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.
