I played the demo for Zero Parades: Dead Spies and I have opinions about it ☝️
So here's a ramble with spoilers of both games!
ZA/UM will never ever ever outrun what the they with the original writers of Disco Elysium
But the creatives behind Zero Paredes are very clearly having a blast! I played the demo twice and tried to do a normal run versus a batshit run
Manyyyy things here are using the same systems of Disco Elysium, and it kind assumes you have played DE, doesn't really introduce you to some mechanics. The whole isometric view, eh? Skill points, skill checks, dialogue trees, dialogue-heavy
On the other hand, the way you go through dialogue is delightfully different. Your skill checks can be influenced not only by your passive state but you can actively opt to use exerted your abilities. If you don't take into consideration the context, you WILL be set back, make CASCADE lose a whole skill, even if you favorably advanced the dialogue. While with Harry you have to worry about only two stats that can ocassionally kill you, CASCADE can die from anxiety (relatable)
The order in which you do stuff is far more reactive, volatile really. And it felt like you could fail rolls more easily, it doesn't hold your hand at all. It has QTEs, too!
Plus you're in this shit on your own, no Kim Kitsugari on your side. The political climate makes you lethally anxious, you're not searching for the murderer of a hanged man while bickering with a high off meth kid. Instead, you're in active threat of death.
CASCADE has more memories than Harry, far more. And at the same time, all those said memories are fuzzy with trauma and spy brainwashing.
I'd say Zero Parades is similar in, mainly, mechanics and structure. As in, general plot structure. "Amnesiac detective/spy investigativing a murder/assassination". See? Kind similar. Both have an overwhelming amount of side quests and stuff to look and do
The demo is a bit frustrating because you start a lot and doesn't finish nearly enough. But, for example, NPCs don't collaborate at all when compared to DE. Where you could convince people of Ravechol through AUTHORITY (the fact you're a cop), and where Harry DuBois could work through making anyone talk, eventually, here in Portofiro people are more paranoid so CASCADE, and you as the player, has to read between the lines more
And the farther you go through the plot, more you realize how screwed you are. Your neck is at risk. While Disco Elysium turned into the inner content of Harry, filtering everything through his liquor-blurred retinas, Zero Parades's air is denser, heavier, harder to breath. As if you're trying to breath through a wet mask. Both of them have different vibes which become vibratingly stark against each other.
Ravechol has a beautiful brilliance, a smudged, latent hope. It is part of a sunken, failed system, where something else is taking root through the cracks of post-war, post-revolution, and it's frail and weak but it's THERE and it's important, it changes everything, even what you can't save, even you live in failed system. Here lays what one person can do to change everything else. Where Portofiro is not! Here people have already gone through the end and come to the other side. And turns out that after the fire, ice holds. A cold war where you stand on the weaker link. It's a scratched lottery ticket and the disappointed and how people survive while going through the worst historical moment, y'know??
It tries a lot, the writing is insecure. There's depth missing. It's not provocative. But I wouldn't say it's a bad game. I'd say this is what happens when you get some creatives and chews them through corpo bullshit, when who's making decisions is already famous for stealing. You can't come back from that, really. It's a living, marionette thing wearing the necrosing skin of a Magnus Opus.
The point is: it's NOT Disco Elysium. And I feel... Fine about it. The game is fun. It's not that deep. Buy it on sale or pirate it, yknow