One More Go

Having recently called Obra Dinn the essential detective game, I wanted to try, or in this case revisit, some other games that could challenge that status. First up Disco Elysium, a game where you play a police officer who wakes up in a trashed room with absolutely no memory of who or where they are, but is swiftly told that they’re there to investigate a body found hanging from a tree. A task that would be much more straightforward if they hadn’t spent the last three days drinking themselves into oblivion.

Disco Elysium plays more like a CRPG or a tabletop RPG than it does a regular video game. Your main ways of interacting with the world are searching items and containers, conversing with NPCs, and attempting to define who your character is by upgrading and unlocking skills. There is no combat, instead challenges are presented as stat checks where you roll dice to see whether you succeed or fail. The items you’ve discovered and the way you approach conversations will determine your odds of succeeding, people are less likely to help you if you’ve treated them unkindly, or they may be more likely to help you if you’re wearing an outfit that holds more authority. You’re rewarded for considering your options carefully and are warned early on that it’s sometimes better not to disclose information to a witness when you could use it against them later. It’s this push and pull of guessing whether you should ask that next question that is the beating heart of Disco Elysium.

Each piece of information gained will add dialogue options elsewhere, unlock new paths to explore and hopefully bring you closer to understanding the truth. It will also unlock more ways for the narrative to unfold, spiraling your investigation in different directions, and sometimes throwing more distractions into your path. Disco Elysium is absurdly dense, during the promotion of The Final Cut (a free upgrade that adds features and voice acting to the entire story) the developers boasted that it contained a million lines of acted dialogue, some of which you may never see. I can only imagine that behind the scenes the logic that holds all of that together looks like a conspiracy theorists cork board (which would be kind of fitting given the mess that ZA/UM and Disco Elysium’s creators now find themselves in).

The mystery surrounding the hanging body is the main driving force of the narrative, encouraging you to explore and interact with the world, sleuthing for any hints about where to look next. In doing so, however, you are pulled into another mystery, that of the player character. Disco Elysium wants you to discover who you are, not just in the sense of re-learning your name and history, but also in defining your personality, your political ideology, and your beliefs. These decisions become established through the game’s “thought cabinet” menu, and are reinforced by unlocking unique dialogue options and granting experience bonuses for behaving in a way that matches your personality. None of this is set in stone, however, gain enough experience and you can forget a thought, opening up the opportunity to morph your personality in some way. Swapping the right wing for the left has never been easier, but who knows what information you will have already missed.

One constant throughout your journey and something that sets this game apart from others, is it’s loveable companion – Kim Kitsuragi. Kim is a straight laced cop who has the displeasure of having to follow the player character around the world, trying to rehabilitate them while also solving a murder investigation. Selecting wacky dialogue options or saying inappropriate things to people can be easy when you’re playing a solo game, but Kim’s presence adds a layer to your decision making that is often missing in other games. Throughout the story he will admonish and encourage you, leaving you the opportunity to act outrageously, sometimes amusing Kim, and sometimes upsetting him. If you want to do something that Kim will definitely not approve of, you can sneak out after he’s retired for the evening, though whatever it is you’re doing you’ll hope that he doesn’t find out.

Tasks are much easier with Kim present, and despite the lack of combat there are still game over states caused by either a drop in your character’s health or their morale. My current play through is technically my third, the second was over within an hour. My morale dropping to zero, overcome with shame and self loathing after mistakenly shooting the victim’s corpse and ruining any chance there was of gathering information via an autopsy. My third playthrough is running a little more smoothly than that, though I am hitting the quick save button more often, a habit that threatens to undo playing through the consequences of my decisions and failed skill checks, especially when I’ve missed out on something that I’m genuinely curious about. It can sometimes be quite a tough challenge, knowing which punches to roll with, and when to reload and try to push the story in a way you’ve not seen before. If you’re playing for the first time, none of that matters, you can stumble and crash your way through the whole investigation, just whatever you do, don’t upset Kim too much, he doesn’t deserve it.