In recent news, ZA/UM, the studio behind Disco Elysium, is dead. The limited liability company continues to exist, the same way that Billy Joel is still touring, or The Simpsons is still running. The body shambles on, the spirit departed. ZA/UM, however, did not have the luxury of a slow death by degrees, the magic slipping away creation by creation until fans could pore over the clues and figure out in what way all the juice had been wrung out. No, ZA/UM was murdered, its creative nucleus pushed out by investors who were more interested in selling branded clothes and a sequel than letting creativity work.
That is a tragedy only because of what ZA/UM had already created, which I consider to be the best game ever made. I do think, though, that it is very hard to explain why I recommend it so much without spoiling things, and indeed, most game reviews are happy to spoil a few hours of content. I am more amibitious, and so I present the following with only one comment - the more it tugs at your heart, the more I think you’ll love Disco Elysium.
The wasted man looked at his hands. There was a certain medicated peace to knowing that one’s best was behind them. It made life dreamlike, an epilogue that had to be gone through. The calluses on his hands lay plain before him, but he had no way to piece them together into a story. Was this what it meant to be broken? Fragments of self and reality lay strewn about the floor, and the only thing certain was that he was alive. He was here, breathing. A solid, but narrow, foundation. Would that be enough to build a new self?
Long nights haunted the student. He knew he had to get his work done for a million reasons, but his mind refused to be caged in. It is hard to focus on a dark pattern while blinded by the light, however distant. He knew it was there, he knew there was a path to fixing all of this. The forces arrayed against him, against love, were vast, but he knew this time would be different. In his head danced visions of utopia. If it was impossible, then it would have to be the structure of time and space that warped and bubbled and was reforged. It would be.
The gunman was too far gone. He used to be kinder, gentler, scared of the world as he blasted it apart, but no longer. Every life he took pounded the delicate structure of self flatter and flatter, until he was as smooth and shiny as a pebble. Every now and then, he tried to remember what it was like to be someone, not Someone, but just someone. It just felt like trying to take hold of mist. Maybe the devil didn’t need to appear before you for you to bargain with him. Maybe you just had to do his work and reap its rewards.
The oracle hated this part. The dirty squalor, the needle depressing and then penetrating flesh. It was like fumbling with a bra-clasp, the awkward prelude. But it was worth it, because once the plunger came down, he would be where he belonged. The hut would still be there, the needle on the floor beside him, but so what? He would feel. Feel his body, thrumming with life and stardust and flame, feel the souls that danced to his heartbeat, and talk with them. He knew things nobody else knew, and he would tell anyone, if they just asked. He just looked like another junkie, but he was different. Already, he thought he could feel his fingertips thrumming in resonance with the leylines of reality.
The wasted met the student, and the weak flame re-lit the ashen oak, which burned anew. The wasted had once been a worldshaker, and the student told him of the world, and in which ways to shake it. So the wasted took hold of the world, set his feet, and shook. Spoke of a brighter future, made others see with the same eyes that the student had given him. They, too, saw the chains that kept the world bound in misery, and understood the necessity of casting them off.
The gunman was told to fix the issue, and so was set on his task. He oiled his rifle and donned a mask, ready to hurt himself again. He was skilled in his trade, and so got the man at swordpoint, and gave him a chance to speak his last words.
The wasted looked him in the eyes, and spoke. Spoke of the chains that bound them all, that lashed the gun to his hands, and its barrel to his skull. That bound the homeless to the streets and the power to the greedy. That bound feet to the ground and clouds to the sky. That bound the electron to the nucleus and aging to time. He spoke of how they could all be broken, when their might was tested against that which bound lover to lover, how they should all be broken, and how there would, at long last, be a just kingdom in the world, a kingdom of love and lovers, where broken hearts would be mended and all would be made right, after so, so long.
The oracle watched on from his hut, watched as the cycle of pain repeated itself again, heard as the souls wailed and gnashed their teeth at how close the wasted man had come to making things right, and how a hundred thousand years would have to pass before there would be another chance. If only things had been different, they cried. If only, if only. He watched as the student snuck up to the gunman, knife in his hand, the gunman enraptured.
The wasted had almost caught mist and made it whole, grabbed it by its lapels and talked sense to it, but he was not who he once was, and there was not yet enough love in the world for such miracles. The gunman blew his brains out moments before his neck was gouged out by the student, and as he bled to death, crushed the student’s skull in his hands.
The oracle recovered the bodies and stacked them atop of one another in a shallow ditch at the side of a road, uttering to himself a quiet prayer, as the spirits told him to do, as they screamed at him to do. That would be the last time the spirits spoke to him. He was just a regular junkie, his purpose fulfilled, and died rambling incoherently.
Where the bodies lay a tree took root, though that tree has not yet borne fruit. One day, it will. When love is so thick and heavy in the air that the stars fall as powdered sugar and the dirt bubbles with glee, it will finally grow its apples. One day, a million thousand years away.