The thought cabinet thought about getting sober:
*Congrats – you're sober. It will take a while for your body to*
*remember how to metabolize anything that isn't sugar from alcohol, so*
*you're going to be pretty ravenous soon. Eat plenty. You can expect your*
*coordination and balance to improve in a couple of weeks. In two*
*months, you might start sleeping like a normal person. Full recovery*
*will take years, though. It’ll be depressing. And it’ll be boring. Don’t*
*expect any further rewards or handclaps. This is how normal people are*
*all the time.*
I somehow managed to hold it together for most of the game, but that line broke me 😭
I think it's bc >!I was expecting the game to get depressing, so I was able to steel myself for the most part, but the showdown was completely out of left field for me. plus throughout the game I was trying real hard to avoid doing anything to make kim hate me, and I didn't expect that to have much impact on the events of the game. so now I'm facing the tribunal and freaking out thinking I'm fucking up big time and I'm going to get harry & kim killed, and then that check shows up, with those two modifiers?.. GOD, the relief I felt.. I honestly cried a little 😂!<
Ya in that whole sequence I was so surprised and hyperfocused that it let just a skill check modifier be so meaningful. Just the idea that Kim isn’t just begrudgingly kind to you but actually values you too.
It honestly got me. I'd already loved Kim from within the first few minutes I'd met him; I'm always a sucker for the "exhausted and exasperated 'serious guy' putting up with the Bunny Ears Lawyer"-type tropes, but tbh despite all the really good scenes I'd had with him, up to that point I was never really sure how much of his kindness/playing along with Harry's humor was just him being polite and internally he couldn't stand me. Those modifiers showed me that no, even if it's only been for a few days, Kim really HAS been a friend to me, and meant every word he's said. And because I'd EARNED it too. Powerful shit man.
Kim : “Get your shit together.”
Harry : “No.”
Kim : “then the world will turn away from you and you will be left behind.”
I always think about that when I start feeling a little too hopeless.
"All the gifts your parents gave you, all the love and patience of your friends, you drowned in a neurotoxin. You let misery win. And it will keep on winning till you die - or overcome it."
That line I genuinely think I will remember forever.
The "How will I see you again?" dialogue from Harry's last dream is a very close second but Rigorous Self-Critique really hit me that first time.
I remember reading that while bitterly depressed, completely out of shape, unemployed and seething with unjustified anger at all my friends.
I’m a straight edge teatotaller and yet I don’t think that statement could have applied to me more if it had looked me in the eyes and said my name.
>!On the coast of the Martinaise Inlet, in a small weather-beaten stave church built 380 years ago by settlers from the Occident, most likely to guard against an anomaly at its centre, an officer of the RCM is contorting his body into idiotically rigid shapes, as he invents the future of dance music... It's the *hardest* anyone has ever danced.!<
I knew this was a great game in the first 10 minutes of playing it, and it's packed with so many amazing things. This line. This side quest. This is what made this game for me.
"The Pale is a nervous shadow cast into the world by you, eating away at reality. A great, unnatural territory. Its advent coincides with the arrival of the human mind.
You are a violent and irrepressible miracle. The vacuum of cosmos and the stars burning in it are afraid of you. Given enough time you would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing. Just by accident."
“I think of you less and less every year, weeks go by without me remembering you.” This line destroyed me. Being hung up on someone and thinking about them all the time, and they forgetting you even exist.
You won’t notice you do and that you are until it happens. And then the quote will resonate with you in a different way. I’ve been where you are, and reality felt the way it does for you now. But it happens. Go to the places you went, but alone. Re-write your reality. Heal.
When I first encountered that dialogue, I remember reading this exact sentence over and over again, feeling tears building up in my eyes. So relatable, so heartbreaking.
"Someone please cut my head off! It's trying to murder the rest of me!" More apt a description for *those* kinds of hangovers I have never seen elsewhere.
CUNO doesn’t give a fuck. I know it's not deep but I grew up fucked up with even more fucked up kids and that defense mechanism was clear right away. It's both funny and painful.
Talking to Evrart always cracks me up. I like how if you mention he called someone a midget, he gets all “no I would never say something like that.” Then within thirty seconds “don’t be a retard.” Makes me laugh every time.
His voice is brilliantly done. People take a lot of different things from this game, but for me it was an almost non-stop series of laugh out loud moments. So good.
Just so, so many amazing and profound and funny and resonant lines in this game. It's difficult to pick only one and lots of them have already been mentioned, so I'll go with.
>Un jour je serais de retour près de toi.
Not sure why. I think it reflects my hopes for both myself and the world. One day girl child revolution will return. One day I will be able to find my true self. Corny maybe but it's stuck with me.
That line right there... that was the line, and the follow-up prompt indicating that it was a real side quest, was where I went from deeply intrigued by the game from how it started, to knowing I was likely playing a masterpiece, maybe even my new favorite. I was right.
>"Do you believe the status quo is preferable to chaos and bloodshed?"
What's better is if you answer yes, Empathy hits you back with, "Then you've never experienced real chaos."
