Board 8 > Time for me to fumble through Zero Time Dilemma

(+) Yeah! (+)

*ongoing spoilers for ZTD and potential spoils for 999/VLR*

I'm finally getting around to finishing the Zero Escape series. I've made topics here for both 999 and VLR, so I might as well do one for the divisive third entry as well!

I reread my VLR topic to refresh my memories on the ongoing plot, which very rudely ended with an abrupt sequel tease. Hopefully I've not forgotten anything major. All I know about the third game going in is that people tend to be pretty down on it, unfortunately.

Here's my VLR character rankings fwiw:
Luna > Alice > Tenmyouji > Sigma > K > Phi > Clover > Quark > Dio > Akane/Zero

We start in Nevada Desert, of course, with some unusual new aesthetic choices. Why are their eyes so bright? Akane is here (spoilers she probably did it), Sigma, Phi, Junpei (!), and a bunch of newbies- Carlos, Mira, Eric, Q (Quark somehow?), and Diana. And a new plague doctor Zero! We get the coin flip right and win the game, the end. :D

After our new game introduction, I pick Team Carlos to see how Akane and Jumpy are doing, though I doubt they'll explain anything this early on. Carlos plays third wheel to the very icy couple as Junpei acts uncharacteristically bitter and is seemingly uncaring of anything going on. Whew, interesting. The whole gang has been together for 5 days, unlike the past games, so nobody is a complete stranger. I of course vote D team, then head to play as them and see how our second game's protags are doing.

Phi and Siggy are their usual bantering selves, and thankfully they've already told everyone the reason they're here. I vote Q team, but it would have been funny for Diana to pick C team after everybody agreed Q was the only real option.

Next up, Eric and Mira are maybe a couple and Q has amnesia. Mira's incredibly bright eyes are more distracting than her chest, what a ridiculous design. But if the similarly styled Lotus and Alice are any indication, I'll wind up quite liking her and she'll be almost entirely irrelevant to the central plot. I vote C.

Next up... huh? Instead of the next step after the voting, we get fourteen new memory fragments to choose from. This is weird. I pick one of the C pictures that looks interesting, which takes us to a Monty Hall problem. No idea what's going on here but hey we have a puzzle room!

I miss having the touchscreen to write notes on. Oh, well. We work through the quest (I bruteforce the password after getting only 3 of the 4 cards whoops) and wouldn't you know, Junpei still puts Akane's wellbeing first and he and Carlos die while she escapes alone. Bad end. ...Is this how this game works? We randomly jump all over the timeline with no linear continuity or knowledge? Surely not, but we'll see how things go from here.

Oooh, tag. I was randomly thinking about this series earlier today. Your last topic was probably the last time I actually saw anything with it.

Tag and also have you played Ever17?

andylt posted...

...Is this how this game works? We randomly jump all over the timeline with no linear continuity or knowledge?

Uhh, yeah! In the beginning, it pretty much is!

You can change to timeline view at the selection menu to see where those choices fit chronologically, but in the beginning, it's REALLY not that helpful.

Tag.

Diana my beloved.

I liked ZTD a lot! Actually didn't mind the way they did the memory fragments and timeline jumping. It worked for me. D Team best team.

ZTD had its moments, but overall I think it's the weakest of the three.

Hot take: despite its obvious flaws, ZTD has some of my favourite moments in any visual novel, and I think all three games in the series are similarly good overall.

Hope you feel the same way!

(Tag)

Tag even though I've forgotten a lot of this game.

I think the best moments of ZTD are right up there with those from the other games, but overall I do agree that it's the weakest game in the series.

D team is indeed the best.

Glad to see some fans of the game, hopefully I'll be one of them!

foolm0r0n posted...

Tag and also have you played Ever17?

I have not! The only Uchikoshi games I've played are 999, VLR, and the first Somnium Files.

I think ZTD is a clear superior to VLR but I never liked VLR that much. 999 is in its own league and basically flawless so it's hard to compare.

Giggsalot posted...

Hot take: despite its obvious flaws, ZTD has some of my favourite moments in any visual novel, and I think all three games in the series are similarly good overall.

