Video Gamers Podcast - Disco Elysium Hijack! - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan, and John are diving deep into the gritty, surreal world of Disco Elysium—and not by choice! This episode of Hijack a Host sees John reluctantly stepping into the role of an amnesiac detective after a listener vote, forcing him to play one of the most unconventional video games in recent memory. Was the experience worth it? Has John seen the light, or is he begging for a return to Expedition 33? We’re breaking down everything from the game’s unique dialogue system to its political themes and unorthodox mechanics. If you’re into video games that challenge the norms and throw you into philosophical gaming spirals, this episode’s for you. A must-listen for fans of weird and brilliant video games, only on the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf and Phelps   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, Patrick, NorwegianGreaser and PeopleWonder   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: ⁠https://discord.com/invite/Dsx2rgEEbz⁠ Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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fellow gamers and welcome to the video gamers podcast there's been a hijacking and one of us was forced to play a game by our awesome supporters it's a well-known game but somehow one of us has never played it until now and we're dying to find out what he thought we'll get to the game and the host who had to play it in just a second but first some introductions are in order i am your host Josh and joining me, he'll probably refer to one of the characters as Kujo at least twice in this episode, but that's why we love him. It's Ryan. I tell you what, that Cujo guy is just, he's a whole mess of worms, you know. Man, you sound like a really interesting video game character, Ryan. Just, yeah, I'm just, I'm a, I'm a detective, so just Keep going. And you do know Kujo, right? Yeah.

Four-legged guy, really aggressive. Yeah, he's a little guy. He likes to eat people. Yeah. I don't know what this stick is, but I'm here for it. And joining us. Don't worry if you see him digging around and rotting corpses. He's just trying to help solve a murder mystery.

It's John. Yeah, trying, trying being the operative word there. Did you ever think you were going to be digging around in rotting corpses in a game there, John? Well, in a game, no, because I've done it plenty in my real life. Forensic files. Yeah, but it was interesting, yeah. Yeah, this is a forensic podcast, everybody. So we're talking about the how long it takes for rigor mortis to set in.

Rig of Mortarice, I never knew her. Yeah, oh, you don't want to know her. Yeah. Yeah, she's a real stiff, man. Ah, yeah! We're starting off already! Oh, man. That was so bad.

I want, yeah, okay, okay? But it worked. I love it. I was drunk Harry, by the way. I thought we were supposed to come in character. Oh, oh. Well, I guess we're giving this way. Guys, welcome in everybody.

We are going to be. I mean, if they haven't noticed from the intro stuff, we are going to be talking about disco elysium today. John got forced by the community to play this game. My first one, yeah. His first one ever. John got to experience either the joys or the woes of being forced to play a game that was not your choosing.

So we're going to get to all of that here in just a little bit. We're going to talk about, you know, John's experience with the game. Ryan and I have both played disco elysium. One of the few games that I've actually beaten in my day. So, you know, we'll be able to actually talk on our experience with this game as well. But guys, before we get into that, we got some new supporters of this show that we need to thank, man. You know, listen, we say this all the time. This podcast would not exist without the support of the listeners.

And just to kind of put things into perspective for you. you. I, you know, like, just take a second. If this podcast failed to exist tomorrow, if we said, hey guys, video gamers podcast, we're done. That's it. Would you pay $5 a month to get it back? Because if you would, we need your support because your support is what makes this happen. You know, so if you want to support this podcast that we put a link in the episode description, it makes it very easy for you to sign up. It only takes a few minutes. But this is what keeps this show going. And if you support the show, you get a shout out. Like these two amazing people, we want to think NIDA and Ridi for both signing up for Rare Status. Thank you so much. Both members of

our Discord community as well, very active, awesome gamers. Love having both of you in our community. And thank you for making this podcast possible. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. I'm loving to this seems to be maybe a newer phenomenon, but it would seem like people would come into the Discord and then lurk for a bit and then like eventually kind of like break the seal. And it seems like probably due to the efforts of such a welcoming Discord community now that when people pop in for the first time, they are they're chatting it up like real quick.

