Damn those moralists and their checks notes good governance.
The entire game is set in a Moralist-controlled deindustrialised slum area where drug abuse is rampant, and almost everyone lives in abject poverty.
The creative team are all Estonian leftists/Marxists who lived through the 1990s. It’s clearly what they draw on - the absolute devastation of global capitalism.
but have you dumb commies considered that the *price stabilitié* is fantastic now? Didn't think so. Maybe if you actually attended an EPIS meeting you'd understand why you can't just fix problems and improve your local living conditions.
(Note: I don't understand either but I am paid to to pretend)
Also the large building that used to be full of thriving small businesses is destitute and nearly abandoned except the one dice maker lady. You can literally pick through the remains of the failure of capitalism that has left only a husk of itself behind.
And yeah, nearly every NPC in the game is living in poverty, is angry all the time, or has resigned themselves to quietly suffering
The whole setting is cope and seethe by commies about how based globalism is.
You can't talk to a person like this, what can you possibly say to someone who goes "I love bombing a country into perpetual poverty and exploitation where children listen to snuff radio and do drugs, thats so based" except
These people played a game where every single time they said what they believed in they were mocked for it, and still came away thinking that it was based and neoliberalpilled.
They've rationalized it in a "My enemies got mad and lost their temper therefore I am vindicated" kind of way.
The fact that the game mocks their beliefs merely reinforces the enlightened status of those beliefs.
That is a particularly annoying debate brained
. Yes I will get angry at you for saying fascist things even if you say them politely.
moment.
One of my favorite exchanges in the game is when you can identify yourself as an ultraliberal to Evrart. He simply doesn't entertain the idea. He finds the concept so stupid he just insults you and moves on.
"You're not an ultraliberal Harry. Get the fuck out of here."He straight up just calls you a slur even, he calls you the R word, pretty sure its the only real world slur they bother with too outside of the flaubert misdirection.
Cunoesse says a few slurs if I remember right, but they're in Finnish. She says a few words that are sometimes used as slurs for gay people. I don't remember if they're censored though.
Half of Finnish words are swears centering around the word vittu though
Yeah the f slur's used a lot in the game but it's bleeped each time, and the jacket in the game that says "Piss [F-slur]" on the back has even been smudged so you can only read the first two letters of the second word
Sacred and Terrible Air has a character in it who's pretty clearly a parody of a stereotypical Finn. I think Kurvits has something against Finns.
They keep mentioning how Joyce and Kim are helpful to the player as representatives of liberalism, but Evrart and Measurehead are antagonists as representatives of socialism and fascism. And they're saying the devs accidentally made liberals seem more agreeable this way.
Yeah no shit the liberals are more polite to Harry, he's a cop. Evrart is trying to impede the investigation? No shit, Evrart is organizing a strike and you're some dumbass cop working with a lady who's on the board of directors of the company he's striking against.
And they're saying the devs screwed up by showing communists as murderers or ineffective? That's the point, that building communism is hard, mistakes are made, and Harry's bias as a dumbass alcoholic cop is going to color his perception of the world. I hate these libs so much. I thought liberals were supposed to be media savvy but they completely miss the point
first problem is eating media, that shit's not good for you
i just wonder how hungry you have to be to eat books, tv, radio, whatever media
This is on the devs for making the communism vision quest not mandatory, but the game literally has a character turn to the screen and monologue about how Communism is the only ideology that promises a better world is possible for each and every human being and that struggling for it is worth it even if you fail or are killed.
Meanwhile the fascism quest is all about how cope is destroying your life and ability to relate to other human beings, the moralism side quest has you fuck around with dumb bullshit that doesnt matter and almost gets you kidnapped by the state, and ultraliberalism is memes.
spoilers just in case
All the political quests are Harry's methods of dealing with pain, with varying degrees of success. They're all cope. However the communist quest is the only one though where he tries dealing with his pain in a productive way, that is, he tries to remain optimistic and tries to at least understand other people. He comes across as goofy and arrogant when he says communist stuff, but that's to be expected.
He's an alcoholic cop who had amnesia and suddenly decided he's the reincarnation of Kras Masov. He's never read theory, never organized. His heart is in the right place but he's a dumbass.
