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Maybe try to get the lowdown on reality before you give up.
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Jun 26, 2023 13:50
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| # ? May 30, 2024 00:37 |
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Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment are both strongly character-driven games. If you're not the kind of player who likes to really get invested in the various characters, learn who they are and what makes them tick, and occasionally meddle in their lives, you probably aren't going to enjoy either game to the fullest. Which isn't an indictment or anything, it's just... they might not be your cup of tea.
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Jun 26, 2023 14:57
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or schnapps, in Harry's case
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Jun 26, 2023 15:08
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General Battuta posted:Maybe try to get the lowdown on reality before you give up. Oh yeah, that's a pretty solid suggestion. Assuming the player gets around by the usual route, if after getting the lowdown nothing has clicked to engage with the narrative, it's a good bet that disco isn't their cup of tea
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Jun 26, 2023 16:06
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Attempting the leap to get my coat was the moment that blew the game wide open for me. I still think it's awesome they let you try that so soon and that multiple characters point you to its resting place.
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Jun 26, 2023 |
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Jun 26, 2023 16:27
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H13 posted:Torment felt like it was going somewhere and doing something. So far I've had arguments with children, racist meatheads and poked a corpse. This was where I was when I first played DE. Spent maybe an hour on it, never finished day 1, and I got stuck trying to figure out how to either get my coat or get into the dockyard because I wouldn't really explore around and talk to other characters because "I'm supposed to talk to this Claire guy, he's in the dockyard, and thats the story, that's the game". Then I dropped it for over a year as it stewed in my head. Then last year, after seeing most of my online friends talk about it I got curious again and spent the next week playing through it. I'm not saying this in a "You have to like it, you just don't know it yet" way. No one has to like everything, and you certainly don't have to like stuff that doesn't vibe with you. That said, you own it now, and it's not going away, and maybe, one day, you'll be in the mindset where it will resonate with you.
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Jun 26, 2023 16:59
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I mean there's not clicking and then there's actively disliking the tone of the game which sounds more like what's happening here IMO. And the dialogue never stops being the way that it is so if that's turning you off I wouldn't expect that to change.
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Jun 26, 2023 17:11
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General Battuta posted:Maybe try to get the lowdown on reality before you give up. This, but also since that doesn't mean much on the face of it, it's worth saying it's a part of the conversation with Joyce, the old lady on a boat on the northwest. You may also need to (very minor) come back after Kim goes to bed.
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Jun 26, 2023 17:29
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The reality lowdown only works you find the themes of the game are resonant to begin with so it can deepen the expression of what the story is aiming for. If not, i can't imagine it having impact. Anyway, i don't get what "it's too clever" means as criticism. Pretentious?
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Jun 26, 2023 17:34
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The first time I played I was wondering if the game was some kind of sly image board fash trolling while going through the docks stuff. Measurehead and Evrart still stick out to me as basically weird cartoons compared to everyone else in the game. I was kinda up-and-down on DE until after you get over the bridge. Everything from waiting for the car to emerge to the end of the game was aces.
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Jun 26, 2023 17:42
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I feel like the game puts a very abrasive first foot forwards: the two clearest objectives the game gives you leaving the cafe are the body and talking to Evart, and they point you right towards either a slur spewing child or two very different kinds of racists. In the long run it does feel like an intentional juke: it's putting up a tough face so it's eventual sincerity can be more convincing, but I can see why it could put people off. I will say you've not found anything of worth after 4 hours of playing I can't imagine it clicking after that. Even with the tough opener there's still a lot of great early interactions, which if they failed to land probably mean you'll not like the rest of the game.
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Jun 26, 2023 18:04
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yeah the first hour of the game is very abrasive between cuno/cunoesse, newsie, and measurehead. measurehead in particular spewing paragraphs of biotruths about semanese oranjese seolite etc was a whole lot to power through
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Jun 26, 2023 18:25
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I died turning on the light and was very frustrated that I had to go through all of character creation again. I also got stuck on Evrart's chair the first 3-4 times because I made it straight there in my first (subsequent) run and tunnel visioned on following that path rather than the more natural 'go and investigate the corpse'.
