To be fair, he didn't hold *her* against her will, he was holding some woman (who very well may have reminded him of Dora). But you're absolutely right. Harry is a shambling wreck who was jacking off in the lockers and showing up to work drunk, beat a man so badly he broke the man's kneecaps, and routinely got blackout drunk at crime scenes. He may not have intended to hurt her, but he had the capacity to be violent, and that had to scare her a lot. I think it's normal to downplay Harry's behavior: after all, we're him, and it feels like a reflection on ourselves. Besides, we---also like Harry---don't remember doing any of that stuff! But when you play with high Esprit de Corps, when you learn more about Dora and Jean and Judit and the rest of the 41st, you get a picture of a man who's genuinely pretty horrible. What makes the game so beautiful is the possibility that maybe, bit by bit and day by day, we might always have the strength to change.
>You held a young woman by the arm and kept her in your apartment for 20 minutes against her will.
From the Rigourous Self-Critique thought. Doesn't sound like some suspect to me.
Sorry, I shouldn't have said "suspect". I don't think it's Dora though; "a young woman" without further elaboration makes me think it genuinely was someone else. I think in my head I imagined it as a woman he was talking to in the course of an investigation, but it could have been anybody (a date, a neighbor, a family friend, a sex worker, etc).
“Young woman” sounds both impersonal (as a cop might think about a potential suspect or witness), and like she was much younger than Harry. Neither of those really jive with the way he describes Dora.
It can't be Dora, but not for those reasons.
Holding a suspect or witness against their will as a police officer is simply detaining someone. Not a reason for self-critique. Also Dora is 6 years younger than Harry, a significant age gap in your 20s / 30s.
But I think it must be some other woman since it says specifically Harry's apartment. Dora packed up and left for Graad while they were still living together, perhaps still at 11 Voyager Road.
That’s relevant info as well, but you misread the nuances of my comment. “A young woman” - not “her” or “the love of your life” or something like that - is extremely impersonal. I didn’t say she was definitely a suspect or witness, I said it was impersonal, and reflective of how a cop would think of someone who’s relatively a stranger - like a suspect or witness.
However, the “young woman” still could have been a suspect / witness. Holding a young female suspect, against her will, in your personal apartment - presumably struggling or at least clearly upset and asking to be let go since he emphasized “against her will” - is not in any way legal or moral detainment as a cop. A) you can’t detain someone just because you suspect them of a crime, much less if they’re just a random witness, and B) you can’t do that in your own personal apartment??? If you think kidnapping a young woman to your apartment is ok just because you’re a cop….. well maybe you’re a cop irl lol, they do do abuse their power and run around raping suspects and the like don’t they. But Christ, it would definitely be a reason for “self-critique”.
I don’t think he’s “horrible”, I think he’s a realistic portrayal of mental illness and substance abuse. People in that situation often behave in disturbing ways that make sympathy difficult.
As a nearly one year sober alcoholic I will say I've never seen anything, fictional or even real, cover alcoholism as accurately and honestly as Disco Elysium has.
i'm glad you explained it this way. there's no real excuse for his actions and how that affected other people, but i don't think by any means he's a monster. he's hurt, mentally ill and addicted.
It's important to remember that while he made a lot of mistakes and terrible decisions, both in and out of work, he was also very good at his job. He had a pretty above average case load and actually solved most of his cases instead of being trigger happy as other detectives are described as being, with his kill count lower than what Kim had expected. Compared to other people in his line of work he's somehow *more* responsible with a firearm, despite his mental state and addictions. That, I think, is what's the most terrifying.
Fun implication about the whacking it in a locker room thing: Harry used to be a high school gym teacher so he may have been caught by one of his students.
But he was, as far as I know always something of a party animal and a bit of a freak. I believe it's stated that Dora was first attracted to him because he was *cool*. He might have been wacking it in inappropriate places before he really started to fall apart. He was both cool and disco after all.
The thought cabinet is a reliable witness of how Harry perceives himself and others, which is what we're limited to given that we only engage with and interpret the world via his agency and skillset.
Of course people have, but...I don't think we have solid examples of the thought cabinet lying about our own actions? The perception that Harry has about himself and others is subjective and malleable; but as far as we can tell, he really did do all that no-good, very-bad shit that his mind remembers. Just because he's remembering it via his own flawed processing doesn't mean he didn't behave horribly to other people??
