SFF Review - Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium is marketed as a video game, but it is in fact a novel. One accompanied by tons of amazing art, a haunting soundtrack, and incredible voice acting. It’s been out for nearly 5 years (Oct 2019), the Final Cut version has been out for 3 years (2021), so I will assume you’re at least familiar with it, and know that it’s a massively celebrated game. If you’re like the me of 4 days ago and still haven’t played it, you should play it. It’s good.

You wake up with no memory, having drunken yourself into amnesia because you are unable to cope with losing your ex-wife. But you’ve obviously ruined everything around you, you’re losing your mind, and you have a murder to solve. It starts out as a very dark comedy. It gets much darker as you go.

The second half of this review will contain spoilers, I will separate that half with a double line.

There are some books that, once they really hit their stride, are impossible to put down. When that happens you get completely sucked into the world and hours melt away. Eventually when you reach the end you find yourself deposited in our world again and filled with grief.

I’ve spent much of the last day in this terrible story-hangover. That world was so rich, and I was ripped out early. I’ve grown to know and care about the people within it, and now they are gone. I’ll never see them again. I only knew them for too short of a time. Now I only have the memories.

The Pale is an in-universe force that is coming to maybe destroy the world. Maybe the Pale is also a metaphor for the story drawing to a close. All these echoing memories, the wrenching nostalgia for other’s lives, losing yourself... All gone. It was supposed to be a distant threat. Instead it all crushed in at once. I was deceived.

It’s really good

I played the first quarter of this novel during a bad time. It’s interactive enough to let you do some incredibly destructive things to yourself. You can cackle in the face of pain and despair and really tear away the last shreds of sanity. It’s even fun. But it was too close to the apocalypse unfolding in my life, and I’ve learned how to manage depression over the decades. I stopped and didn’t come back for well over a year.

When I came back three days ago, I was in a much better place. And I couldn’t play the game the same way now. I resumed where I had left off, but now I worked to mend Harry. I was picking up all the broken pieces of his life. I was helping to reassemble him, sorta, into a man that he could be proud to be again, some day. We were building something together now.

This is a hard game to replay. It’s a deeply personal narrative. It’s best played near relationship trauma. I told my elven poem weaver that I’m scared to replay this game. If I come back for another play-through, it’ll probably be because we’re over. I’ll be living the theme of the novel from the apocalyptic side rather than the redemptive side. This game can’t just be about itself, it has to be about your life, and I don’t want to be there when I’m on the wrong side of it. It would be self-destructive, and I would probably lean into it, hard. I don’t want to play this game when it’s about her. It would be too much.

It’s a very good game.

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Below this there will be spoilers. Full end-of-game spoilers. Don’t read on if you haven’t played yet and you have even the barest hint of desire to play.

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We never find out precisely why Harry and his ex split, but reading between the lines it’s pretty easy to see. He adored her. He loved her so very desperately. There was nothing wrong with their relationship, he was a regular functional guy before they broke up, with a regular functional relationship. She just… she didn’t love him back. That’s it. She saw how desperately he loved her, and she knew she couldn’t have that same feeling back for him. She left because she couldn’t do anything else.

This is why I had to mend Harry. He was so destroyed by this. The world of Disco Elysium is so dark. The worst of humanity is shown to us. It’s one of the ugliest settings I’ve ever played. You grab for every glint of light you can, just so you don’t drown in the bleak. Near the end of the game when I had the option to graffiti a wall, I wrote “Something Beautiful Is Going To Happen” on it, in huge letters, in defiance. I needed it to be true.

And at the climax (buried under another mountain of human shit) suddenly completely out of the blue (and yet also having been hinted at the whole time) something absolutely, unabashedly beautiful happens. It is simple, and it is glorious. I don’t think I’ll ever, ever forget that feeling. He needed that, to heal.

My ex loved me like Harry loved his ex. I don’t know if she’s healing. I really wish for her to be healing. I really wish for something beautiful to happen for her. I need something to break through the clouds of her life and stop time in a ray of light. She loved me so much, and it’s not fair. It’s not remotely fair. I tried so hard, but I had to go, I couldn’t do anything else.

I know it’s just a game. But I needed it. It gives me hope. If Harry Du Bois can pick up his pieces after his ex left him… if he can stumble into a moment of grace and beauty like that in the middle of goddamn Revachol, holding those pieces in his hands…

Well. It’s a very good game.