While the Estonian perspective is important to understanding the game's machinations, equally important is that the developers moved to the United Kingdom during development, which adds a helpful dash of understanding to other things in the game, like the deep and complex character of Racist Lorry Driver.
@@sleepingdogpro yeah and he's a Scouser too and it's a perfect choice of accent. So scratchy and nasally and in real life scousers have a reputation for having a certain kind of swagger
The funniest thing about Inland Empire is that it allows you to literaly solve the case the moment you set foot on the crime scene, but the answer is so vague you only ever realize it was true after finishing the game.
The moment that the game told me I was a Sorry Cop was when I realised that, despite all the written words in the Disco Elysium, it was the game that was reading me like a book.
I feel like people resonate with the game precisely because it will challenge your views and how you handle situations. It has a perfectly subtle 4th wall breaking effect that works so well
Yeah I was a sad/sorry cop and a (reluctant) man of the center. At the ripe age of 38 I now consider myself a crushed idealist with my default position being cynicism. The game really resonated with me about that.
I actually felt annoyed by that part. I said sorry because it was the decent thing to do after I completely fucked shit up. That doesn’t make me a “sorry person”, it makes me a well adjusted human being who can admit when they’re at fault. you don't even have to be a super polite person, just halfway decent.
@@headphonic8 Same here fellow Sorry-cop, but were you also a boring Cop? Because I was, I spent as many opportunities with-holding judgement and asking questions to get a bigger picture, and very rarely did I ever conclude something that wasn't logically right in front of me.
I think most people end up as sorry cop because it presents you with the most opportunities to apologise before anything else. Players might intentionally try to keep everyone favourable so they don't lock themselves out of options in the future, and apologising is instinctively a way to do that.
I feel like the working class woman sidequest is probably the best microcosm of Disco Elysium as a whole: disarms you by starting off as an obvious joke, then rips your heart out with raw, real, painful humanity
I haven't even played the game and I cried at that point of the video Apparently crying at Noah talking about games I've never played is just what I do now
For me it was playing pinball with Kim. A pointless little game that brings some excitement to both of you for a brief moment and leaves as quickly as it came, but still somehow remains a cherished memory.
Nonsense pseudo intellectual shit. Get your life together and quit looking to communist propaganda video games for inspiration and stop being such a massive embarrassment to everyone around you. Commie video games won’t save you, loser.
"My friend, we have failed at so many things, let's fail at making a video game." I think in a lot of ways disco Elysium is about failure: particularly those failures that were doomed to happen. It's a game about losing, and about how we carry on when we know we will lose.
That was probably the thing that stuck with me the most: when you 'succeed' a skill check, only to fail anyways - and sometimes the skill apologies for bringing up the idea
In revolutionary upheavals, some energy, or rather some utopian dreams, take place, they explode; and even if the actual result of a social upheaval is just a commercialised everyday life, this excess of energy, what gets lost in the result, persists - not in reality but as a dream haunting us, waiting to be redeemed. In this sense, whenever we are engaged in radical emancipatory politics, we should never forget as Walter Benjamin put it almost a century ago, that every revolution (if it is an authentic revolution) is not only directed towards the futures but it redeems also the past failed revolutions. All the ghosts as it were, the living dead of the past revolution, which are roaming around unsatisfied, will finally find their home in the new freedom. I may be freezing to death but you’ll never get rid of me. All the ice in the world cannot kill a true idea. *SNIIIIFFFFFFFF* and so on and so on
"Disco Elysium is not expecting a right answer to the questions of life, the universe, and everything. It's trying to tell us it's normal for it to be this painful to have to choose an answer anyway." Beautifully put. Thank you.
"Never once did a single dialogue option from Inland Empire help me solve the case." This is true, however upon replay and with foreknowledge you'll also note that /Inland Empire is always, ALWAYS correct/. It's like a bizarre oracle that never lies but always speaks in riddles. In fact, think back to what the hanged man says if you ask him who killed him: the answer is 100% correct, you'd just never be able to parse it unless you exhausted all dialogue with a key witness and the perp. Or, as another example, think about the entire Horrible Tie saga, if you played it out correctly.
The conversations with the corpse especially stand out as perfect foreshadowing. "Love did me in, and Communism killed me" I believe you also get a bonus to the roles to find certain pieces of evidence if you listened to Inland if I remember correctly.
@@RobertKuusk Could you be more specific, I don't remember that exact exchange. I'll grant that maybe IE /might/ get some stuff wrong but I feel it's either fuzzy stuff (for example, what's /exactly/ going on in the Cursed Shopping District is open to a couple of options) or minor details, I'm pretty sure that whenever IE is talking about something major (or animates an important thing to talk to you, like the Tie) it's either obliquely correct or self-reflective of Harry.
@@BladePHF oh, yeah, no you are right. It's pretty obvious when it's wrong. But it's not ALWAYS right. I think the curse isn't even explicitly a wrong one, depends on how one thinks about magic. It posits you did the murder at the start, for example, if you win a skill check w kitsuragi. He shuts it down pretty fast, but you can insist on it. I don't think any references to werewolves and vampires were right either. And I think it insisted that the impossible to open door was possible to open.
I have to disagree about Inland Empire being useless. IE will point you directly to the bullet in Lely's throat if you have it high enough early game. Other times that I can't specifically remember while half-tipsily typing a youtube comment, it will tell you exactly what is happening through a metaphorical lens. The trick to having high IE is being able to find the anchor points in reality that the kite of imagination is flying from, like waking up from a strange dream with a better understanding of something going on in your real life.
Inland Empire also lets the best character in the game, Horrific Necktie, talk! It also gives you the *only* in game offensive alternative to your lost gun if you haven't found it (happened to me in my first playtrough)
The game resonated quite a bit with me, as a Brazilian I've been taught quite a bit about south American history, with all its revolutions, all its regimes and all its bloodshed. This, along with living with the older generation, my parents and extended family, who were alive during the dictatorship and reminisce about the times past, recounting things that history have taught me are heavily rose tinted down to the mishmash of seemingly art-nouveau and modern architecture, among other details, paint a surprisingly relatable picture. I guess in a way eastern Europe is not so far away after all.
It's not. There is always this fight for the ideas and systems we believe to be better and try to force them down the hierarchy once we are at the top. Never realising that by the time we reach that place we have already become corrupt, groteque versions of our ideals. Never ending cycle. There is no difference to sendero luminoso in Peru than the maoist in central China. No difference between Heaven's Gate and Ōmu Shinrikyō. Most of us are just caught in the middle of it. Disco Elysium kinda nails that.
@@JerryBanks572 How can someone be good at anything if he doesn't want to is beyond me. Two most important traits of good leaders for me are integrity and responsibility.
It's unbelievable that a group of Estonian artists who never made a game before just made one of the greatest games ever made on their first try. And it is that. A real work of art. I hope they get to make another game
unfortunately the latest People Make Games documentary about the mess at the heart of that group really makes it so I believe there will never be any sequels or anything else of worth made in that universe. It's kind of brilliant, though, I think the game's legendary status will only grow stronger if it remains the only one ever in that world
They made a book before they made Disco Elysium, it's written in Estonian but there are fan-translated versions out there for free. Sure, it's not another game, but it's definitely worth a read
Hey Noah, thank you again for your videos. I commented on one of them years ago about how you brought up being a pizza worker and how much that meant to me being one of those sorts of workers. I talked about how your progression made me hopeful even in my terrible, low-page job. I finally got a better one, I can finally live on my own. I can finally have savings. I finally have vacation time. I don't expect you to respond to this one - your channel is dramatically larger now, but. Thanks again for your videos, even if this is tangential to the current video. I always see yours and go, "Someone else had to work like that too and things can get better."
idk i think the phasmid is confirmation that pursuing dreams and ideals like communism are not necessarily doomed to fail, and that the pursuit brings about other revelations. It's one of the few hopeful spots of the game. It's not your dream, and it had deleterious effects on others, and it brings about epiphanies of an existentially terrifying nature, but it's hope nonetheless.
Well that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Communism is an idea. Capitalism is an idea. America is not a perfect capitalist state. An ideal system takes pieces from many ideologies and integrates them into their work as they fit. Capitalism is an economic model the same way communism is. They can be wielded by the authoritarian north or the libertarian south. Hope is all we have because ideology is just a theory. It’s how much and where that theory is integrated that matters. 0.00% of communism has been integrated because people see things in all-or-nothing notions. Any degree of welfare from the state spits in the face of capitalism...but we need degrees of welfare or our entire system crumbles when the inevitable losers of capitalism become homeless. No safety nets or socialist-based aid and a capitalist country suddenly has massive swaths of homeless contributing crime and poverty in a nation occupying it. In my 5+ years as a political science major and a self-identifying socialist, EVERY system needs bits and pieces of many system to succeed. It’s just how much you take from which pool that matters.
@@KaitoGillscale all politics ultimately revolves around one question: Should we give most of our power and wealth to a ruling class, or not? As long as a ruling class exists, a system cannot be accurately described as "socialist" or "communist." Mixing socialism and capitalism sounds reasonable on the surface, but doesn't really make sense when you get the the core of what those terms mean. Its also based on the false idea that socialism/communism is inherently "impractical," and must be tempered with capitalism because humans are flawed. The only situation where maintaining "elements" of capitalism is practical, is the situation Cuba and Vietnam are currently in, where the only alternative is being completely excluded from the global economy. In the long term, there is no rational reason to maintain a ruling class. People often point to the 20th century as "proof" that there are no realistic alternatives to ruling class domination, but that ignores the larger perspective, which is that ruling class domination has consistently produced horrifying outcomes for the last 8,000 years. Capitalism (and all ruling class ideologies) is fundamentally impractical and, as evidenced by climate change, incompatible with long term human survival. Capitalism is an incredibly inefficient and impractical system. Perhaps it would be more tolerable if it was reflective of human nature, but it isn't. Human beings are deeply social animals, and capitalism is deeply anti-social.
@@donniedarko2815 Burkina Faso, who was assassinated by European Powers in 1987 because his social recovery and welfare was a threat to colonialist powers. There was also Patrice Émery Lumumba, who was was instrumental in the Congo's reviatlization from a Belgian colony to their own country. Here's a document about how the CIA was instrumental in fragmenting the military and leading to the unrest that led to his execution by the military: docs.igihe.com/IMG/pdf/robarge-frus_and_the_us_in_congo-1960-68-12sep2014-2.pdf
@@KaitoGillscale Sounds like a whole lot of failure to me. The type that dose not work and won't ever work no matter how many times you post a link to some vague communist regime doing "Good" commies truly are the ones that learn the least from history despite being prominent in academic circles. Truly, truly a shame.
The reason I really enjoy the ending with the Phasmid is that by the end it really makes you feel like you finally have a grasp on the world. Skills have been leveled up, Thoughts have been thought (thunked? thoughted?) and lore has been read. And while vague ideas of the structure of this universe and the Pale it's all... out there, both geographically and in terms of being deep inside dialogue trees. Here, the town, the cop job, the failed relationship is something that for better or for worse have been to some extent resolved or at least explored. And then - you are confronted with something entirely supernatural - and all that comfort of you thinking that you got a finger on things slips away once again because you realize there is an entire new facet to... everything. You don't get dramatic satisfaction because you don't deserve it. The assumptions you made and conclusions you were so proud of aren't so complete as you thought once again, as a reminder that they never will. You can never be sure you got it right, up until it's hindsight 20/20.
I can totally see the point you make, and i even agree with it, my issue is that it came a bit left field for me, firstly i did not interact a lot with The Pale. secondly i did not speak to it as the actions to get there made me think it instead saw me as a threat, the journal discretion and the actions, furthermore Inland empire is not a skill i had much in. Meaning my interaction became a more "oh that side-quest charecter was right" kind of moment more than a commentary.
I really liked how the game inverted the structure of many detective stories where there are supernatural elements. The normal structure is to start with a supernatural explanation for a crime, and then show that there really is a naturalistic explanation for everything. DE kind of did the opposite.
Definitely. I think you nailed it. I like that it adds a little dash of "fuck you" mystery to the very end. ALSO it's a huge huge payoff if you got invested in and talked with the cryptozoologist and his wife, which I definitely did. When the phasmid unfolded from the reeds, I was absolutely thrilled. And I love that the game lets you remember to go tell the cryptozoologist about it.
I had my grand resolution with Big P, but failed a skill check and it vanished. Somehow, that felt more appropriate than if I'd succeeded and actually found resolution.
Good of you to get the perspective of the developers. It's a uniquely eastern european perspective and the ideals of communism and the realities of the soviet union is a rather tricky topic to navigate around these parts. I'm from the same country as the developers, only a couple of years younger than them and the way the game resonates with me is unlike anything else. The happy-go-lucky lulz Lenin que the soviet anthem attitude of western online leftists is quite often pretty jarring. I guess one of those "you don't know maaaaan, you weren't there" type of feelings. The way Disco deals with the failures of humans, the failures of ideas and the day-to-day life of people in a failed world is like a...comforting blanket of cold concrete and rust. An oxymoron for sure but such is life. Shoutout to all my fellow communists and what not from the east of the europe, we don't have a disco option but at least we have Disco Elysium. Oh, and fuck Lukashenka, fuck Orban, fuck PiS, fuck Putin and fuck all their ilk everywhere.
Imagine now being a communist again after capitalism raised your standard of living and helped Eastern Europe increase the life expectancy by 10-15 years since the fall of communism. In before “It wasn’t true communism”
@@saskiafalken6350 Ah yes classic Capitalism, with it's focus on improving the lives of ordinary working class people with programs such as free healthcare, social security, disability and other welfare programs. Oh wait, none of those are actually part of capitalism. It's like the entire capitalist ideology is so broken, that it has to borrow some of its most beneficial ideas from other political systems like Socialism and Communism. Capitalism has, and always will, benefit the rich and powerful first and foremost. The working class will always be an afterthought.
@@saskiafalken6350 Can you explain why you think capitalism isn't an ideology? Feudalism also wasn't an ideology that came and went, but eventually it did go. It became clear that it had downsides to it that can't be resolved within the current feudal system. Eventually capitalism will "go" as well. Socialism isn't special per se but it is different and possibly better in ways such as it focusing on workers wellbeing over profits.
