Disco Elysium: Views from the East

Hello and welcome to the amount of pixels podcast for back on. Season 3, episode 3, disco Elysium. This one's been in the grinder for a long time. Will this died several times to bring it to you? I am the host this week Nate and with me we have Craig ready and we'll it Sammy. It's a me really. Oh, in lieu of an opening question this week, I have two white checks for each of you to pass. I have a D6 here, and I have two thought cabinet thoughts.

One for each of you Who would like to go first will says he would like to go first. Now we'll I've got a savoir-faire check here for you called dances from mask to the eggs. You have a pretty high chance on this. You got a 42%, I've got a D6 here, you cool. If I roll it for you. Yeah, let's go. I wrote it on a soft mat but oh, you passed. You passed confidently. Here's the text that I see. What are you roll? It was it D6? I guess the game doesn't really

tell you what it's rolling. Does it? And that's true. Yeah. To d6s. And you can critical fail or critical path. So there's a 3% chance or 97% chance are your limits? Well crap. I should have had contingencies for that. Would have been fun. The text I have here says, within you, there exists are horrendous vacuum. An area devoid of purpose, a doomed passion area of sorts. There's a serious need in there man. What you going to do about it? Better start planning and

studying a glass. A Gore to might help sounds like my experience at this colesium perfectly. Well this is working this has a 45-minute thought. Cabot internalization time you get a A plus 2 bonus to disco Elysium thinking Now standing now. Craig, it's your turn. You have a pretty good chance on this one. You've got a 21 percent gray. Oh, thanks funny. Like I hope this works out for you. Glad you're setting me. Help success here. You passed. But barely. All right.

Craig's is a physical instrument check. It's called the Great Reformation. Yeah, he text here, says towering, over your young life looms, a history of fear and uncertainty your life. May not last long. You might want to think about this, but don't think too much about it. People will think you're dramatic and it's the kind of thing that can consume you from the inside out. Anyway, what you'll really need is some kind of improbable High School to add a state college level transformation.

Maybe try some substances, and this also has a +2 critical thinking about disco Elysium effect. While it internalizes that's going to take an hour. I feel like stay tuned for the back half of this podcast when it gets good, right. I feel like electrochemistry could have been a little more fitting there. That is true. I don't know how seriously to take the suggestions that the thought cabinet.

That's half. Yeah, that is also we will get to that all shortly because we're here to talk about disco Elysium which is a Estonian but I guess pan-european written mainly in London, I guess. Computer role-playing game. Released in 2019 and updated in 2021 with console ports and

voice acting. It is a wordy game that has basically, it's big twist, is that it's a crpg like those of the 90s except instead of characters you have different voices in your head that represent different aspects of your identity. If you do plot summary first or the kind of who made this thing, what do you think? Wow. Craig didn't even move his eyes and the yeah, let's go straight in a plot summary since I met dr. Experienced in working with

comatose, patients. Yes, I Splat summer, I wrote this one down, you're a mysterious no name. With total Amnesia, I'll add the classic RPG Trope, who wakes up in a hotel discovering, you drink yourself. Into a total stupor, you're here from your Precinct, to solve an apparent murder mystery. That is left. Someone hanged in the courtyard outside the hotel of mercenary.

Initially it looks like the Workers Union was at fault who are adversarial and defensive in your attempts to investigate through several days of Investigation. It becomes apparent that the mercenary was actually killed by a far distant. Hermit practicing, communist. Ideology desperately in love with a fellow Hotel. Guests from afar jealous of the sexual Affair. The mercenary was having with this guest.

The murder was reframed as a hanging to defend the hotel guests who they felt would otherwise be accused. But before this is fully revealed, there's a climactic action scene where the murdered mercenaries comrades were Turn in stage of public execution of the union leaders claiming responsibility and in some cases, shoot the player and the greatest NPC of all time, Kim katsuragi your partner.

The game ends with you meeting the aforementioned communist, the deserter who surrenders to you the last of his kind 43 years since the failure of Revolution who collapses in Death At The Disappearance of the Cryptid, dubbed, the insulin d and phasmid a supernatural being that has watched the Region's history. For some 350 years, and has observed and played some hand in the various failed and successful revolutions. Get all that. Well, Can I think I got up to the first sentence?

They're fine. I think most of that was beyond. What will a scene? So I apologize for the spoilers basically. Yeah you're a detective. Try to figure out a murder mystery and some crazy political Rebel killed him under the influence of a crazy like bug business. Is this, your experience or is this everybody's experience? This is the experience that is the experience. Perience.

Yeah, you will make it through this experience by the end of If you finish this game and roll credits at I guess the ending. Although there is earlier endings, if you die earlier or go elsewhere, but this is this is the game. I will say that the bit about the supernatural bug being controlling. The Assassin is sort of subtext,

but it's also kind of text. so, that might be like, You can miss meeting the phasmid altogether but even if you miss seeing it, which is pretty rare, you don't get to talk to it, but you still see it and then it disappears. And when it disappears, the Assassin starts, convulsing and dies. So it's subtext that. Like the thing was controlling it at that point, but it's, you know, chekhov's gun sort of

situation I guess. We will get it all into that more after we talked about, who the heck made this game. So, this game was written, and lead by Robert curve. It's kind of, its kind of an Art Collective Zoom, which of course we would be remiss to not mention the fact that ziane do more apparently fucking theoretical syllables of Russian proposed by radical poets in the 1960s. So even the developer name is like chalk. Deep and revolutionary like history.

Curve. It's is kind of credited as the lead. He wrote a book called The Sacred and terrible are that's still only available in Estonian. That's kind of a big book of advanced in Elysium which is kind of a ten-year project for his role playing game that he runs with his friends but as I guess not going to learn Estonian so you can read it at this rate. That's what you're going to have to do. Is I'd like, why isn't it, when translating this I imagine the impostor syndrome must be very

strong. I don't think anyone probably expected this game to get the reception that it did. As I mentioned, Zoom is like a collective, right? So there's also Alexander rostov who's the art director, that kind of brings that up, impressionist painterly style and Helen hand Pierre, who is another writer. And then of course, there's a huge Studio. I think there's something like 20 riders in this game.

A million Words which is something something we're going to talk kind of more about words and since we're recording this in 2022, which I guess would be catastrophically late. We can say that we're being timely because there's been some leaked legal documents about zooms Cultural Association being dissolved recently and someone I forget how that news made it

out. But when people were talking about oh what is the dissolution of the Cultural Association which is a, like a group within the company. What does that mean for the studio? It also came out that curve it's and I believe rostov and, and PR had been forced to Leah ejected from the company at the end. End of last year, which is a little concerning because there were plans for a disco Elysium too. If you look at steam, it's been actually not review bombed.

But tons of people are talking about this is this is being perceived by the internet as kind of a cash. Grab by Zoom to try to keep the rights and they're a lot of this made it to the west by there's papers that have been filed in Estonian Court of curve at suing Za whom to try to get the property back. So there's kind of a lot going

on right now. We don't know all about that stuff, but yeah, I think that The kind of the important thing I think in our discussion here today is that the team is definitely Estonian are from Eastern Europe, a country in the Soviet Bloc, that was in the USSR in all of the developers lives times. Well, I don't know about all but most definitely the author. And I think that that's pretty relevant to kind of the Viewpoint that this is

espousing. Oh yes, there is also when the game came out, there was a huge list of developer Inspirations mmm that they released alongside it. There's tons of stuff Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, which I've read, which is like a surreal. I guess we don't need to go into book report mode now. But as also is like, if you've read that, do you understand where the inspiration like that? That is, is there a direct line

of sight between the two? Kind of Invisible Cities is like surreal accounts of cities that it's Marco. Polo coming back to the Kublai Khan and Reporting on the city's he's been to. Yeah. And they're all like surreal visions of like cities that are. It's basically like early magic realism I think. Okay. So yes in that it's like very flourishing and describe cities but like it's not like you're going to get exactly a disco Elysium by reading it. City in the City by China mieville.

I don't I keep hearing about him. He wrote like a fictional account of the Russian Revolution. I've been meaning to read him, but I just like every time I get to it on my reading list, I bump something above it. Oh, and the soundtrack is score by British Sea power. Now just known as sea power because After brexit and stuff, it's just that they're just not undersea Powers kind of a different flavor. Okay, interesting. And what is Red Rock, Riviera.

It was one of the songs that they that's by I guess. Now. See Power is that see that blah, blah blah. Yeah, I think so. Okay, great. Soundtrack on bandcamp. I have it. It's pretty good. And yeah, I think that's all our metadata about what this game is there. Anything else you guys would like to throw in at the beginning? Well, thanks. I mean it's interesting and we'll get into this, right? But that what you explained, Sounds complicated and convoluted and difficult to

grasp. Yet when you start the thing, it's like, hey, you're just a detective that is fucking hungover and you're here to solve a murder. That's it. More or less, right? Like. Yeah, here to solve why this guy died, but don't you feel like this game like immediate? I guess we're hot of the discussion already, but this game immediately makes you sort of like start drowning in its words. I go absolutely even before you're like miles, deep and political knots.

Yeah. It's just, it's interesting, just to see where it gets into versus where you start within the first 10 seconds, where someone would like pitch it to you in a bit. So it's like a detective game where like you're trying to solve a murder and then there's all of everything else that will get into. Yeah, I started this episode with a plot spoiler because I don't think we'll spend a lot of time. Actually kind of talking about what happens so much as what all

of that represents. I think if this were a normal podcast, where we kind of talked about the game on its level at you're right, it would have made way more sense. Just kind of start with, it's a murder mystery. What all did you guys find out? Let's play in podcasts ever recover that too tough. Yeah, I'd also be curious will.

I should I didn't want to put you on the spot but I almost thought of having you summarize this game incomplete like me, but before I gave my description, what is disco Elysium? Oh man, this Games been tough. So we've kind of talked about it. I restarted this game like four or five times. Now I think the key to me making the most progress has been one of your last pieces of advice. We're at one point.

I was telling you, I just can't comprehend anything that's going on here and you were like, well, hey, there's a skill encyclopedia, which will just jump in and tell. Tell you what the hell things mean, and what's going on.

And so for my final restart, that was almost completely maxed out and it's like Wikipedia and getting that context for everything that was going on and understand even when theme things seem like they should be obvious from Context to be like, oh, here's a name of a city and be like, oh, this is a city, and this is, you know how it relates to the area and the law. It almost became approachable for my Don't run where I was getting all of this additional information.

I was kind of comparing this to their. There was a great. I think it's an extra credits episode where they're talking about a good intro versus bad in front row. And they're comparing like a modern warfare which kind of gets you into the action and shows you what's going on versus the Skyrim intro, where you're sitting in the back of a wagon and you just have to pee.

People talking to each other and they just give you term after term after term and political people and the names of people and the names of houses and you're just. And it's like, I don't have any context to know who any of these people are. What how they relate to each other? How many of these are important? I'm not going to be a real, remember them? Because you just throwing words at me. And that's what this game felt like quite a long time for me.

So camera, what your initial question was, but it has been a lot of like, really struggling to figure out what's going on. What the context is. I think, when I started talking to the rich lady, and she was starting to give me both context on like, what is reality, where am I? What's going on? But then she started hinting at the, the, this mysterious Interspace between the worlds. And then she like, straight up tells you were not on a sphere.

This is not a planet. We're not always said, I was like, whoa, what the heck is going on here? And so, I could, as I was starting to see that I was starting to get that wonder wonder feeling and like thinking, oh man, where could they be going? And yeah, I can see them getting to supernatural aliens at some point because we're talking about these isolated. Dated World Islands in between some, we had a mysterious multi-tenant multi-dimensional things.

So yeah, it seems to me Lance, pop out of there. Seems like we could have gotten there. Probably would be fun getting there. Did you ever talk to the lady in the wheelchair? In the whirling and Rags the question times, the curb Hunter, Yeah, her husband. She lost her husband and then I told her husband was across the gate that I couldn't go across, and then she was okay. And then I just gotta cross that gate on Wednesday morning. That's where I am currently.

He had a childhood experience at five with a Cryptid and she talks to you about that. I think pretty early on and that Cryptid is the thing you meet at the end of the game. But yeah, so it's not quite alien but it's interesting how as Much as it sounds like there's a gradual path to get there. This pretty much immediately like disclosed you at the beginning of the game, too. Which is interesting. Everybody talks about it. Like, it's like, it's a Yeti. Yeah.

Like, you know, completely fictional. It's it's presented as like oh yeah, these are all crazy guys. That are just yet out there like a Hyundai and it's like oh they're just wasting their time because there's nothing better to do in life type scenario. So for it to actually show up does present some sort of surprise. But I do think one other thing about going into this game similar to too well for how you kind of bounce into it.

I also had that same experience of like, what in the world is happening here. Like there's just so much text being dumped on you about the world and Exposition. I was like how do I put these things in context? How do I understand the concepts? And the were like it's also a bunch of new terminology. It's not necessarily utilizing. You know, the terms that we use

or old. They are not current, no not not current and Nate. I think you had had experience reading text, like books outside of gaming that present, world's, in this sort of way where it's just like a dump, you just have to essentially be with it and it for a period of time before you can start making those connections and that was super, beneficial to me as I started playing to be like cold, like be overwhelmed and exist, within that space and know that after.

In a couple hours, things will start to form some sort of connections, hopefully, and then that did in a recurring eventually. Yeah, I mean, I love me some, like, giant space operas right. Take your pick from, you know, mundane to Star Wars Star Trek to, you know, I've been watching the expanse Mass Effect, even you know, kind of stuff, like all the Brandon Sanders didn't stuff, though.

Real Time stuff like these. Huge big were epic worlds and if you were, you know, if anywhere to jump in in the middle of, you know, the 15th book in this series, of course, you're going to be as lost like, oh, who are these Powers? Why do they relate to each other? What does it mean to have, you know, a mass effect Drive?

What, you know, like all the the technology and all that, but in almost all of those cases, it feels like they've built up to it. They They helped you build the understanding of the situation the, you know, enter political ramifications, the technology that all those kinds of things. And this game not only starting in media res, but then with that dump of completely foreign terminology.

Yeah. I feel like if they had just used the In World in our world equivalents of a bunch of things, it would have made it much more approachable. Yeah. That Sorry, starting off with the bummer criticism but no. Yeah, we might be jumping ahead. I think we'll get back to that. I think before we dive into the that bring us back into the meat of this. I'm curious, who were your cops will? You've probably had like five? Well, hold on. Well, who is the character? Who's the main character?

