Phone call in Disco Elysium: The Final Cut

[@Komnen0s]

Shivers has a great line here that doesn't come up in the video for some reason: _"Run. To the church. Home. Anywhere but here. _*_Anything but calling her again."_*

[@levitybooks3952]

Great addition, on this playthrough I had low shivers so I probably missed it. After two playthroughs I'm starting to think Shivers is the best skill at finding what Harry's mind is really about.

[@genderlesswhale2868]

@@levitybooks3952 or maybe just what's best for him... being an extra sensory protective force, and all. High shivers is very cozy- paradoxically

[@justanidiotmk2749]

Shivers + volition + maybe that starry dude or empathy makes the best introspective build in my case.

[@bobobsen]

@@justanidiotmk2749 esprit the corps is pretty good

[@mariobaratti2985]

that could be a great chorus for a song

[@arempy5836]

When I did this It was late at night, raining, without kim. It felt... Very personal.

[@levitybooks3952]

I did it on my first playthrough in the same manner, with high inland empire. It felt like Harry was having a very bad night!

[@01_pandenyomanl.d.j96]

Yeah me too, i got it late night after i go to the "crazy pigs" lady, and just randomly clicking the phone because its 22 pm and kim just get to his room

[@u31inked]

Damn.. Though you were talking about irl or is that just me 😅🥲😔

[@lounisbenmammar8255]

this fucked me up the first time , they really know how to make you feel harry's trauma

[@levitybooks3952]

Yeah I was trying to keep him together this playthrough, first time I had Inland Empire as my signature skill and PSY starting stats were high, and I think I had to keep him from getting really depressed.

[@sometimesgeeky]

I thought Harry was in a dream state when he dialed the last number. It was only when the dialog tree branched out into details like her work that I knew it was real, it was Harry's ex and why Harry was in the state he was in all in the span of five seconds. This was so incredibly important to the story, i feel bad for anyone who beat the game but missed out on this part.

[@levitybooks3952]

On my first playthrough I think she picked up but I pressed the wrong speech option and the conversation ended before it got deep. I actually thought it was Harry's hallucination and not actually her!

[@Raybro16]

I invested points in volition and after this entire sequence, my hand bloodied and bruised, it chimes in. “Its over.” I couldn’t help but feel the weight of those two words, so simple but carrying so much.

[@nem3732]

That is so much more depressing when even Volition is the one who's saying it.

[@catnisseverdeen]

Kim watching like 👁👄👁

[@levitybooks3952]

The amount of restraint Kim has in the entire game being next to Harry is admirable!

[@geminithewolf2189]

I came across this part after Kim left for the day to drop off the body. Let me tell you, this scene hits even harder when Harry's alone. The sight of him throwing the phone down, all alone while it was snowing, paired with the BGM...good lord man.

[@122josh]

Same exact experience here and boy oh boy does it hit 10 times harder with Harry being alone in the snow with the street lamp illuminating him for the world to see in his most vulnerable moment the whole scene fucked me up i sat there for a good 10 minutes after tears in my eyes just staring at the TV 😂.

[@dramacomum]

The first time this came up to me it got me completely out of the blue. I am going trough a hard breakup and I literally cried trying to select what to say. And he crawls and begs and unloads his anger on her all at once just like I did days prior. It was fucking AGONIZING. I also played with the tie, Inland Empire and highest PSY you can have. Best game I’ve ever played.

[@gospodinkrasnov1516]

Well, the first thing I thought when playing this game, haha funny game about a broken man. And now 2 months later, Im a broken man myself, I had to leave my now ex and I finally feel for Harry.

[@deconteville]

I was married at the time I first played this but I knew it was ending soon, partly due to my own fault at the start but by the end hers - at any rate, it was an emotional experience even then and it still tugs at me to this day. Brilliant writing and indeed probably the best game I've ever played.

[@luckynyaa2826]

@@gospodinkrasnov1516 wish you luck man.

[@gospodinkrasnov1516]

@@luckynyaa2826 thank you very much, im more or less over it already!

