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Kim is such an exasperated sigh of a character it's crazy how much I identify with him
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Oct 19, 2019 05:30
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I feel like it's totally valid to dislike the writing if it doesn't vibe with you but this game is an elusive case of actual grown-up writers writing for a game and not the people who do extended universe Halo novelizations
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Oct 19, 2019 05:31
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Also I wonder when the alt right gamer brigade is going to find out this game allows you to embrace fascism but the motivation is directed By gut flora and the poo poo in your little intestines
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Oct 19, 2019 05:38
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So I tried not progressing the plot at all and there isn't a game ending time limit or at least not one within a reasonable playtime if anybody was worried about that I'm up to day 10 of not progressing the plot and the only thing that has changed is the old royalist guy dying, the hardie boys and the cops from your station showing up at the hostel, and the jacket guys showing up Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 05:42
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goferchan posted:I feel like it's totally valid to dislike the writing if it doesn't vibe with you but this game is an elusive case of actual grown-up writers writing for a game and not the people who do extended universe Halo novelizations Word. The more I play it, I feel that this game is right now underrated because gaming is so ingrained with certain specifics on what its writing should be about that, after this, there is bound to be some reevaluations. I mean, games that I thought were pretty much "solid" on the writing front have now gone to well, middling. Witcher 3? Yeah, sure, fun fantasy for a stroll, nice game, etc
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Oct 19, 2019 05:44
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goferchan posted:I feel like it's totally valid to dislike the writing if it doesn't vibe with you but this game is an elusive case of actual grown-up writers writing for a game and not the people who do extended universe Halo novelizations  It's weird that the most compelling speculative fiction I've read in years is a video game. Weird, but not at all unwelcome.
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Oct 19, 2019 05:51
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Game is amazing and I love streaming it so I can fumble over the words like the idiot I am.
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Oct 19, 2019 06:01
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I'm a tiny bit confused I'm supposed to confront the pigs lady who has my gun, but I went to the fishing village and no one is there?. Do you have to get there RIGHT at 22:00 or what?
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Oct 19, 2019 06:02
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JosefStalinator posted:I'm a tiny bit confused I'm supposed to confront the pigs lady who has my gun, but I went to the fishing village and no one is there?. Do you have to get there RIGHT at 22:00 or what? Fish market. It's the bunch of sheds between the feld building and the church
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Oct 19, 2019 06:04
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JosefStalinator posted:I'm a tiny bit confused I'm supposed to confront the pigs lady who has my gun, but I went to the fishing village and no one is there?. Do you have to get there RIGHT at 22:00 or what? you need to go further north, towards the boardwalk. she's very hard to miss and a question of my own - i read a few posts about a quest involving a drug-running operation. who gives that out? i'm on the verge of day 5 and while i've made good progress on the murder case and the church quest i haven't heard anything about the drugs
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Oct 19, 2019 06:04
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JosefStalinator posted:I'm a tiny bit confused I'm supposed to confront the pigs lady who has my gun, but I went to the fishing village and no one is there?. Do you have to get there RIGHT at 22:00 or what? I think you have to be there between 22:00 and 2:00 of the same day you got the task
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Oct 19, 2019 06:04
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Zoracle Zed posted:RPS: That’s interesting…have you read the City and the City? Was that an inspiration? It's really easy to be a better author than China Mieville and I agree with the guy that he is.