Thanks for bringing that up! I kinda thought they didn't really know what to call the game and went with that sequence of dialogue in which you name a place Disco Elysium. This is MUCH cooler and very meaningful
the funniest part of the copotypes was when the game asked me if I wanted to become a boring copotype and I rejected it, only for the game to point out that's exactly what a boring cop would do
My favorite in-depth game analyzer and one of the most thought evocative games I've played in recent memory? Why yes, of course you can have my complete attention for the next 90 minutes
The meaning of the phasmid is simple - it's the complete refutation of what the Deserter stands for. The game shows you this bitter failure of an old man, who is stuck in the past and believes the chance for a brighter future is long gone, so he can just give up and pursue his meaningless existence creeping on women. And then minutes later the game shows you an event so improbable, the player himself would have never believed it would happen. The entire cryptozoology subplot is the absolute extreme of an irrational hope. There is no reason for this pair of old people to pursue a likely non-existant insect, the chances of them finding one are miniscule, they are basically chasing a yeti. And the player is there with them. I doubt that a single person playing the game expected to see a cryptid in the climax of the game, but it happened anyway. And an important detail here is that the Deserter literally can't see it, because of how long he'd been on that island wallowing in his misery. He can't see the good parts of life because of how stuck he is in the past. This encounter is a microcosm of the entire game - pursuit of a better future, no matter how small the possibility of it actually transpiring, is not fruitless and irrational hope is not necessarily a bad thing. It applies both to our favorite wreck of a protagonist and the city of Revachol, along with the rest of the world of Disco Elysium.
that Vice article sounds weird to me, as did a polygon article calling the game ironic and nihilistic, because whilst Disco Elysium is sad and sarcastic on a constant basis, on a fundamental level it also feels devastatingly vulnerable and sincere, and above all optimistic. Harry is trapped in despair. Harry is not going to change the world. Even at his most revolutionary, Harry is fundamentally a depressed cop, and his ability to affect the world around him is limited by that. However, this is not to say that the world of Disco Elysium is similarly trapped. To me, the most hopeful and uplifting moments of the game were in interacting with the younger generation, the one that has the strongest chance of making things right. Whether it be meeting Steban the student communist and the Echo maker at the book club, and persuading them to put up flyers and reach out to others in the community, connecting with Acele in one of the best empathy checks, vibing with Noid, persuading Andre to drop the whole speed lab element and making the night club ever harder core, or most of all watching Cindy the Skull compose her true masterpiece and lighting the thing ablaze, sending a message to the moralintern aerostatics in the sky, the youth of Martinaise are growing up in a world they are told is dying, a place filled with failure and shrinking as the pale expands, and yet they not only continue, but dare to reforge old and ideas and birth new ones. It’s notable to me that nearly every youth is some sort of communist (unless you’re one of the true monsters who made egg head a moralist), or at least has some form of leftist sympathy. And not only are they actively capable of learning from the past, especially with your help, they are capable of combatting this existential despair through a new counterculture not simply angry at the way things are, but fighting for a way things could be. The fact that you can literally help some kids hold back the end of the universe with dance music says to me that Disco Elysium is far from resigning itself to the despair of disco, but is instead bold enough to hope anew even in spite of it all
Everything matters, and the game makes it a point - narratively and through the gameplay mechanics - that everything matters. If not to Harry, then to the people around him. Even the Pale death of the world is not the destined end before which all things lose their meaning; after the pale, the world again. Even if Harry cannot change the world, he can - and has taken extreme measures to be able to - change himself. That's probably the most realistic message of the game, that this is often the only thing we can do. It may work as an allegorical narrative on history, politics and sociology. But more than that it works on a personal level. And if there's one thing I haven't drawn from the game, it's nihilistim.
Right? Getting Cuno out of Marinaise and into the junior police academy was like.. wow I just saved this kid's life. Shit was beautiful, really made the ending way better on top of Harry still being able to stay with the RCM
"Sincere" is really the best world to describe this game. The problem with many "ironic" pieces of art is that the irony becomes a way to mask the true intent of the artist. Instead of conveying the message directly, an indirect approach is used that loses some of the discussion and lessens the impact. While DE isn't a stranger to sarcasm and irony, it's also not afraid to be blunt and honest. Especially considering the ending of the game, I can't agree with calling this game "ironic".
Thats great and all but in the book: A Sacred and Terrible Air - the city of Martinaise was nuked by the Moralintern due to the rising political viewpoints of communism rising in the area. So, once again Martinaise was stomped under the weight of collective foreign capital.
"If its not your first time spinning the tape - you know pretty well to recognize the tune" So much of this game and this analysis hits too close to home, which made it uncomfortable at spots but also impossible to stop playing.
I feel like there's multiple lines to experience vicarious sadness. Some people want to experience it because they never have. Some people want to experience it because that's where they're most comfortable. And others like myself cannot any longer I've reached my fill, vicarious sadness spills over too easily now
One thing I thought about the game was that it was very hopeful, in a way. The game goes to great lengths to ridicule the work of the Cryptozoologists, and yet, at the end, there is the Phasmid, a beautiful, impossible creature that proves all the doubters wrong. And, more poignant: the communist mantra which Cindy the Skull writes in front of the Whirling-In-Rags: One day, I will return to your side, the hope that, despite everything, there will be a future where we win, where humanity wins. It really resonates well with the real-world history of the Soviet Union and the developers as communists living in an ex-Soviet state. They are keenly aware of the pain and horror present in that history, but they decide to keep holding onto that little star of hope.
Don't forget how hopeless Kim felt when Harry suggested they go to the sea fortress just to be thorough. The whole game was about failure after failure after failure. Yet once they get on that island every mysteries unravel itself. Kim and Harry returned to the mainland with such smug that Jean couldn't say anything. To me that's the most hopeful part of it all.
So they are fully aware that communism failed horrendously yet they still think it will work. How many 10s of millions more need to die before we can agree it's not a good system to implement?
@@user-og6hl6lv7p Isn't that true of Capitalism too, though? Let's see, Irish Potato Famines, Bengal Famines, Congo Free State, Native American Genocide, 1990s Eastern European Collapse, Sierra Leone Blood Diamonds, purges under Pinochet and the Brazilian Junta... I mean, it's a long list, we could be here all day. And, of course, Global Warming is coming and we're going to see a lot of death from that as well. So, should we abandon Capitalism? But Communism killed so many people too, didn't it? So, what then?
Very few estonians believed in communism. Soviet Russia invaded Estonia and took it over by force, this doesn't somehow mean that estonians are magically communists. Why does there seem to be a common belief that ex-Soviet countries are full of people who believe in communism? It's like saying that france was full of French nazis after nazi Germany invaded them..?? Sorry, as an Estonian these comments just puzzle me. Not the first time I've seen it.. but I do agree that there is a slight tinge of nostalgia towards Soviet times, at least for older people. Maybe a shared opinion with Russians that the west is a bit too spoiled out of touch from "the real world". Nothing to do with communism tho.
The complete brilliance of this game's political message is matched by the infuriating abundance of people who do not understand it. The way you were able to articulate it's message without necessarily subscribing to its creators' perspective is a huge credit to you. I especially liked your thoughts about Kim, who both I and my friends loved immensely, for all we disagree with the larger worldview of Moralism.
A lot of people including myself understands it, but find it incredibly boring and not something that should be part of a get away game fantasy world. I loved the game, but spare me the politics.
God, the sorry cop. I have never felt so called out in my entire life. (but also when you described trying to pick lunch I felt that in my soul, so if nothing else this stranger knows just a fraction of how you feel)
Why, though? Saying you're sorry after you got drunk, trashed a room and made a waitress quit her job is probably like 50% of what the game needs to call you a "sorry cop". It's just not being a sociopath. I guess "not sociopath cop" doesn't sound as good.
@@kingkefa7130 Ok but did you keep apologizing after that? As a large number of people have said it catches them and you even have a chance to call yourself the sorry cop or ultimately reject it. Its your actions and attitude through harry that makes you the sorry cop.
This is so strange to see a "communism" being a critique for the game. Living in the post-Soviet country, communism is... it's just is. It is a part of everyday life, it's everywhere. Communist buildings, communist streets, people, who studied scientific communism for their entire lives - this is what is. I want to have empathy towards people from the west, whose experience is coloured by living in the countries on the other side of historic conflict, but... I'm just sad that people are not willing to show empathy towards the developers of the game and millions like them who live in places like Revashole every day. Those who go into communist bunkers as part of their school trips. I've been in Saint-Petersburg once. There is a place north from the city. I was there in april. The bay was full of reed and big ice chunks on the sand, and howling wind. And I thought - this is basically Martinaise. There is an attraction nearby - a memorial or a museum, I haven't got to see it, of a place, where Lenin hid from the Imperial goverment prior to Revolution. There is a train on the train station, standing as a memorial piece, in which allegedly Lenin fled to Finland one time, changing his clothes to mask as a coalman. Communism was part of that place's identity. I'm pretty sure, that Tallin is just like this. To ask to remove it from the game... I would say, that it's somewhat ignorant, certainly invalidating and pretty rude.
It's not so much taking the history away, it's just that... Estonia had it really rough under Communism. There's a reason the Estonian Parliament has so few left-wing seats currently.
@@Hypogean7Which is strange given the fact that the USSR wasn't left-leaning at all. But I guess it just speaks to how heavily it damaged the perception that when people think communism, most of them immediately picture gulags and KGB agent
@@thebookofive The USSR WAS left-leaning. Their economy was very collectivised and centralized, religion was discouraged and banned, there was no distinction between public and private law, etc.
@@Hypogean7 Marxism-Leninism as an underlying political ideology was very much not left leaning. That was one of the main reasons for the Kronstadt rebellion. Religion being discouraged or economy being centralised aren't the inherent elements of a "left-leaning politics". Imo an authoritarian-communism is an oxymoron, if you think about it.
@@thebookofive Left-leaning isn't a synonym for being anti authority, like anarchists. Social democrats are left leaning, and they don't promise abolishing all government. You can also be anti authority while being right wing. Dunk all you want on libertarians, but libertarianism is a real ideology with writings and analysis. CallMeEzekiel had a really good video on it.
Your words at 1:01:50 really spoke to me, honestly. Never a hallmark moment of defeating the thoughts, only a “well, this is probably a bad time to do it and it would fuck up a lot of other people’s things THEY have to do, plus, things aren’t too bad, right now.” This is a phenomenal video. Subscribed and going to binge the rest of your content.
That "eject" button is just so accurate with some personal modification added. Like pilot in their airships, it is always there, and you can technically to choose to press it even if the plane is fine. It's for me just a forever lingering thought, with rarely any intention to execute it, with some exceptions during my darkest of moment. "Big red button" is such an apt description of suicide. It's somewhat a last resort, it's designed to be violently punched, sometimes breaking the thin encasement with it. It's unlike the other small, complex looking delicate buttons, dials, switches on the cockpit that require skill and knowledge to operate to navigate life safely.
Im really glad you mentioned Kitsuragi. He is probably one of the best companions i have come across during my years as a gamer. Normaly i dislike playing with tag alongs being it multiplayer or NPC:s but something about his presence along the journey just felt so vital.
25:37. God-tier writing. You never cease to surpass my ecxpectations with the clarity with which you are able to show me what I could not see but was there all along. “2020 has been a strange year for everyone but it’s been particularly surreal to be an American because of how completely it seems we’ve abandoned the grand pretense of what the country is supposed to be about to instead squabble over who gets to paint their face in the ashes of what we’ve let it become.”
Absolutely on point. This is true rhetoric, elucidating truths we recognise upon hearing / reading them spelled out rather than aiming to sway its recipients to one side or the other.
@@Isewein Whoaaaa, that was really, really good too. Beautifully written!! OK, I am wondering if would-be writers are attracted to Noah. Creative writing was my minor but I never followed it professionally. Any one else reading this fit into some sort of writing background/talent? Noah has a natural, plain spoken style of an American mid-westerner. But he weaves complex threads with that plain speak that paint a deeply recognizably human truth. I don’t even play these games, but it’s rarely the game he is describing - it’s the human condition. Anyway, any other writes reading this?
Kropotkin talks a bunch about how to stop corruption and rot in a revolutionary movement. There's also been like 200 years of marxist thought since marx. You don't need to expect marx to have all the answers
After many months of staring at Disco Elysium in my library, I have finally worked through it, feeling more profoundly affected than I have from a game in a fair while. It is both wickedly clever and deeply personal and refuses a clean, easy reading in the way it immerses you in a flawed, chaotic world. It's one of the only video game RPGs I've played that feels like it embodies the concept of "failing forward", which seems quite an apt description for the last two years. I couldn't ask for a better video as a companion for working through my own thoughts and feelings on Disco Elysium than this - one of Noah's best, I dare say.
"How many 'truths' did you have to sift through, to find one that lived up to the name?" our man out here writing incredible fourth-wave emo lyrics by pure happenstance.
It's crazy how, in the end, Harry had inadvertently delayed the apocalypse and was effectively acknowledged by the cryptid as the chosen one in how dangerous he is
It is funny that you read from the Manifesto given that it's actually the least useful thing to read by Marx if you want to understand Marxism. Even the points at the end are rather useless because Marx and Engels acknowledge in an later preface that the Paris Commune made most of them moot. So yeah... saying 'what is said in the Manifesto isn't great' is not actually very useful. It's also a mistake to say he want everything of bourgeois origin thrown out: like others after Kant, he saw his work as continuing and completing the work of Kant (a very bourgeois guy). (Not to mention, he did not want to destroy the means of production built by those before). It's less throw out the notion of freedom and more overcome and revolutionize the notion of atomistic individual freedom. Like, realizing that the freedom of one depends upon the freedom of all; that unless we're all free, our freedom isn't guaranteed. The freedom of one cannot be founded upon the bondage of another. For one, the possibility of the free to become the bound still exists in the core of such a notion of freedom. For another, such a situation is class struggle as the free struggle to keep the bound in bondage and the bound struggle against their chains. Neither is truly free as they struggle to be free, free from bondage and free founded on bondage. Either striving to be free takes bondage as its principle, thus preserving it in freedom's core. This is alienation: alienation of freedom from freedom itself, alienation of the self from society, alienation of the self from the self. The bourgeoisie, the 'free' class, and the working class, those bound to the servitude of the 'free,' both exist in a condition of alienation preventing true freedom (freedom founded upon freedom itself) from existing. The absolute example of bourgeois freedom is the MAD world. Peace secured through pointing nukes at each other such that if they went off, there is mutually assured destruction. That's not peace. Peace cannot issue from war without preserving in its core, war itself. Thus, war continued even in the peace of MADness. To be at peace is, in a sense, to be free, free from the struggling against bondage and free from war. Freedom cannot issue from bondage without preserving bondage in itself. The freedom of America is a freedom of bondage, a freedom of slavery. It is this American freedom that Marx would wish to overcome for the sake of true freedom, freedom grounded on freedom, peace grounded on peace.
Damn, that commentary on self-harm was the realest shit. Never really defeating the thoughts of *self harm*, it's just always shaken off. Warded away by it not being convenient, and that there are things you need to do first.
My confrontation with the mercenaries didn't go very well, but I was reluctant to save scum it because it's rather long and tricky. Then I found out that Kim was alive in hospital, and I thought "OK, I can accept this." Then Cuno offered to be my new partner, and I thought "I am definitely accepting this."
