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Omi no Kami posted:How the heck do you get knowledge of the Pale? Not having it gave me a huge nerf to that check in the church to figure out what was going on with the hole in reality, but since I'd already done everything and talked to everyone, I guess it must be tied to a quest/conversation I missed? ask joyce to tell you about "reality." while there are a bunch of general-lore questions in that tree, there's one locked behind an extremely hard Conceptualization check that becomes easier with the Jamais Vu thought. the tree behind that check tells you about the Pale, though you'll need to engage her on it without Kim, either by speaking to her after hours or passing another check to ask him to go away
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Oct 30, 2019 18:08
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No Mods No Masters posted:Might be obtainable elsewhere, but definitely comes from a white check with joyce in the 'what is x' part of her dialogue tree. Oh crap, that's what that check was? I skipped it at the time because of how hard it was, and completely forgot about it when other stuff overshadowed the union business.
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Oct 30, 2019 18:08
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As mentioned, it's a deliberately hard check until you internalize jamais vu in which case it becomes a gimme- IIRC.
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Oct 30, 2019 18:09
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i also think it's funny that people identify DE's writing as the reason it's character exploration is so much stronger than Planescape in particular. (because they have a pretty similar thread) I mean it *is* better written, probably because the editor and writer aren't the same person, but i'm betting the real reason most people like it better is because *endgame* you aren't immortal, but you probably have had a rough breakup or equivalent and you can also probably conceptualize grtting old and can intertwine those thoughts. Harry's trauma is a lot more relatable than TNO's - although i think you were supposed to interpose your own issues into TNO through the context of the Good Incarnation.
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Oct 30, 2019 18:20
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To the person who mentioned Age of Decadence, I agree. Its a similar game, and honestly more branching path options. However its hard as balls at times comparatively and you don't get conflicted internal monologues.
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Oct 30, 2019 18:24
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This game dethroned pathologic 2 as goty for me, it might be a stretch to call that game an RPG but I think it would scratch a lot of the same itches as this does if you can deal with the extreme russian-ness of the experience
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Oct 30, 2019 18:28
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pathologic also includes elements of the survival sim, which is a surprisingly big ask of most video game players
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Oct 30, 2019 18:29
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Yes true. It's a pretty unabashedly harsh and alienating experience but scratches the 'excellent writing wandering around in a weird atmospheric town trying to solve a mystery' itch. Honestly that should just be its own genre at this point- the best genre
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Oct 30, 2019 18:32
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Thanks for the tips, that was a really neat bit of worldbuilding to semi-hide. I just finished and it's pretty great, some random thoughts: It's not quite a criticism, but I personally dislike mysteries where the perp comes out of left field in the third act. When they ruled out the last of their good suspects, I wish the case had pivoted to a known person we hadn't considered, and not a random serial killer weirdo. The final confrontation felt like a bit of a letdown, because I genuinely didn't care about this dude I'd just met. I like that Harry's big life-destroying heartbreak was a random years-old casual fling that he was obsessed with, it says horrifyingly terrible things about his psyche and worked really well. Making his deranged memory-obliterating blackouts a recurring thing was a weird decision. My impression for most of the game was that he was a habitual loony drunk who'd just gone on one bender too many, and hearing his team go "Geez you're doing the brain-damaged amnesiac drug-and-alcohol binge again?" was a really strange way to reframe it at the last minute. Kim is a total bro- that guy's the best. Cuno, I love you! (Seriously though, what was the deal with his friend, the kid who apparently straight-up murdered the elderly or something? I was expecting that to go somewhere, I guess I must've missed figuring it out.) Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 18:43
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Omi no Kami posted:Making his deranged memory-obliterating blackouts a recurring thing was a weird decision. My impression for most of the game was that he was a habitual loony drunk who'd just gone on one bender too many, and hearing his team go "Geez you're doing the brain-damaged amnesiac drug-and-alcohol binge again?" was a really strange way to reframe it at the last minute. For me, this is almost the opposite of how it went down. I was the one who suggested that this was a recurring thing, and my team were in utter disbelief at the idea.
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Oct 30, 2019 18:46
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:For me, this is almost the opposite of how it went down. I was the one who suggested that this was a recurring thing, and my team were in utter disbelief at the idea. ...huh, really? What kind of cop did you play? I was kinda 85/15 Smart Cop/Drug Cop. I took it seriously and tried real hard to solve the case rationally, but I drank/smoked/drugged once each for the tasks and said or did stupid bullshit when it sounded funny. In my game the team went "Jesus Harry, we need to take your badge and your gun and put you on disability, this keeps happening," then Kim came to my aid and went "He's a crazy loving rear end in a top hat with severe mental health issues and also literal brain damage, also I think he might be drunk and on drugs right now, but he's also a rad cop who solved a bunch of cases and discovered a new species." Then it ended with Harry getting demoted from team lead to line cop, and he and Kim went on to be awesome buddy cops in district 41.
