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This video is going to spoil some pretty major plot points,
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but the plot isn't really the point of this game.
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This is truly a title you have to play to experience,
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so now's your chance to go play it blind if
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that's what you want to do. Otherwise, here we go.
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I spent a long time getting to know the sand
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in Disco Elysium. Specifically, I spent a long time scouring
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the coast, searching around the remains of dilapidated settlements weathered
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by time and conflict for a bug. Not even a
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real bug. A mythical one. A cryptid. The Insolindian Phasmid.
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A creature only known to exist in campfire stories. This
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wasn't a small diversion. The whole time, my detective partner, Kim,
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was sure to let me know how colossal a waste
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of time this was. And given everything else happening in
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the game, he was probably right. I agreed. And yet,
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for reasons I still don't fully understand... I chose to
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do this. Disco Elysium, if you don't know, is a
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dense game. It's a murder mystery with international stakes. Civil
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War seems all but inevitable. The setting is an ideological
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time bomb waiting to blow, fuse ignited by the still-smoldering
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embers of history. And, as the detective on the case,
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you're prodding at it the whole time. Beyond that, it's
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a game with a lot to say about reality, too.
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I've been hearing for years that this is a political masterpiece,
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a game with two Bibles worth of philosophy embedded in it.
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I remember when it first came out, it seemed nobody
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could make their video essay about it fast enough. It
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seemed to be the domain of MFAs and professional loremasters,
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a title purpose-built for overthinking. Which, I will not lie,
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sort of kept me at arm's length. I don't know,
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it seemed like a title better handled by the experts.
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Over the years, I've enjoyed reading and hearing all they've
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had to say about it. I've learned things about history, philosophy, geopolitics,
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just from watching other people analyze this game. So imagine
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my surprise when I finally get around to playing it
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and I find myself singing karaoke to a bored hotel audience,
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embarrassing myself trying to talk fine art with a lorry driver,
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laboring over the life-altering decision whether to shave my mutton chops, and,
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of course, spending a truly ludicrous amount of time chasing bugs.
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Call me crazy, but somehow this game doesn't feel like
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a college dissertation to me. Outside of the political intrigue,
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the existential philosophy, the literal volumes of worldbuilding, Disco Elysium
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is deeply, movingly, unremarkable. So, for a change, that's the
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side of the game I want to show you. The quotidian,
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the sidequests, the part you might never see when staring
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at the sheer scale of this masterpiece. The part where
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you walk the beach, looking for imaginary bugs. Before we
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get into the actual video, I've got to show you something.
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We have made what I think is one of my
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favorite pieces of merch ever. Look at this. I won't
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say anything, just look at it. I am the Eldritch Horror.
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To anyone who's ever felt like an outsider, who's recognized
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how unconventional and untidy they are for the rest of
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the world, everyone who's noticed these things about themselves and
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found power in them, this is for you. Illustrated by
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the amazing Salamander King, this poster shines with beautiful foil
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and hangs on your wall at a healthy 16 by
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20 inches. You can get it right now at thetailfoundry.com.
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A big thanks to everyone who does. Not only are
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you supporting the show, but you're also encouraging really good
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art to be made and a really good message as well.
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There's this giant boar there. And evil apes. And the
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evil apes are juking it out on the ball. You're
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one of them. Harry Dubois is as new to the
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world of Disco Elysium as we are. Kind of. You
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start the game in a trashed hotel room with the
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worst hangover in
Load full transcript
human history. When you do miraculously come to,
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you find that your mind is a blank slate. No
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memory of where you are, who you are, what you are.
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But the first things you learn are all very basic.
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You are, supposedly, a cop. You live and work in
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a city called Ravachal. You have a bad history with alcohol, and,
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it seems, a bad history in general. Outside the hotel
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room is a dead body which you were supposed to
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be investigating. As it tends to be in stories like this,
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Harry's amnesia is a great device for exposition. As he
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re-learns about his world, we get to discover it, and
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you quickly find out just how much there is to discover.
