It’s easy to talk about things I dislike, but it’s equally (more) important to talk about things I love. So welcome to Things I Love, reviews and meditations on all the good things keeping me going.
Today’s thing I love is a video game, an RPG, and like all good RPGs it plays like someone is gently telling you a story that changes every time you interrupt.
Esoteric Ebb, developed by Christoffer Bodegård and collaborators, takes place in the city of Norvik. You are The Cleric, or a cleric who is also a rogue, or a cleric who is actually a god wizard, or a cleric who is also a fascist struggling with his masculinity, depending on the choices you start making before you get into the story. It is your job, Cleric, to investigate a possible act of terrorism; someone has blown up the local tea shop five days before the very first election. There are opposing political factions in play. There is a mimic.
Your character traits, the things you selected for or against – my first run-through was a strong as hell constitutionally fortified cleric with nothing between his ears – are themselves characters with their own motivations and political inclinations. You have spells that can enhance or hinder the success of interactions. As you work your way through objectives, you are given choices between different bonuses that are flavored to match the different traits.
There are also women; a brash capitalist, a one-with-nature elf who is sort of a mushroom, a brawny hired muscle who really hates being Charmed, a flirty bar owner. A very political teenager. A literal angel.
These are all parts of what makes the game compelling to me. You can find more information, including access to a discord server and the soundtrack, on the game’s website.
I love the music choices, the way they set a distinct feeling of the story. In a story that borrows bits and pieces from a lot of traditional fantasy (and Dungeons and Dragons), Bodegård could have gone with something containing significantly more lute. He didn’t, though, and the soundtrack helps the player understand that while there are parts here that will feel familiar to anyone who’s played D&D, this is a different place.
No one is perfect; there are no perfect choices, and at times the player might find they bend the ideology they’ve attached to in order to justify an action. Sometimes capitalism is the best way to ultimately benefit the workers’ party. Sometimes you have to go along with what a shady character suggests because that’s the only good option. Ideals are meant to be tested, poked and prodded.
One of the themes that sticks out the most to me is about the reality and importance of mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes of varying consequence. Everyone should be given an opportunity to fix them. Even the mistakes that were devastating, that have created long-lasting divisions, are not permanent. They can be forgiven. It isn’t that to err is human; in Ebb, erring is universal.
There are a lot of comparisons drawn between Ebb and Disco Elysium, another catastrophically good RPG that I will absolutely write about at length later. Indeed, Bodegård talks about his game as being a kind of love letter to Disco. It is described on its own site as being a “Disco-like,” the first time I’ve seen a developer self-describe in such a way.
The thing about these two games is that Disco Elysium and Esoteric Ebb are asking you to live in different headspaces.
Disco asks you to exist in a world that is, at its core, broken; even in a broken world there are murders to solve, there are people living their lives the best they can. At every step you are shown the corruption and malice of a system left to rot. You are a broken person but, depending on your choices, you can try and solve one single problem. You can do your best in a bad circumstance.
Ebb, then, asks you to exist in a place where there is the promise of something better, of a way to fix what’s broken through admittedly imperfect means. You are a person with a great many faults and failures, but conversely it is the world around you trying to make things better. You can (again, game choices) aid the work of idealist pro-worker Azgalists, build a relationship with a goblin queen trying to do right by her people, try and ensure the elections happen without problems. There is something optimistic about the tone of the game, even in its darkest moments.
I suspect it’s that tone that causes some Disco fans to regard Ebb as being less compelling. There are plenty of valid criticisms, and at times the writing in Ebb can be more simplistic than in Disco. I think the fundamental flaw with comparing them, though, is there’s often an unspoken idea that when you hold up two objects, one should be better than the other. This isn’t the case to me; I love both games for similar and different reasons. Disco Elysium embraces a revolutionary spirit – the system is broken, what you do won’t necessarily fix it, do it anyway – and Esoteric Ebb is focused more on the ideas of collective progression – there are many at work to make a difference, you must choose to help progress along in spite of its many flaws. Those are both ideas that are worth examining and understanding.
The two things Disco and Ebb strongly have in common that make me love them both are these: the power of introspection, and the importance of relationships.
Knowing oneself, strengths and flaws, helps a person make better choices. You play to your strengths, you find ways to get around the weaknesses. When your Strength is 6, chances of you passing a roll rated to 34 are pretty goddamn low. But there’s an option for Wisdom, for Constitution, maybe there’s a spell you know or an article of clothing you have that will even the odds.
Relationships give those choices meaning. You fail a check, an interaction doesn’t go the way you’d hoped, you’re compelled to find a way to fix it or deal with its consequences. A check is successful, and a new moment of understanding blossoms in its wake – your goblin associate thinks more highly of you, you secure a date with an attractive woman, you befriend a snail. The world you’re exploring is made real by the things you learn about the other characters, by digging deeper and taking risks. You love them because of your interactions, the way you understand them better over time.
I’ve seen posts from newcomers to both games asking “what stats make the best playthrough” and seasoned players explaining that it isn’t that kind of game. That’s what makes a game like Ebb, or like Disco, so appealing and thrilling to me. You’re telling a story in collaboration with the creator. You’re making choices about the direction of the story, and the creator, in turn, reveals little treasures of experience accordingly. These are games of intimacy, not optimization. There isn’t a loot crate to be had at the end of the story. The game was the friends we made along the way.
There is a moment towards the end of Ebb where, without spoiling it, a character reckons with the ways their choices have created harm. In a lot of storytelling, there might be fighting in that moment, violence, retribution. Instead, though, there is space for reflection. There is a kind of forgiveness. Mistakes happen, and in the spirit of all RPGs, there are choices to be made in response.
There’s also a perpetually-drunk Sphinx.