A True Art: Disco Elysium review
Disclamer: this review is spoiler free.
Disco Elysium is obviously Art. It is as close to Real Art as a video game could have ever been. It is beautiful, in visual style, in music, and most specifically in its texts, flowing like a river and beating like a heart. Like every self-respecting art piece, Disco Elysium is elusive and flirty, luring the player behind, whispering promises of passion and riches.
Like is the case with every self-respecting art piece, these promises are empty.
A long time ago, when I tried Disco Elysium for the first time, I was noting, with surprise and bafflement, that it is a game that spends all its time talking while not really saying anything. Before writing this, I have browsed the reviews, both amateur and professional, taking specific notes of the themes that the game supposedly has. Some say that it is a study of the human condition. But what does it say about it? That poverty and misery and alcoholism exist? That sometimes life sucks? Some say it’s about politics, that the game is criticizing radical political movements. Oh, it’s criticizing them, alright, in the hypertrophied hysterical manner that cannot be taken seriously. All communards are Trying to Destroy Our Democracy and Must Be Shot. All libertarians are hustlers who would kill a man for a penny. And all centrists are hypocrites who don’t believe in anything and will never do anything of value. The game has opinions all over it, but none of them are true, none of them are designed to convince the player of anything.
It is intentional, of course. Art is not to impose its own thought and meanings upon the player. Art is to provoke something that is already within. There is no meaning in art, the player is to find their own personal meaning. Some find it deep and complex, but I always found it cheap. If I’m doing all the real mental work, I should get all the real credit.
What surprised me, is that Disco Elysium is not actually a story game. It looks very much like a story game from the outside, with the broken mess of a main character and a mystery to solve. It the classic setup for a plot — the detective solves an engaging case while learning more about themselves and progressing as a character. Thus, the story would be both personal and emotional, while remaining engaging and thrilling. Disco Elysium does indeed follow these story beats but does so very half-heartedly. There are barely any surprising twists and most of them happen tragically early. The ending is likely to leave a player disappointed, breaking some major rules of detective writing. I am not entirely sure why is this the case. I don’t see anything in particular that would be an obstacle for a competent detective story. My early conclusion is that it has to be unintentional — the writing focus was in a different place, so there was no time left for the plot.
I can pinpoint the problem with character development much more easily — the gameplay is the killer here. Or, rather, the sheer variety of personal choices and styles that the player can impose upon themselves. How can you develop a character if there is no definite character? You can be a superstar cop, who thinks that everyone should bow to his glory. Or you can be a direct opposite, a broken man that cannot stop apologizing. While all of them have the same core underneath, the practical differences are big enough that trying to apply the same emotional punches to them would be jarring. And so the game didn’t. There is a number of choices you can make that sound meaningful — fixing your past mistakes and becoming a better person — but they don’t mean anything to the game itself, the game only acknowledges them briefly. They only mean something to you.
The main character is a curious mix of both being a blank slate and a developed character. H.D.B. has his own voice, you can generally see what kind of person is he, or “was” he. But after he gets into our hands, we are free to guide him wherever we want, to make anything we want out of him.
But when the story lacks, the Lore makes up for it. The lore of the game is obviously the love child of ZAUM. The game paints many things with wide strokes, only providing the general shapes, images, ideas, but the lore is hyperdetailed. Almost every character in the game won’t stop dropping names, dates, places, historical events. It is commemorative in its own way, but it quickly becomes clear that the lore does not exist for anything, but to exist. The game did not need the lore as a justification for the scenery, it is supposed to be its own beauty for people who love to dig. And it is indeed beautiful, and tragic and touching and deep. In one of the interviews ZAUM mentioned that they were not ready to abandon Revachol after Disco Elysium, and I agree that it would be madness to do so — this setting provides a monumental amount of detail that is barely used.
Disco Elysium is a strange game. After I finished it, I realized that it failed to leave an impact on me. The game has hardly touched any strings in my soul. It did not make me particularly emotional. There were a few moments that came close but they were rare and fleeting. There were no characters that I particularly loved or cared about. The game even failed to be annoying, boring, or infuriating — I have finished it with some interest, but nothing more. It entered me, enveloped me from the inside, and then left, somehow without touching anything. I am most likely an exception here, as most people have found it to be deeply personal to them. But with such a wide sweep, the resulting punch was way too weak to get through my armor. And I cannot describe it in any other word but “sad”.
