Lurker > Giggsalot

now, presumably, the big ones:

Carlos hits the kill button: Carlos can't quite believe it. Akane is stunned, but reserves judgement. Jumpei helpfully gets all high-school philosophy about how killing people to stay alive is totally fine, and that maybe Carlos always wanted to do it anyway. Zero chimes in to agree, and casually informs us that because we played the game so well, we'll get to keep our murderous memories. hurray!

team D and team Q awaken in the decontamination rooms, and Q speculates that maybe they've been there before. before he can parse anything fully, however, the HF showers turn on, and two thirds of our party meet a truly horrifying end.

Zero quickly informs us of the events in the other wards, and Akane tries to help Carlos justify his actions with some silliness about mind-altering parasites (I think she means me!). We open the X-Door with the given passwords, and Junpei and Akane walk through. Carlos, however, has a moment of epiphany, and stays behind, claiming that in another history he made a promise to save them, and takes off back into the facility purposefully. this is more than a little odd, especially considering this timeline ends right there, but alright then!

to be continued?

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Q hits the kill button: Q looks stricken. Mira is amused. Eric continues to be by far the most deplorable member of a team that continues a serial murderess by blaming Q for everything that he wanted to do anyway. he then proceeds to have a mental breakdown about his brother's death as the sedation is applied. what a well adjusted human being.

in the other wards, all of our erstwhile psychic heroes come close to work out what's going on, but are powerless to stop their horrifying end. meanwhile, back in Q ward, the team finds out about the horrors, and go to find Gab so they can escape. unfortunately, our lovely host has chained him to a post, and he can't be freed. Q ultimately chooses to stay behind with him as Mira and Eric escape, due to his lack of memories and connections to the outside world. that's all very touching, but it still results in a

GAME OVER

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Diana hits the kill button: Diana breaks down. Phi is stunned, and even Sigma is angry for Diana's apparent inability to follow her stated position. she begins to protest that she doesn't know what happened, and Phi morphogenetically invokes her similar stance back after betraying C team in the execution vote. however, we're put to sleep before anything exciting can be revealed.

we go through the same appalling rigmarole in the decontamination rooms as always, and D team awakens in the lounge. Sigma has redirected his anger at Zero, but Phi decides to talk about neuroscience, which is sure to help the panicking Diana. retaining optimism that the other teams remain alive, the three make their escape, but Diana breaks down with guilt outside the door and immediately rushes back inside. there, she receives a mocking sermon from Zero, congratulating her on her faultless strategy to look innocent by way of insanity. intentional or not, none of this can save her from a

GAME OVER

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phew, that was pretty intense! time to continue with the main stuff tomorrow.
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after trying out the team C Force Quit segment and running into a password problem, I'm forced to admit that now might be the time to run through all of the bad choices that I've been avoiding.

here is a summary of these efforts:

Team C votes betray: Akane gasps, dead-eyed Junpei applauds, Carlos stares at his hands in disbelief at his own actions. the scene switches to Q team, locked in the pod room, collars around their necks. Eric inadvertently discovers a yellow door (of truth?!), but it matters not. Zero announces the results, their collars tighten, the camera pans away, three bodies hit the floor.

Team Q votes betray: Eric is appalled, Q pleads for understanding, and Mira just giggles. she points out that their unique position makes a betraying vote completely logically and morally unjustifiable, as Diana's vote could easily screw them over regardless. this, in fact, ends up happening, as the scene plays out exactly as above. poor guys.

Team D votes betray: Diana has it easy. she has no reason to vote for C team. but she does it anyway. all three team members are incredulous, but interestingly, no scene follows. I wonder what that means?

Team C can't find the antidote: looks like Carlos is 2 dum 4 this game. now C team dies painful deaths. hurray!

Team D refuses to drink Akane's antidote: one of the most obviously dumb decisions in the game so far, D team get to enjoy painful deaths too. hurray!

Team C can't find the antidote: looks like Carlos is 2 dum 4 another game. more painful deaths for team C. hurray! the game then treats us to an interesting if throwaway scene of Sigma and Diana successfully leaving via the X-Door to go and get help. good luck with that, guys!
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Transporter (continued)

the input pods re-open, and Sigma and Diana emerge. confused, they ponder what just happened, and the nature of the device, and Sigma postulates that perhaps they were pseudo-cloned, rather than simply teleported. why they returned here remains a mystery, but as Sigma says, right now the stranded pair are, in Sigma's own words, "out of cards in their deck."

To be continued

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Door of Truth

the export pods open, and Sigma and Diana emerge. it is 18:05 in this world, and Sigma suspects we have jumped, forwards or backwards, into an alternative history. he casually terrifies Diana by revealing that he chose a destination on the incomprehensible display panel randomly, but before she can say anything, the pair run off in search of Phi. after finding nothing but bloodstained walls, and a morphogenetic flash of their Zero-mandated execution, our heroes are locked in a bathroom for no apparent reason. thanks again, Zero, you're the best.

after some cool puzzles, the room transforms revealing a fetchingly yellow secret door! this door is evidently quite important, given the title of this segment, but I do not know the eight digit code it requires. I back out, and we fade to black.

