Disco Elysium

The conversation with the Hardies does go that little bit smoother, yeah It's not a hugely exciting change, but you are able to ask your questions without that one big hiccup. Kind of like if you succeed on the Composure check without the need to roll for it.

There are certain things you won't know, however, because they're things you talk about with Klaasje. For instance you won't know nearly as much about your antics the previous few nights, the song you sang or the things you said. Garte won't be in any mood to tell you. And if you want to ask her about them later, you have to come back without Kim, because he's not going to stand there while you use police time to question a key witness about your ongoing breakdown. This can get a little tight if you've got a lot to do in the evenings and aren't staying in the hostel any longer, since Kim will be right there when you wake up. Depending on how long you're willing to stretch out the investigation, of course.

Edited by Unsung on Oct 24th 2021 at 10:14:45 AM

I do find it amazing you can actually genuinely have a nap and avoid dream about "her" as well since I thought for sure that is mandatory "failure is only option" xD

I've played through it like four full times, done various reloads to try different things, and was still finding new stuff, dialogue options I know I haven't tried because they're unique to this series of decisions that are already pretty niche — the spirit quests being the obvious contender, but even things like having one really high stat that lets you pass those 18 and 20 passive rolls

Did ye know that there is exactly one trivial difficulty anti passive? As in, passives are "6 + skill" and trivial difficulty is 6 so you always succeed them. Anti passives are passive skill checks that don't appear if you succeed them, so they only appear to point out you are extremely bad at something xD So only way to fail this passive is to get your skill down to -1

(its for Espirit de corps xD No clue what it says)

Anyway, currently going to redo my physical 6 psyche 4 playthrough because I want to finally use Gorosky(sp?)'s brew bug to get 12 perma physique xD Aka to see if they fixed that bug

(yes, that special brew had/has bug where it stacks with itself and doesn't turn off when buff runs out)

Edited by SpookyMask on Oct 24th 2021 at 7:30:07 PM

Is that the only one? I can't remember now. There is a certain amount of reactivity for getting your Logic down low enough, which can be negative, but the passive check might not be *that* low. I've seen that, heh.

I think I've seen that Esprit de Corps check, too, but I can't remember what it is offhand.

Its only ANTI passive one down to trivial difficulty, though presumably there is failure text for failing at normal trivial passives :D There are 52 trivial logic passives, so unless some of them are "this only appears when you succeed", I would assume there are lot of "lol you dumb" trivial check failures

Edited by SpookyMask on Oct 24th 2021 at 7:40:22 PM

No, no, I get what you're saying. (Even if I'm bad at wording it.) I'm just surprised that given all the non-anti-passives Logic has, that there was never a case where they wanted the opposite.

Heh. Have a good time. Watch out for a bug as of the recent patch where you apparently can't get Klaasje's buoy :o

Edited by Unsung on Oct 24th 2021 at 10:45:51 AM

Ah that :D Well anti passives are rare in general. To quote "In fact there are only 123 of these compared to 9067 passive checks. " And lot of anti passives are "You lose morale/health because you are really bad at this"

But yeah thank you :D Hoping I don't run into that buy and that brew bug still works

Aww man :'D Unless hardcore mode or something else is screwing it up, it appears they decided to limit brew use to single use while not fixing it giving perma buff bug

That is nice compromise, but guess I'll never get to see 11 phyisque run from having high elec chemistry and using it 5 times since I missed my chance :'D I could I guess download my old save where I did have it with 4 uses and use it then but that was my +5 physique starting run

(...well guess alternative is just straight up cheating :p)

Now that I've shifted from "Raging alcoholic" to "recovering alcoholic" this game hits even fucking harder. I *was* Harry Dubois. This game has such power in so many aspects but I feel like people overlook the substance abuse aspect of it. I have never seen a game tackle the topic of alcoholism and addiction as well as DE did

It doesn't help that one of the very first "quests" in this game is to get a drink. On my playthrough that was the one quest I didn't even try to fulfill despite it going against my completionist tendencies in these kind of games. I had a feeling that it wouldn't exactly be a good thing for Harry to indulge.

I wouldn't say the substance abuse aspect is overlooked — it's pretty clear from the start that Harry and alcohol do not have a healthy relationship.

One thing the game also gets right on this front is that staying sober is not easy. Even if you go through the whole game without drinking a drop, it's still noted that Harry's only stayed sober for a few days. The game doesn't even try to pretend that this means Harry's actually overcome his alcohol habit for good. It's just a start.

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2021 at 5:19:03 PM

The game just recieved a new update, which they're calling the "Jamais Vu Update". It seemingly adds new content, but they've decided to be coy and not actually document what the new content is aside from a few cryptic hints on how to find it, encouraging the players to work as a community to uncover it by playing "strangely and thoroughly". The hints (which I assume are the names of new achievements you can get):

• Cause a Shitstorm
• Leopard Mindset
• Wheel of Pleasure and Light
• Modus: Mullen
• Bother Kim After Hours
• Baddest Brow in Town
• Gurdi-Ball Is Lit
• Get Kim To Wear *The Jacket*

The game is also 55% off as a celebration of the update (and a holiday sale). And, for some reason, available in a steam bundle with Remedy Entertainment's Control, just because they're fans of one another apparently

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Dec 23rd 2021 at 6:05:26 AM

As a game where a lot of content varies depending on different builds and RP styles, I think the new content is less about the content by itself than it is just encouraging people to try things they might not have tried. If you've done a few runs already and kept your saves (saving often and in different slots), a lot of these could probably be knocked out in a few minutes if you can guess what they are. And if they're not bugged, like the one with the jacket apparently is for some people.

klaasje calls upon dark semenese necromancy to revive this thread

anyone else replaying this game? im going through as a Straw Vulcan Moralist as opposed to my ultra-empathetic art cop. it's funny how evrart's treatment of easy leo, rene, and gaston foreshadow how evrart treats a communist cop: even if theyre full-blooded communists... or even a fascist in rene's case... he doesnt have the luxury to fully trust them. they are outsiders, and sometimes not by choice.

