Disco Elysium is out

[Gromnir]

am curious, but similar to bug, we will wait for a few patches 'fore paying and playing.

sidenote, disco elysium sounds like an alternative title for xanadu. 

HA! Good fun!

[Wormerine]

Aside from one clue registering (learned password which I couldnt use, until I learned it from a difference source), I had a pretty smooth experience.

Oh, and at one point an NPC joined in on a conversation, even though she left the room.

[Gromnir]

15 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

Aside from one clue registering (learned password which I couldnt use, until I learned it from a difference source), I had a pretty smooth experience.

Oh, and at one point an NPC joined in on a conversation, even though she left the room.

general policy for us to not buy until after at least the first major patch, and is likely we wait six months. get a more stable and likely encehapened game. is the norm for games to be buggy at release, so why buy at release? no downside to wait. am not gonna be the guy who habitual complains 'bout games being buggy in spite o' buying such games day 1.

you learn lesson the first time, yes?

yes?

exception: crowdfunding.

if we contributed to game development, then is kinda too late to wait for post patch reviews to decide on a purchase. 

HA! Good Fun!

 

[bugarup]

I don't normally play RPGs fresh out of the oven either, but I keep hearing how initial sales is Very Important Thing, and this is new independent studio that went for something more original than high fantasy cliche salad with mild Tolkien dressing No 112, so I made an informed decision to give them my money and then wait. 

[Wormerine]

11 hours ago, Gromnir said:

general policy for us to not buy until after at least the first major patch, and is likely we wait six months. get a more stable and likely encehapened game. is the norm for games to be buggy at release, so why buy at release? no downside to wait. am not gonna be the guy who habitual complains 'bout games being buggy in spite o' buying such games day 1.

That’s a practical approach, which I approve of, though as I tend to replay RPGs, I don’t mind playing on day1, if the game is in good state, I have been waiting for it for a while, and I have a gap in my gaming schedule. 

[ShadySands]

9 hours ago, bugarup said:

I don't normally play RPGs fresh out of the oven either, but I keep hearing how initial sales is Very Important Thing

That's why I bought it on release, I wanted to support something different, but I'm still letting it sit a while before I actually play it

[MedicineDan]

36 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

That's why I bought it on release, I wanted to support something different, but I'm still letting it sit a while before I actually play it

I do this.  For some people here, the cost of games is trivial.  Not me.  I like to spend wisely, but I rarely feel foolish over the games that I purchase early.  I *do* sometimes feel foolish for some of my impulsive Steam purchases, which has taught me patience in that regard, but those aren't pre-/early release propositions.  RPGs I purchase early or even pre-order have almost always been well worth the expense.  I think Disco Elysium will fall into that category, although it was a little off-putting at first.  If I wanted to play a late stage alcoholic, I'd get out of bed in the morning.  Still, dying in the first five minutes of the game, in a game willing to kill me off nonchalantly so early, is impressive.

[stiven]

 Nice stat system and ok-ish dialogues (later about them), but this game plays and feels like fanmade "expansion" on new vegas. Some nice things mixed together with the bad ones (over 9999 skills checks to scratch ass or blow nose, and your char dies if he fails them), and some just really stupid thing. Like 97% chance-to-successes skill checks, could fail 2-3 times in a row, which with so much dialogues text makes existence of skills questionable. Because it seems the only ways to play without save-loading is to go full-on some skill or not invest in the skill at all. So the dev could just made binary system of skills, - you have them or you don't, and that is it. But as it now, - you play the game you spend 5 minutes on reading all possible branches of the dialogues....and then you fail 67% skill check, so back to square one. And when you play for first time, you pretty much forced to do so, because game sucks at explaining the rules and its mechanics. Not to mention consequences of your fails. One skill fail can lead to nothing, but another one can cut you off some quest routes or possible reward/"perk", and you have no idea which skill check is important or which will produce some bull**** death. Not to mention dialogues options is offten on fanfiction level. For example sake, - you can try VTMB with the clan mod installed, end even if you will play it for your fist time, you can immediately detect "fanmade" parts of the game, by drastically reduced quality of dialogue options. Only in case of DA, whole game is like that. I seriously disappointed by dialogue options in this game. For example when you meet your "previous self" in the dream for first time, you can't just say to it to go fu-k itself and say that you are different man now, the only options - is shades of your char pissing his pants.

