Like many others before me, I find myself compelled to write about Disco Elysium every time I play it (which is four or five times now). But it’s difficult to figure out what to even say. Every time I start to write, I find that I am just recounting the story or writing an explainer on the lore in the hopes that re-telling it can get something about it across, something that seems ineffable.
As I attempt to get my thoughts out, be warned: I am not going to mark or avoid spoilers.
The lightning summary of Disco Elysium is this: you are a Detective who has woken up in a room that is not yours with a killer hangover, your clothes scattered around the room, and–seemingly–no memory of what led you here. You stumble your way down the stairs (if you don’t die trying to grab your Hideous Necktie off the ceiling fan–which is exactly what happened to me on my first playthrough) and meet Kim Kitsuragi, your straight-man partner who is Here to Help. He explains that you’re both in Martinaise, this crumbling neighborhood in the city of Revachol, to solve the mystery of The Hanged Man who is currently decomposing in the courtyard behind the cafeteria-hostel where you woke up. Hilarity (and many other emotions) ensues. As you progress, you discover more about this presque-réaliste world and the characters that inhabit it, working your way through mind-numbingly large dialog trees. You will learn about the failed Communist revolution, the international coalition keeping the city under its boot, the Union strike, the rise and fall of disco, the Crown corporations—sorry, “indotribes”—that control nearly all the world’s commerce, and the mystical Pale which separates the world’s continents and causes those that cross it to lose their memory and their minds. In the end, after wheeling through a spinning carousel of suspects, you learn that the murder was committed not by any of these forces you’ve encountered throughout the bulk of the story, but by an aging Communist deserter who has gone insane in his isolation.
And then you have an in-depth philosophical conversation with a ten-foot praying mantis.
There are a few key components to Disco Elysium that make it stick in my head like glue: the depth of the “historical” lore of the world and its politics, the roundness of the characters, the perfectly executed quasi-realism of the city of Revachol, and how all of this melds perfectly with the soundtrack and the art and the gameplay. Here, I’ll primarily focus on the lore and politics. Even though I’ll be using examples, I’ll try to refrain from simply recounting the game.
The lore of Disco Elysium is immense. Of the million or so words that the game contains, surely no more than half are directly related to the actual (purported) main plot of the murder mystery. The other half of those million words must be characters, books, and internal thoughts explaining the history and state of the world to our Detective. The extent to which this is fleshed out is hard to convey; in my fifth playthrough, I was still discovering new pieces of information I hadn’t learned before. Through the conversations the Detective engages in and books he reads, we are able to learn about the ancient discovery of intercontinental travel, the colonization of the newly discovered land, the now-50-year-old Communist revolution which overthrew the tsar suzerain, and the international coalition which crushed the revolution. All of these historical events are enriched by a rich cast of historical characters who are nearly as fleshed out as the live characters we meet throughout the game.
Disco Elysium manages to make learning about history exciting by tying it directly into the game itself. There are four core ideologies in the game:
The believers in these ideologies, these parties of the revolution and its following events, are still active in some form in the “present day” of the game. The details of the events you hear will depend on who you are talking to, just as you would expect in real life. If you ask a Communist about the day the Coalition attacked, you will be told about the pure evil of capital indiscriminately shelling Revachol to put down the revolution; if you ask a member of the Coalition (a Moralist), they will tell you that they “stopped the disaster of the Revolution” and highlight the economic growth Revachol experienced (many years, and deeply unevenly) afterwards.
The game largely depicts fascism as irredeemably evil. Most of the fascist characters the player encounters are racist almost to the point of caricature. The main exception to this is Rene, The Old Soldier, who fought for the suzerain all those decades ago. Rene is an angry, bitter old man who pines over his lost cause and blames the Communists and, to a lesser extent, the Moralists for the desperate situation Revachol (and especially Martinaise) finds itself in. Through the dialog choices offered to the player, the game admits a certain pride to Rene and some modicum of respect for his dedication and service. This is not the same as ceding any ground on his beliefs, however.
On the surface, Moralism sounds nice enough. Even the name is quite pleasant. Who could argue with being moral? Your partner Kim, everyone’s favorite character, is (or was, in his 20s) a Moralist! However, when you dig into the subtext (and when you unlock certain Thoughts and conversations), you discover the game holds more disdain for Moralism and centrism than just about any other ideology. Moralists are responsible for the annihilation of Martinaise, and the decision to not rebuild it for to serve as a reminder against any who would start a new revolution. They are responsible for the massacre of the Communists (and, it is implied, a large part of the civilian population of Revachol) during the “liberation.” They are without true beliefs and without conviction; maintaining the status quo of capitalism and “democratic principles” is their only priority. Nevermind that Revachol has no elected government; nevermind the poverty and environmental destruction; nevermind that Coalition warships are still hovering over the city 50 years after the end of the war. Centrism is what allows all of this to happen. It is what turns a blind eye to war crimes committed by the victor.
