Acclaimed indie developer ZA/UM is partial to a letter-and-number codename. Project Y12 and X7, purported to be a Disco Elysium standalone expansion and sequel, have since been canceled. Project M0 is rumored to be an Elysium spin-off for touchscreen devices. That leaves Project P1, a sci-fi RPG that (you guessed it) was reportedly canceled following producer Kaur Kender’s departure, and – “This is not Disco Elysium 2,” Disco Elysium’s producer and writer Siim “Kosmos” Sinamäe confirms in a closed-door presentation alongside lead voice-over director Jim Ashelevi. “This is C4.” Explosive.
What follows is a 57-second teaser trailer for the RPG that simultaneously offers too much and nothing at all, narrated by a low-voiced cockney with a bitter slant to her words. Delicate fingers pluck a blood-red, origami rabbit from a white-furred colony suspended in the negative space of a bisected skull held aloft by disembodied hands. Wingless cherubs clutch briefcases housing eyeballs connected by an etheric thread as a modern-day Mad Hatter emerges from a paper coffee cup.
These illustrations take a different approach to the Rostovian expressionism that so characterized Disco Elysium. Instead, these dioramas evoke Salvador Dali’s paranoiac-critical surrealism. They are stark, yet unreal. As our cockney friend narrates: “Obliteration wears a rented suit.”
So, what’s this actually all about, then? To quote Ashilevi, “spy stuff” – but perhaps not quite as we know it in videogames. “It is not 007, with his hero complex, the Bond girls, the gadgets. It’s more like Slow Horses,” Ashilevi says, referring to Apple’s acclaimed British spy thriller based on Mick Herron’s Slough House book series. “Doing the work you love, even if it does not get you any fame or parades.”
Espionage games broadly fall into one of two categories: action shooters or anodyne simulators, neither of which capture the brow-beaten working man that stands as literary counterpart to Mr. Shaken-Not-Stirred. As a devoted fan of John le Carré, this is my absolute favorite brand of spy. Ashilevi gives special mention to “the original master of spy fiction” and suggests that the plot movements and deft characterization exemplified in the Karla Trilogy is ZA/UM’s model for this project.
Admittedly, I don’t see much of the buttoned-up practicality of George Smiley in the surrealist nightmare that passes for C4’s teaser trailer. That brings Sinamäe to the other half of ZA/UM’s hypothetical mood board: the weird fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, and Stanisław Lem. “We are standing on the shoulders of giants,” Ashilevi adds. Suffice it to say, John le Carré’s in good company.
If this sounds all very conceptual, that’s because it is. There is no gameplay shown here, not even an in-game screenshot, but one thing is clear: no matter which form C4 takes, player choice reigns supreme. “Will you be loyal to your friend and asset, or choose your service over them? Will you dedicate yourself to your assignment, or be held back by your vices?” Sinamäe wonders. “At the end of the day, whose side are you on?” So far, so Disco. I can practically feel Kim Kitsuragi’s disapproving stare.
Of course, ZA/UM is a very different studio than it was during Disco Elysium’s development. Its in-house cultural collective has long since dissolved and dispersed, with Disco Elysium’s chief creative visionaries scattered to the winds in the wake of the studio’s fallout. “Failing forward seems to be one of the things we here at ZA/UM excel at,” Sinamäe says, and I can’t help but consider how that statement applies to the studio’s fraught history.
While Sinamäe and Ashilevi are familiar names and faces for Disco fans, ZA/UM is a veritable ship of Theseus. According to Sinamäe, the studio now plays host to “a wider, more expanded team, with many new faces bringing in their skills and fresh perspectives.”
“We have truly learned a lot,” he adds.
A spy story wasn’t quite what I expected from ZA/UM, but in hindsight, it checks out. “Conspiracies strangle this world,” C4’s teaser proclaims. Perhaps this project is as much an insight into the psychology of a studio mired in years of controversy, lawsuits, and scrutiny.
As our narrator invites the viewer to “one last dance on the remains of your humanity,” it remains to be seen if C4 is ZA/UM’s own swan song. In the wake of the studio’s rupture, its estranged founders have announced a flurry of spiritual successors. I expect fans will draw those battle lines accordingly. For my part, I’m intrigued – and intrigue is the genesis of any good spy story.
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