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[SPOILERS] Zero Time Dilemma Spoiler Discussion Thread [SPOILERS]

calc84maniac said:
I think the idea is that timelines only exist because of decisions. Not just decisions, but intentional decisions. For example, the timelines where Carlos or Diana press the yellow button and kill 6 people would not exist without Delta intervening with the Mind Hack, because they would not have made that decision themselves.

People tend to act in certain ways, and it's not implausible that these tendencies will ultimately lead to only a certain set of outcomes.

In this way, Delta must be intentional in order to create a timeline where everybody's powers are fully awakened, or one where the AB project occurs, or one where he and Phi are born.
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But Akane specifically said there are worlds which does not have any life forms. Furthermore, it makes even less sense considering the dice game had different outcomes despite having the same intentions.

You're onto something, but I don't think there is anything in the game that supports this theory. I do hope you are right though.
 
So i finish d the game and have all the trophies except "still a rookie" which is to complete one quest.... what am I missing here? Is this bugged? How do I have all the others except this one?
 
Seth said:
So i finish d the game and have all the trophies except "still a rookie" which is to complete one quest.... what am I missing here? Is this bugged? How do I have all the others except this one?
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That's weird. Maybe just start a new game and quickly do another quest/puzzle room and then it'll unlock?
 
I think I've finally discovered a mathematic expression that explains Zero's motives:

Let z be Zero's Motives. If so, then:

z=-z*

Q.E.D.
 
Taruranto said:
That's... what I said?
Does it? What prompt her to basically ruin her own life to maybe create a new timeline that will.... be just another timeline in the infinite numbers of timelines? It doesn't even "fix" her world, ultimately whatever happened on Mars will create infinite words that won't affect her one bit. Not to mention, how many bad timelines were born from that act? How many lives were ruined?

Am I the only one that feels it's a pointless exercise? Like trying to fill the ocean with more water?

Yeah Akane, you created a timeline in which you stopped the terrorist and the virus. Next week: Someone takes the wrong road and over 800 bad timelines are born.

Uh...
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Again, Junpei in VLR addresses this; it's going to matter to the 6B people that Akane saves.

Akane can only do so much, she can't save everyone in every timeline. But it would be really weird to not bother to try to save 6B people just because you know you cannot save an infinite number of people.
 
I'll ask here, since it's more active than the OT, and I'm gonna list some fragment names and info...

So I'm totally stuck right now.
I just got to Door of Truth, but I don't know the password.
The only fragments I have available are the rightmost one for 3-Way Standoff and the right for Who Killed Mira. But I can't think of a 4th name, and the event connecting to Mira's killer (assuming based on the timeline) is locked

The fragments following The Stranded Pair, Carlos's Sin, The 99.537%, Anthropic Principle are there, but locked.
In team select, 5 in C-Team are locked (in middle, left 2 of second row, middle of 3rd row, middle 2 of bottom row), 4 in Q-Team are locked (left 2 of top row, left 2 of second row), 2 in D-Team are locked (top right and leftmost of 3rd row).

So what do I do here?
 
Busaiku said:
I'll ask here, since it's more active than the OT, and I'm gonna list some fragment names and info...

So I'm totally stuck right now.
I just got to Door of Truth, but I don't know the password.
The only fragments I have available are the rightmost one for 3-Way Standoff and the right for Who Killed Mira. But I can't think of a 4th name, and the event connecting to Mira's killer (assuming based on the timeline) is locked

The fragments following The Stranded Pair, Carlos's Sin, The 99.537%, Anthropic Principle are there, but locked.
In team select, 5 in C-Team are locked (in middle, left 2 of second row, middle of 3rd row, middle 2 of bottom row), 4 in Q-Team are locked (left 2 of top row, left 2 of second row), 2 in D-Team are locked (top right and leftmost of 3rd row).

So what do I do here?
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Have you seen every possible outcome for the voting at the start? If not, do it immediately. The game remembers the last vote you made for each team so just work through them in order until all those symbols near the top of the flowchart are lit up. The password you need is after Stranded Pair, which should be available to you straight away if you've cleared every possible event up to this point. The 3-way and Mira events you are missing don't unlock anything.
 
Kal-El814 said:
Again, Junpei in VLR addresses this; it's going to matter to the 6B people that Akane saves.