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Revachol is not just the game's setting. It's a fulcrum,
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a place where a truly unbelievable amount of world history intersects.
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You can literally spend most of an evening, in real time,
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reading textbooks about it at the local library, but mostly
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it comes in a drip feed. Pieces of dialogue, half-remembered stories,
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evidence etched into the very bones of the city itself.
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At first, I remember feeling intimidated by the sheer scope
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of the world I was entering, its geopolitical machinery and
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social intricacies. That didn't last long, because right away, I
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ran into two old men playing shuffleboard in a bombed-out
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crater a few steps away from my hotel. It's not
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actually shuffleboard, it's this universe's legally distinct equivalent, but the
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picture is a familiar one. They pass the time here,
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cursing at each other, eating their lunches, playing their game,
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doing what old men do. One of them is a soldier,
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and he wants you to know it. He's still wearing
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the uniform of his long-dead army, and he still walks
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and speaks with the aggressive rigidity of a drill sergeant.
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His name is René. The other is much more at ease.
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He seems to have accepted whatever happened here and doesn't
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spend his time dwelling on the past. His name is Gaston.
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These two old men and their almost ritualistic bickering were
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my first window into what happened to the city of Révechaux.
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René is quick to tell me about his own history.
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He told me how he proudly served the king of
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Ravachol in a heroic last stand against the communist scum
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that overtook them. His former service to the crown is
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core to his self-image. He's still got the uniform on.
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He paints a romantic portrait of the monarchy, what he
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sees as some sort of golden age, when everything was
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right in the world, when everyone was in the right place,
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when Ravachol was in its right place. I asked some
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more questions and began to poke holes in that portrait. Gradually,
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I learned how the valiant and immortal monarchy was taken
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down by, in his words, mad anarchist women who tore
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up all the social values he held so dear. How
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the kings that he valorizes were, to put it bluntly,
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coked out of their minds while they were supposed to
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be running the country. And, most embarrassingly of all, how
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the communist scum met their ultimate demise not at the
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hand of a heroic Ravachonian patriot like himself, but by foreigners.
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Foreigners who succeeded at accomplishing what he could not. Gaston,
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René' s stalwart shuffleboard partner, doesn't seem too bothered by any
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of this. He's constantly ribbing René for his absurd devotion
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to the long-dead monarchy and his old uniform. I wouldn't
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call him optimistic, but at the very least, he's forgiving
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of the shortcomings of the new world he's found himself in.
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He's accepted the state of things. His voice carries an
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implicit hope that one day, his friend can accept them too.
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And so, here these two men sit, literally inside a
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scar of the past, arguing all day about what the
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past means. To be fair, there is a lot to
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argue about. The parallels to real-world history, what this implies
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for your investigation, the rights and wrongs of the political
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movements of the
past. You could write an essay about it.
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You could write a whole book about it. You could
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make a whole game about it. But that's not what
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they did with Disco Elysium. In Disco Elysium, you get
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this history through listening to two old men arguing in
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the street. A reminder that history isn't a neat timeline.
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It isn't just a series of events in a book.
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History is the messy process of people remembering themselves and
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each other, trying to make sense of the past. René
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and Gaston's bickering doesn't just tell us about the history
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of Revachon. It tells us about their relationship to that history,
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and how their position in it warps their perspectives. And
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I suppose that's what all historical accounts are, in a way.
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Whether they come from an encyclopedia, an archive of documents,
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or the mouths of two old men. On the same
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beach where I was chasing bugs a few hours ago,
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I dragged myself and my astonishingly patient detective partner... into
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another side quest. This one revolved around an abandoned church.
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Loitering outside it were a gang of young ravers trying
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to start a nightclub in the church. After deflating their
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dreams of starting up a drug-dealing side business inside that nightclub,
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I ultimately decided to help them get the thing off
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the ground. I figured dancing would be better than selling drugs.
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There was just one little complication. Someone was already using
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the church. This is Suna, a programmer who's taken up
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residence here as part of a strange research project. She's
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looking for the location of a two-millimeter hole in the world. Apparently,
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this hole is in the rafters of the church, and
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it seems to absorb everything that it touches, including radio waves,
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which makes it nearly impossible to measure.
