Gaming Zero Time Dilemma - Spoiler talk!

Bimmel

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Just played through the game yesterday and wanted to know what you guys think about the game and the plot? Did you think it was good? Bad? Plot holes all the way? Did you get what you expected?

Obviously, spoiler alert all the way. Please just read if you played through the game completely.
 

CrispyYoshi

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[Endgame Spoilers]

- What I liked -

- Uniqueness of the story fragment system... It was fun to follow... but there are cons too. See below.
- SigmaxDiana ending. That made me sad, and it tied the story together.
- Like the previous bullet, I also enjoyed the true end
- The luck-based decisions like the russian roulette with Sigma or the triple 1 dice. It was an interesting way to let the player directly feel the choices, and is forgiving because it is (to what i hear) rigged to get you the other outcomes with <3 tries each.
- The ability to skip cutscenes despite having watched them or not. Very helpful in VNs like this, where some scenes overlap or you accidentally lost progress on a save.
- The hidden eastereggs, like the nods to VLR/999 and the hidden "shoot Delta" ending
- The subtle logs that added to the True end. Perhaps this could've been developed more, but perhaps it was a budget issue during development...

- What I disliked -
- Fragment system also made it a bit confusing to follow the story without looking at the global flowchart frequently
- Two points of getting stuck in the game that I felt were unclear: triggering all team execution scenes and getting through the Door of Time when everything else is locked from selection. (You're supposed to guess the door combination a few times or hit Cancel before it lets you progress, and I looked everywhere else before I tried doing that, which took about 2 hours re-watching cutscenes I already saw)
- The Zero reveal. Seriously, that guy came out of nowhere!
- The true ending. It was super underwhelming, but I suppose it couldn't have ended any other way...
- Sean, in my opinion, was the only really interesting new character in the series: Mira and Eric were rather bland (Eric was particularly... arghh)

All in all, it was a fun game. While this might be my least favorite in the Zero Escape series (was expecting more plot twists), I'm glad we got a third game at all, and I thank Uchikoshi and his team for this labor of love to the fans of the series.
 

Nirmonculus

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It's a mixed bag. I was really hyped about how they were going to incorporate ? Into ZTD and K. So I sort of made a theory about it. I love the game but they can't end it that way, it's too weak.

Akane, seems weird, old Akane is best Akane. It's like she doesn't know much in this game and that her powers seems nerfed? She's nerfed here and her the creator said she has a Machiavelan personality and it wasn't executed well here.

Mira is weird when she turned herself in, psychopaths won't do that. Like Dexter, he chose to fake his death so that he can continue chopping down criminals and ignored a wonderful life with his new girlfriend and son, he has forsaken them because he is a killer, it's what he is. Mira doesn't even love Eric, she was just bidding her time to rip his heart.

To my theory, it may be than VLR is actually the good ending CQD 2, and that Akane and Sigma still wen't on to do the 3rd nonary game. Because they have to. K did switch with ? but since ? Has to be in ZTD and we didn't see him, he might be somewhere else, in a spinoff game. That is why Phi couldn't tell ? What happened because it would change history.
Much like Seven and Snake couldn't say who died in the first nonary because it would change history.
Anagram
Zero Time Dilemma - Me Im Zero Im Delta.
 
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FireEmblemGuy

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Kind of disappointed. No real elaboration on Brother or Free the Soul; they even tried to end it with Brother being a morally-ambiguous character, which disregards anything in the past in favor of looking only at what he'd done for or because of this game. Let's just ignore all the shit FtS already did and the fact that even if he hasn't yet, he'd planned on building a whole army of clones to do his bidding - even after he'd ended the terrorist threat.
 

piratesephiroth

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I think it was a great game. Not as good as 999 but better than VLR.

I liked the characters, especially Jumpei. Eric was annoying but his unstable behaviour is coherent with his shitty childhood.
Mira was pretty lame though. Why does she looks almost like a teenager if she started murdering people 17 years ago? Is that the secret to eternal youth?

The biggest disappointment was the Zero reveal. The game always indirectly tells you Q is the boy, like pointing the camera to him when Zero says "Q" is the leader and showing his "face" together with the other team members.

