I think the game has multiple messages as it covers a wide area of subjects. DE is not a simple game when it comes to it's writing. Here's one of the messages:
If you pass a check at the end of the communard quest, the students tell you something along the lines of that "being a communist isn't about succeeding in building communism, but believing that it can be done and still going forward".
Taking the message into the most basic terms: "Life can be tough at times, and you will fail repeatedly (Harry). Sometimes because of things you couldn't even have prevented (Deserter). But it's important to never lose yourself and follow your dreams or at least not give up on life (Harry at the end)." Lena and her husband may be following irrational things, but at least they're happy, unlike many old people. The communard students have their own problems too, but at least they have a reason to live — hope.
I had an epiphany (if i can call it that and not be seen as a idiot, but i am so who cares.) about that subject. That something is impossible doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to achieve it. Will I be a Perfect husband? Perfect father. No i won't. But i will do anything i can and try to be. I'll do my best and fail spectacularly. I'll sometimes be the worst. But hell if i won't try to achieve this impossible task. That makes us who we are. Whatever it is we are. Always strive to achieve the impossible however futile it may be.
An organization I’m currently a part of has an old saying that sort of doubles as their mantra.
“The eternal pursuit of perfection.”
Note, the key word pursuit. It’s a losing battle to EXPECT perfection but to strive for it is an eternal battle that pays off in the end depending on your viewpoints. And no, you’re not an idiot for having this realization. It seems so simple but it’s a shocking revelation to have.
But you also have to be careful not to lose yourself in that pursuit and allow it to consume you. The lone gunman allowed Communist ideology to steal his life and he is a miserable husk. Renee is so obsessed with the good old days he can't see love in front of his eyes. Harry keeps dancing on the edge of oblivion obsessing over the One That Got Away.
By contrast you have the crypto zoologists, who loved their creatures, but even more loved each other. And the Hardy Boys believe in the union, but also build up their community and each other.
Those who dedicate their everything to The Cause are miserable. But those who fight the good fight then go home to live their life and enjoy what they have while it lasts are the happiest people in this miserable world.
What's the meaning of it for you? That everything sucks and there's no point trying "in this world"?
Or that life is inherently imbalanced, and to try and combat it, the game suggests killing a bunch of middle-class people?
What's your meaning, why is it so important to you?
Its more of a dialectical-materialist analysis rather than a existential ponder.
The phrase, to me, is about how the bourgeois notion of ‘love’ is false, and that there cannot be ‘true love’ within capitalism. With neoliberalism, even social relations have become markets - characteristics of character, apperence or personality have become like characteristics of an investment: we attribute ‘value’ to people. Also, beneath capitalism, even if you are together with people you truly love, material conditions will make love degrade over time. Being “past the honeymoon phase” is just an euphemism for “alienation by capital made social relations rotten over time”.
And the middle class, by it’s reactionary tendencies, reinforces that. The middle class more and more seeks self-isolation and values more appearing happy than actually being happy. By that, it strengthens the individualist, consumerist and reactionary culture imposed by capitalism. A culture which, as I explained in the previous paragraph, makes the existence of ‘true love’ impossible.
That’s the meaning of the phase to me, and it fundamentally ties with Steban’s fundamental thesis: Being a communist is not building communism, but believing it can be done and still going foward.
> Disco was advertised as a game about communism and unions
Was it? What makes you say that?
Anyway, I think it's mainly that even if you've failed, you eventually have to move forward. Things can't get better as long as you remain trapped by the past.
I mean it wasn't directly but ZAUM did get on stage and go "Shout out to Marx and Lenin for making this game possible." and they're all avowed socialists. What's COOL about the game is that it critiques communism rather saliently, despite it being the political affiliation of its developers.
Depending on when you got the game, it'd be entirely fair to believe it was a game about communism.
Sure, but that's not really them advertising the game. I get that they're socialists, and that their thoughts on socialism and communism shaped much of the game, and you can certainly argue that that's what the game was _about_, but it wasn't something that was specifically part of how the game was _advertised_, was it?
A major part of communist theory, at least the Marxist-Leninist variety, is dialectical materialism. What is dialectical materialism? Well, it encompasses pretty much everything in this game.
So in my opinion, the game is about dialectical materialism. Well, that and hope.
“Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”
Utopia is defined as impossible.
Eutopia is the better world we can think of and try to achieve
We can build this world better but we all have to work for it.
And there is nothing on the horizon but the grey.
It will consume everything in the end so the feeling that nothing makes sense may be overwhelming at times. But we have to get up and keep working. Tequila sunrise.
Unless the striving is the goal in itself. It's kind of paradoxical, but I think the point is that you *can* achieve a life spent working toward something, even if that something isn't achievable. It's a direction to strive in. It's okay for it to be arbitrary, even if not every goal is equally satisfying.
It's not saying you should never achieve anything, just that achievements aren't as meaningful or satisfying if they're not part of a larger motivation in life.
So is it better to not have tried at all? Trying to reach your destination makes you act, creates motion. It doesnt really matter if you reach it, just being close is already good. It helps with your mental health too
And when you’re gone, all that vanishes with you. Spending your time “creating motion” is an artistic way of saying you spent your life as a Sisyphean nobody. You wasted your life on something that will ultimately never come to fruition.
Its not about building something that will endure for all eternity. its about finding meaning in your life, seeing the beauty in simple things or finding something that drives you forward. Life doesnt need to be spectacular to be enjoyable. But you need to take the first step. Find your own meaning. Be introspective. I cant tell you how to live your life dude.
Why would there not be payoff?
Utopia literally translates as "no place". It can not exist. It's impossible perfection.
Don't think of each step as just labour for nothing. That's not what's meant here. It's "striving towards perfection", as others have said further up. We try to envision what a perfect world would be like, and we take steps to get there. We may never get there, but every step towards it is still an improvement in the world.
It's called the Paradox of Perfectionism. Maybe we want to solve world hunger. Or violence. Or poverty. And maybe we never can. So there are two answers: "No matter how many children we feed, there will never be a time where everyone is fed, so we shouldn't try." Or "Every child fed is still a child fed, even if others are still hungry". Perhaps we're not peacefully resolving every conflict in the world, but we can resolve *some.* And that's still better than nothing, than not trying.
That's what's meant by the striving. Do as much as you can, even if not all problems are solved.
I think the difference interpretation of “goal” is what’s causing you to disagree with other people here. The quote doesn’t have to mean working your entire life just to fail to get a promotion, or be famous, or something tangible.
A goal to always strive for but that is unreachable would be wanting to be the perfect father. I saw someone in another comment thread on this post mentioned this being what they want in life, and I think it’s a good example. There is no such thing as being a perfect parent, no matter how hard you try there will be mistakes and shortcomings. But the goal is the striving in this task, striving to do as good as you can, striving to give your kids the best life.
I had an epiphany (if i can call it that and not be seen as a idiot, but i am so who cares.) about that subject. That something is impossible doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to achieve it. Will I be a Perfect husband? Perfect father. No i won't. But i will do anything i can and try to be. I'll do my best and fail spectacularly. I'll sometimes be the worst. But hell if i won't try to achieve this impossible task. That makes us who we are. Whatever it is we are. Always strive to achieve the impossible however futile it may be.
Depression: You’ll never be happy, so why bother trying?
Cancer is so hard to treat, and we’ll never get rid of *all* illnesses anyway, so why bother trying to help?
People are already dying in that burning house, so why bother trying to save the few that could survive? It’s pointless. We all die anyway.
