Board 8 > Zero Time Dilemma: A KCF Playthrough Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

I honestly have no idea, but that conversation, if I interpreted it correctly, meant that Q in some form has experience behind the wheel.
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KCF0107 posted...

One exchange the two had during this time was about some game they called it about getting a car out of the parking lot. I took this as playfully whining about the difficulties of parking lots/garages, which means that Q could possibly be of driving age or have the memories of someone who was.

No there's literally just a common sliding block puzzle with a car in a parking lot
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I guess that I can stop over-thinking about that then!
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D team, first column, first fragment

Suppression

Waking up in the Healing Room, I was soon rewarded with a story about Diana's musical background and how she brought several of her friends to tears while playing the tambourine. I'll bet she did. We also keep getting weapons as a knife soon entered our inventory. Seriously, the rate that weapons are used against another character is alarmingly high in this game.

Overall, this puzzle room was easily my favorite that I've played so far. I didn't believe the game when a message popped up indicating this was only the sixth one that I've gone through, but that appears to be the case. If I had to rank them:
1. Healing Room
2. Pod Room
3. Pantry
4. Study
5. Incinerator Room (big fan of the multiple perspective)
6. Infirmary

A big, blue button appeared with a warning message to not press it. This was shaping up to be my favorite decision because it was such a simple task, and you had absolutely no idea what choosing either would lead to. Unfortunately, they tried to goad you into pressing it by giving you a 60-second timer and zooming in on the button as time went on for an added sense of urgency. Perhaps pressing the button turns out to be the correct course of action, but I didn't like them going the extra mile as they did. I ended up not pressing it.

The door opened and everyone went back to the lounge. Phi was playing or something with Gab while Sigma and Diana talked about the time-jumping thing. I needed a refresher course on it, and now I think I can differentiate it from morphogenetic powers a lot better. I will probably call it SHIFTing from now on. Eventually, Phi was gone with Gab still there. I smell trouble brewing for someone.
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X Passes were given out for the deaths of D team and Eric. Once again, the team has differing ideas on how Diana voted during the Execution fragment. Much like the conclusion of First Come, First Served, Diana has a vision of C team's execution. Eric's crime scene I don't think was the one from Triangle. For starters, I'm pretty sure that Eric was smiling in that fragment. Also, I think that the study's floor was wooden or at least not that tile we just saw him laying on. It could have been for dramatic effect, but Sigma and Diana were talking about the remaining members who could have killed Eric when Sigma was cut off before saying Q.

The main lights went off, and the lounge was all lit in red again (where is the source of that red light?). That always leads to someone dying. Phi, please don't be coming back to kill us...uhhhh, it's a cloaked person. I didn't get a good idea on their height and general body type, but he stabbed Sigma who is probably going to die. Phi was eventually found inside the Healing Room looking at god knows what. If there's one character to run off and not tell anyone where she went, it would be Phi, but still, what an inconsiderate bitch given the circumstances.

Sigma was found in the lounge bleeding out. He said Diana Luna, and from what I remember from VLR, Luna was designed based on someone from Sigma's past. Luna and Diana have medical skills, so it must be Diana. In a twist, it was the character that I was controlling who accused a character of killing another. Now that Phi and Diana are separated, one is definitely going to fall victim to the cloaked person. If you bet on Phi, you are a winner! That makes it six casualties, so it's time to blow this popsicle stand!
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Pushing the button leads to the best scene in the game
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Goddammit! This had some parallels to the Sub ending from 999, so I kept my guard up for jumpscares after Sigma was attacked. When I was inputting the X passes, I was such a wuss that I muted the volume with the expectation they were going to do it during that portion. I unmuted it after we saw the door go up and then blam! I was hit with a bloody scene similar to the times when you died in 999. Damn thing made my heart race.

Gab didn't even alert me of another's presence. This is why toy breeds cannot be counted on in a time of crisis! Now that I think about it, he also didn't do that when Sigma was attacked. Gab might be familiar with this cloaked person and/or was trained not to react to them. Whatever the case, the cloaked person headed through the elevator door. I sort of got the impression from their walk that it was a woman. They were too tall to be Q and too light of skin tone to be Mira. While not totally confirmed, I think this means that there's more down here than the three teams and Gab. This also gives us an option for who killed Junpei and Mira, not that I would know what to put down when asked. Also of note, the manufacturing room is in this wing, but how an adult-sized humanoid would gain access to other wings is unknown to me.

