“Everyone in This Story Is Already Dead”: Death Matters in Disco Elysium’s Apocalypse

Citation

McKeown C (2024) “Everyone in This Story Is Already Dead”: Death Matters in Disco Elysium’s Apocalypse. In: Di'Tommaso L, Crossley J, Lockhart A & Wagner R (eds.) End-Game: Apocalyptic Video Games, Contemporary Society, and Digital Media Culture. Video Games and the Humanities, 16. Berlin: DeGruyter. https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110752809/html?lang=en

Abstract
This paper is divided into two sections. In the first section, I present my understanding of ‘apocalypses,’ at first within game studies then more broadly. Following this I outline how I intend to contribute to the current discussion by drawing on posthuman theory to reframe apocalypses. I propose that my reading of apocalypses in video games could make a small contribution to writings on death (both in games and more broadly) by viewing apocalypses as calls for a height- ened appreciation of the entangled nature of human existence. In the second section, I apply my understanding of apocalypses and death in video games with reference to Disco Elysium. Describing the game’s world and its characters, I emphasise its juxtaposition of an apocalyptic world (an encroaching, unavoidable entropic force, dubbed ‘the pale’) against its protagonist, Harry Du- bois, who functions as a node of near-endless possible selves that are allowed by the game’s vast possibilities for self-expression through an array of dialogue op- tions. I explain how Disco Elysium constructs a singular fate for its world, but con- trast this with a staggering number of possibilities for the lives lived within it. Focusing on this contrast, I argue that Disco Elysium functions as a tool for em- bracing a view of agency in the face of finitude and unpack how the game sug- gests that a single life (including death) has powerful potential for multiplicity and entanglement with the political, social, and material world.

Keywords
Videogames; Posthumanism; Apocalypse Environment; Ecologies