The Making of Disco Elysium - Part Two: Building Elysium

0:03 Hi!

0:08 [HELEN HINDPERE] Hello!

0:10 (ALEKSANDER GROWLS PLAYFULLY) (Laughter) (Door opens) [HELEN] You remember?

0:16 [ALEKSANDER] Of course!

0:18 [HELEN] So...

0:19 (Click) [HELEN] The sound engineering room used to be there.

0:23 Also, some rooms were there.

0:26 It's just a hallway.

0:28 This is where...

0:28 Oh my god, look at it.

0:30 (Chuckles) [HELEN] I don't know what that is...

0:36 But this is...

0:37 (Laughter) Martin, we have been here...

0:40 Erm...

0:40 [DANNY] What was in there?

0:41 [HELEN] So this was...

0:42 [ALEKSANDER] It was the main room.

0:42 [HELEN] Yeah, the main room where the artists were, erm...

0:46 [ALEKSANDER] Programmers.

0:47 Yeah.

0:47 [HELEN] Programmers.

0:48 Yeah.

0:48 [ALEKSANDER] It's 'cos we started there and then

0:50 slowly expanded to take over the house...

0:51 [HELEN] Took over the entire house.

0:52 [ALEKSANDER] like a malignant, er, game tumor.

0:57 (Chuckles) [HELEN] So, while it also started here,

1:00 we were way too loud in our meetings.

1:03 So we were banished to the completely different side.

1:07 This is, basically, a different building they built together,

1:13 but it's actually completely different from it.

1:16 Oh!

1:17 [unintelligible] [ROBERT KURVITZ] This is the actual commons area of the studio

1:23 where people smoked and drank coffee and stuff like that.

1:29 ("Detective Arriving on the Scene"- Sea Power)

1:37 [DANNY O'DWYER] When production on Disco Elysium began,

1:40 the studio's location poetically mirrored the team that was making it:

1:44 Two partially dilapidated buildings in the centre

1:46 of Tallinn's historic old town,

1:48 merged together through a system of broken walls,

1:52 interior stairwells, and a roof that connected the two.

1:54 It was here in this building,

1:56 that work on No Truce With The Furies– the game's original moniker– began.

2:01 But by the end of production much of the team would be separated by land,

2:05 sea, and for many, a wider emotional distance.

2:08 Over the course of this series,

2:10 we'll explore the work of those people– the ones we

2:12 talked to and the ones we didn't– in an effort

2:15 to capture how this team of debutantes went on to make

2:18 one of the most beloved games of our era.

2:20 In this video, the second in our series,

2:22 we're gonna explore the work that went into building Disco Elysium.

2:26 The team that Robert surrounded himself with, the engineers

2:28 and tech artists that brought Rostov's paintings to life,

2:31 the production processes the team used to construct

2:34 the city of Revachol and the district of Martinaise.

2:37 In our first episode,

2:38 we talked about how life in Estonia had influenced the game's creators.

2:42 Today, we'll demonstrate how the very walls

2:44 of this building impacted the design of Elysium itself...

2:54 [ROBERT] The office was the first thing we did.

2:56 I think, after the pitch document, where the concept art came together,

3:03 after that we got the office, and we got...

3:06 at that time it was me, Rostov, Jüri Saks, Martin Luiga,

3:11 and we got a producer called Lembit Jürgenson who became the Lead

3:15 Producer on Disco Elysium for the first four years or so,

3:18 And he lived in this hippie commune place,

3:21 and I was always visiting him– which I did a lot,

3:25 because it was a cool place to visit.

3:27 And there was this large area there that was

3:29 used as a gallery or an art gallery, that later turned into the studio premises,

3:35 and I always thought that would be a very cool place to do something in.

3:38 And he took it upon himself to build us this physical space.

3:44 So that was Lembit's first gift to the production.

3:47 He got IKEA stuff from Helsinki, at that time.

3:50 We still didn't have IKEA in Tallinn.

3:52 We put the tables down and everything.

3:55 It just looked really cozy, and inspiring, and nice.

3:58 So we had this fortress now, that we could...

4:02 Our pillow fort.

4:03 Is that so they say?

4:05 And then, yeah, there we kind of...

4:08 Even before we...

4:09 waiting for the miracle of investment,

4:13 we basically developed the entire concept for it.