It's weird how game journos, the ones which usually big on sucking off COD 23, or Battlefield 55, and taking a dump on, or ignore on old-school rpgs like under-rail or pillars, age of decadence, is suddenly flushed with overwhelming praises for this game. For me, personally, i will solider-on forward, maybe 4-5 hours in the game, and if it not gets better i will drop it.

 

Edited November 17, 2019 by stiven

[Wormerine]

12 hours ago, stiven said:

 Nice stat system and ok-ish dialogues (later about them), but this game plays and feels like fanmade "expansion" on new vegas. Some nice things mixed together with the bad ones (over 9999 skills checks to scratch ass or blow nose, and your char dies if he fails them), and some just really stupid thing. Like 97% chance-to-successes skill checks, could fail 2-3 times in a row, which with so much dialogues text makes existence of skills questionable.

Some of the mechanics aren't explained as well as they could be. I got stuck at one point, as my only way to move forward was to initiate conversation which would cost me -1 health, resutling in my character dying. However, you can use "medpacks" in conversations, and you have a generous amount of time before the point if health drains. 

I do like skill checks - in the first part of the game there are always multiple ways of reaching an objective, and there are many leads you can pursue. Failing a check, isn't as simple as "try it again later" - you often get a chance to persue the objective in another way, or gain information to make the check easier next time. For the first half of the game, all checks were shaping my character, not blocking my progress. It very much a game about building your character, and it is skills which decide what your character thinks, and can/cannot do, not you directly. I like that approach very much. For the same reason, I don't mind the low chance of critical failure/success when doing rolls. With amount of stuff to do, I didn't feel the need to save scum, until I crossed the watergate.

In latter part of the game, there are singular must-pass checks and they do make the game much worse. Aside from the content simply not being nearly that good, mechanical issues become apparent: There is no cost in changing clothing, so it is encourage to back out of the conversation, when player encounters a check, and put appropriate clothing to maximize chances of success. That becomes really tiresome, as amount of clothing available grows, and game doesn't discourage gaming the system in any way.

The bigger issue, is that the game encourages not spending skill points on lvl up. When a white skillcheck is failed, one of main ways of unlocking it again, is putting the point into this skill. I found it more advantagious to hord my skill points and spend them only when I failed a skill check, that I wanted to succeed in. That gamestyle wasn't really fun, as rather then developing my character in a way I wanted to, I felt pressured to be molded by skill checks I would go against. In addition, it halted my character progression quite a bit. Still, I was glad I did that, as passing the mandatory SHIVERS check, which I wasn't build to do, took quite a few tries. 

[213374U]

15 hours ago, stiven said:

It's weird how game journos, the ones which usually big on sucking off COD 23, or Battlefield 55, and taking a dump on, or ignore on old-school rpgs like under-rail or pillars, age of decadence, is suddenly flushed with overwhelming praises for this game. For me, personally, i will solider-on forward, maybe 4-5 hours in the game, and if it not gets better i will drop it.

Funny that you should mention AoD there after criticizing the all-or-nothing skill check design, because that's one of the things AoD drew flak for. You would have an absolutely miserable time in that game unless you had laser focus on a small set of skills, which determined the kind of character you'd play. I mean, I played a Daratan Praetor jack of all trades character and got the secret ending and all, but it took a hell of a lot of metagaming, going back, etc. Definitely not something you could achieve in a first playthrough, or without a guide.

This game (as AoD) looks right up my alley, but I'm also a strong proponent of the "wait at least six months" school of thought.

Edited November 17, 2019 by 213374U
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Tigranes]

This is a very polished game - there are a small amount of scripting errors, that's about it. Virtually no broken quests, no crashes, etc. They clearly opted to produce a polished game with plenty of 'depth' in each area instead of a 'large content' game, and there's no reason not to play now if you are interested.

The game should please anyone who liked Age of Decadence, although it's a very different beast, in fact. It will also please anyone who wanted TTON to be good (or, I guess, if you enjoyed TTON). It knocks most games out of the park without hesitation in terms of atmosphere and style.

