![]() ZA/UM has since cited several different sources of inspiration for this game, from Planetscape: Torment to True Detective, political and philosophical literature to classic painters. It’s somewhat genre-bending, mixing elements of a gritty detective noir, classic tabletop RPG, and socio-political manifesto into an isometric interactive narrative that transcends the expectations you might have about any or all of those things. Time to get to work.ĭisco Elysium, developed and published by ZA/UM, originally debuted in 2019 to resounding universal acclaim and has earned many awards since then. ![]() Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi waits for you downstairs. ![]() The first conversation outside of this room informs you of three things: you are a cop, you’ve been drinking a lot, and there’s been a dead body hanging from a tree out back for several days. Through blaring context clues and the voices in your head, you come to understand that you’ve bendered yourself into total retrograde amnesia. It swiftly becomes clear that you’ve done this to yourself for some reason – the pain of it all, the coming end, the inherent disquiet of the body itself, the ‘ex-something’ – and you can beg for the darkness to continue in perpetuity.Įventually, you awake to a hostel room in ruins, every inch of it defiled in the wake of a bender the degree of which is yet unknown. You drift within the abyss of a cataclysmic hangover, the only voices dominating your thoughts belonging to your Ancient Reptilian Brain and your Limbic system - your most basic and instinctual functions keeping you alive. So if you’re like me, here’s a really long-winded review of the whole thing. The additions it makes to the base game are noteworthy, but it also just feels like a more refined version of it, and it was this update that finally made me go back and play through it completely. It’s also deeply, deeply funny, a lot of dark and absurd humor that comes naturally to the universe and the eccentric characters with whom you have to try and cooperate.ĭisco Elysium: The Final Cut feels like a good place to write a review. The way this game weaponizes nostalgia as a way to examine the most pathetic and most arrogant parts of yourself - I found myself reconciling pieces of myself with my own ideology and the world around me. The second-person aspect drew me in completely, and that first night’s dream is something that I still think about in particular. I’ve played through it a few times now in slightly different ways, as though trying to scratch an itch. I found myself reaching for it every day when I should have been working, and it bled into my thoughts at night.
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