Topic: Disco Elysium

@AgentCooper I discovered the phasmid both times. It's kind of disappointing that it's quite easy to do to be honest as it would be much cooler if it was something that you really had to work at to get. I did like the big difference in the final section for not having Kim vs having him and, as I said in the spoiler in the other thread, I thought it was much funnier this way round for both the island and the "debrief".

Hardcore mode didn't seem that much worse. I had some thoughts that negated the lower money you get in that mode an didn't ever need to buy healing items which are more expensive too. The higher check level is negated by being given more XP so if you "cheat" and get Jamais Vu as early as I did you can still get a really strong build by the end.

I'm looking forward to having another run at some point with Inland Empire as my key stat and go for a political centrist, psychic, apocalypse cop and see if I can hoover up the remaining trophies too.

So I finished off the game, and figured I’d leave some fuller thoughts about the whole experience.

Overall it’s an impressive work. I clocked 37 hours, according to my PS5’s timekeeper. As inaccurate as that tends to be, I reckon it’s in the right ballpark for this game. It was a good playtime, although I know it can be stretched longer or cut shorter, depending on how many side activities you open up. I was fairly obsessive about doing everything and I left no task on my list undone, although there were optional NPC interactions that I either missed due to timing, or ignored. I admit that there were plenty of times that the game did drag for me, and it was mostly while on these side activities when NPC would ramble on and on about socio-economics or the history of Revachol and its politics. In the end, I do see the importance of some of these conversations and background contextual information, but it probably could have been streamlined better, imo. I got where I was just clicking through the conversations and speed-read scanning them rather than listening to the whole diatribe.

Nevertheless, the way the game ends, it does indeed wrap up almost all those small moments and world building tidbits. Most of the random things like phasmids and revolutionary history come back to be important in the end.

I mentioned in the GameClub thread how I was deeply touched by a few of the reveals and final sections of the game. The way the game ends is really good, but I do think I’d have liked to have a small bit more about what happens to my Harry when he gets back home. A lot of that is alluded to and some of left open to interpretation, but I tried hard to stay sober and do a good job and I felt like I needed a final hero’s welcome and I didn’t quite get that. Some veiled left-handed compliments at the end from my partner helped, and there was a foreshadowing of the boss keeping me around, but I’d have liked to have more. And I ended up with so much money at the end and nothing to spend it on. 😅

The game will live on in my memory for a long time, but I don’t think I’ll replay it, at least not anytime soon. I don’t usually replay games. There’s many different ways this game can be approached, but I’ll stick with my canon play though for now.

@Th3solution I’m glad you enjoyed it in the end! The game does come together nicely but even after two plays I’m not sure how I feel about the ending.

It feels like it wraps a bit too neatly with the guy on the island being responsible for it and it seems to allow you to have missed loads of things and still be able to pin it on him. The emergence of the phasmid is a cool moment but did feel slightly out of place too (and a surprisingly low check needed to see it for that stage of the game).

And I agree that they do go slightly OTT on the politics of the game but part of me is incredibly impressed at how much thought had gone into creating this whole world.

The debrief is good fun though and on this run led to one of my favourites when asked whether I had my gun;

As for replaying the game, it had been around three years since I first played it and I still loved it. It was good fun playing a substance abusing, racist a-hole and going for physique stats. But I still remembered most of the main beats of the game so sort of remembered what to focus on. It was quite nice not to feel so aimless but the original feeling of discovery is what makes these games so amazing.

The biggest change on this run was that I didn’t manage to save Kim from being shot so had Cuno accompany me to the island at the end which was brilliant. And the little guy really got into the cop lifestyle but still using his “colourful” language;

As I said elsewhere, I will do a paranormal play through at some point.

@Thrillho It’s definitely a game that has its merits. It’s surprisingly good, but as you mentioned, it might have been better served to pour some of the efforts they used in world building and creating an intricate politico-historical setting and use that to create a slightly more nuanced outcome for the finale. I don’t know if it’s possible to make it to the end and botch the case entirely and never make it to the island, but it sounds like all roads lead to that outcome of finding the killer. Same with the phasmid. For example, I wonder if there’s a possibility of never seeing the phasmid if you were to ignore the little side quest where you meet the two guys and agree to check their traps. That contingency would make sense. Or if you took a repeated stance of dismissing the idea of phasmids, perhaps you don’t see it at the end.

Likewise, the game seems to siphon you into the same island outcome no matter how you end up making it with the Ruby search. There seemed to be a few ways to find Ruby, two of which I unlocked due to ramping up my Shivers and also by doing the whole side activity with the kids hearing the radio in their heads. It’s good that there was a couple ways to get there, but a little divergence at the end would have been appreciated. Although to be fair, since I only played once maybe there is a few large differences in outcome, separate from finding the Deserter on the island.

Nevertheless, the amount of connections that are strung together at the end did surprise me. Still, I’m not sure what the point of all that stuff in the church really was, other than to support the notion of the pale. Same for the choice at the end of day 3 where I went ultra liberal and set up the huge net worth, but it didn’t give me a different ending other than one or two extra lines during the wrap up, and the small part with the statue. It led to humorous dialogue options, which I suppose is the point, but it would have been nice to see somehow that I could ride that whole thing out to some endpoint of financial dominance 😅

If I played it again, one things I’d like to do would be better about my thought cabinet. In the early game, I just equipped every thought that came along, and so I ended up with a fairly random collection of thoughts and filled up by halfway through the game. The second half I had to be more tactical since it cost me a skill point to erase one and equip another. So I got better with it at the end but yet still left several thoughts unlearned that I wanted to try. For example, there’s apparently the homosexual underground one that apparently allows you to have a separate discussion with Kim (according to the wiki) that I didn’t get to see because I simply ran out of time and was end game at that point so wanted to max my attributes. There was a really good thought also from Joyce toward the end that was supposed to unlock all white checks that would have been great to have but it took like 7-8 hours to unlock and it was so close to end game that I didn’t want to mess around long enough to unlock it.

And yeah, having Cuno as your partner seems like it would be off-the-rails. 😂 And I had that option to respond that way about my guns, but I chose to just stay conservative and show him my own gun only.

@Th3solution I don't know if the pale stuff in the church has more significance with a paranormal play through or not or whether it's just a weird minor side point in the world.

The ultra liberal thing is something I think they added in later on to give a bit of an amusing detour for a lot of the political leanings. The communism one I had on my first run basically sees you ending up meeting some fellow commies but who are only interested in arguing about the theories and principles of it, rather than actually doing anything. The fascist one is quite funny as you talk to all the other "traditionalists" who all turn out to be utter losers.

The thought cabinet is weird as it's not explained at all and so your first instinct is to go for whatever you find. It was the only thing I used a guide for on both runs to make sure that it was worth it in the end. This time I think I only half filled it as most of the penalties outweighed the gains on the build I had.