Late in Disco Elysium there is a quiet conversation between your character and his Partner Kim, where Kim asks you whether your drinking or drug habit makes you a better detective. And among the personal justifications, self-deprecations, and the boasts is one line: "It makes me the detective I am." This simple statement has stuck with me ever since I finished Disco Elysium.

In so many stories, statements like this can come off as cheesy, or melodramatic, but here it feels like a statement of fact. Does the drinking and drugs make me better in the game? I don't know. I've been doing it since I woke up. All I can tell you is that it makes me what I am. For better or worse.

The first scene in Disco Elysium is similar to the edges of consciousness from waking up in a drug addled or depressive mind. Brief flits of thought echoing through total darkness. Primal thoughts assessing the darkness itself, the emotions just wanting to fall further in. With effort you can drag yourself awake, but in those moments, it is truly tempting to wallow in the dark forever. But in some way you know you have to get up, you're just not sure on the details of why just yet.

After waking, naked, your clothes strewn around the wrecked hotel room, you stand and assess the situation. Your tie rotating on the ceiling fan, your pants are on the floor, shirt hanging off of the furniture, and you missing one shoe with a small shoe sized hole in the window to your apartment. Beyond that is a mess of empty bottles, a cassette tape whose actual magnetic tape has been stripped and scattered around the apartment. The visual provided almost comes with a smell, one of liquor and human refuse. After getting dressed you take a moment to look yourself in the mirror, looking back at you is a hapless wreck of man, with a puffy red nose, baggy eyes, and a beard and clothing that makes him look like a vagabond who has found just enough scrap to barely afford a hotel room and some hooch to keep him company.

What happened here? The answer is straightforward enough: Disco Happened. Years of carefree partying has left you a hollow wreck of a man in the late stages of alcoholism, whose very faculties have been so addled by drugs, alcohol, and depression that your own memory has packed up and left. You don't even remember your name. This is the tone the game starts you out on and from there it takes you on a journey about politics, philosophy, history, and self-destruction.

The mode in which you explore this journey are summed up in your basic statistics. In the beginning you get to negotiate the stat array for 4 different attributes: Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics. Basically, how smart you are, your emotional intelligence, you physical acumen, and your agility. These correspond to 6 skills each represented by fully voices 'characters'.

During your run of the game, passive checks will be made allowing one of these skills to pipe up. Encyclopedia, which is just a repository of information about the world you're in, Drama, which assists in lying and telling if other people are lying, or even Shivers, a word for that certain je nais sais quoi that you have the gives you impressions of the world around you, pulling your own perspective back to the see the whole of the world you find yourself in. This internal landscape has a lot to say about who people are. We tend to think of ourselves in pretty limited terms: A smarty boi, an athlete, a sensitive drama kid. But this game eloquently argues through its mechanics that we are a complex set of competing interests, all are separate but in aggregate make up our experiences. The game in a way is about how deep a person is under the surface.

Disco Elysium on the surface is about being a cop. A statement as useful as saying Dune is about being the son of a Duke. The plot of game circles around the mystery of man who was hanged behind the hostel, but the central mystery of the story is: who are you? This can range from topics as complex and heady as philosophy, politics, and history, to as simple and straightforward as: what is your literal name? And what did you do?

I've deliberately refrained from using the name of your character, because even that is a point of contention in Disco Elysium. Early on, when asked about your name you have the option of making up one on the spot: Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau. Or you find out by talking to some drunks that the night of your drinking bender you went by Tequila Sunset, or Codename: Firewalker. But upon exploring your motor carriage that is half submerged in the frozen canal (long story) you find your badge and it says "Harriet Du Bois". But which name is your name? Is your identity dictated by the name on a slip of paper, requisitioned by your former self, a person you don't even remember? Or do you get to be Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau? Or Tequila Sunset?

These are the kinds of questions Disco Elysium is most interested in. And the sheer number of frameworks you can apply. Most directly being: What kind of cop are you? I went with a Columbo by way of a coke-addicted Dirk Gently. A kind of clever interrogator who feigned ridiculous idiocy to get people to open up, and always was working on the case even if it meant solving the mystery of an elusive cryptid because I knew everything is related.

