If someone wonder why conversation graphs look this way in Disco Elysium is because it's build using middleware called Articy:draft. Graphs is how Articy editor designed so it's only natural to visalize it this way.
Since my team also made a story driven game using Articy that far less complex than Disco Elysium, but still complex. After we done it I can say for sure that whoever written Disco Elysium is trully insane, in a good way. While Articy is a good tool it's have own set of problems specifically awful performance on huge projects and I can't even imagine how developers of Disco Elysium managed to accompish it.
So I pretty sure Disco Elysium isn't just masterpiece of storytelling and writing, but also insane technical achievement of whoever managed to get it all working together using tools they had. Even on a project of much smaller scale getting it all debugged, loop-free and free of tons of logical errors is very hard. Knowing how much variables Disco Elysium have I truly believe developers are all geniuses.
PS: It's just everyone always wonder at how cool and complex modern rendering is or performance in game with millions of objects, but very few people understand how hard is to create story-driven game if there is more than 10 variables and not just int skill checks.
It's so impressive, similarly I also love the game Pentiment by Obsidian, some incredibly complex branching conversations in there. I recently watched a video where the game director Josh Sawyer (of fallout new vegas fame) walks through some conversations in Obsidians own dialog software.
Can also wholeheartedly endorse Alpha Protocol, also by Obsidian. A must play for anyone who feels RPGs are more than a few skill trees and binary choices, the way AP manages to interweave a massive complex conversations tree with the way players handle the action sequences is frankly second to none.
To quote Ben Yahtzee Croshaws review[0] from back then:
“For once, this is a game that claims that "every action has consequences" and actually means a consequence more significant than a character maybe wearing a different hat. For example, although the hub-based mission system lets you do the operations in any order, during the one I chose to do last, an informant mentioned the previous operations I'd completed in conversation. "Fuck", I said, "this game's just showing off now." So I immediately became an aggressive ponce and slammed his head into a desk. After which, there was more security in my next mission because the informant went crying to his big brother or something.”
Coincidentally, I just got Pentiment, and I've spent the entire weekend on it. I'm not really a gamer, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. The art is gorgeous.
It is a great achievement in story-driven games, but there are still glaring ways in which you can get softlocked, and hilarious ways of "winning" it in less than 1 hour.
I am pretty sure one could implement a mechanized, exhaustive checks for this kind of issues (well, at least the game-breaking soft locks) but no-one ever cared so far (:
Start by expanding the Search Dialogs section and type in a search term, then hit Search. Then click on one of the numeric results. Nothing will happen, but if you now expand the Build Conversation section, this will have filled a Conversation ID onto the appropriate box. Or you can input an arbitrary conversation ID into the Build Conversation / Conversation ID box (kelseyfrog posted some good ones).
Either way, if you now click Build Graph, you will get a conversation graph on the right. Red nodes are you speaking, or the voices in your head speaking to you. Yellow nodes are other people speaking (your non skill based voices, like Ancient Reptilian Brain, are also yellow). Blue and purple nodes are flow control (setting and reading variables, skill checks, jumping to other nodes). You can zoom into the graph and click the nodes - for red and yellow nodes, this displays the conversation text in the left sidebar, and lets you listen to the audio.
The graphs don't show actual skill check difficulties, just the results of them being read, and don't seem to show health/morale damage or items being gained/lost.
I entered some random stuff and a dialogue graph showed up for me in Firefox release 134.0 and some other firefox-based browser. Not sure how it works exactly though. You sure you tried the exact same input for Chrome and Firefox?
For those unfamiliar with the game I would highly recommend it if you are interested in CRPG games with excellent writing. There is a lot of text in this game, but with the most recent version of the game most of it is voice acted. Many lines will stick with you later. It's rare to not be taken by something in the game, as expansive as it is.
For a more general description of the game: you are a detective, you must solve the case, and your fractured psyche will not let you do it alone.
It's also an atypical videogame in that there's no significant combat mechanics (combat is as rare and exceptional as in real life), and the setting is far from your usual videogame setting (it feels like like alternate history mid-to-late 20th century Eastern block, but it's entirely fictional) and themes (ostensibly a detective game, but leans heavily into political commentary, morality, nostalgia). Despite the bleak setting, it's also super funny at times in both subtle and unsubtle ways.
I believe that this game is an artistic masterpiece.
On the first playthrough when I woke up with amnesia, I simply played a cop with amnesia in all of my responses. It was goofy, I annoyed Kim for fun, I beat the game, etc.
On the second playthrough, I chose all of the dialogue options that honestly explained how the character became an alcoholic. It changed the vibe of the whole game to somber, and I was fascinated that the relationship with Kim felt different. It also felt natural to explore all of the lore and sidequests of the game involving the pale in this mood.
And then I went on a completionist binge and found some great social commentary in the "high-net-worth individual" sections.
The writing is an exercise in how closely you can toe the line of turning into purple prose without ever crossing it. It's clearly written by somebody who likes words, for other people who like words.
In the middle opinions also exist. I thought the worldbuilding and their spin on conversation mechanics was top tier and liked the art, but I also thought that it was oversold with the "open world... let you do almost anything" marketing when the reality is closer to "you're an alcoholic cop character with a defined backstory, who must solve a mystery with a defined ending by negotiating your way through defined checkpoints, but you can act differently towards the characters you need to pump for information and take on a couple of side quest options if you want"
I definitely liked some things about the game. But what I didn't like is that it's incredibly depressing. There's not enough wry humor (even though it's good humor) to cover up the fact that it's a terribly sad story about a man who's alcoholism has destroyed his ability to comprehend reality. I made it about ten hours in, and deciding to stop there felt like opening a window onto a bright sunny day after being stuck in a menial office job.
