What Was Disco Elysium Actually About? 

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Disco Elysium is a game about putting cool hats and jackets on a very handsome and well-put together protagonist

Kim is one of my favourite game companions of all time. Watching the dissapointed professional facade melt as he learns more about you, and watches you get results, until he's eventually cracking sly, quiet jokes is just the best.

I love how they chose to make the game's world something completely fictional and a bit magical, yet everything in it is realistic. The coalition government, the failed revolution, the pale... Revachol itself is this weird blend of France, England and parts of eastern Europe. I feel like the tone of the game just wouldn't have been the same if it was set in our reality. The political themes would have felt like on the nose comments on recent events, the fantasy elements would feel awkward and out of place. This way it's just perfect

One thing I think you might have missed: Why is Evart in the crate? Why do they move the crate around with that crane instead of him leaving? It's not because he's too fat to move, or too lazy. It's because he knows about the sniper. The sniper who he's upset by betraying his goals after they made a deal to assasinate a political rival.

One of the most touching moments in the game were those 2 modifiers to try to save kim If kim kinda likes you, you get a +1 modifier stating Lieutenant katsuragi trusts you. If you sided with him in the moments were he was the target of racism you get an additional +2 : Kim "truly" trusts you. Brought a tear to my eye

Not many games made me cry, but when the cryptid showed up I shed some honest to God tears of joy. I honestly didn't expect it to be there, I accepted that sometimes you just lose. AND THEN IT WAS THERE, GLORIOUS AND ALIEN AND TOXIC AND WONDERFUL, AND KIM TOOK THE BEST PICTURE IN THE HISTORY OF CRYPTID HUNTS OF US TOGETHER. I CRIED SO HARD.

I remember the first time i played this and my GF was aksing what the game was like. I responded with "Well I just danced so hard I was granted audience with the anthropomorphic personification of a city, and that's about the third weirdest story beat so far." This game is such a gem

For me, it was when Harry met his old squad. The meeting directly mirrors the Tribunal with they way it positioned the group you're dealing with (and with a music theme very similar to the one that was played at the Tribunal). This is the real climax of the game: the Tribunal represents the messy curveballs life throws at you and the fact that not everything is under your control, what with all the dice rolls you could fail. The Tribunal is external, but meeting the posse is internal. It's Harry's progress report that decides whether he gets to continue to work in the RCM. The active checks are minimal, and everything is mostly decided by the actions you've already taken, and if you put in the work, Kim (or Cuno) will step up for you, and you'll have the strength to convince everyone to let you back in. Even if he can't fix the world, Harry can still fix himself. No matter how hard he was beaten down, he was still able to get up, and this time is no different. That's what Disco Elysium is all about.

What made Disco Elysium genious was how precisely it could stare into my soul. In many situations it gave me some critical information about myself that I have not even considered before (whole centrism way, how I want everything to stay the same and many other things). In my opinion, Disco Elysium is mainly a game about you, the player...

One of the things I love in that showdown scene - when saving Kim Kitsuragi (it shows up briefly in your video) are the modifiers. +1 The lieutenant trusts you. +2 Kim *truly* trusts you. The latter far more personal, far more revealing, and far more important. It's about the human connections that tie everyone together in this game - bottom line.

Pulling the bullet out during the autopsy is probably the single biggest achievement in the game that actually changes the story. Knowing that the union is trying to give you the runaround is huge

The only gripes i have are minor (pronounciation of oranje and spelling of insulindian), except for a small bit of wrong information: Harry was actually a good detective. If you inspect his badge it tracks the number of cases he ever solved, and Kim notices his crimes solved by year is above average. Plus, he's a double yefreitor. That means he had a chance to get promoted and refused it. Twice. His glory days are long past him, but they were not as mediocre as they might seem.

“Kim trust you, Kim REALLY trust YOU!!” The moment just stuck with me, one of many. such a great game !

On my first playtrough I died from turning the light on and failing a die-throw, so it was a heart attack for me because low-health-high-smarts build. Loved it.

This is one of the few pieces of fiction that, despite it being a yearish since I experienced it, still makes me tear up just thinking about. There's so many phenomenal little bits across the whole game. The moment that takes place if you hug the Working Class Woman is a 100% success rate ugly cry trigger for me, and I will never get over the impact I felt when discovering the answer to a simple question: Are you the miracle?

