Oct 5, 2019

Disco Elysium lets you be Sherlock in flares

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

I've only just managed to get this dead man down from the tree. First I had to get past the stench, no easy feat since the body's been there a week, and then sever the industrial rope he was hanging from. My partner suggested getting help. Pfff.

I waved him away and shot through the rope in a rare display of competence. On my other save, where I created a character with less impressive physical stats, I can't even get close to the body without vomiting and instead have to psych myself up by going away to think about it for half an hour.

Disco Elysium will let you play the kind of detective you want. Its selection of stats and skills can mimic a variety of "copotypes" like the master of deduction, or the Columbo who always has just one more question, or the one who "just get these flashes", or who talks to dead people, and so on. Replaying its opening days I've been a tough guy who takes no nonsense and an unhinged sensitive who at one point began taking off his clothes to get a better sense of the air. "It's a technique of mine," I tried to explain to horrified onlookers as I unzipped my fly.

No matter what flavor of gumshoe you create though, your character is always a boozehound with amnesia, the one genre staple that remains true in every playthrough. You're always a loser who woke up on the floor missing a shoe.

Disco Elysium encourages you to play to your skillset by giving each skill a voice. In the classic text box where NPCs answer questions a skill like Authority will pop up to suggest that somebody needs to be manhandled, while Inland Empire—which takes subconscious insights and transforms them into dialogues with objects—has given my necktie the ability to suggest inappropriate things. Electro-Chemistry wants me to smoke a discarded cigarette butt while Visual Calculus is telling me the shoe size of footprints in the mud.

It's a glorious overflow of information. I have to block out irrelevant stuff like I'm telling Watson to shush because I'm on the edge of a breakthrough, for god's sake man just shut up, I'm trying to think here and I can't listen to you and my necktie at once.

To get prosaic for a second, all this is folded into a classic top-down RPG. I walk from location to location clicking on objects, picking up clues or just coins, then interrogating every character who will let me climb their dialogue tree. It's Planescape: Torment if instead of being based on Dungeons & Dragons it was more like Life on Mars or China Mieville's novel The City and The City.

The thing about mysteries is that everything hinges on the solution, and if it falls apart at the finish that makes the time spent getting there feel wasted. The opening hours of Disco Elysium give me confidence, though. The writing's perfect for the genre, poetic in a "Raymond Chandler sneaking something profound past his editor" way, and there's a lot of detail to uncover. A side task to explore abandoned shops that might be cursed blew out into something far bigger than I expected.

What's more, playing through the opening a second time with a different loadout was just as interesting, changing the tone like I was watching a reboot with a different director. Now I want to go back a third time as a supergenius who can analyze tire tracks and tell you what car they came from while snapping at my long-suffering sidekick. The game's afoot, even if I've only got one shoe.

Disco Elysium will be out on October 15.

Oct 3, 2019

Disco Elysium's developers are in a bloody battle for the human mind

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice Bell)

When visiting ZA/UM’s studio, I had to take my boots off. This is because their studio, where they are putting the final touches on open world RPG Disco Elysium, is also a flat in a townhouse in Hove, where several of them live. It has nice wooden floors, unbelievably high ceilings, and a big bay window cradling some workstations. There’s also a bookshelf full of many different tabletop RPG rules and expansions, and other tabletop games.

Artist Mikk Metsniit makes black coffee in the kitchen, and Robert Kurvitz, lead designer and writer, proudly shows me all the miniatures for Kingdom Death (pointing out, in particular, the Flower Knight), and a set of display stands for Arkham Horror: The Card Game that they’d ordered specially from Etsy. Kurvitz collects TRPG rule books and other “nerd shit” both as a stress reliever and as research. This checks out, because Disco Elysium has its roots in almost two decades of Kurvitz’s nerd shit.

(more…)

Sep 30, 2019

Introducing The Thought Cabinet

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - ZAUM_Dani

The time has come to talk about the Thought Cabinet, Disco Elysium's illustrious “inventory for thoughts.” Let me start by presenting an image. A rather detailed image. Of all the icons of all the thoughts you can get in Disco Elysium, woven into a single tapestry. The Thought Cabinet art is made by Anton Vill, a concept artist known for, among other things, his work on the film Mad Max: Fury Road.

