Hello and welcome to the amount of pixels podcast for back on.
Season 3, episode 3, disco Elysium.
This one's been in the grinder for a long time.
Will this died several times to bring it to you?
I am the host this week Nate and with me we have Craig ready and
we'll it Sammy. It's a me really.
Oh, in lieu of an opening question this week, I have two
white checks for each of you to pass.
I have a D6 here, and I have two thought cabinet thoughts.
One for each of you Who would like to go first will says he
would like to go first. Now we'll I've got a
savoir-faire check here for you called dances from mask to the
eggs. You have a pretty high chance on
this. You got a 42%, I've got a D6
here, you cool. If I roll it for you.
Yeah, let's go. I wrote it on a soft mat but oh,
you passed. You passed confidently.
Here's the text that I see. What are you roll?
It was it D6? I guess the game doesn't really
tell you what it's rolling. Does it?
And that's true. Yeah.
To d6s. And you can critical fail or
critical path. So there's a 3% chance or 97%
chance are your limits? Well crap.
I should have had contingencies for that.
Would have been fun. The text I have here says,
within you, there exists are horrendous vacuum.
An area devoid of purpose, a doomed passion area of sorts.
There's a serious need in there man.
What you going to do about it? Better start planning and
studying a glass. A Gore to might help sounds like
my experience at this colesium perfectly.
Well this is working this has a 45-minute thought.
Cabot internalization time you get a A plus 2 bonus to disco
Elysium thinking Now standing now.
Craig, it's your turn. You have a pretty good chance on
this one. You've got a 21 percent gray.
Oh, thanks funny. Like I hope this works out for
you. Glad you're setting me.
Help success here. You passed.
But barely. All right.
Craig's is a physical instrument check.
It's called the Great Reformation.
Yeah, he text here, says towering, over your young life
looms, a history of fear and uncertainty your life.
May not last long. You might want to think about
this, but don't think too much about it.
People will think you're dramatic and it's the kind of
thing that can consume you from the inside out.
Anyway, what you'll really need is some kind of improbable High
School to add a state college level transformation.
Maybe try some substances, and this also has a +2 critical
thinking about disco Elysium effect.
While it internalizes that's going to take an hour.
I feel like stay tuned for the back half of this podcast when
it gets good, right. I feel like electrochemistry
could have been a little more fitting there.
That is true. I don't know how seriously to
take the suggestions that the thought cabinet.
That's half. Yeah, that is also we will get
to that all shortly because we're here to talk about disco
Elysium which is a Estonian but I guess pan-european written
mainly in London, I guess. Computer role-playing game.
Released in 2019 and updated in 2021 with console ports and
voice acting. It is a wordy game that has
basically, it's big twist, is that it's a crpg like those of
the 90s except instead of characters you have different
voices in your head that represent different aspects of
your identity. If you do plot summary first or
the kind of who made this thing, what do you think?
Wow. Craig didn't even move his eyes
and the yeah, let's go straight in a plot summary since I met
dr. Experienced in working with
comatose, patients. Yes, I Splat summer, I wrote
this one down, you're a mysterious no name.
With total Amnesia, I'll add the classic RPG Trope, who wakes up
in a hotel discovering, you drink yourself.
Into a total stupor, you're here from your Precinct, to solve an
apparent murder mystery. That is left.
Someone hanged in the courtyard outside the hotel of mercenary.
Initially it looks like the Workers Union was at fault who
are adversarial and defensive in your attempts to investigate
through several days of Investigation.
It becomes apparent that the mercenary was actually killed by
a far distant. Hermit practicing, communist.
Ideology desperately in love with a fellow Hotel.
Guests from afar jealous of the sexual Affair.
The mercenary was having with this guest.
The murder was reframed as a hanging to defend the hotel
guests who they felt would otherwise be accused.
But before this is fully revealed, there's a climactic
action scene where the murdered mercenaries comrades were Turn
in stage of public execution of the union leaders claiming
responsibility and in some cases, shoot the player and the
greatest NPC of all time, Kim katsuragi your partner.
The game ends with you meeting the aforementioned communist,
the deserter who surrenders to you the last of his kind 43
years since the failure of Revolution who collapses in
Death At The Disappearance of the Cryptid, dubbed, the insulin
d and phasmid a supernatural being that has watched the
Region's history. For some 350 years, and has
observed and played some hand in the various failed and
successful revolutions. Get all that.
Well, Can I think I got up to the first sentence?
They're fine. I think most of that was beyond.
What will a scene? So I apologize for the spoilers
basically. Yeah you're a detective.
Try to figure out a murder mystery and some crazy political
Rebel killed him under the influence of a crazy like bug
business. Is this, your experience or is
this everybody's experience? This is the experience that is
the experience. Perience.
Yeah, you will make it through this experience by the end of If
you finish this game and roll credits at I guess the ending.
Although there is earlier endings, if you die earlier or
go elsewhere, but this is this is the game.
I will say that the bit about the supernatural bug being
controlling. The Assassin is sort of subtext,
but it's also kind of text. so, that might be like, You can miss
meeting the phasmid altogether but even if you miss seeing it,
which is pretty rare, you don't get to talk to it, but you still
see it and then it disappears. And when it disappears, the
Assassin starts, convulsing and dies.
So it's subtext that. Like the thing was controlling
it at that point, but it's, you know, chekhov's gun sort of
situation I guess. We will get it all into that
more after we talked about, who the heck made this game.
So, this game was written, and lead by Robert curve.
It's kind of, its kind of an Art Collective Zoom, which of course
we would be remiss to not mention the fact that ziane do
more apparently fucking theoretical syllables of Russian
proposed by radical poets in the 1960s.
So even the developer name is like chalk.
Deep and revolutionary like history.
Curve. It's is kind of credited as the
lead. He wrote a book called The
Sacred and terrible are that's still only available in
Estonian. That's kind of a big book of
advanced in Elysium which is kind of a ten-year project for
his role playing game that he runs with his friends but as I
guess not going to learn Estonian so you can read it at
this rate. That's what you're going to have
to do. Is I'd like, why isn't it, when
translating this I imagine the impostor syndrome must be very
strong. I don't think anyone probably
expected this game to get the reception that it did.
As I mentioned, Zoom is like a collective, right?
So there's also Alexander rostov who's the art director, that
kind of brings that up, impressionist painterly style
and Helen hand Pierre, who is another writer.
And then of course, there's a huge Studio.
I think there's something like 20 riders in this game.
A million Words which is something something we're going
to talk kind of more about words and since we're recording this
in 2022, which I guess would be catastrophically late.
We can say that we're being timely because there's been some
leaked legal documents about zooms Cultural Association being
dissolved recently and someone I forget how that news made it
out. But when people were talking
about oh what is the dissolution of the Cultural Association
which is a, like a group within the company.
What does that mean for the studio?
It also came out that curve it's and I believe rostov and, and PR
had been forced to Leah ejected from the company at the end.
End of last year, which is a little concerning because there
were plans for a disco Elysium too.
If you look at steam, it's been actually not review bombed.
But tons of people are talking about this is this is being
perceived by the internet as kind of a cash.
Grab by Zoom to try to keep the rights and they're a lot of this
made it to the west by there's papers that have been filed in
Estonian Court of curve at suing Za whom to try to get the
property back. So there's kind of a lot going
on right now. We don't know all about that
stuff, but yeah, I think that The kind of the important thing
I think in our discussion here today is that the team is
definitely Estonian are from Eastern Europe, a country in the
Soviet Bloc, that was in the USSR in all of the developers
lives times. Well, I don't know about all but
most definitely the author. And I think that that's pretty
relevant to kind of the Viewpoint that this is
espousing. Oh yes, there is also when the
game came out, there was a huge list of developer Inspirations
mmm that they released alongside it.
There's tons of stuff Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, which
I've read, which is like a surreal.
I guess we don't need to go into book report mode now.
But as also is like, if you've read that, do you understand
where the inspiration like that? That is, is there a direct line
of sight between the two? Kind of Invisible Cities is like
surreal accounts of cities that it's Marco.
Polo coming back to the Kublai Khan and Reporting on the city's
he's been to. Yeah.
And they're all like surreal visions of like cities that are.
It's basically like early magic realism I think.
Okay. So yes in that it's like very
flourishing and describe cities but like it's not like you're
going to get exactly a disco Elysium by reading it.
City in the City by China mieville.
I don't I keep hearing about him.
He wrote like a fictional account of the Russian
Revolution. I've been meaning to read him,
but I just like every time I get to it on my reading list, I bump
something above it. Oh, and the soundtrack is score
by British Sea power. Now just known as sea power
because After brexit and stuff, it's just that they're just not
undersea Powers kind of a different flavor.
Okay, interesting. And what is Red Rock, Riviera.
It was one of the songs that they that's by I guess.
Now. See Power is that see that blah,
blah blah. Yeah, I think so.
Okay, great. Soundtrack on bandcamp.
I have it. It's pretty good.
And yeah, I think that's all our metadata about what this game is
there. Anything else you guys would
like to throw in at the beginning?
Well, thanks. I mean it's interesting and
we'll get into this, right? But that what you explained,
Sounds complicated and convoluted and difficult to
grasp. Yet when you start the thing,
it's like, hey, you're just a detective that is fucking
hungover and you're here to solve a murder.
That's it. More or less, right?
Like. Yeah, here to solve why this guy
died, but don't you feel like this game like immediate?
I guess we're hot of the discussion already, but this
game immediately makes you sort of like start drowning in its
words. I go absolutely even before
you're like miles, deep and political knots.
Yeah. It's just, it's interesting,
just to see where it gets into versus where you start within
the first 10 seconds, where someone would like pitch it to
you in a bit. So it's like a detective game
where like you're trying to solve a murder and then there's
all of everything else that will get into.
Yeah, I started this episode with a plot spoiler because I
don't think we'll spend a lot of time.
Actually kind of talking about what happens so much as what all
of that represents. I think if this were a normal
podcast, where we kind of talked about the game on its level at
you're right, it would have made way more sense.
Just kind of start with, it's a murder mystery.
What all did you guys find out? Let's play in podcasts ever
recover that too tough. Yeah, I'd also be curious will.
I should I didn't want to put you on the spot but I almost
thought of having you summarize this game incomplete like me,
but before I gave my description, what is disco
Elysium? Oh man, this Games been tough.
So we've kind of talked about it.
I restarted this game like four or five times.
Now I think the key to me making the most progress has been one
of your last pieces of advice. We're at one point.
I was telling you, I just can't comprehend anything that's going
on here and you were like, well, hey, there's a skill
encyclopedia, which will just jump in and tell.
Tell you what the hell things mean, and what's going on.
And so for my final restart, that was almost completely maxed
out and it's like Wikipedia and getting that context for
everything that was going on and understand even when theme
things seem like they should be obvious from Context to be like,
oh, here's a name of a city and be like, oh, this is a city, and
this is, you know how it relates to the area and the law.
It almost became approachable for my Don't run where I was
getting all of this additional information.
I was kind of comparing this to their.
There was a great. I think it's an extra credits
episode where they're talking about a good intro versus bad in
front row. And they're comparing like a
modern warfare which kind of gets you into the action and
shows you what's going on versus the Skyrim intro, where you're
sitting in the back of a wagon and you just have to pee.
People talking to each other and they just give you term after
term after term and political people and the names of people
and the names of houses and you're just.
And it's like, I don't have any context to know who any of these
people are. What how they relate to each
other? How many of these are important?
I'm not going to be a real, remember them?
Because you just throwing words at me.
And that's what this game felt like quite a long time for me.
So camera, what your initial question was, but it has been a
lot of like, really struggling to figure out what's going on.
What the context is. I think, when I started talking
to the rich lady, and she was starting to give me both context
on like, what is reality, where am I?
What's going on? But then she started hinting at
the, the, this mysterious Interspace between the worlds.
And then she like, straight up tells you were not on a sphere.
This is not a planet. We're not always said, I was
like, whoa, what the heck is going on here?
And so, I could, as I was starting to see that I was
starting to get that wonder wonder feeling and like
thinking, oh man, where could they be going?
And yeah, I can see them getting to supernatural aliens at some
point because we're talking about these isolated.
Dated World Islands in between some, we had a mysterious
multi-tenant multi-dimensional things.
So yeah, it seems to me Lance, pop out of there.
Seems like we could have gotten there.
Probably would be fun getting there.
Did you ever talk to the lady in the wheelchair?
In the whirling and Rags the question times, the curb Hunter,
Yeah, her husband. She lost her husband and then I
told her husband was across the gate that I couldn't go across,
and then she was okay. And then I just gotta cross that
gate on Wednesday morning. That's where I am currently.
He had a childhood experience at five with a Cryptid and she
talks to you about that. I think pretty early on and that
Cryptid is the thing you meet at the end of the game.
But yeah, so it's not quite alien but it's interesting how
as Much as it sounds like there's a gradual path to get
there. This pretty much immediately
like disclosed you at the beginning of the game, too.
Which is interesting. Everybody talks about it.
Like, it's like, it's a Yeti. Yeah.
Like, you know, completely fictional.
It's it's presented as like oh yeah, these are all crazy guys.
That are just yet out there like a Hyundai and it's like oh
they're just wasting their time because there's nothing better
to do in life type scenario. So for it to actually show up
does present some sort of surprise.
But I do think one other thing about going into this game
similar to too well for how you kind of bounce into it.
I also had that same experience of like, what in the world is
happening here. Like there's just so much text
being dumped on you about the world and Exposition.
I was like how do I put these things in context?
How do I understand the concepts?
And the were like it's also a bunch of new terminology.
It's not necessarily utilizing. You know, the terms that we use
or old. They are not current, no not not
current and Nate. I think you had had experience
reading text, like books outside of gaming that present, world's,
in this sort of way where it's just like a dump, you just have
to essentially be with it and it for a period of time before you
can start making those connections and that was super,
beneficial to me as I started playing to be like cold, like be
overwhelmed and exist, within that space and know that after.
In a couple hours, things will start to form some sort of
connections, hopefully, and then that did in a recurring
eventually. Yeah, I mean, I love me some,
like, giant space operas right. Take your pick from, you know,
mundane to Star Wars Star Trek to, you know, I've been watching
the expanse Mass Effect, even you know, kind of stuff, like
all the Brandon Sanders didn't stuff, though.
Real Time stuff like these. Huge big were epic worlds and if
you were, you know, if anywhere to jump in in the middle of, you
know, the 15th book in this series, of course, you're going
to be as lost like, oh, who are these Powers?
Why do they relate to each other?
What does it mean to have, you know, a mass effect Drive?
What, you know, like all the the technology and all that, but in
almost all of those cases, it feels like they've built up to
it. They They helped you build the
understanding of the situation the, you know, enter political
ramifications, the technology that all those kinds of things.
And this game not only starting in media res, but then with that
dump of completely foreign terminology.
Yeah. I feel like if they had just
used the In World in our world equivalents of a bunch of
things, it would have made it much more approachable.
Yeah. That Sorry, starting off with
the bummer criticism but no. Yeah, we might be jumping ahead.
I think we'll get back to that. I think before we dive into the
that bring us back into the meat of this.
I'm curious, who were your cops will?
You've probably had like five? Well, hold on.
Well, who is the character? Who's the main character?
This game? Did you ever found out his name?
And any of your plate? There is Du Bois, right?
All right. Yeah.
Are the wall? Here are your depois here here
with an. Alright, that's what Harry Reid
was that you have over the course of your life.
So I have three main restarts that I can think of my first
instinct was to go in and I wanted to play quote-unquote
like myself. So very intellectually a focused
and a little bit of like dexterity focused and then you
know, I it's funny because I was Was telling me what the hell is
this game. It's not even a game and then as
I'm telling Nate this I sit in a chair and die like well shit.
