YMMV / Disco Elysium

• Adorkable:
  • Trant can qualify as this if you find his sheer earnest passion for the things he rambles about endearing.
  • You yourself can be this under certain circumstances, for example when asking Lena to tell you about her favorite cryptids with a childlike sense of wonder.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Most of the cast are multifaceted people with their own desires, so it's possible to interpret them in multiple different ways.
  • The detective himself is a good example of this, as the game offers up numerous possibilities of who you once were: a communist, a fascist, a really boring person, a mix, or maybe something else entirely?
  • Was Dolores Dei a Messianic Archetype god-figure who paved the way for numerous advancements in human society, founded the modern society the game takes place in, and generally acted like a saint who came to uplift humanity, or was she an insane, narcissistic war criminal bent on paving the way for her own brand of morality to become the norm throughout the world? While Kim is a Moralist himself, he notably does not downplay Dolores' conquest as anything less than troubling, which implies that people are still having debates about this in-universe, even during the time in which the game takes place.
  • Klaasje is a walking encouragement of this. How much she actually plans and how much is improvised is left to much in-game speculation. While some things were absolutely out of her control — most obviously the instigating incident, Lely's death — it's unclear if what she does afterwards is carefully manipulated or just instinctual fight-or-flight - the fact that she's been constantly on the run can argue for both interpretations. Notably, even when you wise up to her tricks thanks to Volition, she only betrays her facade once: if you tell her that she seems suspiciously and comfortably out of the spotlight, she will give you a dangerous look. Even then, the game leaves it open to interpretation if that flash of anger is because she realizes you're finally onto her, or because she's insulted that you're downplaying her trauma.
  • Iosef the Deserter. Is he a genuinely heroic figure wanting a better future and continuing to fight decades after the communists were defeated? Is he a broken Shell-Shocked Veteran who refused to surrender out of guilt for abandoning his comrades to their deaths? A pathetic and pitiable Hypocrite who uses hardliner communist ideology as a shield to hide his own moral failings? Perhaps just a tired, sad Old Soldier who has been influenced by the Insulindian Phasmid to lash out in acts of violence? None of these interpretations are mutually exclusive, making him a complex character of frequent debate.
  • The pale and the 2mm hole under the church prove without a doubt that there are supernatural powers at play, but the game leaves it vague if Inland Empire and Shivers represent instinctual insight which your insane brain justifies through elaborate narratives, or is it actually you piercing the supernatural veil. When you pass out from dancing in the church, a high Shivers will have the city itself talk to you and claim to root for you: while it would explain some of the hunches the skill provides you that border on Deus ex Machina (like figuring out where Ruby is hiding), the conversation can be easily explained as a manifestation of your inflated ego. The Insulindian Phasmid muddles this even further: On the one hand, Kim provides actual proof that the creature is real, and its influence is the only sensible explanation for Iosef's mental and physical state; on the other, the conversation you can have with it thanks to Inland Empire is suspiciously centered around you and your political beliefs, which casts doubt on everything it tells you. The game describes Shivers explicitly as a "supra-natural" skill — but that doesn't mean it actually is one.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • The "Hobocop" copotype might seem to be a silly Pun on Robocop... except that "hobocop" is an actual term, used for police operations where policemen disguise themselves as the homeless.
  • Revachol's police force is called the "Revachol Citizens Militia". It might sound weird for Westerners, but in Eastern European and in post-Soviet countries (like Estonia, where the creators are from) the police force is sometimes referred to as the Militsiya. This started after the Russian communist revolution, when the Politsiya was condemned as a tool of "bourgeois oppression" and disbanded, and in its place a "workers' militia" was formed. Interestingly enough, the old Revacholian communist army was called the "Insulindian Citizens Militia" (ICM), and it's implied the RCM was formed by former ICM members, as the RCM is explicitly stated to (sort of) be a descendant of the ICM.
  • The Deserter, a communist straggler hiding from civilization while "fighting" in a war that was lost long ago, is pretty similar to the Japanese Holdouts, Imperial Japanese soldiers that spent decades hiding from civilization believing either that the war was still going, or refusing to surrender as it would be "shameful". The last man confirmed to surrender was Private Teruo Nakamura, 29 years, 3 months, and 16 days after the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed.
