The Making of Disco Elysium: Part Six - Aftermath

(graphics clacking) (solemn music) - Like, one of the main things that "Disco Elysium" talks about is that some defeats are unrecouperable, that there is permanent damage that you can't go on from.

And while people really, and I admire this about them, they really wanna make, there's an expression, Estonian expression, which is (speaking in Estonian), bread out of shit.

They wanna turn something, you know, unsavory into something that can be used. Harry's story is not really about getting over anything, it's about accepting that some things will never get better and learning to live with those things.

(solemn music) - [Danny] Hello, and welcome to the final episode in our series on the development of "Disco Elysium."

Once the original version of "Disco" was released, there was no parade. As we discussed in the previous episode, a large number of the original team, including all of the original engineers, several writers, producers and more, had been let go by ZA/UM leadership.

By now the studio was largely based in London, and in the weeks and months that followed "Disco's" release, and the groundswell of sales, awards and recognition of the studio and it's story, the studio was finally in a more stable financial situation, and so they quickly got to work

on a new version of "Disco Elysium" called "Final Cut." This would add full voice acting to the game, four new political side quests, and a wide array of bug fixes and quality of life updates.

It would also see the series make its debut on consoles. But for the people who had been working on "Disco" from the start, there was no respite.

While everybody who had worked on "Disco" had crunched, many of the team, including Robert, Argo and Helen, had been struggling with the workload for years for a variety of reasons.

This delta in energy and enthusiasm would be a crowbar in the already emerging splits within the team.

And it didn't help when a global pandemic landed on everyone's front door. (solemn music) (grim music) - After this period, things really changed.

Pandemic happened, and people weren't, literally, like, meeting up. This is, like, kind of where, I think, things started going really south, and relationships started going really south.