Then all of a sudden they decide to reveal Q is the old guy in a wheelchair that's always around and at the same time start calling the boy "Sean"?
That was just retarded.
 

Nirmonculus

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I think it was a great game. Not as good as 999 but better than VLR.

I liked the characters, especially Jumpei. Eric was annoying but his unstable behaviour is coherent with his shitty childhood.
Mira was pretty lame though. Why does she looks almost like a teenager if she started murdering people 17 years ago? Is that the secret to eternal youth?

The biggest disappointment was the Zero reveal. The game always indirectly tells you Q is the boy, like pointing the camera to him when Zero says "Q" is the leader and showing his "face" together with the other team members.

Then all of a sudden they decide to reveal Q is the old guy in a wheelchair that's always around and at the same time start calling the boy "Sean"?
That was just retarded.
I agree. Mira is not executed well.

In the trailer, there was a scene where Sean was shown and a huge Q was on the screen.
I knew the boy was a robot and not a mask would come off leaving him headless though.

I just hope they create another one, I don't care if it takes long, as long as it is executed greatly.
 

Mr.Faq2015

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It was fun to play, the escape zones kept being challenging in some parts, although I would've liked them to be more like VLR, with not too much clues and making more use of the features of the console in the handheld ports (I noticed that at least on the 3DS which is where I played it. And yeah, I missed the 3D...).

Now about the game plot and characters:

The plot itself did mostly as VLR's plot: solved several plot holes, didn't solve another ones and generated its proper plot holes. This doesn't make me dislike it though, it has its good parts, but all of us were expecting something different...

I join to the group that agrees with Mira being a character that wasn't really well implemented.

The biggest disappointment was the Zero reveal. The game always indirectly tells you Q is the boy, like pointing the camera to him when Zero says "Q" is the leader and showing his "face" together with the other team members.

Then all of a sudden they decide to reveal Q is the old guy in a wheelchair that's always around and at the same time start calling the boy "Sean"?
That was just retarded.
I found something interesting about this. In the choice where Eric asks Sean to tell him the name of Mira's killer while Eric points him with the shotgun at the very first time, if you put Sean as the name... Eric will say "I knew it, I knew it was you..." and shoot. Does that mean that Eric knew Sean's name BEFORE the name itself was revealed later in that story?

Bottom line I guess, I liked the game overall, but it will never be like 999
 

piratesephiroth

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I found something interesting about this. In the choice where Eric asks Sean to tell him the name of Mira's killer while Eric points him with the shotgun at the very first time, if you put Sean as the name... Eric will say "I knew it, I knew it was you..." and shoot. Does that mean that Eric knew Sean's name BEFORE the name itself was revealed later in that story?

Bottom line I guess, I liked the game overall, but it will never be like 999

Yeah, apparently Sean is aware of his own name and tells them from the beginning.
 

Bimmel

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[Endgame Spoilers]

- What I liked -

- Uniqueness of the story fragment system... It was fun to follow... but there are cons too. See below.
- SigmaxDiana ending. That made me sad, and it tied the story together.
- Like the previous bullet, I also enjoyed the true end
- The luck-based decisions like the russian roulette with Sigma or the triple 1 dice. It was an interesting way to let the player directly feel the choices, and is forgiving because it is (to what i hear) rigged to get you the other outcomes with <3 tries each.
- The ability to skip cutscenes despite having watched them or not. Very helpful in VNs like this, where some scenes overlap or you accidentally lost progress on a save.
- The hidden eastereggs, like the nods to VLR/999 and the hidden "shoot Delta" ending
- The subtle logs that added to the True end. Perhaps this could've been developed more, but perhaps it was a budget issue during development...

- What I disliked -
- Fragment system also made it a bit confusing to follow the story without looking at the global flowchart frequently
- Two points of getting stuck in the game that I felt were unclear: triggering all team execution scenes and getting through the Door of Time when everything else is locked from selection. (You're supposed to guess the door combination a few times or hit Cancel before it lets you progress, and I looked everywhere else before I tried doing that, which took about 2 hours re-watching cutscenes I already saw)
- The Zero reveal. Seriously, that guy came out of nowhere!
- The true ending. It was super underwhelming, but I suppose it couldn't have ended any other way...
- Sean, in my opinion, was the only really interesting new character in the series: Mira and Eric were rather bland (Eric was particularly... arghh)

All in all, it was a fun game. While this might be my least favorite in the Zero Escape series (was expecting more plot twists), I'm glad we got a third game at all, and I thank Uchikoshi and his team for this labor of love to the fans of the series.
For the story fragments I did not even know what happened when exactly. At the end I read through the Wiki site to understand everything.