[@Raybro16]

I wouldn’t say what Im going through was an end of a marriage or a break up, but the pain is all the same. I haven’t spoken to my best friend in over four years as of writing, not after… The things we said to each other. The things he said to me, i will never understand them. The things I said to him, i will always regret. I just wish out of all the things I could say if given the chance is to tell him that I’m sorry. That I’m sorry for hurting him. That I’m sorry for everything. There’s a wound in my heart, deeper and more painful than anything i can ever experience. I don’t know if it will ever heal. I wish there I could’ve been able to say that in game, just have something to give me closure. I don’t care if I’ll ever be forgiven or not for hurting him. I just want to say…. I’m sorry.

[@Fru1tpunch]

harry you’re killing yourself from volition was prob my favorite line off this interaction

[@Garl_Vinland]

You want my MONEY? He wasn’t talking to the phone.

[@XxEpicZxXx]

I never even got this because I got the second caller to think his wife was cheating on him and went all in on it. After that experience and Kim's commentary afterwards I was ashamed to even try anything with that phone again.

[@levitybooks3952]

On my first playthrough I did the same thing. I think I also punched the phone and then thought the phone was going to make me lose so I stayed away from it. There are lots of little scenes hiding in the game, did you see the Mysterious Pair of Eyes yet?

[@krupniokk]

What Kim said ?

[@Tobias8842]

@@krupniokk I don’t remember exactly, but he says something about having lost respect for you

[@rogerphone481]

@@Tobias8842 yeah and kim's respect stat is tracked too so it's not just empty words. he really did lose respect for you.

[@disk3001]

Harry probably got the number through excessive amount of stalking with his cop connection, you can imagine him repeating the number in his stupor over and over again, until it is etched into his brain. But the reaction of Dores suggest that he never actually called her before, so that says a lot about how Harry himself had the decency to not call her even after attaining the number(or he was too afraid, as inland empire suggested when opening the closed compartment in his ledger) There is a lot you can infer from what *didn't* happen on screen, very masterful writing. btw this is the first time seeing shaved Harry, creepy

[@levitybooks3952]

Great comment, yes! The writing is fantastic as it makes these bizarre situations believable, as you described. Given Jacques and the police station seem to know about her too it's conceivable a lot of people knew her number. Shaved Harry isn't worth it, I'm not sure why I tried so hard for that skill check, he looks a lot more unhappy!

[@Honorio-nz4ts]

actually, the game strongly implies that Harry kept calling her for all this years. Harry is a broken man and now that we take control of him during the game after his amnesia, we can change him to a better person, because he really was a jerk on the past.

[@JB-xl2jc]

@@Honorio-nz4ts What's weird is that she doesn't hang up on him immediately if he really was a horrible stalking jerk to her. I don't know if it was pity or if she still feels some connection to him. Either way, pretty interesting.

[@Niriixa]

@@JB-xl2jc Relationships can be complicated. Maybe Dora doesn't want Harry in her life anymore and has very good reasons to not want to talk to him. She might still care for him on some level. Clearly, Harry still loved her even when she left- but sometimes, love just isn't enough to keep an otherwise unhealthy relationship going. I've definitely cared about and talked to people who I at the same time had good reason to be mad at!

[@randomnerd9088]

I Iike shaved Harrier with the expression taken off. It's who he really is. No politics. No fake smile. No gaudy beard. Just naked man. It speaks of a future. Acceptance

[@herumitto]

The way he changes the posture, literally shrinking - it alone could be enough to explain what's about to be happening.

[@Ed-1749]

I like how kim starts to get impatient, but then doesnt say anything the moment the last call starts going. He knows there's no saving Harry from this one.

[@IAmLeMonke]

I didn't realize you had your facecam on in the recording, but I'm happy(?) to see that your reaction was the same as mine the first time I played though this. Pure agony.

[@levitybooks3952]

Yeah I cut this from my let's play. The first time I did it I pressed the wrong choices and didn't have this talk, so this was my genuine first reaction to it not knowing you could actually talk to them!