And these two guys are great examples of this. Yeah. Thank you so much for the support. It's super awesome to have you. It really, we say it all the time. And hey, listen, you know, we know we talk a big game for our community. you're more than welcome to join and lurk for a little bit. Check it out.

But it is awesome. If you're a gamer and you're looking for other gamers to play with or just chat games with or hang out with us, you know, and be stupid. That's the place for it. And again, there's a link in the episode description. And if you want to lurk, that's cool too. We love our lurkers. Yeah, we love our lurkers.

Yeah, honestly, like, when I found you guys, I lurched for a while. And it was mostly because I am old and I don't know how to use Discord this day. I can't get it to do right. Look, a quick aside. Like for my job, I handle customer support, you know, and there, you would be amazed at the number of people that don't understand how the internet works. And I get emails all the time from people that are like, I don't know how to do this. And I am just like, my mind is blown where I'm like, I don't know that I can teach you how to internet, you know? Like, I'll try because that's my job.

But at the same time, like, if you don't know what a browser is, like, we, we have a long way to go to be able to help you out. a grade or two here. Yeah. Oh, man. So sometimes I just shake my head and I say, man, if, if, if you think that everybody out there understands the internet technology, believe me when I say that is not the case. All right, guys, let's get into this number one. You know, John, you got selected, man.

The community said, hey, it's time to hijack a host. We do this every, every month. This is one of the perks for the, our epic and legendary supporters. So if you have ever wanted to pick a game for one of us to play, that is how you do it. You sign up. You're an epic or a legendary supporter. You get a vote in the game. You get a vote for the host.

It's all very organized. Shout out to Jigilpuff and Jake for kind of organizing all this stuff as well and making it very easy and seamless. But John, the people picked you. I kind of figured this was going to happen because, you know, we all have very different gaming takes. And I think people are trying to kind of figure out your your tastes when it, comes to games, you know, and I think this came about from your love, your absolute passion for another very story-based narrative-driven game in Expedition 33. Now, these games, that's about all they share, because Expedition 33 has combat and the timing

and all that stuff, but they have very unique characters, it is very narrative-driven, it is story-based, and that's kind of the angle that, you know, both of these games are trying to take to get you hooked. So I think people went, we know John likes RPGs. You've been playing metaphor. You're a fan of persona, you know, some of these. Expedition 33 is my favorite game of all time, probably Final Fantasy. I was going to mention Final Fantasy.

I was, John likes RPGs. Here's one that's a little out there. It's not your classic RPG that's similar to everything else. Famously, I have played it. I loved it. into it thinking I was going to hate it. We can talk about that a little bit later. And then Ryan has played it.

Ryan, the masochist that he is, Ryan, you played it before the voiceover came out. Oh, I just like pain, pain and misery. But you did go back and play it after the final cut update where it's the voiceover and all that, correct? I did, yes. Yeah, I went through which, which, you know, we'll get into it in depth, but like they did a brilliant job on the

voiceover work after, you know, redoing that. So, yeah, beautiful voiceover. yeah so all right john so you get picked you've heard of disco elysium you've heard us talk about this before you've ever touched the game were you excited were you nervous i mean this is a pretty beloved game so there's that kind of like the man this game super highly rated what if i don't like it like were you curious or what were your thoughts on that the thing is and this is one of the wonderful things that this show has provided for me but i this is a show a game that i'd never heard of honestly, before I started listening to you guys.