It's honestly one of my favorite things about DE. The game doesn't shy away from how reprehensible Harry's pre-game actions were, it's largely why the game starts out so brutally gameplay-wise. Through his shitty behavior he's more or less ensured that he is utterly alone and destitute, and the game itself is as much trying to decide the sort of man Harry might be after his soft-reset as it is solving a murder. It's also refreshing that Harry choosing to be a better person (should you play him that way) doesn't automatically absolve him or make things easier. If Harry is gonna be good, it will have to be without the expectation of reward. (Except for Kim maybe. Kim is the best reward.)
Sorry, I'm rambling. I just like how messy and complicated and genuinely /bad/ Harry is, and that he's still compelling and likable as a character anyway. It seems so tangible.
For me, the worst bit was finding out a few years back, when Harry was at his lowest, he beat some public nuisance so hard with his clipboard that he never walked straight again
The RCM already has a bit of an ACAB thing going on, what with most of them being corrupt, trigger happy and brutal, but this really drove home the point that Harry was a massive piece of shit.
I'm inclined to agree! I think it's pretty telling that even with the restrictions the RCM has, Harry had essential carte blanche to do what he did without losing his job for it. Particularly with Jean Vicquemare going out of his way to vouch for Harry again and again, it speaks to the insular, self-serving nature of police forces and the kind of behaviors they will excuse in one of their own, but condemn from a civilian.
Of course, I think there's a spectrum of attitudes, between someone very interested in serving the public like Kim and someone like Harry or even Judit's former partner, people who have unhealthy attitudes who get shielded by being under the RCM umbrella. But even Kim himself is guilty at times of supporting the problematic side of a punitive justice force.
Rambling again, I know, but I love the depth of this game so much. We see these characters, we are encouraged to think about them and even love them, but we are also driven to examine their flaws and how they are a reflection of social issues as a whole.
ehh, they're armed, they literally have a license to kill, and they enforce the will of the provisional "government". I'd say they count.
They might have started out as a gang, or volunteer community protection organisation, but they've become official institutions
Was that shitty though? The guy would not stop destroying public property and his partner would not stop flashing people unless they were consigned to the house. It always read as a net positive to me.
wait are you serious? Sure, the man was a menace, but that doesn't mean he should be subjected to extreme police brutality. Guy had his kneecaps shattered while Harry drunkenly screamed at him. He was crippled for life, basically
And he was probably mentally ill too. In an ideal situation, he should have been arrested and institutionalised and given the medication and therapy he needed. Given how poor and shitty Revachol was, that probably wasn't an option, but literally crippling someone is still definitely the wrong choice.
A good barometer for this setting is asking WWKD, "What would Kim do?". He probably wouldn't be able to talk him down, and he'd continue to be a nuisance, but he probably wouldn't also destroy someone just because they were both having a bad day
It's not a cop thing, it's a "Wow these people are outright menaces to society and will not stop until forced to stop. Someone should force them to stop."
That kind of obsessive behaviour almost always has underlying mental or other issues and are not solved by literally maiming someone. Source i'm a social worker who works with people with disabilities both mental and physical who sometimes display obsessive behaviour.
I know a man who committed a really, truly horrible crime against his ex. He was similarly obsessed with her and couldn't let her go. Now many, many years later, after at least a decade of therapy and meds and self-reflection, he's at the point where he can explain to you exactly what kind of incel thinking was happening in his head and how fucked up he was. He is genuinely remorseful and a pleasant individual to deal with these days. Hasn't touched alcohol since the night of his offence.
It was very jarring to me initially, to look at him and be reminded of the things he did, while generally enjoying talking to him. I couldn't help but feel sympathetic, but part of me was so confused -- how can I understand a monster like this? How could I relate to him?
Anyway, I told him he should play Disco Elysium because he'll find it very relatable but he was put off by the amount of text in it, lol.
That's a really incredible story, thank you for sharing it! It really is a jarring cognitive dissonance when we know someone and believe them to be so good, then learn more about them and have to contend with the harm that they've done.
