disco elysium’s writing is so leagues above most media and especially video games!! wow! I’m dumbfounded, I’ve played a lot of bad games this year. Especially in writing and pacing. But Disco just feels so well done! Like that’s a narrative! That’s a video game! It’s gonna take me more time to digest the themes and connections so ignoring those for a second I have to gush about how it just nails the mechanics and necessary components of a game. Like obviously games all play different but when you think of this style: rpg, point and click, adventure game qualities and all the problems that have faced its predecessors, and then think about how many teams (AAA 👁️👁️) are just failing at competent story telling, and dropping the ball on interesting gameplay in exchange for sloppy, tedious, and/or monotonous gameplay (often pay to play modes) even in narrative games and then Disco shows up and drops a game that is just mechanically competent, functional, and engaging!! The bar is so low but it makes me need to sing my praises at Disco and the original dev team (pirate that fucker <3)
It feels like characters and narration rarely have time to engage with the materials (world, characters, themes, etc.) and I’m sure much of that is crunch time and shitty publishers but Disco’s writing manages to be smart, sarcastic, witty, ironic, genuine, scared, anxious, nihilistic, enraged and rallying in different contexts and voices. It’s so refreshing.
oh my gooooood it scratches an itch in my brain i wish it had set more of a standard for how games work and play
