Disco Elysium

There is no combat in Disco Elysium. You won’t shoot anyone. You won’t swing a sword. You won’t dodge-roll. If that’s already making you nervous, good — that’s the point. You’re about to discover that a video game can do something to you that no shooter ever has.

You play as a detective who woke up with no memory, in a city that’s falling apart, trying to solve a murder that might not even be the real mystery.

The game is played through dialogue. You talk to people. You examine things. You think — and your thoughts are characters, literally, different facets of your personality arguing with each other about what to do next. Your “skills” aren’t combat stats — they’re things like Inland Empire (your imagination), Authority (your ability to dominate a conversation), Empathy, Logic, Electrochemistry (your desires and impulses). When you try to do something, you roll dice against these stats, and the outcome changes what you learn, who you alienate, who you fall for.

The writing is the best in any video game ever made. Not “pretty good for a game.” Not “surprisingly literary.” The best. It’s a political novel, a detective story, a portrait of a broken man trying to piece himself back together, and a meditation on what it means to believe in something — communism, fascism, God, nothing — in a world that gives you no reason to believe in anything. It’s funny. It’s devastating. It’s horny in ways that will surprise you. It’s the only game that has ever made me put the controller down and stare at the wall.

And it respects your time. Twenty to thirty hours. No grinding. No filler. Every conversation is the game. Every word matters.

You think games can’t write. This one will prove you wrong on the first screen and never stop proving it.