  • In The Final Cut, pursuing the fascist "vision quest" has you learn that Measurehead is a member of the "Semen Retention Society" and thus never ejaculates since he believes it drains his energy, despite being fully aware that as someone with "superior" genes, he must pass them on. This might sound like yet another of Measurehead's hilariously contradictory beliefs, but this is an actual (bizarre) belief in certain white supremacist communities.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Iosef the Deserter. Rather than getting involved in an epic war of words or a chase scene, he surrenders without a fight and quite easily admits to being Lely's killer, though getting his motives takes a bit of digging. This seems to be a deliberate example and a part of the game's overall attempt to subvert and deconstruct Fair-Play Whodunnit and Police Procedural tropes, and is also immediately followed up with the discovery of and possible conversation with the Insulindian Phasmid.
• Awesome Art: The game's painterly style lends itself well to the pre-rendered backgrounds, with the run-down Revachol being beautiful in its own way. The expressive portraits, which vary somewhat in style for each character, also help bring the characters to life.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Whirling-In-Rags", all three versions, but most memorable among them is the morning version (8 AM). When you wake up from your last hard day realizing how the world screwed you up and drag yourself downstairs, the first you hear behind the door is this song coming from loudspeakers. Simple beat, light strings, deep brass, the melody itself gives you hope among these harsh days in Martinaise.
  • The horns of "Instrument of Surrender" let you know you're in for something special from the moment you first walk out onto the street and into the surrounding ruins. Mournful, yet with a sense of underlying strength, enduring the sadness of the strings — before the later swell into something sparkling and soaring as the track carries on.
  • "Polyhedrons" turns the inside of a broken-down factory tower into an oasis of peace in the wilderness of Martinaise. A Lonely Piano Piece is layered over the echoing thump of a low drumbeat, as the lilting strings build to a chorus. Delicate and yet wondrous, a reward for your curiosity in having sought it out on the other side of the "haunted" halls of the Doomed Commercial Area.
  • Upon discovering the Insulindian Phasmid the soft and dreamlike Playing the Heart Strings track "La Revacholiere" starts playing, as if to underscore the pure beauty and wonder of the miracle both the player and Harry are witnessing unfolding before their eyes after being put through a sad tale of sordid murder, heartbreak and general human misery.
  • "Krenel, Downwell, Somatosensor" plays during the confrontation with the mercenaries and it encapsulates an Old West-style showdown, perfectly fitting for the events that occur.
  • "Burn, Baby, Burn" aka "Sad FM", which plays during the boat ride to the island where you finally finish up the case. It's a haunting, stripped-down version of Sea Power's "Want To Be Free" - the blaring horns are replaced by a woman's almost siren-like wail. Simultaneously melancholic and triumphant, hopeful and sad, it feels like it's a soundtrack to both drowning and emerging safely from the depths, which perfectly summarizes the game's Anti-Nihilist themes.
  • From the Final Cut, "Advesperascit" starts with a sort of quaint, whistling flute playing something like a seaside shanty, before pivoting into an ominously atmospheric synth tune, both soaring and crushing, then finally overlaid by minimalist dance drums, bleeps, boops, slow sirens, and a reprise of the beginning shanty as it reaches a crescendo. The song is just over ten minutes long — the theme of the well-intentioned but implacable, often oblivious Moralintern, and named after the capital city of prominent member nation Vesper, the site of the coronation of Dolores Dei herself.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Everything that comes out of Measurehead's mouth is both horrifically bigoted and sidesplittingly hilarious.
  • The very start of the game is one. You wake up and discover you ruined your life in the course of a truly... dramatic... attempt at suicide. That included you throwing taxidermy birds and playing the same song on the jukebox over and over until it traumatized people.
  • When talking with the Hardie Boys, the Detective can ask to borrow Kim's gun, which he will reluctantly hand over. Much to everyone's surprise, including your own, the Detective next puts the gun in his mouth and threatens to kill himself in order to "assert authority". Everyone is too baffled to take it seriously — but the Detective can then go through with it. The newspaper article on the Non-Standard Game Over screen notes that nobody has a clue what the hell just happened, but that the Detective seemingly did it to "make a point".
