I just started playing this game for the first time and made my character ridiculously physically weak.
My first death came from reading something so sad I assume he died from the stress. It’s fucking hilarious and I will NOT be restarting with a different build we are frail to the end here baby.
No, that’s not what kills you, they’re talking about the Oranjes book about two lovers that drift apart that deals 1 damage to each pool.
The letter just shuffles your to a cutscene, inspecting the car immediately afterwards is what lost me my first hour of progress though.
This post inspired me to play some more after not touching the game for a couple weeks. I just died of a heart attack because I knocked on a door too hard and hurt my hand at 1 HP.
I tried something similar with the first Fallout. Character creation was wide open, but according to the manual, you \*need\* some combat abilities.
Well screw that. I will only play characters with no combat abilities. After fighting the first rat for half an hour, barely surviving, I was rewarded with another rat to fight.
I already bought it and played it for a couple hours, months ago, then I guess I lost interest.
Now when people talk about the game it doesn't make sense? There's no character build? You wake up as a washed up detective? It's been a while.
I should ... also play this game. I should probably start over from scratch, too.
There's a small amount of character building before you start the game. You distribute points that make you better at certain categories of skills, then you pick a signature skill. It's a really quick process and you can even shortcut it by selecting one of the preset point distributions, so I'm not surprised if anybody forgets.
I would absolutely encourage you to start again and play all the way through at least once. I can't say enough good things about the game.
Just to add what others said, there *are* builds and they completely change the game because among other things they can lead to unique encounters and dialogue. For starters at the beginning there are 3 set starter builds, from which the only one I wouldn’t recommend for a first playthrough is the Thinker (light blue one) because it’s very lore heavy and its best played after you have some notion of the world and is hungry for more.
Funny, I'd suggest it for a first timer so that you actually get some context given to you, though I can see how that can be overwhelming. I personally found that Encyclopaedia chiming in and giving context to cities, places, people was massively useful in understanding conversations for the first time.
I also recommend relatively high Motorics first playthrough as well, because high perception is really nice to have in a conversation, and opens some of the best plot twists in the game when inspecting the corpse.
Damn. I did one playthrough as Thinker and was literally about to make a negative comment about how the lore was too deep and we didn't enough details for it to really make sense
I made the same mistake and just wanted to warn people haha. I think the Sensitive one is the best for beginners because it’s all about vibes and paranormal shit which are greatly entertaining.
After that and if you’re looking to know more about pretty much everything, the Thinker is great and makes a lot more sense!
I would so play this game, but it honestly breaks me every single time I try.
The only advice I can give is to do the opposite of what you might instinctively do as a player of an RPG, and choose a character that is as much unlike you as you possibly can - because what this game does is *torture you.* It inflicts existential cringe on the character you choose until he should be dead, yet somehow he keeps living. I empathise.
I noticed that even though I spent every play session gasping with delight at the beauty of the writing, and the visuals, and the concepts, and the sounds, after each session my IRL sanity meter was just a little lower than it was before I started.
I stopped for my own sake, man. That game doesn't fuck around.
Yeah, it's not friendly to people who are depressive or struggling with suicidal thoughts, especially. Though the catharsis of the finale is still *so worth it.*
Yeah it's funny like that. Like it's a game that could totally sink you further into a depressive state, but the ending honestly goes a long way towards helping people who find themselves struggling.
The other thing I'd add is that the game does actually expect you to read and consider the dialog when making choices. If you do the typical RPG thing of working through all the branches of the dialog tree until you run out of stuff to talk about, you're inevitably going to have bad things happen to you.
There are 100% builds in the game. It’s very significant. Like the difference between playing a bard and a barbarian. Changes literally everything about every encounter throughout the game. Different builds will net you an entirely different experience from someone else who played one you did not.
Maybe try the Sensitive build to start. I tried going with what I thought sounded interesting and I think I ended up on that kind of a build, with Inland Empire for Psyche and some mind stuff, ended up getting into all sorts of skills and fumbled my way through pretty well.
There are also Thoughts that you'll generate through different events that you can 'internalize' to unlock more stat tweaks (can go up or down with some stats) or dialogue options, even special abilities, so definitely pay attention when those pop up as you have to activate the process to internalize them, and they take in-game time to complete (while you're doing other actions basically). Once internalized it's a permanent 'addition' to your brain, unless you spend a level up point to remove them. You can also spend points to unlock more Thought slots.
You can even die in the very first room. The game begins with MC waking up completely hungover and almost naked. So your first task is to dress yourself up, but a piece of your clothing (I think a tie?) is hanging from the ceiling fan. Which is spinning. And you can actually die from over-exertion by trying to grab it. >!You're supposed to turn off the fan before grabbing the tie!<
To that point the scenario in the screenshot isn’t a soft lock either. You never have to meet with the union leader. Or if you choose to and don’t have the points to survive it, you can do some other stuff and level up.
I think it's a universal experience of people who dumped physique to die to the fan sixty seconds in. It happened on my first playthrough and that's when I knew the game was a masterpiece.
I did physique of 1 my first play though. Died on the fan right away. But also managed a miraculous 12 to knock out Measurehead. Fully planning on boosting physique and motorics on my next play
Such a god damn beautiful aspect of the game. Holy crap. It's a shame phys also makes you a psychopath. I love it, but it's disturbing!
I honestly feel like this game sort of belongs in the psychological horror genre, I dunno how anyone else feels?
I was softlocked into being racist cause I'm too weak
(bypassing the Measurehead requires eitger an agility-based check, a strength-based one, or internalizing Advanced Race Theory)
I will mention, I don't think internalizing Advanced Race Theory actually makes you racist. Cause when he asks you what you learned, you can just tell him 'Advanced Race Theory means whatever you want because you're just making shit up' and he laughs and lets you go.
(Unless I thoroughly misunderstood that dialogue, which is possible)
Oh yeah, I remember that. That was weird. In the first version, he wasn't voiced, do I remember right? And in the second version, he was, and it was... weird.
