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Rolling the Dice: Disco Elysium, Postmodernism and Literary Possibilities

Thesis · September 2023

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33779.50723

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Title: Rolling the Dice: Disco Elysium, Postmodernism and Literary Possibilities

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

i
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND FIGURES

● Illustration 1: Representation of combat in the dialogue system. (Page 5)

● Illustration 2: Archetype selection screen at the beginning of the game, with a choice
to create one’s own. (Page 6)
● Illustration 3: Adjusting abilities enables players to create their character archetype.
(Page 7)
● Illustration 4: Each ability has six skills, representing a fragment of the character’s
‘self’. (Page 7)
● Illustration 5: ‘Inland Empire’ speaking to the protagonist within the dialogue
system. (Page 8)
● Illustration 6: In Thought Cabinet, thoughts are problems and ‘internalising’ them
leads to solutions. (Page 9)
● Illustration 7: The protagonist’s conversation with the novelty dice maker reflects
what makes RPGs work. (Page 10)
● Figure 1: A representation of Elysium world’s evolution and embeddedness between
different mediums. (Page 12)
● Illustration 8: Game design asset for Revacholian Eras (Jenkins). (Page 14)
● Illustration 9: A fan-made map of the fictional Elysium world (Cajolions). (Page 15)
● Illustration 10: The Inland Empire check enables the protagonist to speak to the dead
man. (Page 17)
● Illustration 11: The conversation between the ancient reptilian brain, the limbic
system and the consciousness. (Page 19).
● Illustration 12: Skills fighting over the course of action during a fight. (Page 20)
● Illustration 13: The ‘spirit of the city of Revachol’ speaking to the character through
the Shivers skill. (Page 21)
● Illustration 14: Horrific Necktie suggests the protagonist flee the scene when asked
to pay for his room. (Page 22)
● Illustration 15: The protagonist’s encounter with the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy.
(Page 24)
● Illustration 16: The protagonist’s conversation with Anette, the bookseller, about her
family shop. (Page 28)
● Illustration 17: Kim Kitsuragi warns Harry about RCM’s relationship with the local
community. (Page 30)
● Illustration 18: A graffito in Disco Elysium where the protagonist can choose to
write an anti-police slogan. (Page 32)
● Illustration 19: The Esprit De Corps skill references the protagonist’s continued
instability. (Page 33)
● Illustration 20: The Deserter confesses to killing the mercenary. (Page 35)
● Illustration 21: The protagonist talks to the Insulindian Phasmid about its allomone
and its effect on the Deserter. (Page 36)
● Illustration 22: The precarious world thought that foreshadows the nature of the
Elysium world. (Page 38)
● Illustration 23: The protagonist encounters the Fortress Accident office in the DCA
basement. (Page 40)
● Illustration 24: The dialogue between the protagonist and the Deserter which sums
up his worldview. (Page 41)
● Illustration 25: Visualisation of CCP and creation of the Pale (Jenkins). (Page 43)
● Illustration 26: The Visual Calculus skill recreating scenes from history. (Page 45)

ii
 1

INTRODUCTION

In 1970, Roland Barthes made a radical proposition in S/Z. He conceptualised the

notion of a writerly text and argued that its goal is ‘to make the reader no longer a consumer,

but a producer of the text’ (S/Z 5). However, he also claimed that such an object did not

hitherto exist. For Barthes, this proclamation might have been inspired by rare and

experimental books-in-boxes like Composition No. 1 by Marc Saporta, released in 1961, and

even B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, released in the United Kingdom a year earlier.

Unbeknownst to him, though, these words would echo in a new generation of storytelling.

Had Barthes waited a year longer, he would have found evidence of his writerly text in an

American mail-order catalogue—Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s Chainmail, the precursor

to the popular role-playing game (RPG) Dungeons & Dragons (D&D)—where players

decided the course of their own stories.

More than half a century later, RPGs are now widely accepted as ergodic literature in

academic and popular discourse.1 However, studies on their form and genres have been

limited, partly due to stylistic variations as well as knowledge gaps between ludology

(play/game) and narratology (narrative/literature). One such form, the computer role-playing

game (CRPG), evolving since the late nineties, has brought a depth of complexity in

interactive storytelling; as scholars point out: ‘one of the defining features of modern CRPGs

is the importance of story to play’ (Schules et al. 125). Meanwhile, other scholars like

Markku Eskelinen and Aarseth argue that viewing video games as a form of literature stems

from “imperialism,” “academic colonialism,” and “story fetishism”2 (Simons) and cite the

narratology vs ludology debate3 as a convenient dead-end to any development on their

1
Coined by scholar Espen J. Aarseth, ergodic literature is one where ‘nontrivial effort is required to allow the
reader to traverse the text’ (1). For evidence of its wider use, see Jara and Torner, Walter.
2
Imperialism and colonialism here refer to ascribing academic value to video games through established
discourses of literature and cultural studies and dismissing game studies as an independent field.
3
For a summary of the debate in game studies, see Frasca.
 2

intersections. While these assertions are important landmarks in the development of the game

studies field, their foundations lie in ludic-dominant games (emphasis on combat/play),

where the player is a passive follower. In these games, the player merely follows the rules of

the game to carry the narrative from one fixed point to the other. In contrast, post-2010 video

games like Heavy Rain, The Walking Dead, Undertale, The Stanley Parable, and Life is

Strange, and early outliers like Planescape: Torment and Fahrenheit display a narrative-

dominant style (emphasis on narrative) where the player becomes, in the Barthesian sense, a

co-creator of the text by shaping the story through their choices. The growth of such indie

games points to the transcendent capacities of stories told within the medium. Yet, as scholars

David Jara and Evan Torner contend, RPGs’ potential to understand or re-situate literature is

rarely discussed in the field (278). Therefore, contemporary research on video games must

respond to these changes by exploring emergent narrative possibilities. It ought to consider

the cross-pollination of stories and fictional worlds connected by a narrative tissue across

different mediums.

In this context, Estonian indie game development studio ZA/UM’s 2019 Disco

Elysium has already garnered significant academic attention4 and presents a compelling case

study. Its evolution from a D&D-style table-top RPG to a novel and finally to a choose-your-

own-adventure-style5 CRPG challenges established views of narrative in video games. It

attempts to embody a writerly quality through its dialogue-driven story, flexible

characterisation, expansive worldbuilding and multiple endings. The game blends science

fiction, detective and police procedural with political, magical realism and historiographic

4
Scholars Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen and Míša Hejná, for example, illustrate how in Disco Elysium, the
‘vocal performances of characters can contribute to sociocritical storytelling in video games.’ Meanwhile,
scholar Diana Khamis explores Disco Elysium as a philosophical text. Baltic Screen Media Review, a scholarly
journal based in Estonia, has also published a special issue on the game that ‘illustrates the significance of Disco
Elysium to the local and global game industry, and how it advances the aesthetic and philosophical
understanding of digital games’ (Apperley and Ozimek).
5
For more on the history of choose-your-own-adventure narratives see Mansky, on its literary implications, see
Cova and Garcia. The developers describe Disco Elysium as a ‘choose your own misadventure’ (Devblog).
 3

elements to produce a hybrid narrative. Unlike other games, Disco Elysium complicates

generic expectations and seeks to disrupt the post-enlightenment, modernist interpretations of

a narrative.6 The game's setting—Elysium—also becomes an important aspect of this

discussion. While resembling the real, the sci-fi world of Elysium challenges the rules of civil

society and its institutions, politics, and nature by creating spatiotemporal disorder and

fragmentation. The game’s characterisation also reflects these tendencies as it problematises

the understanding of characters as human beings. It leads the protagonist to behave as a

nomadic desiring machine who craves drugs, self-identity, and history—of the world and

himself. The game’s mechanics, like the thought cabinet, skill-abilities, and archetypes, are

all geared toward representing the various forms of desire circulating within and bursting out

of the character. The paper argues that these readings of Disco Elysium’s plot, setting, and

character highlight a key intersection between video games and narratology—the creation of

a postmodern CRPG.

In order to provide a relevant and comprehensive analysis of the text, this paper will

engage with the background of Disco Elysium writers, their politics, and a variety of

resources put together by the online game community. It will also reference developer blogs,

writing on Elysium by its worldbuilders, and critical readings of theories on the game. The

important secondary sources, in this regard, are the online blog of Martin Luiga, one of

Elysium’s early worldbuilders, and the community translation of lead writer Robert Kurvitz’s

novel Sacred and Terrible Air, originally written in Estonian. Both documents are integral to

an in-depth understanding of the game and its world.