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So....
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I agreed to help her with her research. In exchange,
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she'd tolerate the teens and their nightclub. The journey she
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sent me on led me to
her old game studio,
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which was destroyed by an inexplicable data loss incident. She
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believes it was caused by this two-millimeter anomaly, and she's
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going to prove it. Turns out it's a good thing
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she's sharing space with these ravers, because when the critical
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moment arrives, their speakers provide the perfect medium to play
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back her research data. And when she does.
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The driver of the speaker vibrates in the air and
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then stops. Plasterwork begins to crumble down the walls. In
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the silence, a low hum starts creeping up your spine.
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It's a song inside you, not in the speakers, not
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in the room. A great bass sigh in the basement
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of your mind. Slowly it builds until the air around
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you starts to vibrate. It's out there now. In the world.
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Harry, possessed by some force beyond reason, seems to know
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what this sound means. And with full confidence, he says
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that it is the Pale. By this point in the game,
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I'd already learned a little bit about the Pale. It's
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a sort of hazy, entropic mist, a sea of cosmic
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nothingness separating the habitable areas of the world like so
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many islands. Normally, it is impossible to traverse. Even with
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modern technology, humans can only spend so long in it
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before losing their minds. And it's growing. It's a long
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way off, but eventually the pale will swallow everything. Which
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is why it is, to put it mildly, concerning that
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there's a fragment of it here, above this church, right
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next to a city. This revelation could change everything. This
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is the biggest problem in the game, right? The end
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of the world? I thought that this was going to
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be the part where the game enters the real plot,
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that Kim and I would set everything aside to look
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into this impending apocalypse, find some way to stop it,
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or at least react to it, marshal the forces of
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the world to rally against it. Instead, the opposite happens.
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I mean, look. Look at where we are, what we're doing.
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We're building a nightclub right under it. A nightclub. One
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thing I wasn't expecting was for the ravers to have
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a philosophical perspective on all of this. Turns out that
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they believe that political philosophy is outdated. Not just a
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particular political philosophy, but political philosophy as a concept. In
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their view, it fails to meet the challenges of the
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modern world. Their truth lies in the rave. To them,
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dancing isn't just an activity, it's a social practice, a
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genuine way of life. At first, their views seem kind
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of incoherent, juvenile, driven by more than a few party drugs.
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But remember, this world, the world that millions have violently
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struggled over for centuries, will ultimately be devoured by the pale.
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In that context, their outlook starts to make a little
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more sense. There are some genuinely challenging skill checks in
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this game. There's a lot to prepare for. But one
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of the hardest of them all? To set everything aside
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and bust a move in this church-turned-nightclub-at-the-end-of-the-world. It's a skill
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check that I failed the first time, but that's what
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save files are for. When I eventually succeeded... This is.
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Not a moment I expected from Disco Elysium, but it
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is one that defines the game for me. The rave.
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Isn't an immature way to dodge the question of what
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to do about the end of the world. The way
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the game frames it, the rave, is an answer to
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the question, possibly the only one that actually makes any sense.
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The rave rejects the idea that existence is some kind
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of grand political struggle. It suggests that there's no solving life,
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just living it. That all one can really do, perhaps
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all you're meant to do, is find the energy to dance.
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While you still can. Most of the people of Ravachol
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live just above the threshold of survival. They make homes
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in old furnace rooms, tents on the beach. But none
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00:14:49.860
of them walk the streets with a sign strapped to
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their back saying, please save me. Most of them are
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just trying to live quiet, dignified lives with the resources
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they have. At one point in the game, I came
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across one such citizen, an unassuming working-class woman. When I
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examined her, Harry got this sudden internal impression that she
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wasn't doing too well. So, following that lead, I asked
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if there was something wrong in her life. And she said, no.
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Harry's inner voice was mistaken. He'd assumed that just because
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of this woman's class, she must have needed his help.
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But she clearly doesn't need it. Kind of an odd diversion.