• Fan-Preferred Couple: While the game presents Lilienne as something of a canon Love Interest for the Detective, the vast majority of the fandom prefers to pair the latter with Kim instead. A particularly stark example can be seen through the game's tags on fanfiction website Archive of Our Own: as of November 2023, the Detective and Lilienne have 7 fics pairing them as a couple, while the Detective and Kim have over 1,500.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Chapo Trap House. Only natural when 4 of the 5 hosts were voice actors in the initial release of the game, with one of them voicing a fairly major antagonist.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Munchkin strategies for Disco Elysium all revolve around roleplaying a high-INT stat Art Cop. The aim is to obtain the Thought Cabinet ideas Actual Art Degree and Wompty-Dompty-Dom Center, the two Art Cop themed thoughts, as soon as possible - Actual Art Degree gives +10EXP and heals Morale damage every time you get a Conceptualization passive, and Wompty-Dompty-Dom Center gives +10EXP and +2.00 réal every time you get an Encyclopedia passive. (Both of these are two of the most common types of passive in the game, and pay for themselves very quickly.) These are not only far more generous than the political thoughts which give you EXP or money, but work on passive checks rather than active roleplaying choices, so they don't lock you into having to play the entire game as an artist in the same way that (e.g.) becoming a Mazovian Socio-Economist will mean you're sacrificing EXP every time you don't choose a Communist dialogue option.
  • Surprisingly, the Boring Cop copotype is a favourite of minmax strategies, as the associated Thought, Regular Law Official, gives you +3 to every skill cap in the game once internalised. 4 points is the magic number you need in a Skill before it will begin passing Medium passive checks (and therefore influencing your personality). Boring Cop means that even if you start out with 1 point in a primary stat, the skills within it can be levelled up to 4, letting you, ironically, transform yourself into a very strange person. Also, since Boring Cop raises caps on skills that other Thought Cabinet projects simply can't reach, it's pretty much mandatory for 1/1/1/1 Self-Imposed Challenge runs.
  • The Thought Cabinet ideas which double the effect of drugs are very useful, both for ordinary play and for the fact that drugs increase your level cap in each skill for the duration of their effects. (Although Revacholian Nationhood, the skill for doubling the effect of alcohol, is somewhat controversial in the playerbase, as it requires you to become a massive fascist.)
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: After a Simplified Chinese translation of the game was released in early 2020, it quickly became a surprise hit in China.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • If you finish a thought that doubles the effects of a drug at a time when you're under the effects of that drug, the stat in question will be permanently boosted by one. So a detective who starts with a base intellect of 5 and finishes the 'Boiadero' thought while having recently smoked a cigarette changes to having a base intellect of 6, as well as jumping to 8 every time they smoke a cigarette in the future.
  • Normally, the stat gains you get from abusing substances fade away after an hour, but there is an exception. The *special* borscht with vodka you can get from the cook at the Whirling-in-Rags will bump your physical stats by one permanently each time you drink from it, unless you have the Revacholian Nationhood thought active.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • If you cancel the task of collecting the signatures for Evrart, Kim will say that, even though your gun will probably stay missing, "Firearms can be replaced. People not so much." Later on, when you try to stop the tribunal without said gun, it is possible for Kim to get shot, with Cuno replacing him for the rest of the game.
    • There is another way to replace your gun. Hand-eye Coordination will point this out when encountering Ruby if you destroy the Pale Latitude Compressor.
    Hand-eye Coordination: If she kills herself you’ll get her gun…
  • Starting on Day 2, you can come across a working-class woman near the bookstore and have a humorous exchange with her involving you desperately convincing her that her husband is missing. This becomes significantly less humorous later on when you can actually come across her husband's corpse on a boardwalk, who's been dead for two days.
  • The final words of the credits, Mankind. Be vigilant. We loved you. being in past tense stings a lot more after the dissolution of the ZA/UM Cultural Association.
• He Really Can Act: Would you believe that Jullian Champenois' (Kim) only prior acting experience was in commercial voiceovers?
