Board 8 > Zero Time Dilemma: A KCF Playthrough Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

More than 18 months after I received my reservation copy, I am finally going to play this. I originally planned to begin on my birthday, but it might be better to start a little sooner.

As a bit of background information, I originally bought 999 in the winter of 2011 on a whim. Back then, Amazon had daily deals of the day for video games, and the first two impulse purchases from that were mega hits with me (Far Cry 2 and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars). After reading some interesting reviews for it, I took the plunge and made a playthrough topic out of it. Despite the ending leaving a bitter taste in my mouth, I found the journey to be incredible with overall great writing and one of the best atmospheres that I have experienced in a video game.

I later bought and played (with an accompanying playthrough topic) VLR in the spring of 2013. I had mixed feelings about it but mostly positive. I loved the flowchart, the improved puzzles, and the Ambidex game in theory, but the atmosphere left a lot to be desired and the writing quality took a nosedive. There aren't many psychological thrillers with hybrid gameplay (just Zero Escape and Danganronpa as far as I know), which I realized I loved after 999, so there was no doubt that I was getting ZTD and make a playthrough topic when it came time to play it.
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Tag, but if you had issues with the first two games, this one won't be any better. Especially in the writing and characters department.

Even hardcore fans of the first two games thought ZTD was a letdown.
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My feelings for this game are complex
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Tag
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tag
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My tag is complex......I fully expect you like this game considering public opinion is split on this game my friend
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Because I assume that it is expected for people to have played the first two games, I will have a lot of unmarked spoilers pertaining to Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward. I will however mark the rest of this post.

I thought about replaying 999 and VLR before going into this since I just bought the Nonary Game collection, but decided against it since I think that I can remember most of the important stuff. I recall 999 being a self-contained game where:
- Some group experimented on kidnapped children to research morphogenetic fields across space or whatever.
- Akane, Santa, Clover, and Snake were four of many participants of it. Lotus' daughters were too.
- Ace and the 9th man were two of four major players in the experimentation. Other two died during 999.
- Seven was a detective trying to find the missing children.
- Akane was Zero, Santa was her brother and assistant.
- The game took place in the desert where one of the morphogenetic tests took place.
- Junpei was Akane's best friend and at the end of the game, he was Akane's morphogenetic field partner and the game was actually from Akane's perspective or something to prevent her from being incinerated. I forget the specifics.

VLR definitely required a sequel with all the crap they threw at you:
- Some organization called the Myrmidons wanted to do something probably evil and were led by Brother and/or Left. They also cloned one of the two I think. Dio was a clone.
- Ten was an 70-something Junpei and Quark was there just because they needed another body.
- Alice and Clover were like government agents.
- Luna was a robot.
- K was both mechanical/cyborg/clone Sigma and Akane from 999 depending on the path.
- Phi and Sigma were working with Akane and could jump timelines and whatever. Sigma was technically Zero.
- The game took place on the moon.
- I totally forget what they were hoping to achieve from the game, but I do remember it might have had something to do with preparing for jumping to the timeline where the shit hit the fan on a base that might have been on Mars. That might be what ZTD revolves around?
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ZTD fucking rules
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I really like some parts of this game, but as a whole I'm not totally sure how I feel.
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I know very little about this game since I wanted to go in mostly blind. I do know that among the characters are Junpei, Akane, Phi, and Sigma, though with this being an alternative timeline (or so was the idea), their personalities may be different because I remember seeing in a trailer that Junpei was acting like an emo tool. I also am told that it doesn't actually answer many unanswered questions from VLR.
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Weird shit tag
Weird shit tag
This game rules
Weird shit tag
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Can't find any mention of game-breaking bugs to look out for, so I think that I am being given the green light. The fact that many of you have said that you don't know how you feel about the game intrigues and concerns me.
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I liked the game a lot and didn't really have any problems with it. I guess it's true that there were loose threads from VLR that never got tied up but it didn't bother me a ton (much like Best Show Ever Lost).