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Oct 19, 2019 06:04
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Oxxidation posted:you need to go further north, towards the boardwalk. she's very hard to miss Joyce, the boat lady, will give you the task to investigate the drug running operation in exchange for some information
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Oct 19, 2019 06:06
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Pulsarcat posted:Joyce, the boat lady, will give you the task to investigate the drug running operation in exchange for some information oh crumbs, i'm gonna have to drop the dime on evrart, aren't i
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Oct 19, 2019 06:08
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Oxxidation posted:oh crumbs, i'm gonna have to drop the dime on evrart, aren't i you don't actually have to tell Joyce the results of the investigation merely that you started one Also further evrart doesn't actually give a poo poo even if you tell her everything Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 06:12
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dead gay comedy forums posted:Word. The more I play it, I feel that this game is right now underrated because gaming is so ingrained with certain specifics on what its writing should be about that, after this, there is bound to be some reevaluations. I almost used Witcher as an example there but I stopped myself because even though the setting isn't super imaginative (which is fine, you can accomplish a lot by introducing new takes on familiar materials) it's still got writing elevated far beyond the norm when it comes to games. Disco Elysium truly kills it though and its structure solves a lot of problems that come with people (including me!) looking at a very very text heavy game and being like "is this even a game?" -- I like to read books and I like to watch movies but somehow I lack the patience to enjoy straight-up visual novels, no matter how well written they are. Hopefully i'll be in a better position to express it once i finish the game but right now I feel like it does an amazing job of feeling like a "real game" and not something you could just accomplish in a Choose Your Own Adventure paperback. The levels upon levels of reactivity continue to surprise and impress me
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Oct 19, 2019 06:14
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Nanomashoes posted:It's really easy to be a better author than China Mieville and I agree with the guy that he is. Anyway in terms of books the game reminded me of it's 100% Inherent Vice.
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Oct 19, 2019 06:15
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Synthbuttrange posted:Fish market. It's the bunch of sheds between the feld building and the church Man, I found that location near where the dead guy is on the dock, but it's like 12:30 now and I'm wondering if I missed it 
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Oct 19, 2019 06:16
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I'm a bit annoyed. I was closing in on the end of the game and suddenly I couldn't save anymore. Tried exiting and it happened again. Tried running as administrator and it happened again, plus my quicksaves were gone. Decided I was close enough to just rush to the end, then my mouse cursor disappeared. Three wasted hours... guess I'm waiting on a patch to see the end?
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Oct 19, 2019 06:19
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Been loving the hell out of this game. It's just so much fun to explore everywhere and talk to everyone. It's been a long time since I've found a game world as intriguing as this. Sent Kim off with the body on day 2, so I had some time to kill alone. So, I decided to go chat with the company lady some more about Reality, seemed like a good way to kill time. But, while reporting about my meeting with the union boss... I got stuck, and had to be rebooted.    Took some damage in the process, but it could've been worse 
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Oct 19, 2019 06:33
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OH MY loving GOD I JUST I OH poo poo GOD loving drat IT THIS GAME End of second day, I managed to get some points, did my poo poo, "oh, I can try opening the ledger!" I read the letter. Everything blacks out. "DISCO ELYSIUM." THE CHARACTER DIED OF HEARTBREAK. game of the decade please EDIT: HOLD THE gently caress UP I GOT TRICKED
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Oct 19, 2019 06:47
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Can someone help me with a first day task - I want to get to the union boss before the first day ends but I got my rear end whooped by the big dude at the door button. It looks like there's a path on the roof but I can't figure out how to get up there, any help?
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Oct 19, 2019 06:53
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Smith Comma John posted:Can someone help me with a first day task - I want to get to the union boss before the first day ends but I got my rear end whooped by the big dude at the door button. It looks like there's a path on the roof but I can't figure out how to get up there, any help? Hint: Examine the yard where the hanging body is. Answer: It's through a hidden shack behind a pallet over to the right side of the yard. You can either notice it with high enough perception, or befriend Cuno and have him show it to you. You get up to the roof through a ladder in there.
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Oct 19, 2019 06:57
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Harrow posted:
It's funny - if I had /read/ this in book form, I would have found it pretty unsatisfying. This isn't my kind of book. But, by experiencing it in game form, the characters and decisions resonated with me a whole lot more, in a way that just watching a disaster of a human being stumble along in book form would not have been.
