To talk about Zero Parades: For Dead Spies means we have to talk about Disco Elysium.
No, it isn't fair, and no, ZA/UM doesn't make it easy for themselves. For better and for worse, their latest shares so much in style and mechanics with the genre-defining game from 2019 that they feel like long lost siblings. Already, on YouTube and beyond, armchair analysts have decided that this is a pale imitation of a vague understanding of everything that Disco, well, Disco.
For the first few hours, I couldn't escape that sensation. I accompanied every click and step in the game with a repeat of the same frustration: "It's just not the same, is it?"
But that's kind of the point. It isn't the same, yet it is. There's a lingering sense like we let a great thing slip out between our fingers. Now we have to live our lives wondering what might have been. Le Retour didn't happen.
Zero Parades: For Dead Spies leans into that sensation, and the more time I spend with it, the more brilliant it feels. There's no way to escape the shadow of Elysium, so why not embrace the failure?
The more time I spend with [Zero Parades], the more brilliant it feels.
This is where Zero Parades begins: At the bottom. You play as Hershel, also known as Cascade, a disgraced agent who in another life let her team take the fall for a mission gone wrong. She's been out of the game, The Opera, for years.
Out of nowhere, her handlers pull Cascade back in from the cold. It doesn't take long for the disasters to follow. Someone snitched and another agent is dead. Surviving friends are scattered to the wind. You can feel the crosshairs on your back.
It is mixture of John le Carré books, the wryness of the Slough House series, European cultural anxiety, and a deep fascination about the nature of time and how we experience it. There will be a lot of things to write about Zero Paradise in the coming years. I doubt any of it will be boring.
Like with Disco, Zero Parades begins in hotel room surrounded by the detritus of our failures. Our partner, codename Pseudopod, lies catatonic on an armchair. He's gone, wiped, or worse. The phone rings; you answer, and a voice informs you the mission is over, return home now.
Something is off, but you don't know what.
The most immediate difference to Disco is that Cascade isn't Harry. She's got her wits and most of senses about her.
Sure, she's a fuck-up, but she knows exactly the type of monster she's become. On top of that, there is no Kim Kitsuragi here. Nobody to balance out the overdrive. It makes Zero Parades a lonely, tough experience, one that connects us to the world even stronger.
The city is a ruthless place, and based on the demo a more sprawling landscape than ZA/UM has ever made. Here, the powers that work against Cascade are far greater and immediate, yet also more elusive and deadlier than in Revachol. There is no ethereal Pale or connection to the beyond, but that doesn't mean existential threats do not exist. In a world of espionage, nothing is what it seems.
The further Cascade escapes into the world of Portofiro, the more paradoxical the experience becomes. Certain visuals are so close to Victor Rostov's iconic art they feel like beautiful imitations. Elsewhere, characters have distant echoes of their Disco counterparts, like a pair of bickering ex-pilots, who spend their days lost in a hazy mix of alcohol and nostalgia.
[Zero Parades] is an intoxicating, fully realized experience you can reach out and feel.
But then you speak with the people swept up in the tides, and the sensations drift apart. Where Disco was melancholy and bittersweet, a paean for that what was and didn't come to pass, Zero Parades is angry, distrustful, and flickering with a yearning to burn the whole place to the ground.
It is a vision of a Cold War that never ended, not unlike the world we live in today. We're somewhere that resembles the European continent, a mix of cultures clinging on to their former selves in a hypercapitalist landscape, where soft power seeps in through pop culture osmosis. Children watch imported TV shows and dedicate their lives to smartly branded kitsch. Everything is digitized and some rebel by surrounding themselves with physical media. Pirate broadcasting gets the word out, and the printed message is stronger than ever.
It is an intoxicating, fully realized experience you can reach out and feel. Within seconds, I was lost in Portofiro. Like with Elysium, I needed to know more.
The demo is a small morsel of what's to come. It gives a vague understanding of the mechanics, and only some of them are available in the present state. Click on them in the menu and you're greeted with a placeholder text about their unavailability.
Once again you choose from three different archetypes, each with an emphasis on a certain type of spy. There's the physical heavy, the thoughtful visualist, and the unstable empath. All very familiar from other games in this genre. In the full game, you can build your own stats, though Cascade remains the same throughout.
There is also a greater emphasis on traditional roleplaying elements such as gear. While in Disco the clothing modifiers felt more like fun additional asides, in Zero Parades they already make a genuine impact in the experience. Though, once again, the point is not to "win" in an old-fashioned sense. There might not even be anything to win.
The new stuff is equally fascinating. Cascade operates through three vitals: Fatigue, Anxiety, and Delirium. They help and hinder every agent in The Opera. A little bit of anxiety helps you focus, but too much will drop one of your stats permanently to stave off something worse.
Cascade is also a more active and physically impressive hero than Harry. When you get the city under your feet, it takes a moment to get used to the long and assertive strides. But that too is part of the experience. Your movement defines your playstyle, and Cascade rushes forward with conviction.
Once more, dice rolls measure your successes and failures. Like in Disco, nothing ends if you mess up a roll or a speech check. Instead, every moment is a new opportunity for the world to reveal itself in interesting ways. After completing the demo for the first time, I jumped right back in to do things completely differently.
The demo also lacks a completed voice over and the one that exists is rough. This is hopefully just placeholder material, as some of the acting is noticeably poor compared to the rest. Others fare much better, though you can tell these won't be the final edits of anything.
Based off the demo, [Zero Parades] is everything we could have dared to hope it would be.
Even for a demo, Zero Parades is very much a work in progress. At one point, the actor for the narrator changed entirely (luckily for the better). Whatever Zero Parades will sound like isn't here yet. Although there is one brilliant musical cue that plays towards the very end of the demo that gives an inkling to how things might turn out. As such, it's a tantalizing glimpse into what's to come.
There's an intent and necessity to releasing a demo in such an early state. ZA/UM has to show they're on the right track. They have to win over not just those expecting a sequel, but a whole host of former fans who want to see them fail.
The longer I spend with Zero Parades, I'm more convinced that whatever legacy Disco Elysium left behind hasn't gone to waste. It is far too early to say if Zero Parades grows into the same kind of masterwork as its predecessor (which took Disco years and two major updates). But so far the foundations are rock solid.
ZA/UM today is like the Ship of Theseus. Only a few of the original staff remain, yet the spirit lives on. Zero Parades explores the same thematic elements as Disco Elysium, but does so on its own terms.
As a game, it is as wildly fascinating and intellectually stimulating as you could wish for. A smart and complex investigation of culture and politics through the lens of timeless tropes and storytelling that rewards those who are curious and open-minded.
Based off the demo, it is everything we could have dared to hope it would be.
Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is out later this year. Check out the demo during Steam Next Fest.
