“The greatest RPG ever made?” Not even close. Why do titles need to be this hyperbolic?
Because it’s an opinion article and maybe it’s OK for the author to make an subjective statement of the quality of a thing they love? Like, if they really believe it, is it wrong to state that? Do they need to qualify everything in their article with “this is just my opinion, sorry if you don’t agree.”
I get being annoyed by hyperbole in articles, but I don’t really think that this warrants this kind of response. Sometimes it’s OK to make strong statements. You can make statements like that without implying that people who think differently are bad/wrong.
Sometimes it’s OK to make strong statements.
How fucking dare you
If it was an RPG that was even close to contending for that title, I would acquiesce to it. As it stands, I think the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Personal taste is personal taste, and that’s fine, but if you’re going to make bold claims like this, you should have to be burdened with the duty of backing it up. I don’t accept that this reporter’s personal opinion matters more than the RPG fans’ opinions as a whole. For them to make such a bold claim on such a public forum means they need to provide substantial evidence for it.
Let’s get back to basics though: this was a bold statement done in an article title to get clicks. You can tell talk till sunrise about a person’s right to have their own opinion, but this isn’t really what’s going on. This is a journalist making a hyperbolic statement to get clicks. Fuck them. Fuck them and their marketing strategy. Tell me it’s not exactly that: a marketing strategy. Tell me it’s not a ploy to bolster the author’s career. Tell me there’s something substantial underneath this that warrants serious attention, rather than a click-bait article that’s meant to incite anger and garner clicks that way. How much does your contention that this reflects a genuine opinion stand up to the idea that it’s just a cheap attention grab?
Why did this incite anger in you?
I suppose because it’s insulting to the fact that there are good games out there that actually deserve attention.
Is that your opinion, in the same way that it might be the author’s opinion that Disco Elysium is the greatest RPG ever?
No, that’s a fact.
Haha, awesome. Have a good day ✌️
If it was an RPG that was even close to contending for that title, I would acquiesce to it.
Except it is. And I don’t think the burden of proof is on the article writer, when culturally, it’s just accepted that it is either the greatest RPG, or one of the greatest RPGs. Maybe you didn’t like it, but that doesn’t invalidate the facts of how high people regard this game.
It’s not some damned marketing strategy. It’s sitting at 91 on MetaCritic (even after all of the backlash about ZA/UM), won Game of the Year for many many outlets, and any individual who has played it all the way through will either call it the greatest RPG they ever played, or one of the greatest RPGs.
No no, you don’t get it. Every single person in the world must love it for it to be the greatest game. Until that day, they’re just pretenders.
/s
I think your “not even close” statement is hyperbolic. Disco Elysium has very positive reviews in most if not all review outlets and won Game of The Year award in 2019. You can personally think its not a good RPG but saying its nowhere close is very hyperbolic.
But “best RPG” though? There are tons of RPGs that won “Game of the Year”, and when people talk about iconic RPGs, Disco Elysium is rarely the one mentioned. Most people will claim Chrono Trigger, Morrowind (or Skyrim I guess), or one of the Final Fantasies (usually 6, 7, or 8). Look up any list of top RPGs and it probably won’t crack the top 10.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game, but “best RPG” is a pretty crowded field that rarely includes Disco Elysium.
Disco Elysium is not a fantasy themed monster slaying adventure game. It’s a detective game of narrative psychological exploration that uses RPG mechanics.
Sure, but being different doesn’t automatically win you “best RPG.”
Because it riles up the nerds.
The article author has never played a good RPG before, clearly.
I don’t get the love for this game. I’ve been playing CRPGs since Temple of Apshai and I’ve never seen a game where the story and dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.
So bad that I had to hop on a forum and go “Hey, so, there aren’t any good choices in the dialog tree, did I fuck up my character generation? Should I start over?”
And got “You just don’t get it, man!”
Yeah, I don’t get games where “You want some fuck?” is a valid dialog choice.
The main character starts the game literally giving himself a traumatic brain injury by drowning himself in alcohol. It’s not really the kind of RPG where you can play a self-insert, the player character is an actual character with his own backstory. Not being able to make good choices because of the player character’s personal trauma and limitations is part of the story that the game is telling.