The description for Advanced Race Theory and the bonuses it gives you definitely suggest that you haven’t *really* fully become racist, just that wrapping your head around the aesthetics-obsessed worldview of an actual racist like Measurehead turns out to be really stimulating bit of exercise for your sense of imagination and conceptualisation (as you visualise all these stereotypes and weird classifications).
Iirc if you go the route of internalizing the thought to get past Measurehead, Evrart teases you about how you had to “become racist” to get to him or something along those lines. Of course it’s Evrart so he’s just trying to get under your skin but it probably has something to do with why players would think that’s what internalizing the thought is.
Of course, it probably also means they never discovered the steps to *actually* became racist in the game.
that's not what softlocked means. softlocking is creating a situation where the game is still technically playable, but it's impossible to advance or go back, so all you can really do is move around in a relatively small area and do interactions that don't advance the game. the only thing to do is abandon the save file.
for example, the first time I played Skyrim, I ran straight through the main story, and ended up at Skuldafn temple at only level 18. the only way to leave Skuldafn once you arrive is through the portal to Sovngarde which can only be opened after killing the dragon priest protecting it, who I was unable to defeat because of my low level. I had my game set to autosave each time I entered a new area, and there are quite a few areas you have to travel through within Skuldafn, and the load menu only lets you choose from a handful of recent autosaves, so I couldn't go back to a point before I arrived at Skuldafn. so I couldn't go forward, couldn't go back, but the game was still technically playable, i.e. I was still free to run around within Skuldafn, kill enemies, loot chests, etc., but none of that would actually do me any good. that's an example of a softlock
Can't you just run through the portal to sovngarde before the priest closes it? I'm pretty sure the priest has to re-close it each time you load the area.
If you have to abandon the save file that's a hard lock. Softlock means restarting the game/reloading your save. That's why it's soft
Edit: having read more comments there are clearly many people on both sides of this and we need to recognise there are three scenarios and thus we need three terms and arguing about two terms is never going to solve anything.
* You cannot progress by playing the game; you must quit and load your save
* Your save file loads to a state where you cannot progress
* Your save file loads to a state where you can't even really play
The first scenario is the softest lock and differs from the other two in the aspect of whether the save file is still viable. The last is the hardest lock and differs from the other two in the aspect of whether the player can still make actions (although one might argue there is a blurred line there). Is the middle one soft or hard? The important thing is that everyone has a strong opinion and squabbles endlessly about it. Good work team.
A hardlock is when the game itself locks up, as in constant crashes or freezes or something. A softlock is where the game still works, you just can't progress through or leave an area that you're trapped in. You are right that reloading is often a valid strategy to get out of a softlock though
Often but not always. Hence two different scenarios. You are in camp "scenario two is soft". Lots of people are not. Very often people who speak the same language use different words to describe the same thing, that doesn't make either wrong. You can argue it's inefficient or whatever but that's how language works and fighting it is tiresome. I'm so bored of my British compatriots getting all snobby about (association) football being called soccer. Now I'm bored of people yelling about whether a save file that cannot be completed but where you can still walk without crashing is hard or soft locked.
Us brits complaining about Americans calling it soccer is especially weird, considering we're the ones who called it soccer. We only stopped in the 70s because it sounded too American, despite it being a British English word.
My eyes glazed over halfway through this comment. I'm glad some people get off on this. Brings me hope. Hope for the nerds of the future. You're still out there, being unaccountably interested in the infinitesimally significant.
it seems like there's actually three sides here: group A thinks scenarios 1&2 are soft, 3 is hard. group B thinks scenario 1 is soft, 2&3 are hard. group C (which is the usage I'm familiar with) thinks 2 is soft, 3 is hard, 1 is not "locked," so it's something different altogether.
interestingly, what group B considers to be "hard" and what group C considers to be "locked" are the same thing, namely, the need to abandon the save
You don't actually have to fight the priest, you just need to get to its staff before it does, create the portal, and jump in. You can beat the whole game without killing anything
But you could've just temporarily lowered the difficulty to minimum until you got past the priest or both lowered the difficulty and spent some time grinding levels until you could beat him. That's not a soft-lock, just a PITA.
> I was still free to run around within Skuldafn, kill enemies, loot chests, etc.,
I've played the game; the part he's talking about has respawning enemies scattered about. If you don't want to wait for them to respawn you can just save and reload to make them come back immediately. That's not a soft-lock if you can grind your way out, it's just annoying.
I got softlocked in day 2 in disco elysium because I couldn't get enough money for the hotel lol, got the special dumpster ending but had to cheat in money because I didn't want to actually start over
If you can get out of it then it's not a lock. A softlock is when you can still play the game but for whatever reason completing it has become impossible. For example killing a plot-important NPC in Morrowind (though in this case the game is kind enough to warn you.)
No, it's really not. A hardlock is when the game freezes, consistently crashes, locks you in place so you can't move, or otherwise becomes completely unplayable. A softlock is when the game is completely playable, but some condition for progressing in the game becomes impossible to meet. If you can get out of it, it's not a lock, just a shitty situation.
A hardlock is when you can't play the game at all. Like you jammed yourself in a piece of scenery and can't get out or the game autosaved just before something killed you. If you can get out of it, you're not locked.
Loading an older save, obviously, does not count as "getting out of it", since either kind of lock can be solved that way (when it's an option).
ah, I thought "soft" referred to still being able to play the game despite being unable to advance past a certain point, and a hardlock would be a situation where you're unable to give any inputs at all, like being completely frozen for some reason, or immediately dying whenever you load, and both softlocks and hardlocks are only resolvable by starting a new save
You have the right definition. A hard lock is pretty much the game refusing to let you play at all, such as a UI element not closing and you having no control. It's just a step down from the game crashing.
I literally never heard of save files having to do with anything.
You were correct about the definition of hardlocks, but usually scenarios that require the game to be restarted or an older save point to be loaded are still considered softlocks, even if they don't force you to move to a new save file.
