Board 8 > Virtue's Last Reward playthrough topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

*progressive spoilers for VLR will follow, as will full spoilers for 999!*

I played (and enjoyed!) 999 a while ago, and now I'm finally getting around to the most loved entry in the Zero Escape series. This probably won't be a massively detailed playthrough topic, but I like to have somewhere to gather my thoughts when playing this kind of game.

I've played a couple hours now. It's too early to make much of an assessment on anything, I wasn't feeling 999 at this stage but I ended up liking it a lot. I didn't expect this to be a direct sequel, but Clover and All-ice are here so I guess it's a good job I've played the first one! It's a bit frustrating being in my position at this point, I know everything will turn on its head like a dozen times before the game is done so there's no point getting too invested in the basics like the betrayals or Zero's identity, but it's annoying not being able to e.g. talk to Clover to get everybody up to speed on the past.

So far, I... am not really feeling Sigma. He's amusing enough but doesn't seem to be a particularly selfless guy, and neither does Phi. I know they had the whole explanation on why choosing 'betray' is the most pragmatic option for the AB game, but I'm gonna be honest there's a roughly zero percent chance I'd ever pick anything but Ally on a first playthrough. I'm sure everybody will have their reasons in the long run (notably Clover's team picked betray and she should have some knowledge of what's happening) and they might all wind up involved in the grand master plan like last time, but it feels needlessly complex right now when everybody could just select ally three times and we'd be home free (yes yes I know that's the point!).

I picked Alice for the first door (who has usurped Lotus for the award of Most Inappropriate Outfit)- I wanted to let Alice and Clover be together but not as much as I wanted to talk to Alice and have her explain how the hell she got from 999's ending to here. No such luck on that front, I'm gonna have to wait a while I think. Sigma knows absolutely nothing at this stage, though interestingly he's already having flashes of other events. I'm guessing these are flashbacks of previous timelines, only as a player we're in our first right now. I wonder how much ground this will retread from the previous game, though they're making some notable changes already.

The puzzles and overall presentation are still good, though my 3DS stopped recognising some of my touchscreen inputs at one point in the Crew Quarters and I had to reset. And I have been warned already not to save in the 'PEC room', whatever that is. Also the 3D models are fine I guess but the 2D stuff was much cleaner. The music is great.

No clue what to think of the newbies, they all seem nice but I know nothing will be as it seems! I wonder if K is somebody we already know, and I'm trying to make a note of all the offhand references to things that we will assuredly be returning to later, like Schrodinger's cat or Ten and Quark knowing each other. I'm also of course keeping an eye on if anyone shows signs of prosopagnosia, the coloured numbers were clearly an intentional choice here!

Will Sigma get out of this game less traumatised than Junpei? Will Clover have another psychotic break ending? Will Zero III run out of rabbit puns (or Sigma cat puns)? Will we have an extended sex joke longer than the elevator one from last time? We will have to wait and see!

Tag!

I think the PEC room bug was patched? Definitely dont save there anyway just in case, though.

I came in this topic to give the same warning! I bricked my save with that bug :(

enjoy though! this game rules

VLR is my favorite of the Zero Escape games so I really hope you enjoy it, I think this game just generally knocks it out of the park

LordoftheMorons posted...

Tag!

I think the PEC room bug was patched? Definitely dont save there anyway just in case, though.

Yes, they patched it...

by disabling the option to save in that room, so you couldn't do it anyways

VLR is miles better than both 999 and ZTD (Though its funny, ZTD is almost great . Its just. Weird)

Incredibly good game

We did the sports chat top 100, so whenever one of the games on my list has a topic surrounding, I just GOTTA have input on where I have it!

#95: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
#26: Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward

VLR is indeed awesome, and my 5th favorite Visual Novel-type game ever. Hope you end up agreeing!

sigma balls

(tag)

sigma male activity

these are high expectations being set!

tag

Alright, on we go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

andylt posted...

And then imagine my further surprise when Sigma acknowledges the absurdity of this change! Our protagonist is immediately very aware that he has gone back in time, before catching himself after a couple of minutes and realising how insane he sounds. This is fascinating, the flowcharts not being rigid timelines but actually altering depending on the order you play them opens up so much potential for this game's structure and throws me for a total loop. I love this twist.

This is amazing yes

Yeah, I was already into the game pretty good, and did all three of the first escape rooms first. But when I went and changed that first Alice vote, that was the moment that truly got me hooked. I think I spent like 4 marathon days playing this game from start to finish because of that.

man I gotta replay this game

andylt posted...

And then imagine my further surprise when Sigma acknowledges the absurdity of this change! Our protagonist is immediately very aware that he has gone back in time, before catching himself after a couple of minutes and realising how insane he sounds. This is fascinating, the flowcharts not being rigid timelines but actually altering depending on the order you play them opens up so much potential for this game's structure and throws me for a total loop. I love this twist.