Akane can only do so much, she can't save everyone in every timeline. But it would be really weird to not bother to try to save 6B people just because you know you cannot save an infinite number of people.
Click to expand...

If she wanted to save a lot of people, she should have spent the next 40 years flipping a coin.

Even if she flipped a coin for an just an hour, and we assume flipping a coin takes 5 seconds, and she does it every day, that's approximately 10512000 timelines, and in each of them 2 billions of people get saved!

Jokes (?) aside, what is ZTD Akane going to do now? Even if she "saved" this timeline, a bad timeline is bound to be born at some point, one way or another. Sure, they'll stop the terrorist. In this timeline. But a timeline in which they failed will also be born, one way or another. (Maybe they made a wrong choice along the way or they simply... failed) Will Akane try to fix that too? What about the future, after that? Is Akane going back in time to fix stuff every time humanity fucks itself (Remember, every time someone makes a choice the world is diving itself!)?

Sorry, but to me, "Akane was trying to save the world" only worked when I didn't know much about the nature of the world and Radical 6 looked like an inescapable fate.

The whole thing feels like an endless game of cat and mouse (with infinite cats and mouses lol).
 
Taruranto said:
If she wanted to save a lot of people, she should have spent the next 40 years flipping a coin.

Even if she flipped a coin for an just an hour, and we assume flipping a coin takes 5 seconds, and she does it every day, that's approximately 10512000 timelines, and in each of them 2 billions of people get saved!

Jokes (?) aside, what is ZTD Akane going to do now? Even if she "saved" this timeline, a bad timeline is bound to be born at some point, one way or another. Sure, they'll stop the terrorist. In this timeline. But a timeline in which they failed will also be born, one way or another. (Maybe they made a wrong choice along the way or they simply... failed) Will Akane try to fix that too? What about the future, after that? Is Akane going back in time to fix stuff every time humanity fucks itself (Remember, every time someone makes a choice the world is diving itself!)?

Sorry, but to me, "Akane was trying to save the world" only worked when I didn't know much about the nature of the world and Radical 6 looked like an inescapable fate.

The whole thing feels like an endless game of cat and mouse (with infinite cats and mouses lol).
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The biggest and funniest irony is that Tenmyouji basically tells off Akane for treating timelines like they're disposal and in the end her timeline ends up being disposal as well.

It's just so incredibly funny.
 
PK Gaming said:
The biggest and funniest irony is that Tenmyouji basically tells off Akane for treating timelines like they're disposal and in the end her timeline ends up being disposal as well.

It's just so incredibly funny.
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I think that's what I like most about the ending, Delta going "what, isn't this the exact outcome you wanted?" and Akane's just as played as everyone else.
 
Yeah Akane's motive seems so.....pointless now that we know more of how timelines work.

VLR led me to believe radical 6 was some nearly unavoidable fate that almost all timelines were destined to run into, the plan was to find the "stein's gate" and create/jump to the world where radical 6 doesn't happen.
 
The Silver said:
Yeah Akane's motive seems so.....pointless now that we know more of how timelines work.

VLR led me to believe radical 6 was some nearly unavoidable fate that almost all timelines were destined to run into, the plan was to find the "stein's gate" and create/jump to the world where radical 6 doesn't happen.
Click to expand...

That was what happened though? The thing is, except for the timeline where delta is convinced to let the shifters handle the terrorist, he presumably still releases radical 6 in some manner to kill him... But we never see that except in the one timeline.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
That was what happened though? The thing is, except for the timeline where delta is convinced to let the shifters handle the terrorist, he presumably still releases radical 6 in some manner to kill him... But we never see that except in the one timeline.
Click to expand...
Ah I never really got the sense he still released it(mainly in the branch where he's dead) because well...it's never brought up by anyone.

Thinking more yeah it is possible he left instructions behind and such but i guess because the game treated radical 6 as such an afterthought(besides the VLR route) my brain just assumed it didn't get released in every timeline.
 
How can everyone be mad at Delta for killing people in other timelines when they do the same thing.

Overall, was not a fan of this format.
The multiple perspectives made things confusing, and all the recapping was annoying.

Really hated Mira and Eric, they felt so out of place and forced.
 
That was a kind of "afterword" written in a conversational format. In that scenario there was no meaning to supplement main story.
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wat


If there is a theory that makes more feasible or convincing than mine, you can adopt it as your canon.)
Click to expand...

