Topic: PUSH SQUARE GAME CLUB | November | DISCO ELYSIUM 🕺🔥

Kim doesn’t get how I roll.

@Thrillho 😂 I love all the little jabs that the characters take at you, depending on how you’ve been responding.

Regarding the healing items for health and moral, appreciate that tid-bit also, since somehow I didn’t realize that’s what the little number on the gauge in the left lower corner was. I was poring through my inventory trying to find my healing items to know how many I had, and so now I realize they are just tracked on the life bars themselves.

Not sure if all CRPGs are like this but the tutorials are relatively lean. It’s fine because I’m figuring things out, but it’s been more hands-off than I’m used to. I’ve heard Baldur’s Gate 3 is like that as well, so it’s possibly a genre thing. Hopefully getting my feet wet with DE will serve me well for future endeavors in the genre.

The "...and what's with all the running?" line at the first night's debrief properly cracked me up. Almost 4th wall, but not quite.

I just finished replaying this on Wednesday, as it happens. Second time playing through (on PS5) - played it about a year ago on the Switch.

I wasn't sure about replayability but I could not tear myself away from it once I started.

I really enjoyed my first playthrough, but I was wildly inconsistent in my choices and what stats I invested in, I also didn't really touch the thought cabinet. This was reflected in the ending which I am pretty sure was the 'worst' one it is possible to get- kim had been shot, and everyone just basically walked away from me muttering that I was an insanse disgrace ! I also didn't see nearly as much of the game as I did on this playthrough. This time I focused on the psych tree (empathy and inner empire, particularly) and filled my thought cabinest with thoughts weighted towards remembering my old life and making amends.

This time I think I pretty much got the best ending possible old precinct took me back, recruited Kim, Kim got a photo of the phasmid and I saw so much more doomed commercial area + started the club in the church, the video rental/ dolores dei dream on the island and got a lot more information about the world, despite having little in Encylopedia this time.

If anything I enjoyed it even more this time around.

In short, HARDCORE TO THE MEGA!

@Th3solution Yeah, it’s kind of weird how little the game explains. There is a voice that jumps in every now and again to tell you how to do some things like equip tools but you’re mostly left to it.

@woollypump I got most of the things you described first time round and it’s pretty cool to wrap it all up so nicely. That said, I am looking forward to how much I can actually mess it up

I’m hoping that that I don’t get Kim killed but he ditches me instead. I did accidentally get him to do that on my first run by failing a random check and Harry blurted out something really racist so Kim stormed off. I did have to reload that save!

What author does DE most bring to mind for you? Definitely echoes of Philip K Dick and Douglas Adams, I thought.

It's been a slow burner for me, but it's clicking with me more now that I've reached the end of the first day. Now that I've got a better view of the overall case, along with some familiarity of the external factors, things are becoming more than just wandering around aimlessly.

I'm currently trying to see if I can turn my guy's life around, and avoid the booze and drugs. Of course, there's incentives for partaking in these activities, so I might have to resort to them if things get bad.

I should be able to get a lot more played this weekend, as I'll be less busy then.

I’ve raced through to day 4 now and am well on top of things. I’ve got lucky passing some low skill checks so I’m not sure there are too many things I’ve missed so far (with some alt paths on ones I have messed up). I’ve got so many skill points I haven’t assigned yet either as I’m saving them for any difficult checks that might come up.

I’m still enjoying this as a second run though and have managed to continue as an ultra liberal “traditionalist” but also played the “I am the law!” card enough times to unlock that thought.

I won’t say too much more to avoid spoilers but might post in the game thread instead so people can check in there for some more spoiler heavy posts.

Rolled the credits tonight after 50ish hours. I’m not sure i can put my experience into words just yet but it’s easily one of the most important and invigorating gaming experiences I’ve had in the last decade or so, and I’ve played some corkers.

I’m already building another playthrough in my head.

Shockingly good and an incredible piece of artistry!

Hardcore to the Mega!

I’m into Day 4 now. Dealing with all the new area’s shenanigans. It seems like the game just keeps going. I would have thought I’d be closer to a resolution at this point but I’m still running around trying to play both sides in this conflict and feel no closer to solving the crime than I was on the first day. Every lead I follow just points me to another lead.

