Board 8 > Anagram plays Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

There are epilogue files you probably want to read first.

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Also great game

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Anagram posted...

Like, is no one going to address Mira being an insane murderer? She cut a guy's heart out of his chest and ate it while orgasming. This is significantly worse than the equivalent character in Danganronpa.

Life is simply unfair, don't you think?
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Yeah the epilogue files should be read.

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Alright, I'll reinstall the game and read them.

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Wesker voicing Delta makes everything about Delta palpable. Only he can say ridiculous lines like complex motives and mind hacking confidently.

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Also the Zero Escape subreddit had some really great memes for a while after ZTD immediately released. I'm sure more will be posted later, but I'll just post these two for now.




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Anagram posted...

Then back to Sigma and Diana after they're stranded in the reality where Phi is dead and the game is already over. Sigma says "well, I can shift, so I'll just leave." Haha, no he doesn't, he says they have to wait ten months for the transporter to recharge.
"I truly wish that's true."
I actually kind of like these scenes of Diana and Sigma killing time.
Diana pulls out Luna's blue bird music box from the second game, and Sigma clearly didn't know she had it. But didn't she have it during the time you spent with her on the moon, and passed it on to Luna?
"Nothing's changed, it's all the same! The same scenery, the same can every day." This series just can't stop predicting Covid, huh?
Diana used to be married? She looks like she's 25.
Oh my God, Diana's voice actress doesn't know how to act drunk at all. This is like in Stranger Things s2 when what's-her-face does the worst drunk acting of all time.
Huh, didn't expect them to actually have sex. I mean, if you were trapped for ten months with someone and had nothing else to do, yes, you'd probably spend that time boning everywhere, I was actually going to make that joke. Probably you wouldn't have sex in an alien transporter pod, and then put your clothes back on after sex so the animators wouldn't have to model naked people.
Three months later, their clothes are still in pristine condition. I don't remember a laundry machine, dammit.
Diana gives birth to twins, and the babies' faces are just a complete JPEG nightmare. Wait a second, if they only had enough food to barely scrape by for ten months, and Diana was pregoh whatever.
Okay, Sigma's bracelet is appearing and disappearing between shots, I wasn't certain before, but I am now.
Sigma says "let's transport the babies into another dimension before 2009 when there's still food, but I guess this only copies them so the two of us will still see our children starve to death here, but I won't mention that because it's depressing."
If you're a woman, and your husband says he wants to name your daughter after his dead girlfriend, how angry are you? I mean, yes, I can see that baby Phi is going to turn out to be our Phi, which is weird because Sigma in the second game kept hitting on her, but Diana doesn't know that.
Diana, how about you put a warning letter in the transport pod that explaoh whatever.
Baby End get.

People joke about "alien fax machines"
But those parts you mentioned are the best in the game. They are legit great

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Anagram posted...

Q points to the screen and yells it's Delta. So the plot twist is that the third person perspective of the game all along has just been the first person perspective of a guy wearing sunglasses that connect into the cameras, and no one ever referenced him until just now, and everyone knew the kid's name was Sean all along? Are we to assume that any time Mira escaped, Delta was just there, watching? Because, I mean, if Q Team had four members the entire time, why was no one asking about that? And where was Delta's fake wheelchair when he was pulled out of a pod by Sigma and Diana? Or if he was outside of the pod all along... oh forget it.

You kind of took a dump on the animations in the beginning of the topic, and I wanted to defend it and say "they had limited budget" but then I realized it could have been 2D like 999 and VLR and that's it...so why they went for 3D when they knew it would look so bad?

Purely because of this twist
I am too tired to look for Q&A to see if they admitted this but it wouldn't surprise me
UshiromiyaEva posted...

Finally.

https://youtu.be/mfOsjVT8mlU

Lightning Strikes posted...

Dammit, I wanted to post that.

Oh so I wasn't the only one
I am sad to see that after all those years, it's still has so little views


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Since you're done with the series, I guess I can just link to the ZE wiki now.

https://zeroescape.fandom.com/wiki/Answers

This is the interview Q&A given after 999 released and after VLR released. There's a lot of good info in there, including some cool stuff, like the 999 cast being based on enneagram results.

...You can also see all the stuff that would be "answered by the third game" that...well, you already know how it ends.

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You may have finally leveled up your VN power level enough to read Umineko.

