Noile voci din Disco Elysium – The Final Cut fac să se simtă mai mult ca niciodată ca o experiență de masă

The delightfully unusual detective role-playing game Disco Elysium is finally on console. The Final Cut version of the game arrived yesterday on PlayStation machines (4 and 5), the App Store, Stadia and PC (a free update if you already own the base game), and there’s an Xbox version due to follow this summer.

I’ve been playing it on PlayStation 5, and generally it works well. I haven’t noticed the frame-rate issues I’ve seen reported elsewhere, so presumably they really have been fixed. But I have come across the object interaction bug, which sometimes doesn’t register your interactions, or doesn’t quite trigger them. Pressing the button again usually rectifies the issue, so it’s sometimes annoying but rarely more. Loading times seem fine on PS5, though I wonder what they’re like on PS4, and I haven’t seen any other bugs, though I’m only early in the game (code arrived late).

Dar cea mai notabilă nouă adăugare este actoria vocală completă. Disco Elysium este un joc pronunțat și doar patch-uri din acesta au fost exprimate inițial, ceea ce înseamnă că de cele mai multe ori citiți o casetă de text în partea dreaptă a ecranului. Și, deși cuvintele au fost (și sunt) încântătoare - Disco Elysium are un simț al umorului revoltător și un mod minunat de a exprima gânduri care ar trebui să rămână în capul tău - marea cantitate ar putea fi obositoare. Acest lucru a făcut, de asemenea, jocul oarecum liniștit și nemișcat, deoarece aștepta să citești și să ajungi din urmă. Dar adăugarea de voci audibile are un efect puternic asupra acestui lucru.

Disco Elysium now feels more like an actual tabletop role-playing experience. A kind of narrator describes scenes audibly to you, making it feel as though you’re in a live gaming session with a GM. This also frees you up to concentrate less on the words, which is a blessing now you’re probably sitting further away from them. And it means people in your house can be pulled into the experience too, should you want them to be – I don’t recommend letting your children spectate!

It’s also very welcome hearing the characters who you speak to. Their newly found voices give new life to the game, and they add a sense of clarity to the different characters you meet. The voices are generally good, too, with a nice range of accents and voice types. The only slight jarring element is when there isn’t a voiced line, for some reason, and when your player character speaks, or rather doesn’t speak, because you are not voiced.

So while full voice acting may seem like a token addition on paper, in practice it has a big effect.

There are other additions in the new Final Cut version of the game, including unseen areas and quality of life improvements, and added replayability, but I either haven’t noticed them or haven’t seen them yet.