[@Overlijden1995]

No other game's ever done heartbreak as well as Disco Elysium, possibly because no other game's ever done limited (choice and divergence within the context of a real character with a personality) roleplaying as well as DIsco Elysium. You can feel how the loss has drained the colour from his world. Regardless of the minor triumphs and eventual happy-ish ending there's an overpowering sense that Harry's never again going to be quite as happy as he was when he was with her. His middle age, his alcoholism and general path of self-destruction combined with the dereliction and cynicism of his surroundings all contribute to the feeling that his best days are behind him. And the most brutal part of it all? That's true to life. There really is no guarantee that you'll "find someone better" or that "everything will work out" or you'll realize you were never right for each other . There are absolutely men that stay broken after their love leaves them for the rest of their lives, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Life only moves in one direction, and there comes a point where the most you have to hope for is that you have someone with you in the end. People die alone every day, and a LOT of them have stories like Harry's.

[@exu7325]

Yeah, and the breakup is so realistic. There's no convoluted psychodrama, it's just, "you're too poor".

[@PermianExtinction]

I mean the story doesn't shy away from the possibility that Kim is his next love.

[@Jules-69lol]

​@@PermianExtinctionshow yourself to the door

[@Dungeon-uh4ph]

The one comfort is that there's always a way out of this. If you truly believe your best days are behind you, that there's nothing good in your future, there's something you can do. And it's your right to do so, no matter what anyone else says.

[@burzslaw]

@@exu7325 that's wrong. She left harry cause he became to depressed and mentally unstable after getting a job in RCM. There's even a unique dialog line with dora, depending on your signature skill

[@waltdisney566]

God the first time I played this game was early in 2020. Then after I finished I started another run-through probably in June and at the beginning of the second run through, my boyfriend broke up with me. These scenes hurt me the first time, but the second time they practically killed me. Especially when he is trying to convince her they can be together because I tried so hard to convince my ex. The breakup was like out of the blue and unexpected and I knew that the last dream scene was going to hurt even worse. And it did. Anyway, I am doing okay now lol. He was a good person I think, but a terrible boyfriend. Although I am still single lol.

[@levitybooks3952]

Yeah, the way the phone call is articulated, it's pretty sad. Coincidentally I had a similar thing happen with my girlfriend on my first playthrough, only it was a year before in 2019. The first time I heard it I felt sad for Harry, the second time I felt inside that same sadness. Glad to hear you're doing ok now. Disco Elysium is a great story for 'moving on', so the timing for both of us was fortunate!

[@alchemistthrace]

Thanks for sharing something so personal, I missed the phonecall after finishing recently but the dream sequence with Dora/Delores at the end really got me crying, if I played a few months earlier it would have absolutely destroyed me since my ex girlfriend just left completely out of the blue and it hurt a lot to get over (I think a good person who I loved, but not the best girlfriend) . Finishing the game and seeing Harry so hung up on his loss really helped put how I was feeling then into perspective and i'm better now. I'm glad you got something similar out of it and are doing better!

[@waltdisney566]

@@alchemistthrace thank you for listening and sharing your story too! I'm glad this game was able to help so many people.

[@none_of_your_business]

Sort of the same, the ending in my case was more dramatic than your regular "X dumped Y" story. The reason why I looked up this video was just to confirm that stuff like this can no longer get to me as they used to. Iiiii'm okay.

[@ptkstefano]

I'm going through the exact same shit. Breakup out of the blue from the person I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. The first time we really talked after a few months she said she was fine emotionally, romantically, professionally, while I was still in the thick of it. Dora saying the exact same thing to Harry during the dream hurt me so, so much.

[@JTF374]

What a great way to coax the player to dive deeper into a Horrible idea. We keep calling and we get funny prank calls until we get the check for a number to remember. As we're happy to find out every good check in the game cause of dopamine... We don't realize the whole reason why our character drinks is to forget about "her"... And we'd fail in a Different way.

[@ugozna]

This is heartbreaking

[@levitybooks3952]

Yup, it feels pretty real, but I don't think this is the worst this scene can be! I was playing as a relatively sane cop, had I played with higher PSY starting stats, Inland Empire signature skill and the horrible necktie, it would've been even sadder.

[@aynes8099]

@@levitybooks3952 is the game sadder with high PSY? I missed this phone booth on my first playthrough with basically 8s on all psy and mind stats and a bit more on inland empire and empathy. Now I want to replay with the same build I guess just to check out this phone booth call…

[@t.t6294]

"why does it hurt to talk to you?" made me tear up

[@Garbageman28]

IRL game-over.

