>>716385569 (OP)I played Disco Elysium recently. I guess there isn't much there to talk about outside of the writing. I think the whodunit mystery was done well. The characters and their dialogues were also done well. I liked that the different upgradeable aspects of the protagonist become voices in his head. I think the pacing was *generally* done well, I especially liked the culminating point and the way the falling action was handled afterwards. I'm very impressed that they managed to have the killer be a third party who you don't know even exists until the end of the game, and that it was done in a way that was narratively satisfying and didn't feel stupid or contrived. I liked the presence of those different political ideologies that shape the characters and plot events. And that despite the writer being a putrid commie, communism wasn't presented in a way that was too glorified. Many problems with the ideology and with the people who claim to subscribe to it were highlighted, as it was with other ideologies. I guess the way fascism was portrayed was rather lazy, dumb, and dismissive. While I agree that fascism is stupid, you could talk about its ideas with more nuance and subtlety in a way that doesn't just come across as gratuitous dunking. Now, there were also elements of the writing that I didn't like. There's way too much exposition. I don't care about the world's historical events or what is geographically where, I don't care about the lore. I care about them in so far as they are relevant to the plot, since dry fact dumps that I have zero emotional or intellectual engagement with are just boring. The game suffered from it a lot. It can sometimes contribute to the atmosphere and help the world feel more alive, but in the case of Disco Elysium it brought the pacing down so much that it was hardly worth it. But it was overall a fun game and I'm happy I played it.