I also did this door first, and this was the first thing I decided to go back and do, and yeah, it's brilliant. I gasped when Sigma was like "that's not what happened last time!"

Tag! This game is great.

Tag

To provide an alternative perspective to the posters earlier, I think this is my least favourite ZE game - the characters and setting are just the least emotionally resonant to me personally. That said, it's probably the best mechanically, and I think all three games are great, so who cares really.

Tagging this, should be great fun to read!

Giggsalot posted...

To provide an alternative perspective to the posters earlier, I think this is my least favourite ZE game - the characters and setting are just the least emotionally resonant to me personally. That said, it's probably the best mechanically, and I think all three games are great, so who cares really.

Tagging this, should be great fun to read!

You liked the character of Zero time dilemma more?

I would actually say the exact opposite. I thought the mechanics of ZTD were great and almost every new character was terrible.

masterplum posted...

I would actually say the exact opposite. I thought the mechanics of ZTD were great and almost every new character was terrible.

I'd go even further than this and say most of the returning characters were terrible too.

Glad that twist was good for others too!

Today I go ahead and do the other runs that result from betraying Alice. First we head to the archives- I don't want to pair with Phi as I assume she'll betray me, and I figure Alice and Ten being on the same team means they'll probably ally each other. We begin with Sigma making some gross sexual jokes with Clover and Luna (if this is the same writer from AI Somnium then he clearly has an obsession with this stuff >_>), then a pretty short puzzle section. The secret files may be spoiling me on some things so I think I'll stop looking at them- this one mentions robots a bunch and nothing like that has come up in the plot so far. We also get new rules for the AB game.

Then there's a lot of repeating- Quark winds up diagnosed with Rad-6 again and Alice runs away. Notably team Dio went to the pantry this time instead of the laboratory (the lever must have opened a different door for some reason), so there's presumably no cure in Quark's pocket. But we don't get to the cure stage, because this time Alice seemingly kills herself! In the Crew Quarters! I can't think of a meaningful difference between this and the last run to explain why she's not in the garden but maybe it's another Schrodinger's cat situation. Or maybe the different group configurations gave someone else (Phi?) a chance to kill her? Either way Sigma finds her dead with the scalpel in her chest, and after screaming he falls unconscious and wakes up in a field of nothingness... Game Over.

Hmm... just like last time I hop back to the other timeline to choose the other door. This time there's no indication from Sigma that he knows he's gone back in time, I suppose it only triggers on certain events. Anyway we wind up in neither the Laboratory or the Pantry but a Control Room for an antimatter reactor. Hoo boy. The puzzles here are a step up in difficulty but no real bother, and after leaving we again repeat our situation from before. How are Quark and Alice getting infected I wonder? And why aren't the rest of us losing our minds? She heads back to the garden this time, and we see another antimatter bomb. Come to think of it, in the previous timeline she also dies in a room with a bomb... probably not a coincidence, but I'm not sure what this could mean. Weirdly enough I'm considering Clover as a contender for the bomb setter, she may not be aware of the current timelines but given her past experience she could be looking for a way to break out of the confines of the game somehow. And she has the opportunity (the bomb in the garden is seen only when her team has been in there). I haven't gotten to speak to her much but idk something feels off with her. Not sure why VLR (and Zero) brought her back into the game.

After a lot of talking we rush to the AB rooms again. I assume Phi will betray us but pick ally anyway, and sure enough she took her chance to get to 9 points. Though interestingly she claims it is payback for Sigma betraying her- she's clearly alluding to previous timelines but we haven't betrayed her in any timeline yet! Though given how Sigma is already having flashes at the start of the game, I suppose we (the player) haven't joined in at the beginning of this adventure. She is the only person other than Sigma who has shown awareness about the timelines, I think. She does some flips and we get another to be continued. Will I ever reach a single ending in this game?!

Now normally I'd immediately head to the other option and see what happens if I betray Phi, but I'm curious how things will go if I just... don't. If I never betray her and she's aware of the timelines, she will have no reason to betray me unless, again, Sigma betrayed her before I started playing. I'm hoping it will lead to some extra dialogue anyway, I'm not gonna toss through timelines without a care in the world now I know that things carry over and some people at least will remember my actions. Next up I'll probs jump back to the first chromatic doors and pick one of the others.

I was going to ask if you had played Somnium Files (you probably know why I was wondering). Rest assured I think this game is significantly less horny on main (Alice and Clover's outfits notwithstanding)

Paratroopa1 posted...