The other quests are unhealthy ways of dealing with pain, especially fascism. Fascist Harry becomes a shell whose life revolves around racial hatred. It's the only quest where Kim will chew you out, beyond a professional capacity. He'll get sick of your shit and will berate you outside the church. Kim is the most patient man on Earth and the fascism quest has you betray even his trust.
The moralism stuff is just Harry trying to live in the memory of his marriage. Ultraliberal I interpreted as trying to ignore everything that's happening, compete dissociation. "This is good, actually" as an ideology.
honestly I think a sequel (yes I know it will never happen) could fix so much of the problem here. Imagine if they do some crazy branching quest that remembers your save from the last game and if you did the communist path he's now read theory and isn't so worthless. (even without the IP controversy I'm sure that would be too complex for an indie studio or smthing let me dream)
Imagine if they do some crazy branching quest that remembers your save from the last game
Get out of my head, I was thinking exactly this not a few hours ago. I'm of two minds about a potential sequel, but if one ever materializes, this is precisely what I hope it is. You're probably right though, I doubt it'll happen like this, if at all.
i'm personally a fan of sequels that have only vague references to whatever they're following, but that's just me. I'd want the events of a sequel to happen decades or centuries later, with the events of the first game a footnote in a random history book somewhere. I like seeing long-term time spans
that could work in disco I think for sure, although really I think where it's needed to be used is more for continuing long epics/trilogies more often instead of "it's the main character's child!!!" cash grab stuff
Something easier to implement would be for the MC of the hypothetical sequel to meet Harry with corresponding dialogue changes for each political quest.
The whole setting is cope and seethe by commies about how based globalism is.
Imagine reading The Jakarta Method and come away with thinking it’s about how based
SukarnoSuharto and the CIA are.I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who mixes their names up.
i like how they think the moralists or ultralibs or w/e faction they think they are is the best choice
the world around the player is in utter decay as a result of said factions
cant make this shit up lmao
the world around the player is in utter decay as a result of said factions
Gestures wildly at the real world and
Someone with some insight might take away something from the fact that their preferred ideologies are both absent and omnipresent from the actual characters of the game.
The prime rep for ultraliberalism is a cynical billionaire whos company has just sent in a fascist death squad to resolve a labor strike, and anyone else who might be described as an "ultraliberal" in the game are literally on the shit tier of society either grifting for scraps or just completely delusional.
And moralisms prime rep is a literal occupying warship, followed by a bureaucrat who bullshits you about the economy while secretly engaging in sexual relationships with someone living in a filthy decaying slum, and finally Kim who deliberately refuses to engage in any serious politics and therefore doesnt really count.
Edit: Just remembered Trant, whos technically listed as a moralist on the wiki I guess but whos also an apolitical coward more than anything, and a crypto-social democrat.
The actual people of Martinaise are neither ultraliberals nor moralists, makes you think huh?
Someone in that thread was specifically praising the Sunday Friend lmao
Of course! He talks about economic responsibility to people who are suffering so badly from the economy they are blaming a supernatural curse for their misfortunes!
Its a neoliberal wet dream. I have to assume somewhere in the thread they are gushing about the vision of a future IKEA-fied Martinaise that the new ZAUM added with the photo mode update.
Here I though the guy praising a disconnected economic metric while sitting in a bombed out ruin where people live in abject poverty, where he goes for basically sex tourism was too on the nose
The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don't really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
They're even saying how cool it is she's worshipped as a deity? The fuck
Worse, isn't it heavily implied that she's some manner of inhuman abomination who
spoiler
has the ability to pull information from the future via the Pale? And that by doing so she and others like her contribute to a potential entroponetic apocalypse caused by repeated time paradoxes?
Does that mean
spoiler
Doing the church sidequest is confirmed to doom Martinaise through the pale expanding?
spoilers for disco Elysium
These people are really claiming that the moralists are the best, most ethical faction when they're the ones who got martinaise to the point that children are doing drugs in the street, the entire district is incredibly impoverished, the local government completely collapsed so the union had to take over all administration and law enforcement duties, there are drunks and drug addicts everywhere and then sprinkled in with all the misery there's a few incredibly rich people who either don't give a shit about (or aren't even aware of) all the poverty around them all while the moralists still have guns pointed every section of the city and have it under military occupation (and we're actually told that they nuke martinaise two decades after the game ends or so in response to another revolution).