No, I never heard of it. Okay. And I just heard, I heard discoletium over and over and over again. You guys are ranting a raven about it. And I was, you know, much like you guys are figuring out my, my game calibration. I was doing the same thing with, with you, Ryan, and Paul, where I was like, you know, I wonder who's gaming interests I'm closest, closest to. And I felt like, I'm kind of somewhere like in the middle, you know, I don't perfectly

align with, with everybody. but there's there's certain things that I certainly resonate with uh with you Josh on like the turn-based RPG love and um certain things like Ryan where it's you know you want to be very narrative driven and and you know kind of a distaste for difficulty for difficulties sake and so this was one of those games where you guys all three kind of unilaterally liked it and I just never got around to playing it for one reason or another. And so it was very humbling and I'm honored, honestly, that the community chose me to do this hijack because this may have ended up being one of those games

that just sort of forever stayed in my backlog if I hadn't been forced to play it. So my expectations pre-listing to you guys were basically zero. because I had never heard of it. And then having listened to you guys, I had a very strong curiosity and interest in playing it. Yeah. So does an RPG with no combat, like, because that put me off big time.

I was like, this is going to be boring. Like, does that kind of create the same sense of like, how does this even work? Like, was that a turnoff, like initially going into it? Was it like a curiosity? Because it's like, how do they pull this off if there's no combat in an RPG? Well, that by itself wasn't really a factor for me.

We were talking about this a little bit on the pre-show, which, by the way, if anybody is considering signing up for Patreon, one of the perks that you get as you get to sort of listen to the preamble as we prep for the recordings and stuff. Josh and I, and presumably everybody listening to this is a big Christopher Nolan fan. He is one of our generation's best directors. But we were talking about some of his movies. and one of my favorite movies of his is Memento, one of his first movies. And Memento is a movie that is very narrative heavy, very dialogue heavy, very circuitous.

It is a storyline that weaves all over the place. And there's very, very little violence in combat in that movie. And so you really have to get and be a type of person who can be invested in character. And so the fact that there wasn't combat by itself, it wasn't really a factor for me. I had watched a lot of video on it and certainly listened to you guys talk about it. And I mean, everybody in the community rants and raves about it. And so my expectation was that this would be a refreshing change from the games that I had been playing recently.

recently, and that the overall presentation of the game was going to keep me interested through the development of these characters. So you get picked for this, you pick it up. I want to talk about the very first impression. Because I always think that's kind of neat for a game. It's like, you know, you started off, you know, so many games are either they blow you away or they hit you with a ton of cut scenes and story at the beginning to where you're like, okay, I have to be in the right frame of mind.

watch an hour worth of cutscenes. Death Stranding, looking at you. You know, for some of these games, Disco Elysium, I think, has a neat art style to it. It's kind of got that hand-drawn, watercolor-ish kind of art style to it. It's its own setting with you're in Revischal. You're kind of, the game kind of starts you off with, you know, Harry DuPaul waking up half drunk in his hotel room, you know,

and it just kind of throws you in to this game. you know there's not a whole lot of preamble to it there's not a whole lot of you know exposition or anything like that to start off so take us through like that first hour maybe two hours to where it's like was it impressive was it complicated was it like i'm trying to understand these game mechanics but what was it like for you in that first couple hours of just like diving into this for the first time so my very first impression was that i like the art style it is it is unique and and I'm a sucker for that. I love indie primarily for that.

You get to see unique interpretations of what a world might look like, and this certainly check that box. I will say I had a initial pretty pronounced challenge with the controls in the game. Did you guys play a keyboard and mouse or controller? I played mouse and keyboard. I play controller. So this feels like one of those games that was maybe designed more for mouse and keyboard in very much the same way that maybe Balders Gate felt like that way for me.

Isn't this a point and click, like to move around? Isn't it like kind of the old like you click the area that you want to walk to? I mean, it's been two years now since I played this game or maybe even longer. It's a weird hybrid, very much the same that Balders Gate 3 is, where you use the you use your um your stick to to move but then you also have to point and click like you use your left stick to move and then you use your right stick to like focus on a general area and yeah exactly like aim around for for points of interest and get the fan and get your tie back you know exactly exactly and so um i i did not like that yeah i did i did i did

did not like that i i found it to be clunky kind of right away and uh you know the my first my first couple hours of playing this i woke i wake you know you guys have heard this a million times but i don't sleep very much and so i woke up at like three in the morning and i toss and turn for a little bit and i was like oh i guess i'm up for the day time to hit some disco elysium and uh i i started getting tired again like right as soon as i was playing it and so i was like uh maybe Maybe I need to come back and revisit this with some some coffee in me. But so anyways, I don't, initially the, my impression was that I like the art style. I liked the voice acting was great.

