The new role-playing game Disco Elysium reminds us why it's fine to embrace failure and settle for an imperfect playthrough of a game.
There’s a push and pull that persists in games, the competing ideas of whether games are a toy or a narrative device. Games have objectives and goals and are meant to be won, and stories are meant to be listened to and experienced.
This commitment to success somewhat makes sense, as games have both micro and macro goals, and usually, the more significant objective of the game is to complete it. To finish the game means to finish the story. But what happens when failure is part of the game—and perhaps an integral part of the game? Are we so focused on “winning” that we lose sight of the many ways to enjoy a narrative experience?.
It’s a shame that I did because the possibility of failure was still written into the story—hundreds of hours of written and spoken dialogue that I never experienced because I was too afraid to make the wrong decision. What might I have learned if I wasn’t so scared of having an option closed off to me if I wasn’t avoiding the acerbic retort of an NPC after a failed speech check? I wonder if I’d opened up myself to that vulnerability, what would certain characters have had to say.
Other times, to avoid an action or branch of dialogue is to halt the game altogether. You may not understand what an obstacle requires until you’ve already given it a go. Some paths only open once you’ve had less luck with another. Between that and the game’s forgiving speech check system , it doesn’t feel as though there’s a penalty for trying. That’s important in a game with so many decisions to make and possibilities to explore.
In the end, stressing out about every last detail distracts from the tremendous depth built into the world of, and I’m ready to stop over-preparing and otherwise manifesting my anxiety in videogames. If anything, it will make additional playthroughs, customized by the game’s peculiar set of character skills, an appealing possibility. I look forward to all the secrets that will soon unravel aboutHolly Green is the assistant editor of Paste Games and a reporter and semiprofessional photographer.
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