I've decided to try for a full-on Boring Cop playthrough since I've never actually seen someone play that way and am curious about how your squad talks about it in the ending, but it's hard. I've accidentally become a radical communist and also an Art Cop along the way

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Sep 21st 2022 at 12:21:19 PM

The game makes it very difficult to stick with any particular Copotype or political belief system, which I appreciate. The deeper you get, the more ridiculous the things you say are.

If you ask me personally, it's actually a quite realistic thing to happen - to stick to a single copotype means becoming a single-note person who keeps spouting the same points and views no matter the situation. Many people, even those who ardently follow an ideology, will have something they disagree within similar theorists. Those who don't tend to be completely messed up in the head and barely functional in social engagements - which describes a Harry who does just that pretty well.

By the way, has anyone else here seen the passive Inland Empire check in the Confrontation against Ruby where if you fail the active pain resistance check beforehand you get to see "A vision of the future", which leads to a description of Revachol after being nuked? I remember posting about it on reddit two months ago and to my surprise very few people had saw it before. You need to have an extremely high Inland Empire skill for this too, since if i'm not mistaken the passive check is Legendary. That would actually make Inland Empire the only other skill besides Shivers who seems to be "aware" that Revachol will be nuked in the future.

^^ and ^ as someone who thinks themselves sufficiently leftist, i like how it is as critical of leftist politics as it is towards every other political school of thought, too. questioning if leftism needs wanton violence to achieve its goals without going "can't we just all get along, kumbaya" and still committing to leftism as a better path warmed my heart, especially after the plasm sequence in the communist path

also wow i never saw that, and inland empire was my signature skill. i even had the conversation with la revacholerie but it didnt come up. ill load my old file right before that happens and see if i can get it to trigger

So a Disco Elysium sequel is happening...without Robert Kurvitz, Aleksander Rostov and Helen Hindpere, among others.

God fucking damn it...

So, I look at this game, and I feel conflicted as to whether or not I should buy it.

On the one hand, it looks like a unique and fascinating take on RP Gs, urban fantasy, and detective fiction with a lot of potential for humor.

In the other hand, it looks depressing as all hell, with a protagonist who's a wreck of a human being with no real chance of improvement, his work as a detective is ultimately futile, the city's a doomed wasteland, and the entire world will probably end up swallowed by a Negative Space Wedgie.

Well, that's mostly true, but not entirely, which is crucial to how the narrative can function within that unique setting. There's a proper journey in all that, with player actions and dice rolls offering different angles to it.

Have you seen someone play it or are you going off summaries?

Edited by kkhohoho on Oct 1st 2022 at 2:04:18 PM

That's not inaccurate but it misses that, depending on how you build your character, your choices, and how the dice fall, it's just as much a story about hope, love, and a sense of wonder for the world's melancholy beauty persevering in the face of that utter despair. It's not a happy story but it's by no means pure grimdark misery.

It's also uproariously funny when it wants to be.

To be more specific at the risk of spoilers (do not venture below if you're interested in experiencing the plot firsthand, seriously; these are responses to your concerns that have way more impact if you experience them through the story):

The protagonist is a wreck of a human but the "no real chance of improvement" isn't accurate, it's more like "a slim hope of improvement, if he can bring himself to stay on the long and difficult road of sobriety after this particularly disastrous and life-changing experience." His work I'd say isn't "ultimately futile" except in the extreme doomer "the sun will explode one day so nothing matters" sense — you do legitimately help a lot of people and potentially the local community as a whole depending on how you resolve certain sidequests and the main plot.

The city and world being doomed are equally in the realm of "there is a slim hope that we can and must hold on to"; the former is on the cusp of a second communist revolution that many people truly believe in and the latter, while inevitable, is inevitable in the same sense that the sun exploding is inevitable. Maybe on a bit of a faster timescale, but the magical metaphysics of the world imply that humanity's collective hope and love for one another can at least slow it down and buy us a few more centuries or millennia to enjoy the world before it's gone.

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Oct 1st 2022 at 12:31:34 PM

Plus it's insanely funny, with the cleverest writing I've seen in a long time. But yeah, the idea isn't that the world and the characters in it are inevitably doomed; that may be the overt theme but it's more about how characters deal with their very real personal struggles amid such existential horror.

There's endless variety in how you decide the main character will deal with his problems and the world's problems. He can try his best to redeem himself and be a genuinely good cop; he can resume his self-destructive path; he can become extravagantly insane in a number of different ways; and several other things besides.

Another way of saying it is that this game celebrates the idea of choosing how you deal with adversity.

It's really shitty that company would get rid of all creatives behind its most successful product presumably for really greedy reasons :/