“Disco Elysium is perfect but also a complete shit show” is becoming its own genre of journalism.
greatest rpg ever made? doubtful.
Greatest to who? In terms of what?
I tuned out of these absolutist statements years and years ago and now just see it for what it is, attempts at farming engagement.
I loved DE and absolutely rank it up there as one of the best gaming experiences, but it’s more like an interactive novel set in a highly polished world, a dive into an author’s mind. It’s not a “gaming experience” you can put on the same list with things like Final Fantasy XXVII or whatever RPG’s people play now.
edit: there is a lot of rage-bait from people who don’t like to read or follow nuanced stories in this post, I highly recommend just not engaging, you won’t feel better after trying to argue with teenage gamers who prefer JRPG’s where you farm cave slimes and grind levels for 90+ hours.
Final Fantasy XXVII
Look, I played SEVEN and not another one, if that’s a real number for where we’re at, that’s even worse.
Yeah, I’d argue Clair Obscur is better and that’s only talking about recent ones.
Is…this a joke?
Nope, Clair Obscur is a better RPG (and game) than Disco Elysium IMO.
I didn’t even get through Disco Elysium because it was kinda boring. I get how some people could really dig it, and I plan to attempt to pick it back up for the third time at some point. But it was much closer to being an old school point and click adventure game (albeit with a lot more reading) than an RPG anyway, and it’s certainly not the “greatest RPG ever made” IMO.
Does CO let you roleplay a communist disco cop who sweettalks everyone into his bidding despite being a total idiot?
It is to my understanding that CO is closer to being a JRPG than an RPG, with little in terms of choices. Which to be fair, a lot of them are inbetween, but makes comparisons pointless here since these two are on opposite sides of the spectrum.
I love Clair Obscur, but i hate it when people call it RPG. You know…ROLE PLAYING GAME!
There is like two or three meaningfull opportunities to role play and one of them is binary choice in the end of the game.
And you had so many other games you could have said. Like Baldursgate or Cyperpunk where you actually can roleplay.
Claire Obscur has rpg elements, like level ups, skills and equipment. It also has very jrpg like fighting system, but there is not enough roleplay to call it rpg.
You are experiencing the story, not shaping the story.
(As a games i love both)
Ps. Im really intrested what your definition of rpg is?
Claire Obscur has rpg elements, like level ups, skills and equipment.
Pretty much those elements are my definition. I feel like what you’re describing with nonlinear storylines with lots of choices isn’t all necessary for a game to be an RPG either. But I’m not a purist about any of it. Genres in general are approximate markers, and you can argue all you want about what belongs in what category.
If asked to describe the genre of Clair Obscur I’d say JRPG because purists have bickered enough to make me add the qualifier. But I’ve seen it described as RPG in lots of places, and given my thirty years plus of playing games it’s very similar to other games I’ve seen described as RPGs.
It’s kinda like “knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad” to me in that if someone recommended Disco Elysium to me because it’s the “greatest RPG ever made” I feel like I’d come in with completely different expectations about the game and be very disappointed.
But I’m no d&d player. I don’t really like the Renaissance faire that much. When people start talking with those character voices I want to run for the hills.
Edit: Downvote all you like, dorks! Look at what you actually do for most of the game in Disco Elysium. You’re walking around picking things up, looking at things, using them to solve puzzles, and having conversations with people. That is closer to a Sierra point and click adventure from the 90s gameplay wise than any of the many RPG games I’ve played.
This was the first comment I saw in this post. Having skimmed through the rest of the comments, I’ll just say “fair enough but I disagree.”
Yeah part of the reason that Disco Elysium isn’t the “greatest RPG ever made” is that there’s no objective way to rank such things and stating that as a fact seems on its face kinda absurd.
Clair Obscur is a game that almost seems like it was designed for me personally because it matches what I like about gaming so much. But mine’s just one opinion, and I understand people having different ones. 😀
I found it…daunting. I couldn’t stick with it. maybe it’s because I like my RPGs to have a bit of action or random encounters I don’t know but I just couldn’t get into it. once I found myself skipping text and stuff I figured “welp, there’s no point in playing this now”.
So yeah I guess I just found it daunting and boring. Just not my cup of tea. If you’re someone that enjoyed it, kudos. but personally I don’t think it’s the greatest RPG ever made.
I’m not entirely confident in my answer but I think my initial issue with Disco Elysium when I first tried to play it was because I expected the typical high action and quick cause-and-effect outcomes I’m used to in most RPGs. At least IMO, most RPG choices in games usually end up with a relatively clear outcome, whereas DE felt more gradual. Similarly, DE is more detective than action, which might sometimes benefit from gradual clues all coming together.
Not to say anyone is wrong for not liking this approach, it does take a bit of commitment to engage with it. But I think being willing to engage with it on its level might make the initial hump more bearable. I’ve honestly come to enjoy the slower approach of DE, but refreshing compared to everything else.
