possibilities are endless! infinite timelines!
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Virtue's Last Reward SPOILER Thread
- Thread starter LiK
- Start date
possibilities are endless! infinite timelines!
Also, another thought I had:
Is the relationship between Akane and even Sigma with Free the Soul ever properly explained? What if you're actually at a different spot in the time blueprint than Akane leads you to believe, and the reason you're being sent back in time in different bodies is to actually facilitate the release of Radical 6?
Then again, that would kinda call in to question Dio's mission.
Hummm.... I'm still thinking there's more to Akane than we know though. After all, one of the bomb deactivation passwords is roughly translated to Kurashiki. And Junpei is extremely unhappy with how his meeting with her went. I can't tell if he just thought she'd be a different person or if he was upset with something else about her.
Is the relationship between Akane and even Sigma with Free the Soul ever properly explained? What if you're actually at a different spot in the time blueprint than Akane leads you to believe, and the reason you're being sent back in time in different bodies is to actually facilitate the release of Radical 6?
Then again, that would kinda call in to question Dio's mission.
Hummm.... I'm still thinking there's more to Akane than we know though. After all, one of the bomb deactivation passwords is roughly translated to Kurashiki. And Junpei is extremely unhappy with how his meeting with her went. I can't tell if he just thought she'd be a different person or if he was upset with something else about her.
MatthewB92
Member
3rd game better give us our bikini time!
CornBurrito
Member
lol...
SoulUnison
Banned
Just finished the game. Feel like my brains leaking out of my ears.
I had so many theories for my first couple routes that ended up not panning out, and a couple that were closer that I could have know, but I kept telling myself were just "too far out" to be possible.
I thought K was going to be Snake. Paired up with Clover and feeling comfortable going by just the letter "K." Reasoning being that "K" is the 4th letter in "Snake" (Referencing Clover's name and previous Nonary Bracelet number) and the 11th letter of the alphabet. 9 + 2 (Snake's previous Nonary Bracelet number) gives you 11. This went slowly out the window, though. First, when he didn't appear to be blind,though I thought that might have been the reason for the suit, but then completely when he gave exposition about his childhood growing up in a facility. (Obviously, *this* facility, since he flashes back to dinner at the table in the same room you're standing in.)
I got trapped at the Two-Headed Lion Login for a looooooong time because I'd just gotten the "Old Woman's" ID Card with "Pass = JUMPYDOLL" written on the back, and was convinced that's what was needed to continue. It didn't help that the actual login and password get given to you as "First Gate' and "Second Gate," so I was convinced that when I finally used those it wouldn't be at the same time.
Speaking of which, there's one point where a character says "JUMPYDOLL" in voiced dialog, and they pronounce it "Joom-pee-Doll." Maybe they were trying to make the connection more obvious, but there's just no reason to look at that password and not pronounce it the way you'd *normally* pronounce "Jumpy." It was a small grating thing.
I got Dio's ending pretty early on and saw the "red Moon," and assumed, like the game wants you to, that it was December 31st, and we were somewhere in the desert. But then later, once they started talking about the Mars mission simulation and some other related concepts, I became terrified that we were actually on Phobos or Deimos, and that was Mars in the sky. I kicked myself for thinking of that, considering it to be "too far out," but, well, turns out I wasn't that far off, conceptually.
Instead, I was pretty sure that we we trapped in the facility that had been designed for the simulated Mars mission. I never came up with any really solid reasoning - I think the best I had was something along the lines of testing the effects of lengthy space travel on groups of untrained strangers to prepare for colonization of Mars - but that was a pretty weak explanation for the Nonary Game or the puzzles and the like involved.
I thought Tenmyouji might be Akane's father or something, searching for his daughter on the run. I hadn't at all considered the idea that we were 45 years in the future - it was another "far out theory" - and so I never considered the possibility that "Old Woman" or Tenmyouji might be Akane and Junpei, respectively. I *did* have a lot of questions about why the world seemed so terrible in Quark's backstory, and why something like Root Beer was so rare and valuable, but I didn't dwell on it long enough.
