Something I've yet to rant about is the inherent sadness and misery of post-tribunal disco elysium. Of course it will *feel* different each time depending on the outcome, but I think I had one of the worst one of all. Everyone fucking died, I didn't have a gun, and I failed all but two skills checks. One of them had a 97% success possibility, so it was almost impossible to fail *that one*. Safe to say it was a shit show. When Harry wakes up, Kim is tired. He is running on his last drop of fuel and he is *so* close to done, but he is Kim Kitsuragi, the entire RCM's finest, he doesn't give up. Still, the air in the post massacre streets of Martinaise feels thick with defeat. Everyone has fucked off, closed off. People are only left with a burning memory and the task to accept what happened, because there's nothing to be done now. The choices you've made snicker at you trying to accept the consequences now. You will never know if you made the right decision.
Not only that, but this game doesn't let you forget for a second, that Harry is severely wounded. When he sleeps in the flak tower it is mentioned multiple times that his wound is bleeding, the game makes a point to comment on how his pelvis hurts, how it's hard to run... and in the final cut scene, the Finale, Jean outright says that Harry is actively bleeding everywhere. This game doesn't let you forget what the character has been through, wounds don't heal when the health bar is full.
Harry has been a broken man from the beginning, not even the beginning of the game, but the post-tribunal gameplay doesn't play along to his madness anymore, it has given up on the fanfare. The tie stops talking and something within me compelled me to turn down on the out-of-pocket replies. It didn't feel appropriate anymore and honestly, it didn't feel like the same game anymore. All that is left is the death and misery present all around him, not contained to inside him anymore. Martinaise is a district that has had to go through the worst, but *it* has learned to cope. Now it just needs time to get back on its feet again. But Harry... Harry is down low, but he's still going. He's not going to take the time to get back on his feet until he's forced to, I think. This pitiful relentlessness only highlights how truly fucked everything in the moment is.
Disco elysium is truly a wonderful game for portraying this misery so bone-chillingly. It forces you to feel the last bit of hope they chased. The ending, the confrontation with his past, can only be described in a word I don't know the English translation for. I don't think it exists.
Õõvastav. The ending is exactly that. Harrowing is the closest word I could think of.
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