Disco Elysium
studio ZA/UMSince its initial release in October 2019 we’ve all fallen in love with Disco Elysium, everyone’s favorite open world role playing game.
For us here at Articy it began way before that, back when studio ZA/UM was an ambitious startup with a big dream and a lot of work ahead of them, not unlike many of our partners out there. It was truly inspiring and a privilege to see the game grow from a small project to the masterpiece that it is today.
In the wake of its last big content update, the Final Cut release, we’ve talked to the team at ZA/UM to get some insight and much appreciated tips into their development of the game and their use of our software. Hope you find it as insightful as we did.
Articy: Please introduce yourself and the team here at Studio ZA/UM.
Cash DeCuir: Hello! I’m Cash DeCuir. I was a writer on Disco Elysium, and writer and voice director for The Final Cut.
Helen Hindpere: Hi! I’m Helen Hindpere, writer on Disco Elysium and lead writer for The Final Cut.
ZA/UM is a company of artists from every discipline that have all come together to create games. That’s the remarkable thing about games, in truth — every art there is can live within them, and ZA/UM strives to see that they come together like nobody has ever seen before.
Articy: Disco Elysium – The Final Cut is coming out today. What induced you to look at your critically acclaimed game with hundreds of thousands of words and go: “we’re going to bring in even more quests, more characters, and also do voice over for everything”?
Cash DeCuir: It was a simple decision. Martinaise is a district with so many stories, and the Disco Elysium we released in 2019 did not tell enough of them. Ideas were cut for time, as is the case in any creative endeavor. With the incredible success of the original launch, we had the great fortune to finish the originally intended game. The Final Cut enabled us to offer more paths through the main quest, and to finally introduce the Political Dreams. There are four Dreams total, each corresponding to the game’s political affiliations. These allow the detective to fully become a political animal, and change the world around him — however incrementally — through direct political action.
Full voice acting was also part of that original vision. Having the characters able to fully speak for themselves offers a whole new layer of immersion. There’s a new dimension of reality that comes with the spoken work. Even the detective’s inner monologues are more alive with Lenval Brown’s incredible, overarching performance as the Narrator and all twenty four Skills. Having the full rendition of Mikee Goodman’s iconic performance as the detective’s physical body brings everything to another level, too. And of course, with the release of Disco Elysium – The Final Cut to PlayStation, the full voice acting creates a significantly more comfortable console experience. It’s a whole new way to be lost in the story.
Articy: Did you create the world for Disco Elysium based on Robert Kurvitz’ novel “Sacred and Terrible Air” set in the same world? What motivated you to transfer this setting to a computer game?
Helen Hindpere: The world of Disco Elysium is not actually based on Robert’s book – it’s been in works since 2001 as a collaborative work among friends. We came up with it as a basis for our tabletop role-playing games – though we spent at least as much time if not more on drawing maps and coming up with skills than actual role-playing sessions. It was a way to unite all our creative pursuits under one umbrella. Then came the book as a test run for the world – would people be interested in it? Robert’s book was meant to be only the first in series – other writers would follow – but we quickly learned that this was not our path to fame and glory. So we pivoted to an even more ambitious pursuit – making video games – in 2015.
Articy: I think it is safe to say that branching dialogues are a core mechanic of Disco Elysium. Did you encounter any unforeseen challenges in handling this vast amount of non-linear narrative?
Helen Hindpere: articy:draft is definitely responsible for how wordy the game ended up being. There’s something very inspiring about those forest green dialogue trees sprawling out on the screen. All writers are familiar with the curse of the blank page, but I’ve yet to experience it in video game writing. If anything then we’ve had to do the opposite: constantly remind ourselves to stay in the quest’s word limit.
Because yes, branching dialogues can bring many challenges. You can put down the rough outlines before you sit down to write, but eventually an inspiration or two will send ripples through the entire plot. What might start out as a harmless and innocent ‘wouldn’t-it-be-cool-if’ type of an idea might need someone else to rewrite an entire scene. And then there’s the task of coordinating it among the writers – how do you make sure that everyone is on the same page? Not only about the characters or the plot, but also about a million tiny details that may or may not conflict with each other. Whenever one of us came up with a brilliant idea – say, a new voice for one of the skills or a new aspect about your partner’s personality – we had to make sure that this was reflected in every dialogue.
But then again solving these types of challenges – and doing it collectively – is what makes video game writing so fun.
Articy: The players have a lot of freedom in terms of when they can do things. How did you make sure that the overall narrative doesn’t break because of player actions?
Cash DeCuir: Two things made it possible for Disco Elysium to be as wildly expansive and non-linear as it was:
● First: Documents! A wild number of documents, at least one for every in-game task. To begin, we wrote out the expected path for every task. Then, we dove into Articy to search for any variant paths and important moments of reactivity, and recorded those as well. With Articy’s visual interface and search functions, it was easy to review the content to find potentially problematic points.
● Second: Time. The time required to generate those documents and then playtest the content was enormous. At the same time, this process provided us with golden opportunities to make the game even more reactive. Yes, some paths were accidental and game-breaking and needed to be fixed. But other unexpected paths offered golden opportunities to create unique story beats. In those moments, we could do magic with just a brief aside from Kim or your Skills. With all of those small comments filling out the experience, the game became uniquely cohesive and personal.
Articy: At which point in the development stage did you decide you need to use a professional tool and what made you opt for articy:draft?
Helen Hindpere: articy:draft came early on in development. Two of our writers went in and reported that ‘it’s pretty fun’, thus convincing Robert to run it. He can honestly be quite hopeless at learning new programs – and yet he was able to pick it up in a day. What sealed the deal for us was how pretty and visually understandable articy:draft is. It’s important that the digital environment where you’ll end up spending your work hours looks handsome, clear and inviting. In the years since I’ve seen all our writers pick it up on the fly – we’ve hardly had to do any teaching.
Articy: Do you have any tips for other developers looking to use articy:draft that you can share?
Cash DeCuir: Articy is a great tool for drafting. Building outlines is quick. Take advantage of this. The interface is free space, and it gives you an excellent overview of how the dialogue flows. You can build a conversation there in no time, and edit it with ease later, too. Plus, importing your dialogues into the engine is easy. This makes playtesting a simple affair, which is essential to the development of any game.
As well, Articy makes it easy to create reactive content. Whenever there’s a memorable moment, tag it with a Boolean. This makes creating callbacks and personalized content easy. The more you write, the more you have to reference. Be sure to have an organized naming conventions, of course; you and your team will be thankful later for it.
Articy: If you were to give some advice to a new founded studio, what would that be?
Cash DeCuir: Take care of yourselves. Making games is difficult, especially when a studio is only just getting off the ground. Plan your work carefully to prevent overscoping, and add a buffer of time for unexpected setbacks. Track your progress at every step when you work. Foster a culture of support, understanding, and trust. Reality will always slow down or change the course of production; only with a good, supportive culture can you all work together to find the best ways to adapt your production. Crunch and burnout should never be your answers.
Plus, when you’ve got that clear vision of your game and a clear plan for how to make it, it’s far easier to relax and enjoy the work itself. Watching a project come together can be a sincere delight. The rewards of creating and following a sound production schedule are more than worthwhile. Good luck!
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