Disco Elysium review – video game as first-person novel

(ZA/UM; PC)
You inhabit the mind of a hungover detective trying to solve a mysterious murder in this game of secret dice rolls

Disco Elysium establishes the character you play - a washed-up detective living out of a hotel room - with enviable efficiency. The game opens as you emerge from unconsciousness into a shuffling, amnesiac hangover following a three-day bender. Your work tie ribbons from the ceiling fan, your room is a wreck, and your immediate purpose is lost to the week's substance abuse. You spend the next few minutes clothing yourself (an exertion that, for an unlucky player, can lead to a terminal heart attack). Then you begin to piece together your identity, and discover why you have wound up in this rundown port town, "a puddle at the end of some drainpipe", as one character puts it, not unfairly.

Soon enough you meet your partner, an abstemious young detective who places a steadying, expositional hand on the narrative. He explains that you have been paired to investigate the apparent murder of a security guard, whose body still dangles from the tree on which he was strung, behind the hotel in which you're staying. As you sober up, you find that the locals are wilfully uncooperative; this is an "orphan" district, so-called because the local police precincts are unable to agree on which of them is responsible for maintaining law and order. The resulting power vacuum has been filled by the local unions, whose strictly anti-snitch stance makes life difficult for a pair of detectives.