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Oct 19, 2019 07:04
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Disco Elysium's writing is vastly superior to the majority of RPGs for me because it allows for moments of staggering failure, both mechanically, narratively and personally, in some sense other RPGs always rein that in because it's at odds with the mechanics. You can't have the character engage in a miserable downward spiral of a plot when one of the core tenets of RPGs is that your protagonist grows in strength the more you play, it's why RPGs are hyper prone to narratives that are purely wish fulfillment and why they're almost uniformly about you being utterly exceptional in some way. When things gently caress up it's virtually always because of some external reason or if your action does have a negative consequence it never feels that signifigant because your protagonist usually just kind of brick wall stares at whoever's life they ruined and offers some preselected platitude. You're more worried about what you might miss out on content wise at that point. It would feel extremely incongruent to have your gameplay say that you're some maverick at speech skills or charisma then have your character manifest some fatal character flaw in a cutscene where he fucks everything up because of his pathos. Your stats say you're one thing but then the plot says something different. Compare that to Max Paybe 3 where Max can be an utter God of murder but it's a central and core theme that it's all he's good at and it inevitably just fucks his life up even more. The only thing he's good at is breaking poo poo, both human beings and his own life. You aren't going to get that sort of character depth for a protagonist in virtually any RPG yet here Disco Elysium is giving you the ability to synthesize a personality like that. Sheperd is never going to have a full on panic attack because half his crew died, or do anything other than act stoic and maybe express some corny, half-hearted regret in a conversation that's two stiff plastic dolls staring at each other. Even then he has no internal life. He just comes off as a thoughtless golem. RPG protagonists are almost without fail nebulous and mostly defined by actions rather than hardset ideals or fully defined motivations because part of the reason people play the genre is because they want the game to allow them to be an extension of some vague role or personality they dreamt up. It's why emotional stakes in RPGs invariably feel hollow and distant compared to something like The Last of Us, if the protagonist is just a vague shell or some disparate yet incohesive clump of traits, you're not going to feel that connected to them, or the people that are connecting to them. As much as people like to pretend RPG characters are stand in for themselves, it never really works out that way in practice, and you ultimately need to have a character you find relatable, or at least engaging, to give meaning and stakes to what's happening. The worst symptom of this is that the main character ultimately feels like some soulless impulsive machine who does things just because (because you told him to). The Witcher sort of avoids that somewhat, but ultimately waffles it by having Geralt be such a generic hypermasculine knob and suffers, yet again, from conversations amounting to two people staring at each other with minimal drama or emoting bar cutscenes. He still comes off as too much of a caricature. I don't think it's any coincidence that the two RPGs I've played that managed to emotionally resonate with me in any capacity are the ones where you're an amnesiac reconstructing yourself and discovering a past you no longer can remember. Planescape: Torment and Disco Elysium both avoid that common pitfall by your character having been a defined personality before the game started, there's something to go back to, to give the protagonist more shape and thus give you a bouncing board to relate to them. They also give you more ownership over how they respond to their past, because in a sense, it allows them to change and grow in a way Sheperd can't, they can continue to obsess over lost loves (both PS:T and DE have that), they can be horrified and apologetic about their past actions - and allow you to feel that same regret - (again both) they can make amends to those they've met "again" (once more, both) or they can continue to indulge in the worst tendencies of their past selves or become even worse, but that past isn't necessarily strictly informative of who YOUR character is. It gives you both, that RPG compulsion to create your own personality, and the narrative importance of having a compelling protagonist. Them reacting to their past is growth, their new trajectory is growth. They're also heavily text based which allows them to be far more descriptive and imbue their writing with both internal monologues and evocative prose while also avoiding the serious issue of 3D models doing the worst and stiffest physical acting possible, yet another reason why action games generally excel more in narrative, they can put all the heavy moments in cutscenes and really flex that mocap and improved