Board 8 > nonary nonsense: giggs plays zero time dilemma

(+) Yeah! (+)

Speaking of Eric waving shotguns in people's faces, I just remembered another fun clue to the reality of "Q" in Pop Off.

When Eric asks who killed Mira, if you say "Me" or "Myself", Eric's response is to say something like "I knew it was you!" But if you say it was Q, his answer is "That's clearly impossible!"

Because he thinks Q is blind, deaf, and confined to a wheelchair.
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Final Decision (Part II)

Delta informs them that, after all their hard work, they have activated the facility's self-destruct mechanism, and it will blow to smithereens in just ten minutes. in a moment of fairly absurd villainy, he then tells them that he killed Gab with the shotgun (the true ending is the only one where Gab dies? fuck this shit), and then smarmily tells them of his ability to briefly control people's bodies with his mind hacking ability, which he promptly shows off by forcing Eric to shoot him.

in his dying breaths, he announces the final Decision Game. either we can stay here and die, or... or...

Delta dies without finishing his sentence. Akane, however, quickly realizes what he meant. the teams can survive by shifting to a history in which they all survive - the one in which they won the coin toss. this, however, means dooming their alternate universe selves to a chaotic, unexplained and violent end. the team argue over the morals of this, but it's ultimately equal. one will live and one will die. but can they kill themselves to live?

---

the team decide not to shift. they can't do that to themselves. Mira stands impassively. Eric looks petrified. Sigma, Akane, Junpei and Carlos nod at each other in silent approval. by destroying Radical-6, they will accomplish their goal. the team silently gather hand in hand and close their eyes as the fire rises all around them. rest in peace, brave souls.

GAME OVER
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Sigma is a jackass in this segment, by the way (and Akane might be too, I don't remember which decision she supported). They're both former Zeroes. They both abandoned who knows how many alternate versions of themselves in other histories, some if which had no reason to even be in that situation.

Where the hell does Sigma get off on campaigning for alternate history self rights? Did he try to save the Sigma who ended up sealed in Rhizome 9 with a dead robot Luna while "our" Sigma jumped to the bomb timeline with the knowledge of where Dio hides stuff? Did he give a shit about the Sigmas that got shoved into his Radical-6 infested body moments before he committed suicide?

Sigma is probably the last person who should be complaining how unfair it is to swap with the "selves" who didn't do anything wrong.
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Payoff 2

the team decide to shift. why not? it's not like the moral ambiguities have stopped us before! and we have a world to save!

the team crashland in their bodies in the desert, outside the facility. they begin to hesitantly congratulate themselves on a job well done, when they turn around and come face to face with Delta, who naturally did not die in this history either.

the team threatens to call the police, but Delta points out that he has killed no one in this world. as a matter of fact, he's a different person than the one they were mercilessly toyed with and murdered by in all those other histories. and he's brought about a history where Phi and he were born, no one died, and Radical-6 will never spread. is that not, indeed, a happy ending?

the team bring up Delta's prophecies of doom - that mankind will cease to exist without Radical-6 to bring down the religious fanatic who brings about the apocalypse - but quickly resolve to work together to devote their lives to opposing him. in this way, Delta claims, his aims are fully realized - who could stop a team like this from achieving their goals?

Delta throws a gun to Carlos, and tells him that he can do as he will with it. he can shoot Delta dead for his machinations, or he can allow him to live. Carlos stares at the weapon, and raises it with purpose in his eyes as the credits roll.

CQD-END 2
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FFnut posted...

Sigma is a jackass in this segment, by the way (and Akane might be too, I don't remember which decision she supported). They're both former Zeroes. They both abandoned who knows how many alternate versions of themselves in other histories, some if which had no reason to even be in that situation.

Where the hell does Sigma get off on campaigning for alternate history self rights? Did he try to save the Sigma who ended up sealed in Rhizome 9 with a dead robot Luna while "our" Sigma jumped to the bomb timeline with the knowledge of where Dio hides stuff? Did he give a shit about the Sigmas that got shoved into his Radical-6 infested body moments before he committed suicide?

Sigma is probably the last person who should be complaining how unfair it is to swap with the "selves" who didn't do anything wrong.

Akane seemed fairly happy with either option, but yeah, Sigma and Carlos both being anti-SHIFTing after the events of the last two games was mildly baffling.
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Ah man, these topics have been so much fun.~

And now I can finally post this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfOsjVT8mlU" data-time="

Looking forward to final thoughts.
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Xiahou Shake posted...