Do you see my point? Do you see why this is flawed thinking.
By giving up hope, you GUARANTEE that things will *not* get better at all. But when you try, even with sky high ambitions, you can improve. That’s true whether it’s the world or ourselves. Some progress is better than nothing.
But it works like that with most human goals. "I want to get this job, *then* I'll be happy". Then you get the job, and after 2 days of being glad, you're unsatisfied again: "I just need to get promoted and start getting over x money per month, *then* I'll be happy".
But the goalposts always move forward. Once you achieve something, you still feel empty and unsatisfied, if you only ever think about goals. And, more than that, perfection is impossible anyway, so if your goal is perfection, then you're even more screwed.
But if you set goals, but don't focus on them, and instead think about the path itself, the progress you've making - then you can be fulfilled, in knowing that you're doing what you want to be doing
I'm not sure it has a single discrete message. It's about addiction and piecing a life together, it's about how the decisions we make make us, it's about how dogmatic approaches to political issues can dehumanize us and turn into coping mechanisms, it's about how corporatism looks from the bottom of the ladder, it's about how small flawed humans trying to be kind to each other is most of what we have in this life. There could be a single "point" that the writers were trying to make, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what that single point would be
I like your answer a lot. It touches on many important themes.
For me, the main themes are fighting an addiction, and about piecing together a very broken life, by struggling, trying, working day after day, getting better.
These feelings and themes are why I keep coming back to this game over and over. Sometimes I just feel down, and I install the game again, and it feels like I'm understood. So I go trying to crawl out of that difficult place again, fighting the difficult stuff.
And I've never struggled with addictions, never even tried smoking or alcohol, but I'm afraid of those things, and the Electrochemistry's temptation, and Volition fighting it feels relatable. Every time I tried smoking in this game, I just felt like I lost, like I betrayed the chances for Harry to get his shit compressed enough
For me Steban summed up the game’s message pretty well:
"In the dark times, should the stars also go out?"
There’s never going to be a magical fix-it for all your problems. Harry solving the case won’t bring back the Ex-Something, single-handedly repair the Major Crimes Unit, or fix all of Revachol’s problem. But that doesn’t mean you can’t work and hope for a better future.
That's a tough one with all the ideology, disco, colorful characters and *socioeconomics* going on, but I think the persistent theme throughout the game is that, no matter how bleak life seems, every single day is a chance to compress your shit and start moving forward in spite of it all. Or, to put it quite simply, to have hope. No matter how elusive and distant it may be, it's always out there somewhere. No matter how convinced you are that it has abandoned you, one day it will return to your side.
**UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRES DE TOI**
There is a lot of value in analyzing art this way, but I think this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin also applies:
“Messages are for Western Union”
Pretensions aside, my take on the message would be “No matter what your past is like, you can still play a part and help others”
It's pithy but I think that Le Guin quote is perfect.
People are always looking for a moral or a message (and it's not their fault, we've been trained to do so!), but that's not the point of art, and it's sometimes more important and just as powerful to make you *think* and *feel*.
Exactly. Le Guin’s work and Disco Elysium are complex art works. You could distill it to a single message, but there’s no way to do that without losing something.
The goal of art is to make you think and feel, sometimes it wants you to feel a single message, and sometimes it’s a complex web of things that aren’t strictly related to one through line
Mark Twain, speaking more directly: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Honestly I can’t think of a single person who was helped by Harry and Kim and the investigation. >!It depends on how well you do at the trial I guess!<
I don't think so at all actually... I think that part of the issue is that Harry can't help people through the RCM, he can't help people as a cop. What is the point of all the things he does in his official capacity, investigating the murder of a violent fascist and potentially causing the deaths of multiple people, only to discover by the end that the murderer is so far gone that it's worthless arresting him? Dros isn't going to kill again. The whole thing was essentially futile. But then there are the actual moments of humanity through the game, helping Annette come in from the cold and see eye to eye with her mother, helping Lena and Morell with the phasmid, helping Billie Mejean with her husband, even getting the grouse for Garte... (although that was his fault to begin with). These are the moments that actually have an impact, far more so than in Harry's official capacity as an officer.
The real world inspiration and context for the quote are what really matter; but yes, it was a beautiful send off. This quote carries so much weight and sends a very clear message as to what the authors’ intentions were to those who know where it’s from.
I think it's about how the pain and ugliness of a city in ruin essentially and the whole world facing a literal unknowable, unstoppable force make beauty, humanity and incredible moments possible.
The game is essentially a love letter to the human condition. Life has so much pain and suffering. The world is built on death, ruin, destruction, failure and loss. But people still keep going. Cities still keep shivering. And against all that dirt, beauty and even love (if not for a lover, then for yourself. If not for yourself, for your friend. If not for your friend, then for a city. If not for a city, then for a cause. etc) shine through.
There's a certain strange beauty to listening to Idiot doom spiral's spiral of doom. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong and now this clearly educated and intelligent bloke is left to rot in alcohol. But it's his story. And this game, the story, the writing accepts that. It doesn't ridicule him for it. It's his life, his story. He is like anyone else, a part of this world we inhabit. It applies a sort of beauty to him, to his condition. That's just once example that came to mind.
She once described the core feeling of what made things "elytical" (as in, something felt like it belonged in Elysium) as "the shadow of annihilation waiting in the wings next to the unshakeable belief in the greatness of humankind"! She's got several kickass quotes but this one in particular stuck with me :)
I think it's biggest theme is that of breaking or perpetuating cycles. In other words it's a souls like. But in all seriousness I think it's about making the effort to change those cycles whether those are political or personal or cultural and maybe you'll fail or maybe what you try to replace the cycle with could be worse than the old thing. But you should still try to improve yourself and the world around you.
Subdue the regret. Dust yourself off. You'll get it in the next life, where you don't make mistakes. Do what you can with this one, while you're alive.
I don't think there's a message as such, it's just an expression of the creators' view of modern life in the thrall of neoliberal hegemony and mass environmental collapse.
There's a lot to unpack in disco elysium and ultimately I think most people's responses are probably accurate- its saying a lot and it is, very painfully, emotionally honest and so there's a lot to read into it. I think the main takeaway from the main story is just that, \*you can't save the world\*.
As Harry tries to fix himself he can very easily latch unto these grand ideologies, in particular communism and fascism which serve both as copying mechanisms and paths for him to move forward. So much of Harry's progress can feel like you're moving mountains, and even in the end when the story gets to its most tense heights, what have you done?
You solved a murder, you did your job, and you maybe helped some people or hurt them (being vague for spoiler reasons). You don't start a revolution or return the suzerainty or fix revachol, you just go home and try to keep piecing your life together with everything you've learned.
A lot of games have us play these world-changers, these mythic heroes who reshape the world with their time in it. But I think Disco Elysium is ultimately more concerned with being a normal person; a fucked up person, but someone who is living in a world that's far too big and trying to figure out how to cope with it. And I really like that, I feel like it helps condense the experience and it feels far more potent because of it. Also kinda scary, though also because I see too much of myself in Harry.
Mmm... I'd say it didn't have a single message, but several and, depending on your sensitivities, one of another will leave more of its imprint on you over the others.
The one that stuck to me was that there's hope in community, in love. Even if the world is bleak, greedy, unforgiving and you're all shades of fucked up, there's still hope as you don't let go of people.
