Video Gamers Podcast - Disco Elysium Double Take - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Gaming detectives Michael, Josh and Paul are doing a Disco Elysium Double Take. Touted as one of the most acclaimed RPG’s of all time, we break down our thoughts on this often obscure gaming legend in a special holiday gaming double take. Don’t be put off by the lack of combat in Disco Elysium. This is a game that needs to be experienced by gamers. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers. This is Paul. I'm here with Josh and Michael. We are currently in the middle of our Christmas break to spend time with our families and to prep for 2023. We will be back with fully new episodes starting January 9th, and we have chosen a couple of our favorite episodes to re-release during this break. And for this rewind, we have chosen to re-release Disco Elysium. And, you know, Josh, Michael, I remember when we first played this game, I had told you both that I absolutely loved it. And I think you were both a little surprised at how much you guys liked it as well. Michael, what is it that you want people to know as we set up this episode? Well, first of all, if you haven't played Disco Elysium, there's a good chance that you haven't heard of it. A lot of people that I've recommended this game to have no idea what this game is. I will tell you that it's an RPG, and that's about all that I knew going into it. Honestly, when I first started playing the game, up until I actually pushed play on the game and started playing it, I thought it was a space game. No joke. Probably because the movie Elysium with Matt Damon is in space.

And so I had no idea what it was. So when you start the game, let me just tell you, the game starts out bonkers. It's a black screen. You hear like, your brain is on fire. Some weird voice is talking to you. But what you don't know is you're about to get into one of the greatest treats of all time. And this game is on a different level of RPG,

but it's very interesting. I can't say that I've ever played a game like it. I don't know if I'm supposed to tease that or not i mean this is an old episode we released it but um the game is truly one of a kind it's it might not be for everybody but everybody should try it out because it's truly something very different and fantastic and i believe michael you named this as the best game you played in all of 2022. No, he picked cyberpunk. I picked cyberpunk. This was,

I picked disco. At least it was crazy. Cause we thought Josh was going to hate this game. I thought I was going to hate it. I said that during a recent episode, I went into disco Elysium. I did not play this game. I had heard about it.

I'd seen all the amazing reviews and I intentionally did not play it because I went, I'm going to hate this game. It is an RPG without combat. And I went, I don't want any part of that. I like part of an RPG is combat and I like slaughtering things. So I was like, Disco Elysium, you're not for me. Sorry. Like it ruins it. I don't want to just have conversations all day.

That's not my style. And boy, was I wrong. I mean, I did. I named Disco Elysium as my favorite game that I played in 2022. And that is saying a lot. If you're like me, don't hesitate to give this game a try. There are people out there that do not like it, but I have yet to actually meet one of them in person. I've only seen reviews. It is hard to quantify what this game is. And we're going to try over the course of the next hour or so to try to tell

you what Disco Elysium is. But, you know, even looking back on this deep dive, give this game a try. Yeah, absolutely. And I don't even know if I should say this or not, but you are going to hear a couple of manscaped ads in this episode. I don know i don't know if the promo code still works for that uh believe it or not after we agreed to the campaign we never heard back from manscaped so if anyone out there works for manscaped uh reach back out to us because we did this campaign and it's been crickets ever since we didn't get paid we never heard anything on the results of our promo code uh however i will say that they did give us um some free manscaped shirts and my wife wears it to bed like four nights nice so she really loves the manscaped shirt i'm 90 sure i'm wearing the underwear right now hold on there you go yep sure i'm. Anything else to set up for Disco Elysium, guys?

No. Let's go ahead and get this one started. Disco Elysium, Harry Dubois, Kim Kitsuragi. Let's do it. I am the genie of the podcast and will grant you one wish. Oh, that's easy. I wish I could groom my body hair at an affordable cost. Wish granted. That's right, squad mates.

We have teamed up with Manscaped to get you all the deal of a century. Pick up hair trimmers, deodorant, toner, or other products today. Get 20% off and free shipping with code multiplayer at manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com by using code multiplayer. Unlock your confidence and always use the right tools for the job with Manscaped. They say the world isn't ready for a rock and roll cop. We got a field autopsy to perform on Disco Elysium. Go find some gloves and whatever you do, don't point your gun at the red-haired potty mouth no matter how much you might want to.

This is the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Welcome to the show. We are three dads who love to talk about games. And today is a deep dive episode that I've been waiting a very long time for please make sure to rate our podcast five stars and leave a written review if your app allows come check out our patreon page if you support the show you'll unlock some awesome perks including access to the squad cast episodes which release twice every month you can see our patreon page at multiplayer squad.com you can also connect with us on socials at multiplayer pod and all three of us are very active on our free discord server just come follow the link in the episode description i am your host paul and i am joined by two of the best detectives around.

First up, we have the patient and loyal friend in the vein of Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi. He's always around to offer his expertise, and he has a love for fancy cars. It's Michael. Whoa, I get to be Kim Kitsuragi? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I get to be Kim. You better have somebody good for me, Paul. Oh, man, I'm so happy.

I cannot do that man's excellence justice, by the way, and I'm certainly not that patient. Oh, one of the best sidekicks of all time. And then with us, he's the unpredictable but brilliant mind keeping us on our toes in the vein of Lieutenant Double E Freighter Harry Dubois. He just might try to build a music club that's hardcore. Or selling his police-issued gun to a pawn shop. It's Josh. All right. All right.

You totally redeemed yourself, Paul. I was like, wait a minute. Who's he going to make me? But then the main character is a good choice. Yeah. You've always been the wild card of the bunch. That's gotta be Harry, so that's what I decided to go for. I was really wondering where that was gonna go and then you totally redeemed yourself.

Well, you know guys, we got so much to cover. We can't leave this body hanging for too long. We gotta start working the case. Let's deep dive Disco Elysium. Let's start as we always do with the steam description disco elysium the final cut is a groundbreaking role-playing game you're a detective with a unique skill system at your disposal and a whole city to carve your path across interrogate unforgettable characters crack murders or take bribes become a hero or an

absolute disaster of a human being all right guys oh boy i really have no idea where to start with disco elysium this might be the strangest most confusing bonkers game that we've covered on the show while simultaneously at least in my opinion, being one of the most beautiful and moving games that I've ever played. You know, I first went through Disco Elysium almost a year ago, and you already know out there how much I love Disco Elysium. I've talked about it a lot. Fast forward now to July 2022.

Josh, why are we just now covering Disco Elysium? Well, I remember you raving about this, and we got to talking about role-playing games. I think we were, maybe we were talking about Michael not having ever played God of War, or we just kind of got to talking about some of the most well-known RPGs out there. And it came up that, you know, he and I had never played Disco Elysium, and we know that you had played it and loved it. And I remember us talking about, hey, you know what? People either really seem to love that game. It's one of the most highly rated RPGs out there. Or people despise it because it has zero combat whatsoever. And I remember thinking, I'm intrigued by the scores of this game, but I'm very uninterested because I don't know that it's

going to be up my alley. And then we started talking about it. And we said, you know what? Michael's never played it. I've never played it. Paul, you were like, I would love to play it again. Of course. So why don't we do a deep dive on this like this game is wildly well known like even if you've never played it or even seen a moment of gameplay chances are you still have heard of disco elysium and we thought you know what if if two lifelong gamers have never played this game maybe you know maybe we can we can all play it we can kind of do a deep dive on it. Let the listeners know what this game's all about.

Let them know whether it's worth it. Does it stand up to the hype? Or maybe the people that say, hey, this game's kind of boring are right. Yeah. And Michael, was this anywhere on your radar? You had not played it before. Were you ever considering picking it up or not until we decided to do it here for the show? No, I've always considered picking it up.

I've got a buddy, quite a tool, who who basically always was like you have to play this game this game is right up your alley you're gonna love it i came up again right around the time we did weird west because some of the dialogue kind of pops up in a similar way on your hud and then a little picture of a person talking things like that um but ultimately it's always kind of been there honestly i had no idea what the game was i i was thinking of like the matt damon movie elysium or something like that i'm like is it a space game i don't know what it is i literally still didn't know what it was until i hit play and started playing it oh how funny yeah this is one of those games where i feel like even the

people who really love it always put all these conditions on it where they say it's one of the best games ever but you might really hate it because it's just so weird and there's no combat and it's very ethereal and it's almost like reading a novel in a lot of ways like you read probably more than you do anything in this game uh but i do want to let everyone out there know that we are going to be keeping things virtually spoiler-free here in the beginning. We will give you guys a spoiler warning, and then we're going to jump into our playthroughs, and we're going to talk about all the spoilers that we want to get out of our system. Because I'm so excited to hear about how you guys ran your games, how you solved the hanging that the game opens up with. And I'm very curious to hear what you guys did in your playthroughs. So let me just start off by sharing a little bit about the setting.

And then, Michael, I'm going to throw things to you, and you can talk a little bit about the story. So Disco Elysium takes place in a fictional alternate timeline. It's in a city that they call Revachal. It's been ravaged by war and poverty. And the main character that you play is an officer with the RCM, which is what they call the Revachal Citizens Militia.

And the main character is a detective and you are in this world. They're constantly making reference to it being the 50s. And it in some way is kind of like our 50s with some early technology, but then in other ways, they already have computers and things like that. It's really hard to kind of explain where things are because it's just its own fictional universe. So Michael, I know you're always Mr. Story. I love going to you to set the stage here. We're in Revachol as a detective.

What are we doing? What's our job? Well, we're in Revachol as a detective, or so we're told, because we don't know when we start the game. You don't. Yeah. Essentially, we find out that we are there to solve a murder. There's a man who's been hung outside of the back of the hostel that you're staying at and i mean ultimately it's it's it's crazy you've got amnesia

you don't know what's happening uh it starts out you're trying to basically figure out if you should be truthful with people around you or not but either way you're quickly pulled in the fact that your main role in this game is to solve this murder. And you've got this awesome partner, Mr. Kim Kitsuragi, who basically is... He's probably the most straight-laced patient detective. Patient. Yeah, very patient. He's a very patient man.

