semiconscious
Member
my theory: the version of ztd in the timeline that tricky plays it in is much better than the version in all the other timelines
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[SPOILERS] Zero Time Dilemma Spoiler Discussion Thread [SPOILERS]
- Thread starter Yasumi
- Start date
my theory: the version of ztd in the timeline that tricky plays it in is much better than the version in all the other timelines
...Funyarinpa
Member
Heh. Probably true, too.
So tired of wet fart endings to long-running gaming sagas. It's gotten to the point that any that manage to pull it off are immediately remarkable and memorable. Even Danganronpa 3 as an anime, so far, is doing a better job at being compelling as the final chapter in a saga than ZTDa gamemanaged to be,
lucablight
Member
I thought the group winning the coin toss being the ones to actually die was pretty cool with the whole "life is so unfair" theme.
Delta explaining why he released radical 6 was also pretty cool.
The Diana ending is one of the best scenes in the series.
Tricky I Shadow
Banned
Off the top of my head:
* D-END 2.
* Everything involving Carlos, Akane and Junpei jumping from timeline to timeline.
* Sigma and Diana seeing themselves dead.
* The separate wards not existing and the way time really worked.
* The flowchart changing.
* The Delta reveal.
Nah, he definitely cares.
Funyarinpa
Member
I'll give you #1 and #3, but Delta's motives for releasing Radical-6 is one of the lowest points of the whole game for me. Out of nowhere, no buildup, goes nowhere.
While I did like those (except the Delta reveal), I must say that for me none of them except D-End 2 really carried the emotional weight of, say, "Junpei Tenmyouji" or Sigma's face under K's mask. While VLR did have twists similar to the ward one, in that there wasn't much emotional attachment to them, there were many twists that played with your emotions as well in both VLR and 999 such as the Snake fakeout, or Akane=0, or inspecting the old woman's corpse only to find a card with ID: KURASHIKI/PASS: JUMPYDOLL, or Luna calling you "Doctor" out of fucking NOWHERE as her artificial tissue disintegrates and she dies. In ZTD, the only similar emotional moments I found were D-End 2 and that one GAME OVER where Sigma dies in Diana's arms, mistaking her for Luna, and perhaps the dialogue between Sigma and Diana about "woman D", who lived with Sigma on the moon for three years. There weren't (m)any philosophical or scientific concepts used throughout the whole game either. 999 had the digital root, and the doors. VLR had the AB Game, the Prisoner's Dilemma. ZTD? The fragments were not used in an interesting way in the slightest. Instead, they barred all possible character development (when characters forget what happened in the rest of the game, they always wake up their initial selves) and killed my engagement with the characters since I always knew more than they did. The team system stinted character interaction by (almost if not) always limiting character interactions between three people at once. Even though there were many great, emotional, new tracks, it was "calm moment= Placidity remix, sad moment= blue bird lamentation or morphogenetic sorrow, stressful moment= Tinderbox", with a really good new song for the credits.
clay_ghost
Member
Recon Recon Recon. Well it's a possible time line.....
now that i've had a few weeks to process this game, it's less of a matter of 'jesus that was disappointing' and now i have to consider where in the realm of disappointing games it sits. maybe right next to phantom hourglass: the game which had comparisons to link's awakening before its release and the first nintendo ead zelda game since that game boy title. link's awakening is mysterious, intriguing, and clever, with an honest story and a wonderful fit for the hardware. phantom hourglass is a dumb proof of concept that manages to make aspects of the wind waker worse.
and that's what ztd is to me. 999 is this wonderful thing. the issues that you can have with the game, i don't even consider to be meaningful issues. locked paths in a multiple-ending setup is integral to feeling trapped in a timeline - it helps with that feeling of claustrophobia and zero escape. the twists come out of surprises from what we know of the characters, and it incorporates hardware into the story for a twist that is shown and not told. the writing isn't perfect, but the design, intentional or not, is damn close.
