"disco elysium is, above all things, a game about failure. failure and how we find ways to keep going despite it."
and i just YESSSS that's the thing.
i mean, it's funny, to try and fail the check to grab your tie so you can get dressed. to die from sitting in an uncomfortable chair or falling down as you try to skip out of paying your hotel bill with the money you don't have.
but it's also so fucking *real*, because real life is a challenge. mundane ordinary not-solving-murder-mysteries life. i fail my volition checks... all the time, lol.
'life gets haaard... but we go oooon...'
and the quote that bodies me most in the game is 'human will failed to get out of bed and tie its laces.' but it doesn't have to be tragic, and it doesn't have to be pathetic, (i don't know, what's the difference, maybe it's both?), but, has anyone in it not failed? neither the detectives nor the union nor the company negotiator can avoid a confrontation that no one wants; the commercial district is doomed and the fishing village is nearly deserted. everyone, absolutely everyone, is living in the ruins of a war that happened forty-plus years ago and was never quite rebuilt from.
but there's beauty and the unexpected, dancing and giant insects and YES, but there's also, even outside of that, life. just, i don't know. we can't stop except by dying, (and our protagonist*? Lol) has just failed to die when the game starts, but we haven't given up, either. what the hell good would that do for us.
life gets hard, but we go on.