"Take me to them as a prisoner of war. I have relinquished my weapon, I can no longer serve. No superiors can relieve me of my duty, you bulldozed them all into a mass grave for trying to free humanity..."
@@rangergxi What I meant was, he was a good communist in his head, in theory, trying to stay true to the cause. But in practice he was bad. A deserter, and a petty, horrible man. He was a contradiction, good at one thing, bad at another.
the deserter kinda comes off as that trope involving the killer being an unintroduced character brought-in at the end to finalise the story, but i realise that Disco Elysium spends ages taking the time to tell you about the revolution of Revachol and how the city lives in it's shadow, how it has become a mournful amnesiac of a city- forgetting what it is grieving over. the deserter is the death that Revachol couldnt get over. you can feel him in every faded-concrete inch of martinaise, in the cigarette smoke pluming from balconies, in the lights of the docks at night. when we're introduces to the deserter it isnt unfitting that hes revealed to be the killer, because he has been there the entire time thematically. he is the rotting corpse of revachol, and the hanged man is just it's death croak.
"And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest most courageous people in the world," he's silent for a second. "You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know." "Know what?" "That the bourgeois are not human."
I'm not gonna lie, I felt a little annoyed, at first, that they pulled the "The real murderer was someone you've never even met" thing on me at the end of the game here. I was genuinely thinking "I can't believe a game this good would pull a trick this cheap." Then I talked to the guy for about 30 minutes, and came out of it completely certain that there never could have been any other way to end the game.
After exploring the city and it's history, it's hard not to come to a realization that the ghost of the revolution had always been lingering around. In the ruins, the bullet holes, the old bunkers, it's everywhere. It's the only missing piece that fits the puzzle to complete the story of the city.
It's not someone you never met, you've been learning about it the whole game. Only through your journey you can get to understand where does it come from.
@@haoshenme , that's an excellent summary, indeed the clues were littered and referenced all around Martinaise. I thought it would have been cheap if they hadn't totally fleshed out The Deserters character, but they did, just as they had done with all the other well written characters. By the end all I could really feel was pity for him.
I 100% agree. You never meet the deserter prior to this, but everything, EVERYTHING in this game comes together thematically while speaking with him. The deserter is all the demons within Martinaise and within Harry.
We got him, he wants to tell you everything but he doesn't want to say it himself, he wants you to put the pieces together, he wants you to see it for yourself.
You blink, and the world is different than it was a second ago. The man sitting on the log before you suddenly more familiar to you than the bespectacled man at your side, quietly thumbing through the pages of his notebook, pen at the ready. It takes you a few seconds to realise why, but the revelation hits you like the bullet you're almost certain THIS man fired hit Lely's biological off-switch. You know him because he's you. The you awaiting you if you refuse to let go. If you continue to chase the apricot shadow. If you continue to avoid responsibility for your ultimately self-inflicted woes through the medium of copious amounts of Commodore Red and speed. This man is nobody. All that defines him is external now: his hatred for capitalism, for the killer (the OTHER killer, that is), the union, the world. His existence a mere caricature of living, given meaning by how the inner void attempts to deny its own existence by drowning itself in the world beyond those tired black eyes, never once looking inward and acknowledging the fault lines formed within. No. Wait. You're not entirely right, here. There IS a difference between the two of you. A small one, but maybe the most important one there is. You still have a choice.
@@Rycluse The deserter parallels Rene, you parallel Lely, but those two don't parallel each other. It's an interesting construct, deliberately lacking in symmetry.
man, that line really hit me. all at once, you can see the pain and loss that he feels for a time that existed far too long ago. but it's not just that, it's the parallels with harry's personal life, too. is she not heartbroken? how could she have moved on? things were great and now they're terrible and nobody seems to care.
"Something is on its way, something hidden. It's coming, a miracle - from the northwest - and it's almost here. You can feel it in the air on your hands, a cold spring air smoothing them over." -Shivers, while talking to the dead man
This sort of remind me hold out Japanese soldiers after ww2, some turning themselves after 20 or 30 years since war had ended. Even after so much time, wounds from the war still show...
Just had a thought. There is a lot of similarities between Harry and Iosef. They are both affiliated to the Militia. Both look older than they actually are. Both feel betrayed by women they like. Both can't let go of the past. The main difference is that Iosef refused to move on from the past and Harry still have a choice what to do with it. I am amazed how deep this game can be sometimes.
I think another difference is that Harry still has people who care for him, who are willing to help. The tragedy of the Deserter is how completely desolate his life is. He's not just isolated, he's living in oblivion. Harry isn't there yet.
I always took iosef as a warning. The final product of not moving on. What harry will be in the true long term if he doesn’t let go of his pain and find new life. Harry’s been rotting for 6 years. The deserter’s been rotting for 43.
I actually like how unlikable the Deserter is. He lived through one of the great atrocities of his time, and felt himself torn both by his own cowardice and at Revachol's insistence on forgetting the ruins that surround it. Alone, traumatized, betrayed by himself and the only person who came to approach him, he comes to hate everything that implicitly mocks his fallen comrades. The man he shot was a rapist hired to brutally suppress a strike. It should not be hard to like him. When his voice swells with pride and indignation as he says 'I am the son of a welder, and an officer of the Commune of Revachol,' something stirs in you. And yet, his hatred of Revachol's callousness is also his hatred of people's ability to regrow, move on, keep living normal lives in spite of everything. He moves easily from recalling the horrors of the Coalition's invasion to misogynistic ranting about 'disco whores.' The final murder he committed wasn't motivated by any of the victim's actual crimes, but by petty sexual jealousy. Meanwhile, he remains totally unaware of the most splendid and wonderful thing on the island he calls home. The Deserter is sympathetic, but he, like his far more despicable counterpart René, is a creature locked in the past.