Bad Ending
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C Team Fragments
1. Poison
- Chose correct antidote
- Carlos sees vision of Junpei's disembodied head
- Junpei claims he hasn't had use of his morphogenetic powers since 999

2. Suspicion
- Junpei dead before events of fragment
- Carlos reveals his reason for joining mission
- Akane loses it
- Carlos kills Akane but loses a hand

D Team Fragments
1. First Come, First Saved
- Pressed button killing other teams
- Diana claims to not be in control of her body sometimes
- Diana has vision of dead teams
- Phi and Sigma presumably leave via elevator
- Diana chooses not to go to surface for unknown reasons
- Zero reveals knowledge that Phi will send rescue team

2. Fire
- Sigma is killed by Diana via Decision Game
- Diana kills herself

3. Suppression
- Did not press blue button
- While in lounge, Phi runs off to healing room for unknown reasons
- Sigma is fatally stabbed by cloaked individual
- Diana accuses Phi of killing Sigma
- Phi is fatally stabbed by allegedly the cloaked individual
- Diana is fatally stabbed by the cloaked individual, who goes through the elevator door

Q Team Fragments
1. Triangle
- Eric finds hidden room
- Q recalls a memory inside of a hospital/clinic room
- Team is shown clip of Junpei's disembodied head and Carlos' suicide
- Zero, presumably, goads team to kill one of their own
- Q and Mira kill Eric
- Mira reveals herself to be a serial killer incapable of feeling most emotions
- Mira reveals that Eric worked in an ice cream shop and was a very special person despite being useless and talentless
- Q immediately can recognize and solve anagrams

2. Pop Off
- Mira is found dead inside pod with the means to escape the room in her mouth
- Eric recalls a memory about his abusive dad presumably killing his little brother
- Eric accuses Q of killing Mira
- Eric fatally shoots Q at point-blank range with a shotgun, but Q doesn't bleed
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I have to remember adding notable events for opposite choice in Suspicion. I will probably play within the hour. I will likely do C team, and if I have time, Q team.
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Went with C team, third column, last fragment

First Come, First Saved C

Oh, it's this one. I suppose that I should have expected every team to do it. I'm not sure who is more delusional: Akane or Eric? Eric is the cartoonily (I don't care that isn't a word) delusional one, but Akane just cannot seem to come to grips that she played a significant role in Junpei's personality shift. I guess Junpei quit college and worked at a detective agency straight out of a really dumb and try-hard noir story. Like, it wasn't believable in any sense.

Seven and Junpei destroyed the Free the Soul HQ, which I also rolled my eyes upon hearing. I forgot what Free the Soul was, and I guess that was the group behind the morphogenetic field experiment. Brother formed Free the Soul, but didn't he also found Myrmidons? I know he had some association with them.

I'm under the impression now that all timelines that had everyone voting according to Akane/Carlos' plan resulted in the First Come, First Saved fragment. While I plan to eventually make all decisions in every fragment, I will not be pressing that button this time. I am sort of prepared in case it takes into effect what I did with D team in this same scenario. They seem to suggest that C team will wake up not knowing if showers will activate, but in Q team's fragment, they were all fully conscious when they were showered with acid.
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Q team, first column, last fragment

First Come, First Saved: Q

lol, what are the odds? lol Q nearly pressed the button. Obviously, that wasn't going to happen. Mira and Eric met in Nebraska. God knows why. Mira was going on about a story where koi fish can survive a trip from Brazil to somewhere if a piranha is placed into the tank because a sense of urgency kicks in your desire to survive. The reason why I brought that up is because Eric soon joked that the crew (I don't know if he was talking about the nine here, the DCom group, or a theoretical crew going to Mars) had a murderer a board. Does he know that Mira is a serial killer? It could just be a super coincidence. Also, Mira was kind of offended by that joke, which struck me as odd.

lol, once Zero made their speech regarding the situation in the decontamination rooms, Eric went back to being a six-year-old emotionally. Mira was acting quite calm at the prospect of being showered with acid. That normally wouldn't strike me as odd given who she is, even with her talking about the sense of urgency causing need to survive to kick in. It struck me as odd because, and I haven't brought this up before, but in the execution scenes after the voting portion, she was acting beyond frantic when her collar was about to explode.

Anyway, I did not press the button, and I was a little disappointed that there was no pro/con side like Akane/Junpei and Sigma/Phi in the other situations.
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I think that I have two fragments left for C and D team with only one for Q team since Q team started off with fewer. I don't think that I have enough new info to come up with a revised Zerometer. I might need to do two or more fragments.
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Akane is Akane. Remember how Zero tries to explain her personality back in VLR? "If you were a giant looking down on a termite hill, how much would you actually care about the termites?" She takes little responsibility for anything because life is save states.

Yet she has her sentimentality for Junpei that will last for like 80 years, even past the point Junpei stops giving a fuck
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I do remember that now that you mention it.
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I went with C team, first column, final fragment

Monty Hall

In the control room, and Akane looked internally devastated when Junpei compared the size of, well I forget already because I was totally baffled, to a woman's nipple. One time, my college roommate told me the pepperoni on his pizza looked like his girlfriend's nipple, but saying something looks like another thing is totally different than someone looking at the size of an object and declaring it to be the same size as a goddamn nipple! Do the writers think that young adults talk like that? They must all have been middle-aged.