This game? Did you ever found out his name? And any of your plate? There is Du Bois, right? All right. Yeah. Are the wall? Here are your depois here here with an. Alright, that's what Harry Reid was that you have over the course of your life. So I have three main restarts that I can think of my first instinct was to go in and I wanted to play quote-unquote

like myself. So very intellectually a focused and a little bit of like dexterity focused and then you know, I it's funny because I was Was telling me what the hell is this game. It's not even a game and then as I'm telling Nate this I sit in a chair and die like well shit. So my my second main restart I was like, well, okay obviously Nate was right, there's a game here. So I'm going to play this like a game and I went super into the physical traits. And that was kind of fun in a

way. I was able to like Brute force myself through a bunch of the areas of the game that I hadn't been able to figure out the first time stuff. Like the big, the racist guy, who's the guard on top of the, the defense measure straight up measuring. Yeah measure head. I straight-up roundhouse kick that dude in the face and walks through.

There's a There's a there's a whole should tell that you have to like break in. There's a couple I think there's at least two ways into but the way I got there was going through the bookstore, there's like the back room and then there's a door, and I just frigging slammed my way through that door, and had access to this hotel and the radio room and all that stuff, like way earlier than I did it. My my other playthroughs of the game. This sounds like an awesome build.

Yeah. Because it does all aside and do this. It was Pretty awesome in that. I could get places and go places but at, you know, as I was talking to, Nate had no fucking clue what was going on. And fortunately, unfortunately, that build got borked due to some bugs, and I had to restart anyway, and so that main restart. I went with Nate suggestion to load heavily into the, the, the one that has encyclopedia in it and a little bit of Health, a little bit.

So the the health and morale were like the first stats that I invested in, so I had some wiggle room to play with and then with having the encyclopedia, I was able to get a lot more context, understanding what's going on in retrospect, how I'm playing now is how I probably would have suggested for a first playthrough. It's I'm a little bummed to hear that that it is so focused.

A single singular story because I kind of feel like I wanted to play a second time to see where things went because even in my playthroughs, they've been pretty different and I'd like to kind of revisit them. But to answer your question, my last cop was a started as a boring kapha but ended up being an art cop toward the end. I was my man to put some Trying to find the stuff to paint the wall. And then I leaned heavily into moralism, kind of the super

Centrist point of view. The, there's a great option that was like, you picked moralist because you keep picking D all of these other options sound crazy as fuck. Mastic, that's great. Who are you Craig? Oh man. So I only played through this truly and in one time I did start it once before and then maybe play like 20 minutes so I don't even count it.

But one thing that will brought up that I did want to hop onto before I move into my character was it is interesting that despite the plot getting to the same point you even mentioned being able to do multiple playthroughs and see have A drastically different experience. I think that's something that will come back to again, and

again throughout this is that. Yeah, our own character sheet and the things that you Do put two skills to into or focus on dramatically changes your interaction with the world which may not change the outcome but changes the perceived like activity as it does occur. Yeah and the outcome can be more different than you'd think from what I said too. Yeah all right. That's that's fair.

So my cop was my Harriet or Harrier was very much in tune with the city, so shivers Is one of the skills that I put a lot of points into which I think had like the description of, like, raise the hair on your neck and turn it tune into the City. And then, I also do Dove deep into like Inland Empire, which was like dreams in The Waking Life and bringing hunches and different like imagination into the space as well as empathy and I think like authority to some extent as well.

So long lot of the psyche was the main area that I dove into and then would add points elsewhere where I needed to for checks, but that was kind of the stuff that I would kept going back to listening within my head is like, getting an idea of what is this place and where do I exist within it?

And letting that color the experience, which might have made it far too abstract for me in some capacities of understanding, what in the hell is going on here, because everything was spoken about Out in like lyricism about a place as opposed to what anything actually is also favor. Yeah. Which beautiful to listen to and read in very useless for understanding what's actually occurring. One follow-up, what was your approach on electrochemistry? Good question. Great quest. Do any drugs?

I did not. I was a pretty like sober. Cop overall. Yeah, I love is also fairly sober to I told you to do. I told you both to do drugs in this game, but I think it's hard to tell a first-time player of a game like this to do drugs. Yeah, I think the one piece that I was going with because this isn't a style of game that I naturally gravitate towards was like I want the content to be as

interesting to read. So if there's Pieces that are fulfilling that portion of it for me then, like, that's where I'm going to go into, looking back at it. I was like, I kind of wish this was what a 25-hour ish game somewhere in that range. I kind of wish it was like 12 because I would love to go back and go like hog-wild I'm being like yeah simply like Communists or go into drugs or other stuff of that nature on my super physical playthrough.

I Was getting into a lot of drugs and using them for their stat bonuses and figuring out how to like optimize that way, that was kind of interesting. But yeah, kind of like you're saying when I became more focused on what the heck is going on here. Drugs, seem like it would get more in the way than be helpful. Yeah.

It is one of those places where when you're trying to choose your characters going to be. And again, like, I'm not a heavy-duty RPG, player usually don't head in these games, like I want to craft my experience. It's usually I'm going into it for an experience that is being told so thinking about that.

And now having done this once I'm like I kind of wish I would have played further outside the lines of going into weird places that I don't think I would have Gravitation towards you can speedrun and the cool thing about this game being so successful as the final cut clears up a lot of early roadblocks from people that went way outside the game path. So there's been like a second pass and a lot of the Final Cut was cleaning up people that were speedrunning and like, just

truly going the wrong way, okay. And it's received an unusual amount of polish for handling bizarre, choices. Now, huh, I made this for you. Yeah. Before the Final Cut I was pretty much exactly what you'd expect. I flirted with hobo cup but became art cop with an actual art degree. I was a teetotaler didn't know? Drugs happen. I don't know. Yeah, I think I did sorry I had one of both the physical traits, one point.

So I was extremely close to dying at all points and without drugs that's actually that gets kind of hard at points. And I think if I recall correctly, I ended up giving up that in order to like make it through things that happen in late game cuz I needed like is like I gotta survive. So, I think I like started taking. I forget what just to survive. Let's see what else.

Yeah, when I started the game, I didn't know anything about it and it was right at launch so I didn't have too many Things to kind of guide me and I put all, I dumped all my points in Inland Empire. I didn't really realize Shivers achieved something very similar until kind of later in the game which is kind of the thing that lets you sort of communicate with the phasmid, right like. Well, I guess that's also Inland Empire which has interesting narrative implications by the

way. Does that mean the like bug is really a conversation with yourself? Yes. I think so. Like actual. Okay. Well, we should well come to that when we do, I guess. Well I don't know if the bug as much as Dolores de is a conversation with yourself. But again we will get there. How did you actually get that our conversation with Dolores? Yeah, I got a conversation with my ex-wife presenting as Dolores. Yeah. So I didn't know that was a thing until this week.

Oh yeah, that was a really interesting. Relation. But it was definitely, it was in like this weird dream world. Yeah, it was yes. Yeah. It's an angel or steak confusing. Your ex-girlfriend with the Christ. And Mary figure is pretty great. Yeah. And then like you essentially give yourself permission like move on in life you isn't don't you like doesn't it present as kind of a boss battle? Like you're trying to like win her back, aren't you? And you end up failing? Yeah.

Like in some ways that feels like the whole perception that gas boss bottle. Yeah and I was like, I didn't even get that. Yeah. So too will. Has point the the game can be presented in multiple different ways. Yeah, it's interesting that this is the only game I can think of where the events might be the same, but the flavors different and the flavor being different is like pretty, darn significant. Yeah, I just want to mention what a lot o question. So one of the last things I did

was get the gauntlets. Oh yeah. And during my physical Place through, I almost got the shoes characterizes with. Yeah. They were yep. Once I started looking at like what the gauntlets did I look in the UI? There's a like an ammo. Like how as I'm looking at this, I'm like, Something serious, like must happen here. As far as I know. The only shot that I ever took was shooting the guy down, which I managed to successfully do twice. Apparently, did you really?

That's amazing twice. Yeah, I definitely failed that. So, did you get your case File like early project on Topsy? Super early. I didn't get it down to talk to him or something. Okay, yeah I did the autopsy on day one. Yeah, and shoved him into a nice crate which made me nervous about myself. Second playthrough or in the freezer on day 10. All right. So yeah, that was explore through was was intense. Yeah, I guess what.

You just tear that dude down. Put him in a crate and you're like, all right, once I figured out there and filled all topsy I think you remember you may or may not remember that I do is stressing over the phrase field, autopsy? Like it was pretty nasty, sorry. But what I wanted to come back to was there's all kinds of indications that you're like having shootouts and fighting with people and I guess you guys described a shootout Ishq kind of thing at the end.

Like how does that even work in this game? You can go in duel. Building to that fight. Yeah, there is a showdown when Okay, so world events right there is a labor strike occurring, right? And scabs have been brought in and the mercenary that was murdered was in town to kind of keep a handle on the situation.

We can kind of talk political Theory, a little bit about the implications of this, but basically the labor, the labor union like uses the murder to like, look strong, right to remind everyone that they kind of control the town. But unfortunately, for them to other mercenaries roll into town and just start shooting. Everyone is there essentially

immune to the law. So when you come back from that secondary, you just got to you kind of things go down and you kind of come back and there's a shootout occurring and unfortunately the outcomes of that are relatively fixed, but a couple things can go down. Kim can get shot. They're like you having those guns. If what you're hoping for is like that. Can I use guns to resolve conversations? No. But there is one event we're having guns and ammo will help you.

Yeah, and armor like I think that there is an ammo counter just. Yeah, that was my mind right like You're not like pointing at things and shooting on the screen, right? Correct. It's all still conversationally resolved, and it just affects your stats, but you do take multiple shots of the number of bullets is like relevant and that sense but can't isn't the maximum. You can take like two. I think, I'm not sure. I don't. I I did have a gun at that point but I never recovered my gun.

So I went in without it and tried to converse my way out of that. And that's why. Both, I and Kim got shot. Did did Kevin died. I don't know if you're a guide, but he was out for the count and I finished the game with Kuno as my garnishes Kuno. Oh, fuck him. Yeah, incredible. He gets so shut down. And in the final scene after everything goes down, he actually gets admitted a year early to like their version of the Boy. Scouts to join the police force. Oh, Jesus. Fuck off. What?

It's kind of Great becomes a sort of sweet when he's out there with you. Yeah, I actually it's a buyer, not help reduce voice acting is just incredibly obnoxious thing for you guys to see the end because his character actually like becomes really interesting in the end and I forgot until I was watching a bunch of media this week, why? I was so judgmental of you guys being annoyed with Kuno, until I

was like, oh yeah, of course. Because I've seen like gunas character Arc. What you only see if you have one specific ending. Yeah, that's interesting. Otherwise he's just Kind of an annoying brat with an abusive father. Like there's like reasons either. I can understand. It wasn't change, hide presents. Yeah, he's very well. I'm actually don't think kunas annoying but Kuno s is annoying. Yeah, great because Christmas is like controlling.

So when Kuno becomes like a character on his own away from Kuno s, it's actually not it's like almost a different character. I was considering getting up the empathy to try to talk to him. That was kind of one of my next. Yeah, he becomes kind of a sweet nerd like he's really Excited. Would you see the phasmid? He was trying to use the camera to take a picture of it, but he messed it up and he like really

was apologetic for that. And like in the end when I try to tell everyone at the final reporting that I saw the phasmid, there's no proof and everyone's like okay whatever. Like get the fuck out of here. I did also see I'm assuming the two other officers from your Precinct show up. Oh yeah there. Freaking cool. They are want nothing to do with me. They do not known her. I really do not great. What's funny? Is kunos like cringe gets played off at the end when the picture doesn't work.

You're like there was a fast but I swear and Evans like no, there wasn't and who knows? Like yeah there was and everyone is like now we definitely know. There isn't in your no man. Like God was the my picture did work. So I had actual proof that the past exists. That's great. Okay, let's get in some big picture thoughts. This mm, seems political you don't say, that's what makes this game seem political. And why is it more vertical in turn me off?

Well, it's politics. Who wants to lead this did? Did this is less the politics that I don't like the political theory that I don't like. It is like political Theory. I don't know. It would you prefer it? If it was just like an anti-trump game with no political Theory, Well, here, let me ask here's here's a part. I didn't get to. That's the question. I had a second ago. Ever Arts, the leader of the company. The labor union, right? Okay, so who's the leader of the company?

What company the shipping cover these labor to come laborers? Laboring for their part of a union. That's for the Dock Workers like a dockworkers union and ever a dyke is ideally you have a union that's negotiating against a company right or companies. Is there? No representation for our these Union people. Like they're supposing somebody who's not even in this game. Like the wild Pines group, is like the main? That's who they're opposing, right? Yeah. Do they operate the port?

Yeah, they have to deal with the yeah, the industrial Harbor, right? And then wild Pines group is where Joyce Messier is like, the company rep, that's their right. She's the rich woman on the boat. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, yeah, yeah. So that's who they're against, yes. What do you what what I mean? It, the power Dynamic seems really backward but then of course that is this game in a nutshell, right? Like, Okay. If we're talking like, United States politics, right?

You have some big company. Let's just say, for example, Amazon and you have a bunch of people who are all trying to form a union. So you bring in some external. Oh, this is my union Builder. Rep person to build a union, right? I like, oh, bringing in somebody from out of town to like, perform this Union, but this is

kind of backward, right? We have a super Strong union that already exists and we're going to bring somebody in to form the company that these unions are union, people are working for know, the company, wild Pines group already existed in runs the thing. This is like the third time that they're going on strike and striking against the group for further concessions, like that Amazon is the wild Pines group there, like the Consortium that runs the harbor. Also this isn't an American game.

I don't think this is set in America. I mean very, very much not yeah, right.

But like this hole? This is part of why this is all so confusing to me. It's like, I don't know who the players are and who So and yeah Everett Claire is like the head of the Union. Like he's the one like representing the Dock Workers against wild Pines group and and whoever was there originally as like The Negotiator for traditional sector work, understand that in this world, all these people are working for the doc but the doc has no like company management presents at all.

The wild Pines group owns the dock the wild Pines group is the company. But Like that lady, just comes in on a boat. She's not there. Yeah, I don't think we meet anyone like it it's sort of underrepresented but we hear about it like it's not like she's the only thing. Also, it's the super rich light bending guy from light, while Pines or not.

Which guy was like, oh this is like the, you didn't like if you manage to get inside, one of the shipping containers, there's like a force of light in there that you can't look at just like Rich light. I was talking my way into their might know. Kill is I have like 12 points in the in. You have to like logically talk your way into that shipping container and had 12 points in still, haven't made it up. That's amazing. Oh, I get what I thought. Kevin that he gives you but you

can't even like look at him. He's like he's so rich that you can't even look at him, that's how rich. Oh yeah. So like the union also operates as like a crime syndicate more or less, right? And like they're trafficking drugs through the port and things of that nature as well. So there's like, It's a whole

thing happening there. It's just a second since neither of you met the wild white wedding, especially mega-rich light bending guy roast on the adore, is a multi-billionaire speculated to be in the triple digits. Residing in a container in the North in the container yard.

