Disco Elysium Team Insists New Project Is Neither a Sequel Nor a Spiritual Successor

Developing a successor to a cultural phenomenon is a Herculean task, a reality the team behind Zero Parades: For Dead Spies understands all too well.

As the latest offering from ZA/UM, the game carries the heavy mantle of following Disco Elysium, the 2019 CRPG that redefined the indie landscape with its literary depth. The stakes are exceptionally high; the studio must not only match the astronomical standards set by its debut but also navigate the lingering skepticism caused by high-profile internal turmoil. Amidst this turbulence, the creators are focused on a singular goal: producing a work they truly believe in.

On the heels of a substantial Steam Next Fest demo, the project’s lead writers appeared at this year’s Game Developers Conference to pull back the curtain. In a conversation with Polygon, writers Siim “Kosmos” Sinamäe and Honey Watson explored the connective tissue between Zero Parades and Disco Elysium, while emphasizing their desire to step out from the predecessor’s shadow. It is a delicate balancing act, but as Sinamäe puts it, “Pressure is a privilege.”

Image: ZA/UM

Superficially, Zero Parades shares several hallmarks with its predecessor. Despite a shift in visual aesthetics, it remains a dense, text-heavy CRPG featuring personified internal skills, existential dread, and deeply flawed protagonists. However, the writers view the narrative as a radical departure from their previous themes.

“This is a very different beast from a police procedural,” Sinamäe told Polygon. “While a cop story often circles around justice or redemption, espionage exists in a moral gray zone. There is no binary of good or evil in the world of spies. It’s psychologically more complex because we aren’t interested in retreading the path of a substance-dependent hero. We want to probe deeper into the human condition.”

Watson elaborated on how the CRPG framework naturally supports an espionage narrative. “In Disco Elysium, you wield the institutional power of a police officer. A spy has no such authority. They are an ordinary person who must remain unremarkable to survive. This necessitates more frequent skill checks and dice rolls—you’re constantly manipulating others to volunteer information without them realizing they’re being interrogated.”

Image: ZA/UM

While the game draws literary inspiration from the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin and Thomas Pynchon, its primary muse is John le Carré. Unlike the high-octane power fantasies of James Bond, le Carré’s work focuses on the cerebral and often grim realities of intelligence work. Watson describes it as a game about an average individual performing “horrible, clandestine acts.”

Telling this story required a protagonist vastly different from Disco Elysium’s Harry Du Bois. Instead, players inhabit Hershel Wilk, an operative known as Cascade, who is dispatched to the town of Portofiro. Hershel grapples with a profound identity crisis born from her deep-cover status, forcing a more layered approach to roleplaying.

“Harry was an incredibly distinct character,” Watson noted, “but Hershel offers more varied playstyles. Because she is undercover, you aren’t just roleplaying a spy; you are roleplaying someone who is themselves roleplaying. You have to decide how you approach the persona of Hershel, and how that persona, in turn, performs the role of the spy.”

Image: ZA/UM

One common thread between the two projects is their unapologetic political edge. Zero Parades continues the discourse on communism, class struggle, and systemic power. However, while Disco Elysium used an amnesiac protagonist to introduce these concepts, Hershel comes with her own history: a woman from the bourgeois world who defected to a communist state.

“Hershel’s political leanings are ingrained,” Watson explained. “She has a strong ideological perspective that players can choose to lean into or interrogate. The politics are inseparable from the espionage.”

When asked if the new game is in an active “dialogue” with their debut, neither writer agreed. They view the similarities as a natural result of a creative team exploring shared interests rather than a deliberate effort to mimic or distance themselves from the past.

Image: ZA/UM

“We didn’t set out to forcibly divorce the two games,” Sinamäe said. “The comparisons are inevitable, but we are simply trying to tell a story in a more refined way. Our internal mantra is ‘Half as much, twice as good.’ We wanted the writing to be snappier and for the player to feel more in control of the narrative momentum, rather than just being a passenger.”

The project is currently under intense scrutiny following ZA/UM’s public fallout with several original creative leads, including Robert Kurvitz. This controversy looms over every update, with fans searching for any sign that the new title might be a hollow imitation. Sinamäe finds the hyper-focus on specific similarities, like starting in a room and descending stairs, to be somewhat reductive.

Image: ZA/UM

“If you’re looking for parallels, you’ll find them. But starting in a hotel and walking downstairs is a staple of the RPG genre!” Sinamäe joked. “We’ve actually been much more adventurous in leaning into the ‘game’ aspects of the experience. It feels more mechanical, more interactive.”

Ultimately, the writers hope players will judge Zero Parades on its own merits rather than treating it as a ‘spot-the-difference’ puzzle. While the two games share a lineage, they are distinct entities. The sooner the audience accepts the game as a standalone espionage RPG rather than a burdened sequel, the sooner they can appreciate its unique identity.

“Hearing people call it a spiritual successor is strange,” Sinamäe concluded. “If I had two children, I wouldn’t consider the second one a spiritual successor to the first. You appreciate the first for what it was, but the second is its own person.”

Source: Polygon