Disco Elysium - This is the greatest and kindest arrangement the atoms had in them

Geckonator said:
Well, I think, getting back to the game's plot, that my impression of The Return is that it's change and most sensibly by inference some kind of uprising against the Moralintern, but it's not going to necessarily be a New Commune in specific ideology. Keep in mind the two budding factions in Revachol West ready to pop: the Union which by the end of the game has always seemingly won its strike seizing the harbor with Joyce slinking off to tell Wild Pines to regroup, and the RCM where as long as you don't really fuck up and get fired Captain Pryce knows Harry will "side with Revachol."
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The Deserter tells you a communist revolution is impossible, but he's also very obviously wrong? His whole purpose in the narrative is as a critique of a certain type of communist who cannot see that there is hope in the present. As for the RCM, we are actually told that they're a direct descendant of the ICM, the communist army. They are very much not civic nationalists, lol

Edit: I also think we can take "Someday I shall return to your side" as a communist slogan, just becausethe person who uses it is one of the few explicit communists.
 
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spiritualatheist said:
The Deserter tells you a communist revolution is impossible, but he's also very obviously wrong? His whole purpose in the narrative is as a critique of a certain type of communist who cannot see that there is hope in the present. As for the RCM, we are actually told that they're a direct descendant of the ICM, the communist army. They are very much not civic nationalists, lol

Edit: I also think we can take "Someday I shall return to your side" as a communist slogan, just becausethe person who uses is is one of the few explicit communists.
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Does anything we have ever heard about the RCM indicate they have any left lean? Even Precinct 41, which is one of the better ones. Harry's colleagues find communism about as baffling as any other ideological stance he takes

It's made abundantly clear that people tend to take up the job for complicated reasons ramging from a desire to abuse it for petty corruption at the worst to genuine desire to be a part of Revachol's one avenue of genuine public service, and it follows from that that there are plenty of ugly things on their records like any real police force. "It's almost as if people don't believe a cop could be a communist revolutionary" is one of the most memorable lines in the communist options for a reason.

So, I think it can pretty clearly be read that whatever Pryce and his cabal are planning, they are not leaning on some secret communist agenda almost everyone, including a Harry who might have distilled into a turbo-racist through the events of the game and dialog implies was never very politically consistent before, harbors. They are most likely planning to rally people to the cause they specifically list, and more people genuinely believe in, which is Revachol. What kind of Revachol is vague and I like to imagine a big part of the Never to Be Disco Elysium Sequel would be about interrogating the cop revolt part of the Return and all the different motivations and characters that go along with it, but I can guarantee you that most of the people wouldn't imagine it as a Second Commune.
 
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Geckonator said:
Does anything we have ever heard about the RCM indicate they have any left lean?
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Uh, yes?

They are literally the remnants of a communist army.

Now of course that was some time ago and many of the old tryhards have been replaced with new people with new motives, but that doesn't mean there aren't any left.

That's the whole point of making a secret list of reliable people.
 
I always assumed that while the RCM is mostly made up of communists, it also includes elements of every other ideology. So it would have communists, fascist-nationalist, ultraliberals, and moralists who are dissatisfied with the Moralintern. This seems to be supported by Pryce always saying that Harry will support the Revolution, regardless of ideology. Depending in ideology, he says Harry will side with either the people, Revachol, or the RCM.
 
I haven't watch the video yet, but for what the Pale IS in a more material sense it reminds me of two different deep time doomsday scenarios.

One is the big rip where the degree of accelerating expansion of the universe is such that eventually the scale of it will go from the distances between galaxy clusters expanding, to galaxies themselves, to individual stars, and eventually planets, until the distance between atoms starts expanding.

The other is runaway vacuum decay, which posits that the universe is sitting in a low energy state, but not THE lowest (this is quantum bullshit, so whatever human-intuitive ideas you have about what energy means, get rid of them), and if it slipped down into the lowest energy state that would basically just delete the laws of physics as we know them in an expanding cascade of vacuum decay.

Both of these kinda look like something that could create the pale. Just way more fantastical than how it would actually go down, if it happened at the human scale we'd probably be insta-dead. Thematically speaking it's more about this kind of fundamental apocalypse happening to the human condition instead of the universe. But I just think the parallels are neat.
 
Back when I played the original Disco Elysium, I wondered what sort of skillset would fit a monarch in a fantasy setting. I'm happy to say that this idea of mine has become a reality, in the following quest. Can't promise writing on the level of its inspiration, but we've reached the 100th threadmark and I'm super excited to keep writing it.