Perfect description. In a normal mystery, having the killer be some guy you didn't know anything about until the very end would probably be bad writing. But DE isn't a normal mystery, it's a drama about the psychology of the main character. The deserter is Harry's ghost of Christmas Future. He's who Harry is on the way to becoming - a shell of a human being stripped of everything except rage because he can't let go of the past. But maybe, just maybe, Harry is not too far gone that he can't step back from the edge.
Shit, even Rene was able to move on, form friendships, and come to some grudging realization that the cause he fought for was over, taking small pleasures where he could l, even if it was something as simple as a game of boule. The Deserter was like an angry ghost who doesn’t even realize its dead.
@@garcalej Rene was able to somewhat "move on" because his side eventually won the war and he was re-welcomed into Revachol. The Deserter on the other hand was hunted and had to live in hiding for years after the end of the war because he had been on the losing side.
@@TheButterMinecart1 The Coalition won the war. Not the Royalists, who were allies of convenience. They got their revenge on the Communists, but Revachol never regained its monarchy or its independence. It was thus a bittersweet victory, though nowhere near as bitter as the Communist defeat. Still, there must have been other communards who survived the war, survived and got on with their lives as best they could, either by keeping their past associations secret, going into exile, or foreswearing them for a more moderate position. Time wouldn’t have erased their grief, but it would’ve softened their desire for retaliation or to cling to that doomed cause. Not so The Deserter. Something was broken him. Even when it became clear the Coalition no longer was looking for ex-communists, indeed, had moved on from it, the war was still going in his head.
The deserter might be the most tragic character in all of Disco Elysium. He gave his life to a cause he truly believed in at the age of 16. He is a man who saw all his comrades get massacred in a matter of minutes. And for 43 years he has to watch the world move on for this tragic event. Yet he can’t move on from it. The years of isolation and uncompromising idealism has made him a bitter hypocrite. He hates people for becoming racist yet calls Rene a traitor to his race. He is saddened that he is the last communist left yet he refused to help the Claire brothers and calls the player a fake communist. The real tragedy is that he is not a communist anymore. He is not motivated by his ideals anymore. He is by his hatred for the rest of the world. He hates the royalist more than he cares about communism. If you tell him Rene died before he could kill him he losses the will to get worked up about anything anymore. He doesn’t answer any of your questions and just losses his will to fight. The one thing that kept him going was his hate for the royalist and fascist. Without that all his convictions leave him and he just is left a sad old man. A man form a bygone time. He is the last of his kind. He would tell you he survived the day all his comrades died. He is wrong. He has been dead for 43 years. His dream died with him. And he knows it. So he just sits on the island getting more and more bitter. This is what makes Disco Elysium one of the greatest games of all time. A simple talk with an old man can be one of the most depressing moments in the game.
Let's be honest, he is right for not helping Evrart. Despite his ideals he is still a corrupted businessman who does nothing to change the city for the better.
@@BooguyTheAdept I mean Evrart is pretty morale ambiguous but I think he is 100 percent ride or die for Revachol. I believe there is a drama check with him when he tells you about his plans to restore the city and make it better after the war with Wild Pines, and drama says he is being legit and wants to help people. Also, why would he give Rene a job that has no benefit to Evrart and even hurts his bottom line than for no other reason than he cares at least somewhat about the people of the town.
@@atheismgotstopped2537 The problem is that it's impossible to tell Evrart real intentions, this isn't the only time in the game that your skills get tricked, and even Drama iirc, points out fairly early on that the man put on a facade to hide his motivations. It's more obvious when he gives the document to build the the youth center. The people concerned are skeptical about it, and if you check it out, you notice that the main point of the construction is to chase away the locals. It's a good reminder that there's more to people than what they let on and to not believe someone just because they're willing to cooperate.
@@atheismgotstopped2537 The Claire brothers use Gaston as a writer and the job is just a gift to him. Rene has a job for the union through him. The job is a meaningless job he does not even need to show up for, but does anyway.
How does calling someone a race traitor for their politics make someone racist? That's the point of the term. A better example would be the fact that he hates racism but hatefully uses 'kipt' despite being black himself.
I have seen too many real life examples of the Deserter. People so consumed with revenge, so consumed by their past, that they never move on. They're effectively dead people walking. And whatever justifications they come up with to cling on, it doesn't disguise that fact. You may feel that if you let go of the past, then those who hate would have won. No. By clining on to it, you are showing them that they won. That they hurt you so badly it is consuming you. That they destroyed your life. By clining on to that pain, you are simply giving them more power over you. Learn to let go of the past. It doesn't do to dwell on it.
It's easy to feel that if you forgive, you'll forget as well, or maybe didn't care that much in the first place. Indeed that's how it sometimes goes. But it doesn't have to be like that. One can remember what happened, and learn the lessons, without letting the bitter memories devour you from inside.
