LogFAQs > #969648881

Alright, on we go.

No more branching paths for now, after some chats Luna and Sigma are railroaded into the Garden (sorry, 'B. Garden.' Knowing this game the B will wind up being a crucial clue) with Alice, who will almost certainly betray us again so I'm not looking forward to pressing ally when the time comes! The puzzles here are fine, I actually wind up doing the 'secret' file by accident thinking it's the main one lol. We get some background info from the last game, and mentions of Immunoglobulin which is about to become important. Notably there's a tombstone with a lock here that we are unable to open.

We learn some useful info about the gang in today's session. Alice is trying to avenge her father's murder and is sort of a detective (I guess she's in that organisation the secret files mention), she also tells us about All-ice but denies being her (despite admitting to meeting Clover in a desert). Tenmyouji straight up refuses to talk about Quark, but he has some very peculiar word choices when referring to him. Luna has a medical license, everybody else doesn't reveal much. We've heard very little from K or Clover so far, and Dio seems to be little more than a punching bag- but then I thought this about Santa in the first game and we know how that panned out!

As I prepare for the deadly AB game, we get thrown a curveball in the form of Quark's diagnosis with Radical-6. A pandemic, VLR was ahead of its time >_> I wonder how this storyline will feel in 2022. As Quark freaks out, he seems to claim that the body he is in isn't actually his own and that his soul will escape if he kills himself. This tracks with Tenmyouji's weird statements about him not really being an elementary schoolkid, and could relate to the feeling Sigma shared earlier that his body wasn't his own.

Alice soon freaks out too and gets diagnosed with the same illness, and I get a 'to be continued' ending as Sigma tries to think how to save both of them with the lone vial that Quark had picked up (for some reason). Man, I got a 'to be continued' ending my first run of 999 too! I can't tell if that's good or bad luck on my part.

Lots of juicy questions on the table here, I'm getting into some fun stuff already. There's three cryo-sleep pods that presumably belong to three of the nine, but who? I'll have to take note if anyone mentions anything suspicious about the date they were kidnapped, as Sigma's was on Xmas morning 2028. There's the mysterious antimatter bomb which seems to make no sense- if it's Zero then why on earth would they want to blow anything up (to connect us to another timeline perhaps?), and why is Sigma certain that Zero Jr wasn't lying when it said Zero was one of the nine.

I have more questions to ponder, but as I'm thinking over what happened I decide to hit the flowchart and betray Alice to get through the other side. Imagine my surprise when Alice actually picks 'Ally' this time! Alice's choice is Schrodinger's Cat, it seems. And then imagine my further surprise when Sigma acknowledges the absurdity of this change! Our protagonist is immediately very aware that he has gone back in time, before catching himself after a couple of minutes and realising how insane he sounds. This is fascinating, the flowcharts not being rigid timelines but actually altering depending on the order you play them opens up so much potential for this game's structure and throws me for a total loop. I love this twist.

After a while the timeline settles into repeating the last time, but I do notice Tenmyouji mentioning he 'hasn't had enough time' to earn Clover's trust. Is he also aware he's in some timeline thing, just like he's aware of whatever Quark's deal is? And an aside on Sigma- he's growing on me (his refusal to accept sacrificing either Alice or Quark endears him to me a great deal), but remains unique from the rest in ways that stretch beyond him being the main character. For some reason he's the only unvoiced character, and I've noticed he doesn't appear in the wide group shots in the warehouse (or in any of the single close-ups). There's also one instance where Tenmyouji runs through everybody's job, but fails to mention Sigma entirely. He appears to be an anomaly here for some reason. And if we're going to be heading into body swap territory then things could get very interesting (and confusing) quickly.