Anyway, I eventually received a password that was BETESTEDBYFIRE, which wasn't a good sign. Nobody on the team batted an eye though. A machine that we plugged a cable into short-circuited and caught fire. Luckily, there was an extinguisher built into the ceiling. Unfortunately, the room was closed off and the door locked, causing CO2 to build up to toxic levels. There are 10 lockers here, and only one has an oxygen mask. I wonder if I was given an obvious hint earlier and choosing the wrong one makes me an idiot. I went for broke and chose locker #3.

I guess that first decision didn't matter. I remember the probability rule that was commonly associated with Let's Make a Deal when given the opportunity to switch, you take it as your chances of getting your prize are at its highest, so I did switch. The funny thing is that I didn't know that Monty Hall was the host of Let's Make a Deal. I'm sure that I would have put two and two together upon seeing the fragment title if I did. There was an oxygen mask behind locker #9!

I thought that they said there was going to be one mask, or at least implied it, but I guess the rest of the team was surprised to see just one. I wondered if it was possible for everyone to share, but Carlos says that there wouldn't be enough oxygen in the mask for everyone to survive for 20 minutes. Carlos has been a firefighter for 10 years now? Unless this is more of the wacky Japan ages thing, Carlos must be around 30 then, which in turn I think hurts the chances that Q is his sister unless again more wacky stuff. I didn't have a choice on who to give the mask to, but I was probably going to say Akane anyway since she apparently has a weak constitution if this and Poison are of any indication.

I regretted not looking to see which team was completely decimated and which player from the other team died because the next thing I saw after Junpei and Carlos collapsed was Akane going out the X Door. I could be wrong, but that might have been the first time that the X Door was opened in a C team fragment. Not only that, but that might have been the first time that Gab didn't go through it.

One interesting thing to remember is that the female voice from the intercom seemingly had a live conversation with the team, or at least was an AI that could understand human voices and was aware of the team's situation.
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Next, I went with D team, final column, third fragment from top

Outbreak

I had been wanting to enter the Manufacturing Room to see the possibility of a robot being the cloaked killer from Suppression was it? When I got the robots up and running, it didn't appear that any of them were capable of what that cloaked individual did. Maybe my judgment is being clouded by Betty. Then again, I think that the Law of Robotics was a sticking point in VLR, so maybe they wouldn't up and violate it the very next game.

I really fucked up those wire-cutting things. Like the first one had like four notes to help you make the right choice, and I was too lazy and stubborn to go back and read them, so I chose a wire at random, and it was of course the wrong one. I messed up the pendulum a few times. I even realized the order I had to do stuff in, but I of course decided that writing it down is for losers (yet I write down most of the puzzles in a notebook). On the final fuse, I remembered Alex the robot's note saying to cut Betty's wire, so I didn't screw up that part at least. I wonder if there was a bad ending for this puzzle room for any of the number of times that I could have let a bomb go off.

Back in the lounge, Phi once again left, this time to go off to the Prep Room. No Gab to be found anywhere. Sigma has basically told his life story to Diana in the past two fragments of theirs. It has been informative as in addition to the refresher course on SHIFTing, I now have a better understanding of certain events. I guess Luna was created before Kyle, and the mother figure to both were actually different people. I'm pretty sure that Kyle's was Akane, but it sounds like Luna's was future Diana.
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After hearing Phi's plan of blowing up the Decontamination Room door with a bomb from the Manufacturing Room, I was suddenly reminded of the fragment title. Is there some poisonous air or something to do with Radical-6 on the other side of the door and by blowing it up, we doom us or something? It could also be another double entendre and outbreak has to do with breaking out. I don't know, I tend to grasp at straws. I did not like Diana's look and close-up of the stun gun as we left with the bomb.

C team has all died, and now Zero is laying down the law. If the bomb is blown up, Q team will die in the process via being within the blast radius. Our team was planning to go in and defuse it, but the showers were going off with that acid. There's only one suit, but the decision is not for who to go into the suit but if we will stay and defuse it or run away. I initially wanted to run away. This would guarantee six X passes, and having seen two fragments that resulted in wildly different endings that resulted in the X Door opening, I was eager to see a third. On the other hand, every time that I made a decision that was certain to screw over others, nothing has gone as planned (not that anything has turned out well period). Against my better judgment I stayed, and what I witnessed was pure idiocy.

