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Zero Parades For Dead Spies – Part 1-1

Despite the messy, sordid story at the heart of Disco Elysium, which caused most of its lead developers to sever all ties, much of the talent responsible for it still remains at ZA/UM. They still have creative ideas and energy, and they’ve spent the time since directing it towards a new project.

The question is: Can this new game, Zero Parades For Dead Spies, escape the shadow of what came before?

Streamed on my Twitch.
You can find Andre on his Twitch channel.

The documentaries I referenced in the intro to this Let’s Play are mentioned above.

But since the tutorial forced us to have a panic attack, I think this is a good moment to discuss the systems that govern CASCADE’s physical and mental condition. Where Disco Elysium used a traditional health system, in which our lead died or had a mental collapse if either of the relevant scores hit zero, Zero Parades chooses something more freeform, to better immerse us in the role of a disaster human.

As we exert ourselves, fail checks, or come into contact with stressors, we will take or Fatigue, Anxiety, or Delirium. If we take on too much of any one of them, we will have an episode on the spot, which will permanently lower a skill associated with the overtaxed condition. Here, the tutorial forced us to max out our Anxiety, which is associated with our Relation skills. Therefore, we lost a point in one of our Relation skills.

It’s a fascinating system because it serves multiple purposes. For the game’s fiction, it sell the idea that we’re a world class fuckup constantly teetering on the edge of absolute disaster. In my original playthough, I managed to avoid having another attack, but I was always on the edge, near the breaking point of at least one of the three. In perfect alignment with the character, I managed to stave off the worst of it though a steady diet of caffeine, alcohol, and cigarettes. CASCADE might be wrecking her health and nervous system in the long term, but in this moment binging on her vices is the only way she’s able to cope with the colossal pressure of spycraft.

If we can’t cope, it’ll affect our performance in a very literal sense because one of our valuable skill points will be sacrificed. We can keep going, of course. However, the going will be made that much harder. Admittedly, there’s a part of me that wants to see if this has the potential to CASCADE into some hilarious and/or humiliating outcomes for us.

Especially since, as I noticed very quickly, we can’t Game Over the same way we could in Disco Elysium. Unlike Harry DuBois, when Hershel has a panic attack, she doesn’t immediately die or resign. She’ll be worse off, and things will get harder for her, but she’ll endure. She can keep going.

Thus, we have every incentive to keep our stresses in check, but the game won’t punish us too severely if we fail to do so. That’ll just be another part of our story.

I think it’s a smart choice for this style of game. While it is fun to see the various ways we can die in Disco, I don’t know if they experience here in Zero Parades would benefit from so many different ways for Hershel to ultimate fail, rather then merely stumble and fumble in perpetual distress.