Disco Elysium is a Role-Playing Dream Come True 

By the way, I apologize for the two parts that ended up being badly mixed (far too loud), it wasn't intentional. Premiere lifted the decibel-lock on audio tracks recently, and it sounded fine in the editor and in the rendered file on several sources, yet after RU-vid's re-compression it became too loud and I didn't catch that before releasing. Sincerely sorry if that ended up being unpleasant for some viewers! I'll certainly be more careful with that in the future, thank you for the feedback.

The moment the game gave you the choice to CONVINCE A DOOR TO OPEN and I succeeded an almost impossible skill check and got to talk to a guy who's so rich that light bends around him and managed to scam him into giving me money for my "investment plan", I knew this was one of the best games off all time.

"I want Disco Elysium to be the game that instigates the long overdue semantic RPG Revolution. I want this game to be the example that people bring up to argue that the Role Playing Game, in the context of video games, should not anymore refer to progression systems and XP-bars shoehorned into genres that have nothing to do with the origin of the word. I want it to reclaim the term RPG to, once again, describe videogames in which you *actually roleplay* " What a good fucking quote. I'll be using it aplenty.

Disco Elysium is the greatest book I’ve ever played.

As soon as I got "Sorry cop" I immediately fell in love with this game.

Something I was surprised about that the game keeps track of: At the end of day 1, I had a talk with my partner about the past day. He brought up the fact that I've been running everywhere. Told me it tired him out

"DE is a game that fully embraces the joy of a bad roll" - You hit the nail on the head. I also love that the developers weren't afraid of ridiculous and chaotic/creative choices (like the excessive nodding leading to neck injury lmao or the molotov tie). Those moments are unforgettable and make the game great.

This is the kind of game we need to start seeing more of. I want more games to focus on smaller worlds with more intricate, believable detail.

I'm not even into this kind of RPGs, or at least I wasn't before, and I couldn't put this game down. An absolute masterpiece. Gotta play Planescape now.

The title is not clickbait, this game truly is insane and blew everything out of the water this year. Also, Ragnar, congrats for covering this it really deserves a lot of attention.

Man, this is one of those games that we’re only gonna see once in a decade, huh? Oh look its 20% off!

I love how no matter what political ideology you choose the game will make fun of you constantly

I was watching this video when my husband came into my room and started watching it too. After about 5 minutes he goes away (I figured he had gotten bored), comes back shortly and says "you bought me that game for Christmas". So thanks for helping me with my Christmas shopping!

IT'S HARDCORE!

The game and you both nailed the idea of "a great GM makes a bad roll not bad", which was an idea I didn't understand until the first time I ended up flipping the double-bird to the bartender at the whirlin-in-rags. After that, it just... Clicked. This game has changed how I run my tabletop RPGs.

This game looks so cool!

SPOILERS My absolute favorite moment of this game was at the end when confronting the manifestation of my Ex, and my Suggestion suggested I kiss her. I did and it was fucking miserable. After which my Suggestion basically told me: "Brother, I'm sorry. I fucked up bad and you shouldn't listen to me. Line me up against a wall because that was a terrible idea," in that exact tone. I was laughing so fucking hard. This game reminds me A LOT of LISA the Painful in terms of tone. How it can bounce from one extreme to the other effortlessly, and instead of creating a rift, it binds the whole thing together.

We need a "No Truce With the Furies" special edition of this game. That name should NOT be wasted

I watched this video and thought "alright, I'll play. It'll probably be pretty good." GUYS. It's *SO* much better than pretty good. I can't even describe it

"I hope this game turns some heads" *Goes ahead and wins all 4 awards it was nominated in* Yeah I think people are paying attention.

OK, it's sold. It was sold when you mentioned it to me, but now I'm HYPED.

So glad they’ve released the ‘working class’ update, so I can finally experience this on my laptop

This game changed my life. It IS the best game I've ever played. And I've played more than a 1000+ games in my 30 years lifetime.

4:23 The music in the background starts to play My body: "Re-install VTM:B and play it for the 14th time!"

My favorite thought is "real art degree"

This game resonated with me simply because of the character's internal conflicts. They are so colorful and realistic. I feel like in life people aren't just STRICT vs RELAXED. They could be both. They could struggle with the concepts of either trait, any personal trait. They bicker and argue within themselves... and come out some mixmash of things that's truly unique.

halfway though the video and you've already convinced me. this looks fantastic. i've been CRAVING a deep engaging roleplay

I love you Ryan Hollinger. Sorry, Super Eyepatch Wolf.

