Following up on a hit game with something new is never an easy task. That\u2019s doubly complicated for the team behind <\/em>Zero Parades: For Dead Spies<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The latest game from ZA\/UM is the studio’s follow-up to Disco Elysium<\/em>, a CRPG that\u2019s gone on to become highly influential in the indie game scene since its 2019 launch. There\u2019s a lot of pressure on the team behind it both because Disco Elysium<\/em> set such a high bar with its enduring writing and because drama behind the scenes at ZA\/UM has cast an odd shadow over the studio. Those two factors have created a particularly high stakes environment for the creatives at the studio who are just trying to make a game they believe in.<\/p>\n Following the release of Zero Parades<\/em>\u2019 beefy Steam Next Fest demo, the writers behind the project stopped by this year\u2019s Game Developers Conference to reveal a bit more about the game. In an interview with Polygon, writers Siim \u201cKosmos\u201d Sinam\u00e4e and Honey Watson discussed where Zero Parades <\/em>intersects with Disco Elysium<\/em>, and how it\u2019s trying to stand on its own apart from that complicated legacy. It\u2019s a high-pressure balancing act, but as Sinam\u00e4e says, \u201cPressure is a privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n At a surface glance, Zero Parades <\/em>looks very similar to Disco Elysium<\/em>. Despite the apparent differences in its art style, it’s still a dense CRPG full of talking skills, existential dread, and disaster heroes. But for the game\u2019s writers, the story is a radically different riff on some shared themes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a very different type of story from a cop story, where a cop story is about justice, even redemption,\u201d Sinam\u00e4e told Polygon. \u201cIn a spy story, there is no black and white. There is no good or bad in espionage. It\u2019s psychologically more interesting, because you don\u2019t want to repeat the beats of having a substance addict again. We want to investigate more about the human condition.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe system is quite well-built for a spy story,\u201d Watson added, discussing how Disco Elysium<\/em>\u2019s CRPG structure fit the new story naturally. \u201cWith a police officer, you get the power that comes with that, whereas a spy has no authority. They\u2019re just a common person, and they give themselves away if they stop acting like a common person. You have a lot more dice rolls, more using your skills, and trying to get people to tell you information without knowing that that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n Zero Parades<\/em> drew its inspiration from a variety of places \u2014 Ursula K. Le Guin and Thomas Pynchon, to name a few \u2014 but its most central influence is John le Carr\u00e9. The spy novelist has a more cerebral approach to espionage compared to the power fantasy of James Bond, and that was a fit for the story ZA\/UM wanted to tell. It\u2019s a game about an ordinary person doing \u201csneaky, horrible things,\u201d Watson said. <\/p>\n Doing that story justice would require a very different kind of hero than Disco Elysium<\/em>\u2019s Harry Du Bois, an alcoholic cop wrapped up in a complicated detective story. Zero Parades <\/em>instead follows Hershel Wilk, an operant working under the codename Cascade, who is sent on an espionage mission in the town of Portofiro. As someone who is deep undercover, she\u2019s struggling with a deep identity crisis that players have to work through. That setup alone would force the team to tell its story in a completely new way, thanks to what Watson called some \u201ccomplicated\u201d dynamics that never came about with Harry.<\/p>\n \u201cHarry is a very, very strong character,\u201d Watson said. \u201cBut there are more diverse ways to play Hershel. Part of that is because of the spy genre. She\u2019s undercover, so you are choosing your way not only to approach the job of spy work, but there\u2019s also how you\u2019re going to play being undercover? It\u2019s role-playing as a roleplayer. You put on the character Hershel, and then Hershel puts on the character of being undercover. How do you approach the character of Cascade herself, and how do you approach the character of Cascade the spy?\u201d<\/p>\n What is similar about the two games, though, is their political edge. Zero Parades <\/em>isn\u2019t shying away from continuing Disco Elysium<\/em>\u2019s conversations about communism, the bourgeois, and other thorny topics. The team believes that espionage is inseparable from politics, so that setup only allowed them to come at familiar ideas from new angles.