Disco Elysium: The Language As An Art Form
Thoughts on the 2019 living novel developed by ZA/UM.
During the second semester of 2019, playing games wasn’t something I could do frequently anymore, I was waking up early to go to work and was going to sleep really, really late because of college stuff, in the meantime — understand it as being in public transportation — I was listening to a lot of music and a lot of podcasts, among them, one about games caught my attention regarding a new indie RPG that had just recently came out, and that’s when I first heard about Disco Elysium. That same day I took a quick look at some gameplays, read some reviews and thoughts about the game, and ended getting interested in it, even though, it didn’t take much time for me to realize I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it the way the game deserved if I chose to play it at that time, obviously due to the minimum amount of time needed to beat it. Even so, Disco Elysium kept me curious, so I bought it, waiting for the time I’d be able to play it decently, and for my happiness, the time came.
Much has already been said about Disco Elysium, but I’d like focusing here on something I don’t see that much in the game industry, something Robert Kurvitz — lead writer and lead designer of Disco Elysium — and his team of writers made astonishingly, in a level of sensibility that had frequently caught me off guard while playing it. That is the use of writing not just as a means to communicate, but as an art in its purest form.
Besides as an indie game, Disco Elysium expresses itself as almost pure literature, immersing you in that world and its conflicts as if you were playing verses taken away from a book, hand-painted right in front of your eyes.
I couldn’t tell you the last time I’ve felt that while playing a game, neither if another game has made me feel that as much as Disco Elysium has. Everything around you breathes so perfectly in Revachol — capital of the game’s world -, even the most basically made animation can say a lot, everything because the texts were so well put together, that the experience is something like reading dialogs written with the precision of a poet’s pen.
Since the game and its world are presented for you by dialogues in 99,9% of the cases, words handle great power, one of the innumerous examples of this is the skill “Shivers”, which makes you “aware” of the city and its streets, delivering to us beautifully written details about Revachol, it’s buildings and corners, talents and cracks, giving life to it, making you almost feel the words scratching your cheek as if they were cold breeze, mixed with the raindrops of a cloudy afternoon in Martinaise — a district of Revachol, where the game takes form -, after a revelation about what you should do next to get closer to complete the case you see yourself in. This power given to the words and this conscious sensitivity delivered even in more complex dialogs during the gameplay couldn’t be different — or at least shouldn’t -, otherwise which would be the joy in playing something like Disco Elysium? And even if it had some, it would be, probably, a “pretty good well-constructed with an innovative skill tree and nice dialog mechanics RPG made by an indie studio”, which would definitely be a thing, but it wouldn’t be so Disco — yeah players, get that -, and Robert Kurvitz knew it.
Robert Kurvitz is a writer before a game designer, Disco Elysium itself is situated in the world of his 2013 published novel “Sacred and Terrible Air”, and that tells us a lot about the literary aesthetic and feeling that crosses the entire game and accompany us in our journey to solve a mercenary’s murder, the game main plot.
The language being eloquently used as an art form is what you can mostly find in the game, for instance, the dialogs during the protagonist nightmares, the voices on his head, speaking with him, making him float throughout a state of almost-unconsciousness, but still there, with no place where he could run for, without the chance of effectively resting. Every protagonist’s attempt to sleep is a particular show gave to us by ZA/UM, since the cello deep sounds in the background — probably a cello -, giving the feeling of a nightmare drowned in melancholy and depression, passing through the stunning voice acting by Mikee W. Goodman for both “Ancient Reptilian Brain” and “Limbic System”, who performed those genuine poems before him with excellence, enhancing perfectly alongside the game soundtrack the message from the dialogs, delivering to us the essence of what makes Disco Elysium so unique.
Everything around the world built in the game seems to have its start in conflicts, deep questionable choices, morality issues, and that comes from every corner, from everyone. The whole district of Martinaise is a piece of art, with a rich history about revolutions, kings, and the ghost of greater times, yet, those are not our time. The reality calls you telling you just have a murder to solve in an almost forgotten city, right now, where everything cracks. It seems like every resident of Martinaise is a reflection of the district, not only because they suffer from the results of a history of civil war, not only because they’re hostages of great institutions politics, but because despite all that, Martinaise is their home, owns their histories and, as the district, everyone seems to be, someway, cracked by their own lives.
A girl who lives where she can, thrown in the streets, exposed to the reality of gangs, murder, theft and drug trafficking. A girl who does not dream about becoming anything, but it’s an artist by instinct, by nature, carrying nothing but hate against you “pigs” as she calls, keeping, perhaps, that same angry Basquiat kept, without remembering exactly why, knowing that the feeling it’s just there, hidden somewhere she can’t achieve.
A lot about the world wouldn’t have such an impact if it wouldn’t for the distinctive way ZA/UM works with the language on Disco — obviously, as said before, alongside other important aspects. If the game wants to communicate you a failed try in a dice scroll to open a door, one that you felt had something strange and could hide something important, it just has tons of ways about how to approach it for you, the player. The game can say you just failed, followed by a regular message about how you did not open the door, and that’s ok, that’s what most of the games do, but on the other hand, the response could be… unexpected? And Disco actually does it once in this exactly same case. After you’d felt something strange about a door right before your eyes, you can receive the following text dialog in case of failure trying opening it (Inland Empire is a skill you can upgrade, and like the other ones, it talks to you as a voice in your head, as an aspect of your own character):
“Inland Empire — No, there’s more to this. You get this strange *feeling*.
You — What feeling?
Inland Empire — Hard to say, it’s gone now. Feelings pass, you see.
Especially the small ones.”
Then it’s gone, you’ve failed.
See? The approach here is completely different from what we expect as a response, the language is used in such a subtle way, it makes you even more curious about what’s on the other side, giving another layer regarding what was nothing more than a strange door just a second ago. These texts work a lot like poetry, even being just thoughts, just a dialog of the player with himself, and this is why you can play hours and hours of just walking and reading and it doesn’t turn out as an exhaustive thing, you’re into that world, into those conflicts, you’re walking on a painting and dialoguing a lot, with poetry.
At length, Disco Elysium rewards who plays it with attention, enjoying the dialogs, not running to finish it quickly, and has so much to tell that just one playthrough isn’t enough to truly understand the majority of the facets of the game, the same way these few words aren’t enough to synthesize the amazing personality of the protagonists and some other delightful characters — not you Cunoesse, not you -, or the incredible game soundtrack from British Sea Power alongside with the meanings behind the selection for such a distinguishing art style for the game. I’ll surely play this game again, enjoy it again, and, mainly, understand it again, as if it was a brilliant novel telling me to read it just one last time, because in this case, I honestly believe it is.
