You earn another skill point for every 100 XP you gain, collected by checking off tasks from your quest list or by simply having conversations with people and uncovering new information. They’re as much in-game tips as they are a way to gate your progress. With high Empathy you might get a voice telling you not to push too hard in a victim interrogation, but with high Half Light (a skill that allows your to interrogate suspects with more force) your brain might tell you to just punch them in the face. These skills aren’t just passive ways of sending you down different paths each one is a distinct voice in your detective’s head, represented in the dialogue window during conversations. Want to talk to that necktie? Start messing with the David Lynch-inspired Inland Empire measurement.
How about intimidate a witness? Beef up your Physical Instrument total. Want to command respect from a member of the public? Spend points on Authority. Each of these consists of six wonderfully strange skills (like Intellect’s Encyclopedia), which bring their own bonuses. Your character sheet is made up of four distinct pillars: Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics. “If that isn’t varied enough for you, you can build your own detective from the ground up instead. It’s a gorgeously designed isometric RPG that makes you think at every turn of its painterly streets. As you stumble around your wrecked bedroom searching for remnants of your former self, it quickly becomes clear that this isn’t simply a whodunnit, but a journey that will challenge you to solve crises on both profoundly personal and societal levels. A part of your consciousness described as your ancient reptilian brain – which you literally engage in conversation with – attempts to persuade you to give up your quest even as your snivelling limbic system battles against it. You can’t even remember your name, let alone that you are a cop on a murder case.
Everything that surrounds this core mystery is far from simple, however, not least being that you kick things off with an almighty dose of hangover-induced amnesia. And, somehow, it manages to make all of this fun and, surprisingly often, funny.The premise of Disco Elysium is straightforward: A body has been discovered, hanged from a looming tree in the backyard of a hostel, and it’s up to you to work out how it got there over the course of the 30-hour story. Through sharply written dialogue and an expertly crafted world, it uses some unique game mechanics - such as debating against 24 different sections of your own brain - to create an experience that will stay with me for a long time. It takes the age-old mechanics of tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons and twists them in strange ways around a macabre tale of violence, poverty, and a society on the brink of collapse.
Like all good detective stories, what appears simple at first becomes so much more than that in Disco Elysium – and here it gets so, so much weirder, too.
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