He has an incredibly high net-worth due to inheriting an enormous sum from his grandmother and proceeding to invest it with an economic coefficient of over .96 at least between him and Harry Dubois. He's traveling on the cheap with his entire container. Ship from one point to another in order to prevent being Subjected to targeted advertising for luxury items due to his wealth allowing him.

Effectively, no problems. He believes that material goods are not as important as mental space and time. So this Games version of like, Ultra richness is like you just don't even care about material wealth anymore, which is kind of Interesting. All right. So, back to the game, being political there is something that Nate the you, and I talked about separate from the podcast that resonated strongly her, which was like the idea of the Imperial core. And I think that's like, what?

Flavors? This space. Can you elaborate on that for the listeners? And well, well well at fear of triggering will hoop. Sounds like it doesn't like political Theory. The Imperial core is this idea that there are markets post 1970

at the onset of neoliberalism? They're ran out of we stopped having the ability for all places to benefit equally from capitalism around 1970 and that's one of the things that defines neoliberalism is that the world bifurcates into the Imperial core which is areas that directly benefit from capitalism. I'm dying watching wolves response to the periphery which is destined to be more extracted from than in can benefit from the effects of its extraction, right? So in sum The whole thing.

You got America saves from the dead and excitement pedia. Yeah. And you've got to look like skill set and yeah I got it. That's right. The Imperial chorus the place that benefits from capitalism and the periphery is what does the West? So you can have the West is the Imperial core but more than that like America is decreased or but well, we're talking in human world. Although yeah.

But also America has parts of it that are the periphery to write like West Virginia, maybe in the Imperial Court globally, but it certainly think America's he meant the wild west. Oh no. It's like Wyoming. Yes. Like cowboy times the West's was the no. I mean the theoretically the part of the United States which benefit from the yeah and ignores the south of both hemispheres.

Okay. Yeah, so in this game from a political Theory, angle Kuno represents the periphery Kuno is outside of the Imperial core and is being extracted from. His parents are addicted to drugs. He has no means of success. There's nowhere for him to go in the world even though he is kind of. I mean I think also Jamrock is kind of I forget my specific place names. Jamrock is the city right? Or is it like State. Oh man, I think it's the like

state. I was gonna say we should he, we should try not getting too tied up and specifics geographically. But basically disco Elysium is like a game that's taking place in something at the margins of the core and the periphery. And what's, if Kuno represents the periphery, then, what represents the Imperial Court or the mercenaries who show up as the colonizers, there's no law applying to them whatsoever. They can shoot whoever they want.

They destroy the labor union. Like when you get shot as You Fade Out, you hear the sounds of The Hardy Boys and everyone else getting shot like to death by many book gunshots. There's no consequence for these people and that's kind of a political commentary on how the West interfaces with regions that are not in the Imperial core. So that's some fun economic and political Theory.

Yeah, and even when you're starting this out right near, like moving through the world, this is a world that's clearly been at the end of Revolution or Wars, right? There's like still bullet holes thrown across this like the city is in like tatters as far as there was clearly military operations and areas, bombed out that were never recovered. And also there's like no hope of it seeming to be recovered, right? It's oh yeah, the rubbish and

soiled. Yeah, like the revolution failed and also no one's coming to like help pour money into this area either and even when you break into a 26-story building, that's only got four floors. Yeah exactly. And there's even an opportunity later in the game to like help like modernize a portion of like the old fishing Village and it's all played out essentially as like, this is not actually, Here

to help the people here. Like this is a way to try and enrich some of the coffers of someone that's already wealthy. But like this isn't going to actually help the community in any capacity, which gets back into that Imperial Court gets back into like this, like a helpless world to live in and what does that say about the politics of that region or that sort of worldview when that exist? So Yes, I think that's very well said. Well do you have any questions for we move on?

I have a, I have a related. But embellishing thought so many? I don't know. It's a fine God. We're going on a journey or tonight or will. I think when we're thinking about what makes this game, political, I think the top-level answer is it's using gameplay, mechanics, and it's words to comment on political structures and systems. Systems that affect the world that we live in as the players as well as the NPC's in the game.

Right? So I think that's the like answer it. I think that's, that's a piece of it and other place here is that the game seemed more interested with understanding the world and what what has occurred within this space to be able to set up the circumstances that take place than it does about any character within the game? Right? Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it.

I think what sets it apart for me so drastically is that the game is about the systems that interact with people in the world, not how the people interact with the systems in the world. Well, that's good because I was just going to challenge you. What you are basically saying before, like place setting is what makes it political. And it's like so, like a Brandon Sanderson novel that's like extremely interested in, establishing a world is political not. Hold on, before we answer, Sure.

That well I got the results of your thought cabinet thought here. Oh man and it just says this, it's a little totally unusual for the game. You have really great determination and dance form and I'm proud to have seen you grow all these years. From salsa, through West Coast, your determination to always grow in skills is amazing. Now, this has the following effects plus. One hand, eye coordination, in the text. There is gotcha. You got a +2 pain threshold. Yeah.

Feel my feet. It's listed you get a minus one. Esprit de corps, dancing. The night away and a minus one on rhetoric. Let's Just Dance it out. He's perfect fantastic. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah, unfortunately, you no longer have a, I didn't mean to set it up this way. But unfortunately, you no longer have a plus 2, talking about disco, Elysium. So Craig's, got like a 15-minute

bonus here. All right, so you're saying basically Craig that the I don't think it's about the place that setting up the systems and their influence on the Region's inhabitants is political. Yeah, and even like the economy of the world, right? Like that has a political undertones like that exists for a specific reason and has reasons on how it came to be. And a lot of the game is a exploring, your knowledge of like why is the system setup or rigged against these people in certain ways?

And it's all because of some sort of political machinations as far as how the world has like come to exist, within the power structure of it, right? Like that's what what I Sets that apart because it's about it's about those thoughts, much more than it's about like Hey, how do you feel about this thing, right? It's like know what's this thing that has been set up by people pressing into you? What do you think for what you've played?

Well, You mentioned that it's like sort of it sounded like a negative implication of the amount of political Theory going on is that what makes it political to you? I mmm. I don't feel like I'm Hmm. I think that here's something interesting. I was just looking at the political alignments for this game, all on the list of political alignments of, which I was kind of surprised that Ultra level ultra-liberal is the only like capitalist alignment that I saw.

If I could have sworn there was going to be more but this has a list of organizations that align with those political alignments. And so I think that's quite interesting and as I'm saying this, I'm like, oh yeah. That kind of makes sense.

And I can kind of see how the players might align based on their ideology and it kind of fits the way I I picked, you know, I was mostly playing us. The moral is Or organizations include the moral intern, which is kind of the overall Mega, the, the Illuminati, kind of people. I guess. Maybe something. But more importantly, the second one is the, the citizens militia. So the actual cop group. So I was playing as a cop that believes in cops and they like,

fits perfectly. But yeah I thought that like being able to understand how these these groups are generally associated with their political ideology, understanding how and who they interrelate with seems like Had I had a better innate or Nate natural grass of these Concepts. I would have had a much better time, understanding the kind of interrelationships between all of them.

But being able to like see it on paper come back have a. Now with my retroactive somewhat retroactive perspective of like, oh these are the people that care about yeah. It just Don't know. It kind of seemed too complicated at the early stages that I keep being in. I think Craig mentioned earlier of the idea that maybe I told him about or maybe he this just happens in life. There's a lot of media that throws you into stuff.

There's no you're not supposed to have an onboarding path where it explains it to you piece it together by being overwhelmed for some number of hours, until it starts to make itself. Evident through the things. And I think it's a It would be frustrating to play this game and think that you're supposed to get it all from the beginning. I've probably got 20 hours and what am I supposed to get it? Like I don't think it's by playing the beginning multiple

times. I think it's by getting to the end and seeing what the game is, like thrusting at. Yeah. How long was this game supposed to have been like 25 hours ish somewhere in that range? But obviously that's super variable depending on conversation and how much you're talking to people and what you're trying to main line? But I do think there's something about Like some combination in that to me. Where one of it is about just being overwhelmed by it. Another piece is as certain point.

You start being able to at least add context around it of like, oh okay, we're talking about income inequality, we're talking about the way that racism presents within this space, we're talking about systemic oppression, we're talking about these sorts of Concepts and once I was able to start to wrap my mind around, okay? These are the things, and this is how they show up in those. World.

And this is how it's like, impacting the different people that persist here, that's when it started to click separately, for me than outside of it being like, Oh, I need to understand specifically what these actual terminology or places mean within this game. Yeah, I think this is a better. Better example of the point. I was trying to make earlier badly. I'm sure there's stuff like under that's racist racism, right? You run into at least three or four.

People early on in the game. Who are explicitly racist? Yeah, and one Fortunately, the game calls out specifically. Hey, this dude is being racist because some of the ways in which they're being racist, aren't obvious. The the one guy says, welcome to Raven. Welcome to reason small crossover of the Year. Oh shit, how we ended up in Half-Life again? Fuck. Yeah. As we always do, welcome to roshal. I think the shawl. Yeah, yes.

And that is a racist phrase and then they kind of go and explain why that's a racist phrase. And then like, all right, I don't understand what the races are in this game. I don't understand. I think, I think that an endo tribe is a race. I or ethnicity. Oh, we like like Go ahead. No, I was just going to say like, I'm not fully sure either. yeah, I know there's like ancestry that's like brought up about where people are like it was like an extra level of complexity that I don't know.

You guys tell me if it pays off, but it doesn't seem like if they would have just picked races. Like maybe it becomes more fraught in trying to put a game out. If you have guys who were like, specifically racist against the Asian Community Indian Community.

So, if you all of a sudden, the, the like specific cultural context against being, you know, something of this world, but like needing, To pick entirely to generate these new races and not being not being words that sound like races like it just becomes confusing and a whole lot of other way. There's a much higher like mental hurdle to continue to place that in context of oh you use this word, you know, like oh shit, that was racist in the context of this world, right?

So it's like you have to learn where those are presented and then remember oh okay this Word isn't a location. It's not a concept, it's not a person. It's a like racist like phrase being hurled at someone and Sometimes they context can be subtle enough. That it's just like that implicit version of racism, right? Like the unconscious racism, that gets or bias that gets thrown into different places there were without you knowing like that's what's happening.

I think there's just extra work that you have to do there from a mental hurdle to cover that I think we're slipping down a bit into. This game is obviously made a choice to be a piece of media that is. You're in it. Good luck, figuring it out. So there are, there are books out there, right? That Unfortunately, yet literature we have to pull on here because gaming doesn't really do this a lot.

I think gaming is very entrenched in the if I'm going to throw you into new stuff, well I better do the work to get you there but there are tons and tons of books where you're thrown in the deep end. And those books are often commentating on our real world, but are choosing to remove that from you by one layer for reasons that I would say, oftentimes aren't Like they don't pay off, but they make it more fun to a certain kind of reader, it's an adventure to

read them. And I think that disco Elysium To your point will using race. In this game is interesting because some races get compressed and others are expanded according to whatever the game needs to do. And I kind of have a few thoughts on race and the way it uses specific races here in a minute that are interesting, but Like it's a fair thing to call out, but I think this game is making the choice to keep these things. Like one layer removed. Yeah.

It's less a matter of like. It all depends on the context, right? If you're watching a 20-minute TV series and the whole point is that you're lost and you can be completely lost for 20 minutes that's completely fine. If if I'm reading a 5000 page book and I'm supposed to be lost for 4,000 pages of that, five thousand page book. That's a completely different ask of the consumer and like in some parts I get it. Particularly, because of the way

I played this game. Like you want to save stuff for somebody who's into encyclopedia you, you need to have some payoff for them. So everybody else is inherently going to get less information so that encyclopedia does pay off. Like they built a skill around having some way to explain the context of the game. Like I I just it it Not a fan that's all. It's like, I mean, it's just like the authorial intent is, is to create that space like it's gonna work for some people and not for others.

I do think it pays off. I mean Craig you're the you're the middle. Every man in this situation, you are surely overwhelmed at the beginning, right? Did it pay off for you? Did this all become more clear? It did I didn't think that I needed to get in till the very end for it to become clear and I don't know. And there's still places that aren't clear.

I also kind of got to a space where I thought that that was intentional that you weren't supposed to be able to neatly pack it up all of these thoughts and put them into a box. And I thought I was like, maybe that's part of The history of who created this game is that it wasn't neatly packaged into Concepts and into themes that end up with like you know, are

bowed and tie it off, right? And instead there was like there's just like things happen in the world that like you can't really place or that don't really have space to be

explored. But there was also I think I just had a belief that if I looked hard enough or if I were able to explore some other skill cabinet thoughts or just other pieces there that like everything felt like it had grounding to be flushed out whether or not I had actually exported enough to be able to get to that point, right?

So there's like a trust built up that the depth does exist there, if you go out and find it, and that's one of the places where I did see some sort of payoff there, but in a completely different way. Probably, It didn't mean to leave me feeling like oh I get it but I left feeling like I understand what they're trying to do and I respect them. Can I add a quick counter point to myself?

Sure counter yourself. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the visual style particularly in the art around the thought cabinets that is just so like complex and Like they're these super weird detailed yet. Also abstract representations of these con Plex thought constructs that like they're great representations of that same kind of thing you're talking about where it is bull.

Visually kind of trying to give you an idea of what's going on, but also leaving all these gray areas for it is hinting at excessive complexity to make you feel. Like, if you just kept digging, you would understand more and more of this world whether or not that's actually true or not, Yeah, which is a like a piece of advice.

I don't know if it's Vice but it's a characteristic of a lot of great writing right designed to make you think that there's a lot more there and even if it doesn't need to tell you it. Yeah, I think this is just the first time I've seen that visually, yeah, that was worth calling out. It is, that's where this feels different in a game. Yeah, that's the big piece that I'm like, oh this this showing

up in this medium. Like is why I wanted to talk about this game because it's that's one of the pieces that I truly feel similar to me when I'm like, we're so used to just being spoon-fed. Like, here is the thing, like here is what you understand. Here is, how your game, here's your play, and how it interacts directly with here. This is. Yes, is the challenge and sometimes there's gray area to be explored there. But usually, Ali not in the way of like Tomo, text can present

to you. I think visual media in general, has a hard time being vague it. Yeah it's there on the screen right? It's very hard to pull off something vague in a visual medium that isn't just like, well why didn't you tell me more? Where is it? Looks? I think excel at that. Oh, that's a really good point before we get to that. Yeah. Craig. I just got the results of your white check. Here are your clothes, I'm sorry. And again, the tone is a little

strange with this one. It says you have great legs and calves and feet, and I'm so proud of your yoga achievements and your overall transformation of Health over your life and all the time, I've known you is inspirational and fantastic. Now, the effects of that are plus one suggestion, he handsome plus to volition, not going to die yet and - to electrochemistry, I'm going to bed very well. Played excellent. I appreciate my white Check.