So my my second main restart I was like, well, okay obviously
Nate was right, there's a game here.
So I'm going to play this like a game and I went super into the
physical traits. And that was kind of fun in a
way. I was able to like Brute force
myself through a bunch of the areas of the game that I hadn't
been able to figure out the first time stuff.
Like the big, the racist guy, who's the guard on top of the,
the defense measure straight up measuring.
Yeah measure head. I straight-up roundhouse kick
that dude in the face and walks through.
There's a There's a there's a whole should tell that you have
to like break in. There's a couple I think there's
at least two ways into but the way I got there was going
through the bookstore, there's like the back room and then
there's a door, and I just frigging slammed my way through
that door, and had access to this hotel and the radio room
and all that stuff, like way earlier than I did it.
My my other playthroughs of the game.
This sounds like an awesome build.
Yeah. Because it does all aside and do
this. It was Pretty awesome in that.
I could get places and go places but at, you know, as I was
talking to, Nate had no fucking clue what was going on.
And fortunately, unfortunately, that build got borked due to
some bugs, and I had to restart anyway, and so that main
restart. I went with Nate suggestion to
load heavily into the, the, the one that has encyclopedia in it
and a little bit of Health, a little bit.
So the the health and morale were like the first stats that I
invested in, so I had some wiggle room to play with and
then with having the encyclopedia, I was able to get
a lot more context, understanding what's going on in
retrospect, how I'm playing now is how I probably would have
suggested for a first playthrough.
It's I'm a little bummed to hear that that it is so focused.
A single singular story because I kind of feel like I wanted to
play a second time to see where things went because even in my
playthroughs, they've been pretty different and I'd like to
kind of revisit them. But to answer your question, my
last cop was a started as a boring kapha but ended up being
an art cop toward the end. I was my man to put some Trying
to find the stuff to paint the wall.
And then I leaned heavily into moralism, kind of the super
Centrist point of view. The, there's a great option that
was like, you picked moralist because you keep picking D all
of these other options sound crazy as fuck.
Mastic, that's great. Who are you Craig?
Oh man. So I only played through this
truly and in one time I did start it once before and then
maybe play like 20 minutes so I don't even count it.
But one thing that will brought up that I did want to hop onto
before I move into my character was it is interesting that
despite the plot getting to the same point you even mentioned
being able to do multiple playthroughs and see have A
drastically different experience.
I think that's something that will come back to again, and
again throughout this is that. Yeah, our own character sheet
and the things that you Do put two skills to into or focus on
dramatically changes your interaction with the world which
may not change the outcome but changes the perceived like
activity as it does occur. Yeah and the outcome can be more
different than you'd think from what I said too.
Yeah all right. That's that's fair.
So my cop was my Harriet or Harrier was very much in tune
with the city, so shivers Is one of the skills that I put a lot
of points into which I think had like the description of, like,
raise the hair on your neck and turn it tune into the City.
And then, I also do Dove deep into like Inland Empire, which
was like dreams in The Waking Life and bringing hunches and
different like imagination into the space as well as empathy and
I think like authority to some extent as well.
So long lot of the psyche was the main area that I dove into
and then would add points elsewhere where I needed to for
checks, but that was kind of the stuff that I would kept going
back to listening within my head is like, getting an idea of what
is this place and where do I exist within it?
And letting that color the experience, which might have
made it far too abstract for me in some capacities of
understanding, what in the hell is going on here, because
everything was spoken about Out in like lyricism about a place
as opposed to what anything actually is also favor.
Yeah. Which beautiful to listen to and
read in very useless for understanding what's actually
occurring. One follow-up, what was your
approach on electrochemistry? Good question.
Great quest. Do any drugs?
I did not. I was a pretty like sober.
Cop overall. Yeah, I love is also fairly
sober to I told you to do. I told you both to do drugs in
this game, but I think it's hard to tell a first-time player of a
game like this to do drugs. Yeah, I think the one piece that
I was going with because this isn't a style of game that I
naturally gravitate towards was like I want the content to be as
interesting to read. So if there's Pieces that are
fulfilling that portion of it for me then, like, that's where
I'm going to go into, looking back at it.
I was like, I kind of wish this was what a 25-hour ish game
somewhere in that range. I kind of wish it was like 12
because I would love to go back and go like hog-wild I'm being
like yeah simply like Communists or go into drugs or other stuff
of that nature on my super physical playthrough.
I Was getting into a lot of drugs and using them for their
stat bonuses and figuring out how to like optimize that way,
that was kind of interesting. But yeah, kind of like you're
saying when I became more focused on what the heck is
going on here. Drugs, seem like it would get
more in the way than be helpful. Yeah.
It is one of those places where when you're trying to choose
your characters going to be. And again, like, I'm not a
heavy-duty RPG, player usually don't head in these games, like
I want to craft my experience. It's usually I'm going into it
for an experience that is being told so thinking about that.
And now having done this once I'm like I kind of wish I would
have played further outside the lines of going into weird places
that I don't think I would have Gravitation towards you can
speedrun and the cool thing about this game being so
successful as the final cut clears up a lot of early
roadblocks from people that went way outside the game path.
So there's been like a second pass and a lot of the Final Cut
was cleaning up people that were speedrunning and like, just
truly going the wrong way, okay. And it's received an unusual
amount of polish for handling bizarre, choices.
Now, huh, I made this for you. Yeah.
Before the Final Cut I was pretty much exactly what you'd
expect. I flirted with hobo cup but
became art cop with an actual art degree.
I was a teetotaler didn't know? Drugs happen.
I don't know. Yeah, I think I did sorry I had
one of both the physical traits, one point.
So I was extremely close to dying at all points and without
drugs that's actually that gets kind of hard at points.
And I think if I recall correctly, I ended up giving up
that in order to like make it through things that happen in
late game cuz I needed like is like I gotta survive.
So, I think I like started taking.
I forget what just to survive. Let's see what else.
Yeah, when I started the game, I didn't know anything about it
and it was right at launch so I didn't have too many Things to
kind of guide me and I put all, I dumped all my points in Inland
Empire. I didn't really realize Shivers
achieved something very similar until kind of later in the game
which is kind of the thing that lets you sort of communicate
with the phasmid, right like. Well, I guess that's also Inland
Empire which has interesting narrative implications by the
way. Does that mean the like bug is
really a conversation with yourself?
Yes. I think so.
Like actual. Okay.
Well, we should well come to that when we do, I guess.
Well I don't know if the bug as much as Dolores de is a
conversation with yourself. But again we will get there.
How did you actually get that our conversation with Dolores?
Yeah, I got a conversation with my ex-wife presenting as
Dolores. Yeah.
So I didn't know that was a thing until this week.
Oh yeah, that was a really interesting.
Relation. But it was definitely, it was in
like this weird dream world. Yeah, it was yes.
Yeah. It's an angel or steak
confusing. Your ex-girlfriend with the
Christ. And Mary figure is pretty great.
Yeah. And then like you essentially
give yourself permission like move on in life you isn't don't
you like doesn't it present as kind of a boss battle?
Like you're trying to like win her back, aren't you?
And you end up failing? Yeah.
Like in some ways that feels like the whole perception that
gas boss bottle. Yeah and I was like, I didn't
even get that. Yeah.
So too will. Has point the the game can be
presented in multiple different ways.
Yeah, it's interesting that this is the only game I can think of
where the events might be the same, but the flavors different
and the flavor being different is like pretty, darn
significant. Yeah, I just want to mention
what a lot o question. So one of the last things I did
was get the gauntlets. Oh yeah.
And during my physical Place through, I almost got the shoes
characterizes with. Yeah.
They were yep. Once I started looking at like
what the gauntlets did I look in the UI?
There's a like an ammo. Like how as I'm looking at this,
I'm like, Something serious, like must happen here.
As far as I know. The only shot that I ever took
was shooting the guy down, which I managed to successfully do
twice. Apparently, did you really?
That's amazing twice. Yeah, I definitely failed that.
So, did you get your case File like early project on Topsy?
Super early. I didn't get it down to talk to
him or something. Okay, yeah I did the autopsy on
day one. Yeah, and shoved him into a nice
crate which made me nervous about myself.
Second playthrough or in the freezer on day 10.
All right. So yeah, that was explore
through was was intense. Yeah, I guess what.
You just tear that dude down. Put him in a crate and you're
like, all right, once I figured out there and filled all topsy I
think you remember you may or may not remember that I do is
stressing over the phrase field, autopsy?
Like it was pretty nasty, sorry. But what I wanted to come back
to was there's all kinds of indications that you're like
having shootouts and fighting with people and I guess you guys
described a shootout Ishq kind of thing at the end.
Like how does that even work in this game?
You can go in duel. Building to that fight.
Yeah, there is a showdown when Okay, so world events right
there is a labor strike occurring, right?
And scabs have been brought in and the mercenary that was
murdered was in town to kind of keep a handle on the situation.
We can kind of talk political Theory, a little bit about the
implications of this, but basically the labor, the labor
union like uses the murder to like, look strong, right to
remind everyone that they kind of control the town.
But unfortunately, for them to other mercenaries roll into town
and just start shooting. Everyone is there essentially
immune to the law. So when you come back from that
secondary, you just got to you kind of things go down and you
kind of come back and there's a shootout occurring and
unfortunately the outcomes of that are relatively fixed, but a
couple things can go down. Kim can get shot.
They're like you having those guns.
If what you're hoping for is like that.
Can I use guns to resolve conversations?
No. But there is one event we're
having guns and ammo will help you.
Yeah, and armor like I think that there is an ammo counter
just. Yeah, that was my mind right
like You're not like pointing at things and shooting on the
screen, right? Correct.
It's all still conversationally resolved, and it just affects
your stats, but you do take multiple shots of the number of
bullets is like relevant and that sense but can't isn't the
maximum. You can take like two.
I think, I'm not sure. I don't.
I I did have a gun at that point but I never recovered my gun.
So I went in without it and tried to converse my way out of
that. And that's why.
Both, I and Kim got shot. Did did Kevin died.
I don't know if you're a guide, but he was out for the count and
I finished the game with Kuno as my garnishes Kuno.
Oh, fuck him. Yeah, incredible.
He gets so shut down. And in the final scene after
everything goes down, he actually gets admitted a year
early to like their version of the Boy.
Scouts to join the police force. Oh, Jesus.
Fuck off. What?
It's kind of Great becomes a sort of sweet when he's out
there with you. Yeah, I actually it's a buyer,
not help reduce voice acting is just incredibly obnoxious thing
for you guys to see the end because his character actually
like becomes really interesting in the end and I forgot until I
was watching a bunch of media this week, why?
I was so judgmental of you guys being annoyed with Kuno, until I
was like, oh yeah, of course. Because I've seen like gunas
character Arc. What you only see if you have
one specific ending. Yeah, that's interesting.
Otherwise he's just Kind of an annoying brat with an abusive
father. Like there's like reasons
either. I can understand.
It wasn't change, hide presents. Yeah, he's very well.
I'm actually don't think kunas annoying but Kuno s is annoying.
Yeah, great because Christmas is like controlling.
So when Kuno becomes like a character on his own away from
Kuno s, it's actually not it's like almost a different
character. I was considering getting up the
empathy to try to talk to him. That was kind of one of my next.
Yeah, he becomes kind of a sweet nerd like he's really Excited.
Would you see the phasmid? He was trying to use the camera
to take a picture of it, but he messed it up and he like really
was apologetic for that. And like in the end when I try
to tell everyone at the final reporting that I saw the
phasmid, there's no proof and everyone's like okay whatever.
Like get the fuck out of here. I did also see I'm assuming the
two other officers from your Precinct show up.
Oh yeah there. Freaking cool.
They are want nothing to do with me.
They do not known her. I really do not great.
What's funny? Is kunos like cringe gets played
off at the end when the picture doesn't work.
You're like there was a fast but I swear and Evans like no, there
wasn't and who knows? Like yeah there was and everyone
is like now we definitely know. There isn't in your no man.
Like God was the my picture did work.
So I had actual proof that the past exists.
That's great. Okay, let's get in some big
picture thoughts. This mm, seems political you
don't say, that's what makes this game seem political.
And why is it more vertical in turn me off?
Well, it's politics. Who wants to lead this did?
Did this is less the politics that I don't like the political
theory that I don't like. It is like political Theory.
I don't know. It would you prefer it?
If it was just like an anti-trump game with no
political Theory, Well, here, let me ask here's here's a part.
I didn't get to. That's the question.
I had a second ago. Ever Arts, the leader of the
company. The labor union, right?
Okay, so who's the leader of the company?
What company the shipping cover these labor to come laborers?
Laboring for their part of a union.
That's for the Dock Workers like a dockworkers union and ever a
dyke is ideally you have a union that's negotiating against a
company right or companies. Is there?
No representation for our these Union people.
Like they're supposing somebody who's not even in this game.
Like the wild Pines group, is like the main?
That's who they're opposing, right?
Yeah. Do they operate the port?
Yeah, they have to deal with the yeah, the industrial Harbor,
right? And then wild Pines group is
where Joyce Messier is like, the company rep, that's their right.
She's the rich woman on the boat.
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, yeah, yeah.
So that's who they're against, yes.
What do you what what I mean? It, the power Dynamic seems
really backward but then of course that is this game in a
nutshell, right? Like, Okay.
If we're talking like, United States politics, right?
You have some big company. Let's just say, for example,
Amazon and you have a bunch of people who are all trying to
form a union. So you bring in some external.
Oh, this is my union Builder. Rep person to build a union,
right? I like, oh, bringing in somebody
from out of town to like, perform this Union, but this is
kind of backward, right? We have a super Strong union
that already exists and we're going to bring somebody in to
form the company that these unions are union, people are
working for know, the company, wild Pines group already existed
in runs the thing. This is like the third time that
they're going on strike and striking against the group for
further concessions, like that Amazon is the wild Pines group
there, like the Consortium that runs the harbor.
Also this isn't an American game.
I don't think this is set in America.
I mean very, very much not yeah, right.
But like this hole? This is part of why this is all
so confusing to me. It's like, I don't know who the
players are and who So and yeah Everett Claire is like the head
of the Union. Like he's the one like
representing the Dock Workers against wild Pines group and and
whoever was there originally as like The Negotiator for
traditional sector work, understand that in this world,
all these people are working for the doc but the doc has no like
company management presents at all.
The wild Pines group owns the dock the wild Pines group is the
company. But Like that lady, just comes
in on a boat. She's not there.
Yeah, I don't think we meet anyone like it it's sort of
underrepresented but we hear about it like it's not like
she's the only thing. Also, it's the super rich light
bending guy from light, while Pines or not.
Which guy was like, oh this is like the, you didn't like if you
manage to get inside, one of the shipping containers, there's
like a force of light in there that you can't look at just like
Rich light. I was talking my way into their
might know. Kill is I have like 12 points in
the in. You have to like logically talk
your way into that shipping container and had 12 points in
still, haven't made it up. That's amazing.
Oh, I get what I thought. Kevin that he gives you but you
can't even like look at him. He's like he's so rich that you
can't even look at him, that's how rich.
Oh yeah. So like the union also operates
as like a crime syndicate more or less, right?
And like they're trafficking drugs through the port and
things of that nature as well. So there's like, It's a whole
thing happening there. It's just a second since neither
of you met the wild white wedding, especially mega-rich
light bending guy roast on the adore, is a multi-billionaire
speculated to be in the triple digits.
Residing in a container in the North in the container yard.
