Practically 5 years because the sport launched, Disco Elysium has one thing of a rotten legacy. One of the vital acclaimed video games of the fashionable period, the ground-breaking RPG was adored by critics and customers alike at launch, lauded for its deep RPG programs, its exemplary writing, and for the way fully and totally well-conceived its bleak, depressing world was. I additionally actually, actually favored the music.
Tensions between growth employees and the publishing arm of the corporate, and apparently rancid in-studio vibes, have result in many people pondering that we’ll by no means get one other sport like Disco Elysium ever once more. Or will we?
Although it’s lacking some key employees that made DE as memorable because it was, new indie developer Longdue has introduced that it’s engaged on one thing very Disco-like – and it even has plenty of employees that labored on the unique on its books (however not, notably, the three ‘fundamental’ leads: Robert Kurvitz, Aleksander Rostov, and Helen Hindpere).
The studio is already ‘a dozen robust’, per a press launch, ‘together with crew members that labored on the unique Disco Elysium and its unreleased sequel’. The crew can also be drawing expertise from throughout the business, together with veterans from Bungie, Rockstar, and Courageous At Night time (who you’ll in all probability know from Sure, Your Grace).
“Longdue’s debut RPG explores the fragile interaction between the aware and unconscious, the seen and unseen,” the press launch states. “Set in a world the place selections ripple between the character’s psyche and atmosphere, gamers will navigate a continuously shifting panorama, formed by each inner and exterior forces.” I don’t find out about you, however that definitely sounds a little bit Pale-like to me, no?
In case you cherished what The Thought Cupboard did within the unique Disco Elysium, you’re in all probability going to like the brand new ‘psychogeographic RPG’ mechanic that Longdue is engaged on, the place each choice reshapes each the world and the characters that inhabit it. On this expertise, the strains between the thoughts and the atmosphere blur, colliding and remodeling with every selection, main gamers by an ever-evolving narrative panorama. Color me intrigued.
The press launch definitely says all the appropriate issues to get my consideration. It notes that Longdue goals to create video games that “resonate emotionally and intellectually.” It assures us that the studio is right here to “construct a repute for persistently delivering high quality, with a concentrate on depth and narrative integrity”. That is, per the messaging, “only the start of Longdue’s journey to change into a trusted title within the higher RPG canon”.
The studio is funded by by “personal traders from the tech world”, although, and we noticed how that each one went down with Studio ZA/UM. It seems that people who find themselves so rich that gentle bends round them have the facility to trigger numerous issues for creatives. Who’d have thought it, ey?
However, reservations apart, I’m enthusiastic about this. We simply don’t get plenty of video games which might be as narratively and mechanically wealthy as Disco Elysium nowadays – the closest I can consider are in all probability Citizen Sleeper and Pentiment, however neither fairly scratches the identical itch. Disco Elysium, I’m not alone in pondering, was actually one thing particular.
However, good issues are by no means constructed to final, are they? In a story that might have been spun from one of many sport’s many side-stories, the collapse of the Disco Elysium concept post-release was messy, private, and achingly unhappy. Key figures in that first sport’s growth parted methods with developer Studio ZA/UM in 2021 (Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere), and torpedoed a sequel as they exited.
Following that, earlier this 12 months, we realized that one other spin-off sport set in the identical universe has been cancelled. And rumours abound that we’ll by no means get a Disco Elysium sequel or spin-off from Studio ZA/UM, ever.
No matter Longdue is engaged on will possible be our greatest probability at getting one thing even remotely comparable, then. I’ll be maintaining my eye on this one, and updating you every time there’s any information.