If you read a lot of books, it’s absolutely one of the best interactive reading experiences ever made. If you’re not into reading and you don’t have a brain adapted to creating worlds from text you’re going to feel like only some kind snob likes it or it’s pretentious and people only like it for the politics or something.
Edit: the idea that so many of you are actually mad that other people had a great experience that you can’t share for whatever reason should be your tell that you are experiencing a form of cognitive dissonance that should be embraced and explored.
Why don’t you read a PDF transcript of it then? I mean, all the visuals just mean you don’t have a brain adapted to creating worlds from text… Why need a game if you can a) go to page 713 b) go to page 23 c) go to page 412
Because the player choices and interaction and evolution are what drives the shape of the experience you have, the game wouldn’t work as a novel, and a novel alone couldn’t explore the depth of the world-building and characterization, so it’s an almost perfect harmony between the two genres, and if you don’t like the tone, setting or concept, that’s fine, but understand what it is so you know why you don’t like it.
All you describe could just play all out in my head. You haven’t read a lot of good novels if you need all this audiovisual support to paint a world with such depth in your head.
You really need a brain adapted to creating novel universes from text. If you don’t like reading novels I get why you need all the help such games offer to handwalk your imagination along the script. If that’s the case, reading novels is just not your cup of tea. That’s fine, I get it. But I don’t get why you wouldn’t just read an PDF choose-your-own adventure.
There are some of us with no inner vision who do enjoy reading too though, you know?
Not all of us have the ability to see what we read, i.e., aphantasia.
I love to read though. All day long if I can. Also in the top 0.1% when it comes to reading speed. Guess why? Nothing wrong with my comprehension either.
I was being cynical, to make the point that looking down on mainstream gamers for not liking visual novels could be doubled down by taking the same stance comparing visual novels vs reading plain text.
I play visual novels all the time, and the point you make is very valid.
You haven’t read a lot of good novels if you need all this audiovisual support to paint a world with such depth in your head.
This is such a needlessly obtuse and petty take that I stopped here. I will not have any interesting conversation with someone so bent out of shape that other people had a better experience than they did. If you just don’t like a “reading game” just end it there and go play CoD or something.
OK, now you’ve come to this conclusion reread your original comment. The only one petty and obtuse are you.
Also, I dropped the /s for my previous comments. Glad you get my point now, though.
Yeah, it wasn’t for me either. I really tried to give it a shot, gone back to it a couple times but I really just don’t get it.
Great art/style? Definitely. But the gameplay itself is SO boring.
I’m trying to play a game here, and the game part is lacking. RNG+ text? No thanks, not much to keep me.
It’s about the exploring the story, the mind of your character, and lots of political and philosophical themes. The deep psychological exploration of the human condition is absolutely unique and fascinating.
Maybe you’re too young or otherwise not ready to engage with these themes.
Nobody reads anymore, anything more than a paragraph of text gets skipped by most people under 25 I think. I mean it broadly too, online, in games, in classrooms, in work meetings… it’s massively infuriating to someone who grew up reading books and has a brain adapted to creating worlds from abstractions.
Definitely neither.
I put down choose your own adventure stories a long time ago, and a digital one doesn’t hold me no matter how well it’s put together.
But the gameplay itself is SO boring.
I don’t know why anyone is trying to pass it off as a “gameplay” experience, it’s literally an interactive novel that uses visual settings and reader choices to advance the plot in a thousand different ways.
If you don’t like reading, if you don’t have a brain adapted to creating worlds from text, you won’t like it. If you sit down to “play a game” and wanna click-splat baddies or strategically manage your health potions as you horde massive piles of wealth and gain levels… you won’t like it. It has some of those elements but its to serve the purpose of advancing story, not engaging in gameplay.
Yeah, I read a couple books a month. Not interested in playing one disguised as a video game. They serve different purposes.
Reading goes at my pace which is way, way faster than a game. Story-based games are way too slow and not nearly rich enough to replace a book.
Cool if people like it, obviously there’s something there that clicks with people. But I think it’s boring AF.
Everyone is in here talking about reading… The Director’s Cut or whatever its called, has full voice narration of everything. And it’s really good.
Oh yes, the voice narration was what made it go from great to fantastic, but it’s still at that point an “audio book” for all the unwashed masses in here, so it’s semantic and pointless to try to convince people who rather delight in the nuance and depth of JRPG’s where you grind killing slimes for 94 hours that it’s not supposed to be that kind of game.
Same - Planescape Torment is my personal greatest RPG ever made
A true fellow of culture. Just don’t trust the skull.
eekum bokum
this game was so fucking depressing and bleak and full of downer characters and sub stories i stopped playing after 4 hours.
drama can be good. hardships make adventures exciting. but when the entire world is a hardship, I’d rather play something with more realistic variety.
Sad because I played it a dozen times and found avenues of hope, metaphors for our current lives and generation, bleak and dark views and sublime explorations of acceptance and living in the present. Choices and consequences that can’t be reversed and how we deal with them.
