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NRVNQSR posted:Yeah, I could never bring myself to care about Mira or Eric in the slightest. They basically made up a team that was two-thirds Dios; if it weren't for Sean I would probably have just blown all of Q team's heads off and ignored them for the rest of the game. I believe this was entirely intentional, using Q as a sympathetic protagonist in a team of batshit alienating and abusive parental figures.
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Jul 1, 2016 11:23
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:So why did Delta in some timelines just choose "gently caress it whatever I wanna live in a doomed timeline" and push the shower button or vote for the other teams? Like what was the point in doing that because I don't recall those specific timelines really resulting in anything and it's not like he can shift or anyone on his team can outside Sean (kind of.) I liked it better in VLR when superficially-seeming irrational or terrible choices made by the player was translated into an inner monologue by the protagonist of "why the gently caress did I do that? Was it just fate?" instead of removing human agency through ~*~MIND HACKING~*~. I feel like mind hacking is the ZTD equivalent of MGSIV's nanomachines bullshit and it kind of bothers me. Just seems like a cheap cop-out writing-wise. 
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Jul 2, 2016 00:49
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Paul Zuvella posted:There was less pretty much everything this time around. It's pretty clear they had to cut back on some content to fit a budget. Generally speaking I think the new format held the game back way more than it should have. The third person camera was necessary to do their piss poor Zero/Delta/Sean twist and so they could go all kill bill/saw more dramatically. I really believe Uchikoshi must have been heavily influenced by Saw 1 in making ZTD with the whole "the antagonist was actually right in front of you the whole time!" twist, not to the mention the emphasis on gore and traps, morality, life and what it means to live, etc.
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Jul 2, 2016 01:31
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alcharagia posted:Really, omnipotent villains always present kind of a problem in stories like these. Yeah I know Delta can't SHIFT and all but fucker magically knows everything anyway and somehow manages to plan for every single contingency other than "Sean shoots me dead in the Study," including ones he needs to abstract himself through mindhacks. The scenario where he fails is still one where he basically gets off scot-free. Wait, that brings up a thought: what is Sean's in-universe reason for shooting Delta in the Mexican Standoff? If I remember correctly, you input Delta, Sean just sort of shrugs and goes "um, okay then?..." before shooting at the camera, killing Delta. Is it a case of Delta trying to commit suicide for no apparent reason through mind hacking Sean to make an illogical choice? Or is it just a weird one-off player fuckery thing? Also, did ZTD ever comment on Blick Winkel directly? I saw people talking about this early on before the official release but I don't recall hearing it mentioned (granted I streamed from Twitch to get my ZTD experience so I'm probably missing a lot of minor details).
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Jul 2, 2016 01:39
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8-bit Miniboss posted:healing_room_button.mp4 I called the Ren and Stimpy-esque History Eraser Button gag in ZTD way before release in the main thread.  NJ Deac posted:I think the story feels a little tighter if you treat the "?" ending of VLR as more of a "what if?" story where the cast gets to address the player directly rather than as part of the canon. Even with all this benefit of the doubt being given, people are going to be disappointed anyways since it still violates the Chekhov's Gun rule. Why all that set up only to be shelved with the end of VLR and no pay-off? Also, why couldn't Sigma!OldMind somehow replicate the Transporterizer and other futuristic equipment for use at the future moon base? He's already got decades-worth of training and basically setting up the moon base with Diana/Luna and Akane single-handedly.
