Essay: chances of success in Disco Elysium and why it’s cool

Disco Elysium is a very good game. There is a perfectly written text, a living world and a lot more, but what is especially important for RPG – you always have freedom of choice. You can choose in what order to complete the tasks, in what way to achieve your goals, which skill is more important for you and in general, what kind of cope you will be . But wig here is also important because your decisions have consequences. The fact that you said something or did not say whether you did or not, affects the text, history and attitude of the characters to you.

And at the same time, the game has an element of randomness! There are a lot of it and it affects the game just like your elections! In this text, I try to explain why it seems to me not just an appropriate, but also the right decision. This is a little more comprehensive than it might seem (or I just Overthinking ABOUT IT), because it is important not only the presence of accidents, but also the way the game reacts to the success or failure of the player.

First of all, it simply does not allow you to always do what you want and become, like, omnipotent. We play for the alcoholic broken by life, who does not remember anything about himself or about the world around, and it would be quite strange if the hero was good at shooting, and in the fight, and in the conviction, and in a heap of other things at the same time. On the other hand, this is a role -playing game and it is great that you can try to perform an action, even if the chance of success is small – because the game is ready for consequences (below this will be more details). So already at this stage the system of success and failures allows you to do what you want, but does not allow you to succeed in everything.

In addition, some checks hide game content, https://wizebets.co.uk/ plot turns, characters’ replicas and entire stories. And you will not get everything in one passage! From the outside, this may sound strange, as if you are made an artificial restriction, but in the case of Disco Elysium it looks quite logical. The world and characters are still not obliged to reveal to you as soon as you come. It is quite natural that you need to make some efforts to find out, understand or see something. This includes modifiers – by exploring the world or choosing the right remarks in dialogs, you can increase (or lower, but it happened much less often) your chances of success. But what is the random? Why not make the system more stable?

Firstly, it’s more funny. When at a plot of an important point you perform a red test and understand that the result will affect the story – any outcome will cause you emotions. When you lose with 92% or win with 8% – it also causes emotions, involves what is happening and this is true fun, damn it!

Secondly, it works very well for the plot. You do not decide whether the main character can change the course of events, you decide whether he will try. And this is very cinematic (in a good way)! You have freedom of action and freedom of choice, but you cannot know for sure what will happen next. And it is very important here that your failures are also canonical.

It’s time to talk about how the game reacts when you failed to check. She just continues. Your failures are part of the story and for games this is a rather rare phenomenon, but in Disco Elysium this is one of the main parts of the narrative. If something does not work out, you can just leave this place alone and try another way. And this is good for diving. Again – not only in the little things, but also in the important points of the plot, the player at the same time has freedom of action and there is no opportunity to solve everything for all. Video players control the freedom of the player in different ways (in Mass Effect, for example, you really sometimes seem to be omnipotent, while in many games-interactive-kino you have almost no choice. And in itself, this is not bad, if that), but the approach of Disco Elysium personally seems to me one of the best solutions.

I learned that even taking off a corpse from a tree is not necessary to open the case, lol

The text turned out to be very short, because it is quite difficult to write about some very specific aspect of the game and not start writing about the game as a whole, but it’s just an essay (well, I’m not the best writer, well, okay), but it will be better than not, than not.