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Oct 30, 2019 18:51
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Omi no Kami posted:Thanks for the tips, that was a really neat bit of worldbuilding to semi-hide. i've seen this criticism elsewhere and i think it stems from a misunderstanding as to what genre the game is sitting in. in my experience noir stories aren't really "mysteries" in that there isn't a whodunit element that the reader follows along with the protagonist, and there's more focus instead on the characters' inner lives and the (generally decaying) setting as for cunoesse, yeah she probably murdered at least one other kid, but the game doesn't go any deeper into it because that's not your problem to solve
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Oct 30, 2019 18:54
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I wonder how much this game was influenced by The Neverending Story, if at all. What with The Nothing and all.
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Oct 30, 2019 18:55
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chaosapiant posted:I wonder how much this game was influenced by The Neverending Story, if at all. What with The Nothing and all. probably not at all. the Pale is an allegory for entropy and inevitable systemic collapse, you can find that everywhere my first point of comparison was Night in the Woods' "hole in the center of everything" but i powerfully doubt that it was used as inspiration for DE
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Oct 30, 2019 18:57
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Irt being a fuckup drunk I just took lots of speed and didn't drink and the team mostly just said... well at least he isn't drinking anymore. It seems they mostly just object to the drinking rather than anything else. Irt the past ex I don't think Harry was overreacting to a one night stand unless I missed something. The story I got is they were engaged, she was pregnant. She aborted the baby, cheated on him and left him for someone else. I can see how something like that would utterly break a person. Finally Irt to the killer I dunno, you can posit a theory that the shot came from far away, in that case it kind of eliminated a lot of the up close suspects. The guy didn't have to be a commie holdout from the previous war, but it honestly didn't matter that much at that point who took the shot. It could have been a corporate Fixer who escaped etc. and it wouldn't have really changed the story too much. I think they introduce the possibility and give you options that no one you talked to was the real killer early enough if you have the skills for it not to be completely out of left field the ending. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 18:59
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My impression of Cunoesse is that she is simply an illegal immigrant. She didn't actually do anything wrong, Empathy merely picked up on Cuno and Cunoesse's fear of police, and Cuno's attempts to scare you away from her. Re the killer, I think the killer makes most sense narratively if you view a mildly communist or moralist run as the canonical run. I think thematically he makes sense at least, though obviously he breaks the rules of crime fiction. I suspect that before the title change, he was more important. Unrelatedly, what I always thought was bad about Planescape basically came down to its core conceit.  So... Yeah, Disco Elysium has the complete opposite mentality.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:00
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Oxxidation posted:...the Pale is an allegory for entropy and inevitable systemic collapse... Also literally what The Nothing is and I think the Neverending Story novel came out long before any other reference I can think of to an entropic force in video games.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:01
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chaosapiant posted:Also literally what The Nothing is and I think the Neverending Story novel came out long before any other reference I can think of to an entropic force in video games. if you had looked at the rest of my post you would have noticed me mention that this has been a allegory across multiple works of fiction for all time, because the impending end of everything is a thought that's always occupied a comfy niche in the collective unconscious trying to nail its influence to one specific work is an exercise in futility
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Oct 30, 2019 19:02
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Isn't the world DE is set in decades old? I thought I saw someone say it's based on some tabletop game world or something.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:06
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Oxxidation posted:if you had looked at the rest of my post you would have noticed me mention that this has been a allegory across multiple works of fiction for all time, because the impending end of everything is a thought that's always occupied a comfy niche in the collective unconscious I didn't quote the rest of your post, but I did read it. And while you're probably right that TNS wasn't a direct influence, there are some parallels more than just the Pale/Nothing being entropy incarnate. The thing that gets me the most is that in TNS Nothing is due to lack of dreams/wonderment and that seems fairly similar to humans being the cause of entropy in Elysium. But it could also be a stretch.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:07
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Omi no Kami posted:...huh, really? What kind of cop did you play? I was kinda 85/15 Smart Cop/Drug Cop. I took it seriously and tried real hard to solve the case rationally, but I drank/smoked/drugged once each for the tasks and said or did stupid bullshit when it sounded funny. In my game the team went "Jesus Harry, we need to take your badge and your gun and put you on disability, this keeps happening," then Kim came to my aid and went "He's a crazy loving rear end in a top hat with severe mental health issues and also literal brain damage, also I think he might be drunk and on drugs right now, but he's also a rad cop who solved a bunch of cases and discovered a new species." Then it ended with Harry getting demoted from team lead to line cop, and he and Kim went on to be awesome buddy cops in district 41. I played a pretty openly drug/drinky cop, tho not overly so. Mostly I was in on In-land Empire, Conceptualization and Communism. I did a lot of really wild poo poo, and while the team were like "gently caress you harry" I'd done so much good stuff by the end that they basically took me back exactly as I was before. Someone asked what the gently caress I thought I was doing and I had a lot of options to explain the amnesia, ranging from "I drank too much and blacked out, that's all", to "I lied, I remembered everything the whole time" to "I did it on purpose. I'm an experimental cop". I picked the last one and Kim basically said "It sounds insane but like, it checks out" and the team had no loving clue what to do with it. Kim is gonna join my badass investigative squad in my ending
