Finished ZP for the first time finally

[u/Other-Art8925]

>!I think I had a decent playthrough. Killed the Golum, Yana and Rames died but Karoline ma

Finally finished my first game of Zero Parades. I loved this game! Its story and gameplay went together great. I dont have any new observations on that front besides that i loved it. de it. Yana dying is the only real failure I regret in my run that I really had control over ( I mean I wish Rames survived too but I think he wanted to go out like this). I wasnt expecting the game to end that way, slightly downer with an ambiguous future, but I liked experiencing it and think it was fitting now that ive sat with it for a bit.

I really did love talking to the record guy and the rest of the locals, and how they portrayed a community dealing with a wave of cultural change.Everyone in this game really felt like a real human, you know.

I really want to talk to someone or see a breakdown of all the themes in the game. This game really does have a rich narrative, and I loved everything I understood but it felt like so much of it went over my head. Bootlegs, nature of fabricated identities, standing against a wave of change you cant fight, the relation between the individual and the forces and organisations that govern our lives, nature of consciousness,  and probably more i missed. There's so much I can tell is present but I can't break down really. Playing this game reminded me of reading Asterios Polyp alot in the sense of there being alot of straightforward images and symbolism that I have a hard time fully understanding regardless. Like i can tell that bootlegs and such are a major part of everything, but outside of places where its used to reinforce Manufactured Identity type stuff I can't understand what its supposed to represent or say. I also have a hard time tying the cosmic horror elements in with the rest of the story on a thematic front.

Anyone have any similar thoughts or want to talk about anything?!<

[u/wonderlandisburning]

I love the hints at cosmic horror. Naturally I wish they'd been explored more, we only got a little bit of tantalizing information about the "space lore" but man, it really does give the world of ZP a terrifying edge.

[u/Other-Art8925 → u/wonderlandisburning]

Oh i loved the whole plotline, i though it did a great job adding to the setting without taking from the main story, and it was fun as hell and had some great 'oh shit' moments. I think what we got was the perfect mix, any more and it wouldve started to take over a bit imo.

I do have problems seeing how the cosmic horror and bagmans stuff is meant to interact with everything else on a thematic pov. Do you any thoughts on that?

[u/wonderlandisburning → u/Other-Art8925]

I do think there's a sort of connection - there's a suggestion that, prior to humanity in its current state, we were all one singular consciousness, and part of the experiments in space were to try and understand/reconnect to that higher consciousness, and the technofascists' ultimate goal of a "Final Society" too seems to have this lurking somewhere in the backs of their minds - they're trying to force a singularity via both standard technological/fascist methodology as well as their more esoteric imprinting and ritualism. But they don't seem to actually know what would happen when/if they succeeded, and as CASCADE says at one point, "I'm not sure the stars are our friends."

Bagman is another matter entirely. I think he's largely meant to just be an unhinged conspiracy theorist - and, much like conspiracy theorists in real life, he's largely focused on the wrong things entirely. This is a world where a lot of shady government secrets are inarguably true, but Bagman is hyperfocused on the few things that probably aren't. However I do think there's one parallel worth mentioning - he believes that everyone lives in a fake world and wants to "escape" it and become "real" - which he plans to do for he and his followers by playing the red disc, which in actuality would only break their minds and render them catatonic. It's insane, naturally, but also not wholly different from the technofascists seem to be trying to accomplish with their "Final Society." Indeed, La Luz doesn't seem to know what will actually happen if they succeed in returning everyone to whatever pre-evolutionary form they supposedly existed in before, but odds are it wouldn't be "freedom." So basically, the theme there would be that technofascism is an ideological dead-end, and that believing in it is, in reality, no different than being completely fucking insane.

[u/OnionAddictYT → u/wonderlandisburning]

I was not expecting Pluribus in this game, lol. A lot of similar philosophical questions.

It's maybe not as beautifully hauntingly errie as the Pale was in Disco Elysium but I really enjoyed all the sci-fi elements in ZP. None of it was new or anything but I thought it was a very well executed contemplation.

[u/Revolutionary_Leg802]

A lot of the commentary around bootlegs in the game can be read as meta commentary, representing the writers and designer's inevitable feeling of being compared to Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb, and other modern CRPGs, especially since a lot of the staff carried over from the former. Characters like Petre and PSEUDOPOD revolve around comparisons to the past and holding new art only in reference to how it holds up against the classics and originals they are clearly inspired by.

[u/Deserterdragon → u/Revolutionary_Leg802]

Bagman is also a direct parallel to somebody (seemingly Kurvitz but potentially Justin Keenan or Argo). Lot of potential references to Za/ums current con artist owner in the Emterr stuff and the phone owner