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February 29, 2020 10:46 AM Subscribe
“You’re faced with an early choice here: do you back Kim up in this rather straightforward situation (against a character who, I reiterate, is labeled only as Racist Lorry Driver), or do you, the guy with such extreme amnesia that he has a dialogue option to ask about the concept of money, suggest your partner is overreacting?” I Played Disco Elysium as an Absolutely Gigantic Fascist
Damn I want to play this! My PC no longer plays games well. And frankly, even if it DOES come to consoles, I feel like this would be best played on a laptop. I love the art style. I skimmed the article because I don't want to spoil the game for myself.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:39 AM on February 29, 2020
posted by SoberHighland at 11:39 AM on February 29, 2020
Disco Elysium is such a fantastic game and excellent example of world-building and looking at today's political positions in a new way.
There are four different political camps you can align yourself with: revolutionary communism, racist nationalism/fascism, libertarian free-marketeering, and "moralism." What's interesting about the last one is that it's the camp you find yourself in if you consistently choose "none of the above" dialogue options because you want to keep your options open with the person you're speaking to, or because you generally don't want to worry about politics. In most games this really is a neutral choice, like in Mass Effect you can deliberately avoid Paragon and Renegade options and your morality meter will stay neutral. However as Disco Elysium goes on you realize that by choosing these options you are in fact explicitly aligning yourself with the status quo in general, and certain powerful groups in particular that you may not be comfortable with. It's an interesting take and I can't think of any other game that does this.
All of the political camps have some nuance. I believe the developers are Marxists in real life but the communists in the game are not always the good ones. There's even a fascist character who, while not a nice person, the game does try to portray as a human being and not a total caricature like the racist lorry driver or Measurehead, both mentioned in the article.
Really excellent game.
posted by bright flowers at 12:15 PM on February 29, 2020 [28 favorites]
There are four different political camps you can align yourself with: revolutionary communism, racist nationalism/fascism, libertarian free-marketeering, and "moralism." What's interesting about the last one is that it's the camp you find yourself in if you consistently choose "none of the above" dialogue options because you want to keep your options open with the person you're speaking to, or because you generally don't want to worry about politics. In most games this really is a neutral choice, like in Mass Effect you can deliberately avoid Paragon and Renegade options and your morality meter will stay neutral. However as Disco Elysium goes on you realize that by choosing these options you are in fact explicitly aligning yourself with the status quo in general, and certain powerful groups in particular that you may not be comfortable with. It's an interesting take and I can't think of any other game that does this.
All of the political camps have some nuance. I believe the developers are Marxists in real life but the communists in the game are not always the good ones. There's even a fascist character who, while not a nice person, the game does try to portray as a human being and not a total caricature like the racist lorry driver or Measurehead, both mentioned in the article.
Really excellent game.
posted by bright flowers at 12:15 PM on February 29, 2020 [28 favorites]
I believe the developers are Marxists in real life but the communists in the game are not always the good ones.
They thanked Marx and Engels for their political education when they won an award.
I'd say it's safe to say they are socialists/communists of the George Orwell variety, who are very aware of the dangers of their own professed ideologies.
It's one of the reasons the game is so damn good.
God, I haven't even finished a playthrough. I haven't even made it through the first day because I keep changing my mind on how I did things and go back to a previous save, or I want to make that saving throw... It's been a while since I played an RPG this in depth and complex, especially one with an entirely new system to learn.
It's impressive and oppressive. I feel like I can't even make headway there is so much going on.
Also, I really love the "Visual Calculus" of recreating crime scenes so much It's like the best investigate aspects of The Witcher series, but like a hundred times better and more detailed.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:24 PM on February 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
They thanked Marx and Engels for their political education when they won an award.
I'd say it's safe to say they are socialists/communists of the George Orwell variety, who are very aware of the dangers of their own professed ideologies.
It's one of the reasons the game is so damn good.
God, I haven't even finished a playthrough. I haven't even made it through the first day because I keep changing my mind on how I did things and go back to a previous save, or I want to make that saving throw... It's been a while since I played an RPG this in depth and complex, especially one with an entirely new system to learn.
It's impressive and oppressive. I feel like I can't even make headway there is so much going on.
Also, I really love the "Visual Calculus" of recreating crime scenes so much It's like the best investigate aspects of The Witcher series, but like a hundred times better and more detailed.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:24 PM on February 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
@rodlymight
It's rated Gold in the ProtonDB of games that run in Linux through Steam's Proton.
https://www.protondb.com/app/632470
Just saying, you might not actually have to install Windows.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:28 PM on February 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
It's rated Gold in the ProtonDB of games that run in Linux through Steam's Proton.
https://www.protondb.com/app/632470
Just saying, you might not actually have to install Windows.
posted by deadaluspark at 12:28 PM on February 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
deadaluspark: I want to make that saving throw...