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Oct 30, 2019 19:12
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Jack2142 posted:Irt the past ex Yeah, definitely not a one-night stand but I got the impression that it was a lot more casual than Harry himself thought. The impression I got from his dream was that they were basically young (younger, anyway) and naive, and the relationship grew and flamed out super-quickly when the woman figured out that it wasn't what she wanted, and also that Harry was maybe-sorta married to the job or crazy. Definitely worth being sad over, but the way he was carrying on I was expecting that, like, he watched himself slowly gently caress up what started as a loving marriage over the course of years or decades. Having that setup combined with "Dude this isn't cool, we were only in each others' lives for a bit and it was over a long time ago" does a great job of painting him as a super-duper troubled guy.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:12
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Trant is my spirit animal. I'm not happy with it but I can't hide from the truth
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Oct 30, 2019 19:14
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Count me on the other side. I loved The Deserter. Radical old dog realizing nothing was worth it.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:14
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I love that if you have the ultraliberal thought internalized you can open *that* phonecall with "Hello, I just wanted to inform you that I am an incredibly high net-worth individual." for no reason. Edit: I guess it could point to that Harry thought the relationship went to poo poo because of their different backgrounds.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:15
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According to Joyce the Pale can also (Insulindian isola story) recede and perhaps even create matter. The ex-something was not a one night stand. How would you even get to that conclusion?  (iirc) They only broke up 6 years prior to the game. Harry would have been ~37 at the time. Some lines in the game suggest he worked 2 cases a week so they could start a family. In the dream she mentions their unborn daughters, so they were probably stillborn. Then by all accounts they drove each other mad leading to her leaving him for another man in another city/country, and having his child instead of trying again with Harry. I think it's possible they were together since before he became a detective, so for over 15 years. itry fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 19:16
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, definitely not a one-night stand but I got the impression that it was a lot more casual than Harry himself thought. The impression I got from his dream was that they were basically young (younger, anyway) and naive, and the relationship grew and flamed out super-quickly when the woman figured out that it wasn't what she wanted, and also that Harry was maybe-sorta married to the job or crazy. Definitely worth being sad over, but the way he was carrying on I was expecting that, like, he watched himself slowly gently caress up what started as a loving marriage over the course of years or decades. Having that setup combined with "Dude this isn't cool, we were only in each others' lives for a bit and it was over a long time ago" does a great job of painting him as a super-duper troubled guy. Harry and the ex were together for like a decade.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:27
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, definitely not a one-night stand but I got the impression that it was a lot more casual than Harry himself thought. The impression I got from his dream was that they were basically young (younger, anyway) and naive, and the relationship grew and flamed out super-quickly when the woman figured out that it wasn't what she wanted, and also that Harry was maybe-sorta married to the job or crazy. Definitely worth being sad over, but the way he was carrying on I was expecting that, like, he watched himself slowly gently caress up what started as a loving marriage over the course of years or decades. Having that setup combined with "Dude this isn't cool, we were only in each others' lives for a bit and it was over a long time ago" does a great job of painting him as a super-duper troubled guy. someone else did the math and they were together for at least twelve years before finally breaking up, with at least one aborted child in the mix it was not casual
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Oct 30, 2019 19:28
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, definitely not a one-night stand but I got the impression that it was a lot more casual than Harry himself thought. The impression I got from his dream was that they were basically young (younger, anyway) and naive, and the relationship grew and flamed out super-quickly when the woman figured out that it wasn't what she wanted, and also that Harry was maybe-sorta married to the job or crazy. Definitely worth being sad over, but the way he was carrying on I was expecting that, like, he watched himself slowly gently caress up what started as a loving marriage over the course of years or decades. Having that setup combined with "Dude this isn't cool, we were only in each others' lives for a bit and it was over a long time ago" does a great job of painting him as a super-duper troubled guy. Nah, I don't agree entirely. Sure I think she left him because he got obsessed with his job however I think it was a significant relationship. The change is that in the 6 years since they broke up she got married and had kids moving on with her life and Harry did not. She wasted a long time with her quirky broke cop fiancé with mental issues and wants to put in the past. Harry hasn't gotten past it and you can in the game make the steps he needs to let go, even if its as simple as going on a date with the boat lady sober. Letting go of the apricot scented gum and letting the card slip into the wind. He coped by drinking more, taking on more cases and going on benders and one night stands without forming attachments to the people around him and burned out and hit rock bottom at game start.