production values to get real performances. It really takes the wind out of a dramatic scene if the actor is some Ken doll lump scaring the poo poo out of you with his lifeless glassy polygonal eyes while juddering and jerking like a dead frog that got salt poured on it. Disco takes the manipulation and refraction of a past character further by sometimes retroactively altering your past self fit your current behavior, thus creating a link and allowing you feel ownership even of that predefined character. It's pretty loving ingenious. It also allows you to mechanically create character flaws, obsessions, compulsions, disorders, etc. through its skill system, where success doesn't necessarily mean you do something right or good, but just that you managed to succeed at doing SOMETHING and sometimes that success is you being an utter lunatic or moron. The narrative and gameplay are deeply intertwined and because of that you feel far more ownership over who your character in DE is than any RPG that gives you a complete blank slate to mold. You're not a smooth talker because your speech stat is high, you're a smooth talker because several of your skills are outright personality traits that enable you to be, and they pop up in your skull and guide you into that role. That really raises the question then of how do you successfully translate the success of this model into one that doesn't use the amnesiac slant, because I'm not even slightly kidding that I think it's a pretty core reasons of why these two games work in a way other RPGs don't. Obviously the prose, structure and handling of material goes a signifigant way, but to me its biggest achievement is making your character feel defined even as you make up who he is along the way, with a far looser and more open ended way than PS:T even approached in the slightest degree. Who gives a poo poo about where their Skyrim character came from or what happened up until the point you possessed his floating head in that carriage? Anyway the game is good as poo poo.
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Oct 19, 2019 07:09
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Lil Swamp Booger Baby posted:.. I mean, if you wanted to avoid the amnesia cliche (as much as i love the amnesia cliche, for some reason), you can still hide the past from the player, if not the characters, and reveal it over time with tweaks based on your actions now. If you're doing the 'you were a horrible person in the past' shtick, then the events of the game can be traumatic or shocking enough to justify your character suddenly becoming a better (or worse) person.
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Oct 19, 2019 07:18
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Started the game tonight, loving love it, couple of questions: Is it possible to raise attributes with experience or by leveling up? I saw on a loading screen that drugs let you raise your skill cap, so is that and items the only way to get a higher skill total, or is there a way to raise say, Psyche (and I guess thus each Psyche skill and their relevant caps?) Do high skills ever outright control characters? I've seen skills suggest plenty of hilarious, self-destructive, and weird actions, but none of them have compelled me to do anything yet. Is a high skill an annoying voice in your head urging you to, say, violence, or will it actually make you beat someone up you might not have wanted to? Thanks to anyone who can help clear some of this up!
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Oct 19, 2019 07:24
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Also, while not all dialogue is voiced anyways, having all the internal voices talking to you (unvoiced) means the writer is free to add all the details and options they can think of. There's very little cost to add a quick text blurb and a skill check. So the game is just FULL of these tiny amazing details and moments that add so much life to the game. I think something killing RPGs is voiced protagonists. In your Mass Effects and your Fallouts, you only have 3 loving choices at most, and they're generally "yes", "sarcastic yes", and "no". Often you don't even get the no choice. Because everything has to be voiced, it severely limits the amount of options and dialogue they can have. You've already got 3,000 hours of dialogue to record for the main story, you can't gently caress around. But if its text, its much cheaper, so its easier to gently caress around. I feel really strongly that voiced protagonists are dangerous and even potentially a killer mistake in RPGs. Having other characters be voiced but the protagonist be text is a good compromise that keeps it from feeling like a book, but still allows for lots of flavorful text dialogue options. In games like Baldur's Gate and Vampire Bloodlines, its not uncommon to have 6+ dialogue options. That in turn allows for you the player to have much more agency and at least PRETEND you're actually controlling a character and roleplaying, even if those 6+ dialogue choices only result in 3-4 unique dialogue responses from the other character, there's an illusion that you're at least saying it your way.