i don't like vlr as much because of 999. vlr traded the smart, tough design choices for some more basic ones that make the game flow better for its game elements, but come apart a bit as a whole. there's also some outside interference with the 3d models, anime, and danganronpa-inspired mascot creature. still, it manages to try something interesting out of its own games and systems, even though it doesn't quite bring it all together like 999 did. i
ztd just goes off the deep end. the presentation stars stiff animations, bad direction, and weird 3d models, and the writing mistakes melodrama for heart and dimension-hopping for clever storytelling. as part of a series, it's easily the worst one.
and that's what ztd is to me. 999 is this wonderful thing. the issues that you can have with the game, i don't even consider to be meaningful issues. locked paths in a multiple-ending setup is integral to feeling trapped in a timeline - it helps with that feeling of claustrophobia and zero escape. the twists come out of surprises from what we know of the characters, and it incorporates hardware into the story for a twist that is shown and not told. the writing isn't perfect, but the design, intentional or not, is damn close.
i don't like vlr as much because of 999. vlr traded the smart, tough design choices for some more basic ones that make the game flow better for its game elements, but come apart a bit as a whole. there's also some outside interference with the 3d models, anime, and danganronpa-inspired mascot creature. still, it manages to try something interesting out of its own games and systems, even though it doesn't quite bring it all together like 999 did. i
ztd just goes off the deep end. the presentation stars stiff animations, bad direction, and weird 3d models, and the writing mistakes melodrama for heart and dimension-hopping for clever storytelling. as part of a series, it's easily the worst one.
Azure Phoenix
Member
The culprit being an invisible blind deaf wheelchair bound 100+ year old Mr Freeze ripoff who travelled through time, can manipulate minds and set up the entire game for complex reasons compares to the emotional impact of Luna's ending? Can I borrow the copy of the game you've been playing?
but what about the important questions the reveal raises, like, 'what?' and, 'huh?'
Tricky I Shadow
Banned
VLR definitely had a lot more twists than ZTD, but to be fair ZTD didn't have the advantage VLR had since it had to finish off lots of loose ends that VLR created.
The fragment system grew on me. I eventually loved piecing everything together and figuring out who killed who, why and when.
I'll agree that the whole three different teams set up restricted a lot of potentially awesome character interactions, but the separate wards twist kinda makes up for that for me.
I generally agree with your music complaints, but I do think both Transient Tranquility and Glacial Solitude are two really awesome new tracks. Like you said, the ending credits music is REALLY good too.
It's one of my favourite twists from the entire trilogy. Fight me. All the foreshadowing makes it even better! I especially love the anagrams:
Let's inhibit the virus! = The truth is invisible.
Let the game end where I treat two = Together with me Delta, we are ten.
And people need to drop this whole "complex motives" thing. I mean it would deserve to get criticised if that's all he said, but Delta, you know, actually does explain his motives after he says that....
Funyarinpa
Member
I didn't find the Fragment system interesting enough, personally. The "who's the killer?" and similar segments did pique my interest, but it also actively hurt emotional moments (such as Mira's reveal, or the incinerator) when I got them so early in the game. There isn't any mystery that encompassed the whole game and kept me guessing the whole time through, either.VLR definitely had a lot more twists than ZTD, but to be fair ZTD didn't have the advantage VLR had since it had to finish off lots of loose ends that VLR created.
The fragment system grew on me. I eventually loved piecing everything together and figuring out who killed who, why and when.
I'll agree that the whole three different teams set up restricted a lot of potentially awesome character interactions, but the separate wards twist kinda makes up for that for me.
ZTD's job *was* harder since we knew who was there, and why, but that doesn't excuse how it treated many of the lingering questions about VLR, practically anything about Radical-6 or Free the Soul to be exact. "I'm brother and btw there's this evil terrorist that'll kill all EIGHT billion if I don't kill SIX billion" was the most frustrating plot twist in the series, especially since it's just dropped and then used for nothing.
Doesn't make his motives any less pretentious. "I tortured you all across multiple timelines so that I could be born as a Mind Hacc'er" is fucking hilarious, literally laughed out loud as he was explaining that. The terrorist deal was just mentioned, not taken anywhere, and the lack of a reaction to Delta being Brother -or having no exploration whatsoever as to what that means for Left and Dio, and the supposed Dio clone that was supposed to be on the test site- is just sad.