Yes. You know, I think I'm not sure if in my mind this makes is it makes sense as a transition point, is there a price point that this game is trying to make? And I think that a lack of clarity is actually like one of the direct like statements and goals of this game. I think the narrative and the way the narrative is delivered and even the mechanics to some extent deliver this idea that The past is intertwined with the present, there's no escaping. The failure of the Revolution

but yet, we're here now. There's no other ways. Things could have been but also like none of us really understand why we're in this situation. Things aren't really clear. So something I think is really cool about this game. I was really moved by the way, it ends and talking to the phasmid, and one of the reasons for that, and I just love that in the game was over.

I thought wow. What a beautiful conversation but the more you think about it, the more it's like oh I think this is what this game is talking about and trying to say so will this phasmid you talk to at the end of the game has this idea that human thought is displacing the natural world and will inevitably result in its Extinction and the phasmid uses various aspects of control to like try to contain the human

race and their thoughts. Specifically and I I think the pail is one of those tools that it uses to like keep humans from like extinct defying, the rest of the world. He Compares like human thoughts, arrival on the planet to be like, when Earth gained oxygen and what that did to anaerobic life. And there's this really interesting. I it sort of suggests that he's been around for 350 years watching and taking some hand, in the political events of rubbish, all and the whole

region. And that like you just say that time for him. That's how long he tells you he's been there. I think it's kind of implied that there was something else before him doing this. I don't know if I don't know though. No, no, I'm sorry, nor do I know how long like, I don't really know about the Deep history of this region. Like how long has it been around?

I'm sure some of the encyclopedia would have told me that There's this idea that the revolution, he's, he talks about having seen the revolutions come and go, and it's like all of Humanity's locked in a repetitive cycle of like ideas. And it kind of seems like, he's kind of, the reason, the thing that's keeping humans in this cycle. And I think so much in my, like, personal life as Nate about, like, the future, the past, I love history, and the future.

And it's so beautiful to me that this game is like, having these thoughts about some Supernatural. Force like shaping and containing and playing some influence on it, but it's also really vague like, what does that actually mean? What, what is it doing? I don't know. But I kind of think that that sort of reveals the hand of disco Elysium as a game and is

like a narrative piece. I think it's suggesting that like no matter what you do or who you are, it's kind of pointless because it's playing a part in a bigger picture of humanity as part of the cycle. That's partly because of itself but also partly because of outside forces that we can't comprehend. Set a theme that resonates with you or that you picked up the Baton in your playthrough Craig.

Yeah I was thinking about that I looked at the pale which was one thing that you mentioned as being almost like the pollution of humanity. Right? Like that it was growing and continuing to like exist because Humanity was like, Wrecking parts of the continents and things of that nature like that Humanity being there like is inherently actually not a good thing for the planet, but it never sir Planet. Oh yeah, we're glad it's not the

right word, is it? Yeah. The that has the this the world of Elysium that has seven continents divided by the pale. So that however, you want to phrase, it didn't exist before the pale. I don't know. That's a good question. There is something brought up somewhere that like, the Hale did that stuff, the phasmid and things in new things existed, prior to the pale and the pale didn't exist until humans existed. Interesting. So we'll in the nightclub you discover that there's a hole up

near the well. I thought it was that also see orange. Yeah. That which is also a church very Disco There's a 2 millimeter hole in the world and that's said to be a portal to the pale and that is growing. As disco takes place in the church. It's like it seems to thrive on information and passion which kind of suggests that. Yeah. The pale is like the result of human thought and like grows and feeds upon it. Yeah. Well this is something kind of looks like the make that Matrix for scene.

Yes, very disco what was your original question it kind of where where did my interaction or my thoughts on the point? The game was trying to make. Yeah. Did I guess I had talked about this like the lack of control, being a central theme of the game and I was curious, if that was something you picked up on or if I was just picking that up, no, it to me that I started pick that up within the Of our

own lived history, right? That like the, that people make decisions and set in motion systems that perpetrate some sort of like forward momentum. And while we may think that we're doing something different or even my camera, that man, that's like standing guard After. The revolution is ended any standing guard over nothing

anymore, right? That like, there is something about going through like the Motions of, hey, I'm going to make a difference in this space but like, Your single contribution doesn't actually really matter in the grand scheme of things and instead it's much more broadly, speaking about like the world is going to exist in the people that like perpetrate that are also individuals but also broader in ways that you can't fully comprehend or push back against

in any meaningful way. And it's just going to continue to push things forward in a direction and you might be To like alter the course a little bit, but eventually it starts to cycle back on itself. Yeah, I've been examining kind of how if you choose to be authoritarian fascist and racist in this game, no matter. Where did that take you? It's a really good illustration of this game doesn't have.

And we'll I'm curious if you notice this this game doesn't really have strong opinions on anything you do. It's sort of welcomes you with a strange mixture of Ernest e and cynicism. Like I don't think I think it'd be easy for this game to have just made fun of everything that you do and it doesn't quite fall into that. It's like ironic and detached, but it's not to the point where it's like, Enable to be Earnest and this kind of plays out at

the end. For example, you can declare in your final like report, you can declare I'm a great detective and I'm a huge fascist and that doesn't really affect their nomination for your promotion, as a cop, like the it now. Like and I think that no matter what way you play it the game kind of treats you as equally. Equally valid so that I guess to put that another way, like, the game kind of like uses the same

tone to refer to you. And I think Kim's, great example, of the game being like neutral, you can be racist to camera directly and it. The game does have ways of chiding. You you'll take morale hits for your thoughts being frivolous and silly. Like the game does have an opinion but it's not really interested in like punishing you or showing you your ideas wrong those are morale hits only well from what I saw they you only Get those hits if they alter from your like chosen path,

right? There's if I got a bunch of bonuses for picking moralism options because I was a moralist, I do there's a couple scenes where there's like one where you're sitting down with Kim and having a very open conversation and if you talk, if you keep talking racist at him about his like inferior race, the game will like doing your morale for it when he says something common collected back to you and you like realize he's right for a second, even if

you're like, fully devoted to racism, I think that that all plays up into this idea, that it doesn't really like this isn't a game that thinks you're going to make a huge difference in the world. And I think that that comes from, I mean, obviously I'm not Eastern European hadn't really traveled there. So I don't know that much, but I think that that does come a bit from this Region's perspective

on things in general. The in the Soviet Bloc, you individualism is not rewarded, there's not this belief that one person can make a difference. Matter what way you go, like you've got someone who's an absolute raging alcoholic and you kind of just treat them with the same attitude, you treat

other people. I think that piece of specifically was like the uni piece I can either stand out to me. It was like you're not like a super cop or anything like you're just kind of a bumbling idiot like yeah if you claim to be a super cup the game kind of laughs at you about it like it's a narcissistic delusion it's not. You actually being one. Yeah. I also want to say this is part of what makes Kim, the freaking standout character.

This game is his ability to support you and like, he'll call you on your bullshit but also like in front of other people, he makes it seem like everything you're doing is like extremely calculated. He my conversation with the rich lady, right? He was like, egging me on he's like, no, no, you need to be more. Wild and crazy. Like your normal self in this conversation. I was like, yeah.

Okay. Thanks Kim. You just like given me carte blanche to pick the wildest craziest options and discover Sation it was. He's so like yet he's also grounded while doing that right like you know that he doesn T want you to but he's still it's

just it's fantastic. It's like he knows that you the crazy Jamrock Shuffle Detective. of is the tool that's going to be best used to solve this and he'll use that tool even though he doesn't, you know, himself agree with anything you're particularly saying or doing like it's yeah, but he starts game itself is also that way and the end to it's like as a second layer of that like you can be the game will let you walk all the way to the end and it's it's not even going to hang you for

it. It's just like wow, you really did say one commits that. Yeah, yeah. Can you describe a Vision Quest or describe your vision quest? Why didn't have one? Because I didn't play The Final Cut. Oh yeah. There are play the final quote. I did at the beginning, but didn't get very far and they're hard to get to, they they're actually, they take, they added an additional level of skill, check to get into them higher than anything that was in the

base game. I think it's Godly instead of legendary so I did see a at least one Godly skill check In the non Final Cut. There's no, you know, you'll have like, Capo types and you have, like, moral like your political alignment, the political alignment version was just not really there. You still have the same kind of commentary but it wasn't quite as clear and it didn't funnel you into Quest paths, like it does now. So you could still be like a moralist order.

Well, Lee shit I did not know. Sorry. Yeah. Go ahead. What's up? Tell us I did one of these Quest. Tell us about this. Is how I super curious in a different end game. Yeah. How do you set it up? And what this, how I ended up in an alternate ending and like finishing the game and then being and telling you? I was like, oh, I wrote away on an Airship and you're like the fuck you. Oh yeah, I forgot that at all. So what the fuck? Okay, go ahead. Tell us about it. Please please.

Yeah, so I didn't realize that this was, it doesn't present itself to someone that has, never played the original base game, like, here's something different, right? Like here's like a different thing. It just came Up through like ultra-liberal. I was a moralist more like centralist. So it I think it was like day for. There's something that happens in. Like you go to sleep and you can start to pursue like a thought of centroid, like centrism and specifically.

So I'm looking at page Kingdom of Consciousness, how we got to moralism in the first place, and I got that one because there's a sporting proposition. Project opioid receptor. Antagonist. Does that sound familiar does sound Vaguely Familiar. So what ends up happening is that this is related to the 2. Mm.

Like hole in the church. And if you go through the quest there within the church to help out There's like a lady that you're helping out in the church that she's like trying to get more information and trying to figure out like more data about what's happening here and she wants to contact someone. Oh man I got I wish I remembered this better.

You're trying to contact someone to share some sort of like responsibilities that you have and you have to go through like a bunch of different steps here to be able to like contact this overall government agency. I think is More or less what it is. And many of you have been just like, overall, what's happening at the harbor?

And like your responsibility is to tell a committee and they can decide what to do about it. And so you go through, like a whole bunch of convoluted tasks to boost your radio. Like antenna and being able to contact them which requires you to like go back to the church and then set up tables. All the way from the church across the island to like the statue that's in the middle of all the trucks that you see early on. Like the, you know, my encyclopedia helped explain that thing.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's like broken apart and like your you essentially turn that into a giant radio transceiver and then you've got slime on top of it as Harry. You and like, are contacting. The committee to tell them the responsibility here and if you contact the Airship successful and get them to believe you, like they will come and retrieve Harry and the game ends like so you just like float away on an Airship.

Like it like what was a ladder? And like, you climb up the ladder and the game's over and I was like, like mid-game yeah. This is like, probably, like day for it. Bad amazing. Couple days for you to do all. The random like Aaron's that it has you do it definitely. I was just curious. I was like, what is this thing? And so I went through and like, was scaling things up specifically, so I could pass these checks, cause I thought it was just part of mainlining the game.

And then when I went away on the Airship and like, the credit started to play, I was like, I am entirely unresolved with what the fuck that's happening in this world. Hmm. I was like, there's no I hadn't solved the murder. The Hardy Boys like nothing's happened. There was like what the fuck has happened? Phenomenal, two questions. One is now I'm really curious when you played this game. June of 20, 20 20, so fairly recently posted the news.

It was the final cut on, Cut PlayStation, I played it on PS 5, full voice acting all that type of stuff. So if that happened, and that was a political Vision. Quest, like how did that relate to your politics? Did that end? It was just all the way up to it. That was the Vision Quest. Like, where did it, did it end with the final scene like that somehow like reinforced what political decisions you've made?

I mean it mainly was like hey you don't believe in anything so you're just gonna like give over responsibility to the committee to deal with it and you just it's gone from your responsibility to the world. That's a pretty direct statement. The game is making, isn't it?

Yeah and it's like hard credits. It's not like oh yeah you get to come back in. Like I ended up reloading a save going and intentionally failing the check so I couldn't So I didn't escape and then continuing on with the rest of the game introduced and moralism which is also the path that I

was going down is both. It's it's both extremely like the most logical, reasonable choice of going, what's going on. But also the most like, Asshole ish no responsibility choice at the same time like was like you're just like, yeah. You're just like I'm interested in hearing what all these people are saying but also I don't want to be a communist hard. I don't want to go super far the

other direction. And I think I mean I guess it's a pretty clear say like if you stand in the middle you're just going to get pushed around by someone else. Anyways, so you should probably take a stance somewhere. There's one If you have it that's like a militant insistence on nothing changing. It felt really in our world cup politics. Very conservative, right. Everything's better. The way it used to be. Yeah, I just. Well, conserved also made me

feel that their change. They want things to change backwards right in this region of are like, human world like when political movements like move over you like tithe. Adds to, to claim to be neutral and to like but I mean to me and helped me understand if I'm wrong where I'm wrong, I guess. But that's kind of what moralism felt like to me. Like we have decided, what our status quo is whether or not that's you know, who knows what who that status quo was good

for. But we are now all of a sudden like militant in are insistent that whatever that Quo was is the thing that has to be the new status quo and like there's a it says, in the, in the moralism and one point it's like we believe that change should happen. Very, very, very slowly. We should take our time in changing as like, yeah, I don't know that it kind of felt like to me what our modern conservatism feels like yeah. And It's weird that I feel really weird that I got to.

That was a point of view. But yeah, it felt like the right one for me in the context of this game. I think the game is laughing at like, even though the choices you make to end up, moralist are like, rational, I think the game frames it, as you're not choosing a more interesting

path. I said earlier that, I think the game accepts all outcomes but I think that is the one that it really like looks down upon And it's interesting to think of what in the human world that's commenting on politics in parts of the world that aren't the West are very different and it's interesting seeing what's going on with Russia and Ukraine, right now is a little example, right?

Like it's not normal for people to have strong political opinions, because most people don't really feel like politics is one in their realm of control. Politics is something that happens. And it happens to you and it happens to your countrymen. So the and I feel like this game kind of has that lens. But this game also like wants you to believe in something, which is kind of interesting because that sort of seems different than what I know of that region.

Maybe every person in Russia has like a rich interior political theology about what should be, but it's my understanding that culturally, what it's more like is that people just shake their head at what happens and they might wish for something better, but that's what they think they've got. Yeah, and I'm interested in how that kind of, like the moralist in this game is kind of the likes the silent rational, but the non revolutionary, right? Like you're not pushing towards

any major change. You're advocating kind of a common sense approach, right? Yeah, you're the one kind of constantly thinking about it and just saying like let's not go extreme in either direction. They're like you're not going to get anything fucking done. And yeah it's interesting how in the American context where things are good and politics are fine, like saying I don't want anything to change, presents

conservative. But in the region where these people are from, like, Advocating, the status quo is tantamount to something quite different. I mean, maybe it's part of like them trying to push me away from moralism, but they make it sound like a militant choice to be neutral. Like you will attack anybody who chooses to not maintain the status quo and maybe that's something from their live reality. That's just isn't relevant to us. You mentioned something as really interesting there though

that I hadn't. I don't know if I consciously thought about witches. By choosing them more or less route and Chang, like, I want to maintain the status quo, like, I'm thinking about, I want to maintain the status quo from like a white cisgender male perspective, right? Which within this world that I was role playing within right, like, maintain the status quo, fucking sucks. Like why would I want to maintain that and yet?

