Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium is a role-playing video game developed and published by ZA/UM. The game takes place in a large city still recovering from a war decades prior to the game's start, with players taking the role of an amnesic detective who has been charged with solving a murder mystery. During the investigation, he comes to recall events about his own past as well as current forces trying to affect the city. Inspired by Infinity Engine–era role-playing games, particularly , Disco Elysium was written and designed by Karelian-Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz. It features a distinctive watercolor art style, and music by the band British Sea Power. It was released for Microsoft Windows in October 2019, macOS in April 2020, and with PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch releases planned for later in 2020.
Disco Elysium is a non-traditional role-playing game featuring no combat. Instead, resolution of events are done though skill checks and dialog trees via a system of 24 skills that represent different aspects of the protagonist, such as their perception and pain threshold. In addition, a system called the Thought Cabinet represents his other ideologies and personality traits, with players having the ability to freely support or suppress them. The game is based on a tabletop role-playing game setting that Kurvitz had previously created, with him forming ZA/UM in 2016 to work on the game. Disco Elysium was well received by critics, with it being named as a game of the year by several publications along with numerous other awards for its narrative and art. A television series adaptation was announced in 2020.
Gameplay
Disco Elysium is a role-playing video game that features an open world and dialogue-heavy gameplay mechanics. The game is presented in an isometric perspective in which the player character is controlled. The player takes the role of a detective on a murder case who suffers from alcohol and drug-induced amnesia. The player can move the detective about the current screen to interact with non-player characters and highlighted objects or move onto other screens. Early in the game they gain a partner, Kim Kitsuragi, another detective who acts as the protagonist's voice of professionalism and who may be able to offer advice or support in certain dialog options. Other NPCs may be influenced to become temporary companions that join the group and provide similar support.The gameplay features no combat in the traditional sense; instead, it is handled through skill checks and dialogue trees. There are four primary abilities in the game: Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics, and each ability has six distinct secondary skills for a total of 24. The player improves these skills through skill points earned from leveling up. The choice of clothing that the player equips on the player-character can impart both positive and negative effects on certain skills. Upgrading these skills help the player character pass skill checks, made based on a random dice roll, but could also potentially result in negative effects and character quirks. For instance, a player character with high Drama may be able to detect and fabricate lies effectively, but may also become prone to hysterics and paranoia. Likewise, high Electrochemistry shields the player character from the negative effects of drugs and provides knowledge on them, but may also lead to substance abuse and other self-destructive behaviors.
Disco Elysium features a secondary inventory system, the Thought Cabinet. Thoughts are unlockable through conversations with other characters, as well as through internal dialogues within the mind of the player character himself. The player is then able to "internalize" a thought through a certain amount of in-game hours, which, once completed, grants the player character permanent benefits but also occasionally negative effects, a concept that ZA/UM compared to the trait system used in the Fallout series. A limited number of slots are available in the Thought Cabinet at the start, though more can be gained with experience levels. For example, an early possible option for the Thought Cabinet is the "Hobocop" thought, which the character ponders the option of living on the streets to save money, which reduces the character's composure with other NPCs while the thought is internalized. When the character has completed the Hobocop thought, it then allows them to find more junk on the streets that can be sold for money.
The 24 skills also play into the dialogue trees, creating a situation where the player-character may have an internal debate with one aspect of their mind or body, creating the idea that the player is communicating with a fragmented persona. These internal conversations may provide suggestions or additional insight that can guide the player into actions or dialogue with the game's non-playable characters, depending on the skill points invested into the skill. For example, the Inland Empire, a subskill of the Psyche, is described by ZA/UM as a representation of the intensity of the soul, and may come into situations where the player-character may need to pass themselves off under a fake identity with the conviction behind that stance, should the player accept this suggestion when debating with Inland Empire.