What you believe, is often just as important. The game masterfully addresses belief in its Thought Cabinet mechanic. A simple menu where you can begin to internalize random thoughts that occur to you, the internalization process coming at a cost to intellect or psyche as these thoughts distract you from your work, but upon completion have great benefits in both dialogue options (which is the central loop of the game) and skill checks. The player will likely first encounter this when examining the body.

When you finally get behind the hostel and examine the hanged man, the corpse is in the late stages of decay. He has been left hanging there for a week, stripped of his clothing, dangling behind the cafeteria while a street punk by the name of Cuno pummels it with rocks. It was left there for various reasons, as an example, or out of fear, but mostly the body of the man was left there out of apathy. A sort of 'not my problem', mentality that seems to be prevalent in the city of Martinaise (where the game takes place), and likely in all of Revechol. Even you seemed to not give the first fuck about the body, arriving a full 5 days after the hanging, and then spending the following 3 days in a drunken Disco stupor that has left you with amnesia.

So by the time you actually get around to examining the body, the wreaking stench of decaying flesh is too much for you to handle without passing a very hard skill check. You throw up. This is where your Partner, Kim, tells you get "Get your shit together." leading you to think up the Volumetric Shit Compressor. The problem is simple, your shit is apart, so you need to come up with a device that won't just pull it together but compress it into the density only found at heart of dead stars. It's a delightful bit of absurdist humor, and a look into how we often visualize abstract problems. No you can't build a literal shit compressor that turns your shit into neutron matter, but the idea of such a thing helps you cope with your hangover.

Such thoughts occur during the game in regularity and engaging with them is one of the main ways you can go about answering the central question: who are you?

Politics plays a pretty central role in this. When you arrive in Martinaise it's embroiled in a political dispute. The local Dockworker's Union is in the middle of a strike, which has shut down the town economically, and physically, causing a major traffic jam in front of the city. The central dispute of the city is a negotiation between the Dockworker's Union and the Wild Pines Group. And on first blush you can see why.

The city of Martinaise is in disarray. It has been depoliced, defunded, deregulated. A communist revolution rose and overthrew their monarchy 50 years ago, to be quickly quashed by outside forces. And seemingly as punishment, Martinaise has be left to languish, the scars of that war pocking the city even half a decade later. Bullet holes scar the buildings, and giant artillery craters have been left in the town square. For all the moral righteousness touted by the MoralIntern who watch over the city, the eyes of the government have been turned blind to its material conditions.

It's not hard to see why a socialist movement would rise and strike under these conditions. If the Coalition (The foreign government that quashed the revolution) is going to demand they live under the laws of the MoralIntern (the international policing organization you are apparently a part of), but don't give them the tools to help build up their own society or fund their own government, why should the people Martinaise respect their rule? If the ultraliberals and their corporations are going to exploit their labor without granting enough money to fund the Martinaise economy while blocking all other means, why not demand their voices are heard? Every Worker a Member of the Board strikes very true to anyone who grew up memorizing the words "No Taxation without Representation." If you're going to make demands of material conditions people live with, it's not unreasonable that they ask for a seat at the table.

But siding with Dockworkers Union means working with Evrart Claire. Evrart Claire is a fascinating figure. A true believer in the socialist philosophy he has spread through his Union, but also an obsequious petit tyran, who seeks to install a socialist government in Martinaise, with himself at the top, naturally. Speaking with him is often an obtuse game of flattery and deception. It's impossible to pin down the unflappable Evrart Claire, because at any given time you can't know what his deal is. He seems to be lying, even when you know he's telling the truth. And you can't even know what person Evrart Claire.

You see, Evart Claire is actually two people. This can be easily missed through any play-through, but through some insight and key lines of dialogue you discover Evrart has an Identical Twin brother, Edgar; whose only tell is that Evrart has a lazy eye. And occassionally when visiting Evrart for another tête-à-tête where he dances around your questions, you'll notice his lazy is inexplicably gone. Evrart is so deceptive that you don't even know who you are talking to is Evrart at any time.

One of the major downfalls of the Soviet Union was the presence of party leaders, the petit tyran. These true believers who still insisted on carving out a fiefdom of their own in the socialist hegemony. Socialism, for all of its great solutions to what are major problems, is still vulnerable to this kind of corruption. There will always be Evrart Claires. Opportunists who see the wind changing, and have the right mixture of intelligence and charismatic slipperiness to carve out a section of the new world for themselves. Even if this is all genuinely believed, that Evrart believes the socialist government will make Martinaise better, he and Edgar are still looking to position themselves as the pigs that are more equal.

