Some of Disco Elysium's best ideas are still around in Zero Parades, but the CRPG thriller has an almost impossible task ahead of it

Many people's first encounter with ZA/UM – the studio behind the runaway success of Disco Elysium – is of an alcoholic, middle-aged detective in poor health desperately attempting to put himself back together while nursing a near-deadly hangover. In its new game, ZAUM is considering its previous creation through a new lens, offering a harder world, a harsher protagonist, and far larger stakes.

Zero Parades is an espionage CRPG. While Disco Elysium was primarily a detective narrative, its successor is a thriller, its main character a former spy put on ice for five years, brought back into the game to contest with a power struggle between three major international players. It's a premise that's as immediately compelling as any thriller, but it's tinged with a sense of failure and of the bizarre that's very rarely found within ZAUM's new choice of genre.

ZAUM is quick to establish its new hero as something of an "anti-Bond," a character who's managed to be suave in the past, but has long since abandoned much of the charm and quick wit that shapes 007. It's a clear attempt to invert the thriller genre – Zero Parades is a "meditation on failure" rather than anything too closely resembling a power fantasy, but it's also not too concerned about taking itself too seriously. While the dry wit of Kim Kitsuragi is present, it's rarely long before the notes of Harry Du Bois begin to bubble up.

The pivot from detective fiction to spy thriller allows ZAUM to draw from "a wide range of inspirations," says writer and studio founder Jim Ashilevi. Iconic espionage author John Le Carre is an immediate pull, but there's a weirder, more cerebral aspect to Zero Parades, one Ashilevi says pulls from science fiction writers like Ursula Le Guin and Philip K Dick. Brain-bending watercolors and twisting maps lend what sometimes feels like an otherworldly feel to a city that's often made to feel deliberately mundane, an effect that's only heightened by a twist on Disco Elysium's most iconic feature.

Zero Parades offers a return to a skill tree defined by its protagonist's grey matter. While Disco Elysium's Harry was often shaped by a curious mix of hubris and agonizing self-doubt, however, new protagonist Hershel simply doesn't have the time to suffer her feelings in the same way. The result is an internal skill tree that's more of an ordered mind palace than a series of electrical impulses, a reflection of the order and focus instilled through her training. The chance of success or failure remains fully on display, dice rolls remaining a key part of the CRPG format, but Hershel will be able to exert herself to improve the chances of a success – at the cost of rising fatigue that may make life much more difficult down the line.

What's clear is that Zero Parades is ZAUM's attempt to stick as close to the memory of Disco Elysium as it can. The artwork is immediately reminiscent of the studio's previous game, as is the skill system driven by the internal monologue of a deeply flawed character. Even as the setting differs, the feel of Revachol remains. You can't spend three days mulling over how to get a body down from a tree – events take place a lot faster than that in the world of espionage – but neither is Hershel a figure like Ethan Hunt or Jason Bourne, capable of clearing any obstacle with a quip or a swift punch. The timeframe is a little more immediate, but we're still contending with a game that looks to walk and talk like Disco Elysium.

But that draws attention to the obvious elephant in the room. Even as I'm introduced to one of ZAUM's original founders, it's impossible to tell what effect the extremely messy breakup of the studio has had on this game. It looks the part – perhaps the writing isn't quite as clever as I remember from Disco, but that's extremely hard to figure out in a brief introduction. The fact remains, however, that to my knowledge there are at least three different teams professing to be making the true successor to Disco Elysium. Zero Parades is the first to break cover – and is certainly the flashiest, but that doesn't mean we're looking at the same kind of success story that its predecessor proved to be. The DNA that made ZAUM's first game a critically-lauded CRPG is clearly here, but Zero Parades has an extremely precarious path to navigate if it wants to prove it's a worthy sequel.

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