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Jun 26, 2023 18:36
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Having started a replay of Planescape recently, something that's stuck out to me is how generic fantasy a bunch of the side content actually is. A guy tells you that he's heard some spooky noises from the mausoleum so you go in and fight a necromancer. A lot of fetch and delivery quests. Go kill some gangsters, filler of that nature. Sometimes it gets used to inform you about the world, but I think much of it is just forgotten by players who consider Torment an immediately gripping mastercraft of storytelling. For me, Disco Elysium won me early on when I tried to run away from Garte and failed, causing Harry to try and flip the double birds while moving backwards and stumble on Lena's chair. I realized that the game contained pretty much my sense of humor and approach to thinking about the world. I guess one weakness of the game is that a player might not run into 'that' kind of moment early on for themselves, depending on the options they pick and whether they succeed or fail at skill checks at different points.
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Jun 26, 2023 19:44
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What sold me on Disco Elysium was when I got owned by Cuno so hard I lost the game
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Jun 26, 2023 20:19
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I think one important thing to remember is that if you don't vibe with the game's sense of humor, then huge stretches of it are going to be incredibly painful. It's hard to get to the points where the game reveals it's absolutely sincere if it's extremely grating to deal with most NPCs.
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Jun 26, 2023 20:23
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I think the opening really got me. The reptilian brain and everything dramatically describing what I could only assume was death or the dawn of existence turning out to be just waking up from the worst hangover of your life hooked me. The game hadn't even started yet! Was the opening always voiced before the Final Cut? I feel like maybe I missed out on something by not playing the game until the final cut.
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Jun 26, 2023 20:25
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panko posted:yeah the first hour of the game is very abrasive between cuno/cunoesse, newsie, and measurehead. measurehead in particular spewing paragraphs of biotruths about semanese oranjese seolite etc was a whole lot to power through I genuinely love how they use Cuno there, it's such a raw depiction of a neglected and abused child and the game dares you to sympathise with him as he's making fun of you, calling you a fag and generally being an awful little gobshite. Really no one else has come close to that game's writing
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Jun 26, 2023 20:31
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Malpais Legate posted:Was the opening always voiced before the Final Cut? I feel like maybe I missed out on something by not playing the game until the final cut. The opening was one of the parts that was always voiced, yeah. I'm also the one weirdo who never liked the reptilian brain voice, though I learned to get used to it, and now it's a part of the game's character for me.
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Jun 26, 2023 20:37
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panko posted:measurehead in particular spewing paragraphs of biotruths about semanese oranjese seolite etc was a whole lot to power through You're absolutely correct, and that's part of what makes Measurehead so loving funny. No matter how ridiculous and insane his statements may be, there is always more where that came from, and it is somehow always the craziest thing he's said yet
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Jun 26, 2023 20:39
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Wait, so do some people not just eat up the insanely funny fascist screeds in this game? Every time a fascist is talking in this game it's like the most absurd, well observed parody of that genre of thinking you've ever seen. When you see a dialogue option about globalist cabals of slime goblins living in the radio you don't have to pick it but it's hilarious that is a thought Harry could actually be having
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Jun 26, 2023 20:46
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I mean, the game does sometimes make you feel like you're in the middle of a Twitter fight/D&D posting screed where it's hard to tell who's serious and who's posting through layers of irony.
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Jun 26, 2023 21:09
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No Dignity posted:I genuinely love how they use Cuno there, it's such a raw depiction of a neglected and abused child and the game dares you to sympathise with him as he's making fun of you, calling you a fag and generally being an awful little gobshite. Really no one else has come close to that game's writing I love that if you do the classic CRPG thing of standing up to the NPC that is giving you sass then the game immediately punishes for you it because this is a child and you are a grown man, what is wrong with you? For all the meta absurdity and the entirety of the game being social commentary, it never ever lets you stop taking it seriously as you are playing.
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Jun 26, 2023 21:34
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cracking cuno across the jaw is the quickest way to establish a rapport with him
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Jun 26, 2023 21:37
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Oxxidation posted:cracking cuno across the jaw is the quickest way to establish a rapport with him I would never do something so unprofessional and immoral as striking a child, instead I built rapport with him by giving him speed
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Jun 26, 2023 21:43
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H13 posted:Okay. Yeah, option 1 is to say this isn't for me and walk away whistling. But if you want something d easy to do right now, there's a blue dumpster near that corpse you've been poking. Inside that dumpster is a clipboard. Investigate that clipboard until it gets a suuuuper pretentious name. If that doesn't get you involved, I don't think anything else is going to?
