I actually often say - only somewhat facetiously - that Disco Elysium is barely a game. In many ways it’s more of a visual novel, but one that uses game mechanics as narrative devices.

Still, it’s story wouldn’t be told more effectively and its moments wouldn’t be as impactful if it was using any other medium, I think. So I guess that qualifies it as a game? I still feel weird calling it that since approaching it as a game is more likely to hurt your experience of it than help it.

The implosion of ZA/UM is a travesty, but apart from Kurvitz losing the rights to the IP I think for me Kurvitz and Tuulik falling out is the real tragedy. Knowing what they created together from teenage years to now it makes me sad to think they won’t collaborate anymore. We have a bunch of splinter studios now, but I’m not sure any of them will recapture the lightning in a bottle that was DE.

P.S. I could not find a way to save/follow your profile here. So, I did the next best thing, and tagged you and saved your comments.

Yeah unfortunately Lemmy doesn’t let you follow individual people. But I post about whatever I’m playing pretty much weekly both here on !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works and on !gaming@beehaw.org in the weekly threads. And I don’t know that I’m all that worth following beyond that, anyway.