How many people are mere pawns in this scheme? It's no wonder that most of the players involved sounded very bitter in the Alternate End.
I dunno what's worse. Dying in space or going to his cult place.Well, there were technically a bunch of other Rhizomes on the moon, so they potentially could have found people to help XD
Dio also mentions about taking Sigma and Phi to a place where other people are in one of the endings ^^
One of the few people whom I ended up trusting the most was Luna.
And then she sprang that whole "hey maybe you're a robot!" thing on me, and then started to sound really creepy. I won't deny that I started to suspect her then.
That bit where she appeared out of nowhere outside of the AB rooms was freaky. I thought she was going to go all Terminator on me. Well, in the bad end, she went through the 9 door, and then in the good end she managed to get my sympathy.
How many people are mere pawns in this scheme? It's no wonder that most of the players involved sounded very bitter in the Alternate End.
This whole thing has me questioning whether or not I actually like Akane. At the end of 999, I felt pretty sympathetic towards her, but now? I dunno. Like, I get her motives and actions completely, but I can't help but to think it's rather cruel to go about it this way.
In K's ending he mentions that Akane said that she'd have liked nothing else than to settle down with the man she loved XD
And that essentially it was her turn to save him, like how he saved her
But at the same time, Old Akane and Old Sigma are also trying to save the future from its current dismal fate of Radical-6 and destruction.
So hopefully point E will lead to the happy future for everyone
Though technically, it can't be a happy ending for everyone right? The versions of Junpei and the others in the alternate ending timeline are stuck with what they have.
Sure, a perfect, happy future end is possible, but that'd be a different timeline. Unless I misinterpreted something.
TIME TRAVEL HIJINKS.
Though technically, it can't be a happy ending for everyone right? The versions of Junpei and the others in the alternate ending timeline are stuck with what they have.
Sure, a perfect, happy future end is possible, but that'd be a different timeline. Unless I misinterpreted something.
TIME TRAVEL HIJINKS.
Of course there's that... but think of it like the infinite earths situation. A version of Junpei, etc will end up happy in at least one of them
I understand why Akane (and her brother, somewhere in the background) has to do this, but it doesn't make it any less =(.
The real question is... how long is Ace jailed for :0
I wonder who "Brother" and "Left" are ...
I wonder who "Brother" and "Left" are ...
That's another question I had XD
While most, if not all of the original Nonary game participants/the ones from 999 are now working with the SOIS, Ace/Gentarou being in Jail, the only one really left unaccounted for is Aoi @_@
I wonder what he was up to for the past 45 years instead of being by Akane's side :x
Hopefully Free The Soul didn't eliminate him in the future >.<
Brother is the esper that's in charge of Free The Soul.
Left is the name of Brother's younger brother that was killed in the past.
Brother then went on to create clones of his younger brother Left, which were the Myrmidons.
The clones all were given the same name of "Left", which is why Dio's name is also "Left" because he's the Myrmidon leader of the 4th generation of clones.
Maybe Motomu Toriyama should take some notes for his time travel stories. :vOf course there's that... but think of it like the infinite earths situation. A version of Junpei, etc will end up happy in at least one of them
Yes. And the Alternate End really drives that home--heck Junpei's bit about her not being the same Akane he fell in love with drove that home. I feel bad for the two primary players considering they're sacrificing their lifetimes for this, but I don't know if I have as much sympathy for them.It's just sad when you look at that alternate timeline where everybody essentially got used, abused, and put through hell.
I understand why Akane (and her brother, somewhere in the background) has to do this, but it doesn't make it any less =(.
Brother is the esper that's in charge of Free The Soul.
Left is the name of Brother's younger brother that was killed in the past.
Brother then went on to create clones of his younger brother Left, which were the Myrmidons.
The clones all were given the same name of "Left", which is why Dio's name is also "Left" because he's the Myrmidon leader of the 4th generation of clones.
I suspect that means Dio/Left is ALSO an esper, as Kyle clearly has some ability for that given he got possessed at the end and seemingly took Christmas Sigma's body for a spin.Brother is the esper that's in charge of Free The Soul.
Left is the name of Brother's younger brother that was killed in the past.
Brother then went on to create clones of his younger brother Left, which were the Myrmidons.
The clones all were given the same name of "Left", which is why Dio's name is also "Left" because he's the Myrmidon leader of the 4th generation of clones.
Free the Soul was behind Cradle Pharmaceutical too, right? I can't help but think that Brother and Left are related to people we already know.
