|
Regallion posted:I wonder if this game has quantum bullshit in it *looks at title of game* 
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2022 15:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 04:26 |
|
|
MagusofStars posted:Wait, so this exact ship dumped Jordan into an escape pod two decades ago and now the same ship re-found her. How does that work? Once they launched the pod away, it'd be incredibly unlikely that they'd end up in the exact same spot (or relatively close) after almost 18 years apart. Over that length of time, even very minor differences in travel speed or routes taken would really add up. The game has been pretty heavily foreshadowing that Jordan's parents were up to something involving their research; I'm guessing it's not a coincidence that things turned out this way.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2022 15:26
|
|
|
Leraika posted:I'm assuming the way the timelines work is that a shot from Jordan on a character will always be the kill shot on that character. Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised in a game like this if the results were less obvious than that. Shooting at someone resulting in the death of someone else is the kind of thing that a game invoking chaos theory would do, after all.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2022 15:22
|
|
|
Given the name of the game this was expected (though maybe more a surprise if you're playing it more traditionally, as I assume the game expects you to go through as one character then another), but it's still amusing to pinpoint the exact part of VLR this probably took inspiration from.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 9, 2022 15:16
|
|
|
I imagine that the actual answer is that, of course, this has nothing to do with the remaining provisions. It has everything to do with Jordan arriving on the ship...the child of two people who broke rank and fled during the previous crisis rather than give up their lives. Who set that up, and why, remains to be seen.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2022 15:53
|
|
|
I'm guessing we'll get the code in parts for different endings, in true Zero Escape style?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2022 17:42
|
|
|
Another option is it's a universe where everyone rebelled against in Dai--shutting off the oxygen does seem to be her go-to threat for keeping the crew in line, after all.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2022 14:49
|
|
|
Dai was only created in the last generation from what we know, so it's hard to believe that when Dai is saying "the captains" she's referring to the line of captains--which suggests there's a second person with as much authority as Kimiko. Or maybe I'm wrong and Dai's just referring to being tied to Kimiko and her mother, but that's a weird way to put it if so.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2022 14:47
|
|
|
From what we've been told, Jordan's arrival triggered the death game due to an extra person requiring too many resources; this explanation doesn't hold scrutiny, however, given that it should've ended after just one death, two if you were ludicrously close to a specific threshold of sustainability. So yeah, there obviously must be some other reason for the death game. We don't really have enough information to guess at what that might be, though. Kimiko and her mother almost certainly have something to do with it, given how this branch ended. Jordan likely also does, I don't really buy the resources issue even as a trigger. We also can't be sure we're being told the whole story of what happened leading up to waking up in the middle of the death game; perhaps something else happened that the crew is reluctant to bring up (or has been ordered not to tell Jordan about). On a different note, it seems that the watch didn't jump us into another timeline like originally theorized, but jumped us into the future, at least this time, since "oxygen is off and everyone is dead" is definitely the state we arrived at.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2022 15:30
|
|
|
There is another possibility, albeit a wild one. These could be entirely different people; perhaps the game wants us to believe that these are something like alternate timelines, but the truth is something different. After all, all of the positions are hereditary--maybe it's the same universe at different points in time.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2022 13:49
|
|
|
So, as suggested the code to free the AI is almost certainly some reference to the story of Adam and Eve. That intrigues me more is the possibility that freeing the Ai might actually be the solution. It's been suggested that this is all the result of programming from Kimiko's mother, after all. What if Dai is less a separate programmed personality and more a coping mechanism for Ai being forced to do things she'd rather not?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
Foxfire_ posted:New theory: there is nobody on the ship except Jordan and D/ai ...This would explain something, actually. If Jordan is the only real human aboard--if everyone else is an AI of some kind--it explains why their arrival triggers the "someone has to die because we don't have enough food" protocol, and more importantly, explains why the games keep going after someone dies. If Jordan's the only one who eats, then the games will always keep going until Jordan dies or something catastrophically derails the game.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2022 14:49
