Fangz posted:

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.

Songbearer posted:

Ho ho, hee hee, look @ this post implying someone wouldn't wear the Horrific Necktie the entire game, chortle

Beasteh posted:

God drat I just performed the field autopsy with Kim and managed to find the bullet

Getting told 'good work, detective' without a trace of irony was a great moment

Mystic Stylez posted:

1. In the beginning (I'm on the start of the second day) is it better to invest all points in skills or should I unlock a thought cabinet or two every once in a while?
2. Is there any way to imagine what a thought does besides trying to interpret the vague descriptions?
3. Why constantly my inventory icon turns orange as if there's something new inside it, but when I click on it everything is as before?

Yinlock posted:

nah it ultimately glorifies him at the very end

Lil Swamp Booger Baby posted:

You're looking at this too clinically. The Pale's primary purpose is thematic. Disco Elysium's world is a decaying one that is falling apart and diminishing as its inhabitants dwell in an idealized past even as they suffer and moulder because of that past. The Union and Wild Pines is ultimately the past repeating itself, hence the premonitions that the ultimate result will be the city getting blown to poo poo again as the "new Communards" head up against the "new Fascists."

It's a story that's about the recursive nature of things, both political and emotional. Harry is consumed by his past even as he has had all notions of it wiped clean, but he can't avoid it, it's coming back to him. It takes shape in gum wrappers, the smell of apricots, in phone numbers stored in his muscle memory and the consequences of his past deeds. Just like Harry, the world is consistently trying to forget but coming into constant conflict with the past.

The Pale is that past catching up with us, it's what was destroying what is. It's age old enmity making modern cooperation impossible, it's a several year dead relationship poisoning the mind of a man who tried his hardest to forget. It's that first drink you took on the path to alcoholism. It's when the Coalition came to wipe away the revolutionaries seemingly destined to happen all over again.

There are two people you meet who are wholly consumed by the past, the Paledriver, and the Communist at the end, both of them are a stark contrast to Harry who is essentially a newborn with a genetic, instinctual memory of some life before, but almost entirely, purely existing in a world of now. They are people who purely exist, and are incapable, of escaping from the past. The Communist's entire identity crumbles when the one thing keeping him anchored to the modern world, love, lust, and the neurological effects of the phasmid, is severed. As soon as those passionate, immediate feelings are taken away, he is nothing.

The plot is based around people avoiding or being subsumed by their past. The Pale is that concept manifest. In order for the world of Elysium to work, people need to fall apart in that strange void for the benefit of others, there is no world that isn't built on the suffering of the past, there is no ignoring that world and there is no progress if you just live in that world. Harry tried to ignore it AND obsess over it. He's the two methods brought to a head, combined, they cancelled out and created nothingness, a being of pure and utter now.

Hence the phasmid, hence a creature that only lives in the now, only capable of perceiving a now. No wonder Harry saw it, no wonder Harry was the miracle, he created a freak accident of self annihilation that allowed him to see the world as a several meter tall insect would. Instinctual, no past, no future, just now. Seeing things for what they are, context removed, only living with the face value of things, and what you feel in the moment. No one else saw the phasmid until that moment because no one else shared its view of the world. Kim saw it because he had you, learned from you, as insane as it was. You, a being of utter insanity, are the one who set up the dance club. Harry is nothing but now, all the time. Super hardcore.

Fangz posted:

Pillars starts by introducing you to a bunch of characters, kills all of them, then tell you to go investigate something else. Then you go into a town and get told about a zombie baby plague and literally dead bodies hanging from a tree... but none of that is said to be important to what you were supposed to be getting to do.

DE starts by having you talk to the key witness in the case and then introduces you to the most important NPC in the game who gives you a list of tasks. While there are sidequests, almost all of them tie back into the case and are justified in the processes of solving it. Also it's funny.

PoE has lots of writing, but it is badly written.