Synopsis
Setting
Disco Elysium takes place in the fantastic realism world of Elysium that had been developed by Kurvitz and his team in the years prior, which includes a fleshed-out six-thousand year history of conflicts, with the game taking place during the setting's most modern period known as "The Fifties". Elysium is made of landmasses known as isolas that are separated by the Pale, a mysterious connective tissue in which the laws of reality begin to break down. Prolonged exposure to the Pale can cause mental instability, and traversing the Pale is considered highly dangerous. Nations and people within Disco Elysium follow four main ideologies: communism, fascism, moralism, and ultraliberalism.The setting's political and cultural history is also markedly different. The philosophy of communism was founded by an economist and a historical materialist named Kras Mazov, and rather than being associated with the color red and symbols like hammer and sickle, the ideology is instead represented by the color white and symbolised by deer antlers surrounding a pentagram. Moralism, meanwhile, despite being a centrist ideology, also has religious overtones and connotations, since it is associated with the setting's largest religion, the Moralist International, the dominant feature of which are the so-called "Innocences", saint-like figures, who also wielded great religious and political power while they were alive, akin to the position of pope. The greatest and most influential amongst the historical Innocences is Dolores Dei, a woman of mysterious origins, who allegedly had glowing lungs and founded many of the world's modern institutions. Due to Dolores Dei's influence, the symbol of love in Disco Elysium world is a set of lungs, rather than a heart.
Events in the game take place in the fictional city of Revachol on the isola of Insulinde, specifically in Martinaise, a district plagued by poverty, crime, and corruption. Five decades before the start of the game, a communist revolution took place in Revachol and successfully overthrew the old monarchy that controlled the city. A commune was formed afterwards, but it was soon toppled by an invasion of an alliance of capitalist nations calling themselves "the Coalition". Revachol has since been designated a Special Administrative Region under the Coalition, who holds a strong grip over the city's local economy and keeps its autonomy at a minimum. One of the few governmental functions that Revachol is allowed to handle itself is upholding day to day law and order, which is the task of the Revachol Citizens Militia. While starting as a voluntary citizens brigade, the RCM has since grown and evolved into a semi-professional police force.
Plot
The player character wakes up in a trashed cafeteria motel room with a severe hangover and no memory of his own identity. He is greeted by a Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, who informs him that they have been assigned to investigate the death of a hanged man in the cafeteria's backyard. His identity is unclear and initial investigation indicates that he was lynched by a group of people. The detectives set out to explore the rest of the district, following up on leads while investigating smaller cases, helping residents with a variety of tasks.These tasks allow the player to begin to fill in gaps in the detective's identity, revealing him to be Harrier "Harry" DuBois. A decorated RCM detective, Harry experienced an event several years ago that began a mid-life crisis, eventually culminating in a self-destructive bender around Martinaise in which he dismissed the rest of his squad. Through their work, they discover the killing appears to be connected to an ongoing strike by the Martinaise's dockworkers union against the Wild Pines corporation. They seek out representatives of both the dockworkers and the Wild Pines corporation, meeting up with union boss Evrart Claire for more information on the union and Wild Pines negotiator Joyce Messier on the involvement of Wild Pines.
This leads them to discover that the man was killed before the hanging. The Hardie Boys, a group of dockworkers who act as vigilantes in Martinaise, claim collective responsibility for the murder. They assert that the lynched man attempted to rape a cafeteria guest by the name of Klaasje. They meet with Klassje for her end of the story who reveals that the victim Lely was shot in the mouth while the two were having sex. Unable to figure out the origin of the bullet and fearful of involving the authorities, Klaasje enlisted the help of a truck driver and union sympathizer named Ruby, who with the rest of the Hardie Boys staged Lely's death as a hanging. The detectives then follow the trail across the shore and eventually find Ruby hiding within an abandoned building, where she incapacitates them with a Pale device. She claims that the cover-up was all Klaasje's idea and has no idea who shot Lely. The player manages to resist or disable the Pale device and tries to arrest her. Ruby, who believes Harry to be a corrupt cop working for a notorious drug kingpin, states that she would rather kill herself, which she does if she is unable to escape.