[@levitybooks3952]

Yeah I think they should've made a game over scene here if you got too attached in the phone call, or just way more volition decreases. You can lose in Disco Elysium for far more trivial events!

[@MarxistMogger]

Bros popping percs just to try and talk to her and not collapse. Real

[@mery7798]

I remember that when you talk to Klaasje and confront her (trying to arrest her) she mentions her first real boyfriend was a writer and that she ruined his life (or something like that). Maybe it's the writer you call before getting to Dora, can you imagine the connection there.

[@dayalasingh5853]

Well he'd probably be in Oranje, not Revachol

[@dioksazin]

Daaamn I’m so bitter I missed this on my first gameplay it would make so much sense in the dialogue when Harry got shot and there was an option “I shouldn’t have called her…” I assumed then that he called Dora before getting to Martinese and then decided to drink himself to amnesia

[@thatdamncatboy7963]

Sorry, I know this is a pretty old comment, but the game very much implies that he did call her multiple times between the breakup and martinaise, so your guess might not even be that far off from canon

[@thegodistestingme]

Holy shit, i only noticed this dude in the upleft only on the half of the video.

[@tunasub6111]

DUDE SAME! I’m tripping on shrooms and it kinda startled me but that’s exactly how I looked when I played the game I feel

[@Fatymable]

Just for the sake of info i leave it here: if you invest into a tree with inland empire and volition, in between "Calling...Calling..." Empathy says only once "Calling in the night... The saddest sound in the world" and on the second call says "It looks like she does not want to pick it up, Harry. Stop scaring her". Shivers says: "Run. To the church. Home. Anywhere but here. Anything but calling her again." After you exhaust all options and click on the phone booth again, Inland empire says "Life is garbage". Fun fact: its the only time in the game, where you take сonsistent damage one after the other. After the first day when you talk to a corpse in your dream and ask him, who is he, the corpse tells you that he is "THE BAD DAY, the one when you ask HER, and then later in the streets, wandering" and that "its the worst day of all time and its coming. She will hear about it on the phone", foreshadowing this exact call. "Stop scaring her" implies, that Harry have done it before during their second and last break up. If you've researched the thought "Rigorous Self-Critique", one line heavily implies, Harry tried to make Dora stay in his last desperate attempt: "Here it is. Hard facts from the man you are (...)You held a young woman by the arm and kept her in your apartment for 20 minutes against her will. That's right, these are not flights of fancy. These are *real deeds*, Harry, emerging from the darkness of your past (...)" Also right before you hit a dial to call Dora, you call a man who says he's tired of writing. I remembered that when you talk to Klaasje and confront her (trying to arrest her) she mentions her first real boyfriend was a writer and that she ruined his life. Sorry, if somebody already said it in the comments

[@rogerphone481]

sorry this is a year old but klassje never says he was a writer, just that he gave her the name klassje and she ruined his life

[@Fatymable]

@@rogerphone481 when she tells you about what she did to comapines and how she destroyed them, she tells you about "Oranjies lit" and that her first real boyfriend was doing it

[@Fatymable]

@@rogerphone481 after she tells her "real name" and you choose to adress with and old one, she says, that her first real boyfriend gave it to her. After this you choose the question "Who was he" and she says "He was a writer, he made Oranjese lit, and i destroyed him"

[@rogerphone481]

@@Fatymable Oh whoops mb

[@neartheplumtree]

this moment is the first one in this game that made me outright cry

[@wolfy9898]

I only called once and I don't know why I was such an idiot when I told him that I was his wife's lover and it pleased her more than him. Then unrecognizable screams and crying children were heard... I felt so bad.

[@leonardiker1724]

I called her at night, because thats when i first found the phone, exploring while kim was away. Calling her at night game me alot more info about her.

[@chestikov2011]

You are wearing a Black Beret like the Trotskyist beatniks from ' Grim Fandango '

[@johnterrence278]

This oddly feels comforting after breaking up...

[@stefani.5737]

Welp. I gotta say i'm glad how things turned out on my playthrough. Had some recollection of her from the ledger. Then, a nightmare about Dolores Dei. Stickbug helped Harry get over and finally patch his unknown trauma.