So like, getting stuck at the dragon priest fight still would've been a softlock even if you'd saved before traveling to it, because it requires you to take action outside of the game itself to fix. It's just way less annoying to fix than having to redo the entire playthrough.
While you're right here (or right enough for government work, anyway), your Skyrim example is not a good example of a softlock. It wasn't logically *impossible* for you to progress, just massively difficult to defeat the priest at such a low level.
If you're a good enough intellectual, you can also tell him that his theory is shit. Or you can be *so bad at being racist* that he just helps you out of pity.
*Image Transcription: Tumblr*
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**prokopetz**
Like most old-school RPGs with unguided character creation, *Disco Elysium* makes it possible to softlock yourself very early by building a character who mathematically cannot survive the tutorial mission. However, **un**like most old-school RPGs with unguided character creation, every way in which you can do this is objectively hilarious.
---
**krogoregon**
come on, you can't just say this without giving examples lol
---
**prokopetz**
Without giving too much away, there's an NPC you *must* meet in their office who offers you a chair to sit down; refusing to sit in the chair requires passing a Volition skill check. If you do sit down, the chair proves to be so incredibly uncomfortable that you have to make a Pain Threshold saving throw or suffer a single point of damage.
It's completely possible - albeit very unlikely - to put yourself in a position where your Volition is too low to refuse to sit down, your Pain Threshold is toolow to avoid taking damage from doing so, you have only a single point of Health remaining *and* you've already exhausted every source of healing that's accessible to you at that point.
If all of those factors line up, you cannot proceed because you lack the confidence to refuse to sit in a chair that's so uncomfortable it kills you.
\#gaming #video games #game design #disco elysium #death mention #disco elysium spoilers #spoilers
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I remember someone told me that DE is an amazing game because it makes the concept of failure absolutely hilarious, i did not get what he meant but checked out the game and as soon as i started, i died of a heart attack from trying to get a piece of clothing from the ceiling [fan.As](https://fan.As) soon as that happened i was a fan and adored every moment the game offered.
> Some older versions of the game would even crash at that point, endlessly waiting for the death animation to complete, when in fact it can't start because the "sitting on chair" animation takes priority.
Yeah it's known lmao
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnintentionallyUnwinnable
To be clear, I don't think I'm actually stuck, I just got a bit frustrated with the fact that it seemed like I'd die (in such a dumb way) no matter what I did so I had to set it down for a bit. I think I could heal in between? I'm not totally sure how it works tbh. Is it a timing thing? Speed-draw some alcohol?
My main focus for points is Psyche (5), with only 1 Physique, and 3 in the other two. I've allocated level up points into Empathy, Logic, and Inland Empire.
As for side quests, I'm not really sure what counts as a Side Quest in this game, to be honest. Everything seems like it could or should connect (because I'm a Superstar Detective, obvs). But I was putting off talking to this guy as long as I could because I was hoping to find an alternate solution to getting the guy down from the tree since Kitsuragi seemed to think it wasn't a good idea to let the union help with that. And I don't have enough money to stay at the hotel so I was looking for money. I'm also not sure if I can come back, since Measurehead said he'd let me in only this time.
You don’t actually have to proceed and talk to that guy at all to complete the game. Obviously a whole bunch of ✨content✨ is there to miss, but you can absolutely proceed with the main story without going near that chair.
Why am I only seeing disco Elysium posts a couple weeks after playing disco Elysium for the first time. Was there some shared motivator to play it recently?
I just looked up this game yesterday n it’s the first role playing game that’s interested me. Honestly it’s the only video game that’s interested me enough to wanna play besides the binding of Isaac in the past few years for some reason. Disco just seems to have such a rich and fun environment and story
I love when players fail insanely easy checks. In my DnD game I often have DC 5 checks for trivial stuff just because it's funny to fail every now and then. My favorite one is when my friend was playing Baldur's Gate 3 and managed to fail a DC **0** wisdom check because he dumped Wisdom and rolled a 1.
Thats pretty much Disco Elysium in a nutshell. Your character is a complete and utter disaster, and rolls with the failures like a great DM and player working together.
Watching yourself try and and show how 'virile and manly' you are to your partner by trying to military press 135 pounds unprompted after some seeing some weights...only to fuck it up and ego spiral afterwards is high comedy.
Not yet. They've added all of the base classes except for Monk and Paladin, as well as a few other races, but the game is being released in full this fall I think.
Not only did I not savescum, but my character died in such an embarrasing way that it's canon to me now and I haven't had the heart to play it again. >!I was arguing with the Union guys in the hotel, and tried to convince them to talk to me... by putting a gun in my mouth and threatening to pull the trigger.!< Technically I died of a heart attack but I'm sure that's just what they told the press.
Have you played Hades? It's a great intersection between rich environment and story, and really tight roguelite gameplay. It's an isometric brawler rather than a top down bullet-hell style, but the character rolling mechanics are great once you get the hang of it.
I tired savescumming at a certain point but it didn’t work for me. I ended up getting frustrated and just tried the silliest sounding options, I passed. Love this game >!It was when you’re talking to the giant racist guy, I didn’t want to be racist so I tried to fight him and turns out a spinning kick worked!<
In my first death in Disco Elysium was about 20 minutes into the game when I kicked a dumpster in frustration in a dialog. I know what you're thinking right? A dumpster is made of metal probably and it would really hurt if you kicked it full force.
Nonono.
It wasn't the kicking itself that killed me. It was the heart attack that followed the kick that did me in. It was then that I knew the game was gonna be incredible.
(Before you say anything, I did not know how to use or didn't have meds/drugs yet so I had only one bar left. It was hilarious)
My first death happened when I got fed up from talking to the little shits throwing rocks at the hanging person. I don’t even understand what happened, I guess I just died of shame or something lol
As far as I know you're not actually required to meet that npc at all, though there are some significant benefits for doing so. Most of the game is already freely open to you as well, so you can grind as much as you like before the encounter.
At least at launch (I don't know if it was changed since then), there was an actual softlock if you didn't pay for your room in time.
I had this problem in Neverwinter Nights. I made an Elf wizard who ended up with 4hp. Very first combat, four goblins with 1-damage slings.