Zero Time Dilemma isn't a visual novel!

(and it's much worse off for it)

th3l3fty posted...

Zero Time Dilemma isn't a visual novel!

(and it's much worse off for it)

visual novels aren't an actual thing though.

Japanese people just lump them all into the adventure genre, regardless of how much or how little gameplay elements they have.
'
'visual novel' is just a marketing trademark/advertisement slogan (based on other games billing themselves as 'sound novels' like a lot of early nes games or Higurashi), like how MGS is 'tactical espionage action' or Tales games claim to be really goofy chuuni genres like 'finding the meaning of birth rpg' or 'justice rpg'.

He just means you have to listen to them talk instead of just reading it and that hurts the game (which is does tbh, even though I like the voices overall)

Mr_Crispy posted...

visual novels aren't an actual thing though.

Japanese people just lump them all into the adventure genre, regardless of how much or how little gameplay elements they have.
'
'visual novel' is just a marketing trademark/advertisement slogan (based on other games billing themselves as 'sound novels' like a lot of early nes games or Higurashi), like how MGS is 'tactical espionage action' or Tales games claim to be really goofy chuuni genres like 'finding the meaning of birth rpg' or 'justice rpg'.

Does it matter how Japanese people classify them? We're speaking English.

th3l3fty posted...

Zero Time Dilemma isn't a visual novel!

(and it's much worse off for it)

Not sure if you're referring to the puzzle gameplay elements. If so, I disagree as I tended to like those and they sometimes play into the story.

Next up, Team D (sans Phi) head to a cool looking transporter room. The mechanics of the dimension-traveling here remind me a lot of another sci fi game. As it happens, this fragment comes directly after the one I last played on the flowchart, what are the chances! I promise I didn't look that up.

I work out the puzzle mathematically and later realise you can tell some of the numbered cards by the lines/dots on the pictures oops. Afterwards, Sigma pushes a random button (lol) which sends us to a different timeline, and we wind up in a locker room. I like the banter between Sigma and Diana, the callbacks to his cat talk, him wearing a bucket on his head, the two of them repeatedly walking into the enclosed shower room, Diana thinking her singing triggered the music box, this is a fun room! We come to a locked door that requires an 8-digit password I doubt I have yet, and so ends this little journey.

We then have to head to the other Sigma and Diana who were left behind, Sigma seems a bit confused but he at least has a grasp on the basics of the duplication=/=teleportation idea. Nothing we can do here, so over to team Q.

We're a duo again as Eric and Q are in a pod room. The puzzles here are basic but I enjoy spinning the room around, and the two guys have a nice convo where Q explains how this world and these people are all he knows and Eric settles down a little for the first time. It's a sweet scene, though it doesn't last long. After the puzzle is done, we find Mira's body (I still cannot take her character design seriously), and Eric freaks out over a childhood incident where I surmise his dad killed his brother Chris and forced Eric to shove his body into a lake. That's pretty messed up, and so is witnessing Junpei's disembodied head and then watching Carlos brutally murdering Akane (?!), but I don't think it justifies Eric pointing a shotgun at a child and murdering him. So much for the bonding!

I try a couple of different names to keep Q alive- Zero and Eric don't work, and a couple of others provide a unique response but it doesn't look like I can keep this fragment going for the time being.

Checking in with Team C, it... turns out we're poisoned. OK! Junpei cannot even begin to give a fuck about Zero's stories, and I like this turn for him. He teases coming here to do something, I wonder what. We pick the right antidote, though Akane does most of the work for us, and have a good old talk about morphogenetic fields. Everybody's favourite topic, right, Junpei?

After another dead end, it's back to Team D. Phi is with us this time, in this game's version of Gaulem Bay. The rooms here are vaguely reminiscent of the previous games but I don't see why they're all put together like this, what could the purpose be... Seeing robots triggers Sigma, and I wonder if he's remembering Luna. After fending off a very annoying meme robot named Betty, Sigma and Diana have a nice chat and we get some more of his backstory. He does mention Luna, yay! And a woman named D, who I don't think we knew about from VLR.

