Disco Elysium and Self-Loathing 

I love how Disco Elysium is one big Rorschach test, as my takeaway from it was the exact opposite: not to let go, but fully understand and embrace your flaws in order to overcome them.

I've never identified with a character harder than I did with Harry, this game broke me more than once

Okay, fine, I'll take Disco Elysium out of my backlog

Ok one fun thing about disco is that when i played it, it became a mirror of my own self. The fact that i got 4 sorry cop points in first 90 minutes made me really fucking concerned for my own mental health. I dropped the game. But this was one of the factors that pushed me to get actual professional help and therapy and man i've grown as a person thanks to it. I picked disco up this year and binged it on holidays. This was maybe the best rpg experience i've ever had, and this time i was able to see how i've grown exactly. Funniest fucking thing is that after that DE binge i was thinking with narration voice for like a month. P.S. I also have an internal dialogue, usually is something like my own voice whispering thoughts, or abstract and barely similar to mine constructing sentences and logic in my head, also english isnt my native lang and for it i have a little different voice with a slightly different character to it.

i have a hard time translating my thoughts and feelings into words in the way i want, but im gonna try it anyways. this video absolutely touches on a major takeaway i also had -- living in the moment, taking everything a step at a time, breathing in the present and not letting yourself get stuck in the past, so on and so forth. its incredible in the way the game's mechanics of failure even push this, too. sure, you can fail and fail and fail every check you're presented with, but you are (mostly) able to come back and retry until you do finally succeed. and, in order to do this, you have to experience the world and its characters -- there's no growth without immersing yourself fully and wholeheartedly, spending hours sat at your computer listening through dialogue with a whole host of characters, or with the environment itself, in order to get those skill points to go retry that skill check. what i'm trying to say is that your failures or your mistakes, while sometimes set in stone, are shown as things you can move on from. it's that sense of being pushed to just keep on moving forward no matter what. but, something i will also add, is that the past is irrevocably tied to the present. disco elysium is also a story that is full of history, both more explicitly and implicitly. an example of the more explicit history being gaston and renee playing petanque in a crater left by coalition shells dropped on martinaise, or the wall riddled with bullet holes you can realise as being left there in the killing of a group of revolutionaries (if i'm remembering correctly). it's even worth mentioning renee and gaston again, since they lived through the revolution themselves (as well as a certain someone who i won't say for spoilers sake who you only meet at the very end). all around you is a landscape left with the markers of the failings of a time when people had a powerful hope and desire for change, attempted it, succeeded for some time, but then ultimately failed in their goal. and now you're left with what comes after. that even lingers in harry's character with his name, 'harrier', being a revolutionary name filled with hope and an aspiration to protect. that's something i'd argue is more implicit, at least in the way where you have to come across very particular dialogue to discover that. the rest of the less obvious presence of the world's history is in all of its characters. i won't get into much in detail since this is already VERY long and since i don't think i'd do the writing for the characters justice, but with the lore of the world of elysium, each character carries with them some part of that history. some part of how the world and the past has failed them, but how, despite that, they've got no choice but to live. the mistakes and failures of the past are not your own, or any one person's, but they're things you are burdened with carrying anyways. small sidenote, it's also kind of in the way the game lets you choose your ideological stance or your copotype, these things that cushion you from all that regret and self-loathing. ultimately they don't change much, and you still can't really try to escape from the present. all of that is part of why it's so effective in leaving you with the feeling of, oh, right, that's all happened, but i'm still here. i'm still going. and that's a big part of why i love the game. "streets and sodium lights. the sky, the world. you're still alive."

I'm at 9:30 and about your comment about internal monologues: I'm in the no internal monologue camp. I think in words but they do not have sounds, they just Are, and I have no visual inner thoughts, either. It's called aphantasia, and I knew about it myself going into this game. However, seeing Harry's thoughts (I called them Thought Demons my first playthrough) was the weirdest shit. Still, it's an amazing RPG mechanic in itself and I love it so much. My favourite has to be both Drama and Volition.

I think I've seen most, if not all, the videos on RU-vid relating to Disco Elysium. This one sire, is the best.

The game gave me the same feeling where I've had to walk away from it from time to time.