<\/p>\n \u201cThe political world is very much important to Zero Parades<\/em>, but in quite a different way,\u201d Watson said. \u201cIn Disco Elysium<\/em>, with the construct of having an amnesiac, you get the benefit of getting able to spoonfeed the players bits of politics. With Hershel, you have someone who grew up in the developed world, grew up bourgeois, and then defected to a communist state. So she has quite a strong political bent herself. You come with that naturally ingrained in the game, although you can question that.\u201d<\/p>\n As we discussed the connection between the two games, I asked Sinam\u00e4e and Watson if they felt that Zero Parades<\/em> was in active conversation with Disco Elysium<\/em>. Neither of them are thinking of it that way. While there are shared ideas between the games, the writers chalk that up to working with a like-minded team that\u2019s naturally interested in the topics it’s interested in. At the same time, the two make it clear that they aren\u2019t actively trying to distance themselves from Disco Elysium<\/em> either.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did not set out on a mission to divorce [Zero Parades<\/em> from Disco Elysium<\/em>],\u201d Sinam\u00e4e said. \u201cThis is the world of comparisons that we\u2019re brought into based on our previous game and based on what people are saying online. But it\u2019s what makes the most sense for us\u2026 We keep it to a high quality and see what we can do with the writing differently. We have an internal saying: \u2018Half as much, twice as good.\u2019 That we can be snappier, because I personally feel like there are some places in Disco <\/em>where it feels like you\u2019re in the backseat. You want to make a decision about what happens. But we felt like we could tell a story in a different way, have more checks and gameplay, but push on things.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a weird position to be in. The team is walking a tightrope due to the complicated aftermath of Disco Elysium<\/em>\u2019s release. ZA\/UM has been mired in controversy ever since cutting ties with some of the creative leads behind the project, including designer Robert Kurvitz. It\u2019s a confusing bit of insider drama that seems to come up anytime Zero Parades<\/em> is discussed (including here), despite the fact that ZA\/UM is far from the first studio with a contentious creative split on its record.<\/p>\n Due to that situation, Zero Parades <\/em>has been under the microscope since it was first announced. Disco Elysium<\/em> fans have scrutinized every new detail to determine if the RPG was going to feel like a pale imitation of what came before. If you look through Zero Parades<\/em>\u2019 Steam Next Fest demo, you can find some similarities to Disco Elysium<\/em> in how it\u2019s structured. Its opening, set in a small safe house, is particularly close to Harry\u2019s first moments in a trashed hotel room. As someone who has been with ZA\/UM since 2017, Sinam\u00e4e finds all that a little silly.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to see similarities\u2026 like, oh, you start the same way in a hotel room and you have to walk down the stairs\u2026 man, there\u2019s so many fucking games where you start in a hotel room and you have to go down the stairs! That\u2019s the genre of roleplaying games!\u201d Sinam\u00e4e joked. \u201cWe\u2019ve been a bit more daring in introducing more of the game part of the video game. It feels more like a game.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps that\u2019s why Sinam\u00e4e and Watson seem so hesitant to say that their project is in active conversation with Disco Elysium<\/em>. To approach Zero Parades<\/em> like a \u201cspot the difference\u201d puzzle is to undermine the work that\u2019s gone into telling a very different story with similar RPG systems. There\u2019s shared DNA for sure, but the two games aren\u2019t identical twins. The sooner Disco Elysium<\/em> fans can accept Zero Parades<\/em> as its own game rather than a spiritual sequel burdened by expectation, the sooner they\u2019ll be able to uncover the espionage RPG\u2019s true identity.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it comes to this spiritual successor stuff that\u2019s been said, it\u2019s kind of weird to hear,\u201d Sinam\u00e4e said. \u201cIf I had two children, I wouldn\u2019t think of my second child as a spiritual successor to the first one. Thank you firstborn for your service!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Key](\"https:\/\/static0.polygonimages.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ss_f71a1b51242027f716903c54b57af7244d2467c3-1920x1080.jpg?q=49&fit=crop&w=825&dpr=2\")
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