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Jun 26, 2023 22:08
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Fair Bear Maiden posted:The opening was one of the parts that was always voiced, yeah. I'm also the one weirdo who never liked the reptilian brain voice, though I learned to get used to it, and now it's a part of the game's character for me. Same!
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Jun 26, 2023 22:19
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Oxxidation posted:cracking cuno across the jaw is the quickest way to establish a rapport with him It's basically just a hard reset. You're troubleshooting
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Jun 26, 2023 22:26
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When does Evrart go to sleep? Is it possible to see Evrart without Kim by sending Kim to bed and sneaking back out to the harbor? I'm trying to work out if it's possible to conceal that your badge and gun are missing by getting them back before Kim notices. The badge part is easy, just don't ask Joyce for lynching info until you've grabbed the badge from the car on day 3. The gun part is harder because to get the gun back you have to talk to Evrart, and to hide it from Kim you have to talk to Evrart without Kim. By my count there are 4 ways to separate yourself from Kim for the rest of the day: have him drive the body to processing, have him drive Klaasje to jail, be racist toward him, or retire to your rooms at 9 pm. Having him drive down the body isn't possible here because you can't get the body down from the tree without shooting it down (reveals you have no gun) or talking to Evrart (same), but being racist toward him is bad, and arresting Klaasje requires you to go really deep into the game's plot, I'm not even sure if it's possible to do without getting info from Evrart or Joyce or the body.
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Jun 26, 2023 23:24
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I think once it's late enough to send Kim off, Evrart's already done for the day. It felt like that when I tried to do that, not sure if I approached it wrong.
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Jun 26, 2023 23:27
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You can get Kim to leave pretty much whenever, when you get a reason for him too. It's something to be avoided, normally, but you can go to Evrart without him for sure. He'll be mad at you though.
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Jun 26, 2023 23:39
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That makes sense, in that case I think the only way to conceal the lost gun might demand making an even bigger rear end out of yourself: do almost nothing productive for the first two days, day 3 set up the nightclub, abuse Kim without apology, and then while Kim is off being mad at you, grab the badge and run Evrart's chores to collect the gun that evening.
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Jun 26, 2023 23:39
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If you get the body down, Kim will take it to the morgue whenever you tell him to, no?
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Jun 26, 2023 23:48
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UP AND ADAM posted:If you get the body down, Kim will take it to the morgue whenever you tell him to, no? Getting the body down requires revealing to Kim that you lost your gun one way or another. Related: is it possible to get harry’s gun back before getting the body down and use it to shoot the rope instead of kim’s gun?
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Jun 27, 2023 00:00
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To give more detail... I have investigated the dumpster, done the clipboard stuff, vaguely started to get along with Cumo (sort of), talked to the old woman in the wheelchair, the bimbo who works in Frittte, Measurehead, found some secret passageway (that I can't open) in the Hotel, got a few things in my Thought Cabinet, managed to investigate the corpse after some effort, got my jacket, made Measurehead happy enough to let me into the docks, I was about to chat to the boss of the docks when I couldn't be hosed anymore...I think that was about it? It was around 8PM on Day 1 at that point. And ultimately, none of that feels like I've accomplished anything in the 4 hours I've been playing. I'm sure if I persisted, I'd find out where all these things are going, but...I also don't think I give a poo poo. None of those tasks are particularly engaging or thrilling. So far it's like a point and click adventure game dressed as an RPG. WHICH IS COOL 'cos I like those as well, but 4 hours into Monkey Island or The Dig would have resulted in some progress and achieving something interesting. It inspired me to replay Grim Fandango and 1 hour into that, I'd discovered an afterlife-spanning conspiracy, lost my job, potentially met the love of my...erm..."life" and met up with Glottis outside town. Legitimate, recognisable things were happening. Somebody mentioned the side-quests in Torment and how they were so generic. I mean yeah kinda, but the advantage of them being there is that if you ever got tired of having conversations with somebody, you could go stomp a necromancer for some giggles and to give you a feeling like you got something done. There was nothing in