It's funny because throughout the whole thing like there's so many things that you don't know whether you should tell him or not like you've lost your badge you've lost your gun you don't know where your car is which is a police car and you have no idea where these things are and so like from the beginning you're like should i tell kim that i don't know who i am or just go along and that's that's all the choices that you make there's so many choices in this game that you have to make but ultimately that's the biggest thing is you've got a partner he knows what he's doing you're harry you don't know you're harry yet you don't know you're a detective you think you're a detective because there's a cop there saying he's supposed to partner with you you're

there to solve a murder for better or worse and in most cases worse not only do you not know your name in my playthrough i did not know my name so i told harry and like all or i told kim and like all these people around me that my name was like rafael aquarium or something or aquarius there's like this really like extra name that was clearly wrong and then like i didn't even know my name was harry in my first playthrough until halfway through the game but yeah like right off the bat you don't know who you are you start talking to people and you're actually asking them like hey do you know why i'm here you know and they're like well you're you're an officer and it's like oh i'm in the military and they're like no you're a detective and it's like oh and you start putting the pieces

together and uh it's really funny playing as a person with amnesia and trying to put all the pieces together. Well, and it kind of adds up to that you're in the middle of this turf war between these strikers and a union. And there's so many more layers that go on top of it that add to it. And so it really gets pretty complex as you go. Yeah, even with like politics, they go into things about fascism and communism and ultra liberalism.

But what I found refreshing is that none of it is really tied to today's politics. So it's not like when you play Disco Elysium, you feel like they're taking sides or trying to teach anything about life today. But they do address those things within the fictional city of Ravishal, which is kind of interesting as well. So Joshosh i know this is hard for you to tackle all of this at once but why don't you tell us a little bit about gameplay how does the game actually function so this is where it gets weird so thanks for giving me the hard part yeah you're welcome this game is an rpg like it you do have. You have gear that affects your stats and your character.

You have choices that you can make. And so it is, by nature, an RPG. I think that is a good designation. Gameplay in this game, it took me a little bit to kind of figure out, but I actually distinctly remember messaging you, Paul, and saying, I understand what this game is. It is very akin to a point and click adventure. If you're older like me and you played any of the old Sierra games, it is very, very similar in that vein. Escape from Monkey Island is a well-known point-and-click adventure. So it's got a lot of that DNA. It doesn't mean that's all it is because it definitely is a lot more than that. But basic gameplay in this is you walk around.

You have a world. It's not huge, but there's definitely kind of like different zones that you can go in or different parts of the city. You can talk to a lot of different characters. Most characters that you talk to actually pulls up like a conversation. And then there's choices for the conversation. You can ask various questions, interact with them in certain ways and things like that. So that's kind of how you go about interacting with the world and carrying out your investigation. I like the game because it's got that really nice thing where you can highlight interactable objects, a la Diablo for people that are familiar with, you know, you just hold left alt and everything lights up on the ground and you go, oh, cool, I can go

interact with that. And so that's a nice feature. The other thing that really sets Disco Elysium apart isn't the walking around and talking to characters and things like that. It's your skills. And your skills in this game, I'm pretty sure we'll get into that a little bit later, but your skills and your character, basically, you're talking to your thoughts, you're talking to your subconscious and the different things that make up your personality in this game. And that is the hook, man. A good example. You guys have been driving around and you look over and you're like, I bet I could beat that guy in a race. Or you're like, I bet I could beat that guy up. You know what I mean? Do you know how your brain just talks to you sometimes? And I don't mean

it's always competition, right? But it's like, you know, we have these thoughts in our head that never get voiced outside, right? It's just our brain is just kind of dumping and we hear it. But in Disco Elysium, you hear it. It talks to you. Do you know what I mean? They lean into it full stop. It actually talks to you.

And not only that, but different parts talk to you. Like the bad sides of like i bet i could drink that whole bottle of vodka you know like that'll talk to you and then it's like you know but then you have this other side that's maybe a little bit more like paranormal where you're like i think there's something weird i'm sensing something about this area so you have like i don't even know how many different skills there are. I want to say there's like 20 different skills or something like that. And they all play a part in how they behave in your personality, and then how you actually interact with the world around you. It's bananas. And it is honestly one of the coolest systems I've ever seen done in a

video game. Well, and the funniest part about that, what Josh said, is that you even argue with yourself in your own mind sometimes. Think of when you're about to go to sleep. You've got to work the next day or you've got school the next morning. And you're like, hey, it's 11 o'clock at night. I'm a little tired. I could try to go to bed now. Or should I watch this movie and then go to bed? And then you think about it and you're like, but if I do that, I'm going to be really tired tomorrow morning. Is that okay? And you make those decisions in your mind by arguing with these different parts of your psyche. It's really funny. Oh, absolutely. And Josh, you didn't even go into dice rolls. Oh, that's right.

Because when I think about Disco Elysium, I don't so much think of click adventure games. I think more Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah. This is almost like if you're playing a dnd campaign except it's all about being a detective instead of being in a fantasy world with you know paladins and warriors and whatnot and so all of those different uh skills that you have you put points into them and your gear impacts them and And as you go through the game, you have different dialogue options. You have different actions you can take. And all of those things are tied into dice rolls.

So do you want to talk a little bit about how that works in the game? So you're right. Dungeons & Dragons, this game, it's an RPG. It's a point and click adventure. It's a choose your own adventure. It's a Dun and dragons campaign it really it really pulls a lot and i know that sounds super chaotic but it's not like everything just kind of jives together in this really weird sort of way nice choice of word with jive by the way right it's perfect for this game very disco right so the way that things are kind of determined in this game, because yes, there's a lot of talking, but hey, you know what? I want to try to intimidate this guy versus coerce this guy. How does that happen, right? And you go, okay, well, you have dialogue options. And maybe one

of those options is, hey, threaten this guy. And it'll kind of tell you whether that's intimidation or perception or hand-eye coordination. You have all of these different skills that you do. And then so you'll say, hey, I want to use intimidation. Let's see what happens. And then it will roll and it'll actually tell you, hey, this is a skill check. So you actually know when you're going to have to make a skill check. And so the dice just roll.

You don't actually physically see dice roll, but it does pop up your result. And it's very cool. It's either green or red kind of across the screen. And if it's green, you know you passed. And then dialogue or the result happens. If it's red, you failed. But guess what? Nothing stops this game. If you fail, something will happen.

And so the dice rolls are basically every branch in this multiverse of Disco Elysium. And there's no right or wrong. That's the real kicker here is if you fail a dice roll, yes, what you intended didn't work, but something else is going to happen instead. And so that's where it gets really neat because it's not like Dungeon Dragons where if you fail, you take damage and you get hit or a dragon eats you or something like that. It's just how the story branches. Yeah. And that's I think the mark of a great RPG is that ultimately, if you mess something up, you can try something else.

If you mess that up, you can try something else and you'll probably still get to the end result. But the one thing also that I noticed in this game is there's also dice rolls that you don't see, like dice rolls behind the scene. For instance, my character, for some reason, because I was wearing an outfit that just looked really flamboyant and awesome, I had a lot of points in the drama somehow on accident. And so what happens is your skills in this game, one of those like 20 skills that Josh was talking about earlier, if you have higher points in it, then that part of your mind will kind of drive the conversation differently than if you have points, for instance, into logic or speculation or something like that. And so what happens is I would have a lot of my inner monologue do, and it would show you like medium success passed. And so it would say, or medium chance passed. And so I know that there was a dice roll going on that I didn't choose. But I passed on the fact that now the drama part of my brain was going to make a suggestion for

how I should do this. And let me tell you, drama is one of the worst ones because he... Drama, he comes up with some ridiculous stuff to suggest to you. He's always based on like, she's lying. You know she's lying because it's always like a play or something like that. I mean, I found that really refreshing as well that I would have different options presented to me based on like the gear I'm wearing or how I decided to skill my person, which was outside of even my conscious choices to roll a die, which I thought was really interesting. Yeah, even as you walk around, if you have more points into perception, then more often you'll get a thought bubble where your character will say, oh, I think there's something here.

And then maybe there's like an item or something you can click on. And so even stuff like that behind the scenes is always at work. The only thing that I would say is that while the main storyline will always continue where there's always another route forward, you can technically die in this game i did a couple of ways i think i've tried two or three times so yes that is possible you not only can you die you can literally die one minute into this game i don't know if you guys know that the heart attack on the fan yes you can have a heart attack because in the beginning of the game you wake up hungover you've got your window smashed out your clothes are

strewn about the room and your tie is swinging on a ceiling fan we've all been there right if you fail that check to grab the tie while the fan is still on and you have no morale i think you miss it and he he falls over and dies of a heart attack. And you get a newspaper clipping, you know, local cop dies from heart attack. And then you just reload your save and carry on. So other than dying, which is actually kind of hard to do in this game, you can actually even fail forward. Like sometimes you'll fail a check and it's actually a good thing. It's one of the things that makes Disco Elysium so cool is that if your drama side passes, that's not necessarily good. It just means you're leaning into that part of your personality

and it doesn't mean that that's even right. So even passing a check is not necessarily a good thing, which is really what makes this game so incredibly unique. So I think we kind of already mostly covered everything as far as the character sheet if anyone out there is curious to know it is a total of 24 and so the game is broken down into intellect psyche physique and motorics and each of those four is broken down into six further categories and uh i was kind of curious did you guys lean into any specific kind of strategy like was your guy more of a fighter or a thinker or was he just totally bananas going off of gut instinct or what i went with so early on i was like okay i don't know

anything about this game i'm not looking up any spoilers or anything like that but i did say if i'm a detective i want to i want to go with a certain like shtick right and it's like and you know obviously the different categories say are you going to be highly intellectual and kind of like sherlock holmes this with a lot of perception and intellect are you going to be like magnum pi and just bully everybody around and be super like brutish and stuff like that and i was like i want to play with this almost psychic paranormal type yes skill set you know what i mean to kind of go with these gut feelings like oh i've got these gut feelings and that kind of detective um so that's what I did. I went with Shivers, which basically

these skills don't do a very good job of explaining everything that they do. The game will give you a description and then it will tell you what they do at very high or low levels. But even then, I feel like they're still a little confusing. So for me, Shivers was that spidey sense, right? Where it's like's like hey i know there's something wrong i know this guy's lying to me that kind of stuff um i went with perception and like hand eye coordination so i kind of mixed those three and michael you touched on something that i think really bears touching on again is that while there are the dice rolls in this game, these different skills that you have in this game, like, for instance, psyche, right?

