Disco Elysium is one of my favourite games ever made. From the art style to the gloriously overwritten dialogue, to the sheer number of roleplaying opportunities, it’s a masterpiece and I’m gutted we’ll never see a true sequel. The original creators are working on something, as are (separately) a slew of other devs who split from the studio, as well as those still at ZA/UM. But nothing will ever match the communion of minds that created the first game.
I’ve come to terms with that. I’ll lap up every game produced by the various shards of the original team, but I fully understand that none of them will come close to instilling the same feelings in me as Harry du Bois.
Games, Games, Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink
February was meant to be a stacked month for new video games, and yet we’re halfway through and what has been released? I’m not paying extra money to play Avowed a little bit early, Pirate Yakuza doesn’t release until next week too, and Monster Hunter Wilds isn’t until the end of the month. I skipped Civ 6 entirely, so I’m more than happy to give the game’s seventh iteration a few months to get its affairs in order.
I played a little Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, but the tutorial was so heavy-handed that I fell off immediately. I’ll come back to it.
I’ve been playing a lot of indies, both new ones, games I missed last year, and those that are yet to be released. Steam Next Fest is looking good, let me tell you that much already. But I need a juicy RPG to really sate my appetite in a way that Kingdom Come Deliverance didn’t. To tide me over until – checks notes – later this week.
Enter Disco Elysium.
Here We Go Again
Why do we replay games? There’s something comforting about it, for sure, returning to an old favourite like a dog-eared book or a vinyl record played so much that its grooves have been worn down. Maybe a game had such a profound impact on you that you need a second playthrough just to take in its message. Not me. I returned to Disco Elysium out of spite.
I saw someone I follow on BlueSky disrespecting Cuno. It’s safe to say that I don’t follow them any more. But I also embarked on another Disco replay just to be extra nice to Cuno. Because anyone who has disrespected Cuno has disrespected me.
If you haven’t followed Cuno’s story before, I wholeheartedly recommend you do. He’s more than just a drug-addicted child, and his story assails the summit of emotion as much as anyone else in this game.
There’s more to it than just Cuno, of course, but he gave me the impetus to step into Detective du Bois’s damp shoes once again. But after the opening and Cuno’s expletive-laden first appearance, there are so many roleplaying opportunities in this game that it will never feel old. After everybody’s had their fun with a fascist run, then a communist run, then perhaps an artistic run, there are still deep wells of alternative corners of Harry’s brain to explore on subsequent playthroughs.
Here lies my problem. I’m already hours deep into my Disco Elysium replay, and I know I won’t be able to put it down. Not for Avowed, a game I’m very excited for. Not for Pirate Yakuza, which has pirates and yakuza. I’m in this until the bitter end. So I need your help.
If enough people read this article, I can confidently point to the numbers and say to my boss, “people still want to read about Disco Elysium”. While usually I would be hopping between new release after new release, trying to analyse and critique every component of each new game that hits our shelves to determine whether it’s worth your time or not, instead I’ll be playing Disco Elysium.
To say it as clearly as possible: this video game is detrimental to my job. Unless you read the h*ck out of this article. But you shouldn’t read it for that reason. Don’t do it for me. Do it for Cuno.
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