The structure of this paper is driven by a reading of the game’s story and its elements,

borrowing from a range of postmodernist theories. By focusing on Disco Elysium as a text,

6
The idea of Modernism that the paper works with is one that philosopher Jean-François Lyotard argues
encompasses a linear, singular, and totalising grand narrative, with ideas of naturalism and realism, as Henry
James describes it, being its modus operandi.
 4

the project sets aside considerations such as the player's subjectivity, game coding, hardware,

and functionality. This is not to say that they are not an important part of a video game, but to

distinguish the project’s nature as a literary analysis from a computational and procedural

one. Furthermore, postmodernism in this paper neither refers to a break from Modernism nor

a continuation of the Modernist project. Postmodernism embodies an anti-grand narrative

approach, where assumptions of natural and linear characters, plot and setting are subverted

and erased. It is a theory that desires to understand what lies beyond the conventional limits

of text, fiction, and the world. The paper engages with scholarly works by Brian McHale,

Stefano Tani, Paul Smethurst and Aleid Fokkema, whose literature-oriented approaches to

the field are useful frameworks to see beyond the horizon of traditional narrative theory. The

research also leans on philosophers like Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix

Guattari, Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes and their lasting legacies of operating in the

obfuscated fissures of literary landscapes.

Following an overview of the game, chapter one opens with a discussion of Disco

Elysium’s background and formal elements that contribute to gameplay and aspects of

postmodernism. Chapters two, three and four analyse the game's plot, setting and characters,

explaining how they are critical to its transformation into a postmodern text. These follow a

conclusion of this paper where the implications of this analysis, the scope for expansions and

gaps of knowledge, and a potential way forward for readings of CRPGs are discussed.
 5

GAME OVERVIEW

Disco Elysium (DE) is a computer role-playing game produced by Estonian indie

game development studio ZA/UM, released initially in 2019 for Windows and MacOS,

followed by a ‘Final Cut’ for PCs and consoles in 2021. The game is written and designed by

novelist Robert Kurvitz and is set in a ‘fantastic realist’—blending both fantasy and

realism—the world of ‘Elysium.’ The world was first conceived as the setting of a table-top

role-playing game, then used in Kurvitz’s novel Sacred and Terrible Air and later served as

the world where DE takes place. The game follows an amnesiac detective who, while solving

a murder mystery, also attempts to discover his past and the city's political situation. Instead

of being combat-heavy like most RPGs—where the story progresses through fighting and

defeating the enemy—DE adopts a different system. According to its developers, ‘the action

sequences are literature-heavy showdowns’ (Devblog, “Frequently Asked Questions”), where

the story progresses through dialogues, not only with other characters but also with voices in

the protagonist’s head. The latter, more importantly, is conceived in the game through skill-

abilities. Even in the few instances where traditional combat occurs with weapons, it is built

as set-piece moments managed within the dialogue system.

Illustration 1: Representation of combat in the dialogue system.

 6

In effect, the game plays as a turn-based dialogue-driven story, where players are not only in

control of the character but also the story that changes based on their choices. DE’s narrative

is unique in its engagement with internal monologues, which have a significant bearing on

the fifteen possible endings7—ranging from successfully solving the crime and avoiding any

death of its characters to dying from a heart attack when turning on the lights for the first

time. Even before the story begins, the player is given the choice of archetypes, which

significantly changes the dialogue options, actions the player-character can perform and how

the other characters interact with the protagonist.

Illustration 2: Archetype selection screen at the beginning of the game, with a choice to create one’s own.

These archetypes are built on combinations of four basic abilities: Intellect, Psyche, Physique

and Motorics.

7
This includes twelve game overs, where the player can choose if they want to keep playing from the last save
point and continue the story.
 7

Illustration 3: Adjusting abilities enables players to create their character archetype.

The more each ability is used in the game, the more experience the character gains in that

ability and, hence, becomes better at it. In Disco Elysium, these abilities also have a unique

set of six skills attached to them, each of which manifests as voices in the protagonist’s head,

affecting the story.8

Illustration 4: Each ability has six skills, representing a fragment of the character’s ‘self’.

8
For more on skills see Disco Elysium Wiki, “Skills”; Devblog, “Meet the Skills”; Michael et al.
 8

For example, while examining the corpse around which the murder mystery is based, one of

the psyche skills, ‘Inland Empire,’ named after David Lynch’s 2006 film, muses on the fate

of the protagonist’s body when he eventually dies:

Illustration 5: ‘Inland Empire’ speaking to the protagonist within the dialogue system.

Such interactions are not merely cosmetic but affect how the character begins to think and

perceive the city and the world around him, changing the dialogue options available to

players and altering the story of the character and the plot. The skills are also linked to an

alternate in-game inventory called the thought cabinet9 comprising fifty-three thoughts,

which, when ‘internalised,’ can boost skills, change the protagonist’s reputation, and reveal

new story arcs and character interactions.

9
For more on thought cabinet see Devblog, “Introducing the Thought Cabinet.”
 9

Illustration 6: In Thought Cabinet, thoughts are problems and ‘internalising’ them leads to solutions.

It is also connected to the player’s choice to roleplay the protagonist along any of the four

ideologies—socialism, moralism, fascism, and ultraliberalism10—and seven ‘copotypes’11—

Superstar Cop, Apocalypse Cop, Sorry Cop, Boring Cop, Honour Cop, Art Cop and Hobo

Cop. These alignments also significantly impact character interactions and how the story

plays out without affecting the ending.

10
For more on political alignments and ideologies, see Devblog, “The Political Alignment System.”
11
The archetype of a ‘cop’ (police officer) the player can choose to roleplay. For more, see Disco Elysium
Wiki, “Copotypes.”
 10

CHAPTER ONE

MISPLACED IDENTITIES: DISCO ELYSIUM, RPGS AND THE POSTMODERN PROJECT

Illustration 7: The protagonist in conversation with a novelty dice maker, reflecting on why RPGs work.

While critics have used labels like ‘interactive fiction’ and ‘interactive novel’12 to

describe Disco Elysium, the developers call it ‘neither fantasy, alternate history, nor any type

of -punk, a novel set in the same world has been dubbed fantastic realism’ (Devblog,

“Announcing No Truce…”). Curiously, the parallel between role-playing games (RPGs) and

novels is not new. Several scholars have also used it in their quest to define the genre. Rick

Swan, for example, claims that ‘a roleplaying game is an improvised novel in which all the

participants serve as authors’ (3). This early notion is useful as it considers the multiplicity of

its ludic co-creation. At least three known worldbuilders—Robert Kurvitz, Martin Luiga, and

Jüri Saks—were involved with making Elysium, the world in which Disco Elysium is

situated. Additionally, after it evolved from a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) to a

computer roleplaying game (CRPG), a team of eight writers was added to the project.

12
These terms signify particular forms in the Game Studies domain that do not coincide with computer role-
playing games (CRPGs).
 11

However, Kurvitz both reaffirms Swan’s idea of an RPG in noting these complexities and

rejects it by proclaiming that roleplaying games are a bigger challenge than writing a cycle of

novels (ZA/UM 17). This claim underpins the intention behind Disco Elysium — the

challenge of transforming CRPGs from simply being a ludic medium into a multi-layered

writerly text. The various areas of writing are, therefore, critical to this discussion. Aspects of

worldbuilding—the creation of a setting, characterisation—the creation of characters, and

campaigns—the creation of story/plot, take priority over elements of non-narrative ludology.

They form the core of a new identity, the postmodern CRPG, and demand closer analysis.

Apart from creating this new identity, Disco Elysium also forms a new extension of an

already established identity. Its setting is ‘adapted’ from a larger narrative world—Elysium,

whose origins lie in the TTRPG. Elysium also serves as a setting for Kurvitz’s novel Sacred

and Terrible Air, published six years before the game. Though they have different characters

and plots, DE is also connected to the novel through its setting and narrative events. The

game’s status as a story within the story of Elysium points to a certain type of intertextuality

and anachronism. More importantly, however, it questions Disco Elysium’s identity as a self-

contained text. It reflects what scholar Brian McHale calls an ‘ontological dominant’13 of

postmodernist fiction:

Postmodernist writing is designed to raise such questions as: What is a world?

