Disco Elysium splinter studio's Red Rooster is going to be a 'an incendiary, physics-driven RPG' where you play an inmate, an opiate-fuelled mathematician, and a bus driver with nunchucks

However, the surrealist elements are turned up. You'll be playing Redrick Roost, an inmate turned arson investigator—and instead of Kim Kitsuragi, you'll be getting "an opiate-dependent mathematician, Dr Astrid Albers, and a nunchaku-wielding truth-activist, the district bus driver Rico." God. We're so goddamn back.

The major point of divergence—aside from an emphasis on 3D physics, which cites "Larian's Divinity Engine games and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic" as an inspiration—is in its tone and theme. The site very plainly states that "this is not the 'end of history', but rather the 'beginning of the future' in the tripartite city of Arta-Tantor."

That "end of history" line feels like an indirect nod to Disco Elysium and the philosophical bedrock it was built on—the nihilistic representation of an end-point of societal evolution, represented, (as folks far more well-versed in this sort of thing have posited) in Disco Elysium by the Pale and the oppressive pressure of the Moralintern. To quote the game directly:

"Centrism isn't change—not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth."

Basically, in drawing this line, Summer Eternal seems to be distinctly saying its new setting will be altogether more lively. More optimistic? Maybe not. The protagonist has a dark and brimming set of alter-egos in a psychological "chicken coop" and the game takes place in the hottest summer on record. But even just looking at the artwork, there's less of an emphasis on slow, harrowing decay and more of a thumb on the wildfires of psychedelic revolution. Needless to say, I am very, very excited.