I could play for 5 hours then gave up because similar reasons. In situations like this I usually think it should be an acquired taste, but in this case, I'm pretty much confident that I'd have never liked it. UX was the biggest pain point for me BTW.
You're not alone. From the description it should have been right up my alley — avid reader, including Philip K. Dick, can appreciate weird stuff — but something about the way the protagonist was interacting with other characters sat wrong with me. Perhaps it was the pretending everything was alright whilst suffering from (something induced) amnesia? I'm not sure what exactly irked me. I didn't feel like I wanted to dive into this world. The UX felt underwhelming too.
Perhaps I'll look into it again in a few years time, when I finally finish Factorio.
I love the game, but I know a lot of people who don't, for a variety of reasons. They were very opinionated about what kind of game they were trying to make, so you'd expect it to resonate strongly with some people and not at all with others.
I don't know why I haven't played this yet. I absolutely loved Planescape: Torment and Fallout 1 & 2. I already own Disco Elysium. I've just never booted it up yet.
It's such an incredible science fantasy universe, probably my favorite piece of fiction from the past decade.
The political history, nature of reality and shape of the world, even things about how computers ("radiocomputers") work are all fascinating to me. It's a shame what happened to the studio. There deserve to be more stories told in that universe.
I think, even though they are very different games, Disco Elysium has a lot of the same feel as Planescape: Torment. A lot of the same introspection of human nature, philosophy, moral judgment, and wry humour. If you like one, I think you'll like the other.
I played Disco Elysium when it came out and enjoyed it. In particular, I thought the Inland Empire skill was pretty awesome. I can't imagine what the game would be like without the ability to talk to inanimate objects.
I loved the way that you'd pass encyclopedia checks in the game and it would give you totally irrelevant information. I think at one point a character tells you she's using a contact mic and the skill check informs you about a boxer called "Contact Mike".
Very impressive game, one of my all-time favorites. Felt a bit personal because of own struggles with alcohol too. I'm happy that I bought it after they added the voice narration to it, the narrators do a fantastic job bringing the characters alive, and I loved that I could spend in-game points to specialize in insane skills like "being in tune with the city". I'm happy that people talk about the game from time to time, I hope it gets to as many folks as possible.
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Since my team also made a story driven game using Articy that far less complex than Disco Elysium, but still complex. After we done it I can say for sure that whoever written Disco Elysium is trully insane, in a good way. While Articy is a good tool it's have own set of problems specifically awful performance on huge projects and I can't even imagine how developers of Disco Elysium managed to accompish it.
So I pretty sure Disco Elysium isn't just masterpiece of storytelling and writing, but also insane technical achievement of whoever managed to get it all working together using tools they had. Even on a project of much smaller scale getting it all debugged, loop-free and free of tons of logical errors is very hard. Knowing how much variables Disco Elysium have I truly believe developers are all geniuses.
PS: It's just everyone always wonder at how cool and complex modern rendering is or performance in game with millions of objects, but very few people understand how hard is to create story-driven game if there is more than 10 variables and not just int skill checks.
https://youtu.be/u9WFmMY5oyY?si=ruJcmYey8hAiKWDR&t=640
To quote Ben Yahtzee Croshaws review[0] from back then:
“For once, this is a game that claims that "every action has consequences" and actually means a consequence more significant than a character maybe wearing a different hat. For example, although the hub-based mission system lets you do the operations in any order, during the one I chose to do last, an informant mentioned the previous operations I'd completed in conversation. "Fuck", I said, "this game's just showing off now." So I immediately became an aggressive ponce and slammed his head into a desk. After which, there was more security in my next mission because the informant went crying to his big brother or something.”
[0] https://youtu.be/K9ZkY-6M5qw?si=IWrCsJqo35p25n23
I am pretty sure one could implement a mechanized, exhaustive checks for this kind of issues (well, at least the game-breaking soft locks) but no-one ever cared so far (:
Start by expanding the Search Dialogs section and type in a search term, then hit Search. Then click on one of the numeric results. Nothing will happen, but if you now expand the Build Conversation section, this will have filled a Conversation ID onto the appropriate box. Or you can input an arbitrary conversation ID into the Build Conversation / Conversation ID box (kelseyfrog posted some good ones).
Either way, if you now click Build Graph, you will get a conversation graph on the right. Red nodes are you speaking, or the voices in your head speaking to you. Yellow nodes are other people speaking (your non skill based voices, like Ancient Reptilian Brain, are also yellow). Blue and purple nodes are flow control (setting and reading variables, skill checks, jumping to other nodes). You can zoom into the graph and click the nodes - for red and yellow nodes, this displays the conversation text in the left sidebar, and lets you listen to the audio.
The graphs don't show actual skill check difficulties, just the results of them being read, and don't seem to show health/morale damage or items being gained/lost.
Quite a remarkable tool, despite the UI.
Deleted Comment
> Disco Elysium is a 2019 role-playing video game developed and published by ZA/UM.
For a more general description of the game: you are a detective, you must solve the case, and your fractured psyche will not let you do it alone.
On the first playthrough when I woke up with amnesia, I simply played a cop with amnesia in all of my responses. It was goofy, I annoyed Kim for fun, I beat the game, etc.
On the second playthrough, I chose all of the dialogue options that honestly explained how the character became an alcoholic. It changed the vibe of the whole game to somber, and I was fascinated that the relationship with Kim felt different. It also felt natural to explore all of the lore and sidequests of the game involving the pale in this mood.
And then I went on a completionist binge and found some great social commentary in the "high-net-worth individual" sections.
Perhaps I'll look into it again in a few years time, when I finally finish Factorio.
The political history, nature of reality and shape of the world, even things about how computers ("radiocomputers") work are all fascinating to me. It's a shame what happened to the studio. There deserve to be more stories told in that universe.