I got stuck at the execution scenes too. I watched 1 hour of the cutscenes again before I noticed that.

And Mira and Eric.. they annoyed me from beginning to end. A mass murderer, really? Through the whole game I was interested in the question: "Who killed Junpei?" And the answer just makes no sense at all. Why would Mira kill only Junpei? And when did she do it? And why in such a cruel way? There was no need for that. Did she just walked in the room, saw Carlos, Junpei and Akane on the floor and said: Junpei, I choose you! Then she cut him in pieces, set all the puzzles and the body parts where they can be found? If she wanted to get out, she just would have killed everyone, end of story. And if she wanted Junpei's hearts, the heart would have been missing.

The whole Eric story annoyed me as well. He was just a character to get some tension into the whole thing, because someone must go crazy all the time, right?

Junpei and Akane were kind of strange in this game. Junpei tried to be badass and funny all the time, and Akane was the opposite with her storys and lectures about time travel.

The biggest disappointment was the Zero reveal. The game always indirectly tells you Q is the boy, like pointing the camera to him when Zero says "Q" is the leader and showing his "face" together with the other team members.

Then all of a sudden they decide to reveal Q is the old guy in a wheelchair that's always around and at the same time start calling the boy "Sean"?
That was just retarded.
I agree. That was just lame.

Interesting thing from Reddit:

Clues that Q is Delta, the 4th particpant:

1) Literal shadows from Delta in most Q team scenes (here are the shadows from Pop-off, for example).

2) "The old man in the wheel chair" dialogue

3) If you try to select "Q" in the "who to shoot" scene, it will say to select Q's real name. If you input "Sean," it will give an error. If you choose "me" or "myself," the game will say "you cannot commit suicide." - Credit for expanding this goes to overchargext

4) If you say that "Q" killed Mira, Eirc will say "that's impossible!," and if you select "Sean," or "me," he'll say "I knew it was you!" - credit for expanding this goes to Ro9ge

5) "The truth is invisible" anagram

6) The parasite discussion

7) Carlos/Diana not knowing why they pressed the decontamination button, or the bad execution choice (mindhacking). Sean never claimed he didn't do it, as he can't be mindhacked.

8) The anagram about the 10 that Akane finds

9) The scene after the radical 6 is chosen to not be injected where Eric talks to Gab and calls him "Old man," he is actually talking to Delta. Both Eric and Mira are looking to the screen (to Delta), and Sean asks if they could speak. - Credit goes to untuned of the Something Awful Forum, and to Ro9ge for elaborating.

10) Q never has a portrait in the status screen, but there is one of Sean inside the Study - Credit goes to YoshiOfYellow of the Something Awful Forum

11) "Even Q ... he couldn't see or hear when" (when talking about Q team execution) - Credit goes to voltcatfish of the Something Awful forums)

12) Sean in Pop-off says "you are all really important to me" rather than "you both are really important to me," despite the fact he only knows Q team.

13) When Zero tells Sean about the "old man" who visited him.

14) Eric says "I know the leader's supposed to decide who to vote for but...", because Delta is believed to be blind and deaf - Credit goes to Ro9ge

15) Eric is suspicious of Sean because he isn't on the X-passes - Credit goes to Ro9ge

16) If you try to shoot Mira, she will shoot twice before the X-pass notification comes on, because she also shoots Delta - Credit goes to Ro9ge

17) Despite the fact that Carlos seems to know Q, he doesn't recognize the robot that looks like Sean - Credit goes to zatchel1

18) Towards the end of the C-team ending, when listening to the recording of Zero, Zero specifically says that he's dead in this timeline, and that Carlos executed him. This is also the timeline in which all of Q-team dies because Carlos decided to execute Q team. - Credit goes to Ro9ge

19) After Phi and Delta and delta are born, the status screen shows Q and Phi alive. Status before birth and status after birth - Credit goes to YouWithTheFace

20) Decision game starts with "deci," which means ten - Credit goes to ultramario1998.

