How much of Disco Elysium’s DNA should players expect to see in ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies?

Kosmos: Disco was a good first draft of a new type of CRPG. ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is the second draft. We’ve taken what worked well in Disco but also adapted it to a new setting, story and genre.

Beyond the visuals and overall art style, will there be any other connective tissue between ZERO PARADES and Disco Elysium?

Justin: As always, we hold story-telling and player agency in the highest regard. This time we prioritized giving players a wider variety of methods to overcome the obstacles they encounter throughout the game. This ties back to one of the central themes of our espionage story – making it up as you go along.

"Disco was a good first draft of a new type of CRPG. ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is the second draft."

How did the idea of translating espionage themed gameplay into a tabletop RPG styled system come about?

Kosmos: It felt like a very natural progression from what we’ve done before: Roleplaying as a roleplayer has a certain intuitive appeal, doesn’t it? As soon as we came to it, we knew that we had a strong hook that also offered us a different perspective on our roleplaying systems.

Justin: Of course, we knew early on that this would not be a stealth game. The player still has to have a high degree of freedom to roleplay as they choose, even when it goes against their own interests or those of the assignment.

This is what gives the whole a pleasing tension – the push and pull between the choices you want to make as a player and the choices you feel you should make for the sake of your assignment, not too dissimilar from real life.

ZERO PARADES revolves around a three way power struggle. Will players have opportunities to shift their allegiances during the story?

Kosmos: As in our contemporary reality, the geopolitical contest frames the story, but Hershel is not one of the secret puppet masters pulling the strings – she’s like the rest of us, at the whims of forces beyond her control. The real power struggle is internal – what is the player’s motivation for doing what needs doing, and how far are they willing to go to do it?
In the murky twilight realm of espionage, one must be ready to work with everyone.

One of Disco Elysium’s most memorable ideas was turning your stats into voices you could interact with. Will ZERO PARADES explore anything similar?

Justin: Absolutely. We are still very much interested in holding a mirror up to the dark and sticky things inside the player’s heart. We have 15 skills from 3 different faculties all vying for the players time and attention, not always in beneficial ways. What facets of yourself you listen to and which you tune out is an important part of crafting your character.

How do Pressures and Exertion factor into the regular flow of gameplay?

Kosmos: The job of a spy is thankless and hard. In ZERO PARADES, this is expressed via the pressures they face in the field: Anxiety, Delirium and Fatigue. Just like in real life, the right amount of pressure makes us perform – and the wrong amount makes us fold. When the player hits one of their limits, they lose a skill point in the associated faculty.

Pressures are managed via story events and consumables. Pressures are raised by exertion – a new mechanic. You can exert yourself on active checks to roll three dice instead of two, using the two highest against the check. This means that you have a better chance of succeeding, but doing so raises one of your pressures, giving the player a new balance between short-term gain and their long-term health.

"Pressures are managed via story events and consumables. Pressures are raised by exertion – a new mechanic."

The game’s description suggests that players will fail quite often. What kinds of consequences or punishments will failure bring?

Justin: As developers, accounting for both success and failure is what makes the game for us. We walk that line with a fine balance, both metaphorically and literally – failure can be as enticing as success, granted that it is entertaining.

At the same time, it’s not just about stumbling blindly forward through every situation. Every challenge in ZERO PARADES has multiple solutions, if you’re able to find them and, more importantly, if you’re willing to live with the consequences.

Will ZERO PARADES focus on one large central environment, or will players visit a variety of locations throughout the story?

Justin: Portofiro is a large city, made up of several districts. The heart of the story takes place around the formerly working class stronghold called Quisach, but the player’s adventures will bring them to a number of surrounding areas that are quite distinct both from one another and anything we’ve done before. There’s a colourful world out there for the player to explore and – we hope – fall in love with.

Aside from a few examples, the genre has largely stayed the same, and seldom have we seen it take a more serious look inwards, with the characters questioning their work and the people they have chosen to ally themselves with. With ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, developer ZA/UM is taking what it learned from its 2019 RPG Disco Elysium to tell a more introspective story that still doesn’t skimp on its more outlandish elements, be it the world, its politics, its people, or even just the strange circumstances you might find yourself in.

Let’s get this out of the way right from the outset, comparisons with Disco Elysium are going to be inevitable for just about every aspect of ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies. Unless you were intimately familiar with both games, for example, just glancing at screenshots wouldn’t allow you to tell the difference thanks to their closeness in art style. Even in gameplay terms, the two RPGs have quite a bit in common, from how its core skill check system works, right down to how your character’s skills act as companions in any situation.