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Jul 2, 2016 02:47
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Also am I the only one who really disliked SHIFTing being made visible in ZTD (and how it was depicted)? I liked it way more in VLR when it was more like instantly "blinking" from the time right before death to another point in the timeline, which is the closest resemblance (I think) to how it would be experienced in the first-person in real life. It's that sort of confused, disoriented, and terrified/disturbed feeling from the abrupt change of imminent death to the mundane, which is honestly pretty great. I also really liked in VLR how it made the experience of dying and being dead more explicit and palpable as drowning in a sea of nothingness (granted, is a less about internal monologues and inner dialogue than it is about SHIFTing morality quandaries and inter-character conflict, so I'll give it that at least). Instead in ZTD, SHIFTing is depicted as a dumb DBZ blue super Saiyan anime aura that descends from on high to whisk you away to another far away time and place like the loving warp whistle from SMB3. It's really, really stupid. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Jul 2, 2016 |
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Jul 2, 2016 02:58
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As soon as I saw the fade-in/fade-out static with the camera pulling away from the participants waking up or falling asleep, there had to be something hosed up with the camera or a reason why the player or Zero would be looking in on it. As for Zero being in the room with Q-Team/Q's identity fake-out/Delta as brother to Phi/etc, of course I didn't figure out any of that until very late in the game. I'm pretty surprised I didn't think more skeptically of the promo art being misleading (ie the official site labeling Sean as Q) similar to VLR with the promo-art misleading would-be VLR-players that Young Sigma is up with the Nonary Game: AB Edition participants and Zero III and etc versus how it actually plays out in the game.
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Jul 2, 2016 06:06
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Irisize posted:Well, she has no idea how the infection actually happened. All she knows of that path is about stuff that happened after the escape. Yeah, I was going to say, couldn't Akane have just tracked them down and asked? Junpei is a detective specialized in tracking people, after all.
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Jul 3, 2016 00:24
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MegaZeroX posted:I mean, VLR doesn't have an in universe explanation for why the screenshots of Sigma are all off. Not showing Signma is entirely for twists sake. There is also no way to even begin guessing the twist. I think the "Sigma is old!" twist is more clever than the "Zero was off-screen/the camera the whole time!" because it takes advantage of the first-person nature of VN mechanics in a subtle way and also that the player never questions why they never see their own protagonist's face in-game despite it being nearly the first thing you do in 999. The former is "holy poo poo, I never thought to check for that!  ", the latter is just "well, yeah, why would I ever think of that?  " which feels cheaper and falls flatter.
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Jul 4, 2016 16:17
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Meiteron posted:This is actually one of the more disappointing things, for me, about how the plot turned out in ZTD. I wonder if Uchikoshi originally wanted to do more with BW/? as alluded to in VLR but changed his mind to go with mind hacking instead. I think directly implicating the player as an amoral/morally gray external force toying with the characters would have been a more interesting crux for the game as a whole, even if just to point out the players' hypocrisy for hating on Delta toying with lives when you've been doing the same thing the whole time more or less. Relegating this moral quandary to the characters right before the game ends with SHIFTing was a bad way to execute that. It would have been better structured if these concerns came up in VLR before hand IMO.
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Jul 4, 2016 17:51
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NRVNQSR posted:There's also always an evil pharmaceutical company. He really seems to have something against the industry. I think "evil pharmaceutical company" is a really common trope in Japanese fiction, not just with Uchikoshi.
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Jul 5, 2016 00:46
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Wanting to say again anytime I hear Delta say "my motives are... Complex." I cringe because it just seems like such an asspull cop-out hand-waving of plot details that weren't tied up very well. I practically expected Delta to literally wave his hands as he said it. Also, are we to believe that Akane is literally the only esper on a planet of billions of people with the resources and simply caring enough to do something about the extinction of the human race? Nobody else had their esper abilities awaken in such a time of immediate life-and-death crisis all around them?
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Jul 5, 2016 01:32
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cloofish posted:I have a feeling I liked Delta more than I should have just because of D. C. Douglas's insanely charismatic voice. That means the mind hacking is working.
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Jul 5, 2016 04:37
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Voisk posted:Man I forgot that was a thing. I should go read it. Also keep in mind how the view goes static at the beginning and end of every scene as well as the blue screens with monitor scan lines at the game over screen.
