I don’t often review games on the PC, and there is a good reason for that. I have a decent laptop for doing work and whatnot, it actually has pretty good specs besides the fact that the native graphics card is a joke, so I’m usually limited to decades-old point-and-click adventure titles ( not complaining), dealing with horrifically low settings, or missing out completely. In fact, today’s title Disco Elysium -an existential isometric RPG from ZA/UM- was played entirely with a graphical glitch that caused the protagonist’s body to warp and ribbon into an incomprehensible nightmare in a tie and blazer, whenever clothing was equipped. And I really need to talk about this title, because even with that whole deal, my enjoyment was not diminished one drop.
Disco Elysium is a Role Playing Game that truly lives up to its genre as well as its roots in tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. But this fantasy is powered not by magic in the traditional sense, but rather drugs and wild imagination. You are thrown into the role of a scruffy detective who, through a tremendous amount of drugs and alcohol over a three-day time span, has found himself with a whale of a headache and a retrograde amnesia chaser. He is tasked, along with a new partner from another precinct, to solve the murder of a security guard, while also trying to get a grip on reality. The general set up is cliche enough, but the execution is far more nuanced. The primary loop of the game involves wandering around a fictional city struggling to keep itself moving through the turmoil brought from a revolution decades prior. You’ll interact with the locals through conversation, investigate your surroundings, and interact with the environment in order to solve crimes and learn about yourself as well as the world you inhabit.
As is standard for RPGs of this ilk, interactions with the world are dictated by dice roll based stat checks, but it goes so far as to show you the dice themselves, and the stats are not what you’d find in your standard D&D campaign. The role you play is that of a mutton-chopped cop with disco style, so intelligence here means less “adept with magic” and more “adept at analyzing art.” Your main attributes are Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motoristics, which each have their own sets of skills such as the ability to be dramatic and lie, have a vivid imagination, take more drugs and feel more benefits, and be a better shot respectively, with a total of twenty-four different personality aspects to advance. There is nothing like actual combat however, with every single interaction in Disco Elysium being dealt with via stat checks and dialogue boxes. This along with its unique oil painting art style gives the game a pen-and-paper-but-digital quality that allows for your own imagination and interpretations to affect how you feel about certain interactions and can give someone with even the weakest of graphics cards a chance to experience the meat of this title. To help keep the events unfolding, and to give incentive for your character build choices, each skill themselves have a voice, and they are more than happy to chime in.
I mean that literally, from your Empathy to your Pain Threshold, each skill has its own personality and opinions to offer you as conversations unfold. Depending on your skill levels the deeply artistic Conceptualization may suggest that you design a powerful name for yourself before you learn what it really is, or your connection to the city through interpreting your Shivers may give you insight on how the denizens are living through the tumultuous times. It is an interesting way to handle the impact of skill choice on gameplay and story, making for unique and varied play experiences moment to moment. While the story will eventually lead you to an inevitable end, how you get there or whether you die of a heart attack while trying to jump for your tie dangling from the ceiling fan is affected by what you chose to develop.
In addition to the voices in your head, you also have access to the protagonist’s “Thought Cabinet,” a place for introspection. As you make choices, certain thoughts will pop into your character’s head, such as thinking really hard about where he may live, or the idea that taking a bunch of magnesium might make him immune to hangovers. If you choose to peruse the thought, your character will internalize it for a set amount of real-world time. During that time, you may gain a bonus or penalty to associated skills, and once the thought is complete, you’ll gain a different boon or bane that will be permanent unless a skill point is spent to remove it. It makes for yet another added layer of roleplay ability through deeper personal development of the character, as well as offering a nice set of challenges to seek out and attempt.
Seeking these things out may be optional, but they offer deeper glimpses into the world you inhabit. The world itself is not our own, though it features many similarities in burgeoning political systems and ideologies. There are labor disputes involving unions and scabs, political intrigue built after the revolution of their past, racial purists debating various flawed pseudosciences and hateful justifications. It is a fascinating universe built by someone who truly puts passion into their worldbuilding. The main designer, Robert Kurvitz, has spent incredible time building a history for this world that goes back thousands of years. He originally designed it for a homebrew D&D campaign and even wrote a novel taking place within it, before finally developing a game in it as well. The similarities are enough to give us the philosophical ammunition to understand the systems in place while being alien enough to give a sense of being lost. It is a delightful breed of sci-fi that does so much to ground itself while still remaining in the realm of the unreal.
Disco Elysium is a game I cannot recommend enough for fans of RPGs, especially traditional tabletop games. It does enough to play with classic rule systems to feel familiar, but has such a unique take on skills and setting that it is well worth experiencing. If you enjoy detective narratives, this title is excellent as well, giving you the ability to be as ingenious and unstable, hard-boiled and bull-headed, or whatever your ideal level of boiled is. Even if you have a weak computer, you can probably get into this title. Not going to lie, the distorted image of my character’s body actually fits in nicely with the game’s themes. It is not yet on consoles, though there should be a release sometime later this year. However, it is on sale for one final day on Steam at $29.99 but is still well worth it at the full price of $39.99 normally on both Steam and Good Old Games.