In the vast ocean of the Insulindic lies a pebble: the island of Le Caillou. Here on this rock, the ravaged city of Revachol and its forlorn citizens reside. A war-torn landscape under foreign coalition control, the population is crushed by poverty as their city crumbles around them. The lack of any social aid or government has led to a massive increase in crime seeing as there are no laws and no one to enforce them. You play as a cop of the citizen’s militia, a band of men and women seeking to bring peace and authority.
Drunk, hungover, dirty and tired, a cop wakes up face down on the floor of his hotel room. He lost his badge, his uniform, his gun and his memory. Unable to remember his name, he descends into the lobby of the hotel where he meets with his partner Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi. As it turns out, the two cops have been assigned a murder case. An unknown man has been hanged outside the hotel, and no one seems to know who did it.
Working with Lt. Kitsuragi, I was tasked with solving the murder case and reastablishing my grip on reality. This is the cop that I played as, who I named Harry.
Revachol is a beautiful city to explore, still bearing the scars of a failed revolution. The town can be explored in three areas: The Harbour, The Doomed Commercial Area and The Fishing Village. Most of my time was spent in the commercial district which is not only the largest area, but also the scene of the crime. There are so many things to discover and people to converse with, who often will reveal side tasks that can be undertaken alongside the main investigation.
I found these to be quite refreshing, oftentimes not involving a lot of police work and instead more imagination. For example, one side quest was to assist a bookstore owner in finding a ghost that is haunting her backroom. This opened up a new area in her shop and led me to find a slew of items and information, some of which even helped me find clues towards my main tasks.
On the topic of the townsfolk, every person I interacted with had their own voice acting. Typically in games like this, dialogue is dispensed through text on screen, and I was impressed at both the quantity and quality of voice acting. It truly made each character feel alive and memorable, and I always wanted to hear the things they had to say — and they do have quite a lot to say. Dialogue is an important aspect of this game, so some people may be put off by this if they aren’t prepared.
“Disco Elysium” is a game about living with failure and how you cope and adapt. Rather than engaging in fights or combat like in a traditional role-playing game, you converse with people. It isn’t as simple as just choosing your dialogue options, though, with the main mechanic being around speech checks. These are tied to your skills, and your chance of success will depend on how much you may have leveled them.
For example, you might sense someone is experiencing sadness during an interview. If you have your empathy skill high enough, you may be able to pass a check that allows you to dig deep and unearth what is bothering them. If a check isn’t passed, you might not get the full story from a witness. Or in another case, you might injure yourself trying to kick open a locked door if your physical instrument skill isn’t at the proper level. Going with the punches is just part of the experience; and, while it certainly hurts to not succeed, it made the moments that I did more valuable.
There will also be times when you miserably fail. There are red speech checks that can only be attempted once, and if you fail them your opportunity is gone for good. These pop up at different times and are rare enough to feel impactful when they do present themselves.
In lieu of traditional skill trees found in most role-playing games, there was a vast option of mental attributes to upgrade. The four main categories are intellect, psyche, physique and motorics. Each of these had its own subset of skills to upgrade, although it isn’t as simple as getting them as high as possible.
While having a low level of skill was an impairment, getting a skill too high also incurs penalties. Take a skill like “Shivers” for example. This skill allows the player to sense supernatural events and get in touch with the city itself. At low levels, you won’t pick up on events that aren’t overtly in front of you, and you might miss out on details of the city that aren’t immediately obvious.
However, if this skill is too high, you might seem off to others as you hear voices in the wind and track shadows through buildings. It’s this back and forth that made choosing my skills so interesting and allowed me to extensively tailor my mental state. This was not the only way I was able to apply skill points though, with another layer of character building taking place deeper in the mind.
Similar to perks, stray thoughts during conversations and encounters may present themselves that can then be internalized. This process takes place within the “Thought Cabinet,” where all the thoughts that I collected were manifested. Internalizing thoughts takes time and applies a temporary downside for a short period. These downsides flip into an upside once the process is completed and remain there unless removed. This system was interesting to explore, providing unique benefits such as raising your attributes while wearing certain clothing and reducing/increasing the effects of drugs.
The only issue I had with this system is that the game does not disclose what the upside of your thought will be after you internalize it. Some thoughts incur heavy penalties during the internalization, and you have to spend your skill points on them. When the benefits of some thoughts turn out to be a bit lackluster, it can sometimes feel like a waste of precious resources.
Solving the various mysteries littered throughout the island and interacting with all manner of citizens is something I will always remember. Even when I wasn’t playing the game, I was thinking about how different story threads might converge and how I might eventually solve the case. Every time I thought I had everything nailed down, the game was able to unveil new secrets that expanded my list of suspects once again. There isn’t a whole lot of action, but the intensity ramps up quite a bit at times. If you’re a fan of gritty narratives and dialogue-intensive plots, this might just be your new favorite game. I found “Disco Elysium – The Final Cut” to be an eloquently written murder mystery that will stick with me for a long time.