Yeah. I could tell that there were a lot of really interesting ways to build your character out. You know, there's a lot of kind of interesting character archetypes and then ways to sort of buff and build those archetypes. And I created my own, you know, right away. I usually end up doing if that's the option. What archetype did you kind of go? Did you gravitate towards? We did a pre, we kind of did a pre show with this for patron content only,

where we kind of revealed the game and got your initial thoughts on this. And we talked about that during that, where it's like, hey, you can kind of choose the type of detective you want to be, if you want to be like this harsh, like physical guy that's, like, threatening people. Or if you want to be some weird, like, you know, supernatural, like I get a vibe kind of thing so which which way did you go with your guy I I ended up most of the time when I'm playing an RPG where my brain goes is I go like John what would you be doing in this world and so I go like okay well what are your strengths and and I go like

you know this is vanity speaking but I go logic and and physical attributes and so like I was buffing my character towards logic and and physicality okay I did the opposite I went very very supernatural to almost like a very extreme degree on that so so opposite of your real life like just yeah exactly intelligence you know that's all we need I do I do like and I think that's the first glimpse we can't really spend forever breaking down what disco elysium is I mean let's be honest this game's been out for a long time now we we did do an official deep dive on this game so anybody that wants to know more about what this game actually entails. We did do a deep dive on this way back in the day with Paul. So if you want kind of that experience where we break down everything in this game, you know, you can certainly search for that and find that.

But I kind of wanted to focus a little bit more on John's experience with this, since he did get forced into playing this. But I will say this. One of the cool parts about this game is and where you get a glimpse into like this, how is this an RPG, is you have these skills and these. stats that you can unlock and put points into. And this is how you build your character and you say, hey, this is the type of guy, the type of detective that I want my Harry Dubois to be. And you can pump a whole bunch into one stat. You can try to spread them out. But you're going to come

against skill checks for certain things. And if you don't have that stat, you're not going to do very good. You know, like at one point in the game, you might need to just punch a guy in the face to solve this problem and if you can do that great well that makes it really easy and if you can't do that because you're super weak like my guy was like you're probably not punching this guy out and then you got to get creative and find another way around so I really do like how they introduce the RPG elements on this

I'll tell you what I kind of want to spill the beans on your take on this John because we've been teasing this long enough and I'm very curious to find out myself we're going to take a quick break and then we'll come back with what you thought about Good Clifhanger. We'll be right back. Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things

Comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner, Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee, Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Sandberg, Kate McKinnon, and Allison Janney, a hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of rice. Roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. All right. We're back. We're talking disco Elysium with John. John. John got forced to play it. All right, John. Enough beating around the bush. I mean, people know what this game is.

If they don't know what this game is, like I said, just come to our Discord. We'll tell you, or you can watch a video on it. I'm just going to start off by saying, you know, this game is beloved. We have talked about this, you know, this is the challenge, this is the risk. I looked up the Steam rating on this game. It's a 93% on Steam with over 100,000 reviews on this game. And I'll tell you this, this game got review bombed. So this night, it got review bombed because of some fallout with the studio and the developers and the intellectual property for this and all that.

so the fact that a game could get review bombed and still be at a 93% it's an 89 on metacritic too yeah yeah that says something unbelievable I mean super high so john I don't again this is this disco elicium's one of those games that's super polarizing I think if you love it you love it and I think if you don't get it you really just don't get it so which one are you John this is one of the least enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had in my own. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, least enjoy it's all because of Kujo.