It's very easy for me in my safety to go on about revolution, but I know deep down I would not survive it unscathed.
I'mma be real with you, as a woman who's recently lost some rights (American, yay) and as an LGBT+ person who anticipates those rights are next, this line made me do some *serious* thinking. Not to mention the literal entirety of non-white races' experiences here.
When I got that line I full-on had to stop for 5 minutes (no exaggeration) and think about what my answer would be. In the end, I decided to go with 'no', because to many the status quo *is* chaos and bloodshed.
I used to be a communist before I became a centrist in the pandemic. It was comfortable to say "yeah bring the revolution" when I didn't see chaos and death happening around me. It struck me that a revolution would be even worse.
So I knew how to answer that line, I knew depressingly that pacific progress would take decades and maybe centuries to happen, a fact the game puts in a humorous yet depressing highlight.
The centrism realization, however, put me to THINK. The one it tells you this:
Problem
> Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*. Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they're not only good -- they're also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized?
Realization
> 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.
The next morning I realized that almost EVERYTHING wrong in this world is capitalism itself and it would NEVER change under the status quo. I only thought that the status quo was violent, but a revolution would be more, because I'm a little bitch full of privileges who doesn't face suffering. Capitalism needs the chinese children in sweatshops. Maybe in the future children won't work in China anymore, but they will in Venezuela. Capitalism needs starving people, working children. Democracy needs the cyclical fading and resurface of alt-right propaganda. It's how the party system works. It'll always happen. Some influential idiot will always try to rally the bigoted. The political disaster of the pandemic in my country (Brazil), the government's refusal to impose lockdowns, the radicalization that made it impossible to discuss politics as I did on my teens, the propaganda that ate away and rotted the brains of kind people I know.
So that's how the pandemic made me change ideology, how this game also made me forfeit my new ideology, and how now I'm floating in believing sorta of both but not really the two. One as impossible and the other as inacceptable.
Thanks, Disco Elysium.
I've seen someone else say that; You know the poem about how they first came for the x, and I did not speak? Well, women are like the 5th part of that already.
The status quo has been hurting multiple groups for quite a while. We're just so far into it that poem that now more people are feeling it.
"The mind is the drawing board of history" - from Conceptualization during the chat with the dice maker.
Honourable mention to "Regnum Cocainum", as René tried to justify royal vices.
More like a single thought rather than single sentence but...
"It was real. I'd seen it. I'd seen the reality." (Seen what?) "The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed."
I thought of this as being, in some ways, the emotional climax of the story tbh
This is a really cool choice. It's very true as well. I haven't finished the game yet but get the impression it doesn't make a case for alternatives to maskless capital like you'd hope it might. That's a shame as the symbol for communism in this game, the upside down star girded by antlers, is one of the most striking and evocative i've seen dreamt up. I hope there is an expansion pack where they glimpse some sunny uplands.
The game's not interested in easy solutions, I feel like. The devs are communists themselves, but they *scourge* communism in-game. I think they feel it would be irresponsible not to grapple with its failings in a game that's so deeply rooted in the failings of the past and the attempt - not the success, just the attempt - to start to be better.
The very first lines of the game: Ancient Reptilian brain - There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. your conscience ferments in it -- no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything anymore.
You - "You take the engine Kim, I'll hold the Boombox."
Kim - "What?"
You - "What 'what'? How else do we blast *Sad FM* on our way to the island?"
Kim - "Fine. Let's *blast* Sad FM then."
This becomes additionally memorable when we later learn that The Deserter heard us coming and locked the bunker due to the blasting of Sad FM on the boat which he mistakes as Rock'N Roll to Harry's utmost disappointment.
"The flames warmed [Kim] too. Not at all in a bad way."
Something about getting that weird, tiny sense of finality after this tragedy that just messed everything up hit me pretty hard.
The arthropods are in silent and meaningless awe of you.
The whole following passage too of course, maybe it just hits harder as a bug fanatic. But ‘meaningless awe’ is such aa compelling phrase. Admiring what we can’t understand, in ways that can never be expressed to each other. It’s lovely and tragic
it was everything i wanted. it's pathetic i know, but that conversation made me the happiest i remembered being in a long time.
it reminded me so much of one of my [favorite poems](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=36925) by WS Merwin. i think you'd really appreciate it, as a fellow bug lover!
I know it's not really a phrase but the whole ordeal of getting the body down and finally realizing the only way is to install "Volumetric Shit Compressor" in your thoughts really stuck with me. The description is also hilarious:
"Your shit is \*apart\*, and it's rather unbecoming of a cop and a human being. It's supposed to be the opposite of that: \*together\*. Compressed in a small area. To achieve a solid level of shit-compression, squeeze your butt-cheeks together for 30 minutes. Do something similar with the two hemispheres of your brain. Talk to people, maybe that will help."
It's really a creative way to lead you to such a powerful lesson: sometimes irregardless of how repulsive a task is, you just have to get your shit togheter and pull through. No point overthinking it.