4:16 And then a lot of the questlines and also

4:19 the story for the Cryptozoologists and the hanged man,

4:23 and all of this, that was just one of the 40 ideas for cases that you could...

4:29 Murder mysteries you could undertake as this police officer, basically.

4:34 That was the first people who were in the team and then

4:37 I think Siim Raidma came along– the big technical wizard on Disco Elysium.

4:42 So already, before it,

4:44 just for almost no money we'd been able to build a little visual prototype

4:51 where light was moving around and we

4:53 had this painterly background so it looked really, really promising, I think.

4:57 And then Rostov and Siim kinda formed

5:00 this dream team of pre-rendered isometric graphics.

5:03 [SIIM RAIDMA] It wasn't as much of a hiring process as a, "Hey,

5:07 there's some friends I know making a video game...

5:10 "Do you wanna join in?" I was the first person ever

5:15 to have touched a games engine in the ZA/UM studio history.

5:21 Pretty much the first day I come into the studio,

5:24 I get presented with, "Check out this rad new game.

5:30 It looks amazing, "and we wanna look better than

5:34 this game..." And the game was Pillars of Eternity.

5:36 [ALEKSANDER] I figured that stuff out with Siim Raidma.

5:39 He's the Technical Artist.

5:41 The Obsidian guys were just doing their great comeback game,

5:45 Pillars of Eternity.

5:47 Basically, we saw how they made the modern isometric game there.

5:51 Ah!

5:51 You render out these render passes of height maps and normal maps,

5:54 and then you can use this to do the lighting and stuff,

5:57 and we were like: "We should steal that!" (Laughter) [SIIM] I think

6:02 it'd just launched on Kickstarter and it had a bunch of backer updates.

6:06 And, basically, the first week we went through

6:11 their vlog video number 79, frame by frame...

6:16 That was the graphics update, "How we render stuff." "It's a flat plane,

6:21 and we make it three-dimensional with pixels

6:24 and stuff." So we were excruciatingly going through

6:28 that video and pretty much trying to make a cover band of Pillars of Eternity.

6:34 Having a flat world and 3D characters and all the lighting

6:39 is basically in shaders with some dynamic lights thrown in.

6:45 I think we'd gotten most of it very early on.

6:49 I had an absolutely great time trying

6:52 to figure this thing out, like a puzzle box.

6:55 [ROBERT] Then we got, at the time,

6:59 a 3D modeler later Marketing Director, Mikk Metsnit.

7:03 And, after a while, it became clear that he's just

7:08 the perfect guy to run the marketing side of things.

7:12 And then I went to a programmer called Jaagup Irve, who we called "Irv",

7:19 who's a really respected guy in the Estonian nerd scene and he

7:25 was the moderator or forum lord of a place called Dragon.de.

7:32 And he was, at the time,

7:35 a professor of coding at the Tallinn technical university.

7:39 I knew we were going somewhere if we're getting him

7:42 on board because he knows a lot of technical personnel.

7:45 And then Irv got a really good programmer called Markus Rondo.

7:48 [JAAGUP IRVE] I think I was hired

7:50 as Assistant Designer because of my Dungeons& Dragons background,

7:55 that's how I got to know Robert.

7:59 There was this initial meeting, which I called the "pigeon shit" meeting because

8:05 it was held in their studio in the attic.

8:08 We sat own on some couches there and it was completely weird!

8:14 (Chuckles) But they said that they were in the middle of financing a game,

8:21 and soon they'll have some green lights, and...

8:24 It was really strange.

8:26 You could feel the craziness of it all.

8:29 [ROBERT] Here, you can see spooky mannequins.

8:32 (Helen laughs) [ROBERT] A must-have element of every half-abandoned house.

8:37 [HELEN] Some kind of PC that says "just do it."

8:40 (Laughter) (A plane rumbles overhead) [ROBERT] As you can understand,

8:52 the snaking, internal architecture...

8:54 I think it actually did inspire Whirling-in-Rags a bit.

8:58 Like, these hidden pathways that you can take through the whole case.

9:03 [HELEN] This was the smoking corner.

9:05 (Laughs) And coffee corner.

9:07 It's quite interesting, how it's super secluded.

9:11 Yeah.

9:12 You can also come in from this window.

9:15 [ROBERT] Yeah...

9:15 [ROBERT] And if now go in from this window and then go down,

9:19 then you find yourself at the studio again.

9:22 [HELEN] Yes (laughs).