Diana used the stun gun on Sigma AND Phi. There was no reason to believe that Sigma was going to force Diana to run away even though he said that there probably wasn't enough time to diffuse the bomb. Diana then goes out of her way to stun Phi. Phi did volunteer to put on the suit, but when Diana asked Phi a question about taking Sigma to the surface, Diana didn't like how Phi answered or something and wasted valuable time by stunning her. Just as Diana arrived to the bomb, without closing the door mind you, the bombs were just released and it exploded killing all six remaining characters. It was like it came straight out of a MacGruber sketch.
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C Team Fragments
1. Poison
- Carlos sees vision of Junpei's disembodied head (after choosing correct antidote)
- Junpei claims he hasn't had use of his morphogenetic powers since 999 (after choosing correct antidote)

2. Suspicion
- Junpei dead before events of fragment
- Carlos reveals his reason for joining mission
- Akane loses it
- Carlos kills Akane but loses a hand (when choosing Akane in decision)
- Carlos kills himself while Akane bizarrely calms down (when choosing Carlos in decision)

3. First Come, First Saved: C
1. Junpei reveals he quit college to join a detective firm
2. Junpei says that Seven and him destroyed Free the Soul's HQ
3. Did not press button

4. Monty Hall
1. Female voice over intercom had what seemed to be a live conversation with the team
2. Akane leaves via X Door (after choosing correct locker)

D Team Fragments
1. First Come, First Saved: D
- Pressed button killing other teams
- Diana claims to not be in control of her body sometimes
- Diana has vision of dead teams
- Phi and Sigma presumably leave via elevator
- Diana chooses not to go to surface for unknown reasons
- Zero reveals knowledge that Phi will send rescue team

2. Fire
- Sigma is killed by Diana via Decision Game
- Diana kills herself

3. Suppression
- Did not press blue button
- While in lounge, Phi runs off to healing room for unknown reasons
- Sigma is fatally stabbed by cloaked individual
- Diana accuses Phi of killing Sigma
- Phi is fatally stabbed by allegedly the cloaked individual
- Diana is fatally stabbed by the cloaked individual, who goes through the X Door

4. Outbreak
- Phi comes up with plan to blow up Decontamination Room door
- Zero says plan is in violation of the Decision Game and says Q team will die if plan proceeds
- Diana is a moron who knocks out Sigma and Phi, gets to bomb too late, and all six remaining characters die

Q Team Fragments
1. Triangle
- Eric finds hidden room
- Q recalls a memory inside of a hospital/clinic room
- Team is shown clip of Junpei's disembodied head and Carlos' suicide
- Zero, presumably, goads team to kill one of their own
- Q and Mira kill Eric
- Mira reveals herself to be a serial killer incapable of feeling most emotions (after choosing to kill Eric)
- Mira reveals that Eric worked in an ice cream shop and was a very special person despite being useless and talentless (after choosing to kill Eric)
- Q immediately can recognize and solve anagrams (after choosing to kill Eric)

2. Pop Off
- Mira is found dead inside pod with the means to escape the room in her mouth
- Eric recalls a memory about his abusive dad presumably killing his little brother
- Eric accuses Q of killing Mira
- Eric fatally shoots Q at point-blank range with a shotgun, but Q doesn't bleed (after choosing Zero in decision)

3. First Come, First Saved: Q
- Eric may know that Mira is a serial killer
- Did not press button
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I think that covers all the non-Execution fragments. I'm not sure that I have learned enough to do complete revisions of my Zerometer, but I can make some small comments and change my hierarchy

Q - Q has twice flung Eric far back in poor leverage situations with superhuman strength. It wouldn't be the first game to take liberties on what is physically possible if that ends up being nothing, but for now, I have to keep it in consideration. I still think that Q's big twist is more likely to be what is revealed under that helmet thing than being a part of this new Zero's group.

I'm also not convinced that Q is a guy. I'm not leaning toward either way, but other than Mira calling Q a guy once or twice, there's no reason to believe that they are male or female. There's also a third option that Q is a humanoid. There was no blood after being shot in Pop Off, and I can't say for certain that I can recall blood forming around Q's body in the execution scene after the voting.

Mira - Now I know Mira is not completely incapable of feeling anything. That being said, there were two situations where death loomed over the team. One resulted in her being totally frantic and another had her completely nonchalant. Her face in Pop Off was also full of pain. Since it seems that these all occur in different timelines, or something of that nature, I'm wondering if there's something off about her in the specific timeline of First Come, First Saved.

Eric - Is Eric the Dio/Luna/Quark of ZTD in that he is so transparent that makes it so hard to believe that he will in fact everything that he comes across as being? Maybe this is born out of delusional hope, but I am hanging onto Mira's claim that Eric is special and the idea that Eric might be aware that Mira is a serial killer as an indication that there's a lot more than meets the eye. Plus he had kind of a traumatic moment when he was a kid that he could be fucked up enough to be involved in the carrying out of the Decision Game.

