|
Finished the first playthrough almost a month ago, been lurking this thread ever since. 28 hours, give or take. Easily one of the best experiences I had with any media, not just games, in a long while. Didn't catch the Horrible Necktie - suicide attempt connection until reading about it here. It makes so much sense in hindsight, I'd be very surprised if it's not the case, as much as I'd prefer it not to be. Also, same as a few people here, the phasmid thing hit me like a motherfucker. I don't recall ever full-on crying from a videogame before, at least. Almost feels like the phasmid was the point of the game, really, and it's remarkable how smooth it felt, like it's completely out of left field, yet everything just seemed to fall into place and create this magical, uplifting moment. Some great analysis here on what it means exactly and why it hits as it does, reading all the great takes probably amplified the whole experience for me, thx! Also, as a eastern european, I don't think people who are not eastern european realise just how eastern european this game is. It's off the charts. By far the most eastern european media I've encountered in a good while, in a very subtle way.
|
#
¿
Jan 30, 2020 15:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 16:05 |
|
|
Re Klaasje, I let her go on my first playthrough and after thinking about it I regret it. It can be argued that her presence in Whirling-in-Rags and more importantly her actions on the night when the merc captain was killed was one of the main causes for the Tribunal. She essentially orchestrated the fake lynching, which was one of the reasons for the tribunal happening in the first place, and for the deaths of at least 3 innocent people. She could've bailed, and there were other options, but she chose to do what she did. All the effects this development had on the Wild Pines-Union struggle notwithstanding, the fact that she so effortlessly manipulated 8 people into getting into a very dangerous situation (which she could have easily predicted knowing the merc leader as close as she did), and the fact that doing this was her first decision makes me think that she does not have much regard for people around her and close to her, their livelihoods and their safety. She knew what she's getting them into, and she was fine with it (apart from some performative I'm Sad poo poo). She was also fine with throwing Ruby under the bus, a person who she knew had feelings for her, and what's worse, she was a-ok using these feelings to push Ruby into following through with this whole mess of a plan. I think this warrants stopping her from doing more harm in the future. nurmie fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Mar 2, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2020 21:20
|
|
|
It honestly is interesting to read all the different takes re Klaasje. I still stand by arresting her being the right desicion though. While she did not cause the deaths directly and the option to arrest her appears before the main fallout happens (the Tribunal that is), she basically willlingly (or because she panicked, which honestly is stretching the definition of "panic" quite a bit) created a narrative that put three heavily armed and now uncontrollable monsters on a collision course with a bunch of completely unprepared and unsuspecting working-class people. I don't think this is too "moralist" or "cop-brain" to do the only thing in PC's power to stop her from causing more harm. I just feel horrible for Ruby though, and I'm super glad that I managed to stop from suiciding in my playthrough. There's a really cool thing that DE manages to pull off though, which I don't think I've experienced in games before. The way other characters sometimes manage to completely blindside not just the PC, but the player as well. In my playthrough I was quite successfully manipulated by Klaasje, sure, but Evrart's shenanigans completely blindsided me. I thought I was so smart playing Evrart and the Wild Pines exec, feeding them both info about each other, only to realise I'm basically doing what Evrart was nudging me towards. This sense of "You bastard!" I don't think I've ever felt towards a video game character before, and it's really cool that they managed to write it in a way that feels so true for both pc and me the player
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2020 03:50
|
|
|
NotNut posted:electrochemistry is a weird skill in how it ties together pleasure from drugs and sex. I'm the ultimate counter-example because I'm insanely horny and love cumming but I've never found any drug I like. even really mild stuff like caffeine doesn't sit well with me I think the effects of Electrochemistry would be different to every person. It's more of a "let your desire for the basest pleasures take the wheel yeeee" rather than any specific thing. It's just Harry's desires literally every basest pleasure that is known to exist.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2020 08:40
|
|
|
re end game, There are hints scattered throughout the game that indicate the presence of some unknown actor, the footprints in the old pinball repair shop being the most obvious, also white flower petals on the roof, the cigarette butts, some inconsistencies in the description of events around the killing, etc. Plus the references to the historical events of the revolution that set the tone for it. However I don't recall there being a direct indication of who exactly the killer is. I don't think he is known to any characters to be honest, besides brothers Claire that is. However, I just finished a second playthrough a few days ago, and there are a few times where Inland Empire and Shivers explicidly and gleefully spoil the whole thing, but in a way that is completely inpenetrable on the first playthrough. There's the whole "love did me in but communism pulled the trigger" dead body talk which has been mentioned quite a lot, but I remember there being at least 3 or 4 other moments (can't remember the exact circumstances though) where I just lold at the audacity of the writers. Also, with the right skills, monseur Costeau will latch onto the inconstistencies and odd bits like petals and cigarette butts and will bring them up all the time like a maniac while being completely on point about it being important somehow
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2020 20:26
|
|
|
Digital Osmosis posted:Hey so I'm on my second serious play-through and I just realized I have no loving idea who called the cops. Volition seems to seriously imply that Drama is wrong when he believes Klaasje when she claims she called you guys. It really would make sense for her character, but that weirds me out. Is there a definite answer to this in the game? If I recall correctly after 2 playthroughs, I'm almost 100% certain it was indeed Klaasje. I think Volition is overreacting due to the whole Klaasje-successfully-defeating-all-your-skills-with-spy-training-and-weaponising-horny thing, and really hates her because of that. She explains the reason why the phone in the hostel is not working anymore as well (I don't remember if you can connect that to the call before her mentioning the nail clipper trick).