The terrible dilemma of the deserter is that he is right to despise the world he watches through his scope, but he's wrong to dwell on it, and the two come with each other, at the same time, but they're mutually incompatible. That's the tragic, beautiful paradox of Disco Elysium, and it's not necessarily capable of being solved.
@@theonlylauri I know one other game that has this lesson. The Sexy Brutale, while not a masterpiece, is a pretty decently made mystery puzzle game, where you, as Lafcadio Boone, the local priest, try to save guests of The Sexy Brutale casino mansion from being murdered by the staff, trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario. The day plays again, and again, and again. Spoilers ahead. You try and succeed at saving people one at a time, getting their power and getting deeper into the mansion. As you descend into the depths of the basement you see something surreal, something different. Graves that shouldn not be there. An operating room. A jail cell and a tree that grew from a sapling into a massive oak. And at the heart of it all - The Marquis of the mansion, Lucas Bonds. The man whose bloody tears from witnessing all his friends' deaths fuel the infernal engine restarting the day over and again. The Golden Mask, a mysterious force, keeps the Marquis there indefinitely, intending to make him suffer eternally. And an incarnation of Lucas Bonds' wife, Eleanor, now stripped of all skin, is trying to help us, Lafcadio Boone, to stop the Golden Mask and let The Marquis go. Of course, things are not as simple. There was no exaggerated deaths from giant spiders, songs that shatter a massive vitrage glass and elevator turned into incinerator. There was only one fool, The Marquis, who spent unheard wealth on The Sexy Brutale but could not keep the money flowing. So he tried to get insurance money with timed bombs in all the chimneys. Except he miscounted. The bombs exploded not at night, when everyone will be outside and watching fireworks. They exploded in the middle of the day, with everyone still inside. Only the Marquis survived, jumping out of a window. Everyone else - his guests, his friends, his wife and his unborn child - all perished in the flames. Marquis was saved with advanced surgery. He was jailed for many years for massive death he caused. And yet Lucas Bonds felt this was not enough. So he punished himself. He kept the agony of the mistake fresh in his mind, replaying that fateful Saturday over and over again, fleshing out the deaths, making them more out there, more fitting, more brutal. All to keep himself punished for as long as he could. Lucas Bonds was The Golden Mask. And yet he knew his wife would not want him to suffer forever. So a part of him fought to stop the madness. This image of Lafcadio Boone - L.B. - was also Lucas Bonds - L.B. And of course the image of his dead wife, now so disfigured Lucas cannot look at her without pain, is his inner image of her. At the end Lucas takes up the final mask of of his true self and frees himself. He didn't forgive himself - he does not get the luxury. But he stopped punishing himself for it. It was finally time to move on. Fourth years of misery was too much.
In a city where everyone's political opinions are essentially a purely intellectual side hobby to impress others and never actually used for change, having a bolshevik stand-in who gave his entire existence to the cause be the final confrontation is such a genius decision. Such a tragic character, and a phenomenal reveal
I don't know why but since I've played the game in 2019 I still to this day come and listen to this OST whenever I feel like crying, I really don't know why but it makes me cry so much
Honestly at first i was like, why a random ass character that is just introduced is the culrpit in a mystery genre story? But the more i think about it, the more profoundly fitting it is with the rest of the game. Honestly i missed a lot of the more subtle storytelling on my first playthrough. Hopefully i can pick it up better whenever i replayed it again which i definitely will. This game is just that worth it.
This might just be me, but the deserter’s theme to me is kind of representative of his life, at least after the revolution. The ambient tunes in the back remind of the progress and moving on of the world, while the repeated guitar part, to me, represents how he is stuck in his ways, unchanging. Beautiful game so much so that a single song evokes such emotion.
This and Instrument of Surrender truly capture the feeling of defeat, depression and nihilism, in a time where we face imminent climate crisis and eventual mass death in the 40s(which imo is mirrored in disco elysium by the pale) if not for radical action done in the next few years. It's hard to describe how cold and hopeless you can feel listening to disco elysiums soundtrack, its a masterpiece in practically every aspect
"The bourgeois are not human" Fucking hell. Both in-game and in real-life I'm pretty left-wing, but not violent revolutionary left wing like this guy. But this line made me feel for him. He's been through the worst of it. He's stared down humanity at its bleakest. It broke him.
He admittedly has a point about the Moralintern being pure evil, given all the war crimes their occupying forces committed during "the burning years" and the way they've mismanaged Revachol for decades until it became an impoverished chattel colony to international corporations. The Deserter makes some salient observations despite how obviously disturbed he is by his bad life experiences.
He’s a man who watched a revolution sweep away the old, a nation of people fighting for a future for themselves. He held a rifle, held his position and did his duty in the hope that it would help keep the fires of the revolution alive... Only to watch as the world crashed in on Revachol, stomped out that fire beneath the heel of the Moralintern, a heel claiming to do so for the good of the people of Martinaise as if they needed to be saved from themselves. He watched as everyone he knew was either hunted down and executed, or resign themselves to the horrific reality the Moralintern forced upon them: that change is not possible, that they will remain the way they are until the end of time. The Deserter spent decades living on that island, peering through his scope to see the land beyond his shores decay, taking the people with it, left out of reach and him left powerless to do anything... Anything except to take that searing hatred, point his barrel at anything he believed responsible, and pull the trigger. To do his duty, long after the war was over and the revolution was gone. The Deserter is an incredibly interesting character, acting as a sort of manifestation of the overhanging feeling you get walking around Revachol; that the city is unwilling or unable to move on and change, that the horrors of the wars still linger in every street. He’s the opposite to Reme for a reason, both unable to move beyond the past.