[@Yelonek92]

Damn, I haven't triend another phone calls after the first. Good that youtube can help to fill the missed parts of a game

[@hedgehog.of.cydonia]

this hurt my heart

[@maxwellkazemba2299]

Is that Fuck The World in the third call? He's even putting on the tough guy Skull initiate act and everything

[@GHST-rj4pe]

Very hard moment for me I'm fall in tears:(

[@levitybooks3952]

Don't worry, it will be okay

[@GHST-rj4pe]

@@levitybooks3952 thank you, King

[@yuriylehki1613]

Haha what a funny prank call.

[@raspymorten]

I haven't seen past the third call cause I didn't wanna annoy Kim.

Pure cinema.

[@zeroanonymity9736]

"It didn't give you any fun for that money" feels so, so bitter.

[@VinnySM]

just finished the game some weeks ago and I still think about moments like these, my first thought was "Is harry hallucinating?" and then it kept going and getting deeper into this. This game was really great at making me feel like I lost my mind since I still can't tell if it was real or just Harry being crazy lmao

[@ThicknSwift]

I feel the beauty of this scene comes from all of us, we all have a relationship in our lives that has ended in the past that we all just wish we could have done differently. However, what I feel that this moment offers to some of us that is so hard to give, is a moment of closure that we may not have gotten prior. Two dialogue choices here in particular that standout, that despite all of the information that is given to the player about who this woman is and the new life she has for herself. We're able to end it with the dialogue of "I'm a detective. I'm doing a case. There's a hanged man." "I'm going to solve it." It acts as this weird way of giving the player the ability of saying that "Despite it all, I can still be the person I need to be."

[@eukor-si]

esta escena simplemente me destruye, todos te comprendemos Harry

[@levitybooks3952]

um si

[@anarchohelenism]

Something that everyone who's been through a bad breakup can relate to

[@huntergang7858]

this scene really took me aback the first time it happened the first moment i’m laughing my ass off at these prank calls and then it all just comes tumbling down when harry is brought to reality and that whatever past he had left with his ex-something is gone and i just started sobbing. It hurts even more that it’s an “interfacing” check so harry was probably triggering some muscle memory to be able to call his original house number and the same goes for the time harry calls the video store

[@rayjinflo]

I, wow holy shit just did this part in my second playthrough so I knew who it was right away. I missed out on dialing all the numbers the first time around. I played it lawbringer style and made me fucking sad

[@giangiga]

I wish I was the wind.

[@MoonyMoonzzi]

Playing this scene with two Morale feels balsy

[@Superszyga]

Thank you for this upload.

[@Jules-69lol]

Pain, agony, misery

[@klym8_]

This is why this is my favourite game of all time

[@Dux_Sux]

Huh.. When I did this Kim said something like "Stop it!" when I started punching the phone.

[@honoriscausadignitas]

most epic game's episode

[@mossw4ste]

damn this feels different after you've lost someone

[@CaptainMurasaTheULTRAKILLFan24]

Calling. Calling. Still calling. DESTRO-

[@OddManeuver]

I might be misinterpreting this, but did Harry's call actually make it past the Pale? Like did Harry actually brute forced his call past the Pale based on intuition just to hear his wife? I mean, it's definitely possible since Harry does have some supranatural abilities. Edit: Oh yeah, I think he did. Graad and Revachol are no where near each other and a shit ton of Pale is between them. Numbers (data in general) are supposed to break down the farther you go into the Pale, but Harry's dialing worked. That's really romantic and super sad.

[@MadisonRamanamabangbang]

When it says numbers break down, I don't think it means phone numbers, I think it means that physics doesn't make sense there, I think they have ways of communicating between Isolas. Otherwise it'd be weird that there is Graad phone region extentions

[@martinnolhaf3151]

There are easy of communication. In the Pale there are "stations" for that. The Corporate Woman (forgot her Name) Talks about this

[@twonuclearbombs7495]

there is also a call in which you make an abusive husband beat his wife,

[@nats4823]

Wow, literally me.

