13 Sentinels: Ogata, Minami, Takamiya, Sekigahara, and Hijiyama
Ogata: Back to the loop and escaping is... remarkably straight-forward. It just put NPC Okino back in so we could leave that way again. Weird, I had picked up a Thought Cloud term from the bullies a while back and that... never became needed for any ending route. I guess the only purpose it had was to allow you to talk them down instead of being an instant reset if you walked that way after the first time or two. That's Ogata's story cleared.
Minami: Over to 2105 for more investigation. We eavesdrop on Gouto and smol!Morimura and while Morimura blames her memory lapses on being transplanted into Chihiro and having the brain of a child I wonder if that would be foreshadowing that she's just simulated by UC just I already know that from playing through Fuyusaka's story. Or maybe it's something unrelated that I'll see on Gouto's story. Or she's right about her explanation. Either way, Izumi figured out how to hack into the automated factory two loops ago. Once they leave, BJ, with some help from Minami, discovers Sentinel 17 is in orbit. Huuuh... I assumed we were on that satellite the whole time but maybe BJ's theory we're on the new planet is right. Will revisit this a bit later. Also we get trapped in 2025 by Shinonome for a second but after doing Takamiya's section below we proceed right to Minami's ending which is her becoming the pilot of Sentinel 17 and BJ recovering the logs but at the cost of his life. rip little guy.
Takamiya: Pretty short section where we go to check on Sekigahara to find him in bad shape, but BJ somehow got away from Shinonome and back to him and they point Takamiya to 2025 where we shoot a bunch of androids to save Minami. Since technically I did this ending before Minami's by necessity (just I rolled both of Minami's trips into the above section) this surprised me by being the first character ending that didn't flash-forward to the final battle like Fuyusaka and Ogata. But then Minami's didn't seem to either so I guess that was just a coincidence my first two endings did.
Sekigahara - Now here's some juicy info. Sekigahara tries to find Minami, finds Takamiya instead, but Takamiya was intentionally luring him over to Minami anyway, just presumably in a place with more privacy. She reveals that the SIU/Ida made her give Sekigahara a false message with that drone at the beginning of the story and BJ shows the real one - first further confirmation that it was 2188 Gouto who hired Sekigahara to kill Morimura but then an even juicier flashback where Sekigahara recalls meeting Ida in 2025 and we get the closest to a true explanation of what's going on here from him and... it matches up with a fair number of my previous ideas! It sounds very much like my idea that each time period is its own district and that it's not REALLY time travel when you shift between them is on the right track. Once the Deimos control each district the world resets and each district is created from 16 years before the present-game dates. Ida claims we're supposed to reach 2188 but the Deimos invasions prevent that. He then recruits Sekigahara to his side of stopping Morimura and Operation Aegis because that would end the possibility of looping with the promise he can save him and Shinonome. While I do trust Ida on his explanation of loops the rest of it is a bit sus because he's very clearly and obviously manipulating Sekigahara here who is so desperate he just rolls with it and agrees to betray BJ!Miura and retrieve the data logs for Ida.
Hijiyama: Even more juicy info here when we stumble upon another 2188 log where it's revealed there was a dispute on the space station between Okino who wanted to direct their remaining power to life support for the people on the station and Ogata who wanted the power to go to Project Ark. Izumi ends up shooting and killing Okino and Ogata apparently kills at least Ogata and maybe Izumi in retaliation. The data files say seven people died and Ogata was one of them at least. Shinonome and Ida are mentioned by Ogata to have survived. Another branch leads us to Okino taking Hijiyama to the UFO and giving a bit more detail on how the Control Key works. The D-Code just has to have a commander and contact to Universal Control/the UFO mainframe, the automated factories in 2105, and - Okino suspects - the satellite. The big shock to me though was this all revealed, along with the other branches in this session for Hijiyama, how in the dark Okino is on a lot of the fundamental mysteries. I had been assuming from near the start that he was actually one of, if not the most, informed on the reality of the situation perhaps rivaled only by Ida, Morimura, and 426/Izumi, but this showed he's still in the midst of figuring it out, and arguably behind a few of the other cast members...
Overall: So now my primary question is where exactly is everyone. I assumed they were on the interstellar satellite thing because IIRC the data file gives dimensions for it that basically match the buried UFO - 30 km diameter, etc. and that the cast thinking the UFO is a separate thing is because they are, Amiguchi/Takamiya-excepted unaware that the outside world is an illusion and they're actually in a 30km cage. But BJ seems to make it pretty clear that Sentinel 17 is on an artificial satellite 500 km above them so that probably rules that out unless there's some massive generation ship thing enclosing everything else here (there's mention about a prospective planet/system 12 light years away in a scene somewhere earlier so I can't TRULY rule this out yet.) So for now I'm going to assume the Satellite arrived at whatever planet it was meant to terraform, detached part of itself to form the buried UFO/base (hence why the dimensions still match) while the rest of it stays in orbit (almost certainly Sector 0.) Not sure though.
There's also the matter of the Project Ark dispute, the factions involved, and the matter of what the other sectors are (I'm still placing my bet on shifting being more physical transportation than temporal but I have many questions still whose answers could still debunk that idea.)
In any event, next up will be Miura and I'm pretty sure that will end up lifting a lock on Sekigahara but after that more fighting I believe.
---
xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?