I was going to ask if you had played Somnium Files (you probably know why I was wondering). Rest assured I think this game is significantly less horny on main (Alice and Clover's outfits notwithstanding)

Yes I wanted to allude to a specific thing but I wasn't sure how without spoiling AI lol. And good, someone clearly needs to spray this writer with a water bottle!

(me rubbing my hands gleefully knowing that Phi is about to tell Sigma there's a porno mag on the floor)

I'm confused. Why would you want to NOT be horny all the time??

Play Somnium Files and you will see that it is in fact possible to be too horny.

This time we take the green door with Luna into the Lounge. I am unable to find one of the hemi-hemispheres for the longest time here and end up solving both puzzles without its aid >_> But I do find it before we leave. We go through the motions afterwards, with everything the same until Sigma enters the AB room and finds... a porno mag lying on the floor :O Wait, wrong game, there's actually a dead woman lying on the floor. Wait, what? What?? Sigma mirrors my own reaction here, I wasn't expecting to simply stumble across a corpse like this.

And so we have our first human outside of the 9, an old woman who seems very likely to be Tenmyouji's wife. She was stabbed, and all signs point to K as the culprit. I am failing to remember who went through the far left AB door for round 1 in the other timeline, I don't think it was me and Phi though. Maybe I should go back, whoever takes the far left door that time would immediately become the prime suspect. Or maybe not, with how this game is handling timelines. K insists it wasn't him (Clover was also notably in the same room but unconscious), and before investigating further we have to go back and play the game. Sidenote: Luna explaining ADAM again with a closeup makes me suspicious of this machine, and I think it must wind up playing a role here. Something to pay attention to when I eventually do the Infirmary puzzles.

We get a speedrun tutorial of the AB game, and I of course defy Phi and choose to ally with Luna. For the first time in the game I experience a win/win situation, as good old Luna comes through. I'm liking her now, so of course she will probably turn out to be the Ace of this game. Phi mentions hoping things will be different 'this time', so I wonder if Luna does betray us in some other timeline. It seems unlikely, she's consistently voted ally in every instance so far, so maybe Phi was referring to something else.

There's plenty of drama in the other groups. Dio constructs an elaborate blatant lie about Quark betraying Tenmyouji. This obvious lie defies reason, Dio loves to betray people and there'd be no reason for Quark to share his devious plans with him, and fictional Quark refers to Tenmyouji in the same derogatory terms Dio does. It's so obviously false that I wrap around into thinking there must be some truth to it, because why else is it here. Man, I'm too suspicious after 999 >_>

More interesting still is K and Clover betraying Alice. That pair has betrayed in the other timeline too, but Clover in particular betraying Alice here is very odd. Later on Tenmyouji accuses K of betraying Clover, I'm not sure if that's just a translation error or if he's implying K took control of the voting and betrayed Alice himself, therefore betraying Clover's trust. Either way it seems odd, on paper K's actions are incredibly suspicious but in his manners he seems quite the opposite. And Clover remains a bizarre question mark. I have to hand it to Alice, she takes being betrayed like a champ. There's no hypocrisy on her end!

Our further explorations provide more new info (nobody asks Zero about the dead woman post-AB game for some reason). Clover and Tenmyouji both clam up and refuse to share their secrets out of a lack of trust for us (maybe we should return to this timeline after gaining their trust), though Clover does admit she works for the same organisation as Alice. Suspicious indeed. In the infirmary we finally get some K time, he claims he feels natural in his metal suit and there's a Sontaran style 'pop me open here' target on the back of his head. Is he a robot with someone's consciousness uploaded into it? Mayhaps. He later absolutely refuses to let us take the red door, even after Ten relents. When this guy says no he means no.

Talking with Alice and Dio my earlier suspicions are confirmed that these people were kidnapped on different days. Alice was on the 22nd, and Dio thinks it was on the 20th. There were only three beds in that treatment room, so it could just be us three (or Alice and Dio) who were in there, but the dialogue is trending more towards the idea that everybody was captured at a different time, perhaps a long time before the outbreak.

We head towards our next puzzles (no bomb this time), but not before Quark starts showing his Radical-6 symptoms early. Interesting, Sigma is paired with Alice so I wonder if she will start playing up in our next room. I decide to take Luna into the green door- she's been so nice and trustworthy, and won't betray us unlike Clover and K. Or will she??? I've gotta start trusting these characters more >_> Or do I???

I leave it here today, Gaulem Bay will have to wait.

andylt posted...

Play Somnium Files and you will see that it is in fact possible to be too horny.

I have and I disagree.

andylt posted...

Play Somnium Files and you will see that it is in fact possible to be too horny.

You haven't played Punch Line yet

Arti posted...

You haven't played Punch Line yet

And after briefly scanning its wikipedia article I have no plans on doing so!

