Back in the 1980s, when video games were just starting to find their feet, there was a marked divide between people who enjoyed arcade-style games and those who liked what were, at the time, described as capital-A Adventures.
“Adventures”, as they were defined at the time, actually encompassed what we know today as text adventures, role-playing games and even some strategic titles — to put it more simply, the term “Adventure” tended to describe games that 1) were aimed at a slightly older audience and 2) tended to require a certain amount of imagination in order to get the best out of them.
We won’t get into the outright snobbery some Adventure fans tended to exhibit back in the day right now — that’s a discussion for a whole other day, I think — but suffice to say for now that Disco Elysium is the first game I’ve played in a very long time that feels like a real successor to those early days of capital-A Adventures. Particularly those of the text-based variety. So let’s take a closer look.