Aside from that, ZERO PARADES isn’t simply just a case of the studio giving us more Disco Elysium. It tells its own story in a brand new setting with a new, diverse cast of characters, and even the gameplay has seen a few changes. The most interesting and important distinction between the two titles, however, is the protagonist.

You take on the role of Hershel Wilk – a spy with a storied history of espionage behind her. However, due to an (at first) unnamed incident, you were put into the proverbial freezer. Now that several years have passed, the agency once more needs your capabilities, and the story kicks off with one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever experienced in a video game. And I was instantly hooked. You are activated by a fellow agent, referred to by many in the story as your “Double”, who goes by the name PSEUDOPOD. Referring to you with your own codename, CASCADE, PSEUDOPOD tells you that, despite your previous failures, the world still needs you, and you have a larger role to play in upcoming events, leaving you with the simple phrase, “what will happen has already happened.”

Without giving you any more direction than that, you wake up to find PSEUDOPOD in a strangely comatose-adjacent state. His body is with you in the room, and he still has a pulse. However, he doesn’t seem to respond much to your attempts to interact with him, and even with all the skill checks I could try, I got little more out of him than some grunts and drool pooling at the edge of his lips. And this is where my favourite thing about ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies brought itself into sharper focus – the stat system.

The idea to let each one of your stats essentially act as full-fledged party members that you can have entire conversations with based on specific topics felt like genius when I first saw it in Disco Elysium, and ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies has only made me double down on this opinion. Rather than having to deal with simple stats like in other RPGs, like strength or intelligence, ZERO PARADES instead breaks these outs into more abstract concepts. For example, the thought in your brain that you are part of the country you live in and work for is Statehood, and it’s the voice in the back of your head that’s always telling you to toe the party line and give your all for the country. When you find yourself needing to peruse your own memories, on the other hand, you’ll have conversations with your Records stat.

"Comparisons with Disco Elysium are going to be inevitable for just about every aspect of ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies."

All in all, there are 15 of these stats categorized into three “Faculties” – Action, Relation, and Intellect. Action has all your physical stats, like Shadowplay, which governs your sneaking ability, and Doppelgäng, which is the equivalent of your physical strength. Relation is how you see yourself and the world around you, with stats like Nerve, the steadiness of your own mind, and Blueprints, your knowledge of the city. And finally, the Faculty of Intellect includes skills analogous to your character’s intelligence, which can range from your capability with technology, governed by Technoflex, or your deductive reasoning capabilities with Grey Matter.

As you would expect, each and every single one of these 15 stats has its own distinct personality, and the writing for them tends to be so clever and distinct that you’ll never confuse your Personalism for your sense of Statehood, for example, since one is quite clearly about your own humanity, while the other sees you as little more than a cog in the larger machine that helps the country function. These stats being voices you hear in your head also helps to further flesh out Hershel as a character, while also giving the player more tools to change her outlook on the world, and potentially, the ultimate fate of the story.

ZERO PARADES doesn’t really have any combat, per say. You will find yourself in many situations that require you to succeed at skill checks, and the system governing these is quite simple. Using an early example, fixing up an old broken-down fax machine, you get a target number you have to hit based on the difficulty of the action, and there can be more modifiers applied to this target number depending on the situation. How high is your Technoflex skill? Did you read the manual? Do you even know where the panel to get into the guts of the fax machine is? Through this, the target number is calculated, and you can to see whether you succeed or fail.

While success in these situations is almost always a positive thing, failure is often an interesting outcome in its own right. Depending on the stakes of your current task, you might even take some “damage” across three distinct health pools, Fatigue, Anxiety, and Delirium. The first represents physical damage and fatigue you might feel. The second deals with your general anxiety about the world and the situation around you, and the third has you start questioning your sanity in moments of intense pressure. As you rack up “damage” across the three pools, hitting the maximum of 20 with any of them gives you a serious consequence: reduce one of your skill’s levels by 1.

Thankfully, there are other ways to recover your health, from simply taking a nap to reduce anxiety, to finding a doctor to help with your fatigue, or even just simply getting your hands on some drugs that will lower your delirium.

"While success in these situations is almost always a positive thing, failure is often an interesting outcome in its own right."