The detectives return to find themselves in a standoff between the mercenaries and the Hardie Boys, the former seeking revenge over their dead comrade Lely. A firefight breaks out and the player is badly wounded, blacking out and waking up a few days later. Most or all the mercenaries are killed and Kim may be hospitalized, in which case street urchin Cuno offers to take his place. The detectives begin chasing down their last leads, ultimately determining that the shot that killed Lely came from an old sea fort just off the shore of Martinaise.
The detectives explore the rest of the fort and find the shooter: a former Commissar from the old Revachol communist army named Iosef Lilianovich Dros. Iosef's motivations are revealed to be ultimately born out of his bitterness towards the new capitalist system Lely represented, as well as his sexual envy for Klaasje. With all of the evidence now found, the detectives arrest him for the murder. At this point, an insectoid cryptid known as the Insulindian Phasmid appears from the reeds. The player may be able to have a psychic conversation with the Phasmid, who tells Harry that it finds the notion of his unstable mind to be fearful, but is in awe at his ability to continue existing day after day. It comforts Harry, telling him to move on from the wreck of his life and move forward.
Harry and his partner are confronted by his old squad upon their return to Martenaise. They reflect on Harry's actions during the game, whether he has solved the case and how he handled the mercenaries. Harry's former partner Jean Vicquemare confirms that Harry's emotional breakdown was indeed the result of his ex-fiancé leaving him several years ago. Depending on player choices, the squad expresses hope that Harry's state will improve in the future, and invites him and either Kim or Cuno to a special RCM unit.
Development
Disco Elysium was developed by ZA/UM, a company founded in 2016 by Karelian-Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, who served as the game's lead writer and designer. Kurvitz since 2001 had been part of a band called Ultramelanhool, and in 2005, while in Tallinn, Estonia, with the group struggling for finances, conceived of a fictional world during a drunken evening while listening to Tiësto's "Adagio for Strings". Feeling this had a solid idea, the group created a collective of artists and musicians, which included Aleksander Rostov, to expand upon the work of that night and developed a tabletop RPG based on Dungeons & Dragons on this steampunk-like concept. During this period, Kurvitz met Estonian author Kaur Kender who helped him to write a novel set in this world, Sacred and Terrible Air, which was published in 2013 but only sold about one thousand copies. Kurvitz fell into a period of depression and alcoholism for about three years following the book's failing.Kurvitz eventually managed to overcome this period of alcoholism, and helped Kender to also overcome his own alcoholism. As a sign of gratitude, Kender suggested to Kurvitz that instead of pursuing a novel that he try capturing his world as a video game instead as to draw a larger interest. Kurvitz had no experience in video games before, but once he had seen artwork of the game's setting of Revachol as easily fitting into an isometric format, as well as Rostov's agreement that they might as well continue taking the risk of failing on a video game together, Kurvitz proceeded with the idea. Kurvitz wrote a concise description of what the game would be: "D&D meets '70s cop-show, in an original 'fantastic realist' setting, with swords, guns and motor-cars. Realised as an isometric CRPG – a modern advancement on the legendary Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate. Massive, reactive story. Exploring a vast, poverty-stricken ghetto. Deep, strategic combat." Kender was impressed by the strong statement, investing into the game's development, with additional investment coming from friends and family. The game was announced as an upcoming 2017 game under the title No Truce With the Furies, taken from the poem "Reflections" by R.S. Thomas and published in Thomas' No Truce with the Furies in 1995.
Kurvitz established the ZA/UM team to create the game, using the name "za um" which could be read in Russian as either "for the mind" or "from the mind", while the use of all-capitals and the slash to present the team as "something that definitely exists and weighs eight tonnes". Work on the game started around 2016, with the local team working out of a squat in a former gallery in Tallinn. They were able to secure venture capital into the game during that first year which allowed Kurvitz to seek out the band British Sea Power for their music for the game's soundtrack. While in Birmingham to speak to the band, Kurvitz realised England was a better location for the main development team as there were more local resources for both development and for voice-overs. During development, some of the staff relocated from Estonia to London and Brighton, with other designers working out of Poland, Romania, and China. Overall, by the time of the game's release, ZA/UM had about 20 outside consultants and 35 in-house developers, with a team of eight writers assisting Kurvitz in the game's dialog. The majority of the game's funding was provided by Estonian businessman.