In a world where the Pale is slowly devouring everything, it makes perfect sense for Harry to be drunk out of his mind. I love when you find out about the Pale, you realize that everyone around you knew the whole time - including Kim. But despite the Pale, total amnesia, destruction around you, desperation, the most crushing moment is when in a dreamy remembrance the love of Harry's life leaves him.

"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. " -Karl Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Harrys Karaoke was the moment I found a healthy escape to Harry's pain, he could express himself without ruining the connections he has to those around him and is a way for him to deal with the pain that wasn't self destructive. Was a moment where his pain became beautiful

This was a great video. I love philosophically deep games, and it's nice to see someone put the time into writing in depth analyses of them. Even though it took you 3 years to put this one together, you should be proud!

The raw and unfiltered scouse power in Cuno's voice has absolutely made my night!

I had a very different experience playing through Disco Elysium. I've always had a hard time taking part in politics, and your comments on moralism hit me hard. People say "it's not rocket science" as if physically consistent phenomena are more difficult to comprehend than the human condition. It's easy to escape behind the fallacy of false balance, and I hate to admit I just don't know what the real answers are. But if there's a moral to be taken away here, I guess we get up again and we do what we can. You've done a wonderful job with this video, Adam.

Having to tell the woman about her husband’s death was possibly the first time a game has _ever_ brought me to tears. Followed by confronting Pigs on the boardwalk and then the meeting with the Phasmid.

uh, disco elysium is about being a funny little guy with your friend kim. duh

listening to this after I've finished the game once through helped me retrospectively connect so many dots! Two in particular: "The trucker seemed to rip some expensive radio equipment out of her truck" "The victim seemed to be happy when he died" Great video. Incredible game.

Good video, but a bit short. I expect better on the next Disco Elysium video.

I am surprised how well you were able to make a coherent chronological order for the events while making your points and highlighting the major themes. With how open ended the story is I had a very different timeline playing and thus was a bit confused or looked at the story from a completely different perspective, seeing how other people play this game and having a complete breakdown of the events changes so much (even though the events are largely the same, the order you can experience it changes ones opinion) Very awesome video!

5 Times is a charm. Really happy for the other 2 guys who watched this video to the end, relay great stuff. Instantly my favorite from you

I can honestly say this 1:11:05 went incredibly quick. You summed up my experience (only 2, almost 3, playthroughs under my belt), and arrived at many of my conclusions, and presented it in a way that is enjoyable and entertaining. That you did this all in a little more than an hour is a feat unto itself. Bravo!

This game deserves more attention, such a mood

Speaking to La Revacholiere always brings me to tears. It is single-handedly one of the most beautiful moments I've experienced in a video game, let a lot of piece of literature/media. It so wholly captures the ethos and love within Disco Elysium.

A fantastic video. For me, it really all came together at the very end during the Insulindian Phasmid scene, where I just started weeping when that Volition check happened. For once, your psyche united, speaking as one, facing forwards and onwards. Inland Empire [Medium: Success] - DETECTIVE Esprit de Corps [Medium: Success] - ARRIVING Authority [Medium: Success] - ON THE SCENE

Oddly enough I came away with a very different interpretation. The world is this vast unknowable and inscrutable thing. In any moment there is more mystery, history and implication than you could ever comprehend. What are Harrys/your problems in the face of it? To Harry the glimpses he has of his past are Earth shattering and all consuming but when faced with the movements of the fabric of reality then even those are ultimately small little things, even Humanity itself is a small little thing. The discovery of the Phasmid and the nature of the pale to me serves as a recontextualization of the world to Harry. A pivot in perspective that ultimately allows him to transcend his own failings and finally move on in life. It's not a "happily ever after" but it's a "things will get better". Ultimately that does depend on playing a version of Harry where he wants to move on and be better. The Tribunal at the end serves to judge your actions to deem if you are worthy of that second chance in others eyes.

Strangely fitting that disco Elysium is the one game you have struggled to write about so much, but keep coming back to try again

I'm really looking forward to watching this video in 18 years when I've finaly finished Disco Elysium

Kim is one of the best companions I have seen in a video game. It always made anxious to make decisions that may disappoint him. During the tribunal, when I saw that he REALLY thrusted me, i was so touched and so happy! But as in real live, shit can always happen. I failed the roll despite the high chances I had of succeeding. It broke my heart! However, as the game wants to teach us, we learn about our failures so better things can come. Having Cuno as a companion was so fun, and for me, one of the most touching parts of the game, was confronting my squat with my friend Cuno by my side, seeing how he finds the company that he desperately needs by him side. If you didn't have it in your playthrough, let the poor Kim to be shot so you can explore the island with cuno. But don't worry, we are told that Kim doesn't die, he is in the hospital recovering.

