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Comment on The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made

Because people trying to sell it as a traditional video game are doing it a disservice, you don’t play Disco Elysium for the same gaming experience as something where you click buttons to splat baddies, it is literally an interactive novel and if you love reading you will love it, if not, you won’t. It’s ridiculous to compare it to other games because it’s a niche genre.

I get really sick of the anti-intellectualism around non-traditional experiences though, part of the seven-second attention-span generation leaking everywhere. The “I ain’t reading all that” banner that everyone under 20 seems to carry nowadays.

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vxx@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I love reading, but I couldnt get into Disco Elysium besides many attempts, so I disagree with your statement that I love it because I love reading.

Maybe I don’t like starting a book over and over again because the dice decided to.

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- ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Sounds like you had some really bad luck? The game doesn’t ever punish you for failure, it rewards it in most cases, it develops the story and there are relatively few ways to actually “lose” there are just different story and character arc outcomes, that’s why so many of us replay it so many times.
  
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  - vxx@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Possible.
    
    I experienced it as an impossible puzzle to not die in the first hour. I went with a different approach each time, rolled a couple of 1s and died.
    
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    ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s absolutely crazy, I have done deliberate fuck-up playthroughs and had as much enjoyment from how the story progresses as when I try to min-max various traits and win every roll. I can only think of a couple places where dying was a real risk and they take place much later in the game.
    
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But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
It has nothing to do with attention span. If I wanna read a novel I’ll sit down and do so, if I sit down to play a game i want to play a game. Your argument would be like Christopher Nolan releasing a film with no pictures, just words on screen you read, I’d be mad and others would say it’s a masterpiece. But it has nothing to do with me liking to read or not. If you think about it DE is a video game equivalent to a Nolan movie, some will say it’s a masterpiece, others like me will say it’s pretentious, boring crap

I have the same issue with those telltale games where you just click a choice and watch a giant cutscene.

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- ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If it’s not attention span, and you like to read, then the issue is expectation. It is a visual/interactive novel. Player choices and interaction and evolution are what drives the shape of the experience you have, the game wouldn’t work as a novel, and a novel alone couldn’t explore the depth of the world-building and characterization, so it’s an almost perfect harmony between the two genres, and if you don’t like the tone, setting or concept, that’s fine. I just encourage people to understand that it’s not trying to be a traditional game or novel, it’s something in between and if you don’t care for that experience, also fine.
  
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