Zero Parades For Dead Spies – Part 4-4
A man with a bag on his head has access to a magical CD containing a song that hollows out whoever listens to it.
We should… probably deal with that.
Streamed on my Twitch.
You can find Andre on his Twitch channel.
During this session, we ran into the Metal Stripper, and her leader Subcomandante Bagman. They represent an altogether different, more self-referential side of Zero Parades, one that I do not care for now that I’ve had to experience it once again.
In summation, they are Deadpool-style NPCs who are aware that they exist inside the confines of a video game. The Metal Stripper is aware that time only passes when the player character performs an action, and later Bagman will be aware of save states and how the player can and will do any number of things. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having characters like this in an RPG setting, but context matters when doing so. Famously, Spec Ops: The Line spent the entire campaign deconstructing the mechanics and writing of first/third-person shooter campaigns.
But that’s not what’s happening here. As far as I can tell, there’s no point or thesis being advanced through either of these characters. I get the impression someone on the team thought it would be funny/cool if some of the NPCs realized that they were NPCs, and neither did the work to elegantly weave them thematically into the game’s central plot, nor were they willing to cut them out of the script.
It doesn’t work for me. And honestly, I don’t think it adds to the game either.
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