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Disco Elysium |OT| A worthy Planescape: Torment successor

T

Teslerum

Member
Kadayi said:
DE is absolutely an RPG in the classical sense of the term. The inherent problem with cRPGs is that in large part they've modelled on the Dungeons & Dragons loot & Levels treadmill of progression concept (and understandably for many people that's all they know),However D&D was only one model (albeit far-reaching in influence) when it came to design, whereas there were other P&P RPGs that operated in a completely different fashion (Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Bushido for instance) and were much more focused on role play, investigation and creative problem solving versus endless combat & cash, because combat in those games was often a precarious thing. Also, DE isn't a visual novel, there are stats and you get bonuses/penalties based on both equipment as well as actions, which impact the likelihood of success. The dice rolls themselves are just out of your hand, though for the most part, the game allows you to back out if you think a challenge is unfavourable and retry when you're in a better place.
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Pretty much.

Its of course also not going to be everyones *thing*. I mean the thread title is here already a good indication.

Not everyone liked Torment either, but we’re all different. If you don’t mind a dialog heavy game you really owe it to yourself to play Disco. It really is a modern, evolved Planescape, just that the abmysal part of that game (combat) is removed here.
 
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Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
Goddamn it this game is a trip and a half


n33hatsfrsya.gif
1o5nh4i.gif


^Me learning about the 'Pale'

Also (late game plot spoilers)

I totally stole those Fancy Merc boots off the Corpse at the end of day 2 and having sent Kim off with the body to the Morgue then went on a crazy adventure exploring the Fishing Village etc doing all sorts of wackiness. it was like a whole separate little adventure of mischief, devoid of judgement. Good times. kind of great tbh, aside from the corpse, the foul wino jacket and discovering who the car Hooligan... 🤔 .
 
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Komatsu

Komatsu

Member
Apparently half of all the socialist podcasters in NYC (the Chapo guys, Dasha from Red Scare, etc.) had small voice roles in this game.
 
DiscoJer

DiscoJer

Member
Kadayi said:
DE is absolutely an RPG in the classical sense of the term. The inherent problem with cRPGs is that in large part they've modelled on the Dungeons & Dragons loot & Levels treadmill of progression concept (and understandably for many people that's all they know),However D&D was only one model (albeit far-reaching in influence) when it came to design, whereas there were other P&P RPGs that operated in a completely different fashion (Traveller, Call of Cthulhu and Bushido for instance) and were much more focused on role play, investigation and creative problem solving versus endless combat & cash, because combat in those games was often a precarious thing. Also, DE isn't a visual novel, there are stats and you get bonuses/penalties based on both equipment as well as actions, which impact the likelihood of success. The dice rolls themselves are just out of your hand, though for the most part, the game allows you to back out if you think a challenge is unfavourable and retry when you're in a better place.
Click to expand...

I don't think that's really the case though. Almost every early RPG was combat focused, since D&D invented RPGs and all of them copied it to a certain extent. It wasn't until the late 80s with the rise of "story games" that you saw combat deprecated.

Traveller was basically criminals and mercenaries in space. Bushido was about Samurai (whose whole point was fighting), Call of Cthulhu had the reputation for being the deadliest game ever, with incredibly deadly monsters and constant fights with cultists.
 
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Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
DiscoJer said:
I don't think that's really the case though. Almost every early RPG was combat focused, since D&D invented RPGs and all of them copied it to a certain extent. It wasn't until the late 80s with the rise of "story games" that you saw combat deprecated.

Traveller was basically criminals and mercenaries in space. Bushido was about Samurai (whose whole point was fighting), Call of Cthulhu had the reputation for being the deadliest game ever, with incredibly deadly monsters and constant fights with cultists.
Click to expand...

Please those are some BS descriptions right there, but still as with any kind of game, there was always the risk of violence, but you didn't become invulnerable/invincible in any of those games unlike in D&D simply as a matter of course where say your average 8th level fighter could single-handedly massacre an entire village of Orcs and not even break a sweat. Combat was never the focus versus an option because combat was deadly and a huge risk unless the odds were absolutely on your side. Still YMMV I guess depending on who you played with and how imaginative they were when push comes to shove. But it's an absolute fallacy to imply they are all one and the same.

StreetsofBeige said:
If there's no fighting, can you get killed in the game?
Click to expand...

There are options to fight at times and yes you can get killed in the game. However, you can't just randomly decide to kill NPCs if that's what you mean (you're ostensively a Police Detective operating in a fictive period of modernity at the end of the day versus some Post-Apoc lawless frontier). Sill I find the whole 'How many NPCs can I kill before I break the game' fixation around cRPGs frankly bizarre tbh (there's been some of that doing the rounds with Outer Worlds I've noted).
 