Flying kicks in the face of Delta, a hilariously goofy scene against some Dark Q in C-Team, that anime-ass, INCREDIBLY CRINGEWORTHY speech at the end- every single risk ZTD takes, and practically every thing that it SHOULD have had a really good answer to, is terribly executed or an afterthought. Or like the Q= Delta twist, both.
Don't get me started on the series climax being a pointless bomb sequence and a "SHIFT or not?" choice that carries no emotional weight whatsoever, which also DIRECTLY contradicts VLR's point about stronger espers zoning out the ability of lesser espers to access the Morphogenetic Field.
I do agree that the anagrams were very good. Though my favorite is Zero Time Dilemma being an anagram of "Me? I'm Zero. I'm Delta."
R_thanatos
Member
I will pop-up and say this , i agree with this .. The "complex motives " meme is , IMO stupid.
His motives were so complex , he needed 3 explanatations in the game where he does explain things , to akane in that bad ending , the recording and the part at the end.
People often only stop at the ending moment when delta gives as zero plenty of informations reguarding his motives.
Azure Phoenix
Member
Except it, you know, doesn't actually attempt to finish off almost any loose ends apart - apart from the few main ones that it makes a dogs dinner of.
Greatest Ever
Member
Oh god lmao no
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
The radical 6 reveal might be one of the low points in gaming storytelling history. After all the buildup in the previous game, the reasoning is that some fanatic was going to kill 8 billion people, so Delta kills 6 billion in the hopes that the fanatic is one of them? My brain can't even process the sheer idiocy involved with that decision.
Sumio Mondo
Member
I found the alien technology "twist" pretty horrible too. I'm probably in the minority on this but i really disliked the Phi twist as well (being Sigma and Diane's daughter). The fact that Phi suddenly has red eyebrows when that wasn't hinted at in VLR (they looked black in-game in VLR?). And Phi raising herself in the future? Ugh...
I just finished this game! It was really interesting with lots of thought-provoking concepts. Still, i wish they had taken those concepts a little further. I didn't really feel like there were any big twists either, especially compared to the first two games. The character animations meanwhile didn't bother me in the slightest - I'm sure they were on a fairly tight budget. Would have been cooler to do it 999 style though in that case. But it was definitely a relief to not have to keep pushing the a button to go through the Dialogue lol.
I felt the puzzles were very easy, and some of them were disappointingly short.
Certainly a fun game, loved the general atmosphere. There were some great moments there. But can't help but feel a little cheated. It could be that i prefer the first two games because they were one of the first visual novels i played. But even so...
Here's hoping DR3 exceeds DR1 and DR2!
I felt the puzzles were very easy, and some of them were disappointingly short.
Certainly a fun game, loved the general atmosphere. There were some great moments there. But can't help but feel a little cheated. It could be that i prefer the first two games because they were one of the first visual novels i played. But even so...
Here's hoping DR3 exceeds DR1 and DR2!
GhostTrick
Banned
Nah, I disliked it too. I feel like it wasn't worth the teasing around Phi in VLR, and it felt pretty half arssed.
I like that twist a lot, but I liked it less when I looked back to VLR and saw that the color of her eyebrows wasn't consistent. Lame; so it was just another thing they had made up for ZTD.
Alien technology is probably the dumbest thing there is. The pure essence of a deus ex machina.
Sumio Mondo
Member
On a positive note: The twists/revelations that I did like were the ones regarding the layout of the sectors/rooms and the time differences and what happened to them after they slept, Sean's "identity" (android kid with all of those production bodies lined up), what caused Carlos and Akane to go batshit crazy in that one scenario (that whole scene made me laugh my ass off with how crazy it got) and Eric's fucked up backstory (felt kinda Silent Hill esque, he reminded me a little bit of Eddie from SH2, for some reason).
KuwabaraTheMan
Banned
I thought that the way the twist was done with Phi was good, and I felt like the scenes were well executed, and probably some of the strongest material in the game, but the actual idea of her being Sigma's daughter didn't really line up well.
