When it comes to RPGs, one of the great expectations of the genre is for players to be able to shape their characters and customize their playthroughs through a wide range of options by making decisions both big and small that ripple through the story, with the game world reacting accordingly. From games like The Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate 3, Kingdom Come: Deliveranceand Dragon Agethese IPs are held in high esteem for offering a satisfying amount of player agency and subsequent consequences. CD Projekt Reds is also counted among the best in this field The Witcher series, especially the latest post, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
And while all of the above certainly make for great RPG experiences, especially in how they give players various meaningful choices and depict their aftermath, they're topped in many ways by indie developer ZA/UM's 2019 debut, Disco Elysium. Will be an instant hit upon release, Disco Elysium was hailed as a masterpiece in the RPG space. Through its cooperative systems, star writing, and clever use (and subversions) of gene tropes, Disco Elysium allowing fans to experience a range of possibilities and paths to degrees that even the others mentioned may struggle to achieve.
Disco Elysium offers as many, if not more, impactful choices and consequences than The Witcher 3 and other great RPGs
Disco Elysium is built from the ground up around the player agency more than most
Some fans may be aware Disco Elysiums origin as a home brew Dungeons & Dragons campaign jointly built and refined by a number of the core developers. Only this aspect gives it a heightened sense of curated authorship, and the design principles are clearly visible in the final product. Disco Elysiumroots as an intimately handcrafted pen and paper RPG blossomed into a game world that extends to every aspect of the player's experience. Its versatility and willingness to allow fans to indulge in a range of reasonable to more “out there” choices while still providing relevant and meaningful (and in many cases humorously surprising) results is one of its secret ingredients, and a major reason why it tops many of its contemporaries.
How Disco Elysium beats The Witcher 3 and other RPGs at its own game
What does Disco Elysium standing out even among some of the aforementioned heavy hitters is its premise and commitment to the implications and mechanics that underlie it. Casting fans into the role of a worn-out detective who has abused drugs and alcohol to such an extent that he has essentially erased his own memory and personality, Disco Elysiums narrative structure immediately opens the door to a myriad of potentially widely varying styles of role-playing. Being able to shape the main character's psyche, identity and worldview through Disco Elysiums core mechanics create a natural path that ensures an ingrained sense of investment and agency, while providing a unique method of communicating and responding to player choices.
Disco Elysiums updated Final Cut version adds a series of political “vision missions” determined by dialogue responses corresponding to the four possible connections.
If you compare this approach to some of the other games, they often have more well-defined characters, although they still give players the power to shape them. In the case of The Witcher 3 (although this could also easily apply to, for example, Henry of Skalitz), Geralt of Rivia already has an established history and persona long before the events begin. In some sense, this limits their breadth of roleplaying, at least compared to Disco Elysiums comprehensive personality skills and thinking cabinet mechanics.
Just compare some of the notable quest lines between Disco Elysium and The Witcher 3:
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Disco Elysium |
The Witcher 3 |
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Deal with Ruby |
Dealing with the Bloody Baron |
|
The power struggle between White Pines and the Port Workers Union |
The plight of Novigrad's mages and non-human population |
|
To arrest or release Klaasje |
Romantic Yennefer, Triss or both |
|
The situation around the church |
Choosing who will lead Skellige |
|
The confrontation with the mercenaries |
Cirri's ultimate fate |
Both games offer significant opportunities and varying results with these and others. The larger point, however, is that while fans can certainly shape Geralt's choices and reactions to situations over the course of the adventure, he still retains some inherent characteristics that, whether implicitly or explicitly, serve to inform his behavior. While Disco Elysium allowing fans to assume brand new personalities that naturally emerge as they explore and converse with NPCs and the detective's interior. Combined with the number of methods to solve (or ignore) various investigations, Disco Elysium giving players much more freedom to shape the character and their decisions.
Disco Elysium's smaller scale but incredibly dense design provides a wealth of RPG possibilities
pound for pound, Disco ElysiumThe setting of the devastated Martinaise district in Revachol's world can be overshadowed by the size of many of the maps in the games mentioned above. But it more than makes up for this in the impressive depth found in it. Every location and NPC the detective comes into contact with adds layers to the story, and there are several secret cases to uncover that can easily be overlooked. Every playthrough of Disco Elysium can be very different depending on which traits players choose to lean into and follow advice from.
In ways both subtle and outlandish, Disco Elysium bends many of the rules of RPGs and allows players to do the same, all while incorporating their decisions and maintaining a coherent story that flows accordingly. It is even possible to solve the main crime in a non-standard way. Disco Elysiums smaller but more focused world and the emphasis on fully populating the protagonist's mind through carefully crafted design and top-notch storytelling make it one of the most immersive and reactive RPGs. It outshines many other famous titles as one where choice and consistency really matter.