I continually made choices because when I was looking at the other ones they were like oh these are extreme thoughts. Right. But in actuality, they might have been pushing more towards equality, or towards things that I actually do have a stronger alignment with, you know, personally and what I think like Harry should be fighting for well, imagine yourself in a situation like the Russian

Revolution, right? If there's a bunch of ideologies being thrown around, you can say, I like the current order, but I'd like it to change a little bit, but when the Russian Revolution is in the air saying that is sort of folly. Especially in the view of what's going to happen, right? I guess in that moment, you don't know that.

But when Revolutions in the air or when revolutions, the only thing that can make meaningful change, you are kind of a coward to say like that we can make slow change will slow change. Doesn't happen here like only Revolution happens. And that's interesting, that's not something we have experience with. That's not how we think, even in a generation of people that wants Revolution. Although even within the same when they're like a revolution is failed. There's kind of something means

if he said there, right? That's like this thing's like been going on for three hundred years in like on. In the way, it will add almost Presley change cycle, fits very well with this, like, Western American ideology, right? If you just vote, things aren't going to change a whole bunch, but, you know, eventually maybe we'll get enough people that we can get 2% more back from our taxes, right?

Like yeah, we want just things. We feel comfortable in our system and if we just like push on our system enough Will again ventually get a change rather than you know something a lot more radical and our goal. Yeah. Yeah, I guess just your comments made me think about like what you're saying, makes a lot of sense from our Viewpoint, culturally and politically, but I don't think this game is authors come from that background. And neither does this game like it out as its presented?

You don't, we shouldn't have to know about the author's background, right? That's a whole can of worms. But like, in this, World, if you're advocating for things to change slowly. You probably don't have a full scope of what the world is yet. Because it's not fair because you're amnesiac, and you just yeah. What. Yeah, what's happening? Yeah, but yeah, no, I think that as a message, I think that that

is really powerful, right? You're the game telling me, hey, your tendency to like think that everything is good and to continue to try and act in a way that everything is good and should continue to being the way it is. Doesn't make sense. If you haven't taken a a full accounting of what the world is, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's cool. You know, one thing that's funny about the political Vision quests is that the Communist end of The Vision?

Quest is a bunch of guys, in a laboratory experimenting with crops. And they find that the one, the crops with the strongest ideology grow the fastest and like, like, I can't like decide if that's like really funny like I think like the game like in that ending alone, the game acknowledges that ideology makes a difference but it also completely minifies like, what difference that would make it's laughing at communism while also like giving it some credit.

It's it's just it's like really funny. That's that is amazing. I would be curious to know what all of the other Vision Quest are I will do, they tell me everything. I'm curious and I was going to kind of ask this of both of you guys. You keep calling it a Vision Quest. But what Craig described in sounds like what's that phrase implies? So what are we talking about? Called a vision quest in the game. That's only what the game's marketing for the patch used to

describe them. Yeah, and it does start off it. Like I believe it. It shows up as a vision while you're asleep. So I think it's like a thought pattern that shows up while you're asleep and you can choose to pursue it. So I had one dream that was weird, but I also had one point where I was looking at my book and passed out, and as I was passed out, it just said disko Elysium. And there were some options that I are some spots on the Disco Elysium logo logo.

That I could have clicked didn't want a viking, any of them. All right. Wow. You guys, neither of you guys saw this, okay? Know what? It's are also you fell asleep. Reading the wait, what? There was some concept which was so novel. That, as I was reading it, I fell asleep or, you know, like passed out and Kim was like, whoa, what's going on? You. Okay, I shouldn't shouldn't have been thinking about these wild

thoughts. Yeah, I feel bad that I can actually click anything on the disk Elysium logo. I thought felt like I died. Yeah, I could see why that's really funny. Yeah, it was weird. And I for a second, I thought that maybe something like that was what a Vision Quest was, that's amazing. Sounds like you guys didn't see that sense. Nope? Yeah, no. It's didn't know that, but at far more intense on them. Can I ask you another question? Just normal world view

perspective. Yeah, because my experience with Eastern European like content movies, books media like is not broad, right? So, this is almost an entry point, which feels like a deep entry point to stuff into food. Like here, here's hundreds of thousands of words and Concepts and ideas presented from this frame of reference, but there is something else like The Witcher 3 exist, right? Who's about to ask the same? Of course good and which one of us will have you played it to completion?

I haven't even touched it. I am here for fucking a Craig seminar. On him, not even read tuts. Watch the Netflix series. What I've also watched that you haven't watch some handsome gamer boy and said okay with our mister mister Cavill, yes, I didn't get any of this from The Witcher 3 though. Like not figured out our next game. I'm not playing it now.

Then I was inside the, the next-gen version comes out in December, but no, I think some of this stuff does come up but The Witcher 3 seems, I don't know. It just seems like a plays in a safer space. There's like, there's it's much more of really, Black and Whites and my opinion and maybe I missed dramatic things. I don't know, like it's been years. It also There's a I didn't play the close to be a really good deal, see about a vampire lord or a vampire manner, that would

have supposed to be good. I might employ that imply blood and wine. I'm quite surprised to hear this. I thought The Witcher was known for being more less optimistic, more Grim, more nuanced. I definitely think that there's those pieces of the World that exist within a butt. Yeah, so yeah. So I think from like perspective on that outcome of the world, it might have a little bit more of that bent to it, but it also plays with like, more of like, the folklore of the world,

right? So there's like kind of inherent playfulness that occurs in some of the side quests and things of that nature. And there's like, people's more human scale problems. That you're going in and like, helping interact with and there's things of that nature occurring. But when you're looking at like the political like, Machinations that are overseeing or overarching within that world there's like you know, Kingdoms At War. It just feels very standard

within that media, right? It doesn't feel like hey I'm going to challenge you on what your definition of like feudalism is like there's a lot of income. I don't maybe, you haven't played this in six months and you forgotten. There's a lot of comedy in this game like, well, for any of it to bring it up course. But pom will hold on. So, I'm going to intrude with a like, a global cultural human scale.

This does not. Yes, the The Witcher also is from Poland, which is, I mean, I'm gonna get in trouble for saying that it's this way because it's Poland, right? But Poland was never a part of the USSR. Poland is a very rich cultural and imperial history. Like Poland was an Empire pulling is a much stronger self concept of identity. So, it would make sense that, obviously, you can't say, because it's polish, we would expect these things, but I'm going to basically say that.

Anyway, like pulling is a very rich like folklore, tradition, so, it makes sense that, if a Polish Game were to happen, it would be playing in those spaces where as an Estonian game doesn't like Estonia has its own history obviously, but it its history is of being conquested in Empire did and things like that. That's where like the and authorial intent of the Witcher feels like it comes from a place

of power. The authorial intent of disco Lee's. Yes, it feels like it comes from a place of being subjected, that's interesting. Those things feel very different in how they presented their worldviews, to me, that's interesting and really interesting. Yeah, and it's also interesting, it might be The interesting and yeah, I really made an Ellis Wyatt. There's yeah.

Hi Abby's just interesting you guys that's interesting fascinating because we're Americans like what the fuck would it be like to have a national self concept? That's not one of being the dick like we are generation might be self-conscious about that but we still have no insecurities and there's no outside forces that are really notable that move across us like tides of course, there's our language and our money is still dominant which And our culture like it?

Yeah, yeah. A I love media from places. It's so alien and weird to read media and be in a world. That's about being subjected to outside forces and this game I think I think that that's true for the majority. There are starting to be cases people. You know, there are American perspectives that are not that. Yes. Oh, I was like their behalf of America. Well, not half, but large portion of America is not in power, that's been expressed and

subjugate its history. But that's not, who's making the media Mafia 3, the whole? Well, yes. Yeah, anyway, there's a bunch of. There are sweet starting tomorrow. Every I have also that is like, they just take the understand the, yeah, a lot of those people do have tremendous influence on the media in the form of Music, at the very least. Sure, but fair point Fair Point, that's not to say they're not oppressed but it's interesting how their voices are still heard

and ways that then get anyway. I am disappointed to hear that. The Witcher isn't a very similar game that is not disappointed. It's just not what I thought that game was praised for as being so different. I mean, you can also solve any of your problems with violence in The Witcher. No. Yeah. That is the first thing help that itself across a cell phone tower. Yeah, exactly. It's like the, the gameplay there overlaps with the story

mechanics in such concrete ways. yeah, interesting around, I think part of it is Again, I really wish that I had played them closer together The Witcher. It does go into interesting spaces, right? And has interesting conversations about who is in power and things of that nature. But again, it gets back into, like, who should run the kingdom, not, should the kingdom exist, right? I think people praise that it shows darkness in a way that our media off, it does not.

That's, that's fair. I got some big picture, quick hits for you. These are Big thoughts, but I think will knock them out quicker, whoever cursed the podcast by bringing up Tolstoy and his opinions on Park. Last time has graced themselves with a recurring segment, which is in Tolstoy. Is definition of art. It's only art. If it's like a pure feeling conveyed by a Creator, such that any audience would understand. And I wanted to ask, if art is a representation of a feeling,

what feeling would this be? Despair. Despair. Is that reasonable? Yeah. Hopelessness. I think it's the preservation of humanity under like, Under outside forces. Failed Revolution, State structures, around you economic forces that are way above you and this like Cryptid thing, controlling humankind Maybe. I want to read from the game. Is a point where you say, it does. Yes. But what is art and conceptual? Conceptualization Pops in with

excellent question. Art is a diverse range of visual literary, auditory and performative. Creativity is an expression of an imagination and Technical skill. Additionally, it is history criticism and pure enjoyment and it goes on from there but less for the head. That's so great. Is it always is conceptualization always that Earnest and straightforward. That does sound lovely. Yeah, thanks. I don't fit. Hopelessness is not the right term?

No, I don't think, yeah, I don't think it's that - it's more of like, you know, a neutral that make that is so uncomfortable to us as Americans that it feels -. Yeah. It's like it is, I mean, it's just very it's like, very realistic is, it's not a feeling the need for change. But the Need For Change was of the recognition that you can't. Yeah, the exactly you're not, then you're not able to influence it directly. It's a need. That can't be that you can as a person can't fulfill.

Yeah. yeah, I think that feel free to continue reflecting on that and your conclusions would be interesting if you come up with anything different or that is more nuanced than that. Why do you think this game was made in? And also at all? Why was this game made? I think it's because the creator has a D&D setting and once you get a DND setting you just keep rolling. Just have to share it with the world as well and hundreds of

thousands of words. I've read at least three space operas recently, that felt exactly like that. I'm like how in that what this is? Just this guy writing down his D&D game. I think to offer some Global political context. I don't know what estonia's having happened, but a lot of the post-soviet republics are falling into kind of the first tastes of nostalgia, for communism and authoritarianism. The capitalism that was promised to large numbers of these

countries. Like has not meaningfully appeared and new generations are beginning to wonder like what authoritarianism like bring us more than these things. have brought us, there's kind of this examination of the past, but I also think, People living in those situations are much more in touch with the failed Revolutions of the past, then we are. I'm sorry curious.

If that's true, right? Like, I don't know if that's true or not, but it does feel even here within our own lived experience that people are forgetting that civil rights wasn't 300 years ago. It was like 60, right, like, it's not that long ago, and but that didn't happen during our lifetimes, the host of this podcast and starting to see people, you know, the regressions and thoughts about

those things. But also, when talking about like this game being made now, Yeah, there's something to be said about looking at it and I guess that Imperial core concept is what comes back to my mind of being liked. We missed the boat. There is no boat coming and the next boat has already sailed like now, what the fuck do we do? And this feels like an exploration of that of like what do you do when you live in a town that's made of rubble and you know that there isn't

another way out of it? I've been stuck on this thought ever since our last podcast when Nate was saying that like, oh, 30 years ago, somebody could have been, you know, in their 50s, who was a pure contemporary of Pablo Picasso. You're like, wait, what, how is that? Sir, that on the podcast, but that is wild. It's just like history. As soon as you call it history, it seems like 300 years ago, right? But there are parts of History which are almost within reach.

What? I'm even like you look at like this game called disco, right? And like the Disco era being in what, like the 70s and Roe v-- Wade, 73, Roe v-- Wade. Overturned 2022, right? Like, That Gap is not super dramatic. No. Yes it was dramatic. Yeah, it feels super dramatic. You're like holy shit. And yet like your we are. It's like oh yeah. She just roll back women's rights. It's like like people fought for

that 50 years ago. and I don't know that that's like the closest contemporary that I can give to something here as far as, like, when looking at this, it just feels like a way to explore like, What happens when these things that we thought? We had learned from and that the experiences had been that you'll be like we're not going to go back to that space. Like what happens when you start to go back into them?

Well failed Revolution, certainly isn't just a non Imperial core phenomenon, true utopian Ambitions of the 60s here. Got moving in the 70s and then all stymied out in the 80s and I haven't really been seen. Since in Britain, you have the summer of love and the other things in the late 80s and early 90s. But I don't think the West is really seen meaningful return to those kind of hopes ever since Yeah. What the fuck's happening? I guess Eastern European.

I guess you mentioned. I'd like the the rise of authoritarian regimes for continued. Like I mean that's not specific to that part of the world either though. No but it's more specific there because when you're outside the well I mean to my earlier point there are parts of America outside the Imperial Court as

well, right? Basically I think the point is here, the Imperial Court is growing stronger, the periphery is growing weaker and anyone in the periphery At this point in our history is saying, wait a minute, what they're noticing. And what they're thinking about authoritarianism, as a solve for, is the fact that the imperial core grows stronger and they see nothing from it. Yeah. When the wall fell, and when these countries became capitalist, the belief was that they would be part of the

Imperial core. The reality is there the periphery And living with that dichotomy is something that I don't think us as productive. Well, earning members of our world can quite understand but it's easy to look down upon Gap has widened also, right? Yeah, it's not, it's not. There's no turning that back. It seems. There are places in the world according to some travel, like ethnographies. I've read where it's being

shown. That authoritarianism does keep more money in the periphery than capitalism. And that's disturbing something. Thats dark. The like these conclusions aren't just wrong and stupid. These are parts of huge systems that are evil and not equal. And it's interesting to me that this game I mean, the fact that it's even got us talking about, this is amazing, it's cool. It does kind of raise the question, like, what's the future? If you live in a region like

this, what can you hope for? Yeah, I'm curious from the game directors, like, the guys that were building a campaign. Like what were they looking to explore with these Concepts within their own worldview as well, right?

