- Why did Diana give such a cryptic message to the operator? Why not actually tell him the truth? As in, directly warn him about the situation? Rather then give a cryptic monologue that made her sound like she was some murderous nutjob who wanted to destroy the human race? Seriously, what possible reason did she have to make what she said so damn cryptic and misleading?
- She was kind of traumatized at the time. Manslaughter of billions of people weighs on you.
- Being traumatized doesn't explain how specifically weird and ambiguous her message was. And what she did would hardly constitute as manslaughter, not by a long shot, but that's neither here nor there. I understand that she was feeling heavily responsible at the time, but the thing is, from Diana's POV, she really shouldn't be feeling so emotionally traumatised as to leave a message like that one. This gets into a bigger issue that I have with that entire scene, in fact, that being how Diana becomes way too emotionally invested in the apocalypse she's apparently going to be causing way too quickly. We, the players, only know what Diana has done due to our meta-knowledge. Although Diana would be far from calm or emotionally distraught, the way that the game expects us to buy that she's instantly taken on the responsibility of 6 billion deaths that haven't happened yet and now see's herself as a genoicider, enough to leave the heavily ambiguous message she did, is absolutely ludicrous. From Diana's POV, there's absolutely nothing that would cause her to feel that way yet. She's been told about what's going to happen as a result of her actions, but that wouldn't instantly translate into emotional trauma. Especially not within literal minutes. The way Diana acts in that scene is as though the game is treating Diana like a pure player proxy—because we instantly have the emotional investment in what's going to happen in the next 40+ years, Diana does too. Which is really abysmal writing, to be frank. Even more so when it's so apparent that the only reason it was done this way was so that the scene could match up with the recording from VLR.
- Diana talked with Sigma and Phi before Dcom was taken over, and was WELL aware of the situation involving Radical-6 and how things they had said were coming true.
- On an intellectual level. That's not the same thing as actually feeling like she's murdered six billion people. Her primary emotional pain right now should be coming from Phi and Sigma's condition, not some imagined capability.
- She was kind of traumatized at the time. Manslaughter of billions of people weighs on you.
- Junpei mentioned in VLR that he spent the rest of his life up to that point searching for Akane, and he never found her. However, they're both on Team C in this game.
- Part of this could have to do with the nature of memory wiping in 90 minute periods throughout the game.
- The alterations to history in VLR could have also changed the participants in the Mars Test Site.
- Or he lied.
- However, Word of God also stated this, and Uchikoshi has never explicitly lied in his Q&A's. He's always either told the truth, or dodged the question. But I wouldn't rule out Exact Words as a reason, and that one of the two aren't who they say they are.
- Fully explained. In the timeline leading to VLR, Akane hits him with the memory erasing drug after they escape, providing an explanation for this.
- It just must have been a particularly large dose, to erase more than just the past 90 minutes.
- Most realistic explanation: retcon. It was clear from VLR that Uchikoshi wanted to sink that ship.
- Ah yes, that's why they're canonically dating in the true ending. Uchikoshi clearly wants to sink the ship.
- He wanted to sink that ship in VLR, where Junpei wastes his life without meeting her only to finally realize he was Loving a Shadow and leaves even though she's alive and they had a chance to meet. By ZTD it's clear Uchikoshi changed his mind; that's why ZTD gives Akane her personality from the bulk of 999, which 999's ending and every bit of previous material implied was an act - she needs to be innocent 10-years-before-999 Akane and not hard-edged A Million Is a Statistic Akane in personality for Junpei to stay with her. Hence, retcon.
- Diana said that 6 people in the facility died. However, 5 people who were in the facility are alive (Diana, Sigma, Phi, Junpei, and Akane).
- It's mentioned that the three teams are split up from each other (Gab is their only means of communication), so it's possible that in that specific instance Diana was led to believe that the rest of the teams were dead despite having no way to confirm it herself.
- However, in order to escape the facility, you require six passwords. You get one password for every dead participant.
- Both of the above will likely be explained at some point, Uchikoshi said that certain discrepancies in VLR do have meaning. Remember that this is Zero Escape, absolutely nothing is as it seems.
- Considering how VLR played with the idea of decisions in the future having an effect on the past, this may come into play here.
- The participants in the Mars Test Site may have changed as a result of the timeline alterations in VLR. After all, only three people were confirmed to be present at the Mars Test Site in the original timeline: Phi, Sigma and (presumably) Diana.
- Also ask yourself: which facility is she referring to? This would not be the first time the series has deceived the audience about where exactly the game is taking place.
- There may have actually been 11 people in the facility — remember that there were more than nine people in the first game's test site.
- Except she said that 3 people lived, and 6 died.
- She rightfully believes Junpei and Akane are dead. However, they use the transporter to transfer themselves from another timeline, unbeknownst to Diana.
- It's mentioned that the three teams are split up from each other (Gab is their only means of communication), so it's possible that in that specific instance Diana was led to believe that the rest of the teams were dead despite having no way to confirm it herself.
- If the "six password" setup is true, then it seems like a trivial problem for Sigma. Remember back to how he got the passwords for the bombs in VLR, by jumping between timelines. He could do the same here, and solve the passwords in a timeline where no one dies. Of course, this runs into a couple of problems. First, for all we know, the passwords could be what releases the Radical 6 virus. Second, VLR demonstrated that powerful espers are able to absorb the power of weaker espers. If Brother is at the test site, his very presence could prevent Sigma and Phi from time-jumping at all.
- It could also simply be that the passwords are randomly generated as someone dies, so you can't know the password ahead of time, since it doesn't exist until someone dies.
- Brother is an incredibly powerful Esper, and he likely knows that there are members of Crash Keys among the participants, so that lends credence to this theory.
- Or perhaps Zero has to approve the passwords, and he wouldn't approve them if the participant associated with the password isn't dead.
- Now that the game has been released, it turns out unfortunately, Zero has indeed figured out a way around the time-jumping problem: he's set the X-door to be unable to accept passwords from different timelines. C-Team finds this out the hard way when they attempt a plan to use X-Passes from another timeline.
- This still doesn't explain why Sigma or the other espers didn't try it immediately.
- Phi does actually make a comment to Sigma that he should "try dying" to test if a password really is revealed whenever someone dies, when they first learn about the X-Passwords. Sigma's response seems to indicate that he'd be less then happy about the idea of purposefully getting himself killed just so he can jump to another timeline. As you'd pretty naturally expect. Although the characters do this several times in the game, it's almost always as a last resort.
- It could also simply be that the passwords are randomly generated as someone dies, so you can't know the password ahead of time, since it doesn't exist until someone dies.
- Why are Junpei's eyes red in the introduction art in his biography? In the past games, and in most screenshots of him from ZTD, he has light brown eyes, but in this specific artwork he has very bright red eyes. Maybe that implies something?
- That he gets possessed by Kyle/???/someone else entirely at times?
- Perhaps it's foreshadowing that Junpei isn't who he says he is.
- In the released game, we never see him with red eyes at all. If this was supposed to hint at something, then whatever it was changed. It may just have been artist error.
- In the true ending of VLR, we see a glimpse of a consciousness not accounted for in K's body (named "?"). He is supposed to be an important player in the events of ZTD, but we never hear of him - and given that Delta states very solidly that he isn't a SHIFTer, he can't be Zero. Maybe he is Gab? or Q/Sean?
- That was supposed to be the player - however, pretty much that whole true ending wasn't followed up on in this game anyway, so your guess is as good as mine. I thought that force was responsible for jumping around between the different characters and controlling them, but then it was implied that Delta was doing that.
- It could very well be that "?" is actually Carlos. Akane notes that ? is a wild card in their plans and could determine the outcome at the Dcom test site. As it turns out, Carlos happens to be the only one who can SHIFT with no previously explained reason why and has also never been in contact with anyone from the franchise until this point in time. Admittedly, we never do see him hijack somebody else's consciousness, but it's a nice thought.
- Word of God has confirmed that the "Another Time" ending was non-canon metafiction
. It was added due to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake striking around the time, as a way to make the ending give off more of a hopeful vibe in response to the disaster. The ending wasn't voiced in the Japanese and European release, which was supposed to indicate its place as simple metafiction, but the American release voiced the ending, which just added to the confusion. Uchikoshi apparently regrets not making its non-canonical status more apparent.
- Word of God has confirmed that the "Another Time" ending was non-canon metafiction
- Delta has two goals: to create a Stable Time Loop in which he and his twin sister can be born, and giving the participants the knowledge and determination to stop the religious fanatic who's going to start a nuclear war. What reason, then, would he have for sending Dio to Rhizome 9 to put a stop to the AB Game? That goes against his goals.
- For his plan to work, it's essential that Old Sigma participates in the Decision Game. For that to happen, the AB Project has to be a success, which requires Dio to be a part of it. Dio was never meant to succeed.
- Or his goals have changed by that time.
- Where did the brooch come from, who engraved it? Phi got it from her mother who got it from Phi.
- It's a Bootstrap Paradox. In the same vein: How did Delta end up planning his own birth?
- The same thing applies to Phi's name as well. Sigma called his daughter Phi after Phi, who grew up to become Phi.
- Bootstrap Paradoxs can be fun stable time loops when dealing with information or currency. But when you have a real physical item like the brooch then it causes some serious headscratchers. That brooch is going to age. Get send to the past as it is. It continues aging. Get sent to the past again. Continue aging ad infinitum. Except eventually it's just going to rust away into nothingness. Then what happens?
- Simple solution to that problem: just have the item copied and/or repaired each time it loops. That way the information of the brooch remains constant even if the original item had already rusted/changed away. They never outright state this AFAIK but it would've likely been done when Phi and Delta were sent back through the transporter, as the brooch isn't being sent back but the data is.
- How did Delta end up learning about the religious fanatic? I mean, learning it from a SHIFTer just seems off, as it seems odd that Delta would just be able to tell that this person's mind is true and not crazy. If someone or something came out of the transporter and told them, that could make more sense, but then the question becomes of when the message was received. After all, too early, and researchers would find it. Sure, they might not be able to do much to change things in terms of finding the terrorist, but the problem is in the plurality. From how it seems, Delta's operation was mostly a solo one. Sure, I doubt he did every single thing by himself, but those appear to more have been stuff that he paid for. Where are the other researchers watching to see how things would play out? Thus, he had to learn about the fanatic after he bought the device. Now, that part does make a half bit of sense, but honestly, his only reason to buy it, is for the Decision Game, where plans for Sigma and Diana bring him into existence. But, that means at the beginning, his only motivation was to make sure he was born?
- He could have seen it in the minds of multiple SHIFTers.
- Did you not read that troper's point? They specifically said that learning it from a SHIFTer just seems off, and I agree. It's a plain old Hand Wave. What I think about this whole religious fanatic thing is that it came too out of left field, and unfortunately, it doesn't seem like we are gonna have an answer anytime soon. One could argue too that Delta has just been lying the entire time and in fact he's the one who wanted to wipe out humanity, like the more sensible VLR suggested.
- Did you read THAT troper's point? They specifically said MULTIPLE SHIFTers. That's far from unlikely.
- Well, then — let's suppose he heard it from multiple SHIFTers. How did they know in the first place? Planning on wiping out the entire world isn't something that usually leaks into public knowledge. Are you suggesting that a superspy scheme involving SHIFTers is going on? We don't even know how many of them there are.
- How about this? Fanatic Bio R is an anagram of fabrication. We've heard how important anagrams are in this series. There was no such thing in the first place (and even Sean, who knows of Radical 6, comments on this when he chooses not to inject Radical 6). There was no terrorist in the first place, and the entire purpose of Radical 6 was so that Akane would create the AB Project and send Sigma's consciousness into the past.
- Unlikely. Otherwise, why would he continue pretending after his plan had succeeded in the true ending?
- To Make Carlos play the final FINAL Decision game where he won't mind hack him. He wants to see what Carlos would do, kill him or let him live, If it was the latter, I'm sure he would have simply said "good luck." and left.
- He could have seen it in the minds of multiple SHIFTers.
- Why can't Delta just use his own powers to stop the terrorist? He could easily go to where the attack is supposed to happen and mind read until he finds the person responsible and stop them. Even if he's supposed to die soon (dude is 124, to be fair), he could always use the transporter to get there instead. What does Delta even need these people for? What was the point of the game except to create himself?
- Most potential targets whose destruction could set off a nuclear war may have thousands of people present, including people hiding, in non-public areas, etc. It'd be a huge risk for Delta to just show up and start hacking people at random to find them — especially since he only gets one shot at it. A team of SHIFTers, who can just keep trying until they succeed, is actually a more logical choice.
- Stupid Evil: So hang on, if Delta's been trying to save 8 billion people this whole time, why didn't he just ask for Akane's help when he has somehow found out what she'll go through to save 6 billion?
- He says one of the reasons for making the Decision Game is because he likes seeing the different timelines that result. So, For the Lulz.
- More Stupid Evil: A common complaint from fans after the Plot Twist is it is never explained why Zero/Delta gained any benefit from being in the room with the players in Q-Team, given that he is impersonating a blind and deaf man in a wheelchair and so doing literally anything will give him away. It's not to be able to Mind Hack them, because he can Mind Hack the other teams too without being with them. Given that being with them also requires him to arrange his own death multiple times, it seems awkward that it isn't explained.
- This is so that he doesn't draw suspicion. Remember how Carlos figured out who Zero is in CQD Ending 1? That's because Delta — or as the others knew him, Q — wasn't jailed with the rest of the participants. Since all of the participants bar Sean were also part of the Dcom experiment, if Delta wasn't with them then the players would immediately figure out that he's Zero.
- In which case, it's doubly stupid. They can't get to him or harm him and he can erase their memories whenever he wants, so what would it matter if they knew who he was? Certainly nothing worth dissolving yourself in acid about.
- It wouldn't have exactly worked if they kept working out every time they woke up that Q is Zero. One of the main reasons for their suspicion towards each other was the fact that Zero could have been among them.
- It still isn't necessary. If you try to tell Eric that Q killed Mira, he'll just dismiss it as an impossibility. He wouldn't have suspected Q even if he was absent — and keep in mind only Q-Team would even know he wasn't there, because Delta is totally capable of, you know, lying and saying Q's in Q-Team even though he isn't. "He's the mastermind!" is also not the only, or even most logical, reason for why a blind, deaf, paraplegic old man might be missing from a death game — they could easily conclude the mastermind deemed him useless and killed him earlier. Carlos' epiphany always struck me as a Bat Deduction — but even so, Eric is clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, so it's very likely he wouldn't figure it out even if Carlos did. And his suspicion is the only reason for doing this in the first place, so why bother?