Holy crap, really? An hour long video from AoG on one of my favorite games ever? And it's not even my birthday! Thanks Adam

The core that you came away from the game with speaks to me on a deep level. As someone with significant trauma and a ticking time bomb in my life, the idea of using your past, your pain, as a way to move forward, to learn from and help others learn too, is so powerful. I've lived by a code of wanting to make the world a better place, to prevent others from ever having to go through what I have; I wish to eliminate the poverty that puts undue stress and impossible choices on the heads of everyone, especially children; I want to prevent the bigoted judgement of society from planting the seed of shame in people, having it grow and fester into a parasite that only gives power to those who want you dead; I want to help people realize that coming together and leaning on others is one of the most important things you can do when you're in pain, when you're hurt, when you feel like you've become damaged, rather than isolating and hiding within yourself. As a depressed communist, this video brings me much joy. It's incredibly powerful. I'm glad that you were able to continue fighting through it all and finding success in the end, for this is quite a mighty success. From the depth of my soul, thank you for this.

Will watch this at some point, but I'm only like 6 hours into Disco Elysium so I really don't wanna spoil myself qwq But I feel really glad that you did an in-depth analysis of this awesome game c:

I really appreciated the ending that I received: Kim wasn't with me, which gave me a new lens to see Cuno through, and the team at the end were openly hostile to the idea that Harrier could be permanently changed by his experiences and was now a much better person. It really brought home that redemption isn't a matter of the short term and simply resolving this one case over the course of a week isn't enough to demonstrate that Harrier had moved past all his personal traumas (which in my mind were entirely self-inflicted. He was a dangerously violent and unstable person to begin with and probably used questionable methods to 'solve' such an unusually high number of cases. No doubt that instability influenced his ex's decision to leave in the way that she did.).

I think the message of this game is something we all need to hear right now. Yes, life is pain, but we have to keep "fighting the good fight". Now matter how difficult things get, it is ALWAYS worth the effort. "Do not go gently into that dark night. Rage! Rage against the dying of the light."

This was genuinely so helpful, I'm pretty dense and I basically... I really wanted to enjoy this game but I kept getting frustrated and rejecting whatever Harry was going through and kept struggling with trying to pick the best option. This video kind of opened my eyes to the fact my life is in a similar route to Harry's I won't go into detail but I have regrets and I'm worried about the future. I make mistakes and give up, so this is really important to me thank you.

"On the old road, we found redemption." My favorite quote from Darkest Dungeon which in a strange way shares some themes with this game.

"Get back up" what a great message and a great mindset. Reminds me of the second punic war, when Hannibal destroyed the largest roman army ever amassed. Hannibal sent a request for surrender to the romans, and they just replied something like "Good fight, see you next year" , or maybe that was a joke in a video and not a historical event. Epic either way

I can't express enough how much i love this game. It's a masterpiece in every aspect possible. It scratches a itch i had since Grim Fandango and Full Throttle, it have so, so so much style and different routes, and stories, and even the fails are really interesting, so i don't mind if i get shitty results because this reflects how stupid this game can be, wich is beautiful in so many ways. I loved to exchange blows with a racist titan, talk with a man so rich it distorts space-time, get totally screwed by the most intense uncomfortable chair boss fight ever, party like a freak while the world ends with a lot of crazy teens in a abandoned church, sing the saddest son with a gutural voice in a decadent hotel, get drugged with a kid, fist-bump my cop-bro, paint gibberish in a wall, get drunk as hell, let go of my ex, trade wholesome words with a cryptid, get shot in a gunfight and enforce communism. This experiences are marked in my heart forever, and this was only my first run. This universe is so rich that i wanted to explore every single bit of content it had cause i was as addicted as Dubois. This game is what i think about when i say that videogames are a kind of art that is incomparable to the other ones. I just love Disco Elysium, from the genious Skills and ideas to the characters, from the stupidity to the really messed up things, from the art style to the suberb dubbing, to me, everything is perfect. REVACHOL FOREVER.

