Disco Elysium is a detective RPG of
improbable depth. It’s part
Planescape: Torment, part police
procedural. Your hungover detective
peels himself off the carpet, nude
except for a pair of soiled underwear,
and begins the laborious process of
piecing his broken
mind back together,
while attempting to
solve a gruesome
murder on the wrong
side of the tracks.
The game has stats,
skill checks,
companions, quests,
and an interface
inspired by classic Infinity Engine
CRPGs. But it also has a lot in
common with visual novels, tabletop
games, and point-and-click
adventures, with dense, branching
dialogue and the ability to intimidate,
charm, or bluff your way out of tricky
situations via several novels’ worth of
strange, vibrant dialogue.
A man has been found hanging
from a tree in an empty lot, and it’s
your job to find out who killed him—
if you can get near the corpse without
puking. Disco Elysium’s sallow,
flare-wearing protagonist is a totaldisaster. The taste you get in your
mouth the morning after a heavy
night of drinking made flesh. The
sticky floor of a discotheque given
life. But the beauty of the game is
how you can mould this grotesque
lump of sin and despair into
something else entirely.
Thanks to that
skull-shattering
hangover, and the
amnesia conveniently
brought on by it, your
detective is truly a
blank slate.
You can reveal
things about yourself
by talking to the poor souls caught in
the wake of your apocalyptic bender.
But you’re also given the opportunity
to suppress these discoveries, even
down to denying your own name and
choosing a new one.
The degree of freedom you have
to shape your character’s psyche is
really quite astonishing.D-I-S-C-O
Through conversations you control
every facet of your personality. You’re
given a variety of ways to respond to
people, and this dictates yourpersonality, how the population
reacts to you, and the outcome of
quests. The things you say and
decisions you make in Disco Elysium
really, actually matter, impacting your
role in the world and the inner
workings of your mind in a
meaningful way.
You also have to watch what you
say, because doing the usual RPG
thing of exhausting every
conversation option regularly leads to
you putting your foot in your mouth
and getting someone (or yourself ) in
trouble. Characters will remember
things, so it pays to think carefully
before making any rash decisions or
betraying someone. Then again, a
cavalier attitude can lead to
interesting, unexpected things: An
example of how well Disco Elysium
caters to different play styles.
Skills are important too. There are
24 in total, ranging from logic,
perception, and reaction speed to
endurance, conceptualization and
authority. A character with high
authority might find it easier to
pressure a timid witness into spilling
their guts. A high logic character can
divine truth from a clear-headed
analysis of a crime scene.
There are some more esoteric
skills too, such as inland empire,
which lets you pluck inspiration from
dreams and talk to inanimate objects.
Conversely, a character with low
perception can miss case-breaking
clues floating right in front of their
face, while a low endurance cop will
struggle in even the most trivial
physical trials. All the defining traits
of the best fictional cops are in there,
but importantly, the worst too.
So if you want to have the
superhuman insight of Sherlock, but
also be a self-destructive mess like
The Wire’s Jimmy McNulty, Disco
Elysium lets you. It’s like a bottomless
detective pick-and-mix.
When you create a character, your
starting skills are determined by the
stats you roll. Your base stats are
intellect, psyche, physique, and
motorics, which make you better orNEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A stylish, dialogue-
heavy detective RPG
EXPECT TO PAY
$40
DEVELOPER
ZA/UM
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
GTX 1080, Intel
i5-6600K, 16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
zaumstudio.comIt pays to think
carefully
before making
any rash
decisionsY
ou are not well. You’ve woken up on the floor of a grimy
hotel room with a hangover so devastating you might as
well be dead. You don’t remember who you are, which city
you’re in, or what happened the night before. Apparently
you’re a detective, in town to solve a murder, but you don’t
feel like a cop. You feel like total, utter crud.GOOD COP, BAD COP
Create your dream detective in DISCO ELYSIUM, a surreal adventure
influenced by classic RPGs. By Andy Kelly
MIND GAMES The stats that make up your character
INTELLECT
This stat governs logic, the
ability to engage in intellectual
discourse, detecting lies, and
analyzing crime scenes.PHYSIQUE
This stat lets you take a punch
to the jaw like a champ,
physically intimidate people,
or endure a drug trip.PSYCHE
Understand and empathize
with people, rely on your
hunches, and talk to items of
your own clothing for clues.MOTORICS
Composure, perception, and
hand/eye coordination, as well
as handy skills like lockpicking,
are determined by this stat.REVIEW