There are very few ultraliberals found in Martinaise. Of course, hyper capitalists are rarely drawn towards locales which force them to confront the outcome of the free market for those who do not end up on top. The most prominent ultraliberal the player can interact with is Joyce Messier, a negotiation rep for the Wild Pines Group, the company against which the strike is occurring. Somewhat sinisterly on the surface, Joyce is portrayed as one of the kindest and most likable characters in the entire game. This facade hides the fact that the liberals sold out Revachol to the Coalition. They are equally as responsible for the death and destruction that that entailed as the Moralists. Not only that, but their continuing influence on Moralism helps to ensure the vast economic inequality continues and corporate interests are placed above individuals. Ultraliberals are responsible for policies like that which seemingly place a higher price on corporate espionage than murder.
Finally, we come to Communism, which in the world of Disco Elysium has experienced much the same catastrophic failure as it has in our own. Very few Communists are encountered in the world of Disco Elysium. Joyce states that this is because the Coalition wiped them all out. Besides the literal meaning–the millions of dead revolutionaries who were all “shot in the head”–the constant reminders of the Commune’s failure make it impossible to rebuild a revolutionary class. In a sense, this is Timothy Snyder’s “Politics of Inevitability” which capitalism and Western liberalism have established in our world as well: “a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done.” There are no Communists left in Martinaise because the Coalition has established in the hearts of Revacholians there are no alternatives for Moralism and incrementalism. In one of the most tragic and haunting lines of the game, even the Deserter, the final holdout of the Communists, admits defeat:
THE DESERTER: Hiding, fishing, waiting…
THE DESERTER: Always waiting.
YOU: For what?
THE DESERTER: For her to return.
YOU: Her who?
THE DESERTER: Girl child Revolution.
YOU: Girl child Revolution?
THE DESERTER: Always…
YOU: Nothing in history is guaranteed. But revolution is still a possibility.
THE DESERTER: No. The material base for an uprising has eroded. The working class has betrayed mankind and themselves…
THE DESERTER: The historic opportunity for a revolution has passed. It will not come back anymore. However hard I try, whatever I do.
Added in The Final Cut edition of the game is a series of political side quests, one of which allows you to meet two students, Steban and Ulixes, who may be the only optimistic Communists left in Martinaise. They continue to carry the torch of Revolution, continue to hope. The game portrays them as hopelessly idealistic, yet noble. It hangs a lampshade on their youth, admitting to a degree that their inexperience is what allows them to continue to dream this way. However, it also openly admires them and venerates this. To paraphrase a saying that I normally deplore: in a world so devoid of expectations for the future, even hope can be a radical act.
YOU: Wait, you’re saying communism is some kind of religion?
STEBAN: Only in this very specific sense. Communism doesn’t dangle any promises of eternal bliss or reward. The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we’re willing to work and fight and die for it.
YOU: But what if humanity keeps letting us down?
STEBAN: Nobody said fulfilling the proletariat’s historic role would be easy. (He smiles a tight smile) It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn’t mean we can simply give up.
YOU: Even when they ignore us?
STEBAN: Even then.
ULIXES: Mazov says it’s the arrogance of capital that will be its ultimate undoing. It does not believe it can fail, which is why it must fail.
VOLITION: So young. So unbearably young…
STEBAN: I guess you could say we believe it because it’s impossible. (He looks at the scattered matchboxes on the ground) It’s our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain… like this…
In fact, this may be the most optimistic conversations in the game. It takes tremendous dedication on the player’s part to even reach this dialog. They must repeatedly make leftist choices in conversations, internalize a Thought Cabinet idea, and work through a quest that has them zig-zag all over town and can potentially take several in-game days to complete (and, if they’re not careful, can get locked-out by other main story events). The reward is a peek into the beliefs underlying all of Disco Elysium.
Despite online commentary to the contrary (written largely by those who seem to be totally incapable of understanding subtext), Disco Elysium is not a cynical game. It wants us to examine our ideologies and it is willing to engage in an honest dialog with most of them (except fascism, which is not worthy of the respect that implies) and that includes critique. However, all of the most positive events in the game revolve around communal action. The Hardy Boys look after The Pigs, an elderly woman who is off her medication and suffering from hallucinations. The Union, even though it may be corrupt at the top, takes care of the people of Martinaise. The women of the Fishing Village look out for one another. The Speed Freaks establish a dance club in an abandoned church to try to capture some, any spark of hope.
EGG HEAD: There needs to be a club for anodic music in there. NEEDS TO! Everyone hates each other. Everybody hates it here, it’s all just drugs and we’re slaves and I can’t… we are running out of time! We need a win, Andre. I promise this will be a win! We won’t cook speed in there, we’ll do it clean, we’ll do it true! We’ll do it sober and real and beautiful.
In the wake of Communism’s failure, it’s hard to find a source of optimism. Disco Elysium’s core tenant is that even in the absence of revolution, even under the unceasing crush of the boot of capitalism and Moralism, the best thing we can do is choose to help each other. Directly, defiantly, one step at a time. Although they are trite and overplayed, there is also some truth in the refrains about the value of hope. In the days of Covid-19, these are ever more present. Yet it’s true that without a belief in the attainability of a better world, there can be no revolution, large or small.
In dark times, should the stars also go out?