I didn't really catch/think anything of the "old man" comments pointed toward Sigma. I remember there being a mirror in, I think the Crew Quarters and there was no way to get Sigma to wipe it off or interact with it besides commenting he couldn't see anything in it, but I just brushed that off as it being unimportant at the time and never had a chance to revisit the thought.
In retrospect, though, for the couple of times in the game that Sigma references putting his hands to his face or wiping sweat from his brow, I find it kinda ridiculous he never realized he had a large chunk of metal protruding from and around his eye.
I haven't had an "Oh my god" moment with a video game in a loooong time like I did when I unlocked the Grave Pod in the Garden, found "Myself" and suddenly K goes: "Didn't I tell you I'd be by your side?"
I involuntarily and audibly gave Sigma's reaction, almost word for word, and had to put the 3DS down for a moment.
All that out of the way, I miss the mood of 999, and I hope with the set-up for the third game (A locked down secret facility full of deadly booby traps) we're going to get back to the tension-filled psuedo-horror atmosphere of Volume 1.
I felt like VLR had its sense of dread and violence toned down, while cranking up the coarse language. I also felt like none of the characters actually seemed more than "mildly annoyed" that they'd been abducted and forced into some sick, deadly game, but upon completion most of the participants were either there willingly, part of the plot, or had specialized training.
I also thought the whole "die painlessly in your sleep via lethal injection" angle was waaaaaaaay tamer and less threatening than 999's "there's a bomb in your small intestines" angle.
999 also had descriptions of corpses that made my skin crawl and terrified me, while VLR just has a lot of knives in chests, for the most part. I think the most "violent" bad end was the infirmary scene where Sigma slits his own throat, and even then it was pretty tame, with that slightly narm-y blood splatter effect recycled from a couple other spots in the game.
What was the deal with Alice and Clover claiming Akane had given them a way to return to the past, body and mind? Did they ever explain what it actually *was* and I'm just forgetting it in the massive info dump I just undertook, or are they really going to start introducing flat-out time travel to this series?
Alice's outfit makes absolutely no sense. Unless she's got that thing taped down to the breasts, she should be basically flashing everyone every time she moves slightly, or anyone looking at her, say, from the side. Also, while I'm glad her appearance in 999 was a misdirect and they didn't actually go with the "unthawable Egyptian mummy" angle, I find it HILARIOUS that some special secret agent had her car break down in the middle of nowhere and she had to resort to hitchhiking. That's just laughably incompetent on her and her organization's part.
Speaking of which, I guess that timeline never really "happened" and Akane's the only person who really even saw the possibility of it, but shouldn't SOIS have a psychological screening process, or something? Besides the fact that they were sending Clover, a 22 year old girl on solo operations, she obviously has it in her to snap and axe murder total strangers.
What's up with the dialog you get if you put 8008 into the phone in the crew quarters? That was the first path I took, so I didn't realize VLR's tone was going to be less... horrific, at that point, and I was just fooling around entering random numbers and suddenly I got what I imagined to be something like a real-life Numbers Station. Legitimately creeped the crap out of me, and I still don't know what that message is about/decodes to.
So, final thoughts:
Great game, can't wait for Volume 3. Hope it returns to the tone and sense of urgency of 999 while keeping the scope of VLR.
Wow, I typed a lot. Sorry, guys. Man... This game. I need to go take a nap and sleep on these mind fucks,
EDIT: Quark's hat is dumb. ...Just... Completely dumb. And he *stores* things in there? He's gonna have neck problems by 20.
I had so many theories for my first couple routes that ended up not panning out, and a couple that were closer that I could have know, but I kept telling myself were just "too far out" to be possible.
I thought K was going to be Snake. Paired up with Clover and feeling comfortable going by just the letter "K." Reasoning being that "K" is the 4th letter in "Snake" (Referencing Clover's name and previous Nonary Bracelet number) and the 11th letter of the alphabet. 9 + 2 (Snake's previous Nonary Bracelet number) gives you 11. This went slowly out the window, though. First, when he didn't appear to be blind,though I thought that might have been the reason for the suit, but then completely when he gave exposition about his childhood growing up in a facility. (Obviously, *this* facility, since he flashes back to dinner at the table in the same room you're standing in.)
