I started Disco Elysium this weekend and it’s hard to understand how it’s only four quid

TW: This article contains references to suicide, addiction, and alcoholism.

Disco Elysium is a very divisive game. I’ve heard it lauded as a perfect CRPG with writing that far surpasses anything else considered possible in video games, while others have criticised it as a boring mess. Regardless of your thoughts on the game, it’s only £4 thanks to Steam’s Summer Sale, and of the several hours I’ve experienced so far, it’s absolutely worth trying out yourself.

After picking your ‘archetype,’ and a few lengthy conversations with your conscience, psyche, and mortality, you wake up in the pitiful husk of an amnesiac alcoholic detective, hard-boiled. Naked, there is nothing around you aside from a neck-tie attached to the ceiling fan from which you woke up beneath.

Disco Elysium asks you to step into the shoes of a David Harbour-esque loser. You will often fall into deep conversations with yourself as you struggle to wrap your head around the moral consequences of eating a sandwich. Intrusive thoughts interrupt each conversation you have. Your compulsion to lie will invite trouble at every opportunity, and each flaw will sink you further into an abyss of addiction and self-destruction.

I won’t delve too much further into the plot or the main character (who goes by the name Raphael Ambrosius Costeau if you fail the first skill check), though I will speak more about the game’s mechanics. Like with many CRPGs – to backtrack a second – plot and character do actually play a significant part in the gameplay. Your many skills and choices will impact how the consequences of your actions play out, and the acute level of customisation gives you so much control over your helpless character.

The thing I was most interested in finding out for myself was Disco Elysium’s writing quality. The clarity and delivery of the world is fantastic, and while perhaps it’s too soon for me to judge on ZA/UM’s ability to deliver a long-form plot, the characters and each of their quirks are established with oomph. Much of this is enhanced by the fantastic voice acting that the Final Cut edition brings, while the digitally painted character portraits move mountains to define each character as their own living and feeling creature.

I think that’s enough of me talking about Disco Elysium: The Final Cut. There’s not much I need to really do to convince you to try it out. With it costing £3.50, it’s cheaper than a supermarket meal deal, and you can’t go wrong with one of them.

ZA/UM recently made plenty of its staff redundant, and now a sequel to Disco Elysium is off the cards forever, unfortunately. This is a once-in-a-lifetime game, it seems.

Disco Elysium artwork via Aleksander Rostov of ZA/UM Studio.