Is Disco Elysium A Fair Mystery?

Comments · 448

• PL

  @pleadthefilth · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9CUqCSAmc&amp;t=42">0:42</a> &quot;There must be no love interest&quot; Ok but did Van Dine consider that the protagonist&apos;s ex-wife may also be neoliberal Jesus?

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• PR

  @proplejeezus6406 · 2 months ago

  So, back when I finished disco my only real complaint was that I did feel a bit robbed of the detective story by the sudden appearance of the deserter. On a detective story level it&apos;s not super fun to have the killer show up in the last scene. <br><br>However, i believe now this is a valid subversion of the detective story. Disco is in part about the spectre of communism. The spectre of communism is never personalised in the story. There&apos;s plenty of other &quot;living&quot; competing ideologies who are personalised. The ultras are well and in control, the moralintern have a gun to your head, the union has its mouthpiece, but there&apos;s no character who embodies the spirit of the revolution before, because the revolution is supposed to be dead.<br><br>The deserter is that embodiment. He&apos;s been haunting the narrative and we&apos;ve felt his presence, both ideologically and in the detective story (we&apos;ve been lacking any conclusive suspect). The fact that it was him who did it is genius. The revolution isn&apos;t dead, it&apos;s still there, everyone can feel it&apos;s still there, but nobody can see it. And then, suddenly, in the midst of all the living ideologues manoeuvring it strikes, seemingly at random, seemingly without purpose, and nobody can really acknowledge what happened because in their minds it&apos;s doesn&apos;t exist anymore and therefore could never impact the world.

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• HU

  @hurlyburlywa6185 · 2 months ago

  Rule 15 is a weird one for Disco Elysium because on the one hand I totally agree that finding out that it was the deserter who did it is near impossible but on the other hand on a second play through it feels like every single bit of world building that you get is pointing you towards the fact that the deserter did it.

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• ME

  @melecaogaming1567 · 2 months ago (edited)

  Some disagreements myself, the video is great, but:<br><br>1. You find some Maybells (or whatever the flower is called) on Klaasje&apos;s balcony, something you can find out was a flower commonly worn by soldiers in the revolution.<br><br>2. You can get an.. Inland Empire check, i believe, which tells you that &quot;Communism killed him&quot; in regards to the hanged man. Or something like, &quot;love did him in, but communism killed him&quot;? It&apos;s been a while, but i do recall something along those lines.<br><br>3. It becomes apparent quickly that it couldn&apos;t have been any of your initial suspects, pretty much the moment you figure out he was shot with a rifle - which is done when you recover the bullet from the hanged man. Rifles are loud as hell, therefore at least one person would&apos;ve heard the shot if it came from anywhere nearby. <br><br>4. Doing investigation on the bullet leads you to find out it&apos;s a 4.46mm, and generally the consensus from skills like Encyclopedia and even Rene if you &nbsp;ask him about the rifle, it&apos;s that it&apos;s an outdated caliber no longer really produced, and it was commonly used by Revachol pre-revolution<br><br>5. When exploring the three possible vantage points except the Islet, you find out that they are not viable. &nbsp;Therefore, the shot had to have come from the Island.<br><br>All of these things point to the shooting having been carried out by someone using revolution-era weaponry, a communist and possibly an original revolutionary, from the islet. Obviously we don&apos;t know it&apos;s specifically the deserter, but you can theoretically put the accurate version of events together with the evidence presented to you by the game.

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• CA

  @CaptainBalcon · 2 months ago

  I find it extremely funny that Van Dine wrote these rules about making a perfect fair mistery, but in the only book I read written by him (don&apos;t remember the title right now) the solution about a locked room murder was the corpse of the victim WAKING UP, going into the room and locking the door. If I recall correctly it was explained as the brain still remaining active for some minutes after the murder and leading the corpse to do its usual actions during life. I don&apos;t even know if it&apos;s something that can actually happen in real life (highly doubt it), but I think it&apos;s the farthest thing from a fair mistery

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• AT

  @AtomicRiftYT · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9CUqCSAmc&amp;t=1494">24:54</a> This does sort of happen, actually. When you make it to Land&apos;s End, I believe there&apos;s a passive thought that pops up telling you that there&apos;s Tioumoutiri cigarette stubs on the ground. After viewing this thought, the game remembers this event, and you can later comment on it when grilling the Deserter. I also think there&apos;s a can with Tioumoutiri cigarette stubs in it in his sniper&apos;s nest. While this doesn&apos;t directly confirm his identity, it&apos;s technically involved

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• NI

  @Nixie_uk · 2 months ago

  About rule 15: on my first playthrough i managed to gather enough evidenence and conclude on my own that the murderer was on the island even though i missed allot of the information about &quot;fire man&quot; and even revolution in general. How i came to the conclusion is that on autopsy if you pass visual calculus check iirc you can notice irregular ligature marks excluding linching. The bullet belongs to the rifle, which ruby would not be able to conceal carry + hardy boys are armed with pistols not rifles in fact they clear rifle stashes out (refer to Titus). gunshot in that range would be clearly heard and the crime seems to be lined up too perfectly for the nature of the crime scene(you wouldnt usually plan timing on a kill where your target is together with another person). There`s also a bunch of stuff that i dont remember but on a high intelligence build you get more than enough evidence to conclude the killer is a sniper not connected with any group of influence or someone close to Klasje

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• EL

  @elbosshard · 2 months ago (edited)

  quick note regarding cigarette butts: while it obviously doesn&apos;t solve the murder, you actually can find cigarette butts somewhere north of the church in land&apos;s end and Harry can make a note of the brand. you can bring this up when you confront the deserter and I believe he confirms they&apos;re the brand he smokes. kind of inconsequential overall but a fun detail imo

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• YE

  @Yenwodyah · 2 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9CUqCSAmc&amp;t=325">5:25</a> Let&apos;s be real, Kim is way out of Harry&apos;s league.

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• PA

  @packman2321 · 2 months ago

  Regarding rule 9: I don&apos;t think this is about number. Kim is an assistant rather than a detective.<br>While Kim is a policeman, he doesn&apos;t go off and do investigation on his own or provide competing theories to Harrier. Instead, he serves to recap worldbuilding information or clues you&apos;ve already find and give you an opportunity to assess your theories. The reason more than one detective can be a problem for fairness is that it risks the audience missing clues, losing track of who knows what or ending up taking sides between detectives instead of trying to solve the puzzle, but the assistant is a tool to allow the audience to process or understand the detective and how their weird impulses will be seen (hence why Watson is the narrator, our lens through to Holmes).

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• L4

  @L4zrus · 2 months ago

  I think the deserter definitely passes rule 19.<br>The rule specifies &quot;international plottings,&quot; not personal politics. I believe this rule is meant to cover assassinations wherein the murderer&apos;s motive was purely to fulfill their role as a government agent/paid by a nation state. The deserter was certainly not ordered by the communists to shoot him, it was purely a &quot;personal motive&quot; as stated in the rule, even if that personal motive was influenced by his alignment.

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• KE

  @keromora · 2 months ago

  The deserter’s reason for killing wasn’t actually political, it was personal. This woman he had become obsessed with slept with someone he despised. He can ramble on about politics all he wants, the murder he committed doesn’t help his failed revolution in any way nor was it a part of a broader political agenda. The base impulse is no different to an incel decrying that women only date assholes. It’s someone you don’t like getting something you can’t have. He could have killed the mercenary at any moment but he chose to do it when he was with her because he wanted to hurt her too.

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