What kinds of worlds are there, how are they constituted, and how do they

differ? What happens when different kinds of worlds are placed in

confrontation or when boundaries between worlds are violated? What is the

mode of existence of a text, and what is the mode of existence of the world (or

13
For a detailed summary of McHale’s argument, see Istvan Csicsery-Ronay.
 12

worlds) it projects? How is a projected world structured? and so on. (Nicol

284)

Though the idea of worldbuilding and the world, albeit fictional, is central to all

roleplaying games, Elysium questions the singularity of fictional worlds as it exists in

three forms—a TTRPG, a novel and a CRPG. Since the tabletop game is not made

public, its adaptation to the video game and novel leaves many questions unanswered.

Tropes like parallel universes and alternate dimensions or realities do not plug the

gaps caused by the differences in forms. Instead, Elysium is comfortably situated in

its impossibility of narrative omniscience as it remains fragmented and ontologically

plural. Thus, understanding the story’s embeddedness becomes critical to the project

of any possible meaning-making of the world. Following Barthes’ suggestion in

Structural Analysis of Narratives that ‘to understand a narrative is not merely to

follow the unfolding of the story, it is also to recognise its construction in storeys’

(87), the same can be applied to efforts in understanding non-linear narrative worlds:

Elysium World

Table-top roleplaying
game campaigns

Sacred and
Terrible Air
(Novel)

Disco Elysium
(CRPG)

Figure 1: A representation of the Elysium world’s evolution and embeddedness between different mediums.
 13

Though such representations give the illusion of narrative orderliness, it also shows that

Disco Elysium’s narrative world is ontologically related to its precursors. It problematises a

singular understanding of a narrative world because these narrative spheres, within which

Disco Elysium is embedded, are not unitary or homogenous. For example, the overarching

sphere of TTRPG makes the Elysium world fluid to the needs of each campaign. Meanwhile,

in both the novel and the CRPG, characters not only know little about their world, but large

parts of the Elysium world remain unexplored by characters—as evidenced by the presence

of ‘entroponauts’ (like astronauts but for the Elysium world). The ontology of the Elysium

world is, therefore, constantly evolving and expanding. As Martin Luiga, one of Elysium’s

early worldbuilders, attests: ‘The world (of Elysium) not being readily understandable has

always been central to the project, and it, of course, points at our world not being readily

understandable’ (Correction). Paradoxically, the ‘human’ civilisation of the Elysium world

closely mimics real-world politics, society, and economics. This is evident in its evolution

across the eras, where the fictional world can be understood through its reliance on well-

established political systems like communism, capitalism, liberalism, and fascism.

 14

Illustration 8: Game design asset for Revacholian Eras (Jenkins).

Similarly, the geographical layout of the Elysium world also presents such problems. Though

not spherical or continentally divided as the Earth, the presence of maps in Disco Elysium

means that its fictional construction still lends itself to cartographies and resemblance to real

geography, leading its community to speculate about the positioning of landmasses called

Isolas (islands) and the nations that inhabit them.

 15

Illustration 9: A fan-made map of the fictional Elysium world (Cajolions).

Indeed, the Elysium world weaves in the fictional and the real but blurs the lines

between the kinds of worlds it represents. It plays with the meaning of the world and,

in doing so, creates multiple strands that lead to tricky contours of meaning. For

example, the strands of DE attached to the novel Sacred and Terrible Air have

complicated implications. Firstly, the absence of an official translation presents

several challenges. While continuing to pose questions about authority, it enters

murky territories around reliability and accuracy. The text is only available in the

public domain through two community translations. Much like DE, the novel also

plays with the detective plot —with one of its three protagonists a private investigator

and the other a police officer in their quest to find three missing girls. More

importantly, it contextualises and confronts the worldbuilding of Disco Elysium

against itself and, by doing so, expands the Elysium world in its textual presence. The
 16

translated novels act as books of lore14 for the game community and reflect their role

as postmodern texts whose function, Leslie Fiedler asserts, is to close the gap between

elite and mass culture (Nicol 163-164). The books are discussed, extended, theorised,

and debated among those determined to map out the intricacies of the Elysium world.

The game and the novel are also connected with the world in these spaces. However,

they also become pieces of the puzzle that the gaming community attempts to

assemble into a cohesive narrative.

It is this dream of a cohesive narrative that both the game and the novel, and in

essence the world of Elysium, rebel against. They reinforce that failure is the fate of any

attempts at meaning-making—that even the soundest structures are inherently absurd. This is

especially true of the game Disco Elysium, which glorifies failure by not punishing the player

for making mistakes but enabling a narrative where the story lives by these flaws. The

developers describe Disco Elysium as a ‘game about being a total failure. An almost

irreversible, unmitigated failure. Both as a human being and an officer of the law’ (Devblog,

“Announcing No Truce…”).15 As a result, the story and the characters also often take

contradictory turns. The text arrives at a point of narrative fluidity that is possible only in the

world of Elysium, where actions matter not only because they upset a grand narrative but also

because of their immediate effects on the protagonist’s surroundings and their own identity.

The text raises many such ontological concerns not only in its origins and objecthood but also

in its plot, setting and characters. In the next three chapters, this paper will attempt to uncover

some of Disco Elysium’s postmodernist preoccupations.

14
Lore is a game’s backstory that is not always included in the text. To read more on lores and their function,
see Paklons and Tratsaert.
15
For an in-depth discussion of Disco Elysium’s emphasis on failure, see Sawicki.
 17

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHO ARE YOU, DEAD MAN?’: DISCO ELYSIUM, CHARACTERS, AND POSTMODERN DESIRES

Illustration 10: The Inland Empire check enables the protagonist to speak to the dead man.

Contradictory to the convention, one of the most striking aspects of Disco Elysium is

the narrative’s disregard for a proper name that is the fundamental cohesive factor of a

character, without which it cannot exist (Fokkema 35, 38-39). From the protagonist, who

assumes various aliases in his conversations, to many minor characters, who are either named

after their roles or have their roles attached to their names, display this tendency. This is the

first indication that the characters are a function of the game’s narrative instead of being the

anchors around which the narrative world is built. The characters are not meant to represent a

human being, as in, ‘resemble life or reality within a specific set of conventions that are

accepted as natural by a community of readers’ (Fokkema 16)16 but rather are a self-

conscious function of the text that reinforces the aspects of its artificiality. Disco Elysium

16
For more on the literary tradition of character as a human being, see Chapter 2 of Fokkema’s discussion of
Henry James, E.M. Forster, and Baruch Hochman.
 18

achieves this by intertwining characterisation with the notion of a postmodern desire. On a

larger level, it enacts a narrative desire to violate logical and biological codes that create

characters as ‘natural’ and coherent constructs. On an individual level, the protagonist is

constructed as a nomadic desiring machine who goes against the idea of characters as rational

beings.

The first disruption of codes in Disco Elysium is observed in the twisting of basic

biological functions and movements of characters. For example, the protagonist’s ability to

run without the need to stop and catch his breath is an impossible feat for a human being. The

game, self-conscious of this factor, also pokes fun at this through instances where the

protagonist’s partner, Kim Kitsuragi, taunts him for running around everywhere. Ironically,

there are some places in the city that the protagonist cannot access because it does not serve

any narrative function. Notably, most minor characters are also situated within designated

positions and rarely move out of them—they can be found standing at their spot from day till

night without tiring or taking a break. Even sleep, necessary for any living being, is only a

function in the narrative to progress time17 and heal the protagonist’s morale and health.

The protagonist also violates the mind-body dualism that dominates the Western

cultural notion of a human being. This is evident in the first conversation of the game

between the ‘Ancient Reptilian Brain’ and an unnamed character, which takes place at the

cusp of existence—a liminal moment before the protagonist gains consciousness and opens

his eyes. As the scene progresses, from nothingness stems distant memories, after which the

‘Limbic System’ also begins to speak. Awareness creeps up on the character—of his physical

body—the ‘meat-thing.’

17
Though the protagonist has the option of not sleeping, the in-game clock stops at 2:00 a.m. if he does not—
which means the narrative progress is halted.
 19

Illustration 11: The conversation between the ancient reptilian brain, the limbic system and the consciousness.

