The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
The ending of the communism vision quest might be my favorite moment in any game ever.
Seriously you should play it for yourself if you haven't.
That brief moment when all of the meloncholy of DE goes away, and a few people in a room manage to do something impossible together for a few seconds just by believing they can do it is such a beautiful way to end that subplot and injects so much hope into the Elysium universe that it’s unreal.
You CAN save the city. You CAN stop the expansion of The Pale. You CAN bring about The Return. All you have to do is get fucking organized!
I wanted so hard to enjoy Disco Elysium and go balls deep into it (I always loved RPGs like that) but I really couldn’t enjoy it. I think I’m burned out of real gaming at this point