But as I say over and over, it’s a reading experience, it’s a mental/emotional exploration of ideas and settings that reflect the real world. If you just wanna feel good… well there’s a voice in your head for that too, and you can follow that voice and shut out all the others in life, and in game.
Maybe you should have kept on playing and you’d have noticed that the game is also funny as fuck…
If they didn’t notice for 4 whole hours the game is funny as fuck I don’t think it’s for them anyway. Kinda weird they picked up only the nostalgic and sad tones, but nothing else, in a game that basically allows you to react to its world in a myriad different ways.
I think it triggers some people because it’s immediately apparent that it is:
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Not a “click-splat the baddies” game and you’re not going to be running around grinding levels and powering up your weapons. People barely read more than a paragraph even on social media sites, we cannot expect most people to connect with an interactive novel.
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Realistically dark. If you are like a lot of people right now, you are trying to escape thinking and feeling (never mind the damage that does long term) and seeing a setting like Disco Elysium immediately throws you into, of a world torn apart by fascism, greed and human failings, of self-destructive binging to escape pain, of the quiet acceptance of a winding-down world that people still try to exploit and get ahead of others in, you might quickly run away.
This is sad because the story also teaches about finding yourself, of creating identity out of the darkness, of listening to your inner voices and deciding how to treat others and dealing with the consequences of those choices. It feels like a lifeline in places, a nod of hope in the darkness that you still have agency, and it’s wildly quirky and funny, also like life in many ways.
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i have 4 hours on my steam account. not a single chuckle. that’s enough time for a laugh. you may jokes about bleak existences and situations but dark humor isn’t exactly mainstream and imo is pretty hard to pull off without feeling gross, which Disco Elysium did to me.
also, i have seen more of the game via youtube than i have played. the game is not a comedy, just stop it.
If it were me, and I had that reaction to a interactive story that so many other people got so many other different experiences from, I would explore that dissonance because it reveals something.
Not saying “go play the game again” if you don’t like it you don’t like it, but I would consider thinking about how and why a dark but quirky and sometimes bleak-toned reading experience left so many other people feeling one way, and you another. I found it hilarious but also you have the choice in the story to view the bleak world as either a tragedy or a comedy and everything in between… do you feel that kind of agency in life or are you stuck in some way?
Not asking for an answer, just queuing rhetorical questions I would ask myself in that position.
dude. i am 36 years old. i have experienced and enjoyed tons of dark humo. johnny the homicidal maniac was my bread and butter when i was 16. please don’t assume just because a stranger doesn’t like something you do it’s because they are uncultured or have narrow horizons. it comes across incredibly pretentiously
lol ok bud
Hey, it’s cool if you didn’t like it. I just think there’s tons of hilarious things going on. The whole setting appears very bleak and surreal, but there’s some really funny things in the game. I think it’s a good balance to be honest.
4 hours really doesn’t get you far. You don’t even get a feeling for the world in that little time. But you’ve watched YouTube videos on the game, so I guess it’s just not for you.
I grew up with British humor, so it’s kind of weird to hear that dark humor isn’t mainstream, lol.
Yeah I felt the same way. I kept playing because of the hype around it, but quit after 8 hours or so.
Not set in a fantasy world and was not expansive science fiction
Uh… I mean, it kinda is. The world of the game itself is pretty wild. Monsters of a kind exist, and there is some sort of fog between the continents that csn literally make you stop existing without sci-fi tech to protect you. And it’s growing.
Actually talking to the corpo lady on the boat, doing the church quests, as well as having a high Encyclopedia skill gives you tons of exposition about the world itself, and it is gnarly.
The game gives the player so many options for what you want to dive deeply into. Some players might get lost in the backstory and politics, some might dive into the characters, some like myself might get lost down the surreal/sci-fi elements. It’s very easy to play an entire playthrough and miss entire bodies of work within the work.
And if you’re like half the people commenting here, you might boot the game up and immediately say “I ain’t reading all that” and go fire up Call of Duty.
And if you’re like half the people commenting here, you might boot the game up and immediately say “I ain’t reading all that” and go fire up Call of Duty.
Fr. Some dude up in here basically implied DE isn’t a good game or a proper RPG, but they are so vague about their complaints it doesn’t even sound like they ever actually played the game, they just want to be contrarian.
You summed up why I never engage in media/gaming conversations online, but I had to step into this one because the game was legitimately art and needs to be recognized and preserved before like, the Turmp administration declares it terrorist propaganda or something. (Don’t scroll down where people are saying it was an artistic game as a derogatory slam.)
They aren’t continents; calling them continents implies a planet, but the planet is long gone, broken apart into isolas (containing both land, including full continents, and sea) floating in the Pale, which is very much not fog.
The Pale isn’t… anything, really. A literal lack of being. Not matter, or energy, but space-time broken down into pure entropy where direction and time lose all meaning.