This entire sequence is a sign that the narrative re-enacts throughout the game—the body can

speak as manifestations of the mind. It constructs the protagonist as a posthuman assemblage

through parts that are not just ‘bodily functions, but complex amalgams of materiality that

transgress the traditional boundaries one would confine the human body within’ (Mckeown

72). Without indicators like a name or established relationships with other characters, the

protagonist’s brain, limbic system and even the spinal cord come alive as elements of

existence. The game also makes this possible through its conception of ‘physique’ and

‘motorics’ skills that not only determine the physical makeup of the protagonist but also

actively converse with him. This shows that internal processes shape the protagonist more

than interactions with the external fictional characters and the world. Thus, skills and body

parts become the protagonist's primary mode of identity formation. They even inspire

thoughts and actions and guide his development across communist, ultraliberal, fascist,

and/or centrist political alignments and one and/or many copotypes.

 20

Illustration 12: Skills fighting over the protagonist’s course of action during a fight sequence.

These skills, embodying the physical and mental traits of the protagonist, also display

individual characteristics. They have motives (display of their ‘usefulness’ to the character),

interact with each other, grow more influential (level up), and possess the ability to shape the

narrative according to their points (the higher the points in certain skills, the more dominant

they are). These aspects of the skills problematise logical codes that avoid contradictions and

‘guarantee that the same character cannot be understood to exist and not exist, be human and

inanimate, at the same time’ (Fokkema 74). In DE, skills become characters in their own

right, presenting the protagonist as a vessel carrying a host of characters. Though internal

conflicts are a traditional trope, Disco Elysium repurposes it by making it about a journey of

creating a narrative identity from a blank slate—from a vessel to a character. In this context,

one of the most important skills in the story is Shivers. This physique attribute allows the

protagonist to become a ‘medium’ and translate bodily sensations. It is revealed late in the

narrative that the Shivers skill is not the protagonist’s internal voice but the voice of the city

incarnate.
 21

Illustration 13: The ‘spirit of the city of Revachol’ speaking to the character through the Shivers skill.

In these instances, the narrative calls into question the composition of the characters,

especially the protagonist. There is no separate mind and body, but assemblages and heaps of

discourses and characters speaking on top of each other within a single character.

Logical code is also disturbed in Disco Elysium as objects also serve similar functions

as characters in the game in delivering soliloquies, inspiring thoughts and moving time

along.18 Moreover, like characters that exist in a text to ground other characters, especially

the protagonist, objects also boost and decrease the physical and mental traits of the

protagonist in Disco Elysium.19 This is especially true for the protagonist’s build20 as a

‘sensitive’ cop, whose ‘horrific necktie’ begins to speak. Though it is suggested that the

necktie’s speech is merely imagination, its interjections at unexpected moments blur the line

between mere illusion of speech and intelligent responses to situations where it has no place.

18
For more, see Michał Kłosiński’s in-depth analysis.
19
For more information on specific objects and their functions, see Williams.
20
In gaming terminology, a build is the arrangement of skills, items, and attributes that make a character.
 22

Illustration 14: Horrific Necktie suggests the protagonist flee the scene when asked to pay for his room.

Moreover, the protagonists’ interaction with objects like mailboxes, monuments, beds,

chairs, and doors is not encoded with the same caveats. The option to internalise the ‘Anti-

Object Taskforce’ thought where the protagonist sees ‘the material world holding you back’

is further evidence of the role of objects as characters. Though these conversations may be

imaginary, they serve the same narrative function as a ‘human’ character would. Indeed, if

imaginary human characters are a common feature in literary texts, Disco Elysium extends

this to objects and skills.

The narrative also problematises the idea that a character’s control over mind and

body, like a human being, is a given. The game governs the actions and dialogues of the

protagonist through active and passive checks.21 Critically, passing these checks depends not

only on the points in a skill but also on the roll of a dice. Though failing these checks do not

lead to an inability to act or speak, they often lead to wrong ends. DE thus conveys that

contexts and chance play an equally important role in characterisation as the narrative

trajectory set out for the character in a text. The game also complicates logical and biological

21
For more on active and passive checks, see Devblog, “On Active Skill Checks” & “On Skill Checks.”
 23

codes in the narrative space to reload the game and ‘start over’ from the last save point before

the protagonist’s death. This immediate reincarnation of characters in the same

spatiotemporal configuration, or more accurately, reversal of time to change the course of the

narrative, is unique to video games. The protagonist’s narrative indestructibility certainly

points away from the tradition of seeing characters as accurate portrayals of human beings.

While logical and biological codes are indeed twisted if not violated entirely, the text

closely follows social codes—that the identity of characters, like human beings, is created

from society and interactions—and psychological codes—that characters can, for the most

part, control their desires and psyche. The focalisation of the text on inner motives and

psychical make-up of the protagonist and most other characters and their situation within the

narrative’s social structure emphasises this. Some characters are built solely around these

aspects of discourses on race, for example. Meanwhile, other characters’ dialogues are also

primarily constructed as a rundown of Revachol’s class war between the workers and the

monopolistic conglomerates. The protagonists’ strict alignment/non-alignment with these

social codes is an important aspect of how the narrative shapes up. However, these are often

pushed to a parodic polarity, where the characters and the protagonist occupy extreme

positions within the narrative, embodying their ideologies entirely and leaving no room for

rational thought. For example, the titular character of Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy inside a

shipping container embodies the ultraliberal spirit so wholly that he distorts his surroundings

and violates laws of physics by bending light around him.

 24

Illustration 15: The protagonist’s encounter with the Mega Rich Light-Bending Guy.

Thus, Disco Elysium breaks logical and biological codes even when subscribing to social

codes. Characters in the text are not constructed as coherent selves with a finite, unchanging

identity but as fluid narrative objects occupying various positions in a web of discourses. 22

The text’s treatment shows ‘the paradox of a postmodern character that both practices and

undermines representation’ (Fokkema 69).

Disco Elysium’s use of psychological codes also lends itself to a discussion of their

role in constructing an unconventional protagonist. While interrogating a suspect about their

motive, the protagonist remarks: ‘Desires drive people loco.’ This perhaps comes from the

character’s delusional experiences and hallucinations about talking to objects and dead

bodies. Though the character emphasises being ‘loco’— crazy—a common reaction to

irrationality and absence of meaning, what also deserves attention here is that desires can

drive subjects/objects. Indeed, the concepts of desire and delusion in Disco Elysium merge in

the protagonist’s character, hinting at the possibilities of a postmodern mode of existence

22
Fokkema argues that character’s status in postmodern fiction is problematic—that it demonstrates ‘only
fragile subject positions, that language is the only constituent of self’ (13).
 25

where forms of identity and stasis can be transgressed. This is present in the protagonist’s

construction as an ‘unstable’ character whose physical, mental, social, political, and

historical, i.e., ideological and material, subjectivity can differ with contexts and

conversations. However, unlike the traditional understanding of desire in characters as a

driving force seeking to acquire something it lacks, the protagonist acts as a ‘desiring

machine’ who produces and actualises desire during his interactions. The character’s amnesia

and schizophrenic tendencies reflect the idea that ‘desiring machines run only when they are

not functioning properly’ (Deleuze and Guattari 31). Psyche skills, for example, which betray

the framework of a cohesive psychic unit, work as desiring energies that produce a flow of

desire from itself. Each skill has its interpretation of events and interactions and produces a

desire to be heard. They not only speak to the protagonist but demand that their suggestions

be acted upon. These fragmented desires of the protagonist neither originate from a lack,

since it is part of a whole—the character’s psyche and being characters within themselves—

nor from a moral coding. Instead, it comes from a liberatory or revolutionary stance—to

create reality itself by getting the protagonist to act upon these desires.