I disagree, disco elysium is about trying (and failing) to kiss kim kitsuragi.

All I can say is that Disco Elysium is a work of art.

An excellent analysis of a beautiful experience. When I first played Disco Elysium on launch, I got to day 3 but lost interest in the game. I went back and finished a new playthrough after The Final Cut update came out. At first I had thought it strange that long political quests were added in the update, and their inclusion into the game's setting when I first played it. Upon finishing, I understood the game's story to be about existence, the simple state of humanity and society's being, both at scales impossibly large to fully comprehend (politics, anthropods, the pale), and at scales uncomfortably personal and deep (Harry's story, Cuno's story, the lady with the missing husband). The game shows the effects of the past on the present, how seemingly disconnected threads of stories are imperceptibly woven together, and most importantly how the main character and the player internalize these concepts of existence. Shivers being the skillcheck that determines how Harry finds Ruby despite having already explored the entirety of the island by then is another piece of context I didn't fully comprehend until this analysis. I understand that the skills are the personifications of different facets of Harry's psyche, those skills are how he understands and interfaces with his surroundings (the environment, other people, and the barriers they present), and that the clothes and drugs aid in altering the world's perception of Harry/Harry's perception of his own identity. What I initially didn't fully catch was how Shivers stood out as unique from the other skills as the connection between Harry and the identity of Revachol. Its a connection between Harry and the present state of being around him, his relationship with the environment in its most direct and pure form, only when he can say he understands the city via high innate skills or through completing sidequests for the modifiers can he reach the truth. My own understanding of the game's narrative was affected by my own understanding of myself and the world. 'Politics are a separate entity from me', but the setting and the characters in their caricature helped reveal that the ideologies and their influences are an irrefutable part of myself and my surroundings. 'Disco Elysium is a story about existence, perception, and a single person's place and influence in it', when it could be more accurately described about a story about a history of pain and suffering and overcoming that past. My understanding of the game was based on my experiences, understanding, and internalization that 'existence = pain'. As the intro of the video finished, I remembered that I thought that Disco Elysium was about 'existence', so it was interesting and enlightening to see the evidence and analysis of the same experience reaching a different concept as the holistic message.

I just finished playing Disco Elysium for the first time on Sunday night, so I'm stoked to watch this! 1 hr video essay about a game > 1 hr documentary for class, lol.

Truly wonderful video. Disco Elysium is a special, beautiful game, and it's always good to hear someone speak their ideas on it. Also, it's InSULINDIan, not InDILUSIan

I'm really glad you did this. I tried the game a bit and while I knew it would be a good game I knew it was also something that I wasn't going to be able to get through let alone understand the deeper meanings of. this was a nice treat to see what this game really has to offer

You missed something REALLY important with Measurehead. You can learn his ideology in a completely academic manner, without aliening Kim at all. The thought clarifies that you don't need to believe something to understand it.

Disco elysium is a masterpiece and one of my favorite pieces of art ever. I've been obsessed with politics from a left perspective for my entire life and seeing such a thoughtful exploration of political philosophy through the funniest writing I have ever read, it's the kind of experience I wish I could erase from my mind to experience it fresh once again.

As someone who played through Disco Elysium, and was deeply affected by it, thank you. This video brought tears to my eyes and you should be proud of it.

"not so much my cup of tea" I love more serious topics like this, i think that negativity is what we learn from. After all, you don't need to change when youre happy, everything is great and we can just continue doing those things that brought us to that place. When this happyness eventually shatters we then try to look at it and learn from it while also taking in account how we went from that to our current negative self. Yet when its presented in media i cannot face these topics, saying they are not so much my cup of tea is undercutting the fact that they bring me face to face to my depressive self. It makes me wonder if people that develope projects like Disco Elysium are worried that their project will end up confronting someone so much that they break comepletely, maybe they just hope for that confrontation to cause positive change or just say its not their responsibility, i dont know. So i'm sorry that this is the first video of yours i cannot watch, maybe ill be able to come back to it in a few years! Thanks for all the effort, much love!!!

Had a rough day and lots of revelations in therapy today and for some baffling reason I watched this exactly now by chance and it helps so much. Feels surreal that this happened but maybe luck's on my side this time. Thank you, I needed this.

