Why I Played Disco Elysium 2½ Times

It’s been a few years since this review, and all I’d like to mention is if you want to play this game, don’t buy it. Pirate it. If you haven’t heard, an estonian businessman seized control of ZA/UM and kicked the creators out of the company. It’s being puppeted by scum. Which, is incredibly ironic given the content of this game.

My only ideology was protecting Kim at all costs because he is precious and innocent and deserves good things

Also my personal highlight was dancing with the kiddos and Kim... in a strange, holy place. The Shivers activation in that moment brought me near to tears. I love DE.

You hitting that 3% check at 9:54 gave me second hand satisfaction

Your calling Kim a twink icon made my hand click the like button of its own volition before I'd even finished the video. Love your description of The Pale as discourse. I have heard The Pale described as a world built upon something other than power and capital, a world we cannot imagine because we accept the world around us (Martinaise) as the natural state. Anything other than this is spooky scary sci-fi to be afraid of. What a great video, I cannot personally be mean to Kim as it hurts me in the feels and gives me the big sad and kills my vibes. You are a trooper for even getting halfway through that playthrough.

although the pacing is a little slow, the editing , jokes and style and absolutely sublime and its one of the best videos ive seen all year

Another part of the vibes that goes underapprecited (except by jacob geller) is the shivers skill. Just really leaning into the vague sense of this cold dying world around you and the other people trying to live in it. 20/10 extremely disco.

One of the greatest moments was when I was fangasming to the guy with a cigarette and Kim could barely keep his laughter. Also when I had internalized Wompty Dompty thought with high Encyclopedia stat. Since then I was swimming in money and XP.

Shivers: you feel a nice warm feeling on your chest. It raises your hair on the back of you're head. Revachol calls Empathy: there's passion on his words. He means it Suggestion: you should consider subscribing Authority: No, you should subscribe Logic: it's the obvious choice. Limbic system: subscribes*

This is my favourite game of all time. I am on my 5th play through, 160+ hours into the game and still discovering new dialogue options. I have consumed every bit of disco elysium content on YouTube and your video essay is a great addition. I love your take on the game and the editing is superb. Thank you for your contribution sir! The day that ZAUM announce a new game or DLC in this incredible fictional universe cannot come soon enough! Liked and subscribed!

Funny to hear someone else’s story recap when it’s different from mine! I found out that Klassje was on the run from our conversation and let Ruby go so she never killed herself. DE is so great at choices impacting the rest of the story without the “Everyone will remember that” type handholding

This channel is criminally underrated. The quality of these videos exceeds most of YouTube's heavy hitters, and I hope this channel blows up some day

On my playthrough of getting the achievment "Get to the lowest point with Kim" I had to stop because, when he gave me an ace's high, I declined and felt so bad I stopped playing.

This was great. I've watched a dozen video essays, because I just can't get enough of Disco Elysium but you are the first one to go at it with actual humor and normal observation. Love it.

You begin to forget yourself the more you argue about who you are. What you believe becomes murky and confused. It's a sort of loss, who you are now, is not who were or who you will be. You are thousands of forgotten selves. Poetry is how those first expeditions staved off the forgetting of selves, long enough to see the Insulindian Miracle. Art, Poetry, music and passion are how humans beat away the Pale, how we remember that we are more than what we believe. More than an ideology.

related to the final part: the devs, especially one of the main devs robert kurvitz is a huge communist, lenin bust on his work desk kind of thing, and it's really interesting to see how he characterizes his own ideology in the game. Like you said the ideologies do not give happiness to the people who espouse them, and you can clearly see that through how communism is described in the game, one quote that stuck with me is "communism is about abject failure", not because of any flaw with the economic theory (marxist economic theory of value and labour is still used today by capitalists even) but it's more about how it gave hope, only to watch that hope get stamped out, bombarded by artillary fire, crushed by the personification of the status quo, the moralintern. The "solution" description for communism itself talks about how you realize the enormous impossibility of a communist revolution under the oppressive moralintern, and how the dreams that kraz mazov gave you now create nothing but pain, as you can see a better world that is impossible to reach. At the same time though, another quote that really stuck out to me was the one by the communist student Steban in the communist political vision sidequest, "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?". where Ioseph stands for regret, hopelessness and the glorifying of a past revolution so much so that it attains a golden untouchable status, to the point that theres no more chances for another revolution, Steban instead is the opposite: there's still hope out there as long as there are stars, and the stars will always shine.

I can’t exactly explain why, but this game gave me a new perspective on love. Harry spends the game stressed about people leaving, about things changing. I’ve spent a good portion of my life not experiencing things because I know it will end one day. This game sort of put a good spin on that “everything ends eventually” mindset. If Harry and Dora had stayed together, one of them would’ve died eventually. Everyone ends up alone, somehow. And that’s ok. What matters is if you cherished the time you ere together or not. Then you can find new people in your life— like Kim. Idk if this makes any sense but that’s just how I feel. As a person with an anxiety disorder, this depressing game somehow made me not as scared of change, and I commend it for that. You’ll probably never see the speed freaks, Cuno, Lena, or any of the other people you helped again. But at least you got to bond with them.

I feel that Disco Elysium is like reading a book, a really good one that you can see the imagines exactly like your imagination point on and this is something that i never experienced in anything, this is something powerful and extremely rich, vivid to the core of it's creation, it's magic, what Disco Elysium did was magic and everybody should at least once in your life as enjoyer of video game should try it because will got you good.

GOD tier editing and AMAZING video. I'll be sending this to all my friends, hope you get the views you very much deserve

I've only managed to play it once. It was so powerful an experience I think it gave me Stendhal Syndrome, and now hearing a single tidbit of the soundtrack is enough to overwhelm me.