I think it is about communism and the original intent behind it and many comments here will tell you the same. **BUT** also at the same time, I think it is about the "work". It is talking about the idea that it is important for a person's work, whether it's a painting or a song, to endure the test of time and transcend time and space, and to then influence many generations to come (Very much Classicism). In this case, despite the crippling alcoholism and addiction to various substances and the problematic personality, at the very end of the game, Harry is accepted back into the unit because of his amazing "detecting" skills. Which is beautiful because it is sort of highlighting how Harry's contributions have made a mark upon people and have generally improved people's life (and saving a couple as well). But also depressing because well I don't think Harry went about this detective business in a very healthy mental state. So I think it is about the vicious cycle of an artist or someone who wants to perfect their craft, sort of like the Artist/Perfectionist version of "The Myth of Sisyphus". You detect, which then ruins your mental health but you solve cases and making a contribution to the society makes you feel better, rinse and repeat.
Everything is fucked, but that isn't an excuse to lie down and wait for it all to be over. It may be nigh-impossible, but you have to try to build better, to be better.
*"In the dark times, should the stars also go out?"*
Like any piece of art, I don't think there is a singular message. It is open to interpretation from each person who views it, especially true of this game which can unfold and end in several different ways.
Our culture and civilization gonna collapse , all what we trying to achieve is going to fail , all loved ones will leave us in poverty and shit , economic situation is being fucked up and soon 1% of ppl will live in heaven and 99% will eat mud for breakfast, god abandoned us , no miracle and salvation left on Earth , everything good left in past . But still you should not supress your happiness and to keep up the smile when you see a happy childs face , sun rise , when you talk to your friend , or pet a cat , or do whatever that brings joy in your little heart and touches your immesurable soul . You should keep living in this world - the world without future and hope for us , not just "exist" and simply kill yourself with alcohol and other stuff . You should know that always SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN . And then wake up with the next sound of hell horn.
Dunno. I think it could mean different things depending on who is playing.
For me it's about starting over from a shitty place and finding the will to go on, rediscovering yourself, helping people, the complexity of people, Communism....
Lots of stuff.
But I suppose if I had to give a succinct answer...
It's about finding the truth.
But that's a real slimmed down take 🤔
Definitely has a lot of Communism in there.
>Disco was advertised as a game about communism and unions
Where was it advertised as that? I thought it was advertised as a detective story where your choices matter.
There's a lot of messages.
"It is easier to imagine the end of all things than it is to imagine the end of capitalism."
"To fail is to be human, to work past it is equally human."
"We seek the approval of those we are close to, more so if we are close to them by association, even if we do not truly know it."
"Children are annoying."
"Life is broadly random. Death is equally random. You can die for no reason at all and it would mean nothing."
"It is possible to do everything right and still fail. That is not unfair, it is merely life."
"Sanity is having two shoes that fit, and a purpose. Purpose is the driving force behind all sanity. Find purpose if you do not have one."
And that's not even the more esoteric "I have seven degrees in incredibly obscure art fields and found this one small reference to this equally obscure Finnish philosophical work and how the entire side quest is actually a refutation of that entire philosophy" meanings. That's just the Aesops it hands you on a silver platter.
Okay the first one kind of requires a really, really, really specific lens to analyze the pale and what it means and how it works and you need to do a side quest as a communist and pass one specific encyclopedia check to learn a really small detail that turns into the greater aesop that while is never actually explained to you fits the theme of the game and the theme of the developers being Marxists of some flavor.
If you are telling an extremely simple story to a kid, then sure, it might have one central message, Everything else has a theme or a set of themes, and attempts to distil them always into a clear message or messages will result in an extremely shallow understanding of a given story, hiding intended ambiguities of the text, which may actually be the focus. An author might raise questions when he has no answers, after all.
To me, Disco Elysium central theme is history and revolution, and I see game as clearly arguing for necessity of utopian thought. Reality is never done, you should always question it, humans can break from the current order, future might not be - shouldn't be - like the day before, and the way you think about anything might turn out to be wrong or limited - expect the unexpected. But there are other notable themes, like addiction or love, and somebody else might take them as more important or better executed.
That addiction and escapism will destroy you, if you let it. This theme stays consistent from start to finish. Maybe you will be alive, but you will just be an anthropod seeking out glucose rewards - not a human. Either live your life in Nothingtown or embrace the pain, bright lights and people wanting things from you that you don't want to give them.
The game is clearly political. And has a LOT to say about politics, communism in particular.
But I don’t think that’s “The Message”. I watched a video essay that pointed out something very interesting that really stuck with me.
At the end of the game you get maybe the most interesting choice in the game and possibly in any text driven story game: YOU get to contextualize what your choices meant. Trant asks you what happened to you to cause you to lose your memory and you get to decide (drank too much, defense mechanism to forget trauma/sadness, caused by the anomaly in the church, a stupid joke, etc). This choice is very interesting because it retroactively contextualizes almost every other choice you made previously.
This ties into one of the main themes of the game, which is how to move forward in the aftermath of devastating events. You start the game a hollowed out husk. The town has been devastated economically. The communists are trying to build back after being completely destroyed.
You, the town, the communists, the remnants of the union after the shootout, are all trying to figure out how to move forward. You meet different characters that are working through coping with many different kinds of loss in different ways (the widow with the boat, the wife of the dead drunk, Cuno, etc).
I find that choice at the end interesting because it gives you the agency to contextualize what your journey through the game meant and who your character is.
I think “The Message” of the game is how to move forward after traumatic loss and that you have the ability to decide how your decisions shape you as a person.
This one's mine: 'Our decisions can lead us to the abyss or to redemption'.
This is my GF: 'The world is a shitty place and you still have to fuck it to move forward'.
Hope it helps!
I do not play any games this is what it says on my Google page and it has like six apps on there and then it has bisco and then across from that it says follow ing I don't get it
Maybe a message explaining there’s multiple ways to solve problems or an anti drug message? I can’t really remember much of the plot from this game, but I don’t think anything happened in the story before I finished the game that was too interesting.
For me, the messagw would be how ideology (understood as a cosmovision) conforms our reality and how we relate and engage with ourselves and the world around you. Once you get free about yourself as a political being, you can be anything you want to as a "tabula rasa"
Coming to terms with the history of your life. All of the events and choices that have led to where you are, the solidified and unchangeable past; all of the possibilities and potentialities stretching out before you, in both the hope and terror of what could be; and, ultimately, the means by which we come to terms with it all - self-medicating to cope, be it substances, ideas, obsessions or fixations. Leading to the unrealistic hope of a future some find naive, or a boring resignation some find complicit with the issues of today, or maybe just the realization that none of it matters and embrace the warm primordial blackness of oblivion.
Disco Elysium is the body without organs of Martinaise and Revachol in general. It demonstrates relations of power, deterritorializations and lines of flight. It is probably the only and the best poststructuralist game out there.
It's basically a narrative of art -- that is, it is what you make of it. It's told through your life in this broken, dark, politically-charged world in which you are a cop and addict. But during this time you are exposed to many things: the tired writer (who even self-inserted), the heartbreak of love, music, dancing, fantasy, crafting, painting, etc.
You are a cop because you investigate. You find a story in even the little things. Because art is in everything, even the hard cop and the depressed alcoholic. **Powerlessness can be an inevitability for everyone, but how you interpret that and what you become are what matters.**
I feel like this is the only "core" message the game has, which is given incredible depth by the story. But there are other messages as well. Such as compassion for the mentally ill and drug addicts. Personally I believe the politics in the game are more fictional than cryptids, so I don't really believe that is the point.