Great use of "no truce with the furies" at the end there, it made perfect sense after all you'd said. Great analysis. You've got good long form writing in you, clearly. Even if it takes practice.

Interestingly, by your analysis, the message of Disco Elysium is also the message of Dark Souls, but THAT game chooses to communicate that message more through the gameplay than the narrative. You can play the entire game (perhaps the entire series?) without paying any attention to the plot or the lore and you'll still learn and hear what it is trying to say. As a side note, this is ALSO the message communicated and distilled through the structure and gameplay loop of roguelite games. In fact, this might just be the message that ALL great art is attempting to communicate, in one way or another. As one favorite author of mine put it: What's the most important step a person can take? The next one. (Brandon Sanderson, for the curious). Cheers, Adam. And thanks for this.

Christ this was probably my favourite video of yours, goes into so much depth. Good job!

**The anarchists were actually killed by the Coalition forces when they were rooting out the Commune. Joyce herself says it as an aside, "they shot the anarchists, too. Shot them so well one scarcely remembers them." Although, I'm sure there was plenty of ideological tension within the Commune and those against the formation of the state in itself.

A lot of the characters' suffering in Disco Elysium reminds me of CPTSD, where everyone is constantly miserable, turning to addictions to deafen feeling all the trauma and never-ending pain. The first time I played DE, I played the boring cop, always subservient and eager to please-exactly what I'd been doing my entire life to stay safe. I had been becoming more and more self aware of this strategy and my utter lack of ability to understand the world around me, and DE just put that into the spotlight even more.

This game is an instant classic. I cried twice during my first playthrough

I have so much to say. This is a great video and I cried through half of it. The other half I kept rewinding back and rewatching to understand all the clever visual meta-commentary that you left for me. It is jam packed with meaningful interpretations and I love it. Thank you very much. My life is going to change significantly because of this, and I am completely serious (and sober) when I say this. I'll go and subscribe to your Patreon right now.

This was an amazing thought piece, and i genuinely can't applaud you enough for finishing it. Your message of perseverance, or the highlighting of DE's message, whichever you prefer, really struck a cord with me. The fact that you stuck with 4 entire script rewrites is wild to me, but i cant thank you enough for doing it. Long form video content suits you i think, though i cant imagine the stress, time, and sanity the project might've cost you. I think im rambling, but in the end what i want to convey is that this was delightful to watch, that I'm impressed and, as meaningless as it is to hear from a total stranger, im proud that you embodied the message you wished to convey so well.

So glad to see you covering one of my favorite games! I’m hoping to do my own video on it someday soon 😁

So, I have to point out that there were a few inaccuracies, most notably that there's nothing to suggest Kim actually dies if you fail to warn him. But this was a great video overall, one of the best I've seen about the game.

that is so typical of philosophy. Hours of philosophizing around only to end up with "no pain no gain" and "just do it" that we can't accept simple answers like 42 for big questions is probably one of the most genuine wisdoms

I hadn't even heard of disco Elysium before I heard you talk about it, so this just made me fall in love with the characters. Cheers, and stay frosty.

"Egghead is just mental"???? How dare you speak about the next Innocence in such a way! Kudos on the genuinely great video though - I wish there were more folks making videos exploring this game (and Elysium in general) with such high perception, encyclopaedia, and empathy scores

After putting all of this together, I can honestly say that your analysis and description of this beautiful game truly brought a tear to my eye. I think I’ve internalized the original title of this game “No Truce with the Furies”. It really brought tears to my eyes

55:04 I had no points put into shivers, yet made this roll by hitting a double six (3% chance). I thought it was some scripted thing, because shivers tells you that the only way you can succeed is to fail, and when I expected to fail the game just gave it to me. I had done literally no side quests, so had no boosts from those, watching this video and finding out there was some whole 'pale" storyline that I'd missed dumbfounded me

I have tried to play Disco Elysium a couple of times, burning out on it quite quickly, and this vid has inspired me to go back and finish it. Awesome work as usual.

