LogFAQs > #911065234

foolm0r0n posted...

It's the same as in 999. You "choose" the doors, but it's actually Junpei choosing and you're past Akane watching various versions of him simultaneously. You're not actually choosing anything. It's just a gameplay formality. In ZTD you're just watching through Delta's quantum cameras and mind reading (which goes across timelines if you don't remember).

Delta's mind hacking doesn't go across timelines. He can only read the minds of people in the same history as him. The reason he knows about other histories at all is because people SHIFT into his timeline and he can read their memories of the other timelines.

And isn't this contradictory? You say that Delta is mind hacking people into making these decisions, but then you say that he's just seeing different histories via his quantum computer. Why would this game be so inconsistent with its methodology when the previous two games were always consistent? I mean, VLR Zero also had a quantum computer, why didn't the game show us stuff after Sigma dies in those timelines as well?

foolm0r0n posted...

However what's different in VLR is that there ARE actually choices where you click a button and it mind hacks the character to make a choice they would never make. This explicitly makes the player connected with Delta's actions.

Can you provide any real evidence for this? I mean, first off, how do I know that it's not just the quantum computer showing me, the non-Zero player, different histories (one where Delta mindhacked, one where he didn't) in a way that doesn't explicitly link me to his actions? And how do you prove that they would "never" make a decision? If I remember correctly, Diana claims to have made a decision that she would never have made (pressing the decontamination button), but the message from Zero in Standoff: D makes it clear that she definitely made that choice of her own free will and was just making an excuse to Phi and Sigma. So how many of these decisions are a choice someone would never make, as opposed to one that they would make and just won't admit it?

foolm0r0n posted...

The point of the ending is just that anything could actually happen. It's just another binary choice, but it's completely different since the player has no say in it. It's only up to Carlos, as an actual person, not a pawn in some elaborate paradox.

Again, I disagree. As far as I can tell, the point is to create more timelines. Everyone SHIFTing in to Payoff from Final Decision plants the seed to stop the terrorist, but that's no guarantee of success. The best way to ensure that there's at least one timeline where the terrorist is stopped is to split off as many additional timelines from that "seed" as possible. And one way to do that is to force a decision.

So if the Carlos that shoots Delta at the end fails to stop the terrorist, maybe the Carlos who doesn't shoot him succeeds in his own history.

Delta repeats his "the lives of you, me, and mankind are all on the line" platitude right before Carlos makes his decision at the end, even though his complex motive of putting them in the mindset to stop the terrorist is already complete. So he must believe that this decision is also integral to saving humanity. Otherwise, nothing's on the line for that "Decision Game".
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And though we deserved not his mercy, he has led us to this new Eden, a last chance for redemption.