the 4 hours of play in Disco that made me feel like I had achieved anything. I did like the internal monologue that gave a lot of insight to dialogue choices (and other things). I liked how all the racists were psuedo-intellectual idiots. I liked that you can die in the first room. Again, I liked how clever it was. ...but the main guy (never found out his name) wasn't somebody I enjoyed playing. When he found out he had done something shite, he was either a mewling apologist, glib rear end in a top hat or unrepentant dick. Surely there's a middle-ground between those three somewhere? Then to find out he's one of the best cops in the world, none of those personalities really match up. Which I'm sure 20 hours later there'll be an explanation for. Compare to The Nameless One in Torment. Yeah he's got a past (a helluva past) but since you wake up on a slab, completely without knowledge or memory of your past, your character is much more of a blank slate AND you're in the same shoes as his (as in you don't know "your" past either) making it easier to relate to. Also, TNO has a loving fascinating backstory featuring genocide, betrayal, heartbreak, insanity, being legitimately loving hideously evil etc. 4 hours in, and all I've got from main guy is some hints that his wife\girlfriend left him, he was an amazing cop and abuses the gently caress out of substances. It's hard to write that sentence without being glib and I bet there's a lot more to his character that I'm yet to discover. ... But GOOD GOD this game needed an edit. It needs an awful big strong loving glass of "GET ON WITH IT" I can appreciate the depth of the content and that they poured literal hours of detailed, high-quality content and conversations into pretty much everything, but it's like an amazing guitar player who insists in having a 5 minute guitar solo in every loving song. After a while, it starts to wash over you and you stop giving a poo poo and you just want to get something done. Just because you can doesn't mean you should It's similar to why I bounced off Red Dead Redemption 2. Like holy poo poo, those animations of him getting on and off his horse are amazing! Do we need to wait every loving time for him to do that? I didn't feel like the game was respecting my time. Nor did I feel like I was having any impact on anything at all (which I bet is probably some nihilist point the game wants to make). After the 20th super amazing guitar solo of a conversation I didn't give a poo poo how amazing it was and just wanted to get something done Brevity is the soul of wit and loving hell this game has none.
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Jun 27, 2023 00:12
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you were about to talk to the dude who drat well might have masterminded the murder after navigating an ongoing strike blockade, and it feels like you haven't done anything? like, that's what a detective does, they talk to everybody and exhaust leads and stuff de gustibus non est disputandum but "there was too much good writing" is a reason I rarely see
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Jun 27, 2023 00:24
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H13 posted:Brevity is the soul of wit and loving hell this game has none. imagine ending a 750+ word post praising a 40+ hour game and complaining about a ~10 hour game with this and no self-reflection
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Jun 27, 2023 00:25
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It sounds like you accomplished quite a lot in those four hours, so I'm honestly... not sure what it is you're actually looking for, in terms of a sense of accomplishment? You literally are "getting on with it"? "Just get on with it already" was something I felt a lot while playing Torment, while I don't think there was ever a time where I didn't feel like I was making progress on something in Disco Elysium, so there's clearly a weird mental disconnect there and I'm not quite sure how to resolve it? You're clearly not alone, and even just with this game - I've talked to people who spent hours playing, say, Outer Wilds, and had the same problem "I've been playing for hours and haven't ACCOMPLISHED anything!" and I've been equally perplexed there. Also, your character here also doesn't know his past so I don't understand the comparison where you're in the same shoes in Torment but not here. Just... a very strange post. If its not clicking with you, its not clicking with you, so walking away may be for the best at this point, that's ok. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Jun 27, 2023 |
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Jun 27, 2023 00:33
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All Disco Elysium playthroughs are substantially improved by starting with at least 6 physique before you get out of the hotel room
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Jun 27, 2023 00:34
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| # ? May 30, 2024 00:37 |
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H13 posted:
you can wrap up disco elysium by the time it takes to comb through the drowned/dead nations in torment. I don’t think brevity is a good criterion of comparison and critique for either game tbqh
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Jun 27, 2023 00:37
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