One of the most poignant moments in Disco Elysium is near the very end when you encounter a very elusive crypid/mythic beast.
The moment is treated with a lot of care and consideration, and the conversation itself is, I think, transcendent and some of the best writing in games (or any media) ever.
The line that sticks with me most is when the cryptid says:
"The moral of our encounter is: I am a relatively median lifeform -- while it is you who are total, extreme madness. A volatile simian nervous system, ominously new to the planet. The pale, too, came with you. No one remembers it before you. The cnidarians do not, the radially symmetricals do not. There is an almost unanimous agreement between the birds and the plants that you are going to destroy us all."
It's easy to see this reflected in nature in the real world. All animals and life seem to be aware and accommodating of each other, but humans are cut out from that communication. Everything runs from us, we are not part of the conversation. We are the exclusion, the anomaly.
I think to realize this deeply inside of yourself is a big moment of growth, to see that we exist in a world that was around long before us and will be around long after us.
>It's easy to see this reflected in nature in the real world. All animals and life seem to be aware and accommodating of each other, but humans are cut out from that communication.
This just seems like noble savaging birds and rabbits and deer. None of these creatures have any communication with each other, and while they may be more aware of each other's presence than a 'go hiking every once in a while' person, someone who actually spends a good amount of time in the woods, such as a hunter or birdwatcher, probably has a pretty good sense of them. The Disco Elysium quote just reads like fairly common environmentalist misanthropy, which I suppose isn't surprising considering the creators.
I think people forget how big people are. We're well above average size in the typical natural environment, and especially in the typical sorta-natural-but-sorta-urban environment most of us are in most of the time.
The local rabbits and squirrels tolerate each other but are pretty scared of me. Of course they are, I'm two hundred times bigger than they are, and much more dangerous. The local foxes are the closest thing we have to an apex predator around here, and they're rightfully terrified of this massive creature that outweighs their entire family combined.
Imagine wandering through the woods, enjoying the birds tweeting and generally being at one with nature, and then you come across a 20-ton 35ft-tall monster. You'd run away screaming.
personally I'm a little concerned about meeting alien life. If the universe is incredibly diverse with many different types of lifeform then how might an arbitrary one of those view us?
We proliferate incredibly quickly, we have limited care for our environments, but most importantly our primary means of sustinance is to consume other forms of life. To the point that we consider it an art form, we spend vast amounts of energy perfecting, discussing or advertising the means of cooking and eating the flesh of other life forms. To us its normal but surely to an alien who gains sustinance by some other means; we're absolutely terrifying. Akin to a devouring swarm.
One of the most poignant moments in Disco Elysium is near the very end when you encounter a very elusive crypid/mythic beast.
The moment is treated with a lot of care and consideration, and the conversation itself is, I think, transcendent and some of the best writing in games (or any media) ever.
The line that sticks with me most is when the cryptid says:
"The moral of our encounter is: I am a relatively median lifeform -- while it is you who are total, extreme madness. A volatile simian nervous system, ominously new to the planet. The pale, too, came with you. No one remembers it before you. The cnidarians do not, the radially symmetricals do not. There is an almost unanimous agreement between the birds and the plants that you are going to destroy us all."
It's easy to see this reflected in nature in the real world. All animals and life seem to be aware and accommodating of each other, but humans are cut out from that communication. Everything runs from us, we are not part of the conversation. We are the exclusion, the anomaly.
I think to realize this deeply inside of yourself is a big moment of growth, to see that we exist in a world that was around long before us and will be around long after us.