Out of all the games to come out in the last decade, none may be as important or as great as Disco Elysium. It’s a masterclass of an RPG, telling a horrifically real, incredibly impactful story that can only work in this medium. The themes of failure and finding hope shine bright due to the gameplay, on top of all the important commentary the game provides.
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The game has no weak moments, with each scene and character having something to say and leaving an impact. Each one offers a micro-story that emotionally grips you and leaves you with a new perspective after the fact. And amongst these, there are some that are truly breathtaking moments not just within games but fiction as a whole. These 10 are some of the best-written stories ever made.
10 The Car
There are so many moments within Disco Elysium that set the heavy tone and themes of the game perfectly, but the moment that personally distills the essence of Disco Elysium is discovering your crashed car. Once you open the water lock, you can explore the coastline, and among many things, you can discover a crashed car in the ice… One you discover is your car.
This scene perfectly sets the theme of slowly coming to terms with your failures and your delusions in the second half of the game as you sit and wait for the waters to recede enough to investigate the car. You are slowly spiral as you realize it's your car, something you cannot replace or save, the product of your greatest mistake. And even if you have Kim there to comfort you, you have to contend that you are a failure, not able to hide from it anymore this late in the game, unable to delude yourself.
9 Meeting Evrart
Every single character within Disco Elysium has such a strong presence, each of them having such bold personalities and stories that make them so memorable, but none may be as memorable as the first meeting with Evrart Claire. Evrart is the leader of the union, one of the biggest players in the city, and just meeting the man is a feat as you have to break through his strange bodyguard, Measurehead, just to get into the docks.
And it doesn’t get any better with the man himself as despite plenty of characters being far more despicable than him, Evrart is the slimiest liar and the most hateable of them all. Everything about the encounter is terribly uncomfortable, from Evrart’s bald-faced lies to your face that somehow pass Drama, to the fact that everything is made to drain your stats away, to how buddy-buddy he tries to act, and the music all comes together for an encounter that feels so wrong.
8 Meeting The Squad
While plenty of people have criticized Disco Elysium’s ending for feeling too linear compared to the rest of the game, several players think that it perfectly wraps up the story while still caring about players' choices, such as with the final scene of meeting your squad. The final piece of Disco Elysium’s ending sees you facing the police squad you abandoned, now in a second tribunal, as they come to judge how well you did and if you are fit to still be an officer.
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In this wondrous scene, you’re confronted with everything you did, both good and bad, and now forced to explain them away. Your new political beliefs, any side-quests you did, how you treated Kim, who you sided with in the conflict, and how you handled your addictions are brought up in ways that feel so special and gratifying if you tried to help Harry improve himself. While it can end horribly, other times, it can be a point of triumph as Harry proves he’s not that kind of animal anymore.
7 Klaasje
While Evrart’s first meeting is memorable, it’s nowhere near as effective as some of the biggest scenes with other characters, such as Klaasje. Klaasje is a strange but beautiful woman who acts as a key witness to the murder as she knew the victim, speaking to her about everything is a breakthrough in the case as she just pours out information about what really happened, giving you all the answers you want, but…It all comes together too easily.
The ease makes you forget that it utterly ignores the fact he was shot, something she never mentioned. But she wasn’t lying, right? That’s when it pulls the rug out from under you as you realize… Klaasje is such a good liar and seductress that your own skills are helping her lie, leaving you with nothing to trust but your intuition as the entire game and how much you trust the skills is flipped on its head. From this point forward, Klaasje serves as the most fascinating and confusing character in the game.
6 The Communists
Disco Elysium is a game soaked in political commentary, and the Final Cut update gave even more as the four political ideologies got their own “vision quests.” While all of them are great, the ending of the communist vision quest easily stands as the best. The ending to this quest sees you meeting what you think are the two last actual communists in Martinaise and simply having a talk with them.
The two are initially a joke, being naive students who do nothing but discuss nonsensical ideology and thought as they try to build an impossible matchbox tower… And yet, in the end, you can break through it and see what they truly think, how their belief in communism is simply them hoping that no matter how improbable it is, things can get better than how they are… And for just a moment, that matchbox tower stands. Just for one glorious moment of hope.