Seriously people, go and buy this masterpiece. Saying that this is one of the best roleplaying games is totally accurate and the developers should really be commended for this!

“failing checks will lead to fun and interesting events” you obviously didn’t fail the one asking Kim to dance with you :(

Oh god I’m going to have to buy it now, aren’t I....

God, if only this team was able to release another game. They once mentioned that a sequel could've happened in Jamrock. Sucks that ZA/UM ruined it all.

Got to say that this is likely to scratch an itch I haven't been able to scratch since finishing Bloodlines. That was my first experience of being able to solve disputes through dialogue rather than always relying on combat, so having a full game that not only removes combat but reacts to practically everything you say and think looks incredible. Definitely going to check this game out. Also, very subtle with the plug for Pathologic 2 there. I almost didn't notice it :P

Oh thank God; from the first 15 minutes (well, honestly, first moment) I started playing this game, I was hoping someone would cover it. I think I want to write something about this some day, but I'm not even done -- I'm not even done day *two*, and I think I've played like 7 hours already. It's so dense. It's so good. God I love this game. I know I'm making a comment before I've even watched the video but I just have to thank you for making it, because I want everyone to love this game. I don't even know my whole feelings on it. The game literally makes me ill; every time I sit down to play it I get an actual headache. But this game deserves to be discussed, to be known and recognized and ripped apart and understood and misunderstood. I know right now no matter what I think of it as a whole, or in details, or what anyone else thinks, it's a damn good thing this game was made.

Agreed. I’ve been extolling this game’s virtues to anyone who’d listen. I don’t know if it’s perfectly written or it’s just perfect for me but this game went in my top five within hours of starting it.

I barely started and got to the point when your character was supposed to autopsy the body of a victim and had to pass a roll to endure the degrading corpse bile smell but I failed the roll on it due to my low points into the stat needed to pass it so I ended up not being able to stand anywhere near it. I had to get ammonia to what I presume was to help with the rolls the second time around which failed horribly and ended with my partner telling me to get my shit together with a tooltip telling me to work on getting a perk called "Get My Shit Together" which I'm assuming is a bonus endurance perk to support rolls for the individuals who couldn't autopsy the body on the first 2 rolls, I failed the roll after that horribly and my partner roasted me for it saying he can't possibly believe I failed to hold in the vomit and bile that many times even after getting the perk. Fuckin loving the amount of depth to this game. Shortly roundhoused kicked a buff racist dude on a bridge shortly after that point bypassing it with an amazing roll.

I've never played one of these games, don't even know what the hell you're talking about most of the video... Now I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to dive, head-first, into this piece of art! Bravo, good sir. Bravo.

I did something I’ve never done before and bought this game completely blind, based solely on the title of this video (I didn’t even watch the video itself until playing through the game). My faith in your opinion was well deserved. This game is such an amazing experience and I think I enjoyed it so much more going in without knowing the first thing about it.

I devoured it. I share your love for meaningful RPGs and games in general. It was dense, meaty, bloated with wit and character. And was one of few games that were able to brought me to ecstatic (or maybe I should say ORGASMIC) tears.

I genuinely find it amazing how expressive you're within your videos, to the point in which i end up purchasing or have a very high interest in the games you talk about. For example your Love Letter to the series Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, having bought that and played through it, it was honestly one of the best gaming experiences i've ever had. 10 minutes into this video and Disco Elysium will be another one of those purchases. It's criminal how you only have 179k subscribers when you genuinely deserve a lot more. A work of art is what i tell my friends when recommending your channel, keep up the amazing work Ragnar !

Finally, one of my favourite RU-vidrs is talking about Disco Elysium. It is truly such a great game. Thank you very much!

I love this game so much, my favorite part is when I got a thought that would take 20h to research. During that thought it gave some terrible debuffs, then when I finally completed it it gave even more debuffs. It played with my expectations so much and made me love it to death. This is my favorite RPG of all time

This game broke my brain, my heart and also my body - I have been sitting behind my computer playing it for the last 10 days.

14h in, I've laughed and I've cried! It's text heavy but not like other rpg's. Here you want the text, like in a good classic; a psychological pessimistic philosophical horror novel. It's me going back to swedish tabletop rpg's like "Kult" and "Chill". Those were the days. These guys (devs) could pull off a rendition of "Kult", if any. To me that is the highest praise in terms of psychological depth.