Diana - Just when I was easing off her by just a smidge, she goes and does something like she did in Outbreak. Mira might be a serial killer and Eric is an aggressive moron with the emotional intelligence of a child 80% of the time, but Diana's inability to think remotely clearly in any moment of crisis makes her more dangerous than anyone. It's the kind of dangerous that makes you want to think there's no way she's involved in this, but the little things are stacking up.

Phi - I don't think Phi is self-aware on how self-centered she is, which in turn makes her a poor team player that can cloud judgments about her motives. Still, there are great arguments to make for her being more than a captive, but I'm choosing to chalk it up to Phi being Phi for now.

Sigma - While I'm still concerned about Sigma not experiencing any symptoms of SHIFTing like Phi, the past two fragments for D team I think help his case tremendously for not being involved. I also think that they have also caused me to see portions of previous D team fragments in a slightly different light. Like, I had to think if I wanted to place him last on the Zerometer rankings.
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Carlos - When thinking about Carlos, I really start to wonder if any of the nine are actually Zero or part of Zero's crew. There's been so many segments that want you to fully believe in Carlos' virtuousness, but that might also be the best case for him being Zero or an assistant. It is unclear if Zero has noble or ignoble goals, but if this game follows suit of VLR (999 was definitely not the former imo), then Carlos seems to be as good of a bet as any. It could be that future Carlos is Zero and that his younger sister did die from Reverie Syndrome, which I remarked as having some overlap with Radical-6. He could be trying to undo what caused his beloved sister and billions of others' deaths.

Akane - I have my doubts that Akane will be Zero or Zero's assistant for the third time in as many games, but I still have to evaluate her. I don't think that my outlook for her has changed at all with the exception that I'm confused at the splits for Suspicion decision. I will say that this has been my favorite iteration of her. I just hope that still holds by the end.

Junpei - He did admit to forcing his way into DCOM. He also claims to have destroyed Free the Soul's HQ. He further claimed, twice, that he hasn't had use of his morphogenetic powers since 999. It is within the realm of possibility that he lied on that last part and knows that Free the Soul's Brother has a role with Myrmidons in the future and also has something to do with Radical-6. Thus, he did all of this crap as a well to prevent all that shit. There's a lot of huge ifs with that theory, but it's still one to think about.
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Revised Zerometer

1. Eric - Heated
2. Carlos - Heated
3. Diana - Heated
4. Junpei - Temperate
5. Q - Temperate (up from 6th)
6. Phi - Temperate (new designation. up from 7th)
7. Akane - Frigid (up from 8th)
8. Sigma - Frigid (new designation, down from 5th)
9. Mira - Frigid (new designation)
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Eerieka posted...

One sentence has me grinning pretty hard.

I hope that I will remember this post upon beating the game.
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By the way, I am just shy of the 10 hour mark in the game.
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GANON1025 posted...

I spent way too much time to attempting to determine if that was Eric or the artist drawing himself.
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I am unsure if I will resume tonight
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KCF0107 posted...

Eerieka posted...

One sentence has me grinning pretty hard.

I hope that I will remember this post upon beating the game.

If not, then when the time comes, I'll point out exactly what had me grinning so hard.
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Wrapping up Q team's last available fragment: 2nd column, final fragment.

Radical-6

Oh shit, now that's a fragment title you didn't expect until later in the game. We are even in the Biolab, so is this were Radical-6 was born? Q said that it was too early to eat dinner, but since when is 6:10 local time too early for dinner? Between being told to slash a pig's stomach and the preserved corpse of various animals, I don't think that I'm going to like this puzzle room too much. I didn't take an anatomy course for a reason.

"Time to prove I'm a man! Hyah! Owww, my hand"
"Looks like it's the grownup's turn now. Hnnnggg!"
- I will rank characters after the game, but Eric is the very definition of a love/hate character. He is just so goddamn goofy that you have to be soulless not to laugh at him constantly, but just don't get him started with Mira.

"What the hell are you..." Mira on Eric
- *Nods in agreement*

Q's silence upon reading a sheet of paper talking about a Fanatic Virus R leads me to believe that they know something about it. This also reminds me that I gave Q free passes for knowing stuff no kid should normally know because I thought it was commonplace in the series. Then I realized that Clover didn't know shit in 999 and same with Quark in VLR. I then also read that DCOM is owned by Free the Soul. That leads me to believe that this could be set up like 999 and the cloaked individual that killed D team is from Free the Soul.
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So much for my theory that Eric already knows that Mira is a serial killer. He made a comment when Mira proved to be good with a scalpel that she might have been raised on a pig farm or something. We got some further clarification on the snail story that took the lives of six individuals a long time ago, namely the connection between the Mira serial killer/falsely accused and the surgeon/taxi driver crash.