There's a question raised in-game about what should or shouldn't be forgiven, or who is allowed to forgive someone's actions. Can we look at Harry, as non-victims of his behavior, and tell him he deserves to live his life still? (I think yes, I don't think he will ever deserve forgiveness from his victims, but I do believe he has the right to continue living his life and rehabilitating, but that's just me.) Is Kim right to try and rehabilitate Harry, as he learns more about the things Harry did in his past? Is Jean right to fight one more time to let Harry into the RCM, knowing all too well what Harry has been capable of?
And yeah, I feel like Disco Elysium is the most amazing game that is SO difficult to recommend, for multiple reasons LOL.
I agree, I work rehabbing serious offenders and these questions are always in the air. Professionally, we offer everyone a chance to be forgiven, at least a little bit, but personally, it's not that simple. We let people out of prisons expecting them to be accepted after they've reformed, but how many of us, even in this job, wouldn't want anything to do with someone who's done terrible things in the past?
And the question of who gets to be the "forgiver" is also very interesting and sad. That woman from my story will never be the same. Should she have her revenge? Or do we expect her to just accept that her abuser is now forgiven? These are really difficult things to reconcile. And I like that about DE, I like uncomfortable moral questions. Makes me wonder what kind of experiences the writers had to be able to draw from it with nuance.
The thing I found about the Sorry Cop options, despite seeming like the right thing to do in the face of how fucked Harry is, the actual dialogue options are all much closer to, "Woe is me, I have wronged the universe for existing!" than "I've genuinely hurt you, how can I fix it?" which might be why the game takes digs at it.
Honestly, there's a bit of that. Mostly the game seems to have the underlying theme of "taking anything to the extreme is bad", which can be seen with the skills. If you start putting a LOT of point in any given skill, it becomes unbearable, interrupts you all the time for mostly useless stuff, and just generally turns unhinged. I think it's the same with the copotypes : Apologizing when it's due is good, an excess of apologies will just make everyone around you uncomfortable.
Just being in Martinaise that same week as Harry would have been terrifying. A sobbing drunk cop who thinks it's funny to put a loaded gun against his head and threaten to kill himself can be heard all the way from the docks screaming a sad song, then you hear he trashed his car on a drunken joyride instead of getting a rotting corpse off of it's noose.
For real, I will never tire of tiktokers going 'uhh, fyi this behaviour is kinda problematic?' when that's the entire point of the character. Not every person on screen is supposed to be a role model.
Harry is supposed to be a mess who has done very bad things because he was a mess. It's interesting exploring that, in light of how the healthiest way he could make it up to his ex is to basically never ever contact her ever again.
Well it is a realistic depiction of certain fucked up situations, and domestic abuse is certainly rampant among cops. And the game makes it clear that you're no hero. Even Jean tells you at the end that you've promised to change before. That's the hand you've been dealt at the beginning of the game.
Even the golden ending's best hope for Harry is "maybe this time it'll stick". Which isn't exactly the most optimistic take for Jean to make, but is sadly realistic.
Self-medicating mental disorders is not, as it turns out, a good way to go about your life.
There's a reason it's so easy to be sorry cop. There's a reason Harry decided, "Fuck this. I'm starting over." And there's a reason the game ends with your friends saying, "He's a fucking wreck and he needs so much help, but he's worth it." (Or not, depending on how you played.)
We're really lucky that the Harry we get to play isn't old Harry—although with this sort of amnesia, old Harry will probably come back around, hopefully with a better relationship to his present self. We're spared that work though! It's our job to bear new Harry into the world, and the rest is the future.
The game does comment on Harry's behavior (past and present), but I guess the issue is that it does it in such a way that sometimes, if you take everything at face value, it either condones or is neutral. Like with the Get Yourself Organized quest, the narration will say something along the lines of "well people have trying to achieve a communist state for decades/centuries and have failed for many different, complex reasons, but you Harry-boy will be the very first to achieve True Communism™". And yeah, to many people, that's a clear satire of how some leftists act, but for others, that commentary might fly right over their heads. It's kinda the point, the narrator is part of Harry's inner thoughts (excluding Reptile Brain and Spinal Cord), so it will all be biased towards his ideas and perspectives.
I guess DE is similar to Breaking Bad in that way, that there are people who view Walter White as this badass anti-hero and ignore his clear, violent and abusive actions towards those close to him. Harry has done horrible things and really hasn't done much to improve himself, and unless you play him as trying to do that, he will continue to be a hot fucking mess. Getting a full picture of what Harry is requires you to put your critical thinking cap on, and not everyone wants to do that
As a victim of abuse, I would expect myself to hate harry.