I wonder if Diana is (or will become) the 'D' that Luna is eventually based on. They have similar mannerisms and voice (as best I can remember), and the appearance is passable with this new artstyle. It would explain why these two get along so well. Or maybe Diana is the next robot that comes after ABC. On second thought, it's probably best I don't start randomly accusing everyone of being a robot again >_> Either way, I'm happy Luna hasn't been forgotten.

We have some silly bomb shenanigans and I wonder why everybody believes Zero about Team Q's location, given the very strong incentive for Zero to stop the bomb going off here. Though I'm sure it's all a part of the plan, there wouldn't be a bomb around if setting it off wasn't within the parameters of the game. I go both routes here, Sigma turns on his Hero Mode in one path and the other has Diana stun both her teammates and then fail miserably, lol.

And just in case they're relevant, here's the X-passes we've been given in the diff routes so far:
June, Jump, Virgin, Blue, Red, Milk
Eye, Kill, Fool
Fire, Crash, Five

I'm enjoying myself well enough so far, though it's a little hard to get invested when we have to switch routes so frequently.

Tag.

andylt posted...

I try a couple of different names to keep Q alive- Zero and Eric don't work, and a couple of others provide a unique response but it doesn't look like I can keep this fragment going for the time being.

Very minor spoilers that I honestly think you should read, but it's up to you:
This "decision" is kinda weird, because it certainly makes you feel like you need to actually know the answer to this before you get it right, but you don't, and a ton of people get stuck here. You can totally answer that from the very beginning.
Continuation of previous section, but includes a hint:
Just put yourself in Q's shoes and do or say what you think he might actually do or say.

Personally, I didn't mind switching routes so much, and thought it was kind of an interesting story telling technique.

Fiop posted...

Not sure if you're referring to the puzzle gameplay elements. If so, I disagree as I tended to like those and they sometimes play into the story.

it's the rest of the game that changed - the non-puzzle sections went from heavily text to heavily cutscenes

Yeah I'd also say ZTD is not a visual novel, mainly because you don't do that much reading, it's a different story format. Has nothing to do with the puzzles/gameplay

I replayed Zero Time Dilemma for the first time since launch a few months ago. Still had an absolute blast with it, flaws and all.

ZTD being a VN or not is a weird one for me since I'm inclined to say no but if you slapped text boxes over the cutscenes and made me click to advance dialogue (or even just tick an auto play toggle) I'd almost certainly say yes. Presentation matters, I suppose!

Xiahou_Shake posted...

ZTD being a VN or not is a weird one for me since I'm inclined to say no but if you slapped text boxes over the cutscenes and made me click to advance dialogue I'd almost certainly say yes. Presentation matters, I suppose!

Presentation DOES matter, I think! That's kind of the point.

FWIW I'm playing with Japanese audio so there is a lot of reading for me still lol. The EU 3DS release of VLR didn't support English audio so I decided to stay consistent.

MrSmartGuy posted...

This "decision" is kinda weird, because it certainly makes you feel like you need to actually know the answer to this before you get it right, but you don't, and a ton of people get stuck here. You can totally answer that from the very beginning.
Continuation of previous section, but includes a hint:
Just put yourself in Q's shoes and do or say what you think he might actually do or say.

Gotcha, I'll accuse Gab :)

Okay now that you read that I'll say yeah, that one had me stuck for a bit too when I played through on release and I ended up having to look it up, but you absolutely do have the information to "solve it" right now.

I powered through some more after the last update, I was in the mood tonight and had the time!

With Team Q we get our first but surely not last Radical-6 mention of the game! Also another virus with a 100% mortality rate. Zero sure likes telling stories about the heart ripper killer or whatever their name was from 17 years ago, and some woman who died. After the puzzle we have to choose whether to inject ourselves with Rad-6 or not. It's a neat choice, I decide to go for it and to my surprise Q's reasoning is the same as my own, way to go game.