@@Komnen0s The Moralintern are hypocrites, but not pure evil. At the time they wanted to reign in the communist terror (something that would kill 30 million people). In the present they want to hold the line and maintain stability. These are noble goals. The downside of course is that the status quo is corporations brutally murdering people in the blacker parts of the world.
I can assure, most people living in the global south do have the same idea, that the bourgeois are not human, there are people living in digged graves, sleeping in graves to survive winter, while a kilometre away a factory owner is building a 5 story apartment to rent for the highest bitter. Its probably not the same in the western world, but a glance in the global south will definitely change your mind
I think the deserter represents what harry will become if he continues to obsess about the past and refuses to move on: a broken depressed bitter old weasel of a man fuelled by nothing but self loathing and jealousy towards those who can be happy while wallowing in what used to be (fairly ironic, considering he claims to be a communist, a man of the people, but hates everyone), untill eventually you're left as a pathetic shell that can do nothing but hate and crawls through life while seeing none of the beauty it has to offer you. After all, he cant see the phasmid. The best ever final boss: yourself
I also love that Klassje is also a mirror of Harry’s past self, a talented, smart, perceptive young person who wallows constantly in substances just to numb themselves from the already insane world of Disco Elysium. If Iosef is Harry’s Ghost of Christmas Future then Klassje is his Ghost of Christmas Past. Two central figures of the main storyline being mirrors to the protagonist is just so cool to me.
@@DK-xz6sz oh maybe the reason iosef is obsessed with and hated Klassje reflects Harrys really unstable sense of self esteem, simultaneously hating and loving himself
@@harrymg8458 Tbh there are a lot of characters in DE that serve as Harry’s foils to depict his struggles clearly but I think as you and I’ve already said, Klassje and Iosef are the 2 most blatant examples.
@@DK-xz6sz yeah like i love how Garys relationship with Lena and Morell shows how hope and open mindedness can be both wonderful and horrific. Two wonderfully kind people being exploited and turned into fascists by a pathetic weasel of a man
I think the Commune of Revachol fell because its truest believer lost faith in it - even for just a brief moment. In a strange way thats kinda how the Eastern Bloc in our world fell as well...
Not the same. The Eastern Bloc fell because many of its states where there against their wills, oppressed and puppeted. Chernobyl, the financial woes, and the coup were the last straw for the believers of the system.
A theme of a sad man, a broken man. A man who holds himself tight in a fortress of old beliefs and contradictions. Who wanted to stop the enemy of progress only to realize it was to late the moment his countrymen were gone.
I have cried to this song before. I wept for the state of communism today. "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism". Sometimes it just feels so hopeless. But man, we just can't give into despair and the idea that change is impossible. There always has to be revolutionary hope, if we one day want to change the world for the better.
@@Hypogean7 I always assumed it was just like how the Russian Revolution overturned a bunch of old Tsar-era laws and replaced them with their own. Since the Commune didn't even have much time to establish itself unlike the USSR.
I can't denied after this plot twist i felt disappointed, i was like: really?? REALLY??? But after some thought was really a genius twist I was hoping one of the big players of the story was the culprit, but the answers was so simple but so deep at the same time Just was needed a little sad and pathetic man who can't Let it go his past to start all that Chaín of events to lead to all that mess, but at the same time by know the city's story, it's people and all the obsesive polítical conflict to understand that the stage was already setting, the desserter was only the unexpect consecuence and the spark to ignites something was already destinied to burn
"Take me to them as a prisoner of war. I have relinquished my weapon, I can no longer serve. No superiors can relieve me of my duty, you bulldozed them all into a mass grave for trying to free humanity..."
He was a good communist, and a terrible person. One of the many contradictions in the world
@@pabloc8808 He was a terrible communist. His cause stopped being communism and he gave up on uplifting people.
@@rangergxi What I meant was, he was a good communist in his head, in theory, trying to stay true to the cause. But in practice he was bad. A deserter, and a petty, horrible man. He was a contradiction, good at one thing, bad at another.
He ran away. How is he good? His comrades died.
YEAH HARDCORE EAT THE POOR
The perfect music for a 30 minute long interrogation.
the deserter kinda comes off as that trope involving the killer being an unintroduced character brought-in at the end to finalise the story, but i realise that Disco Elysium spends ages taking the time to tell you about the revolution of Revachol and how the city lives in it's shadow, how it has become a mournful amnesiac of a city- forgetting what it is grieving over. the deserter is the death that Revachol couldnt get over. you can feel him in every faded-concrete inch of martinaise, in the cigarette smoke pluming from balconies, in the lights of the docks at night. when we're introduces to the deserter it isnt unfitting that hes revealed to be the killer, because he has been there the entire time thematically. he is the rotting corpse of revachol, and the hanged man is just it's death croak.
The hanged man even tells you directly, "It was communism that killed me."
this is an eleven month old comment, but i just finished this game for the first time last night. this is so well put and evocative. thank you
@@clementinekitten8305 ty for the appreciation :)
chiming in after my first playthrough to say you put it perfectly. the deserter is the perfect embodiment of every theme in disco elysium.
@@adora_was_taken means a lot to hear that :)_
"And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest most courageous people in the world," he's silent for a second. "You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know."