This says it well. I also like how the character’s fucked up backstory is inescapably linked to the fucked up backstory of the world he lives in. It it were just that he was a fuck-up, then it wouldn’t be as compelling. What I really love is that whilst he certainly is the victim of his own choices, it’s much more the case that he’s a victim of his material circumstances (rather like how I am currently still in bed due to a combination of poor choices, and material circumstances making consistent good choices very hard)
So bad that I had to hop on a forum and go “Hey, so, there aren’t any good choices in the dialog tree, did I fuck up my character generation? Should I start over?”
Your first mistake was thinking it was like any of those other CRPGS with dialog trees. No, you didn’t fuck up your character generation. Your character IS a fuck up. That’s part of the story it’s trying to tell. You don’t get to Mary Sue this shit.
How you engage with the game is figuring out how to un-fuck-up the character in a matter that is realistic. Or just ignoring whatever lessons the game gives you and continue down the same self-destructive path. Or somewhere in-between. All paths are have their creative stories to tell, and even being strange and weird with it can still lead to solving pieces of the crime you’re trying to piece together.
Yeah, I don’t get games where “You want some fuck?” is a valid dialog choice.
Because it’s fucking funny when you didn’t know what the actual dialogue entry was going to be, you took a gamble, and the “pay off” (well, it was a failed check) is that your character says the cringest fucking line to some woman he’s immediately attracted to. So cringe that even your own Volition (best fucking mental power, btw) is like “the words already left your mouth” as if he was already smacking his goddamn forehead right through to the other side. (EDIT: Actually, it was Suggestion, but whatever.) If anything, it should teach you not to make red check gambles unless you’re prepared for the mental damage a failure might come with. Or maybe you just want to laugh at the upcoming misfortune.
Your. Character. Is. A. Fuck up.
If that bothers you, and you want to play something that involves some extreme power fantasy, where you can pick a class and play a completely silent blank slate, then this game is not for you.
And I’m not interested in playing as a fuck up… it’s not interesting to me.
Thank god Steam let me return it.
Seconded. Also the neckbeards downvoting you for having a civil conversation about a game but not enjoying it are a joke.
neckbeards downvoting you for having a civil conversation
That’s not at all what’s happening here, it’s the other way around. Most posts in here are from people saying they hated the game and comparing it games absolutely nothing like it, and then they are getting pissed at the people responding and explaining why they liked it and why it was good, and said neckbeards doubling down and saying Witcher was a better game or something when one is an interactive novel, and the other is a click-splat game.
People are just being irritated with other people for not liking the same thing they like, and no surprise, the bulk of contention is coming from people who rather mindlessly cut down orcs with a sword so they don’t have to feel or think things.
I mean, it’s ok to not get it? It really does sound like you just don’t get it. If your example of why it’s bad is a genuinely funny, absurd result of a failed check, it might just not be for you.
I enjoyed it because many RPGs are a power fantasy, where you’re an epic hero who saves the world. Some of them present you with a blank slate character you can shape however you wish, and whilst that can be fun, I find I have more fun when I’m playing a character with some history.
In Disco Elysium, you’re playing as someone whose history is fucked up, so good choices often aren’t an option. He’s not a typical hero, and he’ll be lucky if he can save himself, let alone the world — the world is even more fucked up than he is, riddled with scars from a long dead, hopeful era. Even though at the start of the game, both the player and your character have no knowledge of history, you can’t escape it.
A huge part of why I like it is because I can see what it’s going for, and I’m here for that. Even if I didn’t personally click with it, I think I would respect it for having things to say and committing to it. What’s an RPG that you have clicked with or loved what it was going for? If you’re not into Disco Elysium, then I suspect that your answer might be a game that would pull me out of my comfort zone in interesting ways.
“dialog choices appear to have been written by or for people with traumatic brain injury.”
I think this is a pretty harsh statement, but it did make me laugh, because part of why I vibed with Disco Elysium so much is because a couple years before, I actually bumped my head that I lost my memory and couldn’t even remember who I was.
I mostly just hated that the story was largely delivered via info dump and nearly every character was a terrible person to the point of being grating. I don’t have to enjoy every video game, but I wish I at least understood why this one got this much acclaim.