Part of the idea behind the “world” is the idea that we normalize our reality and it’s almost equally absurd and distressing, we have just as much craziness in our existence that we’re just used to the same way. “Oh, we’re floating on a spherical rock in an endless dark void? And the climate is changing and we may all go extinct? Cool, what’s for breakfast.”
It’s used as a metaphor for how we just plow through our own narratives in life without stopping to think about how weird and fascinating and disturbing our own reality is, and it could be radically different and we would get used to that as well.
The pale is incredibly interesting as a concept.
Entropy.
But filled with memories of things that happened before and maybe in the future too.
The pale driver gives you evenore context.
Quite frankly I had such a high Inland Empire on my playthrough that the only things I’m sure are real are the things Kim or my good friend Horrific Necktie backed me up on.
I will always back you up bratan! You and I are bratannoi – brothers. Brothers fight. But when they’re done fighting, you know what they do? They party. They fucking party!
I was surprised that the church sequence doesn’t kill you. I only got shot once in the Whirling-In-Rags.
The dancing for Egghead can kill you if your health is low enough/your physical stats are 1-2.
HARDCORE
I died from sitting on a slightly uncomfortable chair that one time.
It was very uncomfortable.
Apparently that chair is a common soft lock people hit.
The “union” leader is what makes me uncomfortable.
More than his super racist guard? I felt like there was no way to handle this situation without disappointing Kim… which was not out of the ordinary in my playthrough but still… :(
I think if you beat him in a fist fight, Kim is low-key impressed because he hates racist pricks. That’s one of the few things I have not managed to actually do yet, tho.
Nah, Measurehead is adorable. A native Revacholian playing ur-racist out of what he’s learnt on the radio while dating a “Kojka” he can’t have sex with because his own racism prevents him from getting an erection in her presence.
Evrart (and Edgar, though we never meet him) Claire are downright terrifying.
Extremely intelligent, constantly ten steps ahead and in control (except for the tribunal, the entroponetic phenomena underlying the events of the game, the deserter, and, possibly, the Detective) even over the Wild Pines woman, extremely charismatic despite their appearance, and yet absolutely malicious and self centered.
They’re like sharks, perfect, cold, inhumane, apex predators evolved to completely dominate their territory.
Measurehead can never really hurt you. Evrart Claire can kill you by making you sit on a chair, and he’s fully aware of it.
As someone who has never played the game before, I really can’t tell if you’re making all of this up. It sounds fascinating.
It’s really worth playing. The voice acting is stellar, and it really is the best “role-playing” game, in the sense that you are fully immersed in role-playing a character. The mental gameplay mechanics are GOAT, and one-of-a-kind.
For me it is how real every character in the game feels, they’re all weird and ridiculous but feel like real people 100%
It’s real. You can die at the beginning of the game attempting to grab your tie. You’re playing as a 40 something burnout cop who has recently done so much alcohol and drugs that you have complete and total amnesia and your heart can explode at any moment. At one point even sitting in a chair could kill you. lol
I mean, only because you picked some build that gave you 1 HP.
You can die due to having too low morale, too.
Or killing yourself as an intimidation tactic during an interrogation, regardless of your stats.
Practically all versions of the detective are susceptible to self-inflicted demise in one shape or another.
one of the three presets do!
Sure, but your first time through it’s easy to not understand the mechanics.
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If I wanted to read that much I’d reread the Stephen king dark tower series. I just couldn’t get past all the dialogue and reading, that’s not why I play video games
Because people trying to sell it as a traditional video game are doing it a disservice, you don’t play Disco Elysium for the same gaming experience as something where you click buttons to splat baddies, it is literally an interactive novel and if you love reading you will love it, if not, you won’t. It’s ridiculous to compare it to other games because it’s a niche genre.
I get really sick of the anti-intellectualism around non-traditional experiences though, part of the seven-second attention-span generation leaking everywhere. The “I ain’t reading all that” banner that everyone under 20 seems to carry nowadays. It’s damn near impossible to find slower-paced, more thoughtful entertainment experiences without really digging into niches and even then you’re going to see people complaining constantly.
edit: if it makes you irritated that other people enjoyed a thing you didn’t, that should be a cue to explore deeper why you aren’t able to enjoy something so different from the norm and what it makes you feel. It’s far more productive to explore your own reactions and conscious thought-stream than try to convince other people who DID like a thing that they’re wrong.
It has nothing to do with attention span. If I wanna read a novel I’ll sit down and do so, if I sit down to play a game i want to play a game. Your argument would be like Christopher Nolan releasing a film with no pictures, just words on screen you read, I’d be mad and others would say it’s a masterpiece. But it has nothing to do with me liking to read or not. If you think about it DE is a video game equivalent to a Nolan movie, some will say it’s a masterpiece, others like me will say it’s pretentious, boring crap
I have the same issue with those telltale games where you just click a choice and watch a giant cutscene.