Ah, Kujo! Let me tell you why. Okay, so first of all, I want to state that I respect it a lot. This game, what I kept coming back to in my head was how similar a lot of this game reminded me of Baldur's Gate, which Baldur's Gate 3, beloved title you know i don't know what their steam rating is but beloved you know yeah yeah exactly

it is one of the most beloved titles ever but that there are things that bothered me about it um i think that the over reliance on dialogue heavy exposition without presentation was bothersome for me I think that the, you know, because of the way I chose to play it, which is controller, it felt like that game wasn't well suited for it. Yeah. And, uh, and there were environmental things, clunky things that I found to be sort of unnecessary. Like, for instance, it seemed like in, in this game, like, whenever I had to go, like, up and down stairs, the stairs were like behind some sort of like, terrain.

that was like yeah so I end up like bumping into walls like over and over again I'm just like ah man this is this is this is tough for me and and I found the same with ballers gate so what I kept coming back to was like this game reminds me of balder's gate three if you stripped every piece that I did like of balder's gate out of it like removed all of the fun that I was able to have in balder's gate out of it like it's balder's gate without the fantasy element and the combat and the attractive women and, uh, you know, the fantastical worlds and the, and the really robust levels and stuff. It's, um, but at the same time when I was playing it, I was like, you know, this, if I'm looking at this is a game, this game is

like a novel, right? Like, and novels are awesome. people love reading novels, you know, like next to the Bible, the Harry Potter series is the most sold book in the world, in history. It may have actually outsold the Bible at this point, but those are beloved and those are novels and people love to read them. I have a really hard time reading novels and that may be a fault to my imagination or something along those lines, but when I'm reading, I can read dry text or business books or it's comic books. And there's like no in between. And the, although I respected, I mean, I could very much tell pretty early on.

I was like, the craftsmanship that went into the storytelling for this is masterful. Yeah. And the fact that they recognized that there was a weakness in the game that relied too much. on people reading text because with all the different like narrator point of views and stuff and like all your internal monologue going this way and that I imagine without the voice dialogue that must have been really hard to keep up with but uh so kudos to the studio for for fixing that and for releasing this cut but at the same time man it is not for me at all like I couldn't honestly I couldn't imagine a game worse design for me and and so this the thing that

I kept, I was like, Josh loves this game, man. Josh loves this game, but he hated the altars. And it, for me, it felt like there was kind of a lot of the same stuff there for me, where it was like, I don't know. Okay, so this is a, because this is a neat thing, right? Because we all have games. And again, this is, this is why we love these hijack a hosts, right? And this is why we love doing this podcast as well, because you are going to meet a million

different gamers that have a million different tastes, right? And just because a game is universally beloved doesn't mean that that game is for everybody. You know, I say this all the time, but I hate starting value. You know, it's one of the most beloved, one of the most highly rated games in existence. And it's like, it's just not my kind of game. Famously, Ryan absolutely despises Expedition 33. He said it's the worst game he's ever seen. I'm just kidding.

He didn't say that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ryan's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, I'm just doing it. They're going to clip that. I'm going to be destroyed online. It may need to re-evaluate some friendships if that's true. But I mean, we can't help what we like and what we don't like. And we start to kind of get our tastes on things.

But I think it's very easy. Like, you know, and I have to imagine like, honestly, like, we're going to have listeners. We're going to have the people that pick this game for you going like, but John, John, you loved Expedition 33. That's got characters. That's got exposition. That has dialogue. So like, but what's the difference? Polar different.

like the expedition 33 even if you stripped all of the combat out okay i'm that remember the first scene where i'm going to go ahead and say it there's a little bit of bearing the lead if you haven't played expedition 33 yet you know tune out for the next couple of seconds here and spoiler warning issued go get at at the beginning of the within the first five to ten minutes of the game, you have this gorgeously presented cinematography of Sophie evaporating into the

flower petals. And it's like, I don't even know this character and I'm crying. Like that game made me cry right away. This game just didn't have any of that for me. It was, it's like I don't know. The best way I can the best way I can put it is it felt like a like a choose your own adventure novel. And I was trying to justify it in a way I'm like, well, I like the telltale games.