I got trapped at the Two-Headed Lion Login for a looooooong time because I'd just gotten the "Old Woman's" ID Card with "Pass = JUMPYDOLL" written on the back, and was convinced that's what was needed to continue. It didn't help that the actual login and password get given to you as "First Gate' and "Second Gate," so I was convinced that when I finally used those it wouldn't be at the same time.
Speaking of which, there's one point where a character says "JUMPYDOLL" in voiced dialog, and they pronounce it "Joom-pee-Doll." Maybe they were trying to make the connection more obvious, but there's just no reason to look at that password and not pronounce it the way you'd *normally* pronounce "Jumpy." It was a small grating thing.
I got Dio's ending pretty early on and saw the "red Moon," and assumed, like the game wants you to, that it was December 31st, and we were somewhere in the desert. But then later, once they started talking about the Mars mission simulation and some other related concepts, I became terrified that we were actually on Phobos or Deimos, and that was Mars in the sky. I kicked myself for thinking of that, considering it to be "too far out," but, well, turns out I wasn't that far off, conceptually.
Instead, I was pretty sure that we we trapped in the facility that had been designed for the simulated Mars mission. I never came up with any really solid reasoning - I think the best I had was something along the lines of testing the effects of lengthy space travel on groups of untrained strangers to prepare for colonization of Mars - but that was a pretty weak explanation for the Nonary Game or the puzzles and the like involved.
I thought Tenmyouji might be Akane's father or something, searching for his daughter on the run. I hadn't at all considered the idea that we were 45 years in the future - it was another "far out theory" - and so I never considered the possibility that "Old Woman" or Tenmyouji might be Akane and Junpei, respectively. I *did* have a lot of questions about why the world seemed so terrible in Quark's backstory, and why something like Root Beer was so rare and valuable, but I didn't dwell on it long enough.
I didn't really catch/think anything of the "old man" comments pointed toward Sigma. I remember there being a mirror in, I think the Crew Quarters and there was no way to get Sigma to wipe it off or interact with it besides commenting he couldn't see anything in it, but I just brushed that off as it being unimportant at the time and never had a chance to revisit the thought.
In retrospect, though, for the couple of times in the game that Sigma references putting his hands to his face or wiping sweat from his brow, I find it kinda ridiculous he never realized he had a large chunk of metal protruding from and around his eye.
I haven't had an "Oh my god" moment with a video game in a loooong time like I did when I unlocked the Grave Pod in the Garden, found "Myself" and suddenly K goes: "Didn't I tell you I'd be by your side?"
I involuntarily and audibly gave Sigma's reaction, almost word for word, and had to put the 3DS down for a moment.
All that out of the way, I miss the mood of 999, and I hope with the set-up for the third game (A locked down secret facility full of deadly booby traps) we're going to get back to the tension-filled psuedo-horror atmosphere of Volume 1.
I felt like VLR had its sense of dread and violence toned down, while cranking up the coarse language. I also felt like none of the characters actually seemed more than "mildly annoyed" that they'd been abducted and forced into some sick, deadly game, but upon completion most of the participants were either there willingly, part of the plot, or had specialized training.
I also thought the whole "die painlessly in your sleep via lethal injection" angle was waaaaaaaay tamer and less threatening than 999's "there's a bomb in your small intestines" angle.
Though, granted, in 999, it was only Kubota who *actually* had a bomb inside him, but still.
What was the deal with Alice and Clover claiming Akane had given them a way to return to the past, body and mind? Did they ever explain what it actually *was* and I'm just forgetting it in the massive info dump I just undertook, or are they really going to start introducing flat-out time travel to this series?