To be continued

(weird that I was required to play that section immediately. it's not like I saw or achieved anything of note. anyway, back to the main story!)
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ha, definitely looking forward to seeing all the memes about this once I can't be spoiled. i've heard good things.

update imminent!
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Saving this topic first though
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And if you don't know, now you know.

sounds like every critique of my writing ever made!

back to saving the world soon hopefully
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I was going to play the remainder of the transporter section, but the game seems to be pausing me for a reason, and it's already late here. To be continued tomorrow!
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Transporter

The X Door has been opened... and subsequently closed

Diana and Sigma awake after midnight, a startlingly late hour by all accounts. after very ominously failing to find Phi, they come upon the "transporter room", and Zero explains the object before them. a seemingly alien device, it allows for the teleportation or transportation of objects or individuals through spacetime and into alternate histories. Zero curiously lets slip that he obtained it in 2009, which would seem to indicate that he is a man of both means and age (hello Ace).

in any case, we are told that in order to "obtain that which we desire" we need to activate the strange device. after solving one of the coolest puzzles in the entire series (I am such a secret maths nerd), Zero shows up and not only confirms Phi's death and those of Q team, Carlos and Jumpei, but informs us that the X door has been opened and closed, and Akane was able to make it out.

The decision game, we are casually enlightened, has been concluded, and we are thanked for our participation.

(this is a particularly weird timeline, in that it suggests Zero is continuing to toy with his players after the game is over. this would seem to almost confirm that he's not one of the nine participants, and also that his motives are perhaps more utilitarian than expected)

Sigma, manic at some combination of these revelations, unceremoniously bolts off, searching for Phi. as he reaches the incinerator, Diana flashes back to her choice there earlier in the timeline and blacks out. awakening back in the lounge, Diana and Sigma discuss their various choices, and Sigma decides that the only way out of this "horrible history" (aka one without Phi - this game is really playing up their love story, romantic or otherwise) is to transport themselves.

---

this is clearly what Zero wants us to do. Diana chooses to stay here, damaging the machine before Sigma can use it, and quite remarkably, the massive alien object almost spontaneously explodes. faced with a locked X door and no path out of here, all Diana and Sigma can do is wait and hope Akane returns to save them. for whatever reason, Sigma is skeptical about this, and his skepticism is apparently proven right with the appearance of a

GAME OVER

(damn, Akane, really? that's cold)
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First come, first saved - D

I decide to jump into the D ward decontamination room! we get some clarification over Sigma, Phi and Akane's plan, but nothing particularly revelatory. as Phi begins to explain the concept of "jumping", and how it might relate to our timelines, Zero shows up and explains the situation at hand.

Sigma, interestingly, takes the "push the button" approach, but for consistency purposes, I opt not to (I'll come back to the button-pushing timelines later on).

Zero sends us back to sleep, and the adventure continues another day.

To be continued

(oh man, I've unlocked new fragments for the first time in a long time. I think I'll complete the other D team scenario first, but I'm excited!)
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1) I'm not claiming previous Zeros were master wordsmiths, but their silence made the terror and mystery all the greater. this guy's insipid and repetitive mantras make me less afraid of him rather than more.

(this is slightly overstating the point, for the record, but I do think it's one of the weaker aspects of the game - at least until the backstory Zero is alluding to becomes clear)

2) that art is so cool. they should have made the whole game in that art style, would've rendered it a;; so timeless.

3) I actually did the gun thing three times! my first two rounds were live, and I figured I had to see the don't shoot timeline first to unlock the "good" ending. by coincidence, it worked the first time after that, and I assumed I was right in my assumptions. funny to discover it was just luck!
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Fire

Team D awakens in the trash disposal room at 18:06, and the door opens for us! how nice. unfortunately, it quickly transpires that Phi is locked in a nearby incinerator, which will activate in thirty minutes. classic.

after a cool but seriously sinister two-team puzzle where Sigma gets rendered immobile, strapped to a chair, Zero reappears and gives the most detailed explanation of his seventeen-years-ago nonsense. naturally, it still makes almost no sense.

the decision game begins. essentially roulette, Diana must shoot a gun loaded with 50% blanks at Sigma, or the incinerator will activate, burning Phi alive. what a nice guy this Zero is.

---

I fire the gun, of course. Phi rushes out of the opened door to find a horror-struck Diana, staring at Sigma's dead body. this elicits some of the most genuine emotion we've ever seen from Phi, screaming at Diana that she should have let her die because she "doesn't matter". Diana walks away from her in a reverie, picks up the gun, and calmly places it to her own forehead. she'll be with Sigma very soon.