The game really reminds me of Alice in Borderland, in that both are deeply introspective lessons you may have heard before (but personally attached no meaning to), taught through the non-jarring lens of fiction. Not an easy thing to pull off.
Disco Elysium has a number of different messages for the equal number of topics it tackles. If you were to ask me to summarize my main takeaway from this game, it'd be something to the effect of "The world sucks and is indescribably cruel, but it's *your* world. You're the only one who can make something good out of it."
I think Volition says it best: "No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive."
For me it was about identity, what identity means and how it is created and reinforced. And class struggle, with other forms of oppression mixed in (racism fascism).
for me the message is to not be stuck in the past and to not isolate. there is hope, people work better together, don't become a man alone in an island (metaphorically). let go of the past that's weighing you down.
though I gotta say, highly disagree with your take on the message of bg3 lol
I think it's possible to take away many different messages. Here are some that I did:
* Failure is unavoidable.
* Human systems of government are flawed, terrible, and never serve everyone adequately. Some are more terrible than others.
* You can't wipe away the past, but you can do good things now.
* Alcohol and drug abuse is bad.
I think the game is fundamentally about two things failure and hope. Failure is a fact of the world, and we can either submit to it and marinate in oblivion or we can try to be better and have hope for tomorrow. The message is that the choice is ours, but failure isn’t a death sentence.
That’s just my thoughts though. I usually try to play the Sober Communist who wants Kim to like him. So my perspective is certainly biased, but still applicable.
I do disagree about the game *not* being plot focused. The plot is full of intrigue and it beautifully connects to the characters and themes of the story. Disco Elysium wouldn’t be the same without unions or communism just as much as it wouldn’t be the same with Kim Kitsuragi or Titus.
At it's core, I feel nothing more strongly than "No matter how shitty of a day you had yesterday, you'll wake up again tomorrow. What you choose to do with it is entirely up to you."
With a dozen other messages that come from that single starting point.
>"Demonstrate that man is the biggest danger for man, even in a zombie-infested world"
I will say that that's like... Explicitly not the message of Walking Dead. There's like 3 speeches in the comic about how that isn't the message.
The world is a shitty place, and people make bad decisions, and the whole life could be such a mess, but still there can be found a glimpses of something different, something beautiful, and it is so bittersweet.
For me, the game is what happens after everything is lost. You can see this in lots of places, from Harry’s breakup to the destruction of the Revacholian commune. In both cases, it feels to those within like the light has gone out of the world. But, as they & we see throughout, life keeps fucking going. You have to keep breathing, keep moving, keep living, and most importantly, keep fucking trying to make things better. Kim shows Harry that connections can be formed, and the communist subplot shows players that the fight doesn’t end because all is lost. In fact, that’s when the fight is most dire, most Real in a Lacanian sense. It predates us, it resists representation while we are within it, and it will outlive us. I tend to recall Gramsci when playing: pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. In Harry’s case, I think that maxim starts moreso as a pessimism of the self, optimism of the body. Though a part of him has died with the ex something’s departure, his stubborn body persists in a damned world. He along with said body learn (or at least they have in all my playthroughs) to believe in something else, to keep fighting even if they aren’t exactly sure what they are fighting for. The point, the message of the game for me is thus: life & love will out. What the hell are you
going to do about it?
Know thyself: understand who you are and what drives you; understand who others are and what drives their behavior. Harri is struck by amnesia so that he doesn't remember his life before the great blackout, not even his name. His whole "journey" so to speak, is a discovery of who he is. To complete his task, he must discover who the other characters are, what motivates them, what constrains their choices, who they are connected to, what social entities shape their lives: the union, the company, the police precinct, the city and culture they came from, etc., and what ideologies they espouse: unionism, communism, business, gang credo, cultures. In the process, he learns who he is. Understand the other, and thus understand yourself.
"Everybody has to contend with the political, social, and economic systems that they live within, and any semblance of success comes at some degree of self-compromise or self-serving stances."
The absolutists of each faction are always presented like some totally unproductive joke.
Failure is an unavoidable part of life. No matter how much it hurts you must roll with it and try to make the best of it and learn from it. Wallowing in misery doesn't accomplish anything.
There's more to it but that's one I've picked up on. Harry's a failure of an adult, his relationship failed, communism failed, yet despite it all everyone persists and moves on.
It's about living in a fictionalized version of post soviet eastern europe. All ideologues on offer have failed. They all have excuses for their failure, something went wrong or is going wrong that they couldn't control. But there is no clear north star for the future. Not the companies, not the unions. Not the revolution. Our individual lives can and often do fall apart. It is important to know that in the face of failure we can slide into both ideological and personal nihilism and literally forget who we are. In response to this, we must still live. After the worst failure you can imagine short of death, you still must face a new day. After forgetting your ideology's crumbling you must still go on. After forgetting your own name, a new day will dawn complete with the consequences of the nights before you don't even remember, but you still have to keep going. Find your own reason to keep going because you don't have a choice either way. The next day will come and along with it the accumulated consequences of your actions and the actions of entire nations. No matter. Wake up and keep going.
Disco has a lot of deliberately confusing and contradictory writing and messaging throughout its runtime, but more than anything, I think the underlying message is something like this;
The world is a confusing, scary place, but there's beauty in the mere act of existing within it.
I think the game has multiple messages as it covers a wide area of subjects. DE is not a simple game when it comes to it's writing. Here's one of the messages: If you pass a check at the end of the communard quest, the students tell you something along the lines of that "being a communist isn't about succeeding in building communism, but believing that it can be done and still going forward". Taking the message into the most basic terms: "Life can be tough at times, and you will fail repeatedly (Harry). Sometimes because of things you couldn't even have prevented (Deserter). But it's important to never lose yourself and follow your dreams or at least not give up on life (Harry at the end)." Lena and her husband may be following irrational things, but at least they're happy, unlike many old people. The communard students have their own problems too, but at least they have a reason to live — hope.
I had an epiphany (if i can call it that and not be seen as a idiot, but i am so who cares.) about that subject. That something is impossible doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to achieve it. Will I be a Perfect husband? Perfect father. No i won't. But i will do anything i can and try to be. I'll do my best and fail spectacularly. I'll sometimes be the worst. But hell if i won't try to achieve this impossible task. That makes us who we are. Whatever it is we are. Always strive to achieve the impossible however futile it may be.
An organization I’m currently a part of has an old saying that sort of doubles as their mantra. “The eternal pursuit of perfection.” Note, the key word pursuit. It’s a losing battle to EXPECT perfection but to strive for it is an eternal battle that pays off in the end depending on your viewpoints. And no, you’re not an idiot for having this realization. It seems so simple but it’s a shocking revelation to have.
But you also have to be careful not to lose yourself in that pursuit and allow it to consume you. The lone gunman allowed Communist ideology to steal his life and he is a miserable husk. Renee is so obsessed with the good old days he can't see love in front of his eyes. Harry keeps dancing on the edge of oblivion obsessing over the One That Got Away. By contrast you have the crypto zoologists, who loved their creatures, but even more loved each other. And the Hardy Boys believe in the union, but also build up their community and each other. Those who dedicate their everything to The Cause are miserable. But those who fight the good fight then go home to live their life and enjoy what they have while it lasts are the happiest people in this miserable world.
Big fucking bugs are cool but dangerous
After all of it, yeah. Disco Elysium: 10/10 I cried at a bug.
The game is super bugged. I always encounter bugs when I play the game but nobody believes me.