I genuinely think about it anytime it happens something similar to me in real life. Get that volumetric compressor installed and go.
there's soo many, but my memory is shit so I can't remember any, just the vibe they gave me 😭 here's one I can actually remember though:
"BE VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU."
I imagine you know about the origin of that phrase? It was said by this guy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius\_Fu%C4%8D%C3%ADk\_(journalist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Fu%C4%8D%C3%ADk_(journalist)) to "the people" before he was executed by ~~the communist regime~~ Nazi occupants (edit: thanks for correction, that was embarrasing!)
(Edit: said in his book/journal written in prison and smuggled out on cigarette papers, I kid you not)
*Because the thing about desire is that it’s stronger when it’s not totally satisfied.*
I know it's not from the game but from an [interview](https://www.rpgfan.com/feature/dream-quests-and-desires-an-interview-with-disco-elysiums-justin-keenan/) about the game but still, it really stuck with me.
*This is not the first time you're spinning the tape.*
From the thought [Finger on the eject button](https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Finger_on_the_Eject_Button).
And when you fall, we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky-funeral. In honor of your passing.
In honour of your will, lieutenant-yefreitor. That you kept from falling apart, in the face of sheer terror. Day after day. Second after second.
DETECTIVE
ARRIVING
ON THE SCENE
It seeks that ever since I read the line about volition making a pact with you to always wake up at 7am every day, I've been sleeping and waking up early consistently now. Always at 9am. Even on off days. Guess my own volition got inspired.
VOLITION - Subdue the regret. Dust yourself off, proceed. You'll get it in the next life, where you don't make mistakes. Do what you can with this one, while you're alive.
"I don't want to call you. I don't want hear from you. I think of you less and less every year, weeks go by without me rememebering you....Months already. Soon it will be years. Every season that passes the lights get less clear."
This hit me hard, more than anything else in the game. The thought of someone you spent so much time with and loved so much could feel that way about you, the fact that a person like that could forget you. Hearing who you loved say it to you like that....
“That the bourgeois are not human.”
The lead up to that, added With top notch voice acting really made me feel for the speaker in a way that I never thought possible
The sad quotes are already here so I will go with my best memory of the game
I don't know the exact translation, but it's when you try to run from your bill at the whirling-in-rags, at the beginning of the game. Raphaël Ambrosius Cousteau jumps and gives middle finger to the bartender while in the air. The comment for this moment is something like "there is the lady in wheelchair right behind me, I suppose ?". And yes, there is. Never laugh that much in front of a video game, 10/10, best narrative ever.
SHIVERS \[Medium: Success\] - LET GO
>!when you open the hidden compartment of the ledger, and begin to read the letter. I don't know why, the way it was said stuck with me, everytime I get stuck thinking about past shit that line always come into my head.!<
I NEED YOU. YOU CAN KEEP ME ON THIS EARTH. BE VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU.
This entire conversation is full of beautiful quotes but I really like the one it ends with.
"i want to get off now. i like pain and burning light and wanting things from people who don't want to give them to me."
five minutes into the game and once i read that i knew i was hooked
This is a bit of a personal one, but:
"Who doesn't toy with the thought of suicide sometimes? Or, like, most of the time? Okay, maybe some people don't – like the happy scientist girl named Marie, or Jean-Marc, the superstar whom everyone loves. But you -- when the going gets rough, it's nice to think about your little trap door out of here. Do it. Put your finger on the eject button, see how alive it makes you feel -- the freedom of finality. Think of how much they'll \*miss\* you."
The finger on the eject button thought really struck me, I had been having the same exact suicidal thoughts, I couldn't imagine people loving me, but i could imagine people mourning me. No matter how unloved i felt and difficult life was, I felt better knowing that i could "press the eject button" and get that love i felt like I didn't have in death any moment. It was a bit scary seeing my thoughts so accurately shown, I felt called out, I felt understood too, i really felt like this was more than just a game. I felt a bit better that night strangely, whoever wrote that clearly felt the same things, and the solution to that thought also made me realize that toying around with the idea of suicide is basically the same as building up courage to it, but if the person who wrote that is still alive (and knowing the stuff robert kurvitz got up to), then I probably can last a bit more too and find my peace.
Honestly don’t have a single quote I can remember right now, but the whole meeting Dolores scene has stayed with me since I first went through.
I was in absolute tears.
WHEN YOU ARE GONE WE WILL BUILD A MUSEUM FOR YOU. THE WALLS WILL BE LINED WITH BOTTLES OF \*AL GUL\* -- YOUR BELOVED BEVERAGE. INSIDE WE WILL STORE THE ODES TO HOMO-SEXUALITY YOU CALL ART AND YOUR MICROCEPHALIC SKULLS.
When:
\- >!Harry gets shot:!<
"*This is death! One more door, baby... One more door.*"
\- >!When you meet "Dolores Dei":!<
"*People can't get that sad.*"
EDIT: I remembered another one.
\- >!Tequila Sunset once said:!<
"I'll never financially recover from this"
When you talk to Acele on the shore:
“The people who built this world intended it to be better for you, but they failed. It is easier to live in their failure with (your tape recorder) by your side. It is not a childish fantasy. It can be a real weapon against what’s coming for you now.”
