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“Disco Elysium shaped me as much as I shaped it, and I am eternally grateful for the experience,” Argo Tuulik, the last writer of the original game to depart ZA/UM, tells me.
“That being said, there are some concepts incompatible with the Elysium world-building that I’ve wanted to explore for many years, and now I’m glad I didn’t try them before I had the experience I do now,” he continues. The idea of starting afresh with Summer Eternal, a new studio, alongside some other ex-Disco devs doesn’t phase him: “I don’t feel any more nervous than I do about driving a car. Been doing it so intensely for so long it has become second nature.”
That said, when I ask him whether it’s been tough to leave behind the Elysium universe (something the writer didn’t get much choice about, due to being laid off), he adds: “Creatively, I am genuinely excited to try out new things. However, from an ethical, moral and legal standpoint this whole situation just doesn’t sit right with Kuno. It f**ks Kuno how this creative work was taken away from him and all his friends who worked on it. Kuno’s not yet done with this fight.”
Due to that whole situation, Tuulik’s chosen project wasn’t the only studio to be announced just before Harry and Kim’s adventure celebrated its fifth anniversary. There were a couple of others, via other press releases that, like Summer Eternal’s, hinted at involvement from former DE developers, or the tantalising potential to be a spiritual successor that can pick up the torch left in a bit of limbo by the messy aftermath of the Disco inferno. However, Tuulik’s project was the only one that came with its own manifesto, and that seemed keen to outline that the game it’d be aiming to produce would be “something completely fresh and original”.
“Comparisons and expectations are inevitable, but the origin of our work will be our present conditions, our present team, our present reality, not the past which will never be recaptured again, and is a fool’s errand to chase,” says former ZA/UM writer Dora Klindžić, who penned Summer Eternal’s manifesto. “Ultimately, as we build and design this game from scratch, we will evaluate each element only on the basis of whether it does justice to what we as the team want to make today. Of course, as the big man’s quote goes, men do not make their history as they please, so our present will always be informed by our past. But we want to shed all unnecessary baggage and focus on building the future.
“We are approaching this process without intent to ‘outdo’ or even ‘match’ Elysium or to compete with any other company on Earth or in orbit, nor to lay claims to any targets of commercial success. We leave that business to the profiteers. We will work as artists do, which means both eyes on the work, not one on the audience and not one on the competition.”
“I think we’re just gonna wing it,” Tuulik adds, “’No man steps into the same river twice’, says obscure Heraclitus (obscurely). Rather than trying to be different for difference’s sake or same-y as if there was a formula for this, I will follow the dopamine. I trust that what we make will feel familiar but new.”
Gamechuck developer Aleksandar Gavrilović, who played a big role in putting together the new studio’s co-operative structure and is “the only member of the Summer Eternal team who hasn’t worked on Disco or any of its expansions”, has his own view of the task the studio faces in this regard.
“For me,” he says, “the best thing about playing Disco was how fresh and different it was to everything else at that point. It was obviously a spiritual successor to games like Planescape, but it dared to break rules and this is what should be done now as well…not just a bland stylistic copy of what everyone loves now, but creating something as new and as innovative as Disco was in 2019.
“When Lenin wrote about how best to ascend a high mountain, he outlined an important aspect – when you are already on a high vantage point, to ascend higher, you must sometimes take another path, and descend,” he continues, “This descent is often more perilous and is always followed by malicious glee of those who above all wish for you to not succeed. But if we are to achieve our ambitious plan, we need to take our time and first descend the mountain, before attempting an even higher peak, however long it takes.”
As you’d expect for a collective that’s keen on workers’ rights, the Summer Eternal team seems to have nothing but well-wishes for litany of other former Disco developers who’re now trying to make their way outside of ZA/UM, including those involved in the other projects that were announced in that hectic week earlier this month.
When I ask the group if they’ve got plans to to reach out to any of these folks going forwards, Gavrilović cites “many of Argo’s former colleagues” as having reached out to register interest in becoming part of Summer Eternal, adds that they “haven’t yet written any blogs and statements, so the coming weeks and months might be full of surprises.”
“There are also other devs who would supposedly love to join, but we haven’t yet managed to get in touch with them,” the developer adds. “Life led them on different paths, and not everybody has a strong digital footprint, so finding where some people are also takes a bit of detective work, as well. Luckily, our large digital footprint makes us a very bright beacon, so the situation we have is people approaching us, instead of the other way around.”
“I’d rather under-promise and over-deliver, so I’ll keep it purposefully vague,” Tuulik himself says, “but the responses and the support from our old comrades (as well as new supporters I gotta say) is beyond anything I was prepared for. I am humbled by how many people want to try again or try to help in some shape or form.”
“What a year ago felt like a generational tragedy, today smells like spring with all the new beginnings,” Tuulik tells me, “Instead of a Disco 2 assembled on autopilot, trauma and uppers by people who – medically speaking – are in-between aneurysms, we now get a few distinct artistic directions, all from the children of Cronus. I get giddy thinking about that.”