Disco Elysium Explorer

Can also wholeheartedly endorse Alpha Protocol, also by Obsidian. A must play for anyone who feels RPGs are more than a few skill trees and binary choices, the way AP manages to interweave a massive complex conversations tree with the way players handle the action sequences is frankly second to none.

To quote Ben Yahtzee Croshaws review[0] from back then:

“For once, this is a game that claims that "every action has consequences" and actually means a consequence more significant than a character maybe wearing a different hat. For example, although the hub-based mission system lets you do the operations in any order, during the one I chose to do last, an informant mentioned the previous operations I'd completed in conversation. "Fuck", I said, "this game's just showing off now." So I immediately became an aggressive ponce and slammed his head into a desk. After which, there was more security in my next mission because the informant went crying to his big brother or something.”

[0] https://youtu.be/K9ZkY-6M5qw?si=IWrCsJqo35p25n23

Coincidentally, I just got Pentiment, and I've spent the entire weekend on it. I'm not really a gamer, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The art is gorgeous.

I entered some random stuff and a dialogue graph showed up for me in Firefox release 134.0 and some other firefox-based browser. Not sure how it works exactly though. You sure you tried the exact same input for Chrome and Firefox?

It's also an atypical videogame in that there's no significant combat mechanics (combat is as rare and exceptional as in real life), and the setting is far from your usual videogame setting (it feels like like alternate history mid-to-late 20th century Eastern block, but it's entirely fictional) and themes (ostensibly a detective game, but leans heavily into political commentary, morality, nostalgia). Despite the bleak setting, it's also super funny at times in both subtle and unsubtle ways.

Whats the C in CRPG? I know JRPG but not CRPG...

I believe that this game is an artistic masterpiece.

On the first playthrough when I woke up with amnesia, I simply played a cop with amnesia in all of my responses. It was goofy, I annoyed Kim for fun, I beat the game, etc.

On the second playthrough, I chose all of the dialogue options that honestly explained how the character became an alcoholic. It changed the vibe of the whole game to somber, and I was fascinated that the relationship with Kim felt different. It also felt natural to explore all of the lore and sidequests of the game involving the pale in this mood.

And then I went on a completionist binge and found some great social commentary in the "high-net-worth individual" sections.

The writing is an exercise in how closely you can toe the line of turning into purple prose without ever crossing it. It's clearly written by somebody who likes words, for other people who like words.

Very much agreed. When Harry met a certain creature I cried a little. The text and music were so moving.

In the middle opinions also exist. I thought the worldbuilding and their spin on conversation mechanics was top tier and liked the art, but I also thought that it was oversold with the "open world... let you do almost anything" marketing when the reality is closer to "you're an alcoholic cop character with a defined backstory, who must solve a mystery with a defined ending by negotiating your way through defined checkpoints, but you can act differently towards the characters you need to pump for information and take on a couple of side quest options if you want"

I definitely liked some things about the game. But what I didn't like is that it's incredibly depressing. There's not enough wry humor (even though it's good humor) to cover up the fact that it's a terribly sad story about a man who's alcoholism has destroyed his ability to comprehend reality. I made it about ten hours in, and deciding to stop there felt like opening a window onto a bright sunny day after being stuck in a menial office job.

I could play for 5 hours then gave up because similar reasons. In situations like this I usually think it should be an acquired taste, but in this case, I'm pretty much confident that I'd have never liked it. UX was the biggest pain point for me BTW.

You're not alone. From the description it should have been right up my alley — avid reader, including Philip K. Dick, can appreciate weird stuff — but something about the way the protagonist was interacting with other characters sat wrong with me. Perhaps it was the pretending everything was alright whilst suffering from (something induced) amnesia? I'm not sure what exactly irked me. I didn't feel like I wanted to dive into this world. The UX felt underwhelming too.

Perhaps I'll look into it again in a few years time, when I finally finish Factorio.

I love the game, but I know a lot of people who don't, for a variety of reasons. They were very opinionated about what kind of game they were trying to make, so you'd expect it to resonate strongly with some people and not at all with others.

It's such an incredible science fantasy universe, probably my favorite piece of fiction from the past decade.

The political history, nature of reality and shape of the world, even things about how computers ("radiocomputers") work are all fascinating to me. It's a shame what happened to the studio. There deserve to be more stories told in that universe.

I think, even though they are very different games, Disco Elysium has a lot of the same feel as Planescape: Torment. A lot of the same introspection of human nature, philosophy, moral judgment, and wry humour. If you like one, I think you'll like the other.

I loved the way that you'd pass encyclopedia checks in the game and it would give you totally irrelevant information. I think at one point a character tells you she's using a contact mic and the skill check informs you about a boxer called "Contact Mike".

who tells you to arrest people and take drugs. some friend that is.

something that also managed to trip my corporate firewall

Though there are dead ends, thus needing to save earlier to undo decisions.

Unless they've changed it recently, the auto-save seems to only bother firing off every few hours. All three attempts I've made at the game have ended with losing progress to the save system.

yes