5 The Dance Party
What makes Disco Elysium so special is despite how mired in suffering it is, it still can have fun moments that feel truly earned, such as the unforgettable dance party in the abandoned church. This scene is the culmination of the ravers’ quest as you both turn an old church into a nightclub and discover the horrifying mystery of the hole in reality.
And once you manage to somehow turn even that into a new layer for the raver’s music, you unlock the ability to try to get everyone to dance, a rare moment of joy as you can even get Kim to go along with you and have some fun… Before it culminates in a beautiful scene of you passing out and speaking to Revachol itself, connecting to the torn and broken city that is so much like you. It’s a scene that’s both hilarious and beautiful.
4 The Working-Class Woman
While Disco Elysium has some moments of pure joy, it rests amidst a sea of despair. And that sea has some deep trenches of pure suffering, such as with the side-quest of the Working Class Woman. The quest starts out hitting you in the gut as while exploring the new second half of the map; you find a dead body, neck snapped in a horrible accident stepping on the wrong plank of a boardwalk, taken in an instant.
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But, as if that wasn’t hurtful enough, you have to do your duty as a cop and fill out a report… Before informing the man’s wife of what happened to him. Despite being so simple, the scene is utterly gut-wrenching as you have to build up the guts to just tell this poor woman her husband is dead for no reason. Even the best path through this scene leaves you with a broken woman, confused and scared for her family. There’s no happy ending, it’s a grim snap back to reality.
3 The Tribunal
While it is a depressing game, Disco Elysium keeps a more mellow tone throughout the runtime, keeping the mystery as something to take your time solving as things will wait for you… Well, except for the looming threat of the mercenary tribunal. The entire game keeps bringing back the threat of the mercenaries, who were with the hanged man and would seek blood against the murderers. When that moment finally comes, you have to stand between the two parties, ready to open fire.
It is the one time when you truly feel in danger and on edge within the game. You find yourself having to desperately try to make checks to calm down the situation before finally taking your shot. Despite being just a few dice rolls, it is horribly tense as it feels like any moment you could screw up and get everyone killed… And depending on how well you do or if you don’t shoot, it can be gut-wrenching as it ends up that way.
2 The Deserter
As said before, plenty critique Disco’s ending for not only the linearity but how it ends up solving the mystery, and while it isn’t the best for the detective side, The Deserter is the perfect culprit for Disco Elyisum’s themes. At the end of the game, you find yourself face to face with the murderer, an old communist sniper who has been hiding out since the war, bitterly taking potshots at those he hates.
The Deserter works so excellently because he isn’t someone with a grand plan or scheme like Evrart or Joyce; he’s just a bitter old man clinging to the past and buried in self-hatred. He’s a man without any hope left. And he serves as a dark mirror to Harry, showing exactly what he can be if he holds onto the past and gives into misery, not letting himself embrace the world as it is, no matter how cold and dark it is. And even if he doesn’t have much screen time, he serves as the perfect antagonist because of it.
1 The Phasmid
But, no matter how draped in misery the world of Elysium is, and no matter how much the game may revel in despair, it is a game about hope at the end of the day, and after diving into pure hopelessness with The Deserter, you’re met with that hope. You meet the Insulindian Phasmid -- a cryptid you’ve been on a wild goose chase for throughout the game, a funny side show… Now revealing itself to be real and utterly beautiful.
And, if you decided to cling to that bit of hope throughout the game and helped the cryptozoologists… You can communicate with it, and you’re greeted with one of the most beautiful scenes ever. As despite the beauty of the creature in front of you, despite their wondrous nature, they are in awe of you. In awe of your ability to survive being human, to survive being in your head, to survive all of that and still solve this case, to still live. While the squad is the culmination of Harry’s external journey, this is the culmination of his internal journey, finally seeing that despite his flaws and his stumbles. He made it. He’s alive at that moment and trudging forward, a miracle in action. It’s a scene that calls to the beauty and wonder of just being alive. And it is a moment that is unforgettable.
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