For me, the closest experience is actually the way I play P&P - the feeling of saying 'alright, I'm going to play a cop who's been beaten up one too many times by life and now decides to weather the storm through florid performances of SUPERSTAR coloured by disco nostalgia', then finding all the skills and choices that support this, seeing the entire game shaped through that, and then, the game throwing me enough new information, choices, emotional moments, where said character goes through some kind of change - perhaps to a more sombre man who begins to accept his failures, perhaps to a paranoid apocalypse obsessed cop, etc.

It is pretty great.

[stiven]

On 11/17/2019 at 7:15 PM, 213374U said:

Funny that you should mention AoD there after criticizing the all-or-nothing skill check design, because that's one of the things AoD drew flak for. You would have an absolutely miserable time in that game unless you had laser focus on a small set of skills, which determined the kind of character you'd play. I mean, I played a Daratan Praetor jack of all trades character and got the secret ending and all, but it took a hell of a lot of metagaming, going back, etc. Definitely not something you could achieve in a first playthrough, or without a guide.

This game (as AoD) looks right up my alley, but I'm also a strong proponent of the "wait at least six months" school of thought.

I haven't played AoD much, but from what i saw, - you char, being "specialist", doesn't cut you from critical content. I mean, you can be a fat merchant with no combat skills, and still be able to dealt with "non-merchant-ish" situations, because every situation have multiple "angles" from which you can approach it. Also, in AoD, you usually know what are you doing and why. In DE, you have no idea, - would this skill check about glaring at empty wall open new route, new "perk" research, new "voices" dialogue, or new dialogue option with npc which can lead to something else, entirely. So in contrast to AoD, this game is consistently slam you on face with failed skills fails, which is "not for you", and you usually have no idea to what it can leads. Not to mention, that even if you have the skill, you still can lose the roll...what a brilliant idea. Not encouraging save-loading at all.

[MedicineDan]

Feels like a crusade to me.  On the other hand, it's a man's right to bitch about games.  Haven't had a chance to play it, but I plan on getting into it next month.  I like the premise and I get the feeling I'll enjoy it, even if it does have a few warts.

[stiven]

Spoiler

I had payed this game for a while, and i guess i can explain better why this game is so poor. Dialogues - they written on a level of fanmade mod. Because usually, fan of a game, even if he or she knows "lore" of the game, may still suck at writing game dialogues. Just like with authors of most bad mods i ever played, the author of this game have no comprehension of "player agency" in him. The author of a poor mod or this game, is sits inside his little bubble when he writing the story for his game, and can't possibly conceive the notion of player agency or that player COULD possible want to have an another option in dialogue, or to act in some different way. For example, in VTMB mod i mentioned before, you can meet a kuei jin girl, who want to party with you. We will ignore lore-impossibly and the fact that it is nothing more that the mod author's wet dream. Instead, i want to point your attentions towards dialogues with this girl. Through course of her quest you can visit bunch of night clubs, and in some cases have an options to talk with her in the processes. But the only options that you have is to end this quest imminently or to tag along and pick an absolutely ass dialogue option to process with the quest (with "option" to cry about you actions later). And that is because author of this quest (due finantional or technical reasons, or him just being busy smelling his own farts) has made this quest to be played in one, and the only one way possible (with a few little variations, one worse than another). You aren't "playing" the game/mod, you following the script, you character will do some stupid things when author decide it so, you char will laugh or cry or talk in some specific manner, just because author says so, not because you made a choice as a player. Imagine if in Fallout 1, you sneak you way to the master chamber, without killing anyone, after which the Master greets you by saying "oh i see you didn't kill even a single supermutant, you clearly like supermutants and want to be one, for what POSSIBLE else reason, would you spare all my soldiers? Don't lie to yourself, you want it". After which you have only 2 options, to become supermutant, or start the fight, despite the fact that your char is diplomat/hacker/sneaker/pacifist. For me personally, all DE is like that, one big exercise in the author smelling his own farts. He had some pre-determined opinion on who YOUR character would be and the only remedy to that is to have your char's skills high enough for not to cry, when people is mean to him, or not to became depressed over losing his gun (dispite the fact that you could have give zero F about but also story is implied that previous identity of your character didn't care about it at all), etc. But to be fair, before i played this game i read overblown by praise reviews for this game, so i expected this game to be as good as DoE2, or Undrerail. But instead we got a graphical novel, barely masked for RPG with tons of skill checks. Personally, i don't like this game much. But if YOU like this game this is fine. Despite its fails (IMHO), this game is better and much more deserve your time than another looter-shooters, militarily "realistic" regeneration lootboxes galore, and the such. But kindly please, do not expect me to blow overpraise fanfare in this game honor.

