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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

Disco Elysium is a 2019 role-playing video game developed and published by ZA/UM. Inspired by Infinity Engine-era games, particularly Planescape: Torment, the game was written and designed by a team led by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz and features an art style based on oil painting with music by the English band British Sea Power.

Disco Elysium takes place in the seaside district of a fictional city still recovering from a revolution that occurred decades prior to the game's start. Players take the role of an amnesiac detective who has been tasked 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. Disco Elysium was released for Windows in October 2019 and macOS in April 2020. An expanded version of the game featuring full voice acting and new content, subtitled The Final Cut, was released for consoles in 2021 alongside a free update for the PC versions.

Disco Elysium is a non-traditional role-playing game featuring very little combat. Instead, events are resolved through skill checks and dialogue trees via a system of 24 skills that represents different aspects of the protagonist, such as his 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, later forming ZA/UM in 2016 to adapt it into a video game.

Disco Elysium has been cited as among the greatest video games ever made, with its narrative and art being praised. It won a number of awards from several publications, including Game of the Year. A television series adaptation was announced to be in development 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, who suffers from alcohol and drug-induced amnesia, on a murder case. The player can move the detective about the current screen to interact with non-player characters (NPC) 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 offers advice or support in certain dialogue options.

Setting

Disco Elysium takes place in the fantastic realist world of Elysium, developed by Kurvitz and his team in the years prior, which includes over six thousand years of history. The fiction has been constructed with attention to the theory of historical materialism, which posits that, even if the details were different, human history would play out in a similar way

The game takes place in the year '51 of the Current Century. Elysium is made of "isolas", masses of land and sea that are separated from each other by the Pale, an inscrutable, mist-like "connective tissue" in which the laws of reality break down. Prolonged exposure to the Pale can cause mental instability and eventually death, and traversing the Pale, which is typically done with aerostatics, is heavily regulated due to the danger

Events in the game take place in the impoverished district of Martinaise within the city of Revachol on the isola of Insulinde, the "New New World". Forty-nine years before the events of the game, a wave of communist revolutions swept multiple countries; the Suzerainty of Revachol, a monarchy that up to that point had been Elysium's pre-eminent superpower, was overthrown and replaced by a commune. Six years later, the Commune of Revachol was toppled by an invading alliance of moralist-capitalist nations called "the Coalition". Revachol was designated a Special Administrative Region and remains firmly under Coalition control decades later. One of the few governmental responsibilities that the Coalition concedes to the people of Revachol is policing, which is carried out by the Revachol Citizens Militia (RCM), a voluntary citizens' brigade turned semi-professional police force.

Development

Disco Elysium was developed by ZA/UM, a company founded in 2016 by 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 they had a solid idea, the group created a collective of artists and musicians, which included oil painter Aleksander Rostov, to expand upon the work of that night and developed a tabletop RPG based on Dungeons & Dragons on this steampunk-like concept

Kender suggested to Kurvitz that instead of pursuing a novel, that he try capturing his world as a video game 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.

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", a reference to the Zaum constructed language created by Russian avant-garde poets in the early 1900s. Its name can be read in Russian as a shortcut for "vzyatsya za um" idiom, which is similar to the English idea of bootstrapping. The use of all-capitals and the slash symbol is to present the team as "something that definitely exists and weighs eight tonnes".

Work on the game started around 2016, with the local team living in 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 English band 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.

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 a game that spanned a larger world, they found the need to spread beyond that single location, 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

Design, voices, and influences

The game's art, drawn mostly in a painterly style, was led by Aleksander Rostov, while the game's soundtrack was written by the English band British Sea Power. The original release also had voice-acting by Dasha Nekrasova of the cultural commentary podcast Red Scare and four of the hosts from the political satire podcast Chapo Trap House; these would later be replaced in The Final Cut.

ZA/UM cited several works that influenced the writing and style of Disco Elysium. One major influence is the 1999 video game Planescape: Torment, which, like Disco Elysium, features an amnesiac player character, heavily emphasises dialogue, and is rendered isometrically. 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 narrative writer Helen Hindpere said she 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. The creators have also said that their work owes a lot to the Estonian urbanist poet Arvi Siig. Kurvitz said while accepting the Estonian President's Young Cultural Figure annual award for 2020 "Without his modernism, Elysium – the world the game is placed in – would not be half of what it is." He also said Siig's vision of an international, radical and humanist Estonian culture lives on in Disco Elysium.

Kurvitz said that an aim was to have a full, complex depth of choices and outcomes, limited by the practicalities of game development. Knowing they could not realistically cover all possible choices, Kurvitz and his team instead focused more on what he called "microreactivity", small acts and decisions the player may make such as an embarrassing comment, and how that may propagate throughout events. The dialogue of the player's various skills helped then to provide critique and internalisation of how these small decisions had larger effects on the game world, so that the player would become more aware of such choices in the future. An additional factor in writing was the recognition that there was no real solution to the game; while the player may resolve some portions of the story, the primary case is nearly unworkable, similar to the rest of Revachol. They created the companion Kim as a no-nonsense character to help keep the player on track of resolving some part of the game and recognising that there were some story threads they simply could not fix or resolve.