This appears to be the correct choice, and leads to another story about Eric's sad childhood and why he smiles all the time. If he wasn't prone to murdering children I might really like him! It's a great bonding scene between the trio... that takes a sudden turn when Mira starts laughing at Eric's painful reveal. And then she says something about not guessing the right way to react. And then she kills Eric and Q with a scalpel, and starts laughing some more. I, uh... what? Huh?? Suicidal tendencies are a symptom of Rad-6, could the combined Rad-6 + FBR have created a murderous impulse instead? Or does Mira have some deeper issues going on? Why she suddenly decides to murder her boyfriend, I haven't a clue. I certainly didn't see that coming.

Team C then spends time in the rec room. Carlos tells a snippet of his backstory, urging Junpei to speak his mind while they're still alive as Jumpy stares at a ring (hm). I spend too long in this room because it takes me forever to notice the cigarettes on the bar. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise though, as upon victory we are rewarded by being gunned down. OK!

You know, I would almost respect this game if the goal here is to roll these dice hundreds of times until the odds go our way. Almost. I don't think they're quite that sadistic though, so I'll leave this be until we have more info or our super psychic timeline powers trigger or something.

I briefly pop back on the game after reading MSG's post to try some answers for Mira's killer. I was thinking what else I could type- someone else, a stranger, nobody, the strangler, anyone, but the idea I landed on is to type 'I dont know'. And sure enough, it works! Even without an apostrophe on the keyboard! Thank you for the hint :) Q starts bawling and that is enough to break Eric's rage and calm him down. We then get another story from him, recounting his and Mira's relationship. She reminds him of his mother (hmmmmm), and oddly enough he doesn't mention any sudden murderous tendencies of hers. The route locks off for no good reason, and that's that for tonight!

Another thing that works for that prompt is to simply let the timer run out. It leads to the same cutscene because "you didn't know" what to type.

th3l3fty posted...

it's the rest of the game that changed - the non-puzzle sections went from heavily text to heavily cutscenes

Oh, interesting. I hadn't thought of a VN definition being more based on the "novel" part (though I don't care too much about genre labels). I kinda like the cut scenes, but I guess I can see how the text approach could have appeal.

I think I got stuck on that "I don't know" part for awhile as well, until I came to a similar conclusion.

My personal criteria for 'is it a VN or not?' is based on reading and also if the main point of the game is the reading or not.

IE I considering the Utawarerumono series a VN but not, say, GBA/GC era Fire Emblem, despite both having strategy RPG gameplay with dialogue segments using still portaits between them, because you can literally go hours in Utaware without combat at times but FE will usually only be a half hour or so at most.

FE wants to keep you 'in the gameplay' with story interludes whereas Utaware wants to keep you 'in the story' with gameplay interludes.

That said that kind of breaks down for ZTD in particular because while I would say the story is front and center and not the gameplay, it also doesn't expect much reading- there's little non-voiced text. I don't believe you generally get any character thoughts or monologues, or descriptions of things or actions that you must read.

So personally, I don't consider ZTD a VN.

MrSmartGuy posted...

Another thing that works for that prompt is to simply let the timer run out. It leads to the same cutscene because "you didn't know" what to type.

That is neat, I like that.

if audio books are still books then why can't a visual novel that you mostly listen to also be a visual novel

(j/k j/k i don't want to derail this topic with genre arguments)

tcaz2 posted...

I don't believe you generally get any character thoughts or monologues, or descriptions of things or actions that you must read.

I do think having narration and "stage direction" type stuff that you read is necessary to make it a novel, rather than just dialogue boxes.

This discussion is making me realize how deliberate and smart the presentation in this game is though.

what the fuck mira

That is not enough context to understand what you are referring to. >_>

Before we get to that, today's first route is with D team. Phi is stuck in the incinerator, somehow. This is a particularly easy room but I like the idea of splitting the team in two for the puzzles. At the end of the puzzle, Zero recites their favourite tale of the dead woman and the snail, and helpfully points out that 6 total people were killed (the same that we need to be killed in this game! That had passed me by). Or 6 billion, whatever. Diana has to decide whether to shoot Sigma or not, and Sigma spends an awfully long time explaining the very simple odds to say we should shoot him. I do, and he dies, and Diana is so horrified she commits suicide to be with him. Oof! Poor Diana.

I notice on the flowchart it specifies this end as Shot: Live, so instead of not shooting I go back and do it again... and what do you know, it's a blank! (Please don't tell me this means I have to do that 99.5% probability one hundreds of times >_>) Then we suddenly all collapse with that poison, until Gab comes to the rescue (walking as slowly as possible, I might add) with the antidote from earlier. Phi takes this opportunity to be an absolute idiot, saying we maybe shouldn't take the meds in case it's a trap. Sigma eventually points out that uh we're dying anyway Phi why the fuck would we not take this. I know she doesn't trust people but this was a very silly sequence for Phi, come on now.

We take the antidote, live, and Phi reveals her hair is naturally red. In most other games this would be a light piece of fluff but in this one I assume this will be crucially important later on.

That ends this route, and team Q's next destination is... Zero's office? That Eric stumbled across? I'd be suspicious of him but I don't think he has the capability to lie. Cool place! Q's memory is briefly triggered by the innocuous question 'do you like to read', I'm noting this for later. It certainly seems like he does! I like the weird faces on the wall from the status screen, this is the first time we see Q's and I enjoy the comments. Also probably relevant that since team C is linked to guns and we've had the gatling guns in the rec room, team Q should look out for arrows and D for acid.

After the puzzle, we are in a standoff. I choose to kill nobody of course, and Eric responds by shooting an unarmed child at point blank range with the heavily powered grenade launcher that we just used 5 minutes ago. Eric, man, you've got to stop killing Q if you want me to like you. It's your biggest flaw. Eric and Mira survive unscathed and walk to their freedom, until Mira gets frustrated and kills him. Honestly, not even upset.

I try a few other names in the kill screen- interestingly trying Q prompts the game to tell me to type Q's real name, so there's a bookmark for a later time. Typing 'myself' results in a message that I can't commit suicide, though, so I dunno what that's about. I decide to type Eric, assuming it's a quick game over, but this somehow leads to a full ending. Maybe I should go back and fill in the blanks of other fragments that I assumed were empty game overs!

Mira reveals her psychotic backstory. She has never known emotions, and after taking her mother's words too literally, she decided to start stealing hearts to understand emotion and experience joy. Mira is the serial killer we heard about previously, and she's been with Eric as she's convinced there's gonna be something special about his heart. OK, her design works better when she's a soulless murderer covered in blood. I wonder if she killed Eric in that other ending because he revealed the truth about his smiles, and she had nothing left to learn about him. I find it sweet that his final words were to forgive her, almost makes me want to forgive Eric for the repeatedly-murdering-a-child thing.

We get another X-pass from Eric (poor), and Carlos (fight) though we don't get one for Q in either of the other endings where he dies (I try killing Mira after this but Eric dies again). Mira and Q live happily ever after, or something like that.

I, uh, am surprised by this. We've had reasons to think there's something off with Mira, to put it mildly, but I didn't think the game would reveal something this big this early. If Zero is so obsessed with that woman's death, surely Mira is the one they'd be trying to hurt? (I'm assuming the first woman she killed is the woman from the snail story) But of course, she's incapable of being hurt emotionally, so what is all this for? The story of the deaths is likely just a metaphor then, not a driving motive.

The truth is invisible, indeed.

yeah ok that's the what the fuck mira i thought it was

I am concerned that there will be more what the fuck Mira moments on this level

For as great as Carlos and Diana are, the inverse is true for how bad Eric and Mira are imo lol

andylt posted...

The story of the deaths is likely just a metaphor then, not a driving motive.

Could be a complex sort of motive

After that Mira scene, I go back through a few other alternate paths I hadn't bothered with. First we let Phi burn in the incinerator, which is a surprisingly touching scene. Though maybe my emotions are being manipulated by Luna's music box theme playing in the background (!). It's a great sequence for Phi, and the flashback between her and Diana has me guessing that she is Sigma and Diana's daughter. Is that possible? I don't remember how much of her backstory we learned in VLR.

Q declines to inject Rad-6 in another path, and teaches the gang about the virus. Mira stashes a vial for herself, and Eric attempts to speak to Gab.

Lastly, Diana declines to transport with Sigma. I assumed she'd sit back while he gets into the machine alone, but no, she manages to explode everything again. Lol at this running gag, do not let Diana take things into her own hands.

Back to the new fragments, Team C is absent Junpei in the pantry. I like the one on one scenes in this game. This puzzle is horrifying only because there's pieces of Junpei scattered around and the other two don't even consider that it might be a real body. Carlos and Akane freak out, obviously, and after sitting for a while Akane decides Carlos must be the killer and goes full chainsaw mode. We get some more of Carlos' backstory, and he really does seem to be every bit the clean cut hero he first appears. His internal monologue does nothing to dispel that notion, so I've no idea how he connects to everything else here. The only answers the game seems to accept for Junpei's murderer are Akane and Carlos, both of which lead to downer scenes as you'd imagine. Why is everyone in this game so quick to jump to murder!

A scan of the flowchart shows an untapped '!' after Sigma goes to detonate the bomb, which I assumed I'd somehow missed. But as things go on it becomes clear the scene must've unlocked after I saw Mira stash the Rad-6. This ultimately leads to the VLR timeline, the final trigger being Diana's kindness to her friends. A nice touch, but I thought the point of this whole game would be to undo that pandemic! It appears to be reduced to a single possible timeline instead. Weird, but there are two more ? scenes taking place after this ending so there's surely more to come.

I realise in the next room that we've not had any scene take place between 13:30 and 18:00. Either we really were asleep for those 4.5 hours, or there's gonna be more earlier fragments that open up later on.

Team D are in the Healing Room, which is really cool looking. One of the best puzzle rooms so far, for sure. Once we're done, there's a fun decision on whether to press a button that says 'do not press this button'. Diana doesn't press it, of course, and we get some more bonding between Diana and Sigma. Sigma explains the plot of VLR again ("I'll sum it up in one sentence: I dunno"), and we get a second mention of Diana not remembering who she voted for in the opening. Very interesting, Q and Carlos haven't had moments like this.

Things take a left turn as a shadowy figure approaches, and what follows is maybe my fav sequence in the game so far. Sigma enters hero mode, and then has an excellent death scene with Lun- Dian- Luna. Luna mention aw yeah! Kyle mention!! That music box theme again!!! There's a great speech from Siggy, all the best character moments seem to happen when they're dying. Phi has a decent death shortly afterwards too, and I think my theory that Diana and Sigma are Phi's parents is holding a fair amount of water. I expect a tragic end where Diana is the sole survivor, but the game switches on me once more and she gets knifed. We are unfortunately forced to watch her die on the floor. Poor Diana :(

I see why everyone loves D team so much, go VLR crew! I head back and push the button, and that is hands down the funniest game over sequence yet. A really strong start to today! Also, this bothered me so I went back to check, and this timeline is the one where Mira stabbed Eric and Q... but Q's name isn't read out on the death list! A major detail. ...But his name has been mentioned before as a casualty, so it's not like he's immune. No idea how this implicates the killer, but it's surely very important.

I strangely get the achievement for all quest files here, when there's still so much of the game left. I guess we don't get hints anymore?

...Or maybe we're low on puzzles. Our next fragment has Q team sat in the decontamination room chatting away, and we don't get a puzzle. Zero comes in with some new ultimatum, we obviously don't press the button, and off to bed we go. I then realise that the other two scenes I have left are the exact same thing with the other teams. Did these open up without me realising or did I somehow manage to leave all three of these til last by coincidence? Again, I swear I've not looked anything up >_>

C team's scene is all about Junpei's changes over this past year, and his hostility towards Akane and the world. I absolutely buy his jaded behaviour given the trauma he experienced a year ago, but I don't know if we needed him to be a super detective on top of that to make him so uncaring towards all humanity. Maybe. We get shout-outs for some of the 999 crew, which is nice.

I figure I might as well finish off the set, though D team doesn't offer anything particularly enlightening. Diana's confused memory over the vote is brought up properly this time, and Sigma and Phi go over some of the VLR plot again. OK this stuff must be very relevant to the overall story of this game with how often we're getting the history/future explained, I'm pleased about that. Amusingly Diana says 'we've gotta trust the other teams!!' and then we have a chance to immediately push the button anyway.