Ah man, these topics have been so much fun.~

And now I can finally post this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfOsjVT8mlU" data-time="

Looking forward to final thoughts.

hahaha wow, to think if I might have never witnessed such beauty and grace if I hadn't made this topic. one solitary snail...

thanks for following this guys! it's been a huge amount of fun, doing this whole trilogy over a very long two years or so, and it would have been a pale shadow of the experience without all of your contributions. it's late here, so I'm going to let my thoughts on everything stew overnight a little, and try to give some more thorough concluding thoughts tomorrow.

in the meantime, please continue to bombard me with ridiculous memes / easily missed Q hints / general ZTD ephemera that I might enjoy! I already made a point to read the post-payoff epilogue notes, and I'll go back to read the spoilery discussion from earlier in the topic too, but anything else is welcome. this has been loads of fun and I want to take everything in while I'm still as hyped on this.
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Giggsalot posted...

easily missed Q hints

Ask and ye shall receive!

https://reddit.com/r/ZeroEscape/comments/4qsmvu/ztd_spoilerslets_find_all_of_the_foreshadowing/

Other fun things: All of the X-Passes that you can find for each person's death are directly related to information about them. Sometimes they're obvious, sometimes they're secrets that get revealed later on. For example:

When D-Team (Diana, Phi, Sigma) gets executed by the vote, the three X-Passes revealed are "Blue", "Red", and "Milk" in that order. Blue refers to Diana's bluebird. Red refers to Phi's real hair color. And Milk is Sigma's last name, Klim, written backwards.

If C-Team presses the decontamination button in First Come, First Saved, the D-Team X-Passes are instead "Bird", "Twin", and "Old" in that order. Bird is again a reference to Diana's bluebird. Twin is because Phi is Delta's twin. And Old is because Sigma is a 67-year-old mind in a 22-year-old body.

And how about that snail?

The first victim of the snail was Eric's mother. She jogged down a different path and ran into the Heart Ripper serial killer, who was Mira. Mira killed her, felt the love from her heart, and then eventually decided to nurture love in Eric's heart so she could feel it again (basically, Q-END 1).

The second victim of the snail was Akane and Aoi Kurashiki's father. He was accused of murdering Eric's mother, was convicted, and executed. This led their mother to commit suicide (becoming the third victim). It also meant that Akane and Aoi could be easily kidnapped by Cradle Pharmaceutical, where they would be forced into the first Nonary Game.

The fourth and fifth victims are a cab driver and surgeon. The cab driver was supposed to pick up Akane's dad before he was arrested, so he went looking for another fare once that one fell through. He picked up the surgeon, and they were in a fatal car accident.

Which brings us to the sixth victim - Sean. A young boy who needed a life-saving surgery. Unfortunately, the surgeon who was supposed to operate on him had died in the car accident. Sean's death weighed heavily on the old man, Delta, whom he had befriended at the hospital.

Sean died because the surgeon died while riding with the cab driver who died because he didn't pick up the man who was falsely convicted of murdering the woman who was killed because she went down a different path to avoid a snail. And as a side effect of all of this, people were forced into Nonary Games, a mind-hacking child was born and transported to the past (who would eventually befriend Sean in the hospital), and that mind-hacker would eventually release Radical-6 in order to prevent a terrorist from wiping out humanity.

Life is simply unfair, don't you think?
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I loooove the gun ending so much. Most of the ending is kinda half-baked, especially with Delta's super complex motives (though I do love him in general), but that final scene wraps up the entire series so well. All the decisions in this game were just Delta allowing them to do the natural action, or mind jacking to do the opposite. And in general, Zero (the player) was always controlling the actions in all the games. No one ever had any control. This last decision is the first time a character actually has a choice to make, and it marks the end of the player's involvement. And I love that it's Carlos, the boring guy that is way more likable than he should be.
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foolm0r0n posted...

All the decisions in this game were just Delta allowing them to do the natural action, or mind jacking to do the opposite. And in general, Zero (the player) was always controlling the actions in all the games. No one ever had any control. This last decision is the first time a character actually has a choice to make, and it marks the end of the player's involvement.

I don't agree with this interpretation at all. Plenty of characters make decisions without the player's input (such as Carlos deciding that the best way to circumvent the knockout drugs in the Force Quit timeline was to act like a creepy pervert).

