Behind Disco Elysium’s Mythical Cryptids

thegamer.com:

This entire piece is a spoiler for Disco Elysium.

If there’s anything that real-life cryptids like the Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti have in common, it’s their sheer, imposing size. These are creatures that have long captured our collective imagination—even becoming an integral part of folklore in certain cultures—because of what they represent: the monstrous unknown. The Yeti, for instance, is often described as a massive bipedal ape, whereas the Loveland Frog is said to stand around 1.2 metres tall. Even the giant squid, which is an actual, aquatic behemoth once thought to be a cryptid as well, can be as huge as 12 to 13 metres long. In fact, Bernard Heuvelmans, a researcher who’s also widely known as the father of cryptozoology, has suggested that for animals to be considered a cryptid, they should generally evoke a certain sort of emotional response; such a mythical animal should at least have a single trait that’s “truly singular, unexpected, paradoxical, striking, emotionally upsetting, and thus capable of mythification”.

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Likewise, the cryptids in Disco Elysium elicit the same sort of awe and wonder, even as they’re mostly dismissed as nonsensical bullshit by your buddy cop, Kim Kitsuragi. You’ll first get to learn more about them through Lena, a kindly old lady who’s married to a cryptozoologist named Morell. An enthusiast in cryptozoology herself, she’ll tell you more about the various cryptids she has heard about, including one known as the Insulindian Phasmid. This cryptid is particularly poignant to her, because it was her purported discovery of the phasmid that brought her and her husband together. Yet her once-unshakable belief in this cryptid’s