It genuinely feels like i've been waiting twenty years for this game to release. When i finished Planescape back in '99 i was filled to the brim with excitement and wonder at all the vast possibilities that gaming as a narrative medium with its own unique advantages could make manifest, followed by two decades of gradually lowering expectations, disappointment, and an encroaching realisation that artistic expression wouldn't really exist alongside the practical realities of releasing mass consumption games for a modern market. Even legitimately inspired works like Pathologic marred their own integrity and initial vision by, let's say for example, including a stupid difficulty slider to achieve wider appeal, forgetting that any work of art is inherently niche and it is more valuable to appeal to the audience that your work is made for than hammering your product into a more inoffensive glob for every rando yahoo that opens up Steam and sees it on the front page. And then this beauty comes along, elevates gaming as a medium and delivers its uncompromised, deeply intelligent, multifaceted and empathetic narrative and leaves me reeling, reminding me why i cared so much about videogames as a storytelling medium in the first place. Hopefuly it won't be another twenty years before the next one...

I really missed this kind of an old school rpg. On top of the fantastic story and narration, the game does look really good and plays well. It's an instant classic and demands more playthroughs using various builds to get a grasp of the variety of scenarios available. Simply brilliant.

23:36 : "To top it all off, Disco Elysium also brings the *T H O T system* "

the pathologic to disco elysium fan pipeline is so REAL

I loved this game, but it bummed me out so much by the end. A lotta the stuff with mental health and depression the character goes through all hit close to home. Gonna be hard to find any game that will top the experience I had with this one. I only wish the ending was a bit better.

A darkly beautiful, unbelievably well-written masterpiece of roleplaying.

I never in my life was so involved and thrilled playing a game. Revachol is my home now.

Thank you for explaining how similar the game is like tabletop RPG. Now I understand HOW much The Disco Elysium is FUCKING beautiful.

What I love about this game is all the little tiny voices in your head vying for your attention and you talk back to them. Be they there to help point out important details or looking to entertain themselves by convincing you to do or say something. That and they all have their own little quarks and personalities. Like playing with a full party of players that in whole is just the protagonist and his partner.

Disco Elysium is the type of game that requires patience to appreciate it. Although I love the background, atmosphere, characters, and also how well-written the dialogue and story is, it didn't feel like a game for me. Probably my loss. It's true that I played Disco Elysium mostly after work when I had only a couple of hours left until I had to get ready for the next day and I wanted something more than what seemed to me more of an adventure type of game rather than an RPG. It lacked the fun element of playing a video game, and I detest rolling dice in any game, probably as much as turn-based action like in Disciples. The game felt too much like reading a book, a good one, yes, but not like playing a video game. I love great literature and read a lot but when I play a video game I'm looking more to be entertained. In the future, I will probably just watch a playthrough of Disco Elysium and also great reviews like RagnarRox's

This game looks so good! Closest thing I've play to it was Fallout New Vegas, but I'm definitely getting it now. This video has convinced me to

This is one of the best gaming experience of my life (PC gamer since 1994). I was also playing table-top RPG as a teenager. But I do NOT like fantasy RPG anymore.. that's why Disco Elysium so gorgeous. Wasteland 3 also promising.

might be a bold statement but i don’t think there’s a single character or quest line that isn’t incredibly memorable. everything about this game is designed to sink hooks into your brain and never let go

Wow....I was just thinking the after nearly two decades of playing games where violence is the solution to solving every quest, it would be nice to play a game where you talk and role play to solve problems....

The entire time I was in my playthrough of Disco, I was hypnotized. It was beyond anything I'd played before, and I'm so excited to play the game again. Maybe in a year? I want to keep it fresh, by not beating it into the ground with multiple playthroughs in a single moment.

I *am* the law!

I played this game having never played an RPG knowing nothing about the game. It’s one of my all time favorites now.

Ragna, idk if I should do this here, but i'd like everyone to nominate Pathologic 2 for The Outstanding Story-Rich Game Award on steam, please make some shameless publicity, Ice-Pick Lodge deserves it...

I do think it's one of the best videogames of all time. However, I can't in good faith call it an RPG. There's one too many genre conventions that the game ignores or downplays for it to fit comfortably within its confines. Instead, I consider Disco Elysium to be an adventure game with RPG elements.

