Power, Comic Books and Zero Parades for Dead Spies: How ZA/UM Found Its Disco Elysium Successor

“Zero Parades is an exploration of failure,” explains Jim Ashilevi, writer and VO director at ZA/UM. “What it means to lose everything and then keep going regardless. And then, since it's such a painful question, it inevitably becomes an exploration of what it means to be human. How uncomfortable and strange it is to exist in a body that has thoughts and feelings and responsibilities, and a past that they can't go back and fix.” “This is why I love working here,” says ZA/UM’s head of studio, Allen Murray, with a smile. “I never had these conversations making Halo games.” The studio behind Disco Elysium was, of course, never going to follow up its 2019 “disaster cop” RPG with a game about heroes saving the world. That’s not to say that it hasn’t moved into slightly more traditional video game territory, though. Its new game, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, is an espionage spy thriller set in a dark, almost psychedelic reflection of the Cold War’s closing years. Global powers conspire, enemy agents lurk in the dark, and the entire world sits on the doorstep of the end of history. But while that could theoretically be the elevator pitch for any number of mainstream, combat-forward RPGs, ZA/UM is doing spycraft the only way it knows: Disco style. “I think the one North Star that we have is that we have to be genuinely interested in the stories that we are choosing to tell,” says Ashilevi. “If we were to start mimicking someone else, or go bigger and more expensive and add production value and fighting mechanics and multiplayer, I think we would just destroy ourselves in the process.” This “North Star” means that, on the surface, Zero Parades looks almost identical to Disco Elysium. It’s another dialogue-centric, introspective, isometric RPG with striking art direction. But that’s not to say it’s the exact same game dressed up in a John le Carré skin. “I think you can see the team has really wanted to exceed their production chops with Zero Parades,” explains Murray, “in terms of having the world seem more reactive, more lived in. There's more action, more people walking around doing things.” While ZA/UM had no intention of creating a “traditional” video game RPG, it did want to dig deeper into the genre’s more crunchy elements. This time around there are more skill checks, alongside a mental and physical health system that can be exerted to increase the chances of passing those checks. There’s further emphasis on multiple solutions to individual problems, the very foundation of BioWare’s celebrated Infinity Engine games. By pushing the depth of choice available and enhancing the world’s reactivity to those choices, the team saw the opportunity to create something that stood distinct from Disco Elysium. “Sophomore efforts are really challenging,” Murray admits. “You don't want to repeat your first hit, nor can you really.” It took a lot of time for the team to come to terms with that. During the years following Disco Elysium’s release and subsequent “Final Cut” version, ZA/UM experimented with a number of concepts – some were effectively direct sequels, while others explored “a completely different direction,” according to Ashilevi. The path to Zero Parades arrived with the decision to “not fully reinvent the wheel.” The goal, Murray says, was to “expand on what we know how to do, and make a bigger game, both mechanically and in terms of production scope, and do it well.” Mission Control Murray acknowledges that there were “years of drama” before the studio got to that point. For many fans of Disco Elysium, that will mean only one thing: the firing of several key creatives in 2022 and their subsequent accusation that ZA/UM’s executive management had seized control of the company through fraud. It’s a complicated chapter in the studio’s story, in which those exorcised from the company – including game director Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art director Aleksander Rostov – are characterised as either toxic disruptors or the victims of corporate conspiracy, depending on your source. But there’s more to ZA/UM’s troubled recent history than those controversial dismissals: this is a studio that has repeatedly cancelled projects and, in early 2024, made 20 of its staff redundant. It all paints a picture of an inexperienced studio struggling to adapt to life after releasing an unexpected mega hit on the first attempt, with the workers caught in the crossfire. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ZA/UM’s UK-based workforce unionised last year. The artistry comes first, the storytelling comes first. It still feels like the whole video game development side of things is just like a happy accident. But while collective bargaining is undoubtedly important, those workers also need strong leadership to avoid the woes of the past. Maybe they’ve found that in Murray, a 20-year veteran of the video games industry with previous tenures at Microsoft, Bungie, PopCap, and Private Division. He was appointed as ZA/UM’s new head of studio shortly after news broke about those painful redundancies, and over the past two years his goal has been “coaching the people in the studio, maturing our processes, helping people to really focus on what we're making, how we're making it, and why we're making it.” “It was easy to have a lot of things sort of floating around,” he admits. “But how are we actually going to animate this, or how are we going to light this? What does this story really mean? What are you really trying to get across to the player?” Today, ZA/UM is made up of around 90 members of staff. Several of them have, like Murray, been recruited from established developers such as Rocksteady in order to arm the studio with specialist video game experience. But the remaining members of the Disco Elysium team, which makes up approximately 35% of the studio’s total roster, plus many of the new recruits, “come from a background that has nothing to do with game dev,” says Ashilevi. “As a studio, we still view ourselves pretty much as a collective of artists,” he explains. “The artistry comes first, the storytelling comes first. To me personally, it still feels like the whole video game development side of things is just like a happy accident.” The Price of Power That brings us back to Zero Parades, which tells the story of Hershel Wilk, codename “Cascade”, who’s pulled out of retirement for the all-time classic spy trope, One Last Job. By moving into the espionage genre, ZA/UM has been able to work at a notably different scale than it did with Disco Elysium. While Zero Parades takes place in a physical space not too dissimilar to that of the studio’s previous game, by stepping into the shoes of a spy rather than a local detective, the story naturally explores a much grander stage. “You do have to contend with world powers,” Ashilevi reveals. “It's not just wallpaper, or stuff that you read from notes that people leave in drawers, or newspapers left on tables. You do have to come into close contact with some of the big players as well.” This global stage is explored through Hershel’s very personal lens, so while the stakes are certainly heightened this time around, your actions are still conducted at street level. You may be able to turn the cogs of a mega corporation and shift the balance of worldwide politics, for instance, but to do so may require betraying your closest friend. Hershel’s own pain will be tangible, whereas those rotating cogs will feel distant, perhaps even unimportant, to her own life. Such is the toll of espionage. To create something that reflects Disco Elysium’s triumphs, though, you can’t just tackle issues of the human condition. You’ve got to get at least a little eccentric. And that’s where Hershel’s hobbies come into play. “She's deeply fascinated with comic books, music, you name it,” Ashilevi reveals. “So the story is also an exploration of pop culture and what soft power means. Why is it important for us to be obsessed with pop artists and cartoons, and films and pulp novels, and things like that? Why are people so deeply obsessed with retro tech and bootlegged media, like underground forbidden films? What does it do to your soul, and how does it define your identity?” While music, fashion, TV shows, and retrofuturistic music formats all contribute to the city of Portofiro’s vibrant texture, there is a dark side to it all. What is a consumer as a political entity? How do tiny decisions, like tuning into a particular show or buying a certain magazine, tie into the movements of the big powers? These are potential avenues for Hershel – for you – to investigate. The battle for soft and hard power, waged between international banks, imperialist states, and communist unions, is something that goes beyond just Hershel’s current mission. “We need to come up with an inspiring enough sandbox so that whatever we choose to do with those characters or this universe next, we can just jump right into it and keep telling stories because the groundwork has been laid,” says Ashilevi. Zero Parades is the starting point for something bigger, then. At least that’s the hope. The world of Elysium was also envisioned as a space for multiple stories, but it seems that book is now eternally closed. And while Zero Parades may not necessarily need to be as significant a breakout hit as Disco Elysium was to unlock the potential for sequels, it does need to stand tall in a world where the “Disco-like” is a rising genre, made up of games developed both by fans inspired by that RPG masterpiece and new studios set up by the scattered former members of ZA/UM’s original creative team. But by following their own creative North Star, the team behind Zero Parades hopes to captivate players once more. “We have no clue what kinds of games or stories people are hoping to get out of ZA/UM,” Ashilevi says. “The only thing we can control is whether we're staying true to our own vision and voice. And that's what we have done with Zero Parades.”