After: A more lifelike tabletop role-playing game hasn’t been made yet

In order to really understand the crazy fandom surrounding Esoteric Ebb, let’s first clarify why Disco Elysium was so important. The 2019 game did something that only very few people had done before: an amazingly detailed RPG where the combat mechanics have no function, and the gameplay is basically provided by the dialogues and the tasks to be solved through them.

Here, our abilities are not linked to physical or combat skills, but to character, ideological or mental skills such as pain tolerance, hand-eye coordination, reaction time, logic or empathy. So the game is narratively structured so that, say, we trip on the stairs according to the story, and the game looks at how our reaction time is and it depends on whether we fall or not. Then when we fall, it checks our pain tolerance to determine how many lives we lose. This mechanic is important even for very trivial actions, and if our skills are not adequate, we cannot even perform such a simple action as looking in the mirror.

The storytelling itself is completely different from the usual: here too, there is a lot to read, but instead of endless mountains of text, the narration, internal narration and dialogues work like a fight. This in itself is nothing extra, but a dialogue usually does not consist exclusively of the texts of two people. Between the questions and answers, there is always a quip, a joke, a thought or anything else from our different abilities. Yes, our logic or empathy talks to us and comments on events just like a metamodern storyteller.

This is where the mechanical part of storytelling becomes truly 21st century, since as we read the background story, the dialogues or the descriptions, the monotony of the letter sets is always broken by two or three comments from our different abilities. These abilities comment in a style that we would expect them to, so empathy is always sensitive to things, logic always tries to stay rational, and so on. When the read text is increasingly being replaced by videos and short texts written on pictures, it seems quite a genius move to serve classic storytelling in the form of a somewhat chaotic group chat.

This absolute narrative focus is combined with fantastic art design, unique world-building, and amazingly entertaining dialogues and characters, so that the creators also smuggled deep political content into the game. Disco Elysium became a huge success compared to a small indie game, but the ZA/UM studio couldn’t do anything about it to such an extent that since then the whole thing fell to pieces, all the most important creators, programmers and managers left, and currently, in addition to ZA/UM, four other teams recruited from former ZA/UM employees are working on a game similar to Disco Elysium. And none of them are Esoteric Ebb.

Esoteric Ebb was not even made by a studio, but by a Swedish developer named Christoffer Bodegård, who wanted to somehow make a video game out of his own Dungeons & Dragons campaign, but got stuck in figuring out the combat system. Not long after, Disco Elysium came out, and he spent almost two months playing the game to realize that his idea should be implemented in a similar way. His demo eventually reached PC Gamer, and after the good impressions, the Swedish publisher Raw Fury, which deals mainly with indie games, got behind it, so Bodegård got money for external plugins and to finish the game.

The end result is really similar to Disco Elysium in many ways, yet it has a very specific, characterful atmosphere.

Our protagonist is a so-called cleric, which basically means a priest or cleric, but in the world of D&D, perhaps the most accurate definition is a character who uses divine magic, who does not acquire his power through learning or innate ability, but rather from a deity or holy power. Our hero is an employee of the city of Norvik and is assigned the task of investigating who and why blew up the town’s tea house. However, our hero has amnesia, so during the game you have to simultaneously solve the mystery of the explosion, discover your own past and learn all the secrets of Norvik.

At the beginning of the game, our man is so weak and undertrained that at one point a bucket or a brat is our wardrobe, and long hours can go by without really having any idea what we’re doing here. Then we slowly walk around the city, talking to everyone we can, and depending on our skills and dice rolls, we can get closer to a specific mystery during the conversations.

The setting is a sort of classic fantasy metropolis, but 90% of the people here have been written out, so most of the NPCs we talk to aren’t even human. From gnomes to goblins to sphinxes, the range of characters is incomparably colorful. After several decades of fantasy RPGs, it is especially refreshing to finally see a world where the same 4-5 basic fantasy species (elves, dwarves, humans, orcs, etc.) do not live together, but an angel, a goblin or some kind of bird-headed creature roams the streets.

Many compare EE’s humor to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, as it twists, parodies, and redefines the fantasy genre, while constantly winking at the player. The way our abilities communicate with us is also particularly funny. For example, when I try to flirt with an orc, my charisma keeps commenting on things like go ahead, impress him, compliment him, but the force is almost yelling at me to stop because he’ll eat me for breakfast.