Like what, and maybe this gets into the piece that we're talking about earlier as far as we want there to be like a clean outcome of like, hey, you're doing this because there's like this resolution that you're looking to reach and that just might not be part of what's looking to be explored here.

Yeah. Which feels really uncomfortable to me. Yeah, I think a lot of the people in these countries, if you think about like Central Asia that are going for authoritarianism, these aren't uneducated people that are pushing for this. These are people that have traveled have been to the West have seen capitalism and are fighting for it because they know that that same thing won't bring things to them.

That's dark. Yeah. So yeah, I think in some sense the future for those regions might be I'm you would hope some kind of Revolution. Akin to what happened a century ago, right? Where we try new forms of government that are all about equality But those revolutions turned into fascism. Yeah, those revolutions were so so thoroughly and part of its because our Viewpoint in the west.

Right? We there's a clear narrative that of course, communism becomes fascism might as well, not even try it. And that's that's as much of a marketing thing as it is a reality, Maybe. But it sure has set a damper on trying things like that again even in a time where they're needed more than ever and probably even more than they were back then.

So I guess the Practical answer is probably authoritarianism but I kind of hope somewhere in the world like something new emerges and I hope that its outcome is better than the last time this happened, right? But that history is Within Reach and there are people alive that remember how bad it was and that really inhibits the options that people feel like they can have. Well, it's also without going too far into my king way away from the media that were discussing.

Looking at things like Ubi like Universal basic income or things of that nature but like that's predicated on having a piece of the pie, I think you have to have money as so. And when that money is hoarded by small amount of the people on the planet and used in other ways like you block out those opportunities as well. Yeah. I think the brutal answer is there's not a future. That the hope is limited to a way for us to make it by.

So we can pull back from like extreme Bleak existentialism I suppose if you'd like yeah. How do we, how do we roll back from that one? Poof man thinking about the Roe v-- Wade? And, you know, I always think of that phrase the moral Arc of whatever, always bends words Justice. Yeah. And it's You know, that's a like it's a tenancy, right? The The stochastic, which the average. Yeah, and obviously not everything is going to happen that way. But man, that one, so hard to

deal with for me, like, mmm. did you know like the real pain of like seeing that I human scale of like people are going to literally die because of that and people are going to be hurt and people are going to be like there's like true suffering that We will witness in the Years between now and hopefully when that bends in the right direction. Yeah, that sucks. Anyway sorry sorry to totally

Sidetrack us there. So one of the things that we haven't hit on throughout this entire podcast has been, there's no combat mechanics, right? Like we haven't talked about the gameplay specifically within this, that it's completely different than most traditional RPGs where there is some sort of action that you're partaking in outside of conversation.

And curious for your guys is exactly what I was saying, right, before I died, I'm curious for your perspective on a dialogue-driven RPG and this capacity that's almost it's almost a can do a visual novel with a 3D space. You can move through versus combat focused RPGs Divinity which are You know, other things that exist within that space, this one is skews that entirely. I definitely think this is combat focused. Its idea combat its word combat

well. Okay, word combat like, it actually does get into that only at a few key moments, but I think it is like it represents the combat of ideas, pretty consistently. Like there's multiple voices in your head that are like contesting against each other at many points in this game, right? That's a, that's a great one.

I didn't think about the, the spot where I literally died was a, you know, my conversation with ever art and it was like, this battle of wills and it's literally you and ever are going at it. Like, which one of us is going to back down first, who is going to make the dumb move? How are we going to negotiate ourselves into a better negotiating position here? Like, there's definitely competition Bat in this game. It just not. You know it's not a first person shooter.

Cool. Yeah. And I don't think that's just like well actually Craig like I think that they're I think that like this kind of combat that were describing is kind of a first class citizen. A primary mechanic of this game even in the same way that it is in RPGs. It's funny like they say in the marketing, like, it's an RPG except the members of your party

are all voices in your head. And that kind of makes it sound like it's a like, a way of explaining something that's actually very different using a metaphor. Yeah, but I think that actually is exactly what it is. Yeah, it's actually pretty. That's a pretty bang on descriptor. I was going to say, except you don't have to, like, choose and bring in and out party members. But you actually do that too, by equipping items.

Thought cabinets, specking up different levels like It's actually very strange how extremely traditional of an RPG. It is just for the few like Like knobs turned into. Yeah. Actually the mechanics don't quite line up but they're also exactly the same kind of it has exactly the same amount of like Choice. Well, that brings up something. I was thinking about which is that like a lot of RPGs are designed to convince you.

There's choice at every moment like constantly reminding you, okay, pick this option of that option. Where's this game tones? I remember then Cameron councilman on. This was on majors and murdered ads where they did a long-form playthrough of this game in audio. I think it's on YouTube too, but there were talking about how when you get to the end of this game you're like yeah I saw the game.

That's all there was but because this game does such a fabulous job of convincing you that the choices you've made are like real this game excels at convincing you that all the choices you've made are the correct ones. No matter how weird out there they are it's got like full writing to back everything you do up.

Yeah, and you only discover that there's a lot of other options by kind of looking outside the game, which is kind of the opposite of most RPGs which have to kind of insecurely convince you that your choice matters. Yeah, a lot of this game, you there are a bunch of checks that happen behind the scenes that you only see if you pass those checks like, yeah.

Sample, it cyclopedia, right? If you have a high enough, encyclopedia encyclopedia will jump in and till you give you all these context about all these things are going on. If you don't have enough high enough, encyclopedia you just don't get that context at all. Yeah, just literally or never present itself within the world. Yeah. The same with Them. What's the one you were talking about? That's about the city.

Like I never got any notion a? Yeah, we're just like wandering around and it's like, hey, in 22 years, rubbish, all be destined to be designated by a nuclear blast or whatnot. Yeah, I never got any of that context, little to any of the games that I played. Yeah, so that I think that answers a bit of the question also, like, did should this have been a book or did this need to be a game? And yeah, that's a Turf unquestioning full. Yeah. Is there a meaningful benefit in

it? Being having been a game when I recommend this to people, they're like, oh, you just like games with words? You should probably read a book. There's a lot of them. Yes, that's also true. But this is way cooler as a game than a book. Like it actually brings things to the table. Will your comments about the art is, like, totally part of that to, like the art here is I mean, it's not only cool but it's ludonarrative, Lisa didn't synchronous.

Yeah, there's a specific quest line that I thought was interesting that kind of gets into the world of us dealing with economics and capitalism and you made the funniest thing in all of gaming. Yeah, I was inside. So Nate tell us about the figure out how the world Works quest line and how you complete it. The fact that you learn how the world Works, only by talking to rich people is just really funny. Yep. That's all. That's very good.

Well played Perfect. What about chem as a character we'd let off at the top of the podcast talking about can being the goat of NPCs. What makes them that? Well you kind of talked about this. What you got any more to elaborate on that? I think it's his he is both completely adaptable. He's like the ultimate wingman, whatever you say he's gonna be there to support you and your band. He's not only. Does he got here back? He's got your back in the perfect way like he like a rock,

whatever you're saying. He was thinking the same thing right before you said it regardless of what you're saying it. Yeah, he's perfect. Even when, you know, he doesn't agree with you. He's like still With it. That's absolutely. Which I guess is like the point of a partner, right? Like your partner should be He can back you up and then, if you guys have a disagreement do hash that out separately, but like in the moment, he's going to support you.

What needs to happen? He's beta and Alpha. He totally is. He's just like sitting next to me and you're like, oh ken if chem like has something to say here, like we should shut the fuck up. Yeah. It's no matter how convinced of I ideology. I am any time he talks. I'm like, what, what? What is Kim think though? Yeah, yeah, especially because of like, how he presents throughout everything, where your pure chaos and he's like, The ideal like stable partner, right?

He's just like you know whatever you're drunk or high or whatever the fuck you're doing like even that we're here to work our case. He attributes your chaos to the Jamrock Shuffle like it is a method that is so intense that the average human cannot understand your chaos but your chaos is not chaos. It's a like a, you're playing 3D chess. Like, he's attributing genius to your chaos. That just makes it feel great. It's also fascinating, how he's gay, right? Yeah. Or at least it's okay.

I did, I said, you know, if it came up explicitly but definitely is like clearly alluded to tell me more. It's not a reversal any explicit Trope, but I like that the straight person is like utterly chaotic and crazy and the gay. Is the absolute like rock of like unquestioned not Authority but like she's got a shitty instability that the straight man is gay. Well yeah that that's a whole

quest line, right. Like when you sit down and you finally tell him you're going to stop questioning your sexuality and he goes I think that's great. Yeah. Like like it's he probably doesn't believe you but he's just happy for you. It's I mean it does get into a little bit of. I didn't like the Duality that you'll run into ya later. There's like a jacket, there's a whole thing.

The Duality within our, our current world also is in that same space where Like racism at play Within the world's. Right? And now specifically since like 2016 white people have been like, oh we should show them the allies and margin eyes. Folks are like about goddamn time like we've been waiting on you like what the fuck are you doing right? So I don't know there's something about him just being a character it's like yeah sort your shit out. Like you're the straight

cisgender dude. Here like cool your sexuality. Like got it. We don't need. To we've gone through all this already. Yeah. But he in that analogy, he's like the heroic figure that has infinite energy for supporting a clueless Ally, right? Like it doesn't seem to cost Kim anything when you completely, fuck up, any sort of whether you're Miss categorizing his race or talking about other people like know failed. Allyship costs, Kim anything,

which is kind of fascinating. He's the epitome of. What's the opposite of toss? Toxic masculinity. I don't think there is one will is it this podcast co-host? There's people talk about like the rock as being the opposite of toxic masculinity, like he is super masculine but in a way that's like completely accepting and nurturing and inclusive like I wish I could remember what the name of that but that's kind of

what Kim feels like in a knot. Just masculinity but like it from a moral standpoint like a completely accepting on a moral level. I was kind of talking about this concept of and I found this like healthy masculinity, people talk about like the rock as being one of these guys who's like super super masculine ilka. Ignore like yeah, that's a fucking man. That man ass man. Man, man's man, but he's also inclusive. He involves people. He's emotionally accepting of

people. He can have relationships with strong. Email people that are not like challenging his masculinity like that feels like what Kim is but like on a moral level instead of a masculine level that makes sense. Yeah, it absolutely does. That's interesting with regards to the writing style. Do you find the way that the actual dialogue was presented to be interesting? Or something that kept you engaged versus providing blocks of text.

Like, everything was almost like just quick hits consistently. Right? It wasn't, there's not like a lot of, like, here's so the book page to read. So, one of the changes that I am aware of from the Final Cut, is that all of the internal voice has got voiced in the Final Cut and I think that that was not true for the initial cut to that cause you any problems here, they're neat. Oh, I hate full voice acting weird ever play. The final cut the way it is released.

I think it's and it's it's funny because I can alternate exact opposite way. Yeah. I mean readers. We never readers. Never like full voice acting, right? Like I hate voice acting and fall out like because I feel rude interrupting people because I read like 30 times faster than like I hate playing a game where I constantly have to cut off voice acting. It sucks. I read probably about as much as you do. Inaudible and I love voice acting.

It is the epitome of he's a text-based reader non-audio readers. Yes, sorry. I don't want to bring that gatekeeping here but I think in this case it is a different thing, right? So to me, that didn't affect it. But one thing I would say outside of my particular, penchant for abstract, scribblings on dead trees is that I've heard that the each of, the thoughts being voiced can actually add sort Of a like a tonal interpretation in places where there was none before.

So the example I heard on this was that Inland Empire is kind of sassy and sarcastic and that that like might kind of like That gives you like additional information that can kind of ruin that voice for you, depending on your personal like, hopes, our feelings of it. That's actually interesting. I didn't think about how that would present like how that would change my perception as how the voice was presented.

Since I had only played it with voice acting turned on it, moves it towards the visual media, right? Where there's less and less. More of the work is being taken away from you which is great. I think there's definitely some but it It less interpretive. That is one of the downsides to kind of the audio reading as a as a medium in general. I have just been thinking about that this week, we're voice.

Actors will add specific like inflections on a reading based on what is called out on the book. Hmm, witch. Makes sense when they do it. But also it also eventually reminds you that when it's not called out in the book, they are still adding some inflections that they have decided. Or like there's some Like acting notes that don't show up in the text like yeah, it's a whole extra level that yeah. Does. It definitely does change the context of it.

It's interesting because one other piece that I did find about the writing style for me having it. I'll, man, I hate it. I hate this, but it's almost like tweets and where they were Constant quick hitters. I love that you brought this up. Yeah, this is interesting.

Yeah, we're to me it helped just keep the flow of the conversation and it helped to keep it feel conversational as opposed to. Here's just a block of thought and said it was like here, like we're having an ongoing dialogue, and it really made it feel like we're having a dialogue with yourself, right? That you were interrogating, your own ideas throughout that I I don't think that would have worked with longer-form speech, bubbles.

Yeah, I mean, you're hitting on something really fucking cool about this game, which is that? It makes like high-minded literary Pros approachable, in that sense. If you want to like, if you want to read fancy writing goes back your character and shivers and Inland Empire and just play along. You get one shot, one sentence at a time. Unlike I'm pointing at my bookshelf. I've got tons of books over there. There 800 pages long. Each paragraph is a full page. Age.

Each sentence is half that like it. It's there's something really triumphant and unusual about the combination of style and approach ability here and I it's really cool. You brought it up the way you did because I hadn't really thought about that. And I think that does present it in a way that is approachable to

the masses. Like, in a way to your point where if you were to just even if it was twice, the length of like, what the average sentence is like, that would change the context of how you interact with the game drastically. And yeah, and I interface does a great job like all the sound effects, like just like it's sliding on it all of its really good. Yeah, in a game that I think had a janky like that. Part is great.

It they nailed down, two sides. I think that the colors really helped because there's four colors. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot. So the UI has like layers in that way. Based on those four colors. You like, you have a general idea of what caused what the context is of the, the conversation that's coming in. I also think, I think there's too many skills in this game, I just There's just yeah, that could be.

Yeah, if things were compacted quite a bit, I think you would have an opportunity to have a better. Grasp of how much of the world you're touching with each of those things, like, especially, since I haven't talked about this, but but like, replayability, I think is really poor in this game. Despite how much cool stuff there is, like, I've tried to go back and I absolutely love this game and I've tried to go back and it's like, yeah, like I know ice is that. Why do you bounce off it?

Well hold on. Now I do great question but I do want to let. Yeah, we'll finish. Yeah I think it's just that there's basically 36 options for like what to put your skill in as your leveling. Yeah. But also there's the mental. The thought cabinets is another place. You can put thought points into. So it ends up being. It feels like there are like Three different places that you

can put a a skill point into. And so it's really hard because it's so diluted the game itself can't like main make any one of those things, be terribly important unless it does in which case like you have to push into. Yeah, it there's just so many there that it makes the game. Like I feel like that one decision has made the game more complicated in a way, that is unhelpful. Hmm. I don't know if I quite agree with that but I do agree with the idea.