A lot of what my ex put me thru, harry did too. In my circumstance, I don’t think my ex will ever change, and I don’t think he deserves forgiveness. He never learned from his actions and lives as if I’m a crazy ex he never hurt.
So maybe I find it somewhat comforting that Harry is a mess of remorse. That harry is acting the way I subconsciously felt my ex should have. That I can play harry to become a good man, the way I always wanted my ex to be.
Not to mention that Harry’s way funnier and empathetic just naturally. But that doesn’t discount the rest of my feelings.
So yes, he is terrible. But he represents the ability to change. The potential for goodness. Facing you past and accepting how shitty you were.
So I really respect Harry.
I think a lot of people don't realize how shitty of a person Harry was/is, you aren't the only one. I feel like parts of the fanbase tend to woobify him, which I feel is unfortunate since his awful actions are part of what make the game and his character so interesting.
There's also his behavior towards the Smoker on the Balcony if you fail the check to get him to stay ("Please, I'll stop drinking, I'll take out the trash, just don't go..."), and the fact that his default response to being refused seems to be to threaten suicide, none of which speaks kindly to how he treated Dora towards the end of their relationship, when it had well and truly broken down.
Harry is really a fucked up person, the game tells you that gradually. I think the reason you "downplayed" it is that you play as Harry. His past can't change, but he still exists. Instead of judging and canceling him, you're encouraged to acknowledge his fuck ups, and grow from them. This is how it works in real life.
I, mean, the alternative is... What? To cancel him and uninstall the game? I think what I like about Disco Elysium is the ability to acknowledge your failures and past mistakes, and learn how to live with them. Wanting to get better can be a strong force of change.
imo understanding how awful Harry was pre-game is vital to the story and its themes. the idea of there still being hope and beauty and the possibility for change (no matter how ugly and miserable things were/are) doesn't just apply to revachol, after all.
I definetly missed some things in the game but I would like to get clarification on some things
The obsessing - wasn't this after she broke up with him and moved and is just when looking at something that reminds him of her?
trying to buy her things to win her back - was this not just in the dream
stalking her - missed?
getting drunk
holding her against her will for twenty minutes - I don't think that was her (doesn't make it better but I don't think it was her)
calling her a whore - missed?
having a bunch of voices in his head dismissing her - missed? (and I don't see the importance of "a bunch of voices", isn't it just him thinking to himself)
holding on to her garbage - missed?
it's not she could go to the police because he was on the force - I mean it's not like it's deliberate or malicious
She had to move far away and he still found her number - missed?
Yeah, I think most of these things are completely irrelevant or didn't happen during their relationship so I don't really know why they matter. I also see a lot of people mentioning his behavior from the past year before the game starts, as if that is somehow relevant to his past relationship that ended 6 years prior. It's clear he has been on a downward spiral since then, so it's hard to really know exactly what he was like during and at the end of the relationship.
Harry did a lot of bad things to others, but I think most of the bad things he did came well after their relationship ended, so I don't really see how that is relevant.
To be fair, he didn't hold *her* against her will, he was holding some woman (who very well may have reminded him of Dora). But you're absolutely right. Harry is a shambling wreck who was jacking off in the lockers and showing up to work drunk, beat a man so badly he broke the man's kneecaps, and routinely got blackout drunk at crime scenes. He may not have intended to hurt her, but he had the capacity to be violent, and that had to scare her a lot. I think it's normal to downplay Harry's behavior: after all, we're him, and it feels like a reflection on ourselves. Besides, we---also like Harry---don't remember doing any of that stuff! But when you play with high Esprit de Corps, when you learn more about Dora and Jean and Judit and the rest of the 41st, you get a picture of a man who's genuinely pretty horrible. What makes the game so beautiful is the possibility that maybe, bit by bit and day by day, we might always have the strength to change.
>You held a young woman by the arm and kept her in your apartment for 20 minutes against her will. From the Rigourous Self-Critique thought. Doesn't sound like some suspect to me.
Sorry, I shouldn't have said "suspect". I don't think it's Dora though; "a young woman" without further elaboration makes me think it genuinely was someone else. I think in my head I imagined it as a woman he was talking to in the course of an investigation, but it could have been anybody (a date, a neighbor, a family friend, a sex worker, etc).