I agree on most points, though I disagree that you will end up with wildly different outcomes for playing the game differently, and I really wish you'd snuck in a line about it in the video to prepare folks. The final act of the game has very little variation regardless of decisions made up to that point, decisions made during major events, or your character build. I don't mind it so much as I'm a Torment man for life, and that game only has the one 'ending' in it, but I'd be careful setting up the audience's expectations for reactivity when it all falls away towards the end. This seems to be a real sticking point for a lot of the audience who attempt multiple playthroughs and find themselves 'disenchanted' with the let-down, and I think that disappointment could be mitigated if people understood there was some 'scripting' of events at the end of the game.

Watching The Game Awards, this won a few awards but I've never heard it until now.

The best game I've played in a very long time. Devilishly good writing, beautiful world-building, great mechanics, art style and design...I love this game so much. Going for another play through soon.

i've played disco elysium twice now, and im gonna play it a third time for that hardcore mode, and i cant stop thinking about it, it really is the best rpg thats come out of late

This game is great; it brings me back to the KOTOR games from back in the day!

I remember having succeeded an invisible Drama check that told me to lie about a certain serial number in the game. I didn't even notice that it could be failed until I died and had to reload and the option wasn't there anymore. This game is amazing in so many ways

Loved it. My GF loved it. My friends loved it. we all had different experiences, all weird

When i first heard of this game a few days before it was released i was very close to buying it instantly once it's out, but the game has one big issue for me: I don't think i like it's setting. But now that i've seen this video ... i think i'm gonna buy it anyway. Even though the setting might not be too convincing to me i think the whole concept of this game is worth supporting and that's what i wanna do. So i hope we'll see more games like this from these devs (or others) in the future. And i really don't understand those people screaming "this has RNG (random number generator) so it's shite!" ... and i've heard a lot of these arguments about a lot of classic crpgs like Baldurs Gate, Morrowind etc. I think dice rolling is part of what makes these games really a lot more interesting because success isn't a promise if you're just skilled enough as a player ... your characters abilities and a bit of luck are important. And for me that's basically what an rpg should be: A game, where you play your character, not just an avatar of yourself. Another type of player is the "If there isn't any combat it's not an rpg!!1111eleven" guy. To bad shitstorms have so much influence on game developers. But i guess player skill and character skills are two completely different concepts of making games. I like them both, but in a classic rpg i want some heavy infuence on success from my characters skills. And this is one of the reasons why i think Skyrim for example is an insanely bad rpg ... not a bad game (i actually like it though i prefer Morrowind and Oblivion), but a really bad role playing game from the perspective of actual role playing, and it already starts with the lock picking system for example. "Low skills? No worries, you can still open this insanely complicated lock if you have a hundered lockpicks in your pocket and a minute or two of time. Failed? Don't worry, doesn't have any consequences." Imho devs these days are too focussed on avoiding player frustration by simply removing consequences for failing. Why not make failing interesting instead? Close one door, but open another?

6:53 This is where the game failed, for me. The most important skill check in the game is rigged from the start. You cannot beat it, even if you make a build tailored for that one encounter. I had the unfortunate experience to play the game with that very build on my first playthrough, and that one moment dispelled the notion that the game offered unparalleled c&c. I will concede that the writing is superb, but it is very much at the front and centre of the whole experience, and there are little to no mechanics that lie outside of the attributes/speech system. There is lots of reactivity in dialogue, but not nearly as much of it in any major events.

I loved how rewarding playing through the game embracing every inland empire thought was; That final scene just validated it all

I want to use these ideas to DM a game. The last time I DM'd I did something similar, but still planed on a fight, but it was just a fight the players chose the side of: kill the king during the parade, stop another group trying to assassinate the king during the parade, or simply choose to not pick sides and see what turns out. I had players debating for 25 minutes just on that, without me saying a word. I want more of that!

Thank you so much for this video. You've convinced me to get this game not even halfway thru the video. I'm a huge D&D nerd and to see and hear the pure passion and love you have for this game and the excitement of wanting to share how amazing it is is infectious and I can't wait to start playing. I wish I'd have seen this earlier before my school break is about to end but eh. I can't wait to pour hours into this game.

Disco Elysium is a game with such incredible world building and it's so amazingly writen I almost forgot to breath at times with how much I was immersed in the character's inner monologs.

