Disco Elysium - What kind of cop are you? - OFFICIAL SA Game of the Year

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Disco Elysium - What kind of cop are you? - OFFICIAL SA Game of the Year

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

SlightlyMad posted:

Avatar + Post combo

It's hard to keep calm and wait for what looks like the second coming of RNGesus, but maybe, just maybe the game will be worth the wait and as good as the developers say. If it turns out not fun to play for some reason, I will still complete it to see where it goes with all that dialogue they have written. But those devblog entries, ooff. I like the writing. It goes places.

In the game's discord the devs have answered such questions as: Rustin Cohle (True Detective) type of cop is a plausible option and even more so a Zizek cop. Not that those have served as direct influences, just something someone asked.

actually, I think �i�ek was a direct inspiration. I've definitely read a quote from I think one of the writers were they definitely mentioned Hegel and Zizek. It's pretty fuckin' rad to see a game with some actually interesting inspirations.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2019 14:46

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 23:09

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

CottonWolf posted:

It's certainly an answer to the question "What kind of cop are you?"

'The only good kind'

# ¿ Oct 7, 2019 16:19

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

JamMasterJim posted:

That would be the bare chested cop with points only on physique.

was angling for 'the only good cop is a dead one', but yours's pretty good too

# ¿ Oct 8, 2019 12:35

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

theblackw0lf posted:

I honestly think Disco Elysium is one of those games that in a few years we will look back and realize it had a profound influence on the evolution of RPGs. Like a System Shock or Ultima Underworld before it. Games that weren't necessarily blockbusters sales wise, but developers played, went "holy poo poo" and embraced the innovative gameplay ideas.

I'm sure Obsidian is playing this right now thinking "holy poo poo why didn't we think of some of this stuff, and how can we incorporate it into our next game"?

i'm not so sure. the depiction of the protagonist and its implication on the gameplay are unique and very impressive, but they're also very difficult and time intensive to write. this was a labour of love that took 5 years to write, obsidian might take some hints from Disco Elysium, but i'm not sure if they'll ever be in the position to properly take these lessons to heart. we might never see something quite like this again

# ¿ Oct 18, 2019 00:50

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

The Bramble posted:

Related to the autopsy, can someone give me a hint that isn't too explicit or spoilery about finding the fridge. I feel like I've talked to everyone who makes sense, and the journal is telling me to talk to a person who doesn't have anything new to say about it.

it might be time for a bookshop curtain call and don't forget your flashlight

# ¿ Oct 18, 2019 14:47

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

http://nl.riotpixels.com/games/disco-elysium/artworks/page-1/
while googling for a way to make van eyck's the hardest core i stumbled upon this site with a lot of official (concept) art including beautiful hi-res versions of the skills' portraits and some -seemingly- cut content. seems like you could've used esprit de corps to actually see what your colleagues are doing instead of just feeling it.

also, where exactly is thast mysterious perfect bass-heavy tape? i felt something about a tape stuck in a tree, but have had no luck finding it so far.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2019 00:24

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Schurik posted:

Just finished this, and I'm now in the bad place where everything else I play will feel comparatively bad for a while. This was loving amazing, even the pseudo-spoiler I accidentally stumbled over early on couldn't ruin this.
As with all first playthroughs of RPGs, I played myself, or at least the way I see myself (Sorry Empathy Cop, big surprise), and the way Empathy, Drama, and Suggestion talked to me was startlingly *real* a couple of times, in a way that almost freaked me out a bit, in a paranoid sense.

Massive endgame spoilers: The whole Dora/Dolores confrontation just loving wrecked me. It's far from a unique experience, but the way it's written, how it mingles the specifics of Harry's story with universal truths about being a sorry gently caress, combined with the fact that you're playing it, was almost a bit much in how it nailed the exact specifics of my feelings regarding my version of the situation. There were a lot of skill checks I mulled over for quite a while, thinking about whether I should even attempt them, but the Kiss Her check was the worst. In the end I did it, hoping to fail, because I knew what was going to happen, I succeeded, and it was horrible. I'm getting choked up just thinking about it.