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DKehoe

DKehoe

Member
This really sounds like my kind of thing. Glad to hear people seem to be enjoying it. I’ll try and check it out sometime soon.
 
Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
Disco Elysium has ruined The Outer Worlds for me

I started playing Disco Elysium before The Outer Worlds and would highly recommend not doing that. Gimme some of that booze-fuelled amnesia, please. I don't want to arbitrarily pit two games against each other, but their proximity in time and disparity in style make them interesting comparisons. The Outer Worlds is a known quantity. If you've played Fallout and watched Firefly, you're going to feel right at home. Everything from the broad structure of the story to character progression is safe. Disco Elysium, meanwhile, turns empathy and substance abuse into attributes and will gladly murder you with a ceiling fan in the first minute.
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www.pcgamer.com

Disco Elysium has ruined The Outer Worlds for me

Pining for an alcoholic detective.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com

I must admit, having decided to wait on OW for a bit I am fearful that DE may well have ruined other RPGs for me in a similar fashion because everything else is just going to feel so fucking mundane afterwards. These truly are glorious times.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Kadayi said:
Disco Elysium has ruined The Outer Worlds for me

www.pcgamer.com

Disco Elysium has ruined The Outer Worlds for me

Pining for an alcoholic detective.
www.pcgamer.com www.pcgamer.com

I must admit, having decided to wait on OW for a bit I am fearful that DE may well have ruined other RPGs for me in a similar fashion because everything else is just going to feel so fucking mundane afterwards. These truly are glorious times.
Click to expand...

Yeah tbh it's the same for me - I'm about 20 hours in on Thursday morning in the game, spent ages exploring the south after getting over there on Wednesday while Kim was away dealing with the body. I'm trying to avoid any spoilers because I want to go in fresh for everything - this game has got everything. Outer Worlds on the other hand, not so much. I think in my case it's also because this year I've completed Kingdom Come Deliverance and Kotor 1 and 2 for the first time, all of which are incredible games, then played Mass Effect 1 and 2 and saw the decline of Bioware to what is now just a looter shooter by the time you get to ME3 (I bounced off it hard) and came to OW and saw much of that looter-shooter crap that ME2 and 3 were. Couple that with writing that is exposed further by the excellence of what DE offers and you end up seeing OW for what it is - a shooting gallery with a lovely art style, like Bioshock Infinite. DE has shown me so much of what is possible in gaming and I can see it being the gateway drug to a Planescape Torment playthrough. I can't fucking wait.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
TheCockatrice said:
I'm nearing the end I think and honestly I just don't want it to end which happens very rarely in the games I play. I want to explore all those worlds you keep hearing about, I want to solve more mysteries, etc. This needs a sequel badly.
Click to expand...

If you finish, just get back on the cock carousel - there's much to discover that a single playthrough won't resolve.
 
The Cockatrice

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
hariseldon said:
If you finish, just get back on the cock carousel - there's much to discover that a single playthrough won't resolve.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know but it will ultimately still feel the same. Hard to explain, but the game feels like a story I made and I don't feel like changing things for different outcomes. I want to continue.
 
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H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
TheCockatrice said:
Yeah I know but it will ultimately still feel the same. Hard to explain, but the game feels like a story I made and I don't feel like changing things for different outcomes. I want to continue.
Click to expand...

Yeah I guess I can understand that. I felt the same with Walking Dead season 1 - the story was told and I wanted to leave the memory intact. I guess we'll see how it feels at the end but this world is so lovely that I do want to dive back in when I'm done - I guess I had the advantage of dying on a first playthrough and starting again, that gave me a real feel for how different the story can feel in those cases.
 
The Cockatrice

The Cockatrice

Gold Member
Finally finished it. I made my steam review. Gave it an 8.6. I need a sequel badly now. My main complaint is either hire better voice actors(what the fuck was that Cuno voice acting) or no voice acting at all for future sequels or games. I would prefer they use the budget on more varied and vast soundtracks rather than just paying some weak ass voice actors for a few lines. Anyway, one of the best detective games ever made, definitely a goty material which is funny because my other goty contender is another detective game, Judgment.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Cuno doesn't like me much - won't even talk to me anymore the sulky little shit!
 
Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
hariseldon said:
Cuno doesn't like me much - won't even talk to me anymore the sulky little shit!
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I gifted a copy to my friend whose Liverpudlian and he said the accent was a bit off, however I kind of dig the character just because he's so goddamn obnoxious. However I needed those FALN pants so deals had to be done. Kim wasn't happy.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
I just acquired a certain jacket btw - I am now the coolest motherfucker around.
 
Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
Finally wrapped up my first playthrough. Definitely a good 60 hours plus (probably a lot more if you want to 100% it...I'll save that for another time). I wrote a little bit about it in the 52 Games Thread in terms of a non-spoiler review. At this juncture, I don't really have a great deal to add because even now a couple of hours on I'm still decompressing from it in many ways just trying to wrap my head around how things played out as the game's various threads coalesced to a natural conclusion whilst also allowing for things to resolve quite differently. Zaum studios deserve the highest praise for managing to pull this off and I genuinely hope the game not only succeeds financially but that they are perhaps able to revisit the setting (if not the characters) in some fashion as the actual world-building I found really compelling, especially in how they managed to convey that when push comes to shove you're not saving the world here, but instead you're attempting to pull yourself together whilst simultaneously resolving a mystery is some rundown backwater of a much much larger whole. Pretty impressive for a game that is for the most part largely text on a screen. Doubly so give it manages to also deliver some quite moving, poignant and sobering moments along the way. 10/10 will definitely play again.
 
Stuart360

Stuart360

Member
Kadayi said:
If you can bind the tab button to your mouse you should be fine. You don't need to enter any text versus pick choices, but you need to hold tab down to highlight interactive objects
Click to expand...
Yeah thanks. Jim Sterling is playing the game on Twitch right now, and i just asked him lol. He said what you said about only really needing tab.

EDIT. If you werr wondering why i was asking, i control my whole PC from a XB1 controller using Xpadder. So my controller basically is a mouse now lol. I can add tab to one of the face buttons.
 
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Shifty

Shifty

Member
Big ups to Kadayi Kadayi for tipping me over the edge of trying out my first CRPG, or at least something that very much resembles one.

I don't think I've ever played anything with such impressive writing and dialogue trees. On day 2 so far with a 4/3/2/3 build (specializing in catching coins thrown by mob bosses like a cool guy) and I'm thoroughly enthralled, having my own little genre Jamais Vu over here :messenger_grinning:

Oi TraceTheTong TraceTheTong , this seems like it'd be right up your street.
 
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TraceTheTong

TraceTheTong

Member
Shifty said:
Big ups to Kadayi Kadayi for tipping me over the edge of trying out my first CRPG, or at least something that very much resembles one.

I don't think I've ever played anything with such impressive writing and dialogue trees. On day 2 so far with a 4/3/2/3 build (specializing in catching coins thrown by mob bosses like a cool guy) and I'm thoroughly enthralled, having my own little genre Jamais Vu over here :messenger_grinning:

Oi TraceTheTong TraceTheTong , this seems like it'd be right up your street.
Click to expand...


I've been orbiting it cautiously. I want to take the dive but I see the odd thing that says it's internal politics is a bit preachy. Thoughts on that? I trust yo' opinion
 
Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
TraceTheTong said:
I've been orbiting it cautiously. I want to take the dive but I see the odd thing that says it's internal politics is a bit preachy. Thoughts on that? I trust yo' opinion
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say they are preachy at all. I think more that they throw up certain politically correct and incorrect ideas and really it's you to decide how you want the character to respond. Albeit not a road I went down but its entirely possible to play the game as a racist bigot if you wanted to or a die hard communist, or a racist bigot communist etc etc. The amount of freedom it formidable.

I think what you're probably encountering is people who think that the appearance of something in a medium automatically qualifies as an espousal of it, which has always been a ridiculous idea.
 
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Shifty

Shifty

Member
TraceTheTong said:
I've been orbiting it cautiously. I want to take the dive but I see the odd thing that says it's internal politics is a bit preachy. Thoughts on that? I trust yo' opinion
Click to expand...
Well, it's definitely the most political game I've ever played, but I'm about 25 hours in and haven't felt like the game itself has been preaching at me so far.

There are certainly characters in the world happy to espouse their strong ideological convictions (or use them to manipulate you, in some cases), but it's all diagetic and you're given dialogue responses that range across the political spectrum- fascist, communist, liberal, centrist, moralist, no opinion, I AM THE LAW, etc.
The game won't judge your stance as wrongthink or punish you for it, but asshole characters might!

It feels like you can actually role-play a debate with the NPCs too, rather than the usual videogame fare of each one being a 2D cartoon representation of their politics. I've never seen anything quite like it, though I don't have much of a reference point for writing-heavy CRPGs like Planescape or Baldur's Gate.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the game's grander socioeconomics and figure out if there's an overarching message, but so far that stuff feels like a well-executed side-effect of making a rad police-procedural detective game in a post-revolutionary setting. It's enthralling, and probably the best gateway drug to the genre I could have picked.
 