That's a lot of the really weird internal psychic type stuff. Those are broken down into volition, empathy, inland empire, authority, suggestion, shivers, that kind of stuff. So each one of those has like a category and Michael, Michael hit it because if one is high, that really starts to affect the thoughts that your character has. And so your choices for your character. And for me, like the type of detective that I wanted to be actually really mattered in how this game unfolded because my guy was weird. The city would talk to him. A door would talk to him and say, hey, I think you should

give it another try. And then you're having this conversation with this weird inanimate object or the city because the city's saying hey a block away a character is walking down the street and throws something into a garbage can and then you're like oh maybe i should go look at that garbage can and sure enough there's something in the garbage can you know what i mean so it's like these skills are super cool this is not like hey you know hey you got a little bit of dexterity, your character's a little faster, or you have some strength, you might be able to lift that door or that gate or something like that. These drastically alter the way that this game unfolds and the actual overall feeling of the game. And it's hard to explain how that does that, but it's one of those things that majorly comes through in the actual gameplay.

Well, and it can change as well while you're playing for instance the thing that josh was just talking about where the city kind of talks to you i didn't experience that at all for the first two-thirds of the game but then i found an outfit that was like really high in that particular skill point i don't remember what it was um it's shivers or inland empire i think i think it was inland empire because i had shivers a little bit yeah but what happened was once i started wearing that then all of a sudden i'm like oh i haven't seen this part of my brain hop on yet but because i was wearing this jacket pants and shoes that had those extra points on it it put it just above there to where my character started thinking that way too so you can kind of manipulate a little bit of your dice rolls by you know

looking at what you're about to do and say okay okay, I'm going to need this skill or that skill. But I ended up going a little bit different direction than Josh when I started the game. I went with more of the intellectual thing because I thought when you start the game, it really gives you four choices. It gives you a choice to either do what Josh does, do the physical side or do the intellectual side or completely custom. And I just said, I'm going to go intellectual because I know I'm a detective and I want to just be able to see clues. And that's just kind of like what I thought, knowing that I was going into a game once I started that it's a detective thing. And so it's funny because it even affected the outcome in the very beginning of the game. The very beginning of the game, I thought it'd be funny just to try and grab the tie while

the thing was still spinning. And my character started to have the heart attack, but I was able to use my brain and calm myself down. And I didn't have to. I didn't die because my brain said, you're having a heart attack. You should go sit down. And I'm like, I should go sit down. Whereas if I didn't go with those points immediately into that intellectual side of it, I might have just freaked out and not known what was happening, and I would have died of a heart attack. So it's really interesting how the game literally changes constantly. It's not just like other games where the choices that you make, you got choice A and choice B.

Choice A leads down one path, choice B leads down another. everything that you even down to the hat that you're wearing will change the choices that you have presented in front of you, which is just it's mind blowing how many different possibilities to ultimately get to the same result. But how you get there is a totally wild ride compared to other ones. And I wish we had several hours to talk about this, because I guarantee that Josh, Paul and I all had completely different happenings in the same conversation in certain things, like with Kumo, for instance, that kid. I wanted to punch him, but I didn't. Paul did. Oh, absolutely. I punched him. Yeah. So in my very first playthrough, the only thing I looked up online was what's the best way to play Disco Elysium. And the tip that I read was pick sensitive as your opening class and lean hard into weird. Like, don't be afraid to say weird things.

Don't be afraid to talk to inanimate objects. Don't be afraid to talk to dead bodies. And the game even gives you tool tips while it's loading. And even one of the tool tips says, don't be afraid to say weird things. You know, people are very forgiving when you're an authority figure and then in my second playthrough i went pure motorics and i made my guy you know buff and a fighter all i did was kick everyone roundhouse kick measure head uh i'm intimidating people i'm taking bribes yeah i, I went purely physical. But what's funny is I tried to make my Harry as normal as possible. And it even gave me the option to make myself the most normal cop in Revachal.

That was one of my thoughts in my thought cabinet. And what's funny is, in some ways, the game punished me for that. At one point, Lieutenant Kim told me, Hey, I thought you were gonna do that weird thing while talking to her and throw her off her game. And all you're doing is sounding like a normal cop. You didn't rattle her at all. So, like, my number one advice for people is just don't be afraid to say weird stuff. It makes the game so much funnier.

And I think it makes it a lot more memorable than if you try to play it straight laced don't be afraid to get weird in this one that's very true because like i you know it kind of goes back you can't fail this game like yes your character can die and it's very quick and you just reload and you don't really lose a lot of progress and honestly i think there's only a few instances in the game where that can actually happen and i think think we're so conditioned, or at least I am, because I know in most games, I tend to be the good guy and I try to pick choices that would reflect the choices that I would actually make. But in this game, just go for the gusto because it's the setting, it's your character, it kind of falls into all of the different things that can happen.

And it can be beneficial, oddly enough. Most games punish you if you say something the wrong way or off the wall. And then the guy's like, okay, well, this character is ignoring you now. And you're like, well, darn it. Let me go back and not tick them off or something like that. But that's not like that in Disco Elysium at all. Dude, I remember in my very first playthrough, you walk downstairs. You've already said some weird stuff to the lady who's in the hotel room two doors down. She's the one who clues you in

that you're a cop. Big oops there, by the way, on me. Yeah. I go downstairs. I start talking to Gart, who is the manager of the Whirling and Rags Hotel. And he says, oh, by the way, you owe me 130 real, which is their currency in the game. Which is a lot of money. It is in this game. Yeah. And I immediately clicked try to skip out on the bill. And I failed. I failed the skill check.

Oh, no. And Harry throws up two middle fingers at Gart and jumps backward and hits the poor lady in the wheelchair. And that was when I was like, oh, I am perfectly fine failing every single skill check in this game if it's going to lead to these kinds of interactions. I mean, this game is absolutely hilarious. I don't think we need to spend too much time on the thought cabinet, but I did at least want to mention it. So in the game, you can decide whether or not to focus on different thoughts that pop up in your head. Maybe you say something or someone says something to you, and it gives you the choice to kind of dwell on that idea for a while. So just to give you one example, you do have to pay 20 real every

night to stay at the hotel. Gart tells you, you've trashed your room enough. You got to pay before the night in order to stay here. And if you don't have the money, you're sleeping on the street. And so then my Harry was like, hey, I could be a hobo cop. And then that gives you that option where you're like, yeah, I don't need to pay. I can live on the street. I'm going to just live on the street and know this city. I'm going to be a hobo cop. And you know what? If you decide to add that to your thought cabinet,

now you're sleeping on the streets, but it lowers your reputation with all NPCs in the game because now you're a hobo and you smell bad. But you find more bottles in the world that you can recycle and sell. So it's like all these different thoughts have pros and cons. And in my first playthrough, I barely touched the thought cabinet. Oh, really? This one I went full into.

I had all 12 filled up very early. I actually spent a lot of my skill points because you do acquire skill points throughout the game as well and instead of boosting the actual skills like perception or visual calculus or drama or some of those things i dumped a lot into unlocking more of the thought cabinet slots so i wound up by the end of the game i think i had like 10 i was almost completely maxed out on the thought cabinet stuff and it's a really neat uh aspect of the game, I think I had like 10. I was almost completely maxed out on the Thought Cabinet stuff. And it's a really neat aspect of the game, almost like perks. You've got your skill points, but then you've got your perk system. And that's the easiest way I can describe what it is in

Disco Elysium. There was one where I think I tried to break into a dumpster or a door or something. And so it unlocked the thought that I'm a break-in artist. And so I went down that line and then it gave me... And these all take a while. So they take like 6 hours or 8 hours to unlock for your character to process and think through this thought. But then once it's done, you unlock that. And then my guy got bonus rolls to trying to open anything in the world as that thought. And there like, and there's just, there's dozens of them, man.

And the cool thing is you don't really know what the thought is. Like a lot of them have weird names. Like one was finger guns. And I was like, Oh, I gotta unlock finger guns, man. And then my guy could like my guy,

I like, I had the option to do finger guns to people. You're really good at it too. You know, and like you do, you see your character and he does like hey finger guns and it's just like like what and one of the things about it too is you don't know what you're getting like you can look online but i didn't do that you know i was like just curious like what would this get me one's like called the long way home or something like that because i get it because i admit that i don't know

where my house is and it pops up it's like the long road home or something like that, because I get it because I admit that I don't know where my house is and it pops up. It's like the long road home or something like that. And as you're learning, these things take anywhere from 30 minutes in the game, not real life, to six and a half hours to learn them. But while you're learning them, you have negatives to other skills. And so you've got to look at that and be like, do I want to take negative perception and negative conceptualization? Thank you, gentlemen. Big words are hard. I don't use $6 words often because, well, they're $6 and I can't afford that. Or six real, I guess. But anyways, you've got to decide if this is going to be worth it. But you don't know if it's worth it because you don't know what you're getting. And again, you can cheat and Google it. But I

really wanted to play through blind and just see what i was getting myself into which is great it's the best way to play do your best not to look anything up try not to reload old saves and make different choices just roll with it and i promise the experience will be very rewarding all right well we're at about that halfway point in the episode let's take a short break and hear from one of our sponsors. Hello, my slam and stellar jive turkeys. Back in the groovy days of disco, the way of the man was to possess as much hair as possible. But some things have changed. Luckily, today we have Manscaped to help us with our personal grooming needs.