He has an incredibly high net-worth due to inheriting an
enormous sum from his grandmother and proceeding to
invest it with an economic coefficient of over .96 at least
between him and Harry Dubois. He's traveling on the cheap with
his entire container. Ship from one point to another
in order to prevent being Subjected to targeted
advertising for luxury items due to his wealth allowing him.
Effectively, no problems. He believes that material goods
are not as important as mental space and time.
So this Games version of like, Ultra richness is like you just
don't even care about material wealth anymore, which is kind of
Interesting. All right.
So, back to the game, being political there is something
that Nate the you, and I talked about separate from the podcast
that resonated strongly her, which was like the idea of the
Imperial core. And I think that's like, what?
Flavors? This space.
Can you elaborate on that for the listeners?
And well, well well at fear of triggering will hoop.
Sounds like it doesn't like political Theory.
The Imperial core is this idea that there are markets post 1970
at the onset of neoliberalism? They're ran out of we stopped
having the ability for all places to benefit equally from
capitalism around 1970 and that's one of the things that
defines neoliberalism is that the world bifurcates into the
Imperial core which is areas that directly benefit from
capitalism. I'm dying watching wolves
response to the periphery which is destined to be more extracted
from than in can benefit from the effects of its extraction,
right? So in sum The whole thing.
You got America saves from the dead and excitement pedia.
Yeah. And you've got to look like
skill set and yeah I got it. That's right.
The Imperial chorus the place that benefits from capitalism
and the periphery is what does the West?
So you can have the West is the Imperial core but more than that
like America is decreased or but well, we're talking in human
world. Although yeah.
But also America has parts of it that are the periphery to write
like West Virginia, maybe in the Imperial Court globally, but it
certainly think America's he meant the wild west.
Oh no. It's like Wyoming.
Yes. Like cowboy times the West's was
the no. I mean the theoretically the
part of the United States which benefit from the yeah and
ignores the south of both hemispheres.
Okay. Yeah, so in this game from a
political Theory, angle Kuno represents the periphery Kuno is
outside of the Imperial core and is being extracted from.
His parents are addicted to drugs.
He has no means of success. There's nowhere for him to go in
the world even though he is kind of.
I mean I think also Jamrock is kind of I forget my specific
place names. Jamrock is the city right?
Or is it like State. Oh man, I think it's the like
state. I was gonna say we should he, we
should try not getting too tied up and specifics geographically.
But basically disco Elysium is like a game that's taking place
in something at the margins of the core and the periphery.
And what's, if Kuno represents the periphery, then, what
represents the Imperial Court or the mercenaries who show up as
the colonizers, there's no law applying to them whatsoever.
They can shoot whoever they want.
They destroy the labor union. Like when you get shot as You
Fade Out, you hear the sounds of The Hardy Boys and everyone else
getting shot like to death by many book gunshots.
There's no consequence for these people and that's kind of a
political commentary on how the West interfaces with regions
that are not in the Imperial core.
So that's some fun economic and political Theory.
Yeah, and even when you're starting this out right near,
like moving through the world, this is a world that's clearly
been at the end of Revolution or Wars, right?
There's like still bullet holes thrown across this like the city
is in like tatters as far as there was clearly military
operations and areas, bombed out that were never recovered.
And also there's like no hope of it seeming to be recovered,
right? It's oh yeah, the rubbish and
soiled. Yeah, like the revolution failed
and also no one's coming to like help pour money into this area
either and even when you break into a 26-story building, that's
only got four floors. Yeah exactly.
And there's even an opportunity later in the game to like help
like modernize a portion of like the old fishing Village and it's
all played out essentially as like, this is not actually, Here
to help the people here. Like this is a way to try and
enrich some of the coffers of someone that's already wealthy.
But like this isn't going to actually help the community in
any capacity, which gets back into that Imperial Court gets
back into like this, like a helpless world to live in and
what does that say about the politics of that region or that
sort of worldview when that exist?
So Yes, I think that's very well said.
Well do you have any questions for we move on?
I have a, I have a related. But embellishing thought so
many? I don't know.
It's a fine God. We're going on a journey or
tonight or will. I think when we're thinking
about what makes this game, political, I think the top-level
answer is it's using gameplay, mechanics, and it's words to
comment on political structures and systems.
Systems that affect the world that we live in as the players
as well as the NPC's in the game.
Right? So I think that's the like
answer it. I think that's, that's a piece
of it and other place here is that the game seemed more
interested with understanding the world and what what has
occurred within this space to be able to set up the circumstances
that take place than it does about any character within the
game? Right?
Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it.
I think what sets it apart for me so drastically is that the
game is about the systems that interact with people in the
world, not how the people interact with the systems in the
world. Well, that's good because I was
just going to challenge you. What you are basically saying
before, like place setting is what makes it political.
And it's like so, like a Brandon Sanderson novel that's like
extremely interested in, establishing a world is
political not. Hold on, before we answer, Sure.
That well I got the results of your thought cabinet thought
here. Oh man and it just says this,
it's a little totally unusual for the game.
You have really great determination and dance form and
I'm proud to have seen you grow all these years.
From salsa, through West Coast, your determination to always
grow in skills is amazing. Now, this has the following
effects plus. One hand, eye coordination, in
the text. There is gotcha.
You got a +2 pain threshold. Yeah.
Feel my feet. It's listed you get a minus one.
Esprit de corps, dancing. The night away and a minus one
on rhetoric. Let's Just Dance it out.
He's perfect fantastic. Congratulations.
Thank you. Yeah, unfortunately, you no
longer have a, I didn't mean to set it up this way.
But unfortunately, you no longer have a plus 2, talking about
disco, Elysium. So Craig's, got like a 15-minute
bonus here. All right, so you're saying
basically Craig that the I don't think it's about the place that
setting up the systems and their influence on the Region's
inhabitants is political. Yeah, and even like the economy
of the world, right? Like that has a political
undertones like that exists for a specific reason and has
reasons on how it came to be. And a lot of the game is a
exploring, your knowledge of like why is the system setup or
rigged against these people in certain ways?
And it's all because of some sort of political machinations
as far as how the world has like come to exist, within the power
structure of it, right? Like that's what what I Sets
that apart because it's about it's about those thoughts, much
more than it's about like Hey, how do you feel about this
thing, right? It's like know what's this thing
that has been set up by people pressing into you?
What do you think for what you've played?
Well, You mentioned that it's like sort of it sounded like a
negative implication of the amount of political Theory going
on is that what makes it political to you?
I mmm. I don't feel like I'm Hmm.
I think that here's something interesting.
I was just looking at the political alignments for this
game, all on the list of political alignments of, which I
was kind of surprised that Ultra level ultra-liberal is the only
like capitalist alignment that I saw.
If I could have sworn there was going to be more but this has a
list of organizations that align with those political alignments.
And so I think that's quite interesting and as I'm saying
this, I'm like, oh yeah. That kind of makes sense.
And I can kind of see how the players might align based on
their ideology and it kind of fits the way I I picked, you
know, I was mostly playing us. The moral is Or organizations
include the moral intern, which is kind of the overall Mega,
the, the Illuminati, kind of people.
I guess. Maybe something.
But more importantly, the second one is the, the citizens
militia. So the actual cop group.
So I was playing as a cop that believes in cops and they like,
fits perfectly. But yeah I thought that like
being able to understand how these these groups are generally
associated with their political ideology, understanding how and
who they interrelate with seems like Had I had a better innate
or Nate natural grass of these Concepts.
I would have had a much better time, understanding the kind of
interrelationships between all of them.
But being able to like see it on paper come back have a.
Now with my retroactive somewhat retroactive perspective of like,
oh these are the people that care about yeah.
It just Don't know. It kind of seemed too
complicated at the early stages that I keep being in.
I think Craig mentioned earlier of the idea that maybe I told
him about or maybe he this just happens in life.
There's a lot of media that throws you into stuff.
There's no you're not supposed to have an onboarding path where
it explains it to you piece it together by being overwhelmed
for some number of hours, until it starts to make itself.
Evident through the things. And I think it's a It would be
frustrating to play this game and think that you're supposed
to get it all from the beginning.
I've probably got 20 hours and what am I supposed to get it?
Like I don't think it's by playing the beginning multiple
times. I think it's by getting to the
end and seeing what the game is, like thrusting at.
Yeah. How long was this game supposed
to have been like 25 hours ish somewhere in that range?
But obviously that's super variable depending on
conversation and how much you're talking to people and what
you're trying to main line? But I do think there's something
about Like some combination in that to me.
Where one of it is about just being overwhelmed by it.
Another piece is as certain point.
You start being able to at least add context around it of like,
oh okay, we're talking about income inequality, we're talking
about the way that racism presents within this space,
we're talking about systemic oppression, we're talking about
these sorts of Concepts and once I was able to start to wrap my
mind around, okay? These are the things, and this
is how they show up in those. World.
And this is how it's like, impacting the different people
that persist here, that's when it started to click separately,
for me than outside of it being like, Oh, I need to understand
specifically what these actual terminology or places mean
within this game. Yeah, I think this is a better.
Better example of the point. I was trying to make earlier
badly. I'm sure there's stuff like
under that's racist racism, right?
You run into at least three or four.
People early on in the game. Who are explicitly racist?
Yeah, and one Fortunately, the game calls out specifically.
Hey, this dude is being racist because some of the ways in
which they're being racist, aren't obvious.
The the one guy says, welcome to Raven.
Welcome to reason small crossover of the Year.
Oh shit, how we ended up in Half-Life again?
Fuck. Yeah.
As we always do, welcome to roshal.
I think the shawl. Yeah, yes.
And that is a racist phrase and then they kind of go and explain
why that's a racist phrase. And then like, all right, I
don't understand what the races are in this game.
I don't understand. I think, I think that an endo
tribe is a race. I or ethnicity.
Oh, we like like Go ahead. No, I was just going to say
like, I'm not fully sure either. yeah, I know there's like
ancestry that's like brought up about where people are like it
was like an extra level of complexity that I don't know.
You guys tell me if it pays off, but it doesn't seem like if they
would have just picked races. Like maybe it becomes more
fraught in trying to put a game out.
If you have guys who were like, specifically racist against the
Asian Community Indian Community.
So, if you all of a sudden, the, the like specific cultural
context against being, you know, something of this world, but
like needing, To pick entirely to generate these new races and
not being not being words that sound like races like it just
becomes confusing and a whole lot of other way.
There's a much higher like mental hurdle to continue to
place that in context of oh you use this word, you know, like oh
shit, that was racist in the context of this world, right?
So it's like you have to learn where those are presented and
then remember oh okay this Word isn't a location.
It's not a concept, it's not a person.
It's a like racist like phrase being hurled at someone and
Sometimes they context can be subtle enough.
That it's just like that implicit version of racism,
right? Like the unconscious racism,
that gets or bias that gets thrown into different places
there were without you knowing like that's what's happening.
I think there's just extra work that you have to do there from a
mental hurdle to cover that I think we're slipping down a bit
into. This game is obviously made a
choice to be a piece of media that is.
You're in it. Good luck, figuring it out.
So there are, there are books out there, right?
That Unfortunately, yet literature we have to pull on
here because gaming doesn't really do this a lot.
I think gaming is very entrenched in the if I'm going
to throw you into new stuff, well I better do the work to get
you there but there are tons and tons of books where you're
thrown in the deep end. And those books are often
commentating on our real world, but are choosing to remove that
from you by one layer for reasons that I would say,
oftentimes aren't Like they don't pay off, but they make it
more fun to a certain kind of reader, it's an adventure to
read them. And I think that disco Elysium
To your point will using race. In this game is interesting
because some races get compressed and others are
expanded according to whatever the game needs to do.
And I kind of have a few thoughts on race and the way it
uses specific races here in a minute that are interesting, but
Like it's a fair thing to call out, but I think this game is
making the choice to keep these things.
Like one layer removed. Yeah.
It's less a matter of like. It all depends on the context,
right? If you're watching a 20-minute
TV series and the whole point is that you're lost and you can be
completely lost for 20 minutes that's completely fine.
If if I'm reading a 5000 page book and I'm supposed to be lost
for 4,000 pages of that, five thousand page book.
That's a completely different ask of the consumer and like in
some parts I get it. Particularly, because of the way
I played this game. Like you want to save stuff for
somebody who's into encyclopedia you, you need to have some
payoff for them. So everybody else is inherently
going to get less information so that encyclopedia does pay off.
Like they built a skill around having some way to explain the
context of the game. Like I I just it it Not a fan
that's all. It's like, I mean, it's just
like the authorial intent is, is to create that space like it's
gonna work for some people and not for others.
I do think it pays off. I mean Craig you're the you're
the middle. Every man in this situation, you
are surely overwhelmed at the beginning, right?
Did it pay off for you? Did this all become more clear?
It did I didn't think that I needed to get in till the very
end for it to become clear and I don't know.
And there's still places that aren't clear.
I also kind of got to a space where I thought that that was
intentional that you weren't supposed to be able to neatly
pack it up all of these thoughts and put them into a box.
And I thought I was like, maybe that's part of The history of
who created this game is that it wasn't neatly packaged into
Concepts and into themes that end up with like you know, are
bowed and tie it off, right? And instead there was like
there's just like things happen in the world that like you can't
really place or that don't really have space to be
explored. But there was also I think I
just had a belief that if I looked hard enough or if I were
able to explore some other skill cabinet thoughts or just other
pieces there that like everything felt like it had
grounding to be flushed out whether or not I had actually
exported enough to be able to get to that point, right?
So there's like a trust built up that the depth does exist there,
if you go out and find it, and that's one of the places where I
did see some sort of payoff there, but in a completely
different way. Probably, It didn't mean to
leave me feeling like oh I get it but I left feeling like I
understand what they're trying to do and I respect them.
Can I add a quick counter point to myself?
Sure counter yourself. There's a lot of interesting
stuff in the visual style particularly in the art around
the thought cabinets that is just so like complex and Like
they're these super weird detailed yet.
Also abstract representations of these con Plex thought
constructs that like they're great representations of that
same kind of thing you're talking about where it is bull.
Visually kind of trying to give you an idea of what's going on,
but also leaving all these gray areas for it is hinting at
excessive complexity to make you feel.
Like, if you just kept digging, you would understand more and
more of this world whether or not that's actually true or not,
Yeah, which is a like a piece of advice.
I don't know if it's Vice but it's a characteristic of a lot
of great writing right designed to make you think that there's a
lot more there and even if it doesn't need to tell you it.
Yeah, I think this is just the first time I've seen that
visually, yeah, that was worth calling out.
It is, that's where this feels different in a game.
Yeah, that's the big piece that I'm like, oh this this showing
up in this medium. Like is why I wanted to talk
about this game because it's that's one of the pieces that I
truly feel similar to me when I'm like, we're so used to just
being spoon-fed. Like, here is the thing, like
here is what you understand. Here is, how your game, here's
your play, and how it interacts directly with here.
This is. Yes, is the challenge and
sometimes there's gray area to be explored there.
But usually, Ali not in the way of like Tomo, text can present
to you. I think visual media in general,
has a hard time being vague it. Yeah it's there on the screen
right? It's very hard to pull off
something vague in a visual medium that isn't just like,
well why didn't you tell me more?
Where is it? Looks?
I think excel at that. Oh, that's a really good point
before we get to that. Yeah.
Craig. I just got the results of your
white check. Here are your clothes, I'm
sorry. And again, the tone is a little
strange with this one. It says you have great legs and
calves and feet, and I'm so proud of your yoga achievements
and your overall transformation of Health over your life and all
the time, I've known you is inspirational and fantastic.
Now, the effects of that are plus one suggestion, he handsome
plus to volition, not going to die yet and - to
electrochemistry, I'm going to bed very well.
Played excellent. I appreciate my white Check.