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I was confused as to why the game let me
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engage with this. If there was no outcome, nothing I
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could do, but I decided to set it aside for
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the time being and get on with my investigation. Later on,
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I found myself at the beach. On the edge of
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the sand was a dilapidated pier that once housed a
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fish market. Exploring to the end of that pier reveals
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another dead body. A man who's bashed his head in
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on a bench. An empty vodka bottle lies next to him.
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A pack of still-warm chewing gum is rotting away in
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his mouth. Kim chimes in to note that this is
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a darkly familiar situation. You often see these two things
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00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:00.960
next to dead drunks. The bottle and the chewing gum.
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They're trying to hide the smell. I pulled a library
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card from the man's pocket. In a day or so,
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Kim and I traced the name on the card to
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an apartment nearby. We opened the door to find a
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working woman inside. The one from before. The one who
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didn't need my help. The pieces all came together. There's
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00:16:20.440 --> 00:16:24.450
a clear anti-capitalist narrative here. I can already imagine the
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in-game monologue, what it might sound like. Today, a family
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00:16:27.769 --> 00:16:30.169
was stretched to their limits by the economic conditions of
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their life. The kind of conditions in which people's personal
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00:16:37.519
demons thrive. The kind of conditions that make people depressed, violent, drunk,
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or some combination of the three. This is all a
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result of the system.
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We have not come here to discuss ideology. We have
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come to ask questions regarding a murder investigation.
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It's not that any of this is wrong. These sorts
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00:16:51.039 --> 00:16:54.120
of critiques do have value. I often agree with them.
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There are economic systems responsible for this particular situation. But
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00:16:58.639 --> 00:17:02.710
do real humans actually think about their lives this way?
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Through polemics on political theory? Really? When I asked the
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working woman earlier if her husband was missing, she said no.
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00:17:12.539 --> 00:17:14.759
Not because she knew where he was, but because it
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00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:17.269
was normal for him to be missing. she had become
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00:17:17.309 --> 00:17:20.890
completely numb to the uncertainty and anxiety. Depending on how
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you view the situation, it might be easy to consider
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her behavior careless or even strong in the face of adversity.
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I consider it human. It is, in my view, a
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very human impulse to make the best of a horrible situation.
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Husband or not, the bills still need paying, the kids
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still need raising, life still needs living. And this brutal
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00:17:43.430 --> 00:17:46.890
yet beautiful truth of human nature hangs over all the
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encounters in Disco Elysium. It is the strongest throughline of
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the entire game's narrative. So strong, in fact, that the leitmotif,
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the music of the working woman's apartment returns during the
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climax of the game. And it makes sense that it
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00:18:00.039 --> 00:18:02.680
comes back here, during a boat ride to the edge
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of the city, where the starkest reminder of this same
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truth still waits. Harry and Kim do eventually get around
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to solving that murder. Their last and most promising lead
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00:18:35.569 --> 00:18:37.769
brings them to an island off the coast of Havachol,
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an old fortification from the revolution. Every hallway and annex
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of this place feels haunted by ghosts of the past,
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as if the building itself doesn't know the war is over.
300
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When Kim
and Harry reach the end of it, they
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00:18:50.279 --> 00:18:55.059
find the most haunting kind of ghost. One that's still alive.
302
00:18:56.000 --> 00:18:58.079
Here is an old man, alone on the edge of
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the world, clearly broken by the passage of time. He
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00:19:01.380 --> 00:19:05.289
introduces himself as the political commissar of the 114th Anti-Aircraft
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00:19:05.329 --> 00:19:07.529
Division of the Fourth Army of the Commune of Ravachol.
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00:19:08.089 --> 00:19:12.410
He's also a self-described deserter, partisan, and prisoner of war.
307
00:19:12.970 --> 00:19:15.380
This guy is exactly the kind of person that René,
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00:19:15.579 --> 00:19:18.500
the old soldier from the beginning, would have called communist scum.
