Table of Contents
- How does Disco Elysium work?
- Attributes, skills and ways of reading the world
- The Reflection Cabinet
- an exceptional narrative
- Conclusion
Consolidated today as one of the most interesting RPGs for computers, Elysium disk has been gaining strength in word-of-mouth since its launch. Received greater recognition in TGA de 2019, taking some coveted awards from the event: best RPG, best independent game and best narrative. In addition to the statuettes, the award also served to pique the curiosity of a wider audience. The console version, already announced a long time ago, arrives in the sense of increasing the title's player base.
The version Disco Elysium — The Final Cut was released on March 30th for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, also available as an update for PC gamers, and brings voice dubbing for most interactions, as well as an improvement in terms of resolution and frame rate, and addition of new missions and events. It also adapts, for the first time, the RPG to the controls.
How does Disco Elysium work?
It is a title very focused on Role Play (playing a role), having very well defined and thought-provoking RPG systems as support for this interpretation. Its structure from the point of view of "what the player does" is confused with the genre of adventures - or point and click - in which it is up to the player to walk around the scenario collecting information, items and equipment in order to proceed with the investigation.
The key points of this investigation, however, are based on checks anchored in the values of the character's attributes and skills. If my character has a good value of “Physical Instrument”, the probability of being able to open a door by force is higher, for example. It is possible to change the attributes from points gained by leveling up, as well as engaging with the different systems of the game: the reflection cabinet, the use of tools and drugs, the clothes worn, in addition to previously obtained information and interactions with any NPC involved.
Therefore, the player will need to move a lot in the menus, making the changes and making the choices of all these aspects listed - which I will comment in more depth later in the text. It will also be necessary to walk to and fro in Revachol, interacting with points of interest, objects and, above all, characters. All these interactions result in a pretty substantial amount of text.
This has some implications. The first one is quite practical: those who play should like it or at least not mind spending a lot of time reading. It is important to note that there is an option to increase the font size of the letters, but the largest available may still not be the desired one depending on the television. In my case, the game asked for a little closer proximity, but nothing unpleasant.
The second implication concerns the content of this writing. Disco Elysium is very well written, but it brings many concepts and historical moments typical of that world, although the vast majority is analogous to the real moments and events of our history. The characters are interesting, and the protagonist detective's thoughts often steal the show, but this entire narrative point of the title is mediated by text and voice acting throughout the content in the Final Cut version.
I also highlight the team's care in solving problems as quickly as possible. The game's release on consoles came with some bugs that could even stop progress. They have already been fixed as of update 1.2 and 1.3, and the small team of developers continues to work to fix and improve the experience. In addition, it is worth mentioning the excellent localization for Spanish Spanish. With so much text, such a translation is essential for players here.
Attributes, skills and ways of reading the world
The plot of Disco Elysium begins with our protagonist waking up in a hotel room. A broken room, destroyed and possibly smelling very bad. From there, we take control of this detective, and we need to understand who this person is, what world he is in and, in the midst of all these problems, solve the case of a hanging in the neighborhood.
Before that, however, we must build the character's build, choosing between four aspects: intelligence, psyche, motor and physical abilities. Each of these four groups has 6 competencies. In principle, choosing 6 in Intelligence not only guarantees a base value of 6 for all abilities linked to the attribute, but also gives the possibility to increase them up to a value of 12 over the course of the journey.
It is very important, but it is possible to make changes and evolve each skill during the game. Our protagonist detective interacts with the environment and with himself based on these 24 skills. In fact, these are not just attributes, but above all ways of reading the world, as each of these characteristics generate thoughts about the facts, conversations and situations experienced by the police officer. They generate the way he understands that whole context.
This is one of the most interesting aspects of Disco Elysium, as in addition to having a pivotal impact on the narrative, it speaks directly to the RPG systems when we use our ability in each of these 24 skills to get through the game's checks.
There are two types, checks white and red. The latter can only be performed once, while the former can be repeated after a while, even with a higher probability of success if we get more information or a better tool, for example. The checks are performed on rolling the dice, and the highest probability is always 97%, as the combination of 1 and 1 of the two dice always results in failure, just as a combination of 6 and 6 necessarily results in success.