Some of the best stories and moments come from failure, see this article for instance. There's even a minor thing late in the game where the only thing you can do is learn that sometimes, some things are impossible.
posted by bright flowers at 12:42 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
Some of the best stories and moments come from failure, see this article for instance. There's even a minor thing late in the game where the only thing you can do is learn that sometimes, some things are impossible.
posted by bright flowers at 12:42 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
Also I can think of another moment late in the game where you have a roll that seems, at the time, absolutely critical. I passed it and the game went on. After I finished the game I read a bunch of spoilers and found that, while passing that roll led to an unambiguously better outcome, failing would have let me experience a whole bunch of cool story that I didn't get to see.
posted by bright flowers at 12:48 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by bright flowers at 12:48 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
bright flowers:
posted by are-coral-made at 1:06 PM on February 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
What's interesting about the [moralism political camp] is that it's the camp you find yourself in if you consistently choose "none of the above" dialogue options because you want to keep your options open with the person you're speaking to, or because you generally don't want to worry about politics. [...] by choosing these options you are in fact explicitly aligning yourself with the status quo in general, and certain powerful groups in particular that you may not be comfortable with.It's like real life. A useful idea to keep in the back of your mind when someone argues "let's not discuss politics" (e.g. in professional / work setting) is that the status quo is political. Not discussing politics supports the status quo, supporting the status quo is a highly political position, given the way the status quo benefits or harms different individuals and groups.
posted by are-coral-made at 1:06 PM on February 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
It's really remarkable how much effort the writers put into building branches of the story. At one point, a certain roll can lead to spending a substantial part of the game with a partner other than Kim. It's completely bonkers who the alternate partner is, and the amount of writing that went into building a complete set of parallel dialogue for so many story events...
posted by allegedly at 1:56 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by allegedly at 1:56 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
I discovered recently that Disco Elysium has been nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Game Writing, a category that was only just introduced last year. I hope it wins; it has simultaneously the best and the most writing of any game I've played in a long, long time.
posted by teraflop at 2:14 PM on February 29, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by teraflop at 2:14 PM on February 29, 2020 [8 favorites]
Review from a Narrative Designer (twitter thread)
posted by um at 4:21 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by um at 4:21 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
The game straddles a very fine line between taking away your agency in ways that are really fun and evocative of a self-destructive spiral, and taking away your agency in ways that just make you the player feel bad. The one that I've seen mentioned multiple times by reviewers, because it's in a core part of the plot, is a skill check that isn't related to ideology in any way and doesn't depend on your ideological choices (as far as I can tell) - but if you fail you say something extremely racist and hurtful towards Kim, pretty much out of nowhere. It bothered me because all of the other horrifying things I'd done during that playthrough were by choice.
posted by allegedly at 5:20 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by allegedly at 5:20 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, racism really is baked into culture and you can't avoid absorbing it. Even if it makes you feel bad that you didn't coldly and clinically decide to make a morally bad choice, in the real world you are still part of a morally bad system and you will do morally bad things.
posted by Scattercat at 7:08 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Scattercat at 7:08 PM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
I hope I'm not taking up too much space in this thread.
The Twitter thread um linked is an important reality check, thank you for sharing it. No one should feel obligated to play or appreciate this game. It's also valid to be skeptical of why it's so highly praised, for similar reasons as the recent Joker movie and so many others.
allegedly: Are you referring to the dance scene described in the original article? That's not a core part of the main plot.
posted by bright flowers at 7:47 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
The Twitter thread um linked is an important reality check, thank you for sharing it. No one should feel obligated to play or appreciate this game. It's also valid to be skeptical of why it's so highly praised, for similar reasons as the recent Joker movie and so many others.
allegedly: Are you referring to the dance scene described in the original article? That's not a core part of the main plot.
posted by bright flowers at 7:47 PM on February 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
Imagine that a game wants you to really think about how dangerous fire is, so it lets you set a lot of fires. Also, free book of matches with every purchase!
That's a little hyperbolic, but that twitter thread that um linked above is important. It starts pretty abruptly, and there's a part two you shouldn't overlook.
Like, the censored slurs, the implied violence against women—the game could have cut all of that without compromising what human catastrophes all these characters are. It's like they've figured out that they can be politically transgressive as long as they're condemning the behavior they're depicting, but having played the game, I don't really feel like they've earned that earnestly.
Meanwhile, the competing ideologies wind up feeling interchangeable punching bags out of the South Park tradition. You can't pick a side without being some sort of monster, but you can't not pick a side either, so it basically amounts to asking yourself over and over, how do I want the game to make fun of me this time?
All of that said, I've played and enjoyed the game, but it's really important to internalize the existence of the game's flaws before recommending it.
On preview: See also what bright flowers said.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 8:03 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
That's a little hyperbolic, but that twitter thread that um linked above is important. It starts pretty abruptly, and there's a part two you shouldn't overlook.
Like, the censored slurs, the implied violence against women—the game could have cut all of that without compromising what human catastrophes all these characters are. It's like they've figured out that they can be politically transgressive as long as they're condemning the behavior they're depicting, but having played the game, I don't really feel like they've earned that earnestly.
Meanwhile, the competing ideologies wind up feeling interchangeable punching bags out of the South Park tradition. You can't pick a side without being some sort of monster, but you can't not pick a side either, so it basically amounts to asking yourself over and over, how do I want the game to make fun of me this time?