But the other side of the dispute is in many ways and degrees worse. Joyce Messier is the negotiator for Wild Pines, and at first blush she seems far better to deal with than Evrart or his brother. She's direct but affable and charming. You can waste hours waxing philosophy with her, and she will pleasantly indulge in your eccentricities. But behind her smile and wit is the soul of a viper, whose poison has infected the city. Outside the gate where the strike is occurring is a group of nonunion workers. Scabs. What isn't immediately apparent is they didn't come to Martinaise organically. They were planted there by Joyce.

The leader of the Scabs is part of a paramilitary group, a violent organization whom the body of the hanged man you came here to look at was a part of. His death, and many of the troubles currently in Martinaise is stained into her hands. She will not cooperate with you unless you help her with her with an unrelated case, and even then, she's quick to distance her moral obligation to her own actions. Joyce is part of the upper crust. She's the 1%, and she benefits for the system of exploitation that has left Revechol (and Martinaise in particular) in ruins. And she is willing to do anything, including putting the population in grave danger just to protect her position.

For all of her charm, for all of her pleasant conversation and philosophy, she is part of the engine destroying the world. Evrart is a weasel, but at least his ambitions might help Martinaise. Joyce doesn't care. And she'll burn Martinaise if she has to.

You can side with either of these people, but part of the argument is the actual character of them. Evrart isn't just a socialist with some corruption, he's a symbol of the specific pitfalls that exist within socialist organization. Joyce is not just a ruthless capitalist; she is a symbol of lengths capitalism will go to protect itself. The characters exist in the game not just as fully fleshed people, but microcosm existing as arguments about philosophy.

Other philosophies have presence in the game, though not as prominently in the main conflict of Martinaise. I haven't talked a lot about fascism because, while part of the games world, the handful of fascists aren't really that critical to the plot. You have a Cryptofascist who like other cryptofascists doesn't have a lot of central beliefs but is just resentful that he can't make racist jokes anymore, and otherwise just comes off as a spineless weasel. There is a race realist who is a trucker, you can satisfactorily tell to fuck off, though that will have consequences when you try to question him later.

 Then there's René Amoux. You find René with his friend Gaston, a similarly older man who plays a funny foil to the René's severe demeanor. René is in the twilight of his life. He is a former loyalist and soldier for Frissell, the last of the royal line, the former king of Revechol before he was deposed by the communists in the Antecentennial Revolution. René is a bitter old fascist, longing for the return of the royal times. He's a sad figure, one unable to let go of his own old beliefs in a time that has left him behind. He is left a ghost of a former man, forced to begrudgingly work with the Socialists for a living where he is put into an empty guard tower, looking over nothing important. Probing René won't just give you a good history of Martinaise and the Antecentennial Revolution from the perspective of a loyalist but gives you a good look into the bitter end of being a fascist. Not only are fascist beliefs disgusting, but At best you just get a lonely and sad man, imagining a gilded past that never existed.

It's a failure of fascism really baked into its solution. It looks at the problems of the world, and instead of trying to come up with solutions, fascism just wants to turn back the clock to a world in which these problems didn't exist. The problem is the problems of the modern day did exist in the past; it was just easier for the privileged class to ignore. The age before, the royal age of Revechol wasn't more stable that it is today. When you look into it the Kings were often corrupt, Fillipe the III who has a statue still standing was granted the Nickname Filippe the Squanderer, because his practice of opulent spending. By the time of the Antecentennial Revolution from the communards, the Revechol Monarchy was already a dying state. The fascists are wrong, this time wasn't better, or more stable. It was on life support and all the Revolution did was pull the plug. And that won't change no matter how many foreigners and promiscuous ladies the fascists blame.

And then there's the Moralista's. The Moralista's represent the dominant philosophy of the world Disco Elysium takes place in (if it's not clear by now, while Disco Elysium's world resembles our would, it is a wholly fictional world with its own history and powers). This world view, Moralism, is a humanist view. Often times focusing individual human strife than larger political systems. It's main group is Moralist International (MoralIntern), but their philosophy is felt throughout the structures of the world. They are aligned heavily with the dominant government, The Coalition, the international government who came in 50 years ago and put a stop to the communist Antecentennial Revolution. They are the ruling force of not just Revechol, but a lot of the world. The MoralIntern even put together the Revechol Citizen Militia (RCM), the organization you and your partner work for. The Moralists, unlike all other factions, have a representative who isn't just someone you interview in the case and can be swayed by. Their representative is with you all the time. Your Partner Kim Kitsuragi.