Alice's outfit makes absolutely no sense. Unless she's got that thing taped down to the breasts, she should be basically flashing everyone every time she moves slightly, or anyone looking at her, say, from the side. Also, while I'm glad her appearance in 999 was a misdirect and they didn't actually go with the "unthawable Egyptian mummy" angle, I find it HILARIOUS that some special secret agent had her car break down in the middle of nowhere and she had to resort to hitchhiking. That's just laughably incompetent on her and her organization's part.
Speaking of which, I guess that timeline never really "happened" and Akane's the only person who really even saw the possibility of it, but shouldn't SOIS have a psychological screening process, or something? Besides the fact that they were sending Clover, a 22 year old girl on solo operations, she obviously has it in her to snap and axe murder total strangers.
What's up with the dialog you get if you put 8008 into the phone in the crew quarters? That was the first path I took, so I didn't realize VLR's tone was going to be less... horrific, at that point, and I was just fooling around entering random numbers and suddenly I got what I imagined to be something like a real-life Numbers Station. Legitimately creeped the crap out of me, and I still don't know what that message is about/decodes to.
So, final thoughts:
Great game, can't wait for Volume 3. Hope it returns to the tone and sense of urgency of 999 while keeping the scope of VLR.
Wow, I typed a lot. Sorry, guys. Man... This game. I need to go take a nap and sleep on these mind fucks,
EDIT: Quark's hat is dumb. ...Just... Completely dumb. And he *stores* things in there? He's gonna have neck problems by 20.
Yes, definitely. Wish they would've thrown it in as the reward for getting all the gold files or something :\
I had a LOT of the same reactions and suspicions that you did.
Biggest difference is that I was happy the mood wasn't so dark as 999's. I could play VLR for many many hours at a time (and I did, hahaha, about 12 hours in a row to finish the game) but I couldn't say the same for 999. When stuff gets heavy, whether it be a game or a show or a movie I can't handle it too well, I start to get nauseous. That's one of the reasons it took me a very long time to finish 999.
I'm pretty sure Alice and Clover's time-travel stuff has yet to be revealed, but I'm fairly certain it has a lot to do with how they're getting Sigma into the past (the use of a clone, Kyle).
MatthewB92
Member
That works.
That would be covering more skin than her normal clothing does.
Does she really need to be?
Dat Gaulem.
I was kinda disappointed with Clover in this game (kinda bland, model always had her smiling) but Luna and Phi are pretty awesome.
K and old man Junpei are bro-tier.
???
He says he isn't, though? In the timeline where he actually stays with Quark.
It's official merchandise in Japan. I think these are motives for phone cards or something like that and you can order them via the VLR website.
What are they? Posters?
They either want to beat you up for no reason, or escape, and leave you trapped in there forever, and you consider those bros?
Isn't he ok with what Akane is doing though?
If they succeed, Quark won't exist.
SoulUnison
Banned
Oh, also, Sigma makes a joke at one point about losing his contacts, and NOBODY makes any sort of reference to his robot eye!? They just leave it at "You don't wear contacts!"
Phone cards.
Probably cause it'd make it too obvious.
When people call him an old man, sure you get confused, but I don't think that makes it as obvious.
Oh ;(
SoulUnison
Banned
On a meta level, but with how much some of the characters in the game love to poke fun and make puns, I can't believe they just let that slide with "You don't wear contacts!"
I would have expected something like: "Well you're wearing *one.*" Or "Well you only lost *one." At the very least.
Personally, I would have removed Sigma's contacts joke from the script and replaced it with something else.
Well Luna and maybe Quark is the only one that REALLY always sticks with you, everyone else screws you over in other timelines as well. But I liked their personalities most of the time.
And the Quark thing was pretty much explained in the biker metaphor, right?
K was probably my favorite character aside from Sigma... which is... ironic in a way.
I was promised C-Cup Phi! SHE LIED TO ME!
MatthewB92
Member
Tenmyouji told it when you are in Kyle's body. It's near the end.
There is an epilogue timeline if you got through all of the puzzles on hard. The metaphor rests in that timeline.
