The Pale Entropy
May 23rd, 2025
i played disco elysium. yes i am late
In “Live How I Live” by Zumtru and myself, I openly pour my heart out during one of the worst points in my life. Upon finishing the game, she informed me that the parts of the song written by her actually about Disco Elysium, assumably from the perspective of the protagonist, Lieutenant double-yefreitor Harrier Du Bois, who loses his memory from drinking after being sent to the village of Martinaise to investigate the lynching of a PMC mercenary by a shipping harbor worker’s union. Harry is a leftover from the disco era and while in control of him, is sometimes given dialogue options that hint that he was, or thinks of himself as having been some kind of disco star, not that it matters with him at rock bottom.
Can't see them, could be anyone
You'll show the truth if they show you love
There, lightning strikes another one
I'm bleeding out, where have you gone?
A bleeding wound, expensive words
If I tell you the truth, would you tell me worse?
Can't reach out, I know it hurts
Can't reach out, it would be much worse
Live how I live
And you'll die how I'll die
I know the act's washed up
My performance is done
And I'll never see the spotlight
Seosamh remarked to me that they don’t think there’s better writing in any game and that the final segment in which you meet the “Insulindian Phasmid,” a massive reed-like insect being searched for by cryptozoologists (pseudoscientists hunting for cryptids) is one of the most beautiful moments written into a game. Am I inclined to agree? Possibly— I haven’t found myself especially interested in video games in several years, in part because I do not actively have a machine that can run video games well, and have not had one that can stably play games online for several years. While I may be largely entertained by the world and characters presented by Disco Elysium and stunned by the immaculately detailed prose completely unusual for a video game, what I primarily want to talk about is how it handles physical, mental and metaphorical entropy which seems to be the overarching theme.
The Pale, Entropy, Internet Politics
In Estonia, where Disco Elysium was made, the pale of settlement is called “Juutide asustuspiirkond” which translates to “Jewish settlement area,” whereas The Pale of Ireland is simply adapted from English “The Pale.” In Ireland The Pale refers to a coastal eastern territory that came under English rule after the Anglo-Norman Invasion. In the late 12th century. The term “beyond the pale” which means to go beyond reasonable norms or what is at all acceptable could possibly refer to this settlement in a sense that what lies beyond the territory is uncivilized, unsafe, and foul. Perceived outsideness. In a sense the pale in Disco Elysium functions itself as the beyond of the pale. It refers to a metaphysical anomaly that lays beyond the territories in order to separate parts of the world. It functions as a sort of dark matter that erodes the mind and radiates the body. If one chooses not to look at the pale as a meta-analysis of blue holes (the space laying outside of the map in an game) one must look at it as entropy. Nothing exists within the pale but unlife. It is reasonable to consider that the pale is man-made in a sense. The communist meeting discusses a sort of intellectual “plasm” that can form, the Paledriver has memory loss and memories that aren’t hers, and the Insulindian phasmid states outright that the pale came into existence from humans. One can consider this a metaphor for the ever-growing borders between people caused by the ideologies, alive or snuffed. At multiple points it is speculated that the pale is growing, and that it may even be cause for eventual apocalypse, although this would potentially take thousands of even millions of years. It parallels the way that Silicon Valley tech moguls talk about the death of the earth (and later the sun) and the necessity of space colonization— Here there is an innate nihilist assertion that entropy is inevitable, that everything will eventually be swallowed up no matter what we do, that the fight is hopeless and looking for ways to better the current conditions of things is useless.
After discovering a 2 meter clumping of pale in the church, Harry’s obtains frequent dialogue choices where he can suggest in some way that because of what the pale is, the anomaly could be the cause for the problems in Martinaise, the doomed commercial area and the strife of the workers, which are typically shot down by Lieutenant Kitsuragi, a skeptic rationalist. Whether or not the anomaly is actually affecting the state of Martinaise is irrelevant. Businesses in Martinaise don’t fail because the place is cursed, it’s because it’s an impoverished and forgotten ghetto that breeds racists and addicts while the only people putting any money into the village is a self-sucking wannabe-kingpin union boss. The people do not crave liberation, they crave control, drugs, or materialistic baubles. Regardless of the outcome of the tribunal there is still the looming threat that Wild Pines and Krenel send more PMCs to Martinaise. While Harry does shoot and kill Kortenaer, a man responsible for many obscene atrocities, there are plenty more just like him because this is a world that breeds men like Kortenaer. Harry is unable to do “good” for Martinaise and simply passes through, inviting more combat to an already run down place. Provided that the player gets anything besides the ending in which Harry is abandoned in the fishing village (I got the best possible tribunal outcome and got the ending where Kim joins you at the precinct) he will just go back to his cop life and continue to get people hurt in his drunken spirals. At the very end, his sense of obtained character is wiped away as he retrieves some final details of his past. Harry was never some revolutionary, nor was he a disco star. He was a gym teacher who became a cop to impress a woman and that’s it.
After spray painting “something beautiful is going to happen” on a wall the game insists the message there will be passed by until it is eventually worn off by the sea air. The writing of Disco Elysium points at the beautiful glimpses hidden within entropy, but ultimately submits to it.
This game made a lot of leftists more depressed. It’s not like that was the intention but when you hand an elaborate, existential and possibly nihilistic piece of writing to illiterate westoids this is your outcome-- wannabe communists who capitulate to fictional depression and uninformed people accepting this piece of left-oriented fiction as political theory itself. This is a core attribute of the internet left, a group of people well described by the communist deserter, the true killer. Although he prides himself on his knowledge of materialist readings he has no intent or ability to act on them. All he can do is look down on the citizens in Martinaise, plebeians in the face of his superior rhetoric. By the time he actually does take any sort of action it’s not in the face of revolutionary activity, it’s in the face of misogynistic obsession, one which he thinks gives him a sort of ownership over the woman he’s obsessed with. The outcome, the possibility of further bloodshed with no retaliation were not on his mind, nor was the identity and purpose of the mercenary, he simply caved into his psychopathic, misogynistic urge. He loved her, he wanted to see Lely’s brains splatter onto her face. His character is very reflective of the solipsistic denial of others’ sentience found within political spaces on the internet.
One of the things I most appreciate about Disco Elysium is its sense for its character’s pluralism. The different upgradable skills in Harry’s repertoire are not just skills or representations of his thought processes, but distinct personalities which speak directly to him and sometimes each other, informing his decisions. Including Harry’s brain and limbic system, each aspect speaks in a particular manner with particular notions that may even end with those personalities arguing with each other. During the dream sequence where Harry meets Dolores Dei, Suggestion argues with Rhetoric(?) and if you kiss Dolores it hits you with
Suggestion: “brother, you should put me in front of a firing squad. i have no words for how i failed you”
It is these sorts of interactions that keeps the dialogue fresh throughout the whole experience. Not only is the prose excellent at any given point, it continues to introduce new and interesting writing mechanics. Shivers functions not only as a distinct personality but a conduit for Harry to be able to telepathically communicate with the spirit of Revachol, la revacholiere, during my personal favorite dialogue exchange.
I NEED YOU. YOU CAN KEEP ME ON THIS EARTH. BE VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU.
I don't really have a closing statement for this I liked the game thank you bye