No
/r/starfield
TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD -- FOR NEW PEOPLE IT IS TOO LATE FOR US WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS
Each day I think more and more about this phrase. It’s now a dogma of mine. Disco Elysium changed my life, and that mural was a big part of it
What's the meaning of it for you? That everything sucks and there's no point trying "in this world"? Or that life is inherently imbalanced, and to try and combat it, the game suggests killing a bunch of middle-class people? What's your meaning, why is it so important to you?
Its more of a dialectical-materialist analysis rather than a existential ponder. The phrase, to me, is about how the bourgeois notion of ‘love’ is false, and that there cannot be ‘true love’ within capitalism. With neoliberalism, even social relations have become markets - characteristics of character, apperence or personality have become like characteristics of an investment: we attribute ‘value’ to people. Also, beneath capitalism, even if you are together with people you truly love, material conditions will make love degrade over time. Being “past the honeymoon phase” is just an euphemism for “alienation by capital made social relations rotten over time”. And the middle class, by it’s reactionary tendencies, reinforces that. The middle class more and more seeks self-isolation and values more appearing happy than actually being happy. By that, it strengthens the individualist, consumerist and reactionary culture imposed by capitalism. A culture which, as I explained in the previous paragraph, makes the existence of ‘true love’ impossible. That’s the meaning of the phase to me, and it fundamentally ties with Steban’s fundamental thesis: Being a communist is not building communism, but believing it can be done and still going foward.
☭ ☭ ☭
> Disco was advertised as a game about communism and unions Was it? What makes you say that? Anyway, I think it's mainly that even if you've failed, you eventually have to move forward. Things can't get better as long as you remain trapped by the past.
I mean it wasn't directly but ZAUM did get on stage and go "Shout out to Marx and Lenin for making this game possible." and they're all avowed socialists. What's COOL about the game is that it critiques communism rather saliently, despite it being the political affiliation of its developers. Depending on when you got the game, it'd be entirely fair to believe it was a game about communism.
Sure, but that's not really them advertising the game. I get that they're socialists, and that their thoughts on socialism and communism shaped much of the game, and you can certainly argue that that's what the game was _about_, but it wasn't something that was specifically part of how the game was _advertised_, was it?
A major part of communist theory, at least the Marxist-Leninist variety, is dialectical materialism. What is dialectical materialism? Well, it encompasses pretty much everything in this game. So in my opinion, the game is about dialectical materialism. Well, that and hope.
For me it was advised by people as *the* game to play lol. But the trailer seemed to advertise a deep mystery game of choices and consequences.
“Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I’ll never reach it. So what’s the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”
Utopia is defined as impossible. Eutopia is the better world we can think of and try to achieve We can build this world better but we all have to work for it. And there is nothing on the horizon but the grey. It will consume everything in the end so the feeling that nothing makes sense may be overwhelming at times. But we have to get up and keep working. Tequila sunrise.
I never agreed with that. There’s no point in striving towards something that’s ultimately impossible to achieve.
volition is disappointed in you
Why would I care what that fun killer thinks of me?
because he keeps you alive
You say that like I don’t get *Finger on the eject button* in every playthrough I’ve ever done.
Heavy is the head who carries the crown for the other stats.
That’s encyclopedia for me.
Unless the striving is the goal in itself. It's kind of paradoxical, but I think the point is that you *can* achieve a life spent working toward something, even if that something isn't achievable. It's a direction to strive in. It's okay for it to be arbitrary, even if not every goal is equally satisfying. It's not saying you should never achieve anything, just that achievements aren't as meaningful or satisfying if they're not part of a larger motivation in life.
Striving is just more work for no real payoff. Why in the fuck should pointless work be a goal for anyone.
One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy
I doubt he’d see it that way, given he’s being tortured for all eternity.
by now, sisyphus is fucking jacked and trying to beat his boulder speedruns
But its not pointless? If it gave you meaning, that itself matters. Something like how the journey is as important as the end destination.
The journey doesn’t matter if the destination is never reached.
So is it better to not have tried at all? Trying to reach your destination makes you act, creates motion. It doesnt really matter if you reach it, just being close is already good. It helps with your mental health too
And when you’re gone, all that vanishes with you. Spending your time “creating motion” is an artistic way of saying you spent your life as a Sisyphean nobody. You wasted your life on something that will ultimately never come to fruition.
Its not about building something that will endure for all eternity. its about finding meaning in your life, seeing the beauty in simple things or finding something that drives you forward. Life doesnt need to be spectacular to be enjoyable. But you need to take the first step. Find your own meaning. Be introspective. I cant tell you how to live your life dude.
“I can’t tell you how to live your life dude.” Sounds to me like you already are. A life spent not striving for greatness is a life wasted.
Legacies are for fascists
Spoken like someone who’s jealous they will never have one.
Why would there not be payoff? Utopia literally translates as "no place". It can not exist. It's impossible perfection. Don't think of each step as just labour for nothing. That's not what's meant here. It's "striving towards perfection", as others have said further up. We try to envision what a perfect world would be like, and we take steps to get there. We may never get there, but every step towards it is still an improvement in the world. It's called the Paradox of Perfectionism. Maybe we want to solve world hunger. Or violence. Or poverty. And maybe we never can. So there are two answers: "No matter how many children we feed, there will never be a time where everyone is fed, so we shouldn't try." Or "Every child fed is still a child fed, even if others are still hungry". Perhaps we're not peacefully resolving every conflict in the world, but we can resolve *some.* And that's still better than nothing, than not trying. That's what's meant by the striving. Do as much as you can, even if not all problems are solved.
I think the difference interpretation of “goal” is what’s causing you to disagree with other people here. The quote doesn’t have to mean working your entire life just to fail to get a promotion, or be famous, or something tangible. A goal to always strive for but that is unreachable would be wanting to be the perfect father. I saw someone in another comment thread on this post mentioned this being what they want in life, and I think it’s a good example. There is no such thing as being a perfect parent, no matter how hard you try there will be mistakes and shortcomings. But the goal is the striving in this task, striving to do as good as you can, striving to give your kids the best life.
I had an epiphany (if i can call it that and not be seen as a idiot, but i am so who cares.) about that subject. That something is impossible doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to achieve it. Will I be a Perfect husband? Perfect father. No i won't. But i will do anything i can and try to be. I'll do my best and fail spectacularly. I'll sometimes be the worst. But hell if i won't try to achieve this impossible task. That makes us who we are. Whatever it is we are. Always strive to achieve the impossible however futile it may be.
Or, you could stop wasting your time dreaming about the impossible, and focus on what is actually achievable in life.
You're right. Brb im gonna hava a wank
Depression: You’ll never be happy, so why bother trying? Cancer is so hard to treat, and we’ll never get rid of *all* illnesses anyway, so why bother trying to help? People are already dying in that burning house, so why bother trying to save the few that could survive? It’s pointless. We all die anyway. Do you see my point? Do you see why this is flawed thinking.
I really don’t see your point.
By giving up hope, you GUARANTEE that things will *not* get better at all. But when you try, even with sky high ambitions, you can improve. That’s true whether it’s the world or ourselves. Some progress is better than nothing.