I have to say Zero comes across as pretty pathetic and desperate with their attempts to get us all to kill each other here. Not a very intimidating figure, this go-around.

We've now gone through all the fragments and one more has opened up for each team! Woo we must be getting to the real stuff soon.

I mean 999's Zero was a 12 year old girl and VLR's Zero was a pre-recorded video so standards aren't too high there

True, but that only makes this game's Zero seem even weaker! Or maybe not, depending on who/what it winds up being.

The three new paths all involve the Force Quit boxes from ages ago. Each team's box is in a different predicament but all paths require some kind of password to go forward. To my shame, I cannot think of any answer here beyond Phi's brooch for one of Team D's key items. Not sure if I have to rewatch some scenes or go through some alternate paths I've missed, so I try the latter.

Most of the scenes I hadn't done are indeed empty game overs, I also try the dice roll again and fail again. I'm starting to worry that I may have to do that one the hard way >_> But for now, we have the 'kill everyone' choices in the Decontamination rooms. These are not remotely pleasant to do, especially how we have to watch the showers turn on and hear everyone's screams three separate times, but I see no other route ahead. Rating how bad I feel after making the characters push the button: Diana > Carlos > Q

Everybody is appropriately horrified for a few minutes, but before you know it we're back at it with the lengthy discussions of pseudoscience and paradoxes. Ah, it's been a while! This is just like being in 999 again, only instead of the inappropriateness of chatting casually while on a death countdown, there's the new inappropriateness of chatting casually right after murdering six people. OK, to be fair, Akane's discussion of parasitic snails and the like is clearly to try and help Carlos cope, but Phi's alien hand left brain/right brain mumbo jumbo is obviously doing nothing to help Diana's mental state and she just likes talking about this shit.

Q team discuss the Sleeping Beauty paradox and memetpsychosis while trying to free Gab. This is the only route where he's locked up, and I feel a bit bad for thinking this but why did nobody suggest breaking his leg or cutting it off or something instead of abandoning him, surely there was something in one of the rooms! All three routes end in the same broad strokes- the viewpoint character staying behind while their companions escape- but I like that each of them has a different reason.

For Q, well, he doesn't really know his reason. He's still very much a question mark, and the more the game holds off on revealing things with him the more sure I get that he is gonna be the key character in the plot. The X-passes we get for Q here are Age and Self, which are both drawing up blanks for me (other notable X-passes: Junpei has Quark, so Zero must be aware of the future timeline, and Phi has Twin. Akane has Key, but when doesn't she have something up her sleeve!).

For Diana it's presumably guilt, though for a second I think we're in for a massive twist when Zero applauds her acting. But no, they're simply taunting her, and I have to admit Zero is pretty neat in this scene. Good job! Diana herself displays her weird shifty jumpy memory again in this sequence, and it seems like her 'powers' work a bit differently to the other characters'. Hm.

Carlos, on the other hand, receives some kind of blue message from above (A shift? jump?), and heroically declares he's going to rescue the others before running straight at a brick wall while the game fades to black. Lol.

As I go to quit the game I notice the very first scene is glowing blue on the flowchart, so that's where I'll go next time. If that doesn't work... well, let's hope it doesn't take me more than 216 tries on the dice roll.

Its been awhile, but I think I did the decontamination rooms at different times. So yeah, you probably just accidentally saved them all to do them at once.

I think I also got stuck on one of the lockbox codes even though I should've known it

andylt posted...

Akane has Key, but when doesn't she have something up her sleeve!).

Crash Keys is the organization she's in that's trying to stop Brother and the spread of Radical-6. You learned about them in VLR.

Oh duh, I had just been told about Crash Keys again too.

I finish off all the alternative dead end routes I had left, including voting the wrong teams in the decision game. I like how incredibly unfazed Phi is in the execution chamber lol.