As originally planned, the game was to focus on action in a single city location to make the 2017 release. However, as ZA/UM had indicated to investors that this was to be game that spanned a larger world, they found the need to spread beyond that single location, and forcing them to delay the game's release, along with the name change to Disco Elysium. This title plays on a few double meanings related to the word "disco"; in one sense, it refers to ideas that briefly gain the spotlight before burning out similar to the fad of disco music, and reflected in the protagonist's clothing style, while in a more literal sense, "disco" is Latin for "I learn", thus reflecting on the protagonist's overcoming his amnesia to learn about the world of Elysium. Kurvitz had always anticipated the No Truce title to be more of a working title and wanted to reserve it for when they had bundled Disco Elysium with a second planned game. Though ZA/UM had initially planned to publish the game through Humble Bundle, they ultimately chose to self-publish it.
Design and influences
The game's art, drawn mostly in a watercolor style, was led by Aleksander Rostov, while the game's soundtrack was written by the English indie rock band British Sea Power. The voice-acting cast includes progressive metal musicians Mikee Goodman of SikTh and Mark Holcomb of Periphery, Dasha Nekrasova of the cultural commentary podcast Red Scare, and some of the hosts from the podcast Chapo Trap House.ZA/UM cited several works that influenced the writing and style of Disco Elysium. One of the game's major influences include the 1999 video game , as the player-character in both games starts off in an amnesic state, as well as its heavy emphasis on dialogue. The television show The Wire was also used as an influence for the game's working class setting, while Émile Zola's writings shared stories on the misery of human life that Hindpere said they felt resonated within the game. Other works that influenced Disco Elysium included: the video game Kentucky Route Zero; television shows True Detective and The Shield; the literary works of Dashiell Hammett, China Miéville, and the Strugatsky brothers; and artists Rembrandt, Ilya Repin, Jenny Saville, Alex Kanevsky, and Wassily Kandinsky.
Release
Disco Elysium was released for Microsoft Windows on 15 October 2019. The macOS version was released on 27 April 2020. Ports for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch are planned for 2020. One of the first languages that ZA/UM had translated the game for was Chinese, which was released in March 2020. Its release had bypassed the typical approval process needed to release games in China as the virtue of its content, which included themes of communism, did not meet the Chinese governmental typical restrictions on content. After its release, reviews left by Chinese players had stated that they were drawn to the game as it reflected similar periods of communism that they had gone through. In May 2020, ZA/UM released an update that improved some of the game's performance on lower-end hardware, as well as adding support for additional language translations, which are being developed by the community and by the localization firm Testronic Labs.After its original release, Kurvitz announced plans for an expansion for the game as well a full sequel. In addition, a tabletop RPG based on the systems the game used, tentatively titled You Are Vapor, was also announced, with Kurvitz also announcing plans to translate his novel Sacred and Terrible Air in English, which narratively takes place 20 years after events of Disco Elysium.
Reception
Disco Elysium received "universal acclaim" according to review aggregator Metacritic, with it being praised for its narrative and conversational systems. PC Gamer praised the game for its depth, freedom, customization, and storytelling and called it one of the best RPGs on the PC. IGN praised the game's open world and compared it favorably to The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2, despite being much smaller. The Washington Post said that the game is "conspicuously well written". GameSpot awarded it a 10 out of 10, their first perfect score since 2017. PCGamesN wrote that the game set new genre standards for exploration and conversation systems. Conversely, Eurogamer criticized the game for not offering enough choice in role-playing and for a distinct lack of focus.The game was nominated for four awards at The Game Awards 2019 and won all of them, the most at the event. Slant Magazine, USGamer, PC Gamer, and Zero Punctuation chose it as their game of the year, while Time included it as one of their top 10 games of the 2010s. The game was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Game Writing.