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on the flip side okay we are back from our break and this is now that point where we're going to give a spoiler warning. All right, if you have not played Disco Elysium and you plan to play it, highly recommend you just turn off the episode here. Or actually, don't turn it off. I'll go ahead and give a warning how far forward to go ahead and skip. Because at this point, we are going to talk all things spoiler all the way through the end game of Disco Elysium. We're not going to leave anything out on

the table. To avoid spoilers, skip ahead 35 minutes and 45 seconds. All right, so if it's been a while since you played Disco Elysium, or maybe you never plan to play it and you just want to know what the game is about, I am going to do my best to try to summarize the entire story here in about two minutes or so. Your playthrough could turn out a little bit different, but the notes and bullets are going to be the same, which is really just what I'm going to talk about here. All right, so Kim and Harry have to figure out a way to remove the hanging body from the tree behind the hotel, and you perform a field autopsy. If you pass a couple of checks, then you will discover the corpse was actually shot before it was hung,

which throws a wrench in your investigation. You uncover the fact that a group called the a couple of checks, then you will discover the corpse was actually shot before it was hung, which throws a wrench in your investigation. You uncover the fact that a group called the Hardy Boys claimed to have hung the man and killed him because he assaulted a woman at the hotel named Klasia. And here's where things get a little mature. I'll keep everything PG as far as language goes. But after talking to Klas classia we figure out that she was intimate with the victim and that he was shot through her hotel window we find out that she has a background of being a spy so her life might be in danger maybe she was actually the target of the assassination maybe they hit the wrong person and we try to figure out where the shot could have come from classia gives us some hints that there was also a woman

who was part of the Hardy Boys named Ruby. She orchestrated the cover-up and then went on the run. Meanwhile, we learn that a squad of mercenaries that the victim belonged to are on their way to seek revenge. So there's a little bit of a clock running. We know eventually we're going to have this showdown with the mercenaries. We eventually do track down Ruby. She tells us that Klasia has been lying about everything.

The coverup was her idea. And Ruby at that point either escapes or she commits suicide. You return back to the hotel, find out that the mercenaries have arrived and you get into a firefight with the Hardy boys on your side against the mercenaries. Hopefully you have a working gun or some armor because bullets start flying. Kim may or may not end up in the hospital. He might not even be in the rest of the game if he gets shot too much. You also get shot. You wake up a couple days later. You continue your search and realize that the shot that came in through Klasia's window could have come from a far-off island in the distance. You take a boat to that island, and you end up figuring out that there is a sniper who was a part of the Communist army years ago

that has been living on the island. He is an old curmudgeon of a man. He was jealous of the victim who had been sleeping with Klasia. And we match up all the evidence we've collected over the course of the game with the items in his bunker. And we end up arresting him for the murder. And then if you pass a perception test, you find out that the insulin Indian fast mid does indeed actually exist.

It's a species of insect that hides in the reeds. You have a conversation with it. And then Harry returns with Kim to the mainland where your old squad from the RCM is waiting. And they ask Kim to give a rundown of the case, assuming he's not in the hospital. And then depending on the choices you made along the way, your squad either decides that there's hope for you

in the future and they welcome you back. And if you have impressed Kim enough, you can even invite him to transfer to your squad and the game ends so overall thoughts what'd you guys think of the story of disco i it started weird for me there was a lot like you talked earlier in the episode about the the dispute between the labor union i I think it's called Whispering Pines or something like that, if I remember right. And like the dock workers and stuff like that.

So there's always tension in the background. And the game does a very good job of just kind of like saying, hey, this world's not a pretty world. Like people are upset. It's war torn. There's currently people fighting. People are getting murdered. There's just a lot going on in the world.

And you're trying to do this investigation the whole time. But that disruption in the world and that negative feeling and the war and the fight between this company and the striking workers and stuff like that spills out into things a lot. And so the game's atmosphere is spot on in that regard. Like you actually can just feel it as you're playing through the game. You know, story-wise, it's very weird how this game tells the story because, again, it tells it through your investigation

and the things that you discover and the people that you talk to. There are side quests in this game. There is your main quest, which is trying to figure out, hey, who killed this guy and what happened? But there's a lot of side quests in the game that absolutely should not be missed because there's some of the most bananas quests I have seen. Paul, you mentioned it. There's a quest in this game where there's people that are zoocryptologists. Cryptozoologists.

Cryptozoologists. Thank you. Those are the people that try to find Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and these creatures that nobody thinks exist, but maybe they exist. And you can spend probably a couple hours in this game going down this quest line checking traps doing all this stuff and you're just like part of me was like why am i doing this man but i okay i was thinking that too yeah kim is not even thinking that he's vocal kim thinks you are crazy your partner is like dude you're crazy we don't have time for this we we're here for a murder investigation we're not here to look for insects that don't exist and i leaned into that big time every time i was like

kim i think we're getting closer i think i could feel it man like i could i just i can tell this thing exists we're getting close and then we would fail over and over and over again and since this is a spoiler part at the very end of the game there is one of my favorite moments in the entire game where the freaking insect shows up yep and i i remember texting paul and i went i knew it was real i knew it was real i almost took a picture of my screen this is how into the game i got i almost took a picture of my tv and being like guys it's real it's real like but not in the game in real life like it feels like i was actually there and i saw this giant six foot tall praying mantis weed monster thing stick bug and i was like gonna take a

picture be like oh my goodness i found it and i'm like wait this is a video game this is not real this is part of the story this is um my favorite part that josh hit onto is you're going around and kim is constantly for the first several days at least, always saying, like, what does this have to do with our investigation? We need to move on. We need to get with the investigation. Why are we doing this? At one point in the story, and I don't know if it's the same point for everybody, but he just laments the fact that I'm going to kind of be a free spirit and do what I'm going to do. And he just starts going along with it.

He's just like, you know what? I'll entertain you with this. You know what? I'm kind of curious, too And he just starts going along with it. He's just like, you know what? I'll entertain you with this. You know what? I'm kind of curious too. So let's just go with it. And then he says things like, well, if I say no, you're going to do it anyways, right?

And I'm like, yep, let's go. And it's just, I just, I find myself in this game making decisions based on how Kim is going to feel more often than not honestly that's true you don't want to disappoint him almost yeah because he's like he's such an adorable i found him adorable i know it's a weird word to say we're all men here but you know uh oh he's absolutely

so adorable and he's so but but like when i'm talking to him i'm just like i don't i don't want to disappoint him because he's like my big brother or my dad or something yeah i think one of the reasons that they work so well as a combo because you always see this in like buddy cop movies right you've got the impulsive one and you've got the conservative quiet one and they pull out different parts of each other's personalities harry is straight up dealing with mental illness and depression and he might be legitimately crazy like depending on how you play him the game even gives you a warning if you pick the sensitive class it says harry might lose his mind like they warn you about that right in the beginning and kim is just so straight laced and by the book that he would never imagine why don't i pull out

my gun and shoot it at the hanging man's belt buckle? And maybe we can make the guy fall. Like it never would have even crossed his mind. And when you put the two together by the end of the game, they're both learning so much from one another. It's this beautiful relationship. And the fact that you do find the fast mid and Kim couldn't be happier. Like he's the whole time complaining like

we're not really gonna check the traps again right and it's like let's go kim and you just keep marching as happy as you can be and when it comes out you're like kim am i crazy or can you see this and he's like oh i see it yeah and even then i'm still being crazy i'm like i'm touching it and it's foaming and i'm eating it it, and I'm like, it tastes like sugar water. And he's like, maybe you shouldn't be putting that in your mouth. But at the same time, Kim takes a picture, and it's just like, I love how the relationship evolves over the course of the game.

I know I've told Josh before, one of my all-time favorite moments moments for me, it's like a top three moment in gaming is when I reached the end of my first playthrough and they start asking Kim, well, has Harry really lost it? Like what's going on with Harry and how's the case going? And Kim starts recounting all this stuff over the game that I had no clue he's gonna come back and kim's like you know what he is completely crazy he uh stands still while people are trying to talk to him thinking in his head he runs around wearing one shoe which i did not even realize when i played my game that i had one shoe on i didn't even know until the game ended when kim said that and then kim says but he might be the best detective i've ever worked with and it's like such a cool moment when you hear that

from kim uh you know i don't know if you guys felt similarly but it was just so cool when they start recounting how your officer solved the case and the whole recap was really fun and exhilarating as weird as that sounds this no i was i was completely floored by that at the end because i was i was wondering how is this going to wrap up you know like how is it what's the end of the game and when kim is like essentially going through every decision that you made or just a combination like for instance on on my game my playthrough i kind of shift my tone a little bit halfway through and started to not talk about politics at all, because I also just kind of

wanted to understand the world and listen to other people's views and not take my own point of view. Well, it's funny because Kim even says, your two styles contradict each other. Sometimes you're very loud. And sometimes you're a mild racist, to put it lightly. And I'm like, I don't remember being a racist. Then I'm like, oh, in the beginning of the game, I was talking to a racist. And so to get things out of him, I was like, yeah, that's those stupid people. You know what I mean? I was saying things that I wouldn't normally say. But as Harry, I was just trying to get a story from him.