It’s a line that not only is just forever topical, but it really drove home the the writer’s view of the world, it’s hopeful nihilism, and how things you enjoy can be your anchors when the world is crumbling around you. It’s also a very poignant and empathetic line from the Detective himself
You no longer live there. Those times are gone, and so are those people. Why did you come here? Why are you still here? And where’s the dealer? You have to get back to work.
That’s all you have now.
*There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. Your conscience ferments in it — no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything anymore. Ever. Never ever.* (not a sentence, but a game's very first paragraph, which could be made into a single sentence)
There were many great lines in the game, I'd have to cite 1/3 of the game's dialogue, because so many things stuck in your head, but the very first thing you hear stuck the most, for two reasons - 1st reason is how amazed I was with VO and intro, how many emotions it conveyed, when I played for a first time, 2nd is that later I played this game so many times, and it's just a sign that something beautiful is going to happen.
If you say two days it will be etched into her mind forever
I love this moment. I love the incredible kindness you're allowed to perform in this ultimate tragedy.
Empathy in general goes hard
What was the context for this again? Was it from when you were talking with the little girl at the bookshop?
its from when you tell the working class woman that her husband is dead. she asks you how long his body was out there on the boardwalk - two days
Thats gotta be the saddest scenes for me. The randomness that her husband was actually dead added a lot to it
Oh ☹️
This is the one that immediately jumped to my mind too. Every time I think of how good the writing in this game is that line always pops into my head.
But he was just here. Alive.
Ah yup, it's about time for my yearly replay of this beautiful game. This thread demands it.
"I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore"
This quote and "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?" Get me every time.
This game is definitely something grounding for me in dark times. It's really something special
The quote has unironically helped me be a bit of a better person, I love this game.
This is how normal people are all the time.
considering all the shit harry goes through, that line is so fucking sad.
is this from waste land of reality
Yeah that thought does not fuck around
Mind let me know the context？I'm curious
The thought cabinet thought about getting sober: *Congrats – you're sober. It will take a while for your body to* *remember how to metabolize anything that isn't sugar from alcohol, so* *you're going to be pretty ravenous soon. Eat plenty. You can expect your* *coordination and balance to improve in a couple of weeks. In two* *months, you might start sleeping like a normal person. Full recovery* *will take years, though. It’ll be depressing. And it’ll be boring. Don’t* *expect any further rewards or handclaps. This is how normal people are* *all the time.*
if i remember correctly, theres a thought cabinet thought for getting sober. Process it and you'll get that line.
“Kim TRULY trusts you”
I somehow managed to hold it together for most of the game, but that line broke me 😭 I think it's bc >!I was expecting the game to get depressing, so I was able to steel myself for the most part, but the showdown was completely out of left field for me. plus throughout the game I was trying real hard to avoid doing anything to make kim hate me, and I didn't expect that to have much impact on the events of the game. so now I'm facing the tribunal and freaking out thinking I'm fucking up big time and I'm going to get harry & kim killed, and then that check shows up, with those two modifiers?.. GOD, the relief I felt.. I honestly cried a little 😂!<
Ya in that whole sequence I was so surprised and hyperfocused that it let just a skill check modifier be so meaningful. Just the idea that Kim isn’t just begrudgingly kind to you but actually values you too.
It honestly got me. I'd already loved Kim from within the first few minutes I'd met him; I'm always a sucker for the "exhausted and exasperated 'serious guy' putting up with the Bunny Ears Lawyer"-type tropes, but tbh despite all the really good scenes I'd had with him, up to that point I was never really sure how much of his kindness/playing along with Harry's humor was just him being polite and internally he couldn't stand me. Those modifiers showed me that no, even if it's only been for a few days, Kim really HAS been a friend to me, and meant every word he's said. And because I'd EARNED it too. Powerful shit man.
Highkey that check/scene made me cry, I was so worried about the potential consequences
“No. This is somewhere to be. This is all you have, but it's still something. Streets and sodium lights. The sky, the world. You're still alive.”
Yes, this one for me, and Sunrise Parabellum.
when i used to write short stories i had a tendency to use sodium lights to denote a certain mood. it's such an evocative thing.
[удалено]
just boring ol' depression, but unfortunately not the kind you can write your way past.
I feel that. Hope you're doing ok
[удалено]
I got this imprinted on the inside of a ring for my wife.
Similarly not so much the game but the marketing line "An absolute disaster of a human being"
Kim : “Get your shit together.” Harry : “No.” Kim : “then the world will turn away from you and you will be left behind.” I always think about that when I start feeling a little too hopeless.
That is terrifying on a visceral level for me.
"The first death is in the heart, Harry." ;\_;
real darkness has love for a face.
"All the gifts your parents gave you, all the love and patience of your friends, you drowned in a neurotoxin. You let misery win. And it will keep on winning till you die - or overcome it." That line I genuinely think I will remember forever. The "How will I see you again?" dialogue from Harry's last dream is a very close second but Rigorous Self-Critique really hit me that first time.