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tl;dr
Danganronpa >= Ace Attorney > Zero Escape
ZE1 > ZE2 > ZE3
Delta plot twist bad
ZE3 disappointing, but at least it wraps up the story
I enjoyed the series, but it could have been better

Thoughts on the Series' Story
I'm not even going to try to explain how the plot developments in ZE2 and 3 contradict each other and the first game. Just, basically, you can either have "going back in time affects your current timeline" or "going back in time doesn't affect your current timeline," and the series tries to have it both ways, and that's not to its benefit.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of this as a coherent story. The first game is this simple little tale about a guy mastering his psychic powers to save his girlfriend in the past, and then the second and third games immediately turn that into a giant epic plot about saving the world. I never got the impression in the first game that things needed to progress in that direction. This is like if AA1 was as it is, then AA2 was about Phoenix having to debate intergalactic conquerors to save the world.

I'll say this for ZE3, though: it delivers. ZE2 said the sequel would be about going to the Nevada research facility and stopping the virus from getting out, and to the game's enormous credit, it delivers on that promise with a budget of fifty dollars.

I already went into this earlier, by the way, but the idea that there's supposed to be this huge ethical dilemma about dooming your past self to a confusing death by switching places with them right before you die, after Carlos, Junpei, Akane, Sigma, and Phi have repeatedly done this throughout the game, is outright ****ing bizarre. Akane goes out of her way to explain why it's immoral with a Back to the Future analogy, and then they all just do it anyway like a dozen times, and then, at the extreme end of the game, they're like "maybe we shouldn't." I have no idea what the writers were smoking.

Thoughts on ZE Compared to DR and AA
People compare ZE to DR and AA a lot. I don't know about that. There's a very clear parallel between DR and AA, but aside from being a VN series with plot twists, ZE seems more in that circle of "weird Japanese things that are complicated for the sake of being complicated and looking super smart, but fall apart if you think about them for a moment."

As games, DR and AA blow it out of the water (DR > AA > ZE). As a vehicle to learn about cool characters, they blow it out of the water (AA > DR > ZE). As coherent stories that make sense, DR blows it out of the water, and AA isn't trying to have a singular story anyway.

One thing I'll say about ZE, though, is that despite having the highest concept ideas, it feels the most grounded. That's an interesting contradiction. The only time ZE feels as wacky and anime-y as the others is with the second game's character designs, but even then the writing remains the most grounded, so it does still have an identity of its own.

Thoughts on the Epilogue Files
Why did you guys tell me to read these? They actually made the game worse. Junpei and Akane getting married and Carlos' sister getting better, fine, whatever. Those were better left unstated, but whatever. "Old Phi became a researcher and kept working into her 100s." Look, that's great and all, but how about telling me why did a German scientist in 1904 sent her to 2008? I can't think of a single reason to do that. And Mira just turns herself in to the police because she wants to make amends and stay with Eric? What? She showed zero remorse about any of her actions and clearly stated her complete contempt for him. Nothing changed for her the entire game, that makes no sense.


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Thoughts on the Delta twist
I can tell this is the most controversial element of the game. How could it not be? I'm just going to say it: it's incredibly stupid and bad. It's also stupid and bad in two different ways, which makes it interesting to talk about.

• First, it's comparable to the Titanic, "actually a base in Nevada," and "you're on the moooooon" twists, in that those are all completely pointless and have no payoff and are just there to have epic plot twists. They don't actually change the stakes of the game or anyone's actions. Revealing that there was actually a tenth guy in ZE3 the entire time and only the audience didn't know is an example of a plot twist that changes nothing and is just there to shock you. What I'm saying is this: you could have had the audience be aware that there was a blind, deaf old man the entire time, and the plot of the game doesn't change. No one's actions change. From the perspective of the characters, the twist is just that Delta isn't blind and dead, not that Delta exists. The only difference that showing Delta from the start would have is that the audience would instantly know that the old man is behind everything, because how could he not be. So, this is just the last in a line of epic plot twists that exist for the sake of epic plot twists. It's the plot twist equivalent of that one treasure chest in Final Fantasy 4 where you have to click A behind a pillar that Cecil would be able to easily see, but that the audience can't because of the perspective.
• Just to be crystal clear about this, compare this plot twist to AA's or Danganronpa's, where the plot twists in those games are actually consequential and make you think about the rest of the game differently. In AA6, Dhurke being dead all along as he reunites with Apollo in ghost form completely changes their relationship and colors all of Dhurke's actions. In Danganronpa 1, the world being destroyed before the game ever starts makes everyone's actions until this point completely pointless and despairful. Or hell, even in ZE2, the "you're actually in the future" plot twist has stakes and consequences, so even this series understands how to do it.
• As an aside, I'll admit the idea of "the third person perspective was actually someone's first person perspective all along" is interesting in a fourth wall-breaking way, but the game cheats it all the time when Delta is dead or after the reveal, so it's not even particularly consistent.
• Second, the twist is completely absurd. I understand that it's foreshadowed, but the idea that no one ever mentioned Delta aloud until the extreme end of the game, that Eric and Mira never talked about why Sean wasn't on the leaderboard or mentioned his name, that the paranoid lunatic Eric never suspected Delta, and that no one was ever worried about the whole wheelchair issue, I mean, give me a break. There's "everyone avoids mentioning Tidus' name because the player can name him anything, so the dialogue is slightly awkward" and then there's this. And that's before you go into how he's still alive at 125. Wasn't he alive in the second game, fifty years later? Dio specifically mentions that he's still alive. Are you telling me that he lived to be 175? That's okay in like Breath of the Wild where it's a fantasy game and Impa can just be 200 years old without explanation, but Zero Escape ostensibly takes place on normal Earth. And why, in the name of God, did Sigma send Delta and Phi back to 1904? I understand sending them back before 2009, but why would you send them to 1904 of all times? When this was said, I assumed it would tie into the Titanic stuff from the first game, but that never comes up, so why not just send them to 1950 or something so the ages make sense? Not that they make sense anyway given ZE2. And how does Delta even know when and where he's supposed to be born if Sigma didn't include that information and literally no one knows it in his timeline? I mean, look, I don't want to pick apart the million plot holes and extreme conveniences here, my point is less that it's a bad twist and more that nothing about it makes any sense at all.
• So yeah, like, you got me, game. You tricked me. I did not see this coming, because it's so dumb and silly that I don't think anyone could have.