"Know what?"
"That the bourgeois are not human."
This line will forever haunt me
It's not un-proletarian to feel something
I'm not gonna lie, I felt a little annoyed, at first, that they pulled the "The real murderer was someone you've never even met" thing on me at the end of the game here. I was genuinely thinking "I can't believe a game this good would pull a trick this cheap." Then I talked to the guy for about 30 minutes, and came out of it completely certain that there never could have been any other way to end the game.
After exploring the city and it's history, it's hard not to come to a realization that the ghost of the revolution had always been lingering around. In the ruins, the bullet holes, the old bunkers, it's everywhere. It's the only missing piece that fits the puzzle to complete the story of the city.
It's not someone you never met, you've been learning about it the whole game. Only through your journey you can get to understand where does it come from.
@@haoshenme , that's an excellent summary, indeed the clues were littered and referenced all around Martinaise. I thought it would have been cheap if they hadn't totally fleshed out The Deserters character, but they did, just as they had done with all the other well written characters. By the end all I could really feel was pity for him.
The Deserter was the best character in the game...sitting on that little island bitter all the years
I 100% agree. You never meet the deserter prior to this, but everything, EVERYTHING in this game comes together thematically while speaking with him. The deserter is all the demons within Martinaise and within Harry.
We got him, he wants to tell you everything but he doesn't want to say it himself, he wants you to put the pieces together, he wants you to see it for yourself.
You blink, and the world is different than it was a second ago. The man sitting on the log before you suddenly more familiar to you than the bespectacled man at your side, quietly thumbing through the pages of his notebook, pen at the ready.
It takes you a few seconds to realise why, but the revelation hits you like the bullet you're almost certain THIS man fired hit Lely's biological off-switch.
You know him because he's you.
The you awaiting you if you refuse to let go. If you continue to chase the apricot shadow. If you continue to avoid responsibility for your ultimately self-inflicted woes through the medium of copious amounts of Commodore Red and speed.
This man is nobody. All that defines him is external now: his hatred for capitalism, for the killer (the OTHER killer, that is), the union, the world. His existence a mere caricature of living, given meaning by how the inner void attempts to deny its own existence by drowning itself in the world beyond those tired black eyes, never once looking inward and acknowledging the fault lines formed within.
No. Wait. You're not entirely right, here. There IS a difference between the two of you. A small one, but maybe the most important one there is.
You still have a choice.
I don't remember this in the game. Did you write this? It's incredible. The parallel between the two characters somehow completely passed me by.
What a beautiful interpretation. Well done!
I honestly feel the whole story is like this. Parallels on parallels.
@@Rycluse The deserter parallels Rene, you parallel Lely, but those two don't parallel each other. It's an interesting construct, deliberately lacking in symmetry.
VOLITION: End of the line, last stop before the depot
"Are they not heartbroken? How could they've moved on?"
man, that line really hit me. all at once, you can see the pain and loss that he feels for a time that existed far too long ago. but it's not just that, it's the parallels with harry's personal life, too. is she not heartbroken? how could she have moved on? things were great and now they're terrible and nobody seems to care.
Communism killed me, but love did me in.
Crazy how useful Inland Empire actually is
@@CPNTT there isn't any reason not to max the ability, so fun and interesting
"Something is on its way, something hidden. It's coming, a miracle - from the northwest - and it's almost here. You can feel it in the air on your hands, a cold spring air smoothing them over."
-Shivers, while talking to the dead man
This sort of remind me hold out Japanese soldiers after ww2, some turning themselves after 20 or 30 years since war had ended. Even after so much time, wounds from the war still show...
Hatred corrodes the vessel containing it.
The Bourgeoisie are not human.
2 nobodies in the middle of nowhere talking about something that happened for nothing.
And it the best damn thing ever
Pure, defeated rage in music form
Just had a thought.
There is a lot of similarities between Harry and Iosef. They are both affiliated to the Militia. Both look older than they actually are. Both feel betrayed by women they like. Both can't let go of the past. The main difference is that Iosef refused to move on from the past and Harry still have a choice what to do with it.
I am amazed how deep this game can be sometimes.
I think another difference is that Harry still has people who care for him, who are willing to help. The tragedy of the Deserter is how completely desolate his life is. He's not just isolated, he's living in oblivion. Harry isn't there yet.
''Kill the Past''
I always took iosef as a warning. The final product of not moving on. What harry will be in the true long term if he doesn’t let go of his pain and find new life. Harry’s been rotting for 6 years. The deserter’s been rotting for 43.
@@coolfish420 and it's not like he can't find solace in other people, he doesn't want to...at all
I actually like how unlikable the Deserter is. He lived through one of the great atrocities of his time, and felt himself torn both by his own cowardice and at Revachol's insistence on forgetting the ruins that surround it. Alone, traumatized, betrayed by himself and the only person who came to approach him, he comes to hate everything that implicitly mocks his fallen comrades. The man he shot was a rapist hired to brutally suppress a strike. It should not be hard to like him. When his voice swells with pride and indignation as he says 'I am the son of a welder, and an officer of the Commune of Revachol,' something stirs in you. And yet, his hatred of Revachol's callousness is also his hatred of people's ability to regrow, move on, keep living normal lives in spite of everything. He moves easily from recalling the horrors of the Coalition's invasion to misogynistic ranting about 'disco whores.' The final murder he committed wasn't motivated by any of the victim's actual crimes, but by petty sexual jealousy. Meanwhile, he remains totally unaware of the most splendid and wonderful thing on the island he calls home. The Deserter is sympathetic, but he, like his far more despicable counterpart René, is a creature locked in the past.