Whew, it's heating up today. Gaulem Bay has robots! Wearing boxer shorts! I should probably start thinking about what connects all these rooms to each other, this is an odd building. After another pretty long puzzle sequence we are introduced to our new bri'ish robot pal, G-OLM. This friendly chap pretty much confirms that someone will later be revealed to be a gaulem (Quark? K? All 9 of us?), describes himself as an autonomous arm/leg of the mainframe, and tells us a Chinese Room story that will surely come up again but could be interpreted in so many ways that I don't know what to take from it right now (I like that Alice and Luna call out the needless horny mentions in said story though lol).

G-OLM mentions that we probably wouldn't be able to tell a gaulem with artificial skin tissue from a person, then says: "See, right in the middle of-" before being killed for breaking the rules. Argh, this half-line could refer to so many things! My first thought was him pointing to whoever was literally stood in the middle of us 3 and identifying us as a gaulem, but then I thought he was describing a part of the body that would give away someone being one (Dio and Quark both have hats, and we haven't seen K's body at all). He could have been using 'middle' in some other sense, but it seems that word in particular probably triggered his death so it must be crucial.

Phi later makes a big strain to connect this 'middle' to China, wondering if the Nonary games as a whole are some kind of Chinese Room. I've no idea what this would mean if true, are us 9 the girl sending messages we don't understand to a confused outside world, or are we the men outside receiving messages that the sender (Zero?) never understood? What are we misinterpreting? I suppose this game could all be some automated system at this point set long after whoever made it died (if we're all gaulems).

Skipping ahead a bit after the next AB game (I pick ally of course), Alice dies again. But there's no connection to the virus this time, she is presumably killed for noticing something that Clover then notices. K feels a connection with Phi, Quark is missing, and Tenmyouji has opened up to Clover but not to the rest of us. He later tells us he struck some kind of deal with Zero Sr before entering this place, a pretty massive piece of information that he won't elaborate on. We really need to get info on the deal with him/Quark/deadlady soon, it's been teased so much.

The biggest scene today is the reveal that one of the AB boxes had been moved! I am frustrated at myself for not noticing this earlier, I hadn't thought to pay attention to the background visuals like that! But this is massive, it immediately points the finger straight at Luna as a killer... though Sigma quickly brings up several points to the contrary. Someone found the time to shift the container while the rest of us were off somewhere. Siggy, Phi and Luna were together until the corpse was discovered so it can't have been them, I'd have to go back to figure out where everyone else was. Then there's the conspicuously placed bloody handkerchief which had been exposed by the move. Maybe multiple containers were moved to frame Luna, and the one with the corpse belonged to one of the others? But that'd take an awfully long time to do. Maybe Luna did kill the old lady, but someone else moved the container for... some reason. To expose her?

Whatever the case, Clover likely believes Luna to have killed Alice, and sure enough we soon find Luna dead by injection gun. Alice's murder weapon (presumed to be a knife but notably not confirmed) is gone. Both Ten and Clover have motive for this one if either came to the conclusion about Luna, and I wonder if we're headed for another psycho killer Clover ending. We chat with K, Dio remains a one note selfish character for now (I look forward to eventually unpacking his deal), and K forces Phi and Sig into the security room.

I've been checking the flowchart for a while, waiting for the ending to show up, but we get taken into a puzzle room and suddenly the chart has expanded! Yay! I didn't expect this at all, and I'm glad there's so much more of the game than I previously thought. It's exciting that this particular line continues even with half the cast gone (Alice and Luna dead, Quark missing, Ten and Clover possibly killed by penalty). I leave it here for today (I saved just before heading into puzzle mode) as there is a lot to process. There's been some really interesting developments here. I'm growing fond of most of these characters now, I really like Phi and Sig as a detective duo.

Did you folks notice that the AB container moved before the reveal?

I'll leave today with the most important line of dialogue that I should probably take heed of, from Phi:

Just forget any conclusions you might have come up with. Save that brain space for something more useful

I will try, Phi. I will try.

andylt posted...

I've been checking the flowchart for a while, waiting for the ending to show up, but we get taken into a puzzle room and suddenly the chart has expanded! Yay! I didn't expect this at all, and I'm glad there's so much more of the game than I previously thought. It's exciting that this particular line continues even with half the cast gone (Alice and Luna dead, Quark missing, Ten and Clover possibly killed by penalty).

This was also great. I did the same thing where I was like "Wait, this puzzle room wasn't on the flow chart"

I liked how this game handled multiple different pathways. My first path was going with Luna and then allying with her.

Could you actually see the container being in a different location in the scene? I thought that happened off screen but its been awhile.

I never noticed the difference in the background, no.