A new fragment opened up somewhere along the way without me noticing, and it's a big one! Q wakes up postgame and gets a long chat with Zero, where we learn Q is actually a quantum computer that is newly 'born' into the world in a body based off of a dead child named Sean. There's also a bunch of other Sean clones who do Zero's busywork in the game. I can't say I feel bad about not figuring that one out! Sean appears to be the child who died when the surgeon couldn't get to work to operate on him in the snail story.

The computer apparently contains all of the infinite realities within space, so I guess there's a chance this whole game is set in a virtual reality. Q is given two choices- die, or be split into a virtual happy ever after and remaining in the current world. Poor Q. To top it all off, in one ending Q removes his helmet (6140-4091 to remind me later), and we see he has no head at all. Well... jeez. That's rough, and a great body horror moment. I like these reveals for the time being, they add intrigue and fit in with some of the discrepancies noticed so far. My guess is that Zero is the senior citizen who befriended Sean, and this is somehow their way of making Sean's dream a reality, but I don't know how everyone else (except Mira I guess) fits in with that.

Q's helmet code is not the code needed for the force quit box, oh dear, so it's time to go a-searching again. Out of desperation I eventually reach the dice roll scene again, and it works this time! I assume I didn't get incredibly lucky and it's scripted to work like this, but I am nearly as pleased as Junpei at this result. Akane is a party pooper and wonders if this is the history that God abandoned (good line), and before long we're in a new puzzle room (yay!), with a nuclear reactor.

After the puzzle I get the achievement for beating all quests, so I guess this was the last puzzle room :( But it's time for an AB game! Yay! Very convenient how Akane knocked herself out right at the perfect moment, I wonder how Zero managed to pull that off.

Junpei is so obviously going to betray us for Akane, but Carlos is an honourable man, and I've never picked Betray first time around and I'm not about to start here. He of course does betray us, and I'm honestly pretty pissed off at how casually he reacts to the triple-murder result. Akane would never forgive you for that! Heading back and swapping our choice, we get a quick rehash of that defining VLR moment where Alice's vote changes with the timeline and Sigma acknowledges it. It doesn't land as hard here of course, especially as Akane doesn't get injected with the kill drug immediately and comes in to massacre Carlos. Well, I suppose that's true to VLR too, when Sigma would always be punished for betraying his way to 9 points but nobody else ever faced consequences for doing the same!

Carlos shifts to another timeline and we all sit down and have a long chat about A Sci Fi Movie Legally Distinct From Back to the Future. I like Akane here, she loves talking about this stuff but there's still hints of her cutthroat side. Man, imagine how long a convo between young Akane and Phi would be. What nonsense theories would they arrive at? Anyway, Akane goes out of her way to mention how she believes shifting timelines involves swapping places with the person in the other timeline, and how it's kind of like killing the other person. And then we proceed to do exactly that, like, 3 times in a 10 minute time span.

Did the shifts always work like this? I don't remember them being so... simple, but here everyone is zipping around wherever they like and jumping together like it's a little game. It's fun, but definitely lowers the stakes going forward. We zap to the failed dice timeline, Junpei plans a traumatic horrible scheme to get some X-passes, then we jump again to the successful one. Akane is mad at Jumpy for being reckless and putting her through that, and I kind of get her point but also she did something not too dissimilar by turning the nuclear reactor into a bomb and forcing us all to shift. Why did she insist we start shifting in the first place, there was no urgency to do so at that moment. Also I'm not sure how Akane shifted from the failed dice timeline, she wasn't in any danger at that point.

Regardless, Junpei and Akane have a nice reunion and I'm becoming more convinced these two are a toxic couple who should probably stay away from each other for their own sakes and for everyone else's safety. I have mixed feelings about Junpei's characterisation in this game, I like him being a jaded former hero in theory but I don't like how cruel he can be, and the J/A relationship isn't particularly landing for me.

Zero spoils the fun and a Seanclone comes to exterminate us. Carlos has a strange flash of info about Q team, then jumps himself away to some other timeline. From the map, it's not the timeline where we saw him come in to save the other two earlier, but that's for next time.

The dice is coded so that you will get it after 3 failed attempts IIRC
But also you totally can just get the right combo the first time.