GAME OVER

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I can't do it. I can't fire the gun. Phi has a really beautiful final moment, where she refuses to blame Diana for her choice and tells her and Sigma that she loves them. the incinerator activates, and Sigma cries out in agony. after the flames have subsided, Sigma and Phi return to the incincerator to find Phi's brooch, and the game treats us to a flashback of Diana comforting Phi at a difficult moment a few days prior. this path has really humanized Phi - I find myself having a lot of affection for her despite her being so distant and reserved through most of the series so far.

a broken Diana returns to the lounge with Sigma, where Zero mockingly thanks her for helping his plan along the way. the two remaining D team members return to sleep, never to remember their roles in Phi's untimely demise.

To be continued

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I give the gun one more shot, and the fired blank nearly deafens Sigma. Phi runs out of the incincerator, beyond relieved that it all worked out. her relief soon turns to animosity towards Diana for endangering Sigma, but before she can follow through on anything, D team crumbles to the floor, wracked with poison. before the succumb, however, Gab arrives with three vials of antidote from Akane.

Phi tells me not to drink - after all, in this timeline, team C caused the death of team Q by betraying them with the vote earlier. I do, of course, and the team recovers! hurray! (I'll blitz the "everyone dies" endings later)

Zero arrives to congratulate us on our good health, and tells us to enjoy it as we look forward to the horror that awaits us. what a nice guy indeed. naturally, he puts us back to sleep before we can enjoy anything too much, and our journey as a three-man team continues in some uncertain future.

To be continued
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FFnut posted...

Giggsalot posted...

Not around this weekend. Hopefully more on monday?

A lot of us have been looking forward to updates.

Life is simply unfair.

ha, I do hope my commentary is marginally more interesting than Zero's endless tales of woe. unveiling Zero is usually the most intriguing aspect of these games, but whoever it is this time has spent more time honing their costume design than their dialogue.

update soon!
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Not around this weekend. Hopefully more on monday?
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final crackpot theory of the evening: isn't Eric's backstory kind of similar to Brother's? it's less mystical, but they both lost younger brothers to likely unsolved murder and are filled with seriously negative feelings towards humanity. if you go full crazy with this plotline then you could say that Q might be one of the first Left clones!

no evidence to support this whatsoever really, I should really go to bed.
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Diana's actions at the end there are puzzling. does she know that she's essentially dooming humanity, as she so casually states to the rescue team, or is she simply taking Sigma's word for it? on the basis of her continuing relationship with Sigma pre-VLR and overall sense of decency, I very much doubt Diana wants all humans to die. but how do her choices even make sense without ascribing her a sinister motive?

other loose thoughts:

- this game is based on the premise that Free the Soul released Radical-6 into the world, right? based on that, I would have assumed that Free the Soul were behind this nonary game somehow. the reveal of how Radical-6 got into the world (through Diana, Mira and Zero respectively) would suggest that one of those three characters is Free the Soul affiliated. I very much doubt it's Mira. Zero would be the obvious bet, but could it actually be Diana?

- Zero's instantaneous response to team D's bomb idea makes it seem highly unlikely that he's involved with one of the teams. like, surely they couldn't just wander off to record a video response unnoticed? in principle he could be someone in team C or Q, if the announcements were fake or misleading, but Diana's vision makes that seem unlikely.

fuck it, here's some likelihood-of-being-Zero rankings:

1. Free the Soul / Brother (still feels like the Occam's Razor answer. this could be one of our nine people, conceivably, but for the purpose of this ranking I'm assuming it's not one of our nine. if the series ends without explaining these guys I'll be sad)
2. Q (almost certainly not Zero himself but almost certainly involved as a tool, so many red flags here it's crazy)
3. Sigma (would be a pretty mind-bending and awesome plot if he turned out to be Brother and was trying to save the world from himself. not the likeliest, but plausible!)
4. Akane (I trust her motives but she makes Nonary Games in her spare time for fun, I'd be utterly mad to discount her here)
5. Phi (I can't explain my suspicions here but she keeps wandering off and it's weird)
6. Diana (went all weird in the last ending for sure, but... surely not?)
7. Junpei (has gone all nihilist in a way that might engage suspicion, but chopping himself into pieces would be hard)
8. Carlos (seems far too genuinely good to do this. but who knows. it could all be an act, but I've certainly got no evidence to suggest that yet)
9. Eric (seems far too genuinely unstable to do this. like, the guy can't even control his temper. see carlos)
10. Mira (just a run-of-the-mill psychopath, i think)

that 2-7 range is such a jumble though, it could be any of those guys and I wouldn't be shocked. silly game!
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Outbreak

Team D awakens in the manufacturating room, with a trio of robots for company. after the robots get exceptionally creepy, and Sigma gets awful quiet at the implicating suggestion that Zero is a robot manufacturer, we escape the bomb-filled room without even so much as a decision to make!

this comes to us later, naturally, when Phi wanders off on her own as usual and makes a plan to blast our way out of here. Zero, apparently watching in real time (!) deems this a rule infraction, and not only places the unconscious Q team within the bomb's blast radius but also turns on the HF showers on our road to the bomb.

so, do we risk our lives to save Q team, or run like hell?