Disco Elysium is a narrative exponent of the media precisely because it integrates mechanics and systems with the way that world presents itself to the player. In a single campaign, it is impossible to engage with every thought. In this way, the selected, evolved and improved attributes are those that will generate discourse about the city, people and events. As pointed out earlier, it is possible to interact with other systems to “shape” the attributes. The most interesting of these is that of thoughts.
The Reflection Cabinet
From the numerous interactions carried out by the game's environment, the protagonist can begin to develop a line of thought. They can be aspects of his own existence, or even reflections on art, politics and society. Each thought generates a positive or negative bonus during its maturing hours, and another after it has been completed.
In addition to temporarily altering attributes, such thoughts can be a source of money or even experience, depending on the outcome. In this way, such a system is essential to help us improve our build and even gain more levels. As usual in the game, it also has a narrative implication, as the conclusion of the reflection generates a text resolution, capable of giving more clues and information about the character, Revachol and the whole society around him.
It is not the only form of character “progression”, as it is also possible to use tools, clothes and drugs to shape the value of attributes and increase the chances of a favorable roll. The first group brings more obvious objects, such as crowbars, pliers, flashlights, etc. Fashion is highlighted, as each object worn also gives positive or negative bonuses to different skills.
Drinks and drugs are also present, not only as objects, but also from the point of view of Role Play and some missions. You can choose not to drink, smoke, or do drugs during the campaign, and this will have implications for dialogue, checks, and even endings. But in addition to drugs being shown as complex things, with positive, negative or not necessarily qualifying effects, they are also powerful items to gain good attribute bonuses. Perhaps that essential improvement to beat a particularly unfavorable check.
All these systems speak volumes about how the world is revealed to the player from which protagonist he is living from, and also about the progression in the main investigation and campaign side quests, but roleplaying is still a deciding factor. and the way in which those who play decide to act and take sides.
an exceptional narrative
Disco Elysium does not shy away from making political comments. It's not one of those cases where the role play prerogative in the player's hands is accompanied by an exemption role for the developers. This RPG creates a world in which each character, no matter how “out of the box”, like Cuno and Thiago, for example, responds to the reality in which they live. They are the fruits of their time. Fruits of the conditions of existing and socializing in that space.
And engaging with these characters and this world presupposes action, and not just the reading of the world made and presented by the skills improved by the player. It is necessary to solve the problems, to make progress in the investigation. There is urgency, and to say more than that would be to fall into a pretty nasty spoiler, because the fun of Disco Elysium is the way it funnels events to reveal more about the actors and currents of that place.
You have to try to sort things out somehow. Each objective is “guarded” by several checks. Therefore, it is up to the player to discover the best way to solve it based on the detective's build, but also based on which character we are playing. If we don't want to be a racist protagonist – and who does? – is it valid to learn a supremacist line of thought to please a character and proceed to the desired location?
Disco Elysium shines at the meeting between role-playing and all intricate game systems. Everything generates interactions and actions narrated by a perception of the world of the character's attributes, of the ways of reading the world. It also shines by creating a list of very well defined characters to interact with. From the cryptic yet logical lines of the dice artisan, to the imposing Syndicate bureaucrat, each NPC is beautifully written and represents positions within the game's entire political and social imbroglio. Make no mistake, the hanging that kicks off is much more than a simple crime.
Conclusion
Disco Elysium - The Final Cut is a highly systemic RPG in which the entire character of the game works and intertwines to generate not only the player's interactions with the title, but above all the way in which the world itself is revealed. Its characters and environments are remarkable, both from a visual and literary point of view.
The mysteries about the crime, the protagonist and that world are being groped and finally solved by the way the player interacts with the game mechanics and systems, and mainly by the construction and interpretation of the character. In addition to all its qualities as a video game, the title does not shy away from showing a broad reality and the way in which some political positions see it and dispute it.
Disco Elysium – The Final Cut was one of the most anticipated games of 2021. So, what's yours?
