As a high school dropout myself, it’s incredibly inspiring and empowering to see something of this magnitude created by people with similar artistic inspirations and backgrounds.ĭance, dance downtrodden folks of the earth for it all ends one way or another! They wanted to fly in the face of “dumbing things down” for wider appeal and show that we can make games that can reach a wider audience while still being nerds geeking out on connections between movements like Dadaism and modern RPGs with intricate and extensive lore (Nelson, 2019). Self-identifying as more of a cultural movement than just a small studio, ZA/UM recognized video games as their medium and their place to contribute to contemporary art in a way that combines multiple disciplines for a richer experience, while still parodying elitism. Particularly because Robert and the small band of dropouts that started the collective -which included the lead writer Helen Lindpere and less than a dozen of their comrades- had no prior game development experience before creating Disco Elysium. All of the Dungeons and Dragons-playing, strange world-building, Eastern Europe-wandering, and ridiculous ambition Robert and his peers tapped into trying to create a “world to end all worlds” (as he would put it) would pay off when making the setting for the game (Nelson, 2019). Not only did it take ZA/UM a total of 5 years to complete Disco Elysium, but the source material and essentially main “lore” of the game was created farther than that by Lead Designer and Writer Robert Kurvitz in his novel, “Sacred and Terrible Air”. All with little to no combat at all.Īs all worlds are, particularly a world this fully realized and bizarre, the world of Disco Elysium wasn’t built alone nor without a struggle. The player has the option to choose which thoughts to make stronger or more prominent from the beginning of the game. Yes, the disparate thoughts, feelings, funny asides, and psychological constructs in the brain of the detective are actual characters in their own right with their own motives and effects on the way the game progresses. In Disco Elysium you must balance out the main characters stats and his ability to make different choices in the scenarios you find yourself in by not only completing quests and investigating evidence around the murder but by - get this - engaging and having conversations with the detective’s own thoughts and inner voices in a sort of mental landscape called the “Thought Cabinet”. No no, it's ok I have a whole box of kleenex here myself, thank you. That sounds like the intro to a typical albeit strange detective story, but Disco Elysium is far, far from typical. However, the detective himself is not only an alcoholic but also an amnesiac with utterly no clue who he is and how he got to Revachol. In Disco Elysium the player is tasked with investigating a freakish and peculiar murder and finds out what happened by interacting with the somber, snarky citizens of a small district in Revachol called Martinaise and its odd underbelly. These criteria are as follows whether I can understand and interpret the creative intentions behind the game and the context around the artist or team that created the game, how the aesthetics (the art style, animations, music etc.) help reinforce the games world and its themes, and finally and most importantly, how it actually feels to play the game. I know that’s a big claim to put into a review of a game, so I want to make it as succinct as I can how I judge any artform whether it be classic art, modern cinema, or in this case videogames. These are all ingredients that went into creating an intoxicating and charming brew, and the interactivity of videogames may have been the only cup able to hold such a concoction together for us to gulp down. Disco Elysium is excellent because of its heady, exhilarating, and immersive narrative, its innovative and unique gameplay mechanics and approach to sprawling choices and dialogue, its comical yet brooding characters, and even its user interface. A perfect mess of watercolor expressionism and dark humor, the game pierces through the fog like the clarion call of Revochol’s trumpets on a hungover morning. The underdog spirit and creative intentions of the indie video game collective ZA/UM are resoundingly clear and on full display in the game Disco Elysium, which rewrites how we experience narrative in Role-Playing-Games and pushes the boundaries of what the interactivity of video games can do for modern storytelling. Hey, at least bro still feels things when he sees dead bodies.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |