[SPOILERS] Assorted list of things I liked about Disco Elysium

[solovei]

I have to get these down somewhere, and I don't have it in me to do a proper sort of "review", so this will just be point-form stuff.

• The ending!!! It felt kind of anticlimactic BUT I think it was intended to be? Like, the fact that you can do all this work and investigate all these leads but in the end it turns out to be just some person that you never knew existed before, just a creepy old man with issues.
• Regarding the investigation itself, the whole "she-said-he-said" with Klaasje and Titus was handled really well I think - this game deals a lot in grey areas, where it's really hard to conclusively mark anyone as any one thing. It doesn't downplay the seriousness of sexual assault, but it reminds us that there are nuances and that people we might assume are victims have their own agency as well
• I think they did a really clever thing by using their fictional world to talk about IRL racism -- like, by pairing made-up places (Seol, Semenine) with ethnic and racial characteristics that the players are familiar with.
• The Tribunal!!! I think I may have gotten one of the bad outcomes during my first playthrough, but it was FASCINATING that it's basically presented as The Final Boss - Kim keeps telling you there's no coming back, do all your sidequests if you can, and you go into it assuming that okay, this is where you're going to finally present your arguments and Solve The Case and Win By Logic... Except it doesn't matter what argument you give, they're all wrong (without you knowing it), and in the end people are going to be people and logic doesn't win over emotions and trauma and habit. This sort of ties into my first point too because like, finding the real killer didn't... bring back anyone that died. Arguably, it didn't actually solve or improve anything.
• I love that this universe still has video rentals.
• The entire premise of The Pale and the fact that the planet you're on might not even be a real planet but a bunch of fragmented landmasses barely holding together was terrifying, and even more so the fact that you're supposed to just... carry on in spite of it???
• Relatedly, all of the stuff in the church, including Soona's whole thing with the "2mm hole in the world", really gave me chills -- in large part due to the excellent track that plays in that area. (The whole soundtrack is very good, I would recommend it)
• Kim Kitsuragi, Tumblr's Favorite Cop, is such a delight. (Exhibit 1: "bwee") My first playthrough was marked less by trying to have any kind of political view and more by "living in fear of disappointing Kim".
• This very astute observation regarding the "addiction mechanic