All Cops Are Botchcops: Let's Play Disco Elysium

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > All Cops Are Botchcops: Let's Play Disco Elysium

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Awww yeah, time for some evil apes dukin' it out on a giant ball.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2019 20:13

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 03:19

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

fluffyDeathbringer posted:

do you talk to yourself as the mirror with all starting builds or just the inland empire one

Everyone faces the horror of The Expression.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2019 21:38

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The completely insane theory that you are some kind of superstar person, actually, is one of my favorite running jokes.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2019 20:01

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

There is basically no need to minmax in this game, though I sort of suggest not having a 1 in Phys or Psych because of Johnny Quickdeath over there. Anything you play is going to get up to some wild and fun stuff stats wise.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2019 14:27

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Potentially, but depending on what you choose to raise it can still be fun. It's probably the closest thing DE has to minmaxing, since your cap to raise skills (barring Thoughts and some other bonuses) is their initial value (+1 if your Signature skill is in that category). So someone with all 3s can get +3 skillpoints in any skill they want, and you get a fair number of skillpoints and skill bonuses.

In practice, like any other skill choice, it works out fine for the most part.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2019 15:14

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Gharbad the Weak posted:

So, I will cheat in a lot of games, usually because the power trip is fun and I'm tired. What the hell would happen in this game if you had max stats? Would they balance out, or would it just get even worse?

The voices in your head interject at goddamn everything all the time.

People say it's crazy but actually really fun in its own weird way.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2019 02:56

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think talking about his cool car (and the racing series he follows) is the first time you actually see Kim happy.

To be fair it is a very cool car.

# ¿ Dec 12, 2019 06:05

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Ibblebibble posted:

Yeah, finding out that that was the title screen was pretty fun. I still wonder what the "rear end in a top hat" line would make you do.

Also, I never thought of calling in the boots' serial number, dammit! Guess I'll do that when I'm at home.

I didn't even know the boots HAD a serial number!

# ¿ Dec 16, 2019 06:26

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I hope that is the end of Botchcop, he is making me very uncomfortable. He is a very bad cop.

I don't think I could play this game with low Empathy.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2019 19:34

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Empathy is not normally a crazy misogynist. Or at least, certainly wasn't in my 2-4-4-2 playthrough. Empathy was one of my buddies! Seeing Empathy be such a bastard kind of hurt.

# ¿ Dec 20, 2019 20:31

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I do appreciate that being an awful person in this game is actually so bad that most people can't even make themselves do it.

# ¿ Dec 21, 2019 14:23

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

One thing that I appreciate in DE is that plenty of the people you meet are actually pretty friendly or cool people. It isn't just a parade of jerks or something.

Also, Measurehead is incredible. I saw a making of thing where they said it took ages to get through recording his voicework because his VA couldn't get through his lines without laughing.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2019 21:01

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Sailing through the air like a glorious eagle on a pogo stick. Pantsless and free.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2019 19:56

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I am glad we did not start 2020 with Botchcop.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2020 19:55

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kim's genuine desire to be cool, and the fact that he succeeds at it completely, is one of the many reasons Kim is good.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2020 05:00

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

gently caress it, let's have all the cryptids.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2020 20:02

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Joyce is a really good character.

Also her conversation theme is really cool.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2020 07:39

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I found doing physical things and being fairly good at physical stats pretty funny, because the protagonist usually feels pretty physically fragile from all the substance abuse and exhaustion.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2020 14:20

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Also Raphael is recovering from a recent total annihilation of his sense of self which makes his responses to situations very odd, especially in the early days of the game.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2020 18:55

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Of course it would be Botchcop who believes he is actually some kind of superstar person.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2020 19:27

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

You don't take a 6 Phys and NOT spin kick Measurehead.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2020 04:03

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

anilEhilated posted:

IIRC going with the sensible move instead of spin kicking actually loses you the fight.

Electrochemistry is an irresponsible nutter, but it will accomplish its goal of getting you high as gently caress if you listen to it.

Half-Light is the actual dumbest skill, because if you listen to the terrified voice in your head you will usually just botch-cop harder than you knew it was possible to botch. Half-Light telling you NOT to 360 spin kick is precisely why it should never be given too much consideration.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2020 15:19

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

that last Authority check right there is one of my favorite ones in the game

hi, this is your ability to read power dynamics checking in: do not dare the woman who has made a total 180 in presentation, from helpful and quiet to openly hostile, to show you what she can do to you. in front of an audience, of very large, hostile men, who outnumber you. the best case scenario is you are merely humiliated.

Authority is significantly more useful for knowing when you shouldn't push your luck and picking out who's in charge than trying to assert yourself.

It's the irony of Authority: It wants to push people around but its best trait is telling you when to back down.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2020 22:21

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Synthbuttrange posted:

Failing that authority check is one of the most amazing sequences in the game and I cant wait til Botchcop gets there.

Botchcop will botch it by rolling double sixes and succeeding.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2020 06:25

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

In all worlds, in all realities, RPG players will be obsessed with elfs or the local elf equivalent.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2020 03:27

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

If the difficulty is like 16, then yes, it's quite possible. Your skills can get pretty high, especially with situational bonuses.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2020 15:06

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Botchcop botches everything he touches, it's not your fault.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2020 21:37

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Goddamn I love Lena and Morell.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2020 02:52

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Scaramouche posted:

It's funny, I'm so invested in our cop now I don't even want to see what Botchcop gets up to. It almost feels irrelevant.