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of course Diana does. she defies Sigma and Phi's pleas to run, even going to far as to shock them with the stun gun, and rushes to try to stop the bomb. but she's too late. don't play with bombs, guys.

GAME OVER

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Diana and Phi run away, but Sigma stays. he defies his friends, safety and reality, and stops the bomb... at the cost of two arms and an eye. as literally inevitable as this set-piece was, it's quite stunning to see fully rendered.

Di and Phi take the miraculously still alive Sigma through the blown-up wall into the elevator room, where the corpses of Q team lie in wait. but it's not quite as it seems. Eric is certainly dead, and Q is
once again conspicuously bloodless but likely dead too. luckily for the universe, Mira is still alive, and manages to dedicate her last strength to revenge and inject Phi with her stolen Radical-6 vial.

Sigma tells them all to stay underground, and Phi urges Diana to kill her, but out of either hope, fear or undying faith in Sigma decides to let fate take it's course. she stuns Phi, and brings the three of them to the surface, unleashing Radical-6 upon humanity and becoming indirectly responsible for the wipeout of the majority of humanity. all we can do, as we look up to the New Years lunar eclipse, is hope the next Sigma will save us.

D-END 1
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a brief foray into the world of Team D tonight! no time to play for long, but hopefully starting out will whet my appetite for future evenings.

Suppression

we awaken at 18:05 trapped in the Healing Room, a strange, Twin Peaks-esque monochrome space. immediately, Phi begins to feel parallel universe dissonance. after some funky puzzles and more than a little luck, we unearth a ridiculously ominous huge button labelled with "do not press this button". Sigma says we have to push it - after all, how else will we get out of this room? Phi pushes back vehemently. interestingly, the game gives me a full minute to decide, while Sigma and Phi argue in the background.

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Diana pushes the button. all we see is white light, as the complex is utterly obliterated by a gargantuan explosion. well then.

(a highly abrupt) GAME OVER

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Diana chooses to not push the button. the door opens, no one dies. who would have thought? we exit the room and Sigma gives an important but honestly fairly dull explanation of the consciousness-shift stuff. this is livened up when a mysterious hooded figure rushes Sigma and guts him with a knife! Diana runs off to find Phi, and the two return to witness Sigma's last moments, where he gets all emotional about the subsequent non-existence of his psychopathic rabbit AI and it's all-but-confirmed that he modelled Luna after Diana. Luna begins to suspect Phi, and runs away in terror, only to eventually find Phi stabbed too. six X-Passes in hand, she goes to exit the open X-Door, when the unknown assailant catches up with her, and makes it 3/3 without ever revealing their face. our assassin calmly walks through the X-Door, scalpel in hand. impressive stuff!

(a slightly more elaborate) GAME OVER

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well, that was something. judging by the flowchart, this all takes place directly after Mira stabs Eric and Q. which apparently answers one question - our assassin is almost certainly Mira - but raises several others. firstly, how did she get into Ward D? secondly, the game suggested Q was still alive! and thirdly, the flowchart implies that this storyline continues from here, even though we witness assassin Mira walk through the X-Door, and with the possible exception of a presumably heavily wounded Q, everyone else is dead. what?

I guess I'll find out soon!
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oh that's funny, I actually thought at the time that the timer was quite short to type in a full (albeit short) sentence.

super tired tonight so update tomorrow, hopefully!
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I'd give a quick recap at this point about what I know and who I suspect before I move onto D team (exciting!), but outside of individual character development I'm not sure I really learned all that much about the overall plot from the Q team section.

- Mira's pretty great for what she is. she doesn't seem to be in league with anyone here, she's just been placed in the game to speed up the murder rate, Dio-style. which is fair enough, I guess - she's certainly more fun than he was. in any case, that would seem to suggest that Zero very much knows what he's doing, even if I currently don't. but it's hard to speculate beyond that, really.

- Eric is obviously a very damaged man and, to be honest, that makes him a somewhat more understandable (if not likeable) character. I don't see him as a major player in the plot here though, unless he's genuinely schizophrenic or something. and if he is somehow the big bad here, I'll be mildly depressed.