9:22 [ROBERT] In this really cool level design twist.

9:26 [HELEN] Yeah.

9:26 [ROBERT] Well, there's about two months a year that you can sit out here,

9:30 and this is one of those months again right now.

9:34 [ALEKSANDER] It's fortunate timing.

9:35 [ROBERT] See?

9:36 This happens for about four hours a year.

9:39 [HELEN] Yeah, sun comes out.

9:43 (Tense guitar plucks) [DANNY] The Disco Elysium team was slowly forming,

9:49 with the help of talented programmers eager

9:51 to test themselves in the world of games development.

9:54 But this team was far from built.

9:55 Disco Elysium was a game with story at its heart,

9:58 but Robert's singular perspective could only add so much.

10:01 And so, to pump blood around the body of this Frankenstein-like creation,

10:05 he would have to surround himself with a cabal of talented writers.

10:09 [ARGO TUULIK] In 2016,

10:10 I had this first serious sit down with Robert, where he said, "Okay,

10:14 now we have money, do you want to come and work

10:16 for us?" And in the end of 2016, in October,

10:20 I had just come back from a vacation in the BMW junkyard

10:24 that I was working on– scrapyard– and Lemps [Lembit Jürgenson] our producer,

10:29 called and said: "Hey,

10:31 do you wanna come write a game with us?" And yeah, it was a no-brainer.

10:34 Me, Helen, and Martin, we joined.

10:36 All of us.

10:37 The first thing we did on day one,

10:39 we came to the office and we played this really, really early build.

10:42 I think I will forever remember this moment of this insane disbelief and pride.

10:48 I cannot believe that my friends,

10:50 with whom we dropped out of so many high schools,

10:53 managed to put this together– because already there, in this raw state,

10:57 it really felt like this is the next step.

11:00 This is definitely an RPG, but it's an RPG done different.

11:03 [HELEN] I remember when Robert and Rostov first approached me because

11:09 we had done blocked plot together and we had contributed elsewhere,

11:13 but it had always been in Estonian.

11:14 So when they first approached me I was like, "I don’t know if I can do it,

11:19 but I can try." And then the entire first year I was like,

11:23 "I'm not sure if I’m actually doing it.

11:25 It’s not working out as I want it to." [ARGO]

11:27 Every writer was handed a scene they were writing on.

11:31 For all of us, myself, Helen and Martin,

11:34 we all had a test character, a test scene.

11:36 and weirdly enough they all ended up good enough to be in the final game.

11:41 For me, it was René and Gaston, the guys who play pétanque.

11:45 Martin did Tommy, the poetic truck driver,

11:48 and Helen’s was the working class woman.

11:51 [MÄRTEN RATTASEPP] I think maybe nine, 10, 11-ish, if I remember correctly...

11:56 Several people had been there for, at least, six to nine months.

12:01 The notable name Martin Luiga, who has been related to this project.

12:06 As I remember, as I was told at the time,

12:10 some type of a conflict or misunderstanding had

12:14 happened between him and Robert Kurvitz over the summer,

12:18 and I think basically Luiga absconded with the work

12:22 laptop and just never came to work again.

12:26 [DANNY] We reached out to many of the original team to talk to us,

12:29 but Martin was not available to chat.

12:31 His contributions to the original D&D campaign,

12:34 the early worldbuilding,– including these wonderful

12:36 concept images of Martinaise– were

12:38 foundational in helping the team paint the portrait of this game.

12:43 [DANNY] This might be a sensitive topic as well...

12:45 So we can completely brush over it if that’s the case.

12:48 Is it Martin who had a particularly difficult time with…?

12:51 [ROBERT] Yeah.

12:52 Yeah, we’ve all had a particularly difficult time in our different ways,

12:58 and it hasn’t been good for any of us.

13:01 But yeah, I think Martin’s stuff is so personal

13:06 to him that I don’t feel like speaking on his behalf.

13:12 [MÄRTIN] So that’s what I was told, and then several months later it's like:

13:16 "Okay, we’re getting new funding, we’re getting new writers.

13:19 "Let’s get this project going.” But yeah, I think was like 10-ish people.

13:23 The programmers who were there before me.

13:26 Some artists and a couple of other folks.

13:29 [ROBERT] So that was the crew we’d gotten together.

13:34 And then there was another programmer called Veljo Hagu,

13:37 and also he did a lot of movement programming in the beginning.