It would be interesting if they were less skills, such that you kind of got a sense of like half of them on any given plate. And then you could pretty reasonably, say like, okay, one more play through and I'd see the rest and I think that would make replace feel better. Well, I'm getting The other half now. I feel like you got four ish. Yeah. For skills, like meaningfully. Yeah. Man. Yeah I don't know. They like like I said I've played the first day three or four times, right?

And even now the last time I played, I know that my encyclopedias real hard. But even like the logic of see if I can remember some of the other ones that are in blue, right? There's drama. There's visual calculus. Okay. I remembered for and I think there are eight of them right? I can't even remember what the other. Our and there's six of them, it's logically cyclopedia rhetoric drama conceptualization visual calculus, my push back to that will is that these aren't adding events to?

Well they do they don't add that many events to the game. Right there, affecting the flavor text, you get, right? So it is more of a choice than I'm not getting the game because I didn't see these But it's your Counterpoint of in cyber attacks. Pretty much has. Yeah, that like, flavor, text changes how you experience the game, like fundamentally also. That's that is the reason to replay it, right? Is all different flavor.

This double points thing. Of thought cabinet and no, I mean, that your skill level adds like a base point. Oh yeah. That's the amount that you can put into it. Yeah, that's interesting. it's it's interesting and Incredibly complicated and like it also like you can fuck yourself up early because I chose My can elect as one of the places and I didn't end up going down those paths. Imagine my playthrough where I was one point on two of the four categories.

Yeah, that seems rough. Like this is like that. I'm surprised I didn't block you on certain things. Like, I'm surprised you could finish the game to be honest. But I mean, even if you put one point in right, it still takes you three levels to max out. One of those skills. Three levels take is like hours worth of gameplay. Now, like if I wanted to, if I was at level 1 logic, wanted to max out my logic because I thought it was important for some reason that we're talking hours of gameplay.

To be able to check that and and get to the point where I and if it's my first time playing, I don't even know that that's the most that I could go right? Like right now. Oh man, this system is raw in that it that it doesn't explain enough to tell you. Yeah, it wouldn't have been that place also for me, where I was fearful to spend my skill points because it was like you were getting them.

So sporadically that I was like if I put this into a place that I wanted so I can get to unlock a check. I know it's going to be a bunch of time before I can get enough experience. And I'm not exactly sure. Where I will be able to get that experience from To get the next skill point and that piece was actually a pretty challenging part of the experience. Did you guys get to a point where you would get a skill point and then not a sign it until you had like failed at skill check?

That's where I was at this point. No. But that's very smart. I definitely had with held using a skill point not knowing where what skill checks I would come up against and then would like spend it appropriately once? I knew that. Well, you guys are being such Gamers about this though. Yeah. I think but I think that's it's the place where I was in the game and maybe this is because on day two and I didn't have enough things.

Is unlocked. But like I looked at my map and it's like these are the sticks skill checks that are available to you. I've I went over the entire world twice, there's nothing more to unlock. The only things that are available to me. Are these 6 skill checks and so the next time I got a point I basically have to put it into one of these six things otherwise I'm just not making any progress in this game at all. That is like a failing of the

game were later in the game. When you've opened up, like there's like 30 skill chains in your, like, your skill checks to do and you're like cool. I'm not going to be able to do all of those and like you recognize that but like that learning happens. Way late in the game in my opinion. Yeah, I don't feel like I ever and I don't know why I felt this way, but I never felt that those skill checks were a means to guide me towards something.

I felt very confident that no matter what points I put where I would be able to beat the game. And apparently especially Prix Final Cut. That's not quite true. There were some. I think that was the intention of the developer though. Yeah, I think that your good

faith argument. I think is what they intended to be true but you don't you if you've played other games it's unlikely that you're going to like I don't think they should have to clarify that but also this doesn't exist in a vacuum. You're coming from other games where that's literally a legitimate way for the game to be. Telling you, exactly. To be doing true, that screen is there, right? Here's the things you need points on. So like As much as I don't like

assigning responsibility. The game to tell you that I think it's a great point. You make well it probably should have some way of throwing it to you like you don't you're not going to do all these. All right I mean I was here earlier today so let's talk about that for just a second because I got to a point where and I feel like you had talked to me about this kind of point before. So I feel like you've gotten to the similar point but like I said, I explored the entire world.

I couldn't because of various skill checks. I couldn't make any more progress. I knew that there were progress has be just because of my previous playthroughs like getting into that hotel that I couldn't get to through the bookstore. Like I I couldn't figure out that somebody actually shot the guy, the hanged man. Like I knew there were things that I could as soon as I like breach these thresholds.

There would be entire parts of the story but I got to a point where it's like, I can't make any more progress here. I see these skill checks. These are the I know that these are the things that would allow me to like, break open parts of the story. And I only passed forward was to sit and read my books until the time progressed to a place where I could find some more conversations to get the skill points to break. Open those things.

Is there something else I could have been, or should have been doing thinking about a different way to approach the game? Like you make it seem like, I'm like having these skill checks was a constraint, I put upon myself, but from my perspective it seem like. That's the only way to progress in the game. Yeah, you're right. The whole middle of this game was really hard for me. I had to figure out how to pass time.

Turns out, if you have your case book completed, you can read it to pass infinite amounts of time, which I did not know, / didn't know as a thing in the base game. So, I had real problems passing time, and it's funny to me that I just thought, I'll just pass. Time until the next day. Then plot things will move forward. I never really looked at it like I'm going to spec things differently to unlock a new skill check. So in that sense that's just me being dumb.

Well I mean I don't mean it's you mean don't worry? Yeah I don't think it's you dumb. I had more contacts because I had replayed it three times, right? there was for me, there were specific places where by like happenstance into another conversation or something that happened. I thought that I was blocked and that the skill checks were the only way forward and then I would find.

So if I go down a different conversational path, even with someone that I had talked to, and I thought that I had finished all of the potential options there like something else opened up, or you would get in the space where I think there was a couple times where it's like, hey, I think like I feel blocked and I think I had just gone to bed and that opened up like one new Avenue. And like when I pulled that threaded opened up other threads but there is definitely early

Parts in the game. In that first like, ten hours section where I was, I felt I definitely thought I was blocked by skill checks and was frustrated by it and they found like, okay, there, there always Seems to be something else around but it is, it did feel obtuse and obscure and some capacities can I can I bring up one more thing that sure. Jerked me a little bit, but was a one of my gaming mentors as you were really hated about this game.

If you follow a conversation tree and you have followed a node of that tree before the node will be grayed out. Even if there are leaves under that node that have not been. That is right now. That is annoying. That is yeah. And that does happen. I think the frustrating that part of the reason this game worked for me is very early. I was like, I'm not going to play this as a typical narrative Quest like tree where I'm going to like, just complete all the things.

And I think if you do that this game, sort of, I think that actually pushes you down. The, he doesn't actually, but I feel like it pushes you down the Centrist path, kind of, right? Like if you're playing this to see all the dialogue choices, you're probably going to pick the most neutral option and I think that's part of why? The games making fun of you.

You. But I think it's, because of that, that I didn't worry too much about unseen diagonal dialogue options, that, that helped me to like, keep in the zone of enjoying it, but it is like, that has to be a design choice, right? Like, that can't be it. Just seems very strange. I agree that it's annoying. Yeah, it feels like that. Could have been expressed or said at some point, right? All these choices, make sense and are valid and are valid game design choices.

I would just like the game to tell me that instead of me needing to figure it out through, like Brute Force. Oh, I spent 3 hours of this game. Not realizing there was a choice. I could make because it was hidden behind something. Absolutely, I think I think that you specifically called out to me that time only progresses when you make choices, I'm skeptical that I would have noticed, or how soon I would have noticed that, that was happening. I recently on They knew that by reading.

Like I think there's a certain point that it maybe they added as in the Final Cup. There's something that like I believe Kim says, Hey like we need to turn in for the night. There's nothing more you can do today or something of that nature that does happen like at the end of the day. Yeah, there's one conversation item where the system says, if you make if you have this conversation Choice before you have this Conversation Choice, bad things will happen.

And I was like whoa what really? And that's the only time I saw that happen in the game. Does that happen everywhere else? Yeah, I don't remember that happening. This specific example, they give is when you talk to the bartender who's not a bartender. Whatever his name is boy, that's funny cart cart. If you like ask him some context, he'll give you some information about the context and then you ask him whether or not he killed the guy and that like pisses him off, right?

So if you piss him, Woof first. He won't give you the context from that initial question. I'm sure that's happening. All throughout the game. I don't think you're supposed to like game for that though, right? Yeah, but that's another tricky. If it's actually a conversation simulator, you don't. Yeah. But like it's like, how are you thinking about those options, right? It's like what you were saying, right? Am I picking all four options?

Because they were gray and or before because they were white and now they become gray. So I'm just going through the list or am I actually thinking about Out. Okay, because I've said this, that changes his contacts, that changes his perception of me, that changes the flow of the conversations are now, this other option won't make sense anymore, like, right? That The having that happen in theory. Sounds really cool. But I didn't actually see that happening in the game.

Well, I don't know if you would see it, right? You would never know if that was happening, if it wasn't being called out. Yeah, I mean yeah. But the game could tell me that in a couple of ways, right? You could say what? I'm not going to tell you that you just called me a racist. Or, you know, something like that, right? Feel like stuff like that does happen. And what do you think Craig like Not that, you know, it's fucking interesting.

If you're a forget, what it if you see it on the still checks, Yes, there's that. If you're a communist and an authoritarian at the end, Kim says like, I have no idea how you have these two viewpoints. They make no sense together like there's, that's amazing, but that doesn't happen that often. You're more often. You just like, oh, here's the thing because your communist. Oh, here's another thing because

you're an authoritarian, right? And that's probably just because they only had 20 Riders not like Hades number Wonder. Yeah, you think Hades had more or less dialogue in this game. I would assume less I definitely assume less. Yeah. So, how much how many times more words? Do you guys want to bet the Disco Elysium has than Hades? So I seen a man.

So so good question because I've seen multiple reports on how many words are in Disco Elysium. So I would guess four times the amount of words in Disco Elysium than Hades. 55 times. Okay. It's two hundred thousand words of which are dialogue. Okay. Thousand words total, I guess time I guess was 54 Hades and 204 disco. I think it's 200 and a million shit. She's I had. So I had seen the Million number come up, but I couldn't find a way to confirm it. All they've said, you were over

a million. How many words are in War and Peace? It's the Benchmark. Isn't it? To me? It like warm pieces, only five hundred eighty seven thousand, that's incredible. I would love to know. This would be much more helpful if we knew how many words were in the average playthrough of disco Elysium. Oh, that's true. Because they're being a million

words. Probably means that the average player sees, I okay in 80 Days. The developer said that there are God, I don't remember the number of words but I believe it's one point five times as many words as did as War and Peace and the average player sees three percent of those words in one playthrough light and 80 days is heralded as like a landmark in which I've never played. So I don't know why that is like should - lets all mobile game first wasn't uh it's not words started.

I think so. Yeah. Anyways. Alright, last. Last Hot Topic, any interest in discussing Dolores de, I just heard that she was a person. I don't know who she is, but just figure from 300 years ago in the game, or real life and knowing the game. I was curious. Did we have Dolores de? I'm only interested in because of the way she conflates, whether ex-wife, I've heard people describe the ex-wife thing is the least interesting thing part of this game. But I thought it was beautiful

and cool. Every time it came up and I didn't pursue it very far. Just every time you have these like fractured memories of your ex-wife, I just thought it was really cool. I think there's there's really interesting things about what that says about you about a In of yourself, there's like, I even there was like some hints of like codependency of like you lose yourself without this person also, in like, when she leaves, you become alcoholic, that is not a healthy relationship.

Says my therapist. Yeah, there's that. And then I left her don't. Mmm, don't worry. Yeah, exactly. Doris. Also is like a Godly figure in the world and worshipped, right? Like the church is an altered to Dolores and conflating her with your wife, like you and like worshipping your relationship to your wife. Like they're there is a slot going on here. Yeah. This feels like one of those things where I would trust that the author has a whole shit time.

There's another 500,000 words that they could probably say about, like what this relationship is. And it probably honestly, I am curious. If there's like more of this that was on The Cutting Room

floor for the game. I'm curious too because it's like a thread that's pulled on but you can actually like, pull the entire thread where a lot of the rest of the game, you can like keep pulling and doesn't feel like you ever get to the end of the line where this sits there kind of is there's a bust in the This room and you're like, hey, that bust kind of looks like me. And you have a whole conversation with Kim whether or not you are the, the man on the

bust and he's like, well, that guy died five or fifty years to get home. And you go back and forth. And for me at the end of that is like turns out. I'm not the most famous philosopher of the modern period. We eventually agreed on that. But like, I bring it up in the light context that this configuration comes conflation. The inflation cross ideas that, you know, you might be other super important ideas in the philosophical. Religious history of this world

is not solely your ex-wife. Yeah, there's a bunch of. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. You're basically saying like your character is extremely unreliable and just because you're mixing her up with Dolores de is not necessarily an indication that you're having like christ-like allegorical comparisons with your ex-wife Or vice versa. Maybe she is Dolores de and you are this philosophical or, you know, philosophy is really never waited and and and and right. Yeah. All right.

Yep, it's fun. Take us home. Whoo. Disco Elysium. What do we all think? What's are taking better as a racing game? Was it? I would love to see so much speed run it. I mean to be fair we know will doesn't even know the answer to this. You tried to play it as a racing game and crashed your car into the ice, just outside the town three times. That is Their times. Yeah. Just kept. Kept it on starting every time he ended up with his truck in the ice. Thank God.

Harry did was a genius? Yeah. Why don't I start? Um, I think that I am. I have a tendency to like RPGs in general. This is my kind of game. I think that the art style was pretty cool. I am glad that I got the Final Cut of this game because for me the voice acting was really important for me to be able to like buy into the this world and these characters in general. I thought that I'm a big fan of like super complicated intricate systems and A locking systems

and I like this idea. I should go try and find this but there was somebody who is suggesting that like the way you should build your game is that like 65% of your game, should be available to every single player 30% of your game should require a little extra work to get to and 5% of your game should require like your or your super investing to try and get to the to see that outcome, right? So there's like five percent of

your game. We should only be available to like the most religious Advent, players or game. So I like this idea that if I put in more work, I will get more out of this game. There are so many parts of this game that I feel were like, reaching out to me and like, would have been perfect for me. The problem for me was the in prochik in approachability, like maybe it's the subject, maybe it's the the super hard cliff on the onboarding, which I eat.

