through in a month or so.
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one of the playthroughs i did was entirely sober and there still wasn't an option to turn the badge in, which is also a thought i had. on the other hand, the entire game is kinda about having turned one's badge in, from the very beginning, and then you just choose the ideology through which you want to be defeated agian, including regaining the badge lol. it's defeat all the way down. it's sublime, transcendent.
I also had Harry stay sober, which Kim praised me for to the task force, which was a little detail I appreciated.
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I had a playthrough where I listened to all the voices telling me “you don’t want to think about this” and avoided the entire backstory with his ex-wife. In my first playthrough it was so obvious that these thoughts amounted to unhealthy rumination, but I neeeeded that info dump so bad I’d literally take damage for it.
It was very interesting to see the ways in which online leftists use communism as an identity with which to avoid the world and cope with trauma. You see a lot of this behavior online but seeing it so distilled and in another context made me internally cringe a bit. Then you find the One True Communist and he ends up ranting for a bit about how the commune legalized homosexuality and how he didn’t like it.
“Defeat all the way down” is a good way to put it. Being sober for a week gives you little more than a pat on the back at the end. You cannot reconcile your feelings about your ex. You cannot truly save Martinaise. Even the best outcome as far as I can tell is the mercenaries leaving after several of them being killed, Wild Pines leaving and Joyce gives the harbor to the union, and the union still preparing for war because they’re expecting retaliation.
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One of the strangest storytelling decisions this game makes is that it has a bloomer stuff in it, but it's all hidden. The TL;DR is that Revachol is at the end of history, but time hasn't stopped yet.
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There's a conversation you can have with Klassje, after you read deeper into the story she tells you in your interview and realize that she's hiding things from you (and that Harry didn't notice because he's too attracted to her), where she talks about The Return. It's kept vague what The Return is, presumably so that you can fill in the blank (is the The Return of Communism? Monarchy? Independence?), but it's clear that it's a belief that the people in Revachol take seriously, and that gives them hope for the future.
The Return might be an upcoming coup being organized by Harry's boss, an RCM captain who's famous enough that Kim knows and looks up to him. This future event is revealed by having a high Espirit de Corps during the game's last conversation, and if Harry isn't fired from the force, the captain will be going down a list of who's going to be part of it and who will not. Harry will be part of the coup if the captain thinks that he'll "side with the people".
Socialist Infra-Materialism is real in the game's universe. You can learn from the Phasmid that the thoughts of people are creating a kind of climate change, which is proof positive that in Disco Elysium pure idealism can effect the physical realm - so why couldn't a large group of sufficiently motivated people bring better material conditions into reality by believing in them?
The final scene with the communist book club is the most hopeful scene in the game - a few people who are barely relevant, stacking matchboxes for an hour, into a shape that will almost certainly collapse. But for a few glorious moments, the boxes hold their physically impossible shape. That's what we in the writing community call a METAPHOR, and in this case it's for the seemingly impossible act of building socialism.
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I don’t remember anything about The Return. Maybe I missed the dialogue for some reason. But yeah, the fact that the matchboxes stand for just a little bit longer the second time after you’ve lent a hand is possibly the most inspiring part of this game and it’s hidden behind a thought and a time-sensitive quest
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So I actually tried to uncover as much about Harry as I could, to the point it nearly killed me when I found his Ex's goodbye letter. Thing was I was a bit shocked in the end when your partner tells you she left you like 6 years ago, I had assumed it was recent and that's why Harry went over the deep end, but it took six years for that trauma to ruminate in his head to get this bad? I left thinking there must have been some other element to Harry's story besides his ex that made him lose it, something I missed in the story.
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That also struck me as odd. There’s also a point where the necktie talks about how you used to have a good “work-drink balance”. My guess is that Harry threw himself into his work post-divorce. He definitely had an obsessive streak and a kind of unrelenting drive no matter what he’s doing. So it may have just taken that long to get as bad as it did.
But then there’s the issue of pale. Harry’s obviously been exposed to the pale, probably extensively. There’s a chance that his case notes act similarly to the ancient rituals that sailors would use to survive the pale. But this series of events in the game does seem to be Harry’s rock bottom. Not sure if this is canon, but I always assumed that he tried to kill himself and that’s why the tie was on the fan. It’s never quite explained how or where Harry was exposed to pale, but given his reputation for being as crazy as he is, it doesn’t seem recent.
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If you compete “ruthless self criticism” it says Harry once permanently disabled a man with his gun, and once got physically violent with a woman during a drunken argument (leaving it ambiguous as to whether it was his wife or not). I kinda assumed Harry did something fucked up while drunk and the tried to commit suicide, or maybe tried a few times. Him driving out into the sea was clearly a suicide attempt.