ZA/UM’s sophomore effort, after the phenomenal breakout Disco Elysium, is certainly still feeling the tremors of everything that happened in Elysium’s wake. From the ousting of several major creative leads, ensuing lawsuits, and a crossfire of allegations and controversy, there’s been no shortage of furor over Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, a new project from the current team under the ZA/UM banner. And for all the ways in which Zero Parades differentiates itself from Disco Elysium – a new setting and a Le Carré spy thriller bend rather than detective noir – it still rekindles the wick of ZA/UM’s debut with voices in your head, die rolls, and a striking, gritty atmosphere weighing down the town of Portofiro.
Your job as decommissioned espionage agent and possibly irredeemable screw-up Hershel Wilk (codename CASCADE), goes to absolute crap in about five seconds flat. But like a ricocheting pinball sent flying into the Theatre of spycraft by the plunger of your handlers, your only course of action is to ping-pong around town, trying to pick up the pieces of what went wrong, and discern why you were called back into action in the first place. Zero Parades feels like an extension of Elysium’s ideas at times, allowing CASCADE to overexert her faculties for a higher chance of success, accruing anxiety, fatigue and delirium all the while, threatening to leech away hard-earned skill points when any meter goes beyond its breaking point. There’s a tension to working your way around Portofiro, as the unassuming town lifts its mask to reveal a thrumming hive of hidden blades and cipher drops beneath the veil.
In not-so-short, I’m enjoying Zero Parades: For Dead Spies quite a bit. I can trace some clear love for the craft of Disco Elysium in its scaffolding, while still noting all the ways in which this ZA/UM, both old and new, tried to put their own vision of spies and subterfuge out into the world. If the many studios and projects born from the shattering of the original ZA/UM can all meet or exceed Zero Parades’ bar, then we’re in for a good few years of virtual storytelling.