13:43 And I think that was it.

13:45 We had those two programmers and we had that 700,000.

13:49 And we were on track to make The Return, this giant version of the game.

13:55 And then Veljo comes to me: “You do understand, of course,

13:59 that there isn’t going to be any combat in this game.” I was like,

14:03 “Why?” “'Cos we only have two programmers.

14:06 Y'know?

14:07 700,000’s not gonna...

14:08 "It’s nice that we got that money and it’s a huge achievement, Robert.

14:11 "But the team you have is not going to code

14:16 you a combat system.” And I was like, “Okay.

14:19 Then we won’t have combat.” And about a week later, I came to him and said:

14:24 “Can't we just do all of the combative stuff

14:27 with just dice rolls and dialogue?” And he was like,

14:30 “Yeah, that makes sense.” And then I remember one night,

14:33 I went to sleep with a task, and the task was:

14:35 “Robert, cut the story down from The Return, this huge thing,

14:41 to a very small solid thing.” And I remember

14:44 the other side of my brain being like: “Robert, I’m tired.

14:47 I don’t wanna do that today.

14:49 How am I gonna do it?” And it was, “No, no.

14:53 This is irresponsible.

14:54 "You can’t continue going on with this huge plan.

14:58 "You need to have something that people can start working

15:00 on tomorrow.” And in about 30 minutes my brain was like,

15:04 “Okay.” And then I had an idea for a pen-and-paper session

15:07 with the people in the studio to kind of introduce the world to them.

15:12 And then I had this alcoholic cop thing, and so on.

15:14 So I was like: “Okay,

15:15 well let’s just turn that into the game.” I had Harry and Kim Kitsuragi,

15:20 and these characters were already...

15:22 So it was also supposed to be a pen-and-paper campaign, basically,

15:25 for the video game studio to get people into the setting.

15:28 I was like, I’m not gonna ever have time to run pen-and-paper campaigns again.

15:33 I know that this joke works.

15:35 This stupid disco cop joke is gonna be okay enough.

15:40 So I came to work and I just explained to everyone

15:44 what it’s gonna be like and people were like (chuckles).

15:49 It elicited a small laugh out of people, and it was like, “Okay,

15:52 let’s do this.” [JAAGUP] After the Whirling demo and the waking up demo,

15:58 that happened after we had cut down the scope.

16:02 And that was the most important thing that Veljo did, I think.

16:06 He said, “Your plans are way, way too large.

16:09 "This will never happen if you did it like that, "we

16:12 need to cut combat and make the game small.” [SIIM]

16:16 I guess a fun insight is that the whole of Disco

16:19 Elysium is a vertical slice of a much bigger game.

16:22 There was a massive reduction in scope,

16:28 which was… I remember the lunch we went to, we were just talking,

16:33 “So let’s try to do something more contained.

16:37 "See if we can build it up as an actual game and then do the rest

16:41 of the game.” And that boxed in little

16:45 corner of Martinaise ended up being Disco Elysium.

16:53 [DANNY] Was this type of art here before?

16:56 [ALL] Yeah.

16:57 Yes.

16:57 [ROBERT] It's run by hippies.

16:59 Real hippies.

16:59 [DANNY] Right?

17:00 Drum, yoga, peace pipe.

17:03 And yeah, I’ve grown to really like this over time.

17:10 [Helen] So, all over the place are like this here.

17:15 [ROBERT] "Dream Catchers".

17:16 [HELEN] Yeah.

17:17 Dream catchers are things that say that, “Being angry, it’s poison for yourself.

17:23 You're poisoning yourself.” So every time things got heated up we were like...

17:30 yeah.

17:30 (Laughter) [Robert] By the way, this was my office in here.

17:34 [HELEN] Yes.

17:35 Right in here.

17:36 It’s a very, very small 2 x 2 meter cell, I would say, here.

17:41 [ROBERT] Where I wrote about… Well, too many words.

17:45 But I needed to be secluded from other people

17:48 so they don’t ask me questions all the time.

17:50 [Danny] Right.

17:51 [ROBERT] So this was the solution we found.

17:53 The writers room was there, and everyone else was somewhere there.

17:57 Here there was a big boxing bag you can beat.

17:59 [HELEN] It still is!

18:00 [ROBERT] Still is, thank god.

18:02 [ROBERT] Yes.

18:04 [ALEKSANDER] Ah, the gym!