And so I found it really interesting to see that recap at the end. I loved it. This game messes with your emotions. Honestly, for a game, I don't know if they're intending to or it recap at the end i loved it this game messes with your emotions honestly for a game i don't know if they're intending to or it's just the story since we're talking about the story and the side quests and stuff like that but like the part with the phasmid that like i had an emotional response to that you know what i mean but there's parts in the game with like with kim you know it's like you have an emotional response to how he perceives what you're doing and this is a harsh cold world and so you know there's a woman that's looking for

her husband you know and you can accept that side quest and you can go down that road and then it's like and that's so sad right so it's like there's just this weird emotional response that you get from Disco Elysium that I have not found in very many video games. And it's not – I don't know that they're even intending. I don't think it's like a Pixar movie where they're trying to make you cry or they're trying to make you laugh. I think it just happens because how masterful the story and the characters in this game are you become super invested in it and you find that like you're joyful you're sad you're depressed you're ecstatic you're crazy you're disco you know like yeah you're getting down with the kids at the church and their disco club and you're like it's mega disco club. And you're like, it's mega, you know?

And then you're like, yeah. And I'm headbanging. And I'm like, yeah, stuff like that. But this game does it, man. It really has that it factor where it tugs on every emotion. It's just so well written and so well done. Well, and I got a name drop the um the head writer for this game because when the credits started rolling it said the writer's name i literally stood there looking

at my tv and i saluted the tv i'm like this guy was brilliant the way he made me feel and it's so his name is robert kerb uh kervitz and he's uh an estonian novelist apparently but the whole thing about it is is it really does play with your emotions a lot like i spent just a brief for example i spent the first half of the game thinking that um kim katsuragi was a super cop that he was the best cop ever but then you find out like halfway through or in different playthroughs you could find out on day one or day five wherever the dialogue takes you but i found out that harry has solved 218 cases and kim has solved 102 or 104 depending on how you track it because two of them were murder suicides so sometimes they're counted twice he explains and so kim is actually enamored by you yeah he thinks that you're an incredible detective and i'm like but i'm a hot mess the

whole time i thought that kim was this amazing and it just kind of made me think like this guy's more human because he was almost untouchable in my mind until then and it helped me relate to him better that like he's not as good as harry uh you find out later it's because he doesn't have as much volume he's an incredible detective but it's just like the things like little subtle things like that that just play with how you think in this game emotionally and then also a part at the end we're in spoiler zone so i'm just gonna roll with it but you have a dream at the very end when you don't have to i laid down on the bed at the end, we're in spoiler zone, so I'm just going to roll with it. But you have a dream at the very end. Well, you don't have to. I laid down on the bed at the very end to take a breather for a minute.

And I'm in a dream talking to my ex-wife. And I literally was looking at my TV going, oh, yeah. Like, and I'm almost standing there, like, about to cry because the whole entire culmination of this game and harry's life are leading to this emotional moment on what made him how he is and it oh man yeah it's deep and and having gone through it twice i can tell you that dream can go very differently depending on what you've uncovered really in previous playthroughs oh yeah like you'll find out that your ex-wife had been pregnant and had the baby aborted. And just because you were such a mess, she leaves you and she's now been living with this other guy for several years. And it's just this really heartbreaking story where you just see that Harry is still grieving that loss.

You even have instinctual reactions to the smell of apricots and things like that and you don't know why but it all makes sense later in the game even the way that harry dreams of your ex-wife looking like dolores day which was the most beautiful saint that's how he viewed her and so that's how she appears in his dream. Like this game is so mature and so interestingly written compared to your average video game. I think that's why it really hits you in the feels so much more than, you know, like your Wild West, right? Like or Weird West. Weird West. Great game.

I loved the gameplay. Does not pull on the heartstrings like when you have those moments. So let's get into some of the specifics. I want to know how you guys did some of this stuff. All right. How or did you get the body down from the tree? Because if you didn't know, you can solve the murder without ever even looking at the body.

But I'm assuming you guys actually did look at the body. I did. I looked at the body. Since I had gone with hand-eye coordination as one of my skills i was like i bet i can shoot that down and it was an option let's try to shoot it down and i did and my guy was like you know just spot on and i shot the strap that was holding the guy he fell kim gave me kudos he was like whoa like that's an amazing shot i was like yeah did kim try first and miss no oh wait yes he did yes

he did actually yes he did and i was like hey give me the gun i'm a good shot and then you have the option there yeah i remember having the option there i gave it to kim first i had a 42 pass rate on hitting that buckle and i got really lucky because it hit and so i shot him down as well oh wow yeah my very first playthrough i don't think i had the body down until day three or day four because i missed the shot and harry shoots him right in the chest and kim is like well that's gonna be hard to explain in the autopsy report because it's like you're shooting now this dead corpse and uh in my playthrough i then had to earn favor with measure head in order to get past him to push the button so i had to agree with his critical theories

that i did not agree with about what does the button do i never made it past measure head oh see i see this is how i I did both playthroughs I did. So I did not know in my first playthrough you can go through Kuno's shack or whatever. So you have to get past Measurehead. Measurehead will let you past if you agree with his racist mentalities. So I agreed. Sure, let me think about what you're saying. I adopted racism and then measure had let me through and

kim was not terribly happy about it but to me i was like well i don't know how else to get into this place my second playthrough i went full physical and i roundhouse kicked measure head right in the face knocked him unconscious and walked past him and pressed the button and that's how i how i got past him what does the button do though it unlocks the door to get through to ever art oh the way he's inside the yeah so you can get through the right way and then i had ever art agree to send dock workers to remove the body so that's how i did it the first time the second time i got past measure head by roundhouse kicking him but i still i shot out the belt buckle that time no. No, I went the racist route with that one.

That's what I was referring to earlier when I had to agree with the guy. I've been like, hey, yeah, no. I have never seen that much racist dialogue in a video game where somehow you're like, how could they put this in here? Oh, because it's clearly a negative thing. It's clearly that this is not a person who's right in the head. So it was really interesting but yeah i got through him by by talking to him and agreeing with him and i had to wait like overnight or something like that too to learn something yeah you have to wait for a

while for that thought to finish yeah and it's kind of an interesting pick of wording because it's not critical race theory but they called it like critical advanced theory on race or something like that where it was actually a different topic but you know only related by race uh what about your gun did you guys ever cover your gun i never found my gun and then it's funny because i got to the very end of the game this game does have a couple of those like hey you're not things are going to change you're not going to be able to go back moments and they kind of warn you about that and i came across one of those moments and i'm like i'm near the end of the game like i'm ready and then and then i i never had my gun and that's when i was like oh i needed a gun for this you didn't have ruby's gun no you didn't have

ruby's gun nope so your ruby got away yes my ruby got away i had zero guns that were functional i had some old broken gun that i had found in like some niche somewhere or something but yeah i did not i never got my gun back if ruby commits suicide you pick up her gun and then you can use that or you can use your own gun for the final fight so you had no weapon josh none none at all that's really interesting what about you michael uh mine was the exact same i had no gun now the funniest thing is at that check at the end, the very end, so I'm at the very end of day four, right? And I'm ready to go inside that building and go chase down Ruby, essentially.

And Kim is like, hey, there's all these things we haven't done yet. And I'm like, you know what? But then Kim says something because the whole game I'm playing, hey, would Kim Kitsuragi be okay with this? And so I didn't take a bite of what Everett was essentially trying to get me with to go and hold the door open and have the cops in his pocket. So I'm like, maybe I'll get my gun some other way. But Kim says something towards the end. He's like, listen, we may have to do a little bit unorthodox things. I forget exactly what he says,

but it's essentially we may have to get our hands a little bit dirty. I think that's what he says. And so I'm like, okay, I'm going to go back and talk to Everett and get my gun. So I go back and talk to him. But I have to wait overnight because I don't want Kim to be there for the conversation. So I wait until the end of day four. Kim goes off to bed. I go back to talk to Everett. And it's the morning of day five. And then Everett's like, you have to wait until 10 o'clock tonight. And I'm like, at this point, I have nothing left to do in this game. I've finished all the side quests.

So I'm like, you know what? Never mind. I'm not getting the dang gun. And so I didn't have the gun. I also forgot to put on the body armor because I didn't know I was going to a standoff. Oh, yeah. You don't really know. Yeah.

And Ruby also didn't kill herself because I passed that check. And so I had no body armor, no gun, no Ruby gun in the firefight at the end. You know, what's funny is if you have enough points in maybe it's shivers or one of those, your character will get a thought bubble that says, I sense danger ahead. Maybe I should put on my armor. Oh, yes. Which is actually really neat. Yeah.

So there's like clues in the game but only if you happen to have points in it at the time uh what about the abandoned church did you guys turn it into a disco club i turned it into a disco club but i did not let it be a drug lab so i was like you know it's fine that there's going to be some music and some like uh you know some partying going on here but i was like but I draw the line at turning it into a meth lab. Please tell me you got Kim to dance. No. What?

Dude, as soon as we're done with this episode, go look up on YouTube. I had no clue. My first playthrough, kind of like Michael, I kind of had everything done. I didn't want to waste a whole day so i never finished the church quest line this time i turned it into a club did not let them sell drugs and i go out there and i so did you dance as harry at all josh i don't remember dancing to be honest okay so i think you have to pass a skill check and maybe this helped that i had all my points in motorics. But Harry starts breakdancing on the dance floor. No, I never danced then.

Andre's dancing. Harry's all over the dance floor. And then I start talking to Kim. And I'm like, Kim, get over here on the dance floor. And he goes, you're crazy if you think I'm going to go out there. And I start yelling, Code 31 31 officer needed on the dance floor and it tells you in parentheses that code 31 means emergency and kim is like you can't be serious and i was like kim i'm ordering you onto this dance floor and finally kim comes out and just starts

break dancing with you and he's having a blast you're having a blast you just had to get him out of his shell and for me that was the moment like you had with the fast mid josh i had that moment the first time this playthrough it was getting kim just to dance on the floor with me it was like such a cathartic moment it's a really funny watch on youtube this is why this game is so interesting because all three of us had vastly different results playthroughs styles you know what i mean i feel like you you probably paul i know you've played twice but i feel like you could probably play through this game five or six times and have it be easy wildly different every single time 100 uh did you guys think i'm sorry go ahead

michael i um i they never turn a disco club i got really offended the fact they lied to me so i arrested all of them i'm like the kids i arrested all that's hilarious i'm like you're out of here you guys are lying to me i had to play this stupid game with egghead or whatever his name is to try and get him to talk to me and they're like yeah rad rad and they're sitting there the whole time like, hey, it smells like ammonia in here. Hey, it smells like you guys are cooking drugs in here. No, we're good. Party.