H said:This refers to Gentarou Hongou. He was one of the characters who appeared in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. He was the person who supervised the kidnapping of the children who participated in the Nonary Game in 2018. He is the CEO of Cradle Pharmaceutical, and a devoted follower of Free the Soul.
Was Free the Soul mentioned in 999 at all?
I didn't really like the retcon (the only one, iirc) with Ace being simply a Free the Soul pawn. It seemed...kind of weird to turn the central villain of the original game into just a lackey for some secret society.
I also find it interesting with the termite analogy going on with Zero Sr., the name "Myrmidon" means roughly "ant-people".
Was Free the Soul mentioned in 999 at all?
I didn't really like the retcon (the only one, iirc) with Ace being simply a Free the Soul pawn. It seemed...kind of weird to turn the central villain of the original game into just a lackey for some secret society.
Go to sleep. That's what I did. My brain kinda overloaded because the end was such an infodump. I was like, "Fuckin' space?! You're old?! Akane was always here?! The Man Who Leaped Through Time?! Nuclear winter?!" So much stuff to grasp all at once, lol.I also just finished the game about an hour ago and am still cleaning my brain up from off the wall. Geez I'm having a difficult time grasping it. I get the general idea but it's just so out there.
Y'all actin' like May-September romances are impossible up in this thread...I too was a bit sad when I found out Sigma was an adult because I felt like it ruined the relationship with Phi.
I too was a bit sad when I found out Sigma was an adult because I felt like it ruined the relationship with Phi. Then they started pulling out all the quantum stops though and now young Sigma and Phi have to work together to save the world. Yay
To be fair, while it might have been old Sigma's body, it was still young Sigma's mind. So that's somethin'!
I was just glad that Ace was not forgotten in VLR.
I dunno, I figured the girl he saved could've been Phi, while the woman speaking in the transmission was Akane. I actually thought this when I first heard the transmission, and I swear she shares the same voice as 22 year old Akane.I hope in the third game the characters of VLR won't be forgotten. Of course we will see Sigma, Phi and Akane again, but I wonder about Clover, Alice, Quark and Jumpei. Personally I think Luna will again play an important role.
I am pretty sure "Gaulem Luna" had to be modeled after a "real Luna", who was very important to Sigma. My guess is that this real Luna is the girl Sigma saved in 2029 when he lost his arms. The girl that we heard talking about how she killed 6 people during the experiment and basically the whole world. Sigma got the blue bird pendant from her and then passed it on to Gaulem Luna.D
I read that in the Japanese version this woman is voiced by the same VA as Luna. Don't know if it's true, but it makes sense that there is/was a human Luna somewhere.I dunno, I figured the girl he saved could've been Phi, while the woman speaking in the transmission was Akane. I actually thought this when I first heard the transmission, and I swear she shares the same voice as 22 year old Akane.
I think these three people are the woman (Luna, Akane, whoever?) and Sigma + Phi. But with cloning and time travel you never know of course.Also of note: she said there were 3 survivors and 6 dead people. The Mars mission replication is also in an isolated place, so that's gotta be the setting for Volume 3.
That'll probably be the Safe ending of the next game, with a bunch of alternatives then a true ending where you create a positive future.I think these three people are the woman (Luna, Akane, whoever?) and Sigma + Phi. But with cloning and time travel you never know of course.
- Temyouji = Junpei and Old Lady = June/Akane. Old Lady was obvious once I got the card and saw "Kurashiki" and the password JUMPYDOLL. Temyoujunpei was carrying a picture of a girl who he had saved or liked. The picture of the girl worked in the scanner thing and that made me think "this is obviously Junpei since he liked Akane/June so much and going by Akane = Old Lady, yeah that probably solidifies that.".
Some of the twists are way more obvious than in 999, but there's also some pretty extreme misdirections, IE Luna's trolling Sigma into thinking for awhile he was a robot.Tenmyouji being Junpei became so obvious, that for awhile I thought it was a purposeful misdirect and he was actually Santa...
I just don't know quark's place in all of this? Is he just a plot device to create a sense of urgency? After all, he got knocked out pretty early on and was out of action for most of the game.
It's funny because I never suspected Luna was a robot, especially after she kept reassuring Sigma that it was he who was the robot. She was totally tricking me the whole time!
Her ending though is seriously the saddest thing in a game ever - especially with the way Akane and older Sigma treated her like dirt. I also suspect Luna is the robot that K was given as a child as a stand-in mother.
Yes, there is another ending.Apparantly theres a alternate ending if you beat all the puzzles on hard? Did I read that right?
It will be interesting if there was a Zero Escape Vol. 0.