I don't think there are any bugs like the save bug in VLR.
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Towards the end of the game there's some flags you have to trigger to advance the plot that don't always seem to work properly. It's not gamebreaking though--it just might confuse you for a bit and then force you to rewatch a short-ish scene you've already seen.
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Flags like what 999 required of you to see the true ending?
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It's not really something you need to worry about at the moment. If he is referring to what I think he is, it isn't a glitch. It's just a common point people get stuck on because they don't realize they need to do something. It's entirely possible you just figure it out on your own and never even realize it was something you could get stuck on.
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Mine was either glitched or whatever the requirements actually are were somehow more complicated than people thought at the time, because the fix for me was doing something that I'd already done previously.
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Either way though it's not something you need to worry about now yeah.
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I will totally begin the game tonight and provide an update. I didn't realize how late it was when I made this topic.
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Tag.
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the real dilemma is that i have zero time to play it again
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Team Q represent!
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Q is a good boy.
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So I had planned to upload some screenshots I took, but Sony has a cumbersome method to do so. I thought I could do a workaround by using the email function to send them to myself, but I got an error, and then my memory card corrupted. When I turned the system back on, everything was not only wiped, but my memory card somehow lost the ability to hold anywhere near its limit. There's an insufficient amount of data to download anything from PSN, so I am super pissed that I paid $15 for Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth last year only to never be able to play it.

Pertaining to this playthrough though, I own ZTD in cart form, so this won't have to be put on hiatus. I do however have to do everything over again, but I think that I can enable an option to skip over all texts.

Okay, I removed my memory card and put it back in, and that at the very least gave me back my save file, so I guess that I won't have to re-do anything. I'm still not going to bother with screenshots though.
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Coincide

We begin on 12/31/2028 in a Nevada desert. There appear to be pod-like buildings that are all connected. We are apparently getting right into the thick of things as everyone is locked in cells. Envisioning the still of the pods, these cells can't possibly be located in those pods unless there's an underground portion. If I am wrong, this would be the first in the series where the true setting is revealed off the bat.

One cell has two guys and a girl. Another cell has an Emil/Nightmare Before Christmas enthusiast, a normal looking dude, and a woman who feels that zippers are for losers. They are openly insulting Emil's appearance. The woman even savagely called Emil a mistake. Not that I am happy that we are once again having someone's face be concealed for plot convenience, but maybe they should let off the gas. Two girls and a guy were in the final cell. I can easily identify two as being Phi and Sigma. Other than Emil, I am under the impression that everyone else knows each other.

The animation is disappointing thus far. I really dislike this douche in the gray shirt. Plague doctor strolls into the room to ask us to guess a coinflip. I like how the title of Coincide can also be said as coin side. Clever if intentional. If guessed correctly, everyone leaves. If guessed incorrectly, the game must continue Carlos has to be the one to guess, so I guess he might be the lead character. This would be funny if the game ends completely if you guess correctly, but what are the odds of that?

Savage Boobs said to choose red and Mr. Too Cool For School (Junpei?) said to choose blue. Curious that anyone bothered to tell me what to pick...Right before my decision, Zero called me a solitary snail. Not only is that an odd thing to call someone, that was at least the second mention of a snail. That can't be a coincidence.
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Before the decision, I decided to look at the menus since I figured I would have to be familiar with them. There's a fragment flowchart, a global flowchart, and the ability to switch teams (probably the ones in each cell). Yeah, this isn't confusing at all. I went with red because why the hell not? What do you know, that arrogant woman was correct. Obviously there was a catch. Everybody will be put to sleep and will forget everything through unexplained means. Carlos was cut off after saying "I know you're..." because of course that's what this game would do.

Payoff

We are now in the desert right outside of the pods. Phi and Diana vaguely remember things that occurred in the cell area. Nobody knows the kid still. Uh, we won!? I don't know if this is an ending or intro credits, but in the long-ass time that it took to finish, I recognized two of the names under English Voice Cast: Matthew Mercer and Kirk Thornton. There were more names than known characters, so I'm guessing that there's more to come.

CDC End 1

Cool I guess?
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Congrats on beating the game...!
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Okay, now to choose a team. Team C had Junpei and I assume Akane. Team D had Phi and Sigma. Team Q has the seemingly crappy characters, but at least these are crappy characters that I have no prior history with, so I felt like it was best to experience this nightmare as them. Go Q Team!

