Incline Disco Elysium - The Final Cut - a hardboiled cop show isometric RPG

[Lithium Flower]

It seems intuitive to me that a combat-less game with a lot of humor and a topical narrative would have more mainstream appeal than, say, the majority of CRPG renaissance games

You say that as though you think mainstream opinion has any sort of objective standard they follow.

I did not. There is no objective standard to follow.

The mainstream considers things to be good because they are told said things are good. Whether it's marketing, word-of-mouth, or reviewers, it doesn't matter. Trying to ascribe any other pattern to the madness is plain hubris.

The same people who play easy railroaded popamole like Halo and Gears of War will also play a challenging and frequently confusing game like Dark Souls; because they are told it is good. Just as those same people will go and play Disco, because they are told it is good.

Your analysis requires data that I suspect neither of us have. So how does my heuristic require any more hubris than your own? Seems like it is about as valid as the unsubstantiated gut feeling I presented in the post you are replying to.

The only conclusion to draw from that is such a franchise and genre is going to get much more funding and be much more commercially viable than it was previously.

My only point is that I suspect in the same way that there is a popular demand for games that require a lot of comparatively low-skill action (let's say most mainstream action/fps games) there is probably a popular demand for action-less games (let's say walking sims and visual novels) that comes from an entirely different but rather sizable demographic which Roxor so elegantly identified as soccer dads with big bulgies UwU. It seems intuitive to me that DE has a set of characteristics that would satisfy the latter demand, and I would expect it to be more popular than our beloved Age of Underrails while not quite reaching the levels of popularity of Dragon Rims or Calls of Battles etc. Naturally, some basic sales data showing otherwise would readily prove me wrong.

Whether you think this reflects well or poorly on DE is entirely up to you.

 

[Lacrymas]

You say that as though you think mainstream opinion has any sort of objective standard they follow.

The mainstream considers things to be good because they are told said things are good. Whether it's marketing, word-of-mouth, or reviewers, it doesn't matter. Trying to ascribe any other pattern to the madness is plain hubris.

The same people who play easy railroaded popamole like Halo and Gears of War will also play a challenging and frequently confusing game like Dark Souls; because they are told it is good. Just as those same people will go and play Disco, because they are told it is good.

The only conclusion to draw from that is such a franchise and genre is going to get much more funding and be much more commercially viable than it was previously.

I can't help but sense something good in this. This can be controlled and it in turn can influence the genre preferences or at least which genres are popular to develop for. I'm curious if something will happen now that a "politically charged" and "well written" game like DE has received such praise and debatable adulation. I thought the same thing when D:OS1 and 2 were well received and it seems like we are almost swimming in (not very good) TB RPGs nowadays, we'll see if we'll drown in visual novels next.

 

[Citizen]

I’m a normie

Same. Codex normies unite

 

[Harthwain]

You say it's "pretentious", but for a lot of people the theme and the writing is striking really close home. Mainly because they are during their own midlife crisis.

So, soccer dads

Touche.

Then you make a claim that "soccer dads don't like anything other than read", which is exactly a reverse of what I heard and keep hearing still: that people don't like to read and readership keeps plummeting.

This is less of a point about their being super-glad to do a lot of reading, and more about the fact they get to skip all the "busywork" like combat, inventory tetris, paying attention to big numbers, etc. As I said, it's the same kind of audience that "really loves adventure games, except for the puzzles", which used to be the core target of all the Telltale Games interactive movies.

You may not be wrong in what you're saying here, but I am thinking there is more to it than that. After all, we aren't talking about 70% or 80% positive reviews (which is more or less the norm for universally liked titles). It's 96%. Almost literally everyone loves the game. Both the critics and the players alike. So it isn't simply about developers hitting some large segment of the population, but somehow managing to appeal to nearly everybody. And that's not easy to do, otherwise we'd have a lot of more games doing that and their developers swimming in money.

Then you make a claim that people like something they can't understand.

As if that was anything new. Or rather, it's a case of people's thinking that something is much more sophisticated just because they don't understand it.

What you're talking about sounds more like criticizing paintings in the art gallery. The usual reaction to "I don't understand it" is "This is stoooopid! Me angry! Game bad! BAD! Thumb down!".

And that "politicool content" even matters to people

Of course it does. "Woohoo, I can finally play out my deepest fantasies of being a raging [insert extreme political affiliation here] haha awesome". The major difference here though is that in DE the political content seems to be very tongue-in-cheek, as opposed to super-serious preaching you find in many other places. This in turn isn't all that different from idk people who say they can't wait to play a dark jedi in a Star Wars game.

You have a point here, although I'd rather attribute the same less to the inclusion of actual politicks in the game and more to the sheer hilarity of what you can do (which encompasses more than just politicks - literally everything that's crazy, over the top stuff you usually don't have in other games).