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Zaffo

Zaffo

Member
Anything i need to know when creating a character for my first playthrough?
Can i fuck myself or get boring dialogue options if i go heavy on a stat over another?
 
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Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
Zaffo said:
Anything i need to know when creating a character for my first playthrough?
Can i fuck myself or get boring dialogue options if i go heavy on a stat over another?
Click to expand...

I'd say avoid having 1 in any of stats because this can really bite you in the ass. You probably want a minimum of 2 in everything. I went with 4, 3, 2, 3 with Perception as my main skill and I found that to be a good setup, though if you wanted to lean more heavily into being a Dale Cooper you might want to look at 2, 4, 3, 3
 
Fuz

Fuz

Banned
Maybe a stupid question, but has anyone been able to open the bunker?

I'm pretty sure it's not possible, also considering what the though says, but I have a friend who disagrees and... he put the thought in my cabinet.
 
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Zaffo

Zaffo

Member
Kadayi said:
I'd say avoid having 1 in any of stats because this can really bite you in the ass. You probably want a minimum of 2 in everything. I went with 4, 3, 2, 3 with Perception as my main skill and I found that to be a good setup, though if you wanted to lean more heavily into being a Dale Cooper you might want to look at 2, 4, 3, 3
Click to expand...

I was thinking either going big on physique and intellect for an unpleasant autistic fuck, or physique and psyche for a Joe Rogan style character.
 
Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
Fuz said:
Maybe a stupid question, but has anyone been able to open the bunker?

I'm pretty sure it's not possible, also considering what the though says, but I have a friend who disagrees and... he put the thought in my cabinet.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the door near the church? I'm not sure, but I guess it should be possible as there is a low chance.
 
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Kadayi

Kadayi

Banned
Zaffo said:
I was thinking either going big on physique and intellect for an unpleasant autistic fuck, or physique and psyche for a Joe Rogan style character.
Click to expand...

Go Joe Rogan I say, you then have to ask a lot of questions to suss out the world. He would approve.
 
D

Darak

Member
Kadayi said:
Are you talking about the door near the church? I'm not sure, but I guess it should be possible as there is a low chance.
Click to expand...

A number of dice rolls in the game are fake and you will always fail them regardless of your dice and/or stats, despite the game telling you otherwise. You can even check the tooltip after the fact and see "Required: 14; Your total: 20; Result: Failed" or something similar. And yes, even a double six roll results in failure. I know it well because I wasted one hour reloading and expending multiple skill points trying to win the one critical story dice roll I *really, really* didn't want to miss, and which ended up being one of the fake ones.

I'm pretty sure the bunker door is one of them.
 
Shifty

Shifty

Member
Kadayi said:
Some of us were talking in the Discord and I posted this capture : -


3568bxQ.png


And it turns out that other people had different flavour text: -

1.png


which means it must alter based on your stats /situation

Game devs be like: -

nXPruDN.gif
Click to expand...
I just walked past it again, some 20 hours later, and had a new thought bubble appear based on one of the items I'd memorized in my thought cabinet :messenger_open_mouth:
Guillame Le Million, disco superstar and inventor of The Expression, had a similar 'do
 
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TraceTheTong

TraceTheTong

Member
Shifty said:
Well, it's definitely the most political game I've ever played, but I'm about 25 hours in and haven't felt like the game itself has been preaching at me so far.

There are certainly characters in the world happy to espouse their strong ideological convictions (or use them to manipulate you, in some cases), but it's all diagetic and you're given dialogue responses that range across the political spectrum- fascist, communist, liberal, centrist, moralist, no opinion, I AM THE LAW, etc.
The game won't judge your stance as wrongthink or punish you for it, but asshole characters might!

It feels like you can actually role-play a debate with the NPCs too, rather than the usual videogame fare of each one being a 2D cartoon representation of their politics. I've never seen anything quite like it, though I don't have much of a reference point for writing-heavy CRPGs like Planescape or Baldur's Gate.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the game's grander socioeconomics and figure out if there's an overarching message, but so far that stuff feels like a well-executed side-effect of making a rad police-procedural detective game in a post-revolutionary setting. It's enthralling, and probably the best gateway drug to the genre I could have picked.
Click to expand...

Pretty balanced take? on the internet? alright you convinced me, I'm in. It's on my wishlist (just after Planet Zoo)

After this game you should give Tyranny a try and let me know your thoughts.
 
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