Judicial Opinions: What Makes Disco Elysium a Modern Classic? [Full Spoilers]

The moment that the game told me I was a Sorry Cop was when I realised that, despite all the written words in the Disco Elysium, it was the game that was reading me like a book.

The funniest thing about Inland Empire is that it allows you to literaly solve the case the moment you set foot on the crime scene, but the answer is so vague you only ever realize it was true after finishing the game.

I feel like the working class woman sidequest is probably the best microcosm of Disco Elysium as a whole: disarms you by starting off as an obvious joke, then rips your heart out with raw, real, painful humanity

While the Estonian perspective is important to understanding the game's machinations, equally important is that the developers moved to the United Kingdom during development, which adds a helpful dash of understanding to other things in the game, like the deep and complex character of Racist Lorry Driver.

"Inside every drunk there's a detective. There has to be" still the hardest line of all time

"My friend, we have failed at so many things, let's fail at making a video game." I think in a lot of ways disco Elysium is about failure: particularly those failures that were doomed to happen. It's a game about losing, and about how we carry on when we know we will lose.

"Never once did a single dialogue option from Inland Empire help me solve the case." This is true, however upon replay and with foreknowledge you'll also note that /Inland Empire is always, ALWAYS correct/. It's like a bizarre oracle that never lies but always speaks in riddles. In fact, think back to what the hanged man says if you ask him who killed him: the answer is 100% correct, you'd just never be able to parse it unless you exhausted all dialogue with a key witness and the perp. Or, as another example, think about the entire Horrible Tie saga, if you played it out correctly.

"Disco Elysium is not expecting a right answer to the questions of life, the universe, and everything. It's trying to tell us it's normal for it to be this painful to have to choose an answer anyway." Beautifully put. Thank you.

I have to disagree about Inland Empire being useless. IE will point you directly to the bullet in Lely's throat if you have it high enough early game. Other times that I can't specifically remember while half-tipsily typing a youtube comment, it will tell you exactly what is happening through a metaphorical lens. The trick to having high IE is being able to find the anchor points in reality that the kite of imagination is flying from, like waking up from a strange dream with a better understanding of something going on in your real life.

The game resonated quite a bit with me, as a Brazilian I've been taught quite a bit about south American history, with all its revolutions, all its regimes and all its bloodshed. This, along with living with the older generation, my parents and extended family, who were alive during the dictatorship and reminisce about the times past, recounting things that history have taught me are heavily rose tinted down to the mishmash of seemingly art-nouveau and modern architecture, among other details, paint a surprisingly relatable picture. I guess in a way eastern Europe is not so far away after all.

"Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart."

Hey Noah, thank you again for your videos. I commented on one of them years ago about how you brought up being a pizza worker and how much that meant to me being one of those sorts of workers. I talked about how your progression made me hopeful even in my terrible, low-page job. I finally got a better one, I can finally live on my own. I can finally have savings. I finally have vacation time. I don't expect you to respond to this one - your channel is dramatically larger now, but. Thanks again for your videos, even if this is tangential to the current video. I always see yours and go, "Someone else had to work like that too and things can get better."

Fun fact: Disco Inferno can be translated to mean ‘I learn by suffering.’ In the context of our protagonist’s journey, it feels appropriate.

It's unbelievable that a group of Estonian artists who never made a game before just made one of the greatest games ever made on their first try. And it is that. A real work of art. I hope they get to make another game

My favorite in-depth game analyzer and one of the most thought evocative games I've played in recent memory? Why yes, of course you can have my complete attention for the next 90 minutes

The reason I really enjoy the ending with the Phasmid is that by the end it really makes you feel like you finally have a grasp on the world. Skills have been leveled up, Thoughts have been thought (thunked? thoughted?) and lore has been read. And while vague ideas of the structure of this universe and the Pale it's all... out there, both geographically and in terms of being deep inside dialogue trees. Here, the town, the cop job, the failed relationship is something that for better or for worse have been to some extent resolved or at least explored. And then - you are confronted with something entirely supernatural - and all that comfort of you thinking that you got a finger on things slips away once again because you realize there is an entire new facet to... everything. You don't get dramatic satisfaction because you don't deserve it. The assumptions you made and conclusions you were so proud of aren't so complete as you thought once again, as a reminder that they never will. You can never be sure you got it right, up until it's hindsight 20/20.

idk i think the phasmid is confirmation that pursuing dreams and ideals like communism are not necessarily doomed to fail, and that the pursuit brings about other revelations. It's one of the few hopeful spots of the game. It's not your dream, and it had deleterious effects on others, and it brings about epiphanies of an existentially terrifying nature, but it's hope nonetheless.

the funniest part of the copotypes was when the game asked me if I wanted to become a boring copotype and I rejected it, only for the game to point out that's exactly what a boring cop would do

25:37. God-tier writing. You never cease to surpass my ecxpectations with the clarity with which you are able to show me what I could not see but was there all along. “2020 has been a strange year for everyone but it’s been particularly surreal to be an American because of how completely it seems we’ve abandoned the grand pretense of what the country is supposed to be about to instead squabble over who gets to paint their face in the ashes of what we’ve let it become.”

Good of you to get the perspective of the developers. It's a uniquely eastern european perspective and the ideals of communism and the realities of the soviet union is a rather tricky topic to navigate around these parts. I'm from the same country as the developers, only a couple of years younger than them and the way the game resonates with me is unlike anything else. The happy-go-lucky lulz Lenin que the soviet anthem attitude of western online leftists is quite often pretty jarring. I guess one of those "you don't know maaaaan, you weren't there" type of feelings. The way Disco deals with the failures of humans, the failures of ideas and the day-to-day life of people in a failed world is like a...comforting blanket of cold concrete and rust. An oxymoron for sure but such is life. Shoutout to all my fellow communists and what not from the east of the europe, we don't have a disco option but at least we have Disco Elysium. Oh, and fuck Lukashenka, fuck Orban, fuck PiS, fuck Putin and fuck all their ilk everywhere.