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[-] MF_COOM@hexbear.net 52 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
[-] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 30 points 1 month ago

Because they didn't have money obligations, so what are your obligations then?

Meanwhile I have to screen books for my toddler and discard half of them because of overt racism, misogyny or anti-veganism. 😠

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[-] IgnusNilsen@hexbear.net 34 points 1 month ago

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! pflp-octoplushie

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[-] asa_red_heathen@hexbear.net 34 points 1 month ago
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[-] DengistDonnieDarko@hexbear.net 31 points 1 month ago

new potential tagline material from a .world lemmitor

Saying liberals aren’t left wing is gatekeeping the term. Imagine saying that I’m not left leaning enough. Wtf is that supposed mean!

[-] Cowbee@hexbear.net 21 points 1 month ago

That's not even the worst I've seen today, but it is one of the funniest he-laughed

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[-] Lerios@hexbear.net 29 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I LOVE TALKING ABOUT WORLD EVENTS WITH NEOLIBERALS shinji-screm

"i bought stock in northrop grumman at the beginning of the war and that's paid off massively :)"

he said this while giggling about how uncouth and naughty he was being. he's 23 and well informed and non-white. i'm going to [FEDPOST REDACTED] every single person at this fucking job. soulless freaks.

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[-] DengistDonnieDarko@hexbear.net 29 points 1 month ago
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[-] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 28 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

New Megathread nerds!

dubois-dance kitsuragi-dance

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No current struggle session discussion here on the new general megathread, i will ban you from the comm and remove your comment, have a good day/night :meow-coffee:

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[-] makotech222@hexbear.net 28 points 1 month ago

All these Bush-era politicians endorsing kamala makes me think she promised them war with iran

[-] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

holden-bloodfeast "Please invade Iran"

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[-] EstraDoll@hexbear.net 28 points 1 month ago
[-] HarryLime@hexbear.net 28 points 1 month ago
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[-] Tommasi@hexbear.net 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If you don't want to bleed money to a landlord, you will instead have to pay a bank tens of thousands of dollars to be able to a afford a home. what an awful system. i feel like we don't talk about how evil banks are enough, they're just as much disgusting leeches as landlords are.

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[-] DengistDonnieDarko@hexbear.net 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

genocide talkthere's a moment I often think of from the 2020 Portland protests. mayor ted is walking through the streets, looking at the results of what is at this point months of protests. he's in an interview, making pithy comments, empty platitudes, you know how it goes. then a guy runs up in front of him and dumps overflowing bags full of tear gas cannisters and rubber bullets at his feet, evidence of the police brutality he's let run wild on his constituents. ted, of course, ends whatever interview he's doing and runs away, like a coward.

I often think about this when I'm arguing with libs in the torment nexus (Lemmy). thinking that, maybe I should stop trying to reason with them, and instead show them the results of the policy they support. the broken bodies, the charred remains, the indistinguishable piles of viscera. body parts stuffed into plastic bags and weighed out, as that's the only way to give a semblance of a proper burial, 70kg for an adult, 20kg for a child. would it make a difference? probably not, almost assuredly not. I don't know anymore. I am surrounded by heartless monsters who only care about their own comfort.

[-] rhubarb@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago

In my opinion, the problem with propaganda that just aims to shock people is that the average liberal has almost completely dehumanized Palestinians in their mind. This makes it easy for them to simply ignore whatever horrible result of their politics you show them. It might seem unintuitive when you do see Palestinians as people, but effective propaganda aimed at liberals should first of all aim to rehumanize them, to state that these are people with inner lives like you and me.

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[-] RION@hexbear.net 23 points 1 month ago

The humor skills you can gain as a coping mechanism from being unattractive are powerful, but if you ever acknowledge that's how you got them you're instantly no longer funny

oooaaaaaaauhhh

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[-] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago
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[-] CredibleBattery@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago

in honor of the tragedy of Disco Elysium, i will be posting in the general megathread for the first time

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[-] GVAGUY3@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago

Big government vs small government is one of the dumbest discourse Americans have been gaslit into believing.

[-] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I tend to fall asleep to an audiobook and saw thar the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy ad read by Douglas Adam's was on YouTube. Got a bit in and gotta say, I kinda hate it now. It's such fucking Ricky Gervais core and hearing it read by Douglas Adams who kinda sounds Ike Russell Brand doesn't help. I think my tolerance for smug British people who do 'clevah, huoomah dar makes ya tink roifht?!' Has been absolutely annihilated. I hope I still like monty python. So my question is, British people: why are you such smug pieces of shit and why does your humor tend to reek of self satisfaction when it's not Benny Hill? How about you all get on old times naval ships and die of scurvy?