If it’s not attention span, and you like to read, then the issue is expectation. It is a visual/interactive novel. Player choices and interaction and evolution are what drives the shape of the experience you have, the game wouldn’t work as a novel, and a novel alone couldn’t explore the depth of the world-building and characterization, so it’s an almost perfect harmony between the two genres, and if you don’t like the tone, setting or concept, that’s fine. I just encourage people to understand that it’s not trying to be a traditional game or novel, it’s something in between and if you don’t care for that experience, also fine.
I love reading, but I couldnt get into Disco Elysium besides many attempts, so I disagree with your statement that I love it because I love reading.
Maybe I don’t like starting a book over and over again because the dice made me do it.
Three bad rolls in the first 30 minutes and you get a heart attack and have to start over.
Sounds like you had some really bad luck? The game doesn’t ever punish you for failure, it rewards it in most cases, it develops the story and there are relatively few ways to actually “lose” there are just different story and character arc outcomes, that’s why so many of us replay it so many times.
Possible.
I experienced it as an impossible puzzle to not die in the first hour. I went with a different approach each time, rolled a couple of 1s and died.
That’s absolutely crazy, I have done deliberate fuck-up playthroughs and had as much enjoyment from how the story progresses as when I try to min-max various traits and win every roll. I can only think of a couple places where dying was a real risk and they take place much later in the game.
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“The greatest RPG ever made?” Not even close. Why do titles need to be this hyperbolic?
I think your “not even close” statement is hyperbolic. Disco Elysium has very positive reviews in most if not all review outlets and won Game of The Year award in 2019. You can personally think its not a good RPG but saying its nowhere close is very hyperbolic.
But “best RPG” though? There are tons of RPGs that won “Game of the Year”, and when people talk about iconic RPGs, Disco Elysium is rarely the one mentioned. Most people will claim Chrono Trigger, Morrowind (or Skyrim I guess), or one of the Final Fantasies (usually 6, 7, or 8). Look up any list of top RPGs and it probably won’t crack the top 10.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, but “best RPG” is a pretty crowded field that rarely includes Disco Elysium.
Disco Elysium is not a fantasy themed monster slaying adventure game. It’s a detective game of narrative psychological exploration that uses RPG mechanics.
Sure, but being different doesn’t automatically win you “best RPG.”
Because it’s an opinion article and maybe it’s OK for the author to make an subjective statement of the quality of a thing they love? Like, if they really believe it, is it wrong to state that? Do they need to qualify everything in their article with “this is just my opinion, sorry if you don’t agree.”
I get being annoyed by hyperbole in articles, but I don’t really think that this warrants this kind of response. Sometimes it’s OK to make strong statements. You can make statements like that without implying that people who think differently are bad/wrong.
Sometimes it’s OK to make strong statements.
How fucking dare you
If it was an RPG that was even close to contending for that title, I would acquiesce to it. As it stands, I think the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Personal taste is personal taste, and that’s fine, but if you’re going to make bold claims like this, you should have to be burdened with the duty of backing it up. I don’t accept that this reporter’s personal opinion matters more than the RPG fans’ opinions as a whole. For them to make such a bold claim on such a public forum means they need to provide substantial evidence for it.
Let’s get back to basics though: this was a bold statement done in an article title to get clicks. You can tell talk till sunrise about a person’s right to have their own opinion, but this isn’t really what’s going on. This is a journalist making a hyperbolic statement to get clicks. Fuck them. Fuck them and their marketing strategy. Tell me it’s not exactly that: a marketing strategy. Tell me it’s not a ploy to bolster the author’s career. Tell me there’s something substantial underneath this that warrants serious attention, rather than a click-bait article that’s meant to incite anger and garner clicks that way. How much does your contention that this reflects a genuine opinion stand up to the idea that it’s just a cheap attention grab?
Why did this incite anger in you?
I suppose because it’s insulting to the fact that there are good games out there that actually deserve attention.
Is that your opinion, in the same way that it might be the author’s opinion that Disco Elysium is the greatest RPG ever?
No, that’s a fact.
Haha, awesome. Have a good day ✌️
If it was an RPG that was even close to contending for that title, I would acquiesce to it.
Except it is. And I don’t think the burden of proof is on the article writer, when culturally, it’s just accepted that it is either the greatest RPG, or one of the greatest RPGs. Maybe you didn’t like it, but that doesn’t invalidate the facts of how high people regard this game.
It’s not some damned marketing strategy. It’s sitting at 91 on MetaCritic (even after all of the backlash about ZA/UM), won Game of the Year for many many outlets, and any individual who has played it all the way through will either call it the greatest RPG they ever played, or one of the greatest RPGs.
No no, you don’t get it. Every single person in the world must love it for it to be the greatest game. Until that day, they’re just pretenders.
/s
Because it riles up the nerds.
Out of curiosity, what are some games that you consider contenders for greatest RPG?