I didn't notice it either but I don't know if it was visible

So far you've taken the exact same route through the game I did lol

Security is an interesting room, though I don't manage to get the extra files. The word mixing results in "I was you will be me." (with the removed words forming 'She knows everything'), an ominous sentence indeed. A connection between Zero and Sigma? More on that later. Sigma's mind pretty much breaks down for a few minutes after this, then we piece together more info on Luna's death. I name Clover as the killer, and Phi agrees. Dio is ridiculously shady but she has the motive and opportunity.

Unfortunately when we head up a floor we find Clover and Tenmyouji's corpses handcuffed to a pipe. Clover seems to have written '016' in blood (or 910 I suppose) on her leg. Quark's bracelet is here, and a flashback to Zero's earlier explanation makes me sure Quark is alive- the rabbit notably specifies that the bracelet comes off when the heart stops, not when the subject dies. Dio and K are also killed, leaving Quark as the prime suspect. Phi had the chance but I don't buy it. I made a note that Sigma mentions Radical-6 at some point, and I don't recall if that conversation came up in this timeline or if his memories are bleeding through.

We wind up in the Director's Office and I am unable to answer the password, putting a pause on this timeline for now. This isn't actually locked off so I may well have the info I need for this, but clearly my brain isn't there yet. There are lions and suns all over this facility, and I don't feel like getting a pen and paper out and wading through every possible anagram of that misspelled graffiti. Instead, I'm about to dive off a conspiracy cliff.

Sigma reflects on his earlier breakdown by referring to his 'mental processing speed' slowing down, before catching himself. I take this as a pretty giant indicator that he is a gaulem (or some kind of robot), and I think it's time to go down this hole. The earlier references to him having a great memory add to this, the little animation that closes out a scene could be more than window dressing, and his game over scenes ending in him waking up in nothingness are more supporting evidence. Honestly I should have nailed this sooner. But there's a lot that of questions that this opens up.

I have suspected Quark and/or K of being robots since the term was first mentioned, and I now believe both are. There's also Phi, who has lasting memories, more knowledge than she lets on, and maybe those super anime jumps are really due to robot legs. If half the cast is a robot, we may well wind up with everyone being one, as weird as that may seem. And if that's the case, we might not be dealing with timelines or dimensions at all. Maybe at the end of a 'game' everyone's consciousness get transferred to another body in another building, or put in rest mode until the bodies are fixed up and the game begins again. Maybe this has been going on for years.

But I don't know, that seems pretty outlandish. None of the others have shown signs of being automatons- we know Clover is human, and there's not yet a hint of human consciousnesses being transferred into robots. But then the three most likely robot candidates all have different experiences: K claims he has no memories, which I now believe is not down to amnesia but rather due to him being a newborn robot, possibly without skin tissue which is why he's in the suit. Sigma on the other hand has lots of memories, and him and K seem to believe they are human. Quark, if he is a gaulem, is probably aware of it, given the things he says when he's diagnosed with Rad-6. Tenmyouji is almost definitely aware of this too, and is quite possibly Quark's creator or something like that.

Then there's the matter of Zero, and going by G-OLM's earlier explanations Zero could be taking many forms. At any point Zero could decide to take control of one of its 'limbs' and carry out a murder or something like that without the host being aware. I'm thinking particularly of Sigma having a flashback alone in the warehouse, and what his body could be doing during that time. Maybe this is simply an AI gone rogue, using robots (Sigma, K etc) to get revenge on those it deems responsible for... something (Tenmyouji seems the most obvious target here given Quark and his likely wife). My mind goes back to ADAM, the machine that got its own little closeup and explanation from Luna which triggered alarm bells in my head at the time.

But enough empty conjecture. I think the game is definitely pointing me towards Sigma being a gaulem, and I'm pretty sure about Quark, but beyond that I have little basis for anything. As much as I'd like to brute force this lion password, I don't have it in me and it's time to head down another timeline. I'm avoiding all betrays for as long as I can, so we're back up to the first choice and taking the only remaining route.

Phi and Sig go into the infirmary with Tenmyouji, and one of the first things I notice is the defibrilator which kickstarts a heart again after it's stopped. Oh yeah, Quark 100% got resuscitated with this in that other timeline. Later on Quark goes slow like Sigma did earlier, furthering my theory here. We find the dead woman again, so it seems something happens in the rightmost path that stops the culprit from moving the container. But IIRC Alice was the other person with us at that point, and it really seems unlikely to be her seeing as she gets killed for figuring it out >_> Again I'm thinking as if these are discrete timelines, and we know they're not, so it might not mean anything.

Any more ramblings and hungry lions will have to wait another day.

andylt posted...

