Spoilers after the trigger warnings. If you are interested at all in the concept please play it for yourself as blind as possible. While it takes a while to get into, it's very enjoyable if it's your type of thing. This game handles a lot of heavy topics, and doesn't pull punches. If you can think of it, it's probably mentioned in the game. This is not an exhaustive list what so ever and only off the top of my head from my gameplay experience. 

IMO, the game (not always the colorful cast of characters) handles these topics respectfully, and everyone here is expected to do the same. 

TW: substance abuse, suicide, death, literal warcrimes, bigotry, dissociation/associated topics of mental illness... there's more I'm sure, take care of yourself.

Well, that's a wonderful introduction for whoever hasn't discovered this game yet. I might continue to edit this as I keep working through my thoughts since I only finished it very early this morning. I didn't keep my usual standard of notes because of situations. So this will be a rambling mess until I maybe come back to clean it up, but it's primarily to just discuss the game so it's fineee. To be transparent, I looked up a guide for only one mission because I was entirely stuck on it, and that was my only 'spoiler'. I also tried to not reload once I realized the game still rewarded me after failing. This playthrough was as the Thinker. It'll be a while before I play again, though. Five years seems like a good amount of time?

I've retried the opening of Disco Elysium several times over almost a couple of years. It was too familiar, pissed me off. In fact, my first real interaction was dying trying to get the tie. That was the first quit. I was angry since it was unfair, so impatient I believe I didn't even read what it said. I wanted to get to the mystery and nothing else mattered. I didn't even ask why the tie would be hanging there. I don't know exactly when, or how many, times I attempted it afterwards. I liked the concept of different aspects of the self pitching in because that's kinda how I learned to dissect my own thoughts. I finally got to the 'beginning' of the case - the hanged man. And promptly quit once more because the character I was forced to play couldn't handle a corpse.

Ironically, I was so disinterested I never bothered spoiling it for myself. I kept telling myself that I'd get around to playing it when I felt better, or was further away, so I wouldn't continue to be irrationally frustrated with something that I was imprinting my own experiences onto. 

The most recent attempt - the successful one - was primarily fueled by one thing. My own spite. I felt the worst I had for a while and wanted to stop glancing over my shoulder or at the screen. The other games I had been playing were either set in an even gritter world, or felt too stagnant for the level of brain-melting distraction I needed: a sour jawbreaker of a game.

I will now be discussing actual spoilers. Shoo if you haven't beaten it, or desire to do so. 

I almost entirely missed the second most striking moment of my playthrough purely because I did not want to help Evart Claire. Something something you'd think I had earned my lesson by now, but he literally did the chair trope. Engineered for someone like me to do absolutely everything to not obey a single word. Of course, during the debriefing of that day Kim points out he probably does have information and I finally caved. The thing that impacted me so much, however, was how Marianne LePlante was treated. I encountered her alone, because I had already sent the remains away. If you put in effort, you can learn a lot about her. How she has a name, how caring she was to the children long ago. Psychonauts is one of the few games I can recall doing something similar by actually treating people with issues as people with issues. C freaks out if there isn't a fence between you. Cuno is trying to protect her and himself. In fact, every character has a name, and a motive, somewhere. Despite knowing how horrible Ellis Kortenaer was I was weirdly glad to learn his. 

But there was a part of the game that drove me absolutely insane. I did everything I could find, but the story wasn't progressing. I knew about Ruby and I knew she had to be SOMEWHERE across the water. I kept getting popups in one area, so I kept checking. Nothing new happened, so I ran around again. Asked the guy and his kid, they didn't see anything. Another round. I ended up looking it up. I had never checked the right spot because I had already done so and I got no triggers near that building, just the one across from it. Perhaps it was a bug. Or I just should've known better. But honestly, I felt so drained when it asked me to 'look again', I just did the check again. The side quest was fun, but overshadowed by the exhaustion I felt. 

One of the places I reset was during the Ruby encounter. She killed herself. Why didn't Kim stop her? (He couldn't, he's shown to have less physical endurance than Harrier.) I let him lash out. Or, more accurately, I lashed out through the options the character had. Quit. Game over, good job. The real killer is out there still, and I'm throwing a tantrum because push came to shove. I took a break, realized I hadn't checked my emotions earlier and the imagery was particularly upsetting to me, and I reset. I was not going to finish otherwise. This time she escaped. I was far more content with that. Like yeah, crime and stuff, but she was far from the worst person there, and she was genuinely trying to do what she thought was best. Same with the Hardie boys in general, I guess. I didn't like them, but at least they're loyal and aren't absolute freaking losers. And know when loyalty isn't helping anyone. The cycle continues.

I do have opinions about the ending but I quite literally can't spend more time typing this rn, and knowing me I'm gonna close the tab before I post if I don't do it. Last thing for now is that the menu screen is literally the sniper nest looking over the city. After the credits I just sat there and stared until I realized the time.

Isoef Lilianovich Dros as a character made perfect sense to me. He spoke exactly like someone I knew, who never gave up a war he was born into and had nothing but hate for those who had. It at least made more sense than the other suspects, and the parallels were very clever. I also liked the general through line of the outsiders being the ones seeking to cause harm to Revachol. However I really don't know how I feel about the phasmid. It felt almost like an excuse, in a way, to have it be stated to have effected his mental state. Sure, he refused to leave, making that his choice, but it's just not enough. The discussion with it was cool, I guess, but it was overshadowed by my immediate frustration. If it was just left as "this guy has always been unable to let go, and refused to make peace with others, slowly degenerating more and more alone by his own choice" I would have been more moved by the conversation. There's so many people who refuse to let go of things, driving them to become more and more deranged with their jealousy and vile hatred. Why couldn't it be left at that? 

oh yeah reminder to talk about the church because that freaked me out and i dunno why yet