td;dr. I don't like this game because of dialogues. Example, - imagine you char is speaking with a Race-supremacist (take your pick which one race, it doesn't matter) and your options:

1. Yeah lets kill all those people.

2. Lets kill all those people but spare the X-race.

3. Well, if we going to kill all those people, how can we do that? There is so many of them. 

And options 3 is considered by the author to be a "disagreement" option. In this example you can't falsely agree/lie to the NPC (to move past NPC), or you can't loudly disagree with the NPC opinion.. That is DE dialogues in a nutshell, and for a game about dialogues, - its the game biggest detriment. At lest for me. 

Edited November 19, 2019 by stiven

[Wormerine]

On 11/19/2019 at 5:40 AM, stiven said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I had payed this game for a while, and i guess i can explain better why this game is so poor. Dialogues - they written on a level of fanmade mod. Because usually, fan of a game, even if he or she knows "lore" of the game, may still suck at writing game dialogues. Just like with authors of most bad mods i ever played, the author of this game have no comprehension of "player agency" in him. The author of a poor mod or this game, is sits inside his little bubble when he writing the story for his game, and can't possibly conceive the notion of player agency or that player COULD possible want to have an another option in dialogue, or to act in some different way. For example, in VTMB mod i mentioned before, you can meet a kuei jin girl, who want to party with you. We will ignore lore-impossibly and the fact that it is nothing more that the mod author's wet dream. Instead, i want to point your attentions towards dialogues with this girl. Through course of her quest you can visit bunch of night clubs, and in some cases have an options to talk with her in the processes. But the only options that you have is to end this quest imminently or to tag along and pick an absolutely ass dialogue option to process with the quest (with "option" to cry about you actions later). And that is because author of this quest (due finantional or technical reasons, or him just being busy smelling his own farts) has made this quest to be played in one, and the only one way possible (with a few little variations, one worse than another). You aren't "playing" the game/mod, you following the script, you character will do some stupid things when author decide it so, you char will laugh or cry or talk in some specific manner, just because author says so, not because you made a choice as a player. Imagine if in Fallout 1, you sneak you way to the master chamber, without killing anyone, after which the Master greets you by saying "oh i see you didn't kill even a single supermutant, you clearly like supermutants and want to be one, for what POSSIBLE else reason, would you spare all my soldiers? Don't lie to yourself, you want it". After which you have only 2 options, to become supermutant, or start the fight, despite the fact that your char is diplomat/hacker/sneaker/pacifist. For me personally, all DE is like that, one big exercise in the author smelling his own farts. He had some pre-determined opinion on who YOUR character would be and the only remedy to that is to have your char's skills high enough for not to cry, when people is mean to him, or not to became depressed over losing his gun (dispite the fact that you could have give zero F about but also story is implied that previous identity of your character didn't care about it at all), etc. But to be fair, before i played this game i read overblown by praise reviews for this game, so i expected this game to be as good as DoE2, or Undrerail. But instead we got a graphical novel, barely masked for RPG with tons of skill checks. Personally, i don't like this game much. But if YOU like this game this is fine. Despite its fails (IMHO), this game is better and much more deserve your time than another looter-shooters, militarily "realistic" regeneration lootboxes galore, and the such. But kindly please, do not expect me to blow overpraise fanfare in this game honor.

td;dr. I don't like this game because of dialogues. Example, - imagine you char is speaking with a Race-supremacist (take your pick which one race, it doesn't matter) and your options:

1. Yeah lets kill all those people.

2. Lets kill all those people but spare the X-race.

3. Well, if we going to kill all those people, how can we do that? There is so many of them. 

And options 3 is considered by the author to be a "disagreement" option. In this example you can't falsely agree/lie to the NPC (to move past NPC), or you can't loudly disagree with the NPC opinion.. That is DE dialogues in a nutshell, and for a game about dialogues, - its the game biggest detriment. At lest for me. 