I need to sit and construct some more organized thoughts on the game at this point. In short, I’ve continued to like it and I think it’s convinced me to try out more CRPGs, but it is dragging a teeny bit now. I have to admit that when I’m caught in a long-winded lecture about cryptids, race theory, or metaphysics, I just tune out and start clicking through the dialogue as fast as I can just to get on with it. There’s some legitimate fun moments and hilarious lines, but it’s too often buried in meaningless babbling. To be fair, every piece of well-written fiction has a lot of detail about its world, but this is just too much. I’m probably at 25 hrs and I’m ready for it to start wrapping up.

Thankfully there’s a fast travel system that I figured out now, although it’s extremely bare-bones and absolutely not explained at all. I had to search a guide to understand how to implement the fast travel system. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, you have to buy the map of Martinese at the bookstore for 0.90 Real and then read it and it will eventually load into your menu and you hit R1 on your task list in the menus and you can see the map. It’s a decent map and shows you where you still have skill checks pending around the map if you want to revisit those which you failed the first time around. The fast travel, however, is only between three places - the main area by Whirling-in-rags, the fisherman village, and the church. And it appears you have to be standing at the fast travel spot to be able to select one of the other two spots to travel to. At the Whirling-in-rags spot, I found luck by standing just a few steps south of Kim’s automobile. And even then, it was tricky and I had to move the analog stick to the right to select the spots on the map. It was finicky. But once I got the hang of it, it does save some of the boredom of trekking back and forth across the map.

Next up, dealing with the church and going back for repeat interviews with Klausse and Titus. I really need to figure out who the 8th Hardie gang member, the lady driver, is. I’ve tracked down the woman’s truck and broke into it and searched it, but I haven’t met her yet.

@Th3solution The game opens up a bit once you can cross the bridge but you can spend a lot of time to-ing and fro-ing trying to figure bits out. The church side quest is a really cool part of the game though!

It's hard to say what else you could do at this point as there are so many small things that help unravel the case.

Which political ideal did you end up going with at the end of day 3 though?

I've finished off Day 2. Had to do some unpleasantness to get inside the docks area, but after that things went a lot smoother. I found some important clues for the investigation, and got lucky with some dice rolls at crucial moments. Things didn't all go great though. I got a couple of game overs, so had to reload things.

Now that there's more threads to dig into, and things are opening up more, things are getting interesting.

@Thrillho I played a little further and things really have opened up now and I see a light at the end of the tunnel. In Ch 4 I was able to get an accusation from Klaasje that Ruby is the killer. I retrieved the bullet from the corpse. Not sure I believe Klaasje yet, but at least I have something besides the fake confessional of Titus and his Hardie boys. I’m hoping to get something solid now with Ruby, and at least offer her up as a suspect to avert the imminent civil war between the Union and the company mercenaries. I have a clue that Ruby might be hiding along the coast… maybe in the village or the church? I still haven’t touched the church yet other than to talk to the musicians outside in the tent about the spooky things going on there. I also am stumped about the murder weapon, only assuming it’s an old military rifle that was uncovered like the one I found in the basement. I’m hoping when/if I find Ruby, I’ll have a clue about its whereabouts.

I have 3/4 of the armor set and a full thought cabinet, having unlocked every slot possible and filled them all. I’m considering deleting one or two thoughts from the cabinet so I can unlock more but we’ll see.

As far as political ideals, I’ve been wavering to and fro experimenting with various responses but most of the game I’ve been a moralist and tried to keep balance. But for the end of day 3 I committed to the ultraliberal “indirect modes of taxation” path. I just was able to become an art patron for Cindy the SKULL and finally get into the cargo container over by Evert and met with the mega-rich billionaire guy who traded her art for some stock in a mercury mining company. Now I just need to hire a personal brand strategist.

This game is so crazy. 😅

Unfortunately I might not get a chance to play Disco Elysium this month, I do wish to play it but EA Play have roped me in with their offer so I have to rattle through Dead Space instead.
Hope everyone is enjoying it.