All of that said, I've played and enjoyed the game, but it's really important to internalize the existence of the game's flaws before recommending it.
On preview: See also what bright flowers said.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 8:03 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
You're right, looking back I was mistaken about where the dance scene fit in the plot.
I was totally on board with situations where there were 2-3 options that were all awful, or where an ideology I had adopted came out. It was only uncomfortable when themes that had specifically been the subject of choice up to that point were suddenly shifted from a random skill check. There were a few other instances I think, but not as glaring.
posted by allegedly at 8:36 PM on February 29, 2020
I was totally on board with situations where there were 2-3 options that were all awful, or where an ideology I had adopted came out. It was only uncomfortable when themes that had specifically been the subject of choice up to that point were suddenly shifted from a random skill check. There were a few other instances I think, but not as glaring.
posted by allegedly at 8:36 PM on February 29, 2020
I felt like that twitter thread deeply misread the game's politics. That initial screenshot they linked was from the moment the main character considers whether to take on the "Kingdom of Conscience" ideology, AKA "moralism", Disco Elysium's name for neoliberalism.
In that moment, you are hearing from a personified voice of neoliberalism, and in trying to persuade you of its ideology it presents a false binary choice between the status quo and chaos... because that is a real-world argument neoliberals make for neoliberalism. But from beginning to end, the game is consistently harshly critical of that ideology and it undercuts that very argument repeatedly.
The author of that twitter thread can't seem to stomach the presentation of ideas they don't like in media, even when the media itself is criticizing those bad ideas. If you don't like seeing that stuff then fine, but trying to soapbox about how the art is sinister or harmful for even bringing up those ideas in any context, even to satirize or criticize them? I have no time for that kind of narrow, provincial approach to art.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:19 AM on March 1, 2020 [15 favorites]
In that moment, you are hearing from a personified voice of neoliberalism, and in trying to persuade you of its ideology it presents a false binary choice between the status quo and chaos... because that is a real-world argument neoliberals make for neoliberalism. But from beginning to end, the game is consistently harshly critical of that ideology and it undercuts that very argument repeatedly.
The author of that twitter thread can't seem to stomach the presentation of ideas they don't like in media, even when the media itself is criticizing those bad ideas. If you don't like seeing that stuff then fine, but trying to soapbox about how the art is sinister or harmful for even bringing up those ideas in any context, even to satirize or criticize them? I have no time for that kind of narrow, provincial approach to art.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:19 AM on March 1, 2020 [15 favorites]
As a communist, I played the game through as a communist, and I was frustrated at times too when it shat on my ideology, but if you finish the game it is very clear that, of all the competing ideologies presented in this game, communism is where their sympathies lie.
The game tries to thread a very narrow needle where it criticizes certain types of communism, certain approaches to holding that ideology, certain ways that you express your ideology in social situations. They make fun of dogmatic, authoritarian tankies who are always trying to force a Lenin quote into every conversation.
But at the end of the day, the game is trying to portray the cocktail of hope and despair that a leftist feels when confronted with a world where previous attempts failed miserably, the deck is heavily stacked against you, and the status quo is trying to kill you and those you love, but you know that at the global level a better world is still possible, and at the local level you can still make nourishing connections and help your local ravers build something empathetic and meaningful in their community.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:27 AM on March 1, 2020 [12 favorites]
The game tries to thread a very narrow needle where it criticizes certain types of communism, certain approaches to holding that ideology, certain ways that you express your ideology in social situations. They make fun of dogmatic, authoritarian tankies who are always trying to force a Lenin quote into every conversation.
But at the end of the day, the game is trying to portray the cocktail of hope and despair that a leftist feels when confronted with a world where previous attempts failed miserably, the deck is heavily stacked against you, and the status quo is trying to kill you and those you love, but you know that at the global level a better world is still possible, and at the local level you can still make nourishing connections and help your local ravers build something empathetic and meaningful in their community.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:27 AM on March 1, 2020 [12 favorites]
When I played the game, I’m pretty sure I had the option to give the girl my hat. I don’t know whether the option was gated on a personality trait (empathy?) but it was definitely there. The devs have put more thought into this game than the author of that twitter thread gives them credit for I think.
But, as bright flowers says, no-one has any obligation to play it - especially if you know some of the themes will touch on areas that are difficult for you personally.
posted by pharm at 1:59 AM on March 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
But, as bright flowers says, no-one has any obligation to play it - especially if you know some of the themes will touch on areas that are difficult for you personally.
posted by pharm at 1:59 AM on March 2, 2020 [1 favorite]
I regret linking to Kathy's tweet-thread: someone who reads Metafilter decided to pepper her with a bunch of questions out of nowhere. Not harassment but quite rude.
I was originally excited to play DE but after reading more about it I think I'll leave it. I'm certainly not linking to gamedev twitter again.
posted by um at 3:34 AM on March 5, 2020
I was originally excited to play DE but after reading more about it I think I'll leave it. I'm certainly not linking to gamedev twitter again.
posted by um at 3:34 AM on March 5, 2020
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posted by rodlymight at 11:35 AM on February 29, 2020