309
00:19:18.980 --> 00:19:22.559
He's also the spitting image of René. Both of them
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00:19:22.700 --> 00:19:26.589
are obsessed with the past. They've both grown bitter, entrenched
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00:19:26.619 --> 00:19:29.849
in their ideals. One is the revolutionary without a revolution,
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00:19:30.390 --> 00:19:34.490
the other the royalist without royalty. Initially, I was trying
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00:19:34.509 --> 00:19:36.910
to get this man to confess to the murder. But soon,
314
00:19:36.930 --> 00:19:41.190
I was... deep in psychoanalysis with him. See, he doesn't
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00:19:41.309 --> 00:19:44.650
hide his role in the murder. His resentment, his guilt,
316
00:19:44.710 --> 00:19:47.650
his complete and pathological refusal to accept that the war
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is over. All of it is on clear display. It's
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00:19:51.140 --> 00:19:53.039
almost as if he's been waiting for this moment to
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00:19:53.079 --> 00:19:55.180
make one last grand speech to his enemies so he
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00:19:55.200 --> 00:19:58.779
can finally die with honor. Unlike the Ravers, he feels
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00:19:58.839 --> 00:20:03.660
that existence really is one grand political struggle, one to
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00:20:03.700 --> 00:20:05.640
be fought until the bitter end.
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Are they not heartbroken? How could they have moved on?
324
00:20:11.759 --> 00:20:15.980
He's unrepentant, unbreakable in his dedication to his long-dead cause.
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00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:19.210
I felt bad for him. Arresting him felt like the
326
00:20:19.349 --> 00:20:22.630
kindest thing I could have done. There was no shaking
327
00:20:22.690 --> 00:20:25.369
him out of his misery. It was the end of
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00:20:25.410 --> 00:20:27.690
his life as he'd known it, and the end of
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00:20:27.730 --> 00:20:34.380
my case. And then I saw the bug. The mythical bug.
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00:20:34.819 --> 00:20:39.369
The insolindian phasmid. the object of my apparently meaningless chase
331
00:20:39.490 --> 00:20:43.240
from so many hours ago. And the deserter, this old,
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00:20:43.420 --> 00:20:47.359
jaded man so deeply entrenched in his own mind, breaks.
333
00:20:48.359 --> 00:20:48.809
What is it?
334
00:20:49.819 --> 00:20:53.859
Something is very wrong with him now.
335
00:20:54.740 --> 00:20:55.039
Nothing.
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00:20:55.559 --> 00:20:58.369
There is nothing. Only the reeds for him.
337
00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:02.180
A manifestation of the impossible appears right next to a
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00:21:02.220 --> 00:21:05.369
man who has given up on the possible. And again,
339
00:21:05.829 --> 00:21:11.250
in this bizarre, world-stakes-irrelevant moment, I felt I could see
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00:21:11.829 --> 00:21:15.430
this game. The point of Disco Elysium is not to
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00:21:15.789 --> 00:21:19.579
solve the murder. It's to chase the bugs, to engage
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00:21:19.619 --> 00:21:21.779
as deeply as one can with the world around you,
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to live and breathe Ravashel's sacred and terrible air. Not
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as part of some political education curriculum, but to experience
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the fullness of life. The feeling that the Phasmid conjures
346
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is not quite hope. The game doesn't end with some
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00:21:36.160 --> 00:21:39.299
glorious revival of the revolution or some profound answer to
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all the world's problems. René, the royalist, dies by the
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00:21:42.819 --> 00:21:45.119
end of the game, still unable to let go of
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the past long enough to love or be loved. The
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00:21:48.259 --> 00:21:50.940
working-class woman will still have to raise her two kids
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without a father. The pale will one day devour everything.
353
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And Harry, too, is still gripped by the sorrows that
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00:21:58.430 --> 00:22:00.970
led him to erase his brain with alcohol in that
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00:22:01.029 --> 00:22:05.039
trashed hotel room. But the existence of the phasmid suggests
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that there's a reward for trying to move on. That
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even in the darkest times, there is still life to experience.
