If you're old like me, or possibly just into retrogaming, you will probably recall the Quest MS-DOS games from Sierra On-Line. There were several series of these—off the top of my head, I can remember King's Quest, Space Quest, and Police Quest—and they all had the same basic play mechanics: you steered a character around a fixed background, looking for objects you could interact with. Often that interaction consisted of finding out that the thing you just clicked on was a thing that would kill you if you clicked on it, although the Space Quest games, at least, had a sense of humor about it.

(My personal favorite that I can still remember was the random vertical shaft you could fall to your death in aboard the space station in Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge, which prompted the system message, Boy, that artificial gravity really does the job, doesn't it? Load game? (y/n))

Anyway, Disco Elysium plays like a modern version of Police Quest, if Police Quest were set in a 1970s-themed alternate-history dystopia vaguely reminiscent of the setting of Transmetropolitan. You click to move instead of using the arrow keys, because it's 2020 (the old DOS Quest games were from long before mice were a common thing on home computers), but the hunt-the-pixel-and-hope-it-doesn't-kill-you vibe is very similar.

I loved those games when I was a kid, and haven't run across anything particularly like them in a long time—I figured the format was pretty much dead—so I've enjoyed the hour or so of Disco Elysium I've played quite a bit so far.

The basic premise: You play a police officer—at least, you're fairly sure you're a police officer, everyone seems to think you are, and who are you to argue?—trying to solve a murder in a rough part of town. This task is complicated slightly by the fact that, the night before the game began, you got so incredibly drunk and angry about something that you no longer remember anything. Like, anything. You don't know your name. You don't know you're a cop until the first person you run into tells you. You don't know where you are. You don't know why you're there. You don't know where your badge, your gun, or your right shoe are. You woke up in a bona fide "these are not the hoofprints of your normal God-fearing junkie" scene and now people expect you to solve a murder.

How hard can it be?

(As an aside, I always enjoy it when games do something special to justify the fact that you start that kind of game with an empty inventory, rudimentary skills, and no personal knowledge of the game setting. Like how in the beginning of Elder Scrolls games you've always just escaped from prison or the like. This one is especially elaborate, since it has to account for the fact that your character doesn't even know the name of the city he's in, or anything about the geopolitics of the world.)

It's a very silly game. Right from the outset, you have dialogue choices in which you can just baldly tell everyone you meet that you can't remember anything, or ones in which you can front big-time and pretend everything is perfectly fine (usually in ways that are not convincing to the other characters), which I think is where a lot of the Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas flavor I'm getting from it is coming from. And yet, well... you are there to solve a murder. It's a wacky game, but it's set in a pretty dark world, which is an interesting juxtaposition.

I'm not very far into it yet, but I'm digging it a lot so far. Perhaps more later.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Disco ELysium is....probably one of the best damn games I've played in a long, LONG while.

It starts with your reptilian brain talking to you as you float in nothingness. It then goes on to try and keep you right there. Unfortunately, you wake up....and it goes downhill from there.

The game, as noted, takes place in a Blade Runner world of the 70s. The writing is hilariously funny, in my opinion, the characters are....interesting... and you get a bit of RPG too, in that you can create your character with varying stats, the which gives you access to varying actions and conversation choices.

The game has been called "the best RPG of 2019". In my opinion, it isn't an RPG, it is indeed an old-school adventure game, made for modern computers. But it's certainly one of the best games of the past LONG while, and I absolutely adore it.

"There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. Your conscience ferments in it - no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything any more.

Ever.

Never ever."

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

There's actually a reason behind the amnesia that's more than just you drinking yourself that way.

You'll see.

For now, enjoy the Glorious Ride of Tequila Sunrise, APOCALYPSE COP!

Just thought I'd note that, come March, Idiot Doom Spiral will finally be rid of the truck that's in the way and you can explore the story of the Cocaine Skull.

You know, that truck marked

Delta
Logistics
Company

Yeah, the one that would only be explored if money fell from the skies.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"

>You know, that truck marked
>
>Delta
>Logistics
>Company
>
>Yeah, the one that would only be explored if money fell from the
>skies.

Right next to the Flowers By Irene van.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

After making my original post, I let this game lie for a long time for no really evident reason. I just picked it up again the other day, have now gotten to a point about midway through the third in-game day, and wow. It takes a little while to get into it, but there is a massive contrast between how this game seems like it's going to be at the start and how it really is.

(Uh, mild-to-moderate spoilers for a four-year-old game beyond this point, I guess?)

The opening gives the impression that it's going to be a Fear & Loathing-style rampage of deranged wackiness, and it does retain elements of that (particularly if you choose to play Harry as weird as posssible, but as you start getting into it and Harry starts to get his bearings, it doesn't take long at all to take on a strong overtone of crushing melancholy. I haven't gotten far enough to get any real answers about Harry himself, but I am far enough in to have the inescapable feeling that he and I are both really not going to like them when they arrive, and I've uncovered enough of the worldbuilding to grasp that the setting is a lot less Fear and Loathing and a lot more Les Misérables, with a distinct aftertaste of The Quiet Earth.

This is a pretty big tonal swerve to absorb and I'm not sure I like it. I mean, I get it, it's not a creative decision that baffles me like, say, the Many Non-Endings of Mass Effect 3, but it's also kind of bringing me down. I was not in search of a new source of existential dread in my life, y'know?

I still think it's good, and I'm still playing, but the farther into the cave I venture, the more convinced I am that I should probably not be there. I don't think it'll be good for my headspace.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

You get far enough into it, you will get a case of the feels.

Numerous times.

Just keep an open mind.

I'm not going to spoil anything.

Enjoy the ride.