WAT

To be honest, I'm not sure I understand what is he trying to say.

Is he even saying anything?
 
TheGeniusArcana said:
I'm only just now seeing this, but apparently Uchikoshi explained the absence of "?" and Kyle in ZTD a few days ago on Twitter. It still kind of just reeks of retcon to me in all honesty.

https://twitter.com/pain1227/status/762932061883736064
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- Another Time is non-canon
- ? as a concept is only introduced in Another Time
- ? totally influenced the canon outcome of VLR
- Make up your own canon
- Wait until 2028 for the truth to be revealed about the non-canon thing

Schrödinger's Canon. Please make up your mind, Uchikoshi.
 
TheGeniusArcana said:
I'm only just now seeing this, but apparently Uchikoshi explained the absence of "?" and Kyle in ZTD a few days ago on Twitter. It still kind of just reeks of retcon to me in all honesty.

https://twitter.com/pain1227/status/762932061883736064
Click to expand...

So, decided to post all of his tweets in order here as they'll probably be lost over time on Twitter:

-First of all, it seems necessary to clear up the misunderstanding about Kyle and "?".
-So-called "? END/Another Time End" was added as anomalistic irregular bonus.
-That was a kind of "afterword" written in a conversational format. In that scenario there was no meaning to supplement main story.
-That was a story in higher realities/dimensions and metafiction. That is not connected to main story time-sequentially.
-Therefore that is not canon. Main story of VLR ends in the hiding place of Crash Keys on April 13 in 2029.
-When young Sigma saw the explosion through the window. That's the ending as canon of VLR.
-When we were recording the voices of VLR, a big earthquake (2011 Tohoku earthquake) occurred in Japan.
-Nearly 20,000 people died due to that disaster. We saw the horrible devastation and thought this.
-"I wonder if the ending of VLR should keep it this way. Isn't it necessary to add a story which gives dream and hope to people?"
-As a result "Another Time End" was added.
-Thus there is no voice in that scenario in the Japan version. Because I wrote it after the voice recording.
-I think I made two mistakes in VLR. [1: I added the voices in "Another Time End" in the international version.]
-[2: In the flowchart, I put "Another Time End" on the place after/below Phi End.]
-For these reasons, many players misunderstood as if "Another Time End" is canon. I really regret that.
-When creating ZTD, I wasn't based on "Another Time End". Because not every players of VLR saw "Another Time End".
-There are a lot of players who didn't get all Gold Files. I wanted to make ZTD so that even they can enjoy the story.
-Then, was "Another Time End" all nonsense? Was it meaningless? Of course that's not true. I'll explain.
-(However what I write from now is not necessarily the correct answer. Id like you to interpret this as one of the tentative theory
-Because Zero Escape series has already been out of my hands, and now it's owned by the players.
-If there is a theory that makes more feasible or convincing than mine, you can adopt it as your canon.)
-It goes without saying that what is the identity of "?". It's as many players are presuming.
-At least, I wrote "Another Time End" in VLR with the intention of it. Also there is no doubt that "?" intervened in ZTD.
-In order to imply that, the ability of Mind Hack by Delta was set to resemble the things that "?" can do.
-You can choose one you like from the following 3 theories. The character did it or Delta did it or "?" did it. The choice is yours
-In passing, I'd tell you about Kyle. I said that "Another Time End" was metafiction.
-Therefore I'd like you to interpret Old Akane's words in "Another Time End" as metafiction.
-This means that she was talking toward the player in this REAL WORLD.
-She said "He (Kyle) has arrived at December 25th, 2028." And now is 2016. This year isn't 2028. This is my plan.
-I'm often asked like "Where is Kyle?" The short answer is this. "He will be in 2028." I hope this is useful for you. Thank you!
Click to expand...
 
PK Gaming said:
If any of my alternate universe selves try to switch places with me so help me God...
Click to expand...

You will swap places with another version of yourself where an axe is about to be lodged into your skull and I'll be transported to one where a building comes crashing down on top of me. That will be fun.
 
Sumio Mondo said:
You will swap places with another version of yourself where an axe is about to be lodged into your skull and I'll be transported to one where a building comes crashing down on top of me. That will be fun.
Click to expand...

