Gaming 999 theories on True Ending

[bouncydinosaur]

I think the 5th one is the most logical. What do u think????

Actually, after reading all the theories here, I had an epiphany (pun intended)! The easiest way to explain the true ending, which does not have any contradictions (except for Alice ) is this:

Young Akane survived 9 years ago, and set up the new game where Snake/Santa/June/Seven in the second [Nonary Game] are all in on the loop. The only people truly playing the game not knowing the end goal are Ace & Co. and Junpei and Lotus. Clover can fall in either category.

explanation:

Spoiler

The players' roles:
Ace - tricked into murdering his own accomplices
Snake/Seven/Clover (1) - pretended to remember that Akane had died, and supplied Junpei with background information
Clover (2) - may have been lied to by Snake, who told her that Akane had died 9 years ago in preparation for the second [Nonary Game]
Santa - Zero's helper
Akane - Zero
Lotus - Who she claims to be, the mother of two children who were part of the first [Nonary Game] - the only thing that might be out of place is that she knows so much about the morphogenic field and Sheldrake's experiments.

If you think about it, everyone involved is a great actor/actress. June/Akane most of all, to faint at seeing blood when she was the one who planned [9]'s death. Even right before she was revealed as [Zero], she put on the weak girl act for Junpei. It makes sense that Snake/Santa/Clover/Seven managed to trick all of us. For the clueless ones, Lotus was truly shaking when she had to be placed in the torture chair. She was most likely the one who Snake was explaining the situation to while Junpei was solving the sudoku (since Seven/Clover should already know). Note that no one else tried to get in Junpei's way during this last puzzle.

Given the last-second deactivation of the incinerator, and the desperate climb to the top, it's possible that not even Snake/Seven/Clover knew that they were in Building Q rather than the Gigantic. That may have been Zero just having a last bit of fun with the players. In the end, the point was to recreate a life-and-death situation so that the [epiphany] and [danger] are both supplied for Junpei/Young Akane's morphogenic link.

..And it worked!

 

[Slurpy]

I've just finished the true ending (at last !) and feel so enlightened after read this discussion ..

However there's still one thing annoyed me. It is the fact that Santa/June/Seven/Snake didn't tell Clover about the real purpose of Nonary game was held in second time. Well, if they talked to Clover, all of their plan, the axe ending couldn't be happening, right ? Clover wouldn't want to get revenge since she knew the man who died wasn't her brother/ Snake. It was really risky to not telling her since if she want to take revenge for her brother and the axe ending happened, June/Zero will surely be dissapeared, or dead.

And how come June/Zero couldn't know this possibility ?

Is there anyone who could makes sense of this, about why they decided not to tell Clover about their plan ? Or is it just so the game can have another alternate bad ending ??

 

[Clydefrosch]

seven wasnt in on it.
didnt the storywriter himself say that seven got somewhat brainwashed (with 2020something high tech machinery)? until he gets his memory back, which could possibly still be false (cause he said akane died when she could not have died due to the timeloop)

snake, im not sure anymore, i dont know if he was even around while people spoke of the girl that died.
either way, even if he knew, he might actually put things together on his own and just play along anyway.

and you should understand that everyone being in on it would have risked the whole plan anyway. those people arent actors. things have to be natural to be believable for key-player junpei.


that they werent on the gigantic however, should have been obvious to everyone who played the game before, since that one sunk. if anything, it could only have been a replica of the gigantic and that would've been just dumb.


anyway, to be honest, my biggest beef with this game is not all the soso faulty logics of timeloops ( i mean really, i dont believe that akanes 12 year old brain should have been able to comprehend and remember all the information it was getting (dozens of possible timeline outcomes, most of which should have been impossible to happen to begin with, cause in those, she wasnt saved, but she should have been saved due to being alive in the respective timelines to save up the game that saved her) to the point where she was able to plot revenge so meticulously.
but my biggest problem still is just this:

the original nonary experiment setup doesnt make any sense.

kids in building q shouldnt have been any more or less likely to solve the problems than children on the ship. theres just no reason to think that solving problems on the ship would be the result of morphogenetic field access. the setup would have to work like this:
on the ship,
in addition to that, there wouldn't be any reason to actually build death traps into the ship at all. they could have easily faked one death to make everyone think that the game is life and death. i mean, whats the difference to 18 minutes countdown with or without actual fire and death? in addition to the fact that the ship was going to sink and kill them anyway if they fail. but which also should not have had to happen. they could easily stop at the incineration by design and send the kids back. or kill them all afterwards due to loose ends and crap. really, at least everyone in building q should have been terminated.
that just didnt make any sense.

in addition to that, even if they got the results they wanted, there still would have been no way to utilize them for themselves anyway. specially not for something so specific as regaining your ability to distinguish faces. gawd. thats whats not making sense with this game.
if you allow yourself to believe in timeloops, then a game with the true ending would be almost possible (the safe ending you need to see before however, should not be possible. in this timeline, akane was never saved and thus should be unable to set up the second game, thus making the true ending just as impossible, unless the relevant information was brought into the game otherwise.
but if you're honest, the first game should have looked completely different to make any sense. among that, building q should have been not a replica of the ship, but simply 9 rooms for the kids with the solutions to the puzzles on the gigantic.
the puzzles on the other hand would have needed to be impossible to solve without the information from building q. only then, would it have been possible to say that information was passed from q to gigantic.

also, afterwards, everyone should have died. while the kids on the ship might have been rescued by seven, people in building q should have had enough time to just mow the kids down.


also, i found it ridiculous how junpei, for no reason at all, didnt know what sodoku is, but was able understand the rules in seconds anyway just looking at the screen.

