Disco Elysium is a detective RPG where the central mystery — who killed this man? — is not nearly as interesting as the dilemma the game presents every player: what have you done?
As an alcoholic cop awakening from a substance-induced blackout so powerful it abra kadabra’d all of his memories away, you get to choose who you become. It is an excellent roleplaying game, after all, and your detective’s politics, personality, interests and approach to police work is up to you. But, you have no say in who you were before the game begins: a disaster of a human being running from personal pain and any semblance of responsibility.
In my review of the game, I wrote about how this background affects the tone of the roleplaying decisions you make as you move forward. You can decide to get your shit together, but you’ll never be a hero. You will always be living in the wreckage of the damage you wrought before you lost your memory.
This isn’t a new conceit, but it is a more interesting take on the bog-standard amnesiac protagonist.2018’s Unavowed — an excellent point-and-click adventure from Wadjet Eye Games — similarly begins in medias res. Your character is locked in combat with a pair of magic cops, Eli and Mandana, on a stormy New York City rooftop. This is your introduction to the game, but it’s also your character’s introduction to any of this. You soon find out that your character doesn’t remember anything about the past year of their life.
From there, Eli and Mandana take you downstairs, to a room filled with bloody, dismembered bodies. You killed them all and stuck them there. For a year, your body was under the control of a powerful demon and there’s no telling how much carnage it (you) left in its (your!) wake. Throughout the game (which you really should play at your earliest opportunity), you will uncover the facts of that lost year.
Disco Elysium broadens that sense of failure. Your detective is living in the wake of his mistakes, yes. But, he has also awakened to a city that can only vaguely recall the deep and lasting failure that shaped it. Revachol has never fully recovered from the failed communist revolution of 50 years prior; an act of political upheaval that left many people dead and left the living without confidence that they could affect change; that radical politics could work. The district of Martinaise is in decline; it and its people have stagnated for a long, long time. As you uncover the truth about your own mistakes, they are cast against the backdrop of a regional sense of failure that has impacted more than just your disastrous detective.
If horror is most powerful when it is revealing something to us about ourselves, Disco Elysium and Unavowed are tapping into something potent. The promise of a mystery being resolved is an enticing carrot, but there’s a sickly fear mingled with it. Who hasn’t woken up — hungover or otherwise — with the sinking feeling that you said or did something bad the night before? These games tap into that dread, and the act of playing them feels like the process of reaching back into the inky blackness of your subconscious, groping for half-remembered mistakes.