• Jerkass Woobie: The complexity of the game's writing lends itself well to this trope. Numerous characters can qualify as this depending on your personal inclination towards them, including you, Cuno, Klaasje, and Ruby.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Of the four skill trees, Motorics is by far the least involved.
  • It's not to say it's not worthwhile to invest into the tree, as it contains the exceptionally useful Perception and Composure skills, but it's by far the least worthwhile stat to invest into. This is mostly because the other three trees usually have something to offer beyond situational use - Intellect is extremely useful for actual detective work since it contains the Logic, Visual Calculus and Rhetoric skills, each of which will be used extensively throughout the investigation to process information. Psyche has the Volition skill for upping your Morale health and has the Inland Empire, Esprit du Corps and Empathy skills, each useful for fleshing out the world, interacting with Kim and dealing with mentally fragile witnesses respectively. Physique skills increase your physical health and emphasizes the Endurance, Electrochemistry and Shivers skills, each of which can be extremely important in mitigating danger and catching onto leads, with Shivers in particular being crucial to figuring out where Ruby is. By comparison, Motorics offers up nothing to really balance out its skill tree and is best to level with Endurance.
  • It's notable that of the three "preset" characters that emphasize a Stat over the others Motorics is left out, though this is mitigated somewhat by two of these three presets still having it as your second highest stat, while the third puts at least a point into it.
  • There are four kinds of drugs in the game, each of which add a point to one of your stats. Alcohol (which boosts FYZ), cigarettes (which boosts INT) and pyrholidon (which boosts PSY) all have an associated thought which means the drug will boost your stat by +2 instead (Alcohol - Revacholian Nationhood, Cigarettes - Boiadeiro, Pyrholidon - Cop of the Apocalypse). However, there is no Thought that allows you to get +2 from using speed (which boosts MOT); the associated thought for speed (Lonesome Long Way Home) instead causes it to give you +1 PSY in addition to the normal +1 MOT, doubling its effect but moving outside of its associated skill tree. MOT is considered that unimportant that the PSY bonus is considered by the game to be a better perk of embracing an amphetamine addiction.
  • In the big fight, it's your Motorics skill which determines the survival of certain characters. Passing the other red checks during the conversation only grant a small bonus, though passing certain passive checks and guessing the best response in the follow-up dialogue can add further bonuses. Because of this, the game gives you ample opportunity to cheat the checks with alternate solutions; a PSY-focused build can complete a quest involving the Horrific Necktie which causes the Motorics check to be significantly easier, and you can also access a Thought that gives you +2 Hand-Eye Coordination only in that specific fight. The game also provides a reasonably tricky Hand-Eye Coordination check to shave your face and places this in a hub you will be frequently revisiting, encouraging players to invest points into Hand-Eye until they can clear that check (and hopefully be better equipped for the finale). Repeatedly introducing yourself as "The Law" or "The Lawbringer", which the game gives you numerous opportunities to do, unlocks a thought that raises the cap for Hand-Eye Coordination to 6, regardless of the Motorics stat, and automatically passes all passive Hand-Eye checks, which can help guide the player to the best guesses which bump up the final option.
  • Perception is the most important of the Motorics skills, with plenty of passive checks and yellow orbs. Because the rest of Motorics isn't as strong, it is also one of the easiest to boost skills in the game. Thoughts alone can give you a +7 to the skill, as well as raising its learning cap to 5. This allows a 1 MOT build to still make difficult passive Perception checks throughout the game.
• Magnificent Bastard: Detectives Harry Du Bois and Kim Kitsuragi face many manipulative and cunning adversaries in their long and complex investigation of the hanged man.
  • Evrart Claire is the leader of the Dockworker's Union, alongside his brother Edgar, and they serve as the de facto rulers of Martinaise. Operating under the guise of corrupt, smug crime bosses, the brothers are truthfully die hard communists who had the last Union boss assassinated for being a corporate bootlicker and work hard to better the lives of their workers and the people of the district. With Edgar out on business, Evrart is personally stalling negotiations to ensure the worker's strike lasts indefinitely to perform mass theft on Wild Pines assets, and keeps his people paid by using the harbor as a drug smuggling operation. When the detectives arrive to investigate the murder of a Krenel mercenary strikebreaker, Evrart masterfully manipulates the amnesiac Harry, uses him to perform dirty work to further Union goals for promises of information, and engineers a violent confrontation with his men and the mercenaries to cause a PR nightmare for Wild Pines and Krenel. Ultimately, Evrart was banking on the detectives to pass this information on to Wild Pines, ensuring they would pull out and leave the Union to secure their power base and the beginnings of a second communist revolution.