We wind up in the Director's Office and I am unable to answer the password, putting a pause on this timeline for now. This isn't actually locked off so I may well have the info I need for this, but clearly my brain isn't there yet.

The game is really weird about this. I don't think it's spoilers to say that you can't get this yet. I don't know why the game doesn't have a lock on this path like it does for every block. I really think it should.

Yeah, I think it's okay to tell you that you don't have the password yet. It's not a mystery you have to figure out or whatever.

Ah good, thanks. Weird that they didn't block it out.

Well, everything I think I know about this game can turn on its head in a single gameplay session...

Clover finally opens up about her 999 experience (to an extent), and Sigma handles this pretty damn well considering how absurd and suspicious it all sounds. Clover and I head into the infamous PEC room with Tenmyouji, and patch or no there's no chance I'm saving in here!

The Zero Jr doll in here is really creepy, maybe that thing eats up your save data and it's not a glitch at all but part of the Nonary Game >_> There are nine adult suits here, so we're probably coming back later on. Our big haul is a memory card, which we listen to back in the infirmary to uncover some pretty massive revelations. A recording from NYE 2028 seems to describe the beginning of the Rad-6 outbreak, from a simulated Mars mission that Tenmyouji worked on. With what we're told here and what Tenmyouji says later on, it seems very likely now that we're decades into the future. Space travel also comes into the main story for the first time- there was the flashback Sigma had showing a bomb blowing up on what looked like the Moon, and the Moon and Sun have been recurring themes throughout, but now it's explicitly mentioned. We could very well be on the Moon or Mars right now, or like 999 it could be a simulated version of either.

We naturally select Ally in the next AB game, though Clover does some real weird shit again and tries to seduce Sigma into picking betray. Seriously what is up with her, sometimes she seems her regular self and others she seems completely different. Maybe she was always like this, I don't remember 999 well enough. Then Alice dies again (dang she's having a rough time), and Clover threatens to go murder girl as we reach another TBC. I will reach an ending in this game one of these days!!

I head back up to the first door choice and this time take Dio to the Laboratory. There's an IG replicator here which I guess can duplicate the Alexavir in the first timeline I did, but I don't remember/know what IG could stand for. Dio steals the cure and blackmails us into voting Ally. The one time I felt comfortable picking betray and he has to ruin it!

Before Sigma walks to his doom, he and Phi have a chat about the journal we found (in Latin for some reason). My robot theory starts spiralling down the drain as we learn that slow mental processing speed is an effect of Rad-6- earlier Sigma must have pulled that thought from another timeline rather than from his robo databanks. This scene is good, though I'm starting to feel pretty down about things.

Sigma enters True Hero mode and is committed to saving Quark at the expense of his own life, I can hardly make him back out at the last second. Sure enough, Dio remains a huge asshole (really why is he here!) and votes to kill Sigma and take himself to freedom. Notably K also backs out on his word and takes the chance to go to 9 himself, but there's no time to worry about that right now. Sigma is injected with Soporil Beta, and has only minutes to live. We must have to stop his heart somehow to get the bracelet off, but I don't know how. Regardless, this is a pretty emotional sequence for ol' Siggy and it seems a fitting way to end the day.

Man. I know this game's themes are dark from the offset but things are feeling really depressing right now. I'm not talking about Sigma in particular, but more... everything. All the intrigue seems inconsequential now. If Tenmyouji is telling the truth about the mission and the virus, and the glaring hints that we're in the future are accurate, then what could even await us outside the number 9 door? Humanity ravaged to near extinction by a pandemic, everyone these characters cared about long dead, we might not even be on Earth... it's hard to see how the game could reach a happy ending given what we've been told. How is there a direct sequel to this?! Of course there's every chance we've been lied to and things aren't as grim as they sound, and there's so many things that don't make sense (chief among them: why the heck are we in a Nonary Game if the world has ended), but it's hard to be optimistic here.

Some other things that I've been thinking about:

• The three cryo-pods that could have kept us in stasis for decades. Only three. If Tenmyouji came voluntarily and Quark is... whatever Quark is, that could still leave chance for a few others to be robots (or lying about being kidnapped).
• I wonder how it's decided which door is opened by the lever. Is it a meaningless mechanic to ensure the player gets a different puzzle room each timeline, or is it connected to who pulls it or who's in the room etc.
• I forgot to mention previously, but I'm sure at one point we traveled the wrong way through a one way lever in one of the many many moving montages. Maybe I'm mistaken.
• What's the deal with the start screen for the AB game? I read it closely today, and it says the door will lock once you enter your vote, but it locks as soon as you click 'start'. Maybe there's some shenanigans going on with the voting system.
• There's been no ingame discussion of timelines or multiverses. There's mentions of remembering other events but nothing like the explanations we usually get for major sci-fi ideas like this.
• New baseless theory: Tenmyouji is a character from 999 all grown up.
• I'm really liking the music.