The full-resolution version of this image takes 10 minutes to load, so we’re hoping to include it in the deluxe edition of the game. Here’s the web version:

Each little composition on that image is one “Thought”. It's impossible to get them all in one play-through, or even two. Each Thought comes into play face down. Only its name and some initial info are known to you. It takes in-game time to reveal its true identity by “internalizing” it. To truly uncover the mysteries of all these bad boys takes years of hard-core roleplaying. There are a total of 53 thoughts in the game. On average, a single character discovers and internalizes 16 of them in one playthrough.

And that, in a nutshell, is THC – how we're abbreviating Thought Cabinet :) This mega-feature has gone through multiple iterations. It's a unifying element that ties all the game's systems together. Thoughts are like Fallout's “traits” (back in the 14th century when Fallout had traits) crossed with Civ's “world wonders”. They're loot for your mind that you collect from the world by talking to people. They function as traits, perks, reputations and alignments.

You store Thoughts in your Thought Cabinet - your mind-lab, where you cook up new ideas and obsessions. Conduct research into futuristic armour, become a free market evangelist by thinking about indirect taxes, or just contemplate suicide. All with the power of your mind.

THC is the game's reputation system.

In Disco Elysium there are tags you can acquire that make people think of you in a certain way. Say something stupid and they will remember it, help someone and they'll remember that too. So far, so routine. But Disco Elysium also has an internal reputation system. Your skills – your faculties that talk to you in your head – develop notions about you too. Have you said three artsy things in the last hour? Been telling people you want your name to be Raphael? Trying to recall a lost memory, or your home address? Your skills can turn these into full blown Thoughts: “Actual Art Degree”, “Detective R.A. Costeau”, “The 15th Indotribe” and “Lonesome Long Way Home”. You can turn yourself into a deranged “Torque Dork”, constantly thinking about auto-mechanical trivia. Or torture yourself with the “White Mourning” – the shadow of someone you used to love. This adds a new layer of role playing options I like to call soul customization.

THC is also the game's perk system.

In addition to producing dialogue options and story events, thoughts have mechanical implications. Once processed, they can provide bonuses and – more often – diabolical side effects. Each is a riddle, posing a question for you to answer. The bonus (or penalty) is the Aesop at the end of that story. Thinking of love lost corrodes your soul, but it also gives you an expanded perspective: Your maximum zoom-out range is increased, letting you take in breath-taking vistas. Recalling that memory can lead to drugs being more powerful for you. When the Art Cop uses his Conceptualization skill they gain XP for every criticism. There's even a thought that (temporarily) makes you fail all your skill checks, turning you into a walking disaster, which in turn, can lead to new thoughts.

Thoughts evolve over time.

You need to “internalize” most Thoughts for them to reach their full potential. For this, your Thought Cabinet has slots to put them into. Prior to this, you only have a vague idea of what a Thought might do. You have a set-up. A picture on a closed box.

Each Thought has an internalization period. This can range from 30 in-world minutes to 3 in-world days. Some mental projects are massive, others fleeting. When the process is complete you get an animation -- not unlike finishing a world wonder in Civ. This is where you open the box, read the punchline. Face whatever wondrous and terrifying mechanical effects this revelation has on your character.

If you don't like the conclusion you’ve reached, you can always “forget” the thought by spending one “skill point”, the currency commonly used to improve your skills. If all your internalization slots are full, you can spend a skill point to open up a new slot. Since there is a finite number of slots in your Thought Cabinet you need to curate your thoughts carefully. Players start forgetting old thoughts to make room for new ones, as they mature and reach their final form: The Soul Reaver.

(Note: Disco Elysium doesn't actually feature soul reaving, I just made it up to sex up the paragraph.)

Some (very special) thoughts open up big things in the story.

You can finish a thought, then read its description and see that it tells you to go and ask a specific person in the world a specific question. This creates a rhythm where you talk to someone, mull it over, then return to them with a new (often revelatory) topic. Personally, I adore this part of the Thought Cabinet so I just wanted to point it out.

Finally, Thoughts are also how Disco Elysium handles classes and alignments.