The desires of bodily forces and intensities within the desiring machine of the

protagonist are not cohesive or unified either. They depict a certain micropolitics of desire

between modern and postmodern knowledge23 that Lyotard lays down in The Postmodern

Condition. Intellect and Motoric skills stand in for the former, while Psyche and Physique

skills represent the latter. Encyclopaedia skill, for example, draws from history and explains

the world through established knowledge systems. In contrast, Inland Empire seeks to

unleash ‘uncontrollable imagination’ for the protagonist to often inaccurate but enigmatic

23
Modern knowledge is encapsulated as appealing to metanarratives and legitimate foundationalist claims and
desire for homogeneous epistemological and moral prescription, while postmodern knowledge prioritises
heterogeneity and plurality and eschews grand schemes of legitimisation (Best and Kellner 165).
 26

ends. These desires, which Lyotard calls ‘energetics,’ that the skills possess, circulate within

the protagonist in an ebb and flow. The protagonist jumps between his reliance on them in

different contexts and times. Thus, he performs a certain Deleuzian nomadism24 where the

subject is in constant motion across stable identities and thus cannot be pinned to one. The

protagonist critiques the idea of desire by deterritorialising it from both modern and

postmodern forms of knowledge—which, as systems, still seek to ‘discipline’ the idea into

forms of theoretical understanding. This idea is also extended to the thought cabinet, where

‘internalised’ thoughts can be forgotten to make space for new thoughts or just for

‘unmaking’ a subject. Ultimately, the narrative allows this space to liberate desires by

‘emptying them’ from the self.

The characterisation in Disco Elysium thus poses several challenges to the limits

within which characters are constructed and operate in forms outside of CRPGs. Instead of

developing a character, the text questions the idea of characterisation amidst the instability of

individual characters. It (re)turns to McHale’s ontological concern from the perspective of a

character in questioning its origins, constructions, constitutions, structuring and existence.

Each aspect of character construction occupies antithetical positions in their understanding as

representative of human beings, even in its mimesis. It draws attention to the artificiality of

its characters by violating various textual codes, even when adhering to them, that form

conventions of characters in texts. More importantly, it shows how the idea of a character

may be re-invented as desiring machines where the fluidity of subjecthood and discourses are

emphasised. These disruptions become even more significant when put in the context of the

plot of Disco Elysium, which also plays with the idea of characters and their roles within a

24
For more on Deleuzian nomadism, see Chapter 12 of Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.
 27

story, beginning with the protagonist whose identity as a police officer and a detective is

mired with narrative precarity.

 28

CHAPTER THREE

‘POLICE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR GAMES’: DISCO ELYSIUM AS AN ANTI-DETECTIVE CRPG

Illustration 16: The protagonist’s conversation with Anette, the bookseller, about her family shop.

Three main plots run along the story of Disco Elysium, with a few subplots feeding

into them. At the heart of it is a murder mystery—a mercenary’s body hanging from a tree for

a week in the backyard of a hostel cafeteria in Martinaise, Revachol. This is set against the

backdrop of a months-long strike by the Dockworker’s Union over their demands for board

seats on the Wild Pines Group, the principal operator of the harbour. Meanwhile, the

protagonist, Harrier “Harry” Du Bois, wakes up after a drunken night, unable to remember

anything about the case, the strikes, his identity, or the world. He must either rediscover his

past or reinvent himself.

In some of his first conversations with a host of characters, the protagonist is either

called an ‘officer’—prompting him to ask if he is the police—or is reminded that he is a

‘cop.’ In the world of Elysium, however, as Kim Kitsuragi, Harry’s partner and fellow

officer, points out: ‘There is no such thing as a police officer.’ Instead, the protagonist is a

part of the RCM—Revachol Citizen’s Militia—a self-organised peace corps of the city that
 29

operates within a legal ambiguity and is governed primarily through an Emergency Act.

Though this does not diminish their authority as de facto police officers, they differ from

traditional police detectives. For example, RCM officers cannot demand operator licences,

evict citizens from public spaces or use a citizen’s words against them in court unless it is a

confession. These restrictions and constraints of power are key to understanding how Disco

Elysium destabilises police representation in fiction.

Several concerns voiced by police studies scholars in their discussion of postmodern

law and governance are realised in the conception of the RCM and their officers. For

instance, Les Johnston identifies shifts from traditional policing to ‘hybrid policing,’ echoing

scholar Pat O’Malley’s observation of a rise in community policing in a postmodern world.

RCM pushes this to an extreme as a similar hybrid, community-led organisation whose

‘formal status and operating territories cut across the public-private divide’ (Johnston 114).

The existence of RCM is possible by the participation of citizens. Instead of community

policing, the organisation is the community policing itself. Nevertheless, the protagonist’s

police work in Disco Elysium is critically linked to building a relationship with its citizens.

Not just the murder mystery, indeed, the entire narrative is carried out under the guise of

police work that requires having conversations with the community. For example, an

antagonistic approach to dealing with the Hardie boys—a group of union workers who are

one of the prime suspects in the case—can lead to an ending where they kill the protagonist

without any consequences. What takes precedence, therefore, in the case of RCM officers’

work and the plot of Disco Elysium is the community, not policing.
 30

Illustration 17: Kim Kitsuragi warns Harry about RCM’s relationship with the local community.

Scholar Robert Reiner also points out that in the postmodern society, the police are

fragmented and have ‘fallen from grace.’ The RCM shows similar fragmentation in its

conflict about the jurisdiction of Martinaise between the protagonist’s precinct 41 and his

partner’s precinct 57. It remains an ‘orphan district’—seen by both precincts as a territory of

dominance but wanted by none. This has led to RCM’s fall from grace and the dockworkers

union's takeover of on-ground law and order in the district. Almost all characters in the game

display hostility toward the protagonist, with some using the term ‘pig’ to address the

officers. There is also a sense of de-legitimation of RCM, which comes from the absence of

State backing. Though the Emergency Act gives the RCM the power to police its citizens, it

does little to lay out the terms of its powers or make the government accountable for its

actions. The organisation functions as an autonomous body. The fact that its volunteers are

unclear whether the organisation was formed by the coalition government25 or by the citizens

25
It is explained in the game that Revachol, the ‘former capital of the world,’ is divided into zones of control
under ‘foreign occupation’ by a coalition government formed by three nations after crushing a communist rule.
 31

themselves attests to this. The RCM, therefore, is not just a fragmented organisation but a

fragment without a clear origin. It never realised a point of authority from which it could fall.

Being an RCM officer is not the same as being a police officer, as the former becomes only

an organisation tasked with maintaining the status quo rather than preventing crime.

Meanwhile, in their Baudrillardian study, Eugene McLaughlin and Karim Murji argue

that the ‘crisis of representation’ remains one of the most significant by-products of the

collapse of grand narratives of the institution of policing. This concern manifests across

Disco Elysium's construction of the RCM as an organisation that suffers from chronic

mismanagement, corruption, lack of personnel, and general ineffectiveness. While these

issues are common across any real-life institution, the game pushes the organisation from

operating as an expansive metaphor to an embodiment of a postmodern imagination. The

RCM’s reliance on donations, in the absence of funding by any government body, and, by

extension, good PR, to continue running is the most compelling evidence of the importance

of its artificiality and image. There are also instances where the protagonist takes bribes and

can demand money by physically threatening other characters. Though this is framed as a

necessity for survival—paying for a room to sleep in, for instance—it still points to a degree

of moral ambiguity that plagues the image of RCM as police. Additionally, the story

references other instances of immoral acts by the officers. In one instance, Harry is referred

to as ‘the human can opener,’ pointing to his history of abuse of authority. In many other

instances, the game also backshadows the protagonist’s history of alcohol and substance

abuse. Despite these straightforward violations of moral codes, these characters are still a part

of the RCM. These glimpses show how the RCM’s image problematises the idea of policing

in the Elysium world.

The RCM’s problematic construction forms the location from which the character of

‘the detective’ emerges, which, Stefano Tani argues in his book The Doomed Detective, is
 32

one of three inevitable elements of a conventional detective story. The other two, he outlines,

are the process of detection and the solution of the mystery. However, in certain texts, which

he terms ‘anti-detective fiction,’26 these conventions ‘are paradoxically functional in the

disintegration of the genre’ (Nicol 321). By giving the RCM a postmodernist essence, Disco

Elysium subverts and twists generic expectations of a police organisation and, by extension,

its officers. The protagonist’s involvement with a ‘citizen’s militia’ in the game

problematises grand narratives of authority, structure, and law and order—especially its role

as a public service. This is reflected in certain narrative constructions where the protagonist

can rebel against this professional identity without significant consequences.

Illustration 18: A graffito in Disco Elysium where the protagonist can choose to write an anti-police slogan.