Not OP, but:
- Chrono Trigger
- Morrowind (or maybe Skyrim)
- Final Fantasy (esp. 6 and 7)
- Baldur’s Gate (esp. 3)
- Pillars of Eternity
- Fallout (esp. New Vegas)
- The Witcher (esp. 3)
- World of Warcraft (not my jam, but it’s insanely popular)
There are a ton more, especially if you broaden the definition to sub-genres to include Diablo 2, TLoZ games (esp. Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild), and Dark Souls.
There are just so many bangers.
Half of these games are absolutely nothing like each other, maybe we would all be better off if we just stopped trying to place boxes around things and appreciated them for what they are.
Yeah, I intentionally picked a diverse set of examples. My point here is that “best RPG” doesn’t make much sense without qualifiers, like a year or sub-genre.
Western - Ultima IV
Eastern - Phantasy Star IIDamn, RPGs peaked in the 80s for you. What did these games do right that nothing has done better since?
Exist when they cared more and had less things to compare it to so that nothing can ever surpass the nostalgia of the game, regardless of quality.
The story and engagement. Ultima IV let you talk to literally every NPC in the game, everyone had a name and a job and something to say.
Phantasy Star II was essentially ripped off for Final Fantasy VII to the point where from the minute they introduced Aerith I was like “Well, shit, better not give HER anything I want to keep, she’s dead 1/2 way through the game.” (That was Nei in PSII).
To be clear, those are just the first two off the top of my head, there were other excellent, excellent RPGs.
I really liked the gold box D&D games from SSI - Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades. They don’t hold up well now due to all being turn based RPGs. There is a Steam Collection of ALL of that.
Speaking of, before Fallout, there was Wasteland which has had a modern reboot and sequel. Also a great game that had copy protection built into a story book full of backstory paragraphs.
For JRPGs, it’s hard to go wrong with Suikoden 1 and 2, recently re-released on PS5, drop dead gorgeous RPGs. The Golden Sun games were great too.
I’ve played probably hundreds of RPGs since the start. Disco Elysium isn’t even top 10. It LOOKS great, the writing is dogshit.
It LOOKS great, the writing is dogshit.
The writing is the key point, it has the best writing of most novels so that shows how badly the game is being misrepresented even here by people who didn’t give it a chance because they expected something else or have millisecond-long attention spans. I don’t know why anyone would compare it to any of the other games you listed, the title of the post and article is clickbait, the game is an interactive narrative, not anything like fucking Phantasy Star or others. They’re all great games but it’s weird trying to box them together.
Games are entertainment. When you’re playing a game and you are presented with:
Terrible choice #1
Terrible choice #2
Terrible choice #3
Just godawful choice #1
What the fuck is even this choice? #1That’s not entertaining. I can get where some people might derive some kind of enjoyment from that, I don’t.
Subjectively Terrible choice #1
Subjectively Terrible choice #2
Subjectively Terrible choice #3
Subjectively Just godawful choice #1
Subjectively What the fuck is even this choice? #1
Fixed that for you. For many people who appreciate nuance and dark humor and a more subtle narrative interaction, these choices are what made the game great. It’s not going to land with everyone and that’s okay, it just needs to be understood that these are personal tastes.
Xenogears. Just off the top of my head.
Half-finished, at best.
That was made 25 years ago. And just off the top of my head, Xenosaga surpassed it.
Just because an RPG was made 25 years ago that does not automatically make it bad lol
well to say Xenosaga surpassed it…I mean that’s not hard to do.
Xenogears is great but keep in mind it’s not finished. the entire second disc is proof of this. It’s an unfinished game that is regarded as one of the greatest RPG’s of all time. Same with Xenosaga. that’s an unfinished series. so to say Xenosaga surprassed it…well yeah it got further along than Xenogears did.
Get in the fucking robot,
ShinjiFei
The article author has never played a good RPG before, clearly.
I don’t get the love for this game. I’ve been playing CRPGs since Temple of Apshai and I’ve never seen a game where the story and dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.
So bad that I had to hop on a forum and go “Hey, so, there aren’t any good choices in the dialog tree, did I fuck up my character generation? Should I start over?”
And got “You just don’t get it, man!”
Yeah, I don’t get games where “You want some fuck?” is a valid dialog choice.
ITT: lots of people who don’t like this kind of game saying they didn’t like it, comparing it to wildly different games and getting pissed at people explaining why it was great.
I weep for our species’ lost potential, which ironically was a theme of Disco Elysium.
I enjoyed it because many RPGs are a power fantasy, where you’re an epic hero who saves the world. Some of them present you with a blank slate character you can shape however you wish, and whilst that can be fun, I find I have more fun when I’m playing a character with some history.
In Disco Elysium, you’re playing as someone whose history is fucked up, so good choices often aren’t an option. He’s not a typical hero, and he’ll be lucky if he can save himself, let alone the world — the world is even more fucked up than he is, riddled with scars from a long dead, hopeful era. Even though at the start of the game, both the player and your character have no knowledge of history, you can’t escape it.