That’s a really bizarre read, how do you come to the conclusion that every character was a terrible person? Even amongst the first 6 or so people you talk to, most of them are decent people living in a very poor area. I usually hate media where everyone is an asshole but DI is so NOT that that I’m just… Confused.
Because they were. Maybe not the first 6 people verbatim, but of the characters you have a significant amount of dialogue with, the only one who didn’t give me this impression was your partner. You run into the asshole kid, the other cops over the radio are assholes, the guy on the wall to the docks is an asshole, and beyond that, I didn’t take notes, but it annoyed the hell out of me.
To be fair, many people KNEW your character pre-amnesia. There are very valid reasons for many of them to treat your character like an asshole, because to be frank, he kinda was. This is a very big and very intentional part of the game. You’re also a cop coming to police an area that hasn’t seen a cop come around in literal decades.
Garte, the hotel manager, doesn’t like that you’re being incredibly loud and trashing your room. He’s a bit of an asshole, but honestly with good reason, and he comes around if you make an effort to apologize.
Lena, the Cryptozoologist, is really friendly and very charming.
Cuno is a drugged out kid, he’s supposed to be absurd.
If anything, Kim is impossibly accomodating and patient with you. Even if you’re an asshole to him. There’s a reason people love him and call him “best boy” because he’s got these little windows into his personality even through his stiff police exterior.
There are some actual racist assholes in the game, but I feel very confident in stating that the vast majority of the characters are not assholes.
Oh, my player character was definitely on the list of asshole characters that made the game grating. And even if his actions before the story began precipitated everyone else being an asshole, it didn’t make the game less annoying to experience it fresh as the player.
I think anime ruined a whole generation.
Something about the really overly exaggerated and 2-dimensional character traits that require absolutely no nuance to understand because it makes for better translation through international markets for children, it just wrecked how a lot of people interact with media.
The sad part is someone is reading this comment right now and furiously typing up a reply why their favorite story about a high-school kid with absolutely no personality being fought over by two jealous sci-fi/fantasy princesses for no reason is in fact, peek nuance and the highest form of thoughtful expression.
There are a lot of characters who are good people. A lot of bad ones too . A lot of the good ones you’ve previously pissed off so they start out barely putting up with you talking to them (and you deserve that treatment frankly).
I think the problem is that it kind of isn’t an RPG.
It’s an adventure game with heavy RPG elements. Like the core gameplay clearly resembles old point and click adventure games. It’s just the experience and leveling system are also so central to the gameplay that it wouldn’t work without also being an RPG.
You’ve confused basic with good, common mistake
By chance did you pick a character with a low intelligence or charisma? Because ability scores matter a lot.
I sadly didn’t get to play much of it. I only had access to it for a limited time, and I did not get far at all.
See, that’s what I was thinking. The reaction in the forums was it was supposed to be that way.
To me Disco Elysium was the next example of the “Art Game”.
The game people bring up when discussing Game as Art, without actually explaining what makes it art.
without actually explaining what makes it art.
Is that happening? Everyone endorsing the game even in this post are going on at length what makes it great. I could drop a 20-page thesis about the themes, plots and interwoven interactive narratives, but I am guessing you don’t actually want to read that any more than you want to play a reading game to begin with.
Maybe… and hear me out here, maybe some of you just don’t like arty games and rather do mindless clicking and grinding. That’s fine, just understand what’s what.
ITT: lots of people who don’t like this kind of game saying they didn’t like it, comparing it to wildly different games and getting pissed at people explaining why it was great.
I weep for our species’ lost potential, which ironically was a theme of Disco Elysium.
I found it…daunting. I couldn’t stick with it. maybe it’s because I like my RPGs to have a bit of action or random encounters I don’t know but I just couldn’t get into it. once I found myself skipping text and stuff I figured “welp, there’s no point in playing this now”.
So yeah I guess I just found it daunting and boring. Just not my cup of tea. If you’re someone that enjoyed it, kudos. but personally I don’t think it’s the greatest RPG ever made.
Yeah, it wasn’t for me either. I really tried to give it a shot, gone back to it a couple times but I really just don’t get it.
Great art/style? Definitely. But the gameplay itself is SO boring.
I’m trying to play a game here, and the game part is lacking. RNG+ text? No thanks, not much to keep me.