Aside from making you better at certain tasks when you raise a skill from the experience points you gain throughout ZERO PARADES, the skills also start shaping Hershel’s personality at large. Invest heavily into Statehood, for example, and the idea that Hershel doesn’t really have any humanity of her own starts creeping into just about every conversation you can have. Similarly, raise your Records skill to give yourself a perfect memory, and you’ll start thinking that there are people from your past out to get you around every corner, with each face in a crowd seemingly strangely familiar.

This emphasis on player agency also has its downsides, however. While a journal keeps track of all of the quests you might have taken on, you don’t really get much in the way of handholding. Rather, it’s up to you to find clues that might give you your next lead. While great for encouraging a sense of exploration for some players, others might find themselves feeling a bit lost in the city of Portofiro.

ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is an incredibly interesting RPG that raises quite a few interesting questions about not only its own story, but also the current state of the world. A spy drama that has more of an emphasis on the drama than it does on sneaking around, ZERO PARADES is a phenomenal achievement for the RPG genre, and while it may have Disco Elysium to thank for laying down the foundations on which it was built, the RPG succeeds on its own merits quite handily, and is an easy game to recommend for just about anyone that might be even passingly interested in a narrative-focused adventure with plenty of player agency and twisting pathways throughout its story.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Forza Horizon 6

Almost five years since we bade farewell to the Horizon Festival, but this time it returns in perhaps the most anticipated location in the series – Japan. Relaxing drives through avenues of Sakura trees in Spring, frenetic Touge battles down winding mountain roads, or just hanging out at Daikoku, showing off your vehicle to all and sundry – that’s only the start. Forza Horizon 6 offers two major avenues to cement your legacy – exploration, gradually defogging Japan and discovering Aftermarket Cars, or racing through the ranks to become a Horizon Legend. Beyond everything else, however, it’s your journey. Fill up the scrapbook with memories. Outfit your garage and build out a base. The choice is yours when it launches on May 19th for PC and Xbox Series X/S.

Directive 8020

Say what you will about The Thing, but it reinforced a deep space fear that continues to resonate through gaming – that someone on your crew isn’t who you think they are. Cue Directive 8020 from Supermassive Games, which focuses on the colony ship Cassiopeia as it crashlands on Tau Ceti f. But things take a turn when a horrifying shapeshifting organism begins hunting the crew. Compared to previous Dark Pictures entries, there’s a bigger focus on stealth and combat, not to mention carefully discerning who’s who. Don’t worry if you choose wrong, though, since Turning Points offers a do-over. Directive 8020 launches on May 12th for Xbox Series X/S, PC, and PS5, and after such a long wait, we’re ready to be terrified.

MOTORSLICE

Between monsters, robots, zombies and everything in between, who would have thought that construction equipment could be a threat? That’s the premise of MOTORSLICE, which is all about P and her chainsaw-wielding, parkouring self as she battles these massive threats in a post-apocalyptic world. But then there’s the megastructure – a winding, brutalist space that goes on forever. With its minimalistic art style and unorthodox premise, MOTORSLICE could serve up some hack-and-slash platforming goodness when it launches on May 5th.

WILL: Follow The Light

Unreal Engine 5 and adventure games go together about as well as…just about any other genre, honestly, but WILL: Follow the Light has a different aura about it. In a way, it reminds us of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter with its atmosphere, except you’re controlling a father who embarks on a journey to return home and find his son. It’s a tough task, especially when traversing by sea, crossing mountains and confronting the ghosts of the past. Maybe it could be a dark horse in gorgeous narrative adventures. Maybe not. Either way, we’ll find out on May 7th.

Luna Abyss

A game after my own bullet hell-loving heart, Kwalee Labs’ first-person shooter sees you banished to prison on Luna and tasked to venture into the Abyss for some “forgotten technology.” Enter the cosmic horrors, which aren’t known for being deep sleepers (or quiet dreamers), unfortunately, and you’ll have to slowly unravel the mystery of Greymont, clinging onto sanity the entire time. Having thoroughly enjoyed Saros and Metal Eden, I’m keen on diving into Luna Abyss and its crimson-tinged interiors when it launches on May 21st for PC.

Bubsy 4D

Bubsy is officially back, and no one is safe. Launching on May 22nd across every platform, Bubsy 4D sees the orange furball embarking on a new 3D adventure across 15 new levels. And it looks…not bad? Pretty sleek even, right down to the legally distinct “rolling around at the speed of sound” ability. While the prospect of the game as a metacommentary on Bubsy’s reputation is interesting enough, this looks like a genuinely compelling 3D platformer. Color us intrigued, if nothing else.