The most fun part of the game is clearly that even banal little things can lead to important storylines if you use good skills, throw well, and maybe even have some kind of special power. The latter must be obtained during the game, and among them are such simple spells as turning the ground slippery or putting a shield on yourself to the point of learning to talk to animals, plants and even the dead.

Despite its simplicity, the story is far from linear, and you can progress in almost any way you like. Norvik’s map is not very big, and by the end of the game you get a little bored of constantly moving around the same 15-20 maps, but that’s the goal somewhere. I passed an unopenable door at least forty times before at one point I learned a lock-picking spell so I could come back later and open it without a problem. It’s the same with animals that I thought were just decorations, then I learned to talk to them and they immediately took on a new meaning. Personally, I can’t stand when a map has to be walked over and over again, but in the case of EE, the exciting thing is that at the same time as our own development, new routes and storylines are constantly opening up in places that we passed by without any problems before.

In addition, it is particularly important what kind of character we build at the beginning of the game. I wanted to be a skill and charisma rogue with above average intelligence, which means I’m low on wisdom and strength. Because of this, I could easily pickpocket anyone anywhere, and I could even beat myself up if I fell, but in the occasional combat situations, I didn’t stand a chance against stronger opponents. More precisely, it just seemed that I had no chance, because the game is so versatile and open that with the skillful use of our abilities, dialogues and spells, even a three-meter troll can be defeated. It is important, however, that our abilities often give good advice that is worth paying attention to. Even if the level of our skills is enough to detect the problem, which is also a damn exciting solution.

You have to read a hell of a lot in the game, so those who don’t like it will definitely not like EE, even though the world building is really amazingly creative, and as I already mentioned, there was also a strong political undertone in it. Perhaps my criticism is that politics is handled a bit superficially here, because the end of the game ends with the important election of the city of Norvik, but actually the different political ideologies are presented quite commonly, and it seems a bit like the creators were biased with one or two sides.

It is certain that the classic liberal-capitalists (freestriders) are sometimes presented by the game as even more harmful than the simply beaten down nationalists, while it is noticeable that the story mostly favors the social democrats (azgalists). Apparently, this is an important function in the game, but in reality it has little effect on the final outcome and they cannot say nearly as much with it as in the case of its great predecessor. Although it is undoubtedly very funny that we can really ask anyone who they will vote for in the election, be it a stray cat, a lonely knight or the city wall. Yes, you can even talk to the city wall, at the end of which a very secret storyline unfolds, if you are clever enough.

The other weakness – in addition to the lack of a map, the opaque mission menu and inventory – is the closing of the game. In the case of such an open-ended role-playing game that can be played through in many ways, it is especially disappointing that when we finally get to the ballot box to cast our vote after solving the big mysteries and confusions, the game ends abruptly. Although there is a somewhat weightless epilogue, where we can talk to each NPC a little depending on how our relationship with them developed, there is still a strong sense of loss: did I really spend 50-60, maybe even 80 hours in this game with a lot of reading, so that I don’t find out what happened to Norvik? So that we don’t find out who won the election? What was the result of our investigation? Maybe a DLC can help with that, because I really miss it.

However, for the journey that lasts until the last moment, it is more than worth taking the EE. It works fantastically as an interactive book, a fantasy parody, and an adaptation of a real D&D game where it’s totally okay to lose or fail a challenge. For once, I didn’t feel like I had to reload the game because something didn’t work out, since this is also part of the gaming experience that other RPGs rarely offer. The colorful and fragrant characters, the scheming and stumbling protagonist, the city full of life and many exciting little mysteries really provide perfect relaxation, the only regret is that since the game has only one ending, I feel it is a bit unnecessary to start again. However, I would very much like to be a wise sorcerer who, instead of diplomacy and coercion, cuts through all difficulties with magic and violence.

Regardless, Esoteric Ebb is an amazing achievement from such a small development team, and can rightly claim to be the first Disco Elyium-like game since Disco Elysium. If you need a good read, a good story, a lot of good characters, an interesting world and a little tabletop, but not too complicated or difficult role-playing game in your life, then you really can’t recommend anything better than this. Especially since the whole thing is only $25 on Steam right now, that is, less than HUF 8,500. Big-budget RPGs that cost three times as much don’t have as many ideascreativity, originality and emotion, as in this small Swedish home project.