Quick note: I’m nominating Disco Elysium as the pinnacle of game writing (TM).
If you haven’t played this tremendously heartfelt and involving game, get on it immediately. This game looks superficially like one of those classic “hunt-and-click” adventure games from Lucasarts, but plays like its own tormented, hilarious, luminous revolutionary. And I mean that in all senses of the words.
I dug Planescape, but I’d say 60% of those deep backstories were just window-dressing that didn’t deepen the experience for me. They were nice but totally unnecessary… and never funny.
Elysium is a completely new level of depth. Almost every single character has something interesting to add or connect, or is just flat-out hilarious. When the lady you harass outside the bookstore ends up being connected to the guy from the boardwalk… you know the one… wow. That hit on all kinds of levels. Nothing in Planescape hit me like that.