- If he wasn't with the players, he wouldn't have died in the timeline when Akane finds the Transporter. Akane transported to the timeline when Radical-6 was released because she needed to get answers from him, but she wouldn't have to do it if he was alive. And if she didn't transport herself, she wouldn't have pushed Dr. Klim to create the AB Project and Sigma wouldn't be in that shelter to impregnate Diana.
- But he doesn't need to introduce himself into the Dcom experiment in the first place. And Akane only went back to that timeline because he left a message telling her she had to go there for answers; he could have just left the same general ultimatum message (insisting that he'll only answer her in timelines where group Q survived, or setting some other condition that requires she go to that timeline) without actually being part of group Q, since she needed answers from him regardless.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: The theory of time travel throughout the Zero Escape series contradicts itself.
- In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Akane has to act as Zero and run the Nonary Game so that the future in which Junpei sent her information back will exist. If she fails, her death in the incinerator re-enters her timeline. But in Zero Time Dilemma, Delta is ensuring his own birth, yet if he loses the coin toss, that future event will not happen, but Delta's not bothered. Do you have to close your loops, or not?
- The nature of Delta's existence and Akane's in 999 aren't the same. Delta's quantum state would only resolve in his nonexistence if the events of Zero Time Dilemma could NOT come to pass, due to the nature of the Transporter copying information. Akane, however, is in a true quantum state; Junpei/Akane state that their form of espering is a lesser form of SHIFTing. It most likely doesn't cross the many worlds interpretation, meaning that any world in which Junpei does not save Akane is a world in which Akane's past quantum-collapses into not having learned the solution, leading to her death. Essentially, Delta only needs to have potentially existed, while Akane is collapsed by the fact she cannot exist.
- This could be explained as there must be a timeline where the loop is closed, but it need not be the one you perceive. This also requires that there isn't a timeline for every possible action - because if there was, every loop would be automatically closed somewhere - someone has to make effort to make a timeline exist. That explains both actions above, but causes a problem if Brother didn't really want to release Radical-6, but did so to attract the attention of SHIF Ters to the terrorist. By releasing Radical-6, he has created that timeline, and although SHIF Ters can move in and out of it, they can't destroy it - anything they do, there will be a timeline where it failed. Based on this theory, Brother didn't need to create that timeline and there was no reason for him to do so.
- In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, Akane has to act as Zero and run the Nonary Game so that the future in which Junpei sent her information back will exist. If she fails, her death in the incinerator re-enters her timeline. But in Zero Time Dilemma, Delta is ensuring his own birth, yet if he loses the coin toss, that future event will not happen, but Delta's not bothered. Do you have to close your loops, or not?
- When you make choices, are you Mind Hacking or are you defeating Mind Hacking? You can still make choices when Q-Team was executed and Delta is dead, and in VLR, Akane implied that you have unique powers that are essential to save the world.
- There are definitely a few cases where someone is being hacked when you make a choice — usually when the choice is something ruthlessly practical and/or evil. All of these occur while Q-Team is still alive, though ...
- Delta claims that he can't be punished for stuff his alternate selves did (like 'their' murders), but...his 'true ending' self still kidnapped like 7 people. How is that not a crime he could be legally punished for?
- None of them were kidnapped in the traditional sense; they were all volunteers for the Dcom mission. Any evidence that he imprisoned them and coerced them into guessing the coin toss were likely destroyed along with the shelter.
- True, but there are nine people willing to testify against him. The issue isn't so much the lack of evidence as Delta having too much money and power to indict.
- It's still a little bit strange how no one seems to bring it up. Besides from kidnapping, he also impersonated a blind, deaf & dumb man to get into an official government funded experiment. Considering everything that'd be involved in such a thing including all the forging of documents, that in itself is a pretty large offence. It's just pretty odd that everyone left it at "murder/conspiracy-to-commit-murder", as though murder is the only crime he's ever committed.
- Dcom was owned, at least partly, by Free The Soul, though, so he probably wouldn't need to forge anything.
- True, but the point is that no one brings up such a thing, not whether he's actually done anything wrong or not. From the cast's viewpoint, the guy's a kidnapper and a possible national threat, yet they just leave it at "oh he's technically not killed anyone" like that's the only thing they can try and get him arrested for.
- They don't leave it at "oh he's technically not killed anyone". Did you miss the part where the game ended on the cliffhanger as to whether they murdered him or not?
- That isn't the point they were making. It's the fact that group acts like "oh damn, he's got us good, the cops can't do shit", because they can't get him arrested for any murder related crimes. Even though there's a multitude of other crimes he committed. It's got nothing to do with whether they end up punishing him or not.
- Whatever little crimes he did do in that timeline (which basically just amounts to kidnapping at this point) would be pretty hard to convict him of because he's at least rich enough to orchestrate the entire operation so it's unlikely 9 witnesses would be enough to get him sentenced for it when he could just get it waived with enough money and influence. Not that it matters anyway because he allows them the chance to just shoot him then and there if they so desire, to get their justice. If they don't then they probably won't seek to get him arrested.
- Kidnapping isn't a "little crime." The game takes place in the United States, where kidnapping is a felony carrying a sentence of 20 or more years in prison. And if Delta really did "destroy the evidence," he destroyed a major government project in the process. While nine random people might not be enough to convict him of that, the staff of that very project would be very compelling witnesses to his sabotage.
- You mean staff that are probably part of Delta's cult following? Even if they expressed some desire to implicate their boss (very unlikely considering the track record of Free the Soul according to Alice's accounts), he could still manipulate witnesses or even the judge to make sure he doesn't get a guilty verdict, and nobody's going to believe that he can directly force people to make choices with what amounts to mind control. Also, regardless of the status of kidnapping in the US, when I said "little crime" I meant minor relative to obviously larger charges he would've faced in the other timelines.
- Another possibility is that the relatively brief imprisonment they were subjected to in the true ending could reasonably be explained as part of the experiment they signed up for, and could be covered by waivers they signed up to that point. Keep in mind that in that timeline they were in that cell for all of like 10 minutes; Delta said some very scary things to them, and injected them with a knockout / amnesia drug, but that could likewise be explained as part of the experiment and could reasonably be part of some waiver they signed when they joined (the appearance of danger would logically be part of the test, which could even extend to a very brief "phony kidnapping" or something.) Also remember that in the final timeline they were never taken to the shelter - they were at the Dcom facility the whole time, making it even easier to explain what happened as part of the Dcom experiment. It would probably be a violation of modern experimental ethics, but (assuming the waivers they signed for it were reasonably encompassing) probably not to the point of being criminal, since they were never taken from the Dcom area and were released within minutes after demanding it. What are they going to say, "he flipped a coin first?"
- Furthermore, their so-called "kidnapper" was one of the people who was always meant to be there. Legally, all that happened was that one of the people involved in the experiment took control of the proceedings for a little bit.
- How in the world did Sigma and Diana survive on half a normal-sized can of food a day? Unlike The Martian, they don't have a stock of vitamins to fall back on, so they need a balanced diet. Best case scenario is something like beef stew with vegetables, and half a can of beef stew a day isn't going to top 300 calories at best. The human body needs 500 to avoid starvation and it'll still be in a sorry state. Lasting a couple of months is one thing, but almost a year? It's not helped when Sigma stops eating at all when he finds out Diana is pregnant. Did Zero specifically go come up with his own high-calorie, high-nutrition recipe for such an occasion?
- Considering this timeline was specifically what led to Zero being born, such a suggestion is actually entirely possible. The guy had over 100 years to prepare for all this, so it's not impossible to think he could have come up with something within that time.
- Considering it's an experiment for space travel, I doubt flavor is a priority. Diana doesn't seem to like the food either.
- It's also possible that Sigma and Diana discovered the C-Team pantry and were able to find enough food to pull everyone through.
- How? They would never have any reason to believe that the wards were connected, or that they could get to the pantry, or even to Ward-C.
- They ate the corpses (there were corpses in that ending right?).
- No. Their teammate Phi died by fire.
- Why in the heck did old Akane not bother to tell Sigma everything she knew about the Dcom incident before he went back in time? It wouldn't take much effort to go, "OK, so in the timeline that leads to the outbreak, me, Junpei, and this guy Carlos all get executed by voting. You, Phi, and Diana explode a bomb, accidentally killing these people named Mira and Eric plus some robot kid, and you all escape, but somehow Radical-6 escapes with you. Me, Carlos, and Junpei arrive using an alien transporter (long story), I wipe Junpei's memories, everything goes down the drain. DON'T DO IT AGAIN."
- Perhaps for the same reason Phi didn't tell ? what happened.
- Because, Sigma had no idea what was going to happen during Dcom or the Decision Game. She remembered Sigma having no idea about what was going on, so she couldn't tell him, to make sure that version of Sigma she remembers came about.
- Except that initial condition resulted in a failure, so why would she want to preserve it?
- This game reveals Akane is also a SHIFTer, so it's actually possible she's on the same schedule as Sigma. She didn't tell him because the version of herself that spends 45 years making the AB Project doesn't know the events of ZTD, perhaps? This would also explain why she's still surprised at Zero's reveal about her parents.
- Akane had no f-ing clue what the heck had happened between her death and getting out of the Transporter. She knew that the shelter blew up, but she had no idea how and why. Sigma only told her that there was a mess and he got injured saving Diana, and that's what she relayed to Sigma who came back.
- If the Virtue's Last Reward timeline doesn't happen, Sigma and Phi don't get sent back in time and don't get into Dcom. Just like Delta has to engineer things so that his birth happens in some timeline, Akane has to allow Radical-6 to get released in some timeline. The goal of the AB Project was never to prevent the release entirely — that would be logically impossible, which Tenmyouji points out in the ending of VLR — but just to ensure humanity survives in some timeline somewhere.
- In the C-END, WHY the FUCK did Carlos NOT think about stopping Zero's plan in those 10 months? He would be saving a lot of lives! Did it not occur to him at all? I am guessing he didn't know it was the pre VLR timeline. To be fair again, Zero could have easily figured this out since he'd just mind hack.
- There could very well be a timeline where he did stop Zero's plan, we just never saw it. Anthropic Principle in action; Junpei and Akane are only capable of existing to complain about Carlos not stopping the game in universes where he didn't.
- More importantly then that is the fact that Junpei and Akane bring this up, and berate him for it, so it's more just Carlos being an idiot then anything else. The answer Carlos gives is that if he did that, he would never have met the two (by that point, he'd basically gotten buddy buddy with both of them). Junpei isn't exactly happy about him not bothering to preventing everything just for that reason though.
- Carlos' reason is "because friends!", there's a lot to imply that he's really a very socially-minded and has good emotional intelligence, but he's a very, very busy man. This is the first vacation he's had in a while. He would also have had to wait for the version of himself in that reality to die anyway, or there would have been a lot of problems afterward.
- My view was that when Carlos said 'because I wouldn't have met you', it's not about wanting to see his friends, it's an attempt to avoid a paradox. Perhaps Carlos thought that if he prevented the games from ever happening, he'd never have been kidnapped, never have learned to control his SHIF Ting from Junpei and Akane, never have found the transporter and therefore never have been in place to travel back in time in the first place. Coming to save the other two only after the original Carlos had made his copy would, in his mind, be the safest way to avoid screwing up the timeline.
- For that matter, why doesn't he show up to rescue Sigma, Diana, and the twins in D-End:2? Because Akane escaped? She would have known that two of the members of D-Team were still alive when she left.
- Who's to say he doesn't? He could have saved them offscreen, after young Phi and Delta had transported. After all, why leave them to die when part of his plan just succeeded?
- That takes place in a different timeline where that version of him had been killed in a gas trap. He didn't know about that ending.
- As for why Akane doesn't come back: Chances are that she SHIF Ted to a timeline where Junpei wasn't dead the moment she regained her composure. If that's the case, the replacement Akane probably wouldn't have known that they survived.
- I think this is a plot hole because the Carlos that sends himself ten months back in time must exist in every timeline, just like how Delta exists in the timelines that don't result in his own birth. This second Carlos would have to exist in the same world as the original Carlos, logistics unknown, and would break into or otherwise have the bomb shelter investigated in all timelines. I think the only explanation that makes sense is that Akane stops Carlos from rescuing the two until after Delta and Phi have been sent back in time, either because Akane wants to avoid a paradox similar to what she suffers during the bad endings of 999, or the religious fanatic is real and Akane needs Delta to be born and the events of Zero Time Dilemma to take place so they can be stopped.
- Who murders D-Team in the timeline after they don't press the button? Is it Mira? Where did she get the robe?
- It is Mira. She most likely picked up the robe from the Prep Room, as we never get to explore that room.
- Why is there a bunch of brown crap around one of Sean's air vents, and only that air vent? Why do all the Seans have that crap around that vent?
- It's either rust or where the white paint chipped off. Since all of them have this, it's likely just for decoration.
- In this troper's mind, the rust is to imply previous use of the helmet. If it was completely brand new, polished, etc. it could come off as a tad suspicious. The location of the rust may be where the previous owner/victim of the helmet emptied their pooling tears out, and continual drainage caused it to get rusty over time. Of course, as it turns out, it's not a helmet but Sean's head itself, but the other participants don't know that yet.
- Why is Gab tied up in the timeline where Sean presses the yellow button in the Decontamination Room? That was never explained, and it never happens in any other timeline.
- Delta is also tied up there; Gab is just there as a distraction.
- But still, why?
- Gab is implied to be Delta's dog, maybe he just wanted him to stay there with him...?
- There's no Watsonian answer to this. From a Doylist perspective, it's because Sean would have insisted going back for Q, a defenseless human being who was nearly left behind. But at this point we're still supposed to think Sean is named Q. There had to be something to go back for, and Gab provided an excuse.
- Delta is also tied up there; Gab is just there as a distraction.
- Related to the above, why were they going to leave Delta behind?
- They weren't. Delta is likely the one they were actually trying to unchain. That would explain why they were trying to get the chain off from the pole, rather than from Gab's paw, which would have been much less of a challenge.
- Why is Gab Loved by All? I kept expecting a good explanation for why he seemed to be practically mind-controlling people at points, because of course in Zero Escape, there can be no coincidences... but then nothing.
- Presumably just because he's a dog, and dogs are adorable.
- That's not an answer. Honestly, it really doesn't make sense as to why characters like Eric and Mira give a crap about Gab so much. Even in the path where Eric completely snaps and decides to just kill everyone for no real reason, he doesn't kill Gab even though he's right there. Mira is also literally devoid of emotions and feelings, so there's no reason why she would ever feel anything towards Gab. It really doesn't make any sense, and honestly I'm gonna need more then just "he's a dog and everyone loves dogs" to justify it. Even if that was the writers' intentions.
- There is no other reason. It doesn't even really matter. There is no "bigger reason". He's just a dog.
- That's not an answer, like I said. If that was the intention, then it's really jarringly out of sync with Mira and Eric's characters and makes no sense.
- What part of not wanting to kill a dog conflicts with Eric or Mira's characters? Eric completely snaps because Mira was murdered and he wanted to kill who was responsible for it. Even though he's pretty unhinged, his targets are pretty understandable. Sean has a "helmet" over his face and wasn't part of the Dcom experiment, so he's suspicious. In the timeline where Diana and Sigma transport in, they're supposed to be dead and Eric literally sees their dead bodies. He doesn't know about the transporter, so it's understandable to assume they're fakes. Gab is a dog. There's no way he's related to the Decision Game or Mira's murder. Mira herself is a serial killer who wants to understand human emotion by killing people and tearing out their hearts. Emphasis on "human" emotion. What makes you think she'd care about killing a dog?
- The issue is not that Eric and Mira don't want to kill Gab, it's that they seem to actively give a crap about Gab. There's a difference, and it doesn't fit with their character personalities at all.
- Again, there is no "bigger" reason behind it. He's a regular dog. That's the truth of it
- I'm not saying there is a bigger reason behind it. I know it probably was the writers' intention for that to be the reason, but it still doesn't change the fact that it's an illogical reason that doesn't fit with the characters personalities.
- This bothered me too. I was hoping that The Reveal would connect Gab with Akane's parasite theory as a result.
- Eric actually seemed like he liked Gab to me. For instance, in the scene where Delta kills Gab he seems the most upset (after Sean) and demands "did you KILL GAB?" in a furious and disbelieving tone. It might just be that Eric likes dogs and then it would make sense why he didn't kill Gab. I don't know about Mira though.
- Eric and Mira don't care about Gab that much. If you rewatch it after knowing the twist, in the scene where they (apparently) worry about bringing Gab, they're actually discussing the real, wheelchair-bound Q. This is in-character for Eric (he's an awful person but isn't just going to leave a human being to die for no reason), and Mira generally makes at least a token effort to stay in character around him, so she's not going to suggest callously and needlessly discarding a human life without making at least a basic effort to save him, either. Rewatching the scene with the understanding that they're talking about the life of a human and not a dog changes their level of concern from "above and beyond" to "doing the bare minimum to avoid being an obvious psychopath."
- Presumably just because he's a dog, and dogs are adorable.
- Why can't Sigma and Phi SHIFT before the endgame? It sure would have come in handy during "Fire". In the "Mira kills everyone" bad end, he says "my SHIFT connection's been cut", but we never get an explanation for how or why this is.
- They must be in lethal danger in order to jump. That's why, in VLR, even after the Ambidex Game is over, she STILL had to attempt to kill Sigma with the knife. He had to believe he was in danger just to jump. Y'know, except for Akane. For some reason.
- They were in lethal danger during "Fire" and when Mira stabbed them, Sigma explicitly says his powers flat-out don't work in the latter case. What deactivated them?
- Presumably, this was Delta cutting them off. Remember how in VLR, it's stated that if a stronger - or at least strong enough - esper is present, they can add the weaker espers power to strengthen their own and consequently preventing the others' from working.
- That's a reasonable explanation for the Mira bad end, but Delta is dead during "Fire".
- Is "Fire" that segment where Sigma has a chance of getting shot with the revolver? If so, then it's likely Sigma didn't immediately take it as dangerous as say, sitting in an incinerator which will kill you when the countdown is up. Beyond that, he doesn't have the reaction time necessary to dodge the/SHIFT from the bullet if it is live. As for Phi, I got nothing. Who knows? Maybe she did wind up in some other timeline and just isn't saying anything about it? It isn't certain.
- Who says they didn't? Didn't you consider that the SHIFT was cut because he had just shifted and another Sigma took his place?
- They must be in lethal danger in order to jump. That's why, in VLR, even after the Ambidex Game is over, she STILL had to attempt to kill Sigma with the knife. He had to believe he was in danger just to jump. Y'know, except for Akane. For some reason.
- Why does Akane activate the reactor and force the three of them to SHIFT? There was, at that point, no reason to abandon the timeline they were in; she even explicitly notes that after the experience they'd just had, it was highly probable that both Carlos and Junpei would choose Ally.
- Presumably Delta mind hacked her because it was necessary for his plan. Count how many times Carlos SHIF Ts: from whichever of "Carlos betrays Junpei" and "Junpei betrays Carlos" you chose first, to the other one, to the one where Akane detonates the bomb before they can even play the AB Game, to the one where they get gunned down in the rec room, to the one where they survive the rec room, to the one where Akane chops off his arm with a chainsaw before he kills her with an axe, back to the one where they survived the rec room, and finally to the one where he pushed the yellow button. That's literally every timeline in which he still had a body to go to at that point with the exception of the one that leads to Force Quit, and he followed up the last shift by using the transporter to get to a timeline where he was executed as a result of the 13:30 vote, specifically the one that led to VLR. Given the fact that he needed four of the nine participants in the Decision Game to be alive in 2074, too many for them to have escaped the correct way, these shenanigans were necessary.
- Why does Mira randomly decide to kill everyone in the "inject Radical-6" timeline? She doesn't even extract any hearts!
- I assumed she had a Sanity Slippage due to Radical-6, but knowing she's a Serial Killer... Rule of Drama?
- Why does Mira pocket a Radical-6 vial in the "don't inject" timeline? Did Zero tell her he wanted her to start the outbreak? He claims he didn't give her any special instructions...
- Simply: she is curious. She has a deadly virus on her hands. She is a Serial Killer and is also likely the savviest member of the cast. One thing led to another.
- How on Earth does Sigma survive the bomb blast when Diana doesn't?
- Presumably, Espers are physically stronger than regular humans, and even more so if they discover their power, which could be how Delta lives to 134, and Phi is able to kick him despite not being on the moon.
- Yeah, tell this to Akane. She's easily the weakest physically member of the cast and when something bad happens, it's a safe bet that she'll be hit first despite being one of the most powerfull espers in existence.
- Sigma only survived because Diana was able to treat his wounds, so it's possible she could've survived like he did with similar injuries... if there was someone left who could treat her. She's the only one with medical training and thanks to tazing Sigma and Phi moments before, there's no one left to patch her up in that timeline even if they did know what to do.
- Besides, they probably died along with Diana in that timeline given that they were tazed in the Prep Room and it got destroyed as well by the bomb's blast (while in the VLR/D-END 1 timeline, Diana and Phi were in the Lounge when it exploded. Sure, those two still felt the blast but they were far enough as to not get caught in it).
- When Luna discovered that he has cybernetic arms, he mentioned that one time he broke something, the doctor said that his bones are super-hard and he had to do something pretty crazy to break them. Also the talk seemed to last longer than when Diana did it, meaning he may not be as close to the explosion as Diana was. Remember that when Diana died, the bomb blew up right in her face.
- Presumably, Espers are physically stronger than regular humans, and even more so if they discover their power, which could be how Delta lives to 134, and Phi is able to kick him despite not being on the moon.
- Diana's message in D-End 1 is identical to the one we hear in VLR. But... how? The only way she'd know she's about to kill 6 billion is because Sigma told her. Was VLR already a Stable Time Loop?
- Yes. We already knew that Diana made that message in VLR. Thus, it HAS to happen. What are you confused about?
- Bootstrap Paradox. How did it start originally? The first time Radical-6 broke out, Sigma either wasn't there or wasn't in his older incarnation. When I played VLR, I assumed the timeline there was the original, and that the latter case occurred. Was that not correct?
- We do not know. Just as we don't know how Delta and Phi were originally born, or how Phi's brooch was created.
- But if it's a Stable Time Loop, why do Akane and Sigma never find out how it happened and take steps to not repeat their mistake, as mentioned in another Headscratcher? There's no reason why Diana wouldn't have explained, but Sigma and Phi seem totally baffled by events, implying it's their first time through. Even the "they had to know nothing because that's how Akane remembered it" explanation doesn't make sense here, because if she tried that and it didn't work, the obvious solution is to try something different next time.
- There is no "first time through". In the stable time loop, remember that in VLR, the whole point was that Sigma's consciousness goes into the future, goes through the events of VLR, back into the past right AFTER the apocalypse, through time normally until the future again, and then back into his younger body to do the events of ZTD. It's the same Sigma from the beginning that gets shunted out the whole way through. But the Sigma THAT Sigma shunts out is the "next" Sigma. It's not a loop that was started at some point and then continues, it's a temporal event that can be logically followed into both the past and the future infinitely, remaining internally consistent. This is combined with the Multiverse theory to maintain a loop where the same person can go back to create a stable time loop while also allowing them to exit it at will without destroying it.
- But the events of VLR only occur because of his actions in ZTD, which only occur because of his actions in VLR. That's a paradox. There had to be an initial condition timeline that created the events of VLR without Sigma being there. The loop only starts when Akane foresees the Radical-6 timeline and gasses Sigma in the present. If she doesn't do that, the Radical-6 outbreak never happens. So... what prompted her to start this mess? The reason for sending Sigma to the future does not exist before Sigma is sent to the future.
- You don't seem to be getting the point. It's an example of the "Predestination Paradox" (also known as the "casual loop"), event A is triggered by event C's occurance, which goes on to cause event B, before prompting event C. It's a common trope of time travel fiction, that explores one of the reasons why time travel in real life would be riddled with too many holes for it to be remotely feasible, as you'd be able to cause paradoxes and complete contradictions in time and space with practically everything you do. Complaining about this is nonsensical, because it's one of the reasons why time travel is fiction in the first place. If you're really going to start complaining about time travel fiction using stable yet paradoxical loops as a basis for their plots, you might as well complain about time travel in itself being included at all.
- A potential easier example to digest would be from Gargoyles. In that show, it has a very strict Closed or Stable Time Loop rule with Time Travel that it does not deviate from. The main point of emphasis is how David Xanatos (Trope Codifier of the Xanatos Gambit) became rich in the first place. He was sent a coin by his future self which could be sold for a grand amount of money to kickstart his fortune. We end up seeing him send the coin for the express purpose of making sure his younger self can start that fortune. There is no inciting incident. Event A - Xanatos receives a coin that allows him to start his wealth is triggered by Event B - Future Xanatos sending the coin. Event B only happens because in Event A the Future Xanatos also sent back instructions on exactly what to do and when to do it. This cannot be changed due to how Time Travel works in the show (Goliath tried and failed to do so when it came to Demona's betrayal). The point is that there is no singular starting point where the loop begins, the loop came into being all at once, similar to what happens in the Zero Escape Trilogy. Zero Escape just goes the extra mile when it comes to both SHIF Ting and the Many Worlds Theory which add multiple layers of complexity to a base that's actually pretty straightforward.
- Yes. We already knew that Diana made that message in VLR. Thus, it HAS to happen. What are you confused about?
- What the heck is up with Akane's characterization in this? In 999, she was willing to murder her enemies in horrifying ways, and in VLR, she went full The End Justifies the Means and was willing to do absolutely anything to accomplish her goals, including creating a ton of timelines where Junpei died horribly or got emotionally traumatized. This is the same Akane from VLR, right? In "End or Beginning", she said she didn't know what happened at the Mars test site, so this Akane must be on the same schedule as 2074 Sigma. Why isn't she the one who's gung-ho about executing the other teams or pressing the kill button? Why is she the same blushing Damsel in Distress she was in 999 when that was supposed to be an act (because again, ruthless murderer)? Why does she constantly flip out when Junpei dies if she can just SHIFT to a timeline where he's alive? In the VLR developer interview, Uchikochi stated that she was totally detached from normal emotions and morality due to her nigh-omniscience, but that's not at all the case here. I can't make sense of her character consistency at all.
- For one thing, ZTD's Akane has not yet become the woman who went to the moon and started the AB project. For another, nothing that happened during ZTD was her plan. She had a reason to kill all her previous victims and a decade to accustom herself to their deaths. But in ZTD, people are dying right next to her, for no discernable reason other than Zero's sadism (and she can't just shift away because, say, Carlos would still exist in any timeline she went to, and she'd still have to kill him somehow or work with him to escape). Death is far harder to cope with when it's unexpected, meaningless, and paranoia-inducing. In the 'Suspicion' fragment, for example, she's forced to consider that Carlos might kill her too, in one timeline or another, and that quite reasonably affects her judgement. We were never explicitly told that all of her 999 personality was a mask- that was an assumption on the fans' part- and many parts of VLR hint at her acting the same way by choice. Most importantly, just because Akane is emotionally capable of killing people to achieve her goals, that doesn't mean she wants to. And 'pacifist' does not equal 'Damsel in Distress'.
- She totally WANTED to kill those people in 999, though. There was no need to kidnap and kill the guys for her plan to work, she did it because she wanted revenge. Her characterization in ZTD really bugged me too. Every time she calls Junpei out on his willingness to sacrifice others all I could think was, "You're one to talk". It just seems so hypocritical. In previous games, Akane came off as pragmatic or even downright ruthless but here, she's suddenly so gentle.
- No, Akane had to kill them to fulfill her vision. Everything had to happen as she saw it, or the Stable Time Loop could not function properly. It wasn't an act when she was traumatized each time when any of her victims died. After she was done with saving herself, she immediately abandoned her revenge by sparing Ace and letting the authorities handle him. Akane doesn't like to kill unless it's either absolutely necessary or somebody killed Jumpei. Though she is still fine with sacrificing people in other timelines, as she blows up a reactor just so she, Junpei and Carlos could SHIFT.
- It's because she's the Akane from the 999 True End. Akane wasn't sacrificing anybody, the people she killed, she was killing for revenge because of what they did to her and the other kids. That's why she's so adamant that everyone can be saved the whole time, but people keep dying because they keep killing each other anyway. Keep in mind that in 999, we're actually playing Akane as a child searching for a course of events that will lead to her survival. The other timelines in 999 are the only alternate timelines in the franchise that don't exist because they're temporal paradoxes and undo themselves if Akane dies of the "fever", so the Akane in ZTD hasn't had time to become the cynical quantum goddess she's grown into by VLR. The darker aspects of her personality are there, in the true ending of ZTD, she even says she's willing to kill whoever she has to, but at that point, she just hasn't needed to yet.
- No, she has to be Old Akane. The Akane in "End or Beginning" does not remember the events of the Decision Game.
- She doesn't, but the DLC booklet explains that Old Akane has sent her a trickle of information from the VLR future- it's compared to seeing stuff through a small tube. So ZTD Akane knows some things, but not all. And whatever degree of knowledge she has about her future self is purely intellectual- it doesn't include Old Akane's emotions, reasoning, etc. They're not sharing perspectives like Akane and Junpei were in the first game (which is explicitly why Sigma and Phi doubt ZTD Akane's decisions, because she's not their leader yet and may never become her). That's probably because Old Akane wants to keep her past self's options open (remember her message to Tenmyouji) and create futures other than VLR. Any switching would change ZTD Akane's mindset and eliminate potential timelines. It's vital that they remain different people.
- It seems to me that you missed something regarding Akane's characterization. She's ruthless, brutally pragmatic and vengefull Magnificent Bitch, true, but deep in heart, she's still a good person. She does whatever it takes to accomplish her goals but she never went one step further than she had to. We see it in 999 when she faked the bombs in everyone who's not connected to Cradles and when she leaves them a SUV instead of leaving them in the dessert, we see it as well in VLR when she hits Sigma with the butt of the knife instead of stabbing him OR when she is the first one to leave the AB room, knowing that the first person to leave will be the first to die. Akane does care about others, and never expects from them more than she expects from herself, that was always the case. It's entirely in-character for her to try to save everyone whenever possible and avoid unnessecary deaths.
- For one thing, ZTD's Akane has not yet become the woman who went to the moon and started the AB project. For another, nothing that happened during ZTD was her plan. She had a reason to kill all her previous victims and a decade to accustom herself to their deaths. But in ZTD, people are dying right next to her, for no discernable reason other than Zero's sadism (and she can't just shift away because, say, Carlos would still exist in any timeline she went to, and she'd still have to kill him somehow or work with him to escape). Death is far harder to cope with when it's unexpected, meaningless, and paranoia-inducing. In the 'Suspicion' fragment, for example, she's forced to consider that Carlos might kill her too, in one timeline or another, and that quite reasonably affects her judgement. We were never explicitly told that all of her 999 personality was a mask- that was an assumption on the fans' part- and many parts of VLR hint at her acting the same way by choice. Most importantly, just because Akane is emotionally capable of killing people to achieve her goals, that doesn't mean she wants to. And 'pacifist' does not equal 'Damsel in Distress'.
- Why does the Force Quit Program actually kill the participants? There is no reason for Delta to actually kill them at that point. We know from the ending of VLR that the danger doesn't have to be real for the SHIFT to trigger (and apparently Akane can SHIFT at will anyway?). It also makes his declaration that he's saved the world without a single casualty in the Golden Ending ring hollow, because he totally did just kill the eight innocents who got booted to the self-destruct timeline. Given that he wants them to SHIFT, I don't understand why he even gave them the option not to in the first place.
- It seems to have mostly been legal reasons. After all, if they got out from inside the facility, they would be able to direct the police to the evidence that they were forced to play the Decision Game. However, in the Golden Ending, Delta was able to get rid of the evidence that proved he kidnapped all of them.
- Delta is okay with getting killed in the true end, so I don't see why he would care about that.
- This could easily be the brutal message Brother is sending: work to change the future your consciousness is in now, because if you consider alternate timelines, there will always be infinite tragedy.
- Maybe, but in that case, he shouldn't be tooting his horn about how he accomplished this without killing anybody.
- Because Delta is an asshole.
- Well, that Delta has a point. He didn't kill anyone nor he forced anybody to SHIFT: the party from Force Quit route SHIF Ted there, not the other way around. From his point of view, he just kidnapped them and let them go after winning the coin toss. Even Akane killing Carlos or exploding the reactor, Sean killing Eric, any execution cheating or yellow button pressing team etc etc has more base to blame, since they are the shifting party here and can actually take part in such actions. As for the choice, I think, he wanted them to SHIFT of their own volition, not to force them (and in that fashion he moves the blame for the innocents' deaths to them). He also makes the point of being fully aware of the outcomes of your actions, which was explored in VLR as well, which would actually ring hollow too, if the danger was fake and everybody gets to live happily ever after no matter what they do.
- It seems to have mostly been legal reasons. After all, if they got out from inside the facility, they would be able to direct the police to the evidence that they were forced to play the Decision Game. However, in the Golden Ending, Delta was able to get rid of the evidence that proved he kidnapped all of them.
- How can the gas mask and Russian Roulette be randomized at the moment you make the choice? Zero had to have set those traps up before you make the choice. Did Zero create a ton of virtually-identical timelines, and that's what you're actually jumping between when you return to those decision points?
- They're not. I believe they're randomized as you reload the Fragment, NOT as you make the choice.
- The Watsonian answer is simple: Schroedinger's Cat. Until you open the lockers or pull that trigger, it's a sealed system. The location of the mask and bullet can change just the way that A/B game results change in Virtue's Last Reward.
- I have to disagree with this explanation. Consider the following: a researcher places an apple behind the right door of a two-door cabinet and asks a test subject, who did not observe the apple being placed, to pick the correct door. From the perspective of the test subject, there is a 50-50 chance of the apple being behind the right door. For the researcher, however, the apple is absolutely, 100% behind the right door. If the test subject selected the right door and there was no apple behind it, it would be a blatant violation of object permanence, a concept which everyone over the age of two recognizes as an immutable law of the universe. Although Delta may not be alive for or witness every probability-based decision, he knows what happens in every possible timeline through mind hijacking. The gas mask has to be in the locker he placed it in.
- Continuing on from the above point, the "ton of virtually-identical timelines" explanation makes the most sense. The timelines branch whenever someone makes a decision. Each probability-based outcome ultimately depends on some degree of decision-making. "Which locker do I place the gas mask in?" "Which box does the antidote go in?" "Which of the six bullets sitting in front of me do I load into the first chamber of the revolver?" "How hard do I toss this coin/die, and at what angle?" Each of these result in the creation of slightly different timelines on a common trajectory until they reach a branching point dependent on the original choice, then split off to their common outcomes. SHIFTers probably lack the fine-grained control to jump to specific threads ("I chose a box and the mask was in box 4") rather than the common branch ("I chose a box"). The "Who killed Mira?" branch is an example of this. Sean can suggest a variety of culprits leading to slightly different responses, but they all lead to a single outcome, his death.
- Why is D-Team only poisoned in the timeline where Diana shoots a blank?
- We can assume that they're poisoned in all the timelines, and they just take the antidote offscreen. The only reason it was a decision in the timeline where you shoot a blank is because Phi is alive, and she's the one that places the doubt in Diana's mind that it's fake. Without her, Sigma and Diana wouldn't have doubted the antidote and taken it.
- The Doylist answer is that showing a nearly-identical event in each timeline (even if it differs slightly in terms of whether it's a choice or not) would just waste space on the tree and annoy the player by making them sit through it; if it's an issue the player can just assume that the other timeline resolved it offscreen more or less the same way the one they viewed it in did.
- D-End 1 presents a false choice. Killing Phi isn't the only way to stop the outbreak. Sigma and Diana could warn the first responders and hospital staff, and since Phi needs to be placed in cryostasis anyway, why not put her on ice immediately? Sigma should also know the recipe for Axelavir, and could probably cure Phi if she was kept in quarantine.
- If Sigma had done any of those events, it would have prevented a Stable Time Loop. Basically, warning the first responders doesn't guarantee that the outbreak is prevented, but it would still proceed differently. As for the Axelavir, that was impossible to do at the time, as it requires the antibodies of people who were immune to Radical-6, which is very hard to determine when people have not been required to make antibodies for Radical-6 yet, as the spread and subsequent pandemic had yet to exist. Also, testing for Radical-6 antibodies with Radical-6 would risk causing the outbreak they're trying to prevent, since it spreads so quickly. Even if they were able to make the Axelavir, they'd have to make enough to cure everyone, which takes a lot of time, meaning they'd still lose a lot of people. Plus, Sigma knowing the cure for a viral pandemic that has yet to happen is kind of suspicious. I got nothing for the cryo option though, other than the timey wimey.
- The issue with Sigma preventing a stable time loop doesn't work with the way timelines work in the Zero Escape universe. Even if Sigma made the choice to take steps to prevent the outbreak, there'll be timelines where he didn't take those steps, which would lead into the events of VLR.
- There's also the fact that Sigma was almost near death after losing both his arms, Phi was unconscious, and Diana (at best) might have only heard about the CAS treatment pods, but would have no idea where to get one, let alone so quickly.
- If Sigma had done any of those events, it would have prevented a Stable Time Loop. Basically, warning the first responders doesn't guarantee that the outbreak is prevented, but it would still proceed differently. As for the Axelavir, that was impossible to do at the time, as it requires the antibodies of people who were immune to Radical-6, which is very hard to determine when people have not been required to make antibodies for Radical-6 yet, as the spread and subsequent pandemic had yet to exist. Also, testing for Radical-6 antibodies with Radical-6 would risk causing the outbreak they're trying to prevent, since it spreads so quickly. Even if they were able to make the Axelavir, they'd have to make enough to cure everyone, which takes a lot of time, meaning they'd still lose a lot of people. Plus, Sigma knowing the cure for a viral pandemic that has yet to happen is kind of suspicious. I got nothing for the cryo option though, other than the timey wimey.
- How does Delta know which X-Passes to announce? It's established that they're different for every timeline, but how can he tell one timeline from another, and know that he hasn't given out X-Passes from the current timeline in another one? Especially since he isn't an esper.
- Either the assumption that it's based on timeline is incorrect, and it's instead based on the method of death, or he keeps a list of X-Passes, one for every player, to be loaded into the system after the Execution vote.
- Also Delta is an esper, his ability just isn't shifting. He never said he didn't have access to the morphogenetic field. Presumably, the field is actually how his Mind Hacking works in the first place.
- This can be explained with the Quantum Computer, as it holds the data for every possible timeline, and as such would be able to know if an X-Pass would be given out in a given timeline. Either that or it's set not to allow people to input X-Passes if it hasn't given out six of them and assumes they're from a different timeline if it hasn't given them out.
- He doesn't have to do anything fancy - he can just assign them based on the cause, time, and possibly location of death. Having the computer reject bad X-Passes with the "wrong timeline" spiel is just a way to taunt the shifters by letting them know he knows what they're doing; he doesn't actually have to do any timeline shenangians himself to ensure that they're all different, especially since he controls most of the likely causes of death to begin with (ie. it's easy for him to have a set of X-Passes for each choice intended to kill someone, plus another set of X-Passes for each person in each wake period in case they're killed in an unexpected way.)
- Why do they bother solving puzzles in this one? I mean, ignoring rooms where there's a mortal danger to one or more of their lives and the like, why bother? I mean, nobody even brings up the idea of "Why should we do what our kidnapper tells us to do? Let's just wait the timer out in here." They were forced to go through the puzzles in 999 and VLR in order to get the items and paths to live.
- It's stated in VLR that "epiphany" is an element required for SHIFTing. In 999, the reason the puzzle rooms which the characters are forced to solve before they can progress don't appear out of place is because of the time limit. In VLR, this doesn't apply, and Sigma does bring up at one point that making them solve puzzle rooms, rather then just straight out giving them what they need, is pretty useless since it's only acting as a temporary hold up that they'll definitely get past eventually. So the same thing applies there as it does here: the puzzles are there to enhance SHIFTing, through epiphanies.
- I don't mean why Zero wants them to solve puzzles. I mean, why do they decide to solve the puzzles?
- Most of the puzzles either have a character's life on the line, or have you locked in the room. Just like the other games, they don't have a choice.
- Plus not trying to solve the puzzles and just sitting in the room to wait for the time to run out might be considered a rule violation. Or at at the very least, the participants might have thought such a thing could be the case. Or even that leaving the puzzles unsolved by the end of the 90 minutes would end with them being killed.
- Excluding the "find a way out" interface that characters don't see, at no point are they told to solve puzzles, or given any indication that they are supposed to try and leave the rooms they're locked in. In fact, they could just as easily conclude that Zero wants them locked in a specific room for the 90-minute duration and that trying to leave is a violation; and they have no personal reason to want to leave before those 90 minutes are up because they're clearly being repositioned between wake periods and, therefore, will be in a different room the next time they wake up regardless.
- It's stated in VLR that "epiphany" is an element required for SHIFTing. In 999, the reason the puzzle rooms which the characters are forced to solve before they can progress don't appear out of place is because of the time limit. In VLR, this doesn't apply, and Sigma does bring up at one point that making them solve puzzle rooms, rather then just straight out giving them what they need, is pretty useless since it's only acting as a temporary hold up that they'll definitely get past eventually. So the same thing applies there as it does here: the puzzles are there to enhance SHIFTing, through epiphanies.
- What happens in the Anthropic Principle timeline after you win the dice roll? We never see anything that happens to C-Team after that. Sure, their past consciousnesses jump into their bodies, but that was directly after the dice roll, NOT after they had the talk about the Anthropic Principle.
- If memory serves, their other selves arrive during the drink afterwards and try to open the X-Door with passwords that they got in a different timeline. Then Zero rejected them and sent an evil Sean to kill them, so Carlos did some timeline hopping, transported Junpei and Akane, and SHIFTed out.
- Where was Carlos in the VLR timeline? He managed to get Akane and Junpei out of the shelter, allowing them to participate in VLR's Ambidex Game, but where did he go off to?
- Between old age, the Radical-6 outbreak, and the reactor explosions, there's a fair chance that Carlos could have just died by then. Junpei wouldn't remember him anyways and Akane might not have wanted to contact him after knowing he had given up the chance at preventing this from happening in the first place.
- What happened to Uchikoshi promising in the VLR Q&A that we would find out in the third game what happened to Snake and Aoi, and Dio will appear as 'not the man we know'?
- A lot of content that Uchikoshi had planned was evidently scrapped from the game. In the same vein, we never got a conclusion to Clover and Alice's stories. The game itself getting green-lit was a miracle enough, so it's unfortunately the case that a lot of things had to be altered, or taken out all together.
- Technically, we do find out what happened to Aoi and Seven when C-Team is in the Decontamination Room. And Dio is a clone of Delta, so there is sort of a Dio who isn't the same one. If I recall correctly, the conclusion to Clover and Alice's stories was promised in the non-canon (i.e., meta BS) ending of VLR, so it's not surprising that didn't pan out.
- This troper has a small correction. Dio is a clone of Delta's adoptive brother Left, not Delta himself. Presumably he clone that becomes Dio has yet to be cloned, as he is a fourth generation clone and appears to be in his 20s by the time VLR happens which takes place 45 years after ZTD.
- If Junpei is an alcoholic, why is he so high-functioning during the Game? He's abrasive, sure, but his mental capabilities are in no way impaired, he's not shaking or vomiting- so what's up with that?
- Does it ever say he's literally an alcoholic at that point, rather than just going through a period where he drank a lot to cope with his problems but didn't develop a chemical dependance? Either way, the Lounge has a bar full of alcohol, there's no reason he'd have to quit cold-turkey.
- If his alcoholism is minor then the dependency may be psychological instead of physical. The outward signs would be more along the lines of irritability and aggressiveness, and he displays plenty of both.
- Cool Back to the Future reference aside, when Akane explains that SHIFTing may work by swapping consiousness with an alternate timeline self, she uses the example of M2 travelling through to M1's timeline by preventing his dad from hitting the school bully. This example works for the purposes of explaining how SHIFT may work, but it doesn't work in terms of the film they're using since the only reason M1 got his dad to punch the school bully was to make him look cool in front of M1's mother. (simplified) Akane also brings this up due to the question of "Where is M2 in the new timeline?" Which was also shown what happened to M2 by the end of the film.
- I presume you're saying that it doesn't make sense for M2 to take the opposite action because he'd have no logical reason to? Well, yes, it doesn't make sense. But under this interpretation of time travel, spacetime and logical causality will twist itself into pretzels to make things work out like this. Maybe he prevents it by accident?
- My point being is that they talk of M2's events as if he's going backwards in his version of events and that all the events happened on their own, without M1's interference. The punch is the effect of M1 preventing his father being hit by the car, the cause, and not doing this will result in his erasure from existence. The only way M2 could wind up back in M1's timeline as Akane puts it is by simply preventing the cause in the first place. Since she decides to point at the punch it makes no sense in context unless somehow M2's literally travelling backwards through M1's line of events, which is more of a rewind than changing anything.
- Another question this brings about is how this affects SHIFT's one of two elements needed to work; danger. If it's true that SHIFTers actually switch consciousnesses between timelines, then what's to say the one suddenly put in danger couldn't SHIFT back since they should both be able to, like a conscious tug-of-war? The only explanation this troper can come up with is that they leave it at the last possible second so the alternate self has no time to react to the danger at hand and that perhaps the ability to SHIFT only grows over a period of time so past times/alternate timelines are unable to fight back as well.
- I presume you're saying that it doesn't make sense for M2 to take the opposite action because he'd have no logical reason to? Well, yes, it doesn't make sense. But under this interpretation of time travel, spacetime and logical causality will twist itself into pretzels to make things work out like this. Maybe he prevents it by accident?
- In the "Radical-6" fragment, Zero tells the players that he has foreseen their future. If they inject themselves with Radical-6 then he has previously injected them with Fanatic Bio R; if they do not do so, he has not injected them. It's suggested that "Fanatic Bio R" might not be real (since it's an anagram of "fabrication"!), but the Radical-6 absolutely is real and the syringes do work, yet the team suffer no ill effects if they inject themselves. That means there's a cure or vaccine for Radical-6 in the complex. Those SHIFTer types might have, um, wanted to know about that.
- There might not have been a cure. Eric dies not very long after injecting, Sean wouldn't be infected since he's a robot, and Mira escaped the facility. It's not a stretch to assume that no symptoms manifest simply because there wasn't enough time for them to manifest.
- Zero could not know or be sure Mira would kill her coworkers (and sure enough, there are many timelines where she doesn't). If Zero wanted the players to be safe of the virus, and if indeed Fanatic Bio-R is not a thing, what I think he injected with the needle machine was actually a lasting dose of Axelavir, the antidote for Radical-6. If he was the creator of Radical-6, he would probably have studied up a cure far before its outbreak.
- Axelavir is derived from the antibodies of people who are immune to Radical-6. It's not a poison antidote you can just knock up in a lab; Zero has no obvious way of making it. It's more likely Zero simply didn't care; that wasn't a timeline he was interested in. Mira and Eric can kill each other, they can wander off into the world and start the plague, doesn't matter. It's the other branch, the one that leads to VLR, that Zero is interested in.
- Why didn't the 1904 Phi try to stop her brother? Surely they both ended up at the same place at the same time, so won't they have been raised together and grown up together? If Delta can live to 124, it won't be unthinkable that Phi could do the same, and furthermore, they're siblings.
- Easy, she knew, and didn't want to stop him. This could be for any number of reasons. Just because 1904 Phi is technically the same person as the younger Phi from the 2008 teleportation does not mean they share the same worldview.
- Then shouldn't she be supporting him in that case, then? If she had supported him, we would've seen her alongside with Delta when they revealed themselves.
- 1. That doesn't necessarily mean she was working with him. Remember, the term used was, "didn't want to stop him," not "was definitely an accomplice. 2. Even if it did, why would she need to be there?
- Phi has to be either with him or against him, considering Delta is kidnapping and murdering people for his own curiosity of SHIFTers. If Phi doesn't care about Delta murdering people, that puts her on the same level as Delta. And if Phi was one of Delta's accomplices, she would have to show up (or at least be mentioned being one of Delta's accomplices) for the sake of the player. Actually, it would make some sense for the 1904 Phi to support Delta, considering that the Decision Game has to happen in order for the two of them to be born. However, if it is true that the 1904 Phi raised the 2008 Phi, the 2008 Phi should've been raised with the same worldview as the 1904 Phi.
- I always assumed the obvious conclusion was that 1904 Phi was dead of old age by that point. That would be a little contrived because women tend to live longer than men, but it'd hardly be the most ridiculous contrivance in ZTD.
- Easy, she knew, and didn't want to stop him. This could be for any number of reasons. Just because 1904 Phi is technically the same person as the younger Phi from the 2008 teleportation does not mean they share the same worldview.
- In Q-Team's 'Triangle' segment, why did Eric have to kill Sean? Sean technically isn't a participant, so killing him won't get them an X-Pass. He could've only killed Q to get the last X-Pass.
- I was wondering the same thing but I guess Eric might have just thought of it as collateral damage. He doesn't trust or care for Sean, anyway. Maybe he figured Sean might try to protect Q so he just killed them both.
- Either that, or he just flat out forgot that Sean wasn't an actual participant by that point. Sean was being used as a replacement leader of sorts for Q who couldn't do anything for himself, and considering how lacking in smarts Eric can be at times, it wouldn't be unlike him to make that kind of mistake.
- Related to the Headscratcher above: why didn't Q-Team just kill Q instead of having to kill one another in the 'Triangle' segment? Since Q was supposedly blind, deaf, mute and wheelchair-bound, it wouldn't make a difference whether he was dead or alive, at least from their perspective. Furthermore, if Sean chooses to kill Q/Delta, of all people, Mira asks him, "Out of all of us, you chose to kill him?", as if killing Q was out of the question. Were they reluctant to kill Q because he was supposedly disabled or something? (But then again, Mira kills Q after killing Sean in the ending where Sean chooses to kill Mira)
- Mira wanted to kill Eric for a specific reason other than just needing another X-Pass (his heart). As for Eric, I wouldn't be surprised if him and even the others had forgotten he was even there. Q-Team hardly ever acknowledge his existence baring a few off handed remarks and one brief moment where the game makes it look like they're talking to Gab. Considering they had been using Sean as a "replacement" of sorts for Q the entire time, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine they just flat out forgot that Sean wasn't an actual participant, and that Q was.
- Given the angle of the Mexican Standoff, and the slightly wonky angle Eric was aiming, it's probable that he was actually aiming at Q (off-screen).
- Eric starts the standoff, and he's been at Sean's throat almost the whole game so obviously he aims at him. Sean aims his crossbow defensively, and Mira completes the standoff because she's playing The Gadfly (and wants to kill Eric anyway). Q obviously doesn't have a weapon, nobody even thinks he's capable of wielding one, ergo he is not a threat.
- Mira kills Eric's mother, which gets Akane's father arrested and leads to her mother's death, leading to her and Aoi being kidnapped and the events of 999, which leads to the Decision Game, which results in Phi and Delta being born, which results in the release of Radical-6, which prompts Phi and Sigma to return to the Decision game, which finally ends in a fully resolved timeline where everyone is alive and well and there won't be an epidemic. Well, so the hell what? Literally nothing has changed. They still don't know who the terrorist is. Hooray, everyone's alive, but that means Delta could have just told them "Hi, I'm Delta, there's a terrorist coming, do something!" and nothing would be different. He already existed by being copied into another timeline so there was no reason for him to close the loop that saw him born, it was already done paradox-free because of the Quantum Computer.
- He does say that he enjoys living vicariously through mind reading SHIFTers, so I presume he just wanted to see what timelines would result. So, For the Lulz.
- The other reason for the Decision Game was to make sure they all had the ability to SHIFT so they could catch this unknown terrorist and eventually wind up preventing humanity from being wiped out in the process. Simply telling them beforehand would be both confusing and possibly threaten them learning how to SHIFT.
- So... who dismembered Junpei? Did I miss that?
- Mira did. Delta said as much when he was revealed.
- What for? She didn't rip out his heart or anything, and she didn't kill the other two so it wouldn't be for the X-Passes, right?
- Who knows? She did the same thing in the Radical-6 timeline. She just kinda killed everyone for no reason, no heart ripping out or anything. She was even in a perfect position to rip out Eric's heart, and she just..... Didn't.
- Mira was directly helping Delta, if I recall correctly. It's the same reason why she injected Phi with Radical-6. It was part of Delta's plan.
- However, Delta said that he never gave her orders and she acted of her own accord. Thus, she killed Junpei of her own accord as well.
- Mira did. Delta said as much when he was revealed.
- So is there an in-universe explanation for why you always guess the coin toss right on your first try? At first, I thought Zero mindread everybody to see if the Payoff timeline already existed and manipulated the coin through a hidden mechanism appropriately, but... memory decay from SHIFTing never seems to happen in ZTD. If the characters in "Payoff" shifted back to "Coincide", they should retain all their memories and their behavior should visibly change. So, clearly, that's not what's going on. Is the only explanation Gameplay and Story Segregation?
- It's Schrödinger's cat. Whatever Carlos picks, it changes what side faced up. There's basically two histories, one where he win and one where he loses. But there's four possibilities for what can happen, which are: Red-win, red-lose, blue-win, blue-lose. The win history and the lose history therefore act as a Schrodinger's cat scenario. If it's the timeline where Carlos wins, his choice is right. If it's the one where he doesn't, his choice isn't. As for why we as players see it in the order we do, yes I believe it's simply for the sake of making the story easier to follow.
- What gives you the idea that memory decay from SHIFTing doesn't happen in ZTD? The game unambiguously states that it's still a thing and that shifters usually don't remember anything. Yes, later in the game (after that point, more or less), anyone who is shown shifting remembers stuff, but that's an anthropic principle thing where only the points where people remember stuff after shifting can become "plot-relevant" shifts. Every time the player loads a different point in the timeline is still intended to be a shift. A bigger problem, of course, is that if memory decay is a thing, and assuming it completely erased their memory of shifting to retry the coin flip, then Zero can't tell whether it's the first or second coin flip himself because there's no memory of it to read. (Another issue is that it's not reasonable that a character would shift back to the coinflip after winning - the player does it because we want to see the entire game, but in-universe instinctive shifts happen in response to danger; obviously nobody is going to shift from a safe, happy outcome back to a point of extreme danger.)
- How did Eric and Mira know Sean's name? Did he tell them offscreen, or what? Not very fair for the player if that's the case.
- Yes and yes. It's not really possible to complain about the game being unfair though, it reminds you of that constantly. Don't you think?
- I'm not exactly sure if that's a good excuse. Zero just sprouting that life is unfair in universe doesn't give the game a free pass to be unfair on the player.
- This is a franchise where it turns out that the narrator was a little girl peering into the future to prevent her death and the player is led to believe the protagonist is young (as is the protagonist) when he was in an old man's body the entire time. Not being fair to the player by not giving all the information immediately is to be expected.
- That's fundamentally different. There was nothing being hidden from the player with the twist involving the narrative in 999. It was a twisted perspective, using the player's natural assumptions, as well as conventional storytelling tropes, then twisting them around. The twist with Sigma in VLR was from his own perspective, and we follow said perspective the entire way. No information is being given out to characters off-screen that we don't know about. The twist with Sean would be like if ,in VLR, Sigma already knew about the fact he was old, and he went around telling everyone in off-screen moments that fact. You just can't do that with this kind of twist, and using that kind of method to pull off a twist is horrible writing, to be frank. Sean's twist would have been much better if they, 1) had it so that Mira & Eric didn't know his true indentity, and 2) they didn't directly lie about him being called "Q" in out of game materials. It would have made it a fair twist at least on par with the ones you mentioned from 999 & VLR.
- VLR did the exact same thing by lying about Sigma's appearance. Even if we handwave the fact that he believes himself to be that, there's an anime trailer which outright portrays Sigma as if he were young during the Ambidex Game. The fact that Mira and Eric know Sean's name shouldn't matter anyway, as iirc, the only time they say his name during the game sans near the end is in the Perceptive Ending; in order to get that ending, you need Delta's name, which means you have already advanced enough in the plot to know Sean's name (Delta's confession to Sean) and that he is not Q. (When Delta is revealed.) Thus the twist remains intact.
- I repeat; it's fundamentally different. Actually scratch that, it's different in practically every single way. Virtue's Last Reward was told in a first person perspective by Sigma, so of course his perspective is the same as our own. Throughout the game, we're looking through Sigma's eyes, so we can't see him while everyone else can. It's all to do with perspective. Nothing's directly being hidden, we just can't see what everyone else see due to the perspective we have being the same as one of the characters' own. The problem with the twist with Sean/Q is the fact that he is never considered as Q from any perspective. The only time he's ever considered as Q is to the player in game promos and trailers, which are all from a completely neutral, fourth wall perspective. The anime promo for VLR was from Sigma's perspective, since it's narrated in the first person by him, hence why that actually works. If Sean really did tell Eric & Mira his real identity off screen, then that's not the same as us not seeing Sigma's face. One of them is our perspective hiding something that is otherwise visible, and the other is something just flat out being cut out of what we see. They're completely different. Even ignoring that though, the main issue I have is the fact that they flat out lied about Q's identity out of game to the players, so the missaimed assumption that Sean is Q ends up feeling less like a clover spin, and more like you were flat out tricked.
- And I repeat; it's the same because both are cases of out of game source material outright "lying" to you as you put it. How Sigma's appearance in-game is handled was not the focus of that last reply. Even if the anime trailer is being told from the perspective of Sigma, unlike the game, we're seeing everything from an outside perspective instead of a first-person perspective. Sean is considered by the player as Q in the status screens and team selections since that is the only person we can draw as holding that identity. It's not until later that we realise Sean is actually leading in place of wheelchair-bound Q because he can't do anything about it. The very first choice that you make seems to affirm this even, as you find yourself and all other characters outside of the facility (sans Delta). Everything from a story perspective in-game early on leads us to believe that Q could only belong to the child, and that any foreshadowing given is either mistakenly believed to be philosophical or referring to Sean i.e. "He couldn't even see or hear what was going on" misled us to believe they meant Sean with his helmet. So even if the trailers lie about it, that's neither here nor there as the game feeds us the same lies early on anyway. You can't tell me you wouldn't have drawn the same conclusion had you been purely taking what the game told you; besides, it would have been instantly more suspicious and awkward if they named Sean in the trailer and his name never came up early on, or if they instead showed the wheelchair guy's picture profile.
- You're completely ignoring the basic point I'm trying to get across: 999 and VLR's big twists with their characters work because they're from the perspective of the lead character, and there's no information being directly falsified/withheld from the player. The VLR anime promo is a retelling of what's already happened from Sigma's perspective, as should be obvious from the first person narrative where he's recalling the events to the viewer. In the same way what's going on is also a completely reduced and simplified mush up of what takes makes up the first hour of the game into around 5 minutes, since it's Sigma's basic retelling of the most important parts. And you're basically solidifying what I was trying to say about Sean's identity. Yes, I would have assumed he was Q, that's exactly my point. Lying about who Q was just completely ruined that, since the twist isn't based on pure assumption anymore. Yes, you assume that lines like "he couldn't even see or hear" is referring to Sean in his helmet. That's the point I'm making, the game causes you to make an assumption over a bizarre sounding line. Because saying "he couldn't even see or hear when" sounds kinda like badly written dialogue to refer to someone wearing a helmet which has eye-holes and is very clearly able to let the person wearing it hear just fine. It's not until later on that lines like those suddenly make more sense. I have no idea where you're getting calling him Sean in trailers. I never said they should do that. They should have called him "Amnesiac boy" or something of the sort. There's also no point in which Q is ever labelled as Sean either in the game. The team-selection screen does not specifically identity the characters who are on there as the team leaders, the player just makes that assumption since C-Team and D-Team's ones show their leaders, but there is absolutely nothing indicating as such. The status screen never shows Sean on it either. It's always left blank for Q, because we've not seen Q yet. The player is going to make the assumption for a lot of the game that that may be because we've not seen Q's real face, but you're never being lied to, you just make a natural assumption about the reason. Everything is set up to mislead the player, yes, but you seem to be under the mistaken impression that "misleading the player" and "tricking the player" are the same thing. They're not. Calling a character one thing, then having them be something completely different is not "misleading the player", that's flat out lying to them. The twist with Sean just feels as though it'd have worked a lot more if they never called Sean Q anywhere, including out of the game. Even if everything else in the game leads to the assumption, the fact that you straight out have been told the character is called Q weakens what would have otherwise been the player's own natural assumptions causing them to miss the obvious.
- At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. So the trailer material lied to you. The fact is, there's a reason why we have Never Trust a Trailer as a trope; because it can conceal plot points that otherwise look suspicious and the alternative is Trailers Always Spoil, which is absolutely worse. Both 999 and VLR promotional material did this as well. 999 told us the character we're playing as is Junpei, when it's really Akane. VLR told us we're playing as a young man, when we're playing as an old man. This is fundamentally the same. The question to all of this was, "How did Eric and Mira know Sean's name?" To which the answer has been, "They were told offscreen." Take that as you will, but going back and forth to prove the statement "It's lying to the player" adds nothing more to this headscratcher.
- The thing is, you're not exactly debunking the point I'm making, nor are you debunking the original troper's point. I can throw this right back and say that you're just shrugging and going "yeah, so what?". Which isn't a valid justification for a headscratcher someone brings up. The original troper's point was that if he told them off-screen, that hardly seems fair. You've done nothing to debunk this, you've just been reaffirming the fact and saying it adds nothing to complain about it. This is a headscratchers page, my friend, where people list problems in a media's writing and storytelling. That's the entire point of this page. Also, no, the trailers for 999 never called Junpei the playable character. Playable character and protagonist are mutually exclusive as well, even though they often overlap. Also, in VLR, you are playing as a young man. You're playing as a young man in a old man's body, but you are playing as a young man still. I've explained this a hundred times already, but the Sigma we play as in the game IS the Sigma that's advertised to us. Because that's who he thinks he is, and it's who he literally is in mind & consciousness. It's only his body that's different. It's completely not comparable to the issue with Sean.
- Because (and this is being put bluntly; no hard feelings) there is no constructive point to the statements made by the OP or yourself which contributes to the Headscratcher. Sean's name is known to Eric and Mira presumably because they were told off-screen. The only other possible thing to take out of Sean being named Q in the trailer (outside of the obvious) could have to do with the fact that he is a quantum supercomputer. The OP feels this is unfair if it was told off-screen, which is fine; but by this virtue, literally anything that happens off-screen may as well be unfair (Ace taking the 9th Man's bracelet, Dio planting the bombs in VLR, any off-screen murder that takes place in the franchise ever.) What this troper was bringing to light initially was that Zero Escape has a tendency to be unfair by the troper's definition. Because like Eric and Mira being told Sean's name off-screen, Akane viewing Junpei's actions are in a sense off-screen, as is the fact that Sigma is not young but in fact old, even if his self-perception indicate otherwise.
- In VLR, Sigma doesn't pick up on the fact that he's missing an eye, and has a big honking monocle replacing it. That's nearly impossible to swallow; it would require Sigma to have never once scratched at his eye or rubbed near it. I don't see how accepting that is less of a stretch than accepting the Q stuff in this game.
- Strawman Fallacy - This is a point that while valid by its own merit, does not address the actual points put forth, namely the comparison between how information is hidden/not hidden from the player, instead sidestepping them with an unrelated issue regarding the plot twist with Sigma.
- Everyone keeps dodging the points actually being made here though. It is exactly as the OP stated. I know I'm just reiterating old points here, but it needs to be said: The other twists in the series were handled in a way in which, despite information being purposefully hidden from the player, it was still set up so that it's fair and reasonable in the context of the narrative. Ala, the twist with Sigma's identity: The problem - It's hidden from the player. How the narrative makes this fair - The player's thoughts, and experiences align with the protagonist's, and they never know more then he does. We are specifically playing as Sigma, we are following the narrative as him. Because of that, the twist works. The player is being deceived through the player character. That is, and always has been in all of the history of fiction, completely fair play in mystery writing. Where the plot twist regarding Sean and Q falls short of this, is that there is no one being tricked other then the player. If there was a protagonist on Q Team who did not know that Eric and Mira were told Sean's name, then that would have been one thing, but there isn't. This is not the same thing as not being shown, for example, Dio planting the bombs as stated above, because no one, including Sigma, saw him do that. The game was purposefully cutting out information that was available to every single character in Q Team's story. The information wasn't not shown to the player because it lines up with the specific narrative perspective we have (aka, the perspective of the narrative as seen by one or more characters) and because they didn't see it or don't know about it or have an assumption then that applies to us too (which is what most plot-twist heavy mystery fiction relies on), it was not shown to the player because if it was it wouldn't be a plot twist, and so we just can't see it. Even though it doesn't follow any specific reasoning for why it's cut. In VLR we don't see Sigma's face because Sigma doesn't see it. That's why seeing his face is "cut information". In 999, Junpei doesn't know what the hell's going on any more then we do, which is why the entire thing with the dual scenes is "cut information". Dio planting the bombs is "cut information" because Sigma never saw him do it. They all have a legit reason for withholding the information in the context of the narrative we're being presented. In ZTD, the information like Sean telling Mira and Eric his name was cut, without any logical, contextual reason. The only reason was because it had to be cut otherwise the plot twist wouldn't work. While this isn't necessarily a "wrong" way to handle mystery writing, it is considered extremely taboo, and it sort of shows shows the weak mystery structure of ZTD as compared to 999 & VLR. People need to stop simplifying the point being made into "but VLR & 999 did similar twists", there's much more than that to the point here.
- They are all similar in the sense that they mislead the player into believing they know more than they actually do. ZTD does it simply by letting you assume from the format layout of the teams that Sean is Q, yet the game gives you more than enough hints that Q is not Sean by way of there being no icon (not even a cartoony version of his helmet, mind you), referencing an old man at times and making it seem like he's staying with Gab, and finally when the bombshell is dropped in Q's Reality/Happy END: That he is modeled after a boy named Sean. Logically, it shouldn't matter from the player's point of view whether or not the other team knew Sean's name by the time it's dropped in Perceptive END, because that ending is literally only meant to be accessed after you figure out the revelation that Q is not Sean, but a fourth member, Delta. You could argue that the characters keeping Sean's name secret up until this point is unfair, or that the trailer name-dropping Sean as Q is unfair (though trailers shouldn't always be trusted to present the entire truth to begin with), but in the end, it doesn't matter because by the time you find out that Eric and Mira knew Sean's name, it's no longer unfair from a narrative point.
- You're still dodging the actual point being made, and going n a tangent about something else. You're not even addressing the actual issue here, you're basically going, "yeah, that issue exists, but let's talk about this unrelated thing regarding the plot twist".
- That's not dodging the point. Keeping it dead simple, The OP says that if Eric and Mira were indeed told Sean's name offscreen, then that is unfair for the player, without further context behind that. The response to that is yes, they were told his name offscreen. No, it is not unfair nor an issue that they know his name as far as the player is concerned. Why? Because the player already finds out his name before Mira/Eric even utter it. If this information were to be revealed out of the blue before all that then yes, it would be unfair.
- It is dodging the point, and this doesn't even make any sense. Whether we eventually find out his name or not doesn't mean anything, especially since the information that was cut out would've happened way before the player ever finds that out. That doesn't align to any specific perspective other then a out-of-universe trick on the player.
- I ended up coming up with a WMG to solve this whole issue: The twist was deliberately engineered by Delta for the benefit of the copy of Sean in virtual space, who grows up to play Zero Time Dilemma on his 3DS because none of the events of the series happen to him.
- I must say, I agree with the point being made here, about the Sean/Q plot twist being poorly handled. I wasn't sure as to why it felt so cheap compared to the other plot twists we've had before, but the above points put it into words better than I ever could. To be entirely frank, as shocking a twist as it was, and as clever as it was in many ways, the handling of said twist from a writing perspective was atrocious and breaks every single rule in the book. And not in a good way, either. It annoys me a lot, because it could've been an INCREDIBLE plot twist, if it had been handled as well as the Sigma twist had been handled in VLR, but it just falls flat, in my personal opinion.
- Yes and yes. It's not really possible to complain about the game being unfair though, it reminds you of that constantly. Don't you think?
- How did Zero know about Quark and the AB game? He can't see the future, can he?
- He saw it in Sigma and Phi's memories.
- When? The reference to Quark is simple enough to add at any time, but the AB Game required significant setup that he didn't really get any chance to do. Sigma and Phi only came back from the future shortly before his game started, and he wouldn't have had any knowledge of the future at all (no knowledge that they exist or that anything happend there outside of his plans) until he read their minds. Since he didn't know they existed until he read their minds at D Com, this leaves him only a few days to add the AB game to his own game, and at that point he already had to maintain characters as Q, severely limiting his ability to change the game. In theory, sure, there are various ways he could have done it via extreme effort and expense, but why would he suddenly make a significant change to the intricate, carefully-planned game he set up just to add a reference to something he saw in Sigma and Phi's memories at the last minute?
- Given the unstated implications that 1. Akane worked with Delta/Brother for a time before Sigma went to the moon, and 2. Delta/Brother used the transporters to make a copy of himself in the VLR future, odds are extremely high that Delta/Brother was well in the know about future events long before the Decision Game started.
- He saw it in Sigma and Phi's memories.
- How can Sigma create Luna based on Diana when, in his personal timeline, he has to do so before meeting Diana? In VLR, he is knocked unconscious by Zero/Akane and then travels into the future where he meets Luna. At the end of VLR, he comes back in time and is told by Akane that he must travel to the moon and prepare the AB project. Only after setting up Lagomorph, Luna, etc, is his consciousness swapped into the version that goes to Dcom and meet Diana; so how could he have built Luna based on Diana who he hadn't met yet? The only explanation is that Luna was not based on Diana; Luna was based on Luna.
- This was already explained in ZTD. Diana went to the moon, and she and post-VLR Sigma met. it was only after she died that Sigma created Luna. This was explained in the "Post-Apocalypse" file.
- I can't help but feel like the ending gave off a lot of mixed messages - Doesn't it kind of defeat the entire point at the end to have Delta's defense against conspiracy to commit murder basically boil down to "too bad, I've destroyed all the evidence"? The entire point he's trying to hammer home about the fact that he's not done anything wrong in that history kind of goes up in smoke when his only defence against willfully setting up a death game with the intent of possibly killing people is "too bad all the evidence is gone, ROFL".
- It's one thing to tell that to the authorities or the courts that kind of information, but here he's basically saying to his victims that he won't be nailed in court for this since aside from their word, there's no evidence at all to go on. Nevermind the fact that he has plenty of money, power and a cult who likely set the entire thing up in the first place to make such a case a battle of attrition.
- You seemed to have avoided my point here. In fact, you've rather strengthened the point I was trying to make. The entire "Delta didn't technically do anything wrong and is actually a good guy?" question that's left hanging at the end is kind of broken with its execution when you have Delta gloat about how he's obviously done nasty stuff even in this timeline but that they just won't be able to nail him for it. The entire point of that final scene is supposed to be asking the question of whether Delta setting up so many ghastly timelines to forge a single one where everything is all fine and dandy and no one got hurt or did anything wrong is justified or not, and whether he can get punished for crimes he committed in other histories. The cast then basically say "but you planned for all that stuff in the other timelines to happen" and Delta just basically goes "Yeah, but you can't prove that". The cast's point about the fact that he had still planned for outcomes where people were horribly killed and where he slaughtered 6 billion people is a perfectly valid one. Not to mention the fact he kidnapped them and directly threatened them with death. Yet the game just brushes past it and expects you to buy the fact that Delta did nothing wrong. It just reeks of trying to make Delta an anti-villain at the last minute to me.
- Of course it's right, but ultimately it is the lesser of two evils in this context. Amongst the list of reasons why Delta did this is to prevent humanity from being utterly wiped out by a madman who hasn't been identified yet at this point, which is why he makes the Decision Game; to create a group of SHIFTers who can investigate, find this person/group and prevent them from destroying humanity. Being able to SHIFT helps since it allows them to try again if they accidentally cause said person/group to release doomsday earlier than planned. It's not like he didn't tell any of the cast before the end either since Akane and Junpei are told by Delta about all of this in the VLR timeline, allowing Akane to work towards setting up the events in VLR. The next reason is to ensure Delta's existence since the Decision Game brought about his birth and ability to Mind Hack. The cast may have a point in that he's done some pretty shitty stuff in alternate timelines, but they were necessary sacrifices towards saving humanity as a whole and it's not as if he didn't subject himself to the same treatment as them. He was killed in some of those timelines too, you know. Even if you still think that all of this is not excusable enough then remember that he at least gave the contestants the choice to shoot him then and there, to get their "justice." You have to admit that is at least decent of the guy who's put you through hell in multiple timelines. I'm fairly sure the point the players of this Decision Game were trying to make was more of a "we can send you to jail for all that stuff you've done" rather than an actual point against his "justification" of all those timelines anyway.
- You don't exactly seem to be getting my point I'm trying to make here. I'm not arguing about the ambiguity regarding Delta's actions and morals, I'm saying that the execution within the game of such a thing was handled pretty poorly. When people need to actually spell out what the game's ending was trying to do, it just shows that the ending wasn't executed well. You have to admit that the ending felt really rushed, and the game doesn't exactly do a fantastic job at explaining certain things. If they were aiming for an ending of ambiguity, it kind of ends up broken in its execution when you don't lay all the cards out onto the table, and instead only display the ones that benefit you. Another key example of this is the fact that the cast seem hung up on accusing him of crimes relating to just murder, even though there's plenty of other crimes that he's legitimately committed in this timeline, like kidnapping, and the fact that he's...you know, the leader of a terrorist cell, for example. I'm not arguing whether this stuff actually makes him justified in his actions or not. Rather that the game seems to just bring up the points that make the entire thing as ambiguous as possible, while conveniently avoiding talking about things that might end up swaying it one way or the other. And when it does bring up something that might end up doing such a thing, instead of directly acknowledging it as such, it feels like the game is more just trying to sweep it under the rug. Everything that was built up from VLR regarding Free the Soul, and Brother's background, ect, is all conveniently avoided. I get the feeling they avoided such things because they knew it'd be harder to make Delta seem an ambiguous anti-villain with it being brought up, but that's just poor writing when you have to go down that route. Basically, my issue isn't with the context or what the ending was supposed to mean, but with the execution of it. It feels horrifically forced from a development viewpoint.
- Development Hell and Sequel Hook then. The fact that this ending leaves open loose ends and leaves it ambiguous is just the devs setting the stage for another potential Zero Escape title if they ever see fit to make another one. Keep in mind also that a lot of planned content was either cut or condensed for ZTD and it'd likely be thanks to a number of issues (cart space, deadline, development hell, etc.) so leaving some loose ends is to be expected. VLR is just as guilty in this as ZTD is and it left a lot to be desired from ZTD. They do touch on certain VLR plot points like Brother's background and Free the Soul, but that is either at earlier points in the game or stashed away in info files if you're curious for answers to the plot. Plus they do point out the kidnapping and even had they brought up the fact he's a terrorist, it would've worked out the same; that is, they have no evidence to present to authorities.
- Hang on, you're assuming that the game wants you to think that Delta is good all along. The way I saw it was, that's what he wants you to think, but the rest of the characters not buying it is indication that it's self-congratulatory bullshit on his part.
- He was far from completely good. Rather, he was just a Well-Intentioned Extremist who did what needed to be done to give humanity a window for survival, even if that meant doing some immoral stuff along the way. So what point would there be for him to deny what the participants stated in the end beyond legal matters?
- By his own admission, his motives are complex. He's spent a lot of time creating Free the Soul and setting up the Decision Game, why bother going to prison and seeing all of that undone? Even if he personally is content to die there and then doesn't mean he'd be okay with his life's work bar the events of the game being torn down.
- It's not just a mixed message; it's out of "character" on a meta level. Given everything that the player has witnessed over the course of three games, it would actually be more logical if the Decision Game setup was never even in the shelter to begin with in the timeline in which they won the coin toss, due to Schrodinger's Cat principles, than merely having them put to sleep long enough to get rid of the evidence. After all, the characters had never directly observed the shelter in this timeline; they only knew what it was like in an alternate timeline.
- It's one thing to tell that to the authorities or the courts that kind of information, but here he's basically saying to his victims that he won't be nailed in court for this since aside from their word, there's no evidence at all to go on. Nevermind the fact that he has plenty of money, power and a cult who likely set the entire thing up in the first place to make such a case a battle of attrition.
- As cool of a plot twist as it makes for, was there actually a specific reason why Zero even felt the need to hide the fact that everyone was in the same ward? If the times for when everyone was awake were on a schedule so they never ended up being awake at the same time, there was no real danger I can see that it would pose if they knew they were all in the same ward, just alternating when they were wandering around. I don't see what difference it made acting like they were all inputting their execution votes at the same time either. It wasn't as though it changed anything about it.
- Since this is a game of life and death, separation between each other leads to less chance of trust and more chance of betrayal. The execution votes not being input at the same time doesn't affect the results; it's because they are led to believe that the other groups are in separate wards and would make their votes at the same time, which makes the situation more dire for them since they can't directly agree with each other what choice to make or make sure they won't betray one another, kind of like the Ambidex Rooms in VLR. They also wouldn't be able to let the other groups know in advance if the votes happen simultaniously. Of course, in the True Ending route, they find Gab useful to send messages between each other on their plan, but even then the groups are in conflict of whether or not they were telling the truth in those notes or if they can even keep their word.
- Why is the answer "It was a suicide" not available in the "Suspicion" fragment? If you enter "Junpei" when asked "Who killed Junpei?", you get an error message along the lines of "The dead can't kill anyone." I concede that Junpei couldn't have dismembered himself, but the question is who killed him, not who dismembered him and spread his body parts around the pantry.
- There's no reason to suspect he killed himself, especially BECAUSE he was dismembered.
- The fact that Junpei's body parts were used as parts of the puzzle makes the idea of suicide absolutely laughable. His death had to have been known, anticipated, and incorporated into the original design; Zero isn't improvising this stuff off the cuff.
- How much caffeine was Zero on during the events of the game? Especially given he is over 100, he would get tired monitoring everything. And this is assuming mind hacking is as tough as breathing air. Did he take 30 minutes power naps between every cycle?
- Zero wouldn't need that much rest when you take the way events would have to turn out. From 6 PM until Midnight is when the acid shower section takes place, and all teams are locked in a space with nowhere to go and thus no reason to be observed. If he woke up after that in a timeline where he isn't killed then he'd just have to stay awake for another ten hours at most according to the Active Time file you get when you find out that each team is not awake at the same time.
- So apart from Rated M for Money (or Z in this case as that was what they were aiming for), why exactly did Akane brutally murder Carlos in the AB Game game over where Junpei is killed? 1) She knows about SHIFTing more than anyone else and should have the common sense to know why Carlos might have betrayed Junpei, especially since she'd have heard Carlos's protests 2) Even without such knowledge, there's such as thing as a mistake, and self-protection. 3) By that point, her and Carlos are at least on friendly terms. If they were strangers, I could buy it more, but it seemed incredibly stupid for her to bash a friend to a bloody pulp out of instinct like that. 4) It's completely inconsistent with the Akane presented throughout the rest of the game, and I'd even argue the rest of the series. She's always been presented as being a "hypocritical pacifist" of sorts. The kind of person who's fine with letting people get blown up and murdered, but has the audacity to say that slaughtering innocents & murdering someone directly is wrong.
- Akane is still a regular human beingnote capable of making hasty irrational decisions, especially when Junpei's been murdered. Nobody remembers how or why it happened and logically, in her mind, Carlos was the only other person around in their ward who could have committed the act, which becomes debunked later on but she doesn't know that at this point and is also too Ax-Crazy to care at the moment. The big reason behind her conflicting "calm, cold and calculating" character in the last two games is largely thanks to the fact that she had spent years preparing the Nonary Game and decades the AB Project, and knew exactly how both of them would play out. Here, she is bound to Delta's rules and isn't the mastermind this time, so she had no known way of knowing who killed Junpei or if Carlos was telling the truth or not except as you pointed out, SHIFTing. But she would still have to have been killed by Carlos afterwards to SHIFT first, which just proves her point.
- I get that Junpei dying is bound to set Akane into emotional overload, but the way it's presented in Zero Time Dilemma makes her out to be a crazed serial killer who's grip of her sanity is only maintained by everything going her way and Junpei is alive, which isn't how I ever envisioned Akane. It always seemed like it would have been more appropriate to have her break down emotionally, rather than fly off the handle with rage and beat someone to death because Junpei got killed in an AB Game. The main issue I have is how inconsistently she's portrayed through the game itself. What she does in that scene, and the attitude she exhibits in others are so flippantly different. She's portrayed as a massive hypocrite but not in a way that comes across as intentional. For example, where does she exactly get off telling Junpei that he was being selfish with his plans when they were SHIFTing, even though she straight out forced Junpei & Carlos into having to go along with getting blown up so they can SHIFT in the first place? It's one thing when you make your character intentionally hypocritical with biased audacity, but it's another thing entirely when we're supposed to actually see the flippant stuff they come out with as a consistent personality.
- The subtext isn't hypocritical, it's the situation that just looks that way. While they all did SHIFT initially, they all agreed to do that and nobody was left behind to witness the carnage. They hadn't however established the entire plan, which led to Junpei suddenly forcing Akane to watch both him and Carlos being riddled with bullets in front of her eyes for the sake of the passwords. While she did succeed in surviving and collecting the passwords, she had no say in the matter and was quite upset that Junpei made her go through that, SHIFTing aside. As was stated earlier, this only conflicts with her character from both prior games in which she was the mastermind, and even then the first time wasn't quite her fault since her life was hung in the balance.
- I still think, even with the subtext, that she acts like a hypocrite a lot, although I'm going off the original point here. To get back on topic, like I said, the scene where she bashes Carlos to death makes Akane come across like a insane murderer who's grip on her sanity is kept up only by her life going how she wants it to go, which is not how I've ever envisioned Akane to be. Take note of the fact that she doesn't just hit him over the head, then regret it. Or do it a few times, then go "oh god what have I done". She bashes him to a bloody pulp. That isn't instinctive rage, that's full on insanity. Borderline villain and Well-Intentioned Extremist is one thing, but full on psychopathic killer has never been demonstrated before as being remotely in character for Akane.
- It's not like Akane did it for no reason at all and was only doing it for her own selfish benefit, and a psychopathic killer wouldn't simply kill with emotional passion. Akane's doing it because Junpei died and Carlos was the one who did it by selecting betray. Her motive is simply revenge for Junpei, and it's her rage that clouds her judgement to listen to Carlos. But if that's not enough reason for her actions, perhaps they weren't entirely hers. Remember that Delta can manipulate choices and actions through his Mind Hacking, and we know that includes full on forcing people to murder as we see with Eric in Q-End 2. Combine that with Akane's own trigger (Junpei dying) and she might have been too pissed off to consider why she was bashing Carlos' brains in. Even if she had done that, after a while, it wouldn't have mattered; she was already dead within seconds of the act thanks to the aforementioned choice Carlos had made.
- You seem to have ignored the point I made. A person with a rational and "normal" mentality would respond to such a situation with impulsive emotional rage, before rationality takes hold, which is not how Akane reacted. She went full on lone and battered Carlos to a bloody pulp without a single sense of restraint or rationality, over an extended period (an "extended period" by the scale of a situation like bludgeoning to death that is). I can at least buy the idea that Delta was mind-hacking her though, but, without that, I really can't buy that how she reacted was at all how a "sane" person would react. If Carlos flat out murdered Junpei then that reaction could be more believable, but in a situation where Carlos picked betray in an AB game and makes claims that it was because of SHIFTing shenanigans, her brutally beating him to death without any restraint just makes her seem incredibly mentally unstable. It would've been better in my opinion if Akane had emotionally broken down, brutally verbally interrogated Carlos, then snapped when she began to doubt him, or some such. That'd have given her full-on psycho breakdown a proper build up.
- I got your point, however, you seem to be under the impression that a person thrown into a death game where 6 people are required to die and potentially up to 8 people are opportunistic murderers to get out would have the same "rational and normal mentality" as your average joe does in a regular everyday situation. How could you honestly expect anyone to be in their right mind completely under that much of a threatening and stressful situation? The only person who could was Mira, and she's psychopath certified already. As for Carlos trying to reason with Akane, he could barely get her name out before she bashed his head in. The best Carlos was able to spit out behind his reasoning was along the lines of, "No wait, you picked betray last time!" while Junpei is gasping for breath, curses at him and asks him what the hell he's talking about before, and that's if you picked Ally first. If you decide to pick Betray first, then Carlos has nothing more than "You would've picked betray to protect Akane, so I had no choice but to do the same. Also, I wanted to protect Diana and Sigma." Either way, Akane waking up shortly afterwards to this scene is like being in a nightmare, and she has no reason to believe Carlos didn't do it simply to save his own skin and get the passwords necessary for opening the X-Door, so why should she not kill him? Keep in mind that Carlos didn't just kill Junpei with his choice; he killed Akane too. There's also no time allowed to explain why he just killed Junpei and her, so Akane figured in her anger that she might as well take Carlos down as well. Nothing mattered anymore at that point.
- It still does seem a bit extreme for Akane to beat Carlos to a bloody pulp. That wasn't really "nothing matters anymore", or not being in a rational state of mind due to circumstances, that's more straight out psychotic levels anger and emotional impulse that completely bypassed rationality and logical thought. It's like was stated, if she had struck him a few times and it killed him, then she realized what she had done when it was too late, not only would it have been a much sane reaction, it also would have probably made the scene that much more dramatic and heartbreaking, since in my opinion the way it was actually done just made it seem over the top to the point where it screamed of Rated M for Money. It's the fact that smashes him to a pulp that bothers me, and the fact that her guilt afterwards was over the fact that Junpei died and that she didn't seem to care at all that she just turned someone who was once her friend into a pile of bloody goo. It really does make Akane seem mentally disturbed, whether you consider her reaction "reasonable" or not. And even ignoring whether you think it is or not, the scene still screams of "let's make this really bloody to try and get that Z rating".
- Quick scenario: You're stressed out and scared in a death game that you yourself actually didn't design this time and it's known that 6 deaths are needed before anyone can escape. You just woke up to find out your boyfriend/lover and yourself were just murdered because your other party member just decided to kill them. You see boyfriend/lover gasping for air and swearing at said party member for "saving their own skin" and calling bull at their argument.
Unless you've been in this exact situation yourself (or an extremely similar one), I doubt you can vouch that it "seems like a big stretch" for the likelihood of what could possibly happen here. All we can do is speculate, but given that your whole life and big relationship has just beem ripped out from under your feet however, it's most likely that spiting them by killing them would be the strongest emotionally fueled decision here. And I doubt "My God, What Have I Done?" will be remotely crossing Akane's mind in the 10 or so second she has to live left. - Unless I've been in an exact situation myself, I can't consider someone's actions psychotic or mentally disturbed? Sure I can't tell if Akane's actions were a realistic reaction necessarily, nor a reasonable one, I'm no psychological expert, but there's a difference between reasonable and sane. I'm not necessarily saying that Akane's action wasn't a "realistic" one, given the context of the situation, but from the point of view of most people, that scene makes Akane seem a bit insane, "reasonable" reaction or not. Plus you completely ignored the other point, which is the main point I wanted to make here anyway. That being that the scene really seems like an obvious case of them putting violent stuff in just so they could make the game Darker and Edgier.