You know, I really went. I feel like I went out of my way to try to overcome. I really, really tried to buy into this game, and I wanted it to be something that I really enjoyed. I as sad as it makes me feel, I feel like this game wasn't a game for me as, as much as it feels like, it should have been a game for me. It just wasn't something for me. And it's like, The mechanics in the and the systems and all of that was built and designed for

someone like me in mind. But but the story the context, those kinds of things just wasn't for me. And it's like, it's a good sign for video games as an industry. We're getting so big that we can build these specific experiences for Specific kinds of people, like very specific kinds of people. This is a game for for people who like RPGs and are in to political Theory and are into like all these. It's a very it's it it seems

like it's a great game. It's just sadly, it's just not for me so I'm I am. Sad is that? I am so impressed by this game that wasn't for me. I just beat Halo night and I know how you feel the most controversial thing that's ever been said on our podcast is that Halo Nights defeat could elicit anything? Other than utter Transcendence in a direct express? Ticket To Heaven, are you going to finish it? Well, yeah, as I'm playing it, I'm like, oh, I want to play.

Why this have I want three playthroughs of this game? But also, if we weren't podcasting about it, I would not have picked it back up again. So it's really hard. No, I understand. I understand that feeling. Yeah. Is there mechanical tweaks that could have been made to ease you into it? Such that you would have like enjoyed the end result or do you just think the core premise of something? So, like, political and unapproachable is the issue.

I talked about some of them, like I think there's too many skills. I think that what could those like changes have tipped you over? Do you think like fundamentally you'd still be confronting the fact that it's just not a game for you? But you just would have made it through easier. Yeah. Like I got I got closer than ever picking up encyclopedia like you suggested. If there was something even more in that area, encyclopedia the elementary school of version of Encyclopedia like seriously,

break this shit down. For me. I understand the concepts and the characters that that would have helped more or less skills. I think what I've helped more for. Me which I wanted to do all that. Let's say there's Wikipedia integration with the game. So when you hover over communism there's a one paragraph explanation of what that is. Like, if everything was made easier at the end of the day, do you want to play a game? That's all about fully immersing

you and like this kind of world. I like the idea of inhabiting the role of this character being able to make choices that affect my world having like the the choice of how I would approach a situation like the systems part, I loved. I think that like one of the other things we talked about a little bit earlier in the game like if they just short gave me some shortcuts on to what we're talking about.

About you didn't need or I don't feel like you needed to introduce 10 new races so that I could figure out what the content like you tell me 10 races and I still don't know what race Kim is. Do you guys know what race Kim is see all light, which is a combination of Japan and Korea. Okay. And it did, you know that crazy? I'm just kidding. Just that I recipe. I know your soul light but I didn't know like what that given that we don't exist in our world.

But yes, I did. I knew that piece of bleep at least. Yeah. I feel like there's just a lot of I need to do the work to appreciate this game and I would have just appreciated more. If the game did the work for me or gave me the shortcuts to allow me to enjoy and understand as soon as we started. As soon as I started talking to the character about like, what is reality mean? What are this this concept of this like negative space between the worlds?

And this world isn't actually a sphere, and Like we're jumping between like dimensions on a weird interdimensional playing like, you guys started talking about, oh, there's an alien race, that's kind of creature, you know, puppeteering the way that that humanity is evolving. Like there's so many cool that cool ideas that I totally want to have seen and explored and thought about. And Experienced but yeah there. Yeah I'm like I like it was almost there.

What I hear you saying is? Yes you do want to get there? I think the tragedy is that this does happen just by sticking with it. I wish that there was a way to make that on-ramp more gentle, but it's interesting to me that I think the confusion you're experiencing is almost

intentional. And I'm kind of curious to hear what Craig says about it. I'm going to go next to give, Greg something to kind of play off of when I think about disco Elysium and when I remember how it felt to play it, the metaphor that comes to my mind is I feel like I was the video game sci-fi fan watching no man's sky is Debut trailer in 2014. This is everything I want games to be. I think that this game is Suspect, it's just incredible.

And I think that one thing that's cool about it, is, it is it it's certainly a high watermark for video game RPGs tons of people say that, that I'm a little worried about that because I think that that makes people thinking that they should make a great RPG, try to make a disco Elysium. Like I don't think the in the medium needs more of that. It has its disco Elysium. So I'm a little worried about that. But I think, what's so

spectacular about is, is it? I like, I genuinely and unironically think that it brings literature to new heights, and I think that where it really shines as a work is in fiction and writing. If I know people that really like riding I would push them and that don't care about video games, I would still push them to play this game and that is something that I think games have always wanted to have good

writing. There's always been this claim that games have good writing but saying that I think is unexpected in the joy to have received in our lifetime. The skills, you can spec in this game that give you sort of a, what? Just King things, calls the wandering Eye camera that Stephen King does so.

Well, where you pull out from the world you're in, and you just get this big picture view of what's Happening elsewhere in the world is just it's it's so beautiful to me and so it's everything I go to literature for its It's the way I want to be able to think about life on our planet. It's what I want to understand more cultures for to be able to pull out from the present and think in a bigger context.

I feel you will. I think it's it's a tough on ramp but I love the confidence that this game has. It doesn't try to onboard you. It gives you enough to let you figure it out but it's kind of up to you to do the work.

I think that's just amazing. I've I don't think I can't think of many other games that have such foreign settings that don't sort of like gently walk you into it like you're a newcomer and I I don't know, I'm kind of running out of words for that particular feeling, but I just think it's very Very impressive. I'm the politics of the world are interesting, the way it plays off, real life, political Theory, the way that it like The way that it's able to be smart without feeling like it's

rubbing your face. And you're not being smart is really amazing. I'm interested in the way that it uses race. We didn't really get a chance to talk about this, but it compresses race. When it's convenient for the story and ways that are sometimes a little offensive, like it uses mask as a race for Hispanic and talks about the Spanish Civil War, but in the full cut, it'll sometimes include Chicano voices clearly

from like kind of a south southern. via like place when it's convenient for it to talk about masks - and clearly Spanish, Revolution, Spain, and Southern California are like completely unrelated and to conflate those is almost defensive but the fact that like Yeah, it's a game written by a team of Eastern European people. And I'm I'm very fascinated by how it the races that are in the developers backyard. It has quite a nuanced understanding of in the one's a

little further away. It doesn't. And I think that's cool. I think it's kind of cool that it doesn't tackle raise perfectly, but it tries the fact that it has a black character that completely inverts. Colonial stereotypes in measure head that was written by black. Authors is fucking wild. It's cool. It's like a I don't know, it's just neat. I the way the phasmid speaks to you at the end of the game about seeing all of human history is just breathtaking.

I can barely talk about it without tearing up. It was such a moving experience to me, it's something that I've like, craved finding and literature it. I read books about other countries and other cultures for these kind of things. And this game did it, and the fact that it's not just about an imaginary world, but has parallels to the world we live in, I think is just another A layer of what makes it fantastic.

I think the systems that innovates as an RPG or not just ways to shoehorn text into a genre, kind of like I was saying before, I think there is like genuine Innovation here that a very serious historical genre video games hasn't seen in a long time and I think that's cool. What can I say about it? That's - I think it could be better at replayability. It could make it systems more

clear. But I don't really think those things matter when we talked about Kentucky Route, Zero on our podcast, that game kind of became more parsable. To me, it became more of a this is a toy box of some nerds is like art interests and that game sort of fell off its pedestal to me and also became more respectable as like, you know, art is really cool. It's cool that video games can be conversing with the serious art world, that's neat.

But for everything that that game does in that regard, I think it sort of loses its luster as a game and becomes more of an intermodal art project disco Elysium. On the other hand, everything it does that I think is amazing. Makes it stronger as a game. I think that's spectacular. So this is definitely my favorite game I've ever played and I think it's cool. And I'm glad you both are here to talk about it. What do you think? I'm interested that it's God. Well, before you go jump in, you

said yeah. This is not a completely divorced from our reality world. What did you mean by that? yeah, I think it's tying until like, Eastern European politics and the way Yeah, the kind of stuff we talked about with the Imperial core. Yeah. It's not set up in some made of world with like some other problems that humanity is like not actually facing. In a way it is. But it also manages to comment on our world without being like a lazy way of avoiding commenting on our world, I think.

Okay. I thought you were time to debate but we're late. Yeah, I thought you were saying. Oh, this is Our world and the year 3000 or something. Oh no, sorry, I interrupted correct? No, no, it's all good. I would say that when you mention the mechanics, really what's there to be negative about moving through this game World follow. Yeah socks. Yeah, moving sucks. Sadly miserable. Did they had quick travel in the

finally unlocked fast. Travel to the fish market specific place, but I didn't know. How to use it or what to do with it? Yeah. It's it's not great. Yeah, and I think the console implementation of movement is bad. Yeah, just talking about council did not at all nothing things. Felt really weird marking, things feels real bad, especially compared like immortality where you can freeze the screen and just like know what selectable on the screen. Yum.

Yeah, and then there was a button to show you everything that selectable on the screen and that doesn't show you everything that selectable of Screech. And it doesn't make it easier to select their living either. Yeah, it's like all the bottles that you pick up are not selected, are not highlighted. Oh, that's from the terrible. Yeah, yeah, I mean, this is a PC, a sport if the car was one. Yeah, it absolutely is. I won't go too deep into that space because I think we've covered it.

But yeah. Yes, my rap of thoughts. I don't think they're going to be as exhaustive as either of your guys is with regards to the Grand scale of what Was accomplished here or what was sought after. But for me I looked at it as an opportunity as an introduction to a different type of literature than I'm normally seeking or exposed to and having the opportunity to exist in something that is actually immersive.

We talked about games being an immersive experience and that's usually like hey I want to exist within this thing that's separate from the world outside of me but this was like, I need to exist. This thing because without becoming fully immersed within that world, I don't have an understanding of the space and I thought that was a really interesting, you know, thing to try and occupy an especially unique opportunity with in gaming and Bridging, the world

between literature. Two games is something that I think is wholly unique to disco Lee's iums experience here at least at the proficiency at which it accomplished it, right?

It's not too. that there's not a ton of other games that have a shit ton of text or are written well or have other places there but it's that combination of taking high-concept ideology and you know different perspectives on the world and then bring able to make that accessible playable and understandable to some extent right mileage may vary as we discussed through last three hours, but That's a really unique kind of combination, and

it was also something where I probably would have bounced off early on, right? I'm like, happy that I stuck with it. And didn't leave it after two hours of being like, what the fuck is happening here? Like, I've spent as much time as I would spend, on a movie, trying to understand and parse what's occurring here.

And I still didn't feel comfortable in that space, and I think there's something about being pushed to that limit of uncomfortability to be Able to understand what something is trying to achieve or accomplish and even leaving the game when it was finished, right? I didn't feel like I had a complete understanding or a comprehensive view of the philosophy of the theories of the different.

Like machinations of like how things were being presented in a way that I would be able to go out in articulate to someone of like what was disco Elysium. I don't know, it's a thought bucket of a bunch of different things. Things that are happening of within yourself and within the

world. But there's something beautiful within that and I'm grateful that it exists and that there was an opportunity that a collective could put this together and put it into a place of they can present it to the public and Nate to one thing you mentioned, right? Like while I would say I would like to Explore this and give it as an option for someone that's deep into literary or literature, and reading, like, it's kind of can be miserable to

play at times as well. So it's like we have a guided experience here, which bums me out in some ways because it keeps it from being that True full recommendation of hey you don't even need to know the medium like you get to experience like what the medium is capable of when it starts to bridge between. Between something that has existed for hundreds and thousands of years versus something that's existed in a recent time, right?

And there's something maybe that bridges into the themes of the game of the history and the how things repeat itself. But separating out that theme it's just like I can't hand it over to someone and be like, hey, you can you've never touched a controller before. You would be able to see kind of the best of the combination of the, the mediums.

And that's like unfortunate and that's a bit of a failing of the game, but it's also not what it was trying to accomplish, and I'm glad it wasn't trying to seek out to be that. So, I'll wrap up there but I'm grateful this exists, I'm grateful to a plated and The opportunity for it and glad that it's paved, you know, an opportunity for something to exist in this space. And I think we're going to see a lot of different riffs on variations of this over the next

few years. But I think there's something truly, and wholly, unique for creating this sort of work of Peace. Especially when you look at, you know, Classics of literature. It's not like every year, there's a thousand-page book that people look at. And I do this. Thing will be referenced in 10 or 20 years, right? It doesn't come along that often. I think there is something to be said here, that even if you don't enjoy it, there's something that you can appreciate about it.

Wonderful conclusion. I think my one quibble would be it's not like you can hand someone the best works of literature and say read this true you can but part of what makes the grade is its Impenetrability and also in some ways disco Elysium plays. So poorly that it would be a great first game because you wouldn't know better. Be like, oh yeah, the bottom it's a little chunky, but what do I know? Yeah. I think this has been a great podcast.

Thank you all for joining. Thanks for sharing with us. Hello, it's Nate after completing the edit. I've been thinking about pieces of media that are related and might be enjoyable to someone who like this conversation or like this game. I'll start out with two books that I think are related. If you're curious where I got the sort of Eastern European perspective, there's obviously a lot more to be said there than I, Got to in the episode.

But Owen Heatherly is a really good author, he's a good person to follow on Goodreads to. He has a book that I've read called, The Adventures of Owen had early in the post-soviet space where he does kind of a well-informed travel Journal of each of the post-soviet countries. That's a great book. He has other books that are similar kind of ethnographically, exploring the rise of fascism across Europe. There's also a book called solenoid by Romanian author, murchie got the rescue, that's

what I would. Cite if you are looking for a sort of high-minded Pros, heavy work of literature. That's kind of the most beautiful thing I think I've

ever read. I'm only a third of the way through it. It's kind of like a big maximalist novel that was sort of like, what if Kafka met Boris Yeah it's pretty crazy recommended reading if you're just in for some good Pros as far as video games go, I think Road Warden is a really good, Indie text based RPG with Graphics that will kind of make sense when you see it. Is it really good like meaningful, Choice, driven, text game that really has a rich sense of place.

There is clam man to open mic, which is a demo for the forthcoming clam, Man, 2, I don't even know if there was a clam man. One clam man to is very kind of like a sweet game about being a clam that's very clearly inspired by disco Elysium and it's some beautiful writing and is just kind of like a scaled-down lovely version of this game. There is, of course, Penta mint, which is Josh, Sawyer of obsidians early Renaissance,

Bavarian game. Wherein you're playing a Traveling Artisan. I think that's also very rich in place, and is also like a game about a culture that's far removed from us, and I think the only other thing I would say is it might be fun to plug cause modi's new game betrayal at Club low, which kind of sort of unabashedly borrows the dice mechanics of disco Elysium into kind of a choice based RPG with a note. Incredible Jazz electronic soundtrack. I'm a beta tester for his games,

they're all pretty great. I think that's all the recommendations. I can think of. I hope that you all enjoyed this one. It was a big one. Talk to you soon.