My recommend to this game is: If you like David Lynch, boy you are going to love this game , if you don't well...try it but I don't blame you if you don't like it

Proud to be one of the 4 who finished the video, evidently x 1000, a fantastic take and explained a lot of the naunces I missed on my playthroughs, especially the wrap up of the ending. I had my own conclusions as well but I feel like my take was a lot more on the surface

Wow, i’ve got shivers watching this essay of a masterpiece. Thanks for writing, I love thinking that my life got better after I’ve completed Disco Elysium. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

After watching this video I am so emotional. I get hit with waves of pure sorrow. I go from processing the video and thinking about the themes trying to be conveyed and sobbing. I feel like I should have played disco elysium but worry that I wouldn't have been able to grasp such complex messages without this video. Sufficient to say I needed a hug after this near perfect video.

I've watched a couple of video essays of Disco Elysium and I've found that Adam seems to hit the true message of the game. Other people get bogged down in the politics or are unsatisfied that the game doesn't play like other RPG games (being the hero who can affect the end of the story). Politics is just fluff, so you don't have to go in depth in it. If you do, well then you may get stuck in that thinking, not being able to accept other ideas that come from the "other". I'm not sure why some people were disappointed that your character wasn't able to make any changes to the main story. You are just one person who is tasked to solve a murder. The murder mystery was always going to be a linear path for you to discover. Like in real life the facts are already there, it's up to you to find them. However if you keep moving forward with determination, through failure and hardship, then you may be able to solve the case and maybe, just maybe, also come out of the investigation (and the game) as a better person.

Sitting on the swing with Lt. Kim is a moment I will never forget.

Adam thank you so much man for this video. Yesterday i just finish this game and in a frenzy to understanding it all i searched you video and man i found gold. Thankyou for taking the time to think about this complicated word of Disco Elysium and to spend hours writing this gorgeous script that enlighten so much for me. I love your videos and your takes on videogames. Keep this great work, and once more thank you for this and all your work here, it is truly inspiring and entertaining ^_^ big hug from Brazil.

Something that doesn't gel for me is the explanation of the Doomed Commercial Area and Nera's defiance of it. Shivers would have you believe the "curse" is somehow hemmed in by real estate lines, which isn't compatible with any pale-related theories of failure in Martinaise or Revachol. It wouldn't be worth noting if Shivers wasn't eerily reliable elsewhere Meanwhile at no point do we entertain what I think is a very viable theory: Not having to pay rent is OP. By, say, working out of a chimney

1:08:49 to skip game spoilers.

One thing I love about Disco Elysium's tribunal is that originally the game was supposed be more of an isometric RPG where you can fight as the 'No Truce with the Furies' had screenshots of battles. In DE however, the ONLY time you ever fight IS the Tribunal. It makes the scene so memorable as not only is it the only time you fight but its the crux where you put your skills to the test and save as many lives as you can.

ADHD makes watching these types of videos really hard despite how much I love them but, I suppose in a thematic way, after having to leave because I could not follow anything anymore, I came back and watched to the end haha I appreciate your efforts in writing these (let alone all) videos a lot. Thank you very much C:

Honestly this was absolutely riveting. It felt like 5 minutes. I am astounded at how concisely you did this. It was the shortest hour I've had in a long time. BRAVO.

I have had awe for this game from the moment i played it first time, and i might revere it 'til the day my mind rots the memory from my conciousness. In reviewing my first playthrough of Disco Elysium, i see that i embodied one of the lessons i've struggled with the most in life: You don't learn anything if you don't fail. Ok, you might learn a bit, but a lot of lectures can only be received from the bottom of a hole, of varying depths. I discovered the "shortcut" past measurehead (as you call it), not knowing that the other routes might have made me understand more of what the game is telling the player about. I played the game as a drugless goodie two-shoes, and succeeded on a few choice checks earlier than i statistically should have, and the combination of the two made some of the points the game was making fly right above my head. Yet at the end of it all, i still got the game's idea, it's message. I just didn't comprehend it clearly, just as most concepts one comes across in life; you don't understand every single minutia and intricacy about it, but you none the less grasp the notion. Such blurry pictures rarely leave you with deep emotion, yet something within the frame of that fuzzy image resonated with me to the core. I think i now understand. Because though i took the shortest path, where i didn't get much perspective, i still played directly into the game's narrative: Getting up and getting on with it. So when the conclusion to the story of my particular harry came, it had the same tone as the game build up to, the ending fit atop structure the game presented. Kudos to the developers.

Incredibly well done. So many parts of this game hit me like a ton of bricks and I loved your tour through them again.

