TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,997
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Two locked doors, two surprisingly funny and nuanced dialogue puzzles.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
RPG developer ZA/UM has a difficult—maybe impossible—wire to walk with Zero Parades, its follow-up to Disco Elysium. The spy thriller wants to strike a different tone to one of the best RPGs ever made while still working in the same verbose style. And while parts of it indeed feel very similar, as PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens noted from the Steam demo, a longer build I played this week at San Francisco's Game Developers Conference delivered some fantastical spycraft situations that I think embody the ideal of Disco-with-a-twist.
Stepping into the shoes of disgraced and confused spy Hershel, brought in from the cold after a colossal fuck-up for one last chance, I tried to stay on-mission by tracking down another agent who's been disappeared by the mysterious forces at work in the city of Portofiro. Talking to the locals helped me narrow down his location to a sketchy warehouse by the water's edge, and after skulking around the edges of the building I found the front door. Locked, of course, but an intercom offered me a tantalizing option: could I talk my way inside instead of sneaking in?
I pressed the buzzer, and the resulting conversation tree gave me everything I wanted from the situation: Unexpected comedy, sincerity, sarcasm, problem-solving, and a dramatic skill check that embodied Disco's tendency to offer dramatic outcomes for rolls, good or bad.
My favorite bit of this encounter—the part that reminded me of the ways Disco's conversations often flew off in unanticipated and absurd directions—was the option to peel the plastic from the intercom. It's deftly done, communicating that the security at this facility has been set up recently and in haste, while also reappearing in the conversation in a meaningful way rather than just being a one-and-done bit of flair.
And then that sincere dialogue option actually paying off by reducing my character's anxiety? Even in that short back-and-forth, Zero Parades gave me some meaningful choices in molding who Hershel is—whether she stays "in character" as a spy, or lashes out, or lets herself be vulnerable for a moment.
My powers of persuasion weren't potent enough to get me in the front door, but a bit more investigating led me to an underground entrance that was, itself, locked. But the keypad here seemed more promising than the ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
RPG developer ZA/UM has a difficult—maybe impossible—wire to walk with Zero Parades, its follow-up to Disco Elysium. The spy thriller wants to strike a different tone to one of the best RPGs ever made while still working in the same verbose style. And while parts of it indeed feel very similar, as PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens noted from the Steam demo, a longer build I played this week at San Francisco's Game Developers Conference delivered some fantastical spycraft situations that I think embody the ideal of Disco-with-a-twist.
Stepping into the shoes of disgraced and confused spy Hershel, brought in from the cold after a colossal fuck-up for one last chance, I tried to stay on-mission by tracking down another agent who's been disappeared by the mysterious forces at work in the city of Portofiro. Talking to the locals helped me narrow down his location to a sketchy warehouse by the water's edge, and after skulking around the edges of the building I found the front door. Locked, of course, but an intercom offered me a tantalizing option: could I talk my way inside instead of sneaking in?
I pressed the buzzer, and the resulting conversation tree gave me everything I wanted from the situation: Unexpected comedy, sincerity, sarcasm, problem-solving, and a dramatic skill check that embodied Disco's tendency to offer dramatic outcomes for rolls, good or bad.
My favorite bit of this encounter—the part that reminded me of the ways Disco's conversations often flew off in unanticipated and absurd directions—was the option to peel the plastic from the intercom. It's deftly done, communicating that the security at this facility has been set up recently and in haste, while also reappearing in the conversation in a meaningful way rather than just being a one-and-done bit of flair.
And then that sincere dialogue option actually paying off by reducing my character's anxiety? Even in that short back-and-forth, Zero Parades gave me some meaningful choices in molding who Hershel is—whether she stays "in character" as a spy, or lashes out, or lets herself be vulnerable for a moment.
My powers of persuasion weren't potent enough to get me in the front door, but a bit more investigating led me to an underground entrance that was, itself, locked. But the keypad here seemed more promising than the ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?