I'm really wondering how old Mira is then, or if I made a wrong assumption somewhere. I thought they said that the woman died 17 years ago, and based on Mira's memory in Triangle, Mira sounded like she was at minimum 14-15. It's totally possible that she's in her 30s, but something tells me I goofed somewhere. Oh god, they made a comment during the puzzle section that math was not Eric's strong suit. Math was always my best subject during my school days, but now that those days are behind me, am I Eric now? Noooooooo!

I tend to pause the game and think about things and eventually write various things in a notebook for this playthrough topic. As a result, it is not uncommon for me to spend five minutes on something, and then the game/characters subsequently talk about exactly what I was thinking about as soon as I resume the game. This happened with determining that Radical-6 and Fanatic Bio R were not the same, and once they revealed that the two had an antagonist relationship that would cancel each other out, I also determined the percentages of being affected:
- If we do have FBR, using R-6 = 100% survival
- If we do have FBR, not using R-6 = 0 % survival
- If we do not have FBR, using R-6 = 25% survival
- If we do not have FBR, not using R-6 = 100% survival

The obvious play then is to use R-6 as the only way route that has a 0% chance of survival is by not taking R-6. Based on what Zero was saying and how similar this is to D team's Fire fragment, I assumed that it would be randomized if Q team was infected or not. I still took the R-6 virus and was subject to Q laying out to Eric and Mira what I just did, albeit I think Q did it set it up slightly differently as Q used different math and percentages. It is nice when the protagonist and I are on the same page. I give Diana flak, but she and I are on the same page more often than not it seems. I have a better success rate with Q and Carlos though.
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Upon hearing Eric reveal more of his backstory, I was getting convinced that Mira found Eric special because Eric's father was the man accused of killing Mira' first target. Then, Eric's mother committed suicide, which would lead to Eric and Chris going to abusive relatives/foster family, which would bring us up to Eric's memory during Pop Off. Of course, the game then reveals Eric's mother died first. Then it hit me given the whole "always smile" bit that Eric's mother was Mira's first victim.

Eric gave a face that had me worried that I made the incorrect decision about the R-6, but I guess maybe Q's inquiry about Chris reminded Eric that his brother is dead. I keep forgetting that you can do the fragments in any order, so players might not have done Pop Off yet. Eric has kind of redeemed himself a bit here in terms of how I view him as a character and also as being possibly Zero/Zero assistant. He might truly just be caught up in all of this. It might be that all of the nine characters are connected to the snail story. We know Mira's, and assuming I am correct about Eric's, then we have five characters (accused man/accused man's wife/surgeon/taxi driver/young male patient) to divvy up among the rest. However, I still don't know why Mira and Eric joined DCOM's experiment.

Oh god, Mira's serial killer persona is kicking in. I can sort of see how Eric set her off, but she didn't rip out his heart this time. Another fucking Gab-only camera shot. I'm onto you pal. I have no idea why Mira went after Q though. I thought her victims all had their hearts ripped out (unless she's doing it just after attacking Q), and also what was revealed in Triangle was that she didn't chose her victims indiscriminately. Maybe that's just the thing about serial killers though; they are illogical.

Bad Ending
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The true message of this game is that we are all Eric
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What a depressing message
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I also used a notebook to write down stuff for some puzzles. There's one puzzle in particular that uses made-up symbols and it took up a good two pages of my notebook.

When I found those pages a year later, I couldn't remember wtf they were until I saw some other things that reminded me it was from this game.
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D team, 2nd column, 2nd fragment from top

Transporter

There's no Phi, no room that we are locked in, and the camera goes straight to Gab staring at the X Door. Yep, there's certainly nothing bad happening on the horizon. Sigma and Diana eventually entered the Transporter Room where Zero explained it. He called the entire thing basically a 3D printer, so I guess it essentially clones one or two objects from an input pod to the export pod in another timeline. This room is only in D Ward I think, and since that cloaked killer has only appeared in D team fragments, I'm wondering if that's where they came from. Zero claims to have had it for like 20 years, but that doesn't help me narrow down who might be Zero.

There was only like five steps to completing this puzzle room, but some of those were quite involving. I had to consult a guide to help me get unstuck in two puzzle rooms prior to this, but I was surprised that I didn't need help for this. I was hit with some bad news after doing what Zero asked. Phi was already dead and Akane had opened C Ward's X Door and escaped. I guess that also prevents the opening of the other X Doors. I'm not sure that was explained before. I thought that all X Doors were independent from each other and could theoretically all be opened.

