There are few video games that leave as distinct an imprint in one’s memory, to the point where not a day goes by in one’s everyday life where one cannot help but be reminded of a little slice of it. Some games can be particularly invasive, all but infecting your dreams and waking life: Shapez.io and The Witness did this for me respectively. Yet there are games that leave a much deeper, more subtle impact. Within day to day life, it’s hard not to encounter a tiny slice of Revachol and its melancholic hardships. Not necessarily material, but emotional: promises of what could have been, and the knowledge that it can never be. Perhaps that is the point, after all, of redemption from near-oblivion, rescue from heartache, enlightenment from suffering, to be thrust head-first into one moment of ultimate understanding, only to find that it is unreachable. Unattainable. Ultimately, nothing matters.
Disco Elysium is a game with myriad interpretations and analyses, from the humble blog posts to PC Gamer and everything in between. I suppose it’s the kind of game that does that to people. I treasure my journey with this game. I happened upon it by chance, soon after it first came out way back in Year 2019 of the halcyon Pre-Covid Era, after a friend had recommended it to me noting my love for cRPGs. As I quickly found out, Disco Elysium is no ordinary cRPG. Truthfully, it’s closer to a point-and-click adventure than a cRPG in the traditional sense. It was only in second full playthrough of the “Final Cut” version during this summer break just gone that I could really embrace it for all it has to offer.
Many have written long, veritable essays espousing the virtues (or criticising the lack thereof) of the four, main political visions in the game: communism, fascism, moralism and ultraliberalism. I won’t be discussing politics here. That’s not because the game doesn’t have anything interesting to say about politics, but I’ll instead be discussing something I found much more appealing, much more grounded, fundamentally rooted to the success and appeal of Disco Elysium’s worldbuilding, a criminally underrated speculative fiction concept: the pale.
Major spoilers ahead! If you have not played Disco Elysium and wish to discover its world for yourself, now is the time to turn away!
The Importance of Good Worldbuilding
There is an art to good worldbuilding. Many games neglect it, relying instead on the merits (or rather the perceived “complexity” and “depth”) of their gameplay to engage the player. Worldbuilding is distinct from mere storytelling and lore. Stories need a setting within which to feel real and authentic. So too does lore, for history and traditions cannot exist without context. Without this, a story is just a story devoid of any purpose. Of course, not every game genre needs to rely heavily on stories or aeons of accumulated lore, let alone fancy worldbuilding. But for narrative-focused games like Disco Elysium, worldbuilding is crucial. One of the great things about Disco Elysium is that its worldbuilding is so interconnected with its lore that the two are near inseparable. This attention to detail is key to the success of Disco Elysium’s world, a world dominated by the pale.
Entroponetics
Our world on Earth consists of several contents separated by oceans which, for most of human history, were impenetrable obstacles. The world of Disco Elysium, aptly named Elysium, instead consists of several Isolas – continents – each surrounded on all sides by, the pale. The pale is described as the “achromatic, odorless, featureless separative tissue between the isolas”. The world is shaped not as a sphere, but as a “dark grey corona” complete with flares and prominences of pale.
The pale is no ordinary “ocean” or luminiferous aether, instead described (by the rather eccentric Joyce Messier) as the “enemy of matter and life”, a “transition state of being into nothingness”. Little is known about how the pale came to be, or even what it truly is. It can only be measured by its surrounding matter, or “that which exists” as Soona the Programmer puts it. In that sense, it seems a lot like dark matter. Yet even dark matter (theoretically) abides by physics, providing the necessary mass for galaxies to rotate the way they do. The pale is basically nothing, its fundamental property being the “suspension of properties”. As such, travel through the pale is severely restricted to no more than 6 days per year for civilians, and up to 22 for those with the requisite training. The so-called “over-radiation” from pale exposure is especially damaging to the mind. This is since it is believed that the pale consists of memory, the “rarefied past”. Information. Entropy.
An expanse of nothingness
When signals get routed through the pale, it’s possible to hear other conversations or even echoes of conversations that took place in the past. This actually happens in the game when interacting with one of the payphones. The Paledriver, clearly having lost her mind, lives in dreams and memories. At the very end of the game – interacting with the phasmid on the final island – it is posited that the pale is “human pollution”, that will eventually destroy all animals and plants across Elysium.
One of the more memorable side quests in Disco Elysium is the discovery that there is a very small hole in reality in the Dolorian Church. This encroachment of the pale is already having an adverse affect on the wider city with all the failed businesses in the Doomed Commercial Area. It’s possible the pale may continue to grow until it eventually envelops all of Revachol. After all, the pale is known to be expanding.
Hell is the Absence of Meaning
There are many interpretations one can make regarding the pale; antimatter, entropy, an allegory for global warming, how our memories of the past fade with time, the inevitability of one day ceasing to exist, the eventual heat death of the entire universe, I’m sure there are countless others. The second law of thermodynamics all but ensures that order will eventually lead to disorder. The pale is the manifestation of nothing, a state of complete meaninglessness. With no reference points, past, present and future are void of meaning, instead just a mass of human detritus. It’s interesting that one of the non-technological methods of crossing the pale consists of abiding by an intense psychological training regime akin to the “creation process of poetry”. As someone who has written well over 150 poems over the years, I must agree with this depiction. For what is poetry but trying to put words to concepts and emotions that cannot be directly expressed? Instead we use flowery language that flows from somewhere deeper in our minds. Only in this way, it seems, can a traveller stave off the sensory deprivation that is the pale.
For what is everyday life without imbued purpose and reason? And what happens when purpose and reason lack tangible meaning? Is nothing real anymore? What, then, is there to separate this world from pale? Reality from the absence of reality? Existence from non-existence?
That which can never be known
The pale is an extremely interesting concept that I hope will inspire similar worldbuilding in the future. It’s something that comprises such a massive part of the game’s world, and yet is something that remains largely mysterious. No one knows, for sure, just what the pale is. What’s worth noting is how the pale features two horizons, i.e. boundaries. The first is the border between matter and pale, described as “porch collapse”, a massive grey mist where matter roars upwards and evaporates into – seemingly – nothing. The second horizon is inside the pale; this is perhaps the true horizon. It’s the point inside the pale where things have broken down to the point where numbers stop working. No one has crossed this “number barrier”, and it is believed to be impossible to cross. This entire concept seems eerily similar to black holes, in particular the event horizon, wherein objects that fall in are forever after trapped and cannot escape, as well as the central singularity where, for better or worse, the laws of physics seem to breakdown.
If the pale and its many horizons are to stand for anything, it’s perhaps the fact that are some things in the world that can never be known. Perhaps that’s why the pale has such a debilitating effect on people. For some horizons are not meant to be crossed.