If you'd asked me a couple of months ago "What 2 games do you want to see Noah cover?" I'd have said "Who are you? Why do you care what I think?" but my answer would have been Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium.
I've been watching some of your older videos lately, and it's impressive how much your narrative skills have improved. They've always been there, but over the years you've refined them and are more articulate than ever
I slowed the voiceover to 75% in order to keep up with the ideas and discovered it was like listening to a friend after a few pints. It really set the mood!
He would not be able to create these essays if he weren't. Listen to any other essayist who write on games, they repeat the same stuff and can't touch the essence. Most UA-cam essayists who are not formulaic read theory.
I would very much argue that the values you site as inherent that tend towards capitalism are also learned. The issue is that we have lived so long under capitalism that these learned qualities have become to be seen as man's natural state.
I felt personally called out by the "Kingdom of Conscience" thought. It made me laugh and laugh, and then take a hard look at myself in a way that few works of literature have managed to do. I think each of the political thoughts is meant to do that, or at least seriously mock a person's noncommittal political attitudes.
The entirety of this video is magnificent, but the way you articulate your thoughts on suicide brought me to tears. The validation touched faintly by despair that comes with feeling seen by someone or a piece of media is not one I can put into words, but thank you for it all the same. The experience of not quite valiantly defying those calls to oblivion, but postponing them for fear of inconveniencing those who love you for whatever reason is one I relate to intimately. To no small measure of self-loathing, once in awhile I find myself hoping that my loved ones would all rebuke me or perish, so that I may kill myself free of guilt. I’m sorry for any distress reading this may of caused.
"Let me tell you about the time I got so drunk I forgot the world and had to learn it all over again". It's december 25th and for reasons that don't matter I have spent these christmas days alone at my home. I felt the need to play Disco Elysium again, and today, when I was supposed to be having lunch with my family though I couldn't, I watched this video. It made me happy. Thank you.
I just finished my first playthrough of Disco Elysium and went heavy into everything imagination. I was essentially a more mild Wacky Wasteland, but that's also kind of how I am as a person. Something you said that I had a different experience with was Inland Empire, it gives you lots of hints to certain events that I only realized with hindsight. I found the bullet, the key to the blue door, & the silence space, through Inland Empire. Also the finale of having a full convo with the Phasmid put a new perspective on the game for me as well. Realizing I wasn't crazy and actually, very insightful with these guttural thoughts. Starting the game blind and knowing as little as Harry, it gave me so many hunches that stuck with me throughout the game, perusing these odd thoughts actually brought me closer to the full picture. Also, based 1 int player over here. 😎
1 int is so good. I think having minimal material understanding of the world on the first try is the best way to do it, before going for a more encyclopedic build on a second go. a sensitive, physical cop on the first run really lets you exist on vibes in a satisfying way.
One of my favorite moments in the game is when SPOILERS Volition finds out Klassje is bullshitting you, Kim and all your other skills when you go and question her outside her apartment.
The moment I heard about this game the first thought I had was, "I cannot wait to hear Noah's thoughts on this". The video was even better than I thought it would be. Thank you.
Wouldn't call her a caricature, that implies that Joyce is a parody. She is a very compelling character, and any similarities mostly end with her hair.
I just finished the game for the first time the other day, and I'm mulling over the idea of a replay. This is one of those games that, despite its staggering number of permutations based on a player's decisions, is impossible to experience like it's the first time after the first time. That's not necessarily to the game's detriment, I don't think, but part of what makes this game a modern classic is the paradigmatic shift it represents, and the surprise that paradigm shift creates in the player. About an hour into my foray as the then-nameless burnout detective, I remember saying "Oh, yeah this is that NEW shit." I'm definitely not the only person to have that revelation while playing. I went through the game fully appreciating how unprecedented this experience was, and yet even with that lofty expectation met, I lament that I will never be able to play it for the first time ever again, unless I decide to go hard on the chemicals like our boy Harry... nah, better not. Plus I get the impression that the technical glitches will bother me more on subsequent playthroughs... All respect to ZaUm for what they did, but the fast travel system completely crapped out on me by the 4th day...
42:06 there is a Esprit-Corps check towards the end of the game which heavily implies that the RCM is planning a revolution, so I think this point is only partly valid
Commenting now to help with the algorithm, I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts at the end. Thanks again Noah for all your hard work you put into all your videos, I’m sure this will be another great one
Regarding the game's treatment of Communism: It's a pretty popular sentiment in post-communist countries that 'Everything Lenin told us of communism was false, and everything he told us of capitalism, true.' I think that's where you end up if you follow the Mazovian threads, especially the Thought Cabinet. EDIT: I wrote this midway through; now that I've finished, I just wanted to add that it was a great video and we're all richer for your thoughtful reflections on the game.
My favorite, who had to flee from Communist Romania after pissing off the dictator, once said to me that "Communism is a dream", implying untenable. So yeah, this also resonates to me.
Communists diagnosed the illness that plagues society but could not arrive at a cure. We are still suffering the downsides of Capitalism today, but no effective alternative presents itself.
@@Orhan6125 Capitalism is its own cure - it burns itself out and scorches all those it touches. The hope is that it reduces us to a pre-industrial state before we irreparably destroy the environment. It's a lofty hope, I know. But you have to dream in times such as these if you're to keep going.
@@fuzzydunlop7928 It's no coincidence that that's exactly what some thinkers propose as the solution: depopulate the cities and spread the population to the rural ways of living to stop damaging the environment. It starts by bringing the advantages of living in the city to the towns and villages (access to hospitals, education, Internet, etc). At least that's what I learned in some course about local development and government funding.
@@Orhan6125 This reminds me of a Zizec quote that terrifies me to my core: "It's easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism." I'd argue that this idea is fundamentally ahistoric and apolitical. Effective alternatives don't present themselves, we create them. People don't all get together to decide what power structure we'd like to have. Politics is not a debate, it is a struggle to increase your material conditions. A struggle that got us the weekend, an end to child labor, etc. The thing that honestly made me a communist is direct action and seeing the good people working together can bring about. I'd highly recommend the book "Capitalist realism" by Mark Fisher, he explores this subject incredibly thouroughly.
I'm so happy I'm not the only reflexive apologist out there. I, too, get the "STOP SAYING YOU'RE SORRY!" on a monthly...or weekly...basis. I don't have much more to add, it's just nice not to feel alone.
It actually didn’t make sense in the context of this story though. I apologized as the character because he was a huge drunken alcoholic asshole to people. It’s not like we were apologizing out of habit; it was actually deserved.
this advice may no longer be needed, but, from an ex-chronic-apologiser: try saying thank you instead. makes people feel valued, and helps you grow accustomed to gratitude and relying on others, rather than excusing your own existence
Thank you for getting to this game. It's glorious. It made me laugh, it made me have feelings. 95% of video games don't. I've had to listen to this review with my eyes closed because I kept getting distracted by the dialogue! Just so wonderful to read through again.
Fun fact - The moralist thought 'Kingdom of Conscience' refers to Orlando Bloom's quote about the Kingdom of Jerusalem being the Kingdom of Conscience. In the movie, which is set during the crusades, Bloom's character Balian refrains from taking any stance that would alter his status quo wildly, like refusing to marry Sybilla and condemning Guy to death, refusing to abandon Jerusalem from certain defeat to fight another day. Rather, he chooses to uphold moralist principles, defending the city, but letting the city fall and saving the people. Letting Sybilla follow through with what he knows is a doomed path because he does not want to 'interfere', and letting her hit rock bottom and then accepting her for what she is. This game made me think about a movie I love. Damn.
Really one of the best gaming experiences I've had. I didn't think it'd get much better than Tyranny or the PoE games for modern CRPGs, but then we get hit with dynamite like Disco Elysium that reminds you that the best narratives come from someone's soul.
I see so few people talk about tyranny, but I really think it much more interesting than their other releases. They're all good, but tyranny was the only one that really gripped me
Truly love your work, but the moment you brought up The Communist Manifesto as a critique of Marx I got flashed to the J Peterson and S Zizek debate on Marxism and how Peterson only read the Communist Manifesto, which is widely regarded to be the dregs and weakest thing that really has very little to do with Marx's wider body of work. Though, bringing it up in the face of cultural understanding is brilliant. Though, personally, I'd recommend David Harvey's "Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economical Reason".
@@TheJollyLlama875 Even if The Communist Manifesto is, to some, "Marxism for dummies", Noah's reading of it was sophisticated, engaged, insightful and personal. Wherein Mr. Only-Meat-Diet is a bad faith actor whose entire career is based on deliberate misreading. High-five across the web.
I really enjoyed the video and you qualities as a writer and an excellent investigator are on display. My one pet peeve as one of the hardened communist that is chinese and lives in eastern europe with a bit of pained gasped about communism is that Communist manifesto is not a good source material for interpreting Marx or Marxism generally. It is sensationalist piece that was written on the eve of a revolution in germany, in which many socialist beliefed would be the end of capitalism. It was also one of the last stages of the heavily hegelian Marx that was focused on analyzing huge historical concepts with rather abstract posibilities. I think that one of his journalistic works (Civil war in france, Eighteenth Brumaire) from his later life would be better way of easily and digestibly understanding what Marx thought and how he imagined social life functioned in capitalist societies. Capital would be optimal, but it's incredibly turgid and boring. It still is one of the greatest written books of all time, but your mind starts to mingle after a while Also you made the greatest analogy of Marxism that I've heard. College degree in truth or what you belief to be the truth, because once you learn marxist methodology. The stain and stamp of his thinking doesn't leave you r head and makes you a think a lot like him. FOREVER.
@@soggybottomboidenis Oh yeah, definitely. And can you believe how many cigars he smoked? Fuckin' monster. That note from the prussian police about his apartment reads as though he had a little Harry Dubois in him.
@kevin willems Capital is a very fun book on your 2rd reread when you know wtf is happening. I liked 12 rules of life. I aknowledged its obvious failures in its socialogical methodology of trying to compare complexities of human existence to a lobsters life, but i thought that Peterson is a good storyteller and it engaged me enough to be fun.
As much as I love Noah’s video on RDR2, and as much as I care for all of his work, this video essay is to me personally the best he’s put out yet. The writing, the personal dimension, the intelligent observations - they all come together to form something truly insightful and inspiring. Thank you very much for this, Noah.
12:35 the one moment where I felt the inner voices did more than just be a pack of wacky background cartoon characters, was on the balcony with Klaasje, when Inland Empire hints that your other Skills have been compromised, double-checking this reveals they've been secretly seduced by Klaasje and have been giving you wrong advice... afterwards, they try to overcompensate by being extra punitive towards her... I suppose other instances where you're personally involved with a topic would be opportunities to explore this type of thing... like perhaps you find yourself becoming more angry as a conversation continues without you knowing why, and it turns out that subconsciously there's some relation to your past... but, then again, professionalism is the ability to separate your personal world from work
Hey, just finished the game like 4 hours ago and watching this review and scrolling through the comments reminded me of a moment of triumph and optimism in the skils near the end of the game, when you meet the Phasmid. Inland Empire, Authority, and Espirit De Corps all chime in to say "DETECTIVE" "ARRIVING" "ON THE SCENE" which was so fucking awesome and brought the writing and mechanics to a whole other level of cool to me. It also works as a truly uplifting moment for Harry. He is finally, finally, solving the case. He may be flawed. He may be terribly flawed, in so many ways. But this moment reminds you, completely unironically, that "Yes, you are a skilled detective. You have come this far. You have done well."
I often go back to listen to an essay of yours when I’m busy around the house, but I have never so quickly wanted to restart the video, sit my SO down with me, and watch it over again. Thank you so much for your work.
Funnily enough, the conditions were just right for me at work today to vibe with this even more than I normally would. Even though I know the world won't end, the election is in 3 days. I had a massive blood sugar drop yesterday toward the end of my shift to the point where I was borderline unresponsive and was walking around greeting people as usual and stocking away, 100% on autopilot and hoping to all that is good that I at least appeared normal to all the customers and coworkers around me. And then I had another day mostly to myself stocking today, and I just feel like disappearing. "Opting out." Not in a suicidal sense, mind, but just a massive longing to be away from the maddness of it all. Of all the slings and arrows of life for a time. My body and mind ache from the strain of my life. I have to wear a goddamn mask and I have what I believe feels like a sinus infection so I can't breath for shit. I get home and sleep all day just to get up in time for doing it all over again. I understand a lot of the feelings brought forth here. Having high hopes and values/ideals, but too knowledgeable of how people are to know that what I think of it all doesn't matter in the slightest. So every day for the last several years I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and I figure I'll make it... somewhere eventually. I don't even know why I do it. I don't wanna be a hindrance, for certain, but I sometimes wonder if that's the only way to think. I'm only 26, but like the protagonist of the game here, I feel much older cause I allow myself to think out the paths that thoughts should take and what they mean. Frequently. It makes you more wise, but it leaves you with barely the energy to face the day, and things that used to make me happy don't even provide that anymore. I'll probably just delete this comment here. It sounds like grade school drama... but that really isn't different to adult life, is it? Maybe I'll keep the comment. Yeah. Tangential thinking is what keeps me going and its nice to know I don't seem to be the only one.
nah mate, dont delete it it doesnt sound like high school drama, it actually sounds like depression, honestly i have no way nor energy to help you in one youtube comment, except to say that you should never give up, because like some very intelligent dwarf once said "death is so terribly final, while life so full of possibilities" things in life always turn around, and maybe not always for the better, but to live means to change, that might as well lead us to even greater suffering, but it staves off the ultimate suffering, that which is known as "boredom"
I find it fascinating how your experience with Inland Empire was very similar to my experience with a different Skill. Shivers. Shivers is such an interesting skill, its dialogue contributions feel like your character is listening not to his imagination, not to the people around him, but to the city of Revachol itself. And everytime Revachol wants to speak to me I find myself completely enthralled by it's perspective and thoughts.
i like the whole thing of harry is never gonna let go of his wife. seems more realistic he can't let that torment leave him so he keeps losing his memory and then making a new personality to cope. and the end implies this is gonna keep happening even after the events of the game.
He can have good days, but he'll always still have the horribly bad ones. He has no grand fate or destiny to look forward to. He is just one man, trying to make it work and screwing up horribly along the way. That's precisely why he's so relatable. :D
@@richardbarnes4196 yeah. if anything harry may be even more tragic then tno. atlest tno felt healed by the end of his adventure. harry is the gonna stay the same broken man for the rest of his life.