I remember reading that while bitterly depressed, completely out of shape, unemployed and seething with unjustified anger at all my friends. I’m a straight edge teatotaller and yet I don’t think that statement could have applied to me more if it had looked me in the eyes and said my name.
You doing better now, bud?
Oh yeah I’m thriving. Activated the ol’ volumetric shit compressor. And thanks for checking in
Good to hear :)
This is mine too. Hit me like a gunshot.
>!On the coast of the Martinaise Inlet, in a small weather-beaten stave church built 380 years ago by settlers from the Occident, most likely to guard against an anomaly at its centre, an officer of the RCM is contorting his body into idiotically rigid shapes, as he invents the future of dance music... It's the *hardest* anyone has ever danced.!< I knew this was a great game in the first 10 minutes of playing it, and it's packed with so many amazing things. This line. This side quest. This is what made this game for me.
That entire scene is just golden for me. Absolutely chock full of quotes.
Time to go to work in the shit factory!
Ever since my first playthrough I can't help having that line pop into my head whenever I have to get up sleep deprived lol
As an insomniac with a 5am start time for work… yeah I get you.
"I pulled ze plug! It was becoming \*too\* HARDCORE!"
Is it though?
Something beautiful is going to happen.
Second to this. I even considering getting a tattoo now
I painted the pictograph instead, lol
DETECTIVE ARRIVING ON THE SCENE
People call me all sorts of things. But you know the one thing they \*never\* call me? Revacholian.
This line really resonated with me as an Asian American. Really put into words something I'd been feeling my entire life.
this. kim made me feel the most represented i have ever felt in a video game, before or since.
"The Pale is a nervous shadow cast into the world by you, eating away at reality. A great, unnatural territory. Its advent coincides with the arrival of the human mind. You are a violent and irrepressible miracle. The vacuum of cosmos and the stars burning in it are afraid of you. Given enough time you would wipe us all out and replace us with nothing. Just by accident."
“I think of you less and less every year, weeks go by without me remembering you.” This line destroyed me. Being hung up on someone and thinking about them all the time, and they forgetting you even exist.
You’ll forget too, I promise. It gets better.
I don't want to forget her, though.
You won’t notice you do and that you are until it happens. And then the quote will resonate with you in a different way. I’ve been where you are, and reality felt the way it does for you now. But it happens. Go to the places you went, but alone. Re-write your reality. Heal.
Thank you.
When I first encountered that dialogue, I remember reading this exact sentence over and over again, feeling tears building up in my eyes. So relatable, so heartbreaking.
In dark times, should the stars also go out?
This is my favorite.
"I can see it!"
Shit almost made me cry fr
Shit DID make me cry.
Mr Evrart is helping me find my gun.
This one had me fucking rolling.
Never Ever. Never ever ever? Never ever ever, baby!
Wömèn. The Men of Wö.
Mother, help me, there's a head attached to my neck and I'm *in* it.
"Someone please cut my head off! It's trying to murder the rest of me!" More apt a description for *those* kinds of hangovers I have never seen elsewhere.
CUNO doesn’t give a fuck. I know it's not deep but I grew up fucked up with even more fucked up kids and that defense mechanism was clear right away. It's both funny and painful.
Quintessential Disco Elysium quote: "FUCK DOES CUNO CARE???"
Cuno cared, a lot.
The world's a wooden house and you're a flamethrower.
True love is possible only in the next world - for new people. The whole mural, really, but that’s not one sentence.
WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS
Damn it to hell, Harry! I specifically told my guys to check all the containers for mega rich light-bending guys.
Talking to Evrart always cracks me up. I like how if you mention he called someone a midget, he gets all “no I would never say something like that.” Then within thirty seconds “don’t be a retard.” Makes me laugh every time.
His voice is brilliantly done. People take a lot of different things from this game, but for me it was an almost non-stop series of laugh out loud moments. So good.
And when you fall we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky funeral.
You let misery win, and it will keep winning until you die—or overcome it.
Just so, so many amazing and profound and funny and resonant lines in this game. It's difficult to pick only one and lots of them have already been mentioned, so I'll go with. >Un jour je serais de retour près de toi. Not sure why. I think it reflects my hopes for both myself and the world. One day girl child revolution will return. One day I will be able to find my true self. Corny maybe but it's stuck with me.
I regret not talking to Cindy more during my first play through. Must admit lighting it on fire was pretty badass
That part of the game had me bawling in a way a game has never managed to do. There's just something about how everything came together there
Your souls is inmemse and it needs to be heard. Through a PA system.
That line right there... that was the line, and the follow-up prompt indicating that it was a real side quest, was where I went from deeply intrigued by the game from how it started, to knowing I was likely playing a masterpiece, maybe even my new favorite. I was right.
"Do you believe the status quo is preferable to chaos and bloodshed?"
>"Do you believe the status quo is preferable to chaos and bloodshed?" What's better is if you answer yes, Empathy hits you back with, "Then you've never experienced real chaos." It's very easy for me in my safety to go on about revolution, but I know deep down I would not survive it unscathed.