Disco Elysium is one of those rare games where i can acknowledge their beauty, but feel unable to sit through myself. The subject matter is heavy, the game is very deliberately slow and unnfriendly, and everything sucks in the best way. Ive tried to play it in the past, but it lies in that awkward spot of making me just uneasy enough to keep me from playing.

You know, thank you. This video made me realize I did not understand this game. My obsession with succeeding in games made me dislike how hard it is to succeed in day one. I didn't realize I was supposed to be failing. Amazing

i really love the communist political quest line, the two students are obviously pretty educated in general and constantly throw around big words but they are also extremely childish since they truly believe that the right theory will improve society forever, hell even the background theme in in the room where you meet them sounds kind of esoteric and out there but also childish in a way. and building the glorified jenga tower with them while extremely silly was really heartwarming to me, they genuinely want to make the world a better place and that alone was what made them set out on this critical-theory rabbit hole and if you manage to hold up the tower even for a few seconds even though it's supposed to fall you can hear the excitement in their voices as they feel like all their efforts finally have paid off

Only 25 minutes into the video but it’s amazing how different your first couple days were to mine.

This was a fantastic piece on the game. It's one of my favourite games of all time (second only to Outer Wilds) and you did a tremendous job exploring the themes. Our stories played out differently but the game is smart enough to make every story beat flow naturally and feel "right". I was deeply affected by this game and I played it at an important time in my life but you put a lot of the feelings I had into a coherent, formative analysis. The themes of endless pain and coping are things I never concretely understood. It wasn't until watching this video that I really understood the deserter. I felt before like many did that it was a bit of a last minute switch, but you're right. The deserter is the absolute antithesis to the games message: he is one defined by his pain. He is the personification of giving up. He has been the game's antagonist all along. I need to play this game again. Great work!

I can't believe I missed the symbolism you point out at 1:04:25! It feels so obvious in retrospect, props for noticing such a powerful and relevant thing about that sequence :)

A deeply moving gaming experience one of the great great video games and definitely one of the best written games I've ever played. Thank you for this video its brilliant.(Kim is best boy by the way what a brilliant character)

I found this by accident, but damn, Adam, you cracked it. That was one beautiful video, just like the game. Thank you.