At the most he might have Kim backing him now, with perhaps Jean Vicquemare and the rest of Precinct 41 letting him back into their lives emotionally, but it's still up to him whether or not he throws it all away. His trauma didn't vanish when the game ended and neither have his self destructive tendencies. I honestly love that. :D
One thing I think to note about Kim's Moralism is that, hes gay. In fact every true blue Moralist in the game is gay, which doesn't make a lot of sense, gay is change, the homo-sexual underground. But it makes much *more* sense when you look at the other ideologies. The Fascist are homophobic, the Communists although mercifully less racist as almost as homophobic. In a world without a third option, only the center, unchanging, closeted and don't say gay as it is, only the center is safe, cause at least its not going to make anything worse.
Hey man I really respect how you share your own experience about shit that you’ve been through and how those experiences change how you interact with and view games. Unrelated to that I also like how you record the audio without using a lot of cuts to remove spaces where you’re not speaking, it makes it easier to understand and take in what you’re saying when I hear it in your more normal speaking voice vs an abbreviated edited voice.
I took the Phasmid to be more akin to commentary on the structural failure of communism. The Deserter and Phasmid are almost a refutation of Communism's ideal human, the basis of the ideology. The Deserter is a man who exists in two parts: one devoted fanatically to the revolution, and the other to his base animal instinct of lust. He represents the state of nature communism promises: taking only what he needs from the refuse people are willing to give, but subject to his animal impulses. But instead of his impulses being compassionate and noble, they're shockingly base. Restraint and nobility are learned behaviors. The Phasmid is there to highlight that fundamental contradiction that deep in our brains we are simian animals with animal needs. No matter how close you get to the harmonic state of nature, without accounting for the base flaws in our DNA it is doomed to be corrupted. The Phasmid literally spells out how chaotic and selfish our DNA is. It represents the purity of that ideal communist world where people understand their role in the their ecosystem without uncertainty (the Shivers skill emphasizes this). But the Deserter, who sits nearest to it for so long, is driven mad by it because it runs counter to our nature. It warps his thoughts and degrades him into becoming a parody of the man he thinks he is. The phasmid exists as a plea for realism, not to refute communism but to show that for communism to ever truly uproot the destructive systems that bind us and reach harmony, it has to be done with a clear acknowledgement and acceptance of what we are. The deserter is the ghost of the old revolution that hangs over the city, and the phasmid is the echo of the dreams it promised. It can be glimpsed and captured only when face to face with human identity and ideology together, unifying the two themes of the game with purpose. Fantastic video, really hope youll do one on the Outer Wilds, its a game with themes and creativity that is right up your alley!
>for communism to ever truly uproot the destructive systems that bind us and reach the harmony it strives for, it has to be done with a clear acknowledgement and acceptance of what we are. isn't it more that the state of harmony is an illusory ideal? The phasmid exists as a creature of pure present, a single eternal moment, no past, no future. There is no room for contradictions in that state of consciousness because there is no room for reflection. To quote one of my favourite books: "A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires ... his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old, but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him." We are always losing our balance and re-centering ourselves, individually and collectively just one 'blink' away from catastrophe. If man is that kind of creature, there can be no eternal harmony for him.
communism actual communism is completely utopic. It relies on human being who aren't greedy selfish cruel and willing to give others equal oppurtunity. But it doesn't mean we can't put some of these ideals to certain extent to use. I like the hopefullness the plasmid gave us at the end.
I'm an anarcho-syndicalist, so personally pretty far from a strict Marxist, I just wanted to point out that I don't know any self-described Marxists that take The Communist Manifesto very seriously beyond its call for the workers of the world to unite and other such slogans. It was very much an of-its-time pamphlet, written to spur on the working class in that time. Marx's real value is in his critique, Das Kapital. Which I've also never read completely, because I have a life and a job and who has that kind of time, Marx?! Anyway, great video otherwise! I just wanted to point out that small frustration. Carry on, feel free to ignore. Not a big deal.
While the Manifesto is quite spicy and, very plainly, a propaganda leaflet, it's very much *not* antiquated. The political landscape it illustrates and absolutely trashes can be one-to-one located within today's politics. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
@@CDexie Yep, I think I probably worded that poorly. I think I wanted to sort of counter the common misconception that the "The Communist Manifesto" is really all you need to understand communists™.
I’m a shameless “Read Theory” guy and this is correct. The Manifesto was made to be a propaganda pamphlet you pass around the factory to get your co workers pissed at the boss and very much not a “Communism 101” thing. Kapital is incredibly thorough and prescriptive in its critique of capitalism but as you alluded to, its extremely long and boring and while i think there is value in knowing *exactly why* capitalism is bad and having the language to express that, you kind of get it instinctively if you’re poor or working class and i don’t expect people to actually read it unless they’re trying to pass themselves off as an authority on the subject. Im kind of rambling but i guess my point is that Marxism is a science, and that science is constantly evolving. Trying to limit the scope of the work done to advancing and understanding communism simply to Marx or the manifesto does a massive disservice to the people who still study and advocate for it, and to yourself if you’re taking your own study seriously. Of course i dont mean to bash Noah for being a little reductive here, its a game review, not a polisci thesis.
Thank you very much for this analysis Noah, I already loved the game but your critique on it not only showed me a lot that I had missed between the lines but also led me to deeper thought about my own life, especially the discussion regarding depression and suicidal tendencies. Keep up the wonderful work.
58:12 - The conversation about depression and suicidal ideation hits so close to home, I replayed it several times, and I've come back to it semi frequently. Depression, especially when tied to the things I've actively done to destroy my life, spin that mixtape in my head as well. And just like you said, it isn't that I feel like I deserve to live, it's just that it would pile up a ton of shit and bad vibes on the ones I'd leave behind. So I don't just walk into the water, or off the bridge, or whatever. What you said resonated. Thank you for saying it.
Philosophy tube did a really good video called "mental illness and su*c*de" that I think you might also find moving and inspiring. My spouse and I cried when we watched it, and it helped us be a little more supportive of each other.
"What kind of idiot gets their politics from a game?" Why we all do. From the music, the tv, the editorial newspaper, theatre and everything that constitute the culture of our own world. Never stop being political, Noah, wether I agree or not with them, I'll keep sending that patreon money. Because nothing exists in a void, and everything is politicized. No matter how hard it tries not to be. "The Medium is the message" and all that.
This is very true. I remember when I played Tetris Attack as a child and the politically charged experience caused me to become an anarchist. The next day I played Tetris (sans attack) and turned into a pacifist instead. I have since pinballed between every single possible position because I am a little ant with no free will and I am powerless but to be influenced by anything I see or hear. I hope someday someone makes a game that isn't political so I can play it without having to change my voter's registration. Everyone at my local DMV is really mean.
Just finished the game and came here first thing to contrast our thoughts. Just great to hear a lot of what was going on in my head reflected in this review along with some cool perspectives of planetscape. I wish Noah touched on the crazy hole we find in the church that ends up being proto-pale, and some of the crazier things like being taken away by one of the aeroships in one crazy “ending”, but the themes and mood were articulated perfectly and it was a treat to hear your take on it. Thanks again Noah!
For me the segment with the Phasmid was the highlight of the entire game. One of my favorite thoughts was Col Do Ma Ma Daqua, and what it had to say about the beauty of hope and dreaming for new experiences. I thought that tied in perfectly with the Phasmid. By all measures of logic and rationality the Phasmid should not exist, and yet it does, and to be able to see it such a great privilege. The central pillar of the game is daring to dream, whether that is for a new society, new experiences, or new discoveries, and for me the Phasmid captured that into one beautiful moment
Its thanks to Disco Elysium that I was able to combat my depression. I am so glad with how well you discussed the less comical elements of the game that so many people seem to miss. The game is often obsured, but it honestly hit me so powerfully and this is the first review that I think somewhat encapsulates how I felt. (Sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes, on my phone atm).
This game will always have a special place in my heart. As someone who suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts this game helped me out. The opening was so powerful i had to take a break. It felt like it spoke to me specifically. Its silly i know but its truly impressive.
Noah, for the love of all that is good and kind in the world, SWITCH ON THE AUTO-SUBTITLES!! They are what allows deaf/hard of hearing people like me to understand video essayists like you!
It says they are on. Because I'm not partnered with adense, I'm not entitled to speak to a service representative from youtube about it. I can't do anything about this.
Really enjoyed this critique. While Marx was (understandably) dickish with many fellow communist theorists in his day, I'd just say that the bit quoted at 32:23 isn't directed at you, Noah, but at members of the bourgeois ruling class. You're a subject of this ruling class who, yes, has internalized the ideas it has created for its own benefit and self-preservation just as we all have, but this passage would only be calling you out if you happen to own a factory, a mine, or a plot of capital-producing land that we don't know about. Are you a secret bourgeois, Noah??? Inquiring minds want to know!
I felt the EXACT same way about being called Sorry-Cop. Like this game just directly mocked me on a truth about my personality that I am actually pretty insecure about. Like a quirk I try to hide, but it's so apparent that even a video game can pick up on it.
Disco Elysium is the game I'd use as an example of Games as Art. It transcends its medium, but is also facilitated by the medium. It wouldn't work as anything other than an interactive experience. It shows that games can have the same impact as any other artistic medium. Mind you, I don't think all games are art, but then again, neither are all films, books, etc.
This is my first time watching one of your videos, and you have a very straightforward and matter of fact voice that works really well for analysis videos like this. But surprisingly there is a lot of earnestness and love in your voice that i did not expect from a video focused on facts and analysis. I'm glad you got a lot out of this game. I think people like yourself are the exact type of audience the game designers would have wanted. I felt similarly impacted by its critiques of moralism and the sorry cop which has fundamentally changed my internal voice in a way that i did not expect. Im glad you explored each of these elements in depth in this video voicing the exact thoughts i had myself on the topic. You did a phenomenal job with this video, truly taking the game for what it is while reflecting and critiquing in much the way only someone who loves a piece of art truly can.
The one minute or so passage at around 1:01:27 hit me like a knife to the gut. I have never had someone describe how depression feels in a way that hits so keenly, painfully close to home. On the one hand, being able to relate so closely to the description of not-actually-really-coping hurts deeply, but on the other hand it also brings some degree of comfort to know that one's feelings are shared by others.
This is probably the third of fourth video analysis if Disco Elysium that I watch and it speaks volumes about the game's depth that each and every one had a completly different angle on it. Also really happy to see my favorite channel go over it. You do amazing work man.
This writing is too good to be free on youtube, I thank you every day for releasing your videos on this platform and your writing stuns me every time I think you can't outdo yoursel. I feel you in my core. I watch hour long videos where someone manages to say nothing, but you pack your videos so tight that I feel like an hour and a half of dissection is you holding back. If you 'trim down the fat' for these videos, I want to see what the hell the 'fat' was that you trimmed.
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While the Estonian perspective is important to understanding the game's machinations, equally important is that the developers moved to the United Kingdom during development, which adds a helpful dash of understanding to other things in the game, like the deep and complex character of Racist Lorry Driver.
Probably helped them with the amazing regional UK voice casting too
@@chilldude30 Cuno could only be voiced by someone in the UK; no other accent would fit that kid.
"Deep and complex character of Racist Lorry Driver", I love the fact that this sounds like a contradiction but yet it isn't.
@@sleepingdogpro yeah and he's a Scouser too and it's a perfect choice of accent. So scratchy and nasally and in real life scousers have a reputation for having a certain kind of swagger
In fact the only problem i had with Cuno was some of the American English he says,which sounded very weird and wrong coming from his mouth (eg ass)
The funniest thing about Inland Empire is that it allows you to literaly solve the case the moment you set foot on the crime scene, but the answer is so vague you only ever realize it was true after finishing the game.
Inland Empire. Frequently right, never useful.
@@xalrath Downright Malkavian if you ask me.
Love killed him, Communism killed him. Straight up
@@joshuawinestock9998 don't misquote him, buddy. Communism _killed_ him, but love _did him in_
@@loganreed23 communism killed him, but love pulled the trigger
The moment that the game told me I was a Sorry Cop was when I realised that, despite all the written words in the Disco Elysium, it was the game that was reading me like a book.
I feel like people resonate with the game precisely because it will challenge your views and how you handle situations. It has a perfectly subtle 4th wall breaking effect that works so well
Yeah I was a sad/sorry cop and a (reluctant) man of the center. At the ripe age of 38 I now consider myself a crushed idealist with my default position being cynicism. The game really resonated with me about that.
I actually felt annoyed by that part. I said sorry because it was the decent thing to do after I completely fucked shit up. That doesn’t make me a “sorry person”, it makes me a well adjusted human being who can admit when they’re at fault. you don't even have to be a super polite person, just halfway decent.
@@headphonic8 Same here fellow Sorry-cop, but were you also a boring Cop? Because I was, I spent as many opportunities with-holding judgement and asking questions to get a bigger picture, and very rarely did I ever conclude something that wasn't logically right in front of me.
I think most people end up as sorry cop because it presents you with the most opportunities to apologise before anything else. Players might intentionally try to keep everyone favourable so they don't lock themselves out of options in the future, and apologising is instinctively a way to do that.
I feel like the working class woman sidequest is probably the best microcosm of Disco Elysium as a whole: disarms you by starting off as an obvious joke, then rips your heart out with raw, real, painful humanity
Yepp that quest is everything great about this game in one quest
I haven't even played the game and I cried at that point of the video
Apparently crying at Noah talking about games I've never played is just what I do now
That quest brought me to tears. What a gut punch.
If you say "Two days maybe" it will be etched into her mind forever.
For me it was playing pinball with Kim. A pointless little game that brings some excitement to both of you for a brief moment and leaves as quickly as it came, but still somehow remains a cherished memory.
"Inside every drunk there's a detective. There has to be" still the hardest line of all time
yes. that shit gave me a kind of fuel that no protein supplement of any strength can possibly give me.
When you have to count your blackouts on both hands and more your deduction skills come second nature at a point.
Nonsense pseudo intellectual shit. Get your life together and quit looking to communist propaganda video games for inspiration and stop being such a massive embarrassment to everyone around you. Commie video games won’t save you, loser.
"My friend, we have failed at so many things, let's fail at making a video game." I think in a lot of ways disco Elysium is about failure: particularly those failures that were doomed to happen.
It's a game about losing, and about how we carry on when we know we will lose.
The Kapuscinskian position :3
O Camusian o_O
That was probably the thing that stuck with me the most: when you 'succeed' a skill check, only to fail anyways - and sometimes the skill apologies for bringing up the idea
In revolutionary upheavals, some energy, or rather some utopian dreams, take place, they explode; and even if the actual result of a social upheaval is just a commercialised everyday life, this excess of energy, what gets lost in the result, persists - not in reality but as a dream haunting us, waiting to be redeemed.
In this sense, whenever we are engaged in radical emancipatory politics, we should never forget as Walter Benjamin put it almost a century ago, that every revolution (if it is an authentic revolution) is not only directed towards the futures but it redeems also the past failed revolutions. All the ghosts as it were, the living dead of the past revolution, which are roaming around unsatisfied, will finally find their home in the new freedom.