And then I went back and I'm like, you know what? There's this guy who's climbing around in the rafters. He doesn't mind that they're going to be there, but I just kind of want to preserve this church and these kids are lying to me. So I arrested him and got him out of there. Now, in the church. Kim must have loved that. Did you guys ever, did you find the hole in the world?

Yes. Okay. So there, I don't, I think't i think that was cool yeah that part was really neat and then did you ever repair the glass mural yes i never i never repaired the mural so i have no clue what happens or any of that stuff i tried and failed not a lot was it nothing really happened yeah nothing really happens there did you a question though because i i don't i don't know if this is going to come up and this was an accident at the very end just to throw one in here speaking of things you did or did not do did you push the button when you were in the in the in the dockyard and find the glowing light man i know oh he's inside the container he's inside a container i did find that and that was bananas that was bananas it's the only time i cheated because in my first playthrough i never find that and that was bananas that was bananas kim couldn't see it it's the only time i cheated because in my first playthrough i never got that door open and i was really curious

so this playthrough i did reload until i passed that check but yeah that's super weird like apparently the guy because he's super rich he's so rich that he like he breaks in a different reality or something. Yeah. And because you're so poor, you can't see him. And he's just all bended light and twisty light and stuff. What a weird... And it has no bearing on the game at all. Zero. Never comes up again.

Yeah. Does not matter. It does finish a quest for you, though. Yeah. You get a little bit of XP. Well, no. It finishes the quest on figuring out... At one point, you're told to talk to a super rich person.

Oh, to become a patron or find a patron or something like that, right? No, it's to understand who you are and where your place is in the world. Something like that. Oh, no. I don't think I ever had that. It's a philosophical thing. Well, I pushed the button to move it because I had just finished talking to Everett, and I hate Everett. That guy's a scumbag.

And so I'm like, he says at one point that he's so big that he doesn't walk around anymore, and he just has his workers move his container where he wants to go. And I'm like, I'm going to try and move his container. So I pushed the button, and the container behind me went down, and I accidentally went over. I accidentally lowered it and went in there, and I'm like, that's not Everett's container. There was the Bendy Lightman in there. And I'm like'm like hey the super rich man quest is over now nice oh that's too funny what about singing karaoke never did it i never found the tape you didn't i never found a sad song to sing or something like that i found it yeah wasn't it in the uh in the basement it's in the it's in the second area once they fix the crossway you walk like behind a building and it's just like in a pile of snow

it's just laying like a box oh yeah and you loot it and it has the tape so if you play it on the boom box you can learn the words and if you do enough for Gart at the Whirling and Rags, you can tell him, oh no, I'm getting on stage. I'm singing karaoke. And it's so funny because who would pick a song called, what was it, like the saddest church in the world or something like that? And he gets out there and rocks to it. It's hilarious.

It's pretty great. And people reference it for the rest of the game too. You even ask. Everyone knew that you meet that was in the hostel at the time you're like hey do you hear me sing yeah and then they can tell you what they thought of you singing i think i told gart like oh i i've rocked that so hard and he's like it was okay like he won't give you any satisfaction but it's like the one time he doesn't totally give you crap for everything that you've done oh how funny uh what about the final tribunal anything in there that you guys wanted to talk about no matter what a few people get shot and die there's no way to save everybody see that was my

question because i had no gun i did i did get the full armor set and i that's another one where it's like you can try to find all the armor but it's not easy and the game even says like this is a very long quest which just means you're probably not going to complete it till near the end of the game but i did have the full armor set which i thought was cool but i had no gun so when i got to the tribunal i couldn't do anything so i had like six people die man it was bad i felt, but I was like, I had no options. What happened to Harry in your playthrough? Because I had the same exact as you, but I had no armor on.

So what happened to Harry in yours? You get shot no matter what, but... In the leg? Yeah, in the leg. I don't know that there's a way to avoid that, because there's no leg armor. That's the funny thing. You have the helm, the chest piece, the boots, and the gloves, but there's no leg armor, which I thought was really weird yeah i found all the armor except i i totally messed up i told kim to take the body out of the fridge before i took the boots off so i never got the

boots and the problem was it gives you two options at that part it says do you want to do the quest where it's one piece of armor or get all the armor i picked all the armor and then sent kim away with the body, and it basically said failed. And I'm like, ah, man, I totally can never get it. But I got everything else. See, Josh, this is the only thing I asked him about. He never put the body in the fridge. He left the corpse next to the tree.

Yeah, Josh had no idea. So I'm like, oh, did you see the giant bear fridge? And he's like, yeah, but I never did anything with it. And I was like, yeah, you can stick the body in there, which even that's hilarious because you can tell the bookstore owner like, oh, yeah, I got a dead body in your fridge. And she's like, what? It's pretty great. And Kim even says, we don't have to tell everybody about using the body in the fridge. Right.

Yeah. Oh, so funny. Well, yeah. Any other spoiler stuff to talk about before we move on did you guys get in the door in the kitchen of the whirling rags i did yeah yeah okay did you beat the chef there's a pinball game do you have to have like really good hand eye coordination for to beat and i wound up beating that yeah kim told me we should come back to it and i was like okay i'll come back to it later and i never went back did um did you guys ever shave your face yes it was the worst mistake in the game i ever made i wish i hadn't i know i had no clue you could do this until josh

happened to mention oh i just shaved and i really regret it and i had no clue because i never stayed the night in the new. Yeah. I would always just run back to the whirling and rags. So I didn't even know you could shave. I looked it up on Google after you mentioned it, Josh. He doesn't look the same without the mutton chops. How did you guys stay the first night?

Because like me, you probably couldn't come up with 130 real, right? So how did you end up paying for the hotel the first night? It's one of the hardest times I ever laughed because the first time I played, I was talking to Joyce on day one. And I'm like, hey, you look rich. Can I have some money? And she's like, I guess. How much do you want? And the game was like, you can ask for 10 real 30 real or 10 000 real and i was

like i'm not getting greedy and i asked for like the middle or no i i asked for 130 and then she's like i guess that's not completely unreasonable and she gave it to me but i was like the fact that my guy's like begging people for money in this game kim was horrified kim actually said something because i kept asking and he was like why do you keep asking everybody for money in this game kim was horrified kim actually said something because i kept asking he was like why do you keep asking everybody for money and i'm like so funny cracks me up every time yeah i don't remember how i think i convinced gart to let me stay i i'll be honest i don't remember i know i didn't have to pay the full 130 though i had to pay 130 because kim just happened to have confiscated some spinner wheels. Yes.

Oh, that's what it was. And he sold them. I sold those. And it was enough that Gart let me stay. I was like, oh, Kim. So Kim sold them for 200 real and he gave me 130 and kept 70. And I was like, you sweetheart, Kim. You sweetheart.

Yeah. Oh, man. There's one other thing I was going to ask you guys about. I'll have to take this out in post. How did you guys feel when Renee died? Or did you know Renee died? Oh, the old man? Yes.

Yes. I was sad. Wait, he died? Yeah. He dies. Yep. No. You talk.

Because you can keep talking to the two old vets, right? Yeah. And they're playing almost like bocce ball, which, by the way, another hilarious moment. Oh, I took the ball and threw it into the sea? Yes. My guy with amnesia walks straight up and goes, I know this game, grabs the boulet, chucks it straight into the ocean. And Rene could not have been more mad at my guy for losing his ball. But he's like the angriest 80 year old man you've ever run

across his best friend and him fight the whole time and you run the whole time all these quests finding out that they were both in love with the same woman and she died and they've got this complicated relationship and you find out on the last day that renee died and his friend uh uses a lot of words that i can't use on this show describing renee but still says you know i loved him and i knew him for 70 years and now he's dead and like i i can't believe he's gone and that's another one of those moments that's like minor and it's easy to miss if you don't go back and talk but yeah renee dies of i think they say it was like a heart attack or something like that it was yep that would have gotten me i would have i would have that would have gotten that would make me

cry i was really connected to that dude he never gave me a bite of a sandwich though either i kept asking him for a sandwich and he never gave me a bite oh never asked him the smell of the pickles and the grilled onions or whatever this is gonna make no sense to anybody that's not played this game and then they're gonna play it and then they're gonna be like oh okay i got you guys the guy's even like f off it's my sandwich yeah yeah he's getting mad at you because you won't let go and he's even like i'm sorry i just don't understand why you want my sandwich so bad and you're like you believe in communism give me some of this sandwich i i have to bring up i have to bring up my absolute favorite moment of this entire game it happens towards the end i don't know

if you guys had this or not i know it's not a it's not one of those pivotal moments but when i am insisting that i can climb a ladder on a building by teleporting. Yes! And I pass a roll. Yes! And the screen goes black. I teleported too! Yep.

And I get to the top and I'm like, Kim, I did it! I teleported! Kim's like, no, no, no, you didn't. I watched you climb the ladder. Because you closed your eyes. He's like, you just closed your eyes. I legit thought I teleported because i was like i had really high whatever the skill was yeah and then i'm like i did it and you you are your guy is so convinced

it's like focus harder it's like feel your molecules moving and i'm like okay i feel them and you're like you can feel every individual molecule i'm like yes and then it's like you hear a snap sound a crackle sound a pop sound and then it shows you on the roof. You're like, I made it. I legit thought I did. And then Kim was like, no, I watched you climb the ladder. And I was like, darn it. Kim's like, no, you didn't. Totally deadpans it.

Total deadpan. It's so great. I almost peed my pants. I was laughing so hard. That part was great. Oh, man. Too funny. All right.