Deviations from the conventional understanding of the ‘detective’ are a common feature of

Disco Elysium as it gives the player multiple possibilities to steer their character across a

spectrum of personalities. This, however, is framed in the story as Harry’s ‘emotional

instability.’ In the first instance, this manifests in the game’s offering of the sensitive

26
In his discussion, Tani quotes Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter's Night
a Traveler and William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel and John Gardner’s The Sunlight Dialogues as examples of
anti-detective fiction.
 33

detective archetype, who, it claims, ‘might begin to lose his mind.’ Jean Vicquemare, his

official partner from Precinct 41, reiterates this when the protagonist questions his

involvement with the mafia.27 The Esprit De Corps skill also alludes to this at the end of the

game, where it flashes forward to a time when something significant is about to happen.

Though the game does not reveal the context of this conversation, it points to the

protagonists’ continued psychological instability.

Illustration 19: The Esprit De Corps skill references the protagonist’s continued instability.

According to Tani, such volatility is a characteristic feature of the detective in postmodernist

anti-detective fiction who ‘gets emotionally caught in the net of his detecting effort and is

torn apart by the upsurge of his feeling and necessity for rationality.’ (Nicol 321) In Disco

Elysium, the protagonist, tasked with solving the murder mystery, instead spends more time

exploring the world and people around him. He cannot suppress aspects of his personality

that draw him to side-stories of characters he encounters. From volunteering to find a

malevolent spirit in the Doomed Commercial Area (DCA) to helping ravers start a nightclub

27
He says: ‘You are too unstable to work for a mob boss. You are suicidal, Harry. No mob boss would take
you.’
 34

in a dilapidated church, the protagonist acts more as a character driven by curiosity than a

purpose. This is offset by the presence of the protagonist’s partner, Kim Kitsuragi, who,

despite his subtle emotional investments, represents a rational guide tasked with keeping the

protagonist ‘in check’ and on track with solving the murder. However, emotions and affect

also become critical elements of the murder mystery through protagonist traits like Drama,

Inland Empire, Shivers, and Perception, causing shifts in perspective about the suspects,

receiving ‘hunches,’ and observing connections between the side stories and the murder

mystery that others cannot. In this way, emotions are essential in both solving the mystery

and distracting from it.

Meanwhile, another central concern of the story is the protagonist’s quest to know

more about his past and the world around him. Tani’s idea of anti-detective fiction echoes

this in the claim that ‘in the hard-boiled school, detection could become a personal existential

quest, but not to the point of being unfulfilled or fulfilled in a thoroughly unconventional

way’ (Nicol 321). The thought cabinet specifically points to this, where internalising thoughts

reveal more about the protagonist and the Elysium world, which, in most cases, boosts his

ability to navigate the murder mystery. For example, one of the early thoughts, ‘Lonesome

Long Way Home,’ comes from pursuing a line of conversation where the protagonist begins

to wonder where his home is. Although this does not affect the storyline, internalising it

boosts perception and alters the potency of substances the character can consume. This means

that the protagonist’s heightened senses of smell, sight, hearing, and taste reveal new material

evidence he could not access before. It also means that if he consumes amphetamines (like

speed), he can be better at traits like empathy, volition (willpower), authority, and suggestion

(ability to convince) that help him forge a bond with citizens or assert his power over them to

aid his murder investigation. This interconnectedness of personal thoughts with professional
 35

capabilities complicates not only a singular understanding of the role of a detective but also

the process of detection that takes several unexpected detours.

Tani, however, emphasises that the most important feature of anti-detective fiction is

the solution to the mystery, which is anticipated within the text but only partially fulfilled,

nullified, denied, or parodied (Nicol 321). In the game, the mystery hinges on finding the

killer among several suspects in the city. However, the killer is only found when all of them

are vindicated, and the protagonist goes back to the crime scene to reconstruct the trajectory

of a bullet that killed the mercenary. This leads the protagonist to deduce that the gunshot

came from an islet beyond the district called the Sea Fortress, where, upon investigation, he

finds an old revolutionary soldier who confesses to the crime. However, both the islet and the

killer are not introduced to the story until the end. This problematises any sense of closure as

the critical elements of the mystery are simultaneously introduced and departed without any

prior context.

Illustration 20: The Deserter confesses to killing the mercenary.

Unlike the immediate political or social reasons—the power struggle between the union and

the Wild Pine Group—that the story hints at, he confesses his jealousy of the mercenary’s

sexual relations and bitterness over the failure of the communist state almost half a century
 36

ago to be his prime motive for the killing. However, for the killer—an isolated observer of

the events unfolding in Martinaise—the ‘class war is never over,’ and the ‘crime’ is his

supposed contribution towards the past communist state of Revachol. The Deserter invokes

an acceptable rationale for war crimes encoded under the guise of ‘defence,’ ‘progress,’ and

‘control.’ Thus, Disco Elysium follows a kind of anti-detective fiction that Tani calls

Innovation, where narratives are preoccupied with the social constructions of crime and its

causes, where a partially satisfying solution is found by chance (Nicol 321-322).

In the same sequence, it is also implied that his actions might also be ‘affected’ by a

cryptid28—The Insulindian Phasmid—who is said to possess psychic powers and

neurodegenerative allomone.29 The introduction of this creature in the story leads to a kind of

metaphysical deferral and ventriloquism in its implication that The Deserter never committed

the crime, at least not by his volition.

Illustration 21: The protagonist talks to the Insulindian Phasmid about its allomone and effect on the Deserter.

28
Mythical creatures in the Elysium world whose existence is yet unknown/unproven.
29
A type of semiochemical produced and released by an individual of one species that affects the behaviour of a
member of another species.
 37

Thus, the solution poses a question of what crime is and if the mercenary’s death is a

‘murder’ or ‘manslaughter’ that might also illicit an insanity defence. This echoes Tani’s

conceptualisation of a second type of anti-detective story—deconstruction—where the

solution is suspended, the crime becomes a conspiracy, and the investigation an existential

quest (Nicol 322). The ‘plot’ in DE here arrives in two forms. Though the game does not

fulfil Tani’s idea of the conspiracy of a secret organisation plotting to take over the world, it

does foreshadow the conflict between the Wild Pines Group and the Dockworker’s union as a

sign of a larger war brewing between the nations in the Elysium world. The Shivers skill,

manifesting as the ‘spirit of the city,’ tells the protagonist that it will be ‘levelled by an

atomic bomb’ in 22 years and that he can somehow avert it. The second conspiracy, linked to

the first, is the missing or incomplete knowledge of the characters about creatures, nature,

and the future of the Elysium world and how that leads to unexplainable and ‘supranatural’

happenings. This is again evident in the swallow sub-plot that concludes with the revelation

that the problems of the DCA, where all businesses have continued to fail, is due to a ‘2mm

sound-absorbing hole in reality’ of the pale in a church in Martinaise. The presence of the

pale phenomena and creatures like the Insulindian Phasmid shrouded in mystery and

superstition for the characters in the story also renders the narrative a quest to uncover the

characteristics and elements of the Elysium world. Existential questions arise through the

‘conspiracy’ of the pale, supranatural beings and futuristic technology embedded in the

narrative’s history and nature—is the murder the real mystery or the world it encompasses?

The text thus connects the idea of detection not just with a murder mystery but also with its

narrative world, reflecting, according to Tani, the madness and self-contradiction of the

universe in which the detective struggles (Nicol 327). While the case is ultimately solved by

the detective in Disco Elysium, the mysteries of its world remain a challenging prospect to

unveil.
 38

CHAPTER FOUR

THE HAUNTING OF A PRECARIOUS WORLD: SPACE, TIME AND SPECTRAL CHRONOTOPES

Illustration 22: The precarious world thought that foreshadows the nature of the Elysium world.

