If you somehow missed the 24-hour window last year in which not one, not two, but three “spiritual successors” to Disco Elysium were announced on the same day… I actually don’t envy you even a little. It was a great day to be on the internet, rife with jokes about leftist infighting and excitement about the new projects, but anticipation for the games themselves was laced with scepticism.
What Does Hopetown Look Like Right Now?
One of those spiritual successors, Hopetown, has now shared its first gameplay image, and I’ve got mixed feelings about it. It certainly looks beautiful. It’s got a gorgeous yellow and purple colour scheme, beautiful painted backgrounds, and its UI is very obviously tied to its journalist protagonist – her character thumbnail is backgrounded by paper documents in a file, and notes on the character she’s talking to are handwritten on a small note under that character’s portrait.
However, it’s the game’s writing that I find a little strange. The game’s Kickstarter tells us that you’ll play a “rogue journalist – a chaotic, self-destructive provocateur uncovering buried truths, exposing fragile systems, and unravelling a world shaped by ambition and decay”. It goes on to say “what you do and say literally affects everything around you. Every choice matters. Every moment leaves a mark.”
This sounds like it might have a more serious tone than Disco Elysium, but the text on the screenshot shows us otherwise. It’s not uncommon to see games inspired by Disco use the same kind of irreverent humour or downright absurdism of its writing – many even do it very well – but Hopetown’s writing feels indelicate. Even ham-fisted. Ham-fisted might actually be too charitable.
One “Gonzo” option, in response to an old pigeon feeder offering you a loaf to feed the birds, has you screaming, “EAT UP, SKY RATS!” Another, the “Noblesse N’oblige” option, has you saying, “I’d rather lick that bin”, knocking the bread out of her hands. Perhaps in context these responses make more sense. God knows Disco Elysium could sound pretty wild out of context. But “eat up, sky rats”? I’m not sure this is the Disco energy we wanted.
Longdue Has A Strange Pedigree
There’s more reason to be suspicious. Many of these self-billed successors to Disco have ZA/UM pedigrees that give them a little more cultural cache. Dark Math Games, which is behind XXX Nightshift, has been associated with Kaur Kender, a controversial figure who executive produced Disco. Summer Eternal has Disco Elysium writers and its narrator associated with the project. ZA/UM is working on its own project, as is another studio, Red Info, led by writer Robert Kurvitz.
Longdue’s pedigree, however, is murkier. It claims to have had seven members of the Disco Elysium team contribute to the game, but doesn’t name any of them bar Piotr Sobolewski, who bills himself as “co-creator of the highest rated PC game of all time” on LinkedIn. Disco Elysium’s credits name him as a member of the outsourcing team, Knights of Unity, that provided additional development. I’m not sure that quite qualifies him as a co-creator, and certainly doesn’t in any narrative sense.
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The Most Interesting Disco Elysium Successor Is The One That Doesn’t Want To Be Disco Elysium
Five Disco Elysium successors, Jeremy? That’s insane.
Sobolewski also has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and does research in “concept drift, LLMs, generative art and computer vision”, and he’s previously worked with OpenAI as a contractor. I don’t love the idea of generative AI being anywhere near video games, let alone a successor to a game renowned for its ingenuity and creative originality. It’s unclear if Hopetown will be using this technology in development.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with games billing themselves spiritual successors to Disco – loads of games have drawn loads of inspiration from it. Everything is a spiritual successor to Disco nowadays, and thank god for that. But it seems that Longdue may be overstating its connection to Disco in an attempt to ride the wave of its popularity. That may just be for marketing hype, but it doesn’t exactly look great, especially since one of the other spiritual successors was announced alongside an anti-capitalist manifesto about, among many other things, corporate greed.
I’m not going to say that Hopetown won’t be good based on a single screenshot, but I can’t say it’s all looking perfectly kosher as of now. There are things about the project that should raise our eyebrows – this screenshot might be the least of it.
- Released
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October 15, 2019
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence
- Developer(s)
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ZA/UM
- Publisher(s)
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ZA/UM