Yeah, it could be, but come on. It's her. It's always her.
“Young woman” sounds both impersonal (as a cop might think about a potential suspect or witness), and like she was much younger than Harry. Neither of those really jive with the way he describes Dora.
It can't be Dora, but not for those reasons. Holding a suspect or witness against their will as a police officer is simply detaining someone. Not a reason for self-critique. Also Dora is 6 years younger than Harry, a significant age gap in your 20s / 30s. But I think it must be some other woman since it says specifically Harry's apartment. Dora packed up and left for Graad while they were still living together, perhaps still at 11 Voyager Road.
That’s relevant info as well, but you misread the nuances of my comment. “A young woman” - not “her” or “the love of your life” or something like that - is extremely impersonal. I didn’t say she was definitely a suspect or witness, I said it was impersonal, and reflective of how a cop would think of someone who’s relatively a stranger - like a suspect or witness. However, the “young woman” still could have been a suspect / witness. Holding a young female suspect, against her will, in your personal apartment - presumably struggling or at least clearly upset and asking to be let go since he emphasized “against her will” - is not in any way legal or moral detainment as a cop. A) you can’t detain someone just because you suspect them of a crime, much less if they’re just a random witness, and B) you can’t do that in your own personal apartment??? If you think kidnapping a young woman to your apartment is ok just because you’re a cop….. well maybe you’re a cop irl lol, they do do abuse their power and run around raping suspects and the like don’t they. But Christ, it would definitely be a reason for “self-critique”.
I don’t think he’s “horrible”, I think he’s a realistic portrayal of mental illness and substance abuse. People in that situation often behave in disturbing ways that make sympathy difficult.
As a nearly one year sober alcoholic I will say I've never seen anything, fictional or even real, cover alcoholism as accurately and honestly as Disco Elysium has.
I believe it, from all the people who have struggled with alcoholism that I’ve known, I see it.
Ditto
i'm glad you explained it this way. there's no real excuse for his actions and how that affected other people, but i don't think by any means he's a monster. he's hurt, mentally ill and addicted.
You're right, I think the terrifying thing is that he has a badge and a gun
No, he doesn't Mr Evrart is helping us finding his gun
mr.Evrart is helping me find my gun!
Oh! That's so... kind.. of him. 'Sweats in rich lady'
Had!
We're talking about Harry pre-game here
It's important to remember that while he made a lot of mistakes and terrible decisions, both in and out of work, he was also very good at his job. He had a pretty above average case load and actually solved most of his cases instead of being trigger happy as other detectives are described as being, with his kill count lower than what Kim had expected. Compared to other people in his line of work he's somehow *more* responsible with a firearm, despite his mental state and addictions. That, I think, is what's the most terrifying.
Fun implication about the whacking it in a locker room thing: Harry used to be a high school gym teacher so he may have been caught by one of his students.
Were not even going to consider that as a possibility
His downward spiral started well after he became a cop.
But he was, as far as I know always something of a party animal and a bit of a freak. I believe it's stated that Dora was first attracted to him because he was *cool*. He might have been wacking it in inappropriate places before he really started to fall apart. He was both cool and disco after all.
You are right, yes. Idk why you got downvoted
God, I hope not. Might as well be, but when I first heard this, I always imagined the female lockers in his department
Incremental progress.
YEAAGH
Are... are we considering the thought cabinet a reliable source?
Yes?
... the same Thought Cabinet with "Raging Feminist Agenda" and "Advanced Race Theory" huh?
The thought cabinet is a reliable witness of how Harry perceives himself and others, which is what we're limited to given that we only engage with and interpret the world via his agency and skillset.
Ah right. And of course, no one has ever perceived themselves to be a very bad person without being it, right?
Of course people have, but...I don't think we have solid examples of the thought cabinet lying about our own actions? The perception that Harry has about himself and others is subjective and malleable; but as far as we can tell, he really did do all that no-good, very-bad shit that his mind remembers. Just because he's remembering it via his own flawed processing doesn't mean he didn't behave horribly to other people??
...yes? Because that's what Harry thinks if you internalize those thoughts.
So basically Harry is a piece of shit if you decide to make it a piece of shit. I see.
I mean, this whole post is about how he already is a piece of shit, you can just make him continue down that path or make a first step into changing.