RIP wizard.
Dude, does anyone remember the [Pool of Radiance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja-5ZWKNql0) game? I think that was the one that immediately preceded NN. It was 2d Isometric point-n-click, turn based combat.
And if you didn't build your shit motherfucking *correctly* you died on the first screen. Literally the first battle I had to play over and over because if you character so much as let one of the first monsters within 50 feet of you and you *weren't* some tanky build, you died.
Game was *mad* fuckin frustrating but I beat it because what the hell else was my bored teenage ass gonna do
RPGs and skill point allocations are great aren't they? I still laugh every time I play a game like Fallout New Vegas with 1 intelligence and have moments where my Courier talks like a fucking Neanderthal
You cant actually refuse to sit in the chair, if your volition is hogh enough to pass the check then Evrart will just refuse to talk with you, after which volition just kidna gives up
that being early in the game really depends tbf. For one, you can beat the game without ever seeing that chair. I didn't get that choice until around 40 hours in
I don't get this. There are healing items lying everywhere and you've four seconds to heal before death. Although, I'm on my second run but I think there's less ways to soft-lock than people think. On my first run I had tons of unspent skill points at the end, which I could use to force through any skill check if needed.
I remember in the beginning of the game there's a section where you have to jump a gap - my run ended when I failed the check, and he (harmlessly) plummets to the ground and I get a game over - the end screen describing the main character as having become a drunken hobo living under a bridge screaming about "what might have been" or something.
After a little bit of tinkering I figured out the reason I was failing said skill check was because of my PANTS - they were too tight, apparently. So I took the pants off to clear the gap, and put them back on afterwards.
This really really really heavily depends on the player finding the games sense of humor funny however
Which is probably why I could get into it, dying while trying to pick up an item with a 76% success rate 3 times in a row when you don't even appreciate the joke of it is insanely frustrating
This is *exactly* what happened to me, and it's why I uninstalled the game. I don't care how "funny" that is, it's obnoxious that I had to restart the game, losing the 4.8 hours I'd spend up until that point (I'm a slow reader and I get distracted easily).
Mildly spicy take: If your game has a soft lock, you have failed as a designer, no matter how good the rest of the game is. If the soft lock is intentional, you're a bad designer.
Edit: Y'all I *want* to be bullheaded and have my Walmart brand mild salsa take. Let me have this one.
You can just edit your save file to give yourself another healing item or an extra point of health or whatever. It's easier to do than you'd expect. The whole thing is in plaintext.
I just started playing this game for the first time and made my character ridiculously physically weak. My first death came from reading something so sad I assume he died from the stress. It’s fucking hilarious and I will NOT be restarting with a different build we are frail to the end here baby.
It wasn't just sad, it was a memory of his ex that he still hasn't got over
Oh absolutely but I like to frame it as “died from sad” because I find it much much funnier
Is your character's name Padme Amidala by any chance?
Iirc, there was also a bug involving that sequence where it will literally restart the game on you. Most people thought it was intended.
Wait you're not supposed to see the game's logo after passing out? I thought it was like everything up to that point was a cold opening lmao
No. IIRC, the intended sequence was that Kim would drag you to his car for you to recover.
*Motor-Carriage
No, that’s not what kills you, they’re talking about the Oranjes book about two lovers that drift apart that deals 1 damage to each pool. The letter just shuffles your to a cutscene, inspecting the car immediately afterwards is what lost me my first hour of progress though.
It was the postcard from his ex actually!
Whoops- there I go assuming things 😬
It is honestly delightful that there are so many documents in this game that will hurt you
The cop’s natural enemy- books
Listen, if they could read they would have gotten a real job like the rest of us!
*Kim's sighs as he scribbles something very small into his note book.*
Cried to fatal dehydration.
You can also die from *trying to hard to cry* at another spot in the game
You went further than my first character. He died from a heart attack after failing to pull his tie from the ceiling fan.
He fought valiantly but the ceiling fan is a vicious foe indeed o7
Amateur. My first run was ended by turning on the fucking light.
This post inspired me to play some more after not touching the game for a couple weeks. I just died of a heart attack because I knocked on a door too hard and hurt my hand at 1 HP.
I tried something similar with the first Fallout. Character creation was wide open, but according to the manual, you \*need\* some combat abilities. Well screw that. I will only play characters with no combat abilities. After fighting the first rat for half an hour, barely surviving, I was rewarded with another rat to fight.
Dude's playing the Hamster build 💀
Wait until you "show them, then they'll be real sorry"
Confronting the Hardie Boys was really hard, ok?
F
Same. Died in first 3 minutes by getting a cardiac arrest from trying to grab the Tie from celling fan. Amazing game
I should... play this game.
It is one of the best written works of fiction I've ever come across. You'll be doing yourself a huge favor
I already bought it and played it for a couple hours, months ago, then I guess I lost interest. Now when people talk about the game it doesn't make sense? There's no character build? You wake up as a washed up detective? It's been a while. I should ... also play this game. I should probably start over from scratch, too.
Totally worth the play. And don’t worry about doing a perfect run. As the OP posts shows failures are some of the funniest things.
There's a small amount of character building before you start the game. You distribute points that make you better at certain categories of skills, then you pick a signature skill. It's a really quick process and you can even shortcut it by selecting one of the preset point distributions, so I'm not surprised if anybody forgets. I would absolutely encourage you to start again and play all the way through at least once. I can't say enough good things about the game.
Just to add what others said, there *are* builds and they completely change the game because among other things they can lead to unique encounters and dialogue. For starters at the beginning there are 3 set starter builds, from which the only one I wouldn’t recommend for a first playthrough is the Thinker (light blue one) because it’s very lore heavy and its best played after you have some notion of the world and is hungry for more.
Funny, I'd suggest it for a first timer so that you actually get some context given to you, though I can see how that can be overwhelming. I personally found that Encyclopaedia chiming in and giving context to cities, places, people was massively useful in understanding conversations for the first time. I also recommend relatively high Motorics first playthrough as well, because high perception is really nice to have in a conversation, and opens some of the best plot twists in the game when inspecting the corpse.