I may be freezing to death but you’ll never get rid of me. All the ice in the world cannot kill a true idea.
*SNIIIIFFFFFFFF* and so on and so on
В
@@SOLOcan 5фуф
"Disco Elysium is not expecting a right answer to the questions of life, the universe, and everything. It's trying to tell us it's normal for it to be this painful to have to choose an answer anyway." Beautifully put. Thank you.
"Never once did a single dialogue option from Inland Empire help me solve the case." This is true, however upon replay and with foreknowledge you'll also note that /Inland Empire is always, ALWAYS correct/. It's like a bizarre oracle that never lies but always speaks in riddles. In fact, think back to what the hanged man says if you ask him who killed him: the answer is 100% correct, you'd just never be able to parse it unless you exhausted all dialogue with a key witness and the perp. Or, as another example, think about the entire Horrible Tie saga, if you played it out correctly.
The conversations with the corpse especially stand out as perfect foreshadowing. "Love did me in, and Communism killed me" I believe you also get a bonus to the roles to find certain pieces of evidence if you listened to Inland if I remember correctly.
Inland Empire is wrong sometimes like the mystery twist you tell to Kim
@@RobertKuusk Could you be more specific, I don't remember that exact exchange.
I'll grant that maybe IE /might/ get some stuff wrong but I feel it's either fuzzy stuff (for example, what's /exactly/ going on in the Cursed Shopping District is open to a couple of options) or minor details, I'm pretty sure that whenever IE is talking about something major (or animates an important thing to talk to you, like the Tie) it's either obliquely correct or self-reflective of Harry.
@@BladePHF oh, yeah, no you are right. It's pretty obvious when it's wrong. But it's not ALWAYS right. I think the curse isn't even explicitly a wrong one, depends on how one thinks about magic. It posits you did the murder at the start, for example, if you win a skill check w kitsuragi. He shuts it down pretty fast, but you can insist on it. I don't think any references to werewolves and vampires were right either. And I think it insisted that the impossible to open door was possible to open.
It's as OP as Shivers if not more. It just also adds more imagination. Turning the game from CSI detective skills to Twin Peaks.
I have to disagree about Inland Empire being useless. IE will point you directly to the bullet in Lely's throat if you have it high enough early game. Other times that I can't specifically remember while half-tipsily typing a youtube comment, it will tell you exactly what is happening through a metaphorical lens. The trick to having high IE is being able to find the anchor points in reality that the kite of imagination is flying from, like waking up from a strange dream with a better understanding of something going on in your real life.
Damn that's a great metaphor for your point.
TV gvvfvfgv the fgf GG GGT try to get he baby Groot baggy gtgvvtt best VR gghgftt4 man to treat TT bet they
Damn autocorrect
Also having a high Inland Empire helps with the *window* white check.
Inland Empire also lets the best character in the game, Horrific Necktie, talk! It also gives you the *only* in game offensive alternative to your lost gun if you haven't found it (happened to me in my first playtrough)
The game resonated quite a bit with me, as a Brazilian I've been taught quite a bit about south American history, with all its revolutions, all its regimes and all its bloodshed. This, along with living with the older generation, my parents and extended family, who were alive during the dictatorship and reminisce about the times past, recounting things that history have taught me are heavily rose tinted down to the mishmash of seemingly art-nouveau and modern architecture, among other details, paint a surprisingly relatable picture. I guess in a way eastern Europe is not so far away after all.
It's not. There is always this fight for the ideas and systems we believe to be better and try to force them down the hierarchy once we are at the top. Never realising that by the time we reach that place we have already become corrupt, groteque versions of our ideals. Never ending cycle. There is no difference to sendero luminoso in Peru than the maoist in central China. No difference between Heaven's Gate and Ōmu Shinrikyō. Most of us are just caught in the middle of it. Disco Elysium kinda nails that.
@@Belzughast I think that's as misguided as saying there's no difference between Trump and Biden.
@@ahmedamine24 And I think that proves my point.
@@Belzughast The only good leader is the one that doesn't want the job?
@@JerryBanks572 How can someone be good at anything if he doesn't want to is beyond me. Two most important traits of good leaders for me are integrity and responsibility.
It's unbelievable that a group of Estonian artists who never made a game before just made one of the greatest games ever made on their first try. And it is that. A real work of art. I hope they get to make another game
unfortunately the latest People Make Games documentary about the mess at the heart of that group really makes it so I believe there will never be any sequels or anything else of worth made in that universe. It's kind of brilliant, though, I think the game's legendary status will only grow stronger if it remains the only one ever in that world
They made a book before they made Disco Elysium, it's written in Estonian but there are fan-translated versions out there for free. Sure, it's not another game, but it's definitely worth a read
Hey Noah, thank you again for your videos. I commented on one of them years ago about how you brought up being a pizza worker and how much that meant to me being one of those sorts of workers. I talked about how your progression made me hopeful even in my terrible, low-page job.
I finally got a better one, I can finally live on my own. I can finally have savings. I finally have vacation time. I don't expect you to respond to this one - your channel is dramatically larger now, but. Thanks again for your videos, even if this is tangential to the current video. I always see yours and go, "Someone else had to work like that too and things can get better."
Facts bruh. Felt that
Hey man, good for you. You deserve a better life. Every one deserves a better life. That's what Disko Elysium is trying to say. I'm happy for you.
@@valemortez that's a beautiful way to put it: everyone deserves a better life. Essential.
I’m happy for you. I wish you all the best
idk i think the phasmid is confirmation that pursuing dreams and ideals like communism are not necessarily doomed to fail, and that the pursuit brings about other revelations. It's one of the few hopeful spots of the game. It's not your dream, and it had deleterious effects on others, and it brings about epiphanies of an existentially terrifying nature, but it's hope nonetheless.
Well that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Communism is an idea. Capitalism is an idea. America is not a perfect capitalist state. An ideal system takes pieces from many ideologies and integrates them into their work as they fit. Capitalism is an economic model the same way communism is. They can be wielded by the authoritarian north or the libertarian south. Hope is all we have because ideology is just a theory. It’s how much and where that theory is integrated that matters. 0.00% of communism has been integrated because people see things in all-or-nothing notions. Any degree of welfare from the state spits in the face of capitalism...but we need degrees of welfare or our entire system crumbles when the inevitable losers of capitalism become homeless. No safety nets or socialist-based aid and a capitalist country suddenly has massive swaths of homeless contributing crime and poverty in a nation occupying it. In my 5+ years as a political science major and a self-identifying socialist, EVERY system needs bits and pieces of many system to succeed. It’s just how much you take from which pool that matters.
@@KaitoGillscale all politics ultimately revolves around one question: Should we give most of our power and wealth to a ruling class, or not? As long as a ruling class exists, a system cannot be accurately described as "socialist" or "communist." Mixing socialism and capitalism sounds reasonable on the surface, but doesn't really make sense when you get the the core of what those terms mean. Its also based on the false idea that socialism/communism is inherently "impractical," and must be tempered with capitalism because humans are flawed. The only situation where maintaining "elements" of capitalism is practical, is the situation Cuba and Vietnam are currently in, where the only alternative is being completely excluded from the global economy. In the long term, there is no rational reason to maintain a ruling class.
People often point to the 20th century as "proof" that there are no realistic alternatives to ruling class domination, but that ignores the larger perspective, which is that ruling class domination has consistently produced horrifying outcomes for the last 8,000 years. Capitalism (and all ruling class ideologies) is fundamentally impractical and, as evidenced by climate change, incompatible with long term human survival.
Capitalism is an incredibly inefficient and impractical system. Perhaps it would be more tolerable if it was reflective of human nature, but it isn't. Human beings are deeply social animals, and capitalism is deeply anti-social.
Communism will always fail. Find me one time it didn’t end in disaster.
@@donniedarko2815 Burkina Faso, who was assassinated by European Powers in 1987 because his social recovery and welfare was a threat to colonialist powers.
There was also Patrice Émery Lumumba, who was was instrumental in the Congo's reviatlization from a Belgian colony to their own country. Here's a document about how the CIA was instrumental in fragmenting the military and leading to the unrest that led to his execution by the military:
docs.igihe.com/IMG/pdf/robarge-frus_and_the_us_in_congo-1960-68-12sep2014-2.pdf
@@KaitoGillscale Sounds like a whole lot of failure to me. The type that dose not work and won't ever work no matter how many times you post a link to some vague communist regime doing "Good" commies truly are the ones that learn the least from history despite being prominent in academic circles. Truly, truly a shame.
"Real darkness has love for a face. The first death is in the heart."
So nice... so true.
See you tomorrow.
And it happens to young people in increasing numbers who are not yet equiped to deal with it. Hell most grown ups arent.
damn read me like a book
The reason I really enjoy the ending with the Phasmid is that by the end it really makes you feel like you finally have a grasp on the world. Skills have been leveled up, Thoughts have been thought (thunked? thoughted?) and lore has been read. And while vague ideas of the structure of this universe and the Pale it's all... out there, both geographically and in terms of being deep inside dialogue trees. Here, the town, the cop job, the failed relationship is something that for better or for worse have been to some extent resolved or at least explored.
And then - you are confronted with something entirely supernatural - and all that comfort of you thinking that you got a finger on things slips away once again because you realize there is an entire new facet to... everything. You don't get dramatic satisfaction because you don't deserve it. The assumptions you made and conclusions you were so proud of aren't so complete as you thought once again, as a reminder that they never will. You can never be sure you got it right, up until it's hindsight 20/20.
I wish the phasmid thing was less on the nose, but at the same time - fair enough.
I can totally see the point you make, and i even agree with it, my issue is that it came a bit left field for me, firstly i did not interact a lot with The Pale. secondly i did not speak to it as the actions to get there made me think it instead saw me as a threat, the journal discretion and the actions, furthermore Inland empire is not a skill i had much in. Meaning my interaction became a more "oh that side-quest charecter was right" kind of moment more than a commentary.
I really liked how the game inverted the structure of many detective stories where there are supernatural elements. The normal structure is to start with a supernatural explanation for a crime, and then show that there really is a naturalistic explanation for everything. DE kind of did the opposite.
Definitely. I think you nailed it. I like that it adds a little dash of "fuck you" mystery to the very end. ALSO it's a huge huge payoff if you got invested in and talked with the cryptozoologist and his wife, which I definitely did. When the phasmid unfolded from the reeds, I was absolutely thrilled. And I love that the game lets you remember to go tell the cryptozoologist about it.
I had my grand resolution with Big P, but failed a skill check and it vanished. Somehow, that felt more appropriate than if I'd succeeded and actually found resolution.
Good of you to get the perspective of the developers. It's a uniquely eastern european perspective and the ideals of communism and the realities of the soviet union is a rather tricky topic to navigate around these parts. I'm from the same country as the developers, only a couple of years younger than them and the way the game resonates with me is unlike anything else. The happy-go-lucky lulz Lenin que the soviet anthem attitude of western online leftists is quite often pretty jarring. I guess one of those "you don't know maaaaan, you weren't there" type of feelings. The way Disco deals with the failures of humans, the failures of ideas and the day-to-day life of people in a failed world is like a...comforting blanket of cold concrete and rust. An oxymoron for sure but such is life. Shoutout to all my fellow communists and what not from the east of the europe, we don't have a disco option but at least we have Disco Elysium. Oh, and fuck Lukashenka, fuck Orban, fuck PiS, fuck Putin and fuck all their ilk everywhere.
Imagine now being a communist again after capitalism raised your standard of living and helped Eastern Europe increase the life expectancy by 10-15 years since the fall of communism. In before “It wasn’t true communism”
@@saskiafalken6350 Ah yes classic Capitalism, with it's focus on improving the lives of ordinary working class people with programs such as free healthcare, social security, disability and other welfare programs.
Oh wait, none of those are actually part of capitalism.
It's like the entire capitalist ideology is so broken, that it has to borrow some of its most beneficial ideas from other political systems like Socialism and Communism.
Capitalism has, and always will, benefit the rich and powerful first and foremost. The working class will always be an afterthought.
@@davidjames3948 “It isn’t real capitalism” do you people even think?
Capitalism also isn’t one of the thousands of ideologies that came and went, it isn’t an ideology to begin with. What makes your ideology so special?
@@saskiafalken6350 Can you explain why you think capitalism isn't an ideology? Feudalism also wasn't an ideology that came and went, but eventually it did go. It became clear that it had downsides to it that can't be resolved within the current feudal system. Eventually capitalism will "go" as well. Socialism isn't special per se but it is different and possibly better in ways such as it focusing on workers wellbeing over profits.
Fun fact: Disco Inferno can be translated to mean ‘I learn by suffering.’ In the context of our protagonist’s journey, it feels appropriate.
Thanks for bringing that up! I kinda thought they didn't really know what to call the game and went with that sequence of dialogue in which you name a place Disco Elysium. This is MUCH cooler and very meaningful
Not just appropriate to our protagonist def appropriate to me as well.
In which language , Estonian ?
@@Sx-xy2zi Latin. Disco is 'to learn' in Latin
muricans XD
the funniest part of the copotypes was when the game asked me if I wanted to become a boring copotype and I rejected it, only for the game to point out that's exactly what a boring cop would do
My favorite in-depth game analyzer and one of the most thought evocative games I've played in recent memory?
Why yes, of course you can have my complete attention for the next 90 minutes
You mean you're only going to watch it once?
@@hayk3000 Wait, you people watch them only twice??
The meaning of the phasmid is simple - it's the complete refutation of what the Deserter stands for.
The game shows you this bitter failure of an old man, who is stuck in the past and believes the chance for a brighter future is long gone, so he can just give up and pursue his meaningless existence creeping on women.
And then minutes later the game shows you an event so improbable, the player himself would have never believed it would happen. The entire cryptozoology subplot is the absolute extreme of an irrational hope. There is no reason for this pair of old people to pursue a likely non-existant insect, the chances of them finding one are miniscule, they are basically chasing a yeti. And the player is there with them. I doubt that a single person playing the game expected to see a cryptid in the climax of the game, but it happened anyway. And an important detail here is that the Deserter literally can't see it, because of how long he'd been on that island wallowing in his misery. He can't see the good parts of life because of how stuck he is in the past.
This encounter is a microcosm of the entire game - pursuit of a better future, no matter how small the possibility of it actually transpiring, is not fruitless and irrational hope is not necessarily a bad thing. It applies both to our favorite wreck of a protagonist and the city of Revachol, along with the rest of the world of Disco Elysium.
Also, the phasmid literally melted his brain with its poison. There's probably a metaphor in there too.
