the game literally says in like the first five minutes Kim would gladly take a bullet for you why are you doing this
don't listen to what that dumb binoclard had to say , anyways check out this sick mug I found in the dumpster :so-true:
A lot of the fascist options physically harm you to say. It mirrors actual fascist indoctrination in that after a certain point, you’ve put yourself through so much ostracization that you may as well fully commit and finish. Some of the most cringe-inducing and heartbreaking dialogue in the game comes from Harry saying racist shit.
If anyone wants to see what I’m talking about…
there’s an authority check you can fail that makes you call Kim a slur. And there are options to double down on it.
this is like doing a genocide playthrough in Undertale - you can just not and go do something else instead. you don't have to look under every rock.
i know this game depicts a wide spectrum of politics, but i saw some tumblr fashlet claim that everyone who thought it was meant to be leftist is delusional and i'm pretty sure that's just a case of fash bein fash and thinking bad things are good.
This is really going to sound silly, but the game is one of the only examples of successful leftist dogwhistling. Liberals seem to come away thinking the game is very nuanced and fair, because it depicts a wide range. Fascists either seem to immediately smell the commie stuff, or they're the same as libs and believe it's wide open to interpretation.
Literally my favorite part of the whole game is when
you find the last living communist and he calls you a liberal
to be fair
spoiler
the last communist has literal brainworms from living next to a giant praying mantis cryptid and has had his mental faculties degrade to the point that he is a bitter reactionary sniping at random people from his crow's nest.
spoiler
He also rants about “pederasts” in a way that sucked
Yeah, even the corrupt union officials and the dogmatic racist guy dogmatically stuck in the past are done in ways that are somehow affectionate to people who've actually done leftist stuff.
Only a leftist gets the idea of "these are the worst and most annoying people in the fucking world, but unlike all the other worst people in the fucking world they're on the right side of the barricade."
Love when the people "dogwhistling" thanked Marx and Engels for their political education while receiving awards for the game .
The lead writer also has a bust of Lenin in his office. I think moreso than dog whistling, it feels like the writers have inhabited leftist spaces in a way that I haven’t seen in other media. Some of the stuff might come off as a quirk or a shallow dunk to people not familiar with the Type Of Guy, but I absolutely know the nerdy dudes who are major theory heads and have alienated several friends because of some minor dispute about the theoretical canon. And it makes the ending of that storyline charming in a way that I don’t feel like people outside of these groups will fully appreciate.
Sometimes I read or watch something and it’s full of novelty. Every character has a backstory that I’ve never encountered irl and acts in ways that are unexpected to me. Disco Elysium felt more like a look inward or like holding up a mirror. I’ve never
spoiler
faced down a rogue military death squad
but I’ve done enough that setting was the novelty, not the people
tbh tho a lot of liberals learn from Marx and use their power against the working class
Yeah but modern liberals and fascists have no idea how to confront open, vocally affiliated communism, it shuts down their brains because they've just used socialist and communist as insults for more than 30 years, not as a political reality to confront. They also see how characters will treat the main guy as goofy and naive when he says leftist things, so liberals will think the game itself is dismissing those leftist things. All the leftist characters are deeply flawed people in various ways, they're corrupt or they're personally racist or they get into petty disagreements.
it's dogwhistling for us because we seem to be the only ones able to see through that. The game is still endorsing leftist movements despite the criticisms, the mocking irony, the kind of hopelessness some characters have.
I'm just brawling my way through, fly kicked the fascist dock worker, punched Cuno, now on to fight Cuno's dad.
I thought the emotional or intelligence classes were gonna be good, considering the kind of game it seemed to be, but surprisingly the physical one was my favorite.
Interfacing and Savoir Faire are great.
But Inland Empire is so, so op It's hard not to go into it.
I got a communist in first playthrough without knowing it was even an option lol.
Renegade Cut made a pretty good video discussing Disco Elysium (alongside other ACAB-related topics) and he also talks about doing a fascist play through and contrasting it with his commie play through. If you haven't already watched it: Disco Elysium - All Hobocops Are ... | Renegade Cut
Edit: It's been a while since I watched it so I had actually forgotten how it's also largely about the history of policing, the fact that it's purpose is to protect capital and capital interests, the instituti9nal protections they enjoy and the injustice they perpetuate today. All with Disco Elysium as a backdrop and reference. Good shit imo.
Renegade Cut is phenomenal and I eagerly devour every video he puts out.
Kay and Skittles did an excellent video about it as well where he talks about how a game like that could only have been written by well informed Marxists, because everyone in the game is deeply self aware and honest about their ideology.
Yep, Leon is awesome. Discovered him a few years ago as one of those rare times I was enjoying some random but impressive film analysis only to realize that coincidentaly I was watching an actual radical leftist.
Oh nice, I have not seen the one you linked. Will definitely check it out, thanks. And yeah, the people who wrote Disco Elysium read theory. And it shines through beautifully when you get to see it.
I was enjoying some random but impressive film analysis only to realize that coincidentaly I was watching an actual radical leftist
Yeah a few other channels like that were instrumental in it all finally clicking for me and figuring out I was a communist. That maybe I was always a communist I just didn't have the proper vocabulary to understand my own ideology fully.
What other channels made things click for you, if you don't mind sharing? I couldn't even really watch youtube until like 2018 (bandwidth capped rural internet). By then I was already a commie, albeit with some tenacious lingering brainworms I'd like to think have since been extracted. So Renegade Cut was just like this great find... felt like finally spotting a true leftist in the wild and even better, it was someone whose work I already liked for other reasons and on top of that, someone whose radicalization process I could really identify with.
I hear you on long ago being leftist at heart, even if you couldn't always articulate it. Starting out with a healthy commitment to empathy goes a long way, I think, in at least questioning a lot of the more disgusting and obvious contradictions of capitalism.
Can't think of many off the top of my head, since I've consumed so much of that stuff since 2016, but the Matt Christman rant about eco-fascism after the Charlottesville car attack was a big oh shit moment, and while some of his framing is sort of lib another one about the inefficacies of liberalism to fight fascism is the Innuendo Studios series the Alt-Right playbook. Also ContraPoints helped me expunge a lot of deeply rooted and unexamined transphobia. Jacob Gellar is also a great leftist media critic.
friends are supposed to stop friends from committing self harm, are you okay TitanRover??
I cannot handle the cringe of being fascist or libs in Disco. So in every playthrough I play with multiple stat spread but always ended up as a commie.
lol I thought about doing this because I'm curious how events and characters unfold but based on your descriptions I think I've gotta pass
Honestly seems like playing the game on hard in a way. As the answers always feel wrong.
id play it but i pretty much refuse to play games where i cant be a female lead :shrug-outta-hecks:
