Zero Escape

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Post Post #100 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 12:52 pm

Post by KaleiÐoscøpe »

In post 99, Parama wrote:i'm done now.

Spoiler: Seriously Don't Open This
what the hell happened to kyle tho
gab

And Equinox, answers on your last part will be given
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Post Post #101 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 4:21 pm

Post by Equinox »

These spoilers aren't necessarily tied to the Fragments for which they're named, so don't open them unless you've already finished the game. It's so weird not being able to talk about this game with others, but the format doesn't really allow for spoiler-free discussion.

Spoiler: D-Team, T-- S------- P---
Having SHIFTed around and seen the nature of the yellow door, I don't think Zero is who I originally thought it was. Radical-6 is the only reason that I thought it was Free the Soul, but there's no reason for Brother to include "Twins' Birthday" as a hint when that event occurred after all was said and done. The game notes say that Dcom is a facility where Free the Soul holds majority ownership, so it looks like what might have happened was someone -- definitely a SHIFTer -- hijacked the experiment and the outbreak might be a side effect of the wrong person (i.e., Mira) getting hands on it. Given that SOIS was looking into raiding the facility to prevent a case of biological terrorism, though, it's possible that the intention was to release Radical-6 anyway and the Decision Game interrupted it.

It's looking more and more like the Decision Game was specifically designed to strengthen the SHIFT phenomenon, so I'm about 90% certain that Brother isn't involved in the creation of it.

I'd love it if it turns out that this is something like Phi and Sigma (or even Akane) coming up with this scheme to stop Radical-6 from breaking out of Dcom but also having to replicate the history that the two of them saw in the Nonary Game. The game has already said that Aoi is assisting Akane from outside, so Akane being the one isn't impossible, either. It'd also explain why Akane basically abandoned Diana and Sigma for ten months.

On the other hand, I really don't want to believe that Akane would let someone saw off Junpei's head. That's just sick. So yeah, this is just one of those "I wonder if" things and not a serious consideration at the moment.

About the ten months, by the way ...

THERE IS FOOD FOR TEN MONTHS

FRUGALLY

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH BABIES

THE BABIES ARE ALSO CREEPY AS SHIT

Spoiler: Q-Team, T-------
When Zero first told the story about how the snail caused the deaths of six billion people, I figured that it was going to play a big role, but the way it played out was still quite nice.

All of the advertising material made Mira the "attractive and bold" personality who "spoke her mind." An innocuous explanation like that in a game like this meant giant neon signs saying "DANGER." (I also thought Carlos was one of the Myrmidons clones before the game was released, so go figure.) Still, it was easy to let her lull me into a sense of security for the early and mid-game Q-Team scenes because she was very likable, even if ruthless at times. That was until that one scene where she began laughing at a sad story of Eric's childhood. At that point, it was super creepy, and it came together by the time they got to the three-way standoff. It probably helped that I played the Q-Team Fragments nearly back-to-back, but the change from "likable" to "OMG PSYCHOPATH" was immensely satisfying. Fantastic character.

I've played for twenty hours.
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Post Post #102 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 4:38 pm

Post by Parama »

Spoiler: Regarding Mira
The second fragment I played after the execution fragments was Triangle. I basically got Mira's full reveal out pretty early, haha... hard to view her actions as anything other than unsettling after that.
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Post Post #103 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 5:53 pm

Post by Equinox »

More rants.

I also talk about Ever17, so don't open this at all if you've never played or finished that game but intend to do so.

Spoiler: D-Team, T-- S------- P---
THEY NAMED THE KID "PHI"

THIS IS THE SAME PHI

THIS HAS UCHIKOSHI WRITTEN ALL OVER IT

I guess I should watch what I wish for. I mentioned Uchikoshi and "?" before, and that was because he'd used a similar device in Ever17. To very quickly destroy a game that some might find worth playing, a set of people were trapped by chance in an underwater theme park, and, to make sure everyone got out, they trapped themselves and their children -- who were, incidentally, conceived during the original disaster -- to repeat history. The game also featured the outbreak of a lethal pathogen. At the very end, all of the characters thanked "Blick Winkel," also known as the player, for influencing everything in that park both times to get everyone out.

I came into this expecting some of this to appear in this game because trademarks don't really go away, and Uchikoshi is well-received in general; why fix a formula if it's not broken? I mentioned "?" in an earlier post because I expected it to come into play somehow. Carlos, Diana, and Q all talked about how they didn't know why they submitted the fatal hammer vote, so that's the set-up for revealing the player's role in everything. I just didn't expect
all
of it, so seeing Diana and Sigma conceive twins who would later come back and set all the wheels in motion was less surprising or amazing but more eye-rolling. I don't know.

I really don't know what I was expecting. I'm just disappointed, I guess.

There doesn't seem to be much of the game left, so let's see how the rest of it goes.

Also, on further thought, the relationship between Diana and Sigma is creepy. Sigma is 40+ years older than Diana, but he's also known her previously due to having already been in a relationship with some different version of her. The way this fragment played out, Sigma laid out what he knew about her, which affected how she saw him. I mean, it was obvious that she was attracted to him, sure, but it felt like Sigma was specifically playing to her weaknesses and that's predatory. It doesn't matter that they're the last man and woman on the planet.
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Post Post #104 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 6:19 pm

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ever 17 is solid but takes forever to really get going, i preferred remember 11 overall even with its weird ending
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Post Post #105 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:07 pm

Post by KaleiÐoscøpe »

Spoiler: what botheres me
Sigma never needs to shave in 10 months and they wear the same clothes for 10 months and then still have woohoo... Yeah
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Post Post #106 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 8:56 pm

Post by Equinox »

Spoiler: Endgame
I've finished all of the routes but the final one. I might finish tonight, but I think I'm going to need a few days to process everything.

The twists with Delta and Phi were enough to make this a unique twist with its own "Zero Escape" flavor, so I think I'm okay with it. I'm still totally disappointed with the Diana-Sigma story line, though, and I think it's chiefly because it's been done before and now feels like the token shock twist. It's also pretty gross. I'm not sure how I feel about Delta being the point-of-view character;
that
came out of left field for me. Unless I missed it (plausible), there weren't hints of a tenth person in the shelter until Q pointed at Delta. For comparison, Sigma in Virtue's Last Reward was the butt of several jokes about his age. Actually, for an in-game comparison, I thought the "there are no separate wards" reveal was done relatively well because there were hints of something not quite right (e.g., four-hour naps with no apparent wakeful but forgotten periods, X-Doors working only once, Mira wandering into Ward D unimpeded).

This feeling of disappointment is probably the result of massive amounts of hype leading to unreasonable expectations on my part.

Delta releasing Radical-6 to "save" two billion people and Akane continuing to stop Delta despite knowing the alternative are interesting dilemmas, though. That might end up being my takeaway from this game because the story with some of the twists that have happened ain't it.

In any case, onward to Point E.
In post 104, Parama wrote:ever 17 is solid but takes forever to really get going, i preferred remember 11 overall even with its weird ending
If nearly all of the slice-of-life scenes were cut from Ever17, it would've been a leaner but much improved game without sacrificing character development.
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Post Post #107 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 9:05 pm

Post by KaleiÐoscøpe »

Spoiler: if you're curious
About the 10th person hints, go read this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroEscape/com ... shadowing/
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Post Post #108 (ISO) » Sat Jul 02, 2016 9:47 pm

Post by Equinox »

I am done!

Spoiler: Does the dog die?
YES WTF

I'll open spoilers tomorrow. I've had enough Zero Escape for a long time.
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Post Post #109 (ISO) » Sun Jul 03, 2016 5:08 pm

Post by Equinox »

I did the Zero Escape Puzzle Hunt today in Little Tokyo. The puzzles were similar in spirit to the ones in Zero Time Dilemma, which was nice. However, as I was trying to submit the solutions, the LAPD swarmed the area due to the armed robbery of a souvenir shop. There was an ambulance on standby, but it didn't seem like anyone was hurt. Miraculously, traffic was no worse than usual. 8/10 would miss evacuation again

News of greater interest to the general public: A voiced PC port for 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors has been confirmed at Anime Expo. There's a video preview of it on Twitter, but the dubbing seems to be in Japanese for now.


For some reason, this news isn't as exciting as it would've been a week ago.

Spoiler: Story
I've been thinking about this game more since finishing it. It's fine. This is the story that they wanted to tell, for better or for worse, and grumbling about the reappearance of a specific plot device isn't going to change anything.

However, I am still upset about the alien technology that was never explained. Apparently, Delta and Phi were sent back to 1904 and appeared through the transporter while it was still in German hands, and it was never said that Zero had been lying. Thus, the truth seems to be that someone decided that, if we're going to play with nonsense like timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly stuff, we might as well throw in aliens. The discrepancy in Virtue's Last Reward was obvious, so Akane and Junpei had to have survived death somehow. The existence of the transporter was planned. But why did it have to be aliens? Deus ex machina. :(

For a series that had decent writing for the first two games, the writing in the post-game notes was ... um ... less so. The editing on Aksys's end also went on vacation (e.g., "intellegence," "nothing phases me" dgndfhdfhkr). Normally, minor editing issues would barely register as a problem, but the game was already suffering and words going out of their way to be misspelled only added to the feeling that nobody cared anymore.
In post 93, KaleiÐoscøpe wrote:Just finished the game
game ending feels kinda underwhelming. The big reveal is cool for like a few minutes, then it drags on closing loose ends. New characters werent all that interesting, phi was mostly irrelevant, akane was annoying, junpei became a sarcastic asshole which i sorta lived, and sigma was okay. The journey was cool, but the ending wasnt really satisfying, and the ending seemed made up rather then it being the main theme of all three games. Game was good, but liked vlr better
Spoiler:
Yeah, the ending felt made up. I'm sure that the story outline was planned beforehand because it has to be for something of this scale. The execution somehow made the game feel like an ass-pull, though.

I think what killed Akane's character in this game was her voice actress because otherwise Akane was as expected from what I've seen of her in the last two games. She seemed to really struggle with calm explanations (e.g., room with nuclear reactor) or strong emotion (e.g., "There's no point in living once you lose the one you care about the most"), and Akane is in those two modes frequently. I don't mean to knock the actress too much because it's difficult to play the soft-spoken, demure character, and the flaws were in particularly stark contrast because everyone else had done extremely well.

Junpei definitely stole the show.
In post 99, Parama wrote:
Spoiler: Seriously Don't Open This
what the hell happened to kyle tho
Spoiler:
Poor Kyle. All he ever wanted was the love of his father. It was for the best that he never saw that Sigma had other children by another woman.

They're probably going to do a question-and-answer session for this game like they did for 999 and Virtue's Last Reward, though, so we'll probably find out what happened to him there.
And it may or may not be an ass-pull.
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Post Post #110 (ISO) » Sun Jul 03, 2016 6:08 pm

Post by xRECKONERx »

oh my fucking god i just hit the BANANAS point in the story, i think?

Spoiler: C team reactor room
we just shifted to like 3 diff timelines then Q showed up to kill everyone and carlos jumped away and now IDFK WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING
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Post Post #111 (ISO) » Sun Jul 03, 2016 6:12 pm

Post by xRECKONERx »

idk how close i am to finishing it but im starting to run into points where the decision being made is not one i have any clue how to solve
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Post Post #112 (ISO) » Sun Jul 03, 2016 8:06 pm

Post by KaleiÐoscøpe »

You can share here and we'll tell if you need to solve it yet
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Post Post #113 (ISO) » Sun Jul 03, 2016 8:11 pm

Post by xRECKONERx »

I figured it out.