 

[takitam]

A bit off topic but I really liked the fact how stupid the end of the first nonary game was. Seven saved all the kids from incineration room and left through the vent tunnel. After Ace put Akane back in the incineration room, Seven did nothing, when he could easily climb the vent tunnel again and get Akane out of there But this way nonary game would never happen

 

[Arras]

A bit off topic but I really liked the fact how stupid the end of the first nonary game was. Seven saved all the kids from incineration room and left through the vent tunnel. After Ace put Akane back in the incineration room, Seven did nothing, when he could easily climb the vent tunnel again and get Akane out of there But this way nonary game would never happen

Maybe he didn't know she was in there, or it would have taken too long for him to return?

 

[GeorgeFoulds]

Am I the only person that got pissed that Ace turned out to be a bad guy? I liked him.

 

[Clydefrosch]

no, that one actually makes sense, there was no time to go back all the way, climb through the long tunnel (remember, seven is a fat guy) and rescue akane from burning once more

 

[DragorianSword]

no, that one actually makes sense, there was no time to go back all the way, climb through the long tunnel (remember, seven is a fat guy) and rescue akane from burning once more

The vent was too high to get in again actually. I seem to remember reading that.

 

[takitam]

The vent was too high to get in again actually. I seem to remember reading that.

It seems that Seven could get all the kids out of the incineration room pretty fast considering the fact the timer was there the first time and he had to make them all climb the improvised rope.

About the second argument, if the vent (the one outside of incineration room, I don't remeber that any details about its position were mentioned in the game) is too high to climb, it would probably be also pretty hard to get out of it in the first place. Seven could get akane out the same way he saved other children earlier imo.

But anyway, trying to make a video game follow 'real life', sensible rules is pretty naive The story is just this way bc its how the game was written. I still like to discuss the possibilities and script holes anyway

 

[Janthran]

Okay guys I beat the sequel so I can answer a couple of things about 999, concerning Alice and the multiple endings thing.

Spoiler

Alice is not all-ice, at least not when you meet her in 999. There might be time travel involved later, but we don't know yet.
The reason there are multiple endings is because each takes place in a different universe, and Akane has the ability to jump between them.
Jumping through the morphogenetic field ignores time, so young Akane contacted Junpei in her moment of peril, probably not realizing that he was in the future.
When she realized it was Junpei from the future, she had to replicate the Nonary Game that he was in, so she's also zero.

 

[Jaxxermus]

Zero is not Akane. We learn that from preview B. Which says
"Unfortunately, that's the wrong answer. Actually...I'm Santa"

Also, there would be no Zero if little Kanny died. Of course, there's the chance of the time something.
Kanny was saved in the past --->Kanny exists in the future so that Kanny is saved in the past.

But I don't think this game would come up with that, what was confirmed with preview B.

We were made think Akane was Zero because of that if the guys knew Santa was Zero, they wouldn't react...nicely.

Of course, that's what I think, and what in my opinion, is clear enough from Preview B.

I would have to disagree with your conclusion that Akane is not Zero based on the fact that:
the line of dialogue "Unfortunately, that's the wrong answer. Actually... I'm Santa"comes from a different string of events that leads to an ending different than the true one, and is said by someone other than Akane or Santa.
It's not really related to the identity of Zero, but confirmation of information that you have gathered in this path's string of events.
The line is simply used for Junpei to prove to the group that Ace has Prosopagnosia.
The line of text is merely a ploy, not to be taken as a fact of the circumstances.
Junpei was tricking Ace.
We are made to believe that Santa is Zero because for Akane to be zero is meant to be the farthest thing from the player's mind.
Until the end when weight is given to the ability nad idea of morphic resonance, for Akane to be able to use some sort of telepathy through time is a completely absurd idea.
For Junpei to deduce that she is Zero would be absolutely insane.
But! After the game clues you in on what Akane and Junpei are capable of, everything falls into place.
Akane had to become Zero to be able to save herself in this long, drawn out, but necessary way.
The beauty of this game is that the facts of the game remain the same no matter what path you choose,
what changes is what amount of information is made available to your character on any given path.
In my opinion (based on the present facts of the story), Akane is Zero, she puts the whole thing together to be able to remain alive, or, alternatively, to be able to save herself in the past.
Without having gone to the extent she did to re-create the situations of the Nonary game, Jumpei would not have been there nor would he have been adequately motivated to have the epiphany that allowed him to save June. This is confirmed by [Seven] revealing that he lied to Jumpei about Akane's fate 9 years previous, he had to believe she was going to die if he didn't save her or else he would not have been able to tap into the morphic resonance.
I believe this game functions on the idea of absolute space and time.
This idea, at is's most basal definition explains that all time and space exist in the same objective frame of reference.
The time we perceive (many times defined as linear, moving only forward, identifying that their is a history that no longer exists)
is simply subjective to our own relative time.
The space we perceive is our relative space.
The idea follows that we exist and move in relative space and time.
In the world of this game, communication and transition into absolute space and time is possible.
Akane is alive now and in the past because they exist at the same moment.
For that to continue to happen, crucial occurrences had to happen.

Sorry for the long reply... I got carried away...
If you decide to look anything up and find that I am wrong (mostly related to absolute and relative time and space), please let me know, though I am fairly confident in my statements.

Hope this helped you!

-Jax