Yes. You know, I think I'm not sure
if in my mind this makes is it makes sense as a transition
point, is there a price point that this game is trying to
make? And I think that a lack of
clarity is actually like one of the direct like statements and
goals of this game. I think the narrative and the
way the narrative is delivered and even the mechanics to some
extent deliver this idea that The past is intertwined with the
present, there's no escaping. The failure of the Revolution
but yet, we're here now. There's no other ways.
Things could have been but also like none of us really
understand why we're in this situation.
Things aren't really clear. So something I think is really
cool about this game. I was really moved by the way,
it ends and talking to the phasmid, and one of the reasons
for that, and I just love that in the game was over.
I thought wow. What a beautiful conversation
but the more you think about it, the more it's like oh I think
this is what this game is talking about and trying to say
so will this phasmid you talk to at the end of the game has this
idea that human thought is displacing the natural world and
will inevitably result in its Extinction and the phasmid uses
various aspects of control to like try to contain the human
race and their thoughts. Specifically and I I think the
pail is one of those tools that it uses to like keep humans from
like extinct defying, the rest of the world.
He Compares like human thoughts, arrival on the planet to be
like, when Earth gained oxygen and what that did to anaerobic
life. And there's this really
interesting. I it sort of suggests that he's
been around for 350 years watching and taking some hand,
in the political events of rubbish, all and the whole
region. And that like you just say that
time for him. That's how long he tells you
he's been there. I think it's kind of implied
that there was something else before him doing this.
I don't know if I don't know though.
No, no, I'm sorry, nor do I know how long like, I don't really
know about the Deep history of this region.
Like how long has it been around?
I'm sure some of the encyclopedia would have told me
that There's this idea that the revolution, he's, he talks about
having seen the revolutions come and go, and it's like all of
Humanity's locked in a repetitive cycle of like ideas.
And it kind of seems like, he's kind of, the reason, the thing
that's keeping humans in this cycle.
And I think so much in my, like, personal life as Nate about,
like, the future, the past, I love history, and the future.
And it's so beautiful to me that this game is like, having these
thoughts about some Supernatural.
Force like shaping and containing and playing some
influence on it, but it's also really vague like, what does
that actually mean? What, what is it doing?
I don't know. But I kind of think that that
sort of reveals the hand of disco Elysium as a game and is
like a narrative piece. I think it's suggesting that
like no matter what you do or who you are, it's kind of
pointless because it's playing a part in a bigger picture of
humanity as part of the cycle. That's partly because of itself
but also partly because of outside forces that we can't
comprehend. Set a theme that resonates with
you or that you picked up the Baton in your playthrough Craig.
Yeah I was thinking about that I looked at the pale which was one
thing that you mentioned as being almost like the pollution
of humanity. Right?
Like that it was growing and continuing to like exist because
Humanity was like, Wrecking parts of the continents and
things of that nature like that Humanity being there like is
inherently actually not a good thing for the planet, but it
never sir Planet. Oh yeah, we're glad it's not the
right word, is it? Yeah.
The that has the this the world of Elysium that has seven
continents divided by the pale. So that however, you want to
phrase, it didn't exist before the pale.
I don't know. That's a good question.
There is something brought up somewhere that like, the Hale
did that stuff, the phasmid and things in new things existed,
prior to the pale and the pale didn't exist until humans
existed. Interesting.
So we'll in the nightclub you discover that there's a hole up
near the well. I thought it was that also see
orange. Yeah.
That which is also a church very Disco There's a 2 millimeter
hole in the world and that's said to be a portal to the pale
and that is growing. As disco takes place in the
church. It's like it seems to thrive on
information and passion which kind of suggests that.
Yeah. The pale is like the result of
human thought and like grows and feeds upon it.
Yeah. Well this is something kind of
looks like the make that Matrix for scene.
Yes, very disco what was your original question it kind of
where where did my interaction or my thoughts on the point?
The game was trying to make. Yeah.
Did I guess I had talked about this like the lack of control,
being a central theme of the game and I was curious, if that
was something you picked up on or if I was just picking that
up, no, it to me that I started pick that up within the Of our
own lived history, right? That like the, that people make
decisions and set in motion systems that perpetrate some
sort of like forward momentum. And while we may think that
we're doing something different or even my camera, that man,
that's like standing guard After.
The revolution is ended any standing guard over nothing
anymore, right? That like, there is something
about going through like the Motions of, hey, I'm going to
make a difference in this space but like, Your single
contribution doesn't actually really matter in the grand
scheme of things and instead it's much more broadly, speaking
about like the world is going to exist in the people that like
perpetrate that are also individuals but also broader in
ways that you can't fully comprehend or push back against
in any meaningful way. And it's just going to continue
to push things forward in a direction and you might be To
like alter the course a little bit, but eventually it starts to
cycle back on itself. Yeah, I've been examining kind
of how if you choose to be authoritarian fascist and racist
in this game, no matter. Where did that take you?
It's a really good illustration of this game doesn't have.
And we'll I'm curious if you notice this this game doesn't
really have strong opinions on anything you do.
It's sort of welcomes you with a strange mixture of Ernest e and
cynicism. Like I don't think I think it'd
be easy for this game to have just made fun of everything that
you do and it doesn't quite fall into that.
It's like ironic and detached, but it's not to the point where
it's like, Enable to be Earnest and this kind of plays out at
the end. For example, you can declare in
your final like report, you can declare I'm a great detective
and I'm a huge fascist and that doesn't really affect their
nomination for your promotion, as a cop, like the it now.
Like and I think that no matter what way you play it the game
kind of treats you as equally. Equally valid so that I guess to
put that another way, like, the game kind of like uses the same
tone to refer to you. And I think Kim's, great
example, of the game being like neutral, you can be racist to
camera directly and it. The game does have ways of
chiding. You you'll take morale hits for
your thoughts being frivolous and silly.
Like the game does have an opinion but it's not really
interested in like punishing you or showing you your ideas wrong
those are morale hits only well from what I saw they you only
Get those hits if they alter from your like chosen path,
right? There's if I got a bunch of
bonuses for picking moralism options because I was a
moralist, I do there's a couple scenes where there's like one
where you're sitting down with Kim and having a very open
conversation and if you talk, if you keep talking racist at him
about his like inferior race, the game will like doing your
morale for it when he says something common collected back
to you and you like realize he's right for a second, even if
you're like, fully devoted to racism, I think that that all
plays up into this idea, that it doesn't really like this isn't a
game that thinks you're going to make a huge difference in the
world. And I think that that comes
from, I mean, obviously I'm not Eastern European hadn't really
traveled there. So I don't know that much, but I
think that that does come a bit from this Region's perspective
on things in general. The in the Soviet Bloc, you
individualism is not rewarded, there's not this belief that one
person can make a difference. Matter what way you go, like
you've got someone who's an absolute raging alcoholic and
you kind of just treat them with the same attitude, you treat
other people. I think that piece of
specifically was like the uni piece I can either stand out to
me. It was like you're not like a
super cop or anything like you're just kind of a bumbling
idiot like yeah if you claim to be a super cup the game kind of
laughs at you about it like it's a narcissistic delusion it's
not. You actually being one.
Yeah. I also want to say this is part
of what makes Kim, the freaking standout character.
This game is his ability to support you and like, he'll call
you on your bullshit but also like in front of other people,
he makes it seem like everything you're doing is like extremely
calculated. He my conversation with the rich
lady, right? He was like, egging me on he's
like, no, no, you need to be more.
Wild and crazy. Like your normal self in this
conversation. I was like, yeah.
Okay. Thanks Kim.
You just like given me carte blanche to pick the wildest
craziest options and discover Sation it was.
He's so like yet he's also grounded while doing that right
like you know that he doesn T want you to but he's still it's
just it's fantastic. It's like he knows that you the
crazy Jamrock Shuffle Detective. of is the tool that's going to
be best used to solve this and he'll use that tool even though
he doesn't, you know, himself agree with anything you're
particularly saying or doing like it's yeah, but he starts
game itself is also that way and the end to it's like as a second
layer of that like you can be the game will let you walk all
the way to the end and it's it's not even going to hang you for
it. It's just like wow, you really
did say one commits that. Yeah, yeah.
Can you describe a Vision Quest or describe your vision quest?
Why didn't have one? Because I didn't play The Final
Cut. Oh yeah.
There are play the final quote. I did at the beginning, but
didn't get very far and they're hard to get to, they they're
actually, they take, they added an additional level of skill,
check to get into them higher than anything that was in the
base game. I think it's Godly instead of
legendary so I did see a at least one Godly skill check In
the non Final Cut. There's no, you know, you'll
have like, Capo types and you have, like, moral like your
political alignment, the political alignment version was
just not really there. You still have the same kind of
commentary but it wasn't quite as clear and it didn't funnel
you into Quest paths, like it does now.
So you could still be like a moralist order.
Well, Lee shit I did not know. Sorry.
Yeah. Go ahead.
What's up? Tell us I did one of these
Quest. Tell us about this.
Is how I super curious in a different end game.
Yeah. How do you set it up?
And what this, how I ended up in an alternate ending and like
finishing the game and then being and telling you?
I was like, oh, I wrote away on an Airship and you're like the
fuck you. Oh yeah, I forgot that at all.
So what the fuck? Okay, go ahead.
Tell us about it. Please please.
Yeah, so I didn't realize that this was, it doesn't present
itself to someone that has, never played the original base
game, like, here's something different, right?
Like here's like a different thing.
It just came Up through like ultra-liberal.
I was a moralist more like centralist.
So it I think it was like day for.
There's something that happens in.
Like you go to sleep and you can start to pursue like a thought
of centroid, like centrism and specifically.
So I'm looking at page Kingdom of Consciousness, how we got to
moralism in the first place, and I got that one because there's a
sporting proposition. Project opioid receptor.
Antagonist. Does that sound familiar does
sound Vaguely Familiar. So what ends up happening is
that this is related to the 2. Mm.
Like hole in the church. And if you go through the quest
there within the church to help out There's like a lady that
you're helping out in the church that she's like trying to get
more information and trying to figure out like more data about
what's happening here and she wants to contact someone.
Oh man I got I wish I remembered this better.
You're trying to contact someone to share some sort of like
responsibilities that you have and you have to go through like
a bunch of different steps here to be able to like contact this
overall government agency. I think is More or less what it
is. And many of you have been just
like, overall, what's happening at the harbor?
And like your responsibility is to tell a committee and they can
decide what to do about it. And so you go through, like a
whole bunch of convoluted tasks to boost your radio.
Like antenna and being able to contact them which requires you
to like go back to the church and then set up tables.
All the way from the church across the island to like the
statue that's in the middle of all the trucks that you see
early on. Like the, you know, my
encyclopedia helped explain that thing.
That's pretty cool. Yeah.
That's like broken apart and like your you essentially turn
that into a giant radio transceiver and then you've got
slime on top of it as Harry. You and like, are contacting.
The committee to tell them the responsibility here and if you
contact the Airship successful and get them to believe you,
like they will come and retrieve Harry and the game ends like so
you just like float away on an Airship.
Like it like what was a ladder? And like, you climb up the
ladder and the game's over and I was like, like mid-game yeah.
This is like, probably, like day for it.
Bad amazing. Couple days for you to do all.
The random like Aaron's that it has you do it definitely.
I was just curious. I was like, what is this thing?
And so I went through and like, was scaling things up
specifically, so I could pass these checks, cause I thought it
was just part of mainlining the game.
And then when I went away on the Airship and like, the credit
started to play, I was like, I am entirely unresolved with what
the fuck that's happening in this world.
Hmm. I was like, there's no I hadn't
solved the murder. The Hardy Boys like nothing's
happened. There was like what the fuck has
happened? Phenomenal, two questions.
One is now I'm really curious when you played this game.
June of 20, 20 20, so fairly recently posted the news.
It was the final cut on, Cut PlayStation, I played it on PS
5, full voice acting all that type of stuff.
So if that happened, and that was a political Vision.
Quest, like how did that relate to your politics?
Did that end? It was just all the way up to
it. That was the Vision Quest.
Like, where did it, did it end with the final scene like that
somehow like reinforced what political decisions you've made?
I mean it mainly was like hey you don't believe in anything so
you're just gonna like give over responsibility to the committee
to deal with it and you just it's gone from your
responsibility to the world. That's a pretty direct
statement. The game is making, isn't it?
Yeah and it's like hard credits. It's not like oh yeah you get to
come back in. Like I ended up reloading a save
going and intentionally failing the check so I couldn't So I
didn't escape and then continuing on with the rest of
the game introduced and moralism which is also the path that I
was going down is both. It's it's both extremely like
the most logical, reasonable choice of going, what's going
on. But also the most like, Asshole
ish no responsibility choice at the same time like was like
you're just like, yeah. You're just like I'm interested
in hearing what all these people are saying but also I don't want
to be a communist hard. I don't want to go super far the
other direction. And I think I mean I guess it's
a pretty clear say like if you stand in the middle you're just
going to get pushed around by someone else.
Anyways, so you should probably take a stance somewhere.
There's one If you have it that's like a militant
insistence on nothing changing. It felt really in our world cup
politics. Very conservative, right.
Everything's better. The way it used to be.
Yeah, I just. Well, conserved also made me
feel that their change. They want things to change
backwards right in this region of are like, human world like
when political movements like move over you like tithe.
Adds to, to claim to be neutral and to like but I mean to me and
helped me understand if I'm wrong where I'm wrong, I guess.
But that's kind of what moralism felt like to me.
Like we have decided, what our status quo is whether or not
that's you know, who knows what who that status quo was good
for. But we are now all of a sudden
like militant in are insistent that whatever that Quo was is
the thing that has to be the new status quo and like there's a it
says, in the, in the moralism and one point it's like we
believe that change should happen.
Very, very, very slowly. We should take our time in
changing as like, yeah, I don't know that it kind of felt like
to me what our modern conservatism feels like yeah.
And It's weird that I feel really weird that I got to.
That was a point of view. But yeah, it felt like the right
one for me in the context of this game.
I think the game is laughing at like, even though the choices
you make to end up, moralist are like, rational, I think the game
frames it, as you're not choosing a more interesting
path. I said earlier that, I think the
game accepts all outcomes but I think that is the one that it
really like looks down upon And it's interesting to think of
what in the human world that's commenting on politics in parts
of the world that aren't the West are very different and it's
interesting seeing what's going on with Russia and Ukraine,
right now is a little example, right?
Like it's not normal for people to have strong political
opinions, because most people don't really feel like politics
is one in their realm of control.
Politics is something that happens.
And it happens to you and it happens to your countrymen.
So the and I feel like this game kind of has that lens.
But this game also like wants you to believe in something,
which is kind of interesting because that sort of seems
different than what I know of that region.
Maybe every person in Russia has like a rich interior political
theology about what should be, but it's my understanding that
culturally, what it's more like is that people just shake their
head at what happens and they might wish for something better,
but that's what they think they've got.
Yeah, and I'm interested in how that kind of, like the moralist
in this game is kind of the likes the silent rational, but
the non revolutionary, right? Like you're not pushing towards
any major change. You're advocating kind of a
common sense approach, right? Yeah, you're the one kind of
constantly thinking about it and just saying like let's not go
extreme in either direction. They're like you're not going to
get anything fucking done. And yeah it's interesting how in
the American context where things are good and politics are
fine, like saying I don't want anything to change, presents
conservative. But in the region where these
people are from, like, Advocating, the status quo is
tantamount to something quite different.
I mean, maybe it's part of like them trying to push me away from
moralism, but they make it sound like a militant choice to be
neutral. Like you will attack anybody who
chooses to not maintain the status quo and maybe that's
something from their live reality.
