Revachol Vista

I wish the City of Revachol (Fig.1, pronounced reva-shol) was real from the roleplaying video game Disco Elysium. It’s a unique fictional place because while there are fantastical elements to it, it already feels real. It resembles real life former eastern bloc cities such as Tallinn, where Disco Elysium’s lead writer grew up. The places where collective action met brutal ends. 

Disco Elysium is among the strongest pieces of fiction when discussing ideas of urban place. Using Revachol as a lens, it focuses on socio-spatial conflict. There aren’t many pieces of fiction, let alone video games, that have quests discussing why a block of commercial failed. The Doomed Commercial Area was home to various businesses such as a clothing store, a gym, cold storage, and many more. All commerce in the area failed, hence the name. Was it because they were in a bad neighborhood? Were the buisnesses poorly run? Were they always doomed to fail, because of underlying flaws in neoliberalism? Was the landlord a scumbag who raised rents, believing that these businesses represented a wave of gentrification that never came? It’s funny that the simplest answer the game offers is deranged; the block is cursed on a cosmic level. 

Another case where Disco Elysium excels in presenting urbanism is Shivers. “Place” as a characteristic of urban environments is very hard to describe without sounding like even more of a vibes analyst than human geography already is. Shivers leans into that. Shivers is a player attribute/voice that improves urban spatial awareness. It’s a bond to Revachol that gives spatial info and at higher levels, feels supernatural. Here is an excerpt of interactive dialogue where you, the reader, can basically play a portion of the game. Here, the Shivers attribute speaks to the player and it tells the geography of Revachol. It reads like human geographer fanfiction.

-Written by Raymond Li