SPOILER: The Hundred-Eyed Golem needs more build-up and foreshadowing.
Zero Parades is a great game and a great RPG. It's obviously not Disco Elysium, but not every game has to be a 10/10, a transcendent masterpiece that changes the genre's discourse. Games can just be great games, and Zero Parades is that.
One thing I do think the game needed, for better narrative completeness and pacing, is more build-up around the Golem and his role.
At first I was a bit puzzled by the final thematic swerve. Most of the game's focus is >!on assassinating the Grand Lich!<, and then we discover that the real confrontation is actually with the >!Golem!<. This shift in focus threw me off a bit because it felt too sudden.
But it makes incredible sense. >!The Opera's mission is to kill the Grand Lich... but that's not really the point for CASCADE. It's the Weeping Eye that destroyed his mission 5 years ago; it's the Weeping Eye who tortured KINDRED, handed Vespar over to the Azzurri, ruined Ramses' life, assassinated Tempo.!<
>!Even the individual people who actually carried out everything bad that happened to the SICK CREW and to CASCADE are all present in that fateful moment on the Tram — including the mastermind, the Hundred-Eyed Golem, who with his militant and somewhat mystical fascism brings an interesting and concrete perspective compared to the cultural-war vision we saw with the Luzians.!<
What's missing — and could be added in a future DLC — are story elements that would let players anticipate the >!Golem !<and his role more precisely. There's just a hint with Ignatz's mission, but that's not enough.
Disco Elysium did a better job with the >!Deserter!<, whose presence was constantly hinted at through the things that didn't add up in the investigation and through the inexplicable "absences" >!(the absence of gunshot noise, the absence of answers about whose print the .38 was, everyone's absence of awareness that there are secret tunnels and hidden crates of rifles in the city, the absence of explanations for the petals, the absence of any connection to the fact that the dead man said Communism killed him).!<
In my opinion, future DLCs should try to somehow increase the build-up toward that >!confrontation on the Tram!<, which is the true climax of CASCADE's story.