Thursday, May 18, 2023

Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium is a game that I avoided playing for a long while.  It is a dialog heavy RPG where you are a down and out detective trying to solve the mysteries of a sleepy seaside town.  (I might get specific details wrong as I'm writing this well after playing...)

What hooked me is the writing for the intro, it was brilliant - and the way they carry the storytelling technique forward in the story adds to the hilarity of it all.   Effectively you have voices in your head that represent archetypes of your personality (or pretty much anything, you're obviously crazy) that are not necessarily to be trusted ... your cop intuition might be great, but your confidence might coax you into hitting on the suspect, or fleeing from paying for your room rent.   It's done brilliantly.

I got to a point in this game where I feel like I did a few choice wrong things, you only get so many dialog options and I expended them before I had the skills that validated some choices.  In the end I couldn't find someone to talk to that would allow my story to progress and I felt like I was just wandering looking for the one thing that would link me back up with some sort of chain of events.

Fun, but I'm not going to try and find the thread ....