I had a choice as to follow Sigma and enter the input pod or not. So I could stay behind and possibly be all alone (I am not sure if or when the input pod would re-open or if Sigma would emerge from it alive if it did), or I could go to another timeline and see what the hell happens. This is like shifting except our entire consciousness stays intact, or that was the impression Zero gave me. With Akane escaping, I don't know if this is the Suspicion or Monty Hall timeline, but I'm not counting on a rescue team. Going into the unknown with Sigma it is.
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Door of Truth

Transfer worked. That's encouraging right? I don't know if we are in one of the game's timelines or even what year it is, but I take back my encouraging comment upon seeing the blood splatter in the Healing Room. Diana has a vision of D team's execution team. I suppose I can't argue that can't be the case, but it would have to be a timeline that isn't part of the game because I'm pretty sure that D team was executed in a more drab setting than the Healing Room.

Being trapped in a locker room with green funky water flooding certain areas is not what I was hoping for when I agreed to go into the input pod. Even better was when I got rid of the green funk and replaced it with a steadily rising water level. I knew that I probably wasn't in any danger, but seeing the shower glass door crack as the water rose above head level was a little nerving.

Eventually, a bright yellow door appeared where the special shower was. It was the same yellow door that I saw during Q team's execution scene. I wonder if this is a way for all wards to connect beside the ventilation system. I couldn't use it without entering in an 8-digit code, but I didn't think I had anything like that on hand. They made it seem like I should as I couldn't go to another team's fragment. I thought that I had to go back to the decision and decide to not enter the input pod to get the code. Then I saw on the flowchart that below the circle showing that I entered the pod was an "!" that I could jump to.

Sigma was confused as to why Sigma and Diana woke up from the input pods from the original timeline, which I don't know why he was. Zero did say that it was basically cloning. I am concerned that Phi's body was never found, though Diana did have a vision of Phi being incinerated, but I'm not sure if that was in this timeline or not. I was soon kicked out of that, so I just have one fragment for C team.
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Here we go
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C team, last column, third fragment from top

Anthropic Principle

It wouldn't be a Zero Escape game without a rec room. Sometime during my time here, I obtained the last of the quest files, and a sense of bewilderment came over me. I will be disappointed if that's the last of the escape sequences because that's arguably my favorite thing about the series. At the end, fucking chainguns came out of the torsos of all the suits of armor. We will all die unless all dice end up a one. Akane says the odds are fewer than 0.50%. Fuck me, I don't think you can really call this a decision. If this is another of those randomized results, I hope that it isn't a prerequisite to come out on top unless there's a trick to it.

It came up 4, 3, and 1. Welp. It was also revealed that Phi was the person left. That leads me to believe that this is in the same timeline as Fire with Diana killing Sigma with the revolver and Diana killing herself with the same item. As it turns out, I have no new fragments for any team, so I will have to start re-visiting old ones, making new decisions, and hope that things unlock. I haven't even given it any thought on where to begin.
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Hmm...

I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm gonna try and be as vague as possible. I'll put it in spoiler tags just in case, but it's not a plot spoiler. More of a progression hint.

In the last one you just did with the dice rolling, the game doesn't actually expect you to retry a hundred times until you roll the correct number. Eventually you will roll the correct dice with 100% certainty.
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I can't remember what it was, but there was something in the rec room that had me stumped for like an hour

I'd suggest reading the above spoilers text btw
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I really liked the puzzles in the transporter room. Any puzzle that has you decipher an alien numbering system is A-OK by me

This game does the thing Obduction did by just giving you a calculator, though, completely bypassing the puzzle.

That's why Riven is still king of adventure games. It doesn't pull any punches. You've got to figure that shit out on your own
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DeepsPraw posted...

I really liked the puzzles in the transporter room. Any puzzle that has you decipher an alien numbering system is A-OK by me

Same. I think that was my favorite puzzle in the whole series. I like deciphering languages
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Q team, Radical-6 return

I chose not to inject everyone with the R-6 virus, and Q confirms to know about R-6, which doesn't surprise me at all. Eric and Q ran off, but Mira (smartly?) picked up one of the R-6 syringes. Then we got a butt shot of Gab. I really hope Gab is just a dog and has no real impact on the story at large. Q kept going on about something that lost me for the most part, but I think that they were saying life experiences could be passed genetically. I'm wondering if Q is someone's child from VLR (and then sent to the past or whatever). I was honestly expecting someone to die or the team to succumb to R-6, but they all went to sleep instead.

Q team, Pop Off return

I tried Gab, Mira, Eric, Carlos, Q, and Myself. I only did myself because Eric said Q was impossible. I suspect that's what he says whenever you enter an unrelated answer, but it is still something to remember. They all resulted in the same dead end.

Q team, Triangle return

I first put in Myself, but I suicide wasn't permitted. Next was Q, and in a stunning turn of events, the game proceeded to ask me to enter Q's real name. Interesting...that's probably the fourth offshoot of that decision tree. Putting in Nobody resulted in everyone turning on Q. I was treated to a creepy ending where the least creepy thing about it was Mira stabbing Eric to death at his house. Putting in Mira resulted in both Eric and Q's death, but the announcers said Q was dead before Q died. Probably just a gaffe.
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OK, so now that I see that you tried it, I'm going to go ahead and butt in here.