Yes, you can't agree with him at this moment. But you will receive the thought related to this conversation and you can internalize it, and become a Race-supremacist. I didn't follow that path, but joining the racist club is one of the ways to get to the switch, I believe. 

[Tigranes]

I'm not sure I understand the objection, but you can, in multiple places, sympathise with race supremacy views, dodge the question and demur, or mock/disagree with them. Same goes for varieties of communism, free market capitalism, etc, etc.

Like any story-heavy game rooted in a scripted dialogue tree, you won't always have the exact dialogue option that you want to give. And like any well written story, you're often going to be in tricky situations where you can't resolve the situation exactly the way you want it. (You might have to partly work with people your character considers despicable, without the ability to totally convert their worldview or something.) But you're never forced to become, say, a communard if you don't want to. You are forced to play a character who's a washed up cop with a lot of baggage that has to one way or another try to solve this case.

Sorry if that's not the point, but it's really hard to digest one giant long paragraph that is mostly describing how fed up you are.

 

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2019 by Tigranes

[Wormerine]

A really thorough, on point deep-dive into Disco.

 

Edited December 14, 2019 by Wormerine

[xzar_monty]

I started Disco Elysium. Looks quite good.

One funny thing: at the crime scene, very early on in the game, there are these two troublemaker kids. One of them peppers her speech with words from a language that not a lot of people in this world speak and that is meant to be clearly alien (not as in extraterrestrial) in the game. I happen to speak that language rather well, so I'm one of the very few for whom that "exotic" bit isn't exotic -- I just happen to note that the pronunciation is off.

[Wormerine]

25 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

I happen to speak that language rather well, so I'm one of the very few for whom that "exotic" bit isn't exotic -- I just happen to note that the pronunciation is off.

 Happens. Kinda like watching Isle of Dogs, while knowing Japanese, I imagine.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Wormerine

[Chilloutman]

On 11/26/2019 at 3:19 AM, Tigranes said:

I'm not sure I understand the objection, but you can, in multiple places, sympathise with race supremacy views, dodge the question and demur, or mock/disagree with them. Same goes for varieties of communism, free market capitalism, etc, etc.

Like any story-heavy game rooted in a scripted dialogue tree, you won't always have the exact dialogue option that you want to give. And like any well written story, you're often going to be in tricky situations where you can't resolve the situation exactly the way you want it. (You might have to partly work with people your character considers despicable, without the ability to totally convert their worldview or something.) But you're never forced to become, say, a communard if you don't want to. You are forced to play a character who's a washed up cop with a lot of baggage that has to one way or another try to solve this case.

Sorry if that's not the point, but it's really hard to digest one giant long paragraph that is mostly describing how fed up you are.

 

 

 

 

 

Where is my BG2 playthrough!!! Just do it!!

[xzar_monty]

I have now played Disco Elysium a bit further. It's a very, very good game, by the looks of it. My only gripe is the walking pace, but the writing is really good.

[ComradeYellow]

I was hesitant at first but now that I've purchased, downloaded,  installed and played it, this is easily one of the best RPG's I've played.  Everything just sort of fits together almost perfectly.  Some of the dialogue is bizarre but that's small potatoes.

Recommend it with your drug of choice, of course.

[bugarup]

I started the game minutes ago and I already love it

P.S.: I'm not hurting myself, they have a debuff on them!

 

[Bartimaeus]

I played about an hour of it a couple of weeks back and thought it seemed very promising with both interesting and entertaining writing, hope to get back to it soon - had the complete opposite feeling in my initial impressions of Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera, and I tried to stick with Pillars of Eternity and ended up hating it, so I'm hoping that my intuition is correct again here.

Edited January 14, 2020 by Bartimaeus

[xzar_monty]

I finished it a couple of days ago. It's really good. The writing makes this game.

Asterisks were used for emphasis *like this* way too much, but apart from that and one you-must-succeed-or-the-story-won't-continue skill check, I don't have much to criticize. The game deserves all the good that comes its way.

I'm hoping that the quality of writing in Disco Elysium will make many game developers a lot more ambitious in their own writing. This would, in turn, benefit everyone.

Edited January 16, 2020 by xzar_monty