I also don't agree that every split decision was caused by a mind-hacking Zero forcing them to make alternate decisions. There's an entire quarter of the game where Delta is dead (Q-Team Executed), and he's very explicit that his mind hacking powers are limited to the history that he's currently in, so there's no way he can be influencing those decisions. Yet that branch contains two of the most significant decisions in the game - shooting Sigma in Fire, and Ally/Betray in Ambidex.

And finally, I don't agree with the interpretation that the player is Zero. Especially in this game - again, Zero is very explicit that he cannot SHIFT between histories, yet the player can see and make decisions in every history. The player can retain knowledge of events in other histories and bring that knowledge to other timelines. Unless you're suggesting that Delta was mindhacking people into putting in the correct passwords for the Force Quit box and they just coincidentally regained their memories at the same time.

You are pretty emphatically not Zero in this game. You're Carlos, Sean, or Diana, depending on which team's fragment you're in. Most importantly, you only make decisions for a team when those characters are present. After Diana shoots Sigma and then herself in Fire, you don't get to control Phi. After Carlos and Junpei die in Monty Hall, you don't get to control Akane. You also don't get to choose what Junpei picks in Ambidex, or whether Eric shoots Sean depending on his answer in Pop Off. You only control the decisions of Carlos/Sean/Diana, and you control those decisions regardless of whether or not Zero is alive in that history.
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The actual endings to everyone's stories are in the archives files, if you haven't seen them yet (no, I have no idea why the game would do this)
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It's the same as in 999. You "choose" the doors, but it's actually Junpei choosing and you're past Akane watching various versions of him simultaneously. You're not actually choosing anything. It's just a gameplay formality. In ZTD you're just watching through Delta's quantum cameras and mind reading (which goes across timelines if you don't remember).

However what's different in VLR is that there ARE actually choices where you click a button and it mind hacks the character to make a choice they would never make. This explicitly makes the player connected with Delta's actions. Similar to how when the screen flips in 999 you are explicitly made to play as Junpei for that scene. But in this one, you're playing as Delta the whole time. Things like Carlos' gambit just make this extra clear (he's equally tricking Zero and the player).

They even made him god damn deaf, mute, and off-screen for 90% of the game. I don't get why you have such trouble with this game's most blatant nods (not that it's bad, just a bit funny).

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

I do admit that it feels like the game is making Carlos represent the player in the end. But that's way too simplistic and ignores all everything the series has done with the player perspective.
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foolm0r0n posted...

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

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

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

foolm0r0n posted...

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

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

foolm0r0n posted...

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

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

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

Delta repeats his "the lives of you, me, and mankind are all on the line" platitude right before Carlos makes his decision at the end, even though his complex motive of putting them in the mindset to stop the terrorist is already complete. So he must believe that this decision is also integral to saving humanity. Otherwise, nothing's on the line for that "Decision Game".
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foolm0r0n posted...

They even made him god damn deaf, mute, and off-screen for 90% of the game. I don't get why you have such trouble with this game's most blatant nods (not that it's bad, just a bit funny).

Because these "most blatant nods", as you call them, are inconsistent and contradictory.

Yes, Q is "blind/deaf/mute" and off-screen for 90% of the game. But there's 10% of the game where he's not. And 25% of the game where he's outright dead. And at least 5% of the game shown from angles that would be literally impossible for him to have a setup to see (such as Force Quit: D after Sean has disabled the cameras in Force Quit: Q, or the discussions at the top of the elevator in the VLR timelines).

If there's a possible interpretation that "You are Zero" that only applies for 60% of the game and outright contradicts the other 40%, then it's a bad interpretation.

This is opposed to stuff like VLR Sigma, where the game is actually entirely limited to his perspective. Yes, there are odd camera angles, but it never shows stuff actually happening that Sigma can't see, nor does the game ever show things that occur while Sigma is dead and literally can't perceive them. (Flashbacks are limited to still images representing Sigma's imagination as well.)

Or, let's take a better example, and one we agreed was great: the dual screen Akane/Junpei duality. There are so many little things that make that duality work, like every time it shows the bomb blowing up to start the game by sinking the Gigantic, the ship and explosion are only shown on the bottom screen. Or every time anyone in the second game speaks, they're only shown with their dialogue/image on the top screen. And this culminates in the final scene where Junpei and young Akane are talking to each other, and each displays their own dialogue on their own screen.

