This essay contains major spoilers for Disco Elysium and Night in the Woods.
There’s a strange amount similarities between Disco Elysium and Night in the Woods. Both have a light plot following a murder-mystery, which is openly a framework and excuse for the the player character to go out in the world and talk with a lot of people about a lot of things. Both follow a character that had a recent, ego-shattering traumatic event, and spend the game reconstructing themselves into something new. Both are set in one small town which is a couple decades out from a period of prosperity, brought about by leftist policies. Both end their story with the killer admitting openly to the crime, before a supernatural entity interrupts and the main character has a one-sided introspective conversation with it.
But there’s something else the two stories share. Something that’s been picking at my brain for a long, long time.
1 - The world is going to end.
I was born 3 months before the first of many prognosticated apocalypses of my life - Y2K. When that failed to manifest, due to the hard work of engineers across the country, everyone breathed a slight sigh of relief. When the towers fell, it was kind of like a terrible punchline to a bad joke. No apocalypse, just thousands of deaths justifying millions of murders. The start of a war which has never really ended in my lifetime. A few years into a president who promised to end the forever war, there was the infamous Harold Camping prediction, one of dozens of religious beliefs that rapture was imminent. Rapture is always, always imminent. But that came and went, and besides, there was something else people were excited for. The Mayans! A wilful misinterpretation of their calendar makes it seem they believed the world would end in 2012! But that came and went without fanfare as well. And it didn't matter anyway. Science had joined in, with something credible. Throughout the late 00’s and never really ending, I’ve been told the world will end in the 2100's unless something big changes for the environment, and soon. In 2020, I even lived through a brief glimpse at the apocalypse when a pandemic killed thousands.
This is the world I have lived in all my life. The apocalypse is, at all times, tomorrow. It is an unavoidable fate of the universe. The world moves towards entropy. This will end. All this will end. There is different motivations in predicting the end, different incentives and different levels of validity. The Y2K bug could have been awful, had the countermeasures not worked. The COVID-19 Pandemic could have been on the scale of the black plague, had diligent scientists not risked their lives to develop a vaccine. Harold Camping was a crank, working to grow an audience. The 2012 apocalypse was an invention of TV executives looking to boost ratings. Its always motivated. Even the scientists, fortelling of environmental colapse, are doing so because their concerns are legitimate, and - like Y2K or COVID-19 - could be a disaster unless adressed.
Its the certainty of the last apocalypse which upsets me the most. Things are dire, and those in the positions of power necessary to change things and save the world are ultimately uninterested in doing anything. They’ve said explicitly they don’t believe it. The conversation has left the public discourse almost entirely. It’s certainty makes everything feel hopeless. The hopelessness makes it hard to argue for preventing the apocalypse. Never arguing for preventing the apocalypse makes it an absolute certainty. It’s a vicious and hopeless cycle, and nobody cares. There’s another apocalypse at the forefront. The Rapture is tomorrow.
The US military has engaged in another conflict with the middle east, and many military personell have made it clear that the reasons motivating it have been religious. The secretary of defense is openly telling soldiers this fight is a precondition for the rapture. There is a true apocalypse on the horizon, and there are terrible people in positions of power trying to accelerate the one they made up because they want to be proven right. To facilitate this end, they’ve stoked hatred and prejudice and killed thousands of innocent people. If you are like me, constantly inundated with fears of the apocalypse, it is impossible to ignore.
It's also why Disco Elysium and Night in the Woods mean so much to me.
2 - Hold on to anything.
Disco Elysium’s apocalypse has a name, and a lot, a lot of lore, but is also completely missable. If you agree to the requests of Kim, you can leave it be, and go the whole game not knowing that there’s a void of reality encroaching on the world. It’s a terrifying concept. If you invest in certain skills, you can even put together that, 20 years in the future, the ruling class intends to intentionally cause the Pale to spread over the entirety of the city, with the intent of putting a forceful end to a revolution. I think about the Pale often. Its an incredibly useful shorthand. In the conversation with the supernatural entity at the end of the game, there’s even implications that the Pale is the result of human progress developing too fast; an outcome of industry. It’s an almost perfect metaphor.
Disco Elysium doesn’t position it as an absolute end, however. Digging deep, deep into the game, speaking with many, completing everything, rewards you with knowledge that the Pale has an opposing force, one going by many names. The Anodic. Communist Plasm. One character calls it “LOVE!” A unifying force. A belief in a brighter future, made manifest, imposing an impossible reality on the void of existence. Reversing the flow of bottomless consumption. Truck drivers use it to traverse the Pale on their deliveries. You channel it to speak to the Powers that Be. In a run down apartment, you briefly manage to keep an impossible structure in one piece. It exists, and it can be used. If enough people believe. Unfortunately, this world is very dismal, and so few people believe. Even worse, you have seen the future. You can hold on to hope for now, but you know how this ends.