That's just isn't relevant to us.
You mentioned something as really interesting there though
that I hadn't. I don't know if I consciously
thought about witches. By choosing them more or less
route and Chang, like, I want to maintain the status quo, like,
I'm thinking about, I want to maintain the status quo from
like a white cisgender male perspective, right?
Which within this world that I was role playing within right,
like, maintain the status quo, fucking sucks.
Like why would I want to maintain that and yet?
I continually made choices because when I was looking at
the other ones they were like oh these are extreme thoughts.
Right. But in actuality, they might
have been pushing more towards equality, or towards things that
I actually do have a stronger alignment with, you know,
personally and what I think like Harry should be fighting for
well, imagine yourself in a situation like the Russian
Revolution, right? If there's a bunch of ideologies
being thrown around, you can say, I like the current order,
but I'd like it to change a little bit, but when the Russian
Revolution is in the air saying that is sort of folly.
Especially in the view of what's going to happen, right?
I guess in that moment, you don't know that.
But when Revolutions in the air or when revolutions, the only
thing that can make meaningful change, you are kind of a coward
to say like that we can make slow change will slow change.
Doesn't happen here like only Revolution happens.
And that's interesting, that's not something we have experience
with. That's not how we think, even in
a generation of people that wants Revolution.
Although even within the same when they're like a revolution
is failed. There's kind of something means
if he said there, right? That's like this thing's like
been going on for three hundred years in like on.
In the way, it will add almost Presley change cycle, fits very
well with this, like, Western American ideology, right?
If you just vote, things aren't going to change a whole bunch,
but, you know, eventually maybe we'll get enough people that we
can get 2% more back from our taxes, right?
Like yeah, we want just things. We feel comfortable in our
system and if we just like push on our system enough Will again
ventually get a change rather than you know something a lot
more radical and our goal. Yeah.
Yeah, I guess just your comments made me think about like what
you're saying, makes a lot of sense from our Viewpoint,
culturally and politically, but I don't think this game is
authors come from that background.
And neither does this game like it out as its presented?
You don't, we shouldn't have to know about the author's
background, right? That's a whole can of worms.
But like, in this, World, if you're advocating for things to
change slowly. You probably don't have a full
scope of what the world is yet. Because it's not fair because
you're amnesiac, and you just yeah.
What. Yeah, what's happening?
Yeah, but yeah, no, I think that as a message, I think that that
is really powerful, right? You're the game telling me, hey,
your tendency to like think that everything is good and to
continue to try and act in a way that everything is good and
should continue to being the way it is.
Doesn't make sense. If you haven't taken a a full
accounting of what the world is, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's cool.
You know, one thing that's funny about the political Vision
quests is that the Communist end of The Vision?
Quest is a bunch of guys, in a laboratory experimenting with
crops. And they find that the one, the
crops with the strongest ideology grow the fastest and
like, like, I can't like decide if that's like really funny like
I think like the game like in that ending alone, the game
acknowledges that ideology makes a difference but it also
completely minifies like, what difference that would make it's
laughing at communism while also like giving it some credit.
It's it's just it's like really funny.
That's that is amazing. I would be curious to know what
all of the other Vision Quest are I will do, they tell me
everything. I'm curious and I was going to
kind of ask this of both of you guys.
You keep calling it a Vision Quest.
But what Craig described in sounds like what's that phrase
implies? So what are we talking about?
Called a vision quest in the game.
That's only what the game's marketing for the patch used to
describe them. Yeah, and it does start off it.
Like I believe it. It shows up as a vision while
you're asleep. So I think it's like a thought
pattern that shows up while you're asleep and you can choose
to pursue it. So I had one dream that was
weird, but I also had one point where I was looking at my book
and passed out, and as I was passed out, it just said disko
Elysium. And there were some options that
I are some spots on the Disco Elysium logo logo.
That I could have clicked didn't want a viking, any of them.
All right. Wow.
You guys, neither of you guys saw this, okay?
Know what? It's are also you fell asleep.
Reading the wait, what? There was some concept which was
so novel. That, as I was reading it, I
fell asleep or, you know, like passed out and Kim was like,
whoa, what's going on? You.
Okay, I shouldn't shouldn't have been thinking about these wild
thoughts. Yeah, I feel bad that I can
actually click anything on the disk Elysium logo.
I thought felt like I died. Yeah, I could see why that's
really funny. Yeah, it was weird.
And I for a second, I thought that maybe something like that
was what a Vision Quest was, that's amazing.
Sounds like you guys didn't see that sense.
Nope? Yeah, no.
It's didn't know that, but at far more intense on them.
Can I ask you another question? Just normal world view
perspective. Yeah, because my experience with
Eastern European like content movies, books media like is not
broad, right? So, this is almost an entry
point, which feels like a deep entry point to stuff into food.
Like here, here's hundreds of thousands of words and Concepts
and ideas presented from this frame of reference, but there is
something else like The Witcher 3 exist, right?
Who's about to ask the same? Of course good and which one of
us will have you played it to completion?
I haven't even touched it. I am here for fucking a Craig
seminar. On him, not even read tuts.
Watch the Netflix series. What I've also watched that you
haven't watch some handsome gamer boy and said okay with our
mister mister Cavill, yes, I didn't get any of this from The
Witcher 3 though. Like not figured out our next
game. I'm not playing it now.
Then I was inside the, the next-gen version comes out in
December, but no, I think some of this stuff does come up but
The Witcher 3 seems, I don't know.
It just seems like a plays in a safer space.
There's like, there's it's much more of really, Black and Whites
and my opinion and maybe I missed dramatic things.
I don't know, like it's been years.
It also There's a I didn't play the close to be a really good
deal, see about a vampire lord or a vampire manner, that would
have supposed to be good. I might employ that imply blood
and wine. I'm quite surprised to hear
this. I thought The Witcher was known
for being more less optimistic, more Grim, more nuanced.
I definitely think that there's those pieces of the World that
exist within a butt. Yeah, so yeah.
So I think from like perspective on that outcome of the world, it
might have a little bit more of that bent to it, but it also
plays with like, more of like, the folklore of the world,
right? So there's like kind of inherent
playfulness that occurs in some of the side quests and things of
that nature. And there's like, people's more
human scale problems. That you're going in and like,
helping interact with and there's things of that nature
occurring. But when you're looking at like
the political like, Machinations that are overseeing or
overarching within that world there's like you know, Kingdoms
At War. It just feels very standard
within that media, right? It doesn't feel like hey I'm
going to challenge you on what your definition of like
feudalism is like there's a lot of income.
I don't maybe, you haven't played this in six months and
you forgotten. There's a lot of comedy in this
game like, well, for any of it to bring it up course.
But pom will hold on. So, I'm going to intrude with a
like, a global cultural human scale.
This does not. Yes, the The Witcher also is
from Poland, which is, I mean, I'm gonna get in trouble for
saying that it's this way because it's Poland, right?
But Poland was never a part of the USSR.
Poland is a very rich cultural and imperial history.
Like Poland was an Empire pulling is a much stronger self
concept of identity. So, it would make sense that,
obviously, you can't say, because it's polish, we would
expect these things, but I'm going to basically say that.
Anyway, like pulling is a very rich like folklore, tradition,
so, it makes sense that, if a Polish Game were to happen, it
would be playing in those spaces where as an Estonian game
doesn't like Estonia has its own history obviously, but it its
history is of being conquested in Empire did and things like
that. That's where like the and
authorial intent of the Witcher feels like it comes from a place
of power. The authorial intent of disco
Lee's. Yes, it feels like it comes from
a place of being subjected, that's interesting.
Those things feel very different in how they presented their
worldviews, to me, that's interesting and really
interesting. Yeah, and it's also interesting,
it might be The interesting and yeah, I really made an Ellis
Wyatt. There's yeah.
Hi Abby's just interesting you guys that's interesting
fascinating because we're Americans like what the fuck
would it be like to have a national self concept?
That's not one of being the dick like we are generation might be
self-conscious about that but we still have no insecurities and
there's no outside forces that are really notable that move
across us like tides of course, there's our language and our
money is still dominant which And our culture like it?
Yeah, yeah. A I love media from places.
It's so alien and weird to read media and be in a world.
That's about being subjected to outside forces and this game I
think I think that that's true for the majority.
There are starting to be cases people.
You know, there are American perspectives that are not that.
Yes. Oh, I was like their behalf of
America. Well, not half, but large
portion of America is not in power, that's been expressed and
subjugate its history. But that's not, who's making the
media Mafia 3, the whole? Well, yes.
Yeah, anyway, there's a bunch of.
There are sweet starting tomorrow.
Every I have also that is like, they just take the understand
the, yeah, a lot of those people do have tremendous influence on
the media in the form of Music, at the very least.
Sure, but fair point Fair Point, that's not to say they're not
oppressed but it's interesting how their voices are still heard
and ways that then get anyway. I am disappointed to hear that.
The Witcher isn't a very similar game that is not disappointed.
It's just not what I thought that game was praised for as
being so different. I mean, you can also solve any
of your problems with violence in The Witcher.
No. Yeah.
That is the first thing help that itself across a cell phone
tower. Yeah, exactly.
It's like the, the gameplay there overlaps with the story
mechanics in such concrete ways. yeah, interesting around, I
think part of it is Again, I really wish that I had played
them closer together The Witcher.
It does go into interesting spaces, right?
And has interesting conversations about who is in
power and things of that nature. But again, it gets back into,
like, who should run the kingdom, not, should the kingdom
exist, right? I think people praise that it
shows darkness in a way that our media off, it does not.
That's, that's fair. I got some big picture, quick
hits for you. These are Big thoughts, but I
think will knock them out quicker, whoever cursed the
podcast by bringing up Tolstoy and his opinions on Park.
Last time has graced themselves with a recurring segment, which
is in Tolstoy. Is definition of art.
It's only art. If it's like a pure feeling
conveyed by a Creator, such that any audience would understand.
And I wanted to ask, if art is a representation of a feeling,
what feeling would this be? Despair.
Is that reasonable?
Yeah. Hopelessness.
I think it's the preservation of humanity under like, Under
outside forces. Failed Revolution, State
structures, around you economic forces that are way above you
and this like Cryptid thing, controlling humankind Maybe.
I want to read from the game. Is a point where you say, it
does. Yes.
But what is art and conceptual? Conceptualization Pops in with
excellent question. Art is a diverse range of visual
literary, auditory and performative.
Creativity is an expression of an imagination and Technical
skill. Additionally, it is history
criticism and pure enjoyment and it goes on from there but less
for the head. That's so great.
Is it always is conceptualization always that
Earnest and straightforward. That does sound lovely.
Yeah, thanks. I don't fit.
Hopelessness is not the right term?
No, I don't think, yeah, I don't think it's that - it's more of
like, you know, a neutral that make that is so uncomfortable to
us as Americans that it feels -. Yeah.
It's like it is, I mean, it's just very it's like, very
realistic is, it's not a feeling the need for change.
But the Need For Change was of the recognition that you can't.
Yeah, the exactly you're not, then you're not able to
influence it directly. It's a need.
That can't be that you can as a person can't fulfill.
Yeah. yeah, I think that feel free to continue reflecting on
that and your conclusions would be interesting if you come up
with anything different or that is more nuanced than that.
Why do you think this game was made in?
And also at all? Why was this game made?
I think it's because the creator has a D&D setting and once you
get a DND setting you just keep rolling.
Just have to share it with the world as well and hundreds of
thousands of words. I've read at least three space
operas recently, that felt exactly like that.
I'm like how in that what this is?
Just this guy writing down his D&D game.
I think to offer some Global political context.
I don't know what estonia's having happened, but a lot of
the post-soviet republics are falling into kind of the first
tastes of nostalgia, for communism and authoritarianism.
The capitalism that was promised to large numbers of these
countries. Like has not meaningfully
appeared and new generations are beginning to wonder like what
authoritarianism like bring us more than these things. have
brought us, there's kind of this examination of the past, but I
also think, People living in those situations are much more
in touch with the failed Revolutions of the past, then we
are. I'm sorry curious.
If that's true, right? Like, I don't know if that's
true or not, but it does feel even here within our own lived
experience that people are forgetting that civil rights
wasn't 300 years ago. It was like 60, right, like,
it's not that long ago, and but that didn't happen during our
lifetimes, the host of this podcast and starting to see
people, you know, the regressions and thoughts about
those things. But also, when talking about
like this game being made now, Yeah, there's something to be
said about looking at it and I guess that Imperial core concept
is what comes back to my mind of being liked.
We missed the boat. There is no boat coming and the
next boat has already sailed like now, what the fuck do we
do? And this feels like an
exploration of that of like what do you do when you live in a
town that's made of rubble and you know that there isn't
another way out of it? I've been stuck on this thought
ever since our last podcast when Nate was saying that like, oh,
30 years ago, somebody could have been, you know, in their
50s, who was a pure contemporary of Pablo Picasso.
You're like, wait, what, how is that?
Sir, that on the podcast, but that is wild.
It's just like history. As soon as you call it history,
it seems like 300 years ago, right?
But there are parts of History which are almost within reach.
What? I'm even like you look at like
this game called disco, right? And like the Disco era being in
what, like the 70s and Roe v-- Wade, 73, Roe v-- Wade.
Overturned 2022, right? Like, That Gap is not super
dramatic. No.
Yes it was dramatic. Yeah, it feels super dramatic.
You're like holy shit. And yet like your we are.
It's like oh yeah. She just roll back women's
rights. It's like like people fought for
that 50 years ago. and I don't know that that's like the
closest contemporary that I can give to something here as far
as, like, when looking at this, it just feels like a way to
explore like, What happens when these things that we thought?
We had learned from and that the experiences had been that you'll
be like we're not going to go back to that space.
Like what happens when you start to go back into them?
Well failed Revolution, certainly isn't just a non
Imperial core phenomenon, true utopian Ambitions of the 60s
here. Got moving in the 70s and then
all stymied out in the 80s and I haven't really been seen.
Since in Britain, you have the summer of love and the other
things in the late 80s and early 90s.
But I don't think the West is really seen meaningful return to
those kind of hopes ever since Yeah.
What the fuck's happening? I guess Eastern European.
I guess you mentioned. I'd like the the rise of
authoritarian regimes for continued.
Like I mean that's not specific to that part of the world either
though. No but it's more specific there
because when you're outside the well I mean to my earlier point
there are parts of America outside the Imperial Court as
well, right? Basically I think the point is
here, the Imperial Court is growing stronger, the periphery
is growing weaker and anyone in the periphery At this point in
our history is saying, wait a minute, what they're noticing.
And what they're thinking about authoritarianism, as a solve
for, is the fact that the imperial core grows stronger and
they see nothing from it. Yeah.
When the wall fell, and when these countries became
capitalist, the belief was that they would be part of the
Imperial core. The reality is there the
periphery And living with that dichotomy is something that I
don't think us as productive. Well, earning members of our
world can quite understand but it's easy to look down upon Gap
has widened also, right? Yeah, it's not, it's not.
There's no turning that back. It seems.
There are places in the world according to some travel, like
ethnographies. I've read where it's being
shown. That authoritarianism does keep
more money in the periphery than capitalism.
And that's disturbing something. Thats dark.
The like these conclusions aren't just wrong and stupid.
These are parts of huge systems that are evil and not equal.
And it's interesting to me that this game I mean, the fact that
it's even got us talking about, this is amazing, it's cool.
It does kind of raise the question, like, what's the
future? If you live in a region like
this, what can you hope for? Yeah, I'm curious from the game
directors, like, the guys that were building a campaign.
Like what were they looking to explore with these Concepts
within their own worldview as well, right?