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2020 05:41
|
|
|
Digital Osmosis posted:Speaking of music - I've been meaning to give British Sea Power a listen after playing this an absurd amount but I'm not sure where to start. Anyone know them well and have a good album or two to jump into? I listened to a few random tracks I liked and of course "The Smallest Church in Sussex" but nothing grabbed me enough to stick it out long enough to get to know a whole album. From what I heard of their stuff, "Man of Aran" is probably one of the closest they have to the general vibe of DE soundtrack (Tiger King from it is even the basis for the dream theme ingame). It's mostly instrumental and pretty chill. "Let the Dancers Inherit the Party" is the newest album and probably the most "accessible", and also very good and a highlight (and again, quite a few bits and pieces from it ended up on the soundtrack). "From the Sea to the Land Beyond" is pretty good as well. Their debut, "The Decline of British Sea Power", is worth checking out as well for the punkier, harsher-sounding version of BSP.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2020 04:39
|
|
|
Brosnan posted:
IIRC Harry can dodge the first bullet if his skills are sufficient enough for that, even without armor. This happened on both of my playthroughs (one wearing armor, one not) so i've never seen what happens if Harry does get shot 2 times lol Also (again IIRC) there is an interesting detail in that the damage from the bullet that takes Harry down is a fair bit more severe if you try to actually dodge it (via the impossible skill check) rather than face your fate. e: World War Mammories posted:what interaction is that? she'll tell you she's an ultra (and the player is obligated to choose "Dios mio! A LIBERAL!"), plus the chats about the pale. what else is there? !!!Joyce spoiler alert, obviously!!! I assume they refer to the fact that Joyce is super high up in the Wild Pines hierarchy, as in one of the actual directors of the company, and she has the power to make a lot of calls on what the company will do in regards to the whole port strike situation nurmie fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Jun 17, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2020 17:43
|
|
|
IIRC there's a gradient of density that applies to the pale. There are mentions somewhere in the texts that there are essentially a boundary of no return within the pale where reality and time collapse completely and there is no going back, but there's also stuff like (again IIRC) Great Western Plains, where the pale is accessible by land and is not too "dense", if that makes sense. There are also mentions of motorways and roads that go through the pale, but I'm not sure if I'm remembering that correctly and if it's literally the case and not an expression or a metaphor or something. I was also under the impression that the world of Disco Elysium is not a sphere, at least not anymore. I believe Joyce all but confirms this. In any case, pale is one of the coolest parts of the setting for me and I hope that it never gets explained and remains mysterious, spooky and metaphorical forever
|
|
#
¿
Jun 18, 2020 22:26
|
|
|
Paladin posted:Actually there is both regular shivers and ALL CAPS shivers, and it's only the all caps that is La Revacholiere. Yeah I assumed that Shivers is like an antenna of sorts through which LA REVACHOLIERE sometimes speaks, when she's in the mood.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2020 21:56
|
|
|
Twobirds posted:PoE2 is fun, but the full voice acting grated on me eventually. I just like to read, I guess. To me, this stood out out of all of the things DE did extremely right. They gave a voice to each (I believe?) character, making it possible to read all the text with those voices in your head, while also saving time and budget not recording a million words and allowing for reading huge amounts of text in your own pace. Ghost Leviathan posted:Inland Empire also seems to be a little beyond what Harry 'should' know, with the name seeming to imply it's not just his imagination but some knowledge of genre convention. Almost the point of leaning up against the fourth wall. The coolest part about Inland Empire is that it allows for both supranatural and mundane reading, in a way. To me, it felt more like Harry's (extremely fine-tuned) intuition working in tandem with his (extremely strong) imagination. Like he can pick up on a lot of things going on around him, eg. working-class woman probably worrying about something but trying not to show it, or all the small inconsitencies and weird bits about the hanged man situation, but it's not a conscious thing and the signals get filtered through layers of his hungover, fried, sad and damaged brain, with end result being very Lynchian. nurmie fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jun 30, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2020 19:57