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Oct 30, 2019 19:28
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itry posted:According to Joyce the Pale can also (Insulindian isola story) recede and perhaps even create matter. Yup. I absolutely disagree that the Pale is entropy. The Pale is *hope*. Terrible and sacred hope. Like the comparison the phasmid makes is made to the arrival of oxygen to the earth. The Pale is not merely the end, but the creation of a new world. Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 19:50
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Holy crap, they were together for a decade+?? Honestly, I find that almost disappointing- it works perfectly well and the narrative supports it, but the idea of a sad dude building a failed relationship up in his head to be so much bigger of a deal than it actually was is such a pleasingly toxic mindset that I thought it worked great.
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Oct 30, 2019 20:15
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4/4/2/2, Perception, with Apocalypse Cop and the sound cryptid thought, is a really good build. You're kind of a doughball but absolutely nothing goes unnoticed by you, on either an intellectual or spiritual level.
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Oct 30, 2019 20:33
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Got to play it some now, ya all were right game's pretty cool so far. 
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Oct 30, 2019 20:45
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Ex timeline stuff. It's mentioned that Harry became a cop to please the ex, he's been a cop for 18 years, and she left 6 years ago. So it's definitely a been a while, 12+ years as was said.
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Oct 30, 2019 20:54
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Omi no Kami posted:Yeah, definitely not a one-night stand but I got the impression that it was a lot more casual than Harry himself thought. The impression I got from his dream was that they were basically young (younger, anyway) and naive, and the relationship grew and flamed out super-quickly when the woman figured out that it wasn't what she wanted, and also that Harry was maybe-sorta married to the job or crazy. Definitely worth being sad over, but the way he was carrying on I was expecting that, like, he watched himself slowly gently caress up what started as a loving marriage over the course of years or decades. Having that setup combined with "Dude this isn't cool, we were only in each others' lives for a bit and it was over a long time ago" does a great job of painting him as a super-duper troubled guy. We can kind of prove this isn’t the case Harry was a cop for 18 years. His ex left him 6 years ago. She was also the one who pushed him to become a cop in the first place to solve their working class poverty issues. From this therefore we know Harry and Dora were living together for a MINIMUM of twelve years. That’s a lot! Harry being kind of destroyed by how things ended is a lot more understandable in that light. Being a cop hosed him up hard and he did it for her for more than a decade.
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Oct 30, 2019 20:59
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ex chat Jean is a gigantic rear end in a top hat about it during the final sequence if they were really together for over a decade. Jean owns
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Oct 30, 2019 21:02
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More ex-chat I'm not sure how much of this is specific to skills or choices - though I believe that stuff that happened prior to the game doesn't really change from skills - but the final conversation basically narrows down why the relationship fails and why Harry cannot get over it. The ex describes him as somebody who is unable to distance himself from how bad the world he lives in is, he always digs deeper and always questions. This makes him an extremely capable detective but not really somebody who is able to have that "grown up" relationship the ex wanted. I also think that fits in with how Harry gets so many possible options to comment on politics even though it's not really called for. Yes, even the Moralist dialogue options.
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Oct 30, 2019 21:22
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Jean is a little satellite rear end in a top hat and should thank Harry for his position.  Randler posted:I also think that fits in with how Harry gets so many possible options to comment on politics even though it's not really called for. Yes, even the Moralist dialogue options. I have an opinion! Do you want to hear it?  itry fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 21:27
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More ex stuff She literally brings up how Harry is a relentless dialogue tree diving bloodhound who can't stop, ever. Dialogue trees are how he organizes interviews in his head!
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Oct 30, 2019 21:28
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Jean, trant, the  patrolwoman- they're all good, inject more of all of them into my veins
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Oct 30, 2019 21:29
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