What happened to Disco Elysium's sequel? I spoke to the man behind 300,000 lines

Dr Disrespect breaks his four-year silence

Disco Elysium seemed to have everything going for it. Clever political satire. A deft portrayal of the police force during a time when such commentary was apt and necessary. Rich voice-acting and a hypnotic soundtrack. Hell, it even had queer Asian representation.

Disco also revived an Estonian novelist’s story, which had previously sold a measly 1,000 copies, and gave it new eyes, racking up awards across the gamut. Now the publisher has laid off 24 employees, the novelist was accused of a toxic management style, and the sequel has been canceled. And the fan base has swiftly turned on developer ZA/UM, even telling each other not to buy merch from the store, lest they support bad actors.

So many people had told me to play Disco Elysium, but I didn’t get around to it until two weeks ago. By the time I finished the game, I was ready to buy Kim Kitsuragi’s bomber jacket. But then, reminded by Reddit of the studio’s many woes, I abstained.

Disco Elysium is a disorienting experience. I played the first few hours on my Twitch stream back when I worked at The Washington Post, and found it too difficult to read all the dialogue to viewers while also trying to figure out where to go in an efficient manner. The second time around, this year, was a lot simpler, as I merely recorded a few videos on demand, which you can view on my YouTube channel. The fact that the main character can’t remember anything makes the introduction into the game extremely confusing, but after investing about ten hours into it, I found a real groove with Disco, and I was loving it.

There’s a moment when I faced an obstacle that had a 3% chance of success, and managed to pass it without save-scumming (the controversial practice of rewinding your game to try again). I was truly shocked, and so was my cop sidekick, Kim. I got to rub my victory in his face, which was the icing on the cake. At another point, I helped a bunch of children make an incredible rave beat in church, a song I later found on Spotify and played at a friend’s birthday party in real life.

And the writing is, for the most part, besides some sexist and racist parts, fairly incredible. Obviously, that’s a huge caveat. There are some synergies between the protagonist, Harry, and his more disturbing remarks and the more recent updates to what has befallen the sequel.

I’ve played so many games at this point that I can tell where developers rushed and cut corners, or where they weren’t able to fill out the scenery with much content. The back-half of Hades 2 is like this, but that’s tantalizing, because you just know SuperGiant is going to fill out the next few levels with unique characters and landscapes. Not so with Disco Elysium, which teases out the island of Jamrock, and mentions various things you can do there, only to wrap up the finale on a barren land, mostly empty space, and a rather short dialogue. In Act 2, I felt the instinct to put the game down — the experience felt more pure if I simply stopped right there, leaving the possibilities endless and infinite. As it turns out, my intuition was right. Many online have complained about the ending being a letdown, while a few defend this choice as intentional.

And now it looks like we’re not going to get more. An excerpt from PC Gamer’s investigation in June:

"In February 2022, I left my job as an academic physicist and space mission scientist in order to work on Y12, the sequel to a masterpiece, Disco Elysium," former lead writer Dora Klindžić said of this time. "Upon my arrival, I was told all the leads were gone and replaced, but this was framed as a good thing, a healthy thing. Four months later the project was shelved overnight. I began raising concerns, as I felt I had just abandoned my entire life and career only to end up in a studio where the people I had come to work with were fired, and the project I was meant to work on shelved with no reason given."

London-based musician Lenval Brown, who narrated over 300,000 lines of dialogue in Disco Elysium, told Updater, “Unfortunately, the sequel got canceled... there was a split in the ZA/UM camp! It would have been amazing... they missed a trick!”

Brown added that while Disco was his first time voice acting in a game, he’s open to doing it again. “I've done a few bits and pieces of voice work here and there since. I'm working on trying to get more voice gigs.”

There is always hope, though. Just with any other property, like the fanmade, non-Disney-related versions of Club Penguin, the fans can always take over. In 2022, for instance, fans released a Chinese game, White Mourning: Museum in Pale.

For the past seven years, I’ve been talking to game developers and their studio heads. The mood in 2024 feels somber. Look no further than LinkedIn to read of the general malaise across the industry. And yet 2025 will be an even bigger year for video games, as the annual not-E3 conference just showed us. 

How are people squaring this strange discrepancy? I’ve spoken to many developers about this, and they highlight different ways they’re weathering the storm. We might revisit and get into more of them later this year. 