  • Klaasje Amandou was a corporate spy who performed industrial sabotage and espionage by using her quick wits and sultry charms to work her way into the trust of her targets. After one particularly nasty job, a guilt-ridden Klaasje fled from her employers and stole enough money to ensure she could hide indefinitely. Fleeing to Revachol and the district of Martinaise, Klaasje lived a hedonistic lifestyle while earning the affections of Titus Hardie and his gang, their trucker friend Ruby, and the Krenel mercenary Lely whom she also fell in love with. When Lely is fatally shot by Klaasje's unknown stalker, the communist holdout Iosef, during sex, she acted immediately by using Ruby and the Hardie boys to frame the killing as a Union-backed hanging to distance herself from the crime. Despairing at the abuse and neglect of her lover's corpse, Klaasje hides her voice and phones the police to finally give him peace. When the investigation comes her way, she is able to effortlessly charm the detectives and send them on a false hunt for Ruby to make her own escape, while leaving them a vital clue to ensure the real killer would be caught.
  • Ruby is a butch truck driver whose entanglements with Klaasje and the Union put her as a prime suspect in the murder of the hanged man. Working as a lorry driver by day, Ruby is a technical genius who masterminded a massive drug smuggling operation by using custom radio stations to lead a fleet of trucks to transport narcotics and is single handedly keeping the Union strike funded. A good friend to the Hardie boys, she was able to perfectly frame the lynching as a Union murder and flees to the coast when the Revachol police arrive to investigate. Believing Harry to be a corrupt cop working for a drug kingpin sent to kill her, Ruby chooses the perfect hideaway to buy herself enough time to build a pale emitter that transmits painful signals from the void consuming the world to lure the detectives into a trap that all but incapacitates them, and chooses to kill herself rather than being arrested if that fails. While ultimately only a misdirection for Klaasje, Ruby still serves as perhaps the greatest obstacle for the detectives during the murder investigation.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Mr. Evrart is helping me find my gun."
    • It got a Snowclone in the form of "Mr. Bezos is helping me fund my show." after it was announced that dj2 Entertainment, who had earlier snatched up the rights to adapt the game to a TV show, had entered talks with Amazon Studios about getting funding for the project.
  • Due to his Large Ham tendencies, most of Egg Head's lines tend to be referenced by players in contexts surrounding the game. Common examples include: "HARDCORE!", "HARDCORE TO THE MEGA!" and "INTERNALLY COHERENT!".
    • "Is it though? "
  • Similarly, "Fuck does Cuno care?!" and "he really doesn't care" tends to get invoked a lot whenever Cuno is discussed, due to Cuno's original over-the-top voice performance and very noticeable Scouse accent.
  • :eye::lips::eye:^ExplanationIn December 2020, PSY, PHY, and MOT skill portraits received a makeover to closer match the existing duo-colored INT skill portraits for DE's Displate launch. Suggestion's rework turned out to be the most controversial due to the bulging eyes and the big toothy grin and the ":eye::lips::eye:" quickly became the most popular emotes on the official Discord server.
  • Get stick bugged lol ^{Explanation (spoilers)}After the confrontation with Dros, the player can discover the Insulindian Phasmid, a giant stick-bug. Needless to say, it pretty much comes out of nowhere, catching many first-time players by surprise. "Get stick bugged lol" is a meme from outside of Disco Elysium, but it fits this moment well.
  • Cunoesse having a Calypso ^ExplanationA video of a British child claiming a Calypso lemonade drink is "fuckin' minging" and throwing it to the ground. Like the "stick bugged" meme above it is not confined specifically to the Disco Elysium fandom, though it has a strong association with it due to the child sounding an awful lot like Cunoesse, as seen in edits like this video
  • There's nothing funny about jokes. ^explanationIn your Inland Empire chat with the murder victim's corpse, he is so determined to be rude and spiteful he utters this nonsense line if you show any sympathy and say the situation isn't a joke to you because it's not funny. The line stuck with a lot of players.