- Q is seemingly the most plot-pivotal character here. he knows a suspicious amount about the more mythological elements of the series' plotting, and his mysterious background and appearance sets him up to be a person of interest at the very least. the K comparison would be too obvious, probably - but if we are in a situation like 999/ZTD where 3-4 of the participants qualify as Zero accomplices (as unlikely as that currently seems), it's hard not to see Q as a suspect.

happy to field any other questions at this time! I remember I periodically did "Zero rankings" throughout my ZTD playthrough, if anyone would be curious about stuff like that I'd be happy to oblige.
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Pop Off

The only things I trust right now are myself and my big gun

my last adventure with Q team for now begins in the very sci-fi Pod Room at 18:10. or at least, Eric and Q. Mira is conspicuously absent, which feels especially ominous in light of C team's pantry experience. after some very cool room rotation puzzles and the discovery of an exceptionally creepy "Become me" Zero card, we unlock a goddamn shotgun. oh sure, Zero, give the team consisting of a frightened child, a nervous overcompensating wreck and a mass murderer all the weapons. bravo.

Eric, concerningly thrilled with his new ballistic companion, shoots up the final puzzle of the room, unveiling the room's titular pods, and a cold, strangled Mira. after a genuinely disturbing flashback implying that Eric's father killed his brother and forced him to hide the body, Zero sends us footage of Junpei's head and Carlos killing Akane. Eric's eyeballs begin to flutter madly (genuinely maybe the most terrifying thing the game has shown so far) and he begins to strangle Q, accusing him of orchestrating the deaths in league with Carlos.

Q gets away to the X door, but before he can enter the codes, Eric returns and shoots the console (and after I'd written them down, too! what a prick). he demands to know who killed Mira, or he will kill Q too.

---

I tell Eric that he did it. it couldn't have been me, right? he doesn't especially like this, though, and shoots Q in a rage. his life quickly seeps from his body, but weirdly, and in stark contrast to most of the other deaths we've seen so far, no blood spills from Q's body at all. meaningless graphical omission, or is this some kind of Luna situation here? I guess we'll see!

Game over

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I tell Eric that I don't know who killed Mira. it's the truth, right? surprisingly, this time Eric puts the gun down, and falls into the couch to lament his loss and the general tragedy of his existence (somewhat reasonably, to be fair). we're at somewhat of a loss as to what to do, when Q notices a damaged area of the floor beside them.

"This is..."

To be continued
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I choose murderous, despicable Mira, of course. Q fires the crossbow with a scream, and Eric dives into the path of the arrow, which hits him right in the heart. Mira, freaking out not because of any emotional human response but because her favourite of Eric's internal organs has been damaged, unloads two bullets into Q and walks away, profoundly irritated by the whole experience. it's hard for the good guys to win in this game.

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I return to the scene to try to enter Q and Akane's name, surely the two other names the game wants, but the game weasels out of this on a technicality - we need to know Q's true name to continue. the game also doesn't allow us to decide to kill Akane, either, so I enter "nobody". this somehow works! Q lowers his weapon slowly, and Eric of all people decides to take the opportunity to blast the small child to oblivion with the highly unrealistic grenade launcher. that bastard might be worse than Mira somehow.

those two escape hand in hand, and the game treats us to a cathartic epilogue where Mira murders Eric three days later. good on her. if it comes down to Mira or Eric, I'm on team psychopath here, no question.
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Triangle

Who will you kill?

C team awakens at 18:10. Eric wanders off, and in an uncharacteristic act of usefulness, appears to find a "secret" room, purporting to be Zero's study. after a little snooping we find a mural of our nine heroes, as well as a crossbow and a handgun, which are treated with considerably less consternation than similar discoveries were in 999. different times, I guess. we then, utterly ridiculously, acquire ourselves a grenade launcher, which we use to help us solve the puzzle without damaging or setting fire to anything else in the vicinity. right.

we solve the room, only to find a single piece of paper saying "KILL ONE". Zero appears on the monitor, and shows us footage of Junpei's severed head and Carlos' suicide, placing us in time. D Team are also all deceased in this timeline, meaning only one more person has to die for the game to be over. in combination with our ludicrous newfound arsenal, this leads to a Mexican standoff between the three members of team D (good luck using that grenade launcher as a short range weapon, Eric). I am then prompted who to kill.

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I choose whiny, oblivious Eric, of course. Q fires the crossbow into Eric's chest, and he collapses to the ground. Q collapses too, shaken by his actions, and Mira coldly finishes Eric off with a bullet to the head during his last words. Mira then goes into a long soliloquy about her many killings, revealing herself as the heart-stealing serial killer alluded to somewhere earlier as she roots around in Eric's insides, searching for her treasure.

stunned into acquiescence, Q accompanies Mira to the X door and enters the six X-Passes we just learned. accompanied by Gab, our only undamaged survivor, we walk through the door, and the credits roll.

Q-END: 1
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First come, first saved: Q

I really, truly love ice cream

Finally, Eric gets relateable.