Oh, and fuck that whole idea of old Phi raising young Phi from the notes.
Funyarinpa
Member
Phi being the daughter of Sigma and Diana is fine for me bar the eyebrow retcon, but the thing is, that's just Phi's *origins*. Save for a few words on a file, we never learned what her life was even like. We learned where Phi came from, not who Phi is.
Also, Phi being raised by herself was a twist lifted from one of Uchi's earlier works, so there's that too.
Also, Phi being raised by herself was a twist lifted from one of Uchi's earlier works, so there's that too.
It's kinda hard to care about Phi when I feel like she's barely in the game lol. I guess I don't dislike the twist itself, the scene with Diana hugging her when she finds about it is one that really stuck with me (Positively), but... the game does nothing with it. We don't even get to know what happens to them after the game. Nothing.
It's certainly not what I expected from VLR, however. I always felt like the game hinted as some kind coco-path-tier revelations that tied together Phi, Her mother, Radical 6 and Mars Site, but as far these things being connected... meh.
It's certainly not what I expected from VLR, however. I always felt like the game hinted as some kind coco-path-tier revelations that tied together Phi, Her mother, Radical 6 and Mars Site, but as far these things being connected... meh.
Tricky I Shadow
Banned
**shrugs**
I thought the game answered enough questions. I can see why some of you would be disappointed, but for me I didn't think absolutely EVERYTHING had to be answered.
Considering the insane amounts of questions VLR left open, I honestly thought ZTD did a good job covering most of the important stuff.
That was kinda explained.
Phi said she changes her hair white because she doesn't like having orange hair. It's not outright stated, but she obviously changed her eyebrow colour from orange to black in VLR but didn't in ZTD.
PumpkinPie
Banned
Most disappointing game I've played... well, maybe ever. So many questions, so much bullshit. I'll elaborate once my tears have dried
So what happened to Diana, Phi, and Sigma after the Post-Payoff?
If I recap correctly:
Q, Eric, & Mira - Are in Prison
Akane & Junpei - Are arranging their future pending marraige
Carlos - Is with Maria
I thought the game was still great, but I didn't like the open ending, assuming this is the final game in the series. I just wanted to know if they stopped the nuclear explosions from happening. It defeats the purpose of the ending of VLR. Radical-6 basically never happened. If I understood the ending correctly. I also still wanted to know what happened to Kyle. I thought he was Delta. Nope. Q? Nope. Akane kept mentioning his importance during the ending of VLR and I believe he wasn't mentioned once in ZTD.
If I recap correctly:
Q, Eric, & Mira - Are in Prison
Akane & Junpei - Are arranging their future pending marraige
Carlos - Is with Maria
I thought the game was still great, but I didn't like the open ending, assuming this is the final game in the series. I just wanted to know if they stopped the nuclear explosions from happening. It defeats the purpose of the ending of VLR. Radical-6 basically never happened. If I understood the ending correctly. I also still wanted to know what happened to Kyle. I thought he was Delta. Nope. Q? Nope. Akane kept mentioning his importance during the ending of VLR and I believe he wasn't mentioned once in ZTD.
Sumio Mondo
Member
In a nutshell:
Uchikoshi has basically retconned that ending from VLR out of existence, basically (said so on Twitter) and sounded surprised that so many people were asking him about it.
Not canon because not everybody got the gold file ending. Pretty poor reasoning.
It's obviously an ass-pull, at least he should've said that the story changed.
A lot of what I have to say has already been said in this thread, but there are a couple of things that still bug me.
Alien transporter.
So here's a device which 'faxes' a copy of things (in particular: a person) across space-time. This person can already exist in that timeline, with no ill effects. They are copied in entirety - current memories, consciousness, etc.
The device has a reservoir of 'common element atoms' used to reconstruct the items (person) at the other end. This is explicitly stated as the mechanism by which the device works.
This implies that people are entirely material - they can be reconstructed in entirety using only matter, including the aforementioned memories, consciousness, etc.