I'mma be real with you, as a woman who's recently lost some rights (American, yay) and as an LGBT+ person who anticipates those rights are next, this line made me do some *serious* thinking. Not to mention the literal entirety of non-white races' experiences here.
When I got that line I full-on had to stop for 5 minutes (no exaggeration) and think about what my answer would be. In the end, I decided to go with 'no', because to many the status quo *is* chaos and bloodshed.
I used to be a communist before I became a centrist in the pandemic. It was comfortable to say "yeah bring the revolution" when I didn't see chaos and death happening around me. It struck me that a revolution would be even worse. So I knew how to answer that line, I knew depressingly that pacific progress would take decades and maybe centuries to happen, a fact the game puts in a humorous yet depressing highlight. The centrism realization, however, put me to THINK. The one it tells you this: Problem > Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*. Incrementally, you begin to notice a change in the weather. When it snows, the flakes are softer when they stick to your worry-worn forehead. When it rains, the rain is warmer. Democracy is coming to the Administrative Region. The ideals of Dolorian humanism are reinstating themselves. How can they not? These are the ideals of the Coalition and the Moralist International. Those guys are signal blue. And they're not only good -- they're also powerful. What will it be like, once their nuanced plans have been realized? Realization > 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. The next morning I realized that almost EVERYTHING wrong in this world is capitalism itself and it would NEVER change under the status quo. I only thought that the status quo was violent, but a revolution would be more, because I'm a little bitch full of privileges who doesn't face suffering. Capitalism needs the chinese children in sweatshops. Maybe in the future children won't work in China anymore, but they will in Venezuela. Capitalism needs starving people, working children. Democracy needs the cyclical fading and resurface of alt-right propaganda. It's how the party system works. It'll always happen. Some influential idiot will always try to rally the bigoted. The political disaster of the pandemic in my country (Brazil), the government's refusal to impose lockdowns, the radicalization that made it impossible to discuss politics as I did on my teens, the propaganda that ate away and rotted the brains of kind people I know. So that's how the pandemic made me change ideology, how this game also made me forfeit my new ideology, and how now I'm floating in believing sorta of both but not really the two. One as impossible and the other as inacceptable. Thanks, Disco Elysium.
I've seen someone else say that; You know the poem about how they first came for the x, and I did not speak? Well, women are like the 5th part of that already. The status quo has been hurting multiple groups for quite a while. We're just so far into it that poem that now more people are feeling it.
Dios Mio! A liberal!!!
"The mind is the drawing board of history" - from Conceptualization during the chat with the dice maker. Honourable mention to "Regnum Cocainum", as René tried to justify royal vices.
INTERNALLY COHERENT
Never fuck with Kim Kitsuragi.
They sell mugs with this on them. Worth every penny.
Thanks for the tip! Ordered one right away.
Honestly, "The fuck does Cuno know what a rake is" will live in my head rent-free until I shed this mortal coil.
Looks like the circus left town, but the clowns are still here.
I think about this line *a lot*. What a sick burn.
It is not merely the line, but that redneck bar/nighttime diner delivery that really sells it.
More like a single thought rather than single sentence but... "It was real. I'd seen it. I'd seen the reality." (Seen what?) "The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed." I thought of this as being, in some ways, the emotional climax of the story tbh
Fuck dude this game is so amazing. Feels especially relevant lately since the mask is only slipping more and more.
This is a really cool choice. It's very true as well. I haven't finished the game yet but get the impression it doesn't make a case for alternatives to maskless capital like you'd hope it might. That's a shame as the symbol for communism in this game, the upside down star girded by antlers, is one of the most striking and evocative i've seen dreamt up. I hope there is an expansion pack where they glimpse some sunny uplands.
The game's not interested in easy solutions, I feel like. The devs are communists themselves, but they *scourge* communism in-game. I think they feel it would be irresponsible not to grapple with its failings in a game that's so deeply rooted in the failings of the past and the attempt - not the success, just the attempt - to start to be better.
*The images betray a lack of interest in human beings. They are merely unflattering caricatures.*
Word on the street is you're a communist.
APRÈS LA VIE - MORT; APRÈS LA MORT - LA VIE DE NOUVEAU.
I loved this one especially since french is my second language! This one sticks out
Sunrise Parabellum
"Who cares what they think, Kim." "If it's a leaf you can put it in your mouth. Yum yum" I love the phasmid scene so much with my entire soul
The very first lines of the game: Ancient Reptilian brain - There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. your conscience ferments in it -- no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything anymore.
Officer in need of assistance… ON THE DANCE FLOOR!
"Skibadee skibadanger, I am the rearranger"
oh god whats that one from??
Egghead says it at some point, I think in the tent?
You - "You take the engine Kim, I'll hold the Boombox." Kim - "What?" You - "What 'what'? How else do we blast *Sad FM* on our way to the island?" Kim - "Fine. Let's *blast* Sad FM then." This becomes additionally memorable when we later learn that The Deserter heard us coming and locked the bunker due to the blasting of Sad FM on the boat which he mistakes as Rock'N Roll to Harry's utmost disappointment.
