10 Video Game Features Every Title Should Have Stolen

6. Protagonist Customisation System - Disco Elysium

Something that certain RPGs do really well is letting you level your skills by actually doing the things those skills are related to. Wanna get better at Alteration spells? Do Alteration spells. Want to up your One-Handed skill? Engage in combat with a one-handed weapon.

Enter Disco Elysium where your protagonists’ personality is defined by the way you interact with others and the morals and thoughts you choose to internalise.

Your protagonist in the narrative-heavy RPG is Harry Du Bois but he’s a bit of an odd blank slate and while your backstory is fixed, where you take him from there is entirely up to you. Your skills in the game which you can invest in are facets of his personality; things like Drama, Pain Threshold, and Perception. These facets will also pipe up in the middle of conversations and the ones you put more points into are more likely to weigh in.

This extends to the game’s unique Thought Cabinet where you can spend skill points to internalise various ideologies. The result of this is your ability to build a character in a way that avoids the binary good or evil characterisation that is present in pretty much every other RPG.

Basically, this game is awesome, you should play it, and this would be a cool feature to see elsewhere.