This hyper-detailed recreation of Disco Elysium's opening scene makes a terrible hangover look like a terrific idea
Disco Elysium begins with the mother of all hangovers. The game's protagonist has drunk himself to oblivion on a three-day bender before sleeping it off, and events begin as he blearily re-joins the world in a small, dishevelled hotel room. If you're anything like me, chances are the character didn't even make it out of there alive the first time through.
It's an opening scene that creates a vivid impression of this odd world and messed-up character, and certainly made its mark on Rocksteady senior environment artist Jonjo Hemmens. Hemmens decided earlier this year to remake the scene after playing Disco Elysium—it becoming his «favorite game of all time.»
The goal was to adapt the game's aesthetic into a semi-realistic style, with Hemmens referencing the best-in-class work of Arkane's environments. «I decided to pick a relatively small space,» writes Hemmens, «so The Detective's destroyed hotel room in the Whirling in Rags seemed to be a great spot [...] I plan on studying the texturing in Deathloop and Dishonored 2 and mixing it with the brush strokey style of Disco Elysium.»
Hemmens has been working on this on-and-off since February and has completed the scene, and made a Youtube video showing it off. The artist Jean Zoudi was generous enough to allow Hemmens to use his version of Harrier Du Bois in the scene.
Perhaps the most striking thing about this scene is the level of detail the hotel room has, and how Hemmens has recreated certain elements of it like the gorgeously chunky record player. Over time he's added more and more new assets, including «the shirt, trousers, necktie on the fan, and the plant, amongst some other small bits of scatter and debris here and there.»
He also «scattered around some empty
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