Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium by Estonian studio ZA/UM is a game without a single fight in the traditional sense - the player wakes up as an amnesiac detective in the depressing port town of Revachol and must solve a murder, armed with nothing but dialogue, persuasion, and introspection. Instead of weapons and hit points, the game relies on an extensive skill system such as Logic, Empathy, or Electrochemistry, which speak directly to the player as inner voices commenting on the situation, creating a unique sense of the protagonist's fragmented, unreliable mind. Dice rolls decide the success of lines and minor actions, and failure is often as interesting as victory, since it pushes the story in an unexpected direction.

The so-called Thought Cabinet system, in which the player literally internalizes ideas that affect his abilities and worldview, is one of the genre's most original mechanics, letting the detective develop even outright bizarre or self-destructive personality traits. The hand-painted, oil-painting-like graphics and the subdued, atmospheric soundtrack give Revachol the look of a rundown postwar town, where crumbling plaster equals crumbling ideals. The political spectrum from communism to fascism, existential crisis, and dark humor are handled with a literary quality comparable to serious fiction, which makes the game function more like an interactive novel than a classic RPG.

The 2021 Final Cut version brought full voice acting of all dialogue to PlayStation 4 along with new content, turning what was originally a text-heavy title into an experience accessible even from the couch. The fact that the game was written by a team with roots in an artistic collective with a literary background shows in an unusually open and unsentimental reflection on politics, class, and personal failure, still a rarity in video games. Critics praised it with extremely high scores for its originality of writing and systemic design, the game won a string of prestigious awards for its script, and it established ZA/UM as one of the most distinctive studios in the contemporary RPG scene.