Not all Thoughts are created equal. Some have a larger effect on your character than others. None more than the four Ideologies and four Copotypes. Ideologies are as close as Disco Elysium gets to an alignment system. Copotypes are how you view yourself as a police detective. Combine these two and you can be a socialist Superstar Cop. Or a centrist Sorry Cop who apologizes profusely. You can also dual-Copotype, or even mix and match ideologies. This, combined with the choices made in character creation – and the rest of the Thoughts – makes for hundreds of different builds.

So, as you can see: THC does a lot of things. I think we've gotten it quite nifty, to be honest.

You can get Disco Elysium on October 15th for 39.99 USD / 39.99 EUR / 34.99 GBP respectively.

- Robert

Sep 24, 2019

Disco Elysium is a 'colossal' game that can take 90 hours to finish

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut

Disco Elysium is a hardboiled detective RPG that's made some very positive impressions around here over the past couple of years. At the start of 2018 we included it (as No Truce With the Furies, its original title) in our list of the indie games we were most excited about, and for 2019 we put it in our list of RPGs we were most looking forward to. It's "unconventional," as Fraser described it when the release date was announced last week, and leans heavily into its tabletop roots.

It's very indie, in other words, and indie games, thanks to small development teams and tight budgets, are often relatively small, short affairs. But Disco Elysium, designer Robert Kurvitz wrote in an update posted at zaumstudio.com, is "colossal."

"Disco Elysium is, in every sense of the word, a huge game," Kurvitz said. "It takes 60+ hours of continuous playtime to finish Disco Elysium if you’re a reasonably completionist player, as I am. It takes 90 hours if you’re absolutely savoring every detail. And 30 hours if you’re rushing it. Back-of-the-box, I would put playtime at: 60+ hours."

The game takes place in a single district in the city of Revachol, but it's divided into five distinct areas: A dilapidated central cityscape, an industrial harbor, an abandoned, ruined coastline, multiple interconnected underground areas, and a fifth locale that's still a secret. In total, the game world is about the size of Planescape: Torment, but Kurvitz estimated that the level of detail and content density is five times greater than any RPG he's played previously.

"Disco Elysium is a detective game and thus you have to be able to put it under a magnifying glass," he wrote. "Any part of it. Every apartment, hallway, street corner, lamp, or even trashcan needs story, writing, details and interactivity that, to me, exceeds even the most detail-oriented adventure games."

On top of that, there are multiple weather states and distinct times of day, which "combine to make an unpredictable, moody city where time moves in a very realistic manner." Players will have about 100 tasks to complete over the course of the game, ranging from "minor to-do's" to full-day side adventures, and roughly 100 inventory items to work with, including clothes, tools, and weapons. There are 24 skills to choose from (and thousands of skill checks to get through), and even "thoughts" that you'll literally carry around inside your head.

"They’re a kind of special item that evolves over time, giving you all manner of perk-like effects and role playing options," Kurvitz explained. "So—you’re playing physical and mental dress-up, draping your detective in ceramic armor, disco duds or tracksuit trousers—all the while filling your head with notions like: poetry, technology, para-natural nonsense, or trying to remember how old you are."

The word count is sky-high too: Kurvitz said Disco Elysium is "one million words long," and you're going to have to play through the game three times just to see most of it.

"It’s honestly inconceivable how we managed to do this. I guess time is the answer. Disco Elysium took 5 years to produce. We only managed to make it so fast because we had a head start with worldbuilding. A whopping 13 years worth of D&D style pen and paper games in the Elysium setting beforehand," he wrote.

"All of this shit is for you. We’re beyond excited to see how you’ll react to it. To a game that’s just… new. A new type of game—of which there’s suddenly a metric shit tons of. On your hard drive—to approach in your own way, order, and style."

Disco Elysium will be out on October 15 on Steam and GOG.

Sep 24, 2019

DISCO ELYSIUM IS A COLOSSAL GAME

Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - ZAUM_Dani

Let's talk content richness and playtime.

We've had enough people finish the game from start to end now. We can finally say how big the game is. And Disco Elysium is, in every sense of the word, a huge game. It's bigger than *giant* and (a little) smaller than *gargantuan*, so I would say it is about colossus-sized.

So — a colossal game.

How long is a colossal game? Well, it takes 60+ hours of continuous playtime to finish Disco Elysium if you're a reasonably completionist player, as I am. It takes 90 hours if you're absolutely savouring every detail. And 30 hours if you're rushing it. Back-of-the-box, I would put playtime at: 60+ hours.