I've played a lot of great games this year, but none have made me feel anything even remotely comparable to that, and it needed to be a game for that effect. Even without that specific example though, this is a loving masterpiece that lives up to every bit of hype surrounding it. Its flaws pale in comparison to the monumental accomplishment the whole package is, especially compared to anything else on the market today. Now to let some time pass and forget some specifics, and roll through the game as a **SUPERSTAR**

I just finished my second playthrough and actually decided to sleep in the bunker this time so in finally got the Dolores dream. Unfortunately I forgot to actually press the 'kiss her' option, and now i think i missed a real important part. any chance you remember what i missed

# ¿ Oct 25, 2019 03:21

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Jose posted:

What was everyone's first game over? Mine was in the bookstore and tried to shout up the chimney and failed the 83% chance roll, lost 1 morale and had the game end

first check in the game. woke up, tried to grab the tie from the fan, failed and got a heart attack. dead.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2019 13:25

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Fangz posted:

Er, so what's the theory?

iirc, it's that actually Kim's the human can opener in El Puta Madre's pocket and that that's the reason he's so ok with you just taking bribes and doing drugs left and right. i'm not sure i agree, he's definitely not happy when you do those things and he's never really that can opener-y. i still think that authority eyebrow's just a pretty good joke, but it might really be more than it seems.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2019 19:26

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

decided it was finally time for an av after like 7 years so figured this gangtag was as good a reason as any. it's not much of a tribute to this brilliant work, but it's probably the best i can do for now.
the expression will guide my posting pbui (peace be upon it)

# ¿ Nov 6, 2019 03:48

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Reveilled posted:

I have a vague idea forming in my head that I can't quite piece together, probably because I haven't actually seen all this stuff directly in my playthrough and have taken some of it from others' writeups. Ending spoilers So it's implied by the ending that maybe the chief of Precinct 41 is about to participate in an uprising against the Coalition. It's also apparently the case that Evart's big plan for the docks is to touch off a war. Also, we discover that the RCM itself has communard origins. So, can we assume that Chief Pryce and Evart are working together? Is this the real reason nobody polices Martinaise, not because nobody wants to, but because unofficially the RCM recognises the union's right to police their backyard?

Early on Kim considers the notion that the outcome of this case could determine who polices Martinaise, but his explanation of that seems...confused. Like he suggests first that neither side wants to take responsibility, so they'd assign their worst cops to it, and he volunteered because he considered that bullshit. And when Harry suggests he got assigned for the same reason (he's a poo poo cop), Kim pipes up that no, actually, both sides want a win. Which...I dunno, just doesn't fit for me with what he'd just said about assigning bad cops and neither side wanting the responsibility. I assumed that was him just wanting to cheer up Harry (and maybe it was), but we do then find out that Harry is the 41st's best cop.

But...what if...what if Harry was sent to actually botch the investigation, touch off the war? Either because he got orders not to do anything, or because his boss knew he was too broken to function. I don't know, maybe that doesn't make much sense, but I feel like there's some more significant connection between Pryce, The Union, The war and the murder that's not really easy to spot. Maybe not what I just suggested, but something.

that's not really how i interpreted it. throughout the game there's a lot of hints -mostly from shivers and inland empire- that the status quo in Revachol is completely unsustainable. the entire city is holding its breath and they're waiting for the right moment to strike. weapons caches left by the communards are just now being rediscovered, bringing a lot of firearms into wide circulation. the police is barely able to keep order as is and the moralists might not be as strong and sustainable as everyone thought. evrart's holding a lot of leverage and you just know white pines is just not going to let that happen. i don't think harry is some kind of pawn in a game played by higher forces, i think he's simply an agent of change, in the right place, in the right time. he might know more than he's letting on -not every gumshoe's an expert on the pale and in charge of a whole special taskforce- and there's a very real chance he might be the last best hope of revachol, but i don't think it's as complicated as what you're suggesting. occam's razor, and all that

# ¿ Nov 10, 2019 22:43

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

https://twitter.com/lamppostlikka/status/1196778574386216963?s=20

# ¿ Nov 19, 2019 15:17

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

tripwood posted:

Hah, nice. From the devs:

So we, the player, are using FELD to view the game. Nice touch.