Like what, and maybe this gets into the piece that we're
talking about earlier as far as we want there to be like a clean
outcome of like, hey, you're doing this because there's like
this resolution that you're looking to reach and that just
might not be part of what's looking to be explored here.
Yeah. Which feels really uncomfortable
to me. Yeah, I think a lot of the
people in these countries, if you think about like Central
Asia that are going for authoritarianism, these aren't
uneducated people that are pushing for this.
These are people that have traveled have been to the West
have seen capitalism and are fighting for it because they
know that that same thing won't bring things to them.
That's dark. Yeah.
So yeah, I think in some sense the future for those regions
might be I'm you would hope some kind of Revolution.
Akin to what happened a century ago, right?
Where we try new forms of government that are all about
equality But those revolutions turned into fascism.
Yeah, those revolutions were so so thoroughly and part of its
because our Viewpoint in the west.
Right? We there's a clear narrative
that of course, communism becomes fascism might as well,
not even try it. And that's that's as much of a
marketing thing as it is a reality, Maybe.
But it sure has set a damper on trying things like that again
even in a time where they're needed more than ever and
probably even more than they were back then.
So I guess the Practical answer is probably authoritarianism but
I kind of hope somewhere in the world like something new emerges
and I hope that its outcome is better than the last time this
happened, right? But that history is Within Reach
and there are people alive that remember how bad it was and that
really inhibits the options that people feel like they can have.
Well, it's also without going too far into my king way away
from the media that were discussing.
Looking at things like Ubi like Universal basic income or things
of that nature but like that's predicated on having a piece of
the pie, I think you have to have money as so.
And when that money is hoarded by small amount of the people on
the planet and used in other ways like you block out those
opportunities as well. Yeah.
I think the brutal answer is there's not a future.
That the hope is limited to a way for us to make it by.
So we can pull back from like extreme Bleak existentialism I
suppose if you'd like yeah. How do we, how do we roll back
from that one? Poof man thinking about the Roe
v-- Wade? And, you know, I always think of
that phrase the moral Arc of whatever, always bends words
Justice. Yeah.
And it's You know, that's a like it's a tenancy, right?
The The stochastic, which the average.
Yeah, and obviously not everything is going to happen
that way. But man, that one, so hard to
deal with for me, like, mmm. did you know like the real pain of
like seeing that I human scale of like people are going to
literally die because of that and people are going to be hurt
and people are going to be like there's like true suffering that
We will witness in the Years between now and hopefully when
that bends in the right direction.
Yeah, that sucks. Anyway sorry sorry to totally
Sidetrack us there. So one of the things that we
haven't hit on throughout this entire podcast has been, there's
no combat mechanics, right? Like we haven't talked about the
gameplay specifically within this, that it's completely
different than most traditional RPGs where there is some sort of
action that you're partaking in outside of conversation.
And curious for your guys is exactly what I was saying,
right, before I died, I'm curious for your perspective on
a dialogue-driven RPG and this capacity that's almost it's
almost a can do a visual novel with a 3D space.
You can move through versus combat focused RPGs Divinity
which are You know, other things that exist within that space,
this one is skews that entirely. I definitely think this is
combat focused. Its idea combat its word combat
well. Okay, word combat like, it
actually does get into that only at a few key moments, but I
think it is like it represents the combat of ideas, pretty
consistently. Like there's multiple voices in
your head that are like contesting against each other at
many points in this game, right? That's a, that's a great one.
I didn't think about the, the spot where I literally died was
a, you know, my conversation with ever art and it was like,
this battle of wills and it's literally you and ever are going
at it. Like, which one of us is going
to back down first, who is going to make the dumb move?
How are we going to negotiate ourselves into a better
negotiating position here? Like, there's definitely
competition Bat in this game. It just not.
You know it's not a first person shooter.
Cool. Yeah.
And I don't think that's just like well actually Craig like I
think that they're I think that like this kind of combat that
were describing is kind of a first class citizen.
A primary mechanic of this game even in the same way that it is
in RPGs. It's funny like they say in the
marketing, like, it's an RPG except the members of your party
are all voices in your head. And that kind of makes it sound
like it's a like, a way of explaining something that's
actually very different using a metaphor.
Yeah, but I think that actually is exactly what it is.
Yeah, it's actually pretty. That's a pretty bang on
descriptor. I was going to say, except you
don't have to, like, choose and bring in and out party members.
But you actually do that too, by equipping items.
Thought cabinets, specking up different levels like It's
actually very strange how extremely traditional of an RPG.
It is just for the few like Like knobs turned into.
Yeah. Actually the mechanics don't
quite line up but they're also exactly the same kind of it has
exactly the same amount of like Choice.
Well, that brings up something. I was thinking about which is
that like a lot of RPGs are designed to convince you.
There's choice at every moment like constantly reminding you,
okay, pick this option of that option.
Where's this game tones? I remember then Cameron
councilman on. This was on majors and murdered
ads where they did a long-form playthrough of this game in
audio. I think it's on YouTube too, but
there were talking about how when you get to the end of this
game you're like yeah I saw the game.
That's all there was but because this game does such a fabulous
job of convincing you that the choices you've made are like
real this game excels at convincing you that all the
choices you've made are the correct ones.
No matter how weird out there they are it's got like full
writing to back everything you do up.
Yeah, and you only discover that there's a lot of other options
by kind of looking outside the game, which is kind of the
opposite of most RPGs which have to kind of insecurely convince
you that your choice matters. Yeah, a lot of this game, you
there are a bunch of checks that happen behind the scenes that
you only see if you pass those checks like, yeah.
Sample, it cyclopedia, right? If you have a high enough,
encyclopedia encyclopedia will jump in and till you give you
all these context about all these things are going on.
If you don't have enough high enough, encyclopedia you just
don't get that context at all. Yeah, just literally or never
present itself within the world. Yeah.
The same with Them. What's the one you were talking
about? That's about the city.
Like I never got any notion a? Yeah, we're just like wandering
around and it's like, hey, in 22 years, rubbish, all be destined
to be designated by a nuclear blast or whatnot.
Yeah, I never got any of that context, little to any of the
games that I played. Yeah, so that I think that
answers a bit of the question also, like, did should this have
been a book or did this need to be a game?
And yeah, that's a Turf unquestioning full.
Yeah. Is there a meaningful benefit in
it? Being having been a game when I
recommend this to people, they're like, oh, you just like
games with words? You should probably read a book.
There's a lot of them. Yes, that's also true.
But this is way cooler as a game than a book.
Like it actually brings things to the table.
Will your comments about the art is, like, totally part of that
to, like the art here is I mean, it's not only cool but it's
ludonarrative, Lisa didn't synchronous.
Yeah, there's a specific quest line that I thought was
interesting that kind of gets into the world of us dealing
with economics and capitalism and you made the funniest thing
in all of gaming. Yeah, I was inside.
So Nate tell us about the figure out how the world Works quest
line and how you complete it. The fact that you learn how the
world Works, only by talking to rich people is just really
funny. Yep.
That's all. That's very good.
Well played Perfect. What about chem as a character
we'd let off at the top of the podcast talking about can being
the goat of NPCs. What makes them that?
Well you kind of talked about this.
What you got any more to elaborate on that?
I think it's his he is both completely adaptable.
He's like the ultimate wingman, whatever you say he's gonna be
there to support you and your band.
He's not only. Does he got here back?
He's got your back in the perfect way like he like a rock,
whatever you're saying. He was thinking the same thing
right before you said it regardless of what you're saying
it. Yeah, he's perfect.
Even when, you know, he doesn't agree with you.
He's like still With it. That's absolutely.
Which I guess is like the point of a partner, right?
Like your partner should be He can back you up and then, if you
guys have a disagreement do hash that out separately, but like in
the moment, he's going to support you.
What needs to happen? He's beta and Alpha.
He totally is. He's just like sitting next to
me and you're like, oh ken if chem like has something to say
here, like we should shut the fuck up.
Yeah. It's no matter how convinced of
I ideology. I am any time he talks.
I'm like, what, what? What is Kim think though?
Yeah, yeah, especially because of like, how he presents
throughout everything, where your pure chaos and he's like,
The ideal like stable partner, right?
He's just like you know whatever you're drunk or high or whatever
the fuck you're doing like even that we're here to work our
case. He attributes your chaos to the
Jamrock Shuffle like it is a method that is so intense that
the average human cannot understand your chaos but your
chaos is not chaos. It's a like a, you're playing 3D
chess. Like, he's attributing genius to
your chaos. That just makes it feel great.
It's also fascinating, how he's gay, right?
Yeah. Or at least it's okay.
I did, I said, you know, if it came up explicitly but
definitely is like clearly alluded to tell me more.
It's not a reversal any explicit Trope, but I like that the
straight person is like utterly chaotic and crazy and the gay.
Is the absolute like rock of like unquestioned not Authority
but like she's got a shitty instability that the straight
man is gay. Well yeah that that's a whole
quest line, right. Like when you sit down and you
finally tell him you're going to stop questioning your sexuality
and he goes I think that's great.
Yeah. Like like it's he probably
doesn't believe you but he's just happy for you.
It's I mean it does get into a little bit of.
I didn't like the Duality that you'll run into ya later.
There's like a jacket, there's a whole thing.
The Duality within our, our current world also is in that
same space where Like racism at play Within the world's.
Right? And now specifically since like
2016 white people have been like, oh we should show them the
allies and margin eyes. Folks are like about goddamn
time like we've been waiting on you like what the fuck are you
doing right? So I don't know there's
something about him just being a character it's like yeah sort
your shit out. Like you're the straight
cisgender dude. Here like cool your sexuality.
Like got it. We don't need.
To we've gone through all this already.
Yeah. But he in that analogy, he's
like the heroic figure that has infinite energy for supporting a
clueless Ally, right? Like it doesn't seem to cost Kim
anything when you completely, fuck up, any sort of whether
you're Miss categorizing his race or talking about other
people like know failed. Allyship costs, Kim anything,
which is kind of fascinating. He's the epitome of.
What's the opposite of toss? Toxic masculinity.
I don't think there is one will is it this podcast co-host?
There's people talk about like the rock as being the opposite
of toxic masculinity, like he is super masculine but in a way
that's like completely accepting and nurturing and inclusive like
I wish I could remember what the name of that but that's kind of
what Kim feels like in a knot. Just masculinity but like it
from a moral standpoint like a completely accepting on a moral
level. I was kind of talking about this
concept of and I found this like healthy masculinity, people talk
about like the rock as being one of these guys who's like super
super masculine ilka. Ignore like yeah, that's a
fucking man. That man ass man.
Man, man's man, but he's also inclusive.
He involves people. He's emotionally accepting of
people. He can have relationships with
strong. Email people that are not like
challenging his masculinity like that feels like what Kim is but
like on a moral level instead of a masculine level that makes
sense. Yeah, it absolutely does.
That's interesting with regards to the writing style.
Do you find the way that the actual dialogue was presented to
be interesting? Or something that kept you
engaged versus providing blocks of text.
Like, everything was almost like just quick hits consistently.
Right? It wasn't, there's not like a
lot of, like, here's so the book page to read.
So, one of the changes that I am aware of from the Final Cut, is
that all of the internal voice has got voiced in the Final Cut
and I think that that was not true for the initial cut to that
cause you any problems here, they're neat.
Oh, I hate full voice acting weird ever play.
The final cut the way it is released.
I think it's and it's it's funny because I can alternate exact
opposite way. Yeah.
I mean readers. We never readers.
Never like full voice acting, right?
Like I hate voice acting and fall out like because I feel
rude interrupting people because I read like 30 times faster than
like I hate playing a game where I constantly have to cut off
voice acting. It sucks.
I read probably about as much as you do.
Inaudible and I love voice acting.
It is the epitome of he's a text-based reader non-audio
readers. Yes, sorry.
I don't want to bring that gatekeeping here but I think in
this case it is a different thing, right?
So to me, that didn't affect it. But one thing I would say
outside of my particular, penchant for abstract,
scribblings on dead trees is that I've heard that the each
of, the thoughts being voiced can actually add sort Of a like
a tonal interpretation in places where there was none before.
So the example I heard on this was that Inland Empire is kind
of sassy and sarcastic and that that like might kind of like
That gives you like additional information that can kind of
ruin that voice for you, depending on your personal like,
hopes, our feelings of it. That's actually interesting.
I didn't think about how that would present like how that
would change my perception as how the voice was presented.
Since I had only played it with voice acting turned on it, moves
it towards the visual media, right?
Where there's less and less. More of the work is being taken
away from you which is great. I think there's definitely some
but it It less interpretive. That is one of the downsides to
kind of the audio reading as a as a medium in general.
I have just been thinking about that this week, we're voice.
Actors will add specific like inflections on a reading based
on what is called out on the book.
Hmm, witch. Makes sense when they do it.
But also it also eventually reminds you that when it's not
called out in the book, they are still adding some inflections
that they have decided. Or like there's some Like acting
notes that don't show up in the text like yeah, it's a whole
extra level that yeah. Does.
It definitely does change the context of it.
It's interesting because one other piece that I did find
about the writing style for me having it.
I'll, man, I hate it. I hate this, but it's almost
like tweets and where they were Constant quick hitters.
I love that you brought this up. Yeah, this is interesting.
Yeah, we're to me it helped just keep the flow of the
conversation and it helped to keep it feel conversational as
opposed to. Here's just a block of thought
and said it was like here, like we're having an ongoing
dialogue, and it really made it feel like we're having a
dialogue with yourself, right? That you were interrogating,
your own ideas throughout that I I don't think that would have
worked with longer-form speech, bubbles.
Yeah, I mean, you're hitting on something really fucking cool
about this game, which is that? It makes like high-minded
literary Pros approachable, in that sense.
If you want to like, if you want to read fancy writing goes back
your character and shivers and Inland Empire and just play
along. You get one shot, one sentence
at a time. Unlike I'm pointing at my
bookshelf. I've got tons of books over
there. There 800 pages long.
Each paragraph is a full page. Age.
Each sentence is half that like it.
It's there's something really triumphant and unusual about the
combination of style and approach ability here and I it's
really cool. You brought it up the way you
did because I hadn't really thought about that.
And I think that does present it in a way that is approachable to
the masses. Like, in a way to your point
where if you were to just even if it was twice, the length of
like, what the average sentence is like, that would change the
context of how you interact with the game drastically.
And yeah, and I interface does a great job like all the sound
effects, like just like it's sliding on it all of its really
good. Yeah, in a game that I think had
a janky like that. Part is great.
It they nailed down, two sides. I think that the colors really
helped because there's four colors.
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. So the UI has like layers in
that way. Based on those four colors.
You like, you have a general idea of what caused what the
context is of the, the conversation that's coming in.
I also think, I think there's too many skills in this game, I
just There's just yeah, that could be.
Yeah, if things were compacted quite a bit, I think you would
have an opportunity to have a better.
Grasp of how much of the world you're touching with each of
those things, like, especially, since I haven't talked about
this, but but like, replayability, I think is really
poor in this game. Despite how much cool stuff
there is, like, I've tried to go back and I absolutely love this
game and I've tried to go back and it's like, yeah, like I know
ice is that. Why do you bounce off it?
Well hold on. Now I do great question but I do
want to let. Yeah, we'll finish.
Yeah I think it's just that there's basically 36 options for
like what to put your skill in as your leveling.
Yeah. But also there's the mental.
The thought cabinets is another place.
You can put thought points into. So it ends up being.
It feels like there are like Three different places that you
can put a a skill point into. And so it's really hard because
it's so diluted the game itself can't like main make any one of
those things, be terribly important unless it does in
which case like you have to push into.
Yeah, it there's just so many there that it makes the game.