- I imagine the line between reasonable and sane are thrown out the window when you've basically been killed. And my point leads into your other one in the sense that regardless, it's portraying Akane's distraught over the situation. Regardless of whether she hits him a few times or 15 times, it's still going to be pretty dark. In the end you can draw whatever conclusion you want, but it's necessary to consider the circumstances behind the action. I would argue that if she wouldn't do this under normal circumstances (and indeed, she only attacks Carlos twice and only when Junpei is killed), then it would stand to reason that she's not insane, just violently angry/distraught, and keep in mind, she has no time to consider her actions after the fact since she is killed soon after. It leaves her personality ambiguous at best.
- I don't necessarily disagree, but I want to point out that insanity, particularly forms of insanity like extreme emotional stability, is far from the measure of how someone would act "normally". In fact, it is by far more the exact opposite, namely, how the tiniest of abnormalities can cause someone to snap and do things they wouldn't ordinarily do. It isn't simply enough to say that someone isn't insane because they wouldn't kill people under "ordinary circumstances". As for the rest of this debate, I'd say it's neither here nor there. Like you say, Akane's character and personality is meant to be ambiguous, in the first place.
- It's much simpler than that. In the timeline where Junpei and Carlos never even play the AB Game, Carlos clearly remembers both timelines, the one where Junpei killed him with his vote and the one where he killed Junpei, and this was completely necessary because it was Carlos's memory of both timelines that delayed the vote long enough for Akane to wake up. SHIFTing requires your life to be at risk. So why did he shift away from the timeline where he'd "won"? Because Akane was beating him to death. The part about mindhacking isn't necessarily something to rule out, either, because this starts a chain of events that leads to Carlos visiting every timeline other than the Golden Ending in which he still had a body to SHIFT into come midnight other than the one in which he was an agent in his own death, namely when he agreed to sacrifice himself to save Akane in "Monty Hall", and this was required to give him the information needed to get Akane and Junpei into the VLR timeline since that occurs in a timeline where C-Team died as a result of the 13:30 vote. The way the SHIFTs through time work in VLR, Sigma's consciousness follows a single unbroken thread. Thus, it was always Old Sigma who was one of the participants in the DCOM experiment—the Sigma that had planned the Nonary Game of 2074 would have no memory of it, because it hadn't happened to him yet. His body had already been replaced with its age-appropriate consciousness. And Young Sigma has no reason to join DCOM; only Old Sigma does. Ergo, the VLR timeline is crucial to ensuring Delta's birth since, in true Stable Time Loop fashion, it's what led to Sigma and Diana meeting in the first place. (Remember that from Sigma's personal timeline, he first met Diana after the DCOM experiment, after he'd already experienced the events of VLR in his older self's body—but from her perspective, she already knew him; it wasn't a chance encounter.) But, on the other hand, there are some implications that Akane was working together with Delta when it came to setting up the events of the 2074 Nonary Game. Which leads me to a question of my own...
- Akane is still a regular human beingnote capable of making hasty irrational decisions, especially when Junpei's been murdered. Nobody remembers how or why it happened and logically, in her mind, Carlos was the only other person around in their ward who could have committed the act, which becomes debunked later on but she doesn't know that at this point and is also too Ax-Crazy to care at the moment. The big reason behind her conflicting "calm, cold and calculating" character in the last two games is largely thanks to the fact that she had spent years preparing the Nonary Game and decades the AB Project, and knew exactly how both of them would play out. Here, she is bound to Delta's rules and isn't the mastermind this time, so she had no known way of knowing who killed Junpei or if Carlos was telling the truth or not except as you pointed out, SHIFTing. But she would still have to have been killed by Carlos afterwards to SHIFT first, which just proves her point.
- In the True Ending, when Delta gives the snail speech for the last time, he says that that one little snail changed every one of their lives. And for the most part, he's right. Mira killed Eric's mother, which led to Akane getting caught up in the Nonary Game of 2018, and as a result Junpei getting caught up in the Nonary Game of 2027. It also led to Sean's death and the creation of Sean 729. And of course, D-Team is entirely comprised of Delta's family members, two of whom were only even in DCOM because of the Stable Time Loop that the events of DCOM created. Which leaves just one wild card. What's Carlos's connection to all this? He is, by virtue of what I stated above, as much of an architect of the VLR timeline as any of them, as Akane literally couldn't have been there without him, and yet he had no prior connections to any of the people in the snail incident. He just happened to be there because his esper instincts told him to. Wouldn't that make him the de facto genesis point of the Stable Time Loop, if there is such a thing? Unless the DCOM experiment itself wouldn't have existed without Delta, it can be theorized that with his motive being the money for Maria's treatment, he'd have been there regardless, unlike at least half the participants.
- So Carlos uses the duplicating machine to transport himself to ten months before the story began. He then waits outside the facility so he can save Junpei and Akane which he does in that one ending. Great. Where is he in the other endings (particularly the twins ending)? Carlos jumped back to before any of the timeline split so this time cloned Carlos should exist in all timelines seen in the game, just like Delta exists in all the timelines due to being transported to before the events started.
- Carlos likely wouldn't have wanted to interfere in the other histories. They have their own versions of him, and the only reason he went back in time and waited was so he could reappear in that one specific history where he no longer existed to go and bust Junpei and Akane out. Should he wind up in one of the other histories, it likely that he would have put together that he existed in the right history at some point in spacetime, so figured it was fine to not get involved, just becoming a displaced element. As for where he ends up, well, who knows. Although, if you want to really wrap things up, you can say that the wrong-history-verions of himself killed themselves, so that they could SHIFT to the right history. In this scenario, only one of these consciousnesses would've actually entered the right body in the right history, while the others may have been forced into the bodies off the versions of Carlos who were all about to kill themselves, basically just swapping places.
- How was Zero able to use his Mind Hack ability in the "Q-Team Executed" timeline? The timeline does contain Decision Games that are essentially random chance, like the Dice Game in the Rec Room or the Monty Hall problem. However, some events in the timeline are not covered by this explanation, like Diana's Decision in the Transporter Room.
- This is supposed to be "explained" via the ambiguous nature of mind-hacking, as it's never made clear exactly when Delta is mind hacking, and what effect this truly has at different parts of the story. Word of God has stated that it's up to interpretation as to who was actually mind hacking the characters at various points: Was it Delta, was it "?" (and by extension was the the player), was it some outside force, or was there no mind hacking involved? In other words, it's a massive case of excusing the plot hole by just shrugging at it.
- I've been thinking, since VLR, that some decisions in these games happen just because there is some possibility for them to happen. For the games trying to go with the many-worlds interpretation and all that.
- So is there any actual explanation for where the transporter came from outside of "aliens did it"?
- No.
- If Sean is programmed to have each and every sense that a normal human has, essentially thinking and feeling in exactly the same way as a normal kid, and his "helmet" is actually his robotic shell's head, how did he not realize something was odd right from the get go? For one thing, he'd be able to 'sense', just like any normal person can, that his head is attached to his own body, and that he isn't wearing a helmet. But moreover, he touches his own "helmet" a large number of times, and Eric grabs his "helmet" as well several times. He would've felt as though himself and Eric were touching his head.
- It's true that Sean has a body capable of feeling, but that is mainly due to an Artificial Biological Tissue coating which has nerves in it. The helmet itself is made of metal and it's thus unlikely there can be any sensation felt when it's touched. It's probable however that there are simulated nerve connections inside the helmet that give the experience of a head trapped inside a helmet, which would explain why he never considers that the helmet is his head.
- He could also just be programmed not to realize it, although this raises the question of why he was made with a bizarre suspicious orb instead of a head in the first place (was robot-face technology not ready yet?)
- It's true that Sean has a body capable of feeling, but that is mainly due to an Artificial Biological Tissue coating which has nerves in it. The helmet itself is made of metal and it's thus unlikely there can be any sensation felt when it's touched. It's probable however that there are simulated nerve connections inside the helmet that give the experience of a head trapped inside a helmet, which would explain why he never considers that the helmet is his head.
- How were Phi, Sigma and Diana cured from Radical-6 in VLR timeline, especially with Phi being the original carrier? Okay, it's possible Phi was put in the treatment pod immediately after the virus broke out (although, iirc, she comes to Akane three months after the Decision Game), but Diana managed to surivive for two years, and Sigma - for some decades until Axelavir was developed much later.
- Either Sigma and Diana managed to not get infected somehow, or they beat the odds; Radical-6 only has a 75% mortality rate, after all. The same applies for Phi but it ultimately wouldn't matter anyway. She gets frozen, thawed out decades later and then re-infected with Radical-6 by the time the AB Project begins in VLR.
- Actually, you can assume that she might not have even been re-infected at all; she might have still had the same infection that Mira gave her.
- Either Sigma and Diana managed to not get infected somehow, or they beat the odds; Radical-6 only has a 75% mortality rate, after all. The same applies for Phi but it ultimately wouldn't matter anyway. She gets frozen, thawed out decades later and then re-infected with Radical-6 by the time the AB Project begins in VLR.
- Why doesn't Junpei recognise Phi during VLR events? They were living in the same facility for a week, and I doubt one drug dose would erase it all.
- Tenmyouji doesn't remember finding Akane even though they spent the same period of time there, so it's not that far-fetched that he wouldn't remember Phi either.
- Alternatively, him not recognising Phi can be chalked up to Phi vastly changing her aesthetic style in ZTD, combined with Tenmyouji's old age. He could've chalked the name up to being a coincidence. Or maybe he just genuinely forget her name and what she was like. He was surviving through an apocalypse, while desperately longing for Akane, and raising a kid. Kinda had his mind focused on other things.
- So, why's Brother still alive? I don't remember any explanation for his age in ZTD and all I remember VLR saying on it was "I donno." Was he just incredibly lucky? Did his wealth somehow let him get super scientist to live that long? Was it from being a teleportation baby, possibly affecting his aging somehow?
- Nothing is explicitly stated, and the only theories we get from Word of God is this Q&A question for Virtue's Last Reward. It all ranges from his powers, to his quantum state, to having the best medical care money can buy, as possible reasons why he's still alive. Also consider that Brother at some point in his life, bought and has access to the Teleporter, which would allow for a version of him to time skip ahead. This would line up with the "rumor" mentioned in that question.
- It probably does have something to do with the teleporter - Brother could use it to keep a version of himself alive into the future, and use his mind hacking powers to keep his memories consistent.
- Nothing is explicitly stated, and the only theories we get from Word of God is this Q&A question for Virtue's Last Reward.
- The impression I got from VLR was that the VLR timeline where six billion people die, Earth becomes hell and humanity is only barely hanging on is nigh-unavoidable, and only by doing all kinds of timejump bullshit with a dream team of espers at the Nevada Test Site can it be avoided (kind of like how Phil Connors had to experience Groundhog Day how many thousands of times to get the one that would get him out of the loop). Yet the VLR timeline seems to have been the result of one highly specific ending. If the entirety of VLR was one giant gambit to prepare Sigma and Phi for the crucible that would be the Nevada Test Site specifically so that VLR wouldn't happen... why was it so easy to prevent it from happening? I get that the characters are going to do everything they can to get out with everybody alive, but as an audience member, it's rather underwhelming that this horror show of a future isn't all that likely, and that all I have to do to save humanity is stop after I hit my first bad ending.
- Sigma knew pretty well that he wouldn't be able to prevent that timeline from occurring due to the nature of the multiverse theory in Zero Escape's franchise, but would instead try to set history on a different timeline. As it turns out from Delta's speech, VLR is arguably one such better outcome because of a terrorist who is going to wipe out all of humanity in all other timelines winds up dying in that timeline. Whether or not that was due to ZTD's development hell causing some changes in detail is up to your discretion.
- More simply: it's "unavoidable" because it had already happened. And needed to have happened, since the Sigma that went back in time—the one that the events of VLR existed in order to send back in time—is the one that fathered Delta in the first place.
- Sigma knew pretty well that he wouldn't be able to prevent that timeline from occurring due to the nature of the multiverse theory in Zero Escape's franchise, but would instead try to set history on a different timeline. As it turns out from Delta's speech, VLR is arguably one such better outcome because of a terrorist who is going to wipe out all of humanity in all other timelines winds up dying in that timeline. Whether or not that was due to ZTD's development hell causing some changes in detail is up to your discretion.
- I just want to know: Where do you think Blickwinkel/"?" from the bonus ending in Virtue's Last Reward appears in Zero Time Dilemma? Virtue's Last Reward foreshadows its involvement.
- He doesn't. The director originally wanted to end VLR on Sigma vowing to change the future while looking at the antimatter reactor explosion. But then the 2011 earthquake happened, and he got cold feet thinking that would make things feel too close to home, so he put in an additional epilogue that would keep the game from ending too depressing. He intended it for it to be mostly non-canonical, as it wasn't voiced in the original Japanese dialogue. But with it being voiced in the English dub, as well as his past writing as you pointed out, people thought that what was non-canon was real, when it only served to partially explain what might have happened after VLR's end.
- Nearly all of Zero's Decision Games exist for a specific purpose. They either set up the necessary conditions for a desired timeline — Delta's birth, the Radical-6 outbreak, Carlos uses the transporter — or reveal a vital clue for the "Force Quit" outcome. There is one, however, that makes absolutely no sense: the big blue "do not press" button. One of two outcomes is "everybody dies, the end", effectively the same as the "Force Quit" outcome sans the participants mind-swapping themselves to the true ending. The other outcome would have happened by default. It may have prompted Sigma to explain his powers to Diana, but this is a moot point since both are promptly murdered and this conversation would inevitably happen in the "Sigma and Diana are trapped for ten months" timeline regardless.
- Delta says that not one of the SHIFTers took a linear path to the Force Quit ending. While this appears to be true—Carlos's knowledge of the alien cards suggests that this was still the same Carlos that made a tour of every other timeline, and all of D-Team remembers their familial relationship—what caused them to SHIFT into that timeline? For that matter, when would Phi have learned that information?
- This is extremely minor, but: Akane instantly solves multiple incredibly-long anagram phrases with the exact correct answer, when even a computer would struggle or would come up with dozens of possible solutions. And yet she can't figure out what word might be made by the letters AEDLT?
- Who exactly pushed for the DNA evidence of Eric's mom's murder case to be reexamined? Resources are limited, because of that, it is impractical to run detailed forensic analysis on every piece of evidence ever found. Typically, when this happens, it is because someone (or a large group of people) is heavily pushing for it. But in this case, by the time the DNA was examined, Akane and Aoi's father had already been executed, their mom had committed suicide, and they had been lied to and believed that their parents both died in some kind of accident. So who exactly is left that believed strongly enough in Akane's dad's innocence enough to actively campaign to have the DNA examined for months or maybe years and possibly raised money to do have it done? Considering that Aoi was responsible for essentially raising Akane after their parents died, and when the two didn't even get reported missing when they were kidnapped, it seems like they don't have any extended family either who could've done so.
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