You can actually get the "right" answer in Pop Off. I was thinking of bringing it up earlier, but I hate when people ruin things for others. However, I know of three different people who all got stuck here, one of them being myself, and at least in my experience, when I was told what that answer was, I was legitimately upset that I was expected to try that. So I'm going to leave various hints line by line, with separate spoiler tags, getting more and more upfront about what the answer is, with the final line being straight up the answer.

Hint 1. Instead of using your own perspective as an omniscient player, maybe you should put yourself in Q's shoes for this answer.

Hint 2. Let's say you were watching this take place in a movie. What would you expect Q's response to this question to be?

Hint 3. Perhaps answers aren't exactly what Eric is looking for....

The actual answer: Either let time run out, or input "I don't know."
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I got stuck on Pop Off for the longest time because I was afraid of spoilers but you're not meant to be stuck there so definitely read the hints
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C team, Monty Hall return

I made sure to fail in getting the oxygen mask. They showed Sigma and Diana leaving via the X Door, and once again, there's no cloaked killer. That person appears to be an exclusive in a single timeline.

D team, Transporter return

Oh Diana fucking destroyed the machine. I thought she was just going to not enter the pod. We were totally not on the same page for that. Yeah, I agree with Sigma that Akane was probably not going to send help after she escaped.

D team, Outbreak return

I sort of expected this to be like First Come, First Served where we would just leave after getting the X Passes, but Sigma had other plans. He tried to give a heartfelt speech but then totally botches the bomb diffusal. I guess he fucking lived though, but I find it massively disappointing this was how he lost his arms and one of his eyes as was alluded to in VLR. I thought he received his injuries in what was a failed attempt at saving Diana. For it to be from failing to disable a bomb that they activated and only because he spent too much time talking to Diana is just underwhelming and anticlimactic.

As Zero said, Q team was on the other side, but Mira miraculously survived. Oh fuck that bitch, she stabbed Phi with the Radical-6 virus! I know what fragment came before this one. Uh, Diana further makes me look like a fool when I said that we agreed on stuff more often than not as she decided to doom humanity by bringing Phi up to the surface. As Sigma said, this is definitely the timeline that would result in VLR as I also recognize the transmission between control and Diana as what I believe was heard in VLR's infirmary.

D-End 1

It's been so long since I got an actual ending that I forgot there was more beyond bad and broken endings.
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D team, Suppression return

I pressed the button, and I definitely see why you really like what came from it. Was that an antimatter bomb? The explosion color reminded me of those from VLR.
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First Come, First Served C -> Q -> D

Radical-6 (Q) -> inject -> Suppression (D)
Radical-6 (Q) -> don't inject -> Outbreak (D)

Poison (C) -> Fire (D) -> shoot live bullet -> Anthropic Principle (C)
Poison (C) -> Fire (D) -> ??? -> Monty Hall (C) -> find mask -> Transporter (D)

Suspicion (C) -> Kill Akane -> Pop Off (Q) -> Door of Truth (D)
Suspicion (C) -> Kill Carlos ->Triangle (Q)

Those are the fragment sequences and their supposed chronological order. I'm trying to make connections between them to aid me in analyzing the characters, but with Outbreak being the only one so far where the teams physically interact, there just isn't much that I can use right now
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I read the spoiler tag, and I would feel pretty stupid for not letting the clock run out if I wasn't convinced Eric is a raging lunatic concerning all things Mira and that no answer would suffice. I don't have the game on and forgot to write this down, but here are various decisions that I know I have left to do and feel like I have the means to do so.

First Come, First Saved C, Q, and D
- C and Q need to press switch
- D needs to refrain from pressing switch
- I'm guessing this might be like voting decision and the game remembers what the other teams did so I have to eventually refrain from pressing switch with all three teams

Fire (D)
- Do not pull trigger so Phi likely dies from incinerator and Sigma lives
- Pull trigger until I shoot a blank

Anthropic Principle (C)
- Roll all 1s, which you guys are saying will happen if I give it a few more attempts

Pop Off (Q)
- Let time elapse
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KCF0107 posted...

- I'm guessing this might be like voting decision and the game remembers what the other teams did so I have to eventually refrain from pressing switch with all three teams

It actually doesn't IIRC.

The voting does, but that doesn't for some reason.

I mean like you do have to go through the decision with each team and not press the button but you don't have to do it all in one run like with the voting to get a result from it.

I will do a revised Zerometer soon after doing a few of these, but now I don't know whether to believe Zero is one of them or not. I feel like it has to be one of them as opposed to Free the Soul since I have the feeling Zero is ultimately trying to prevent the Radical-6 pandemic.
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