I guess we begin with choosing story fragments. I luckily have only one option, but the asymmetrical layout bothers me. I can only hope that things become clearer in due time. I had to go back and throw the coin toss, and the screenshots that I took from the aftermath were amazing. Those facial reactions are soooo bad. I still don't know anybody's name on my team, but if I'm Team Q, I am guessing my helmeted leader has a codename that begins with Q. Back to sleep everyone goes.

Some, uh, crazy shit was going on in that opening video. I saw a Mexican standoff and someone hoisting a chainsaw above their head. They finally reveal the mystery people's names. Eric is the douche and Mira is the harlot. I haven't mentioned this but in addition to the shoddy animation, the voicework isn't exactly stellar either.

Zero showed us a pre-recorded message, and that too mentioned a snail. It was some story about a woman who chose a different path than normal to jog on. She deviated from normal because of a snail and was murdered and disposed of in some bushes. Ahhh, good ol' change. Anyway, the snail motif has to be integral to the mystery of, well, something.
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Mega Info Dump That You Are Free To Correct Me On
- All teams are in separate wards that don't seem to connect (they soon panned to Diana's face and they are the best with hers alternating between being mortified and exhausted along with her bright, blue eyes)
- After 90 minutes, everyone will be put to sleep and have their short-term memories erased (12:10 then)
- We can leave via elevator marked with an X (allegedly no other way to escape)
- Six X passes needed to activate it
- X passes are announced for each death (Sigma and Mira had amazing faces upon hearing this)
- Door remains open for 30 seconds before closing permanently
- We also vote on a team to kill via a computer (only team leader can vote)
- Deadline to vote is 10 minutes before administration of knockout drugs
- Any team that hasn't voted will be penalized like they were voted against twice (I originally misinterpreted this)

We went from Nonary Game to Ambidex Game to now Decision Game. Zero finished off the explanation by saying that not only us but the lives of Zero and the human race are at stake. Nice try in attempting to get me to believe that Zero is none of us. Nothing really happened, so I'm sticking with Q Team.
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Execution: Q

Well fuck me if that isn't an ominous title. They went and showed all the rooms that are within the Q Ward. I miss 999 when you had no idea what each door led to. Can't be helped now I suppose. Eric continues to treat his team leader like crap and while Mira has eased off, she isn't exactly quick to jump in and settle Eric down. Right above a netless basketball hoop was a red message on the wall. VLR did this too, but I forget the significance of it. I'm just going to ignore "Let's Inhibit The Virtus" for now.

Mira totally has Eric whipped/entranced. This sickens me. Mira and Eric work for something called DCOM. Q's helmet, which I can't tell if the orange is paint, rust, or something else entirely, might only come off via a password input on the side of it. Great, more code-cracking. He did have a brief vision of what appeared to be one of those group hospital rooms. I am really tired of this hiding-peoples-faces-for-plot-reasons gimmick.

DCOM, as it turns out, stands for Dwelling for the Cohabitation of Mars. The group of eight (maybe?) were hired as experimental subjects regarding the psychological aspects of living in close quarters. They made it five days before this happened. Eric and Mira appear to be in a relationship that is close to being serious, maybe. Mira just acts so unlike anyone should in a confusing, high-stakes situation such as this. Eric sucks, but at least that might be largely due this bizarre, chaotic mess.

I forget how, but a serial killer called Heart Ripper was brought up. Q somehow knew a lot about it (I'm not going to like this am I?) and told a story AWFULLY familiar to the one Zero told about the female jogger.
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A mysterious, red box has apparently been on the bar this entire time. Naturally, the first thing to do is shake it. It says Force Quit Box, and lo and behold, it appears to be yet another thing that requires a code. Lovely. A dog, apparently the one from the experiment called Gab, comes out of the blue. He has a message that Carlos allegedly wrote that speaks of a plan to ensure nobody dies from the voting process (via tie votes). I do not recall hearing Zero say that a three-way tie would result in no executions, but I won't stomp on their parade yet.

