revenge of disco

[kradeelav]

aka disco elysium loveblog up to the end the first day ~

• so I'm playing this mmmoooostly unspoilered (wherever you'd count 'read the tvtropes page to avoid softlocking myself out b/c i learned the hard way with replaying half of three houses, but none of the spoiler tags?') which is pretty rare for me. after the first hour or two of trying to grok the general gameplay and rhythm, it started settling into something that was as relaxing as it was addictive. got a 5 hour car trip tomorrow and sunday and shoot, i might be looking forward to it for the first time since I'll likely finish DE on the way.

• cannot wait to mess around with the art style some - i read a meme a while ago about every artist's style magically changing once when they got into DE's fandom because experimenting with the sketchy expressionist (impressionist?) illustrations rule.  while coming into the fandoms 5-10 years later has its own set of perks (cheaper games, less drama, etc) - I am slightly wistful as far as missing out on the first wave of banging fanworks. ah well!

• like the vast majority of folks, i think kim is pretty rad >w<  was thinking in the shower today about what is it that makes kim so universally lovable without leaning into awful ~twee~ / cardboard stereotypes and actually allowing him to have a few edges of his own?
  
  • ultimately i think my favorite answer was that his role in the story is allowing detective-you (Harry) the dignity and space to slowly start cleaning up and being a better person than what you were before, while still not letting you off the hook. his presence makes you want to be a better person (even to me, who normally opts for 'extreme bad guy version' in any kind of RPG for the evulz, such as in mass effect). it helps that Harry actually has a pretty tightly written/scripted role in the story and is clearly meant to be a fun foil to Kim regardless which Thought Cabinet direction you go. anyway, i have a theory that "dignity" is massively underappreciated in the general cultural state these days and yeah ~

• (first?) confrontation with measurehead on the bridge was sure something lmao. honestly that had to be the single best (nuanced + most entertaining) description of racist / supremacist mindset I've ever seen - i was hugely reminded of Daryl Davis' book (Klan-destine Relationships) and the interactions he tells the reader about in there - him, a black man, meeting bona fide KKK members and eventually de-radicalizing them. measurehead's lines were .... not word-for word the same (b/c game) but definitely thought-for-thought in terms of the same brazeness and outrageous wtfery where a sane person just doesn't even know where to start.
  
  • basically i clicked through a bunch of his shit for the first time (b/c 'gotta get to the button' to advance the plot) and just straight up ... gave up about halfway through and elected for the 'punch him (with a 3% chance of successfully Delivering Da Punch)' needless to say, n o pe.   
  • still trying to figure out how the hell DE landed that blend of like 'satisfyingly awful and being side-splittingly, crosses-the-line-twice funny' without 'caricaturing the dude in a way that de-fangs the shit' - it's the kind of interaction that even fundie!krad would have been squirming in the seat about. there's the ghost of an essay in me of how i'm usually greatly displeased with -- oh jesus i can't say this shit on twitter -- but i feel like Mainstream US-Left(tm) has the comical inability to depict any kind of supremacist mindset in a realistic way, which is not altogether bad, I guess, but ... you loose the ability to accurately satirize the mindset, you know? also to actually convert folks over. it's just an endless xeroxed copy of 'this is Bad' hand-wringing without dissecting it.

• oddly enough my favorite moment so far was (successfully) convincing the shopkeeper mom to bring her daughter (Annette?) out of the cold and damp weather where previously she was out there hawkin' all the wares and kinda being neglected depending on who's opinion you go for. no one NPC was exactly wrong or right (something that's tangential to this whole game's thesis), but it was still, mmm needful?  it's such a small thing (in a game no less), but i've noticed the best stories know how to pull at the heartstrings in the smallest of ways in addition to the big twists and turns.
  • not to compare everything with a zelda game, but getting excellent majora's mask vibes between the 3-day arc and the extreme focus on characters and overlapping character arcs (that all can't be solved in the first playthrough to boot, multiple replays only deepen the experience).

aaanyhoo, kim, i'm coming back for u and making u smile ~