C team awakens at 18:00 in the decontamination room, and after another sappy Eric flashback about the day he met Mira, we have a quick discussion about what Zero's goal might be. Eric speculates that our survival instinct might kick in more effectively if we're placed in danger, and jokes that it would be wise to send a murderer as part of a Mars mission crew. as he says the word "murderer," the camera pans straight into Mira's icy neon eyes. well then.

Zero then informs us of our current plight, and Eric goes batshit. Mira, who is inescapably sinister even when she's doing the right thing, knocks him out before he can hurt Q, and with a smirk leaves the decision in the child's hands. it's hard to tell if Mira is Zero-evil, Free the Soul-evil, both, or neither, but she certainly seems to have some kind of plan here.

as Q, I naturally decide not to press the button - I'll return to these to make homicidal choices with each team later - and I'm placed to sleep by Zero, where an uncertain future awaits

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side note: for some reason the game seems to have failed to recognise my progress in the Radical-6 sub-chapter, so I'll have to rush through that again sometime. is this a known glitch of some kind, or did my game do something weird?
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it's alright, if I was inclined to spoil myself I'm not short of ways to do so.

update coming soon!
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keeping this alive
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it's Q team time!

Radical-6

well, that title's quite the hook! Q team awaken at 18:10 locked in the bio-lab, where Eric immediately finds his default mode of terrified and useless (I assume he's saving his angsty aggression for later). the idea of a person entirely overwhelmed and rendered histrionic by a Nonary Game is an intriguing character archetype, but so far Eric's shown absolutely no sympathetic traits whatsoever.

in any case, we solve the puzzles of the lab, with Q showing a conspicuously deep understanding of laboratory science, and Zero shows up to regale us with another tragic tale of life being inherently unfair before actively screwing us. we might be infected with the deadly virus Fanatic Bio-R, which Radical-6, kindly provided, will negate. or we might not. so do we inject R-6 or not? Zero bizarrely claims that this is self-fulfilling, and we'll be fine either way, but why the hell would that be in his best interest?

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naturally, I choose not to inject Radical-6. Q reasons that FBR is likely a falsehood, while Radical-6 is definitely real. after a little more conversation, we learn that Q seems to understand the full stakes of this game - that the ultimate humanitarian priority is not so much for everyone to survive, but not allowing anyone infected with Radical-6 to escape. Mira, in the first clearly malevolent act of the game, secretly steals a vial anyway. Zero reappears and - accompanied by some actual visuals this time - informs us that in this timeline C team are dead. Q team then returns to sleep, and an unknown future.

---

naturally, I choose to inject Radical-6. FBR is 100% lethal, and Radical-6 isn't, so pragmatically it's a no-brainer. in the chat afterwards, we're treated to a lengthy but worthwhile flashback to Eric's initially bland suburban upbringing that turns dark upon his mother's death. it's his first sign of depth as a character and it's super welcome. naturally, Mira responds to it by being a total fucking sociopath and laughing at him, then proceeding to murder Eric and Q for seemingly no reason whatsoever. uh, okay! is this Radical-6 showing, or is Mira just the most plain sight villain the series has seen yet? even Ace and Dio kept their murders off-screen and mysterious!
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more nonsense tomorrow hopefully
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bump
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yeah that's why i said "core characters", i haven't really spent enough time with the others (besides carlos, who's aight) to gain strong feelings on them either way

eric certainly makes an impression though, i'll give him that much
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small postscript, having let things settle a little: this game is making me feel things. much more so than in previous games, the bad endings are making me more sad than surprised - there's a long way to go, but i am really invested in the core set of characters in this game. the in-universe stakes surrounding the game are of course higher than ever here, but I find myself drawn far more to the fates and interpersonal relationships of the characters than the overarching mysteries. it's a different approach than the previous games, but this is something that only a sequel can really pull off, and in that regard ZTD has begun fantastically well.
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since that's the end of my team C excursions for now, current thoughts:

- my Saw analogy from earlier seems to be gaining ground. maybe all of this death and destruction somehow needs to happen to save the world from Radical-6, but the violence in this game feels needlessly cruel so far. Sigma and Akane's Nonary Games (while cold and somewhat vengeful) were never this sadistic, and it's very hard to ascribe an altruistic motive to Zero here.

- in the VLR timeline, Sigma, Phi and Akane failed to stop Radical-6, but they all (alongside Junpei) clearly survived - in Sigma's case, with two fewer arms and an eye missing. this begs a few questions: why did they fail, and how could that be avoided this time? how could four people survive this brutal and unforgiving decision game setup? how did Sigma not bleed out despite losing both his arms in the middle of a Nonary Game? did Zero survive?

- I've been in this position before, but it's especially hard to imagine any of the main characters being Zero this time. Team Q are largely unknown entities, and there could be a collaborator or two dotted around, but this game feels so straight up villainous it's hard not to suspect Free the Soul and Brother as the masterminds here. I feel like if Brother is the big bad of the series then he must be someone we already know, too, or else that would be super anticlimactic. we've heard rumblings of Seven and Lotus' fate, but what of Santa? Ace? Snake? could any of them be involved?