Damn. I did one playthrough as Thinker and was literally about to make a negative comment about how the lore was too deep and we didn't enough details for it to really make sense
I made the same mistake and just wanted to warn people haha. I think the Sensitive one is the best for beginners because it’s all about vibes and paranormal shit which are greatly entertaining. After that and if you’re looking to know more about pretty much everything, the Thinker is great and makes a lot more sense!
I would so play this game, but it honestly breaks me every single time I try. The only advice I can give is to do the opposite of what you might instinctively do as a player of an RPG, and choose a character that is as much unlike you as you possibly can - because what this game does is *torture you.* It inflicts existential cringe on the character you choose until he should be dead, yet somehow he keeps living. I empathise. I noticed that even though I spent every play session gasping with delight at the beauty of the writing, and the visuals, and the concepts, and the sounds, after each session my IRL sanity meter was just a little lower than it was before I started. I stopped for my own sake, man. That game doesn't fuck around.
Yeah, it's not friendly to people who are depressive or struggling with suicidal thoughts, especially. Though the catharsis of the finale is still *so worth it.*
Yeah it's funny like that. Like it's a game that could totally sink you further into a depressive state, but the ending honestly goes a long way towards helping people who find themselves struggling.
The other thing I'd add is that the game does actually expect you to read and consider the dialog when making choices. If you do the typical RPG thing of working through all the branches of the dialog tree until you run out of stuff to talk about, you're inevitably going to have bad things happen to you.
There are 100% builds in the game. It’s very significant. Like the difference between playing a bard and a barbarian. Changes literally everything about every encounter throughout the game. Different builds will net you an entirely different experience from someone else who played one you did not.
Maybe try the Sensitive build to start. I tried going with what I thought sounded interesting and I think I ended up on that kind of a build, with Inland Empire for Psyche and some mind stuff, ended up getting into all sorts of skills and fumbled my way through pretty well. There are also Thoughts that you'll generate through different events that you can 'internalize' to unlock more stat tweaks (can go up or down with some stats) or dialogue options, even special abilities, so definitely pay attention when those pop up as you have to activate the process to internalize them, and they take in-game time to complete (while you're doing other actions basically). Once internalized it's a permanent 'addition' to your brain, unless you spend a level up point to remove them. You can also spend points to unlock more Thought slots.
Yes you really fucking should, interrogating people while 4 different paranoid voices in your head scream at you can't be experienced anywhere else
You can even die in the very first room. The game begins with MC waking up completely hungover and almost naked. So your first task is to dress yourself up, but a piece of your clothing (I think a tie?) is hanging from the ceiling fan. Which is spinning. And you can actually die from over-exertion by trying to grab it. >!You're supposed to turn off the fan before grabbing the tie!<
You can also kill yourself by turning on the light and leaving it on.
Yep, that was my first death. Absolutely hysterical, and it cemented my undying love for the game within five minutes of starting
Yes but isn’t a soft lock, as you can just do the right thing
You can also skip the tie entirely; it's not a required item even if it is a very fun one to have.
...ok? I never said it's a softlock
To that point the scenario in the screenshot isn’t a soft lock either. You never have to meet with the union leader. Or if you choose to and don’t have the points to survive it, you can do some other stuff and level up.
You can actually die before waking up, don’t ask me how, but it was unfortunately achieved.
Damn, this ceiling fan got ceiling hands
Gimme back my tie!
I think it's a universal experience of people who dumped physique to die to the fan sixty seconds in. It happened on my first playthrough and that's when I knew the game was a masterpiece.
I did physique of 1 my first play though. Died on the fan right away. But also managed a miraculous 12 to knock out Measurehead. Fully planning on boosting physique and motorics on my next play
Dumping pys is a bad idea in disco elysium because unlike most games pys characters have actual cool role play stuff
Making Shivers a phys skill was a very smart move.
Such a god damn beautiful aspect of the game. Holy crap. It's a shame phys also makes you a psychopath. I love it, but it's disturbing! I honestly feel like this game sort of belongs in the psychological horror genre, I dunno how anyone else feels?
Half-light is an absolutely hilarious skill to have high, too. You should try it sometime.
Because I like spi nkicking measureheads racist ass, byaaahhhhh!
God I wish I could feel what you guys feel about this game, I just thought and kinda still think that was boring and annoying more than anything else
I was softlocked into being racist cause I'm too weak (bypassing the Measurehead requires eitger an agility-based check, a strength-based one, or internalizing Advanced Race Theory)
"I was softlocked into being racist cause I'm too weak" is funniest shit I've ever read
r/BrandNewSentence
Incel wanders into alt right rally. Walks out high on a feeling.
It's the most common cause of racism, unironically.
I will mention, I don't think internalizing Advanced Race Theory actually makes you racist. Cause when he asks you what you learned, you can just tell him 'Advanced Race Theory means whatever you want because you're just making shit up' and he laughs and lets you go. (Unless I thoroughly misunderstood that dialogue, which is possible)
yeah that's what I did I was just making a funny
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I really miss the voice actor for Cuno from the first game though. They really should have got their best actors back. Wistful sigh.
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Oh yeah, I remember that. That was weird. In the first version, he wasn't voiced, do I remember right? And in the second version, he was, and it was... weird.
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A low bar they cleared with a flying leap in that case. That's what it means to be the one to beat, I guess! Setting records.
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The description for Advanced Race Theory and the bonuses it gives you definitely suggest that you haven’t *really* fully become racist, just that wrapping your head around the aesthetics-obsessed worldview of an actual racist like Measurehead turns out to be really stimulating bit of exercise for your sense of imagination and conceptualisation (as you visualise all these stereotypes and weird classifications).
You can *also* become a huge racist, though. I don't recommend it. Kim doesn't like it.
