Disco Elysium.
It sounded like a game I'd never play. A game with a set male protagonist where you take the role of an amnesic detective in charge of solving a murder mystery, developed by untested devs. It pretty much ticked all the boxes to avoid the game. However... continuously hearing my husband giggling hysterically whenever he fired up the game next to me and hearing universally high praise of the game convinced me to give it a go.
Disco Elysium has an exceptional atmosphere that caught my attention almost straight away. The opening dialogue with your... "subconscious" voices was so powerful, I started to have this image of a fallen hero as my character (note: you don't get to see your character's appearance during the character creation). The dialogues were coming to an end, and I held my breath to finally see my character for the first time. Lo and behold. This was completely something I did not imagine. He looked... horrendous... and most importantly, so... *pathetic*. I could not think of a better word to describe him. PATHETIC. So pathetic that he almost got himself killed before he even left his room. It didn't take long for my impression of him to reach another rock bottom, as I started to hear a barrage of horrendous and idiotic things my character's been doing for the past few days at the hostel he had been staying at, instead of investigating his assigned murder case.
To be brutally honest, at this point I was seriously considering calling it quits. I'm not used to taking a role of an idiot who causes so much chaos everywhere and having to apologise to almost everyone I have met in the game (this literally won me an achievement called "Literally the sorriest cop on Earth"). But I held on, remembering those dialogues in the very beginning and heeding my husband's words. In the end, I was very glad I did not give up. It was a hell of a journey, a wild rollercoaster ride of emotions.
I had a love/hate relationship with my character. He was just not built to take phsyical and emotional abuses he had to endure throughout the game - at one point, he took so much abuse that he literally "slid off a chair like a shot of jello". But there were also times when he wowed everyone (including myself) with his sharp observation and critical analytical skills - the game does a brilliant job of showing this off through their art/visual direction, like how my character determines the number and sizes of footprints or a projectory of bullet etc. But above all else, I could relate to him as a human being. The main purpose of the game is not only to solve a murder mystery but to find out more about your character, by interacting with locals to obtain clues of murder as well as your past. There were some really tender, poignant moments in game as he starts to regain memories of someone so special to him. Those moments are executed in almost perfection, it shook me so hard as if I'm experiencing my own emotions, making me wallow in a unholy mixture of happiness, sorrow and hope.
It was those moments that really helped me to get through the game. While I enjoyed the game overall, there were also some elements that I disliked a lot. The game is rather adult themed and it really describes some things I don't feel comfortable with in great detail. For example, the game's lore is heavily based on political issues - granted, they were very well-written and well-thought out, but it wasn't my cup of tea to read through what seems to be endless texts of different political views of various NPCs in order to progress the story and quests. The game also features poor pathfinding which made me extremely frustrated thinking that I was unable to get to where I needed to go. There's also this inconvinience of having to earn daily living for a while in order to pay for the room you are staying at. You can easily get by first few days with "help" from some people but it is worthwhile to unlock the next area as soon as possible (which would be day 3 of your journey) to address the money issue.
The game is largely divided into 4 areas - you start off at the Martinaise waterfront and will unlock other areas as the story progress. There are many NPCs scattered throughout these 4 areas and I ended up building meaningful relationship with many NPCs, including those who seem so minor when you first meet them. The game encourages you to explore all dialogue options and some dialogue options initially seem totally meaningless and absurd. Little did I know, one of these conversations I had with a NPC ended up having such a huge impact on me. My character proceeded on annoy the hell out of this NPC at the bookshop with some absurd hypothetical theory of his. To my surprise, later I discovered that this theory kind of actually happened, which causes grief for that poor NPC. It most likely was a matter of unfortunate coincidence but it sure made me feel terrible - I couldn't shake off the feeling I jinxed the whole thing. To make things worse, it was my character's duty as a cop to deliver the bad news to her and he just had to fail a critical skill check - ensuring that he told her the news in the most unprofessional way possible, causing her even more grief. I literally couldn't live with the consequences of how bad a job my character did in sharing the news that I had reload the game.
My husband was also playing Disco Elysium at the same time and we kept pace with each other so we could discuss how we felt about each NPC and quest. He certainly did not feel the massive guilt I felt towards the aforementioned NPC and we've ended up making very different choices in how we dealt with each NPC which led us building completely different relationship with each character too. This really showed how much impact the choices you make has on your character. I no longer saw my character as "a male, detective, drunkard, pathetic idiot". He was representation of "me" - it was amazing.
There is no combat in Disco Elysium so it is fair to say the game is solely based on reading and skill checks - which meant it is not ideal to play the game in short bursts, however this also left me feeling extremely exhausted by the end of each session. This resulted in me skipping some of dialogues mindlessly and I ended up missing out a big warning saying "do not progress any further if you want to explore all side quests" bit. So, I reached the "point of no return" without a very important item in my possession which ended up costing the lives of some people near the end of the game. My advice is to try not to let each session get too long so you don't make the same mistake I did! From my experience, Disco Elysium doesn't seem like a game with lots of replayability as its heavily story and narritive driven and it would be wise to explore all quests in a single playthrough. I ended up finishing the game at the 19.6hour mark - I'm not sure if this is a good representation of the game's length since I haven't finished all side quests but at the same time, I'm a very slow reader.
I'd rate the game 8/10 - recommended to those who love to immerse themselves in excellent roleplaying experience but doesn't mind too much reading.
@Morrandir; - thought I'd tag you for this