007 First Light

You only live twice, as a world-famous 00 agent once said, and thanks to IO Interactive, we’ll have the opportunity to look at death through the eyes of a younger, brasher, less cynical James Bond. First Light sees him enter MI6 to earn 00 status, but amid the charming arrogance is a desire to prove himself, and maybe surpass his limits. The building blocks of Hitman are all here – exquisite sandbox environments with numerous opportunities for stealth – but Bond goes beyond Agent 47’s capabilities in every way you’d expect. Parkour, sneaking, bluffing his way past guards and staff, clever usage of Q’s gadgets – and when “license to kill” is active, gunning down anyone that stands in his way with an array of weaponry and CQC tactics. And just straight up throwing empty guns at an enemy’s face. All’s fair in the world of super spies when 007 First Light launches on May 27th.

Thick as Thieves

A new stealth game from Warren Spector and Paul Neurath, whose credits include Deus Ex and Thief, respectively? Say less. Its alternate-history 1910s city and procedurally generated mission layout, which encourages quick thinking and improvisation, initially left us skeptical due to the PvEvP element. But that’s been changed to focus more on single-player and co-op, delivering an experience befitting the Thief legacy, as you hone your skills to become a legend in the business. Thick as Thieves is available on May 20th for PC.

Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core

Have you ever seen all the Deep Rock Galactic praise, heard all the calls of “rock and stone,” but could still never really get into it? Maybe a roguelite spin-off will do the trick. Entering early access on May 20th, Rogue Core focuses on the Reclaimers squad, which the Company calls in when there are some serious threats. In every run, you’ll need to make use of any weapons along the way while battling the Core Spawn and improving your skills. With how much work has gone on since its October 2023 announcement, one can only hope that Rogue Core lives up to the original’s brilliance.

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book

Nintendo hasn’t necessarily managed to recreate the magic of Yoshi’s Island, but the Mysterious Book could be a cosy, easy-breezy platformer, much like Yoshi’s Crafted World. The premise this time involves venturing through the pages of Mr E, where Yoshi meets different creatures. Harness their abilities on top of the usual gliding, egg-hurling, and sprinting that the series is known for, and voila (hopefully). Yoshi and the Mysterious Book launches on May 21st, exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

Freshen up on your knowledge of the Dark Knight because Batman returns to the video game world on May 22nd. Granted, it’s in LEGO form, but Legacy of the Dark Knight is going out of its way to pull from every single piece of Batman media in existence, from multiple Batmobile types to the bizarre Batmite outfit. If that vast open-world of Gotham, coupled with the Arkham series’ Free Flow combat, wasn’t enough, there are seven other characters, including Catwoman, Nightwing, Robin and more to play as.

ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies

Yes, it’s not exactly all that appealing considering the whole ZA/UM business and how the original Disco Elysium creators were ousted. There’s really no getting around that particular detail. Still, if you’re in the mood for something in the same vein, albeit with an espionage bent and exerting yourself as operant Hershel Wilke, caught up in a conflict between three factions, Zero Parades may suffice when it launches on May 21st for PC.

Better Than Dead

Bodycam first-person shooters are no longer all that new as a concept, but embarking on a quest for vengeance in Hong Kong, hunting down targets while ensuring no one ends up like you? That immediately skyrockets Better Than Dead for us, and the obvious influence of old-school Hong Kong action films just adds that extra bit of hard-boiled grit. It enters early access for PC on May 12th.

Dark Light: Survivor

You’ve swapped between first and third person in Resident Evil Requiem, but how about top-down and third-person (or even between realistic and pixel-like visuals)? That’s one of the many quirks of Dark Light: Survivor, a roguelike survival where you venture on the Phantom Train, venturing through a terrifying multiverse, gathering resources to keep the engine running. Two maps are available when early access launches on May 15th alongside Artifacts, persistent upgrades, weapons, and more. It may be all about the destination, but right now, the journey of Dark Light: Survivor is shaping up into something intriguing.

Withering Realms

From the developer behind the unsettling Withering Rooms comes Withering Realms, where you control a creepy doll ferrying a ghost, as they venture through Penwyll – a town where surely nothing horrible resides. “Bloodborne” is obviously the first influence to come to mind, but the hack and slash action, perspective, and visuals lend an almost Nightmare Creatures vibe to it all. Withering Realms launches into early access in May, and, surprisingly, will be playable from start to finish with plans for 1.0 to launch later this year.