I’m trying to do a fascist play through now to get the achievement for getting Kim to despise you and I fucking hate myself so much for it
Pros of becoming the Icebreaker: - Hair Cons: - Massive racist - Kim is angry - Fascism
Iirc if you go the route of internalizing the thought to get past Measurehead, Evrart teases you about how you had to “become racist” to get to him or something along those lines. Of course it’s Evrart so he’s just trying to get under your skin but it probably has something to do with why players would think that’s what internalizing the thought is. Of course, it probably also means they never discovered the steps to *actually* became racist in the game.
>I was softlocked into being racist cause I'm too weak average 4channer
H. P. Lovecraft
This comment kicked me in the stomach in a good way
Howard "Lacks the constitution for math" Philips Lovecraft
This is the weakness of Ze Ham Sandvich race in the face of le racial pinacle made manifest!
YOUR BODY BETRAYS YOUR DEGNERACY 'am sandwich
that's not what softlocked means. softlocking is creating a situation where the game is still technically playable, but it's impossible to advance or go back, so all you can really do is move around in a relatively small area and do interactions that don't advance the game. the only thing to do is abandon the save file. for example, the first time I played Skyrim, I ran straight through the main story, and ended up at Skuldafn temple at only level 18. the only way to leave Skuldafn once you arrive is through the portal to Sovngarde which can only be opened after killing the dragon priest protecting it, who I was unable to defeat because of my low level. I had my game set to autosave each time I entered a new area, and there are quite a few areas you have to travel through within Skuldafn, and the load menu only lets you choose from a handful of recent autosaves, so I couldn't go back to a point before I arrived at Skuldafn. so I couldn't go forward, couldn't go back, but the game was still technically playable, i.e. I was still free to run around within Skuldafn, kill enemies, loot chests, etc., but none of that would actually do me any good. that's an example of a softlock
To be semantically correct, OP was *railroaded* into internalizing advanced race theory through game mechanics.
Can't you just run through the portal to sovngarde before the priest closes it? I'm pretty sure the priest has to re-close it each time you load the area.
If you have to abandon the save file that's a hard lock. Softlock means restarting the game/reloading your save. That's why it's soft Edit: having read more comments there are clearly many people on both sides of this and we need to recognise there are three scenarios and thus we need three terms and arguing about two terms is never going to solve anything. * You cannot progress by playing the game; you must quit and load your save * Your save file loads to a state where you cannot progress * Your save file loads to a state where you can't even really play The first scenario is the softest lock and differs from the other two in the aspect of whether the save file is still viable. The last is the hardest lock and differs from the other two in the aspect of whether the player can still make actions (although one might argue there is a blurred line there). Is the middle one soft or hard? The important thing is that everyone has a strong opinion and squabbles endlessly about it. Good work team.
A hardlock is when the game itself locks up, as in constant crashes or freezes or something. A softlock is where the game still works, you just can't progress through or leave an area that you're trapped in. You are right that reloading is often a valid strategy to get out of a softlock though
Often but not always. Hence two different scenarios. You are in camp "scenario two is soft". Lots of people are not. Very often people who speak the same language use different words to describe the same thing, that doesn't make either wrong. You can argue it's inefficient or whatever but that's how language works and fighting it is tiresome. I'm so bored of my British compatriots getting all snobby about (association) football being called soccer. Now I'm bored of people yelling about whether a save file that cannot be completed but where you can still walk without crashing is hard or soft locked.
Us brits complaining about Americans calling it soccer is especially weird, considering we're the ones who called it soccer. We only stopped in the 70s because it sounded too American, despite it being a British English word.
My eyes glazed over halfway through this comment. I'm glad some people get off on this. Brings me hope. Hope for the nerds of the future. You're still out there, being unaccountably interested in the infinitesimally significant.
Somebody's gotta be, and someone always will be. Probably multiple somebodies
Hardware vs software. It's not even a debate on what each means
That's a different thing so doesn't really mean anything here. Also firmware exists so is my second scenario a firmlock?
That has nothing to do with this
it seems like there's actually three sides here: group A thinks scenarios 1&2 are soft, 3 is hard. group B thinks scenario 1 is soft, 2&3 are hard. group C (which is the usage I'm familiar with) thinks 2 is soft, 3 is hard, 1 is not "locked," so it's something different altogether. interestingly, what group B considers to be "hard" and what group C considers to be "locked" are the same thing, namely, the need to abandon the save
You don't actually have to fight the priest, you just need to get to its staff before it does, create the portal, and jump in. You can beat the whole game without killing anything
But you could've just temporarily lowered the difficulty to minimum until you got past the priest or both lowered the difficulty and spent some time grinding levels until you could beat him. That's not a soft-lock, just a PITA.
how does one grind levels when stuck at the end of a dungeon that they can't leave?
> I was still free to run around within Skuldafn, kill enemies, loot chests, etc., I've played the game; the part he's talking about has respawning enemies scattered about. If you don't want to wait for them to respawn you can just save and reload to make them come back immediately. That's not a soft-lock if you can grind your way out, it's just annoying.
I got softlocked in day 2 in disco elysium because I couldn't get enough money for the hotel lol, got the special dumpster ending but had to cheat in money because I didn't want to actually start over
What you're describing is a hardlock. A softlock is when you can get out of it without deleting your save file.
If you can get out of it then it's not a lock. A softlock is when you can still play the game but for whatever reason completing it has become impossible. For example killing a plot-important NPC in Morrowind (though in this case the game is kind enough to warn you.)
That's a hardlock. A softlock is when it's really inconvenient to get out of or when you need to load an older save.
No, it's really not. A hardlock is when the game freezes, consistently crashes, locks you in place so you can't move, or otherwise becomes completely unplayable. A softlock is when the game is completely playable, but some condition for progressing in the game becomes impossible to meet. If you can get out of it, it's not a lock, just a shitty situation.
It's a lock in the sense that you can't get out of it by playing the game; you have to undo your actions only by reloading your save.
Correct. I should have been more clear, I mean if you can get out of it without reloading a save.