If a person had an immaterial 'soul' then the device as described could not possibly copy this. It would seem then that no immaterial souls for people exist.
I suppose it could be argued that the device copies a soul using another mechanism but never describes it. Then why describe exactly how it works, but leave out something so important?
Anyway, going ahead with the conclusion there's no soul due to the material cloning of humans, how does anything else in the entire game series work?
The morphogenetic field concept is probably OK - as a method of sharing ideas between people (an idea pool is not necessary to clone a person, only the ideas they had at that exact moment). A computer can operate without a hard drive of its own as long as data can be pushed into its memory in a way that allows it to operate.
"SHIFTing" would then be replacing a person's current memory with some other identity as 'downloaded' from the morphogenetic field. Why this becomes represented as a physical ball of light beaming down from above into a person's head... who knows?
Edit: But this is only changing the memories/consciousness in the target person. It's not MOVING your current consciousness out of the body and into the target, so shifting as displayed can't really work. I feel like ZTD has just added too many concepts which make the pre-existing ones even less comprehensible, but then people feel like that about 999 to VLR too, so...
It could however be possible to 'force push' ideas into a person to change them, so 'mind hacking' is actually fairly plausible.
There are a few theories about souls and whatnot in the game series which basically become nonsense though. The 'observer soul' somewhere else which is a pointer to a person's body could not be replicated through a person's matter alone. Perhaps the 'soul target' matter could be replicated, but then the 'observer soul' would be pointing at two bodies at the same time, which clearly doesn't happen.
What I definitely have a problem with is Akane's theory of BTTF 'mind swapping' when SHIFTing or whatever. There is no evidence for this shown in-game, and no reason for it to be true (you don't have to take a computer's current memory and place it somewhere else when you overwrite it!). Most of the time the entity being shifted away from is destined to die in an instant, so you wouldn't even be able to confirm it by SHIFTing another person over there to check which 'consciousness' was currently inhabiting them - the one that shifted away, or the one that was the target to be replaced. There are still moral implications with wiping out another person's identity, but it's not quite the same as swapping them into a deathtrap.
Also, why can only one person be replicated in a pod at a time? It can't be a pure mass related problem, because two babies would contain less mass than a full-grown Sigma, for instance. The obvious answer would be that to replicate the consciousness etc requires something which can only be done once in a pod at a time. But they work on pure matter, so why?
On to other things.
The Sigma x Diana ending made me uncomfortable and angry. We're trapped in a bunker knowing we have 10 months only to survive due to lack of food. You go a bit crazy. We discuss your previous physically abusive relationship. You hit me. Later, you get trashed drunk. You ask for sex. I deny it and you call me a coward with no balls. You ask me to kill you. I HIT YOU (clearly she likes physical abuse?). We go off and have sex in an alien transporter pod. You're pregnant, we have no food, I stop eating so you can sustain the pregnancy, because that's a great idea. No food, no escape, time to have babies. The babies happen. We know everything is screwed, so we send them to a RANDOM POINT IN TIME (only stipulation: before Zero obtains the pods) where we have no way of even knowing:
-if the alien transporter at the other end is in human hands
-if it is in human hands, if people monitor it in case babies get transported into them. Babies probably can't open the doors to wander out and say 'hey where am I?'
-if in human hands AND monitored for babies, that the people who monitor the pods will even look after some random babies that get transported into them at all!
Don't even consider sending one parent and one baby so it at least has some chance at the other end!
So now we have two sets of babies, two of which are destined to starve to death right now, and the other two sent off somewhere we have no reason to believe they will not starve to death in an alien transporter pod's output chamber.
What the hell kind of decision making is that? Every decision they made was so stupid I couldn't enjoy that ending at all.
Never mind that Sigma retained super-buff status despite giving all his food to Diana for 9 months.
Argh!
On the plus side, I actually kind of liked the fragment system/memory wiping, because I thought it was a reasonably effective way to combat the knowledge of SHIFTers that came from the future - their current knowledge is being wiped every 90 minutes. I thought this might come up as a plot point, but nope.