The reason that "intepretation" worked is that it was 100% consistent. If they ever showed the ship exploding on the top screen, if a character ever popped up on the bottom screen, etc. then that interpretation would be broken.

You seem to have some inherent belief that everyone else will put exactly as much effort as you did into understanding these games, but that's not true. We saw this after PERCEPTIVE END, where you swore up and down that getting it early could only hype up the ending and wouldn't spoil anything at all - but while you were proclaiming that, Giggs guessed like 90% of the twist based solely on getting that ending early. Now you're saying that the player is Zero, mostly because you really want to believe that "You are Zero" is a common twist in all three games, but you're ignoring the large swathes of the game where you actively aren't Zero because Zero can die just like any other player in the Decision Game while the game and decisions continue without him.

I don't get why you have such trouble with this game's most blatant contradictions to what you think are "blatant nods" (not that it's bad, just a bit funny)
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He looks at quantum cameras and mind reads shifters to see fragments that he was not a part of. There's no inconsistency.
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DeathChicken posted...

The actual endings to everyone's stories are in the archives files, if you haven't seen them yet (no, I have no idea why the game would do this)

Wasn't that because they wanted to make proper epilogues but the budget didn't allow for it?
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there's no Sigma/Phi/Diana epilogues, right? that's a curious omission
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Yeah, D-Team gets a VLR-timeline epilogue instead of the good ending epilogues everyone else gets.
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strange stuff.

sorry guys, today got away from me again. will try and post some wrap-up thoughts tomorrow!
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Er guys if you don't mind me chiming in a bit late to the post party here, could you guys tell me what we're the significances or the meanings of each Doll in the Study?
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From TV Tropes:

Carlos is a well built action figure, suitable for either a super-hero or a G.I. Joe. A perfect fit for a man who will do anything to save the lives of others, even if it involves risking his own.
Akane is a Moe Catgirl figure, with a big smile and bright eyes. This reflects her more optimistic outlook that everyone can escape and that a brighter future can be created. Additionally, the fact that she's a catgirl references that not once, but twice she has been placed into a Schrodinger's Cat paradox.
Junpei is a voodoo doll, with the obvious reference to the fact that he accidentally gave Akane one when they were young. More deeply, however, is the fact that Junpei has gained a more melancholy and grim outlook on life compared to before.
Diana is a porcelain doll, a doll made to be warm, inviting, and comforting, but as anyone who owned one can attest to, will crack under time and pressure. If Diana dies in a timeline, the status screen shows the doll with a shattered face falling apart, possibly referencing an eventual fate of someone based on her.
Sigma is strong, determined, dependable, and big. Perfect fit for a nutcracker, wouldn't you say?
Phi is a paper doll, because she's flat. Okay, more in depth, it's likely because she stays firm and rigid, and never falters in her emotions.
For as Ax-Crazy as he can be sometimes, Eric still has the mindset of a frightened and over-emotional kid. Naturally, he's a baby doll, even if he takes offense to his representation.
Mira, a cold, emotionless, and uncaring person wrapped in layers of Fanservice is a dress-up doll, like a Barbie or Bratz. Dress them up all you want, they still don't break their empty stares.
Last is Q. Him being a Matryoshka doll should have obvious connotations the second you see it (a mystery concealing more mysteries, More to him that first appears, etc.), but what ISN'T obvious is why this isn't his symbol on the status screen. That's because it isn't Q's doll, it's Sean's. But that doesn't mean there isn't a doll for Q. Do you remember what was on the card in the pod room escape? That's right, a doll of Zero II, the missing doll from the cast!

Also found this:
Name of the game is Zero Time Dilemma. Move these letters around and what we got is Me, I'm Zero. I'm Delta.
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Pretty sure that was claimed to be a coincidence

But you never know with Uchikoshi
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All of this stuff being posted is a great case for why ZTD is my favorite of the bunch. Like yeah I'd definitely agree that the moment-to-moment writing is on average the worst in the trilogy, but the scenario writing/theming is so damn good. Plus, as mentioned earlier in this topic, they definitely recognized how powerful their particular brand of absurdity could be and they just ran with it here to great results.

Was weird to see how much hate ZTD got when it first came out but it does seem like folks have warmed up to it significantly since then. Makes me happy.~
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Gog I wish I found this topic when it first started.

