Failure is not (always) the end
Disco Elysium opens with you on the floor. Your character, whoever he is or what’s left of him, is facedown in an undefined hotel room. You are emerging, breaking the plane between the void and the living only to find yourself harboring the grandfather of all hangovers.
This is the introduction to the character you will inhabit Disco Elysium. There are many things and they can become even more: calculating, feeling, thinking, judging, determined or with remorse. But at this point, you are at a low point, possibly as low as possible.
Moments later, you can die trying to remove the tie from the ceiling fan. The headline says “Policeman suffers a final heart attack”, and man, the word “Final” does a lot of work.
Some people may be taking Disco Elysium for the first time now, since you just received your Final cut update and made its way to the consoles. For some, that moment can be very frustrating – going through the whole process of creating the character, only to die of a heart attack when trying to retrieve a piece of clothing. But I’m here to tell you: embrace those moments.
There are many ways for you to die in Disco Elysium. Very few of them are noble or worthy. You can die kicking a mailbox, getting into a fight that has no beginning, or even suffering severe mental damage when you see your own face in the mirror.
Disco ElysiumThe moments of failure are also not all terminal. Early on, if you were able to withstand the challenge of waking up and putting on some clothes, you can pull yourself together and go out, just to come face to face with a beautiful woman. With an intense and potentially undeserved confidence, you can try to flirt with her. And the words that come out can be the eloquent “I want to fuck you.”
In other games, failure can be very bad. Getting that big CAPITAL FAILED marker means that some of the content may have been blocked. Disco Elysium is okay with failure, however. It was written to embrace failure. And you really should do the same.
Take the example of the flirtation: after his detective gathered the strength to speak and still failed, the woman – Klaasje – laughs. She even asks you to say it again. It is a moment of humanization that can even take your character on the path of defining himself, as someone who feels remorse and always says things he regrets.
At this point, you’ve learned more about one of Disco Elysiumkey characters of, while potentially establishing an identity for your own character. After all, your policeman has just come up to breathe from a cataclysmic bender; maybe they are apologizing for all their wrong decisions, or at least they should be. These thoughts can rot until, eventually, you become the Sorry Cop.
This path opens up through failure and can continue to inform dialogue throughout the game, because that is the type of story Disco Elysium weaves. Failure can be a game over state, potentially, but trying to play in some “perfect” way means that you can lose a lot of this world.
Failures contribute to shaping your narrative, because let’s face it, your cop is not Sherlock Holmes. With enough points, they may be able to put together the visual calculation and logic to imagine crime scenes in real time, discern the boot size of the footprints in the mud, and then calculate the number of people present when a murder occurred. Ah, that’s right, a murder happened – apparently, your character is in the Martinaise district to find out why there is a body hanging in the yard behind the hotel.
However, you can often fail to complete a task that a theoretically good inspector might be able to do. It is a struggle to even move the body, a task that becomes the crux of the initial game. Each attempt can result in your character simply vomiting, unable to withstand the task. His flaws are not just fatal mailboxes and confusing words, but as you learn, your character has been in Martinaise for some time. Your ever-present companion, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, is here not only to help you, but to ensure that the task is completed, as it is likely that you are no longer fit for the job.
It can be bad to fail a check and see the health meter fall or simply face humiliation. You can lose some crucial money early in the game or just make the way a little bit harder. But if you are playing Disco Elysium for the first time, I can’t stress enough: embrace those moments.
Failures can end up defining your cop, and you by extension, and makes your game look more like yours. Losing an option makes the next opportunity to progress even more dire – I didn’t like having to literally beg trader Joyce for money just to have a bed for one more night, but I had to, because there was no source of income left. In a brief moment, I had to let go of my morale just to keep warm one more night, because I had failed catastrophically during the day, and so many times before that.
It is not just your character; many people in Martinaise have their own shortcomings. They may have a hard time understanding each other, or be guilty of their old lives for a failure, or simply be bad people. One of my favorite moments is Kim Kitsuragi, a brilliant glimpse of a human being, saying something incorrect during a brainstorming session and instantly realizing it. By seeing this internalized perception and correction, colliding with the anxiety of admitting the mistake out loud and making it to record, you can allow it to reflect and correct at that moment.
It is a small miscalculation without critical narrative consequences, but it is a small kindness that you can bestow, as someone whose mistakes are much deeper than a mere inaccuracy. Like the guy Kim is trying to drag out of the abyss, it’s the least you can do.
Disco Elysium it is shaped by these flaws, so I strongly recommend that you embrace them. I’m just as guilty of saving scum as any other guy, but writing Disco Elysium it seems to reward those who are not afraid to fail. Each lost check adds more to your character as much as it takes, and makes their situation look like yours. Of course, yes, you died trying to tie a ceiling fan, but you – the player – were also the ones who encouraged your character to keep trying.
Failure can end up creating some of the most memorable moments of your time with Disco Elysium. This may mean that you end up making the saddest excuse for a detective to wash up in Martinaise, but at least that person is rarely boring.