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Jul 5, 2016 11:01
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I'm playing through the game for real this time, and I noticed that, in the beginning at D-Com, Mira jokes about Sean maybe being a "one-night mistake" only to be told to knock it off by Diana. Is this possibly an intentional allusion to Phi/Delta being born later? Also, later Zero announces the make-up of each time. Interestingly, he evades labeling Sean as Q, saying "As you can tell by the name, the leader of Team Q will be Q" instead of using the word "you" like with Teams C and D. The camera still zooms in on Sean when Zero says this part, though, giving that initial unsaid impression that Sean is supposed to be Q. Very clever! e: In retrospect, Zero saying "with this information [about the X-Door], surely some of you are thinking, 'how can I kill six people?'" is pretty funny given Delta's mind-hacking powers. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Jul 6, 2016 |
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Jul 6, 2016 15:44
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Wait, when exactly does the title screen change? I skipped ahead to the True Ending on my file just to see if the game would point out me knowing things I shouldn't ahead of time, but then I noticed the title screen changes from a black screen with a ZTD bracelet in the corner to an evening shot of the outside of the DCOM facility.  I don't think I've heard anyone mention that one yet.
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Jul 6, 2016 19:16
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I keep thinking about it and I still don't buy into the moral dilemma that supposedly comes with SHIFTing. Imagine you buy a lottery ticket with random numbers. It's a dud. Bummer. The next day you're walking to work and get hit by a bus and die. Double bummer! But what if you SHIFT back to before you bought the lottery ticket? Now you're able to win the lottery and avoid getting hit with the knowledge you have from the morphogenetic field. Without SHIFTing, you only have one 'Poor Marty' timeline. With SHIFTing, now you have a 'Poor Marty' and 'Rich Marty' you. This new timeline wouldn't have been possible without the foreknowledge you obtained after going back in time. Isn't this basically a net positive overall? Wouldn't it be worth it to sacrifice one or a few Poor Marties if it meant preventing something like nuclear war or even a virus outbreak? At worst, it's a morally gray necessary evil, a lot more people have suffered and died in wars and other things done to try and make a new better future. On that note, I'd like to see a non-ZE game dealing with geopolitics and timeline jumping, that'd be interesting to see.
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Jul 6, 2016 23:48
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Irony Be My Shield posted:Junpei talked about exactly that at the end of VLR. Given Junpei's (well, Tenmyouji's) biker story and his platitudes on why Poor Marty timelines are still important too in VLR, I think the moral dilemma around jumping timelines near the end of ZTD would have been more consistent if that all came from Junpei mainly. But even then, Junpei is the one jumping (  ) the gun to vote for executing the other team or to press the shower button to save his own skin, so I don't really know what the gently caress to say.E: Also, if part of the reason Delta allowed the virus to spread was to kill the unnamed terrorist on the off-chance Radical-6 is mostly effective and prevent the complete extinction of humanity (which still doesn't seem consistent given his supposed misanthropic motivation to set up Free the Soul in the first place as Brother), why didn't he just ask Junpei for help as a professional detective and track him down? The anti-matter reactors get detonated anyways in the Radical-6 outcome too! It just still feels really flimsy writing-wise. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 02:05
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I also think Uchikoshi et al wrote themselves into a corner with the Final Decision Game. The writing already blows its dramatic tension load by testing the morality of the player of having to choose between killing 6 other people to escape or refusing to comply and dying or being stuck in the bomb shelter forever, so when it comes to ***THE FINAL DECISION*** it feels like the writers went "uhhhhh what else can we use as a dramatic device?" and went with the least bad option writing-wise they had left to use. E: ^^^ Could a SHIFTer theoretically jump too far back in time and end up switching consciousnesses with their infant self by accident? It'd be amusing/horrifying to see a twenty-something guy suddenly revert to their gurgling baby mindset. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jul 7, 2016 |
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Jul 7, 2016 02:16
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dmboogie posted:To be fair, 45 years and parenthood will do a lot to change a guy's priorities, especially since ZTD Junpei is in full edgelord mode. I was thinking more in terms as a call-back to VLR, but that makes sense.
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Jul 7, 2016 02:44
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Arbitrary Number posted:Oh yeah, forgot about that. So then my question is can they just keep on SHIFTing each other until there's no time left like a game of hot potato? Or is it implied that once they SHIFT out whoever was SHIFTed in can't SHIFT anymore and immediately dies? It would have been interesting/horrifying to see Reverie Syndrome to play a more direct role in ZTD versus just being a macguffin off-screen with Carlos's sister, like maybe multiple jumps are made to a single point on the timeline and collide, causing one of the participants to freak out and have a seizure or fall into a coma.
