- Joined
- September 16, 2011
- Messages
- 791
I recently finished Disco Elysium. I thought it was great, really well-written, extremely funny in parts, extremely thoughtful and thought-provoking in others, dripping with faint melancholy, excellent/fitting music, and just sort of evoked a wide array of emotions in the right order throughout the experience. The extremely frequent skill checks, the interplay between all of your skills and traits (and even items in some cases), and myriad of different ways the game can be played and situations can be dealt with was all very refreshing, and something I hadn't really seen before to this level of mastery in craftsmanship. The game also has an interesting hand-drawn look with a color palette fitting with the game's overall ambiance.
As for DE being the future of RPG's - in the above ways, I agree that it could be and would absolutely embrace it!
That said, there are also ways in which DE is dreadfully dated and probably should not be representative of the future. Namely, trekking back and forth was sometimes grating. At one point, I was sent on a quest to receive an item on the other side of the map. I traveled across the map, did what I thought I was supposed to do, only to find out that when I returned that I misunderstood precisely what item I was expected to retrieve, and had to do it all over again. While it's not a huge map, the problem is compounded by the interface, since pointing and clicking is the only way to move, and you can't hold down the mouse to button or use any keyboard commands to move your character (in other words, a lot of clickity clickity clickity). The way the game progresses is interesting - time only passes through conversations or by reading books - but at times it seemed like I was just seeking out people to blather with just to pass the time and progress the game forward. Minor complaint I suppose, but something that could be improved. One final way I think DE should not represent the future is with voiced dialog. There is a lot of reading, which is fine. But the voice acting present in the game is soooo good, I would really like to see it all voiced, including narration, a la D:OS 2.
Overall, great game and I'm glad I played it. I'm actually really surprised reading some of the strange hostility towards this game at the Watch, it seems like a game that this community would want to rally behind. Then again, seems some people are never satisfied. I will be tackling The Outer Worlds next, so will have more to say about how the article characterizes it in a month or two (I'm a big fan of Obsidian, so I doubt I will see it the same way as the article).
As for DE being the future of RPG's - in the above ways, I agree that it could be and would absolutely embrace it!
That said, there are also ways in which DE is dreadfully dated and probably should not be representative of the future. Namely, trekking back and forth was sometimes grating. At one point, I was sent on a quest to receive an item on the other side of the map. I traveled across the map, did what I thought I was supposed to do, only to find out that when I returned that I misunderstood precisely what item I was expected to retrieve, and had to do it all over again. While it's not a huge map, the problem is compounded by the interface, since pointing and clicking is the only way to move, and you can't hold down the mouse to button or use any keyboard commands to move your character (in other words, a lot of clickity clickity clickity). The way the game progresses is interesting - time only passes through conversations or by reading books - but at times it seemed like I was just seeking out people to blather with just to pass the time and progress the game forward. Minor complaint I suppose, but something that could be improved. One final way I think DE should not represent the future is with voiced dialog. There is a lot of reading, which is fine. But the voice acting present in the game is soooo good, I would really like to see it all voiced, including narration, a la D:OS 2.
Overall, great game and I'm glad I played it. I'm actually really surprised reading some of the strange hostility towards this game at the Watch, it seems like a game that this community would want to rally behind. Then again, seems some people are never satisfied. I will be tackling The Outer Worlds next, so will have more to say about how the article characterizes it in a month or two (I'm a big fan of Obsidian, so I doubt I will see it the same way as the article).
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- Joined
- Sep 16, 2011
- Messages
- 791