I am in a near dreamlike state where a mocking voice warns me of the condition I have left my body in. Ignoring the warnings and sudden intense pain, I awake to a terrible hangover with no memory of the past night or of any aspect of my life. After I slowly drag myself to the bathroom mirror and attempt to wipe the grime away I am again warned, this time hearing that I won't like the sight that will look back at me. "It can't be that bad," I think as I wipe the mirror, only become horrified at the sight of the swollen and ballooned face of a late stage alcoholic that I have no memory of, just staring back at me with a ridiculous grin. I fail to try to remember what events in my life would cause me to want to have my face frozen in such a ridiculous way, again I fail when I try try to stop it from happening, failure starting to seem a common theme in my life. After collecting my scattered clothes and leaving my room, with the sound of my jingling keys helping me to find them in my jacket pocket, a woman tells me that I'm a police officer that was supposed to be investigating a recent murder and describes the events she heard from my room last night that lead to my sorry state.

Downstairs I meet my new partner, telling him that it isn't time for names yet when I realize I can't even remember mine. Trying to remember causes me to consider the colors gold and orange for some reason. We go on to question the manager, the conversation leads me to declare my feminist agenda, the one that I suddenly remembered after becoming upset at his attempt to ask out one of employees and seeing it as a misuse of his power. This gives me a new idea that I choose to consider for the next few hours, my desire to undermine the tyrannical gender roles of society gives me a better understanding of the existing power structures of the society, of which I am still trying to fully remember. The manager is unimpressed and demands payment for my room stay, as well as payment for the window I smashed when I threw one of my shoes through it. A voice speaks up, a voice coming from the ugly tie around my neck, a voice that is both making a lot of sense at the moment and one I am willing to listen to, it tells me to sneak away to avoid paying my bill. Unfortunately, my gaudy shoes and pants have caused me to stand out a bit to much and I fail to make a clean escape. Realizing I have no chance of sneaking away I begin a mad dash, followed by a dive through the air while flipping the manager off with both hands. The voices in my head tell me to just savor the moment before the crash and enjoy that I showed the manger who was boss. Just look at the shock on his face, no idea how to react to my rejection of his authority. These thoughts come to me right before I crash into a woman in wheelchair. The resulting injury leads to a sudden pain in my left arm, followed by my chest, followed by all enveloping blackness as death takes me. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to my tie, maybe I should have taken better care of my body in my past life. The paper reports on a cop that suffered a fatal heart attack, I'm described as having been a heavy drinker that suffered from a broken heart long before a heart attack.

Existential, depressing, hilarious, political, cynical, hopeful, bleak, ugly, beautiful, and a police games that understands the role of the police. Disco Elysium does things that have been missing from the majority of RPGs. Set in a realistic setting that combines elements of different time periods and places to create a fairly grounded cast of characters and a story focused on the human condition and politics of the setting that mirrors real world elements, without a focus on being a chosen hero, forces of darkness, evil monster races, and what little combat there is governed through your skill checks. A focus on understanding, accepting, and letting go of the past to hopefully better yourself while finding hope in a depressing and cynical world.

You are staying in a now destroyed room in the city of Revachol, a broken down city that experienced both a plague and a communist revolution before it was put down and colonized by the rest of the world, you have drank so much and taken so many drugs that you have effectively destroyed your personality and have no recollection of your past, you are told you are a cop and that there has been a body hanging outside for the last week likely connected to the current labor strike.

You are given four stats intellect, psyche, physique, and motorics which each governing six sub skills ranging from your ability to identify with the people you meet and their feelings, your reaction speed for physical reactions as well as witty comebacks, your attunement with the city around you, your ability to picture a crime scene, your ability to have informed hunches and gut feelings, etc. Every skill you have talks to you when you are dealing with people or noticing things in the environment, they can help you make informed decisions, clue you into hidden details, or cause you to make poor and ridiculous decisions. Your Physical Instrument skill might give you impressive muscles and the ability to use them but it also demands that you showcase your masculinity and to let nothing threaten it, Inland Empire might help you correctly see what isn't visable to the naked eye but as shown above it can be less than helpful when your clothing starts offering strange advice to you. Saying certain things or finding out information about people can lead you to having new thoughts, choosing to focus on a thought will give you temporary bonuses and/or penalties and when you have mulled it over long enough the thought will be locked into place with a new description and bonuses and/or penalties fitting your new understanding of the idea and what concepts you want to be important to your character as you rebuild his forgotten personality.

In most games you are rewarded for playing a certain way or for playing in completely different ways as the situation calls for it, giving your character no personality as you game the system. Disco Elyrium's frequently lore expanding or amusing skill anecdotes, the different options for playing your character different ways, and probably most importantly, your skills giving you an actual reason to want or understand the desire to do something you normally wouldn't do makes you want to play the game again as a character with an entirely different stat and skill focus. It is one of the rare games that can make your failure as interesting as your success. Some of the most amusing moments come from failure, some failure just leads to new logical paths to your goal, some failures might change a goal, seemingly minor choices or clothing items might lead to unexpected tasks or responses. Failing to find the cause of death during an autopsy can lead to a side activity to find a freezer big enough to store the body, succeeding in a Suggestion role might give you a task but play into the hands of the person that was hoping you would come up with such a suggestion, failing a Conceptualization role might lead someone to lend you her art supplies out of pity while succeeding causes her to think that you don't have the talent to create your masterpiece and that if you did you would be competition for her, failing to make a cool catch with your Hand Eye Coordination skill might lead to a loss of health buy an apology in the form of pity money. Unlike almost any other RPG, be it just because of how much combat there is or because some skills just have little or no real use, in Disco Elysium there is no right or wrong way to build your character because there is no push to succeed at everything, to do everything, to fix everything, or to help and save everyone, yourself included.

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Full review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/Legolas_Katarn/review/138666/
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1184282384205697024?s=20