21) When Sean decides to stay behind after pressing the Decontamination button, he is staying behind for Q, and it becomes clear with close examination that Q is also chained, and Q is the one staying behind. Sean is looking at the Camera (at Delta) when he says that he stayed behind because of him. And when they try to unchain Q, they are always trying to get it off the pole, and not off Gab's paw. Here is an image that demonstrates this.. - Credit goes to Ro0ge, and BloodTrain for the image.

22) In the ending of the VLR timeline, Sigma asks "a child?" When he sees Sean's corpse, despite the previous indications that he knew Q was handicapped in another scene. Q doesn't show up as dead in the status screen. - Credit goes to Thisisalsomypass

23) Generally, throughout C and D team fragments, they indicate they know Q at least somewhat, despite the fact that if you win the coin toss, it is revealed that no one seems to know Sean. - Credit goes to Ro9ge

24) During "You are Zero," if you choose the identity of Zero wrongly, after Sean is dead, Eric shoots 3 more times despite the fact that only Diana and Sigma are left, and Gab is revealed to not have been shot. There is a pool of blood that appears as the camera zooms out. - Credit goes to RenegadeReaper, with additions from Bookeworm and TheNarcor

25) When Q team is drinking at the bar before the vote, there is a glass to the right of Sean, and since Eric and Mira already had drinks, and Sean can't drink, it must have been for Q. - Credit goes to blankemp

26) One of Q's X-passes is "age," and another is "self." Thus implying that Q is the "old man" people mentioned, and Q is zero's "self." Also, another X-pass is "eye," which refers to that he is the one watching them all. There is a 4th one (take a look at 37 for more info) - Credit goes to -tjm-, with an addition by Bookwurm.

27) When the Crash Keys twitter account was revealing the images of the participants of the decision game, they never revealed Sean. - Credit goes to TechnoSyndrome

28) There are a lot of Xes. The X-door, X-passes, etc. X is the roman numeral for 10. - Credit goes to BloodTrain

29) In the C Team Execution Decision fragment, Carlos calls out for Mira and Eric through the vent, but not Q (he is believed to be deaf). Credit goes to Lumsyl.

30) When Q team goes to sleep, there are 4 thumps, not 3. - Credit goes to GFJmember

31) When Carlos seems to know Zero's identity in the beginning, it is presumably because he notices that there is one person missing (Q), so he makes the connection. - Credit goes to demosfera

32) When at the Bar before the execution, and Sean asks where they were, they mentioned that "We all lived at Dcom. C team and D team were there too." Rather than "Both of us lived at Dcom." - Credit goes to Jetstream_Kage

33) The segment called "triangle" where there is a stand-off between Sean, Eric, and Mira. The Greek letter delta is a triangle. - Credit goes to soraku392

34) How obsessed this game seems with 3. There are 3 teams (all of which we think have 3 members). There are 3 survivors of the VLR timeline (without the time travel shenanigans). There are 3 x 2 shifters in the game. Biolab has 3 syringes and 3 fingerprint sensors. This is the 3rd game in the series. Delta, as mentioned, is a triangle symbol, with 3 sides. Can anyone think of anything else to add with 3 in the game? - Credit for this is split between me and gschmidl. Credit for corrections about me including Montehall goes to stordoff, aunt_snorlax, and swimmerwoad

35) In the logo, there is an IV, where the 6 is supposed to be. Delta is the 4th letter in the greek alphabet, and what Q is (the 4th member of Q team) and if you add up the 4 and the 6 that is supposed to be there, you get 10, the number of participants. Credit goes to ScLobsters, and to AlexHusky for expanding it.

36) In the execution of Q team, there are 3 piles of flesh in the shower, despite the fact that Sean is a robot. Credit goes to Dastev.

37) After the "don't shoot" option in Triangle, if you pay attention to the X-Pass board, you will learn that Q had the X-Pass "BRO," which obviously hints at him being Brother. An image of it can be found here. Credit for finding this goes to granolaman

38) When Sean is hacking the Quantum Computer, the screen flickers, as Delta's glasses get interference due to hacking. credit goes to Warbec
 

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