We are still fumbling around in the dark. Hopefully things look a bit less apocalyptic next time around!

I truly don't remember how long this game is or even most of the individual plot points, but it sure feels like you've hit enough that you have to be reaching some *answers* and turning points. I can't wait to read your thoughts

I think VLR is easily the longest game of the 3 but I'm still surprised you haven't hit an ending yet. Maybe the paths to the endings are stricter in VLR than in 999 but I honestly can't remember.

MysteriousStan posted...

I think VLR is easily the longest game of the 3 but I'm still surprised you haven't hit an ending yet. Maybe the paths to the endings are stricter in VLR than in 999 but I honestly can't remember.

Sorry, I try to avoid slipping into spoiler territory in these discussions but just for Stan's sake here; it's kind of a classic problem in VLR because the two easiest endings to reach (no locks) are the Luna-betray and Tenmyouji-betray routes, the two that people are the least inclined to do at the start of the game. Andy's not the first to do this, I did it too

We've been through most of the rooms now, the endings should start coming before long!

I realised I missed out a path earlier, so today Alice and Sigma take K into the rec room and watch him have the time of his life riding Zero Jr. Bless him! There's nothing special in this safe, and after the puzzles are done we wander round until, right on cue, Alice dies again. She really can't catch a break. This time Luna dies alongside her to spice things up. This occurs shortly after Alice was looking into the corner of the warehouse, so it could be a similar trigger to the other time when she figured out about the moving container. Quark also disappears again.

K asks Sigma to vote ally, and I acquiesce. I knew that there was a good chance he'd pick betray (he has lied before and is just as fond of betraying as Dio is), but I tried to stay noble. As our reward, K abandons us all to our deaths and I reach my first end of path :( Lesson learned! I should not have put everybody's lives at risk just to maintain Sigma's honesty, I'm kinda annoyed at myself for doing that. I'll be more careful about picking ally in future, though there's not many ally paths I haven't gone down yet >_>

After a quick jump K and I betray each other, and the story goes on. In the infirmary we notice the old woman must've had a bracelet on (again I missed this, I am not looking closely enough at my surroundings!), and one of us was therefore not meant to ever be in the Nonary game. Sure enough, just as we saw Dio had blood on his bracelet in the other timeline, we get him to confess to the murder. This only muddles things further as far as I can see- How did the old woman's body get into Luna's container? Who moved the container and why? Why was Dio ordered to kill her? And why did Dio go out of his way to join this game when, since coming here, he's been working so hard to get out of it? Things still look shady for Luna, who may be in on things with Dio.

We also take a detour into an open Gaulem Bay. G-OLM isn't here and the safe has been emptied, meaning K's key has been taken. Did G-OLM wake up and somehow leave?

Quark is finally found in the treatment pods sans bracelet. Maybe the cryo-chambers can stop the heart briefly? Did he put himself in here? Who took his bracelet? More questions.

After locking Dio in another treatment pod, we search for Clover and Tenmyouji. I worry they're dead in the infirmary like last time but we don't ever visit there to find out. Instead, K remembers an awful lot about his childhood and we get a large info dump. His father was working on some seemingly important but deadly research apparently involving solving death itself, and a mysterious blurry woman (the old woman?) was willing to die for it. Poor K has lived a sheltered and very traumatic life, being created solely as a backup should his father die before his work is done. He's been acting remarkably well-adjusted considering he'd only met two people before this game! Of course several things are still unknown, it's possible he's still a robot, and his father could be... Tenymouji, I guess? He's the only one old enough. I did catch that cartoon baby-K was carrying a stuffed rabbit toy.

I fear K still has more trauma to process, but for now he rests. Maybe we can bring him back to the Rec Room to have some fun after all this is done. Phi and Sig hear a loud noise, and eventually discover Dio dead and his bracelet broken (it's uncharacteristic of Phi to not notice the broken bracelet or attempt to pick it up sooner, she's usually good at that stuff). Once again it appears the answer to progress may involve stopping Phi and K's hearts so their bracelets can come off, so whenever I get a clear-cut answer to that mystery I'll be golden!

The next new path will have to involve betrayal, but before that I scan all the 'locks' looking to see if we can solve one. I choose the double vial path, hoping that something will help me process the meaning of IG replicator so Sigma can forge on ahead. Sure enough, one of the first words I see is immunoglobulin!! How did I forget that!! I save right here for today, but I am optimistic that this path can now move forward.
Answers await :D

I wish the game would give you some kind of blurb describing what has transpired in the timeline you're jumping into, when you swap around a lot it's easy to forget what happened in which one. Maybe that's the point, but I wish they'd at least tell you who's in your team and what everyone's BP is at the jumping point >_>

The IG Replicator works wonders, and Sigma manages to get out of any troublesome questions about how he knew of its existence. Though I feel like we should have made lots of copies of the cure, or at least leave one spare as backup. Sigma himself gets symptoms in another timeline and it couldn't hurt. Alas. I had another thought too- was Luna the one who mentioned Alexavir in the first place, or did it come from the machine or some textbook? I'll have to go back and check on that. The other bomb is here, and a memory card.

