Zero Parades Hands-On Preview: Six Hours With ZA/UM’s Espionage RPG

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is an espionage RPG that follows the playbook of ZA/UM Studio’s previous game, Disco Elysium, incredibly closely. It’s another high-concept, combatless, dialogue-driven game about following threads and investigating leads. But capturing lightning twice is no easy feat, and simply repeating Disco Elysium’s triumphs is no guaranteed road to success. Thankfully, there are fresh ideas here that expand and evolve ZA/UM’s formula, making for what appears to be, on the surface, a more traditionally accomplished video game, but potentially at the cost of crafting a less interesting artistic creation. We spent six hours with the game, playing through the entire upcoming Steam Next Fest demo, plus a significant amount beyond it, and this is what we think of it.