Not much more to do here than demand character rankings....

So yeah, include character rankings, Giggs!
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Xiahou Shake posted...

All of this stuff being posted is a great case for why ZTD is my favorite of the bunch. Like yeah I'd definitely agree that the moment-to-moment writing is on average the worst in the trilogy, but the scenario writing/theming is so damn good. Plus, as mentioned earlier in this topic, they definitely recognized how powerful their particular brand of absurdity could be and they just ran with it here to great results.

Was weird to see how much hate ZTD got when it first came out but it does seem like folks have warmed up to it significantly since then. Makes me happy.~

Completely agreed. It's great how even little, pointless-seeming things (like winning the coin flip) actually end up being profoundly important (the key to the actual happy ending where nobody dies).

I mean, who here that already beat the game didn't giggle at

Giggsalot post #3 posted...

just got the first "ending" - no idea if my coin choice mattered (gotta go blue) and if a nonary game would only result from a wrong choice, or if the real game starts from here regardless.

i can't see any obvious reason why Zero would allow his participants to leave without playing

The fragment system helps mess with player expectations too, especially early on (before you start to fill out the chart). Take Suspicion, the one with Carlos and Akane in the pantry. It's four and a half hours after the vote, so you have no idea if you've woken up before this, where Junpei is, or even what's happened to lead to that point. Unlike 999 (where you have to play each timeline through from beginning to end) or VLR (where you need to reach each point from the beginning through the flowchart), you actually start each segment with basically no knowledge of what led to that point. You don't even know who's alive or dead.

And then you find Junpei's head, and the system announces that Junpei and D-Team are all dead. How? Why? You don't have the answers, because you don't even know what happened before that led to that point. It really does a good job of conveying a sense of horror and mystery that I feel the other games lack due to how straightforward their progression is.

There are certainly some gameplay missteps (like the "see all executions" issue so many people run into) and a lot of specific scenes are written... I don't want to say "badly", but they are. The fragment I dread the most on replays is Ambidex, because of the fifteen minute explanation about M and that famous movie. I don't think that scene is skippable on a fresh run, but either way I just put the 3DS down and go to make a sandwich or something while Akane finds the most convoluted way to explain something we already know about from VLR.

Incidentally, she still got that explanation wrong. In BttF, you totally see the Marty from the new 1985 when "our" Marty returns. They both see Doc Brown get shot, and then the "new" Marty grabs the car and escapes back to 1955 while "our" Marty runs over to Doc. My point is, the old Marty didn't get "overwritten" as Akane claims - he leaves of his own accord in the DeLorean.

But yeah, as a whole I feel like this one has the best concept and fantastic execution of that concept, even though most of the individual scenes are pretty bad.

However, then there are scenes like D-END 2 that are written amazingly well, too.
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Raka_Putra posted...

From TV Tropes:

Carlos is a well built action figure, suitable for either a super-hero or a G.I. Joe. A perfect fit for a man who will do anything to save the lives of others, even if it involves risking his own.
Akane is a Moe Catgirl figure, with a big smile and bright eyes. This reflects her more optimistic outlook that everyone can escape and that a brighter future can be created. Additionally, the fact that she's a catgirl references that not once, but twice she has been placed into a Schrodinger's Cat paradox.
Junpei is a voodoo doll, with the obvious reference to the fact that he accidentally gave Akane one when they were young. More deeply, however, is the fact that Junpei has gained a more melancholy and grim outlook on life compared to before.
Diana is a porcelain doll, a doll made to be warm, inviting, and comforting, but as anyone who owned one can attest to, will crack under time and pressure. If Diana dies in a timeline, the status screen shows the doll with a shattered face falling apart, possibly referencing an eventual fate of someone based on her.
Sigma is strong, determined, dependable, and big. Perfect fit for a nutcracker, wouldn't you say?
Phi is a paper doll, because she's flat. Okay, more in depth, it's likely because she stays firm and rigid, and never falters in her emotions.
For as Ax-Crazy as he can be sometimes, Eric still has the mindset of a frightened and over-emotional kid. Naturally, he's a baby doll, even if he takes offense to his representation.
Mira, a cold, emotionless, and uncaring person wrapped in layers of Fanservice is a dress-up doll, like a Barbie or Bratz. Dress them up all you want, they still don't break their empty stares.
Last is Q. Him being a Matryoshka doll should have obvious connotations the second you see it (a mystery concealing more mysteries, More to him that first appears, etc.), but what ISN'T obvious is why this isn't his symbol on the status screen. That's because it isn't Q's doll, it's Sean's. But that doesn't mean there isn't a doll for Q. Do you remember what was on the card in the pod room escape? That's right, a doll of Zero II, the missing doll from the cast!

