Following layoffs at ZA/UM earlier this year, some of the affected developers provided some details about the Disco Elysium spin-off they were working on before the game was canceled as part of their layoff. As with all the Disco Elysium stuff we haven’t gotten since the original, it sounds very cold.
If you’re not up to date, to say it’s been a tumultuous time for those working at the studio since Harry and Kim came into our lives in 2019 would be a bit of an understatement. Before this year, they were already key figures in the process of creating the first game that parted ways with the studio documentaries showing how complicated the situation has become.
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Now in the report from Computer playerseveral former studio employees have shed some airy on what the project, codenamed X7, looked like before it was shut down.
According to the creators, this spin-off set in the Elysium universe – which, by the way, is not a sequel, as the idea was already shelved after the departure of original Disco creators Robert Kurvitz, Alexander Rostow and Helen Hindpere in 2021 – was “about one of the most beloved characters in Disco Elysium” and was directed by another original creator, Argo Tuulik.
“It was something that no one else but Argo could do and it would be 110% authentic, the most hardcore Disco since Disco,” said former X7 head writer Dora Klindžić, if the game’s addition “improved the story, emotional arcs and gameplay elements at once to truly evolve the psychological RPG genre like Disco Elysium started it.
Unfortunately, after starting development on the game in 2022 and at a stage where it looked like it would be ready for release in 2024 or 2025, X7 is now something we will most likely never play. Which of course sucks both for us as fans and, more importantly, for the creators who worked on it.
If you’re as devastated by this news as I am, you may want to read the article we published last year on World Mental Health Day, in which one of us discusses how some of Disco Elysium’s messages helped him overcome some issues affecting his life.