Sorry for the rambling. I've got more I need to vent about but can't articulate it right now.
Alien transporter.
So here's a device which 'faxes' a copy of things (in particular: a person) across space-time. This person can already exist in that timeline, with no ill effects. They are copied in entirety - current memories, consciousness, etc.
The device has a reservoir of 'common element atoms' used to reconstruct the items (person) at the other end. This is explicitly stated as the mechanism by which the device works.
This implies that people are entirely material - they can be reconstructed in entirety using only matter, including the aforementioned memories, consciousness, etc.
If a person had an immaterial 'soul' then the device as described could not possibly copy this. It would seem then that no immaterial souls for people exist.
I suppose it could be argued that the device copies a soul using another mechanism but never describes it. Then why describe exactly how it works, but leave out something so important?
Anyway, going ahead with the conclusion there's no soul due to the material cloning of humans, how does anything else in the entire game series work?
The morphogenetic field concept is probably OK - as a method of sharing ideas between people (an idea pool is not necessary to clone a person, only the ideas they had at that exact moment). A computer can operate without a hard drive of its own as long as data can be pushed into its memory in a way that allows it to operate.
"SHIFTing" would then be replacing a person's current memory with some other identity as 'downloaded' from the morphogenetic field. Why this becomes represented as a physical ball of light beaming down from above into a person's head... who knows?
Edit: But this is only changing the memories/consciousness in the target person. It's not MOVING your current consciousness out of the body and into the target, so shifting as displayed can't really work. I feel like ZTD has just added too many concepts which make the pre-existing ones even less comprehensible, but then people feel like that about 999 to VLR too, so...
It could however be possible to 'force push' ideas into a person to change them, so 'mind hacking' is actually fairly plausible.
There are a few theories about souls and whatnot in the game series which basically become nonsense though. The 'observer soul' somewhere else which is a pointer to a person's body could not be replicated through a person's matter alone. Perhaps the 'soul target' matter could be replicated, but then the 'observer soul' would be pointing at two bodies at the same time, which clearly doesn't happen.
What I definitely have a problem with is Akane's theory of BTTF 'mind swapping' when SHIFTing or whatever. There is no evidence for this shown in-game, and no reason for it to be true (you don't have to take a computer's current memory and place it somewhere else when you overwrite it!). Most of the time the entity being shifted away from is destined to die in an instant, so you wouldn't even be able to confirm it by SHIFTing another person over there to check which 'consciousness' was currently inhabiting them - the one that shifted away, or the one that was the target to be replaced. There are still moral implications with wiping out another person's identity, but it's not quite the same as swapping them into a deathtrap.
Also, why can only one person be replicated in a pod at a time? It can't be a pure mass related problem, because two babies would contain less mass than a full-grown Sigma, for instance. The obvious answer would be that to replicate the consciousness etc requires something which can only be done once in a pod at a time. But they work on pure matter, so why?
On to other things.
The Sigma x Diana ending made me uncomfortable and angry. We're trapped in a bunker knowing we have 10 months only to survive due to lack of food. You go a bit crazy. We discuss your previous physically abusive relationship. You hit me. Later, you get trashed drunk. You ask for sex. I deny it and you call me a coward with no balls. You ask me to kill you. I HIT YOU (clearly she likes physical abuse?). We go off and have sex in an alien transporter pod. You're pregnant, we have no food, I stop eating so you can sustain the pregnancy, because that's a great idea. No food, no escape, time to have babies. The babies happen. We know everything is screwed, so we send them to a RANDOM POINT IN TIME (only stipulation: before Zero obtains the pods) where we have no way of even knowing:
-if the alien transporter at the other end is in human hands
-if it is in human hands, if people monitor it in case babies get transported into them. Babies probably can't open the doors to wander out and say 'hey where am I?'
-if in human hands AND monitored for babies, that the people who monitor the pods will even look after some random babies that get transported into them at all!
Don't even consider sending one parent and one baby so it at least has some chance at the other end!
So now we have two sets of babies, two of which are destined to starve to death right now, and the other two sent off somewhere we have no reason to believe they will not starve to death in an alien transporter pod's output chamber.
