Its Just Like Disco Elysium

I could be wrong but i always thought inland empire was a direct reference to david lynch, he has a movie of the same name and the inland empire aspect of your personality is pretty weird and lynchian. I wouldn't doubt twin peaks being a inspiration. Great video, always down for more perspectives on this beautiful, haunting game. rip ZA/UM

One of my favorite things I get from Disco Elysium, personally, is an exemplified sense of longing. It’s beautiful to me that Harry starts out as a broken man, and I always like to read the game as the story of him living in spite of his circumstances. My Harry can be Sorry Cop, suicidal, perpetually hungover, and always wishing for who he used to be… but he keeps fighting, to solve a case, to create communism… to live! “And still… does the longing ever stop?”

I think "an experience" is the best way I could ever describe Disco. When you really get into the game you slide into this weird state of mind where everything that happens kind of makes sense, even when in reality it probably shouldn't. The game gives you so many meaningful choices that really only matter to you and mr. Costeau. There are not really good/bad/sensible/irrational choices just choices and story that you make.

At least the first book written by Kurvitz is now available in the English Language, it was of course unofficially translated by fans so it's even better than the actual original thing! It is worth pointing out that Kurvitz wasn't the only person who made Elysium, it was a collaborative artistic effort and thus "A Terrible and Sacred Air" is not exactly the same as the game.

2:16 No one experiences deep dislike of leftists as much as other leftists.

I think to properly get the unique amalgamation of sad vibes Disco Elysium has, you really need to spread your wings and sorta put yourself into the shoes of Robert Kurvitz. He's an Estonian so he'd been growing up surrounded by very sad nations. And one of the main things is to kinda combine all the "Sadness" and "longing" of the surrounding cultures of Estonia. Soviet/Russian sadness is more "apathetic cynicism" Finnish sadness is more "loss of meaning and reason to keep going" Latvian sadness is more "melancholic sorrow". Swedish sadness is more "dreamy, contemplative melancholy" Estonian sadness is more "fragile impermanence" What direct translations of "depression" mean in these languages: - Russian: Toska / Toskaya Mooka or Unyneyye = All meaning variations of "unbearably oppressive state of sadness" and "deep sorrow and despair" - Finnish: Masennus = From verb "masentaa" which means "to depress" (I'm a Finn, I guess the word could originate from "samentaa" = "to muddle, to cloud, to make murky", combined with "mal" from Latin by Christian crusaders, which typically means some kind of an ailment) - Latvian: Aklais laiks = "dark times" - Swedish: Svår nedstämdhet = "severe dejection" / "profound despodency" Estonian: Meeleoluhaigus = "mood disorder" All combined, you definitely get this weird "melancholic nostalgic apathy". As if you romaticize the very sorrows of the past, wishing that the straight forward problems of the past were preferable to the existencial and nuanced ones you go through today. Estonian sadness definitely rings deep in Kurvitz, as describing Disco Elysium as depressive comtemplation about the fragile impermanence of life is quite accurate.

Closest I can get to Disco Elysium? You gotta use two monitors--you play Papers Please on one and Cultist Simulator on the other. I personally like to set the limitation that I have to keep a job in Cult Sim and any time i start a work shift i pause it and then do a day of Papers Please. It's weird lol, but strangely satisfying. Like when you and a friend would play Resident Evil 4 on the wii but one would use the wiimote and the other would use the nunchuk and you'd try to beat the game

To me Pentiment (created by fallout new Vegas writing head Josh Sawyer) is reminiscent of DE. It’s a murder mystery set in the Bavarian Alps but what it really captures is that sense of melancholy and longing that comes with human experience.

I AM THE LAW

Watched this whole video before I noticed the view count. This was so professionally made, well written and superbly researched. I'm definitely going to have to read those books now. Thanks!

It might not be media, but I'd like to recommend visiting Paris. The events of 1871 were, after all, a very important inspiration for Martinaise's history. The Commune may be further in the past, but there are still some places where you can really feel their lingering impact. I didn't get to see the Pere Lachaise cemetery when I was there, which has a wall where many Communards were shot, but I saw the Sacré-Cœur basilica, which was built on the hill where the events of the commune began, to "cleanse" the city of the "unholy" ideas of the revolution. There's also one painting in the Musée d'Orsay in which the artist expresses his horror at seeing communards murdered in the streets, which I found quite impactful ("Une rue de Paris en mai 1871" by Maximilien Luce).

Great vid. I love Kentucky Route Zero. The first time I heard and saw Junebug perform "Too Late to Love You" was truly a special moment. I might have to replay the whole thing again.

Honestly the most similar Disco Elysium made me feel to any type of work is the watch series by Terry Pratchett

When it comes to games, the one that came really close to evoking that "Elysian" feeling for me was Planescape: Torment. I'm not sure if it's mentioned in the inspiration media by the DE devs, but it has a lot of similarities in it's plot, it's themes, even artstyle. But most importantly, that feeling you get when the credits roll, and you know, that something in you changed because of this piece of media that you've just experienced. Highly recommend.

I played and finished this game three times, playing the side quests every time. When I got sick of it, I read every book/author that the developers recommended. It wasn't enough, and these works in isolation cannot satiate a desire for 'Elysian' media. Why? Because Disco Elysium is itself a confluence of ideas. It has the humanity of Emile Zola's 'Germinal', the political intrigues of 'City & the City', and the glassy prose of Dashiell Hammett's detective novels. The tragedy of it is there will be another thing quite like Disco Elysium. There might be a successor game or novel that provenes from the imaginations of Kurvitz or Hindpere one day, but who can say whether it will evoke the same feeling? The conclusion I came to is there is nothing left to do but celebrate this game through creation. Telling stories. Their purpose was to entertain us, and they succeeded. What comes after falls to us.

for me, the special aspects of disco elysium are: 1. unique ways to play the game (player choices / role playing) 2. deep meaningful stories and content that you can't get without multiple playthroughs. including personified traits that speak (gives interesting psychological perspective compared to other role playing systems) 3. lots of themes, political and personal, that are done well 4. the music and art pulls it together nicely 5. humor i dont think setting or cop stuff is anything more than a logical vehicle to try to pull off the above

Great, nicely paced and well edited video with some great writing to boot. What you said about Disco being a deeply personal experience very much resonated. I've tried to do a second playthrough 3 times to discover some more aspects of the game but couldn't pull through, quitting at the end of day 1 feeling like a second playthrough will take away something from my first experience. I highly recommend picking up a book the Strugatsky brothers from the dev inspiration list aswell. Roadside Picnic is their most well known and a good first read by them. Dead Mountaineer's Hotel has the most Disco vibes with it being a detective story with wacky characters. The Doomed City personally I think is their best book.

Loved every bit of this video, great work! :D

INLAND EMPIRE [CRITICAL: SUCCESS] This analysis whispers truths deeper than the Mariana Trench. Good job, Detective.

this is a wonderful video essay. i loved what you had to say and it ripped my heart out <3 wildly well put-together