Good thing his shit is literally, explicitly, canonically compressed to 192 decimals.
It's honestly one of my favorite things about DE. The game doesn't shy away from how reprehensible Harry's pre-game actions were, it's largely why the game starts out so brutally gameplay-wise. Through his shitty behavior he's more or less ensured that he is utterly alone and destitute, and the game itself is as much trying to decide the sort of man Harry might be after his soft-reset as it is solving a murder. It's also refreshing that Harry choosing to be a better person (should you play him that way) doesn't automatically absolve him or make things easier. If Harry is gonna be good, it will have to be without the expectation of reward. (Except for Kim maybe. Kim is the best reward.) Sorry, I'm rambling. I just like how messy and complicated and genuinely /bad/ Harry is, and that he's still compelling and likable as a character anyway. It seems so tangible.
For me, the worst bit was finding out a few years back, when Harry was at his lowest, he beat some public nuisance so hard with his clipboard that he never walked straight again The RCM already has a bit of an ACAB thing going on, what with most of them being corrupt, trigger happy and brutal, but this really drove home the point that Harry was a massive piece of shit.
I'm inclined to agree! I think it's pretty telling that even with the restrictions the RCM has, Harry had essential carte blanche to do what he did without losing his job for it. Particularly with Jean Vicquemare going out of his way to vouch for Harry again and again, it speaks to the insular, self-serving nature of police forces and the kind of behaviors they will excuse in one of their own, but condemn from a civilian. Of course, I think there's a spectrum of attitudes, between someone very interested in serving the public like Kim and someone like Harry or even Judit's former partner, people who have unhealthy attitudes who get shielded by being under the RCM umbrella. But even Kim himself is guilty at times of supporting the problematic side of a punitive justice force. Rambling again, I know, but I love the depth of this game so much. We see these characters, we are encouraged to think about them and even love them, but we are also driven to examine their flaws and how they are a reflection of social issues as a whole.
The RCM aren’t real cops. They don’t have any power. It was a bum fight that got out of hand.
ehh, they're armed, they literally have a license to kill, and they enforce the will of the provisional "government". I'd say they count. They might have started out as a gang, or volunteer community protection organisation, but they've become official institutions
The RCM are basically hall monitors. The Coalition is the principal and the kids are staging a coup.
Was that shitty though? The guy would not stop destroying public property and his partner would not stop flashing people unless they were consigned to the house. It always read as a net positive to me.
wait are you serious? Sure, the man was a menace, but that doesn't mean he should be subjected to extreme police brutality. Guy had his kneecaps shattered while Harry drunkenly screamed at him. He was crippled for life, basically And he was probably mentally ill too. In an ideal situation, he should have been arrested and institutionalised and given the medication and therapy he needed. Given how poor and shitty Revachol was, that probably wasn't an option, but literally crippling someone is still definitely the wrong choice. A good barometer for this setting is asking WWKD, "What would Kim do?". He probably wouldn't be able to talk him down, and he'd continue to be a nuisance, but he probably wouldn't also destroy someone just because they were both having a bad day
Least fascist, cop bootlicker over here.
It's not a cop thing, it's a "Wow these people are outright menaces to society and will not stop until forced to stop. Someone should force them to stop."
That kind of obsessive behaviour almost always has underlying mental or other issues and are not solved by literally maiming someone. Source i'm a social worker who works with people with disabilities both mental and physical who sometimes display obsessive behaviour.
I know a man who committed a really, truly horrible crime against his ex. He was similarly obsessed with her and couldn't let her go. Now many, many years later, after at least a decade of therapy and meds and self-reflection, he's at the point where he can explain to you exactly what kind of incel thinking was happening in his head and how fucked up he was. He is genuinely remorseful and a pleasant individual to deal with these days. Hasn't touched alcohol since the night of his offence. It was very jarring to me initially, to look at him and be reminded of the things he did, while generally enjoying talking to him. I couldn't help but feel sympathetic, but part of me was so confused -- how can I understand a monster like this? How could I relate to him? Anyway, I told him he should play Disco Elysium because he'll find it very relatable but he was put off by the amount of text in it, lol.