You know, like those are very narrative driven. But at least you, like you get the presentation of the, of the consequences of your choices. And this, you have to imagine a lot of it because it's all dialogue. It's mostly dialogue. And you'll have a brief little in, game sequences where you get some small animation that helps to develop it, but it's just totally different. This, again, felt like Baldur's Gate to me where I'm like, man,

Baldur's Gate, you have a fantastical world and all these great, gorgeous looking characters and clearly a game engine that can handle a lot of heavy lifting here, why am I watching so many characters make poop face with internal monologue going on? Like, why are there no animations? Like, show me these things. Show me. me. And I, you know, I kept coming back to that with this game. I'm like, Disco Elysium, show me. Show me what's going on. You know, like even if it's like a close up of the the character, like fighting his own demons or like talking, talking through all these like hundreds of different narrators that are fighting for control of the of the story and stuff. And

it just didn't have it. It felt very much like a novel where I would have to like internally interpret what is going on. And I just don't have that in me, man. It's interesting you say that because I think there's a world where when you compare Expedition 33, you are participating, you are in that party, you are with those people, you were experiencing their struggle, you know, like you said, I don't know that I can name another game where within the first hour I was so invested in those characters. And I will say for Disco Elysium, it is much more you are an observer. You were watching the events unfold. Like, yes, you get to direct. you know the story a little bit to say hey you should go here and you should talk to this person or you should do this but it is much more of a passive okay I decided what should happen next now I sit back and I watch what the results were or if there were results whether they're favorable whether they're unfavorable maybe I need to try a different route but I have to wonder if that's like the difference there you know is it's you're an active participant versus a passive watcher

in how the game is unfolding you know what Josh that that is a really interesting point, and I actually agree with you, but I would flip the perspectives. With Expedition 33, I actually felt more like I was watching a really deep movie. And same thing. Honestly, like Final Fantasy. It's my favorite franchise of all time. Those, I feel like I'm getting invested in the story of somebody else. Whereas Disco Elysium, because of the way it's presented, I felt very much more like it was like a true honest to goodness role playing game like a Dungeons and Dragons where you're like you have this is your template and you are this guy and he happens to have a name already but this is you and now you have to you have to evolve how this character navigates this world yeah yeah um you know that the the just variety of choice through dialogue that was available in this game was pretty pretty robust far more robust I think, than Expedition 33 is.

And so I think if you were to type me, I think probably I would be the type of guy who favors the, you know, I want to play a movie and have some choice, obviously, but I want to play a movie. Honestly, man, my experience with Indiana Jones is another example. You loved that. I loved it. It's really good.

It's one of, it's like top three games I've played this year for sure. um but it's very much you're playing a movie you're you are indiana jones you know you're not john diana jones you're indiana jones with this it felt very much like i was trying to navigate you know insert myself into this world and um you know it it just didn't work for me i like the d and reference because that and i think maybe this is because i you know i've played dn d and my whole life but it is and we touched on this where it's like i played harry dubois like i wanted to play him like where he's this supernatural, he gets vibes and he gets feelings and his skin starts crawling and that tells him something, you know, and he doesn't know. And he sounds like a freaking

maniac because he's talking to doors and Kim Kitzragi's like, look at him going like, dude, are you okay? Like, are you back on the sauce? Like, what's going on here? And I'm like, no, the door knows it's going to open. And then it does open. And I'm like, I told you so. You know, but so I think that's kind of a good point that you made there in the, sometimes it can feel like you are thrust into this story that I don't necessarily want to be a part of and I'm just trying to figure things out. But at the same time, I'm trying to figure out how I'm supposed to play this guy. You know, why am I doing this? What, you know, that kind of thing. I will say the one thing in Disco Elysium that I do like is I do like that they did throw in RPG elements. I also

love the fact that no matter what you do, the game keeps going. So even if you have this catastrophic failure of a result. It's like, well, you just got to live with it, man. Like, the game's going to keep moving on and too bad. And Balder's Gate 3 does that to a degree too. I mean, yes, you can die. But for the most part, the game makes you kind of just live with your choices. Oh, man.

