Back in 2019 eastern European developer ZA/UM put out a game which many consider the best role-playing game on PC since Planescape Torment. Actually, both are deep, text-heavy video games with a script worthy of a novel, and thought-provoking “choice and consequence” gameplay.
Also, and like Planescape, Disco Elysium features an amnesiac protagonist, a detective who must rediscover his identity as he attempts to solve a murder case in the fictional city of Revachol. This is a game which according to its makers lets you “become a hero or an absolute disaster of a human being”, and it has won many awards since its release in late 2019.
Disco Elysium, though, is now being improved quite a bit thanks to the addition of full voice acting to the game. A new edition of the game titled “Disco Elysium: The Final Cut” is out now, featuring “one million professionally voice acted words by actors from all over the world” according to developer and publisher ZA/UM.
This should certainly help liven up the game quite a bit, especially taking into account that ZA/UM seem to have found the right narrator in jazz musician Lenval Brown, whose voice acting performance has been praised in early reviews such as IGN’s.
Also, now that the “final cut” edition of the game is out, Disco Elysium is available on consoles for the first time too. PS4 and PS5 owners will finally be able to play the game, which now also has full controller support on PC, letting everyone enjoy Disco Elysium’s twisted and thought-provoking story from the comfort of their couch.
However, the PlayStation versions of the game seem to have had issues at launch, and the likes of Push Square have reported poor frame rates and unresponsive controls while playing the PS5 version of the award-winning RPG, so it might be advisable to wait until ZA/UM fixes all these issues if you’re planning on playing the game on PS5 or PS4 (note: a recently released patch for the console versions seems to have fixed most of the issues users were reporting).
Aside from PC and PlayStation consoles, Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is also available on Google Stadia and Mac, and is coming to the Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S sometime this summer.
The game, though, is still banned in Australia, as the country’s infamous classification board has refused the game classification in the Land of the Kangaroo as was recently reported on Kotaku.
The game’s console versions couldn’t go on sale in Australia because the game apparently violated a clause referring to video games that “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality”.
On closer inspection, though, Kotaku found out that the fact that players can engage in drug use at some points in Disco Elysium was the main reason why Australia’s classification board hit it with the ban hammer.
And this is obviously not the first time video games have been banned in Australia: the likes of Hotline Miami 2 was banned too, and so was Outlast 2, although in the case of these two games it was their depiction of violence and sex that got them banned in the country. Also, GTA V was pulled from shelves in Australia over its sexism and violence too…
So it’s clear that ZA/UM will have to make changes to Disco Elysium in order to sell the console versions in the Land of the Kangaroo, as the upcoming Xbox and Nintendo Switch versions of the game will almost certainly be refused classification unless the dev makes changes to the script.
The game is still apparently on sale on Steam in Australia though, meaning PC gamers have been exempted from the ban and are able to play the game at their leisure – at least for the time being.
Either way, it’s clear that Disco Elysium: The Final Cut is already one of the top RPG releases of the year given that it’s an enhanced version of arguably the best game of 2019, so here’s hoping that everyone who wants to get their hands on this sprawling role-playing adventure is able to do so in the future.
Read more: Award-winning RPG Disco Elysium to get a “final cut” edition in 2021