It’s a strange and beautiful thing. It’s ambiguous enough that a definitive explanation or prediction for the future is kind of impossible. But, it presents that possibility for hope and change. Hard, impossible change. But its possible. Its there and people know about it, and its use is systemitized. Spread out wide enough, make it something new, and maybe you can save the city. Maybe you can beat back the apocalypse, for one more day.
Night in the Woods’ apocalypse is far more ambiguous. It only comes up right at the end, and is only seen in brief glimpses. It’s something that is Known, but its details are unclear. The killers, it turns out, were purging the Undesirables for the explicit goal of satisfying a hole in reality that will, in some way, result in the apocalypse unless bodies are tossed into it. Its a simple and direct metaphor. Throw away human lives, not to beat back the apocalypse, but never, ever solve it. The thing which resonates to me abt its apocalypse is best encapsulated in a line from the trailer - "At the end of everything, hold on to anything."
Night in the Woods is far less a story about a place and more a story about its characters, and mainly its main character, Mae. We learn over the game who she is, who she was, how she became who she is, her wounds, and most importantly, how she heals: Her friends. Mae feels confined, trapped in the podunk nowhere town the game takes pace in, and takes comfort in having a community of people who care for her, and who she cares for in turn. We learn a lot about her close friends, Greg and Bea, and talk with the dozens of townsfolk, learning about them and seeing their stories develop. It’s part of what makes the apocalyptic twist work. There’s a genuine fear at losing everything because we’ve held on so close to everyone. Its not the city that make life worth it, its the people.
The game ultimately ends with shades of a choice: Stay in town, or go on a trip with your friends. Implicitly, this is the choice everyone in town has. Things are doomed, but there is something to be done. Hold on to Everything, stay safe, and keep living.
It is easy to feel trapped in the apocalypse. It is why it is so effective as a tool for the cranks that use it to keep attention on the projects. It incites a great fear, of losing absolutely everything. And a promise you can avoid it, learn the tricks to stay safe in the apocalypse if you only pay money to these institutions, swear fealty to these causes, kill these undesirables, you’ll be safe, that promise is tempting. Its a promise to keep everything through anything. It is also a lie. There is a real apocalypse. It is coming. It is harrowing to think about. There is still stability. There are still people who care for you, and who you care for. There are things to hold on to. We can weather this storm. And if enough of us love enough, believe enough, maybe we can stem the flow.
3 - The Annihlation of Self
There’s something else about Disco Elysium’s apocalypse worth talking about in this context. It might be why the player character has amnesia, and it might be self inflicted. He chose to destroy his own history and life, in the hopes of waking up as someone new, and someone better.
In the early 2020’s, during the 4th or 5th apocalypse of my life, I also annihlated myself. I changed my name, changed what pronouns I used, and began to rebuild myself with a new identity. One I built, one I chose. In 2025, I started on estrogen. In the time sense, I’ve been somewhat fixated on the idea of total annihilation of self. Not suicide, that is the end of your entire world. The Annihlation of Self is a personal project, but one which can feel earthshattering. A decision to reverse the flow of fortune, the choice to break the flow of fate. To take the apocalypse into your hands, and channel it into yourself, and become something new and beautiful as anodic beats impose a new reality on the unfolding void.
This is the other side of the apocalypse, and one I have been equally fixated on. The preapocalypse is a sensation of dysphoria. An overwhelming knowledge that the world is wrong, that unless something drastic happens, everything will end soon. The pushback against transition is the same forces that chant ‘the climate is not changing’ and pray the rapture begins tomorrow. The world must change to avert the apocalypse. It will be beautiful. It will be terrifying. There must be a willingness to impose a hope for a more beautiful future upon a grim reality for it to truly manifest. But it is necessary. It is good. It is a change that can save the world. We can only get there together.
In 2026, I felt the apocalypse surround me, and in an act of cowardice, I gave in. I abandoned someone important to me into the pale, hoping I would forget them. I haven’t. In the months sense I’ve been increasingly aware that I am a damnable wretch and a complete hypocrite who almost killed a girl for no justifiable reason. I’ve been sitting on that decision. Thinking about what it means for me, what it says about who I am, who I really am. I want to be someone who would hold on to everything through the roiling apocalypse, who would drive out of town to save the ones I love, who would sing and dance to anodic beats through the night because it’s all we can do to live through the Pale. I no longer believe I am this person, but I also do not think it is impossible for me to become them.
Every moment, who we were dies, and someone new takes our place. Every second is a roiling, awful change, and it can feel daunting to navigate it. But I want to believe I still have the means to steer this ship. I know what happened with her cannot be undone, and can never be forgiven. I at least do not want it to all be for not. I want to do right by people. I want to be someone worth loving because I can be there for them throughout the storm. The apocalypse is soon. I want to be able to survive it, and the only way is to be there for others, as they are there for me. It is the only way to live.