ZA/UM in i dunno when posted:

FORTRESS OCCIDENT announce NO TRUCE WITH THE FURIES, a story-driven role playing game about being a total failure. An almost irreversible, unmitigated failure. Both as a human being and an officer of the law.

huh, it's not exactly unexpected, but it's still pretty funny that they named the failed studio developing an incredibly ambitious RPG after themselves, a hopefully successful studio developing an incredibly ambitious. can't say it's not ironic...

# ¿ Nov 23, 2019 00:42

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Perhaps a hamster posted:

Lol, I didn't read that as a street gang at all, that's just growing up Eastern Europe style.

kinda like the kids in season 4 of the wire. no opportunities, no real education and the only 'easy' way out was joining the drug trade.

oscarthewilde fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Dec 1, 2019

# ¿ Dec 1, 2019 19:37

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Skellybones posted:

Dolores Dei was definitely some kind of jacked up Pale wizard. Even throwing away the stuff like glowing lungs and forgetting to breathe, the history doesn't lie. She went from random spouse of a minor noble to having her queen crown her through sheer ???. She independently invented the actual concept of interisolary travel, somehow knowing how to do it and which direction to throw the explorers in without any reason or means.

Shivers identifies itself as a part of the World Spirit. Dolores Dei started her crusade with the intent of unifying humanity into the World Spirit. Folks, Dolores Dei is what happens if you supercharge Inland Empire, Esprit de Corps and Shivers and they give you insight and camaraderie with the entire planet at once. Oh and enough Rhetoric to make a queen abdicate to you.

i'm not sure if i agree with your conception of the world spirit. i interpret it as them just using the hegelian concept of the world spirit with dolores dei as a napoleon^2. she's not just the world spirit riding a horse -a true force of progress that advances society towards the end of history-, but, as the world spirit has physical as well as ideal attributes in the world of DE, as history turned into a person. she obviously has some special powers, but those help to guide humanity along the right path. she is napoleon riding his horse through jena, but also the historical forces that led to napoleon defeating the prussians and completing a necessary step in the realisation of Geist

# ¿ Dec 11, 2019 20:30

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

SimonChris posted:

According to Joyce, the entire insulindian isola formed spontaneously from the Pale around the original explorers, a completely pristine new world, devoid people. All the other isolas were discovered with people already living there, but Insulinde was completely new and empty.

It is from this miraculous event that we get the quote associated with Dolores Dei: �After life, death -- after death, life again. After the world, the pale -- after the pale the world again.� Once the pale has swallowed the current world, it is expected to birth a new one, just like it made Insulinde.

I think the Semenese are supposed to be the descendants of the original explorers, and the Dolorian settlers arrived later.

that's the dialectic for ya

# ¿ Dec 16, 2019 23:48

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Epic High Five posted:

I can understand any critique of the game made, however wrong it may be, except for the people who say it's hopeless and nihilistic

i mean it is hopeless, in that the particular kind of hope that DE presents is not the 'hope' that's enshrined in today's ordoliberal capitalistic democracy. it's not obama's HOPE, it's not 'adjusting the tax rate by two percent and using the proceeds to entice private insurers to insure people with a pre-existing condition', it's not 'spending billions in a stimulus package while constantly cracking down welfare and aid for the poor. that's the kind of hope that sustains a system and sustains its hegemony. no, DE offers a radical -though perhaps not radically new- hope, by showing the power of individuals as a collective -titus and the gang, the union, but also, in more negative sense the mercenaries, the most directly 'powerful' group in the game- as well as the individual over the self. the current obviously injust system is not invulnerable nor as hegemonic as it seems, within the collective lies the power, and seemingly more and more the will, to radically change and improve its lot and decide their own destiny. the revolution might not be a communist revolution -the communists are all dead and buried after all-, but revachol is clearly a powder keg eagerly waiting for a spark. a better future is possible, but not by ruling the world as a numbers fuckstein, no, the real power lies in the hand of the people and that's making liberals and moralists quiver with fear

# ¿ Dec 29, 2019 01:18

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

ChrisBTY posted:

I did the Church stuff. Did I miss something other than 'there is a hole in the universe on this very spot and it could expand and devour us at any moment' And yes I have now beaten it.