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Return of the Puppeteer Princess [Original/Disco Elysium-esque]

(Formerly Return of the Steampunk Princess) Disco Elysium meets time travel Victorian-style fantasy. Can you, the honorable and beautiful Princess Gloria, save your kingdom of Irluvia from its future destruction alongside the hive of voices inside your head? No knowledge of Disco Elysium is...
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It's Disco Elysium, but as a Peggy Sue princess who wants to save her kingdom through the power of SCIENCE and MAGIC. Remember to listen to the voices in your head!
 
So, uh, on the topic of the police being leftist or not. No matter what ideology Harry adopts, the conspirators insist he'll support them. But how they justify it changes. Which I think helps lean into the idea it might be a big tent thing. A united front that will likely turn on itself if they successfully liberate the nation.

If you're a communist, Pryce says Harry will support them because he'll side with the people. If you're a fascist, it's because Harry is a man of Revachol. One of the other ones just has him insist Harry will always side with the RCM. But I forgot/couldn't find the other versions of those lines.
 
ForeverShogo said:
So, uh, on the topic of the police being leftist or not. No matter what ideology Harry adopts, the conspirators insist he'll support them. But how they justify it changes. Which I think helps lean into the idea it might be a big tent thing. A united front that will likely turn on itself if they successfully liberate the nation.

If you're a communist, Pryce says Harry will support them because he'll side with the people. If you're a fascist, it's because Harry is a man of Revachol. One of the other ones just has him insist Harry will always side with the RCM. But I forgot/couldn't find the other versions of those lines.
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Moralist gives you "Harry will side with the RCM."

Ultraliberal is the weirdest one. Pryce says "Harry's our man, he'll pull through. He's always been... money over bitches." Which is such a weird way of phrasing it. I guess focusing on how an appropriately hustlegrinder mindset will get over his emotional wreckage and side with the job that pays him.
 
On the topic of the game's politics... Having finally played through it I don't think I would've gotten (some of) the Devs being communists from what's in the game. Sure, they seem to be harsher on fascism than the other options which... Yeah, fair... But other than that the whole game just has this very cynical nihilist feel. Everything is breaking down and anyone proposing solutions seems to be either in it for themselves, ineffectual, or In some cases likely to make things even worse.

If I'd had to guess the devs' stance on communism purely from my own playthrough I'd have said they admire it, admire the ideals behind it, but ultimately don't believe there are any solutions to be found with communists. If they meant to endorse communism then, it seems to me, they might have taken the self deprecation too far to get that message across.

Then again, maybe it's just down to my choices in my playthrough?
 
They're all critiqued, but the tone and style of that critique differs.
Communist Thought Conclusion;
0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself *sad*. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov *fucked him over* personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.
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Ultra-liberal Thought Conclusion;
Turns out those Financial Oversight Committee gangsters stuffed millions of hard-earned dividends away in the last place anyone thought to look: the hearts and minds of everyday Revacholians! You need to spread that deregulation gospel to the *people*. Tell them about that foreign fare tax. Preach that 98% gross burden. Preach it, preacher man! Set the brothas free. Taxes are racist.
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Fascist Thought Conclusion;
The Revacholian State will be a serene place. (You should get a drink.) A beautiful, serene place of mystery and peace. It will not be a place for women to infect with their frailty and hysterics. Or where the Semenese will be allowed to wear their pants around their ankles. All of that will go. (Once you get a drink.) The socialist professors at the École Supérieure will be fired, the editors of Trompe le Monde will have to beg in the streets. You'll pour your beer into their begging hats and laugh. (You should get a beer.)
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Centrist Thought Conclusion;
The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is *control*. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
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The Communism one is noticeably less critical of the…foundations? Like, it talks about how communism has never been built or succeeded and how even supposed communists don't build towards communism, but it doesn't present communism itself as inherently wrong and deserving of mockery. All the others are portrayed as evil or disgusting or pathetic or delusional from start to end, but communism is a philosophy that might be good but hasn't and possibly can't be achieved, but then goes on to say that just because it can't be built doesn't mean people should stop trying to build it.