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SSBM_Guy posted...

Since you're done with the series, I guess I can just link to the ZE wiki now.

https://zeroescape.fandom.com/wiki/Answers

This is the interview Q&A given after 999 released and after VLR released. There's a lot of good info in there, including some cool stuff, like the 999 cast being based on enneagram results.

...You can also see all the stuff that would be "answered by the third game" that...well, you already know how it ends.

Oh jeez, this is neat, thank you.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

You may have finally leveled up your VN power level enough to read Umineko.

The only things I know about Umineko are the "magic is real" meme and "small bombs in the food" meme.

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Wow you just casually dropped a massive AA6 spoiler in there

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Anagram posted...

The only things I know about Umineko are the "magic is real" meme and "small bombs in the food" meme.

I was trying to figure out what dumb meme to post but instead I'm just gonna say that Umineko is my #1 game and you should play it one day.

Doubt you are interests in a 120 hour VN with no gameplay at this time, though, lol.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Wow you just casually dropped a massive AA6 spoiler in there

GodDAMMIT I spoilered the text and then copied it and it didn't save the spoiler bar, I hope no one saw that who didn't already play it.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Wow you just casually dropped a massive AA6 spoiler in there

RIP me :(

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There's a bunch of great VNs with no gameplsy. Not sure if you'd be interested in that - maybe start with something like DDLC as its short and mainstream

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KamikazePotato posted...

RIP me :(

Goddammit, I'm really sorry.

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I recommend DDLC as well. Here's a write-up I did in the sports discord channel ranking topic I'm heading up.

For the one time in my list, I refuse to go too far into why I enjoyed this game so much. I know were more than 2 years removed from when this game took the internet by storm, but if you somehow have never heard of this game and dont mind a 3 hour read, I highly recommend checking it out. Its free. Go search for it on Steam and grab it. Dont look at the tags or the reviews; just download it and see for yourself what its about. It is not your run-of-the-mill dating sim. It. goes places.

Caveat: if you suffer from depression or have ever had a bad experience with someone near you having suicidal thoughts or tendencies, please do not play this game. It is not for everyone. That said, it had me glued to my screen until I finished it, and there are a good 10-15 moments that will absolutely stick with me forever.

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I've already played DDLC, it's the only other VN I've played, but thank you for the suggestions.

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yeah if you want a casual VN that's just strictly plot, DDLC is a good one to start with since it's pretty short

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One day I'll have to try DDLC. Feel like knowing everything about it might make that pointless, though. Got too mainstream, spoilers got too casual.

My go-to for shorter VNs nowadays is Fata Morgana which is my #2 game. Of course that's only "short" in context, still like 35 hours.

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13 Sentinels is the real next step for something in the same vein as VLR (but better)!
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yeah I need to play 13 Sentinels soon

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Actually 13 Sentinels might be a top 10 breaker. The back half of my top 10 is all a bit more towards my older tastes, while my front half has been updated quite a bit. Will need to get further away from it.

Oooh, Raging Loop is another VN I really liked. It's on sale right now for a very decent price.

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The Delta twist is fucking hilarious. ZTD is a bad game with a terrible plot but some of the shit that happens is just gold. I actually like all the dumb trickery around Delta - like the ENTER Q'S NAME stuff when you're choosing who to kill, which is very strongly implying the kid is NOT Q. Also stuff like Q being dead or not dead on the alive/dead screen can imply stuff if you look at the right time. There's a whole bunch of stuff. They actually DO bring up the fact that there's just randomly a kid in that group, pretty early too!