Look over the timeline, there should be a new node to access.Wait...which one's the alternate Ending?
I saw somewhere it involved OLD Akane, but I got all the Gold Files and my final final ending has YOUNG Akane talking to me.
This whole thing has me questioning whether or not I actually like Akane. At the end of 999, I felt pretty sympathetic towards her, but now? I dunno. Like, I get her motives and actions completely, but I can't help but to think it's rather cruel to go about it this way.
As for your spoiler bit: Anyone noticing a recurring theme here? It seems like people who get abducted for a nonary game end up hosting one themselves, with Ace in a prior one, Akane doing the repeat of the one she was in, and Sigma ultimately hosting the one he participated in when his consciousness was younger. Admittedly each of these had a goal, though Ace was a straight up asshole for his.
I'm just going to put this out here: sorry to her fans, but ever since the end of 999 I have had major issues with her. Great and interesting as a character, but definitely morally ambiguous.
The reason I say ambiguous is that due to her esper powers, vision, and willpower, she has put herself in a position of a "master architect" of history. I don't disagree with what she wants to accomplish: save tons of lives and the planet. By itself I would want that, but it comes at a high price, and of course, there are no perceivable alternatives for the saving of lives / elimination of Radical-6 other than Akane's psychological torture games. Where most everybody lives (by the way, this author is showing a reluctance to kill off characters you relate to a.k.a. almost all of the cast of 9 from both games) but you are also objectified. Ask Alice and Clover. At this point, what's being asked of me is to invest faith that the abuse of people and sometimes even their deaths (indulgence of moral hazard), though effectively not real, is for some greater good. Was she acting against the Radical 6 outbreak because it was took innocent lives and was unnatural?
It's not difficult to conceive of a villain who thinks they act in the name of justice. Or ones who develop attachments and feel they love people. I don't know much anything about abnormal psychology but I figure Akane's life experiences must skew her experience of the human condition. Maybe it's me being susceptible to my own power of suggestion (I was dead set on not trusting K and Luna, with results that don't really show to my favor), but looking at Old Akane whenever she talked was the scariest experience in the game for me.
There's a great conundrum that comes from Junpei - Am I supposed to want to give up my life that I've lived (the Rhizome9 history) so that many others may be saved? It's not as easy a decision as it looks. I take issue with Junpei for suggesting that accepting the paths as they happen and doing the best you can with what you've got (a very fuzzy notion) is fundamentally more noble than acting against it, especially considering he got pissed off at those kids abusing animals way back when. And I take issue with saying "Is there really any point to a world where everyone is happy", though in that latter statement it's hard to see where the bitterness ends and begins. But he has that one fair complaint.
And that's another interesting thing about Junpei's situation - how different would his opinion be if his situation changed and the one person in life who ended up making him happy (Quark) was never in his life in the Rhizome9 history? Is his morality essentially self-referential? Maybe it's because he's jaded and stoic, but it seems to barely register that the woman he spent almost his entirely life searching for has changed into a person he doesn't care for. But since Junpei is a true stoic, there's only one option for him - go back to the life he has now. I guess he realized, and Akane probably did too (or she is emotionally resigned to/fixated with her big plans), that they have major philosophical and values differences. Whether or not they grew into it or those differences are more ingrained is anybody's guess. I'm sure they'll still think of each other and remember how they loved each other. The reunion of the star crossed lovers was pointedly underwhelming.
The Zero Escape saga started with Akane's will to live and avert her death. I think she is becoming obsessed with justice in a way that has warped her and I think distanced herself from her noble, sensitive, good nature. I don't trust her. If her desire to live is actually part of some huge gambit to prevent the spread of Radical6 and the explosion of the reactors in the first place...then she has got to be insane, but I would be at least somewhat wrong. I think Akane Kurashiki is the main character of the Zero Escape series, and not we as the player, the fourth dimensional forces (or the character "?") or whatever that assist her plans, however much they make it possible. Whether or not she is a "villain" will be seen later.
I'm just going to put this out here: sorry to her fans, but ever since the end of 999 I have had major issues with her. Great and interesting as a character, but definitely morally ambiguous.
Pretty much plot device, although I still think he's secretly Dio's kid since Dio mentioned that he got involved with women during his Ending (the only time I believe he's telling the truth), and Quark's got kind of the same hair.
But then again, due to the confusing time-line, and Dio not having an official age (if he has an age being a clone), I don't know if Dio having a kid that old is possible.
Random question, does anyone remember how to get the ending where everyone commits suicide in the infirmary with the scalpel?