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[-] Tomboymoder@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago

Gather old white people together and they can’t help but be racist

[-] Blockocheese@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

That's genuinely all whites of any age

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[-] CliffordBigRedDog@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago
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[-] EstraDoll@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago

all-morons me literally every day being an ML in the imperial core surrounded by """progressives""" and """"leftists"""""

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[-] Frank@hexbear.net 21 points 1 month ago

Reddit has become so fucking joyless. No jokes. No Puns. No off topic comments. All posts pust follow APA formatting. If your account is less than 90 days old you can't post. YOu didn't flare your post. You didn't use the correct title format. No personal annecdotes.

Every sub I find interesting is so locked down, so full of weird rules and bizarre interpretations of those rules. There's nothing organic left of it, it's just minefields of arbitrary mod rulings.

[-] Grownbravy@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago

Gonna be real here, if I have to read another “and my axe” post, i will start a manhunt to hit that redditor with an aluminum baseball bat

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[-] Aliveelectricwire@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago

I'm being abused and so is my ex-fiancee by their current. But if I don't just put up with it, let alone call out the abuse and manipulation, then Basil and will be homeless in Chicago winter, which is basically a death sentence. Guess I'll just cry into my pillow (My room mate gets mad at hearing me cry and tells at me if it's audible)

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[-] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago
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[-] heartheartbreak@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago

its incredible the way disco elysium wormed its way into my brain and has since laid many generations of eggs and worms that have in turn laid more eggs and also begun to cannibalize the other generations of eggs creating a tapestry of worms and sinew sewn together in a seamless and beautiful putty

[-] EstraDoll@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

i went up to the poker dealer at the casino and showed him my many jokers and did the calcuator math to inform him that the casino actually owes me 17,854.7 times as many chips as they had given me for my winning hand and instead they just kicked me out saying that a flush house is not a real hand??? wtf???

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[-] GeorgeZBush@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

Leaves falling? Grey skies? End-of-the-year depression compounding already existing depression? Yep, it's walk-around-town-while-listening-to-the-DE-soundtrack season.

[-] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

Played around with the night vision setting and exposure on my phone camera and lmao

BE NOT AFRAID

biblically-accurate-kitty ^meow^

[-] Moss@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

It would be so funny if aliens were real and actually were little grey guys with big heads. posad

What if this guy was your buddy Jzorp and he was 4 feet tall and you smoked a blunt with him after work

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[-] thethirdgracchi@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

Just found out that my favorite hip hop artist Ka, easily one of the best to ever do it, passed away unexpectedly yesterday. He was only in his 50s. Devastating. Dude was a complete legend. Made records in his spare time as a NYC firefighter, perhaps the great writer to ever put his pen to hip hop. A total inspiration for me, somebody who made incredible art not for profit but because he loved it, still holding down a day job and just grinding out some of the greatest records I've ever heard. Seriously, check out some of these bars, his wordplay and rhyme schemes(s) was absolutely insane.

Cops got us under microscopes to make sure we see cells / Know my first vitamin was iron, but I just wanted to beat 12 / Didn't dwell by the sea shore, but was sure to see shells

Learned many lessons from women, the biggest was forgiveness / Impossibly generosity taught me giving is a privilege / Thought for respect had to be the villain of the village / ‘Cause the only ones chillin’ was the ones willing to pillage / Armed for strong-arm and too impatient to plan a heist / And how you handle fights determine if you man or mice

Inherited a ready-made plight / Was too heavy, not many made light / Come from regal people, fell from great height / To track back to royal, had to break night

Some of my favorites by him:

RIP Ka

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[-] LocalOaf@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

Feeling completelyyes-honey-left from a long day and long term sleep deficit and chronic stress

HOWEVER

Look at these kitties

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[-] Yor@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

working from home today, which means

  • going for a run
  • making hummus
  • playing metaphor
  • hanging out with cat
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[-] WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

Someone at judo said I have become easier to throw. It's not the "omg have you lost weight?" I was hoping for, but it does mark the first time someone else has noticed my weight loss. That's a W

[-] cloudy@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago
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[-] Parzivus@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

A friend of mine got into DE and got the hotel to waive most of his bill in the very first conversation. Everytime I see someone play it I see something new.

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[-] imogen_underscore@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

torrented the new silent hill 2 onto my linux machine... living in the future 😎 sadly my 1080ti is barely above the minimum requirements lol, hard to believe we're at that stage. still get a pretty stable 60 with the settings down and i can still have high textures cause of beefy VRAM pool.

i was really pissed about the (sadly, predictable) lack of FOV slider too. it's an unreal game so i figured someone would have made a trainer to change it like with the RE4 remake. even figured out how to get that working on linux with only mild hassle! who needs windows tux-shining

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[-] Beluga@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

My pussy really hurts I think I’m dying?

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[-] Kestrel@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

Remember Aaron Bushnell

[-] EstraDoll@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago

i can't hear a woman being referred to as a "broad" without conjuring the image of a woman who's like 7 feet wide in my head

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[-] moonlake@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago

Getting stunlocked in the grocery store because there's too many different types of fruit

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[-] Wmill@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago

I think I may be cooked dreamt I was arm wrestling a girl, things were going well then her friend joined to help her win. Even that wasn't so bad but then I realized I was hold two girls hands and I hyperflush hard and woke up with my heart pounding yamcha

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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2024
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