I can't wait to get a chance to dig into this. I love the idea that if some of your stats are TOO high then things can get wacky in your head real quick. You can really make yourself a total nutbar.

I tried but this was too much of a slog to get through all of the dialogue choices. I wanted to make sure I was seeing all of the conversation options and just got overwhelmed with little sense I was progressing.

Thank you so much for eloquently putting into words my same feelings about Disco Elysium. II haven't shut up about it, or stopped playing it, since it came out. I haven't been able to sum it up so nicely, instead going: "I'm roleplaying a consciousness exploring this brief experience as a human, but once everything is over, I'm going back the the void, where it's nicest. People around me think I'm a self-destructive lunatic since I'm constantly killing myself and talking about killing myself. My cop type is Suicide Cop with a bit of Apocalypse Cop. My necktie and I have conversations. It's brilliant." Comparing it to a good Tabletop RPG in the way it reacts to everything is so perfect. Great content!

I've always wanted to play D&D but haven't found anyone to play with in my country so: IM SOLD! Thanks for your video!

Im curious about what RagnaRox’s impression on Sunless Sea would be. Its such a beautiful game.

What can I say, having conversations with your own organs, clothes and random objects has a certain charm.

In my early teenage years, my big bro and I made a tabletop RPG. The rules and ways to play were basically mixing stuff from both Vampire The Masquerade and Deadlands. It was a 40s-50s noire detective type of game, as I am obsessed with that genre (and Horror too but that's the the point). I've been waiting for years and years to finally find a RPG video game with a detective setting. And it looks like I've finally found it...I know what I'm getting on Steam sale now!

I just started another go through this game a few days ago, which is rare for me since my pile of shame doesn't stop growing. But Disco Elysium is such a masterpiece, i just love it. Bought it because of this video back then, never regretted it. The world needs more games like Disco Elysium.

32:47 when "Tribunal" track starts, oh man the FEELS. The most culminatory culmination I ever had in a videogame...

I've been looking forward to this one, especially after being disappointed in The Outer Worlds. After watching this, probably the fourth absolutely stellar review I've seen, I grabbed it on GOG.

For you it was a critically failed conceptualization check. For Supercop Raphael Ambrosius Casteau however it was a merely Tuesday

That last scene, as they climb into the police car, and the end credits theme kicks in... "when the time comes, he will side with the people"... What a game.

You're not the only one who is disgruntled with the state of typical AAA open world sandboxes. I made a whole video essay a couple years ago about some recent games that I hope my be bucking the lazy trends and starting to get more creative about how they go about utilizing their open worlds: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mgq2co97IAI.html

i know someone who did writing on this but he never did a good job describing what the actual game was or it's title. very surreal to be seeing this suddenly done and on my screen lmao

I just asked the first girl/person I met to "make fuck" now she's in her room *showering and I'm debating messing with the door handle. I'm 5mins into the game /:

everant claire was indeed a boss fight - his secret weapon was this damn chair .. so hard to pass if you only have 1 health and dedicated your further life getting sober ..

Thank you for talking about this game BUT YOU MUST BALANCE YOUR SOUND BETTER, your voice is too quiet and the music has a high pitch whistle which kills any pleasure of listening .

After the extremely disappointing storytelling of Star Wars: Fallen Order, I REALLY need something like this.

As much as I enjoy this game... It was also a deeply exhaustive fans that I won't return to again. I got such several times, and gave up close to the very end.

Coming from Disco Elysium though, I was positively surprised when I was playing that Kingdom Come Deliverance game for the first time last week and that whole episode with Father Godwin took place. All those scenes of getting wasted with Father Godwin, beating the shit out of the entire village guard and delivering mass, convincing everyone I was a divinity scholar from Charles University in Prague in an epic recovery, now that was something special. That was all an entirely optional series of events because I had failed to convince the priest in a charisma check when I first met him to help with my murder investigation. Hell I failed at charisma so hard when I first met the priest we had a fist fight and throughout all our later shenanigans the priest had scrapes and bruises all over his face from me beating the shit out of him when we first met! lol

I stopped this video about halfway through, and bought the game. Now, 3 months later, I watched the second half of the video and agree with everything here. A wonderful game, and a great recommendation. Next: Pathologic 2!

DANCE! IT'S THE LAW!

Your tone is so infectiously passionate. Subscribed and checking other vids now!

The only game where I can roleplay as a communist revolutionary defending the free market with the power of liberalism!