(not a diss on the LP/Botchcop parts just more an expression of surprise that the game's writing could get me like that)

This is why I haven't replayed the game. I know there's a ton more stuff I could see, but what I got out of it feels right and I'm genuinely satisfied by it.

Even if I only played it once it's the best CRPG I've ever played, in part because I only feel like I needed to play it once.

# ¿ May 3, 2020 14:28

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Gettin' sober is very important for Harry.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2020 21:54

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Revachol's long history with cocaine explains an awful lot.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 16:27

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

DE doesn't have combat. Except the one time it does it's the most intense sequence in the entire game.

You kind of owe it to yourself to see it in motion some time. The thing they do where everything moves extremely quickly then slows to a crawl again when you're trying to think of what to do is fantastic. And yeah, the song is amazing.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2020 21:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Felinoid posted:

Cool as hell segment, but all I can think of is...if you had Lely's armor, would it save you from Korty's shot? Or is all that talk about the pelvis exploding and bleeding out meaning he shot you in the femoral artery, where maybe the armor wouldn't protect?

It'll save you from the rifle attack if you fail to dodge, though it still breaks one of Harry's ribs from the impact wound.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2020 00:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Supersonic Shine posted:

Jesus Christ. I can't imagine the kind of stress and disappointment that failing a favorable roll here would cause.

My Harry made a slightly-less-than-50-50 to shoot Korty in the face here and my heart didn't stop pounding for quite some time after.

Also shooting Korty is noticeably harder than burning him to death with your heroic, weird-rear end neck tie.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2020 18:18

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I thought of him as the representative of the game's critique of communism. Not communism as a concept (game is left as hell, obviously), communism as a 'cling to the exact Marxist-Leninist or (especially) Soviet ideas and don't examine if anything needs to change or there's any need of anything new going forward' sort of thing.

And in the end he didn't even do the murder over the 'ideology' that he mostly uses to look down on everyone and grumble about how the world is doomed and the working class failed (and will always fail, as 'the material condition has passed') and everyone above them was never even human and thus has no agency, just monstrosity. He did it because he's jealous. He's an old man clinging to the past who can't even be honest about himself or why he acts. And of course he has weird political ideas; he was seventeen! A seventeen year old kid told he's a hero-commissar, a 'knight-philosopher', a future man, and put into a lovely situation where he ended up running away. Of course he's got weird ideas about all of this.

Which then gets you to the other part of DE, its supreme empathy as writing. This is a man wedded to an ideology that has warped and shifted over the long years of hopelessness and loneliness, and instead of hating him or lecturing him (even though his actions killed plenty of people) you mostly get to see him as a sad, miserable guy who got hosed over by a deeply traumatic experience as a young man and a very hard life. And it's like that for everyone, especially if you have a high Empathy. DE is full of people who act like people, who have their own internal lives, and their own rough time of it in Revachol. Which at the same time also contrasts with how he talks about everyone else: He doesn't see that, even though the game has made it abundantly clear, and that's the saddest thing about Dros.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2020 15:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

At the same time I think Dros saying 'they're not human' is one of the marks of how deeply damaged he is, considering how much of the rest of the game is about the fundamental humanity of everyone you deal with. That is his fundamental damage, after all; that he's sitting here talking about how everyone is evil, nothing can be done, there is no way forward, capital's minions are inhuman monsters to the core and nothing could have gone differently because the working class are weak and failed and 'distracted by disco whores'. Much like Evrart talking about Joyce, when it's clear he misread her completely (remember he never actually spoke to her in person, even if he had her boat bugged) and kind of got lucky that things went how they went because she chose not to take the option that pointlessly kills a shitton of people, he can't see.

Everything was supposed to go differently and it didn't, and now he's here looking for the reasons why it never could have and never can.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2020 15:17

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Josef bugman posted:

That's a fair point, though I would personally disagree that the game says the Sunday Friend is framed as "fundamentally human".

Humanity contains evil as well as good, does it not? He's a man making the choices he's making, with agency as a person but deeply shaped by his situation and his position. And as you say, he's choosing to make choices that will hurt people and drown them in sorrow so he can stay where he is. But he's also throwing up a smokescreen about why it's all okay; it isn't like the man ever admits what he's doing, and likely wouldn't admit it to himself, either.

This is why a philosopher willing to write nonsense like Ayn Rand or a think-tank functionary will rarely go hungry; men like Sunday Friend need justification, and they'll pay a lot for someone to give them the words to say to translate to 'it's amazing that I have everything and I don't care if you have nothing, and all of it is right and good and moral'.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2020 19:53

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Thank god for the magical stick bug of hope.

I mean that sincerely.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2020 03:19

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 03:19

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Kanfy posted:

As I recall it, as a centrist it called her "hell on earth".

And says to turn away for all mankind, I think.

I only actually played through DE once, because My Harry felt like exactly what I wanted out of a Harry. I love reading other peoples' playthroughs but haven't had any urge to do another one because I enjoyed mine so much. I was a mournful communist cop who was deeply sensitive and fairly tough, but who spent a lot of the game getting himself together and eventually had his shining moment of shooting Kort in the face on low odds and talking to the magical hope bug. It was perfect, one of the best experiences of 2019. Re-reading it here was a pleasure.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2020 15:30

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