|
|
|
UP AND ADAM posted:The visual/sound presentation was really an A+ for me. The only gripe I had with sound was that dialogue was obviously recorded in several different rooms, with some of it (Cuno's, for example) sounding like the room wasn't all that well treated for reverb/noise. Given the budget, etc. it's not a big deal really though Shinjobi posted:I wish there was a way to save the man who tripped and died on the boardwalk. Something about the timing of when I found the body--essentially right after the tribunal--just really made it hit all the harder for me. Here's a dead body. It's been dead. Foul play? Probably not. Dude just died. An accident. It loving sucks. This was one of the top moments of the game for me. I still remember the horror when I realised who the dead man is related to about 5 seconds before knocking on the door. I don't think I even got it out of the working-class lady that her husband's missing, so that whole encounter was just comedic cockatoo-related shenanigans for me up until that point
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2020 23:15
|
|
|
Some people don't seem to get that something can be *both* funny/ironic/cynical AND sincere and raw at the same time. It's interesting that these people can somehow become Vice writers, writing media analysis articles no less. Also, there's a bit in there where the author somewhat dismissevly calls the church kids' music-related activities "hobbies". Maybe I'm wrong here but that's not how it seemed to me. I read that whole arc as a very poigant commentary on the topic of "following one's dream" (this theme crops up all over the place) - and it felt precisely like the kind of sincerity the author of the article was looking for and doesn't seem to notice for some reason. nurmie fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Sep 3, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Sep 3, 2020 00:04
|
|
|
Kaysette posted:y'all are so good at thinking about this game and i appreciate you  To add to the emptyquote - in all honesty, this thread is probably *the* best place online for in-depth DE discussion and insigths, imo. The effortposts and takes posted here are consistenly amazing and on-point, at least in my humble opinion - so thank you posters 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2020 04:21
|
|
|
I've recently read an interview with one of the translators for the Russian localisation, and they've mentioned a thing about the pale that sort of made me alter my perspective of it, that's kind of interesting (I'll put it under the spoiler just in case - it's not really plot-related, but can kinda spoil what the pale stands for to those who haven't finished the game) Essentially, in the Russian version the ZA/UM-mandated word for "the pale" will be "Серость" - literally meaning "the gray", but it has A LOT of connotations in Russian. Apparently it comes directly from Robert Kurvitz, and he used a very similar Estonian word for the pale in his original novel. In Russian, it's usually used to mean something along the lines of "soul-crushing, depressing routine", or "something unimaginative, boring, mind-numbing", or, when used to describe a person, "somebody who is aggressively, proudly, purposefully boring and dull". It's essentially the opposite of "creativity" or "creation". I think it neatly expands what the pale stands for - it's not just the suffocating weight of the past creeping onto the present, it's also the suffocating weight of *the present* bearing down on the very human impulse to create, to realize and to connect - and which can be fought by indulging in these impulses, against all odds. At least that's how it reads to me now. Hence the importance of the church quest line.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 6, 2020 01:41
|
|
|
Khizan posted:Yeah. Yeah, this works even better! Also goes better with why churches were originally used to contain the pale - churches generally being places where strong emotions often happen and are experienced in unison
|
|
#
¿
Sep 6, 2020 04:47
|
|
|
Ciaphas posted:Lord knows. That must have been an incredible bender - alcohol's a no-go zone for me so I don't have the measure The bender was truly galactic by any measure, especially considering that it was mostly solo. It's surprisingly authentic and true to how it can go irl as well (maybe just a tad embellished and exaggerated), as far as suicidal blackout-drunk all-drugs-at-the-same-time benders go.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2020 12:56
|
|
i overapologize enough irl tho damnit, fuckin game callin me out
|