But apparently the communists are bad because the guy who killed a murderous PMC thug was a bitter, angry old man with a sniper rifle.
That thing you're told happens 2 decades after the game ends... How are you told that? Do you have to sit through all the credits to see it? I played through, got a little bit of dialogue at the very end from shivers and esprit du corps indicating that something is going to happen next, and then painfully long unstoppable credits. Tried to wait the credits out but it got to be too much so I ended up alt+F4ing and started a new run to try a different build.
spoiler
It's in the church, you need specific high stats while getting everyone to dance. You pass out, speak with the city, and if you have the correct stats you receive a vision of the nuke.
If I remember right it says so explicitly in A Sacred and Terrible Air that it happens
Damn I did all that but don't think I had the right stats because I did not receive that vision. Thank you!
I think it happens if you make the right checks during the dance rave sequence? You pass out and hear voices.
That segment is also a call-forward to something mentioned in Sacred and Terrible Air.
Globalism
I'm torn on whether this person has a vibes-based vocabulary or is dogwhistling
I think its just "oh u mad?" type vibes, the bad people talk about globalism therefore globalism is based now.
This is bringing out something that occurred to me the second time I played the game and met Joyce. She really is the liberal of the game.
When you meet Joyce early on, she is, at that stage of the game, one of the most directly helpful NPCs. She talks to you respectfully instead of (rightfully) calling you a pig, she makes jokes with you, she's even willing to discuss reality with you, and some of her most likeable lines come out during that little philosophy talk. She's got an education, and she clearly likes a deep conversation. She even shows that she has a little perspective on her position in the world, and she has some sympathy for the failed revolution and for the conditions that necessitated it. Wow what an intelligent and reasonable mature woman she is!
Try and ask her for money, though?
NOPE
And also shes a board member of the company that hired a fascist death squad that has literally literally no experience outside of committing gruesome sexual and physical cruelties on colonized peoples, to "deal with" a workers strike.
She's very sneaky about her responsibility and involvement in that stuff, its easy to overlook while she makes jokes about being a great wyrm upon a hoard of the worlds wealth or something, what that actually involves.
Right, it's why introducing her early is so effective. Like most people, Harry wakes into a world order established by people like her, and if you literally only take her and the world at face value, she just seems like a proper lady, when she is actually a key player in the horror of it all
She will give you money if it's a small amount. Although what I got from that exchange is she interprets it as a bribe.
Yeah and doing so involves almost turning yourself inside-out, but damn I do enjoy going all caps and saying GIVE ME MONEY NOW
Try and ask her for money, though?
First play though I screamed at her to give me a million billion réal and she eventually relented and gave me a hundred. Didn't die in a dumpster.
Lmao, in an entirely on brand move, they're completely ignoring
spoiler
the Pale
The pale is just an externality. The right thing to do is to tax it so that the market can regulate the Time Void That is Slowly Swallowing the World and keep its growth steady.
That entire post is full of gems.
On Stellaris:
On Fallout 4:
On Victoria 3:
Yeah, in the late game you basically need Council Republic because the Investment Pool contributions get artificially nerfed the larger your GDP gets. And nerfed in such a way that the capitalists money just disappears into the void it doesn't recirculate. So you want to have as few capitalists as possible then. Capitalism so good it suffers from it's own success.
The problem with capitalism is that it makes the investment class too rich. This shows that capitalism is actually an extremely good system with no flaws.
the capitalists money just disappears into the void it doesn't recirculate.
The void is called their fucking bank accounts
Wrong. It’s actually an anonymous Caribbean or Delaware LLC owned by 5 different shell companies.
"Help they accurately modelled the crisis of overproduction in my political economy strategy game!
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I always play this game as a neoliberal. It has an extra challenge to try to make the galaxy a peaceful, cooperative, populous and diverse place compared to just easily genociding everyone
Ah yes, "everything will be incredibly good as long as the
white man's burden succeedsworld is made to follow the same ideology as us".And if this person believes in Khrushcev style peaceful coexistence? Lol, lmao. They follow a worldview whose goals are incompatible with the goals of the ruling class they support.
The first couple times I stumbled upon there I legitimately thought it was a parody