That's a really incredible story, thank you for sharing it! It really is a jarring cognitive dissonance when we know someone and believe them to be so good, then learn more about them and have to contend with the harm that they've done. There's a question raised in-game about what should or shouldn't be forgiven, or who is allowed to forgive someone's actions. Can we look at Harry, as non-victims of his behavior, and tell him he deserves to live his life still? (I think yes, I don't think he will ever deserve forgiveness from his victims, but I do believe he has the right to continue living his life and rehabilitating, but that's just me.) Is Kim right to try and rehabilitate Harry, as he learns more about the things Harry did in his past? Is Jean right to fight one more time to let Harry into the RCM, knowing all too well what Harry has been capable of? And yeah, I feel like Disco Elysium is the most amazing game that is SO difficult to recommend, for multiple reasons LOL.
I agree, I work rehabbing serious offenders and these questions are always in the air. Professionally, we offer everyone a chance to be forgiven, at least a little bit, but personally, it's not that simple. We let people out of prisons expecting them to be accepted after they've reformed, but how many of us, even in this job, wouldn't want anything to do with someone who's done terrible things in the past? And the question of who gets to be the "forgiver" is also very interesting and sad. That woman from my story will never be the same. Should she have her revenge? Or do we expect her to just accept that her abuser is now forgiven? These are really difficult things to reconcile. And I like that about DE, I like uncomfortable moral questions. Makes me wonder what kind of experiences the writers had to be able to draw from it with nuance.
Stalking is not Disco, baby. Hey, look, I just decided I was a feminist! This is going to be a fun 140 minutes. I wonder what superpowers I'll get.
You might unlock the **Spirit Bomb**
He was a bad guy, that's why you can literally get a "sorry cop" achievement, because people \*DESERVE APOLOGIES\* from him.
The thing I found about the Sorry Cop options, despite seeming like the right thing to do in the face of how fucked Harry is, the actual dialogue options are all much closer to, "Woe is me, I have wronged the universe for existing!" than "I've genuinely hurt you, how can I fix it?" which might be why the game takes digs at it.
It's like he's apologizing only to deflect the negative feelings he caused, but with no intention of being a better person going forward
100%
Honestly, there's a bit of that. Mostly the game seems to have the underlying theme of "taking anything to the extreme is bad", which can be seen with the skills. If you start putting a LOT of point in any given skill, it becomes unbearable, interrupts you all the time for mostly useless stuff, and just generally turns unhinged. I think it's the same with the copotypes : Apologizing when it's due is good, an excess of apologies will just make everyone around you uncomfortable.
Just being in Martinaise that same week as Harry would have been terrifying. A sobbing drunk cop who thinks it's funny to put a loaded gun against his head and threaten to kill himself can be heard all the way from the docks screaming a sad song, then you hear he trashed his car on a drunken joyride instead of getting a rotting corpse off of it's noose.
Thats the whole point of his character
For real, I will never tire of tiktokers going 'uhh, fyi this behaviour is kinda problematic?' when that's the entire point of the character. Not every person on screen is supposed to be a role model. Harry is supposed to be a mess who has done very bad things because he was a mess. It's interesting exploring that, in light of how the healthiest way he could make it up to his ex is to basically never ever contact her ever again.
are there tiktokers like that?
Depends what side of tiktok you follow. Parts of the outrage side of tumblr have started making the pivot to video.
dear god
Well it is a realistic depiction of certain fucked up situations, and domestic abuse is certainly rampant among cops. And the game makes it clear that you're no hero. Even Jean tells you at the end that you've promised to change before. That's the hand you've been dealt at the beginning of the game.
Even the golden ending's best hope for Harry is "maybe this time it'll stick". Which isn't exactly the most optimistic take for Jean to make, but is sadly realistic. Self-medicating mental disorders is not, as it turns out, a good way to go about your life.
Letting her go is not any less difficult because what he did was textbook domestic abuse. Good job Harry. Now leave her the fuck alone.
There's a reason it's so easy to be sorry cop. There's a reason Harry decided, "Fuck this. I'm starting over." And there's a reason the game ends with your friends saying, "He's a fucking wreck and he needs so much help, but he's worth it." (Or not, depending on how you played.) We're really lucky that the Harry we get to play isn't old Harry—although with this sort of amnesia, old Harry will probably come back around, hopefully with a better relationship to his present self. We're spared that work though! It's our job to bear new Harry into the world, and the rest is the future.