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Oct 19, 2019 07:24
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Zaphod42 posted:Also, while not all dialogue is voiced anyways, having all the internal voices talking to you (unvoiced) means the writer is free to add all the details and options they can think of. There's very little cost to add a quick text blurb and a skill check. So the game is just FULL of these tiny amazing details and moments that add so much life to the game. Yeah voice acting really restricts the word count massively. Games like Oblivion have the most ridiculously terse interactions with you and NPCs, even important moments in the game feel clipped and rushed. Though that also just brings up the other fatal flaw of RPG stories. Dogshit pacing. Any story filled with 50 hours of padding and ignoring the central conflict is going to feel aimless and unwieldy, and that's yet another strength of PS:T and DE, they're both mercifully to the point and short.
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Oct 19, 2019 07:31
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Begemot posted:Been loving the hell out of this game. It's just so much fun to explore everywhere and talk to everyone. It's been a long time since I've found a game world as intriguing as this. omfg
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Oct 19, 2019 07:38
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Begemot posted:Been loving the hell out of this game. It's just so much fun to explore everywhere and talk to everyone. It's been a long time since I've found a game world as intriguing as this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUa7ikBHpaI
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Oct 19, 2019 07:46
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Oct 19, 2019 08:17
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goferchan posted:I feel like it's totally valid to dislike the writing if it doesn't vibe with you but this game is an elusive case of actual grown-up writers writing for a game and not the people who do extended universe Halo novelizations yeah i was kinda afraid the vibe would be a bit too random/zany when i first saw it and it could still deviate that way at some point but its clicked super hard. i could see someone else bouncing off of it a bit in that regard
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Oct 19, 2019 08:26
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Woof, I just got through my playthrough. I went full Communist Cop of the Apocalypse, and while I (thematic spoilers) kind of expected the Pale and heavily emphasized paranatural elements to actually figure more severely into the story having Shivers and Inland Empire as my two constant companions is an amazing complement to the moment-to-moment writing and really wrings the most out of the atmosphere. Both times you can speak to the mute with Inland Empire are absolutely killer, and Shivers was probably my favorite skill despite actually accomplishing almost nothing with it. I also had a 5 base INT, and honestly it feels like INT might be the best stat to have; not because it's 'more powerful' but because it has some of the widest cast of characters. Conceptualization and Drama are pretty great complements to the somewhat dry rest of the INT tree, and also Visual Calculus is just killer fun (also I love the Visual Calculus Recreation theme.) It didn't get off on the best foot; the game opening up with Inexplicable Feminist Agenda felt more like I'd stepped into South Park than Revanchol, and going out back to a kid spamming homophobic slurs didn't really help that. I'm glad I put it through, but it's a shame the real and sincere writing is preluded by some really unfortunate 'comedy.' In that sense I also sort of get where that one 'I can't be a nice person!' review was going at- no matter who you are, you're always you, and you are kind of a machismo huffing jerk. At the same time, you still has immense agency to be or not be much better or worse within that. A friend described it as 'very Russian'- yeah, you're a jerk, because literally every human being on the planet is a big stinky jerk and that kind of Eastern European nihilism is coating around the game. I'm glad I'd played enough STALKER et. al. to recognize it, ultimately, because the sincerity put into the game was very strong and well pays off the opening. I did end up running into a few bugs- the game lets you tie up Kim in a few ways but also gets *extremely* upset about this happening, and is really not good at tracking what does and doesn't happen while Kim is around. Also, following Kim's advice of not talking to the company lady about Reality... until I was stonewalled because I needed the flood gate to open up ended up with me talking to her about the Pale before Kim has a chance to object to me talking to her about the Pale, which (side quest) meant the game never actually set the flag for me knowing about the Pale. ...whoops? Also, he was ghost-present in a few scenes, including the conclusion of the scene where I sent him off. The bugs weren't a big deal, though. I really liked the system; letting you go back and push checks lets your skill points be a resource you can use strategically rather than just a way your numbers go up. I never felt a strong need to savescum with one exception, and I felt very satisfied with outcomes win or lose mostly. The only real exception, and the big obvious anvil around the neck of this system, is the (late-game event) Tribunal. Maybe it's possible to avoid getting this into a firefight, and it largely doesn't matter that much, but there's literally one check of 'Kim Dies/Kim Doesn't Die' which really lampshades how the system can fail hard when it does. I wish they had a system for spending a skill point to force a red check, and/or deleted critical failures from red-checks. I'm sure this works super well for some people but watching a character you've grown attached to die on a 3% 'gently caress you' failure feels more like an abrasion against the system. It didn't make me feel feels, it made me laugh sarcastically and roll my eyes; Fire Emblem this ain't. All in all, all I'm left wanting is a sequel that dives into the more overtly supernatural elements of the story. Maybe they ultimately work better as a background element, but I still want to know more- I've got an apocalypse coming, and I need to give people precise information about it, dang it!