Quark and Alice recover nicely. Too nicely, in fact. Alice hops out of bed just in time to kill Sigma. Now I know I said I learned my lesson when K betrayed us, but I really thought I was safe this time! She was unconscious! I don't feel bad about being tricked here, but this is a reminder that I should always betray when I'm on 1 BP. For her part, Alice doesn't appear to give a single damn (after I reset and betray her too), and I quickly sour on her. Though she brings up a good point- everybody this round picked betray. Dio, K, and Clover are all very fond of picking that option at any time, and Phi won't risk her life if she's at 1. Another note: Clover went into the far right room this time- is the old woman's corpse just not here somehow in this timeline, or was it stashed somewhere else? Or is Clover aware of it, hm.

As mad as I am with Alice in the moment, she completely breaks through my defences with an emotional setpiece in the garden, confessing her fear and selfishness. It's a very human, relatable impulse and a refreshingly honest admission on her part, maybe it's the music but I find this to be a really great scene. Then Alice goes into her backstory- Myrmidon, Left, Free the Soul, Ace, a scientist father whose field is cloning (oh great, as if robots weren't enough to make me jump onto conspiracy theories, now we have clones!), and her relationship with Clover. Lots of new names to remember, and I believe her story. But we're stuck on this route again as we need a string of numbers to unlock the code from the memory card. *shrug* Another day, another lock.

I go to the other lock that I figured the answer to- Alice's suicide due to Rad-6. We convince Clover of the truth and again manage to put off questions of how Sigma knew this very specific knowledge, and eventually enter the Director's Office with Tenmyouji and an uncharacteristically conscious Quark. It is here, in the middle of an escape segment, where we finally get to look at Tenmyouji's picture of the old wo-

...what.

What? AKANE?! What the fuck? He's not Junpei, is he? He insists that it's not about love, so is he Santa? They do have the same hariline. Thinking back, he did chuckle at the idea of getting Clover to trust him... and he was aware of All-Ice... No, I don't want to get ahead of myself, he could be Akane's father or one of the scientists from the original experiment or something like that, but this is a pretty major info drop to leave in an optional part of an escape room! As time goes on this game is revealing itself to be more and more a direct sequel to 999. Which is pretty obvious I guess, given the Nonary Game itself.

Some time after beating the room, Sigma heads back and encounters a hologram purportedly of Zero! He has things to tell us, mainly about termites. Obviously. Zero explains that he thinks humans are constructing something that only others on a higher dimension can appreciate, and mentions that Sigma may have seen glimpses of said dimension. Are we, the player, these higher beings made to understand the tapestry being weaved? He also mentions saving billions of lives, so we may well end up going back in time and undoing the pandemic somehow. Or not! Then he gives us a very specific code that will probably help me break through a lock later on.

Now this time at the AB room I pick betray without hesitating. I don't trust Tenmyouji not to run out with Quark at the first opportunity, and sure enough he betrays us right back. But it's all for nought, as Clover reaches 11 points and ditches us as K did before. Game over. Why did K not betray Clover right back?? He must really not want to risk killing Luna, but he's usually so keen to betray. Ah well, I don't go back and pick ally as I figure there's no point.

More questions, more conspiracies, more death, more game overs. Another successful day in Sigma's shoes!

I want to post something in response to how you ended that play session. Dunno if this is overstepping spoiler bounds for you. I don't think it is, but maybe others can weigh in before you look at it.

There's never a segment that just ends with two separate and similar game overs. Even if both paths end abruptly, you're at the very least going to get something new.

I think its fine to read

My advice in general is to just follow all paths because all of the game overs resolve within like five minutes of making a bad choice anyway

Personally, Id say to hold off on the spoiler text, though its not that big of a deal. Some of the fun for games like this is in organically discovering how the game works. Im sure Andy will figure it out eventually anyway.

Does the 3DS version have the flowchart the same way the remake does?

If so do whatever the hell you want

The 3DS version of VLR has a flowchart. It is only the original versions of 999 that don't have one.

999 without a flow chart seems impossible due to locks.

yikes

masterplum posted...

999 without a flow chart seems impossible due to locks.

yikes

that's why we were all making our own flowcharts in big forum threads when the game came out! lol