Also found this:
Name of the game is Zero Time Dilemma. Move these letters around and what we got is Me, I'm Zero. I'm Delta.

thanks, this is really nice to know, im still surprised they managed to give a Moe Catdoll Akane a hidden meaning when it could only look like fanservice XD
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so, where to begin?

I liked this game a lot! I feel like the returning characters gave it a sense of emotional stakes and genuine danger that VLR somewhat lacked, and I think the overall concept and scenario writing was very effective and at time powerful. the game clearly suffered in terms of animations, script and a lack of a nice concluding epilogue, but overall I found it hugely enjoyable. my sole real life friend who has played the series (initially at my recommendation, though he ironically finished ZTD before me) is of the school of thought that Delta's motives were unconvincing, and that the returning characters seemed off somehow, but even those common critiques don't really feel right to me. it's very very hard to separate the three games in the series for me, to the point that I feel it's a pointless endeavor. if Diana put a gun to my head, I might say 999 > ZTD > VLR, but they're all in the 8-9/10 range. taken as a series, I think the trilogy is super consistent and one of the best gaming experiences I've had in years.

character rankings and thoughts:

10. Eric

yeah I mean, no shit. Eric is frequently exceptionally annoying, and it's hard to put him anywhere but here, but he does become marginally more tolerable and sympathetic as the plot unfolds and his backstory is revealed. despite his horrific past, he's the closest thing to a "regular dude" in the game, and the way the plot treats that towards the end is quite amusing.

9. Mira

Mira is a lot of fun, and I'd definitely take her over Dio in the battle of the wildcard killers. the fact that she's so utterly emotionless makes it fairly hard to develop any kind of connection to her, though, and while she has a lot of memorable scenes early on, by the end of the game she's ultimately probably as irrelevant as Eric.

8. Delta

this is a weird one. the reveal of Delta - the game's major slam dunk moment - felt quite contrived to me even after I semi-guessed it with help from the Perceptive End (which I didn't mind, by the way - as soon as Delta's name came up I was sure he must be involved heavily somehow), and it's still the biggest issue I have with the game's plot. it feels like cheating to me somehow. Delta's actions post-reveal are pretty cool, and unlike my friend I enjoy his overall role in the game. but there are several issues here. his characterization and motivations are entirely inconsistent with the descriptions of Brother from VLR. he has almost no meaningful interactions with Diana or Sigma to humanize him so he comes across as ice queen Akane on steroids. and most importantly, his dialogue as Zero is so mind-numbingly boring and repetitive that I amazingly found myself tuning it out. he's Zero, this shouldn't happen! overall, Delta is fine as a character but he definitely could have been executed better.

7. Sean

Sean's cool. I can't imagine anyone would disagree with that. his design is great, and he's genuinely knowledgeable and skilled in the same way Phi is, which brings out a lot of good dialogue. Sean's "happy ending" was a low-key lovely moment in a very bleak game, and I definitely built up a connection with the guy. I hope Sigma builds him a real head or something.
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6. Sigma

speaking of Sigma! outside of the player character role here Sigma's character becomes more well defined - which is to say, it becomes unambiguous that he's not very interesting. I do like the guy, though, and I think he has a lot of his best moments here; his time with Diana and Phi really humanizes him. but his lack of prominence (and SHIFTing!) in the narrative is a tiny bit weird considering that VLR was supposed to train him to lead this thing. even Carlos takes more initiative than he does!

5. Carlos

oh hi Carlos. Carlos is great, this should not be questioned. he seems a bit overly perfect at first, with his perfect hair and endearing sister sob story, but he's a fun foil to the perpetually bickering soulmates on his team, and once the guy learns to SHIFT he's a goddamn machine. seriously, he drives the narrative forwardmore than almost anyone else in the game, and half of these guys are time gods. if Crash Keys have this guy on their team, god help that extremist.