Due to having less control (thus far anyway), I am no closer to gaining any understanding of the sense of time. 85 minutes have apparently passed since waking up. I briefly forgot how "Carlos" wanted us to vote, but luckily the was a record of it in a menu. I decided that there's little reason to vote against the plan given the lack of other info, so I went with voting for Team C.

Q Team apparently obeyed Zero's wishes. I don't know if that is referencing the rules of voting or if it actually meant he/she was the one who wrote the message (Carlos being Zero is also an option), but I was still put to sleep, and I had no idea what effect my choice had. Maybe I need to make a decision for all the other teams before I can proceed.

I do not know if I should go back to the decision and vote against the plan or take control of another team. I will think about that and hopefully resume tomorrow (technically today for me).
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I will make sure to do a better job at providing updates earlier than when I did. Also, my future updates will have less re-telling and more flavor/theories. This was just a more confusing setup that I needed to tell how I interpreted the rules so that people could correct me if I'm mistaken about them at this point in the game.
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Eric is a doofus.

My favorite team was the one with the two girls and a guy.
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Speaking about the voice acting, Karen Strassman reprised her role as Phi from VLR. I'm glad that stayed the same. I forget the guy's name, but I believe Eric's is the same actor who played a villain in P5. I don't remember Kirk Thornton though (looks like isn't a main character, just a bit part). I'll have to check the scenes again to be sure. Eden Riegal is Diana. I knew her voice was familiar. It was driving me nuts watching the opening again.

I like most of the acting from the people I know at least. You're right in the sense that some aren't as great as the others. VLR was better across the board in that department. I do remember that. I mean, they had Laura Bailey and Liam O'Brien, so obviously it's not fair.
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In a neat touch, when they went back and added voices for 999 in the Nonary Games version, they kept Akane and Junpei's voices from this game in spite of the year or so gap between the release of ZTD and Nonary Games
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I was fine with most of the voice acting, but yeah, the animations are laughably bad. The budget wasn't what they wanted, and a lot of corners had to be cut in that department. I enjoy laughing at them though. They're "great".
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I haven't seen any movement animation that has made me laugh yet, but my god the faces. I had like 10 screenshots of them.
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This game's director really liked Telltale's Walking Dead and wanted to make a cinematic game like that.

It didn't quite get there
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Based on how things ended after making my decision in the, well, Decision Game, I figured that I should probably switch to the other teams and get them to vote or I probably won't be able to proceed. I am additionally curious if my previous vote would have been overwritten if I decided to stick with Q team and went with the other vote. Whatever the case, I switched to D team

Execution: D

This lounge is exactly just like the one from Q Wing. Layout though is quite different. Other than the lounge and a decontamination room, this wing has a completely different set of rooms (did I see a piano in the healing room?). There's another message in red on the wall. I remembered VLR having these, but I also forgot that they were anagrams. I wrote them down in case I ever want to try my hand at interpreting them, but I will probably just let the game inform me when they feel like it. As has been mentioned before, the animation still continues to disappoint (not that I'm expecting it to get better at this point), but at least you can find humor in it. The voicework though is just, I don't know, low effort? Other than Eric's VA and to a lesser extent Carlos, I can't say anyone has delivered their lines with much emotion or believability behind it. Sigma's response to being asked what he was looking at (he responded, "A box.") is what brought this on.

Speaking of that box, Sigma and Phi could not pick it up or move it around. Didn't Q do that though and with no trouble? Perhaps I am misremembering how that all went down. If this is to be believed, Phi, Sigma, and Akane have their consciousnesses from the events of VLR transferred to the bodies of the present. I think that would line up with the ending of VLR, but it's been awhile. It finally happened, but the idea that Zero could be among the nine has been presented to the players/characters (well a few characters anyway).

Diana is/was a nurse. She signed up for this experiment at the suggestion of the head nurse where she worked, Rebecca, and also another reason, but it was conveniently cut off due to Gab barreling through the vent. This confirms that D team did end up receiving the message. I once again voted as the paper requested, so D team has voted for Q team, and I have been granted no memory loss when D team wakes up. It was time to finish this up with C team.
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Execution: C

I am noticing plenty of music has been remixed/recycled for use in this game. Also related, the default music and voice volume levels suck. The music sometimes made it hard to hear softer-speaking lines/characters, so I finally remedied that. They brought up Tamatebako, Urashima Taro, and something about Japanese folklore. I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, so I won't be surprised if this is a major clue about a future plot point. Oddly, Carlos brought up jumping through time. I take it a specific Japanese folklore is centered around it.

