ZA/UM announced Zero Parades: Director’s Cut, a free update for its espionage RPG Zero Parades: For Dead Spies that arrives on PC on October 1. The studio said in a press release and a Steam post that the update adds "approximately 40,000 words of new material", Rock Paper Shotgun reported.
The new writing covers more opportunities to bond with allies and handlers, additional routes through difficult situations, and further material on protagonist Hershel Wilk’s state of mind. Its centrepiece is a new encounter set on the Quisach Roundabout.
Hershel Wilk and her old friend Ramses find themselves stoned out of their minds, behind the wheel of a hijacked tuk-tuk and seemingly unable to escape the Quisach Roundabout late at night. The objective seems simple enough. Take the right exit and head home. Fail to do so, and well... things might get existential. And possibly fatal.
Voice-over, Backstage Mode and extras
The game’s English voice-over, which shipped incomplete, has been finished, and sections including the introduction were re-recorded for what ZA/UM called "a more consistent performance and audio quality". A new Backstage Mode lets players move through earlier iterations of selected levels to see how those environments changed during development, with cut content and commentary narrated by art director Kaspar Tamsalu.
New clothing, new character portraits, new interactions and death screens, a photosensitivity mode and a set of quality-of-life improvements round out the update, according to PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun.
The update is timed to the game’s console release. PC Gamer reported that the Director’s Cut is free for existing owners on October 1, and that Zero Parades launches on PlayStation 5 on November 3.
Zero Parades: For Dead Spies released four months ago. In July, ZA/UM announced that up to 32 staff were being laid off or were at risk of being laid off, citing the game’s commercial performance as the reason for the downsizing.