4. Junpei
3. Akane

yeah, I'll take these guys together. they were just lovely in this game. Junpei was a bit overtly edgy at the beginning, but his utter bemusement at everything around him made him a pretty great player proxy at times, and his arc over the course of the game, culminating in the proposal scene, was fantastic. Akane, meanwhile, was pretty much great the whole way through. she's still hard to completely relate to, considering she's essentially spacetime Jesus, but this is maybe my favourite version of her character - aware of and more than willing to use her messiah powers, but still uncertain and emotional at her core. Junpei and Akane are the best, and the game did a superb job of closing their relationship arc which has been so central to the series.

2. Phi
1. Diana

I'm gonna take these two together too. god, these two just murdered me. Phi was great in VLR, but the game focused so much on making her enigmatic and mysterious that it was unable to make her seem like an actual person. but her moments of weakness and her apparent embrace of human emotion here rounded off her character in a way that genuinely moved me. the incinerator scene, the family reunion, so many of the most emotionally crushing moments in this game revolved around Phi, which is something I never expected.

and Diana, fuck. her whole story was just utterly heart-shattering for me. I can't even explain why, maybe I'm drawn to slightly damaged people, but I just spent the entire game wanting to give her a big hug and tell her everything was going to be okay. she was the perfect mix of fragile and resilient - smart enough to figure out the secret of the wards entirely on her own, brave enough to survive an entire pregnancy in the facility, but her grip on composure and sanity in that nightmarish hellscape was brittle in all of the most believable and sympathetic ways. she was probably the most relatable character in a game full of lunatics and gods, and I don't think I cared more about the welfare of any other character in the whole series. I can't even really articulate it, but after I finished the game my only real wish was that she found contentment somewhere. video games shouldn't do that to me.
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Team D the best
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D and C are hard to separate for me, they're both great. D wins on emotional moments, but C probably pushes the plot forward more, and they're both a joy to spend time with. I'm happy to call it a tie!
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Yeah, not surprised to see Eric and Mira circling the drain. They're by far the worst characters in the game - not that they're the worst characters in the series or anything (Alice, Quark, 9th Man, Lotus, possibly Dio), but they don't compare to rest of the cast of ZTD.

Eric in particular is a lot less grating on subsequent playthroughs - his irrational distrust of Sean is a lot more... well, rational, when you realize that Sean is the mysterious fourth member of Q Team who wasn't in D-COM.
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I think in the end I put the character within a team right next to each other and went D > C > Q (so like your ranking but with Sigma slightly higher).

Funnily though, I think the teams' fragments themselves are more equal since they usually bring the same enjoyment but with different nuances. Team Q is like a goofy B-movie with mysterious 'Q', crazed manchild Eric, and sexy killer Mira. Team C is heavy on the angsty love and sci-fi scheming with Junpei and Akane (and introducing...Carlos). Team D is more of a relatively lowkey (at first) interpersonal drama between the three members.
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FFnut posted...

You don't have the answers, because you don't even know what happened before that led to that point. It really does a good job of conveying a sense of horror and mystery that I feel the other games lack due to how straightforward their progression is.

And this only works because it's the 3rd in a trilogy, so players are trained already. The series actually has the guts to escalate the narrative complexity to continue providing a challenge to experienced players, unlike lots of other mystery stories.

There's gotta be like 5 other stories I've played/seen that have their big twist be like ONE of the twists in 999 or VLR and that's it. Soma and Westworld come to mind. It totally falls flat after you're used to Uchikoshi stories. Steins Gate did it really well though, so it's not like you need a whole trilogy to set up twists like this. Writers just don't trust the audience much at all.
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Raka_Putra posted...

Additionally, the fact that she's a catgirl references that not once, but twice she has been placed into a Schrodinger's Cat paradox.

Also it looks like she's wearing a school swimsuit which is probably a reference to the "wet" scene in 999
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Giggsalot posted...

I can't even really articulate it, but after I finished the game my only real wish was that she found contentment somewhere. video games shouldn't do that to me.

ZTD was basically a convoluted way to convince the player that creating Luna wasn't a really weird creepy thing to do. We all would've done the same thing.

Also Eric is awesome. Never seen a character like that anywhere in a game. Reminds me of R Kelly always pulling out his gun in Trapped in the Closet.
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Forgot to keep up with this, bumping to the top of my list so I don't forget to go back.
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Will keep this alive for a bit then!
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Purge is simply unfair
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Finally read, just a couple things because I gotta sleep.

