LogFAQs > #970070345

MysteriousStan posted...

It never crossed my mind to solely ally with everyone and then go back and betray after all the ally routes had been exhausted.

Well, after Sigma acknowledged the first rewind I thought my choices might have an effect on other timelines going forward, so I wanted to be careful. Sadly the game didn't really turn out this way!

The Quantum room is a rehash of several past puzzles, and our reward is another hologram visit, this time from Akane herself. She explains that the purpose of the AB project is to send Phi and Sigma to the past, and then soon after we open a new flowchart option set before the beginning of the game (not sure how that works). Here we save Akane and speak to her in person, and she explains a bit more, then we go back into the future and eventually speak to her again so she can explain the whole lot. There's a lot of jumping around here!

After our rest stop in the past the whole gang (minus Dio lol) leaves the facility and Tenmyouji explains that, yes, we are in fact on the moon. Dammit game, you got me again! Of course we're on the moon, we have spacesuits on! I feel so foolish for buying the false reveal earlier lol. None of us realised we were on the moon because we've been infected with Rad-6, slowing our mind processing speed by sqrt 1/6. I'm not sure if this actually makes sense but it's a fun twist so I go along with it. We head back inside through floor B (ah, that door was useful after all!) and go to the Garden Where Good Scenes Happen.

I'm assuming now that B. Garden is really named Before Garden, as in a garden showing how things used to be before the pandemic. That's a neat unspoken reveal if true. We unlock the grave and a treatment pod rises up, and while we wait for it to defrost K explains everything he knows. I'm not going to try to explain the whole ABCDE thing here because a) it'd take me a long time b) I'd definitely mess it up and c) you all know it anyway. The pod defrosts and we see another Sigma clone, who is in fact the same body who is usually in K's suit. The K speaking to us is the Akane we saved, and our Sigma is... old! And Zero!

Like Akane herself, this reveal of Sigma's age isn't really a surprise by the time it comes around. It explains a lot of things, and it works in most respects, but... I don't know, in a way it feels a bit cheap. The twist only works because the game withholds information from the player for no good reason- there's no reason Sigma shouldn't be shown in the group shot by the AB reveal screen for instance, except for the fact it'd spoil this. And moon gravity shmoon gravity, you're telling me at no point did any of these people say 'hey dude the fuck is up with your eye'?? I probably missed some allusions to it to be fair, but still... Did Sigma never put his hands to his face and feel his roboeye or wrinkled skin, or did his cyberarms trick his brain into thinking he looked young still? Maybe I'm doing the game a disservice here, overall the twist works and it's obviously important to the story, but it feels a little sloppier than most of the big reveals have.

More importantly, Sigma is Doctor Sigma 'Zero' Klim. And K is his clone, created to replace him. Poor K. Poor young Sigma's consciousness >_> Akane explains some more batshit sci fi stuff, knifes Sigma into the past, and we have a chat with young Akane about saving the world. Then the game ends. Or begins. Wait, what? That's it?!

Overall I'm sorry to say this ending leaves me a bit empty. I mean, it just ends like that with a sequel hook? All the stuff we've been building up to and that's it?! 999's ending may have had flaws but it was grand and emotionally satisfying, this one is a bunch of cold exposition that cuts off before reaching any resolution. VLR has been great at keeping an emotional throughline throughout its runtime, I'm sad that it ends like this. All of these characters we've bonded with over our journey, and they barely get to react to any of the grand revelations before they're offscreen and done with.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike it, it just doesn't feel like an ending. And I think it's time I talk about Akane. At one point she talks about some death being 'unavoidable', and she explains that all of this was set up to help boost Sigma and Phi's jumping skills. But I'm annoyed that nobody pushes back on this! Sure, her and Dr Siggy's intentions are good and they want to save the world, but there is no mention of there being a moral quandary here. A few updates ago I mentioned that I was happy the game was going in this direction, but it doesn't go there at all! Akane is taken at her word and all of her+Zero's victims don't get a say in things. The two have created dozens of timelines of death and destruction for the sake of saving one single timeline, and to me that feels like an issue worth exploring.

I'm not saying Akane should be treated as a villain necessarily, but her reasoning is hard to swallow. Was this really the only way for Sig+Phi's powers to manifest? I know there's 'fight or flight' and Sigma's species B explanation from ages ago, but did they even try anything else? Because it seems to me like creating a Nonary Game to psychologically torture and kill 9 people shouldn't be the first solution you jump to, and yet Akane's done it twice now! I know, I know, in 999 she had to do it because it was already done when she was a kid, and they try to spin that again here, but I don't really buy it. She had to bring Clover here to put her through all that pain again, but this time without her brother to support her? Were there really no other espers left? Junpei had finally moved on from her and started to find some peace and fulfillment in life through Quark, and she just yanks him back from all that to boost the psychic powers another notch? And subjects Quark to the misery too? K's entire existence is just as a backup in case Zero dies, but they throw him in here and drug him so he doesn't remember who he is for good measure. Luna's creation seems to serve a similar purpose. Clover, Alice and Phi get robbed of their lives to be brought to this hellhole. All of these people get infected with a deadly disease that can and does make them suicidal. All this suffering, death, and pain has a reason, and yeah sure saving the world is as good a reason as you can get, but surely the question of the ethics of doing all this should at least be raised? Am I alone in thinking this?

I feel like I'm being too harsh here. Especially on Akane. I know Zero is just as if not more responsible for all this, but Sigma as we know him is innocent and we haven't seen him in Zero form really, and Akane is the face of the project. I'm making it sound like I hate the game now lol, but I don't! I really like it! My instant reaction now though is to think of it as a game about the journey rather than the destination, and a game with great characters and great twists but not a tightly wrapped mystery.

There are far more questions left than I expected, I guess Zero Time Dilemma will answer them and I really hope it doesn't abandon the future characters I've grown so fond of. I probably set my expectations too high, I knew going in that there was another sequel but it never crossed my mind that they wouldn't resolve this game's story here like they did with 999's last time. Still, I had a wonderful time playing and I hope you enjoyed following along and laughing at my many terrible predictions!