The Communist quest lays it out in a fairly heartfelt manner
Rhetoric: The question you mean to ask is both very complicated and incredibly simple...
Endurance: Take a deep breath. Best to go one piece at a time.
You: If communism keeps failing every time we try it...
Steban: (he waits patiently for you to finish)
You: ...And the rest of the world keep killing us for our beliefs...
Steban: Yes?
Volition: Say it.
You: ...What's the point?
Steban: (he considers your words for a minute)
Composure: You're witnessing his ironic armour melt before you. This is his true self you're seeing now.
Empathy: He's thinking about someone...
You: Wait, who is he thinking about?
Empathy: Hard to say. Someone dear to him.
Visual Calculus: Track his gaze. He's looking out past the broken wall, toward the opposite side of the Bay...
You: Toward the skyscrapers of La Delta.
Visual Calculus: They rise like electric obelisks in the night.
Steban: The theorists Puncher and Wattmann — not infra-materialists, but theorists nonetheless — say that communism is a secular version of Perikarnassian theology, that it replaces faith in the divine with faith in humanity's future... I have to say, I've never entirely understood what they mean, but I think maybe the answer is in there, somewhere.
You: Wait, you're saying communism is some kind of religion?
Steban: Only in this very specific sense. Communism doesn't dangle any promises of eternal bliss or reward. The only promise it offers is that the future can be better than the past, if we're willing to work and fight and die for it.
You: But what if humanity keeps letting us down?
Steban: Nobody said fulfilling the proletariat's historic role would be easy. (he smiles a tight smile) It demands great faith with no promise of tangible reward. But that doesn't mean we can simply give up.
You: Even when they ignore us?
Steban: Even then.
Ulixes: Mazov says it's the arrogance of capital that will be its ultimate undoing. It does not believe it can fail, which is why it must fail.
Volition: So young. So unbearably young...
Half Light: Why do you see the two of them with their backs against a bullet-pocked wall, all of a sudden?
Inland Empire: Their faces, blurred yet frozen as though in ambrotype. You were never that young, were you?
Steban: I guess you could say we believe it because it's impossible. (he looks at the scattered matchboxes on the ground) It's our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain... like this...
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Disco Elysium's biggest critique of Communism is that it was defeated. It's second biggest critique is that the Communists don't know how to move past that.
 
Yeah but that's kind of what I meant. This to me reads as if it were written by someone who's sympathetic towards communism but also doesn't really believe it'll ever get anything done. A doomed fight for unrealisable ideals.

It's like a final punchline to a whole nihilistic joke. Everyone's an asshole and the only people who are trying not to be... Achieve nothing. And console themselves that so long as they keep fighting it doesn't matter that victory is impossible.

Maybe if there were some nods to things that communists have achieved...

In any case I'm not disputing that some of the Devs/writers are communists, or even that they were trying to advocate for communism. But I don't think they did a very good job of that. The game doesn't leave me with the feeling that maybe there's hope, and maybe it's communism. It leaves me with the feeling that everything is doomed, nothing works, and at best we can hope for personal happiness by picking some doomed struggle to believe in.

Geedubs said:
Disco Elysium's biggest critique of Communism is that it was defeated. It's second biggest critique is that the Communists don't know how to move past that.
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I guess that's where the nihilist at worst/existentialist at best vibe I'm getting comes from. It just feels... Universally bleak. Pointless.
 
It's existentialist, at worst? 'We fight for a better future, even if you and the world think it's impossible and keep murdering us in your efforts to keep it that way' is the literal opposite of nihilism.

Nihilism is the centrist path, where nothing can ever change or be better and trying is the thing idiots and children do, just sit there and wait for death while the bleak empty shell you call a body rots away with you trapped inside it.
 
Kadmus said:
It's existentialist, at worst? 'We fight for a better future, even if you and the world think it's impossible and keep murdering us in your efforts to keep it that way' is the literal opposite of nihilism.

Nihilism is the centrist path, where nothing can ever change or be better and trying is the thing idiots and children do, just sit there and wait for death while the bleak empty shell you call a body rots away with you trapped inside it.
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Except that the sense I got out of the narrative is that yeah... change fails. The world is falling apart figuratively and literally and the few people trying to change anything who aren't morally bankrupt themselves are almost certainly never going to achieve a damn thing. The entire game feels unrelentingly bleak and hopeless. Which isn't a bad thing, but it hardly leaves me with a new found interest in any of the ideologies presented.

To be clear, while I'm not a communist, I think the writing gives communism a rawer deal than it arguably deserves. The game presents it as nothing but a legacy of failure. There is no "well we got the first man into space and built housing for millions who lived like literal medieval serfs before." Nothing of the sort. Instead there's "the people's pile" and a whole lot about how the legacy of communism is failure.