- what's going on with Junpei's ring? I feel like, of the major recurring characters, he's the least pivotal to the main plot, but the game is clearly trying to tell his story here too. if Radical-6 was stopped, could Junpei and Akane could actually live a normal life together? that's probably too much to ask, Junpei will probably end up heroically sacrificing himself somehow (for the record I doubt Sigma and Phi are getting out of this alive either).

that'll do for now! if anyone has any specific questions, don't hesitate to ask!
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Monty Hall

Guess we can't order a bunch of pizza then, huh?

team C awakens locked in the control room at 12:10. after some awkward Akane fangirling over Carlos and cynical Junpei posturing, we set out to escape. music in this room is pretty great, by the way.

after some fun puzzling, the room begins to fill with carbon dioxide, and Zero provides us with a Monty Hall problem to find the life-saving oxygen mask. being the kind of nerd who doesn't know anything about maths but does spend too much time on wikipedia, I got it right, and watched as the locker opened to reveal... one mask. this is the second game in a row where Akane has known the answer but fainted right before telling us. I know that this is entirely within character, but get some new material, game!

Carlos and Junpei sacrifice themselves to save Akane, and the segment ends with the opening of the X door and an emotionally distraught Akane exiting alone to an unknown fate.

GAME OVER

(curious aside: the global flowchart continues from here, but I was diverted to a game over anyway. I wonder how this works?)
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Poison

I don't think you saw the future, I think you saw an alternate past!

team C awakens in the infirmary at 18:10, where Zero coldly informs us that we (and another unspecified team) have been injected with poison, and will die unless we find the antidote. it occurs to me at this point that Zero is doing a fairly unbelievable amount of on-the-fly organisation during the course of this nonary game. this has got to be the work of an organisation of some kind.

after a relatively pain-free puzzle room, I find the antidote, and Akane saves the team (and hopefully team D) with some quick thinking. Zero then reappears and informs us that team Q are dead, and Carlos has a morphogenetic vision of Junpei's severed head in the pantry freezer from the previous timeline. it begins...
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on a side note, I've just looked in the global flowchart for the first time. this game is huge.
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And if you don't know, now you know.

First come, first saved: C

Junpei, one year... and you've changed so much

well this one was a doozy

I stick with team C and awaken at 18:10 locked in the decontamination room, where I get an overdue but startling plot dump. Junpei's cold and callous persona, he reveals, was a result of becoming a detective and seeing the worst of humanity over the last year, including infiltrating and destroying Free the Soul's headquarters with Seven. he later threatened his way into D-Com after hearing that Akane would be there. it's pretty difficult to parse his feelings towards Akane - there's clearly anger, but it's hard to tell how much of a personal grudge he holds and how much he has simply become damaged since.

anyway, Zero informs us of the mutually beneficial results of the voting, and gives us a chance to "fix" things - by murdering both other teams with hydrofluoric acid showers (ouch). Junpei is totally all for it, Akane against, but Carlos takes the decision alone.

naturally, I choose not to press it. I find it mildly stunning that the game would allow you to make a decision to murder six people (including Sigma and Phi!), and I genuinely sort of hope I never have to come through this path again and press that button. the atmosphere of the game so far makes that feel like a vain hope indeed though. the segment ends in an open-ended fashion, with us placed back to sleep before discovering the outcome of the decision game.

sheesh.
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Anthropic Principle

What the hell is this shit? This isn't even a fucking game!

team C awakens, 10.5 hours after our initial choice, in the Rec Room. after solving some nicely designed games (and one infuriating block puzzle) and listening to more of Carlos' tragic backstory, we solve the room, only for the "rules" of the decision game to be explained. basically, we each have to roll a die, and if any of them are not 1s, a whole bunch of hidden gatling guns will tear us to pieces.

what

the "99.537% reality" transpires, and we jump behind the bar, but of course that doesn't help us. team C meet a grisly end, and the voiceover calmly tells us that, in this reality, everyone except for Phi has been massacred.

i'd give you some more thoughts, but outside of the recurring "reverie syndrome" motif there's no real sign of any lore/themes appearing yet... i'm just getting pulverized in increasingly brutal ways. this certainly makes for an intriguing setup - after the first two games I'm preconditioned to believe that Zero has complex, partially altruistic motives for doing this, but maybe this simply isn't true here. which makes the coin flip at the beginning all the more baffling. i guess i'll find out!
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C Team - Pantry

Seek a way out!

dearie me, this game is not playing

Akane and Carlos find their way out of the pantry, unknowingly using Junpei's dismembered body as a clue. we then discover D team is dead too, somehow, despite my vote choices. but that doesn't even really matter. a distraught Akane attacks me with a chainsaw. nice to see her show genuine, unambiguous affection for Junpei, though this wasn't quite the ideal manner.