Yeah I guess I didn't phrase that very well.

i wrote this semi-effort post a while back. in broad strokes i agree that hope is very rare and difficult in DE, but, despite the hegemonic and complete capitalist oppression that's colonised every part of revachol and DE, hope still exists.

oscarthewilde posted:

i mean it is hopeless, in that the particular kind of hope that DE presents is not the 'hope' that's enshrined in today's ordoliberal capitalistic democracy. it's not obama's HOPE, it's not 'adjusting the tax rate by two percent and using the proceeds to entice private insurers to insure people with a pre-existing condition', it's not 'spending billions in a stimulus package while constantly cracking down welfare and aid for the poor. that's the kind of hope that sustains a system and sustains its hegemony. no, DE offers a radical -though perhaps not radically new- hope, by showing the power of individuals as a collective -titus and the gang, the union, but also, in more negative sense the mercenaries, the most directly 'powerful' group in the game- as well as the individual over the self. the current obviously injust system is not invulnerable nor as hegemonic as it seems, within the collective lies the power, and seemingly more and more the will, to radically change and improve its lot and decide their own destiny. the revolution might not be a communist revolution -the communists are all dead and buried after all-, but revachol is clearly a powder keg eagerly waiting for a spark. a better future is possible, but not by ruling the world as a
merito/technocratic numbers fuckstein, no, the real power lies in the hand of the people and that's making liberals and moralists quiver with fear

# ¿ Feb 10, 2020 19:02

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

ZearothK posted:

No Truce With the Furies Grand Strategy Game when?

the abstract concepts of political power and popular support constantly bugging you to improve your nation, declare war and oppress foreign pops.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2020 15:46

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

but the writing's very intellectual so it has to be pretentious

# ¿ May 4, 2020 17:43

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Desdinova posted:

To the guy who posted about the only thing that fights back the Pale was Art, was this mentioned in the game?

My art stat wasn't that high but didn't read about anything fighting it off, more like other people posted - that it's constantly entropying away the planet/universe.

i'm might be reading too much into this, chances are i'm just trying to a find a decent use for my philosophy degree, but i didn't read art as being the only thing to fight back the pale. much of the church club storyline is about the subconcious and essentially unknown conflict between man and the pale. the first human settlers bring the pale with them, react to the pale by building the 5 (?) churches and somehow manage to fight or slow down the pale. the pale is a destructive and hostile force, but still connected in some (meta)physical way to humanity and human action. by building the churches, realising themselves in the world and realising the literally divine Weltgeist in the form of Dolores Dei (echoes to Hegel's description of Napoleon as "The world soul on horseback"), human production can somehow halt the inevitable and necessary spread of the pale (an unknowable apeiron in which typical rules of form, knowability and multitude adhere to different kinds of rules).

art of course is one of the most 'real' means of realising onesself, but one must imagine the realisation of history, and other less concrete forms of realisation (the act of building a church, and of turning a religious symbol into its secular opposite), would also satisfy the ungraspable demand the pale seems to both fear and rely on. it is in the complex interpersonal relations, between creator and consumer, dealer and user, priest and parish, that the pale can be slowed, perhaps even stopped. that is why i believe DE to be a fundamentally optimistic text, in which the socio-economic material conditions seem to be unsurmountable, but in which a metapyhsical dialectical development is physically necessary. (the inevatable nuclear destruction of Revachol in 22 years then, is the Sein zum Tode through which La Revalochiere and all its/her inhabitants can realise themselves)

# ¿ Sep 6, 2020 00:44

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Imhotep posted:

I just looked through that text file and I guess Measurehead says that he�s �waiting on immaculate conception from the pale�. Its been a while since I played it and I don�t remember much of his dialogue aside from the phrenology stuff, but I would imagine his character would be religious.