18:06 [HELEN] So this inspired the doomed commercial area’s gym, this area here.

18:12 [JAAGUP] I had the feeling that the whole

18:15 environment was actually part of what we were.

18:19 Some of us like to clean, some of us left their coffee stuff in the machine.

18:25 "Okay, someone else will take care of it." It was an easygoing thing.

18:29 There were hippies before us; there were hippies after us.

18:33 I think Robert had worded it… There was some "namaste" that they

18:37 had to take out of these rooms before we could enter.

18:41 And some of it remained (chuckles).

18:45 [ARGO] Yeah, it was just perfect.

18:47 Perfect in its location and in its state of decay.

18:52 If we had had some kind of modern white surfaces, minimalism,

18:58 water-fountain-in-the-hallway type of studio,

19:01 I don't know how it would have shaped us.

19:04 It was so inspiring.

19:06 It just added to the creativity.

19:10 Already, because no one in Estonia had made a game

19:14 before– at least a game that would have popped

19:17 up on anyone’s radar– the general opinions that we

19:19 got when people heard we were making a video game, was this, “Oh no, no,

19:24 that’s not gonna work.” And also,

19:27 now working in this derelict building where water leaks into the server room,

19:32 and it’s so cold in the winter you have to wear jackets and gloves,

19:35 this really helped to build this “us against the world” vibe, this unity.

19:40 "Guys, against all odds, we are gonna do this." [Helen] I

19:45 think it was quite free-spirited and un-corporate,

19:50 but also maybe slightly chaotic.

19:54 But I loved it.

19:55 I think I’m a person who works very well in those environments,

20:01 where there is no strict hours where you work, when you work.

20:07 We came to the studio at 11am, which is super late for every other place,

20:13 and quite often I would stay late,

20:17 just because I felt really comfortable in the beginning, there.

20:20 It became almost like a second home.

20:23 I also remember some evenings where me and Argo would just like..

20:26 It was Friday evening, we were like, "Oh,

20:29 let’s just keep hanging out in the studio." And like...

20:33 As friends, let’s hang out here.

20:36 It was also in the middle of the city, so even when I was going out to a bar

20:43 I would sometimes just crash in the studio.

20:45 (Laughs) Over there is FRANK.

20:47 That is the café-slash-restaurant bar "bistroraunt" where

20:55 I sketched and painted the skill portraits.

20:59 [SIIM] I was kind of the technical right-hand man for Rostov.

21:02 Like, literally, I was right next to him.

21:04 Rostov is an incredibly technical artist.

21:08 Not a “Technical Artist”, but he’s a massive nerd.

21:12 He’s been modding games and doing stuff in Blender for ages.

21:16 So he's not just a painter who paints with actual oil paints,

21:21 but is technically very, very savvy.

21:25 So, in the beginning,

21:26 he was doing a lot of modeling as well– level layouts and stuff

21:31 in Blender– so communication is super

21:34 easy and everything gets done really quickly.

21:36 [JAAGUP] I think, for the first year,

21:40 occasionally people would come to the office and say:

21:43 "Holy crap, we're making a computer game!" It was...

21:46 "We're actually doing this!

21:48 I can't believe it!" And everyone had the drive of "Okay,

21:53 this is real." (Laughs) And while the house was slowly crumbling...

22:02 I remember, there is this furnace which has stuff written on it.

22:06 That furnace was an actual furnace because we lacked a whiteboard.

22:11 "Hey, we could use that furnace as a whiteboard."

22:14 And then it made it into the doomed commercial space,

22:18 so there was some self-basement, I guess, from the studio.

22:21 [HELEN] There was the video game studio that we had in the same building.

22:24 There was a bookstore, there was a tattoo shop.

22:27 And also, previously, there had been an art gallery.

22:31 So many different things.

22:33 And at the same time, the house itself,

22:35 our studio was almost like this labyrinth.

22:38 This mystery.

22:39 So we wanted to put that into the game,

22:41 and this is what inspired the doomed commercial area.

22:45 [SIIM] In the old studio, we basically had three rooms:

22:48 There was the artists' room,

22:50 there was the programmers' room, and the writers' room.

22:54 I'm not really sure if it's a good or a bad thing,

22:56 because it kind of siloed communication.

22:59 It didn't "silo", but it slowed communication between the teams.