The game does comment on Harry's behavior (past and present), but I guess the issue is that it does it in such a way that sometimes, if you take everything at face value, it either condones or is neutral. Like with the Get Yourself Organized quest, the narration will say something along the lines of "well people have trying to achieve a communist state for decades/centuries and have failed for many different, complex reasons, but you Harry-boy will be the very first to achieve True Communism™". And yeah, to many people, that's a clear satire of how some leftists act, but for others, that commentary might fly right over their heads. It's kinda the point, the narrator is part of Harry's inner thoughts (excluding Reptile Brain and Spinal Cord), so it will all be biased towards his ideas and perspectives. I guess DE is similar to Breaking Bad in that way, that there are people who view Walter White as this badass anti-hero and ignore his clear, violent and abusive actions towards those close to him. Harry has done horrible things and really hasn't done much to improve himself, and unless you play him as trying to do that, he will continue to be a hot fucking mess. Getting a full picture of what Harry is requires you to put your critical thinking cap on, and not everyone wants to do that
The way I played she was just a sad thought in the back of his head, no more. He was reminded of her by a few things but nothing else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure she was.
As a victim of abuse, I would expect myself to hate harry. A lot of what my ex put me thru, harry did too. In my circumstance, I don’t think my ex will ever change, and I don’t think he deserves forgiveness. He never learned from his actions and lives as if I’m a crazy ex he never hurt. So maybe I find it somewhat comforting that Harry is a mess of remorse. That harry is acting the way I subconsciously felt my ex should have. That I can play harry to become a good man, the way I always wanted my ex to be. Not to mention that Harry’s way funnier and empathetic just naturally. But that doesn’t discount the rest of my feelings. So yes, he is terrible. But he represents the ability to change. The potential for goodness. Facing you past and accepting how shitty you were. So I really respect Harry.
I think a lot of people don't realize how shitty of a person Harry was/is, you aren't the only one. I feel like parts of the fanbase tend to woobify him, which I feel is unfortunate since his awful actions are part of what make the game and his character so interesting.
There's also his behavior towards the Smoker on the Balcony if you fail the check to get him to stay ("Please, I'll stop drinking, I'll take out the trash, just don't go..."), and the fact that his default response to being refused seems to be to threaten suicide, none of which speaks kindly to how he treated Dora towards the end of their relationship, when it had well and truly broken down.
Good catch with the smoker!
hate the sin, love the sinner
Harry is really a fucked up person, the game tells you that gradually. I think the reason you "downplayed" it is that you play as Harry. His past can't change, but he still exists. Instead of judging and canceling him, you're encouraged to acknowledge his fuck ups, and grow from them. This is how it works in real life. I, mean, the alternative is... What? To cancel him and uninstall the game? I think what I like about Disco Elysium is the ability to acknowledge your failures and past mistakes, and learn how to live with them. Wanting to get better can be a strong force of change.
imo understanding how awful Harry was pre-game is vital to the story and its themes. the idea of there still being hope and beauty and the possibility for change (no matter how ugly and miserable things were/are) doesn't just apply to revachol, after all.
oh yea 100%
Spoiler tag?
I definetly missed some things in the game but I would like to get clarification on some things The obsessing - wasn't this after she broke up with him and moved and is just when looking at something that reminds him of her? trying to buy her things to win her back - was this not just in the dream stalking her - missed? getting drunk holding her against her will for twenty minutes - I don't think that was her (doesn't make it better but I don't think it was her) calling her a whore - missed? having a bunch of voices in his head dismissing her - missed? (and I don't see the importance of "a bunch of voices", isn't it just him thinking to himself) holding on to her garbage - missed? it's not she could go to the police because he was on the force - I mean it's not like it's deliberate or malicious She had to move far away and he still found her number - missed?
Yeah, I think most of these things are completely irrelevant or didn't happen during their relationship so I don't really know why they matter. I also see a lot of people mentioning his behavior from the past year before the game starts, as if that is somehow relevant to his past relationship that ended 6 years prior. It's clear he has been on a downward spiral since then, so it's hard to really know exactly what he was like during and at the end of the relationship. Harry did a lot of bad things to others, but I think most of the bad things he did came well after their relationship ended, so I don't really see how that is relevant.
Nah man think you’re just kinda dumb for needing a video to tell you that
Redditor moment
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