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I know why I was chasing an imaginary bug on
359
00:22:16.299 --> 00:22:28.700
the beach. It's because I could find it. Before I
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00:22:28.740 --> 00:22:31.759
played Disco Elysium, I was a little put off by
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00:22:31.799 --> 00:22:34.440
its reputation. I'd heard great things about it, that it
362
00:22:34.460 --> 00:22:37.660
was this life-changing piece of media with tons of philosophical depth,
363
00:22:37.720 --> 00:22:39.900
but it was hard to really know where to begin.
364
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I'd heard of the dense lore and history, the political dialogues,
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the immense size of the game itself. From the outside,
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00:22:46.789 --> 00:22:51.990
the worldbuilding seemed completely unapproachable. Once I got into it, though, boy,
367
00:22:52.009 --> 00:22:55.650
did that change fast. I'd honestly say that now, the
368
00:22:55.690 --> 00:22:58.740
worldbuilding might just be my
favorite thing about it, not
369
00:22:58.789 --> 00:23:00.650
just because of how vast it is, but because of
370
00:23:00.690 --> 00:23:04.390
the way it's introduced. You learn about Havashal through conversations
371
00:23:04.430 --> 00:23:07.490
with ordinary people, exploring bits of history through the weird
372
00:23:07.710 --> 00:23:10.069
objects you find rummaging around the pawn shop or the
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00:23:10.109 --> 00:23:13.619
doomed commercial district, repeatedly insisting to everyone that your name
374
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is Raphael Ambrosius Casto, for some reason. Just engaging with
375
00:23:18.579 --> 00:23:21.779
worldbuilding as dense as disco elysiums can be daunting. It's
376
00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:25.400
hard to even imagine ever creating something like this. I,
377
00:23:25.539 --> 00:23:27.279
of course, can't tell you how to create something as
378
00:23:27.339 --> 00:23:29.839
complex as Revachon, but I do know a pretty good
379
00:23:29.880 --> 00:23:32.900
way to get started with your own worldbuilding. There's a
380
00:23:32.920 --> 00:23:35.829
series I really like called Creating Unique and Powerful Worlds,
381
00:23:35.990 --> 00:23:39.170
taught by many-time author and professor of fiction, Lincoln Michel.
382
00:23:39.589 --> 00:23:42.369
He does a great job explaining just how much worldbuilding
383
00:23:42.390 --> 00:23:44.690
can influence the rest of your writing, how it can
384
00:23:44.789 --> 00:23:47.839
shape your character's personalities, the plot, even the themes of
385
00:23:47.859 --> 00:23:50.559
your story. It's surprising how much easier it all gets
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00:23:50.660 --> 00:23:53.440
once you establish that initial ripple effect, as he puts it.
387
00:23:54.130 --> 00:23:57.700
For Michel, worldbuilding isn't just set dressing. It's where the
388
00:23:57.740 --> 00:24:00.779
story begins. And if you want to learn to write
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like that too, then I have good news. You can
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never pay a dime, but at least give it a shot.
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I really think you'll love this course. Again, click the
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link in the description to get started for free. One
412
00:25:13.819 --> 00:25:17.259
thing I love about humanity is your capacity to complicate things,
413
00:25:17.599 --> 00:25:20.779
to overthink, to turn an idea over and over in
414
00:25:20.819 --> 00:25:23.759
your head until you don't know which way is up anymore. But,
415
00:25:23.940 --> 00:25:26.200
you know, I think that can also be a lot
416
00:25:26.680 --> 00:25:30.480
at times. It's so easy to get trapped in your
417
00:25:30.529 --> 00:25:33.230
own mind, to think so much about how things ought
418
00:25:33.269 --> 00:25:36.430
to be that you estrange yourself from how they are now.
419
00:25:37.309 --> 00:25:40.690
So consider this video, and this part of Disco Elysium,
420
00:25:40.930 --> 00:25:43.829
a little check on that. You can and should be
421
00:25:43.930 --> 00:25:47.849
full of big ideas, of course, but you should also live, too.
422
00:25:48.690 --> 00:25:54.829
Keep chasing bugs. And as always, keep making stuff up. Bye.