Finish everything on hard mode, there's more to the story than you've seen
An extra timeline will show up near the bottom right.
pelicansurf
Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
Considering you're swapping and not just tossing your consciousness from timeline to timeline, I feel bad for young Sigma. He keeps getting plucked from whatever he's doing and then murdered or spending the rest of his life locked away in Rhizome 9. The only way this isn't true is if the other timelines get destroyed when you change history, but that's clearly false considering you can still hop from timeline to timeline without issue. RiP Sigmas.
Aaaaaaaaaaall the way on the bottom right. Hard to spot. No "a branch has been unlocked" either.
Aaaaaaaaaaall the way on the bottom right. Hard to spot. No "a branch has been unlocked" either.
MatthewB92
Member
Do you remember when the character you controlling(I guess) has a voice and it's not just text?
MatthewB92
Member
So did you ever go back to the past?
Edit:You did. Something happens after that. Go to the bottom.
All this comes out when they Akane comes out of K's suit in the B-Garden and they take Kyle out of the Treatment Pod there as well, if I recall correctly.
edit: Er, nevermind... Do you have the trophy "A Certain Point of View" ? This trophy signifies you've seen the content we're talking about.
MatthewB92
Member
Something happens after that. Go to the bottom.
Well, then you're missing the last ending, which pops up right below Phi's ending.
You should check on the flowchart, if you really finished all rooms on hard and got all files.
SoulUnison
Banned
Haha, thinking back, I'd like to applaud the scriptwriters restraint for not making any of the obvious jokes when the whole "There's something white on your hand..." scenario begins unfolding.
When they show the picture of Sigma's hand covered in the artificial blood... I like to think I'm a decently mature guy, but I couldn't help but laugh about it.
And, on a darker humorous note, I love that in the path where Sigma uses the Number 9 door to save himself by clamping off his left hand, Alice just suddenly runs into the room and offs herself. At this point you've seen Alice with a blade in her chest or directly watched her/prevented her suicide that I just found it grimly hilarious.
It was like everybody was sitting around pretty level-headedly, surprisingly optimistic for the future and discussing what their next move should be and suddenly Alice bursts in.
"Hey, watch this!"
*Stab*
GAME OVER.
When they show the picture of Sigma's hand covered in the artificial blood... I like to think I'm a decently mature guy, but I couldn't help but laugh about it.
And, on a darker humorous note, I love that in the path where Sigma uses the Number 9 door to save himself by clamping off his left hand, Alice just suddenly runs into the room and offs herself. At this point you've seen Alice with a blade in her chest or directly watched her/prevented her suicide that I just found it grimly hilarious.
It was like everybody was sitting around pretty level-headedly, surprisingly optimistic for the future and discussing what their next move should be and suddenly Alice bursts in.
"Hey, watch this!"
*Stab*
GAME OVER.
Soooooo correct topic. (posting on phone btw. Prob how I goofed) I'm assuming it was the first nonary game that changed Akane forever. It was really sad that to see how bitter Junpei was in the end. That said it was great how we were able to see young Akane again right at the end, but too bad it wasn't the same one we knew. (then again she could have been just faking her act during 999)
Ven: Radical 6 takes its toll. And they illustrate that with Sigma commuting suicide
Ven: Radical 6 takes its toll. And they illustrate that with Sigma commuting suicide
The only reason I found the timeline in question is because I was one trophy away from the platinum and I couldn't figure out what I missed.
The game really doesn't make it obvious that a new timeline opened at that point.
CornBurrito
Member
Err... he isn't. That is why he no longer loves Akane and says she isnt the girl he fell in love with. That's why he gives the story about the bikers.
edit: Beaten. Should have refreshed the page.
SoulUnison
Banned
I assume it was like some kind of hilarious suicide pile-up. Somebody's Radical-6 progressed too far and they killed themselves. Somebody walked in on the scene, fell into complete despair, *their* Radical-6 symptoms kicked up, and *they* offed themselves.
Basically it's like a sick conga line of people coming into the room and offing themselves with the same scalpel over and over until it gets to Sigma.