Like I feel like that one decision has made the game more
complicated in a way, that is unhelpful.
Hmm. I don't know if I quite agree
with that but I do agree with the idea.
It would be interesting if they were less skills, such that you
kind of got a sense of like half of them on any given plate.
And then you could pretty reasonably, say like, okay, one
more play through and I'd see the rest and I think that would
make replace feel better. Well, I'm getting The other half
now. I feel like you got four ish.
Yeah. For skills, like meaningfully.
Yeah. Man.
Yeah I don't know. They like like I said I've
played the first day three or four times, right?
And even now the last time I played, I know that my
encyclopedias real hard. But even like the logic of see
if I can remember some of the other ones that are in blue,
right? There's drama.
There's visual calculus. Okay.
I remembered for and I think there are eight of them right?
I can't even remember what the other.
Our and there's six of them, it's logically cyclopedia
rhetoric drama conceptualization visual calculus, my push back to
that will is that these aren't adding events to?
Well they do they don't add that many events to the game.
Right there, affecting the flavor text, you get, right?
So it is more of a choice than I'm not getting the game because
I didn't see these But it's your Counterpoint of in cyber
attacks. Pretty much has.
Yeah, that like, flavor, text changes how you experience the
game, like fundamentally also. That's that is the reason to
replay it, right? Is all different flavor.
This double points thing. Of thought cabinet and no, I
mean, that your skill level adds like a base point.
Oh yeah. That's the amount that you can
put into it. Yeah, that's interesting. it's
it's interesting and Incredibly complicated and like it also
like you can fuck yourself up early because I chose My can
elect as one of the places and I didn't end up going down those
paths. Imagine my playthrough where I
was one point on two of the four categories.
Yeah, that seems rough. Like this is like that.
I'm surprised I didn't block you on certain things.
Like, I'm surprised you could finish the game to be honest.
But I mean, even if you put one point in right, it still takes
you three levels to max out. One of those skills.
Three levels take is like hours worth of gameplay.
Now, like if I wanted to, if I was at level 1 logic, wanted to
max out my logic because I thought it was important for
some reason that we're talking hours of gameplay.
To be able to check that and and get to the point where I and if
it's my first time playing, I don't even know that that's the
most that I could go right? Like right now.
Oh man, this system is raw in that it that it doesn't explain
enough to tell you. Yeah, it wouldn't have been that
place also for me, where I was fearful to spend my skill points
because it was like you were getting them.
So sporadically that I was like if I put this into a place that
I wanted so I can get to unlock a check.
I know it's going to be a bunch of time before I can get enough
experience. And I'm not exactly sure.
Where I will be able to get that experience from To get the next
skill point and that piece was actually a pretty challenging
part of the experience. Did you guys get to a point
where you would get a skill point and then not a sign it
until you had like failed at skill check?
That's where I was at this point.
No. But that's very smart.
I definitely had with held using a skill point not knowing where
what skill checks I would come up against and then would like
spend it appropriately once? I knew that.
Well, you guys are being such Gamers about this though.
Yeah. I think but I think that's it's
the place where I was in the game and maybe this is because
on day two and I didn't have enough things.
Is unlocked. But like I looked at my map and
it's like these are the sticks skill checks that are available
to you. I've I went over the entire
world twice, there's nothing more to unlock.
The only things that are available to me.
Are these 6 skill checks and so the next time I got a point I
basically have to put it into one of these six things
otherwise I'm just not making any progress in this game at
all. That is like a failing of the
game were later in the game. When you've opened up, like
there's like 30 skill chains in your, like, your skill checks to
do and you're like cool. I'm not going to be able to do
all of those and like you recognize that but like that
learning happens. Way late in the game in my
opinion. Yeah, I don't feel like I ever
and I don't know why I felt this way, but I never felt that those
skill checks were a means to guide me towards something.
I felt very confident that no matter what points I put where I
would be able to beat the game. And apparently especially Prix
Final Cut. That's not quite true.
There were some. I think that was the intention
of the developer though. Yeah, I think that your good
faith argument. I think is what they intended to
be true but you don't you if you've played other games it's
unlikely that you're going to like I don't think they should
have to clarify that but also this doesn't exist in a vacuum.
You're coming from other games where that's literally a
legitimate way for the game to be.
Telling you, exactly. To be doing true, that screen is
there, right? Here's the things you need
points on. So like As much as I don't like
assigning responsibility. The game to tell you that I
think it's a great point. You make well it probably should
have some way of throwing it to you like you don't you're not
going to do all these. All right I mean I was here
earlier today so let's talk about that for just a second
because I got to a point where and I feel like you had talked
to me about this kind of point before.
So I feel like you've gotten to the similar point but like I
said, I explored the entire world.
I couldn't because of various skill checks.
I couldn't make any more progress.
I knew that there were progress has be just because of my
previous playthroughs like getting into that hotel that I
couldn't get to through the bookstore.
Like I I couldn't figure out that somebody actually shot the
guy, the hanged man. Like I knew there were things
that I could as soon as I like breach these thresholds.
There would be entire parts of the story but I got to a point
where it's like, I can't make any more progress here.
I see these skill checks. These are the I know that these
are the things that would allow me to like, break open parts of
the story. And I only passed forward was to
sit and read my books until the time progressed to a place where
I could find some more conversations to get the skill
points to break. Open those things.
Is there something else I could have been, or should have been
doing thinking about a different way to approach the game?
Like you make it seem like, I'm like having these skill checks
was a constraint, I put upon myself, but from my perspective
it seem like. That's the only way to progress
in the game. Yeah, you're right.
The whole middle of this game was really hard for me.
I had to figure out how to pass time.
Turns out, if you have your case book completed, you can read it
to pass infinite amounts of time, which I did not know, /
didn't know as a thing in the base game.
So, I had real problems passing time, and it's funny to me that
I just thought, I'll just pass. Time until the next day.
Then plot things will move forward.
I never really looked at it like I'm going to spec things
differently to unlock a new skill check.
So in that sense that's just me being dumb.
Well I mean I don't mean it's you mean don't worry?
Yeah I don't think it's you dumb.
I had more contacts because I had replayed it three times,
right? there was for me, there were
specific places where by like happenstance into another
conversation or something that happened.
I thought that I was blocked and that the skill checks were the
only way forward and then I would find.
So if I go down a different conversational path, even with
someone that I had talked to, and I thought that I had
finished all of the potential options there like something
else opened up, or you would get in the space where I think there
was a couple times where it's like, hey, I think like I feel
blocked and I think I had just gone to bed and that opened up
like one new Avenue. And like when I pulled that
threaded opened up other threads but there is definitely early
Parts in the game. In that first like, ten hours
section where I was, I felt I definitely thought I was blocked
by skill checks and was frustrated by it and they found
like, okay, there, there always Seems to be something else
around but it is, it did feel obtuse and obscure and some
capacities can I can I bring up one more thing that sure.
Jerked me a little bit, but was a one of my gaming mentors as
you were really hated about this game.
If you follow a conversation tree and you have followed a
node of that tree before the node will be grayed out.
Even if there are leaves under that node that have not been.
That is right now. That is annoying.
That is yeah. And that does happen.
I think the frustrating that part of the reason this game
worked for me is very early. I was like, I'm not going to
play this as a typical narrative Quest like tree where I'm going
to like, just complete all the things.
And I think if you do that this game, sort of, I think that
actually pushes you down. The, he doesn't actually, but I
feel like it pushes you down the Centrist path, kind of, right?
Like if you're playing this to see all the dialogue choices,
you're probably going to pick the most neutral option and I
think that's part of why? The games making fun of you.
You. But I think it's, because of
that, that I didn't worry too much about unseen diagonal
dialogue options, that, that helped me to like, keep in the
zone of enjoying it, but it is like, that has to be a design
choice, right? Like, that can't be it.
Just seems very strange. I agree that it's annoying.
Yeah, it feels like that. Could have been expressed or
said at some point, right? All these choices, make sense
and are valid and are valid game design choices.
I would just like the game to tell me that instead of me
needing to figure it out through, like Brute Force.
Oh, I spent 3 hours of this game.
Not realizing there was a choice.
I could make because it was hidden behind something.
Absolutely, I think I think that you specifically called out to
me that time only progresses when you make choices, I'm
skeptical that I would have noticed, or how soon I would
have noticed that, that was happening.
I recently on They knew that by reading.
Like I think there's a certain point that it maybe they added
as in the Final Cup. There's something that like I
believe Kim says, Hey like we need to turn in for the night.
There's nothing more you can do today or something of that
nature that does happen like at the end of the day.
Yeah, there's one conversation item where the system says, if
you make if you have this conversation Choice before you
have this Conversation Choice, bad things will happen.
And I was like whoa what really? And that's the only time I saw
that happen in the game. Does that happen everywhere
else? Yeah, I don't remember that
happening. This specific example, they give
is when you talk to the bartender who's not a bartender.
Whatever his name is boy, that's funny cart cart.
If you like ask him some context, he'll give you some
information about the context and then you ask him whether or
not he killed the guy and that like pisses him off, right?
So if you piss him, Woof first. He won't give you the context
from that initial question. I'm sure that's happening.
All throughout the game. I don't think you're supposed to
like game for that though, right?
Yeah, but that's another tricky. If it's actually a conversation
simulator, you don't. Yeah.
But like it's like, how are you thinking about those options,
right? It's like what you were saying,
right? Am I picking all four options?
Because they were gray and or before because they were white
and now they become gray. So I'm just going through the
list or am I actually thinking about Out.
Okay, because I've said this, that changes his contacts, that
changes his perception of me, that changes the flow of the
conversations are now, this other option won't make sense
anymore, like, right? That The having that happen in
theory. Sounds really cool.
But I didn't actually see that happening in the game.
Well, I don't know if you would see it, right?
You would never know if that was happening, if it wasn't being
called out. Yeah, I mean yeah.
But the game could tell me that in a couple of ways, right?
You could say what? I'm not going to tell you that
you just called me a racist. Or, you know, something like
that, right? Feel like stuff like that does
happen. And what do you think Craig like
Not that, you know, it's fucking interesting.
If you're a forget, what it if you see it on the still checks,
Yes, there's that. If you're a communist and an
authoritarian at the end, Kim says like, I have no idea how
you have these two viewpoints. They make no sense together like
there's, that's amazing, but that doesn't happen that often.
You're more often. You just like, oh, here's the
thing because your communist. Oh, here's another thing because
you're an authoritarian, right? And that's probably just because
they only had 20 Riders not like Hades number Wonder.
Yeah, you think Hades had more or less dialogue in this game.
I would assume less I definitely assume less.
Yeah. So, how much how many times more
words? Do you guys want to bet the
Disco Elysium has than Hades? So I seen a man.
So so good question because I've seen multiple reports on how
many words are in Disco Elysium. So I would guess four times the
amount of words in Disco Elysium than Hades. 55 times.
Okay. It's two hundred thousand words
of which are dialogue. Okay.
Thousand words total, I guess time I guess was 54 Hades and
204 disco. I think it's 200 and a million
shit. She's I had.
So I had seen the Million number come up, but I couldn't find a
way to confirm it. All they've said, you were over
a million. How many words are in War and
Peace? It's the Benchmark.
Isn't it? To me?
It like warm pieces, only five hundred eighty seven thousand,
that's incredible. I would love to know.
This would be much more helpful if we knew how many words were
in the average playthrough of disco Elysium.
Oh, that's true. Because they're being a million
words. Probably means that the average
player sees, I okay in 80 Days. The developer said that there
are God, I don't remember the number of words but I believe
it's one point five times as many words as did as War and
Peace and the average player sees three percent of those
words in one playthrough light and 80 days is heralded as like
a landmark in which I've never played.
So I don't know why that is like should - lets all mobile game
first wasn't uh it's not words started.
I think so. Yeah.
Anyways. Alright, last.
Last Hot Topic, any interest in discussing Dolores de, I just
heard that she was a person. I don't know who she is, but
just figure from 300 years ago in the game, or real life and
knowing the game. I was curious.
Did we have Dolores de? I'm only interested in because
of the way she conflates, whether ex-wife, I've heard
people describe the ex-wife thing is the least interesting
thing part of this game. But I thought it was beautiful
and cool. Every time it came up and I
didn't pursue it very far. Just every time you have these
like fractured memories of your ex-wife, I just thought it was
really cool. I think there's there's really
interesting things about what that says about you about a In
of yourself, there's like, I even there was like some hints
of like codependency of like you lose yourself without this
person also, in like, when she leaves, you become alcoholic,
that is not a healthy relationship.
Says my therapist. Yeah, there's that.
And then I left her don't. Mmm, don't worry.
Yeah, exactly. Doris.
Also is like a Godly figure in the world and worshipped, right?
Like the church is an altered to Dolores and conflating her with
your wife, like you and like worshipping your relationship to
your wife. Like they're there is a slot
going on here. Yeah.
This feels like one of those things where I would trust that
the author has a whole shit time.
There's another 500,000 words that they could probably say
about, like what this relationship is.
And it probably honestly, I am curious.
If there's like more of this that was on The Cutting Room
floor for the game. I'm curious too because it's
like a thread that's pulled on but you can actually like, pull
the entire thread where a lot of the rest of the game, you can
like keep pulling and doesn't feel like you ever get to the
end of the line where this sits there kind of is there's a bust
in the This room and you're like, hey, that bust kind of
looks like me. And you have a whole
conversation with Kim whether or not you are the, the man on the
bust and he's like, well, that guy died five or fifty years to
get home. And you go back and forth.
And for me at the end of that is like turns out.
I'm not the most famous philosopher of the modern
period. We eventually agreed on that.
But like, I bring it up in the light context that this
configuration comes conflation. The inflation cross ideas that,
you know, you might be other super important ideas in the
philosophical. Religious history of this world
is not solely your ex-wife. Yeah, there's a bunch of.
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.
You're basically saying like
your character is extremely unreliable and just because
you're mixing her up with Dolores de is not necessarily an
indication that you're having like christ-like allegorical
comparisons with your ex-wife Or vice versa.
Maybe she is Dolores de and you are this philosophical or, you
know, philosophy is really never waited and and and and right.
Yeah. All right.
Yep, it's fun. Take us home.
Whoo. Disco Elysium.
What do we all think? What's are taking better as a
racing game? Was it?
I would love to see so much speed run it.
I mean to be fair we know will doesn't even know the answer to
this. You tried to play it as a racing
game and crashed your car into the ice, just outside the town
three times. That is Their times.
Yeah. Just kept.
Kept it on starting every time he ended up with his truck in
the ice. Thank God.
Harry did was a genius? Yeah.
Why don't I start? Um, I think that I am.
I have a tendency to like RPGs in general.
This is my kind of game. I think that the art style was
pretty cool. I am glad that I got the Final
Cut of this game because for me the voice acting was really
important for me to be able to like buy into the this world and
these characters in general. I thought that I'm a big fan of
like super complicated intricate systems and A locking systems
and I like this idea. I should go try and find this
but there was somebody who is suggesting that like the way you
should build your game is that like 65% of your game, should be
available to every single player 30% of your game should require
a little extra work to get to and 5% of your game should
require like your or your super investing to try and get to the
to see that outcome, right? So there's like five percent of
your game. We should only be available to
like the most religious Advent, players or game.
So I like this idea that if I put in more work, I will get
more out of this game. There are so many parts of this
game that I feel were like, reaching out to me and like,
would have been perfect for me. The problem for me was the in
prochik in approachability, like maybe it's the subject, maybe
it's the the super hard cliff on the onboarding, which I eat.