Another random observation —
I am fairly certain that the odds percentage that you’re showed before doing a dice roll is not accurate. Maybe I was naive to think the game is being truthful to me about my chances of passing the checkpoint, but it seems evident (through save scumming 😅) that there’s certain check points that the game will only let you through if you’ve devoted a set amount of skill points into the path it wants you on.

This became abundantly clear for me at (spoiler for Day 3-4ish timeframe dealing with convincing Titus of something at the Whirling-in-Rags) — I reached the point in the Klaasje thread where she has accused Ruby of shooting Lely and I had to convince Titus that it was a plausible scenario before I could advance the thread to have him disclose Ruby’s whereabouts. I heavily suspected that the locked door in the kitchen led to the door on the upstairs patio outside Klaasje’s room where the shot was allegedly fired. I knew I had to use knowledge of that door and passageway to convince Titus, and I was fairly certain the item in the tree outside the window was the key to that door and what I needed to advance. With my setup I had a 42% chance on the roll and failed, so I reloaded and changed my clothes to boost the stat (I think it was Perception, but not sure) up to 58%. I reloaded and tried at that percentage about 4-5 times and kept failing it. So I used some of my stockpiled skill points and got the percentage up to 72% and reloaded and still kept failing the checkpoint even after another 3-4 times. Statistically speaking, it’s very much illogical that I would be failing a roll like 10 times in a row when my statistical probability was way over 50%. So I finally spent another skillpoint into Perception and boosted the probability to like 83% and it finally passed and I got the bronze key. Thankfully I had been holding onto skill points for just this kind of contingency

But anyways, it’s pretty clear that there’s some behind-the-scenes throttling of your probability of passing a check and the numbers they show aren’t exactly accurate. I didn’t have the patience to continue to make the roll and calculate the actual pass percentage, but I wonder if the game would have ever let me pass, despite being at 58%.

The RNG here seems to be taking a page out of the book of a slot machine, where you are led to believe it’s winnable, when in fact it is not. Or at least it’s a much smaller pass rate than you are led to believe.

Has anyone actually passed a roll where the chances are less than 10%? I’d be curious if it ever happens on those 3% rolls. I’ve not had one pass, but then again, I often have just skipped those and plan to come back after leveling up the stat.

Edit: And I realize the number they show you is never said to be an actual pass rate percentage but the higher the number, the more likely to pass, and I’ve had no problems passing many 58% rolls, but this one just kept failing me.

And I just realize my post above is so conspiratorial that I now am convinced that the game has gotten inside my head. 😂 I’m questioning everything.

Also, I’m hearing internal voices argue with each other back and forth. I hope this is normal.

DRAMA (easy success) - they are paranoid enough to ask an Internet forum whether they are normal. Tell them what they want to hear my Liege, make them believe it.

@Th3solution yeah perfectly normal mate, nowt to worry about, totally happens all the time!

LOGIC
[High: Success] It would certainly seem puzzling to keep missing those odds but statistically it can still happen.

VOLITION
[High: Failure] But it hurts so much when I don’t get them!

DRAMA
[Low: Success] The pain! Oh, the pain!

@Th3solution And yeah, I’ve had some sub 10% chances pass on this run. It’s clever that sometimes you get lucky but other times a pass still might not actually achieve anything good anyway.

As for where you are with the case did you pass the visual calculus check on the window to Klassje’s room? Don’t fret about the weapon too much otherwise but you’re right that finding her is the next big step but the game will encourage you to do more side stuff first once you find where you probably need to go…

I’ve kind of ignored the thought cabinet a bit on this run. It’s one of the few times I look at a guide to see if the solution (no pun intended) will give me a benefit I want. Finger pistols was still essential though.

And I have gone with the ultra liberal choice too on this run (although I did save beforehand to do the “traditionalist” one for the trophy which is quite clever and funny as you’d expect from the game). I guess you know how to find your brand strategist?

@crimsontadpoles Day 3 is fun as the map opens up. On my first play I “died” a couple of times but that’s because I didn’t know how to heal myself. Left on the d-pad heals health and right for morality if that’s what has caused you problems so far.

Hi all sorry I haven't participated last few months, been taking a few months off social media