All right. Well, yeah, I think we're done with the spoiler section now, so we can move on to the rest of the show here. You guys have heard a lot of our thoughts about Disco Elysium. I think we all really enjoyed the experience. I think that Disco Elysium is definitely a one-of-one game. There is nothing else quite like this game. I have no idea what the community is going to say about it but josh you've got a couple reviews people have left on steam i do indeed all right so this first review is not

recommended again this game is not for everybody and this this person is one of them um a half hour on record at least through steam and it says oh wow this game is not for all tastes it came highly recommended and is well made but i'm not really its audience you see i love c rpgs and adventure games would i do not love is slogging through pages upon pages upon pages of text absorbing volumes of context and history with nothing going on screen is not my idea of fun it It's boring. Yes, the story is important to a good game, but I tuned down after an hour in and reading endless dialogue trees. It was more work than fun. If I want to read a novel, I'll read a novel. Again, that's just my personal taste. This isn't a condemnation of this game. It's a quality production. It just isn't for me.

Josh, does that review have a date on it by chance? 2020. for me josh does that review have a date on it by chance uh 2020 okay i thought so so apparently last year was the year that they did the ultimate edition the final cut and apparently before that it wasn't fully voiced i didn't know this i don't know if i could have slogged through it if i didn't have all the voices you know like i probably would have but it would have been tough i will say this that's what the final cut is if you're going to buy this game make sure you get the final cut the other thing that we haven't touched on is the voice acting in this game is phenomenal dude really so good different thoughts that you can have have different voices sometimes the dreams that you have when

your limbic system and your reptilian brain start talking and stuff like that that's how the game opens yeah the game opens with you talking to your limbic system like what kind of game is this it's so bananas but the voice acting changed this game i i'm i'm a little bit i don't know that i would have wanted to read every single thing in this game but man does the voice acting push it way over the top i would have probably gotten a lot less of it because i probably would have clicked through a lot of not interested in this political stuff but but listen the voice acting which is funny because i checked imdb and i don't i know we don't have a ton of time to go riding bicycles here during review time but um i checked imdb i'd never like there's no like a lot of games now pride themselves on getting bigger actors and things like that no none of these actors have really done a lot of other work so it's brilliant that they were able to do this but like i it's funny because that reviewer says 30 minutes

on record i think 30 minutes is just you hearing limbic system go through the night in the very beginning reptilian brain you know like it's it's just i think that's the first 30 minutes so of course he's not going to slog through it oh real quick one line that i remember from the beginning that cracked me up is that my character is in so much pain from having his rager the night before that he thinks someone please cut off my head it's trying to kill the rest of my body and i thought that was such a funny line of dialogue like oh man so great all right so this next review is recommended, 33 hours on record. You can conjole an old man to join an ultra-nationalist vigilante group in an attempt to requisition his ham sandwich. You can paint cryptic murals in the middle of a murder investigation while your partner actively worries for your mental stability.

You can help a nautic proto-raver set up a nightclub and drug lab in an abandoned church. Your necktie can tell you to be an anarchist and set people on fire. You can tell neoliberals to their faces that they'll be first against the wall in the revolution. Your base instincts can quote DMX songs at you. You can have a conversation with a bug about the scourge of humanity and the horrors of consciousness. You can die by sitting on a particularly uncomfortable chair. I don't know what art is, but this is art. Amen to that.

I agree with every word. I do too, man. Yeah, that's great. And like I said, a lot... Listen, if you're this far into this episode, obviously either you love the show or you have a lot of interest in Disco Elysium. We get that a lot of this is not going

to make sense but when it makes sense it is the most awesome thing to be able to talk about with other people like that's why you're hearing us kind of doing all this because this game gets you to that point where you just want to share what happened in it with other people. So, okay. This next one is recommended 72 hours on record. And it says, I have a dirty little secret. I like to grab some alcohol, turn on a good podcast or audio book and scum save my way to victory and rev a shawl. Nothing feels better than the game telling me I only have a 3% chance to success. And finally seeing that green success bar show after an hour of reloading. Is something wrong with me?

Deep emotional issues? Perhaps mental issues? Don't judge me. I am who I am. Very nice. Oh, man. I will say it's very tempting to save scum. I highly recommend trying not to, at least for the first playthrough. The only exception to that is if you don't have a good perception check toward the end of the game,

and I don't want to share any spoilers because we're past that part, but you miss out on some major reveals at the very end if you don't have perception. And if you miss that one check, you're going to miss a good chunk at the end of the game. So just make sure you've got at least pretty good points in perception and you'll be good to go. But yeah, what a, what a crazy game.

All right. Now I'm wondering what that moment was. And then, all right. And then this last one is not recommended. Uh, two and a half hours on record, seven thumbs down.

I have been playing this game for five entire minutes and not one single person has exploded. I haven't even chainsawed someone in half or anything half the screen is covered in letters i'm gonna go play doom that's clever i like that review even though you said it's marked not recommended yes it is yeah but i mean basically clearly trolling yeah exactly all right guys so that's what the community thinks you guys can probably pick up a little bit on what we think but now it's time to make our guesses as to what we think the actual overall steam score on disco elysium is um on the steam scale of zero to 100

and i think paul you were the last michael it was michael all right so you get to go first michael what is your guess i just i it's interesting because i've only ever heard people recommend this game to me and so my initial reaction was it must be high but you just let it read a couple bad reviews i'm gonna still go with my gut and pull an 88 88 from michael yep all right i having never played this game before or even seen any gameplay, to be honest, I've only ever seen the screenshots of the guy's face. And I thought he looked really weird and ugly. That's because he does look really weird and ugly. But I did know going into this that this game is very highly regarded for people that like it.

I remember being on Reddit and people were like, hey, if I like games like this. And everybody's like, oh, you've got to play Disco Elysium. I've never had interest in it because it doesn't seem like my kind of game. And so but I did know that it was very highly rated. So I guess I went real high. I went 96 percent on this because I felt like just every time I heard about Disco Elysium, it's always people raving about it. wrote down 90 and i think i'm gonna stick with that i think that this is one of those games where it's a 10 or it's a zero there is absolutely no middle ground you will find this game to be like crack and you can't stop playing and you can't stop thinking about it and you're tempted to do another playthrough or you're gonna be eight minutes

into this game and you're gonna say i haven't read this much since i was in school and i don't like it and you might just be out but i think if you can just give the weirdness and the uniqueness of the game a little bit of a chance it does suck you in pretty quickly but you got to maybe get past your initial impression because there's no combat it's just by nature a different game. It's not an interactive movie. It's definitely more RPG than any other genre, even though there's no fighting. So, yeah, I'm going to say 90. 90.

All right. 88 from Michael. 96 for you, Josh. 96 for me. Boy. Okay. Well, the actual on this one is going to make me the winner because the actual is 94% overall. Good.

That is not recent. That is overall Steam reviews, 94%. Overwhelmingly positive. 19 out of 20 people giving it positive. I like it. Yep. Exactly. It deserves it.

Yep. Man, quick math on that, too. Good job, Paul. Yeah. So, all right. Well, I guess it's my turn to introduce this next segment. Hit that music, Paul. Let's turn on our electrochemistry portion of our brains and go have a good time and play a game of make love, marry, or murder.

Very nice. Oh, I did not go electrochemistry either. But, man, there were times when it tried to jump in and sway my decisions in this game and i was like no my harry had some ideas oh yeah definitely oh yeah all right so this is where we're going to actually individually rate the game our scale of make love marry or murder murder means hey we do not recommend this game i don't think it's worth the money i don't think it's worth the money. I don't think it's worth the time. Make love means it's a very fun game.

If it sounds like it's up your alley, you should probably spend the money and play it. And marry means, hey, everybody should try this game. We think it's one of the best out there. We just absolutely love it. We'll come back to it later on. Just nothing but positive things to say about it. Paul, everybody pretty much knows how you feel about this one, so I'm going to toss it to you first.

One of my all-time favorite games. It's one of the best written stories. It is incredibly engaging. It might sound boring walking around and clicking on items and going through dialogue choices. It is shockingly anxiety-producing to click on that check and not know if you're going to pass or not. And one thing we didn't mention is some checks are red, which means you only get to try it once. And if you fail, you're not going to know what happened.

So the game has a lot of thrills, even though it's mostly through dialogue and through looking at a corpse and trying to figure out the pattern of the boot prints in the ground. And well, that one is very deep. And if I fail a check, my guy's going to think that a 500-pound man must have been at the site of the hanged man. Whereas if you pass that check, you realize, oh, they must have been carrying the body.

And that's, you know. So it's like the game gives you so much by way of story and thrills and discovery i love solving murders not in real life i mean i love that in like movies right so even that i love everything about this game at the end you know there you you can maybe solve the murder maybe not in. In my playthrough, I absolutely did. And it was so fulfilling figuring out finally what happened and all of the buildup. This game earns everything at the end. Like, this is not a game that takes any shortcuts. Everything that happens, you perfectly understand why.

It earns every single emotional reaction you have to it i absolutely love it's one of my all-time favorites it's it's marriage material 100 michael uh i i think if i was literally just rating the writing in this game alone literally just even let's even just say the dialogue just the dialogue it's so brilliant that i would marry just the dialogue yeah but then there's the rest of the game there too i'm absolutely marrying this game everything paul said is exactly what i want to say it's going to be really hard for me not to put this very very very near the top of our leaderboard because i just it's so unique and it's funny because it took me like six days to get through day one of the game.

It took me a little while to really kind of step on the gas and really get going with the game. But once I did, I could not stop thinking about playing this game. I was at work, which is in my house. So it's really hard for me not to go walk out and turn on my PS5 and play it during work, which I didn't do because I've been busy. I might have done it on lunch break or something like that if I wasn't but the whole thing was when my work day was over, I'm like

Sam, the kids can't listen to this game so can they go upstairs and watch TV or something because the game is definitely not rated PG. There's a lot of language in it. There's a lot of things that happen. I mean, I think just Kumo alone is a mature game for sure. It's a mature game for that happen i mean i think just kumo alone is it is a mature for sure it's a mature game for sure yeah yeah um but that being said if you're above a certain age you have

to play this game because it is an experience and i feel bad for the people that that didn't like it or couldn't get into it maybe it's not their type of game because man i just i wouldn't want to be like those people because i wouldn't want to miss out on the experience and just the emotional roller coaster that I went through to... Like I said, it's an experience. The experience of this game is so worth it. I'm marrying it. All right.