I've mentioned Kim a few times up to now, but largely have avoided talking about him. Kim is the person aside yourself you get to know the most in the game. Largely his is a consummate professional. An efficient police officer assigned to the same case you're in. He's professional without being unkind. He's smart without being obnoxious. He has beliefs which can be seen with his behavior, but he doesn't like sharing them. He plays the perfect straight man to your strange antics. And as a representative for moralism, he's perfect. Kim is effortlessly likable. He has little moments of real character, such as the one cigarette a day he allows himself while going over case notes, or the fact that his police radio as a setting speed rock, which he is initially embarrassed about when you discover it. In a quiet scene toward the middle of the game, while you wait for the tide to go down, you can whistle a Disco tune and if you succeed Kim joins so it's just you and Kim sitting in a swing set whistling the night away. It's a great moment of friendship. And as his friend his philosophy is appealing.

The problem is that Moralism is too centrist to actually change the world. Moralism just really stitches the broken parts together. At some point the Kingdom of Consciousness Thought Cabinet will come to mind to you character. And the game treats this a big thing. You are one of the few people who see the political philosophies and have concluded that they are flawed. You're the perfect Moralist, you smarty boi. The blurb for it is equally enticing.

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*. Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they're not only good -- they're also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized?

The Kingdom of Consciousness

The thing is: it's right, Moralism is the domanant philosophy of the world here. Not only held by the MoralIntern, but The Coalition. But Martinaise is still in ruin. It's not repaired, it doesn't have it's own government. It doesn't even have its own branch of the RCM, it's looked over by two branches, the 41st from neighboring city Jamrock, where your character is from, and the 57th, Kim's district. The initial tension between you and Kim is you are part of a joint investigation because the 57th and 41st both claim jurisdiction over the area. But notably Martinaise doesn't have jurisdiction of their own. It's almost forgotten about, the only form of policing is done by a Vigilante arm of the Dockworkers Union, the Hardie Boys, whom are your first major suspects to the Hanged Man crime. For all the bluster of Moralism making a more righteous world through incrementalism, the evidence of the world we see is, a lot of it is still worse off. When you finish the Kingdom of the Consciousness and internalize the philosophy of Moralism, you're left with this blurb:

The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is *control*. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.

The Kingdom of the Consciousness.

The Moralist Centrist philosophy isn't going to make the world better. It's wallpaper. It looks at the flaws of the world and then to humanity, and says: “it's you. You're the problem. You are responsible for the mess the world is in. Never mind we never gave you the tools, that you're left policing yourself but if you go too far we'll send people from outside the city to arrest you. No you just have to be better, more humanist. Never mind we're an occupying force. You're the problem.”

The problem with centrism is it can't fix any major issues, incrementally or otherwise. Centrists can agree corruption is bad, and murder is bad. But to them these are individual problems. Faults in people. The system the system is mainly good. It just has some kinks. It's unable to conceive of the idea that maybe why corrupt people keep getting into power, or why a vigilante group be in charge of Martinaise, is a systemic problem. A fault in the system itself.

All of these philosophies can be held be held by your detective. All of them with similar puzzling and musings. You can be a fascist, but it only turns you into a bitter drunk. You can be an ultraliberal capitalist, but you become a zealot for the system exploiting the decay, but hey at least you can buy books. You can become a centrist, consigned to the status quo that is killing this world. Or you can become a communist, but that just makes you sad.

Most notably, for all of these philosophies, there isn't a Disco Option. There isn't an option where everybody loses themselves in music and mutual love for mankind and these problems go away. There isn't a third option compromise where the Union gets better pay and the Coalition agrees to help rebuild the town because you're just that good of a negotiator. In games like the Outer Worlds there's always a third option, one that solves the problems and makes everyone happy. Disco Elysium calls this design philosophy out. There isn't a Disco Option. You can side with the Dockworkers or the company or your organization. Which way western man? Even if you choose to stay out of it, it's still a choice with positives and negatives.