I DON'T KNOW
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Post Post #114 (ISO) » Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:49 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

um this twist is dumb as FUCK

Spoiler: Q
old man????? really?? fuck off. invisible guy who has been there the whole time? fuck you
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Post Post #115 (ISO) » Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:51 am

Post by Equinox »

In post 114, xRECKONERx wrote:
Spoiler: Q
old man????? really?? fuck off. invisible guy who has been there the whole time? fuck you
Spoiler:
Oh thank god I'm not the only one who hated that.
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Post Post #116 (ISO) » Mon Jul 04, 2016 6:52 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

i literally don't understand. WHAT THE FUCK. did they want us to be...shocked by that kind of sloppy writing? WTF
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Post Post #117 (ISO) » Mon Jul 04, 2016 8:12 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

okay welp i finished it and the game was going pretty great until

Spoiler:
the stupid fucking Delta twist happened. why??? Why would you have it be there there's another person there the whole time. I get that there may have been hints the whole time, but the fact that none of the characters comment on Q/Sean being different people or the fact that nobody comments on how weird it is that Q team has four people when everyone else has three or the fact that we're supposed to be from Q's POV the whole time but there are plenty of places where that makes no sense...all of that pisses me off

then the game went diving up its own asshole


still probably better than 999 but nowhere near as good as VLR
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Post Post #118 (ISO) » Mon Jul 04, 2016 11:22 am

Post by Equinox »

Spoiler: Zero Time Dilemma Explained
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Post Post #119 (ISO) » Mon Jul 04, 2016 8:20 pm

Post by InflatablePie »

Spoiler: don't open unless finished
holy shit I actually called Phi's identity wtf


the ENTIRE cinematic had me going "wait are you actually doing this, okay looks like we're actually doing this"

think I'm done playing ZE for tonight after that, wow. (still have a ways to go before I'm done I think)
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Post Post #120 (ISO) » Tue Jul 05, 2016 3:31 am

Post by xRECKONERx »

i think it's pretty much a straight shot from there to the end unless you missed a section of C-team (but you said you were already doing the AB section I think?). don't think there are any more locks or roadblocks
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Post Post #121 (ISO) » Thu Jul 07, 2016 5:44 pm

Post by Gammagooey »

Spoiler: minor overall plot spoilers
I finally got past the hump of "go through all the team eliminations/shower choices you haven't done yet" and wound up looking up a hint for two lateish game decisions and I'm finally getting close to the end but I've gotten like 3 hours of sleep a night and have plans it'd be nice to be conscious for those over the weekend :<


Spoiler: Late-game Decision spoilers
Figuring out the Door of Truth and Who Killed Mira decisions was a huuuge bitch and I had to look up hints for both. Who Killed was super clever to do it that way, but connecting the Door of Truth to the hint in the other part of the game was not something I think I would have gotten without looking back through hours of cutscenes. It'd probably be pretty close to fine if it weren't for the big timegap between getting the hint and being able to actually unlock the answer, especially when there was no real reason to actually lock that (since I think it was just an elim/shower kill) unless I reeeally missed something weird on the way up to it.


For anyone who gets stuck on any of the harder decisions and wants a hint, or just want to know if you're being dumb or there's something else you need to go through first, this is the best blog post of ALL TIME. Has a ton of mouse-over spoiler hints so you won't see any more than you want to, and a list of pre-reqs for each decision choice hidden behind spoilers in the same way.
http://clontz.org/blog/2016/07/05/zero-time-dilemma/
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Post Post #122 (ISO) » Thu Jul 07, 2016 5:58 pm

Post by Parama »

Spoiler: Door of Truth
You get the answer to that in one of the endings, and the hint is behind the stupid Who Killed Mira choice which was the only place I got stuck, thus I ended up seeing the clue right before getting the ending that answered it. Which was nice.
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Post Post #123 (ISO) » Fri Jul 08, 2016 6:28 am

Post by Quilford »

How the
fuck
did I completely miss that this had been released
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Post Post #124 (ISO) » Mon Jul 11, 2016 5:43 pm

Post by Quilford »

Okay so I played it. I feel like I need to play both the other games again to really, truly lay this series to rest now though.

I think this game was the best presented, but 999 wins easily in the writing and character departments. It was much scarier and funnier and had a better shock twist. VLR had the best minigames perhaps?

I could go on but I cbf to use spoiler tags on mobile
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