No
ratio
A hardlock is when you can't play the game at all. Like you jammed yourself in a piece of scenery and can't get out or the game autosaved just before something killed you. If you can get out of it, you're not locked. Loading an older save, obviously, does not count as "getting out of it", since either kind of lock can be solved that way (when it's an option).
It's not always possible to load older saves.
That depends on the game, not the kind of situation you're in.
Yes, in some games it's not possible to hardlock or softlock. That doesn't mean they don't exist.
Well, you do you, but no one else uses that definition.
ah, I thought "soft" referred to still being able to play the game despite being unable to advance past a certain point, and a hardlock would be a situation where you're unable to give any inputs at all, like being completely frozen for some reason, or immediately dying whenever you load, and both softlocks and hardlocks are only resolvable by starting a new save
You're correct, they aren't.
Looking this up, it very much seems like both definitions are used. Actually, most of what comes up is discussion about which one is correct.
You have the right definition. A hard lock is pretty much the game refusing to let you play at all, such as a UI element not closing and you having no control. It's just a step down from the game crashing. I literally never heard of save files having to do with anything.
You were correct about the definition of hardlocks, but usually scenarios that require the game to be restarted or an older save point to be loaded are still considered softlocks, even if they don't force you to move to a new save file. So like, getting stuck at the dragon priest fight still would've been a softlock even if you'd saved before traveling to it, because it requires you to take action outside of the game itself to fix. It's just way less annoying to fix than having to redo the entire playthrough.
While you're right here (or right enough for government work, anyway), your Skyrim example is not a good example of a softlock. It wasn't logically *impossible* for you to progress, just massively difficult to defeat the priest at such a low level.
There’s another way to get in, I interacted with measurehead very little
If you're a good enough intellectual, you can also tell him that his theory is shit. Or you can be *so bad at being racist* that he just helps you out of pity.
*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **prokopetz** Like most old-school RPGs with unguided character creation, *Disco Elysium* makes it possible to softlock yourself very early by building a character who mathematically cannot survive the tutorial mission. However, **un**like most old-school RPGs with unguided character creation, every way in which you can do this is objectively hilarious. --- **krogoregon** come on, you can't just say this without giving examples lol --- **prokopetz** Without giving too much away, there's an NPC you *must* meet in their office who offers you a chair to sit down; refusing to sit in the chair requires passing a Volition skill check. If you do sit down, the chair proves to be so incredibly uncomfortable that you have to make a Pain Threshold saving throw or suffer a single point of damage. It's completely possible - albeit very unlikely - to put yourself in a position where your Volition is too low to refuse to sit down, your Pain Threshold is toolow to avoid taking damage from doing so, you have only a single point of Health remaining *and* you've already exhausted every source of healing that's accessible to you at that point. If all of those factors line up, you cannot proceed because you lack the confidence to refuse to sit in a chair that's so uncomfortable it kills you. \#gaming #video games #game design #disco elysium #death mention #disco elysium spoilers #spoilers --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
Bloody hell, you're fast. Uhh, I mean, good human.
:)
I remember someone told me that DE is an amazing game because it makes the concept of failure absolutely hilarious, i did not get what he meant but checked out the game and as soon as i started, i died of a heart attack from trying to get a piece of clothing from the ceiling [fan.As](https://fan.As) soon as that happened i was a fan and adored every moment the game offered.
I almost did this! I had to backtrack quite a bit to find a health pickup.
I did do this. lost a luckily small amount of progress
Yup, this is where I'm stuck. Guess it makes sense that this is a common thing.
It's really not a common thing
A *known* thing, then?
> Some older versions of the game would even crash at that point, endlessly waiting for the death animation to complete, when in fact it can't start because the "sitting on chair" animation takes priority. Yeah it's known lmao https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnintentionallyUnwinnable
Where did you invest your skill points? Also have you sidequested at all?
To be clear, I don't think I'm actually stuck, I just got a bit frustrated with the fact that it seemed like I'd die (in such a dumb way) no matter what I did so I had to set it down for a bit. I think I could heal in between? I'm not totally sure how it works tbh. Is it a timing thing? Speed-draw some alcohol? My main focus for points is Psyche (5), with only 1 Physique, and 3 in the other two. I've allocated level up points into Empathy, Logic, and Inland Empire. As for side quests, I'm not really sure what counts as a Side Quest in this game, to be honest. Everything seems like it could or should connect (because I'm a Superstar Detective, obvs). But I was putting off talking to this guy as long as I could because I was hoping to find an alternate solution to getting the guy down from the tree since Kitsuragi seemed to think it wasn't a good idea to let the union help with that. And I don't have enough money to stay at the hotel so I was looking for money. I'm also not sure if I can come back, since Measurehead said he'd let me in only this time.
You can use a healing item when your HP drops to 0, which will raise your HP back to 1.
Everything *is* connected, Kim. No really, it is.
You don’t actually have to proceed and talk to that guy at all to complete the game. Obviously a whole bunch of ✨content✨ is there to miss, but you can absolutely proceed with the main story without going near that chair.
Why am I only seeing disco Elysium posts a couple weeks after playing disco Elysium for the first time. Was there some shared motivator to play it recently?
Steam summer sale, cheapest the game had historically been
Baader-Meinhof effect.
I just looked up this game yesterday n it’s the first role playing game that’s interested me. Honestly it’s the only video game that’s interested me enough to wanna play besides the binding of Isaac in the past few years for some reason. Disco just seems to have such a rich and fun environment and story
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I love when players fail insanely easy checks. In my DnD game I often have DC 5 checks for trivial stuff just because it's funny to fail every now and then. My favorite one is when my friend was playing Baldur's Gate 3 and managed to fail a DC **0** wisdom check because he dumped Wisdom and rolled a 1.
Thats pretty much Disco Elysium in a nutshell. Your character is a complete and utter disaster, and rolls with the failures like a great DM and player working together. Watching yourself try and and show how 'virile and manly' you are to your partner by trying to military press 135 pounds unprompted after some seeing some weights...only to fuck it up and ego spiral afterwards is high comedy.
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Nope, I'm playing it right now. It's fun, but it's been very unstable for me.
