Vast and threatening off-screen space in Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium (2019) allows the player to explore a small yet considerably dense game world. The district of Martinaise, the container, and limit of Disco Elysium's playable world, is described by lead designer Robert Kurvitz as a "matchbox" in comparison to the larger world of Elysium, a "paracosm" he and his team began building at "the turn of the millennium". Beyond the game's many geopolitical subplots and the encyclopedic fashion in which off-screen locations, political ideologies, and concepts are revealed to the player (Graad, Mavozianism, 'plasm,' etc.), there are two key determiners of the vastness of Disco Elysium's off-screen space.