Also, play Ghost Trick next. You absolutely must play Ghost Trick.

YES GHOST TRlCK

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The House in Fata Morgana is exceptional and I recommend it to basically anyone. I feel its art style and story content make it a good fit for who like anime but don't care so much for anime tropes.

Only heard of 13 Sentinels in this topic, so hey, adding it to my personal list!

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Oh yeah, Ghost Trick is from the creator of Ace Attorney, and it is very good.

also Hotel Dusk/Last Window if you want some hardboiled detectives in a pencil-drawn art style

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Thirding Ghost Trick. Very, very good game.

I just finished the introduction to 13 Sentinels and I think it's very good. Still got a long way to go though.

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Can also highly recommend both Hotel Dusk/Last Window.

Last Window only came out in PAL, so if you wanna get that one legitimately, be prepared to import. It's worth it, though.

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I think ZTD not being great but me not caring that it isn't good sums it up best.

Like, yeah it's a mess, but I was literally walking around my living room and even jumped up and down a couple times whik the D Team family stuff was being revealed, so who cares??

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Hotel Dusk/Last Window is pretty good and a breath of fresh air if you're tired of visual novels with anime tropes. It's definitely more of a point-and-click adventure than a VN.

I do have some love for ZTD. I think it definitely provokes a reaction moreso than the other games. Also, Carlos is hilarious.

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I like ZTD for the memes and I'm largely a sucker for big nonsensical plot twists.
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ZTD is 90% great and 10% really dumb.

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Eh I'm just glad it got to wrap up the trilogy. Not in the most elegant way, but better than having VLR as the last game I suppose.

Oh and Ana, your character ranking?

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I have an unironic love for ZTD, and it pulls off everything it tries to do, albeit with colossal amounts of sweeping certain details under the rug. It wobbles, but it actually manages to land a ridiculously complex story successfully.

Also I hope you went and entered Delta into the who to shoot box!

Anyway, if nothing else I hope the various games discussed and suggested here show you how meaningless the term visual novel is!

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ZTD was obviously in a bad place with how the first two games didn't sell very well, and I am fairly unhappy with the outcome. Powerful memes though.

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This was a fun read! ZTD is quite possibly my favorite game in the series, which I know is an... uncommon opinion.

999 is probably objectively the most solid but injecting the paranormal late into an otherwise *not* paranormal story is one of my biggest pet peeves so I was upset with that game for a very long time even if it was done quite well. VLR has that stuff right out of the gate but I feel like a lot of that game's lasting impact is just empty hype that ZTD was expected to cash in on. While meeting those expectations was impossible, I think it managed to be a lot of fun with some of the most memorable bits in the series.

Oh and if we're throwing out adventure game recommendations I'll 100% lend my voice to those calling for Ghost Trick. Absurdly good game, that one.

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Ghost Trick really falls specifically into that "visual novel with puzzles and a big mystery story" category of games that these others fall into

The Delta twist is great. ZTD is also easily better than 999 imo, and I go back and forth on ZTD vs VLR.

AA >> ZE >> DR

Ghost Trick and 13 Sentinels are both fantastic. AI: The Somnium Files is also very good.

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I think VLR is the best of the series because of the way it manages to spin the story in all of these directions convincingly, even if it is able to do that in part because it doesnt need to wrap everything up. ZTD largely works for the same reason, and its impressive that it basically wraps everything up in a way that is consistent with the series if a bit inelegant.

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ZTD's presentation ruined it for me. The text/dialogue is wayyy too slow. I would've liked it a lot more if the presentation had been more like 999 or VLR.

Has some issues with characters, too. Junpei and Akane are basically trash compared to their 999/VLR incarnations. Phi and Sigma aren't quite as sharp here either, and I liked Luna more than Diana, too.

Mira becoming a good person might be the worst moment in the game.
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Raka_Putra posted...

Oh and Ana, your character ranking?

Snake > Phi > Luna > Sigma > Ace > Akane > Diana > Junpei > K > Eric > Seven > Santa > Carlos > Clover > Alice > Dio > Lotus > Delta > Sean > Quark > Mira
This is definitely the weakest of the three series as far as characters go. I liked the first game's characters the most for sure. Luna, Sigma, and Phi are great, but the other later characters aren't. Junpei suffers the most from worse writing as time goes on, but he's still okay.

I still can't believe they made Mira turn good at the end. It makes so little sense.

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Wait a second, why did Delta kill the dog in the second to last timeline?

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the dog knew too much

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I'm quite surprised you put Eric quite high (well, in the middle of the pack really). Though I'll admit he's good for the memes.

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