ZA/UM's next exciting narrative RPG

As much as I want to avoid the subject, I fear I must address the elephant in the room before I begin this review — the well-documented schism at ZA/UM is as politically complex as the espionage depicted in the subject of this review. Everyone who worked at Disco Elysium has their own version of what happened, and each story is shaped by the narrator's own biases. Somewhere in the middle of all this lies the truth, but does the truth even matter, given the irreconcilable division between the studio and several key figures who worked at the Disco?

We can never regain what was lost. A group of creatives coming together to produce a piece of incredible art before immediately imploding from years of accumulated stress is undeniably poetic. The collective melancholy, the feelings of betrayal — that's it very Disco.

Developing a video game is extremely difficult; every single person in a studio affects the final release, and the quality of a good game is often determined by thousands of small decisions made by dozens of people over several years. In short, a video game is rarely the work of a single person.

With that in mind, I can't help but feel that the writers were being allegorical with Zero Parades: For Dead Spies. There is perhaps a lack of recognition for those remaining at ZA/UM, talented people who worked on Disco Elysium but avoided the post-release maelstrom. The dead spies gave no parades. Zero Parade's central themes of friendship, betrayal, and redemption are as relevant to ZA/UM as they are to our protagonist, spy Hershel “Cascade” Wilk. In both game development and espionage, there are few celebrations for those who subtly influence the course of history.

The city of Portofiro, caught between three superpowers

Zero Parades plunges us straight into the life of Cascade, a washed-up spy in the service of the waning communist world power known as the Superblock. We're on our comeback mission – sent to the city of Portofiro on an unknown mission, the same city we left five years earlier after our last job went bad. The catch? Only Cascade was extracted. The rest of her friends, collectively known as the Whole Sick Crew, were left behind in the city to deal with the aftermath of our mismanagement.

Portofiro is almost independent, seen by major powers as a cultural backwater hampered by decades of erratic rule by a single populist figure. Since then, the city has become an arena. Several world powers want to bring the city under their influence: the liberal and technocratic EMTERR uses guilt as its weapon of choice, while the techno-fascist La Luz uses culture: imported pop music, animated shows and flashy clothes are slowly eroding the native culture. Cascade represents third parties; she is a key in the work. The super bloc is primarily concerned with stopping the other two powers from becoming hegemons.

The writing in Zero Parades is exceptional. The setting is compelling and realistic enough to sink your teeth into. The game's realism is aided by its allusions to our own world. It is extremely easy to see how people can be assimilated into a monoculture through pop culture, because that is exactly what happened in our own post-globalist ecosystem. You can draw connections between everything in Portofiro and modern life; ZA/UM has certainly not slowed down its political commentary.

And Portofiro is full of fascinating secondary characters; Petre, the “Format Fetischist”, is a bootleg CD seller who is disgusted by the idea of people playing music. He calls them “replayers” and detests the start of L-Pop (Luzian Pop, a parody of K-Pop). Or the Duchess, a woman who runs a 24/7 phone sex line, who can quickly find and facilitate any kink. Or the good doctor Gonza, with his hatred of the medical board and love of stimulants. Zero Parades has a menagerie of interesting characters to meet, and I especially appreciate that ZA/UM doesn't just talk but shows. If there's an unfulfilled character referenced in dialogue, you'll probably run into them at some point.

As with Disco when it was first released, few of the characters in Zero Parades currently have voices. But the existing performances are fantastic, and I'm very excited to experience the game with a full set of voice acting.

Disco's DNA underlies Zero Parades

ZA/UMisms (I'm coining this term so I can stop saying Disco Elysium) are all present in Zero Parades. You have the esoteric goodness: reality-bending concepts with a touch of science fiction. It is a marriage between the everyday and the high concept. A story like this just wouldn't work if I couldn't spout a conspiracy theory every other dialogue option.

Your skills shape your understanding of the world around you. They are divided into the physical, interpersonal, and metaphysical, and determine how difficult your dice rolls are in dialogue. Zero Parades adds a more punishing twist: three status bars (Fatigue, Anxiety, and Delirium) that deal disadvantages if not dealt with. Thankfully, there is no ailment that a cocktail of cigarettes, coffee, alcohol and other various drugs can't fix.

There are only minor innovations to the formula set forth by Disco Elysium (hell, I said it again): clothing increases or decreases your skills, consumables adjust your mental state, and so on. An addition is cool action-y sequences that happen when there is danger. It's still combat that takes place in dialogue boxes, but I appreciate the added animation and sense of tension. Some people would see the lack of innovation as a negative, but I certainly don't.

The pacing of Zero Parades is on point, starting with Cascade orienting herself in the “theatre” she left five years ago and then shifting focus to a core objective that you spend the rest of the game building. The exhibition never feels forced, with all the flavor hidden behind dialogue options for those who want to learn more. I have to give credit to ZA/UM for creating another engaging environment after Elysium's tribute.

There's just so much intrigue to unpack in Zero Parades. You really get the feeling that you are working against a grand conspiracy, while piecing together why something like this would happen in the first place. Your assigned double was supposed to debrief you, but he was “zeroed” before you arrived. What happened to him? Why was I sent here in the first place? Zero Parades flows elegantly from one mystery to another. It should be fully appreciated because it's not easy to drip feed players with information in a way that feels satisfying.

Cascade is also an interesting figure to pilot, virtually unknown in the city despite all the feelings she has built up in Portofiro. The game hones in on her feelings of guilt and helplessness, and I found myself becoming attached to her estranged group of friends and associates. She's not quite as compelling as Harry Du Bois, because she's not desensitized enough to pull off that booklet, but the fact that she still cares is one of her most endearing qualities.

The game is not without flaws. I ran into a bug or two (nothing a reload didn't fix), and I wish there was more voice acting and more music (certain scenes would really benefit from a custom track). But I can't say that anything significantly detracted from my experience in the 30 hours I spent with the game.

All in all, Zero Parades has that ever-elusive quality of convincing you to keep playing: to find out what happens next, to unravel the story, to keep experiencing Portofiro. There's something about games trying to capture the collective human experience that just speaks to my soul. Zero Parades is the kind of game that makes you think about our common existence; the immutable mechanisms of existing in a society you have no control over. I'm ecstatic to announce that we have another amazing narrative RPG in the world. Bravo ZA/UM.