The whole Shivers reveal is one I found fascinating, especially in its relation to another reveal in another little indie game called Library of Ruina. So yeah. HUGE spoilers for LoR that I will try to hide behind a read more. And a wall of text warning-- this is terribly long-winded because there's a lot to talk about. The reveal of Shivers being the voice of La Revacholiere, the city itself, is pretty much identical to the reveal that the mercurial Prescripts that the Index are obliged to follow are in fact coming from the City, but the themes are polar opposites-- such complete and whole inversions I would be terribly surprised if one didn't inspire the other. For context: In Library of Ruina, everything takes place in the City. There's no actual name for it. It's a cyberpunk-esque dystopian setting where one of the most common jobs for the poorest of the poor is murdering people to harvest their organs and prosthetics for sale on the black market, and everything is run by a mysterious megacorporation called the Head, whose laws make no sense to anyone besides themselves like "No guns, but you're still totally allowed to murder people with melee weapons" and "No AI, but you're totally allowed to replace your entire body with cybernetic parts as long as you have a human brain in there somewhere" and they leave the day-to-day operations to other smaller megacorporations and to Syndicates, who are essentially the yakuza and mafia but not illegal because there's no law against trafficking or murder or drugs. One of the Syndicates are the Index (named after the finger), who are really more like a cult than anything else. They worship the City itself and follow orders given to them on little scraps of paper called Prescripts. These are little random commands from to do... something specific. It can be anything from as tame as "deliver a pizza to your neighbor before 9am on Friday" to as cruel as "if the first person you greet raises their right hand in response, tear their heart out, otherwise, tear your own hear out" to nonsensical and abstract commands like "kill the painting you've made." Everyone living in the Index's turf must follow the Prescripts they get. This replaces the usual protection racket that a Syndicate will demand of people in exchange for being able to live on their turf. The Index does not ask for money or any other goods, just that you follow the Prescripts, but again, weirdly, this has worked out excellently for the Index. They are one of the top 5 syndicates in the setting, and after the events of Library of Ruina, may in fact be the most powerful syndicate, period. Whoever or whatever is pulling the strings knows something no one else does. The horror behind the reveal is that there is no one speaking these orders into being, and no one that these stupid, seemingly random and sometimes pointlessly sadistic Prescripts are benefiting directly. They literally just come from the City. A huge, ancient seismographic machine interprets the rumbling of the city above into a nonsense language which is translated by more machines into the Prescripts. And it's not random. Again, the Prescripts have been proven time and time again to be core to the success of the Index. You learn about this from the eyes of Yan, a high-ranking member of the Index. He is a Messenger whose job is to deliver the Prescripts to whoever they belong, but has completely lost faith in their dogma and spends his days sabotaging the Prescripts in any way he can after they ordered the death of everyone he cared about, forging fake prescripts for people to follow out, igniting a war between the Index and another Syndicate, sending the Index's most powerful enforcers to their deaths, and just trying to destroy the Index from within. Learning not only that you can't Stick it to the Man when, well, there is no Man is pretty bad. What gets really fucking horrifying, to the point that Yan is driven hopelessly insane and distorts into a monster, is that not only does the City not care that Yan has been forging the Prescripts and trying to destroy the Index, but that it has very much accounted for it. The enforcers that Yan sent to their deaths already knew that Yan's Prescripts were forged but followed them anyway, because they received a Prescript beforehand to follow them anyway. Not only was Yan's rebellion pointless, but it was in accordance with the Prescripts he was trying to sabotage. To the City, Yan was just one more source of tremor that caused the seismograph to tremble infinitesimally differently than it would have without him. On the other hand, the reveal that Shivers is in fact the city (lowercase), speaking to you has the exact opposite effect. There WAS someone there, speaking to you, hurting as you do, spinning those very real stories. Someone who knows and feels you and all these people suffering so badly in this fucked-up world who just want to be okay, and who wants them to have that, too. A sapient city, but also a empathetic, loving, hurting being. This realization was incredibly warming to me, rave-party-excitement-induced hallucination it might have been. That there might be something greater out there that cares that I care. A central theme in both games is the ubiquity of pain. Ruina uses lines from a poem (Prayer for a Loving Sorrow) by Francis Jammes, to describe how truly wretched life is. It describes sorrow as a faithful lover, appreciating that it would sit beside you as your soul crushed your being, and that unlike even your true love, it would remain with you to the end of your days trying to enter your heart. Which tied weirdly well into your interpretation on the heart of Disco Elysium. That optimistic anecdote that starts at 52:31 that almost defiantly turns Jammes' depressing conclusion on its head. Sorrow is not something to fight or deny or run from, but something real to recognize, just as you would recognize the floor beneath your feet or the knuckles on your hands. To co-exist with your sorrow is not some failure or misery. It is not giving up on the world. It is acknowledgement and learning. To take it in stride and not let it overwhelm you is essential to becoming more than your scars and shames.

This video is such a, slightly course (which makes it all the more chaming), masterpiece. Thank you aplenty for making this video. It was fantastic to hear your contemplations, to relive the brilliance of Disco Elysium all over again.

I often heavily disagree with your views and conclusions, but this was an excellent analysis of a game that I hold near and dear to my heart and gave me a few new perspectives too. The game came into my life when I was in a very dark place, so I am just incredibly happy to see such a great deep dive into it. (though it is personally my goat game) anywho, great job

For me, voilition was what meant the most to me. Voilition keeps you going when you want to give up, Voilition is the voice of reason guiding you in the dark ether of sleep. Voilition is the mental fortitude that keeps you from breaking down. Voilitiol is the calming agent that pulls the reigns in on the other voices. The best part of Disco Elysium I think, is that there exists atleast one voice that plays this role for people. Most of these stats act to help the player learn from their mistakes and even in the worst case scenario, Harry learns and eventually solves the case. He overcomes himself by learning and I think this is the message of the game. We can overcome our existential terror by getting back up. The pursuit alone is enough to fill a mans soul. I always thought of shivers as a kind of premonition. A physical version of Inland Empire or Espirit De Corps.

Disco elysium is an absolute masterpiece. Outer wilds was another masterpiece released that year, but Disco Elysium won that goty for me, the writing is just phenomenal.

I tried this game because on steam it was marketed as a detective RPG. But really it's a point-and-click story game. I felt like the point system made little difference. As a player I wasn't compelled to go back and see the different version of events or missing information. I wanted to solve crimes but instead I got politics and history that were supposed to make me "think."