But it works like that with most human goals. "I want to get this job, *then* I'll be happy". Then you get the job, and after 2 days of being glad, you're unsatisfied again: "I just need to get promoted and start getting over x money per month, *then* I'll be happy". But the goalposts always move forward. Once you achieve something, you still feel empty and unsatisfied, if you only ever think about goals. And, more than that, perfection is impossible anyway, so if your goal is perfection, then you're even more screwed. But if you set goals, but don't focus on them, and instead think about the path itself, the progress you've making - then you can be fulfilled, in knowing that you're doing what you want to be doing
I'm not sure it has a single discrete message. It's about addiction and piecing a life together, it's about how the decisions we make make us, it's about how dogmatic approaches to political issues can dehumanize us and turn into coping mechanisms, it's about how corporatism looks from the bottom of the ladder, it's about how small flawed humans trying to be kind to each other is most of what we have in this life. There could be a single "point" that the writers were trying to make, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what that single point would be
I like your answer a lot. It touches on many important themes. For me, the main themes are fighting an addiction, and about piecing together a very broken life, by struggling, trying, working day after day, getting better. These feelings and themes are why I keep coming back to this game over and over. Sometimes I just feel down, and I install the game again, and it feels like I'm understood. So I go trying to crawl out of that difficult place again, fighting the difficult stuff. And I've never struggled with addictions, never even tried smoking or alcohol, but I'm afraid of those things, and the Electrochemistry's temptation, and Volition fighting it feels relatable. Every time I tried smoking in this game, I just felt like I lost, like I betrayed the chances for Harry to get his shit compressed enough
Dutch people bad (except Egg)
For me Steban summed up the game’s message pretty well: "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?" There’s never going to be a magical fix-it for all your problems. Harry solving the case won’t bring back the Ex-Something, single-handedly repair the Major Crimes Unit, or fix all of Revachol’s problem. But that doesn’t mean you can’t work and hope for a better future.
That's a tough one with all the ideology, disco, colorful characters and *socioeconomics* going on, but I think the persistent theme throughout the game is that, no matter how bleak life seems, every single day is a chance to compress your shit and start moving forward in spite of it all. Or, to put it quite simply, to have hope. No matter how elusive and distant it may be, it's always out there somewhere. No matter how convinced you are that it has abandoned you, one day it will return to your side. **UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRES DE TOI**
There is a lot of value in analyzing art this way, but I think this quote from Ursula K. Le Guin also applies: “Messages are for Western Union” Pretensions aside, my take on the message would be “No matter what your past is like, you can still play a part and help others”
It's pithy but I think that Le Guin quote is perfect. People are always looking for a moral or a message (and it's not their fault, we've been trained to do so!), but that's not the point of art, and it's sometimes more important and just as powerful to make you *think* and *feel*.
Exactly. Le Guin’s work and Disco Elysium are complex art works. You could distill it to a single message, but there’s no way to do that without losing something. The goal of art is to make you think and feel, sometimes it wants you to feel a single message, and sometimes it’s a complex web of things that aren’t strictly related to one through line
Mark Twain, speaking more directly: “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Another classic with the same sentiment is Sontag’s “Against Interpretation”.
Honestly I can’t think of a single person who was helped by Harry and Kim and the investigation. >!It depends on how well you do at the trial I guess!<
I don't think so at all actually... I think that part of the issue is that Harry can't help people through the RCM, he can't help people as a cop. What is the point of all the things he does in his official capacity, investigating the murder of a violent fascist and potentially causing the deaths of multiple people, only to discover by the end that the murderer is so far gone that it's worthless arresting him? Dros isn't going to kill again. The whole thing was essentially futile. But then there are the actual moments of humanity through the game, helping Annette come in from the cold and see eye to eye with her mother, helping Lena and Morell with the phasmid, helping Billie Mejean with her husband, even getting the grouse for Garte... (although that was his fault to begin with). These are the moments that actually have an impact, far more so than in Harry's official capacity as an officer.
“Mankind, be vigilant. We loved you”.
This is what they sign off with at the end of the credits. This got me teary eyed. I choose this to be it’s message.
The real world inspiration and context for the quote are what really matter; but yes, it was a beautiful send off. This quote carries so much weight and sends a very clear message as to what the authors’ intentions were to those who know where it’s from.
The world is shit, gods are dead but beauty is everywhere and a miracle is always possible.
I think it's about how the pain and ugliness of a city in ruin essentially and the whole world facing a literal unknowable, unstoppable force make beauty, humanity and incredible moments possible. The game is essentially a love letter to the human condition. Life has so much pain and suffering. The world is built on death, ruin, destruction, failure and loss. But people still keep going. Cities still keep shivering. And against all that dirt, beauty and even love (if not for a lover, then for yourself. If not for yourself, for your friend. If not for your friend, then for a city. If not for a city, then for a cause. etc) shine through. There's a certain strange beauty to listening to Idiot doom spiral's spiral of doom. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong and now this clearly educated and intelligent bloke is left to rot in alcohol. But it's his story. And this game, the story, the writing accepts that. It doesn't ridicule him for it. It's his life, his story. He is like anyone else, a part of this world we inhabit. It applies a sort of beauty to him, to his condition. That's just once example that came to mind.
Are you familiar with Hindpere's shadow of annihilation quote? This feels like a beautiful expansion of it :)
i, personally, am not familiar with the quote. what is it?
She once described the core feeling of what made things "elytical" (as in, something felt like it belonged in Elysium) as "the shadow of annihilation waiting in the wings next to the unshakeable belief in the greatness of humankind"! She's got several kickass quotes but this one in particular stuck with me :)
Al Ghul causes a lot of grief?
Check out [this post](https://reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/s/torbppRT6e) !
It's beautiful ! thanks a lot for sharing. I think it strikes pretty close to Robert & Helen intent
Hope.
I think it's biggest theme is that of breaking or perpetuating cycles. In other words it's a souls like. But in all seriousness I think it's about making the effort to change those cycles whether those are political or personal or cultural and maybe you'll fail or maybe what you try to replace the cycle with could be worse than the old thing. But you should still try to improve yourself and the world around you. Subdue the regret. Dust yourself off. You'll get it in the next life, where you don't make mistakes. Do what you can with this one, while you're alive.
Mr Evrart is helping me find my deeper meaning.
I don't think there's a message as such, it's just an expression of the creators' view of modern life in the thrall of neoliberal hegemony and mass environmental collapse.
Disco.
Take drugs!!!!
🎶 Life gets hard, but we go on🎵
Things get better. People, the state of things, life. But it takes time. And for them to get better we need to try.
Dutch people are evil
There's a lot to unpack in disco elysium and ultimately I think most people's responses are probably accurate- its saying a lot and it is, very painfully, emotionally honest and so there's a lot to read into it. I think the main takeaway from the main story is just that, \*you can't save the world\*. As Harry tries to fix himself he can very easily latch unto these grand ideologies, in particular communism and fascism which serve both as copying mechanisms and paths for him to move forward. So much of Harry's progress can feel like you're moving mountains, and even in the end when the story gets to its most tense heights, what have you done? You solved a murder, you did your job, and you maybe helped some people or hurt them (being vague for spoiler reasons). You don't start a revolution or return the suzerainty or fix revachol, you just go home and try to keep piecing your life together with everything you've learned. A lot of games have us play these world-changers, these mythic heroes who reshape the world with their time in it. But I think Disco Elysium is ultimately more concerned with being a normal person; a fucked up person, but someone who is living in a world that's far too big and trying to figure out how to cope with it. And I really like that, I feel like it helps condense the experience and it feels far more potent because of it. Also kinda scary, though also because I see too much of myself in Harry.
Mmm... I'd say it didn't have a single message, but several and, depending on your sensitivities, one of another will leave more of its imprint on you over the others. The one that stuck to me was that there's hope in community, in love. Even if the world is bleak, greedy, unforgiving and you're all shades of fucked up, there's still hope as you don't let go of people.
