An update to Disco Elysium adding a hardcore mode and ultrawide support is now available, bringing a lot more challenge and a few more pixels to the groundbreaking RPG. Disco Elysium’s incredible art style and the way it allowed for even failure to be interesting make these additions enticing upgrades for newcomers and repeat players alike.
Disco Elysium was one of the surprise hits of 2019. While it garnered a lot of attention in previews, the game stayed relatively under the radar until its release, when suddenly everyone was talking about it. Disco Elysium got excellent reviews across the board, with Screen Rant giving it 4.5/5 stars, calling it “an exquisitely-written RPG of external and internal turmoil.” It went on to sweep the Game Awards, picking up wins for Best RPG, Best Independent Game, Best Narrative, and Fresh Indie Game. In their many acceptance speeches, the team behind Disco Elysium pulled off another unexpected first, thanking Marx and Engels, which further solidified the idea that Disco Elysium is anything but conventional.
Widescreen support is certain to get some fans excited, but hardcore mode is clearly the big draw of the Disco Elysium update. According to a press release, activating hardcore mode will crank up the prices on consumables while decreasing their potency, make money harder to come up, and increase the difficulty of every skill check in the game. It sounds a lot more punishing, but it doesn’t necessarily mean players will be seeing the game over screen too much more. While it’s possible to die in Disco Elysium, there’s no combat in the traditional sense, and failing skill checks often means having to find a different way to reach a goal rather than just hitting a dead end. As the press release points out, the higher chances of failure could push players to try paths they wouldn’t have considered otherwise.
Disco Elysium’s main form of gameplay is selecting options in dialogue and reading lots and lots of text. Its developer, ZA/UM, says it based Disco Elysium’s dialogue boxes on Twitter feeds in order to keep players engaged when they’re reading reams of text in each play session, much like they would when spending time on social media.
Hardcore modes aren’t for everyone, and they tend to mostly reward those who get satisfaction from repeating banging their head against the wall before succeeding, but the same could be said of Disco Elysium. It’s a game filled with multiple paths and it’s possible to miss entire sections of the game on a first playthrough, making it a great candidate for any mode that forces players to get out of their comfort zone.
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Disco Elysium is available now on PC.
Source: ZA/UM / YouTube
