Some games I've been playing recently: WoW and Disco Elysium

Note: the thumbnail image is from the Gameboy Demake of Disco Elysium, for which I arranged music based on original tracks from the game. Check it out here.

I wanted to jot down some thoughts I’ve had about these games as I’ve played them over the last week or two. There’s not going to be a throughline here, except for the fact that they’re both games I’m returning to, not playing with fresh eyes.

World of Warcraft put out its prepatch for the next expansion, Shadowlands, and it turned out my characters had enough thousands of gold to buy a WoW Token, allowing me to get a month of game time. The prepatch has made a couple of systems that previously felt like the exclusive domain of hardcore players into something I could attain.

The short version is that the level cap has gone from 120 to 60, with players who were at 120 sent down to 50; the remaining ten levels will be opened with the Shadowlands expansion. On top of this, instead of having to go through each prior expansion as you level a character, you are instead given the option to choose a prior expansion in which to play until you hit level 50. The entire experience scales with you, and you can easily go through the contained story of one expansion on your way to 50. This massively cuts down on the time needed to level a new character, and makes the process far more coherent - no longer are you starting in the revamped zones of Cataclysm, the third expansion, then going to the first expansion, then the second, then back to Cataclysm, and so on, until you get to the most recent content. Instead you just pick one, and it takes you at most around 25 or 30 hours to complete.

Where this change really starts to make its impact is with the systems I alluded to earlier - specifically, the Allied Races and their Heritage armor sets. Prior to this patch, to recruit an Allied Race you needed to hit the maximum reputation with a given faction - a process that will probably take a few months of daily play, grinding particular content and waiting for particular days or events when you may get a bonus to that reputation. Once you did that, you could get a unique Heritage armor set that only that race can wear. In order to get that armor set, you needed to hit level 120 with a character of the Allied Race. For what amounts to new aesthetic options, you are looking at putting in hundreds of hours of play.

I love making new characters. I love seeing a new race or class and thinking up some kind of archetypal hero for them. I unlocked one Allied Race, probably a year or more ago, and certainly never got them to max level. It was just so much to commit to. Now, the Shadowlands prepatch has removed the biggest barriers to accessing these cool new character options and their associated unique armors - namely, the reputation requirements and the extremely long leveling process. In the first week or so that I started playing again, I unlocked each allied race. Then I made a new Allied Race character, a Kul-Tiran Hunter named Tasha, and I got her to max level - level 50 - in about another week. It was about 20 hours of playtime, maybe 25. This is such a drastically easier ask in terms of time and commitment. I love trying new characters, but getting one to level 120 required probably 60 to 80 hours of time. It takes less than half that now. That means I get to try each class - really try it, not just play around with it - and I get to create more stories with the characters I create. The Heritage armor sets give players another avenue for defining an archetype, if that’s their wish, and makes each race even more distinct.

The level squish, from 120 to 60, is a headline feature for this patch and this expansion, but without the additional change to reputation requirements for Allied Races, its impact would have been seriously diminished. Making it more possible to access these new races for players to make new characters with is a brilliant move that has reinvigorated my interest in leveling a new character. I’m no longer looking at the Allied Races with disappointment and annoyance that I don’t have the time or the wherewithal to unlock them. Instead they’ve been added to the array of options I have to think up a new character and get them out in the world.

Dang, had a lot to get out there.

Disco Elysium is still a brilliant game. I think taking about a year to let it stew and then coming back was a good idea. I have the broad strokes of the story still in my memory, but the whens, the wheres, and the hows of navigating the plot are basically gone. I created a Harry DuBois who’s big and strong, but deeply empathetic and emotional. Might be one of those himbos I’ve heard about.

The main thing I’m really enjoying this time around is some of the really funny failures I didn’t run into the first time. An attempt to “slip away” from a conversation about my bill resulted in Harry dashing away, then turning around and throwing up two middle fingers. The frame freezes here. I recommend checking this video out, fast-forwarding to the failure.

The framing is perfect, you realize around the same time Harry does, as everything freezes, what is about to happen. The inner thoughts dialogue options are incredible. Because time has stopped, you get to dwell on your fuck-up as long as you want. Sitting here just wishing you could undo it. Undo your foolish attempt to shirk responsibility. It’s just perfect. This was one of those rare moments a game was truly funny to me.

These moments are pretty rare, and feel more special because they usually have bespoke animation that you otherwise don’t see much of, as characters in the scene usually just hang out where they are, and Harry and Kim are mostly just walking and standing around.

I’m enjoying playing it again - the place has the kind of melancholy I’m looking for right now, and I like exploring the area. My main mechanical complaint is that I generally don’t know how to spec my character when I get new skill points. I tend to save them for when I want to try a “white check” again (the game signals that a roll can be retried if it is highlighted in white). My Harry has a set of good stats and a set of bad stats. The bad stats can only be improved so much, while the good stats are already… good. I could make them better, I suppose, but it’s hard for me to make the calculus of what is worth spending points on until I’m faced with a new challenge, at which point I make a decision about if its worth spending a point to try the challenge again, with better odds.

I mainly wanted to write this stuff down somewhere, so here it is. Gosh the year sure is nearly over huh?