23:03 But it kind of also created a safe space, for example,

23:08 for the programmers to get angry about a systemS thing that Robert came

23:16 up with, and then build-up enough motivation to go and confront him about it.

23:24 Studio architecture has a role to play in team dynamics.

23:29 [ARGO] The writers' room had these only one-layer

23:33 windows with a couple of cracks in it,

23:36 so it was really freezing when it was -18°c outside.

23:39 What we did was, we isolated, used silicone and duct tape,

23:43 to basically air-proof these windows as much as we possibly could.

23:47 But still it wasn’t enough,

23:48 so eventually we brought in a gas burner to heat the writers' room.

23:53 I remember one time when it was me, Helen and Kosmos [Siim Sinamäe].

23:59 We were in the writers room.

24:02 We left Kosmos to work on something,

24:03 and went across the street– not to the strip club,

24:06 but next to it was a New Age shop where we went to get some

24:09 dream catchers or some shit like that– and we were gone for like 45 minutes.

24:13 And when we got back the gas burner had burned out

24:17 so much oxygen that Kosmos was on this… Not fully conscious anymore.

24:23 I think if we had been half an hour more, we wouldn’t have Kosmos anymore.

24:28 This is the level of decrepitude the building was in.

24:34 [JAAGUP] I think Lembit, he was the producer for us,

24:39 and he took care of the environment.

24:42 He made this very random space into a random but somewhat orderly thing.

24:50 No task was below him.

24:52 A toilet got clogged, he’d deal with it.

24:54 He managed all the infrastructure without anything.

24:57 “I get paid, I’m fine.” He was really a great guy at that.

25:03 [HELEN] We definitely worked a lot.

25:06 I didn’t mind it in the beginning,

25:09 because I felt like I had such a huge learning curve,

25:14 with learning to write in English,

25:17 learning to write video games, it just felt justified.

25:21 There was also this entire idea that, once we finished the game,

25:26 and if it does well there would be bonuses,

25:30 and shares will be shared with anyone.

25:33 Shared with the company.

25:35 So it felt like we were working towards a goal.

25:40 I think I definitely see the Tallinn studio

25:44 time as almost this kind of mythical childhood.

25:49 (Laughs) Maybe I overanalyze it, it tends to happen with the past.

25:55 But I definitely was happy, then.

26:02 [ROBERT] These places that always get wiped out.

26:04 One moment you come and then there’s a hole in the ground.

26:07 Or there’s been a change of guard and the hippies are out,

26:10 and now it’s all white, millennial white,

26:14 or a hotel that’s been attempted here, or something.

26:16 So it’s really, really good that you got to record it while it is still here.

26:24 [ALEKSANDER] So many other places have been wiped

26:26 out and bulldozed over and new buildings built,

26:29 and stuff… [ROBERT] It's so important for the game, to kind of...

26:33 [HELEN] 'Cos I think only one journalist has been here.

26:37 I don’t remember for what magazine, but there was some photos taken.

26:40 This was even before the release.

26:42 [ROBERT] This was an amateur journalist for RPG Codex.

26:45 The first piece of press or the first story

26:50 ever made about Disco Elysium was made by RPG Codex.

26:54 They were very encouraging in the first two/three years when we made the game.

27:01 There was a topic about Disco Elysium there,

27:03 and it gave us the minimum feedback required

27:07 for you to feel that there’s an audience.

27:09 And then they were the first people who

27:10 reacted to the idea of the speaking skills,

27:12 as in, “Whoa, that’s a cool idea!" And really, really encouraged us.

27:14 The entire church, speed freaks sequence took me about three weeks to write.

27:22 So everything you do out there,

27:24 with all the tent discussions and Acele and so on, that church

27:28 was the vertical slice of the game that we did first,

27:32 and then we did the beginning of the game in order

27:36 to sell it to investors and prove that it’s gonna work.

27:40 And for journalists and publicity.

27:45 (Soft ambience) [DANNY] The original vertical slice

27:50 of Disco Elysium was set around the church.

27:53 (We'll dive more into that in our episode focused on writing.)

27:56 But as the writing team was getting to grips with the universe of Elysium,

27:59 and decisions over gameplay were being solidified,

28:02 the programmers were crafting engine,

28:04 gameplay and interface systems to make Robert

28:06 and Rostov’s vision of the game even possible.