Fister Roboto posted:The fake lynching was Evrart's idea, because he does indeed want a war. Eh, I'm not too sold on that, personally. I don't think the pieces line up, really - Evrart didn't know about Klaasje's past, I'm pretty sure, and the logistics of the situation wouldn't allow him to plan it all that well, or react to it in any reasonable way, imo. He definitely used the situation to his own end though - further escalating the feud and pushing the conflict to become violent. Also, I don't think it would work all that well thematically speaking - if Evrart arranged the murder of the merc, that really takes the agency and the character depth away from the Deserter. The whole story works much better if the Deserder killed the merc on his own volition, at least that's what seems to me. Furthermore, Klaasje's strength as a character suffers as well - plus, there are several witness statements that corroborate each other pointing towards Klaasje being the sole source of the lynching plan, *and* that makes much more sense narratively speaking.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2020 03:08
|
|
|
necrobobsledder posted:The way Harry handles him significantly better than "normal" kids gave me an impression Harry was more aligned with him than most people although we don't ever talk about HDB's childhood in the game (which was a good idea I'd say). The Fifteenth Indotribe kind of clearly states that Harry's childhood was fairly similar to that of Cuno - he was somewhat of a street urchin. Plus, he worked as a gym teacher for a time - iirc it was in a school environment, hence why he can both be good with handling Cuno and show some neat feats of athleticism Fister Roboto posted:I was under the impression that the merc gets shot, then Klaasje comes to the Hardies for help, then Ruby calls Evrart and he comes up with the plan. I"m pretty sure Ruby directly states that Klaasje organized the whole thing, including hanging the merc in the bathtub beforehand (as mentioned in the previous posts). I didn't get the impression that she's lying, and she never once mentioned speaking to Evrart, I'm pretty sure - at least on the night of the hanging. I assume Evrart found out pretty quickly anyway, but I don't think he had any hand in causing this specific situation to happen the way it did - it was an interplay of passions and bad decisions completely unrelated to the surrounding political conflict (though the conflict provided the reason for everyone being there), which is very Noir and very *Disco*, I'd say
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2020 22:00
|
|
|
overeager overeater posted:idea: use the TF2 voices in 15.ai to voice the skills until the Final Cut is out (sound on) holy poo poo lmfao the soldier physical instrument is just perfect in every way
|
|
#
¿
Jan 11, 2021 15:58
|
|
|
yeah I'd advise to go into Pathologic 2 as blind as possible. Not Knowing Things and figuring poo poo out while under tremendous time pressure is a core element of the narrative, and it can be much more satisfying when you actually do figure something out and make a right choice based on tiny scraps of info the game gives you. *Not* figuring something out and getting into trouble or plain wasting time is part of the narrative as well and should be expected  It's interesting really how DE and P2 can feel almost like, I don't know, a double feature or something? They are nothing alike in gameplay, really, but the crossover in themes, topics, atmosphere and the general vibe is definitely there. Almost like a dialogue. Also, one of lead writers of P2 is currently working on translating DE into Russian, which is cool
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2021 01:10
|
|
|
lets hang out posted:you're why they had to change the name my brain might be broken by the internet but honestly it's kind of hard not to misread the old title as being about furries lol plus "disco elysium" is a better name imo even without the furry connection
|
|
#
¿
Mar 27, 2021 17:00
|
|
|
Imhotep posted:The game is pretty good about letting you get out of a conversation and pick up where you were. There's a few bits with much longer monologues, etc. but you'll probably know when they're coming up. Interesting that descriptions of these mention at least two skills—Volta do Mar and Behaviourism—that don't appear in Mr. Du Bois's skill set. I assume the extended rule set of their roleplay system (can't remember the name for it) has more skills than the 24 that are in the game, and I also assume that you're limited to a certain amount of them when building a character or something. At least that would be cool.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2021 15:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 16:05 |
|
|
Vagabong posted:16 GB is a lot, I am excited. most if it is voice acting, probably
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2021 18:21
|
|