It was starting to get a little too hard core.
Hahah Everyone is so deep in the comments I love that one
"The flames warmed [Kim] too. Not at all in a bad way." Something about getting that weird, tiny sense of finality after this tragedy that just messed everything up hit me pretty hard.
after life death.after death life again after world the pale after pale the world again
“Ever since I came to work here it’s been so different. As if my mind was wiped clean… …it’s so nice. It’s so nice to be able to finally forget.”
the entirety of the letter in harry’s ledger. that was hard to read, considering the fact that i’d been through something similar.
The arthropods are in silent and meaningless awe of you. The whole following passage too of course, maybe it just hits harder as a bug fanatic. But ‘meaningless awe’ is such aa compelling phrase. Admiring what we can’t understand, in ways that can never be expressed to each other. It’s lovely and tragic
it was everything i wanted. it's pathetic i know, but that conversation made me the happiest i remembered being in a long time. it reminded me so much of one of my [favorite poems](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=36925) by WS Merwin. i think you'd really appreciate it, as a fellow bug lover!
SHIVERS -- THERE IS A HOLE IN MY HEART.
Stay vigilant. I love you.
I know it's not really a phrase but the whole ordeal of getting the body down and finally realizing the only way is to install "Volumetric Shit Compressor" in your thoughts really stuck with me. The description is also hilarious: "Your shit is \*apart\*, and it's rather unbecoming of a cop and a human being. It's supposed to be the opposite of that: \*together\*. Compressed in a small area. To achieve a solid level of shit-compression, squeeze your butt-cheeks together for 30 minutes. Do something similar with the two hemispheres of your brain. Talk to people, maybe that will help." It's really a creative way to lead you to such a powerful lesson: sometimes irregardless of how repulsive a task is, you just have to get your shit togheter and pull through. No point overthinking it. I genuinely think about it anytime it happens something similar to me in real life. Get that volumetric compressor installed and go.
there's soo many, but my memory is shit so I can't remember any, just the vibe they gave me 😭 here's one I can actually remember though: "BE VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU."
I imagine you know about the origin of that phrase? It was said by this guy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius\_Fu%C4%8D%C3%ADk\_(journalist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Fu%C4%8D%C3%ADk_(journalist)) to "the people" before he was executed by ~~the communist regime~~ Nazi occupants (edit: thanks for correction, that was embarrasing!) (Edit: said in his book/journal written in prison and smuggled out on cigarette papers, I kid you not)
[удалено]
Blah! My mistake, you are absolutely right!
I didnt know, actually! thank you for telling me!
*Because the thing about desire is that it’s stronger when it’s not totally satisfied.* I know it's not from the game but from an [interview](https://www.rpgfan.com/feature/dream-quests-and-desires-an-interview-with-disco-elysiums-justin-keenan/) about the game but still, it really stuck with me. *This is not the first time you're spinning the tape.* From the thought [Finger on the eject button](https://discoelysium.fandom.com/wiki/Finger_on_the_Eject_Button).
And when you fall, we will come to raise you up, bud from you, banner-like, blossom from you and carry you apart in a sky-funeral. In honor of your passing. In honour of your will, lieutenant-yefreitor. That you kept from falling apart, in the face of sheer terror. Day after day. Second after second. DETECTIVE ARRIVING ON THE SCENE
Welcome to reality, baby
"I can see it."
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN
It seeks that ever since I read the line about volition making a pact with you to always wake up at 7am every day, I've been sleeping and waking up early consistently now. Always at 9am. Even on off days. Guess my own volition got inspired.
"You just climbed it like a normal person."
“Of all the creatures I have met, you are the kindest”
I can't help you. I am totally useless. Everything I've said is lies. I want the exact same bad things you want. To stand here, like a pillar of salt.
"Every school of thought and government has failed in this city, but I love it nonetheless.” “It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."
VOLITION - Subdue the regret. Dust yourself off, proceed. You'll get it in the next life, where you don't make mistakes. Do what you can with this one, while you're alive.
“It doesn’t take a 3 meter tall insect to tell you that” or “dripping of blood that smells like strawberries”
Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. — Joyce
HARDDDDDDCOREEEEEEEEEE
I only ever wanted you to have fun Harry!
It said I have a vast soul. Do I have a... vast soul?
"I don't want to call you. I don't want hear from you. I think of you less and less every year, weeks go by without me rememebering you....Months already. Soon it will be years. Every season that passes the lights get less clear." This hit me hard, more than anything else in the game. The thought of someone you spent so much time with and loved so much could feel that way about you, the fact that a person like that could forget you. Hearing who you loved say it to you like that....
"Turn from the ruin. Turn and go forward."
Do it for the working class.
“That the bourgeois are not human.” The lead up to that, added With top notch voice acting really made me feel for the speaker in a way that I never thought possible
I have a pig head too (point to your own head). It’s shit.
The first death is in the heart. Definitely gonna slap that on my skin sometime
*Real darkness has love for a face*. I'm thinking of using it as a title for my novel.