Perfect description. In a normal mystery, having the killer be some guy you didn't know anything about until the very end would probably be bad writing. But DE isn't a normal mystery, it's a drama about the psychology of the main character. The deserter is Harry's ghost of Christmas Future. He's who Harry is on the way to becoming - a shell of a human being stripped of everything except rage because he can't let go of the past. But maybe, just maybe, Harry is not too far gone that he can't step back from the edge.
Shit, even Rene was able to move on, form friendships, and come to some grudging realization that the cause he fought for was over, taking small pleasures where he could l, even if it was something as simple as a game of boule.
The Deserter was like an angry ghost who doesn’t even realize its dead.
@@garcalej Rene was able to somewhat "move on" because his side eventually won the war and he was re-welcomed into Revachol. The Deserter on the other hand was hunted and had to live in hiding for years after the end of the war because he had been on the losing side.
@@TheButterMinecart1 The Coalition won the war. Not the Royalists, who were allies of convenience. They got their revenge on the Communists, but Revachol never regained its monarchy or its independence. It was thus a bittersweet victory, though nowhere near as bitter as the Communist defeat.
Still, there must have been other communards who survived the war, survived and got on with their lives as best they could, either by keeping their past associations secret, going into exile, or foreswearing them for a more moderate position. Time wouldn’t have erased their grief, but it would’ve softened their desire for retaliation or to cling to that doomed cause.
Not so The Deserter. Something was broken him. Even when it became clear the Coalition no longer was looking for ex-communists, indeed, had moved on from it, the war was still going in his head.
I don't get how is Rene more despicable, Rene has called for the death of far less people than the deserter and also insulted less people.
The deserter might be the most tragic character in all of Disco Elysium. He gave his life to a cause he truly believed in at the age of 16. He is a man who saw all his comrades get massacred in a matter of minutes. And for 43 years he has to watch the world move on for this tragic event. Yet he can’t move on from it. The years of isolation and uncompromising idealism has made him a bitter hypocrite. He hates people for becoming racist yet calls Rene a traitor to his race. He is saddened that he is the last communist left yet he refused to help the Claire brothers and calls the player a fake communist. The real tragedy is that he is not a communist anymore. He is not motivated by his ideals anymore. He is by his hatred for the rest of the world. He hates the royalist more than he cares about communism. If you tell him Rene died before he could kill him he losses the will to get worked up about anything anymore. He doesn’t answer any of your questions and just losses his will to fight. The one thing that kept him going was his hate for the royalist and fascist. Without that all his convictions leave him and he just is left a sad old man. A man form a bygone time. He is the last of his kind. He would tell you he survived the day all his comrades died. He is wrong. He has been dead for 43 years. His dream died with him. And he knows it. So he just sits on the island getting more and more bitter. This is what makes Disco Elysium one of the greatest games of all time. A simple talk with an old man can be one of the most depressing moments in the game.
Let's be honest, he is right for not helping Evrart. Despite his ideals he is still a corrupted businessman who does nothing to change the city for the better.
@@BooguyTheAdept I mean Evrart is pretty morale ambiguous but I think he is 100 percent ride or die for Revachol. I believe there is a drama check with him when he tells you about his plans to restore the city and make it better after the war with Wild Pines, and drama says he is being legit and wants to help people. Also, why would he give Rene a job that has no benefit to Evrart and even hurts his bottom line than for no other reason than he cares at least somewhat about the people of the town.
@@atheismgotstopped2537 The problem is that it's impossible to tell Evrart real intentions, this isn't the only time in the game that your skills get tricked, and even Drama iirc, points out fairly early on that the man put on a facade to hide his motivations.
It's more obvious when he gives the document to build the the youth center. The people concerned are skeptical about it, and if you check it out, you notice that the main point of the construction is to chase away the locals.
It's a good reminder that there's more to people than what they let on and to not believe someone just because they're willing to cooperate.
@@atheismgotstopped2537 The Claire brothers use Gaston as a writer and the job is just a gift to him. Rene has a job for the union through him. The job is a meaningless job he does not even need to show up for, but does anyway.
How does calling someone a race traitor for their politics make someone racist? That's the point of the term. A better example would be the fact that he hates racism but hatefully uses 'kipt' despite being black himself.
This music is pure oblivion
I have seen too many real life examples of the Deserter. People so consumed with revenge, so consumed by their past, that they never move on. They're effectively dead people walking. And whatever justifications they come up with to cling on, it doesn't disguise that fact.
You may feel that if you let go of the past, then those who hate would have won. No. By clining on to it, you are showing them that they won. That they hurt you so badly it is consuming you. That they destroyed your life. By clining on to that pain, you are simply giving them more power over you.
Learn to let go of the past. It doesn't do to dwell on it.
It's easy to feel that if you forgive, you'll forget as well, or maybe didn't care that much in the first place. Indeed that's how it sometimes goes. But it doesn't have to be like that. One can remember what happened, and learn the lessons, without letting the bitter memories devour you from inside.
The terrible dilemma of the deserter is that he is right to despise the world he watches through his scope, but he's wrong to dwell on it, and the two come with each other, at the same time, but they're mutually incompatible. That's the tragic, beautiful paradox of Disco Elysium, and it's not necessarily capable of being solved.