Though Disco Elysium’s murder mystery plot is located within a small district of

Martinaise, the game's larger universe and setting—Elysium—is far more expansive and

complex. Much lies outside of the narrative horizon of Disco Elysium than what lies inside it,

which is to say, the story relies heavily on many aspects of the world that are not immediately

present in the narrative space of the district where the story takes place. Nonetheless, the

game references these aspects in all the protagonist’s interactions. As a result, the text feels

heavy with the world’s inscrutable details, echoing William Spanos’ idea that postmodern

literature makes the reader ‘feel’ the point before they can understand it cognitively (Nicol

135). Concepts and events are invoked in conversations without context, and the story is

deeply anchored in the history and geography of Elysium despite not being immediately clear
 39

in the text. Bullet holes are strewn across Martinaise, and a giant crater in the district's centre

signifies the remnants of a turn-of-the-century war, the details of which are slowly revealed

in the story across many conversations but are still incomplete when the game ends. In its

construction of setting, DE goes beyond the ontological to what Derrida would call

‘hauntological’ preoccupations.30 Dominant in its approach to the creation of setting—space

and time of the narrative—is the presence of spectres or ghosts, not just of the past but the

future. However, it is not a spectre that haunts Disco Elysium but spectres that linger across

its narrative. The text shows that the past and future are present in multiple spatiotemporal

forms or postmodern chronotopes.31

The first postmodern chronotope in Disco Elysium is metafictional; it explores the

relationship between the world (as a space) of fiction and the world outside fiction. The

apparitions of the real world occasionally manifest in the text, destabilising the fictionality of

the story. These are not just political systems and social concepts that the text represents

through the thought cabinet and political alignments but instances where it comments on its

creation. For example, Disco Elysium references the early conception of the Elysium world in

its tabletop roleplaying form and the game development studio ZA/UM’s former name

‘Fortress Occident’ through the office of an RPG studio ‘Fortress Accident’ in the Doomed

Commercial Area (DCA).

30
For more on hauntology, see Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the
New International. Please note that this paper divorces the term from its original use in the context of Marxism.
31
Borrowing the term from science, Mikhail Bakhtin explains that in the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and
temporal indicators are fused into a whole. Time becomes artistically visible and space becomes charged and
responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. For more, see “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in
the Novel.”
 40

Illustration 23: The protagonist encounters the Fortress Accident office in the DCA basement.

DE spends considerable time going through the detailed background of the early iteration of

the organisation, its game, and its characters. The similarities between Wirrâl Untethered,

Fortress Accident’s unfinished game, and Disco Elysium are evident in their shared

geographical setting and nomenclature of the Isolas (islands) in Elysium and the permutations

of narrative possible in the games. Eventually, the protagonist also finds Fortress Accident’s

lead programmer, Soona Luukanen-Kilde, modelled after Disco Elysium’s lead writer, Robert

Kruvitz, who informs him about the presence of the pale in Martinaise. The author, in his

fictional form, thus emerges within the text to unravel a mystery of its world. This instance of

intertextuality, among others, is particularly useful in locating the text’s blurring of

boundaries between biographical and fictional and the presence of the (real) past (of ZA/UM)

in the text. It underscores that postmodernist texts are often haunted by the spectre of ‘the

idea that representations of the world more likely form the world rather than take their form

from it’ (Smethurst 3). More importantly, it explores an alternate chronotope where Disco

Elysium might have suffered the same fate as Wirrâl Untethered of being abandoned, as it

nearly came close to going bankrupt.

 41

Illustration 24: The dialogue between the protagonist and the Deserter which sums up his worldview.

The game’s commentary and critique of communism is also a pertinent aspect of how the

game develops a relationship between the world inside and outside the fiction. It reflects on

the conditions of post-Soviet states like Estonia, where the core development team are from.

It does so by situating the story in a post-occupation society transitioning from communism

to liberalism, much like the Estonian transition from a state socialist economy to a capitalist

market economy in 1991 after declaring independence from the Soviet Union. However, the

game does not reconstruct history by the book. Instead, it distorts this relatively peaceful

transitionary period of Estonia to a fictional post-war limbo where the remnants of

communist powers and the new liberal powers still wrestle to control spaces that have not yet

been claimed. Characters and the plot embody this in The Deserter’s claim that ‘the class war

is never over,’ reflecting the game development studio’s origins as a nihilist and anarcho-

socialist cultural organisation. Disco Elysium also extends this aspect of existentialism in its

conception of the science-fictional element of the pale, devouring reality in the world of

Elysium. There is an allegorical connection between the pale and climate change, where both

phenomena are brought to the world by humans and lead to an apocalypse. However, there is

more to the pale than just being an allegory because it indicates yet another spectral

chronotope in the text.

 42

The pale, which covers 72 per cent of Elysium’s surface, is also present in Disco

Elysium as a dominant spatiotemporal phenomenon where the flows of history and time

collapse with the past, present, and future being disrupted. The game explains that the pale

can ‘write’ over minds the memories of everything and everyone in the Elysium world—even

pasts and dreams that have never existed—as if experienced by the one who encounters it.

Also, going too far into the pale can make it impossible to return. The pale devours reality

and leaves nothing and no one in its wake. It echoes anthropologist Safet

HadžiMuhamedović’s idea of a discursive schizochronotopia that ‘functions within more than

one and even in contrasting chronotopes’ (58) where people and landscapes are sometimes

trapped. The world of Elysium itself is landlocked in its geographical formation as little

islands—Isolas—surrounded by the pale that cannot be crossed without equipment available

to all. Similarly, time, as experienced by characters on land, collapses within the pale. Since it

is the dominant geological phenomenon of the Elysium world, the ‘lifeforms’ are indeed the

marginal matter that exists around the pale, invoking a ‘peculiar feeling of both proximity

and distance’ typical to schizochronotopic timespaces (HadžiMuhamedović 75-76). The

growth and spread of the pale in Elysium also point to not a return to but a return of nature—

an apocalyptic movement that decentres notions of place and location as entire geographical

markers are subsumed into the pale. Therefore, in Elysium, the pale manifests as the world’s

desiring energy as a schizochronotopic time-space, a Deleuzian black hole,32 that seeks to

disintegrate and deterritorialise matter and discourses in the text.

The science-fictional mode that Disco Elysium employs in representing the real world

not only displays what Leslie Fiedler calls the ‘two proper subjects of Science Fiction: The

Present Future and the End of Man’ (Nicol 166) but merges them such that the unnatural

32
Deleuze and Guattari appropriate the term to explain spaces that cannot be escaped from once drawn into. The
lure of the black hole indicates the subject’s attraction toward an absolute (lack) of signification. (Parr 34)
 43

violation of chronotopes is punished through accelerating the end of the world. Flows of

history and time are deconstructed in a rewriting of natural and physical laws. The text

alludes to this through the phenomenology of the ‘crypto’—which is sparsely mentioned in

nomenclatures of ‘Cryptozoologist,’ ‘Cryptofacists,’ and creatures called ‘Cryptids’—but is a

critical aspect of the fictional world. The common factor among these, and indeed the

meaning of the word itself, is that they either are or are in pursuit of the hidden and,

therefore, spectral. In a design asset commissioned by ZA/UM Studio, it is explained that the

world of Elysium contains a ‘Crypto-Conveyant Phenomena’ (CCP)—an unquantifiable data

stream broadcasted from the future to the past—which certain characters (called Magpies)

have the inner capacity to ‘decrypt.’ By doing so, they can use it to create original concepts,

technology, and art (called Novelty). The by-product of the conversion of CCP—the present

future—to these ‘original’ objects is the corrosive pale, which brings the end of mankind.

Illustration 25: Visualisation of CCP and creation of the Pale (Jenkins).

Where traditional literary tropes include characters travelling back or forward in time, the

transmission of CCP affecting characters and nature is a unique concept that Disco Elysium
 44

plays with. Indeed, in this context, ‘history is simultaneously alive and dead in Disco

Elysium, revising itself as it moves’ (Fisher). The future is present through Magpies and

Novelty. More importantly, however, the phenomena of CCP point to a fictional

representation and extension of what scholar David Harvey calls the postmodern ‘time-space

compression.’ Rather than dwelling on the effects of the ‘speeding up’ of time in the late

capitalist society, Disco Elysium reimagines the acceleration and its effects as a spectral

chronotope embedded in its natural world through the pale. The natural and artificial combine

in the creation and the use of CCP, blurring the boundaries between the two. That the

characters of the world are unaware of this phenomenon points to the incompleteness of the

knowledge of Elysium as a world. This problematises overarching ideas of progress and

history, as the origins of ideas are merely rewritten every time a Magpie creates a Novelty.

Another important aspect of Disco Elysium’s postmodern chronotopia is the multiple

forms of time—historical, ecological, thermodynamic, clock, social, and psychological time

(Smethurst 175-177)—that the text transgresses. The most striking aspect of time in the

narrative is how clock time—hours, days, and nights; social time—produced through social

interaction; and psychological time—the lived time of experience; are intrinsically linked.