anyway, the game makes me decide who I think killed Junpei, so I can "remove them". Carlos is weird. it doesn't like my answers of Zero, Eric, Sigma ("the dead cannot kill anyone") or Gab ("how could a dog do it?"). I answer both Akane and Carlos in turn, resulting in Carlos killing either Akane or himself in a fairly gory fashion. weirdly, the latter results in an instant game over, while the Akane death path allows me to hypothetically continue on - a curious development considering who should be the most important characters here.

anyway, lots to chew on here:

- why did my unambiguous vote choices lead to what seems like several possible outcomes? is the game treating each vote in a vacuum, and giving me every possibility based on that? that would explain D team being dead in the C path, since I did vote for them. this seems like a mildly baffling plot design choice, but okay.
- assuming it's Zero's plan somehow, why on earth did Junpei get chopped up for following the rules of the game? I was kind of joking about the Saw movies comparison earlier, but this definitely has a hint of the later movie traps, which are deliberately unfair. Sigma and Akane have a lot to answer for, but at least their games broadly followed the rules (bracelet hijinx aside). I'm getting the distinct feeling that Zero isn't on the side of good this time.
- on a lighter note, d'awww Akane. if she wasn't such a total Macchiavellian sociopath, I think her and Junpei could have been very happy together.

that might do for tonight! any suggestions about where to go next, or should I just jump around as I fancy?
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finished the execution choice for the other two teams, decided (probably boringly) to follow the note's instructions

assorted thoughts:

- why is mira interested in eric he's not even a charismatic type of dick
- Q is significantly more clever than either of his teammates
- what's up with mira and diana's eyes? they look more like cyborgs than luna did. don't even start me on phi's absurd orange eyebrows.

i then decided, like possibly everyone else to play this game, that the still image of chainsaw-bearing akane was too much to resist. on with the puzzles!
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You deserve a reward for obeying. When you awake, all three of you will be able to regret the decision they made.

the decision game begins!

went with C team first

assorted thoughts:

- dearie me this is brutal, i hope the bleakness here is at least somewhat earned and not just totally gratuitous. I don't want a Saw to Saw 2 transition here.
- he hasn't even really done anything yet and i can already tell eric is going to be terrible
- Sigma, Phi, Akane and Jumpei are all in this game, where reportedly only three can survive. time paradoxes aside (*ahem*), we know that all four of them do. this suggests several things, the most obvious being that this game is going to be CONFUSING.

- all of these guys (besides Q) seem to know each other pretty well. this will be intriguing.
- i've been playing this game for almost half an hour and the sum total of the "gameplay" has been guessing a coin flip. is this likely to change?
- there are some fascinating character dynamics here, even early on. Akane and Junpei post-999, Sigma and young Junpei from an NPC perspective, Sigma presumably in messiah mode - lots to dive into here
- the willing of Zero Escape to throw their protagonists under the bus morally is pretty fascinating. In 999, Junpei is pretty much a stock likeable hero, but by VLR he's become a lecherous old grump and here he's actively advocating murder by betrayal. I can't work out if it's good writing, but it's certainly brave.

voted to go with the plan and execute team D. seems that I need to do this part for each team before moving forward, which means I might be two hours into the game before I hit a puzzle room. ...there are puzzle rooms in this game, right? maybe not!
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so we're back in the desert. can't these people resolve their problems in a regular way?

just got the first "ending" - no idea if my coin choice mattered (gotta go blue) and if a nonary game would only result from a wrong choice, or if the real game starts from here regardless.

i can't see any obvious reason why Zero would allow his participants to leave without playing, but then it's not immediately clear - obviously - why anyone would create a nonary game here in the first place. but then, why on earth would I expect to understand anything now?

obvious initial mysteries:

- why is Akane here? shouldn't she be, like, saving the world or something? and where's Sigma? is he the guy with the purple hair?
- Zero seems to know about the impending apocalypse, and gives the team the chance to "save the world". Free the Soul types wouldn't want that to happen, so this must be Akane and co again. but it can't be that simple, can it? and why would a Nonary Game forcing people to die help achieve that in any way?
- Zero looks super cool in a ridiculous way, but why the hell would it be of any use for the mastermind to dress up like a barely mobile Silent Hill apparition? surely you have better things to do with your time sir
- what kind of a name for a zero escape character is Carlos?

obviously avoid spoilers going forward, but feel free to ask questions at any time!
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And if you don't know, now you know.

hi guys! those of you with good memories for inconsequential things might recall my previous two zero escape playthrough topics last year. it's taken me a while to get to ZTD, but I figure I might as well complete the set by providing inane commentary, crackpot ideas and general snark along the way.

initial ruminations up shortly! let the games begin.
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And if you don't know, now you know.