The message I get is "There is always joy in the micro, even on the path from Hell to Utopia"
I think it is about communism and the original intent behind it and many comments here will tell you the same. **BUT** also at the same time, I think it is about the "work". It is talking about the idea that it is important for a person's work, whether it's a painting or a song, to endure the test of time and transcend time and space, and to then influence many generations to come (Very much Classicism). In this case, despite the crippling alcoholism and addiction to various substances and the problematic personality, at the very end of the game, Harry is accepted back into the unit because of his amazing "detecting" skills. Which is beautiful because it is sort of highlighting how Harry's contributions have made a mark upon people and have generally improved people's life (and saving a couple as well). But also depressing because well I don't think Harry went about this detective business in a very healthy mental state. So I think it is about the vicious cycle of an artist or someone who wants to perfect their craft, sort of like the Artist/Perfectionist version of "The Myth of Sisyphus". You detect, which then ruins your mental health but you solve cases and making a contribution to the society makes you feel better, rinse and repeat.
"To live is to suffer but to survive... well, that's to find meaning in the suffering." - Friedrich Nietzsche ......... - DMX
"No matter what, life is beautiful and worth living. We should never lose hope even in intense failure."
Everything is fucked, but that isn't an excuse to lie down and wait for it all to be over. It may be nigh-impossible, but you have to try to build better, to be better. *"In the dark times, should the stars also go out?"*
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN
Like any piece of art, I don't think there is a singular message. It is open to interpretation from each person who views it, especially true of this game which can unfold and end in several different ways.
Love is possible but not for us.
Our culture and civilization gonna collapse , all what we trying to achieve is going to fail , all loved ones will leave us in poverty and shit , economic situation is being fucked up and soon 1% of ppl will live in heaven and 99% will eat mud for breakfast, god abandoned us , no miracle and salvation left on Earth , everything good left in past . But still you should not supress your happiness and to keep up the smile when you see a happy childs face , sun rise , when you talk to your friend , or pet a cat , or do whatever that brings joy in your little heart and touches your immesurable soul . You should keep living in this world - the world without future and hope for us , not just "exist" and simply kill yourself with alcohol and other stuff . You should know that always SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN . And then wake up with the next sound of hell horn.
"All the real communists are dead. They died, fighting for communism." Welcome to hell, find joy in it or go nuclear
Dunno. I think it could mean different things depending on who is playing. For me it's about starting over from a shitty place and finding the will to go on, rediscovering yourself, helping people, the complexity of people, Communism.... Lots of stuff. But I suppose if I had to give a succinct answer... It's about finding the truth. But that's a real slimmed down take 🤔 Definitely has a lot of Communism in there.
>Disco was advertised as a game about communism and unions Where was it advertised as that? I thought it was advertised as a detective story where your choices matter.
There's a lot of messages. "It is easier to imagine the end of all things than it is to imagine the end of capitalism." "To fail is to be human, to work past it is equally human." "We seek the approval of those we are close to, more so if we are close to them by association, even if we do not truly know it." "Children are annoying." "Life is broadly random. Death is equally random. You can die for no reason at all and it would mean nothing." "It is possible to do everything right and still fail. That is not unfair, it is merely life." "Sanity is having two shoes that fit, and a purpose. Purpose is the driving force behind all sanity. Find purpose if you do not have one." And that's not even the more esoteric "I have seven degrees in incredibly obscure art fields and found this one small reference to this equally obscure Finnish philosophical work and how the entire side quest is actually a refutation of that entire philosophy" meanings. That's just the Aesops it hands you on a silver platter. Okay the first one kind of requires a really, really, really specific lens to analyze the pale and what it means and how it works and you need to do a side quest as a communist and pass one specific encyclopedia check to learn a really small detail that turns into the greater aesop that while is never actually explained to you fits the theme of the game and the theme of the developers being Marxists of some flavor.
The message is that Cuno does indeed care. He cares a lot.
HARDCORE TO THE MEGA
Liberals are the ultimate evil.
If you are telling an extremely simple story to a kid, then sure, it might have one central message, Everything else has a theme or a set of themes, and attempts to distil them always into a clear message or messages will result in an extremely shallow understanding of a given story, hiding intended ambiguities of the text, which may actually be the focus. An author might raise questions when he has no answers, after all. To me, Disco Elysium central theme is history and revolution, and I see game as clearly arguing for necessity of utopian thought. Reality is never done, you should always question it, humans can break from the current order, future might not be - shouldn't be - like the day before, and the way you think about anything might turn out to be wrong or limited - expect the unexpected. But there are other notable themes, like addiction or love, and somebody else might take them as more important or better executed.
That addiction and escapism will destroy you, if you let it. This theme stays consistent from start to finish. Maybe you will be alive, but you will just be an anthropod seeking out glucose rewards - not a human. Either live your life in Nothingtown or embrace the pain, bright lights and people wanting things from you that you don't want to give them.
The game is clearly political. And has a LOT to say about politics, communism in particular. But I don’t think that’s “The Message”. I watched a video essay that pointed out something very interesting that really stuck with me. At the end of the game you get maybe the most interesting choice in the game and possibly in any text driven story game: YOU get to contextualize what your choices meant. Trant asks you what happened to you to cause you to lose your memory and you get to decide (drank too much, defense mechanism to forget trauma/sadness, caused by the anomaly in the church, a stupid joke, etc). This choice is very interesting because it retroactively contextualizes almost every other choice you made previously. This ties into one of the main themes of the game, which is how to move forward in the aftermath of devastating events. You start the game a hollowed out husk. The town has been devastated economically. The communists are trying to build back after being completely destroyed. You, the town, the communists, the remnants of the union after the shootout, are all trying to figure out how to move forward. You meet different characters that are working through coping with many different kinds of loss in different ways (the widow with the boat, the wife of the dead drunk, Cuno, etc). I find that choice at the end interesting because it gives you the agency to contextualize what your journey through the game meant and who your character is. I think “The Message” of the game is how to move forward after traumatic loss and that you have the ability to decide how your decisions shape you as a person.
This one's mine: 'Our decisions can lead us to the abyss or to redemption'. This is my GF: 'The world is a shitty place and you still have to fuck it to move forward'. Hope it helps!
Communism will win.
Everybody has a different way of dealing with the inherent meaninglessness of the world, and some are much more effective than others.
It’s never too late to reinvent yourself
Everything sucks, and that's ok.
I honestly view the game as a mirror. This game was like the oracle for me... and she told me exactly what I needed to hear.
This world is enough. It must be. This is the greatest and kindest arrangement the atoms had in them.
I do not play any games this is what it says on my Google page and it has like six apps on there and then it has bisco and then across from that it says follow ing I don't get it
It's about how people cope with trauma
Estonia Sucks
“Nothing really matters”
The genius loci of the literal city itself speaks to you directly, lol. Tf u mean "nothing really matters"
Maybe a message explaining there’s multiple ways to solve problems or an anti drug message? I can’t really remember much of the plot from this game, but I don’t think anything happened in the story before I finished the game that was too interesting.
Marxists are terrible at doing business, and writing stories. They could have had everything, yet they lost their company.
**"There will be better days ahead, trust that, nothing is eternal...YOU can get out of this"**
"Mankind, be vigilant, I loved you" with an eye to the source of the quote but also taken it its widest sense.
For me, the messagw would be how ideology (understood as a cosmovision) conforms our reality and how we relate and engage with ourselves and the world around you. Once you get free about yourself as a political being, you can be anything you want to as a "tabula rasa"
Drugs are... Bad? And whatever you do, don't disappoint Kim.