Not yet. They've added all of the base classes except for Monk and Paladin, as well as a few other races, but the game is being released in full this fall I think.
Not only did I not savescum, but my character died in such an embarrasing way that it's canon to me now and I haven't had the heart to play it again. >!I was arguing with the Union guys in the hotel, and tried to convince them to talk to me... by putting a gun in my mouth and threatening to pull the trigger.!< Technically I died of a heart attack but I'm sure that's just what they told the press.
Have you played Hades? It's a great intersection between rich environment and story, and really tight roguelite gameplay. It's an isometric brawler rather than a top down bullet-hell style, but the character rolling mechanics are great once you get the hang of it.
I would like to introduce you to the *Return of the Obra Dinn*
Citizen Sleeper and Disco Elysium just hit different.
Man, I gotta check this out.
Disco elysium is very much “damn, this mental illness got hands.” The game.
Disco Elysium is a story about a plural system with the absolute *shittiest* head mates
God I love this game. I remember talking to one of the devs a few years ago at comic con and it was great. Bought it at launch
I suspect that it’s possible to lock yourself out of passing several mandatory white checks with 1 in a stat.
it’s technically possible to get softlocked >!looking for Ruby!< if you can’t get past the encyclopedia or shivers checks
Technically you can't get truly locked as double 6's always passes a check. You can savescum until you get it but that defeats the point of the game!
I tired savescumming at a certain point but it didn’t work for me. I ended up getting frustrated and just tried the silliest sounding options, I passed. Love this game >!It was when you’re talking to the giant racist guy, I didn’t want to be racist so I tried to fight him and turns out a spinning kick worked!<
In my first death in Disco Elysium was about 20 minutes into the game when I kicked a dumpster in frustration in a dialog. I know what you're thinking right? A dumpster is made of metal probably and it would really hurt if you kicked it full force. Nonono. It wasn't the kicking itself that killed me. It was the heart attack that followed the kick that did me in. It was then that I knew the game was gonna be incredible. (Before you say anything, I did not know how to use or didn't have meds/drugs yet so I had only one bar left. It was hilarious)
My first death happened when I got fed up from talking to the little shits throwing rocks at the hanging person. I don’t even understand what happened, I guess I just died of shame or something lol
As far as I know you're not actually required to meet that npc at all, though there are some significant benefits for doing so. Most of the game is already freely open to you as well, so you can grind as much as you like before the encounter. At least at launch (I don't know if it was changed since then), there was an actual softlock if you didn't pay for your room in time.
Stared at a light and just fucking died. 10/10
I had this problem in Neverwinter Nights. I made an Elf wizard who ended up with 4hp. Very first combat, four goblins with 1-damage slings. RIP wizard.
Classic Wizard moment
Dude, does anyone remember the [Pool of Radiance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja-5ZWKNql0) game? I think that was the one that immediately preceded NN. It was 2d Isometric point-n-click, turn based combat. And if you didn't build your shit motherfucking *correctly* you died on the first screen. Literally the first battle I had to play over and over because if you character so much as let one of the first monsters within 50 feet of you and you *weren't* some tanky build, you died. Game was *mad* fuckin frustrating but I beat it because what the hell else was my bored teenage ass gonna do
RPGs and skill point allocations are great aren't they? I still laugh every time I play a game like Fallout New Vegas with 1 intelligence and have moments where my Courier talks like a fucking Neanderthal
Yay for social anxiety representation!
You cant actually refuse to sit in the chair, if your volition is hogh enough to pass the check then Evrart will just refuse to talk with you, after which volition just kidna gives up
I wish there was an option to bring up a chair from another room. That would be the funniest and pettiest possible response
This happened to me! I went into the game relatively blind and this confused me to no end. I died from sitting in a chair.
yeah, the chair killed me in my first playthrough... but it was fine because next time I just healed my health before sitting down.
that being early in the game really depends tbf. For one, you can beat the game without ever seeing that chair. I didn't get that choice until around 40 hours in
I don't get this. There are healing items lying everywhere and you've four seconds to heal before death. Although, I'm on my second run but I think there's less ways to soft-lock than people think. On my first run I had tons of unspent skill points at the end, which I could use to force through any skill check if needed.
Doesn't a double 6 roll pass any check?
My 1st run I started 1 PHY and my literal first action in the game killed me. It's great.
I actually came close to this, but had a healing item in my inventory.
Disco Elysium is the game that re-kindled my love for writing and got me back into pushing my own independent game out. It is Earthbound for Adults.
I remember in the beginning of the game there's a section where you have to jump a gap - my run ended when I failed the check, and he (harmlessly) plummets to the ground and I get a game over - the end screen describing the main character as having become a drunken hobo living under a bridge screaming about "what might have been" or something. After a little bit of tinkering I figured out the reason I was failing said skill check was because of my PANTS - they were too tight, apparently. So I took the pants off to clear the gap, and put them back on afterwards.
You can use healing items before the health bar depletes entirely and you’ll be ok.
This really really really heavily depends on the player finding the games sense of humor funny however Which is probably why I could get into it, dying while trying to pick up an item with a 76% success rate 3 times in a row when you don't even appreciate the joke of it is insanely frustrating
This is *exactly* what happened to me, and it's why I uninstalled the game. I don't care how "funny" that is, it's obnoxious that I had to restart the game, losing the 4.8 hours I'd spend up until that point (I'm a slow reader and I get distracted easily). Mildly spicy take: If your game has a soft lock, you have failed as a designer, no matter how good the rest of the game is. If the soft lock is intentional, you're a bad designer. Edit: Y'all I *want* to be bullheaded and have my Walmart brand mild salsa take. Let me have this one.
Somebody's angy that the spicy paragraph made them lose a game that has... *checks notes* ...a built-in autosave system.
Composure 1 hands wrote this comment.
Bruh take the L
Nice meme!
You can just edit your save file to give yourself another healing item or an extra point of health or whatever. It's easier to do than you'd expect. The whole thing is in plaintext.