28:09 Disco Elysium as a piece of software does an incredible

28:12 job at matching the tone and artistry of the world:

28:15 camera movements, UI widgets, menus, skill systems,

28:18 The Thought Cabinet, weather effects and sound management all contribute.

28:23 But this remarkable work on behalf of the programmers didn’t come easy.

28:26 Disco Elysium was always under pressure by incoming release dates–

28:30 which were thankfully kicked down the road on several occasions.

28:34 [ROBERT] What was good about the project was that, about nine months

28:39 in, we got a demo which was the beginning of the game.

28:43 And it was pretty fun.

28:46 Waking up as that character, everyone liked playing it.

28:51 That was an ace in our hole that we had about

28:54 40 minutes or 50 minutes of gameplay that just felt like, “Okay.

28:59 Insert more money, you’ll get a good game

29:02 out of it.” Another good thing we had was, we had this story outline and it felt

29:10 compact enough so that it’s kind of doable,

29:13 but at the same time large enough to…– this is one

29:17 of the things we always fought about– to classify as an RPG,

29:22 or even as a "major" RPG.

29:25 Which is a weird to thing to say about it, but like,

29:27 something that would launch an RPG studio,

29:29 something that would have 40 hours of gameplay.

29:32 That was very good.

29:33 The skill system was very good right from the beginning.

29:35 The speaking skills which very quickly came out of the very

29:39 first dialogues that I had written for the game.

29:42 It was just natural for the skills to be characters too.

29:45 There was no...

29:46 And people reacted to it very well.

29:48 I think the first dialogue was with Acele on the ice.

29:52 It was a test dialogue to have a little bit of church.

29:54 And the first moment where I realized they should

29:57 speak is when Encyclopedia tells you about Contact Mike.

30:02 There’s a contact microphone and then encyclopedia says: “By the way,

30:06 there’s a boxer called Contact Mike.” And then you ask it:

30:11 "Any news on my own name?" And he says:

30:14 "None." And that's where the first dialogue between your skills happens,

30:19 this side-dialogue from talking to Acele.

30:21 And everyone just reacted very, very...

30:23 It was catnip.

30:24 Everyone was, "Oh, that's super funny." [JAAGUP] A lot

30:28 of the design came from what Robert wanted.

30:32 And I think the storyboard was communicating that pretty exactly.

30:37 We would have discussions over skill names and how this would go,

30:42 but I think this was something that Robert just handled.

30:45 He wanted it in a certain way, and we were figuring it out.

30:50 Disco 's production wasn't very cursed.

30:53 I've observed people being in cursed productions and it's really, really bad.

31:00 Disco didn't feel cursed.

31:03 It was cursed in other manners,

31:04 but it didn't feel cursed when you were inside of it.

31:07 But the small curse was that the deadline was always

31:10 a year or a half away from where you were.

31:13 [ROBERT] We had the skill system, and we had the confidence that this works.

31:16 That it's a sticky thing, and that the story works together,

31:20 and the beginning works and the character works.

31:23 So it was just enough for us to continue digging the money hole,

31:28 and the money hole was just getting deeper and deeper all the time.

31:30 So the bad thing about the production was

31:33 that we just ran out of money every nine months.

31:37 And then we were just told,

31:38 "You have to release at that time." And we never had anything.

31:42 It would've been a disaster and a catastrophe

31:46 and a tragedy if we would have had to release it.

31:50 It was clear for everyone that the shape everything was in was always very bad.

31:53 The game was always, always in a bad state.

31:56 It was a drowning man.

31:57 Unfinished dialogues.

31:58 You've seen games in...

32:01 We hadn't made any before, so I was kind of shocked at how...

32:05 A "work in progress" video game is one of the ugliest works in progress...

32:10 (laughs) in all of existence.

32:13 And then it was like this drowning man that always needed attention.

32:17 So that was the bad side, that meant that the programmers never got

32:22 to work out a calm architecture for the project.

32:26 That they were always just doing quick

32:29 fixes to get something out in seven months...

32:32 six months...

32:32 five months and counting.

32:34 Another thing that worked really well was art.

32:36 Rostov was just churning out these beautiful landscapes,

32:39 so that was very inspiring.

32:41 For a long time art was the "good boy" of production and that writing

32:45 was the "bad boy" 'cos we were never ever finished with anything.

32:48 What I would say became the main bad thing in production,

32:52 was I slowly realized that it's gonna have a word

32:55 count which is perhaps best counted in Bibles, not words.