D-team forever. D-End 2 is without a doubt one of the best scenes in gaming. I was literally standing up and pacing while it was happening as I was realizing things in real time. I was even talking to myself while alone on the house! Rewatching ZTD D-Team stuff is the reason I did a marathon replay of the whole trilogy a few months ago to begin with.

Carlos rules OK. When the game is first starting out he is just this lame generic loser getting in the way of holy shit Junpei and Akane interacts, but man oh man does he kill it. Really earns his CARLOOOOOOOOS!

Eric and Mira are terrible, but Eric is terrible in a way that you can appreciate for entertainment value. Mira just sucks.

I UNDERSTAND the people who say they prefer the original DS 999 for the meta implications and artistic integrity, but fact of the matter is it took me almost 2 years to beat that game because I was so intolerant of having to replay content, especially that type of content. Every time I had to repeat a puzzle room I put it down for a month plus. Combined with the VA work, console versions of 999 wins 99% of the time, only exception being what they did to the final puzzle...those monsters.
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oh yeah, where did the CARLOOOOOOOOS! stuff come from? is it supposed to be a specific scene, or is there some meme I've missed?

and I agree with almost all of that, Lapis! having let things sink in a little more I really think this is a great game. it's clearly and badly flawed in certain regards, and there's a lot of ways that it could have been better, but I genuinely think that ZTD gave me everything I wanted from a conclusion to the series. and considering the emotional stakes and the amount of unresolved plotlines, I think that's actually pretty remarkable.

a fitting end to a fantastic trilogy!
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Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Carlos. I was kinda worried he'd just get in the way of the Junpei/Akane stuff and he'd just be a normal dude who's really nothing special (like a sane version of Eric, I guess), but yeah, he really represents what ZTD is all about better than anyone, I think.

(VLR > ZTD > 999, for the record)
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LeonhartFour posted...

VLR > ZTD > 999, for the record

If you reverse this, I 100% agree with everything in your post.

Reg posted...

LeonhartFour posted...

VLR > ZTD > 999, for the record

If you reverse this, I 100% agree with everything in your post.

For me it actually goes VLR = 999 > ZTD, but ZTD is still a good game, it is a shame it didnt have more of a budget, also fitting conclusion and i also cannot wait to see what Kotaro Uchikoshi (Zero Escape Writer i believe), Kodaka (Danganronpa Writer) and Danganronpa artist which i cannot recall his name now will pull on Too Kyo Games, the studio they formed, man i really hope their next one is amazing for those guys sure know their mind screws and art!
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The Tookyo games project is going to be the most entertaining pile of garbage anybody has ever seen

The DR writer in an interview said he knew his stories were garbage and would let Uchikoshi handle that, so it might actually turn into a best of both worlds situation
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foolm0r0n posted...

The DR writer in an interview said he knew his stories were garbage and would let Uchikoshi handle that, so it might actually turn into a best of both worlds situation

I hope this happens, i understand not everyone is fine with Kodaka writing (bad choices were made in DV3 i agree) but i do want to see what they can cook up, at least for the fact that i hope it will still blow our minds.
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I'll take V3 over just about everything story wise.

Foolmo insults incoming.
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LapisLazuli posted...

I'll take V3 over just about everything story wise.

Foolmo insults incoming.

Well this is an interesting opinion, what did you like about it? I won't deny that the cast didn't grab me as the others did but that is me.
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The type of ending it had just appealed to me in a BIG WAY, as I revel in absurdity. I just really adore stuff like that, and I've never seen it executed better.

General cast I still give to DR2, though I consider V3's more balanced.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend the ZE series isn't vastly better written, DR's writing is just more appealing to me. Considering I see them as the two juggernauts, though, I wouldn't take that as a condemnation in any way.
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LapisLazuli posted...

The type of ending it had just appealed to me in a BIG WAY, as I revel in absurdity. I just really adore stuff like that, and I've never seen it executed better.

General cast I still give to DR2, though I consider V3's more balanced.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend the ZE series isn't vastly better written, DR's writing is just more appealing to me. Considering I see them as the two juggernauts, though, I wouldn't take that as a condemnation in any way.

I see, i can also understand that one would be completely Flabbergasted at the end, while i do prefer it would have been a little less agressive towards the audience message and that we only play the games to see the killing , the game was overall pretty good.
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