[@emmazhang9721]

this is devastating

[@Tumbledweeb]

"The machine ran out of money." - I just realized the double meaning here... Man... This writing is ridiculously brilliant! For those who didn't pick up on the double meaning: A constant complaint from Harry's fiancé was money: He worked his ass to the bone to provide for himself and his woman, but due to the fucked up financial system, he was doomed to a life of poverty. He would even ask her parents to lend him money, but regardless, it wasn't good enough for her, so she would humiliate him about it constantly.

[@EyeoftheU]

You're oversimplying it a bit. The whole money thing is implied to at least partially be stemming from Harry's own self-loathing. He was very self-conscious about his poor financial standing and he feared that he wasn't "good enough" for her.

[@Tumbledweeb]

@@EyeoftheU But what caused his self-loathing? What was the root of the issue? What caused him to manifest the notion that his poor financial standing made him not good enough? These kinds of thoughts don't spontaneously come out of nothing, after all.

[@munmunyee]

​@@Tumbledweeb His self loathing comes from his putting Dora on a pedestal. To Harry, Dora is a direct, perhaps delayed reincarnation of Dolores Dei herself. Her (specifically, Harry's perception of "Dora Dei", and not the real Dora as a person) thoughts are absolute truth. When Harry first meets Dora, she's a foreign student studying in Revachol, and it's told if not implied that she's seen as part of the bourgeois class in comparison to the rest of the Revacholians. For an entire generation before Harry was even born, Revachol was a communist commune which had just revolted against a once-prosperous-now-corrupt monarchy. In terms of fitting into global economics, the average in-game Revacholian held a weak position compared to what might be the global "middle class" - perhaps this is indicative/reflective of the author's own experience as an Estonian - a former Soviet state which has been granted independence. In my perspective, canon Harry grew into a supercop (another way to say that he had high specs in all branches) even before the blackout, and even before Dora left. His social senses were telling him that Dora was relatively uncomfortable because she is supposedly innately used to living in a more splendid environment, while in reality, the couple were barely getting by (but still getting by nonetheless). I think Harry despises himself because he has internalized over a long period of time - the belief that Dora needs/expects a better living environment. I personally believe that perhaps Dora didn't mind being in relative poverty compared to what she would have lived in in her childhood and adolesence, but arguably, the reality doesn't matter because Harry has allowed himself to believe over a long period of time that his perspective was instead the reality - so this emotional stress from believing he's not enough for Dora + emotional stress from overwork = self loading WHICH IN TURN remanifests itself as self loathing = not enough for dora

[@exu7325]

@@munmunyee You're overcomplicating it. A young bourgeois academic got in relationship with a charming gym teacher/aspiring policeman. They got engaged, but the policeman is poor, life is hard. Years of police work took a toll on the policeman and changed him as a person. Eventually the bourgeois academic got tired of the hard life and abandoned her fiancee. There's also a terminated pregnancy somewhere there too, implied to be caused by their poor economic circumstances. Dora left because Harry is a poor overworked policeman, that's it. It might be unpleasant, but I think that's the point. This "poverty is only a mindset" bullshit goes against everything Disco Elysium is trying to tell.

[@bobobsen]

@@EyeoftheU you should be careful the other way around. The entire game Harry was deifying her, literally. Pretending she was a perfect angel and had no flaws. Then in that dream we see her flaws and he still pretends they're not there. I think they're real.

[@notrab13]

Kisses…Kisses…Kisses

[@nolanbond474]

LMAO who is that in the corner????

[@supersonictumbleweed]

That's me, losing my religion

[@CJusticeHappen21]

Why is she sleeping no matter when we call her?

[@СергейКостюкевич-ъ5я]

Because she's on a distant piece of matter somewhere in the Pale There might be different 'time'

[@CJusticeHappen21]

@@СергейКостюкевич-ъ5я That's wrinkling my brain.

[@Slim-Thicc]

Jeez people like this game ? What a joke

[@MadisonRamanamabangbang]

Mhmm

[@chupacabras983]

Jeez, somebody DOESN'T like this game ? What a joke

[@kajixdn]

you should give it a change right up to the end if you haven't already. even if you don't like it it's at least nice to see why others might.

[@jollyskull07]

Projecting?

[@JiggyMcCue]

Calling. Calling. Still calling... Calling in the night...

[@sirgideonofnirtheall-knowi1881]

The saddest sound in the world.