You know, I really went. I feel like I went out of my way
to try to overcome. I really, really tried to buy
into this game, and I wanted it to be something that I really
enjoyed. I as sad as it makes me feel, I
feel like this game wasn't a game for me as, as much as it
feels like, it should have been a game for me.
It just wasn't something for me. And it's like, The mechanics in
the and the systems and all of that was built and designed for
someone like me in mind. But but the story the context,
those kinds of things just wasn't for me.
And it's like, it's a good sign for video games as an industry.
We're getting so big that we can build these specific experiences
for Specific kinds of people, like very specific kinds of
people. This is a game for for people
who like RPGs and are in to political Theory and are into
like all these. It's a very it's it it seems
like it's a great game. It's just sadly, it's just not
for me so I'm I am. Sad is that?
I am so impressed by this game that wasn't for me.
I just beat Halo night and I know how you feel the most
controversial thing that's ever been said on our podcast is that
Halo Nights defeat could elicit anything?
Other than utter Transcendence in a direct express?
Ticket To Heaven, are you going to finish it?
Well, yeah, as I'm playing it, I'm like, oh, I want to play.
Why this have I want three playthroughs of this game?
But also, if we weren't podcasting about it, I would not
have picked it back up again. So it's really hard.
No, I understand. I understand that feeling.
Yeah. Is there mechanical tweaks that
could have been made to ease you into it?
Such that you would have like enjoyed the end result or do you
just think the core premise of something?
So, like, political and unapproachable is the issue.
I talked about some of them, like I think there's too many
skills. I think that what could those
like changes have tipped you over?
Do you think like fundamentally you'd still be confronting the
fact that it's just not a game for you?
But you just would have made it through easier.
Yeah. Like I got I got closer than
ever picking up encyclopedia like you suggested.
If there was something even more in that area, encyclopedia the
elementary school of version of Encyclopedia like seriously,
break this shit down. For me.
I understand the concepts and the characters that that would
have helped more or less skills. I think what I've helped more
for. Me which I wanted to do all
that. Let's say there's Wikipedia
integration with the game. So when you hover over communism
there's a one paragraph explanation of what that is.
Like, if everything was made easier at the end of the day, do
you want to play a game? That's all about fully immersing
you and like this kind of world. I like the idea of inhabiting
the role of this character being able to make choices that affect
my world having like the the choice of how I would approach a
situation like the systems part, I loved.
I think that like one of the other things we talked about a
little bit earlier in the game like if they just short gave me
some shortcuts on to what we're talking about.
About you didn't need or I don't feel like you needed to
introduce 10 new races so that I could figure out what the
content like you tell me 10 races and I still don't know
what race Kim is. Do you guys know what race Kim
is see all light, which is a combination of Japan and Korea.
Okay. And it did, you know that crazy?
I'm just kidding. Just that I recipe.
I know your soul light but I didn't know like what that given
that we don't exist in our world.
But yes, I did. I knew that piece of bleep at
least. Yeah.
I feel like there's just a lot of I need to do the work to
appreciate this game and I would have just appreciated more.
If the game did the work for me or gave me the shortcuts to
allow me to enjoy and understand as soon as we started.
As soon as I started talking to the character about like, what
is reality mean? What are this this concept of
this like negative space between the worlds?
And this world isn't actually a sphere, and Like we're jumping
between like dimensions on a weird interdimensional playing
like, you guys started talking about, oh, there's an alien
race, that's kind of creature, you know, puppeteering the way
that that humanity is evolving. Like there's so many cool that
cool ideas that I totally want to have seen and explored and
thought about. And Experienced but yeah there.
Yeah I'm like I like it was almost there.
What I hear you saying is? Yes you do want to get there?
I think the tragedy is that this does happen just by sticking
with it. I wish that there was a way to
make that on-ramp more gentle, but it's interesting to me that
I think the confusion you're experiencing is almost
intentional. And I'm kind of curious to hear
what Craig says about it. I'm going to go next to give,
Greg something to kind of play off of when I think about disco
Elysium and when I remember how it felt to play it, the metaphor
that comes to my mind is I feel like I was the video game sci-fi
fan watching no man's sky is Debut trailer in 2014.
This is everything I want games to be.
I think that this game is Suspect, it's just incredible.
And I think that one thing that's cool about it, is, it is
it it's certainly a high watermark for video game RPGs
tons of people say that, that I'm a little worried about that
because I think that that makes people thinking that they should
make a great RPG, try to make a disco Elysium.
Like I don't think the in the medium needs more of that.
It has its disco Elysium. So I'm a little worried about
that. But I think, what's so
spectacular about is, is it? I like, I genuinely and
unironically think that it brings literature to new
heights, and I think that where it really shines as a work is in
fiction and writing. If I know people that really
like riding I would push them and that don't care about video
games, I would still push them to play this game and that is
something that I think games have always wanted to have good
writing. There's always been this claim
that games have good writing but saying that I think is
unexpected in the joy to have received in our lifetime.
The skills, you can spec in this game that give you sort of a,
what? Just King things, calls the
wandering Eye camera that Stephen King does so.
Well, where you pull out from the world you're in, and you
just get this big picture view of what's Happening elsewhere in
the world is just it's it's so beautiful to me and so it's
everything I go to literature for its It's the way I want to
be able to think about life on our planet.
It's what I want to understand more cultures for to be able to
pull out from the present and think in a bigger context.
I feel you will. I think it's it's a tough on
ramp but I love the confidence that this game has.
It doesn't try to onboard you. It gives you enough to let you
figure it out but it's kind of up to you to do the work.
I think that's just amazing. I've I don't think I can't think
of many other games that have such foreign settings that don't
sort of like gently walk you into it like you're a newcomer
and I I don't know, I'm kind of running out of words for that
particular feeling, but I just think it's very Very impressive.
I'm the politics of the world are interesting, the way it
plays off, real life, political Theory, the way that it like The
way that it's able to be smart without feeling like it's
rubbing your face. And you're not being smart is
really amazing. I'm interested in the way that
it uses race. We didn't really get a chance to
talk about this, but it compresses race.
When it's convenient for the story and ways that are
sometimes a little offensive, like it uses mask as a race for
Hispanic and talks about the Spanish Civil War, but in the
full cut, it'll sometimes include Chicano voices clearly
from like kind of a south southern. via like place when
it's convenient for it to talk about masks - and clearly
Spanish, Revolution, Spain, and Southern California are like
completely unrelated and to conflate those is almost
defensive but the fact that like Yeah, it's a game written by a
team of Eastern European people. And I'm I'm very fascinated by
how it the races that are in the developers backyard.
It has quite a nuanced understanding of in the one's a
little further away. It doesn't.
And I think that's cool. I think it's kind of cool that
it doesn't tackle raise perfectly, but it tries the fact
that it has a black character that completely inverts.
Colonial stereotypes in measure head that was written by black.
Authors is fucking wild. It's cool.
It's like a I don't know, it's just neat.
I the way the phasmid speaks to you at the end of the game about
seeing all of human history is just breathtaking.
I can barely talk about it without tearing up.
It was such a moving experience to me, it's something that I've
like, craved finding and literature it.
I read books about other countries and other cultures for
these kind of things. And this game did it, and the
fact that it's not just about an imaginary world, but has
parallels to the world we live in, I think is just another A
layer of what makes it fantastic.
I think the systems that innovates as an RPG or not just
ways to shoehorn text into a genre, kind of like I was saying
before, I think there is like genuine Innovation here that a
very serious historical genre video games hasn't seen in a
long time and I think that's cool.
What can I say about it? That's - I think it could be
better at replayability. It could make it systems more
clear. But I don't really think those
things matter when we talked about Kentucky Route, Zero on
our podcast, that game kind of became more parsable.
To me, it became more of a this is a toy box of some nerds is
like art interests and that game sort of fell off its pedestal to
me and also became more respectable as like, you know,
art is really cool. It's cool that video games can
be conversing with the serious art world, that's neat.
But for everything that that game does in that regard, I
think it sort of loses its luster as a game and becomes
more of an intermodal art project disco Elysium.
On the other hand, everything it does that I think is amazing.
Makes it stronger as a game. I think that's spectacular.
So this is definitely my favorite game I've ever played
and I think it's cool. And I'm glad you both are here
to talk about it. What do you think?
I'm interested that it's God. Well, before you go jump in, you
said yeah. This is not a completely
divorced from our reality world. What did you mean by that?
yeah, I think it's tying until like, Eastern European politics
and the way Yeah, the kind of stuff we talked about with the
Imperial core. Yeah.
It's not set up in some made of world with like some other
problems that humanity is like not actually facing.
In a way it is. But it also manages to comment
on our world without being like a lazy way of avoiding
commenting on our world, I think.
Okay. I thought you were time to
debate but we're late. Yeah, I thought you were saying.
Oh, this is Our world and the year 3000 or something.
Oh no, sorry, I interrupted correct?
No, no, it's all good. I would say that when you
mention the mechanics, really what's there to be negative
about moving through this game World follow.
Yeah socks. Yeah, moving sucks.
Sadly miserable. Did they had quick travel in the
finally unlocked fast. Travel to the fish market
specific place, but I didn't know.
How to use it or what to do with it?
Yeah. It's it's not great.
Yeah, and I think the console implementation of movement is
bad. Yeah, just talking about council
did not at all nothing things. Felt really weird marking,
things feels real bad, especially compared like
immortality where you can freeze the screen and just like know
what selectable on the screen. Yum.
Yeah, and then there was a button to show you everything
that selectable on the screen and that doesn't show you
everything that selectable of Screech.
And it doesn't make it easier to select their living either.
Yeah, it's like all the bottles that you pick up are not
selected, are not highlighted. Oh, that's from the terrible.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is a PC, a sport if the car was one.
Yeah, it absolutely is. I won't go too deep into that
space because I think we've covered it.
But yeah. Yes, my rap of thoughts.
I don't think they're going to be as exhaustive as either of
your guys is with regards to the Grand scale of what Was
accomplished here or what was sought after.
But for me I looked at it as an opportunity as an introduction
to a different type of literature than I'm normally
seeking or exposed to and having the opportunity to exist in
something that is actually immersive.
We talked about games being an immersive experience and that's
usually like hey I want to exist within this thing that's
separate from the world outside of me but this was like, I need
to exist. This thing because without
becoming fully immersed within that world, I don't have an
understanding of the space and I thought that was a really
interesting, you know, thing to try and occupy an especially
unique opportunity with in gaming and Bridging, the world
between literature. Two games is something that I
think is wholly unique to disco Lee's iums experience here at
least at the proficiency at which it accomplished it, right?
It's not too. that there's not a ton of other games that have a
shit ton of text or are written well or have other places there
but it's that combination of taking high-concept ideology and
you know different perspectives on the world and then bring able
to make that accessible playable and understandable to some
extent right mileage may vary as we discussed through last three
hours, but That's a really unique kind of combination, and
it was also something where I probably would have bounced off
early on, right? I'm like, happy that I stuck
with it. And didn't leave it after two
hours of being like, what the fuck is happening here?
Like, I've spent as much time as I would spend, on a movie,
trying to understand and parse what's occurring here.
And I still didn't feel comfortable in that space, and I
think there's something about being pushed to that limit of
uncomfortability to be Able to understand what something is
trying to achieve or accomplish and even leaving the game when
it was finished, right? I didn't feel like I had a
complete understanding or a comprehensive view of the
philosophy of the theories of the different.
Like machinations of like how things were being presented in a
way that I would be able to go out in articulate to someone of
like what was disco Elysium. I don't know, it's a thought
bucket of a bunch of different things.
Things that are happening of within yourself and within the
world. But there's something beautiful
within that and I'm grateful that it exists and that there
was an opportunity that a collective could put this
together and put it into a place of they can present it to the
public and Nate to one thing you mentioned, right?
Like while I would say I would like to Explore this and give it
as an option for someone that's deep into literary or
literature, and reading, like, it's kind of can be miserable to
play at times as well. So it's like we have a guided
experience here, which bums me out in some ways because it
keeps it from being that True full recommendation of hey you
don't even need to know the medium like you get to
experience like what the medium is capable of when it starts to
bridge between. Between something that has
existed for hundreds and thousands of years versus
something that's existed in a recent time, right?
And there's something maybe that bridges into the themes of the
game of the history and the how things repeat itself.
But separating out that theme it's just like I can't hand it
over to someone and be like, hey, you can you've never
touched a controller before. You would be able to see kind of
the best of the combination of the, the mediums.
And that's like unfortunate and that's a bit of a failing of the
game, but it's also not what it was trying to accomplish, and
I'm glad it wasn't trying to seek out to be that.
So, I'll wrap up there but I'm grateful this exists, I'm
grateful to a plated and The opportunity for it and glad that
it's paved, you know, an opportunity for something to
exist in this space. And I think we're going to see a
lot of different riffs on variations of this over the next
few years. But I think there's something
truly, and wholly, unique for creating this sort of work of
Peace. Especially when you look at, you
know, Classics of literature. It's not like every year,
there's a thousand-page book that people look at.
And I do this. Thing will be referenced in 10
or 20 years, right? It doesn't come along that
often. I think there is something to be
said here, that even if you don't enjoy it, there's
something that you can appreciate about it.
Wonderful conclusion. I think my one quibble would be
it's not like you can hand someone the best works of
literature and say read this true you can but part of what
makes the grade is its Impenetrability and also in some
ways disco Elysium plays. So poorly that it would be a
great first game because you wouldn't know better.
Be like, oh yeah, the bottom it's a little chunky, but what
do I know? Yeah.
I think this has been a great podcast.
Thank you all for joining. Thanks for sharing with us.
Hello, it's Nate after completing the edit.
I've been thinking about pieces of media that are related and
might be enjoyable to someone who like this conversation or
like this game. I'll start out with two books
that I think are related. If you're curious where I got
the sort of Eastern European perspective, there's obviously a
lot more to be said there than I, Got to in the episode.
But Owen Heatherly is a really good author, he's a good person
to follow on Goodreads to. He has a book that I've read
called, The Adventures of Owen had early in the post-soviet
space where he does kind of a well-informed travel Journal of
each of the post-soviet countries.
That's a great book. He has other books that are
similar kind of ethnographically, exploring the
rise of fascism across Europe. There's also a book called
solenoid by Romanian author, murchie got the rescue, that's
what I would. Cite if you are looking for a
sort of high-minded Pros, heavy work of literature.
That's kind of the most beautiful thing I think I've
ever read. I'm only a third of the way
through it. It's kind of like a big
maximalist novel that was sort of like, what if Kafka met Boris
Yeah it's pretty crazy recommended reading if you're
just in for some good Pros as far as video games go, I think
Road Warden is a really good, Indie text based RPG with
Graphics that will kind of make sense when you see it.
Is it really good like meaningful, Choice, driven, text
game that really has a rich sense of place.
There is clam man to open mic, which is a demo for the
forthcoming clam, Man, 2, I don't even know if there was a
clam man. One clam man to is very kind of
like a sweet game about being a clam that's very clearly
inspired by disco Elysium and it's some beautiful writing and
is just kind of like a scaled-down lovely version of
this game. There is, of course, Penta mint,
which is Josh, Sawyer of obsidians early Renaissance,
Bavarian game. Wherein you're playing a
Traveling Artisan. I think that's also very rich in
place, and is also like a game about a culture that's far
removed from us, and I think the only other thing I would say is
it might be fun to plug cause modi's new game betrayal at Club
low, which kind of sort of unabashedly borrows the dice
mechanics of disco Elysium into kind of a choice based RPG with
a note. Incredible Jazz electronic
soundtrack. I'm a beta tester for his games,
they're all pretty great. I think that's all the
recommendations. I can think of.
I hope that you all enjoyed this one.
It was a big one. Talk to you soon.