I found Deserter just being incredibly thirsty, jealous, enraged by his obsession and used his politics as a shield
@@theonlylauri
I know one other game that has this lesson. The Sexy Brutale, while not a masterpiece, is a pretty decently made mystery puzzle game, where you, as Lafcadio Boone, the local priest, try to save guests of The Sexy Brutale casino mansion from being murdered by the staff, trapped in a Groundhog Day scenario. The day plays again, and again, and again. Spoilers ahead.
You try and succeed at saving people one at a time, getting their power and getting deeper into the mansion. As you descend into the depths of the basement you see something surreal, something different. Graves that shouldn not be there. An operating room. A jail cell and a tree that grew from a sapling into a massive oak. And at the heart of it all - The Marquis of the mansion, Lucas Bonds. The man whose bloody tears from witnessing all his friends' deaths fuel the infernal engine restarting the day over and again. The Golden Mask, a mysterious force, keeps the Marquis there indefinitely, intending to make him suffer eternally. And an incarnation of Lucas Bonds' wife, Eleanor, now stripped of all skin, is trying to help us, Lafcadio Boone, to stop the Golden Mask and let The Marquis go.
Of course, things are not as simple. There was no exaggerated deaths from giant spiders, songs that shatter a massive vitrage glass and elevator turned into incinerator. There was only one fool, The Marquis, who spent unheard wealth on The Sexy Brutale but could not keep the money flowing. So he tried to get insurance money with timed bombs in all the chimneys. Except he miscounted. The bombs exploded not at night, when everyone will be outside and watching fireworks. They exploded in the middle of the day, with everyone still inside. Only the Marquis survived, jumping out of a window. Everyone else - his guests, his friends, his wife and his unborn child - all perished in the flames.
Marquis was saved with advanced surgery. He was jailed for many years for massive death he caused. And yet Lucas Bonds felt this was not enough. So he punished himself. He kept the agony of the mistake fresh in his mind, replaying that fateful Saturday over and over again, fleshing out the deaths, making them more out there, more fitting, more brutal. All to keep himself punished for as long as he could. Lucas Bonds was The Golden Mask.
And yet he knew his wife would not want him to suffer forever. So a part of him fought to stop the madness. This image of Lafcadio Boone - L.B. - was also Lucas Bonds - L.B. And of course the image of his dead wife, now so disfigured Lucas cannot look at her without pain, is his inner image of her.
At the end Lucas takes up the final mask of of his true self and frees himself. He didn't forgive himself - he does not get the luxury. But he stopped punishing himself for it. It was finally time to move on. Fourth years of misery was too much.
Love the ending.
Me whenever I think about the future state of anything relating to Disco Elysium now.
In a city where everyone's political opinions are essentially a purely intellectual side hobby to impress others and never actually used for change, having a bolshevik stand-in who gave his entire existence to the cause be the final confrontation is such a genius decision. Such a tragic character, and a phenomenal reveal
Only him and René where left of that era of conflict and blood. Everyone else moved on.
Yea for everyone else, violence is "high concept"
I don't know why but since I've played the game in 2019 I still to this day come and listen to this OST whenever I feel like crying, I really don't know why but it makes me cry so much
Honestly at first i was like, why a random ass character that is just introduced is the culrpit in a mystery genre story? But the more i think about it, the more profoundly fitting it is with the rest of the game. Honestly i missed a lot of the more subtle storytelling on my first playthrough.
Hopefully i can pick it up better whenever i replayed it again which i definitely will. This game is just that worth it.
This might just be me, but the deserter’s theme to me is kind of representative of his life, at least after the revolution. The ambient tunes in the back remind of the progress and moving on of the world, while the repeated guitar part, to me, represents how he is stuck in his ways, unchanging. Beautiful game so much so that a single song evokes such emotion.
This and Instrument of Surrender truly capture the feeling of defeat, depression and nihilism, in a time where we face imminent climate crisis and eventual mass death in the 40s(which imo is mirrored in disco elysium by the pale) if not for radical action done in the next few years.
It's hard to describe how cold and hopeless you can feel listening to disco elysiums soundtrack, its a masterpiece in practically every aspect
You sound like the goddamn Deserter already. Put some points into Volition.
Deserter - bad cop
Cryptid - good cop
"The bourgeois are not human"
Fucking hell.
Both in-game and in real-life I'm pretty left-wing, but not violent revolutionary left wing like this guy. But this line made me feel for him.
He's been through the worst of it. He's stared down humanity at its bleakest. It broke him.
He admittedly has a point about the Moralintern being pure evil, given all the war crimes their occupying forces committed during "the burning years" and the way they've mismanaged Revachol for decades until it became an impoverished chattel colony to international corporations. The Deserter makes some salient observations despite how obviously disturbed he is by his bad life experiences.
He’s a man who watched a revolution sweep away the old, a nation of people fighting for a future for themselves. He held a rifle, held his position and did his duty in the hope that it would help keep the fires of the revolution alive... Only to watch as the world crashed in on Revachol, stomped out that fire beneath the heel of the Moralintern, a heel claiming to do so for the good of the people of Martinaise as if they needed to be saved from themselves.
He watched as everyone he knew was either hunted down and executed, or resign themselves to the horrific reality the Moralintern forced upon them: that change is not possible, that they will remain the way they are until the end of time.