No, you see: All of myselves with be shifters. So every time the axe comes down someone shifts, and the replacement shifts as well, creating a never-ending shifting loop.
__
__
Actually, I was hoping for an explanation tying into Lotus's B computer speech from 999. Remember that? Her theory was that human beings were similar to Computer monitors keyboards; the soul resided elsewhere.

This could have given a satisfying answer to everything, actually, alternative time-lines and all. If the game went with that route, the explanation to shifting, 999, and everything else would basically have been: 'Well, everyone version of a person in every reality is ultimately the same person: Each person has a single soul experiencing every scenario independently; each instance of a person has no memory of the other realities, but the soul does. So, each soul would basically exist in something like the decision game itself.

The idea to stop Radical 9 would be so that everyone can have at least one reality where they survived, which wold at least be agreeable to their 'souls.'

All of this would have opened interesting philosophical and 'what-if' questions to boot.
__
__
Of course, this was all speculation and I figured the game would take a different route; I was hoping for something even more interesting. Instead, we get: "Doesn't matter; timelines. Complex!"
 
Do you know what could have been pretty cool (or at least to me, lol)?

That they would've added another short Another Time/secret ending for ZTD, in which Delta shows up and talks to you (the player) in the "real world" timeline, saying: "Now that you've seen the whole picture, it's time for us to set up everything so it goes as planned", or something like it... hell, they could even add a "Oh, and Kyle is also coming to help out soon!" lol. I know it sounds somewhat stupid, but even with just that, at least I would have been a little bit more satisfied haha.
 
Narroo said:
No, you see: All of myselves with be shifters. So every time the axe comes down someone shifts, and the replacement shifts as well, creating a never-ending shifting loop.
__
__
Actually, I was hoping for an explanation tying into Lotus's B computer speech from 999. Remember that? Her theory was that human beings were similar to Computer monitors keyboards; the soul resided elsewhere.

This could have given a satisfying answer to everything, actually, alternative time-lines and all. If the game went with that route, the explanation to shifting, 999, and everything else would basically have been: 'Well, everyone version of a person in every reality is ultimately the same person: Each person has a single soul experiencing every scenario independently; each instance of a person has no memory of the other realities, but the soul does. So, each soul would basically exist in something like the decision game itself.

The idea to stop Radical 9 would be so that everyone can have at least one reality where they survived, which wold at least be agreeable to their 'souls.'

All of this would have opened interesting philosophical and 'what-if' questions to boot.
__
__
Of course, this was all speculation and I figured the game would take a different route; I was hoping for something even more interesting. Instead, we get: "Doesn't matter; timelines. Complex!"
Click to expand...

Well that's exactly what I thought he was hinting strongly at when we were revealed with Sean and his clone bodies and the "mother board" that controlled all of the processes. And then when Zero said about that theory that pretty much sounds exactly the same as what you were saying with the "soul resides elsewhere, bodies exist in every timeline tied to that one soul". It was a pretty chilling moment for me since I thought Uchikoshi would pursue that kind of plot but instead we get Delta and mindhacks, complex motives and the character screwing alternative versions of themselves into horrific deaths. The only part of the latter that made sense for the characters to go "wait, this is kinda fucked" when just Mira and Eric were the only two not giving a rat's ass when they are the two sociopathic serial killers of the group, so at least that made sense but really, I was more than a little bit disappointed that there was no realt twists or revelations that really shocked me in a good way like the previous two games did.

Both 999 and VLR made me audibly go "woah" at some of the twists/revelations in those games, all in really good ways. I laughed at some of the hilarious OTT moments in ZTD like Akane going batshit with the chainsaw and seeing video footage of Carlos with his crazy eyes but aside from that...yeah, felt lacking. Wasn't big on the whole Phi being Sigma and Diane's daughter either which was the only other "big" moment aside from the short as fuck final ending.
 
I always considered the secret ending of VLR to be a teaser trailer and VLR's story being pretty much self contained, if it wasn't for that, i.e. when it ends with the explosion.
Unfortunately, Kyle missing was far from being the biggest problem of the overall story. In fact, it didn't even occur to me until others brought it up. There's too many other blatant holes.
 
Finished this for a second time today. I liked it even more this time. The more I think about it, the more I think it's slightly better than VLR.

GOAT gaming trilogy.
 
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