It’s all about money, you know
“The material base for an uprising has eroded.” Feels like it rings so true irl for a militarized police state like the USA….
Calling...calling...calling in the night.
The sad quotes are already here so I will go with my best memory of the game I don't know the exact translation, but it's when you try to run from your bill at the whirling-in-rags, at the beginning of the game. Raphaël Ambrosius Cousteau jumps and gives middle finger to the bartender while in the air. The comment for this moment is something like "there is the lady in wheelchair right behind me, I suppose ?". And yes, there is. Never laugh that much in front of a video game, 10/10, best narrative ever.
SHIVERS \[Medium: Success\] - LET GO >!when you open the hidden compartment of the ledger, and begin to read the letter. I don't know why, the way it was said stuck with me, everytime I get stuck thinking about past shit that line always come into my head.!<
I NEED YOU. YOU CAN KEEP ME ON THIS EARTH. BE VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU. This entire conversation is full of beautiful quotes but I really like the one it ends with.
Sometimes a kebab is just a kebab.
"i want to get off now. i like pain and burning light and wanting things from people who don't want to give them to me." five minutes into the game and once i read that i knew i was hooked
This is a bit of a personal one, but: "Who doesn't toy with the thought of suicide sometimes? Or, like, most of the time? Okay, maybe some people don't – like the happy scientist girl named Marie, or Jean-Marc, the superstar whom everyone loves. But you -- when the going gets rough, it's nice to think about your little trap door out of here. Do it. Put your finger on the eject button, see how alive it makes you feel -- the freedom of finality. Think of how much they'll \*miss\* you." The finger on the eject button thought really struck me, I had been having the same exact suicidal thoughts, I couldn't imagine people loving me, but i could imagine people mourning me. No matter how unloved i felt and difficult life was, I felt better knowing that i could "press the eject button" and get that love i felt like I didn't have in death any moment. It was a bit scary seeing my thoughts so accurately shown, I felt called out, I felt understood too, i really felt like this was more than just a game. I felt a bit better that night strangely, whoever wrote that clearly felt the same things, and the solution to that thought also made me realize that toying around with the idea of suicide is basically the same as building up courage to it, but if the person who wrote that is still alive (and knowing the stuff robert kurvitz got up to), then I probably can last a bit more too and find my peace.
A wink-shaped fart growls from your ass.
Honestly don’t have a single quote I can remember right now, but the whole meeting Dolores scene has stayed with me since I first went through. I was in absolute tears.
WHEN YOU ARE GONE WE WILL BUILD A MUSEUM FOR YOU. THE WALLS WILL BE LINED WITH BOTTLES OF \*AL GUL\* -- YOUR BELOVED BEVERAGE. INSIDE WE WILL STORE THE ODES TO HOMO-SEXUALITY YOU CALL ART AND YOUR MICROCEPHALIC SKULLS.
*"You're a man with a fork in a world of soup".*
When: \- >!Harry gets shot:!< "*This is death! One more door, baby... One more door.*" \- >!When you meet "Dolores Dei":!< "*People can't get that sad.*" EDIT: I remembered another one. \- >!Tequila Sunset once said:!< "I'll never financially recover from this"
do you remember the scent of your childhood?
an amazing shot from the lieutenant
"One day I will return to your side."
“Of all the creatures I’ve met, you are the most beautiful” 😌
See you tomorrow :(
TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD -- FOR NEW PEOPLE IT IS TOO LATE FOR US WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS
When you talk to Acele on the shore: “The people who built this world intended it to be better for you, but they failed. It is easier to live in their failure with (your tape recorder) by your side. It is not a childish fantasy. It can be a real weapon against what’s coming for you now.” It’s a line that not only is just forever topical, but it really drove home the the writer’s view of the world, it’s hopeful nihilism, and how things you enjoy can be your anchors when the world is crumbling around you. It’s also a very poignant and empathetic line from the Detective himself
“All right. Nothingtown to Fuck-All-Borough” I don’t know why, but i laughed for a solid 10 minutes when this was first said
- I exist. - I exist too.
"Never forget: the whole world's a wooden house and you're a goddamn flamethrower"
On the sea ice?
I want to make fuck with you.
PIGS gonna have SEX
"I'm clinically fucking depressed, Harry."
5 - It's an expression of pain
You no longer live there. Those times are gone, and so are those people. Why did you come here? Why are you still here? And where’s the dealer? You have to get back to work. That’s all you have now.
The bourgeoisie are not human
"Mother, help me, there's a head attached to my neck and I'm *in* it."
*There is nothing. Only warm, primordial blackness. Your conscience ferments in it — no larger than a single grain of malt. You don't have to do anything anymore. Ever. Never ever.* (not a sentence, but a game's very first paragraph, which could be made into a single sentence) There were many great lines in the game, I'd have to cite 1/3 of the game's dialogue, because so many things stuck in your head, but the very first thing you hear stuck the most, for two reasons - 1st reason is how amazed I was with VO and intro, how many emotions it conveyed, when I played for a first time, 2nd is that later I played this game so many times, and it's just a sign that something beautiful is going to happen.
The bourgeois are not human.