A huge part of why I like it is because I can see what it’s going for, and I’m here for that. Even if I didn’t personally click with it, I think I would respect it for having things to say and committing to it. What’s an RPG that you have clicked with or loved what it was going for? If you’re not into Disco Elysium, then I suspect that your answer might be a game that would pull me out of my comfort zone in interesting ways.
“dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.”
I think this is a pretty harsh statement, but it did make me laugh, because part of why I vibed with Disco Elysium so much is because a couple years before, I actually bumped my head that I lost my memory and couldn’t even remember who I was.
The main character starts the game literally giving himself a traumatic brain injury by drowning himself in alcohol. It’s not really the kind of RPG where you can play a self-insert, the player character is an actual character with his own backstory. Not being able to make good choices because of the player character’s personal trauma and limitations is part of the story that the game is telling.
This says it well. I also like how the character’s fucked up backstory is inescapably linked to the fucked up backstory of the world he lives in. It it were just that he was a fuck-up, then it wouldn’t be as compelling. What I really love is that whilst he certainly is the victim of his own choices, it’s much more the case that he’s a victim of his material circumstances (rather like how I am currently still in bed due to a combination of poor choices, and material circumstances making consistent good choices very hard)
This is the clearest explanation for Disco Elysium I’ve ever read, thank you.
So bad that I had to hop on a forum and go “Hey, so, there aren’t any good choices in the dialog tree, did I fuck up my character generation? Should I start over?”
Your first mistake was thinking it was like any of those other CRPGS with dialog trees. No, you didn’t fuck up your character generation. Your character IS a fuck up. That’s part of the story it’s trying to tell. You don’t get to Mary Sue this shit.
How you engage with the game is figuring out how to un-fuck-up the character in a matter that is realistic. Or just ignoring whatever lessons the game gives you and continue down the same self-destructive path. Or somewhere in-between. All paths are have their creative stories to tell, and even being strange and weird with it can still lead to solving pieces of the crime you’re trying to piece together.
Yeah, I don’t get games where “You want some fuck?” is a valid dialog choice.
Because it’s fucking funny when you didn’t know what the actual dialogue entry was going to be, you took a gamble, and the “pay off” (well, it was a failed check) is that your character says the cringest fucking line to some woman he’s immediately attracted to. So cringe that even your own Volition (best fucking mental power, btw) is like “the words already left your mouth” as if he was already smacking his goddamn forehead right through to the other side. (EDIT: Actually, it was Suggestion, but whatever.) If anything, it should teach you not to make red check gambles unless you’re prepared for the mental damage a failure might come with. Or maybe you just want to laugh at the upcoming misfortune.
Your. Character. Is. A. Fuck up.
If that bothers you, and you want to play something that involves some extreme power fantasy, where you can pick a class and play a completely silent blank slate, then this game is not for you.
And I’m not interested in playing as a fuck up… it’s not interesting to me.
Thank god Steam let me return it.
Seconded. Also the neckbeards downvoting you for having a civil conversation about a game but not enjoying it are a joke.
neckbeards downvoting you for having a civil conversation
That’s not at all what’s happening here, it’s the other way around. Most posts in here are from people saying they hated the game and comparing it games absolutely nothing like it, and then they are getting pissed at the people responding and explaining why they liked it and why it was good, and said neckbeards doubling down and saying Witcher was a better game or something when one is an interactive novel, and the other is a click-splat game.
People are just being irritated with other people for not liking the same thing they like, and no surprise, the bulk of contention is coming from people who rather mindlessly cut down orcs with a sword so they don’t have to feel or think things.
I’m pretty sure it’s because they started off said discussion by suggesting that everyone who liked the story and dialogue had a traumatic brain injury lol. Very civil, that.
It’s not at all surprising to me that the people with outspoken dislike for Disco Elysium and getting pissy at people who did like it, are also the same people trying to say action JRPG’s that share absolutely nothing in common are better games and getting mad at people trying to describe how reading is actually good.
I mean, it’s ok to not get it? It really does sound like you just don’t get it. If your example of why it’s bad is a genuinely funny, absurd result of a failed check, it might just not be for you.
Hey, if you don’t have traumatic brain injury, what are you doing on Lemmy?
To me Disco Elysium was the next example of the “Art Game”.
The game people bring up when discussing Game as Art, without actually explaining what makes it art.
without actually explaining what makes it art.
Is that happening? Everyone endorsing the game even in this post are going on at length what makes it great. I could drop a 20-page thesis about the themes, plots and interwoven interactive narratives, but I am guessing you don’t actually want to read that any more than you want to play a reading game to begin with.
Maybe… and hear me out here, maybe some of you just don’t like arty games and rather do mindless clicking and grinding. That’s fine, just understand what’s what.
I think the problem is that it kind of isn’t an RPG.
It’s an adventure game with heavy RPG elements. Like the core gameplay clearly resembles old point and click adventure games. It’s just the experience and leveling system are also so central to the gameplay that it wouldn’t work without also being an RPG.
