Board 8 > The Beauty of Reality: Why you should play Disco Elysium

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Picture a flower blooming in the garbage. Four white petals, so beautiful they seem to draw in the light to enhance their charm with a glow. Why is it there? How does its grey, hostile, drab environment allow it to exist? You don't know. No one knows. All we can possibly know is that it's a miracle, and we're lucky to be there to see it. That is Disco Elysium, and that is what it's all about.

You might be wondering why anyone bothered to nom it. Its title sounds ridiculous, being a seeming riff on Disco Inferno. The answer, at least the one that I arrived at after playing through it is that it is Real. By this I don't mean it has a verisimilitudinous setting, or that it's dull and brown and boring. What I mean is that it has depth, and quirkiness, and horror and wonder and so much humanity it makes you want to scream, or maybe cry, or maybe laugh in frank joy. Its lead designer and writer, Robert Kurvitz, said in an interview that most games aim to entertain and serve as a form of escapism, a shield against a painful reality we can hide behind for a while. His hope while creating the game was to go a step beyond that. He wanted to do the same thing a good book or movie did, and instead equip players with the tools they needed to deal with their reality once they returned to it. Rather than try to persuade you that he did it, let me give you a couple examples of how him and his team tried to do that:

-Maybe ten minutes after starting the game, you meet a filthy-mouthed kid called Cuno. His greeting is always, 'Fuck does Cuno care?'. He's ten years old, living in one of the poorest districts of the city you're in. He has no future, no hopes, no prospects. His father beats him up when he's not too doped up or half-dead to not care. He's addicted to speed, and offers you to split a dose with you if you can reclaim it from a place he can't reach. Cuno also dreams of a vivid detectivesque setting, the City of Rage, which he's tried to bring into reality through an insect farm. You can punch him, empathize with him, betray him, or ignore him. You can praise him for being a strong kid, or buy sportswear from him. No one will know how you talked to him aside from you, him, and your respective partners watching the scene.

-When you call the police station to report you lost your badge, the entire station crew is listening in on your dispatcher. The second you admit it, they explode into jeers. Try to calm them down and you'll get owned. Like so: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/196447085627703299/635277633361543179/badge.png

After the conversation ends, your skill representing your connections to your fellow policemen activates, and grants you a paranormal vision of them. They're all worried for you. Hoping your antics (and you've had many of them) won't totally catch up to you. They all laugh so they don't cry.

-You can ponder thoughts to gain benefits. After enough time, you'll unlock an epiphany for them. Here are two of them, presented without comment:

Problem

Your face looks like its 58 and your body feels like its 60. Your mind feels like its lived for one day or a hundred. Both longer than they ought to be, the day and the century.... But for how long, then, has this thing attached to your sentience walked the planets crust? Time to start racking those brains of yours, Elder One. When and where were you born?

Solution

You were born in the year 07, in the last year of the Commune of Revachol, right before it fell. In the Old Military Hospital, on the ground floor where people usually came to die, during a snowstorm. The Revolution had about one year left to go and the fires were still burning bright. There were explosions in the blizzard. This was 44 years ago. You are 44 years old. The bloating might never leave your face, but beneath it -- you still have some years. You still have some hope.

Problem

It has been brought to your attention that youre an alcoholic. And that its a sickness. And its killing you. You're crawling on your knees through life, your booze-filled belly dragging on the ground, your brain now fuzzy, now in overdrive, your hair sticking together with today's cold sweat and yesterday's vomit. Perhaps theyre right. Anything is better than this. Even bone-dry reality itself. Maybe you can quit?

Solution

Congrats you're sober. It will take a while for your body to remember how to metabolize anything that isn't sugar from alcohol, so you're going to be pretty ravenous soon. Eat plenty. You can expect your coordination and balance to improve in a couple of weeks. In two months, you might start sleeping like a normal person. Full recovery will take years, though. Itll be depressing. And itll be boring. Dont expect any further rewards or handclaps. This is how normal people are all the time.

These are just a few facets of Disco Elysium. Objective facts to relate to our own, unique experiences. This is where my objectivity ends and my subjectivity begins. I'm a philosopher, by nature if not by trade. The whole time I played this game, I was thinking, as I do when I read a good book. Thinking about myself. Thinking about what my character was doing. Thinking about why things are as they are. Feeling a profound oneness with the world, and cognizance of how strange and endlessly complex it is. As I ran through the broken streets of a colonized postwar commune, I felt like my soul was about to fly. I felt myself growing, like a plant left under the sun and put on fast forward. I was challenged, amused, hurt, healed. I realized I was experiencing something I'd never seen before in videogames, and I felt so, so proud of the medium I love so much and which I grew up with for finally making such a great, unquestionable leap.

When I was a little boy who was 3 years old, I played Doom with my father. The thrill of gaming started there, and it never really went away. Disco Elysium makes games more than partners in fun. Playing it is like seeing a friend who's a couple years your affable but immature and vapid junior blossom into a selfless, loving, questioning, mature adult. It is an emotion that goes far beyond simply being entertained. It's a part of my, our, everyone's process of growth as human beings. It is a blessing. it is truth. It is a miracle.

Play Disco Elysium.

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