r/ZeroParades

Anyone else?

Hey everyone, I’m really late into the game and completely stuck trying to progress the main assassination plot. ​According to my journal, the subtask "Form a plot to strike the Grand Lich" is checked off, so my intel seems fine. My main roadblock is Assemble a New Sick Crew. ​Right now, I have Karolina Ramses, Holocene, and Pseudopod available. However, Holocene refuses to work with old crew members (Pseudopod), leaving my squad grid empty. ​I tried to go the Yana route to bypass this, but when I visit Reno in his kitchen, I'm hitting a wall. He has no normal dialogue options left, and the POETICS [14] "Appreciate the model train" check only gives me a 7% success rate with Exert, which I can't reliably pass. ​Since I'm past the jail area, I can't visit Dante, and I can't find the Renotel technician either. ​How do I break this deadlock? Are there specific clothing items or thoughts I can use to boost my Poetics stat for Reno, or is there an alternative squad combination I can hunt down at this stage of the game? Any help is appreciated.

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.

Im looking for a screenshot of meltia saying "luck and skill operant" and am planning on turning it into a tattoo.

If anyone has and can send it to me, that would be great!

Thanks!

I love this game and the vast world it created, but one thing that really bothered me was the lack of an encyclopedia or journal entries. There is a journal, but it only keeps track of questlines. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Esoteric Ebb has an encyclopedia that lists every concept and city or town and faction and ideology in the game. It helps a lot for those that need a little recap or to know who is who and who's in power. This game is deep and there's a lot of concepts and factions that need knowing, Though for someone like me, it can get a little overwhelming. It's really hard to track or understand what it is I'm doing or which government or political agenda each character or place falls into. I still don't know what technofascism even is or where La Luz is from. It may seem like I'm just slow at comprehending these terms, but I never ran into this problem when playing Disco Elysium. I know where Martinaise is. I know where Harry lives. I know what the RCM does. I know about moralism and ultraliberalism and all that. Maybe the game is a bit overwhelming or maybe the game doesn't tell enough about the world despite having all these concepts. I've played for 10 hours or more I think and I still don't know much about the Opera and how they operate. But idk. Could be a skill issue on my part. Maybe I am just slow and not paying attention. Am I the only one?

Look, I tried to get into this game, but it completely misses the mark on what made DE a masterpiece. I have 15 hours spent on it now, so I was patient, but it does not get better at all.

The yapping is unreal. The game is massively bloated. Half the dialogue is completely irrelevant lore-dumping that doesn't affect the player at all, pushing abstract concepts that straight-up lack basic human common sense.

The entire premise is that you play a spy, but literally every single NPC knows you're a spy. What is even the point of the setup? Also, having to constantly swap outfits and look like a total clown just to pass stat checks completely nukes the immersion.

UI is garbage. There’s zero filtering for clothes. I spend 30% of my playtime just scrolling through a massive, unorganized junk pile of clothing items to find the specific gear I need for a check.

The thought system is honestly pretty shit. Instead of organic roleplaying, it’s a min-maxing nightmare where you're constantly stressing over which stat bonuses you're going to violate.

I don't understand what y'all see in this game, honest to god.

Loved this and Disco, working my way through Esoteric Ebb at the moment. Hooked on this style of game and wanting more. I loved NORCO, but its more of a standard point and click and not much of a Discolike. Rue Valley is meant to be good? What other good Discolikes are there?

i will be given a task, for example find the narc for the doctor but it gives me literally 0 info on where to find him other than a vague description of what he looks like, really frustrated with how unclear a lot of things are in this game so far.

>!So I think I messed up by choosing one of the dialogue options to retrieve papers for UV(so i have a task to go to reno's apartment). i've passed the statehood check to convince Yana, but when I went back to kaleidoscope there arent any new dialogue options. is there anything I can do? I really want to recruit him!<

Played DE before, where it was quite easy, heard the files are now encrypted. Did anyone find a way for max stats / max money runs?

From ArtStation!

I'm only about five hours in, so I probably haven't heard most of it, but what I have heard goes from unremarkable at its best and downright awful at its worst. everyone sounds half asleep, nobody has any sense of cadence, nobody can agree on the pronunciation of words like "pelota" and "Luzian" - which are at least foreign, I guess, but the guy at the bar can't even pronounce "gaudy" right which knocks the air out of his mystique right then and there

what happened? was there just no direction at all, were the voice actors just handed their lines and told to read them?

I hope the Opera covers GAHC for Himshel

I had the leaves fall on Day 8 but still wanted to do more in the silo and with Ramses. I've seen other people say they got up to Day 13. Is it based on readiness if you have a squad, gun and the plan already?