We're all doomed but we should still keep trying for eachother
Coming to terms with the history of your life. All of the events and choices that have led to where you are, the solidified and unchangeable past; all of the possibilities and potentialities stretching out before you, in both the hope and terror of what could be; and, ultimately, the means by which we come to terms with it all - self-medicating to cope, be it substances, ideas, obsessions or fixations. Leading to the unrealistic hope of a future some find naive, or a boring resignation some find complicit with the issues of today, or maybe just the realization that none of it matters and embrace the warm primordial blackness of oblivion.
Do drugs solve crime
Disco Elysium is the body without organs of Martinaise and Revachol in general. It demonstrates relations of power, deterritorializations and lines of flight. It is probably the only and the best poststructuralist game out there.
It's basically a narrative of art -- that is, it is what you make of it. It's told through your life in this broken, dark, politically-charged world in which you are a cop and addict. But during this time you are exposed to many things: the tired writer (who even self-inserted), the heartbreak of love, music, dancing, fantasy, crafting, painting, etc. You are a cop because you investigate. You find a story in even the little things. Because art is in everything, even the hard cop and the depressed alcoholic. **Powerlessness can be an inevitability for everyone, but how you interpret that and what you become are what matters.** I feel like this is the only "core" message the game has, which is given incredible depth by the story. But there are other messages as well. Such as compassion for the mentally ill and drug addicts. Personally I believe the politics in the game are more fictional than cryptids, so I don't really believe that is the point. The game really reminds me of Alice in Borderland, in that both are deeply introspective lessons you may have heard before (but personally attached no meaning to), taught through the non-jarring lens of fiction. Not an easy thing to pull off.
Disco Elysium has a number of different messages for the equal number of topics it tackles. If you were to ask me to summarize my main takeaway from this game, it'd be something to the effect of "The world sucks and is indescribably cruel, but it's *your* world. You're the only one who can make something good out of it." I think Volition says it best: "No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive."
For me it was about identity, what identity means and how it is created and reinforced. And class struggle, with other forms of oppression mixed in (racism fascism).
I wish there was a disco option.
Drugs are bad, mkay?
Fuck the moralists. And their "Le pRiCe sTaBiLiTE" along with them.
We are all oh so very wrong.
ANODIC DANCE MUSIC WILL SAVE THE WORLD
There’s a lot more to it of course but I think it has a really motivating „get your shit together“ message. Volumetric shit compressor all the way!
for me the message is to not be stuck in the past and to not isolate. there is hope, people work better together, don't become a man alone in an island (metaphorically). let go of the past that's weighing you down. though I gotta say, highly disagree with your take on the message of bg3 lol
I think it's possible to take away many different messages. Here are some that I did: * Failure is unavoidable. * Human systems of government are flawed, terrible, and never serve everyone adequately. Some are more terrible than others. * You can't wipe away the past, but you can do good things now. * Alcohol and drug abuse is bad.
“The world is beautiful and worth fighting for. I agree with one of those statements.”
I think the game is fundamentally about two things failure and hope. Failure is a fact of the world, and we can either submit to it and marinate in oblivion or we can try to be better and have hope for tomorrow. The message is that the choice is ours, but failure isn’t a death sentence. That’s just my thoughts though. I usually try to play the Sober Communist who wants Kim to like him. So my perspective is certainly biased, but still applicable. I do disagree about the game *not* being plot focused. The plot is full of intrigue and it beautifully connects to the characters and themes of the story. Disco Elysium wouldn’t be the same without unions or communism just as much as it wouldn’t be the same with Kim Kitsuragi or Titus.
Success is a series of failures.
Get drunk, ~~do~~ solve crime
At it's core, I feel nothing more strongly than "No matter how shitty of a day you had yesterday, you'll wake up again tomorrow. What you choose to do with it is entirely up to you." With a dozen other messages that come from that single starting point.
The world is on fire heading for the edge of a waterfall and the only thing we can and should do is be good to each other.
>"Demonstrate that man is the biggest danger for man, even in a zombie-infested world" I will say that that's like... Explicitly not the message of Walking Dead. There's like 3 speeches in the comic about how that isn't the message.
The world is a shitty place, and people make bad decisions, and the whole life could be such a mess, but still there can be found a glimpses of something different, something beautiful, and it is so bittersweet.
For me, the game is what happens after everything is lost. You can see this in lots of places, from Harry’s breakup to the destruction of the Revacholian commune. In both cases, it feels to those within like the light has gone out of the world. But, as they & we see throughout, life keeps fucking going. You have to keep breathing, keep moving, keep living, and most importantly, keep fucking trying to make things better. Kim shows Harry that connections can be formed, and the communist subplot shows players that the fight doesn’t end because all is lost. In fact, that’s when the fight is most dire, most Real in a Lacanian sense. It predates us, it resists representation while we are within it, and it will outlive us. I tend to recall Gramsci when playing: pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will. In Harry’s case, I think that maxim starts moreso as a pessimism of the self, optimism of the body. Though a part of him has died with the ex something’s departure, his stubborn body persists in a damned world. He along with said body learn (or at least they have in all my playthroughs) to believe in something else, to keep fighting even if they aren’t exactly sure what they are fighting for. The point, the message of the game for me is thus: life & love will out. What the hell are you going to do about it?
Know thyself: understand who you are and what drives you; understand who others are and what drives their behavior. Harri is struck by amnesia so that he doesn't remember his life before the great blackout, not even his name. His whole "journey" so to speak, is a discovery of who he is. To complete his task, he must discover who the other characters are, what motivates them, what constrains their choices, who they are connected to, what social entities shape their lives: the union, the company, the police precinct, the city and culture they came from, etc., and what ideologies they espouse: unionism, communism, business, gang credo, cultures. In the process, he learns who he is. Understand the other, and thus understand yourself.
"Everybody has to contend with the political, social, and economic systems that they live within, and any semblance of success comes at some degree of self-compromise or self-serving stances." The absolutists of each faction are always presented like some totally unproductive joke.
Failure is an unavoidable part of life. No matter how much it hurts you must roll with it and try to make the best of it and learn from it. Wallowing in misery doesn't accomplish anything. There's more to it but that's one I've picked up on. Harry's a failure of an adult, his relationship failed, communism failed, yet despite it all everyone persists and moves on.
It's about living in a fictionalized version of post soviet eastern europe. All ideologues on offer have failed. They all have excuses for their failure, something went wrong or is going wrong that they couldn't control. But there is no clear north star for the future. Not the companies, not the unions. Not the revolution. Our individual lives can and often do fall apart. It is important to know that in the face of failure we can slide into both ideological and personal nihilism and literally forget who we are. In response to this, we must still live. After the worst failure you can imagine short of death, you still must face a new day. After forgetting your ideology's crumbling you must still go on. After forgetting your own name, a new day will dawn complete with the consequences of the nights before you don't even remember, but you still have to keep going. Find your own reason to keep going because you don't have a choice either way. The next day will come and along with it the accumulated consequences of your actions and the actions of entire nations. No matter. Wake up and keep going.
Life is a puzzle and putting together the pieces, making it all make sense is a feeling better than crack. I think. I've never actually had crack.
Disco has a lot of deliberately confusing and contradictory writing and messaging throughout its runtime, but more than anything, I think the underlying message is something like this; The world is a confusing, scary place, but there's beauty in the mere act of existing within it.