Disco Elysium (2019)
Disco Elysium is a 2019 role-playing (rpg) video game made by ZA/UM.
You come to on the floor of a wrecked hostel room in the seaside city of Revachol, with no memory, a monstrous hangover, and a body hanging from a tree outside that you are somehow meant to investigate. ZA/UM builds a detective story with almost no combat. Instead you talk, to suspects, to objects, and to the two dozen warring voices inside your own skull, each one a skill with its own agenda. Every attribute pushes and heckles you. The writing is dense, funny, sad, and political, and the case is only the surface.
Quick answers
What is Disco Elysium about?
You come to on the floor of a wrecked hostel room in the seaside city of Revachol, with no memory, a monstrous hangover, and a body hanging from a tree outside that you are somehow meant to investigate. ZA/UM builds a detective story with almost no combat. Instead you talk, to suspects, to objects, and to the two dozen warring voices inside your own skull, each one a skill with its own agenda. Every attribute pushes and heckles you. The writing is dense, funny, sad, and political, and the case is only the surface.
When was Disco Elysium released?
Disco Elysium was released on 15 October 2019.
Who made Disco Elysium?
Disco Elysium was made by ZA/UM.
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Disco Elysium in our writing
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A few thoughts on Disco Elysium
Come for the murder, stay for the argument with yourself. This is a game about talking, reading, and deciding what kind of ruin your detective wants to be, with almost no fighting. If you love novelistic writing and can enjoy failing forward, few things compare. Bring patience for walls of text and a taste for the strange and sad.
Story-first RPGs built on choices and companions
Disco Elysium builds its whole detective story out of dialogue, party-like inner voices and choices that stick. These RPGs put writing and characters first: agonize over Origins' gray morality, argue through Baldur's Gate III's endless talk, sway Bastila in Knights of the Old Republic, or watch NieR: Automata turn its own genre inside out.
Open-world fantasy RPGs to sink hours into
Disco Elysium gives you a whole seaside city to poke at, every object hiding a story. For that roam-anywhere pull, these open-world RPGs fill their maps with history and distraction, from the monster contracts of The Witcher to the dragon-haunted mountains of Skyrim and the fields of Oblivion's Cyrodiil.
Punishing dark-fantasy worlds with atmosphere to spare
Disco Elysium sits in a bleak, decaying world where the past keeps bleeding through. These dark-fantasy games match that grim atmosphere and ask for real patience: the interlocking despair of Dark Souls, Bloodborne's plague-city gothic, Diablo's demon-choked depths, and the run-again-until-it-clicks grip of Hades.