I was spoiled on that part and was still in shock
that Vice article sounds weird to me, as did a polygon article calling the game ironic and nihilistic, because whilst Disco Elysium is sad and sarcastic on a constant basis, on a fundamental level it also feels devastatingly vulnerable and sincere, and above all optimistic. Harry is trapped in despair. Harry is not going to change the world. Even at his most revolutionary, Harry is fundamentally a depressed cop, and his ability to affect the world around him is limited by that. However, this is not to say that the world of Disco Elysium is similarly trapped. To me, the most hopeful and uplifting moments of the game were in interacting with the younger generation, the one that has the strongest chance of making things right. Whether it be meeting Steban the student communist and the Echo maker at the book club, and persuading them to put up flyers and reach out to others in the community, connecting with Acele in one of the best empathy checks, vibing with Noid, persuading Andre to drop the whole speed lab element and making the night club ever harder core, or most of all watching Cindy the Skull compose her true masterpiece and lighting the thing ablaze, sending a message to the moralintern aerostatics in the sky, the youth of Martinaise are growing up in a world they are told is dying, a place filled with failure and shrinking as the pale expands, and yet they not only continue, but dare to reforge old and ideas and birth new ones. It’s notable to me that nearly every youth is some sort of communist (unless you’re one of the true monsters who made egg head a moralist), or at least has some form of leftist sympathy. And not only are they actively capable of learning from the past, especially with your help, they are capable of combatting this existential despair through a new counterculture not simply angry at the way things are, but fighting for a way things could be. The fact that you can literally help some kids hold back the end of the universe with dance music says to me that Disco Elysium is far from resigning itself to the despair of disco, but is instead bold enough to hope anew even in spite of it all
Everything matters, and the game makes it a point - narratively and through the gameplay mechanics - that everything matters. If not to Harry, then to the people around him. Even the Pale death of the world is not the destined end before which all things lose their meaning; after the pale, the world again.
Even if Harry cannot change the world, he can - and has taken extreme measures to be able to - change himself. That's probably the most realistic message of the game, that this is often the only thing we can do. It may work as an allegorical narrative on history, politics and sociology. But more than that it works on a personal level. And if there's one thing I haven't drawn from the game, it's nihilistim.
very well put. this game is unrelentingly hopeful in spite of it all
Right? Getting Cuno out of Marinaise and into the junior police academy was like.. wow I just saved this kid's life. Shit was beautiful, really made the ending way better on top of Harry still being able to stay with the RCM
"Sincere" is really the best world to describe this game. The problem with many "ironic" pieces of art is that the irony becomes a way to mask the true intent of the artist. Instead of conveying the message directly, an indirect approach is used that loses some of the discussion and lessens the impact. While DE isn't a stranger to sarcasm and irony, it's also not afraid to be blunt and honest. Especially considering the ending of the game, I can't agree with calling this game "ironic".
Thats great and all but in the book: A Sacred and Terrible Air - the city of Martinaise was nuked by the Moralintern due to the rising political viewpoints of communism rising in the area.
So, once again Martinaise was stomped under the weight of collective foreign capital.
"If its not your first time spinning the tape - you know pretty well to recognize the tune"
So much of this game and this analysis hits too close to home, which made it uncomfortable at spots but also impossible to stop playing.
I did actually stop playing it, as I found the game too depressing honestly...
I'd have probably enjoyed it a lot more 5-6 years ago.
Big yup right here
I feel like there's multiple lines to experience vicarious sadness.
Some people want to experience it because they never have.
Some people want to experience it because that's where they're most comfortable.
And others like myself cannot any longer I've reached my fill, vicarious sadness spills over too easily now
One thing I thought about the game was that it was very hopeful, in a way. The game goes to great lengths to ridicule the work of the Cryptozoologists, and yet, at the end, there is the Phasmid, a beautiful, impossible creature that proves all the doubters wrong. And, more poignant: the communist mantra which Cindy the Skull writes in front of the Whirling-In-Rags: One day, I will return to your side, the hope that, despite everything, there will be a future where we win, where humanity wins. It really resonates well with the real-world history of the Soviet Union and the developers as communists living in an ex-Soviet state. They are keenly aware of the pain and horror present in that history, but they decide to keep holding onto that little star of hope.
I thought the cryptizoologitsts were endorsed by the game as a bit whimsical, but dead-serious. Except the cryptofascist, fuck that guy.
Don't forget how hopeless Kim felt when Harry suggested they go to the sea fortress just to be thorough. The whole game was about failure after failure after failure. Yet once they get on that island every mysteries unravel itself. Kim and Harry returned to the mainland with such smug that Jean couldn't say anything. To me that's the most hopeful part of it all.
So they are fully aware that communism failed horrendously yet they still think it will work. How many 10s of millions more need to die before we can agree it's not a good system to implement?
@@user-og6hl6lv7p Isn't that true of Capitalism too, though? Let's see, Irish Potato Famines, Bengal Famines, Congo Free State, Native American Genocide, 1990s Eastern European Collapse, Sierra Leone Blood Diamonds, purges under Pinochet and the Brazilian Junta... I mean, it's a long list, we could be here all day. And, of course, Global Warming is coming and we're going to see a lot of death from that as well. So, should we abandon Capitalism? But Communism killed so many people too, didn't it? So, what then?
Very few estonians believed in communism. Soviet Russia invaded Estonia and took it over by force, this doesn't somehow mean that estonians are magically communists. Why does there seem to be a common belief that ex-Soviet countries are full of people who believe in communism? It's like saying that france was full of French nazis after nazi Germany invaded them..?? Sorry, as an Estonian these comments just puzzle me. Not the first time I've seen it.. but I do agree that there is a slight tinge of nostalgia towards Soviet times, at least for older people. Maybe a shared opinion with Russians that the west is a bit too spoiled out of touch from "the real world". Nothing to do with communism tho.
The complete brilliance of this game's political message is matched by the infuriating abundance of people who do not understand it. The way you were able to articulate it's message without necessarily subscribing to its creators' perspective is a huge credit to you. I especially liked your thoughts about Kim, who both I and my friends loved immensely, for all we disagree with the larger worldview of Moralism.
i feel a warmth towards kim not quite like any other game character
moralism is kind of ass
While I technically would be a moralist due to my personal beliefs, I overall do not agree with them.
A lot of people including myself understands it, but find it incredibly boring and not something that should be part of a get away game fantasy world. I loved the game, but spare me the politics.
@@britneyfierce should a game where you are an agent of the state ignore politics?
God, the sorry cop. I have never felt so called out in my entire life. (but also when you described trying to pick lunch I felt that in my soul, so if nothing else this stranger knows just a fraction of how you feel)
Why, though? Saying you're sorry after you got drunk, trashed a room and made a waitress quit her job is probably like 50% of what the game needs to call you a "sorry cop". It's just not being a sociopath. I guess "not sociopath cop" doesn't sound as good.
@@kingkefa7130 Ok but did you keep apologizing after that? As a large number of people have said it catches them and you even have a chance to call yourself the sorry cop or ultimately reject it. Its your actions and attitude through harry that makes you the sorry cop.
@@VooshSpokesman you're right, I'm sorry.
@@kingkefa7130 bruh
This is so strange to see a "communism" being a critique for the game. Living in the post-Soviet country, communism is... it's just is. It is a part of everyday life, it's everywhere. Communist buildings, communist streets, people, who studied scientific communism for their entire lives - this is what is.
I want to have empathy towards people from the west, whose experience is coloured by living in the countries on the other side of historic conflict, but... I'm just sad that people are not willing to show empathy towards the developers of the game and millions like them who live in places like Revashole every day. Those who go into communist bunkers as part of their school trips.
I've been in Saint-Petersburg once. There is a place north from the city. I was there in april. The bay was full of reed and big ice chunks on the sand, and howling wind. And I thought - this is basically Martinaise. There is an attraction nearby - a memorial or a museum, I haven't got to see it, of a place, where Lenin hid from the Imperial goverment prior to Revolution. There is a train on the train station, standing as a memorial piece, in which allegedly Lenin fled to Finland one time, changing his clothes to mask as a coalman.
Communism was part of that place's identity. I'm pretty sure, that Tallin is just like this.
To ask to remove it from the game... I would say, that it's somewhat ignorant, certainly invalidating and pretty rude.
It's not so much taking the history away, it's just that... Estonia had it really rough under Communism. There's a reason the Estonian Parliament has so few left-wing seats currently.
@@Hypogean7Which is strange given the fact that the USSR wasn't left-leaning at all. But I guess it just speaks to how heavily it damaged the perception that when people think communism, most of them immediately picture gulags and KGB agent
@@thebookofive The USSR WAS left-leaning. Their economy was very collectivised and centralized, religion was discouraged and banned, there was no distinction between public and private law, etc.
@@Hypogean7 Marxism-Leninism as an underlying political ideology was very much not left leaning. That was one of the main reasons for the Kronstadt rebellion. Religion being discouraged or economy being centralised aren't the inherent elements of a "left-leaning politics". Imo an authoritarian-communism is an oxymoron, if you think about it.
@@thebookofive Left-leaning isn't a synonym for being anti authority, like anarchists. Social democrats are left leaning, and they don't promise abolishing all government.
You can also be anti authority while being right wing. Dunk all you want on libertarians, but libertarianism is a real ideology with writings and analysis. CallMeEzekiel had a really good video on it.
Your words at 1:01:50 really spoke to me, honestly. Never a hallmark moment of defeating the thoughts, only a “well, this is probably a bad time to do it and it would fuck up a lot of other people’s things THEY have to do, plus, things aren’t too bad, right now.” This is a phenomenal video. Subscribed and going to binge the rest of your content.
That "eject" button is just so accurate with some personal modification added. Like pilot in their airships, it is always there, and you can technically to choose to press it even if the plane is fine. It's for me just a forever lingering thought, with rarely any intention to execute it, with some exceptions during my darkest of moment. "Big red button" is such an apt description of suicide. It's somewhat a last resort, it's designed to be violently punched, sometimes breaking the thin encasement with it. It's unlike the other small, complex looking delicate buttons, dials, switches on the cockpit that require skill and knowledge to operate to navigate life safely.
Im really glad you mentioned Kitsuragi. He is probably one of the best companions i have come across during my years as a gamer. Normaly i dislike playing with tag alongs being it multiplayer or NPC:s but something about his presence along the journey just felt so vital.
the thing i like is your partner is treated as more of a typical rpg main chracter. while your the wacky side kick that needs support.
Disco Elysium or like the même says: The most advanced personality test there is.
Lè même
It
Ityyy
So I’m a communist and a liberal at the same time? Wow
It told me I’m a communist. Damn it, it caught me
25:37. God-tier writing.
You never cease to surpass my ecxpectations with the clarity with which you are able to show me what I could not see but was there all along.
“2020 has been a strange year for everyone but it’s been particularly surreal to be an American because of how completely it seems we’ve abandoned the grand pretense of what the country is supposed to be about to instead squabble over who gets to paint their face in the ashes of what we’ve let it become.”
Noah is God tier. Very few essayists on here can even hope to compare.
Absolutely on point. This is true rhetoric, elucidating truths we recognise upon hearing / reading them spelled out rather than aiming to sway its recipients to one side or the other.
@@Isewein Whoaaaa, that was really, really good too. Beautifully written!!
OK, I am wondering if would-be writers are attracted to Noah. Creative writing was my minor but I never followed it professionally. Any one else reading this fit into some sort of writing background/talent?
Noah has a natural, plain spoken style of an American mid-westerner. But he weaves complex threads with that plain speak that paint a deeply recognizably human truth. I don’t even play these games, but it’s rarely the game he is describing - it’s the human condition.
Anyway, any other writes reading this?
Kropotkin talks a bunch about how to stop corruption and rot in a revolutionary movement. There's also been like 200 years of marxist thought since marx. You don't need to expect marx to have all the answers
I always say that Disco Elysium doesn't have dialogue trees, it has a grand Dialogue Rhizome.
Not a Dialogue Tree as much as the Dialogue Yggdrasil itself.
It smells like someone has been Deloused in Guattari :3
@@mojoforthewin3069 yes, Rhizome, I was thinking about this term here!
Deleuze and Guattari approve.
Kinda sucks for replayability, slogging through all that text.
After many months of staring at Disco Elysium in my library, I have finally worked through it, feeling more profoundly affected than I have from a game in a fair while. It is both wickedly clever and deeply personal and refuses a clean, easy reading in the way it immerses you in a flawed, chaotic world. It's one of the only video game RPGs I've played that feels like it embodies the concept of "failing forward", which seems quite an apt description for the last two years. I couldn't ask for a better video as a companion for working through my own thoughts and feelings on Disco Elysium than this - one of Noah's best, I dare say.
"How many 'truths' did you have to sift through, to find one that lived up to the name?" our man out here writing incredible fourth-wave emo lyrics by pure happenstance.
I, and everyone else, knew you'd cover this game. I'm just so happy it didn't take too long for you to do it. Stay safe Noah, take care of yerself.
It's crazy how, in the end, Harry had inadvertently delayed the apocalypse and was effectively acknowledged by the cryptid as the chosen one in how dangerous he is
It is funny that you read from the Manifesto given that it's actually the least useful thing to read by Marx if you want to understand Marxism. Even the points at the end are rather useless because Marx and Engels acknowledge in an later preface that the Paris Commune made most of them moot. So yeah... saying 'what is said in the Manifesto isn't great' is not actually very useful.
It's also a mistake to say he want everything of bourgeois origin thrown out: like others after Kant, he saw his work as continuing and completing the work of Kant (a very bourgeois guy). (Not to mention, he did not want to destroy the means of production built by those before). It's less throw out the notion of freedom and more overcome and revolutionize the notion of atomistic individual freedom. Like, realizing that the freedom of one depends upon the freedom of all; that unless we're all free, our freedom isn't guaranteed. The freedom of one cannot be founded upon the bondage of another. For one, the possibility of the free to become the bound still exists in the core of such a notion of freedom. For another, such a situation is class struggle as the free struggle to keep the bound in bondage and the bound struggle against their chains. Neither is truly free as they struggle to be free, free from bondage and free founded on bondage. Either striving to be free takes bondage as its principle, thus preserving it in freedom's core. This is alienation: alienation of freedom from freedom itself, alienation of the self from society, alienation of the self from the self. The bourgeoisie, the 'free' class, and the working class, those bound to the servitude of the 'free,' both exist in a condition of alienation preventing true freedom (freedom founded upon freedom itself) from existing.
The absolute example of bourgeois freedom is the MAD world. Peace secured through pointing nukes at each other such that if they went off, there is mutually assured destruction. That's not peace. Peace cannot issue from war without preserving in its core, war itself. Thus, war continued even in the peace of MADness. To be at peace is, in a sense, to be free, free from the struggling against bondage and free from war. Freedom cannot issue from bondage without preserving bondage in itself. The freedom of America is a freedom of bondage, a freedom of slavery. It is this American freedom that Marx would wish to overcome for the sake of true freedom, freedom grounded on freedom, peace grounded on peace.