I think trying to fit games into genres and people disagreeing with your reasoning is incredibly bad around RPGs.
I’d argue disco elysium is a stellar example of an RPG especialls since I enjoyed role playing as someone who is incredibly far from my own mental state. A game with somehow gets me to roleplay someone so different is a prime example of a good RPG for me.
But I get how messy the term has gotten. People argue about whether Dark souls or Witcher are RPGs, where both games have arguments for it beeing an RPG. Personality I think an RPG has an adaptility in the character AND the world in response to my choices. But I can totally see how others see it differently.
For me personally I’ve set up that there are the traditional RPGs like Fallout, Baldurs gate and Pathfinder WoR. But there are also a lot of games which use a lot of similar parts of the RPG gene that I consider them RPGs aswell.
That’s fair. I guess what I’m saying is that describing it as “an RPG” doesn’t do nearly enough to convey what the game actually is. Like I can see the argument to say Elden Ring is an RPG, because it definitely has RPG elements, but you’d never describe it as an RPG without also mentioning that it’s an action game. You also wouldn’t describe Expedition 33 without mentioning that it’s a turn-based RPG.
In the same way, I find it misleading to label Disco Elysium as an RPG without mentioning that it’s an adventure game. It’s at least as much of an adventure game as it is an RPG, and most importantly: it lacks combat. Combat isn’t necessarily a requirement of the genre, but if you asked a random gamer to name 10 RPGs, he’d either name 10 games with combat systems, or he’d name 9 games with combat and Disco Elysium.
Being insulted by Cuno and that other little rat faced fuck was a highlight for me
Fuck Cuno. I stole that kid’s dad’s speed.
The fuck you’re saying about Cunoesse? The Cuno will fuck your face up! With his maximum velocity fists!
I’m so disappointed we came so close to having a Cuno RPG, only to have that ripped away.
A lot of power fantasy RPG players would have really benefitted from this, they’ll have to stick with postal instead.
That’s not what the detective said. He SAID “I want to have fuck with you”
That correction makes you sound like a pedomorphic binoclard. 😅
I mostly just hated that the story was largely delivered via info dump and nearly every character was a terrible person to the point of being grating. I don’t have to enjoy every video game, but I wish I at least understood why this one got this much acclaim.
That’s a really bizarre read, how do you come to the conclusion that every character was a terrible person? Even amongst the first 6 or so people you talk to, most of them are decent people living in a very poor area. I usually hate media where everyone is an asshole but DI is so NOT that that I’m just… Confused.
I think anime ruined a whole generation.
Something about the really overly exaggerated and 2-dimensional character traits that require absolutely no nuance to understand because it makes for better translation through international markets for children, it just wrecked how a lot of people interact with media.
The sad part is someone is reading this comment right now and furiously typing up a reply why their favorite story about a high-school kid with absolutely no personality being fought over by two jealous sci-fi/fantasy princesses for no reason is in fact, peek nuance and the highest form of thoughtful expression.
Because they were. Maybe not the first 6 people verbatim, but of the characters you have a significant amount of dialogue with, the only one who didn’t give me this impression was your partner. You run into the asshole kid, the other cops over the radio are assholes, the guy on the wall to the docks is an asshole, and beyond that, I didn’t take notes, but it annoyed the hell out of me.
To be fair, many people KNEW your character pre-amnesia. There are very valid reasons for many of them to treat your character like an asshole, because to be frank, he kinda was. This is a very big and very intentional part of the game. You’re also a cop coming to police an area that hasn’t seen a cop come around in literal decades.
Garte, the hotel manager, doesn’t like that you’re being incredibly loud and trashing your room. He’s a bit of an asshole, but honestly with good reason, and he comes around if you make an effort to apologize.
Lena, the Cryptozoologist, is really friendly and very charming.
Cuno is a drugged out kid, he’s supposed to be absurd.
If anything, Kim is impossibly accomodating and patient with you. Even if you’re an asshole to him. There’s a reason people love him and call him “best boy” because he’s got these little windows into his personality even through his stiff police exterior.
There are some actual racist assholes in the game, but I feel very confident in stating that the vast majority of the characters are not assholes.
Oh, my player character was definitely on the list of asshole characters that made the game grating. And even if his actions before the story began precipitated everyone else being an asshole, it didn’t make the game less annoying to experience it fresh as the player.
There are a lot of characters who are good people. A lot of bad ones too . A lot of the good ones you’ve previously pissed off so they start out barely putting up with you talking to them (and you deserve that treatment frankly).
You’ve confused basic with good, common mistake
I could see what it was going for but it felt like a chore to play so I stopped.
The term “over-embroidered” springs to mind.
By chance did you pick a character with a low intelligence or charisma? Because ability scores matter a lot.
I sadly didn’t get to play much of it. I only had access to it for a limited time, and I did not get far at all.
See, that’s what I was thinking. The reaction in the forums was it was supposed to be that way.