33:01 And that I'm gonna have to write one Bible worth of text,

33:05 and I'm gonna have to edit another Bible worth of text.

33:08 That means it's about 700,000.

33:11 One Bible is about 700,000 words or so.

33:16 And we kind of got it down to maybe 600(000),

33:20 we were slightly able to cut corners.

33:22 But because writing was the only gameplay,

33:26 it meant that if we cut things out, it no longer is an RPG.

33:30 So it needs to have these sidequests and stuff.

33:34 That's about the time when, thankfully, the core design of the game was so solid

33:38 that I could move away from a designer role,

33:41 and just become a writer, and all of the design and everything became writing.

33:45 And the game never ended up having any other designers other than me and Rostov.

33:49 Just the beginning little design that we got down,

33:52 the Thought Cabinet and so on.

33:54 So, the good thing was it was a very solid design, for a first-time designer.

33:58 But I think that was because I'd designed

34:01 these systems for ten years before, for pen-and-paper.

34:04 And if they work on...

34:06 It's called a "paper prototype" in video games.

34:09 If they work on paper as a boardgame, then they work in games too, hopefully.

34:19 [DANNY] As Siim mentioned to us earlier,

34:21 the team was largely split into three "rooms"

34:24 for much of the original development of Disco Elysium,

34:27 and in the next three episodes, we will focus on those three rooms: First,

34:31 the writing team– the work of Robert, Helen, Argo, and Martin, who you've met,

34:35 and many others we've not mentioned yet up until this point.

34:38 Then we move on to Art.

34:40 The work done by Aleksander Rostov, Kaspar Tamsalu, Siim Raidma,

34:43 and other artists and animators, to bring this world to life.

34:47 And finally, we'll talk about the final push to complete the game.

34:50 The engineers who worked to finish the team's first game,

34:53 and what happened when the team split apart

34:55 in the months leading up to, and after, launch.

34:58 As ever, Early Access Patrons can watch

35:00 this right now over on the NoClip Patreon.

35:02 And all of our Patrons can watch this wonderful bonus scene where

35:05 the team opens up a suitcase full of art made by fans in China.

35:09 [ALEKSANDER] Oh my god!

35:11 [ROBERT] Wow!

35:12 [HELEN] That's really good!

35:13 [ROBERT] That's cool!

35:14 [ROBERT] So we didn't get money.

35:16 We didn't get the IP.

35:18 But we did get 30 kilograms of Chinese love.

35:21 (Laughter) [Helen] Honestly worth it!

35:24 [DANNY] These bonuses are our way of thanking

35:26 you for supporting us telling these types of stories.

35:29 Stories about the people behind the games,

35:31 and sometimes, even the buildings they called home...

35:34 [ROBERT] This studio, it still has the ZA/UM logo on it.

35:41 I'm gonna eat...

35:42 One moment.

35:43 (Laughter) It used to have a giant poster that I made, that said:

35:47 "Creators of the most advanced role

35:50 playing system in the known universe." (Laughs)

35:54 'Cos I wanted everyone to get pumped up everytime they come to work.

35:58 And then the programmers edited it.

36:00 Struck something through and so on.

36:03 So in the end it was "creators...

36:07 attempters of the...

36:10 most untested roleplaying system in the known universe." So that was the kind

36:17 of level of "epicness" that they wanted to experience when they came to work.

36:22 Which I understand now.

36:23 (Laughter) [ROBERT] It's much calmer.

36:26 But I also prefer it.

36:33 (Bass synth playing "Blue Monday" by New Order) [ROBERT] Yeah, it's er...

37:03 "Agile" was introduced to the production by Lembit Jürgenson,

37:06 the Lead Producer, about a year in or two years in.

37:10 He brought a "scrum master" who told us how to do it,

37:13 how to be Silicon Valley people,

37:15 And then we just adopted it, and yeah, we made it our own.

37:20 It worked.

37:21 It was not as punk or chaotic as would befit the legend.

37:29 It wouldn't have come together at all.

37:32 So yeah, thanks for Lembit for teaching us scrum.

37:37 We really just threw a ball.

37:39 We had the scrum ball that we held onto.

37:42 And we said our magic scrum words, and so on.

37:44 I liked the ball.

37:46 I liked holding onto the soft ball.

37:48 We had a really cute scrum ball.

37:52 (Soaring synth sounds) (Ident clicks) (Click)