  • The framed picture of Kim Kitsuragi ^Explanation In a television interview with Atlantic writer Sarah Zhang, a framed picture of Kim can be seen on the wall in the background. This has lead to numerous fans replicating this display, including the developers themselves at EGX 2022.
  • "Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would *critique* capital end up *reinforcing* it instead." ^Explanation Following the news that Aleksander Rostov, Robert Kurvitz, and Helen Hindpere were involuntarily ousted from ZA/UM at the end of 2021, while ZA/UM put up a job posting for a monetization specialist and a position involving "live service" games, this quote from Joyce Messier became a common reaction to the situation.
  • Official Pathetic Loserman ^ExplanationA Twitter wide poll was conducted to find which character was the biggest loser, leading to Harry DuBois winning with the acknowledgement of the official Disco Elysium twitter. Hilariously, this also subverted the separate trend of Reigen sweeping Twitter polls.
  • Are women bourgeois? ^ExplanationA possible failure at a Rhetoric challenge◊ results in Harry's attempt to come up with "the alpha and omega of communism questions" producing this Epic Fail, so bad that he immediately points out how bad it is. The exchange gets used on Tumblr as a reaction image to hilariously bad political takes by people who clearly don't even understand the position they're trying to promote.
• More Popular Spin Off: The first major project set in the Elysium universe was the novel Sacred and Terrible Air, with Disco Elysium functioning as something of a prequel. The former was self-published by ZA/UM in 2013, sold a thousand copies, then vanished into obscurity. Disco Elysium, on the other hand, received widespread acclaim upon release and has gone on to sell millions of copies. Even as interest in Sacred and Terrible Air grew among fans wanting more Elysium stories, it still remained largely unknown for the first few years of the game's existence, due to the combination of it being long out-of-print and not being available in any language besides the original Estonian. An official English translation was announced, but after falling victim to Development Hell and ZA/UM's legal issues, fans took it upon themselves to produce unofficial English translations in 2023, a decade after its initial publication. A copy of the fan translation in English can be found here.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The siren-like wailing in "Burn, Baby, Burn", which plays you off when you finally reach the final scene of the crime.
  • The voice of the Insulindian Phasmid, filled with equal parts childlike wonder and otherworldly power.
• One-Scene Wonder: Spinal Cord, third part of the triune brain, fully voiced but only found if you pick the right option when dancing in the church. He's upbeat and powerful, representing the impulsive tingle of the autonomic nervous system.
• Porting Disaster: While the PS4 port had some problems at launch, the Nintendo Switch version is considered to be the worst way to play the game due to its long load times.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Thought Cabinet, while a very interesting roleplaying idea, can hinder gameplay more than it helps. Its main gimmick is offering bonuses for considering different Thoughts, which then move into your skill table automatically once the thought is completed. Some Thoughts can be "internalized," or made a deeper part of your personality, but locking themselves in and requiring experience points to remove. However, the big issue with this is that many Thoughts come with downsides that can hobble your character. Since you won't know what a Thought does until you internalize it successfully, you could internalize a Thought that ends up taking points away from a skill you really wanted to increase. Even worse, it costs experience to unequip a Thought, which means that you could spend an experience point to unlock a Thought slot, accidentally internalize a Thought you don't like, and then spend another to remove it. The cost-to-benefit ratio for Thoughts is really poor as a result, and this means that if you want to go a specific build, it's much more efficient to simply ignore just about every Thought that comes your way or just straight up cheese the system by reading a guide that explains what the different thoughts do. It didn't help that in the original release, many Thoughts (mostly those that would grant bonus XP or money in dialog) were bugged and didn't work at all.
  • Paying for a room, specifically on night 2. Though on night one if you are shy on money by the end of the night, you have a variety of methods to get out of being trapped, on night 2 if you don't have 20 dollars to pay for a room, you are screwed. Better hope you left some collectibles around. Thankfully on day 3 you get a free room and never again have to worry about where you're going to sleep.