It’s about the exploring the story, the mind of your character, and lots of political and philosophical themes. The deep psychological exploration of the human condition is absolutely unique and fascinating.
Maybe you’re too young or otherwise not ready to engage with these themes.
Nobody reads anymore, anything more than a paragraph of text gets skipped by most people under 25 I think. I mean it broadly too, online, in games, in classrooms, in work meetings… it’s massively infuriating to someone who grew up reading books and has a brain adapted to creating worlds from abstractions.
Definitely neither.
I put down choose your own adventure stories a long time ago, and a digital one doesn’t hold me no matter how well it’s put together.
But the gameplay itself is SO boring.
I don’t know why anyone is trying to pass it off as a “gameplay” experience, it’s literally an interactive novel that uses visual settings and reader choices to advance the plot in a thousand different ways.
If you don’t like reading, if you don’t have a brain adapted to creating worlds from text, you won’t like it. If you sit down to “play a game” and wanna click-splat baddies or strategically manage your health potions as you horde massive piles of wealth and gain levels… you won’t like it. It has some of those elements but its to serve the purpose of advancing story, not engaging in gameplay.
Everyone is in here talking about reading… The Director’s Cut or whatever its called, has full voice narration of everything. And it’s really good.
Oh yes, the voice narration was what made it go from great to fantastic, but it’s still at that point an “audio book” for all the unwashed masses in here, so it’s semantic and pointless to try to convince people who rather delight in the nuance and depth of JRPG’s where you grind killing slimes for 94 hours that it’s not supposed to be that kind of game.
Yeah, I read a couple books a month. Not interested in playing one disguised as a video game. They serve different purposes.
Reading goes at my pace which is way, way faster than a game. Story-based games are way too slow and not nearly rich enough to replace a book.
Cool if people like it, obviously there’s something there that clicks with people. But I think it’s boring AF.
I’m not entirely confident in my answer but I think my initial issue with Disco Elysium when I first tried to play it was because I expected the typical high action and quick cause-and-effect outcomes I’m used to in most RPGs. At least IMO, most RPG choices in games usually end up with a relatively clear outcome, whereas DE felt more gradual. Similarly, DE is more detective than action, which might sometimes benefit from gradual clues all coming together.
Not to say anyone is wrong for not liking this approach, it does take a bit of commitment to engage with it. But I think being willing to engage with it on its level might make the initial hump more bearable. I’ve honestly come to enjoy the slower approach of DE, but refreshing compared to everything else.
If you read a lot of books, it’s absolutely one of the best interactive reading experiences ever made. If you’re not into reading and you don’t have a brain adapted to creating worlds from text you’re going to feel like only some kind snob likes it or it’s pretentious and people only like it for the politics or something.
Edit: the idea that so many of you are actually mad that other people had a great experience that you can’t share for whatever reason should be your tell that you are experiencing a form of cognitive dissonance that should be embraced and explored.
Why don’t you read a PDF transcript of it then? I mean, all the visuals just mean you don’t have a brain adapted to creating worlds from text… Why need a game if you can a) go to page 713 b) go to page 23 c) go to page 412
Because the player choices and interaction and evolution are what drives the shape of the experience you have, the game wouldn’t work as a novel, and a novel alone couldn’t explore the depth of the world-building and characterization, so it’s an almost perfect harmony between the two genres, and if you don’t like the tone, setting or concept, that’s fine, but understand what it is so you know why you don’t like it.
All you describe could just play all out in my head. You haven’t read a lot of good novels if you need all this audiovisual support to paint a world with such depth in your head.
You really need a brain adapted to creating novel universes from text. If you don’t like reading novels I get why you need all the help such games offer to handwalk your imagination along the script. If that’s the case, reading novels is just not your cup of tea. That’s fine, I get it. But I don’t get why you wouldn’t just read an PDF choose-your-own adventure.
There are some of us with no inner vision who do enjoy reading too though, you know?
Not all of us have the ability to see what we read, i.e., aphantasia.
I love to read though. All day long if I can. Also in the top 0.1% when it comes to reading speed. Guess why? Nothing wrong with my comprehension either.
I was being cynical, to make the point that looking down on mainstream gamers for not liking visual novels could be doubled down by taking the same stance comparing visual novels vs reading plain text.
I play visual novels all the time, and the point you make is very valid.
