Summary
- PlayStation Plus' October offerings include horror titles for the Halloween season, but Disco Elysium shouldn't be overlooked.
- Disco Elysium is a non-traditional RPG with little combat, focusing on dialogue and skill checks for detective work.
- The game offers some of the best storytelling in gaming, immersing players in a rich fictional world with political ideologies and choices that affect the investigation.
PlayStation Plus' October 2023 offerings for its Extra and Premium tiers are exactly what one would expect around the Halloween season. Several horror titles such as Outlast 2, Dead Island: Definitive Edition, Alien Isolation, and The Dark Pictures Anthology's third entry, House of Ashes, are advertised as the subscription's major draws for the month alongside the DC superhero title Gotham Knights, but there is another title that's been added that shouldn't be overlooked: Disco Elysium.
The original Disco Elysium released in October 2019 to positive reviews and high acclaim, winning a plethora of awards surrounding its narrative and storytelling, while also being nominated for its artwork and as a potential Game of the Year at the 2019 Golden Joystick Awards, and 2020's D.I.C.E. Awards. The 2021 Final Cut edition included in the PlayStation Plus subscription improved upon the title even further with optimization for 4K gameplay and 60 fps performance, four new political vision quests, and the addition of a full cast of voice actors to further bring the characters to life.
Disco Elysium Is A Different Kind Of RPG
Disco Elysium is a non-traditional role-playing game featuring very little combat, which is part of what makes the dialogue-heavy detective RPG so refreshing as an experience compared to others in the genre. The isometric title was based on a tabletop game setting that its writer Robert Kurvitz created, and features incredibly striking, painterly art by Aleksander Rostov.
Rather than taking the more action-packed approach to detective work seen in other mainstream media, Disco Elysium's events are often resolved through conversations, skill checks, and dialogue trees via a system of 24 skills that represents different aspects of the protagonist, Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics. A system called The Thought Cabinet represents other ideologies and personality traits, with players controlling the protagonist's internal debates, and choosing whether to support or suppress their opinions during their interactions with other NPCs, adding another layer to the protagonist's psychology.
Disco Elysium's Storytelling Is Some Of The Best In Gaming
With such an insight into the protagonist's psyche, Disco Elysium offers some of the best storytelling in gaming to date. The title takes place within the fictional world of Elysium and follows a decorated detective, Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor, Harrier "Harry" Du Bois, who unravels a conspiracy after investigating a murder, all while suffering from a case of drug-induced amnesia so extreme that he has no memory of his own identity.
Elysium's rich political and cultural history is at the forefront of many interactions, making the fictional world seem even richer with numerous factions strongly voicing their views across different locations. These ideologies consist communism, fascism, moralism, and ultraliberalism, and Harry must navigate conversations with NPCs while either openly or secretly agreeing or disagreeing with their viewpoints in order to extract information, and these choices can steer how he ultimately conducts the investigation at hand.
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is markedly different to the other titles in PlayStation Plus' October offerings. For those who aren't necessarily horror or superhero fans, or just fancy something a bit different, the detective title is certainly worth diving into with many hours of expansive world-building, impressive visuals, and rich storytelling to be enjoyed. PS Plus Extra and Premium subscribers can access the game from Tuesday, October 17.