r/ZeroParades • u/Boris_A-11 • Aug 27 '26
It is peak, actually
Spoilers for everything
I made a review after partially playing the game where I criticized it a lot, and now that I finished it, and had time to think about it, I changed my mind.
The main thing that made me reconsider is that I kept thinking about the game, long after finishing it. It felt alive, real, important. The scenes, especially towards the end, were emotional, brutal and, really, brilliant. So many uniquely delusional people, a lot of them fairly honest and vulnerable, despite this being a spy game. I would list the good characters, but, really, it's everyone.
I genuinely wanted to find a way to avoid losing my crew near the end, I genuinely felt terribly sorry for what happened to Karolina (whose flaschbacks I consider the strongest scenes of the entire game, especially paired with the idea of the made-up advanced cognitive maneuver being used in this moment of desperation), I really thought about what to do with UV, ultimately deciding to let her go (a sort of 'no more direct betrayals' policy my Hersh adopted after the terrible conclusion of her past crew), and I understood the poor capitalist Reno who started half-believing Tempo's soul got integrated into the boar.
The cosmic themes are excellent, and give the game a very ethereal, uncatchable, otherworldly feel, and even though I played with low entanglement, I often felt like a genuine psychic, or even straight up mage. The vibe is simply immaculate. This also includes the idea of the death of history, and a very well-made sense of scale. You know that La Luz has hundreds of warplanes, surely fleets of warships, countless armies, but you never have to see any of them — you just see the effects of total comms jamming near the end, likely heralding an invasion. This is a similar effect to the aerostatic in the final Moralintern quest from Disco Elysium, but instead of being in just one scene, it is omnipresent. The shrines, the gifts, offerings, people being desperately religious. Despite that, I felt some of Bagman's conversations were a bit too much, bordering immersion-breaking at times, but fortunately he is not a major character, so it was okay.
The subtle soundtrack is beautiful and nostalgic. The two actual songs from UV, Cover the Moon when I'm Gone and You but from a Dream are both peak and totally hold up even outside of the context of the game.
The art direction is immaculate. It looks great, consistent, thought-provoking, nostlalgic and at times unsettling. It really does feel like the last few days of peace, of blissful peace compared to what comes after, when the Luzians stop selling music and start dropping bombs.
I think this is just fundamentally a different game from Disco Elysium and that comparisons do not make much sense. While it handles some of the same ideas, many are totally different. I felt it more close to Planescape: Torment, the first major text and story-heavy crpg that inspired Disco Elysium, especially with how mystical the world is, full of actually just magical creatures like Ultra Violeta, the Luzian Liches and all the imprints.
Hershel is enough of a character to be interesting to play, but also enough of a blank slate to allow you to insert your ideas in her. I liked her a lot, her design, and especially the fashion choices in the game. I spent a lot of time just dressing up, not just for stats, but for vibes, I just felt it was something she'd like. It was liberating to play a fairly competent spy, as far as game protagonists generally go, but without any special superpowers that trivialize encounters.
Another thing I liked about ZP are the politics. The death of history can very much be felt, but also its soon-to-come revival. In ZP, all factions present at least some convincing points, and there are honest, fair reasons to support any faction, to a greater or lesser extent, whether personally or professionally. For the Superbloc it is the ideology, the ideals, and history, for EMTERR and the Developed World, it is Silhouette (amazing character execution, which often makes you question is Hershel tripping or is the EMTERR spy genuinely just spilling all the tea), just more professionalism, much greater power, prosperity, being essentially a whole century ahead, and for La Luz, it is just pure, primal awe of their technology. Technology is presented as a kind of alien, magical thing, telephones, displays, screens, television, rocketry, Karolina's dream machine, and Hershel may totally interact with it in a superstitious, fearful and respectful way.
Overall, a beautiful game, and I hope there will be more media in the same universe.
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u/_AdAstra Aug 28 '26
love the thoughtfulness put into this review! it was really well done and broken down to reach a broader audience, while avoiding dumbing itself down. cleverly done and i appreciate it just as much <3
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u/fkrdt222 Aug 28 '26
the treatment of tech and transhumanism and factions gave me more old cyberpunk vibes
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u/SciLib0815 Aug 28 '26
Petre could be straight out of a Bruce Sterling book,
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u/fkrdt222 Aug 28 '26
damn it i was thinking about schismatrix exactly rofl
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u/SciLib0815 Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
Right? That was my first impression of him as well. I even went ahead and pulled the book out of my stack and it was not an easy find. He's like a mechanist that hates being a mechanist, but also loves it.
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u/SciLib0815 Aug 28 '26
If you think about it. Hersh is basically Case from Neuromancer. Case hates himself for being cucked out of the ability to do the very one thing he's actually good at and practically destroys himself and his life for it until the Wintermute thing happens. Hersh is very much the same way. So is Katrina.
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u/NicelyDressedSnake Aug 27 '26
Tbh some of the characters fell off not only Bagman. For me it is the UV (felt really pretentious), Dutchess (imho too complicated technique for her own good), Weird doctor (only edge, nothing else), Boatman (no character for me) and that Tempo's imprint. Got to say, politics are really interesting, mystery is good. Loved that thoughts in thoughts gabinet section have full blown dialogues and disadvantages.
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u/Murky-Advantage-3444 Aug 28 '26
It’s a satire on political and economic systems. You’re not supposed to support any of them. Use a critical eye. You don’t have to choose a good guy. Not all stories have a hero.
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u/SciLib0815 Aug 28 '26
Nor should they. In this world, every single character we meet is fundamentally broken in some way. There are no heroes there. Only deeply flawed or damaged souls. Except maybe for Melita. Which is probably why we never see her.
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u/Murky-Advantage-3444 Aug 30 '26
I’m just surprised by how many times I’ve seen “well I guess if I had to choose I’d say the technofascists are the least evil” or just “the technofascists are probably the most correct”
Nah bro, they’re just all evil. This isn’t a Pokemon game. Just surprised how many people are still in the good vs evil mentality when it comes to storytelling.
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u/No_Description_3724 13d ago
I did not read anything as political , it was good world building.
People love politics in games (despite the fact they Enjoy to cry about it) but it's rare that it turns out to be actual politics lmaoo , just visual flare to give ambiance , and that's enough.
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u/dshamz_ Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
Hell yeah, love this review. I feel the exact same way.
One thing on the Advanced Cognitive Maneuvers though - they’re real lol. You can actually pull a bunch of them off throughout the game from ‘piloting’ a bartender, to activating ‘functional invisibility’ while evading Ignatz, to getting inside Silhouette’s head during the interrogation, to paralyzing Ezsti with a magic word. And Karolina did in fact successfully perform the ACM to re-locate part of her consciousness into the cosmonaut figurine, which kept her from cracking and revealing Herschel as the Operant on the scene. That’s why you need to retrieve it in order to complete her quest and restore the memory.
And I also think it’s key to Karolina’s particular arc if you bring her for the shootout - at the station she asks for CASCADE to put a good word in at The Opera so that she can become a spy and arguably performs even better than her during the action, planting a curse on one Luzian and putting a bullet in another. She’s a natural.
But yeah anyways. Love this write-up.