In a way this game felt like it was calling me out when I played it. I'm an agreeable person in my life, which you wouldn't guess from my mostly comedy Twitter Profile. In person I'm always wanting everyone to be happy. So much of my life I've attempted to go with the Disco Option, hoping the world would get better. It never does. As a leftist I look at the world with all of its flaws, and I see the flaws in the solutions. I stand as a very vocal Anticapitalist, but even then I want a third option. One where we sail into a better and more just world. I want a Disco Option and Disco Elysium laughs at me for considering it. The truth is, there isn't one. Only compromises you're willing to settle for.

A lot of discussion has been made about these choices. Arguing that it pulls its punches. That because it doesn't present any solution as an unalloyed good, that it can't actually be revolutionary. And I disagree with this. I disagree with this because of the lack of a Disco Option. The game very much wants you to consider that the world is not filled with perfect solutions. Only tradeoffs. It wants you to consider that none of these philosophies are perfect. The fascists are bitter, the Capitalists are willing destroyers of the world, the Moralists are intellectual cowards, and the communists are just sad. Moreover, Disco Elysium isn't about what philosophy will save the world. It's about what philosophy says about you. So when people accuse it pulling it's punches, I have to wonder whether they are engaging with the game in the way it demands you to. I have to wonder if they want to believe that they hold the Disco Option.

 Philosophy is a major part of the game; I've spent the last 20 paragraphs talking about just this. But political philosophy won't make you happy. It won't make you a better person. At best you'll make the perfect model of how fucked up the world is, and that doesn't make you less sad. Even becoming a communist doesn't give you a sense of community. For their socialist rhetoric the Dockworkers Union are often closer to social democrats. In the most realistic choice of the game if you choose to become a communist and meet the only other communist in the game, he calls you a liberal and a pedophile.

So why hold any of these beliefs? For the same reason we hold any belief: Because we're human and we compulsively are trying to make sense of the world around us. Disco Elysium isn’t about the viability of any of these ideas. Disco Elysium is about who you are. And beliefs shapes as much of that as your experiences.

Or maybe experience isn’t who you are. This is also an important discussion in the game. Throughout the game what you have done is an important point that keeps cropping up. You rolled up in Martinaise 3 days before the start of the game, and in that time instead of doing your job, you spent it in a drug and alcohol stupor. And the only testimony you can get on your actions are from other people. Occasionally you’ll be in the world, working on a mystery, and somebody will say something like: “Hey, I recognize you, you’re Tequila Sunset.” And you’re like “Tequila What-now?” Then they’ll regale about the time you crashed your motor carriage into the canal after crashing through a billboard and jumping the bridge, only to emerge stupid drunk to announce that you are TEQUILA SUNSET! 

It’s a scene familiar to anyone who has ever binge drunk at some point in their lives. I know there have been point in my life, dark points, in which I would get a call, or a text message, from a friend or a family member detailing events of the night before that for the life of me, I can never remember happening. It’s a strange sensation, really. Hearing about things done by someone who has your body, your voice, your specific intonations, but is otherwise alien to you. Like some sort of sloppy invasion of the body snatchers, where their entire goal is seemingly to do embarrassing things, you have to apologize for and clean up later. When this happens you have two options, either have a moment of serious self-reflection of your choices or grab another drink. In parts of my life, I chose the latter.

And this decision is also a part of the game. Drinking, Drugs, and Cigarettes are a mechanic that can give you minor bonuses. Cigarettes help you focus on Intellectual tasks at the expense of your health. Booze helps with physical tasks, but hurts your morale, a reflection of slipping back into the stupor you escaped at the beginning of the game. You can choose to use these tools for +1 on given checks. All you have to do is slip further into the behavior that lost your memory in the first place.

In a way, this review acts as a companion to my last review, on Cyberpunk 2077. In there I called that game "All spectacle, but very little substance." Well, if that's Cyberpunk, than Disco Elysium is all substance. It has beautiful visuals of course, with an hauntingly beautiful impressionist oil painting aesthetic that helps drive through the mood of the game. But Disco Elysium has a vision it has questions that it puts in a lot of work to discuss. There is a voice to the game. While I engaged with both of these pieces as deeply personal works, in which the discussion was who your character is, it was much more seamless and effortless in Disco Elysium.

Disco Elysium had a lot to say, and there is still more I haven't heard. And I think I will be going back to Martinaise sooner than later. Because I certainly enjoyed talking with it.