2019’s “Disco Elysium: The Final Cut” is a role-playing video game unlike any other, as it is defined by a unique focus on the ideological.
Created by Estonian writer Robert Kurvitz, a self-described Marxist-Leninist, the fictional world of Disco Elysium takes unique inspiration from the situation many post-socialist countries found themselves in following their overthrow in the 1990s.
Homelessness, drug addiction, crime, and poverty flourished in many of them after the rapid privatization of publicly-owned state assets and the evaporation of the social safety net. Another inspiration is the 1871 failed revolution of the Paris Commune, in which the working class briefly took power for the first time in history.
Bois and Kim Kitsuragi. | ZA/UM Studio
Disco Elysium is set in the fictional working-class neighborhood of Martinaise, in the city of Revachol, on the island of Le Cailou. Revachol is occupied by the Coalition of Nations, an alliance of neoliberal states modeled on NATO, which had previously suppressed a Communist-led revolution in Revachol 50 years prior to the game’s events. The Coalition responded to the uprising with a violent invasion, bombarding the people with airships that still occupy Revachol’s skies.
Under this occupation government, many of the people of Revachol, especially the working class, are forced to endure harsh austerity that leads to extreme poverty.
You play as Harrier “Harry” Du Bois, an officer in the Revachol Citizens’ Militia, a self-organized police force. Harry starts off the game in a hotel, Whirl In Rags, with all his memories as well as his police car, badge, and firearm missing after an alcoholic bender the previous night.
Harry quickly discovers that he has been sent to Martinaise to solve the murder of a mercenary hired by the Wild Pines corporation as a strikebreaker during a local dockworkers strike. The mercenary was found hanging from a tree behind the hotel.
Another officer with the Citizens’ Militia soon shows up, Kim Kitsuragi, who has been sent to assist Harry with his investigation. Kim will be your partner for most of the game and serves as the more rational, stable voice to Harry’s chaotic antics. Kim is of Seol descent, a fictional country based on Korea and Japan, and often faces discrimination throughout the game.
Unlike other RPGs, Disco Elysium is not action-oriented, with most of the gameplay consisting of you using skills that you unlock through more and more exploration and interactions with the world. Along with these skills, you also unlock thoughts that allow Harry to interact with other characters and the world in hilarious and unique ways, such as having Harry embrace the “Cop of the Apocalypse Thought.”
This prompts Harry to go on long, bizarre, apocalyptic rants in interactions. Unlocking thoughts helps Harry discover who he is as a person, and as the story progresses, it reveals more and more about his background.
Harry’s health bar is divided into two categories: physical and moral health. If you take certain actions Harry is unprepared for, or you’re not attentive to the mental health of your character, you could risk damaging those health bars and ending the game.
Amongst these “thoughts” are several ideologies you can embrace—Communism, Moralism, Ultra-Liberalism, and Fascism. Moralism is based on “centrist” neoliberalism, while Ultra-Liberalism is based on right-wing libertarianism.
In the game universe, scientific socialism was developed as an ideology by Kraz Mazov, a figure based on Karl Marx but also having parallels to Lenin, as well as Salvador Allende. Choosing to embrace Fascism actually damages your morale health bar each time you say something bigoted or racist.
The character that most exemplifies the nonsense and hypocrisy of fascist ideology is Measurehead, who acts as muscle for the local dock strike and categorizes the different fictional races of the game in a nonsensical pseudoscientific hierarchy.
Throughout the game, as you work to solve the murder, you encounter many unique and colorful characters, such as union leader Evrart Claire, cryptozoologists Lena and Morell, street children Cuno and Cunoesse, graffiti artist Cindy the Skull, fugitive industrial spy Klaasje Amandou, tragic drug trafficker Ruby, and the Hardie Boys, a workers’ militia led by Titus Hardie.
The area of Martinaise is a working-class port area characterized by extreme poverty, hopelessness, and widespread crime and drug addiction. You will encounter many characters who’ve been abandoned by Revacholian society throughout the game, much like our own capitalist society in real life.
In a particularly heart-wrenching moment, Harry has to recover his police gun from an elderly, mentally ill homeless woman who thinks she’s a police officer after all her family has abandoned her.
In another, we learn the tragic backstory of Cuno, a child character who had previously been shown as abrasive and aggressive, as the abused son of his violent, drug-addicted father, who is dying due to his addiction. Cuno fears that he will end up just like him, often abusing drugs stolen from his dad to deal with the pain of poverty.
The game’s bleak, yet humorous world is scored perfectly through the British indie rock group Sea Power’s melancholic soundtrack, which captures the port town of Martinaise’s general poverty and its many rustic industrial sceneries perfectly.
Disco Elysium plays out in a bleak world, where a promising socialist revolution has failed. However, it is not a world devoid of hope. The struggle against capital continues in Revachol, led by workers resisting unjust working conditions, just like in our real world, where struggle did not stop being a fundamental reality even after the fall of many socialist states.
The past cannot blind us to this ever-present reality, especially as capital continues to have crisis after crisis, and Disco Elysium explores exactly this phenomenon.
At the 2019 Game Awards in Los Angeles, Disco Elysium won four awards, one of the highest totals for any game. Writer Helen Hindpere, in her acceptance speech, thanked Marx and Engels for providing the political education behind the game.
Unfortunately, ZA/UM, the studio formed to be a socialist collective of videogame creatives, was taken over by their shareholders, and the writers of Disco Elysium, including creator Kurvitz and Hindpere, were fired. The rights to the game were stolen from them, resulting in years of high-profile legal battles over IP. However, Disco Elysium still remains a unique, highly fascinating political RPG.
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