I'll tell you. Yeah, so you mentioned that. And like, I made this commitment to not scum save before I played. But, but dude, I'll be honest, man. I had the exact opposite experience. I kept dying because the stupid morale, whatever it was, ethic, I can't remember what is that, but you've got like a physical health and then like a morality type health. And I kept dying.

There was this one scene where you're talking to the, like the labor boss or like the union boss. And I had almost no, no morality health going into it. and there is a part of the dialogue where you must take damage you cannot there's no I went through every iteration of this dialogue tree you could before recognizing there was no way I could get through it without dying and so I died a bunch and I was like man I hate I hate this I hate this and then it turns out that there was drugs elsewhere in the game that I had turned down before because I was concerned that if I took the drugs it was going to kill me that I went back and took and I'm like oh okay now I got to go back and now I I still take the

mandatory damage but I will have enough health to get me through that mandatory damage and again for me man it was it was just not pleasurable we at the video gamers podcast only condone video game drugs clearly give me that schedule one give me the uh what's the set is a jet in cyberpunk? I forget what it is. Yeah. I mean, that is, you know, that is a part of this game as well as, again, you can play Harry Dubois a number of ways. I was bound to determine to be the clean and sober. I'm turning my life around Harry Dubois, you know, that was just a maniac with how we talked to inanimate objects and stuff like that. So, John, if you had to rate this game, oh boy, I'm not sure I don't know where this one's going. So if you had to rate it on a scale of one to

10. I mean, this is, so here's the thing, right? We say this all the time. The ability to recognize a good game, you know, and say, okay, I get why this is beloved. I get the artwork. I get the voice acting like that, you know, but then there's the like, man, I mean, you said this is one of the worst gaming experiences you've had a long time. So it's like, how do you rate it? What is your rating on a scale of 1 to 10 for this? Good thing. You didn't play the original without the voice acting. I can't even imagine. Dude, I actually record. I'll share this with you at some point, but like I recorded how. I recorded how. how I, towards the end of how much I was playing this game, how it was playing it. And I was just like, click, click, click, fast forward, get through all the dialogue, choose random dialogue. And it was at that point where I was like, I have zero investment in this game whatsoever. At that point you're done. What am I even playing this for? Actually, like, shout out to Debt Mark Patrick in our Discord.

Because I was like, I was having feelings about this. I always feel like I'm like letting a game down if I start it and I don't finish it or whatever and he he made this comment in our discord where he was like dude you don't know that game anything like you know and i was like well aside from the fact that this is a hijack a host but it helped me it helped me come to realization on it i i extracted zero joy from playing this game and i when i was playing it i couldn't wait to be done with it i i i was like i don't know that i've had a game experience even like the altars which i really struggled with i i there was i didn't have the same level of urgency to stop playing as i did this

game if i i couldn't even give this game an objective rating honestly i couldn't say i can respect the the storytelling it's just not for me man um it my own personal rating on this game would be like a two like it was just short of being a physically painful experience that's disco our disco that's um oh what's the space game man the uh the really really boring one i had it and then i said disco elysium and then i lost it uh gosh i know what you're talking about oh john a blank anyway that's that one uh elite dangerous yeah there it is sorry i was like these are two words it's like it's like an 11 for michael though yeah like even if you like think about like the worst like what are the consensus worst gaming

experiences of all time, like that old Atari ET game, very much maligned. They buried a mountain of these in the desert because it did so bad. Like, at least I had the nostalgia of the ET character at that point. I got nothing out of this, man. Yeah, I mean, it just goes to show you, man. I mean, it sucks because it's like, you know, everybody, I think everybody hopes that we enjoy these games that we have to play. But this is also a good indicator of gamers, man, you know? I mean, I it's even as recently as this weekend like battlefield six played the heck out of battlefield six absolutely loved it but there are you know I've talked to a few people where they're like I just don't get it man like nothing about this seems like it's worthwhile you know uh I've played a million

