One Of Disco Elysium's More Noteworthy Features Was Almost Very Different

Disco Elysium has released to near-universal critical acclaim, delivering a story-driven detective RPG where your character is trying to solve a murder investigation while suffering from alcohol-induced amnesia. One of the game's more noteworthy features is the Thought Cabinet, an inventory system that allows you to unlock benefits from internalizing certain thoughts. Apparently, it wasn't always so beneficial.

"The original effects of the Thought Cabinet projects were to be more negative," Disco Elysium lead writer Robert Kurvitz said, according to VG247. "Oftentimes you would get straight up curses." Developer ZA/UM shifted gears on the Thought Cabinet in order to inject a little positivity in an otherwise fairly bleak story--redesigning the feature to showcase the thoughts the detective was mulling over, instead of obsessions warping their mind.

Kurvitz believes that humans can sometimes become too preoccupied with the notion that our ability to think is ultimately one of our biggest downfalls. In Disco Elysium, the protagonist's Thought Cabinet was redesigned to reflect the notion that, though human thoughts can be bad, they can also be a saving grace in dark, difficult times--a lifeline to keep people grounded. "Sometimes when I'm overwhelmed by negative emotions, I like to go on Wikipedia," Kurvitz said. "Read an article on Sir Francis Younghusband, Pleistocene megafauna, whatever. It's not only torturous to think--to be the kind of animal us humans are. It is also an absolute pleasure and a privilege."

Disco Elysium is the 16th game in GameSpot's history that the website has given a 10/10 review score. In GameSpot's Disco Elysium review, David Wildgoose wrote, "Disco Elysium is a mad, sprawling detective story where the real case you've got to crack isn't who killed the man strung up on a tree in the middle of town--though that in itself, replete with dozens of unexpected yet intertwined mysteries and wild excursions into the ridiculous, is engrossing enough to sustain the game. Rather, it’s an investigation of ideas, of the way we think, of power and privilege, and of how all of us are shaped, with varying degrees of autonomy, by the society we find ourselves in."

Disco Elysium is currently only available for PC. Console ports for PS4 and Xbox One are scheduled for 2020.

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