Damn, that commentary on self-harm was the realest shit. Never really defeating the thoughts of *self harm*, it's just always shaken off. Warded away by it not being convenient, and that there are things you need to do first.
Cuno's relentless cunoness is my favourite thing about this game.
Cuno doesnt fuckin care!
@@bhijdasasdjhasdbjkdasbjkfasbjk (He doesn't care)
Punching him in the face was one of my favourite moments.
My confrontation with the mercenaries didn't go very well, but I was reluctant to save scum it because it's rather long and tricky. Then I found out that Kim was alive in hospital, and I thought "OK, I can accept this." Then Cuno offered to be my new partner, and I thought "I am definitely accepting this."
@@DavidCowie2022 I got the achievement for making him a trainee detective. Was legit proud of that.
If you'd asked me a couple of months ago "What 2 games do you want to see Noah cover?" I'd have said "Who are you? Why do you care what I think?" but my answer would have been Kentucky Route Zero and Disco Elysium.
I've been watching some of your older videos lately, and it's impressive how much your narrative skills have improved. They've always been there, but over the years you've refined them and are more articulate than ever
I slowed the voiceover to 75% in order to keep up with the ideas and discovered it was like listening to a friend after a few pints. It really set the mood!
On this episode of things I wasnt expecting in 2020: noah caldwell gervais reads theory.
Followed by: actually being able to hear the credits.
He would not be able to create these essays if he weren't. Listen to any other essayist who write on games, they repeat the same stuff and can't touch the essence. Most UA-cam essayists who are not formulaic read theory.
I would very much argue that the values you site as inherent that tend towards capitalism are also learned. The issue is that we have lived so long under capitalism that these learned qualities have become to be seen as man's natural state.
Of course, how we unlearn those qualities in favor of more desirable learned qualities is in no way an easy question.
"I wish there was a Disco option." Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. That hit home hard.
I felt personally called out by the "Kingdom of Conscience" thought. It made me laugh and laugh, and then take a hard look at myself in a way that few works of literature have managed to do. I think each of the political thoughts is meant to do that, or at least seriously mock a person's noncommittal political attitudes.
The entirety of this video is magnificent, but the way you articulate your thoughts on suicide brought me to tears. The validation touched faintly by despair that comes with feeling seen by someone or a piece of media is not one I can put into words, but thank you for it all the same.
The experience of not quite valiantly defying those calls to oblivion, but postponing them for fear of inconveniencing those who love you for whatever reason is one I relate to intimately. To no small measure of self-loathing, once in awhile I find myself hoping that my loved ones would all rebuke me or perish, so that I may kill myself free of guilt.
I’m sorry for any distress reading this may of caused.
"Let me tell you about the time I got so drunk I forgot the world and had to learn it all over again".
It's december 25th and for reasons that don't matter I have spent these christmas days alone at my home. I felt the need to play Disco Elysium again, and today, when I was supposed to be having lunch with my family though I couldn't, I watched this video. It made me happy. Thank you.
I just finished my first playthrough of Disco Elysium and went heavy into everything imagination. I was essentially a more mild Wacky Wasteland, but that's also kind of how I am as a person.
Something you said that I had a different experience with was Inland Empire, it gives you lots of hints to certain events that I only realized with hindsight. I found the bullet, the key to the blue door, & the silence space, through Inland Empire. Also the finale of having a full convo with the Phasmid put a new perspective on the game for me as well. Realizing I wasn't crazy and actually, very insightful with these guttural thoughts. Starting the game blind and knowing as little as Harry, it gave me so many hunches that stuck with me throughout the game, perusing these odd thoughts actually brought me closer to the full picture.
Also, based 1 int player over here. 😎
1 int is so good. I think having minimal material understanding of the world on the first try is the best way to do it, before going for a more encyclopedic build on a second go. a sensitive, physical cop on the first run really lets you exist on vibes in a satisfying way.
One of my favorite moments in the game is when
SPOILERS
Volition finds out Klassje is bullshitting you, Kim and all your other skills when you go and question her outside her apartment.
The moment I heard about this game the first thought I had was, "I cannot wait to hear Noah's thoughts on this". The video was even better than I thought it would be. Thank you.
big fan of joyce messier clearly being a thatcher caricature
Wouldn't call her a caricature, that implies that Joyce is a parody. She is a very compelling character, and any similarities mostly end with her hair.
That’s it: I’m beating Disco Elysium this week.
It is heavily suggested you do so. Absolute blast going through and I wish for so much more story telling by the developers!
Some have said it is a Modern Classic.
@@Urheimat9 I’d have to agree with how much I’ve played it. It’s an excellent game. Just hard to finish with research needing to be done. 😅
In Disco Elysium, game beats you.
@@KHMakerD Yeah it's genius in every regard, going to replay it myself soon!
I just finished the game for the first time the other day, and I'm mulling over the idea of a replay. This is one of those games that, despite its staggering number of permutations based on a player's decisions, is impossible to experience like it's the first time after the first time. That's not necessarily to the game's detriment, I don't think, but part of what makes this game a modern classic is the paradigmatic shift it represents, and the surprise that paradigm shift creates in the player.
About an hour into my foray as the then-nameless burnout detective, I remember saying "Oh, yeah this is that NEW shit."
I'm definitely not the only person to have that revelation while playing. I went through the game fully appreciating how unprecedented this experience was, and yet even with that lofty expectation met, I lament that I will never be able to play it for the first time ever again, unless I decide to go hard on the chemicals like our boy Harry... nah, better not.
Plus I get the impression that the technical glitches will bother me more on subsequent playthroughs... All respect to ZaUm for what they did, but the fast travel system completely crapped out on me by the 4th day...
they fixed a lot of buggs by now, so maybe you should check it out again after some time leaving it to settle
Wait there was fast travel? Fuck.
@@SaberRexZealot Literally me. I just wasted an hour running halway across the map for nothing? lol
42:06 there is a Esprit-Corps check towards the end of the game which heavily implies that the RCM is planning a revolution, so I think this point is only partly valid
...Half and hour in...
Noah: This game called me a lib and I thanked it
Commenting now to help with the algorithm, I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts at the end. Thanks again Noah for all your hard work you put into all your videos, I’m sure this will be another great one
I'm replying right now because maybe that will also help with algorithm.
Go go, algorithm!
For Algorithm!
Regarding the game's treatment of Communism: It's a pretty popular sentiment in post-communist countries that 'Everything Lenin told us of communism was false, and everything he told us of capitalism, true.' I think that's where you end up if you follow the Mazovian threads, especially the Thought Cabinet.
EDIT: I wrote this midway through; now that I've finished, I just wanted to add that it was a great video and we're all richer for your thoughtful reflections on the game.
My favorite, who had to flee from Communist Romania after pissing off the dictator, once said to me that "Communism is a dream", implying untenable. So yeah, this also resonates to me.
Communists diagnosed the illness that plagues society but could not arrive at a cure. We are still suffering the downsides of Capitalism today, but no effective alternative presents itself.
@@Orhan6125 Capitalism is its own cure - it burns itself out and scorches all those it touches. The hope is that it reduces us to a pre-industrial state before we irreparably destroy the environment. It's a lofty hope, I know. But you have to dream in times such as these if you're to keep going.
@@fuzzydunlop7928 It's no coincidence that that's exactly what some thinkers propose as the solution: depopulate the cities and spread the population to the rural ways of living to stop damaging the environment. It starts by bringing the advantages of living in the city to the towns and villages (access to hospitals, education, Internet, etc).
At least that's what I learned in some course about local development and government funding.
@@Orhan6125 This reminds me of a Zizec quote that terrifies me to my core: "It's easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism." I'd argue that this idea is fundamentally ahistoric and apolitical. Effective alternatives don't present themselves, we create them. People don't all get together to decide what power structure we'd like to have. Politics is not a debate, it is a struggle to increase your material conditions. A struggle that got us the weekend, an end to child labor, etc. The thing that honestly made me a communist is direct action and seeing the good people working together can bring about. I'd highly recommend the book "Capitalist realism" by Mark Fisher, he explores this subject incredibly thouroughly.
I'm so happy I'm not the only reflexive apologist out there. I, too, get the "STOP SAYING YOU'RE SORRY!" on a monthly...or weekly...basis. I don't have much more to add, it's just nice not to feel alone.
It actually didn’t make sense in the context of this story though. I apologized as the character because he was a huge drunken alcoholic asshole to people. It’s not like we were apologizing out of habit; it was actually deserved.
@@headphonic8 There's a difference with feeling a reflexive need to apologize, and choosing it as an RP option though.
this advice may no longer be needed, but, from an ex-chronic-apologiser: try saying thank you instead. makes people feel valued, and helps you grow accustomed to gratitude and relying on others, rather than excusing your own existence
Thank you for getting to this game. It's glorious. It made me laugh, it made me have feelings. 95% of video games don't.
I've had to listen to this review with my eyes closed because I kept getting distracted by the dialogue! Just so wonderful to read through again.
I had a Dora and this helped me realize how Harrier I was with her. Its a small comfort but its something.
Fun fact - The moralist thought 'Kingdom of Conscience' refers to Orlando Bloom's quote about the Kingdom of Jerusalem being the Kingdom of Conscience.
In the movie, which is set during the crusades, Bloom's character Balian refrains from taking any stance that would alter his status quo wildly, like refusing to marry Sybilla and condemning Guy to death, refusing to abandon Jerusalem from certain defeat to fight another day.
Rather, he chooses to uphold moralist principles, defending the city, but letting the city fall and saving the people. Letting Sybilla follow through with what he knows is a doomed path because he does not want to 'interfere', and letting her hit rock bottom and then accepting her for what she is.
This game made me think about a movie I love. Damn.
Really one of the best gaming experiences I've had. I didn't think it'd get much better than Tyranny or the PoE games for modern CRPGs, but then we get hit with dynamite like Disco Elysium that reminds you that the best narratives come from someone's soul.
I see so few people talk about tyranny, but I really think it much more interesting than their other releases. They're all good, but tyranny was the only one that really gripped me
I've been waiting for this since DE"a release!
Yeah, it seems such a good fit!
Truly love your work, but the moment you brought up The Communist Manifesto as a critique of Marx I got flashed to the J Peterson and S Zizek debate on Marxism and how Peterson only read the Communist Manifesto, which is widely regarded to be the dregs and weakest thing that really has very little to do with Marx's wider body of work.
Though, bringing it up in the face of cultural understanding is brilliant. Though, personally, I'd recommend David Harvey's "Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economical Reason".
I think Noah exhibited a stronger grasp of communism in this video than Peterson ever has
@@TheJollyLlama875 Even if The Communist Manifesto is, to some, "Marxism for dummies", Noah's reading of it was sophisticated, engaged, insightful and personal. Wherein Mr. Only-Meat-Diet is a bad faith actor whose entire career is based on deliberate misreading. High-five across the web.
I cried at the sequence with the phasmid and I don't know why
Maybe it was her gentle kind voice together with the music at the scene
I really enjoyed the video and you qualities as a writer and an excellent investigator are on display. My one pet peeve as one of the hardened communist that is chinese and lives in eastern europe with a bit of pained gasped about communism is that Communist manifesto is not a good source material for interpreting Marx or Marxism generally. It is sensationalist piece that was written on the eve of a revolution in germany, in which many socialist beliefed would be the end of capitalism. It was also one of the last stages of the heavily hegelian Marx that was focused on analyzing huge historical concepts with rather abstract posibilities. I think that one of his journalistic works (Civil war in france, Eighteenth Brumaire) from his later life would be better way of easily and digestibly understanding what Marx thought and how he imagined social life functioned in capitalist societies. Capital would be optimal, but it's incredibly turgid and boring. It still is one of the greatest written books of all time, but your mind starts to mingle after a while
Also you made the greatest analogy of Marxism that I've heard. College degree in truth or what you belief to be the truth, because once you learn marxist methodology. The stain and stamp of his thinking doesn't leave you r head and makes you a think a lot like him. FOREVER.
Marx is the most monstrous human to have ever walked the earth and the legacy of suffering he inflicted upon this planet is unrivaled.
@@codyvandal2860 I agree dude. Das Capital is torture to read. In terms of utility it caused a lot of pain to depressed indebted college students.
@@soggybottomboidenis Oh yeah, definitely. And can you believe how many cigars he smoked? Fuckin' monster. That note from the prussian police about his apartment reads as though he had a little Harry Dubois in him.
@kevin willems Capital is a very fun book on your 2rd reread when you know wtf is happening. I liked 12 rules of life. I aknowledged its obvious failures in its socialogical methodology of trying to compare complexities of human existence to a lobsters life, but i thought that Peterson is a good storyteller and it engaged me enough to be fun.
@@codyvandal2860 lol wtf
As much as I love Noah’s video on RDR2, and as much as I care for all of his work, this video essay is to me personally the best he’s put out yet. The writing, the personal dimension, the intelligent observations - they all come together to form something truly insightful and inspiring. Thank you very much for this, Noah.
12:35 the one moment where I felt the inner voices did more than just be a pack of wacky background cartoon characters, was on the balcony with Klaasje, when Inland Empire hints that your other Skills have been compromised, double-checking this reveals they've been secretly seduced by Klaasje and have been giving you wrong advice... afterwards, they try to overcompensate by being extra punitive towards her...
I suppose other instances where you're personally involved with a topic would be opportunities to explore this type of thing... like perhaps you find yourself becoming more angry as a conversation continues without you knowing why, and it turns out that subconsciously there's some relation to your past... but, then again, professionalism is the ability to separate your personal world from work
Hey, just finished the game like 4 hours ago and watching this review and scrolling through the comments reminded me of a moment of triumph and optimism in the skils near the end of the game, when you meet the Phasmid. Inland Empire, Authority, and Espirit De Corps all chime in to say "DETECTIVE" "ARRIVING" "ON THE SCENE" which was so fucking awesome and brought the writing and mechanics to a whole other level of cool to me.
It also works as a truly uplifting moment for Harry. He is finally, finally, solving the case. He may be flawed. He may be terribly flawed, in so many ways. But this moment reminds you, completely unironically, that "Yes, you are a skilled detective. You have come this far. You have done well."
I often go back to listen to an essay of yours when I’m busy around the house, but I have never so quickly wanted to restart the video, sit my SO down with me, and watch it over again. Thank you so much for your work.
I'm the same, General chores and housekeeping fly by listening to Noah.
They're thought provoking and downright therapeutic.
Funnily enough, the conditions were just right for me at work today to vibe with this even more than I normally would.