The only thing that gives the sympathies away is that the others are treated even more harshly. But that, again, only contributes to the general vibe that everything is shit forever.
 
Rhel said:
Except that the sense I got out of the narrative is that yeah... change fails. The world is falling apart figuratively and literally and the few people trying to change anything who aren't morally bankrupt themselves are almost certainly never going to achieve a damn thing. The entire game feels unrelentingly bleak and hopeless. Which isn't a bad thing, but it hardly leaves me with a new found interest in any of the ideologies presented.

To be clear, while I'm not a communist, I think the writing gives communism a rawer deal than it arguably deserves. The game presents it as nothing but a legacy of failure. There is no "well we got the first man into space and built housing for millions who lived like literal medieval serfs before." Nothing of the sort. Instead there's "the people's pile" and a whole lot about how the legacy of communism is failure.

The only thing that gives the sympathies away is that the others are treated even more harshly. But that, again, only contributes to the general vibe that everything is shit forever.
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To quote the game itself:

In the dark times, should the stars also go out?
 
No no, the devs are definitely communists. I think one of them has a portrait of Stalin in the office and I'm like, can you not use literally any other person?
 
Shinji117 said:
The Communist quest lays it out in a fairly heartfelt manner
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I'm really really glad you brought up this part of the game. It gets me emotional every time, and it's in my top 3 moments from the game, and there are a lot of top moments imo. I think if there was an ever a time the game called us to action, a time it made me want to go out and build a better world, it would be this dialogue here. Says everything I'd want to say and far more eloquently than I ever could.
 
The nuances will obviously depend a lot on your playthrough and how much of the setting lore you dig into, but Disco: Elysium isn't really didactically communist so much as it is politically literate, deeply sympathetic to communism as an ideal, and deeply cynical about liberalism and centrism. Which is fitting for a work that whose themes and setting are rooted in post-Soviet melancholy. In comparison to most media out there, that stands out a lot.

In theory, it could have been earnestly written by people who considered communism but ultimately gravitated to liberalism out of cynicism. Or by people who just didn't particularly identify as anything but kept informed. It's quite possible that that's true for some of the writers and designers who worked on the game. But we know that the lead devs are communists because they've been pretty open about it outside of the game and given that information it's easy to find signs of it in the game itself.
 
CallMeIsmail said:
The nuances will obviously depend a lot on your playthrough and how much of the setting lore you dig into, but Disco: Elysium isn't really didactically communist so much as it is politically literate, deeply sympathetic to communism as an ideal, and deeply cynical about liberalism and centrism. Which is fitting for a work that whose themes and setting are rooted in post-Soviet melancholy. In comparison to most media out there, that stands out a lot.

In theory, it could have been earnestly written by people who considered communism but ultimately gravitated to liberalism out of cynicism. Or by people who just didn't particularly identify as anything but kept informed. It's quite possible that that's true for some of the writers and designers who worked on the game. But we know that the lead devs are communists because they've been pretty open about it outside of the game and given that information it's easy to find signs of it in the game itself.
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To expand on this point a bit, I find there's often a misunderstanding that crops up in discussions about "political games" in the vein of Disco Elysium, and even "political" media in general: that "political" in a descriptive sense is synonymous with ideologically didactic. While I'm sure that those of us who've had the misfortune of encountering the right-wing anti-wonderful person crowd are very familiar with the derogatory permutation of that statement, I'm more interested in the aspirational/complimentary inversion of the argument: the "I want characters to turn to the camera and explain they're the exact type of communist I am" school of thought.

In case it's not clear, I'm not a huge fan of that approach, even if I think it's an understandable stance for one to develop. If you spend a lot of time arguing with idiots on the internet, you're inevitably going to develop a few opinions which amount to uncritical inversions of the other side's claims. But this particular brainbug is often frustrating to deal with in critical discussion because, to borrow a turn of phrase from Ursula LeGuin, it leads to people refusing to engage with stories in terms of story in favor of engaging with them in terms of sermons, which is an entirely different language. And while I personally don't go as hard as LeGuin does on that subject, I think her main point - that a story that's trying to be a sermon is rarely an engaging story - is very applicable to Disco Elysium. A version of the game that was trying to be ideologically didactic would be a far worse story - and for that matter, far worse at articulating its opinions on the subject of communism.
 
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