Negative. Numederpa was extremely anti-soccer dad with the slow-ass combat and inventory juggling. I also wouldn't call it particularly pretentious because it was so drab. Further, it lacked DE's gonzo journalism writing style and instead used generic_fantasy_crapola. And finally, it was not at all political, at least not overtly (out-of-character musings and observations about there being no white people a hundred million billion years into the future don't apply).

and most importantly, tton was just a completely uninspired, confused and lifeless piece of trash

I will call Numenera pretentious. No, more than that. It was a goddamn COLOSSUS of pretentiousness and I dare you to find a worthy challenger to even match that. Because writing billions of words only to pad your "developer stats" and be able to tell people how many pages you have is the epitome of pretentiousness.

 

[Harthwain]

I’m a normie

Same. Codex normies unite

Spoiler

 

[TT1]

So, TIME thinks we are closing the 2010s in 2 weeks. Interesting.

Wrong, but interesting.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

So, TIME thinks we are closing the 2010s in 2 weeks. Interesting.

Wrong, but interesting.

2020 is in the 2020s, you window licker.

 

[Prime Junta]

Hey fellow normies, the soundtrack and art book are out

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1173140/Disco_Elysium__Soundtrack_and_Artbooklet/

 

[jebsmoker]

shiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeet, can't buy it till i have more money

 

[The_Mask]

look at all these people pretending that this game isn't like the biggest normie bait you could possibly have

You're a fucking idiot.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Hey fellow normies, the soundtrack and art book are out

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1173140/Disco_Elysium__Soundtrack_and_Artbooklet/

 

[Infinitron]

Darth Roxor points at Disco Elysium's lack of combat as a major reason for why it won GOTY awards. That can't be ruled out, but I don't think I saw many journos really explicitly make the point that they were rewarding the game for not having combat. They just said they thought the writing and concept were really really good. In theory, they might have felt the same even if the game had some combat in it.

Re: "normie bait", perhaps this is the term you're really looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait

 

[The_Mask]

Darth Roxor points at Disco Elysium's lack of combat as a major reason for why it won GOTY awards. That can't be ruled out, but I don't think I saw many journos really explicitly make the point that they were rewarding the game for not having combat. They just said they thought the writing and concept were really really good. In theory, they might have felt the same even if the game had some combat in it.

Re: "normie bait", perhaps this is the term you're really looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait

You must really want that sweet sweet ELEX first hand scoop, because it's rare to see Jewish people lawyering so hard. <3

 

[tripedal]

>$20 for a pdf file

Come on now, for that price I want a high quality physical artbook.

 

[The_Mask]

 

[fantadomat]

Darth Roxor points at Disco Elysium's lack of combat as a major reason for why it won GOTY awards. That can't be ruled out, but I don't think I saw many journos really explicitly make the point that they were rewarding the game for not having combat. They just said they thought the writing and concept were really really good. In theory, they might have felt the same even if the game had some combat in it.

Re: "normie bait", perhaps this is the term you're really looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_bait

Ahhhh the game does have combat even if it is the text based type.

 

[Haba]

Darth Roxor points at Disco Elysium's lack of combat as a major reason for why it won GOTY awards. That can't be ruled out, but I don't think I saw many journos really explicitly make the point that they were rewarding the game for not having combat. They just said they thought the writing and concept were really really good. In theory, they might have felt the same even if the game had some combat in it.

Surely we've never seen reviewers giving good reviews to something that thas gotten good reviews from others. And surely there is no evidence of "collusion" between reviewers either.

But the fact remains - DE is a great game. And it is one-of-a-kind. I've played 300+ cRPGs to completion, yet Disco still felt fresh.

The next Disco won't have the same advantage and it will be judged more harshly. That's how it goes.

 

[Harthwain]

The next Disco won't have the same advantage and it will be judged more harshly. That's how it goes.

Maybe. Then again, the biggest strong point of the game is the writing. If they can keep it up, while adding a lot of other stuff - like, implementing more of the city (here is the map of Jamrock District alone and that'd be like 1/3 of the city. At least according to this: it mentions Revachol West, Revachol East and La Delta), throwing in way more combat-related interactions, etc. - I don't see a reason for it to be received any worse. Think BG2 to BG1. They have the engine already, so the real work - besides writing - should be creating assets for various locations.

 

[AwesomeButton]

All conspiracy theories and butthurt artists aside, the truth is that Disco got famous due to the traffic collected from clicks on the link in my signature.

Thank you all, and do continue following its spirit:

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Bravo! Continue, then, in the mediocre and vulgar epigones of the world. So what if everything is incomprehensibly shit and you can see it. Take no responsibility

The screeching in this thread is adorable. Keep it up, I'm having great laughs.

 

[Atchodas]

All the leaking butthurt in this thread is just the same as Disco gameplay isn't it

 

[Harthwain]

Try harder.

 

[Prime Junta]

I hate to break this to you Atchodas but somebody disagreeing with some damn fool thing you said doesn’t necessarily mean they’re butthurt about it.

 

[Atchodas]

I hate to break this to you Atchodas but somebody disagreeing with some damn fool thing you said doesn’t necessarily mean they’re butthurt about it.

 

[Prime Junta]

my Christmas miracle is cunta dead in a ditch

Just for you I’ll sign off the Codex for the rest of the decade.

Merry Christmas and happy New Year everyone and see you in the roaring 2020s!

 

[Atchodas]

Yes yes you should definitely tend to your wounds and take some time off