Ersatz posted:

Another question on mechanics: if you want to see all of the dialogue associated with a thought in your thought cabinet, is it necessary to internalize said thought?

I want to lean in to being Detective Costeau, Superstar. But I've spoiled myself on the advantages/disadvantages of the internalized thoughts, and they're just not worth it to me compared to putting the points elsewhere. Will I be missing out on associated dialogue if I fail to internalize?

Night10194 posted:

I'm gonna guess the necktie has the highest kill count of anything in Disco Elysium.

chaosapiant posted:

Man, is Dora's voice perfect for what vibe she is supposed to be capturing, or what? God drat.

chaosapiant posted:

Not just that, but nothing about it seemed rushed. You have a LONG conversation with the entities at the end and then the convo with your homeboys. It was really well written and very good.

Horizon Burning posted:

it surprises me that people couldn't figure out it was going to be poo poo with that trailer with the epic british girl XDD who does the epic fingerguns XDDD

The Saddest Rhino posted:

what actually are the faults of outer worlds? i haven't played it past getting parvati and then i got distracted by sending packages in NotIceland as budget Sigur Ros plays

Thoom posted:

The jogging around would have been a lot better with controller support. The need to spam click bothered me much more than the time it took. I hope they patch that into the PC version when they release on console.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Neat thread of posts by at least one of the devs:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=52246.0

Wheeee posted:

this shouldn't be lost to the final post of a page

Ixtlilton posted:

Just finished the game, dang.

One question for all of you though, having looked up the successful karaoke version after failing am I the only person who prefers the failed version? The way it's sung (even if it's offkey and comically bad at times) is way more fitting. Plus Kim liked it, genuinely.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

Alec Meer does some good writing about the game: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/11/29/disco-elysium-offers-a-dark-mirror-to-my-mid-life-crisis/

The Date of Birth Generator thought, as it was recalled in the comments, is masterful. "You are 44. You still have some hope" after considering how much poo poo you have recalled and dealt with at this point in the game felt like the most thing in the world

Megazver posted:

Infinite Karma posted:

The whole conspiracy and resolution are perfect in how frustrating it all turns out. The timing of the murder lit the fuse of a powderkeg of opportunists with agendas, with real loss for basically everyone involved. Everyone is sympathetic for one reason or another, everyone is trying to do right, but nobody trusts each other. Only Harry the human can-opener supercop is able to bring all the pieces (and people) together, but just as he's about to bridge those gaps and solve the case, the Mercs take matters into their own hands (which is very understandable with Raul being Ellis's brother on top of everything else). We know that everybody at the Tribunal is innocent, and the Krenel mercs would have seen the justice they wanted if they'd waited just a moment longer. But everyone had their reasons for acting the way they did... the conflict was inevitable.

And then you finally get to the island after it doesn't matter anymore, find the Deserter with an orgy of evidence, and a much sadder story than you'd have ever guessed at. You close the case, but it's too late and nobody actually cares that you had the right answer, except for Kim. If you wanted to be a hero and save everyone, too bad, you were a cop instead.

Xarbala posted:

I'd go full low-hanging-fruit mode and try to work in "Beyond the Pale" somewhere

DropsySufferer posted:

I snipped and copied Joyce's conversation about the world directly from the game this time. That wiki snippet I used earlier was only a small part a crappy copy of the text by hand.


Reading this again I now think the world of DE is actually the inside of a disco ball. Viewing the world from the inside --sideways...

Quantum Shart posted:

theblackw0lf posted:

Had a shivers of 1 for most of the game. Think I missed a lot

dead gay comedy forums posted:

this is the major tell that the person missed the point massively

Arrhythmia posted:

I've heard it's an amnesia story with communism.

Lightningproof posted:

Honestly finishing the game and then learning one of the Red Scare hosts apparently voices Klassje was a bit of a bummer for me, but luckily the game is hopeful and kind enough to transcend its dumber casting choices.