shooters and there's nothing about battlefield six that stands out to me and I'm sitting here going like we're back baby I know I'm like it's back we got battlefield again in this part you know and they're like eh and it's like okay but that's okay man like you know not every game is for every person. I think that we can hope that people like a game. I think that we should as gamers absolutely not trash people because a game didn't resonate with them. You know, I mean, like I said, we all have games that are very popular that just didn't land for us. And, you know, one other question, because we got to wrap this up. I do think that Disco Elysium is the type of game that you have to be in the mindset for. Famously for you, John, you started playing metaphor refontazzo.

and you said, I don't get it. And you stopped playing it, but they went back to it a few months later. Oh, contrary, sir. My problem with metaphor refentazio was that Expedition 33 was right around the corner. Oh, okay. Okay, that's fair. And as I was playing metaphor, I was like, I just have to, like, I was like, I was trying to digest it faster than that's realistic. And I was just like, I can't wait for Expedition 33.

wait like get out of the way basically i can sympathize with that yeah exactly very focused yeah it is i mean it's it's a deep RPG that requires a lot of time and uh it's not a game you can fly through so so no chance that disco leesia might be better in the right frame of mind if you're in the mood for a more story driven exposition heavy type game i i will say this right so um i i am a i'm a big fan of of Game Pass. Cloud gaming right now, I've talked about it lots and lots and lots of times.

If this was available on cloud on Game Pass and I could play it on my treadmill where I'm like actively, where I'm habit stacking you know, basically, it would probably work. It does not work for me as a sit down and just enjoy this

game experience at all. It was two dialogue slash imagination dependent for me. But, you know, like you said, dude, one of the beautiful things about gaming is that there is something out there for everybody, but not everything is going to be for everybody. I've said it a million times on this show, Forrest Gump, if you were to look up that movie, which is like one of my all-time favorite movies, it has like an 80-something percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Like, I think it's 83. So you're telling me like 17 out of every 100

people didn't like Forrest Gump. I can't even compensate. I can't even compensate. that it's such a good movie but that doesn't make them wrong you know like people are entitled to their opinions some people are going to like it some people aren't there's like there's no no opinion on gaming franchises or movie franchises that i would consider to be like categorically wrong except for people who like the star wars prequels so those are wrong but everybody I love episode one. I love episode one. No, you did not.

Yes, I do, dude. I love episode one. Look, episode three, episode three, I really came around on episode three. I, look, I initially wiped them all off the table and it's like, these are hot garbage. But three, after watching it like four or five times, I was like, okay, like, actually, this is pretty good, man. Episode one and two, Ryan, no. No. Are you kidding me?

Two? We don't trash people for opinions. around here but your opinion sucks right three three is awesome on its own two natalie portman one pod racing that's all you need there boom all the pod racer pad racer game was so the game was really cool i could care less than that was n64 right i feel like that was in 60s oh yeah oh i played the heck out of it oh heck yeah all right well listen that's going to do it for this episode everybody thank you to all of our supporters uh out there for force and john to play this game. At least he knows what Disco Elysium is now. I almost made the joke during the intro that now

this opens up some more draft choices for picking Harry Dubois and Kim Kitsaragi is these like iconic video game characters. But, you know, it is a good, it is a good example of not everything is for everybody. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the game. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the person. We just like what we like, man. I want to throw this out there. I couldn't, I can't let this go. But for anybody on the Discord or listening who has not played this game and you want to have a good calibration point of whether you will probably like it or not, I think if you liked Baldersgate 3, you will probably like this game. That's good. I think that's fair. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's fair. So, all right, if you haven't done so already,

please make sure you follow the show, hit that plus button, hit that follow button. Leave us a review. five stars that absolutely helps us out um you know it helps other gamers realize that hey we don't suck we're pretty good gaming podcast you know and that way people give us a listen as well so you can do your part to bring awesome gamingness to the world that's going to do it for this one until next time happy gaming see you toodles Thank you.