For those who haven't followed my playthroughs for 999, VLR, Ever17, or the first two Danganronpa games, I decided that trying to understanding the overarching plot (after what went down in 999) would be futile for me, so I tend to focus my attention on analyzing the individual characters. Mira has a hold over Eric and was the one to suggest selecting the red side of the coin. Q, unless I was mistaken, could easily move a box that Phi and Sigma struggled with (also assuming the boxes are of equal weights). There's a few more, but to get to the point, Akane briefly suggested she was familiar with a Zero (obvious for those who played 999 and VLR). Her reaction to another Zero popping up seemed genuine, so I am the least suspicious of her solely based on that moment.

Akane brought up Reverie Syndrome. I have no idea what this is (I'm guessing/hoping that it is fictional), but it had something to do with slowing/dulling senses. I think. Carlos seemed to be somewhat familiar with it while Junpei seemingly did not. Carlos is a firefighter. I forgot that this takes place in Nevada, so Carlos is probably American. He joined up because he needed the money. Akane and Junpei signed up allegedly not knowing that the other did. I wonder how many did sign up. I'm sure there had to be a cutting system. More than eight people certainly signed up for this, especially since $500,000 (USD?) was offered to participants.

Gab once again showed up, not through a vent this time but simply through a door. That might be a major clue. I will have to check out the map later for general layout and specific rooms in C Wing. Junpei should stop telling jokes. Nothing can top his "nuh-uh, there's air!" line from 999. It can only go downhill from there. His personality is also a complete 180 from 999. He's suggesting that I screw over Q team, and he doesn't seem to have much concern for anyone but himself. I can't imagine that the events of 999 broke him so massively. I have a few theories that I can briefly talk about after the vote, which was also affected by my theories.

Had D team not have not received the note that Carlos wrote, I probably would have voted in a way that would kill a team, not sure which to be honest. Because D team did receive it, I decided that I don't want to begin the game with that much blood on my conscious and voted in a way that everyone (maybe) lives the initial decision from the Decision Game. I also decided to go with the flow because I realized that there's no guarantee that my votes would all line up. Because jumping through time is on the table, and the wonkiness behind why VLR Ambidex game results were not what you thought would happen, I was unsure if all of our votes were related to the same Decision Game in the same timeline, and I wasn't sure if my votes even mattered.
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For the third time in as many votes, I have been informed that everyone will retain their memories. I checked the flowchart after, and it does say that all teams survived the votes, so I guess that this suggests this was all during the same timeline. A lot of fragments have opened up. I have five available for C and D teams. I only have four for Q team. I am leaning toward doing one for C or D team in an effort to even things out.

I want to take the time to say that I am currently most suspicious of Junpei for his aforementioned lack of compassion, complete personality change, and let us not forget he was the one who suggested to pick what ended up being the wrong side of the coin. 999 was cleverly written with a lot of misdirection and character concealment. By comparison, VLR was essentially what you see is what you get. I am torn as to how I should interpret the characters in this game, but in the two hours or so that I've played, I'd say that this is more similar to VLR than 999.
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All I can say in response to your comments at the end is... \_()_/
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Urashima Taro is a folklore about a man who saves a turtle, gets invited to an underwater kingdom for his good deed and is given a box as a souvenir. But once he goes back to the surface, hundreds of years have passed because time flows differently underwater and everyone he knows have long passed away. He opens the box and he becomes an old man...the hundreds of years seemingly catching up to him in seconds.

This story might or might not have anything to do with the plot of the game as you know how the writers love to tell esoteric trivia.
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Bebop even made a reference to it in an episode. Jet starts talking about the story a little, and Ed and Spike are just like, "TAMATEBAKO'S THE TURTLE!" That would suck though, trading essentially limited time in paradise for, POOF OLD/DEAD!"
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I decided to stick with C team, and I didn't want to examine the fragment panels too closely as to not spoil myself, so I semi-randomly picked one. It looked to be a room with yellow furniture and x-rays.