What the hell kind of decision making is that? Every decision they made was so stupid I couldn't enjoy that ending at all.
Never mind that Sigma retained super-buff status despite giving all his food to Diana for 9 months.
Argh!
On the plus side, I actually kind of liked the fragment system/memory wiping, because I thought it was a reasonably effective way to combat the knowledge of SHIFTers that came from the future - their current knowledge is being wiped every 90 minutes. I thought this might come up as a plot point, but nope.
Sorry for the rambling. I've got more I need to vent about but can't articulate it right now.
Just finished the game and overall probably the weakest in the series for me but nice to round out the series.
Some weird observations(im sure they've been mentioned before)
-Dosen't the Sean post-game file imply that he could potentially completely fuck with the timeline, causing none of the three games to ever occur?
-The start of the game seemed to heavily imply that Carlos is the main guy and had a deeper connection to Zero(or at least i thought so at the time)...which didn't turn out to be true at all.
-Lol anyone else ruin the Delta twist/guess it during Q's shoot him with the crossbow fragment?
-Really wasn't a fan of the whole mind hack thing at all. Felt like a cheap way to write around Delta's inability to Shift.
-A few of the last segments felt really weird in that they made everyone who wasn't Phi, Sigma, Delta and Diana feel like complete passengers to the story. Even though it was more or else explained along the way why each person was there, i would have liked Delta to address each team in the end.
Some weird observations(im sure they've been mentioned before)
-Dosen't the Sean post-game file imply that he could potentially completely fuck with the timeline, causing none of the three games to ever occur?
-The start of the game seemed to heavily imply that Carlos is the main guy and had a deeper connection to Zero(or at least i thought so at the time)...which didn't turn out to be true at all.
-Lol anyone else ruin the Delta twist/guess it during Q's shoot him with the crossbow fragment?
-Really wasn't a fan of the whole mind hack thing at all. Felt like a cheap way to write around Delta's inability to Shift.
-A few of the last segments felt really weird in that they made everyone who wasn't Phi, Sigma, Delta and Diana feel like complete passengers to the story. Even though it was more or else explained along the way why each person was there, i would have liked Delta to address each team in the end.
Epilogue crap with Mira is ridiculous too. Even if they go back to change the snail's path or whatever their stupid plan would be, Mira will still have the same condition which makes her likely to become a serial killer, or at least still be a socio/psychopath.
BTW I really liked Mira's eyes in ZTD.
BTW I really liked Mira's eyes in ZTD.
Honestly, I thought the memory wiping was going to end in some sort of Pseudo Science 'Quantum Mechanical Uncertainty' twist, or something like that. In the end, nothing really came out of it. It was more of a writer's saving throw to make each fragment easier to write, I guess, since the characters didn't have to be consistent throughout the whole story. They just keep getting hit with the reset button, so character plot lines never actually develop.
That was dropped altogether by ZTD.
Canon concept, non-canon character.
Funyarinpa
Member
certified noncanonical metafiction (tm)
Uchi explained on Twitter that Another Time END was basically noncanon, and something about getting people's spirits up due to a Tokyo earthquake or something. ? is noncanon
Just finished the game, got all the endings. My initial thoughts were: "Eh? Right, where's the true ending?" But it was the true ending.
I was really annoyed about that.
Things to mentions:
- On one hand I liked the fragments, on the other I hated them because it stopped the usual character development you got from the previous games.
- I felt like Carlos would play a bigger role
- Waaaaay too much emphasis on everyone shifting all the time everywhere
- Random alien technology? C'mon!
- Phi's and Delta's origin...meh. I mean the origin is fine but the rest of it...
- Delta being Q. Not nearly as good as a plot twist as in previous games. In fact, I didn't get what they were talking about when it happened. Blind, deaf guy in a wheelchair? How far fetching is that!?
- Random religious fanatic starting nuclear war...
- Delta's motivations. So as far as I understand since Delta didn't know who the fanatic was he decided to become one? Thus at the end Carlos can kill him and everything is fine or let him leave and he'll become the fanatic that destroys the world...or something like that.
