I've realised recently that a surprisingly large number of things are both gay and homophobic at the same time. There are things that only make sense to me in the context of queer life, but that are also compelled to disavow their participation in queerness. The result is that they feel haunted by the lives that they refuse to animate. A lot of these uncomfortable politics can be encapsulated by an item of clothing worn by Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, usually at the behest of one of his girlfriends.
Disco Elysium’s Harry DuBois does not know who he is. I assumed at first that his amnesia was a simple narrative conceit by developers ZA/UM, a way of making him a blank slate for the player to turn into whoever they would like to roleplay. This isn’t quite true: the protagonist is far from silent, and although the player shapes him to a significant extent, we also, through the ways we learn about his past and through the ensemble cast of voices in his head that speak on behalf of his various skills, get to know a man who has already been shaped by his circumstances, and yet has lost himself to them.
Spoilers for the ending of Neo cab start immediately!
Early on in Neo Cab, the protagonist Lina is given a “Feelgrid”, a wearable device that changes colour based on her mood, as a gift from her new roommate and childhood best friend Savy. This speculative technology seems simple at first, but the more closely I looked at how emotion is represented and simulated in Neo Cab, the more deliciously ambiguous it appeared.