Well, it's time to bring things back down just a little bit, guys. I know I have talked about some of the incredible moments in this game. I can appreciate art for art, right? I can appreciate these crazy moments where you're doing this crazy bug hunt and all that stuff. My concern going into Disco Elysium was that the gameplay elements were going to be lacking, that it was going to be nothing but dialogue and conversation and reading. I had seen the negative reviews on people just saying, it's just so slow, stuff doesn't happen. And I was like, man, that's not my idea of an RPG. I need combat. I need that tacticalness. I need that. And so while this game is very, very high on its art and stuff like that, I have to say that it is an absolute masterpiece of a game.

It really is. If you are like me, I'm telling you this right now. If you are like me and you're going, hey, Josh, I'm with you. I agree with you on your game choices. I like action. I like to be involved. I need with you. I agree with you on your game choices. I like action. I like to be involved. I need some stimulation. Everybody that's listening knows that I really enjoy competitive, stimulating games. I can't stand Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley and games like that.

I really, really worried about Disco Elysium going into it. And I cannot stress enough that this game is an absolute masterpiece of a video game. I love you so much right now. It blew me away. I did not expect to like it. I really didn't. I went into this game going, I don't think I'm the kind of person that's going to enjoy this game. And I was not very long into it where it had its hooks into me, hook, line, and sinker. I could not wait to play it i had emotional responses this is one of those games that's going to rank up there for me in my memory for a very long time with just the way that it makes you feel it is an absolute mary from me as well would you get hit with like

adrenaline rushes shockingly like in dialogue options i I'd be like, this is so exciting. And even though it has a lack of clicking on heads with a gun, it's still like you're almost battling through dialogue. It had everything I needed, man. It really did. Like I said, there's very few games that can touch you like this game touched you. Whether it's sadness, laughter, suspense, anticipation of the skill check, what Kim thinks of you, what's happened to that lady's husband. Does this bug really exist?

Am I ever going to find it? Are these people crazy? There's so many moments in this game that just stick with you. It honestly reminds me a lot of those games where you play for the first time, they just stay with you forever, honestly. And and disco elysium is a hundred percent that i i i agree so much in so many ways too and and to your point there were so many moments where i'm like oh whoa like something

happened to the story you're just like oh that oh it ties together or something like that and to what you said a minute ago when people say oh they're slow and boring parts if you don't know what to do because only twice this happened where i'm like i don't know what to do here just go talk to a random person in the game you'll find something to do it's hard to get stuck as long as you just play yeah just keep doing things and you're not going to be stuck yeah absolutely all right guys we got only one last segment. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. All right. So in case anyone's here listening for the first time to a deep dive, Michael, you want to tell the people a little bit about our leaderboard? Yeah. So if you go to the website, which is multiplayerpodcast.com,

or you can go to multiplayerpodcast.com. They'll both bring you to the same place. No, they don't. You have to pronounce it multiplayer podcast or it will not work. Yeah. If you go there, you can actually look at a list of all of the 74 soon to be i'm sorry 75 soon to be 76 games that we have reviewed as a deep dive and what we do is based on what we thought of the game we do what we're about to do and we look at the leaderboard and say where does this land it's similar to um like times in racing like this one faster, which means the car is better, which means it ranks higher than the, than the slower car,

except in this case, cars are games and it's opinion, not fact. Yeah. So I'm looking at our leaderboard. Oh man. We got some stuff like in the top five, we've got red dead to God of war, overwatch,

rust apex down lower, like a 15 grand theft auto online 16 terraria 26 resident evil village 48 tiny tina's wonderlands uh 70 the forest 75 it's gonna be higher than the forest very bottom of the list battlefield 2042 so guys are we are we looking top ten? I'm a top tenner. Yes. Me too. Are we looking top seven? Yes.

Top five? Yes. Yep. Oh, my goodness. Guys, this is not a moment we get often. We should enjoy this. We are not putting top five games every week. I'll just throw it out there. For me, boy, it's really hard to put something above overwatch

i don't think i could quite do that but i was thinking i would have it at four i would only have it below red dead 2 god of war and overwatch i would put it above rust apex legends that's where i would have it personally what about you guys i would put it at number five. Honestly. Just below Rust. Yeah, just below Rust. It's a top five game for me on our leaderboard. I love Rust. I think Rust, the memories from Rust are great.

I don't think it would take a ton to sway me to number four. This is how good this game really is. But my landing spot is number five. I think I'd like to see the top four stay that way and then just say, hey, this game belongs in that upper echelon. What about you, Michael? All right, Michael. Michael's never played God of War.

I'll say, Kratos is going to be pissed. And he's never played Rust. So Michael's like, number one, number two, boys. I love Overwatch. But yeah, it's number two for me. Is it really? It's number two for you is it really it's number it's a hard number two wow well i haven't got a war but i put it over overwatch it was hard for me not to say number one and the only reason i didn't put it above red dead redemption 2 is because rdr2 does

have a lot more to offer in gameplay and it does have it does have a lot of emotion which i was i was like okay so story-wise this one was more emotional to me than rdr2 even though red dead redemption 2 had some emotional moments. I think Red Dead Redemption 2 still takes the number one spot for me on our leaderboard. That being said, I haven't played God of War. I haven't played Rust. I've played Overwatch. And given where that is, because it was hard for me to even put this number two, I'm going to put it at number two i'm gonna put it at number two so i don't know if that brings it up above overwatch or leaves it firmly in between overwatch and rust when we average them out or decide that

you guys trump me and keep it a little bit lower but we'll see where it goes the problem with overwatch is i've spent i don't know what three thousand hours by this point playing overwatch disco as great as it is you're gonna play it even if you play it multiple times you're probably capping out somewhere around 120 hours at the absolute top so that's the only reason that i would have to keep it below overwatch for me and i have a suspicion josh probably feels the same yeah i do i'd have a hard time putting it in the top three it's the bang for your buck it really is like this game begs to be played um i again i i'll say it i did not think this was going to be my kind of game i really went into it very hesitant and i left going oh my goodness i see what everybody raves about

um you know that being said i just one you know i don't know that i'll ever go back and play it maybe a second time like actually my brain considers that because there's so many things that I'd like to try. That's a huge compliment from you. Yeah, it really is, honestly. One, you finished it. I know, right? Two, you might want to play it again. That's why.

If Michael's two and I'm five and Paul is four, then I would say I'd feel comfortable putting it at four. I have a hard time going any higher than that. I feel comfortable at four. Okay. Okay. So let's see. I'm happy with four. Yeah. Wow. it at four i have a hard time going any higher than that i feel comfortable at four okay okay so let's i'm happy with four yeah wow that bumps rust out of a very long-standing top four on our leaderboard think about mount rushmore right your top four rust just got re-chiseled and it's now i mean i don't mind it I don't mind. Disco Elysium is incredible. It's that good.

It really is. I haven't played Rust, that being said, which means if we ever do a third Rust episode, it really is amazing and you will absolutely loathe it at the same time. It's the oddest dichotomy of a game ever.

I do want to argue with the bang for your buck argument. Can you really put a price on emotion? Yes. Yeah, I think so. To an extent. Michael, give me a million dollars and I'll show you happiness. I don't have a million dollars. And if I did, I'd probably share it with Joyce because bailed paul out of a good situation one time she

sure did she did me a solid all right four it is four wow we'll lock it in big moments yeah it really is and one thing that we didn't even mention but i've brought it up in the past i don't know if you guys remember but they are looking at adapting disco elysium as a series on amazon i i'm a little hesitant about that i don't know how well this would translate into a straight tv series but i'll tell you what i'll still give it a try i will try my wife the thing with that is the the thoughts like you have to be able to convey the thoughts properly and the video game does that so well. You know what I mean? But yeah, I don't know about a series. I told my wife, Harry, to roll dice before he says everything in the game. That would be so funny.

See what they are. I did tell my wife, though. People always ask the question, if you could pick one game to be adapted to a movie or a TV series, knowing it's going to be done well. That's the caveat there i would probably pick disco elysium just because i want more of kim katsa katsaragi i can't remember katsaragi i want more kim katsaragi and i want more harry debois i just i want to see more of this please make a sequel to this game please please make a sequel to this game yeah what a masterpiece i'm glad we're all on the same page it would have been sad if michael really hated it and it was like elite

dangerous but in reverse oh man do you think i would have hated this game i think i'm also one that i think people were more worried about yeah i think we're almost worried that josh wouldn't like it but all right well you know uh we knew this episode would go a little bit long. For those of you that are still sticking around, thanks for listening to this point. Thank you. We do want to say thank you to all of our Patreon supporters. We want to say thank you to Manscaped for sponsoring this episode. We also want to remind everybody, if you want to support us on Patreon and get access to the squad cast episodes you can do that at

multiplayer squad.com and the next deep dive has not officially been announced but i think we should tell people at this point we should yeah we're close enough now yeah so we have all now started and have been playing wasteland 3 which was selected by one of our legendary supporters good old red letter selected that one. So we will be covering that two weeks from today. So if you want to pick up wasteland three and play it here over the next two weeks, that'll give you some time to put in some hours.

That is a very traditional CRPG and, uh, takes quite a while to work through that game. And then of course our next episode will be on Thursday. We hope you guys will join us for This Week in Gaming, where we will break down gaming news. And I think that's all for now.

So we'll see you guys on Thursday. Happy gaming, everybody. Cheers, all. All right, see you, everybody.