• Signature Scene:
  • The very first scene, where you can die of a heart attack in less than five minutes from either trying to grab your tie, or from turning on the lights, is the most cited scene in reviews since it is such a good Establishing Series Moment.
  • A close second is quite possibly failing the first Suggestion check to flirt with Klaasje and telling her "I want to have fuck with you," causing her to laugh her ass off at your verbal clumsiness, which also is cited as an effective Establishing Series Moment.
  • And yet another scene is failing the Savoir Faire check to duck out of paying Garte your 130 Real, which causes you to run away at top speed, make a leaping jump, turn around midair to give Garte the finger with both arms... only to crash right into the elderly, wheelchair-bound Lena, the Cryptozoologist’s Wife. Bonus points for also being an Establishing Series Moment if the botched pick-up line to Klaasje wasn't a big enough tip-off, and also potentially causing you to die of a heart attack before you left the hotel you woke up in.
  • On Signature Scenes that are cited as an example of your character rolling Double-Sixes on the dice instead of Snakes Eyes, there's knocking out Measurehead by jumping up to give him a, as one reviewer put, "360 No-Scope Spinkick Headshot".
• That One Achievement:
  • The "Gluten-Free Topping Pie" achievement is about getting Gary, the Cryptofascist, to deliver you a topping pie. Sounds easy enough, but unfortunately, it's another one of those sidequests that's tied to unorthodox conditions, and effectively requires a whole new playthrough just for the sake of completing it. The first and most major problem is that you need to pass two fairly high passive checks of Authority and Endurance, while also failing a relatively low passive Conceptualization check in order to get the right dialogue choices to unlock. Next, you have to repeatedly speak to Gary about his day job (aside from being Morell's occasional assistant, he is also a pie delivery man), both when you meet him in the field, and when you later meet him again at the Whirling-In-Rags. There, if you did everything right, you will eventually get an opportunity to order a pie from him, and unlock the achievement once Gary delivers it. Aside from requiring a weird stat build, the achievement wouldn't be such a hassle to unlock if it wasn't that easy to unintentionally advance the Cryptozoology quest if you are not careful about your dialogue choices.
  • Among all points-related achievements, "The Most Honourable Cop in the Land" is definitely the hardest. It requires taking 11 dialogue options that are related to honour, which, remembering similar achievements, doesn't sound that bad on paper. The problem is that the game isn't always direct about which actions and dialogue options count as "honourable", and those that are tend to be hidden behind specific conditions, with almost all of them being permanently missable or mutually exclusive (through either dialogue choices, or inability to acquire them in enough time). In case you miss some points, your last opportunities to get the achievement will have to be pursued throughout the entire playthrough of the main questline, which includes post-tribunal segments. Compare this to other points-related achievements, each of which can be acquired by day 3 at worst.
  • "Massive Torque Dork" falls under this category due to being tied to the overly specific process of unlocking the respectively named thought.
• That One Boss: The talk with Evrart can kill the unprepared. Evrart wants to belittle, confuse and humiliate the detective, so talking to him deals tons of Physical and Morale damage. If you haven't put some points into either Endurance or Volition, or have medications ready to use for both, you can die no less than two dialogue choices into the conversation, most infamously by sitting on a chair (it's really uncomfortable).
• That One Sidequest: Unlocking the Torque Dork Thought has extremely specific requirements and can be failed before you even start the actual game: it requires your starting Encyclopedia stat to be 3 or lower so that you fail to recognize the sound that wakes you up, not finding out what your name is for the duration of the entire process, avoiding interacting with a specific thought orb that only appears on day 2 until your Encyclopedia stat is at least 4 and your Interfacing stat is at least 6 and then picking the right options in the resulting conversation, with additional dialogue and the Thought being unlocked once you finish it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While this is understandable due to the sheer scope of the matter, many of the Thought Cabinet ideas and the wild mindsets they represent are sadly not as well-supported with dialogue options as the main Copotypes and political ideologies. For instance, you can become convinced you're Kras Mazov, but will not actually be able to introduce yourself as such when dialogue calls for an introduction.

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