I’ll be explicit. One of the reasons I haven’t updated this newsletter as frequently is not just that I took a full-time job at Inverse, but also because one of my stories has actually led to me burning professional bridges. That’s par for the course as an investigative journalist, and some even wear that as a badge of honor. But given the tenuous state of games journalism, it’s increasingly a threat to survival.

That being said, I’m pushing past those hesitations, and committing to writing more of these. Newsletters give you the unique ability to speak directly to your audience, without any Google search engine meltdowns to get in the way. That’s invaluable. And let’s be honest, I never got into this to maintain the status quo.

It’s been the biggest few weeks in gaming, so let’s get into it. First, I traveled to San Francisco for GDC, gathered so many interviews, and now of course, I’ve been inundated with Summer Game Fest news. On the bright side, what this means is you get a double issue packed with only the biggest highlights, cutting out all the noise.

It’s been gratifying to commission the finest writers across the industry. Here are some of my favorites so far: 

No thoughts, only Balatro

Renata Price graced our site with this hypnotic essay about a similarly decadent game about poker hands. As onlookers noted, Balatro is not anything like the poker that you know. But I did find it strangely, achingly familiar and couldn’t place why until I read Marcus Stewart’s interview with the developer LocalThunk here, where he says, “Well, the concept came from – it's a game called Big Two. It's a Cantonese game. If you've ever played a game called Presidents or Cheat or Janitor or A**hole, it's the same type of game where you have a hand of cards, and you select some of the cards and play them down. So it's actually based on a game like that. It's not based on poker. And I used to play this game, Big Two, all the time with my friends when I was in high school and growing up. I wanted to make an online version of that game to play with them during the pandemic.”

On Galaxy’s Edge

We got the rare chance to visit Take-Two’s offices in May and talk to the Star Wars developers. I immediately noticed the hero shooter resembles the Disneyland amusement parks I’ve visited. The developers say that was on purpose. They wanted the instant recognition of Disney, while keeping the game easy to understand for new players. They even threw a football and esports metaphor in there. You can read more here.

Isaiah Colbert’s Delicious in Dungeon dive

An excellent dive into all the gaming references in Netflix’s hit Dungeons and Dragons-inspired show. To edit this piece, I also watched the anime and read the whole manga. The Netflix season one finale gets you caught up to chapter 52 of the manga. Once I discovered the manga was complete, I binge-read it over a weekend.

Honkai Star Rail and Disney from Rui Zhong

“Welcome to the land of dreams!” the nasally-voiced cartoon chirps. With a bright-eyed smile and a pep in his step, he serves as a retro-designed tour guide through a commercial wonderland of fast food, movies, and dreams.

It’s not Disney World, but it is reminiscent of just that.

Read more from former U.S.-China think tank scholar Rui Zhong about how Chinese mobile game Honkai Star Rail, from the developer of Genshin Impact, satirizes American culture.

“No one expects their copy of Kane & Lynch is going to have a dime bag in it.”

Read about the dire state of console returns at GameStop, from Patricia Hernandez.

• Kicking off an acerbic dialogue on social media, we sought to analyze Stellar Blade and its relation to the male gaze. This excellent piece is from Issy van der Velde, who also penned this insane Bloodborne essay that needs more attention.

• In other news, Valorant is coming to console, which marks Riot Games’ first foray off of PC. It’s a bit interesting that the first-person shooter is making it to consoles before League of Legends does.

• Another in platform news: Apple is still going all-in on gaming. Assassin’s Creed Shadows is coming to Mac for $69.99 this fall, which Apple is using to tout the new Mac capabilities for gaming.

• Hard Drive has this very apt satire on all the layoffs plaguing the tech and gaming industries.
  We Went Undercover at Microsoft but Got Laid Off Before We Could Learn Anything

• Nvidia is now a trillion dollar company and CEO Jensen Huang is wealthier than India’s richest man. They visited New York recently to show off more AI updates. More to come soon.

• Streamer Dr Disrespect has finally explained why he was banned on Twitch four years ago — he was accused of sexting a minor. The case was settled in arbitration (as I confirmed years ago but was unable to report out). He claims he has done nothing illegal and he’ll be back to streaming after taking a vacation.

Thank you for reading! I’ll catch you next time.