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Oct 19, 2019 08:52
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It's not difficult to be better than China Mieville- China is a poo poo gently caress writer and all his books are awful crap.
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Oct 19, 2019 09:00
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Communist Bear posted:It's not difficult to be better than China Mieville- China is a poo poo gently caress writer and all his books are awful crap. but but but imagine this... a lady who's also a furnace!!! so steampunk
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Oct 19, 2019 09:29
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I thought we were partners, Kim. The three of us. Me, you and my tie. I think if they were to continue updating the game, I'd like to see more robust uses for some of the skill checks. There are a few situations in the game where one skill has a huge outcome on the rest of the story and it makes it feel a bit lopsided if you're specced into everything but that skill. FZeroRacer fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Oct 19, 2019 |
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Oct 19, 2019 09:34
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One thing I found pretty impressive is that they managed to make the super libertarian borgeouis CEO lady one a pretty sympathetic character in the game - while you know she's manipulating you to an extent she's got a good amount of sincerity that the Union doesn't, and is less willing to resort to violence to get what she wants.. Normally, helping the union would be a gimme in a game like this but they gave some good nuance to each of the political options even as they aggressively mocked them. Even the fascist path has some sympathetic elements even if they're totally ruined by all the other baggage they're associated with, since saying "all these foreign countries running our country at gunpoint as some sort of demented tax haven at the cost of the people living in eternal poverty and squalor is wrong, and they should all GTFO and let us govern ourselves" is essentially one of the opinions that pushes you towards fascism.
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Oct 19, 2019 09:41
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Digital Osmosis posted:Started the game tonight, loving love it, couple of questions: Is it possible to raise attributes with experience or by leveling up? I saw on a loading screen that drugs let you raise your skill cap, so is that and items the only way to get a higher skill total, or is there a way to raise say, Psyche (and I guess thus each Psyche skill and their relevant caps?) quote:Do high skills ever outright control characters? I've seen skills suggest plenty of hilarious, self-destructive, and weird actions, but none of them have compelled me to do anything yet. Is a high skill an annoying voice in your head urging you to, say, violence, or will it actually make you beat someone up you might not have wanted to? Mostly they just give you more input the higher they are, but sometimes they can give you a malus if you try doing something they're completely opposed to. The combo of certain skills and dialogue choices can also occasionally railroad you into a mini-loop where you only have one dialogue "choice", like, for example, early in the game when you interview Garte, high half-light (or maybe authority?) gives you a choice to press on accusing him of murder. If you choose that option a couple of times, eventually your other options get removed and you end up with no choice but to carry on with it until he gets pissed off. But, it's quite rare from what I've seen at least, and heavily depends on the dialogue options you choose. Like, high skills may give you certain options to begin with, but you have to indulge them first before they "overtake" you enough to be the only possible response in a particular situation. I'm only on Day 3 though so don't know if those instances are more frequent later in the game. The Saddest Rhino posted:Kim is such an exasperated sigh of a character it's crazy how much I identify with him Every time my character goes "unconventional", Kim's just like: 
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Oct 19, 2019 09:47
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How do you get to the isle? I need to reach it for the last sniper position, but cannot for the life of me find a boat or anything usable. Joyce is gone in my game, and all the small boats lying around offer no option to use them
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Oct 19, 2019 10:12
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