By Tristan Pagan
One scene, in particular, represents the game's strengths and weaknesses. It is one of the final scenes of the game, the meeting with the Deserter.
People who experience traumatic events in war can often have trouble adjusting to society as the world slowly forgets what they saw. This is the state you find the Deserter at the end of Disco Elysium. He is the person who triggered everything that happened in the game. He killed a mercenary and indirectly caused the deaths of at least 5 people ( it could be more depending on how badly you mess up. ) Yet he doesn't care about any of it and is on an island far away from the city where the game takes place. He kills Lely in at most half a second and sits on his island and waits for you and your partner Kim to arrive. When you arrive, he surrenders immediately and makes no attempt to hide the fact he murdered Lely. Unlike most people involved in the murder and most people in the city where the game takes place, he makes no attempt to manipulate you. He drops his empty sniper rifle and confesses to the murder he committed. The next objective is getting a motive for the murder. And doing that involves getting to know the depressing story of this man. The whole scene as you are questioning him feels so melancholic. It feels like you’re here less to catch the convict of a murder, and more like you are putting down a once-loyal dog. He is the last surviving soldier of the failed Communist revolution that happened 44 years before the game takes place. The revolution was against a corrupt king who bankrupted the city.
He joined the revolution at 16 due to his dedication to the cause and belief in Communism. But once he heard the Coalition airships were coming, he fled and hid in an abandoned building. He then saw all his fellow comrades being killed in a matter of minutes. He describes it as apocalyptic as balls of fire rain from above, burning comrades alive and scorching the earth. When the firing finally stops and he comes out, he sees what is left of his comrades and he breaks mentally. He sees them scorched from the airship bombs and the people in the lower levels in the fortress drowned from water pouring in. So he leaves and gives up on the revolution.
He goes to his island and watches the city he fought so hard to protect and change slowly move on and forget about the tragedy that befell the city so long ago. Yet he can’t. His guilt makes him a bitter, hypocritical old man. He raves about how he is the last Communist left yet when given the opportunity to help Evart, the socialist union leader of the harbor, he refuses. If the player tells him they are a Communist, he will call them a fake Communist who does not believe in the cause. He calls every member of the city racist yet he himself calls a character named Rene a traitor to his race. He is not even a Communist anymore. He is just motivated by hatred. The reason he shot Lely is that the mercenaries' presents reminded him of the worst of Coalition soldiers who landed after the communist were massacred in the city and the ones terrorized/ took over the city. So he sniped him from his island like he did to the worst of the coalition soldiers. It was not out of any sense of morality; it is because they reminded him of the people who beat him.
He planned on doing the same to Rene, the only person still loyal to the former King. Rene kept him going when he wanted to commit suicide because there was one royalist left. The reason I say he isn’t a Communist anymore is that he abandons his ideology and his hatred of humanity when you tell him Rene had died a day before you got to him. He realizes that all his hatred and wasted years were for nothing now that he truly is the last of his kind.
The Deserter represents one of the game's core themes - that failing to move on and dwelling on the past will cause you to waste your life and watch the world pass by.
You can get Disco Elysium on Xbox One, Playstation 4 or 5, switch and pc store fronts like Epic Games store, GOG and Steam.
