When ZA/UM announced their new project (as C4) earlier, curiosity spiked immediately. This is, after all, the first major project to follow in the wake of Disco Elysium, a game that redefined what narrative role-playing could look like. But while comparisons are inevitable, the team is positioning Zero Parades as its own beast – a bleak, espionage-driven RPG that blends John le Carré’s paranoia with Philip K. Dick’s unsettling visions of fractured identity. At Gamescom, we had the chance to sit down with members of the ZA/UM team to hear more about their upcoming title, and what we saw was both familiar and strikingly different.
What we know
Zero Parades puts you in the shoes of Hershel Wilk, codenamed Cascade, a brilliant but cursed spy whose last mission left her disgraced and haunted. Years later, she’s pulled back into the game, drawn into a clash of ideologies inside a sprawling new city that feels alive with secrets, corruption, and competing agendas. The game is designed as a story-driven espionage RPG, where failure isn’t just possible but inevitable – and often it’s the path forward. Familiar mechanics like dice rolls and inner-dialogue choices return in new forms, such as “Conditioning,” a system where Hershel internalizes or rejects thoughts that can shape her stats and worldview.
Thematically, Zero Parades explores guilt, identity, and fractured loyalty, with Hershel forced to rebuild trust among allies she once betrayed while contending with forces ranging from international financiers to techno-fascists. Expect an experience filled with narrative depth, surreal flourishes, and the kind of philosophical undercurrent that put ZA/UM on the map in the first place. No release date has been confirmed yet, but the game is in development for PC and other platforms.
What we saw
At Gamescom, we attended a closed-door presentation led by VO director and writer Jim Ashilevi and producer Jessica Crawford. They walked us through the inspirations behind the game – ranging from classic Cold War spy novels to dystopian sci-fi – and gave us a detailed look at the narrative systems, visual design, and gameplay structure. We also saw several pieces of in-game footage, including story sequences and gameplay not yet shown during Opening Night Live.
What we thought
What stood out first was how heavily Zero Parades leans into the spy thriller aesthetic, though filtered through ZA/UM’s surreal lens. Hershel is the polar opposite of a James Bond archetype: anxious, compromised, and prone to mistakes. The developers emphasized that this is not a power fantasy but rather a game where stumbling through failure is both expected and narratively meaningful. It’s an intriguing spin on the genre, and one that has us curious about how deeply those failures will reshape the story paths available.
The mechanics themselves feel like a natural evolution of what Disco Elysium introduced. The Conditioning system, for instance, looks to deepen the role of internal debate, while new external pressures like fatigue, delirium and anxiety promise to influence not just Hershel’s stats but the kinds of decisions she can make in the moment. These additions could push the game beyond being “Disco with spies,” though it’s hard not to notice how familiar the interface and core ideas feel at times. Whether those differences are enough to set Zero Parades apart will depend on how impactful these new systems prove to be in practice.
Visually, the snippets we saw carried a strong sense of atmosphere, rooted in familiar design sensibilities, while a jazz-fusion soundtrack should gave it a distinct identity compared to Disco Elysium’s melancholy tones. There’s also a bleakness to the world itself, a sense of futility that mirrors Hershel’s burden. When we asked about this, the team acknowledged the hopelessness but hinted that Hershel’s journey could still lead to redemption, depending on the player’s choices. That balance between despair and hope might end up being the game’s most powerful hook.
The main question we left with is how the game’s “high impact” moments that bring big narrative branches will actually play out this time around. Will they genuinely shift the course of the game, or simply frame familiar choice mechanics against a new backdrop? ZA/UM’s track record suggests ambition, but execution will be key. For now, though, Zero Parades is shaping up as an espionage RPG with the potential to carve out its own identity, even as – for the time being – it continues to live in the shadow of its predecessor until more is revealed.
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