Poison

Well I think it is painfully obvious what's going to happen. The room everyone woke up in was unsurprisingly the infirmary. Zero once again tells a story that might have referenced the dead jogger. This time, they go further and say that a man was falsely imprisoned and executed for that murder. The man's wife committed suicide, and two children were left behind. Now I'm not entirely sure what country this all took place in, but I'm pretty sure that in the US, the falsely imprisoned can seek financial restitution for lost time and whatever. A falsely imprisoned and executed person can probably yield a huge payday for the deceased's family. I'm curious is the children are Santa/Akane and they used that to bankroll the events of 999. I remember that the creator Q/A following 999 said something along the lines that they got their money via playing the stock market or whatever, but he also said other things that he immediately reversed course on in VLR. I have no other theory.

Moving on, Zero makes it sound like another team was poisoned as well (or at least three other people). Junpei talks to himself holding a ring. Please no forced romance in this game. I must be honest, I totally forgot about the puzzles after awhile. It only took like two hours to get to one while 999 and VLR had you doing one within the first 10 minutes or something.

"Please doc, you gotta help me. I think that I've been poisoned!" - Junpei
- Okay, Junpei finally made me laugh

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that I needed to spray the lockers with the luminol (I kept spraying the poster since I remembered the fragment panel showing a poster with lots of red marks). It took me even longer to finish the puzzle cube inside one of the lockers. I just could not conceptually understand the solution since you could hardly rotate the viewing angle or put them on the cube to see how they fit. I eventually had to just make random guesses until I picked the solution.
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So there are eight supposed antidotes with six people poisoned and nine of us playing the Decision Game. The math doesn't add up here, and Zero finally revealed the twist. Only one of the antidotes is an actual antidote. The rest are seemingly ineffective and harmless. We can only choose one, though we can use the samples below the real deals. It takes three minutes to feel the effects of the sample, and you will know the real one if the tip of your tongue goes numb. We have five minutes until we presumably die.

So my original method was that we each tried a different one, and if nothing happened, we had to take a leap of faith with a 20% chance of getting the antidote. However, Akane is much smarter than me when it comes to probabilities and says that we can each sample four since they do not affect one another during testing. How fast she came up with the combination of samples each person should use is a bit alarming, but I'm chalking that up to plot convenience for now.

We didn't sample one letter, A, I assume because if none of us were affected, then it has to be the one we didn't try. I AM SO SMART. Carlos and Junpei's tongue started to numb, but we don't know about Akane (who fainted from the poison), so it has to be G or H. Carlos, however, is sure that because Akane didn't feel anything, it means that she didn't have her tongue go numb. That's not actually true. It could have caused a different chemical reaction in Akane, among other things. Whatever, I am probably overthinking things and went with the letter than Carlos and Junpei shared but not Akane (G).

That worked, but Carlos had a vision of I presume a dead Junpei. Oh fuck, Q team died. I was expecting the X passes to be numbers, but they are words: Eye, Kill, and Fool. Junpei is really upset over Q's death despite allegedly nobody knowing Q. It isn't known how they died either, but Junpei acted like he did. Akane thinks D team might be the other team to have been poisoned. If all teams are on the same schedule (if this is a solo work by Zero, I guess it would be hard to keep an even schedule), it should actually be Q team and thus why they are dead, but I guess there's no harm in sending the antidotes to D Wing.

"God, you sound like my mom." - Junpei
- Junpei is going to be the next Clover isn't he (meaning severe drop in quality from one game to next)?

I guess that this time, we aren't granted the ability to remember what happened, but Carlos apparently has to the ability to see visions from other timelines.
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Went with D team and the third column, bottom fragment

First Come, First Saved: D

Unlike the poison fragment, D team is in a locked room (Decontamination). In what was a bit of a confusing exchange between Diana, Sigma, and Phi, Phi unsurprisingly jumped timelines. Sigma has curiously not though. Also of note in that conversation was that it seems the bonus for complying with Zero's wishes was for simply voting and not my potential theory that Zero is Carlos/Akane (former wrote the plan for a tie vote, latter came up with the plan).