The in-game clock does not move until the protagonist interacts with an object or carries out

a conversation. Progression of the day is dependent solely on the movement of the narrative

through interactions—with objects, characters, and imagination. This configures time as a

productive force in the text, which cannot be wasted by running around without engaging

with the world. It also means that the protagonist’s imagination is constructed as a productive

force—that interacting with the ‘inner world’ (manifesting as having a conversation with

voices in one’s head) is just as important as interacting with the ‘outer world.’ Therefore,
 45

unlike traditional narratives where narrative time prioritises outer worlds more, inner worlds

are also prioritised and linked to the passage of time in the Elysium.

Psychological time also uniquely connects with historical time in re-telling historical

events and their re-creation in the protagonist’s imagination. This is especially observed

when Visual Calculus skill takes over the narrative. Instead of a flashback or the protagonist

being transported back in time, spectral figures come alive, and the event is re-enacted before

the protagonist’s eyes.

Illustration 26: The Visual Calculus skill recreating scenes from history.

This enables characters to not only re-view history but also review it and investigate its

truthfulness and finality, reiterating the character’s textual function as a detective. History no

longer remains a past in the narrative but becomes the present to fulfil the characters' needs.

The murder mystery of Disco Elysium critically hinges on recreating the scene of the murder

where the trajectory of the bullet is recreated by Visual Calculus to narrow down the origin of

the gunshot to three possible locations, from where The Deserter’s bunker in the islet is

found. Certain objects like those hidden in the protagonist’s ledger also serve a similar
 46

function where they bring back memories for the amnesiac cop. In these instances, the past

becomes a medium to create a present identity for the character.

Though Disco Elysium is narrated primarily through the protagonist's point of view,

time is also organised without characters in the larger setting of Elysium. This is evident in

the thermodynamic time—an irreversible time of increasing disorder and decay (Smethurst

176)—caused by and within the pale. However, what is not made clear in the text is the

origin of the pale and, therefore, time, despite the confirmation that the world existed much

before ‘humans’ inhabited it. This is where the thermodynamic time, starting with the advent

of ‘human’ presence in Elysium, intersects with the ecological time—the time of nature,

which is cyclical and continuous. Indeed, the former slowly disrupts the latter's flow, in this

case, as the thermodynamics of the pale poses an annihilation of the ecology in Elysium and,

therefore, ecological spaces and time. The thermodynamic time of the Pale at once dissolves

all social, psychological, historical, and ecological time, leaving only a void where the

construction of any reality—spatial or temporal—is impossible.

Indeed, Elysium, as Luiga claims as a benefit of a modern fantasy world, ‘is a world

with a promise of non-staticness [sic], (where) meaning (and) things appear undecided —

they could go one way or the other’ (Devblog). Though dominated by the pale, the setting

enables some understanding of spatiotemporality, even when fraught with contradictions and

complexities. It embeds multiple narratives that blur the boundaries between real and

fictional and plays with spectral and schizochronotopes of CCP and the Pale. It also

complicates notions of temporality by disrupting and combining different forms of time. In

many ways, the Pale signifies the end of Elysium and any narrative possibility beyond it. This

is reiterated across Sacred and Terrible Air and Disco Elysium, where the Pale is present,

continuous, and inevitable as a sign of the end. However, RCM’s founding motto, borrowed

from a saying of a previous era, “After life, death; after death, life again. After the world, the
 47

pale; after the pale, the world again,” still leaves a hint of a chance that world is possible

beyond the pale—the end. This unknowability and incompleteness haunt the setting of

Elysium. The multiplicity of chronotopes problematises it further by fragmenting time and

space across the narrative. Though the narrative refrains from going back or flashing forward

in time, the past is always already present in the role that its characters and plot play in

constructing Disco Elysium’s precarious world.

 48

CONCLUSION

There are games that are played, those that are read (such as interactive fiction), and

in between, games that are both read and played across a spectrum of varying intensities.

Disco Elysium is in the middle, constructing a writerly narrative as it goes along. It concerns

itself with politics, society, identity, morality, and ethics—subjects that are difficult to

navigate in any text and more so in a game. This paper attempts close readings of Disco

Elysium’s characters, plot and setting to show how literary possibilities become clear within a

particular form of computer role-playing games when its subversion of generic expectations

and detachment from modernist narrative interpretations is discovered. By no means does this

suggest that Disco Elysium or any one game, then, is the only text that deserves examination.

In many cases, a useful method of analysis is to compare multiple texts to detect patterns that

confirm or refute current viewpoints in the field. However, scholarly work operating in the

intersections of literary and game studies also demands analyses that inspect the pillars of a

text’s foundations, even when it observes its fissures, to pave new roads. This means picking

apart the narrative bones of a game and putting them under a microscope.

This research touches on the game’s dialogue-driven storyline and worldbuilding,

taking up the disruptive project of creating a postmodern CRPG with an ontological dominant

away from novelistic traditions that focus on epistemological concerns. This ontological

preoccupation serves as a thread in how it ties together the text's subversions, beginning with

creating characters that violate logical and biological narrative codes and reconfiguring them

as narrative functions and desiring machines. The game also embodies the idea of anti-

detective fiction by problematising the idea of police and policing, the character of the

detective, the detecting process and the (non-)solution of the mystery. In the end, the paper

returns to the discussion of Elysium's science fictional world, haunted by the spectres of the

past, where notions of space and time are deconstructed. Postmodernism is thus key to
 49

understanding how CRPGs function in a narrative context, where storytelling is the raison

d'être of the game, not play. However, the notion of play also paradoxically works to make

the postmodernist mode of a CRPG possible, without which the narrative works out linearly.

The game plays with foundations of characters, plot and setting; hence, it is engaged in a

literary quest of deconstructing the notion of a narrative and its assemblage.

While recent scholarship, including Astrid Ensslin’s Literary Gaming, James

O'Sullivan’s Towards a Digital Poetics: Electronic Literature & Literary Games, Tamer

Thabet’s Video Game Narrative and Criticism: Playing the Story and Barry Atkins’ More

than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form, are exemplary in joining the dots

between video games and literature, they do not directly engage with role-playing games let

alone scrutinise CRPGs. In its liberatory vision, the postmodernist lens works as an apt

framework for analysing role-playing games that are similarly rhizomatic in their form. It

enables a breakaway of the genre from its ludic-dominant discourse to manifestations of a

narrative form rooted in messy heaps and scattered grains of meaning. It is on academics

operating between game and literary studies to untangle strands and piece together the

puzzles that role-playing games, as a form, present. For example, as Robert Kurvitz remarks

in his design ethos for Disco Elysium, ‘The trouble is – the experience (of tabletop role-

playing games) cannot be recorded and relayed to others. Tabletop is written on water’

(Devblog). The game’s adaptation from a tabletop RPG to a CRPG presents a fertile ground

for nurturing new theories of gameplay adaptations and their implications, expanding from

Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptive processes. Though this research provides one

perspective on the issues of worldbuilding, there also remains ample scope for researchers to

unearth the myriad ways in which it complicates the notion of writing and literary

constructions. Another area that demands probing in this context is game design and creative

coding—computer codes as bricks of graphic worldbuilding. Though these computational

 50

aspects of CRPGs are beyond the scope of this paper, they are valuable areas of work that

would further flesh out the interconnectedness of technology and literature, and indeed,

literary technologies in contemporary narrative studies. Affect and immersion are also key

areas that merit excavations in the context of CRPGs.

Disco Elysium is one among many contemporary CRPGs experimenting with forms.

However, there is a common thread that binds these texts together.33 They are developed by

indie (independent) studios whose primary goal goes beyond hitting commercial objectives.

Much like cinema, most games emerging from these spaces are concerned foremost with

pushing the boundaries of storytelling. It is unsurprising that in the last decade, indie

developers have won the most British Academy Games Awards for best narrative. Though

this alone does not prove their worth or justify their value, it is worthy of note. Scholarship in

game and narrative studies must also engage with these texts to investigate developments and

movements along methods and ideas of storytelling.

33
Even non-CRPG games like Papers, Please; This War of Mine and What Remains of Edith Finch.
 51

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