Disco Elysium is one of my favourite games of all time. The characters are complex and flawed, the writing is sophisticated, and the art is breathtaking. I binged the whole thing over a long weekend and I still revisit it from time to time. It's a superbly told and genuinely affecting neo-noir detective story, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a great detective game.

"How can you say that!", I hear you cry. Both Harrier "Harry" Du Bois and Kim Kitsuragi (the two leads) are detectives, the plot centres on the investigation of a mysterious murder, and there are no combat or stealth mechanics to speak of. Disco Elysium must be a detective game. Well sure, yes, it's a game about detectives no doubt, but the investigative elements are totally superficial.

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Much though I love the game's commitment to old-school RPG rules based around dice rolls, the total lack of investigative or deductive elements is a bit of a letdown - the one flaw in an otherwise perfect experience. The opportunity to do some real detective work would have gone a long way to helping me get into character and giving me a sense of agency. As it is, it never feels like you as the player are contributing anything other than chucking two six-sided die to progress Harry's bespoke narrative.

The RPG mechanics muscle the puzzle elements out of the way, with skill checks taking over where there would’ve been opportunities for actual deductive puzzle-solving. Investigating the body of the hanged man is a perfect example of this.

In a puzzle, all the pieces should be apparent to every player - they can be obscure and take time to uncover, but they have to be somehow accessible. Disco Elysium doesn't work that way, not all "clues" will be visible to every player. The footprints around the corpse, for instance, can only be properly analysed if you have at least 11 points in Visual Calculus. If you do, Harrier will correctly deduce that the footprints were left by four large men in hobnailed work boots. This is a big hint that the "Hardie Boys", a group of dockers, are involved. There are moments like this all throughout the game, where passing a check will flesh out the world, or perhaps grant you a unique conversation or two, and for the most part they're a big part of the game's charm.

Disco Elysium Hanged Man

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The same applies later on during the confrontation with "The Pigs," a delusional old woman who thinks she is a police officer and has managed to get hold of Harry's gun. Where you might be expecting a puzzle, you get a story moment instead. All you have to do to get your gun back is talk to The Pigs, and even if you fail a hand-eye coordination check you will still get your gun back. There are changes to the precise sequence of events and the dialogue, but there is no way to fail to progress. The focus is on how you role-play as Harry Du Bois. Are you a shoot-first, ask-questions-later loose cannon? A methodical, by-the-book sort? Or are you just a drug-addled maniac?

A smattering of detective elements could really add something when you're say, investigating a body or interviewing a suspect, making connections by finding various pieces of evidence and then confronting the interviewee with the results. There could even be a few false inferences thrown in to keep the player on their toes. This would reward players who fully explored the world but still require a little logic and detective work. Of course, Harry's success in interrogating a suspect or joining the dots between bits of evidence could still be subject to dice rolls, but you as the player - not just as Harry - would at least have something of a bigger part to play in the game.

Relying on nothing but dice rolls causes a kind of ludonarrative dissonance that’s an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise masterfully crafted story. Harry (and by extension the player) is supposed to be a detective, and so it feels a little odd to never really get those “aha!” moments that are so central to the catharsis of detective games. If you had to resolve the situation with The Pigs by finding and presenting her with something (a photograph say) that reminded her who she really was, it would have given the game that nice little extra layer, a step into the detective fantasy.

Compare this to games like The Case of the Golden Idol or Return of The Obra Dinn, one of the best detective games ever made, which require real detective work from the player, and are all about making deductions.

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In Obra Dinn, there are no stats or skills, and the puzzles are central to the experience. You can't pump all your points into perception and get better at taking in the minutiae of exactly how a giant crab tore the quartermaster apart. You have to solve the puzzles yourself using your own critical thinking skills. In order to identify Alfred Klestil and Charles Miner, for example, it helps if you know what German sounds like, and it doesn't hurt to be familiar with the various duties and responsibilities of a Bosun and his mate.

A crew member is shot during an altercation below decks

Klestil, the ship's bosun can be overheard exclaiming "Verdammt!" and then asking about his "Frenchman". From this, you can work out that the man is both a German speaker and has a French mate. From there, you can spot Miner (the Frenchman) by the fact that he is wearing a "marinière", a stripy shirt traditionally worn by French sailors. Miner can also be seen issuing orders at various points, which is another clue that he is of a rank somewhere above the average seaman.

It wouldn't be easy to fit this stuff in alongside Disco Elysium's RPG mechanics, which do such a great job of progressing through the game in dozens of different ways, but I see no reason in principle why it couldn’t be done. The developers would just need to make sure that key pieces of evidence weren’t unavailable to players with the “wrong” build, or alternatively that those who had the appopriate stats could really dig into the deductive-investigative side of things while other builds played their own way.

But hey, these are small quibbles with what's one of the most original RPGs in recent memory. They wanted to tell a story about morality, identity, and existential dread, and they did it with aplomb. If you're yet to play it though, don't let its story and branding fool you. It's a marvel of modern gaming, but a detective game it is not.

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