Why The 'Disco Elysium' Show Is Shaping Up To Be A Disappointment

Fans of video game adaptations rejoice in my place because Disco Elysium will get a TV series adaptation and I hate everything about it. The problem here isn't even the usual one about how every single game-to-movie adaptation is destined to suck ass. Disco Elysium rocks hard, and it's one of the few games I think could perhaps work as a TV series. Much like The Last Of Us, another successful game going the TV route, Disco too could benefit from having its complex world and beautiful dialogue unraveling throughout ten episodes instead of being squished into a 90-minute movie. But it shouldn't be happening this way. 

It's being made by *checks notes* evil megacorporation Amazon. If you've played the game, you'll remember that a considerable portion of it has players dealing with a workers strike, where the people refusing to go on strike turn out to be a bunch of goons paid to disrupt the workers' union. I wonder how that scene will play out when produced by the famous union-busting Amazon.

And that's just the surface. Everything about Disco Elysium is revolutionary, and not just in a figurative sense. The makers of the game went on top of the biggest stage in gaming and thanked Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two of the people usually credited for inventing the belief that capitalism is perhaps not in the best interest of people.

Hell, This game takes place in a universe where being too rich and powerful will inevitably turn you into a reality-breaking jackass.

Now, it's important not to equate my criticism to dumb reactionary classics like “socialists shouldn't have iPhones” or “if you don't like society, then why do you exist in it?”. While in a capitalist system, it's disingenuous to believe that you stand to change anything without resorting to the existing technology. The problem here is how Disco Elysium's anti-capitalist message will get co-opted by capitalism and turned into yet another commodity that will serve the exact opposite purpose of what was originally meant to serve, V For Vendetta mask style.

Top Image: ZA/UM