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Jul 7, 2016 04:33
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dyzzy posted:Just finished this. I enjoyed it but it felt sloppier than VLR and MINDO HAKKU blows. On that note, why couldn't Delta just SHIFT like Mira and Eric did by being in the vicinity of other SHIFTers? I think even non-SHIFTers can do that. Or not? I don't know, gently caress it. The writing is sloppy by the end, I agree. ZTD is best at the middle with all of the death decision games going on and what it does well it does phenomenally; it's just unfortunate the ending bits sour the game on retrospect.
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Jul 7, 2016 05:12
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NRVNQSR posted:VLR did a decent job of making it seem like the twist would be "Sigma is a robot/K is the real Sigma", so I think most people would be led up that garden path. It's been too long since I played it, though, so I no longer remember what I figured out when. Looking back, I think VLR has much tighter control over the writing than ZTD does. I think the red herrings and player expectations are more deliberate and more managed compared to the apparent sloppiness of Delta etc etc. Seriously, why does Delta - head of Free the Soul, a very clearly bad guy organization - go through so much trouble to half-assedly kill Sir-Terrorist-Not-Appearing-In-This-Game and otherwise motivate Crash Keys to stop said unnamed terrorist? VLR already did the whole pep talk motivational bit with Old Akane's "you must save the world!" epilogue, they don't need any more motivating! And it isn't a dilemma for anyone involved to stop Delta's Radical-6 plan at the risk of letting the unnamed terrorist run around since they were going to save humanity regardless and would work on stopping that from happening anyways. Ugh the more I keep thinking about the closure of ZTD the more it feels like a train wreck instead of actually tying things up. Teriyaki Koinku fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jul 8, 2016 |
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Jul 8, 2016 20:38
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Cake Attack posted:999 is still really well put together all around It's really hard to replay IMO because the writing moves at a glacial pace at times with characters reiterating the same description or explaining the obvious three times over. Still worth it for the body pasta explosion descriptions, though.
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Jul 8, 2016 20:57
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MegaZeroX posted:What I'm saying is that perhaps the religious fanatic is a fabrication. Meaning, since Fanatic Bio R was a analogy for the religious fanatic, perhaps there is no fanatic who will destroy the world. Was that the sequel hook? What was the sequel hook exactly?
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Jul 8, 2016 23:35
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W.T. Fits posted:The only thing that really bugged me about the game is that we never find out if Eric's abusive father was arrested or otherwise punished for the murder of his youngest son (probably not, given that he had Eric dump the body in a lake). Granted, it's not important to the overall narrative if he was or not, but I want to know and not knowing bugs the hell out of me. Wait, was it ever made explicit Eric's dad killed his youngest son? I don't remember that part.
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Jul 11, 2016 05:21
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U-DO Burger posted:Woo, game finished, I can read this thread now. They got a hell of a lot of use out of Trepidation, though!  I agree, though, Chill and Rigor was one of the best along with Tranquility, which I think has only been used once in the entire series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VAUu-ODwnU 999 had a pretty wonderful soundtrack and so did VLR. For what I dislike about 999, I do like how it does the straight-up horror/suspense and who-dunnit murder mystery with minimal sci-fi trappings in its own unique way.
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Jul 11, 2016 17:14
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Not really a spoiler, but I can't believe I just realized CRASH KEYS is actually a play on words with the Japanese transliteration of Akane's name (i.e. Kurashiki = Ku-Rashi Ki = Crash Key).
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Jul 14, 2016 20:56
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Exercu posted:In fact there's not just one Kurashiki... There are two Kurashikis. Wait, what do you mean?
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Jul 14, 2016 21:51
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Exercu posted:Crash Keys was founded by Akane (June) and Aoi (Santa) Kurashiki. Two of them. Kurashikis. poo poo, I keep forgetting Aoi/Santa is Akane's brother.  Thanks for that.
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Jul 15, 2016 07:55
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