You haven’t read a lot of good novels if you need all this audiovisual support to paint a world with such depth in your head.
This is such a needlessly obtuse and petty take that I stopped here. I will not have any interesting conversation with someone so bent out of shape that other people had a better experience than they did. If you just don’t like a “reading game” just end it there and go play CoD or something.
OK, now you’ve come to this conclusion reread your original comment. The only one petty and obtuse are you.
Also, I dropped the /s for my previous comments. Glad you get my point now, though.
Same - Planescape Torment is my personal greatest RPG ever made
A true fellow of culture. Just don’t trust the skull.
this game was so fucking depressing and bleak and full of downer characters and sub stories i stopped playing after 4 hours.
drama can be good. hardships make adventures exciting. but when the entire world is a hardship, I’d rather play something with more realistic variety.
Yeah I felt the same way. I kept playing because of the hype around it, but quit after 8 hours or so.
Sad because I played it a dozen times and found avenues of hope, metaphors for our current lives and generation, bleak and dark views and sublime explorations of acceptance and living in the present. Choices and consequences that can’t be reversed and how we deal with them.
But as I say over and over, it’s a reading experience, it’s a mental/emotional exploration of ideas and settings that reflect the real world. If you just wanna feel good… well there’s a voice in your head for that too, and you can follow that voice and shut out all the others in life, and in game.
If I wanted to read that much I’d reread the Stephen king dark tower series. I just couldn’t get past all the dialogue and reading, that’s not why I play video games
Because people trying to sell it as a traditional video game are doing it a disservice, you don’t play Disco Elysium for the same gaming experience as something where you click buttons to splat baddies, it is literally an interactive novel and if you love reading you will love it, if not, you won’t. It’s ridiculous to compare it to other games because it’s a niche genre.
I get really sick of the anti-intellectualism around non-traditional experiences though, part of the seven-second attention-span generation leaking everywhere. The “I ain’t reading all that” banner that everyone under 20 seems to carry nowadays. It’s damn near impossible to find slower-paced, more thoughtful entertainment experiences without really digging into niches and even then you’re going to see people complaining constantly.
edit: if it makes you irritated that other people enjoyed a thing you didn’t, that should be a cue to explore deeper why you aren’t able to enjoy something so different from the norm and what it makes you feel. It’s far more productive to explore your own reactions and conscious thought-stream than try to convince other people who DID like a thing that they’re wrong.
It has nothing to do with attention span. If I wanna read a novel I’ll sit down and do so, if I sit down to play a game i want to play a game. Your argument would be like Christopher Nolan releasing a film with no pictures, just words on screen you read, I’d be mad and others would say it’s a masterpiece. But it has nothing to do with me liking to read or not. If you think about it DE is a video game equivalent to a Nolan movie, some will say it’s a masterpiece, others like me will say it’s pretentious, boring crap
I have the same issue with those telltale games where you just click a choice and watch a giant cutscene.
If it’s not attention span, and you like to read, then the issue is expectation. It is a visual/interactive novel. Player choices and interaction and evolution are what drives the shape of the experience you have, the game wouldn’t work as a novel, and a novel alone couldn’t explore the depth of the world-building and characterization, so it’s an almost perfect harmony between the two genres, and if you don’t like the tone, setting or concept, that’s fine. I just encourage people to understand that it’s not trying to be a traditional game or novel, it’s something in between and if you don’t care for that experience, also fine.
I love reading, but I couldnt get into Disco Elysium besides many attempts, so I disagree with your statement that I love it because I love reading.
Maybe I don’t like starting a book over and over again because the dice made me do it.
Three bad rolls in the first 30 minutes and you get a heart attack and have to start over.
Sounds like you had some really bad luck? The game doesn’t ever punish you for failure, it rewards it in most cases, it develops the story and there are relatively few ways to actually “lose” there are just different story and character arc outcomes, that’s why so many of us replay it so many times.
Possible.
I experienced it as an impossible puzzle to not die in the first hour. I went with a different approach each time, rolled a couple of 1s and died.
That’s absolutely crazy, I have done deliberate fuck-up playthroughs and had as much enjoyment from how the story progresses as when I try to min-max various traits and win every roll. I can only think of a couple places where dying was a real risk and they take place much later in the game.
