pastalicious [he/him, undecided]

Isn’t that what happened to Wittgenstein?

I’d post up my favorite diy punk venue but it would be bad opsec. There’s got to be a place just like it in every mid to large city and they’re putting the best sounding most talented people you’ve never heard of on stage.

It’s a game where you get dropped into a little toy solar system where each planet and celestial body has its own secrets and rules that govern how you interact with it. You progress by learning these things and piecing together a story that kind of makes you feel how small and powerless but still beautiful our time here is.

One of the financiers borrowed money against the studio to buy more of the studio in order to do a hostile takeover and pushed the original creatives out. There’s stuff about kurvitz being a toxic boss but the source is the business guy taking over the company and the rest of the core team don’t seem to be backing up the claim about kurvitz.

Area 51 gun game at the bowling alley in my grandparents small town. During regular life our home consoles were the star (didn’t have to beg adults for spare change) but when we were stuck at that smoky bowling alley waiting got the adults to get tired that was the best time waster.

I read that as cybertruck ttrpg like 4 times. Deeply cursed moment for my imagination.

The secret first question is always “is the game fun?” And if it is sufficiently fun they won’t l list it because it invalidates their argument that diversity ruins games.

Why are Gamers so mad at the company behind Zuckerberg’s favorite bbq sauce?

Spoilers: I think the game is instructive in its bleakness. Yes the revolution failed but the world is still populated with people who keep on living. Fetishizing the old revolution and giving into the legitimate hopelessness will not save you or anyone else… that is to say, you love your ex something the way the guy on the island loves his revolution. Neither of you can bring it back, only destroy yourselves. But Harry can manage to make a new lifelong friend Kim, help the people of Martinaise in small ways, and discover something totally new and wonderful. The world may end but you still get to decide how you live in the ashes and there are still enriching experiences and relationships to discover.

I don’t think a game where you restart the revolution would be more uplifting because when you turn the game off it isn’t true. What the game actually is means something to me about our present reality.

It’s a damn shame and I agree… but I want to believe there’s a shadow of a chance they could pull it off without the IP.

I’ve given it a lot of thought. Disco Elysium is like a perfect storm of features, themes and tropes and the singular experience of it can’t be replicated to the same level of perfection. The skill system only really makes sense BECAUSE of the particular elements that make up Harry. His depression, his self doubt, his amnesia. His amnesia alone is super core to the game and it would be strange to have another amnesiac lead… it would cheapen it. But without the amnesia you lose a huge vein that enables and supplies the absurdity of dialogue choices you get in the game. And without the amnesia you have to find other ways to enable the character to re-evaluate who they are at a fundamental level which is AGAIN core to the experience of the game. If you are a cop in the theoretical sequel then we are forced to tread the same water of exploring what kind of cop you are, how you feel about the power hierarchy, and your complicity in the problems plaguing whatever setting you are in.

I think an ideal Disco Elysium sequel would be so different it would be worth considering a new title so as not to give people a false expectation. You keep the idea of the skill system, and the dialogue as combat sensibility (this really just means you are verbally wrestling with other characters like Joyce and Evrart), but I think you have to figure out who the character is first, you figure out what internal contradictions they’re struggling with, and then you choose NEW skills that bring this particular struggle to the forefront.

And I think they could do that again without being part of ZA/UM… and perhaps they are free to take risks they wouldn’t be able to if they were still there. But I don’t want to end on too positive a note because we don’t know exactly how they feel about it or how it’ll turn out and it still fucking sucks what happened to them.