Map-wise, Disco Elysium takes place in one city district – Martinaise, in the city of Revachol. Martinaise is divided into five major areas – call them biomes if you like. Video game people love biomes:

1. Martinaise proper, comprised of modern, renovated buildings. A dilapidated cityscape.
2. The Industrial Harbour. Big machinery and containers upon containers of goods.
3. The wild, abandoned urban coastline, full of ruins from a long lost Revolution.
4. A plethora of underground areas meant to be explored with your flashlight.
5. And a fifth area that I won’t reveal here.

All four non-underground areas are one seamless, isometric open world that you can approach in any order.

The world is about the size of Planescape: Torment. Or a sizeable chunk of the first Pillars. A sizeable chunk of Fallout: New Vegas... But the resolution – the level of detail, content density – of these areas is, I would say, about 5 times denser than any RPG I've played. Disco Elysium is a detective game and thus you have to be able to put it under a magnifying glass. Any part of it. Every apartment, hallway, street corner, lamp, or even trashcan needs story, writing, details and interactivity that, to me, exceeds even the most detail-oriented adventure games.

None of these areas reuse assets or look the same like games that are asset-assembled do. Sure, people have the same radio every now and then, every little room is 100% unique when it comes to layout and art. And music, too.

There are four major weather states – snow, rain, mist and clear. And four times of day – morning, day, evening, night. These all combine to make an unpredictable, moody city where time moves in a very realistic manner. Getting through one day is a massive thing. Shadows fall. Sodium lights flicker. The music changes. Tomorrow brings new NPC’s to old locations, as the world changes each day. It takes about one real life day to complete one in-world day, if you’re being meticulous.

What is there to do with one massive day?

Disco Elysium has about 100 “quests” – or whatever you call them. We call them “tasks”. Tasks range from minor to-do's a la “have a bath” to side-adventures that take a whole day to complete. We don't differentiate between side-quests and main quests, by the way. It's all one big thing -- the story of your life in another world, as a detective of the Revachol Citizen's Militia.

Let's talk stuff too.

You have about 100 inventory items to mix and match from. These include tools – crowbars, guns, a boombox, a magnum sized bottle of wine... – and a plethora of clothes and even shiny armour to protect yourself with. Then we also have over 50 thoughts to choose from. These go in your head, they're a kind of special item that evolves over time, giving you all manner of perk-like effects and role playing options. So – you're playing physical and mental dress-up, draping your detective in ceramic armour, disco duds or tracksuit trousers – all the while filling your head with notions like: poetry, technology, para-natural nonsense, or trying to remember how old you are.

40 original pieces of music play as you explore the city. Some 6 different psychoactive substances get you high as you do so. Wine, beer, smokes, anti-radiation drugs... some good old fashioned trucker speed. And so on.

Jesus, and then there's the skills! There are 24 of them and I swear to god – the least used has around 50 cases where it does something. The really active ones have (I'm not even kidding) around 500 uses. So yeah... There are thousands of skill checks. There are literally too many to count, for various technical reasons I won't go into it right now. Safe to say, this is the skilliest game ever skilled. The skill list of 3.5 edition d'n'd is but a baby compared to Disco Elysium.

It is one million words long.

There are 70 characters, all have partial VO. Each you can spend hours talking to, each has hours of secret content.

Aaaaaand you're gonna have to play the thing from beginning to end three times to get to see most of it. To see all of it... I don't think a single human being can. But the internet has proven many a boast wrong, so let's see.

It's honestly inconceivable how we managed to do this. I guess time is the answer. Disco Elysium took 5 years to produce. We only managed to make it so fast because we had a head start with worldbuilding. A whopping 13 years worth of D&D style pen and paper games in the Elysium setting beforehand.

So this is Disco Elysium. I think it's gonna rock your socks off, to be honest. I realize listing all this made me sound like James Franco from Spring Breakers talking about all the “shit” he’s got, but it just had to be said...

Click here for the clip from Spring Breakers.

All of this shit is for you. We’re beyond excited to see how you’ll react to it. To a game that’s just... new. A new type of game -- of which there’s suddenly a metric shit tons of. On your hard drive -- to approach in your own way, order, and style.

On October 15, 2019.

- Robert