The Deserter spent decades living on that island, peering through his scope to see the land beyond his shores decay, taking the people with it, left out of reach and him left powerless to do anything... Anything except to take that searing hatred, point his barrel at anything he believed responsible, and pull the trigger. To do his duty, long after the war was over and the revolution was gone.
The Deserter is an incredibly interesting character, acting as a sort of manifestation of the overhanging feeling you get walking around Revachol; that the city is unwilling or unable to move on and change, that the horrors of the wars still linger in every street. He’s the opposite to Reme for a reason, both unable to move beyond the past.
Pacifism will not avail you of Moralintern violence.
@@Komnen0s The Moralintern are hypocrites, but not pure evil. At the time they wanted to reign in the communist terror (something that would kill 30 million people). In the present they want to hold the line and maintain stability. These are noble goals. The downside of course is that the status quo is corporations brutally murdering people in the blacker parts of the world.
I can assure, most people living in the global south do have the same idea, that the bourgeois are not human, there are people living in digged graves, sleeping in graves to survive winter, while a kilometre away a factory owner is building a 5 story apartment to rent for the highest bitter.
Its probably not the same in the western world, but a glance in the global south will definitely change your mind
The second most unsettling conversation I've ever had in a video game. The first one is from the same game too...
which one was most unsettling?
@@fake_nok Probably the war crime story.
@@Hypogean7
When the warning came up I thought nothing of it, but that part made my stomach churn.
I think the deserter represents what harry will become if he continues to obsess about the past and refuses to move on: a broken depressed bitter old weasel of a man fuelled by nothing but self loathing and jealousy towards those who can be happy while wallowing in what used to be (fairly ironic, considering he claims to be a communist, a man of the people, but hates everyone), untill eventually you're left as a pathetic shell that can do nothing but hate and crawls through life while seeing none of the beauty it has to offer you. After all, he cant see the phasmid.
The best ever final boss: yourself
I also love that Klassje is also a mirror of Harry’s past self, a talented, smart, perceptive young person who wallows constantly in substances just to numb themselves from the already insane world of Disco Elysium.
If Iosef is Harry’s Ghost of Christmas Future then Klassje is his Ghost of Christmas Past. Two central figures of the main storyline being mirrors to the protagonist is just so cool to me.
@@DK-xz6sz oh damn i didnt think of that, maybe kim and cuno could represent the angel and devil on the shoulders?
@@DK-xz6sz oh maybe the reason iosef is obsessed with and hated Klassje reflects Harrys really unstable sense of self esteem, simultaneously hating and loving himself
@@harrymg8458 Tbh there are a lot of characters in DE that serve as Harry’s foils to depict his struggles clearly but I think as you and I’ve already said, Klassje and Iosef are the 2 most blatant examples.
@@DK-xz6sz yeah like i love how Garys relationship with Lena and Morell shows how hope and open mindedness can be both wonderful and horrific. Two wonderfully kind people being exploited and turned into fascists by a pathetic weasel of a man
I think the Commune of Revachol fell because its truest believer lost faith in it - even for just a brief moment. In a strange way thats kinda how the Eastern Bloc in our world fell as well...
Not the same. The Eastern Bloc fell because many of its states where there against their wills, oppressed and puppeted. Chernobyl, the financial woes, and the coup were the last straw for the believers of the system.
We both know this is the end, We just need to hear him say it.
fucking mood
This scene freezes my blood
It's what is like when the political ideal is lost. It's a lot more than "moving on" and mental health issue and making the best out of the statu quo.
A theme of a sad man, a broken man. A man who holds himself tight in a fortress of old beliefs and contradictions. Who wanted to stop the enemy of progress only to realize it was to late the moment his countrymen were gone.
To be honest, I often compare myself to a deserter. Just a spineless and brainless creature...
I have cried to this song before. I wept for the state of communism today. "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism". Sometimes it just feels so hopeless.
But man, we just can't give into despair and the idea that change is impossible. There always has to be revolutionary hope, if we one day want to change the world for the better.
Iosef's Party still made pederastry legal, but I guess you can't have everything.
@@Hypogean7 I always assumed it was just like how the Russian Revolution overturned a bunch of old Tsar-era laws and replaced them with their own. Since the Commune didn't even have much time to establish itself unlike the USSR.
"The working class has betrayed humanity, and itself"
I can't denied after this plot twist i felt disappointed, i was like: really?? REALLY??? But after some thought was really a genius twist
I was hoping one of the big players of the story was the culprit, but the answers was so simple but so deep at the same time
Just was needed a little sad and pathetic man who can't Let it go his past to start all that Chaín of events to lead to all that mess, but at the same time by know the city's story, it's people and all the obsesive polítical conflict to understand that the stage was already setting, the desserter was only the unexpect consecuence and the spark to ignites something was already destinied to burn
That moment when you realize the deserter is an incel.
So obsessed with his fantasy of a better world, yet he can't even see the gigantic woman-shaped hole in it.
This is how it felt after bernie lost
Bernie was bound to loose even if he won.
@@nerdaitami7205 yeah but I was expecting Matt Christensen would end up like this in 10 to 20 years.
@@nerdaitami7205 And that is what this piece feels like.
@@hat-eating-cthulu-goat3221 fair enough
@@nerdaitami7205 ...I mean it's not like he could have done worse than Biden currently :/
Banger game