Referencing the doctrine of immaculate conception is a rather interesting choice. The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary as the only example of man without original sin contrasted with conception through the inhuman and incomprehensible pale? Perhaps Measurehead�s imagined perfect human species can only be conceived and born in the most inhospitable and human place, or perhaps it was just a dumb joke and I�m reading too much into it.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2020 13:05

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Pattonesque posted:

So they looked at the fascist thought cabinet choice that literally hurt your morale every time you said something right wing and thought it was pro-fascism?

if i'm not mistaken it was some American leftist (austin walker maybe? i'm not sure but i remember his take being surprisingly dumb. could also have been patrick klepek, the trust fund kid whose leftist credentials are about as fake as astroturf) who hated it cause DE didn't present communism as perfect and without fault. even though DE is probably the most effective and meaningful left-wing game ever, that still wasn't enough. No, it had to present socialism as the completely right path, even though DE is meaningful precisely because it is filled with self-reflection and self-critique.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 16:30

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Arist posted:

They both recorded a podcast about how much they liked the game. This is the dumbest loving conversation.

Then it�s some other lib who loves cosplaying as a leftist. Walker has some decent credentials and is legit one of the most interesting and provocative people in games journalism,
(if a bit iffy when it comes to some left-wing philosophers) but as a whole games journos are stuck in this purely aesthetic and thin conception of leftism. It must�ve been one of them that thought DE had to portray communism as this perfect, unicorn and rainbow-filled utopia and ignored the much more meaningful and critical, and yes hopeful communism present in DE

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 23:10

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Games journos can�t handle DE keepin� it real

# ¿ Dec 9, 2020 23:13

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

the way i've always interpreted the innocents is that they essentially represent a Hegelian theory of history, but completely correct and real. he describes Napoleon entering Jena after demolishing the prussians in battle as seeing 'the World Soul on horseback'. he's using it as a metaphor but in DE's universe the Innocents actually are a physical and supernatural manifestation of history/the World Soul. They are more human than human, more historical than history itself and their very existence entails a complete change in the material condition of the world and the course of history as a whole. and its no wonder these completely inhuman perfect objects of desire have delved their way into the subconscious of our troubled protagonist and he has confused the perfect and impossible madonna Dolores Dei with his similarly perfect and impossible Ex

# ¿ Jan 20, 2021 01:25

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

i actually read Oranje more like a combination between the Netherlands and South Africa, of course an ex-Dutch colony. In terms of global position Oranje more closely resembles the Netherlands, as a powerful, Capitalist member of the Global North. But in terms of culture and geography, it's much more South Africa (but also the US, the global conflict the mercs were involved with resembles Vietnam as much as it resembles Rhodesia). Oranje is the nation of hardy mercenaries that police the globe by massacring the innocents. Even the description of Oranjese literature felt similar to what I imagine the Boer familial culture to be like. Fighting for your land, for your 'race' and finding dignity in defeat.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2021 23:25

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

Also, I vaguely remember reading a description of Oranje that mentioned savannahs and other decidedly not-Dutch landscapes. The city names are definitely Dutch tho, for some reason there's even a Stadskanaal, IRL one of the least interesting and noteworthy places in NL. Lelystad is also a real Dutch city and vaguely well-known, it's the capital of that huge, entirely reclaimed province in the middle of the country. Was nothing but sea until 1950, and now 80000 people live there

oscarthewilde fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jan 25, 2021

# ¿ Jan 25, 2021 23:27

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

UP AND ADAM posted:

Eh yeah I rewatched it and only Volition has any sort of emotional register in its voice. That's weird.

reaction speed is definitely a bit quicker, a bit more upbeat. it's subtle, maybe a bit too subtle, but it's there

# ¿ Mar 20, 2021 00:55

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

homework for everyone who seriously wants to consider the phenomenological/political themes before the final cut comes out: read mark fisher

# ¿ Mar 25, 2021 21:50

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 23:09

oscarthewilde: May 16, 2012; I would often go there
To the tiny church there

SexyBlindfold posted:

They mention Volta do Mar in the game, it's what allowed people to actually traverse the Pale without sailing off into oblivion (named after a real-life Portuguese navigation technique, basically do a broad swerve to catch the best winds back to Europe). Since it's listed in red it might be what Kim has instead of Shivers?

i don't think it's instead of. everyone probably has their own unique blend of skills that work in their own particular way.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 17:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Disco Elysium - What kind of cop are you? - OFFICIAL SA Game of the Year