Even though I know the world won't end, the election is in 3 days. I had a massive blood sugar drop yesterday toward the end of my shift to the point where I was borderline unresponsive and was walking around greeting people as usual and stocking away, 100% on autopilot and hoping to all that is good that I at least appeared normal to all the customers and coworkers around me. And then I had another day mostly to myself stocking today, and I just feel like disappearing. "Opting out." Not in a suicidal sense, mind, but just a massive longing to be away from the maddness of it all. Of all the slings and arrows of life for a time. My body and mind ache from the strain of my life. I have to wear a goddamn mask and I have what I believe feels like a sinus infection so I can't breath for shit. I get home and sleep all day just to get up in time for doing it all over again.
I understand a lot of the feelings brought forth here. Having high hopes and values/ideals, but too knowledgeable of how people are to know that what I think of it all doesn't matter in the slightest. So every day for the last several years I just keep putting one foot in front of the other and I figure I'll make it... somewhere eventually. I don't even know why I do it. I don't wanna be a hindrance, for certain, but I sometimes wonder if that's the only way to think. I'm only 26, but like the protagonist of the game here, I feel much older cause I allow myself to think out the paths that thoughts should take and what they mean. Frequently. It makes you more wise, but it leaves you with barely the energy to face the day, and things that used to make me happy don't even provide that anymore. I'll probably just delete this comment here. It sounds like grade school drama... but that really isn't different to adult life, is it? Maybe I'll keep the comment. Yeah.
Tangential thinking is what keeps me going and its nice to know I don't seem to be the only one.
Well said. Please don't delete.
nah mate, dont delete it
it doesnt sound like high school drama, it actually sounds like depression, honestly i have no way nor energy to help you in one youtube comment, except to say that you should never give up, because like some very intelligent dwarf once said "death is so terribly final, while life so full of possibilities"
things in life always turn around, and maybe not always for the better, but to live means to change, that might as well lead us to even greater suffering, but it staves off the ultimate suffering, that which is known as "boredom"
I find it fascinating how your experience with Inland Empire was very similar to my experience with a different Skill. Shivers. Shivers is such an interesting skill, its dialogue contributions feel like your character is listening not to his imagination, not to the people around him, but to the city of Revachol itself. And everytime Revachol wants to speak to me I find myself completely enthralled by it's perspective and thoughts.
Literally my favorite UA-camr. The effort, the passion, the writing, the language used, in depth analysis, the intellect. NOAH!!!!!!
Don't forget those hi-tech video intros
i like the whole thing of harry is never gonna let go of his wife. seems more realistic he can't let that torment leave him so he keeps losing his memory and then making a new personality to cope.
and the end implies this is gonna keep happening even after the events of the game.
He can have good days, but he'll always still have the horribly bad ones. He has no grand fate or destiny to look forward to. He is just one man, trying to make it work and screwing up horribly along the way. That's precisely why he's so relatable. :D
@@richardbarnes4196 yeah. if anything harry may be even more tragic then tno. atlest tno felt healed by the end of his adventure. harry is the gonna stay the same broken man for the rest of his life.
At the most he might have Kim backing him now, with perhaps Jean Vicquemare and the rest of Precinct 41 letting him back into their lives emotionally, but it's still up to him whether or not he throws it all away. His trauma didn't vanish when the game ended and neither have his self destructive tendencies. I honestly love that. :D
In fact, you can get a scene in which he reads about his old cases. And this isn't his first time going through the hopelessly drunken cop routine.
I know how he feels.
One thing I think to note about Kim's Moralism is that, hes gay. In fact every true blue Moralist in the game is gay, which doesn't make a lot of sense, gay is change, the homo-sexual underground. But it makes much *more* sense when you look at the other ideologies. The Fascist are homophobic, the Communists although mercifully less racist as almost as homophobic. In a world without a third option, only the center, unchanging, closeted and don't say gay as it is, only the center is safe, cause at least its not going to make anything worse.
Hey man I really respect how you share your own experience about shit that you’ve been through and how those experiences change how you interact with and view games.
Unrelated to that I also like how you record the audio without using a lot of cuts to remove spaces where you’re not speaking, it makes it easier to understand and take in what you’re saying when I hear it in your more normal speaking voice vs an abbreviated edited voice.
I took the Phasmid to be more akin to commentary on the structural failure of communism. The Deserter and Phasmid are almost a refutation of Communism's ideal human, the basis of the ideology. The Deserter is a man who exists in two parts: one devoted fanatically to the revolution, and the other to his base animal instinct of lust. He represents the state of nature communism promises: taking only what he needs from the refuse people are willing to give, but subject to his animal impulses. But instead of his impulses being compassionate and noble, they're shockingly base. Restraint and nobility are learned behaviors. The Phasmid is there to highlight that fundamental contradiction that deep in our brains we are simian animals with animal needs. No matter how close you get to the harmonic state of nature, without accounting for the base flaws in our DNA it is doomed to be corrupted. The Phasmid literally spells out how chaotic and selfish our DNA is. It represents the purity of that ideal communist world where people understand their role in the their ecosystem without uncertainty (the Shivers skill emphasizes this). But the Deserter, who sits nearest to it for so long, is driven mad by it because it runs counter to our nature. It warps his thoughts and degrades him into becoming a parody of the man he thinks he is. The phasmid exists as a plea for realism, not to refute communism but to show that for communism to ever truly uproot the destructive systems that bind us and reach harmony, it has to be done with a clear acknowledgement and acceptance of what we are. The deserter is the ghost of the old revolution that hangs over the city, and the phasmid is the echo of the dreams it promised. It can be glimpsed and captured only when face to face with human identity and ideology together, unifying the two themes of the game with purpose.
Fantastic video, really hope youll do one on the Outer Wilds, its a game with themes and creativity that is right up your alley!
>for communism to ever truly uproot the destructive systems that bind us and reach the harmony it strives for, it has to be done with a clear acknowledgement and acceptance of what we are.
isn't it more that the state of harmony is an illusory ideal? The phasmid exists as a creature of pure present, a single eternal moment, no past, no future. There is no room for contradictions in that state of consciousness because there is no room for reflection.
To quote one of my favourite books:
"A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires ... his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old, but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him."
We are always losing our balance and re-centering ourselves, individually and collectively just one 'blink' away from catastrophe. If man is that kind of creature, there can be no eternal harmony for him.
Is the inverse also doomed? Will righteous selfishness always be corrupted by egalitarian, altruist force? By great memetic parasites.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the deserter’s and phasmid’s themes utilize the exact same motifs, basically being reflections of one another.
@@Personell101 They do?! That's awesome :o
communism actual communism is completely utopic. It relies on human being who aren't greedy selfish cruel and willing to give others equal oppurtunity. But it doesn't mean we can't put some of these ideals to certain extent to use. I like the hopefullness the plasmid gave us at the end.
I'm an anarcho-syndicalist, so personally pretty far from a strict Marxist, I just wanted to point out that I don't know any self-described Marxists that take The Communist Manifesto very seriously beyond its call for the workers of the world to unite and other such slogans. It was very much an of-its-time pamphlet, written to spur on the working class in that time. Marx's real value is in his critique, Das Kapital. Which I've also never read completely, because I have a life and a job and who has that kind of time, Marx?! Anyway, great video otherwise! I just wanted to point out that small frustration. Carry on, feel free to ignore. Not a big deal.
While the Manifesto is quite spicy and, very plainly, a propaganda leaflet, it's very much *not* antiquated. The political landscape it illustrates and absolutely trashes can be one-to-one located within today's politics. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
@@CDexie Yep, I think I probably worded that poorly. I think I wanted to sort of counter the common misconception that the "The Communist Manifesto" is really all you need to understand communists™.
I’m a shameless “Read Theory” guy and this is correct. The Manifesto was made to be a propaganda pamphlet you pass around the factory to get your co workers pissed at the boss and very much not a “Communism 101” thing. Kapital is incredibly thorough and prescriptive in its critique of capitalism but as you alluded to, its extremely long and boring and while i think there is value in knowing *exactly why* capitalism is bad and having the language to express that, you kind of get it instinctively if you’re poor or working class and i don’t expect people to actually read it unless they’re trying to pass themselves off as an authority on the subject.
Im kind of rambling but i guess my point is that Marxism is a science, and that science is constantly evolving. Trying to limit the scope of the work done to advancing and understanding communism simply to Marx or the manifesto does a massive disservice to the people who still study and advocate for it, and to yourself if you’re taking your own study seriously.
Of course i dont mean to bash Noah for being a little reductive here, its a game review, not a polisci thesis.
100% agree
Thank you very much for this analysis Noah, I already loved the game but your critique on it not only showed me a lot that I had missed between the lines but also led me to deeper thought about my own life, especially the discussion regarding depression and suicidal tendencies. Keep up the wonderful work.
58:12 - The conversation about depression and suicidal ideation hits so close to home, I replayed it several times, and I've come back to it semi frequently. Depression, especially when tied to the things I've actively done to destroy my life, spin that mixtape in my head as well. And just like you said, it isn't that I feel like I deserve to live, it's just that it would pile up a ton of shit and bad vibes on the ones I'd leave behind. So I don't just walk into the water, or off the bridge, or whatever.
What you said resonated. Thank you for saying it.
Philosophy tube did a really good video called "mental illness and su*c*de" that I think you might also find moving and inspiring. My spouse and I cried when we watched it, and it helped us be a little more supportive of each other.
So happy to see a review from you on this. Disco Elysium is one of my favorite games and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it.
"What kind of idiot gets their politics from a game?" Why we all do. From the music, the tv, the editorial newspaper, theatre and everything that constitute the culture of our own world. Never stop being political, Noah, wether I agree or not with them, I'll keep sending that patreon money. Because nothing exists in a void, and everything is politicized. No matter how hard it tries not to be. "The Medium is the message" and all that.
That's depressing
Hey I know that line. The medium is the message. I had to read that essay for school.
@@DustyLamp that's inspiring!
This is very true. I remember when I played Tetris Attack as a child and the politically charged experience caused me to become an anarchist. The next day I played Tetris (sans attack) and turned into a pacifist instead. I have since pinballed between every single possible position because I am a little ant with no free will and I am powerless but to be influenced by anything I see or hear.
I hope someday someone makes a game that isn't political so I can play it without having to change my voter's registration. Everyone at my local DMV is really mean.
some may even say it's the trickling down of ruling class ideas through the superstructure of society
Just finished the game and came here first thing to contrast our thoughts. Just great to hear a lot of what was going on in my head reflected in this review along with some cool perspectives of planetscape. I wish Noah touched on the crazy hole we find in the church that ends up being proto-pale, and some of the crazier things like being taken away by one of the aeroships in one crazy “ending”, but the themes and mood were articulated perfectly and it was a treat to hear your take on it. Thanks again Noah!
For me the segment with the Phasmid was the highlight of the entire game. One of my favorite thoughts was Col Do Ma Ma Daqua, and what it had to say about the beauty of hope and dreaming for new experiences. I thought that tied in perfectly with the Phasmid. By all measures of logic and rationality the Phasmid should not exist, and yet it does, and to be able to see it such a great privilege. The central pillar of the game is daring to dream, whether that is for a new society, new experiences, or new discoveries, and for me the Phasmid captured that into one beautiful moment
Its thanks to Disco Elysium that I was able to combat my depression. I am so glad with how well you discussed the less comical elements of the game that so many people seem to miss.
The game is often obsured, but it honestly hit me so powerfully and this is the first review that I think somewhat encapsulates how I felt.
(Sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes, on my phone atm).
Thought unlocked: Sorry Cop
This game will always have a special place in my heart. As someone who suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts this game helped me out. The opening was so powerful i had to take a break. It felt like it spoke to me specifically. Its silly i know but its truly impressive.
Noah, for the love of all that is good and kind in the world, SWITCH ON THE AUTO-SUBTITLES!! They are what allows deaf/hard of hearing people like me to understand video essayists like you!
It helps me too as a non-native user of the language. Sometimes I don't get some words even when I replay them.
I mean, you could always rely on the kindness of transcribers and translators that submit their work...
oh wait.
Didn't youtube disable those?
@@justinhanna9152 no
It says they are on. Because I'm not partnered with adense, I'm not entitled to speak to a service representative from youtube about it. I can't do anything about this.
Really enjoyed this critique. While Marx was (understandably) dickish with many fellow communist theorists in his day, I'd just say that the bit quoted at 32:23 isn't directed at you, Noah, but at members of the bourgeois ruling class. You're a subject of this ruling class who, yes, has internalized the ideas it has created for its own benefit and self-preservation just as we all have, but this passage would only be calling you out if you happen to own a factory, a mine, or a plot of capital-producing land that we don't know about. Are you a secret bourgeois, Noah??? Inquiring minds want to know!
I felt the EXACT same way about being called Sorry-Cop. Like this game just directly mocked me on a truth about my personality that I am actually pretty insecure about. Like a quirk I try to hide, but it's so apparent that even a video game can pick up on it.
If it wasn’t for Noah, I’d never have experienced this modern masterpiece. Thank you!
I cheered when I saw the notification and scared the person next to me.
Really loved this essay
Disco Elysium is the game I'd use as an example of Games as Art. It transcends its medium, but is also facilitated by the medium. It wouldn't work as anything other than an interactive experience. It shows that games can have the same impact as any other artistic medium. Mind you, I don't think all games are art, but then again, neither are all films, books, etc.
This is my first time watching one of your videos, and you have a very straightforward and matter of fact voice that works really well for analysis videos like this.
But surprisingly there is a lot of earnestness and love in your voice that i did not expect from a video focused on facts and analysis.
I'm glad you got a lot out of this game. I think people like yourself are the exact type of audience the game designers would have wanted.
I felt similarly impacted by its critiques of moralism and the sorry cop which has fundamentally changed my internal voice in a way that i did not expect. Im glad you explored each of these elements in depth in this video voicing the exact thoughts i had myself on the topic.
You did a phenomenal job with this video, truly taking the game for what it is while reflecting and critiquing in much the way only someone who loves a piece of art truly can.
The one minute or so passage at around 1:01:27 hit me like a knife to the gut. I have never had someone describe how depression feels in a way that hits so keenly, painfully close to home. On the one hand, being able to relate so closely to the description of not-actually-really-coping hurts deeply, but on the other hand it also brings some degree of comfort to know that one's feelings are shared by others.
Man, just within the first fifteen minutes you've given such an empathetic and wonderfully written reflection on drugs and alcohol.
Im willing to say noah is my favourite internet essayist, his videos feel so creative and personal
This is probably the third of fourth video analysis if Disco Elysium that I watch and it speaks volumes about the game's depth that each and every one had a completly different angle on it.
Also really happy to see my favorite channel go over it. You do amazing work man.
This writing is too good to be free on youtube, I thank you every day for releasing your videos on this platform and your writing stuns me every time I think you can't outdo yoursel. I feel you in my core. I watch hour long videos where someone manages to say nothing, but you pack your videos so tight that I feel like an hour and a half of dissection is you holding back. If you 'trim down the fat' for these videos, I want to see what the hell the 'fat' was that you trimmed.