This is one of the best video essays I've watched on Disco Elysium. Truly a wonderful work. Almost made me cry a few times describing the feel of regret, it's very personal to me as well. I am glad you took such a turn for the best in your life. Hope I once be able to as well, even though the things seem so desperate. Disco Elysium hit me like a train with all this regret theme, making me face it. It hurts, but thank you for a different view at it❤ Wish you best, man

The narrator is also the voice of king sysphus in ultrakill

since my teen years i had been relating to middle depressed and alcoholic man. i glad that i'm only depressed and sometimes an alcoholic

Another Disco analysis let’s fucking go I cry every time I play

Calling .. in the night. The loneliest sound in the world.

I have a monologue, voiced dialogue and can visualise 3d rotating objects in full colour in my mind 😮

I didn't always have an internal monologue/dialogue/voice/etc..., came about in my teen years. Used to just think in pictures, video, emotions, music, etc... Sometimes in the right frame of mind I can go back to that

Oh hell yea; another 30+ minute video essay about a video game I’ve already sunken more than 200+ hours into. Thanks for the content Habibi.

extremely good video. ive been trying to piece together my thoughts after the rollercoaster of this story and its taken months, at least. this has helped me. thanks

this is an insanely well-made video about disco elysium! you put my experience of playing it into words. this game is a mixture of both hope and despair, but ultimately hope despite it all. thank you for encapsulating that feeling through your video, and for painting the game in a very human and compassionate light. i hope this video gets more of the recognition it deserves; your hard work didn't go to waste. :)

the karaoke moment got me, I love karaoke and have had many nights I can't remember. The pain Harry feels and the one time he expresses it in a healthy manner, I understood his pain in this moment but it was a beautiful moment, a happy moment

I just finished watching a playthrough of the game, your occasional drinking of water in the video weirdly made me feel at peace and allowed me to further reach closure with the game, thank you for this lovely work

the use of claire de lune is so real here. just a subtle reminder that as bad as the regrets you may hold, that it does get better.

God damn it, I watch a video on DE and oh look im re-downloading it

This is a fantastic video, its extremely well written! But can i say that mysyery quest is a fantastic channel by the yogs and easily sone of the best stuff they made the past two years!

love ur style, gonna binge ur channel now

Abeit I haven't, probably, done that much research into internal monologues/dialogues as you did, but I always worked under the conclusion that most (almost all) people do have it It is rather a point of perspective, when say to a person "internal monologue", they might think they don't have one, because they are not hearing any voices, but rather think of them If you asked me, I'd say I have an internal dialogue, with myself, with other versions of myself (if that makes any sense), with what I want to be, rather than what I am (again, if that makes sense) And even when walking and listening to music, I think of words, and if those wordss were spoken, you would say it is a monologue/dialogue But, I do not "hear" them, those aren't "voices" in traditional sense I can deferentiate them, like, for example, when reading a book I can comprehend that those are different, although they "sound" to me as one - because they do not sound, but on the conceptual level I know they are different If in my internal dialogue there's a voice of a woman, I just know that is is a woman, although it is just a monotonous thought, just like any other I think afantasia is to blame, like, some people cannot "imagine" an image, just like me, for example You can ask me to imagine a house, but I wouldn't "picture" a particular house, I close my eyes, and there's nothing, no image, I only comprehend on the intuitive level the concept of a house with relative positioning of its elements, but no color If I do not close my eyes I can "adjust" the though of a house to have colors, but, again, when I close my eyes there's even less color than its absence, although, once again, I can "understand" where each color is on a house respectively to other colors I think the same thing is with internal conversations Some people actually have different voices as thought, while others just think of voices and may not recognize them as internal monologue

Another absolute banger of a video boss. Sorry the rats decided to go on a 2 day assault on me and I have became the Rat King

On the voice acting: Sadly the various aspects that were previously unvoiced all got the same voice which now appears somewhat too frequently. I hope if DE2 ever comes out, they manage to be more diverse with the voices right away. Also, given the drama and mismanagement surrounding that development, I hope if it comes out, it'll manage to live up to the first one, in spite of it all.

Would you mind providing a list of the musical pieces used in the background? I know most of them but their names escape me at present. I do know most of the Chopin pieces though. Great vid btw, keep it up!

2:12 same man.

7:03 real

Man said his personal favorite was "visual calculus", sorry boss, but i don't watch videos made by nerds.

Does anyone know what song is playing on the start of the vid?

0:40 because humans have actually no free will, lol, there's nothing to regret about, the only thing that is left now are memories.

:,)

great video man!