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Game review 21 November 2019, 18:58

Meet 2019's Most Amazing Game – Disco Elysium, a Quirky RPG from Estonia

[Review updated] A depraved cop investigates a degenerate industrial world, where racism is ubiquitous, the specter of communism fuels class struggles, and the good and evil are meaningless constructs. Disco Elysium, this year's most ambitious RPG

...we have a city to burn...

Perhaps you're now under the impression that the game is a paragraph, text-based adventure. Well... The ZA/UM studio did what they could to avoid that. We spend a lot of time on typical exploration of the environment, full of interactive objects. The perspective is isometric, and the actions of the protagonist are accompanied by neat animations (really, their number is remarkable for a game of this type), and the voice acting is really good. The whole is complemented by a nice color palette and good visual effects.

All this, however, doesn't change the fact that Disco Elysium is brimming with text. Well written, clever, bright, superbly constructed, with a specific atmosphere with a touch of black humor here and there, but nonetheless – in quite terrifying quantities.

People that choose high psychosocial abilities for the protagonist will be most affected by that. In Disco Elysium we spend more time engaged in inner dialog that chatting to NPCs. There are 24 different skills available – and the tests of this skills, performed with every other sentence, are responsible for the lion's share of the text in the game.

The character tab can be intimidating – don't fret! Character creation and development are completely painless.

One of the locations you can discover is an abandoned development studio where Fortress Accident used to make RPGs.... Try asking your uncle Google what ZA/UM was called a few years ago.

Each "skill" is a kind of a separate voice in the hero's head (remember the talking tie?), and each of them has something interesting to add, even during the blandest conversation on interaction with the environment. If that bothers you, consider that ZA/UM did not follow the footsteps of inXile, and – differently than in Torment: Tides of Numenera – tried to avoid overwhelming the player with too large chunks of text. Here, the messages are short, embellished with different colors and graphical elements to make a bit sexier – in the end, however, the amount of text may give you a headache.

But it's not a huge issue when the quality is alright. The writers demonstrate rich vocabulary, coming up with some fun metaphors, and serving some pretty specialized language from different areas. Then, there's the setting. Before developing the game, the members of the studio spent several years (!), creating a universe of Disco Elysium during RPG sessions – and this really paid off. Reading about all the nations, races, important figures and events can make you dizzy. ZA/UM can be proud of the universe they created – still, the sheer amount of text can be overbearing.

WHO THINK, DO NOT ERR

The uniqueness of Disco Elysium is also pronounced in character development. We have more traditional elements, such as allocating points to skills with every level-up, or improving the overall statistics with items (clothes), but there's one aspect that sets this game apart form other representatives of the genre. This is the study of thought. Through dialogue – both with other people and (or above all) with himself – and interaction with the environment, the hero learns various concepts that he can ponder over later.

"Hey," says one voice at some point. "Wanna build communism?" This is exactly how it looks during the game. I should also add that the game follows the conversations closely, and adds up how often the hero voices Communist views, honors the free market, goes about moralizing others, or acts like a xenophobic bigot. It's a truly diabolical design that takes role-playing characters to a level unprecedented in the RPG.

But back to the subject – having unlocked one of these ideas, we can open the right window in the UI, place it in a free slot, and start to internalize it. It's worth going through the whole list. The advanced theory of races, socio-economics, or the agenda of feminism are just a few of the many intriguing questions that the protagonist can delve into. When a certain amount of time passes and the process is over, the hero receives various bonuses for his skills. However, the process also brings about some debuffs. One of which, not a very tangible one, is the fact that you can't unthink a thought.

Please appreciate this screen – it took a dozen tries to finally pass the check. There were times I missed the Torment's effort.

Christopher Mysiak

Christopher Mysiak

Associated with GRYOnline.pl since 2013, first as a co-worker, and since 2017 - a member of the Editorial team. Currently the head of the Game Encyclopedia. His older brother - a game collector and player - sparked his interest in electronic entertainment. He got an education as a librarian/infobroker - but he did not follow in the footsteps of Deckard Cain or the Shadow Broker. Before he moved from Krakow to Poznan in 2020, he was remembered for attending Tolkien conventions, owning a Subaru Impreza, and swinging a sword in the company's parking lot.

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