Disco Elysium: First Impressions

When Disco Elysium went on sale recently, I finally decided to pick it up. I say ‘finally’ because I’ve had my eye on the game for some time, but never felt confident about pulling the trigger. I just wasn’t sure if, despite the very positive reviews, it was something that I’d like. And now, after clocking 6 or so hours with the game, I’m still not entirely sure.

Do you remember L.A Noire? That was a game I tried to play multiple times but could never seem to finish. I really liked the concept of playing as a detective and solving crimes but the way that game handled its investigation and interrogation systems was very flawed, restrictive and frustrating.

In Disco Elysium, you also play as a detective attempting to solve a crime – a murder. An unidentified man hanging from a tree. And this core plot point of Disco Elysium is, right now, the most compelling and enjoyable aspect of the game for me. Everything revolving around solving this murder, searching for clues, examining the body, interviewing witnesses, figuring out motive . . . it’s great.

I think the problem I’m having with Disco Elysium and the reason I still have reservations about it is that not everything in the game revolves around this plot point. There’s a lot packed into the game that’s more about the character you’re playing as and their personal struggles – which I do like, but it can lead to annoying diversions from what you want to be focusing upon.

And then we have all of the wonderful world building and history and political and philosophical musings that, as much as I can appreciate the time and effort that went into creating this fascinating and fleshed out world, this is a game that is also guilty of being a little too self-indulgent at times as these expository dumps come to dominate entire conversations.

Because ultimately, as interesting as some might be, they’re not really that relevant to the mystery you’re trying to solve. And it’s that mystery that I’m most interested in. When one character I tried speaking with went on a 1000 word rant about his theory of racial superiority I just skipped through all the dialogue without even bothering to read most of it.

Because even if it might be interesting from a world / lore perspective, it really had absolutely nothing to do with the core mystery. It was, frankly, just self-indulgent exposition. I skipped it because it just wasn’t interesting or relevant to what I was enjoying about the game – solving the murder.

And people really don’t speak like this. When your game is primarily one of dialogue, it’s so important you don’t just get the mechanics of that dialogue correct in terms of skill checks, but also the way that conversations flow and the way people speak. Normal people don’t ramble on endlessly like they’re reciting an encyclopedia entry, but that’s how quite a few of the characters I’ve encountered in Disco Elysium speak and it’s kind of f**king annoying.

It’s strange, because for the most part, people do speak naturally and conversations flow in the manner that you’d expect. That’s why it’s even more jarring when you do run into another walking wikipedia entry.

Disco Elysium has a very unique and interesting way of building your character. You set your core stats – relating to intelligence and physical aptitude, for example – and these stats then determine how far you can progress the individual skills relating to these stats. You can try to build a more ‘rounded’ character – but it feels a little detrimental to do so. This is a game where it does feel like focusing on just one or two core stats is more beneficial in the long run.

The skills connected to these core stats are then used to determine the outcome of various dialogue based skill checks which are conducted via a dice roll with a displayed percentage of success. It’s an impressive system in the sense of how many skills there are and how many ways these skills determine how conversations flow and what the outcomes might be.

But, once again, I have my reservations. This is a game where I save scum endlessly. I’m not proud to admit it, but I think I’d lose my patience with the game if I didn’t. Why? The dice roll system. I’ve put a lot of points into skills relating to perception and intelligence, so when I get skill checks relating to these skills with a 92% chance of success, to then get a bad dice roll and ‘fail’ in that check is kind of irritating.

It makes building your character to be ‘good’ at certain things feel a little pointless if your success is still determined by a random dice roll. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply require a certain level of the skill to succeed? ‘Perception +4’ required, or something like that? And that’s why I’ve been quick saving before every conversation or possible interaction – so I can try again if I fail what should be an easy check and it screws up the progression of my investigation.

I guess you could argue that failure itself can lead to new outcomes, but I just find it frustrating when the outcome is so random and entirely out of my control. What’s the point of using skill points to boost my capabilities in specific stats, even to their maximum limit, if I can still get a bad dice roll and fail? Because when you do, you’re kind of stuck back at square one because the other skill checks that you haven’t built your character for have practically zero chance of success.

I don’t want to rant too long or too much about this yet because I’m still only giving my First Impressions and it may be that as I progress through the game, these mixed impressions may change. But I wanted to get this first impressions down before I go any further because as you can probably tell, it’s kind of irritating me and I needed to get it out of my system. It’s so frustrating when there are aspects of a game you really love, but you feel like other aspects are kind of ruining it for you. But, as I said, these are only my initial impressions of Disco Elysium and I’ve still got a long way to go.