I forgot about Radical-6 from VLR, but I wonder if Reverie Syndrome is related. I recall in VLR that the processing and reactions were slowed tremendously as early symptoms of R-6, and they did say that Reverie Syndrome did something like slow/dull senses. I guess that Akane, Sigma, and Phi are part of an organization called Crash Keys. I don't recall if that name ever came up in VLR.

I totally forgot about the situation we were in, but all teams are allegedly within the decontamination room. I do recall that all wards had one. Pressing the yellow button will release...hydrofluoric acid in the other rooms! That is fucked up. Sigma assumes that after three minutes, all rooms will have the acid poured on them if nobody hits the button. Maybe he did jump at some point?

What the fuck, this decision has a timer? Only 10 seconds!? Uh, uh, uhhhhhhh...I pressed it. I pressed the button, and upon seeing the bewilderment on Phi's face and horror on Diana's, I knew that I fucked up badly. I forgot that they came to the conclusion that in this timeline, Diana had chosen to follow the plan, and thus everyone else did, which in turn meant that all teams were trusting each other. My fear that Eric would have pressed the yellow button was probably all in my head. I feared that I would have to watch my team be showered with the acid, which I wanted none of.
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KCF0107 posted...

I guess that Akane, Sigma, and Phi are part of an organization called Crash Keys. I don't recall if that name ever came up in VLR.

Yeah. That's Akane's group. I think the term is even a password in one of the final VLR sections

Fun fact: "Crash Key" is prounounced the same (or similarly) to Akane and Santa's last name, Kurashiki, in Japanese
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No memory loss drugs for us, and Zero says it would be inconvenient to forget causing the deaths of others. They kicked me out to the team selection screen, but I have only one fragment available, and it is for D team. That cannot be a good sign. Noooo, I am looking at C team in the Decontamination Room. I don't want to see the acid poured on them. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. I looked at the flowchart to delay the inevitable, and it is clear that I made a terrible decision. Q believes he has been in a decontamination room before. Is Q short for Quark?

I was thinking that the deaths weren't going to be graphic after them having the camera fixated on the shower heads. Hydrofluoric acid is colorless I think, so I am assuming that they took scientific liberties that blood would somehow splatter to the elevation of the shower heads. The VAs attempts at screaming were kind of bad, but then they went and showed me bits of the deceased players flesh/organs. Goddammit, I'm a monster!

The six X passes were different words from the previous set. Both times included Q team, so this basically confirms (if it wasn't obvious) that alternate timelines are at work. I'm not sure if the claim that Diana's body was taken over to press the button and vote different in another timeline is some fourth-wall stuff or not. They also brought up another syndrome, Alien Hand. I'm not going to remember nor differentiate between important and unimportant from all the random stuff they talk about. At the end of that conversation, Diana too seemingly had a vision of all the fleshy bits in decontamination rooms.

Gab came out, and I do want to note that we haven't seen his eyes, we have no idea why he's here, and also his advanced age makes me question if it is a real dog. I was initially worried when entering the X passes since I kept getting an error code, but I guess they do that until you add the sixth one. I was the only person concerned when white smoke enveloped the area round the elevator door one second and totally gone the next.

The elevator room looks similar to the one from VLR. More importantly, Diana was twitching like she was straight up possessed, and she left to return to the lounge all alone. I remember there being a manufacturing room in one of the wings, so it isn't out of the question that someone is a GOL-EM or whatever the things from VLR were called. Zero is going on about how Diana was faking having a split personality disorder to not be legally responsible for the deaths of Q and D team (didn't Zero specifically say that her actions were legally justifiable earlier?). Zero also said some Latin phrase, Stabat Mater Dolorosa, Cool.

Bad Ending
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A new fragment opened up for D team, but I'm going back to Q team when I play again. I need more exposure to their characters. I'm not sure how this would fit into the whole Myrmidons/Brother/Left/Radical-6 thing, but some aspects of this last fragment made me question if this was actually some sort of computer simulation. Highly unlikely, but I think there is an argument to be made for it with selective memories, supposed timeline jumping, body possessing, and the ability to pull off all of this if the wings are only connected via vents and decontamination rooms. Gab better not be fucking Zero.
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