- That whole ending left me feeling nothing. I was like...what about Kyle and ? !?!?!?
- I'm glad the game came out though, most of the game was great
I was really annoyed about that.
Things to mentions:
- On one hand I liked the fragments, on the other I hated them because it stopped the usual character development you got from the previous games.
- I felt like Carlos would play a bigger role
- Waaaaay too much emphasis on everyone shifting all the time everywhere
- Random alien technology? C'mon!
- Phi's and Delta's origin...meh. I mean the origin is fine but the rest of it...
- Delta being Q. Not nearly as good as a plot twist as in previous games. In fact, I didn't get what they were talking about when it happened. Blind, deaf guy in a wheelchair? How far fetching is that!?
- Random religious fanatic starting nuclear war...
- Delta's motivations. So as far as I understand since Delta didn't know who the fanatic was he decided to become one? Thus at the end Carlos can kill him and everything is fine or let him leave and he'll become the fanatic that destroys the world...or something like that.
- That whole ending left me feeling nothing. I was like...what about Kyle and ? !?!?!?
- I'm glad the game came out though, most of the game was great
Vlaphor
Member
Just beat the game and then decided to read a few reactions on here. Overall, I liked the game quite a bit, but not as much as VLR. Best character was
I do think it's funny that two potential plot issues are resolved in text documents that unlock after the game: What's up with the air ducts (Gab has his own little place where he naps on carpet) and what about the serial killer (gonna go back in time and not be a serial killer...which would have notable consequences for everything else in the story, but we can save that for ZE4)
Actually, one I thing I do want to point out is this thing I said from March 12th from this year
Unless the V/O wasn't done three months before the game shipped (unlikely), I don't think she was telling the truth.
Still, thoroughly enjoyed the game and would happily pick up ZE4 day one.
Gab.
I do think it's funny that two potential plot issues are resolved in text documents that unlock after the game: What's up with the air ducts (Gab has his own little place where he naps on carpet) and what about the serial killer (gonna go back in time and not be a serial killer...which would have notable consequences for everything else in the story, but we can save that for ZE4)
Actually, one I thing I do want to point out is this thing I said from March 12th from this year
Unless the V/O wasn't done three months before the game shipped (unlikely), I don't think she was telling the truth.
Still, thoroughly enjoyed the game and would happily pick up ZE4 day one.
broncobuster
Banned
Eric and Mira are annoying.
I was hoping Q team would turn out to be way more interesting than they initially appeared pre-launch, but they were pretty awful and the characters I liked being with the least during the game. The most "mastermindy" because of Sean and Delta, I guess.
Eric is probably the most obnoxious character in the series. Mira at least was slightly amusing with her craziness, but yeah. Sean wasn't that bad through, so that prevented team Q of being downright terrible all around.
AmethystEnd
Member
When I started the game, I made the decision to do every single Q team fragment before any other team.
It was painful, since I hated Eric and Mira, but overall I think I made the right decision because I loved every bit of my time with the other 2 teams, and it was nice that I didn't have to switch back to Q more than a few times after the long slog at the start.
EDIT: I just now read all the files that get added after the end.
No Post-Payoff files for D team?
.The Carlos ones, and the Junpei and Akane ones were adorable.
I know that this game is imperfect.
I know that there are dropped plot points that I would've liked to see.
But deep down, there's a part of me that says fuck the 8 billion people in the game's world as long as Junpei and Akane get to be together until the end (even if they don't succeed in finding the fanatic
but they will succeed because Junpei is a goddamn badass detective now, lololol
And they do get to be together, so for me ZTD is goddamn glorious.
Still, need a Sigma/Diana/Phi epilogue.
Tricky I Shadow
Banned
Awesome fan-art:
You mean the brooch? Because yeah, brooch is paradoxical, it's not manufactured by anyone, it just came into existence.
Is there not a scene where Diana says she saw that very brooch during their days at DCOM? That's how the player discovers it's a thing, right? I think that's what's confusing me; why she wouldn't have recognized it to be hers then.