|
|
|
This game sure loves its wacky random humor and endings. I sure wish it also loved engaging with its central mysteries at all.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2022 14:28
|
|
|
Is this an invisible "lock" where we need to know Jordan's parents' favorite room to get anything out of this, or is this just another case of the game reminding us that it has some central mysteries and just refusing to advance them in any way?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 22, 2022 14:17
|
|
|
Quackles posted:Begs the question as to how we got at least one Kimiko out of position... We have at least one other established timeline where there's a watch and people who know how to use it, so it's not beyond reason. There are some interesting ideas behind what two Kimikos would mean and what effect that would have on Ai/Dai. Shizuka lamenting that she couldn't pull her head out of her games long enough to just watch a movie with her friend is a good scene and I want to highlight that. (And Dai getting caught in the movie and making everyone wait is legitimately funny.)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2022 14:26
|
|
|
This game's writing is so frustrating. We had a really good scene with Shizuka where she lamented that she wasn't willing to stop playing games long enough to watch a movie with her friend, and it seems like we might actually have some character development, then we hang out with her again and her only personality trait is videogames again. Why is this game a dating sim when the characters are mostly cardboard cutouts and nothing all that romantic ever happens?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2022 14:21
|
|
|
Let's try right. Also just to be clear, I'm enjoying the LP itself and think you're doing a great job, Mix. I just also happen to enjoy complaining about bad games, especially bad writing.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2022 16:59
|
|
|
I will give the game credit as this actually makes sense; when we arrived at 22 before, we got shot out an airlock in place of the local Jordan, who was about to lose Vampire Children. If we assume we're crossing dimensions but there's still some parallel of time, then here we've arrived after that Jordan already lost and was launched into space (with their pocket watch, unfortunately). This is actually kind of interesting to think about, because it suggests that any ending where we give it to someone else before dying may be a world we revisit.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2022 14:56
|
|
|
Katashi is a breath of fresh air; it feels like we're talking to an actual human being for once.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2022 15:46
|
|
|
Seems like "the AIs could become solid enough physically interact with things" could be an issue in the future. (Or maybe already has been; there's at least one ending where that would explain something.) Though, on the other hand, maybe there's an Ai or Dai route after all.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2022 17:13
|
|
|
MagusofStars posted:Especially once we realize that Dai wasn't stopping at "just one kill so we're back at the 9 we started with". For all we know, Dai's programming is bugged right now and it'll just keep killing people till the ship is empty, so the food consumption won't matter anyways. This is is the part that bothers me the most; the crew overall seems incredibly incurious about the fact that Dai is continuing to kill people after the first and we don't get any signs that anyone other than Jordan is really investigating anything. If we were being generous this could be an interesting sign that the crew hasn't given us the full story behind why Dai's active and the death game is happening, but really it just seems like the crew is being far too passive about their impending doom. And even that I'd accept if there was, say, a fair bit of paranoia as everybody is more concerned with their own survival than figuring out what's going on, but...everybody just seems to hang out between games (and I suppose continuing their jobs aboard the ship).
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2022 14:19
|
|
|
Hey, this time Kimiko didn't freak out and get herself (and then the entire ship) killed.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 11, 2022 13:56
|
|
|
Hmm...can the watch also take us back in time, relatively (while still traveling to another dimension)? Everybody looking similar but not exactly the same, and the captain apparently executing Jordan's parents, makes me think we warped to a version of the previous generation, where a bunch of people died and Kimiko's mother apparently tried to have Jordan's parents killed. Here she succeeded, but in our main timelines they escaped. Which makes me wonder...what if DAI's trigger wasn't Jordan's arrival, but the watch's?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
Another arbitrary bad ending where we don't learn anything and didn't even make a choice for it; it doesn't feel like an end to the story on this path, or a natural result of the choices leading to it, or even a capstone to Jordan and Katashi's relationship. It feels like they just ran out of content, couldn't think for anything interesting to go here, and were on a deadline so they had wrap it up as soon as possible. I know it's not exactly fair to compare everything to Virtue's Last Reward, which is (IMO) one of the best games of the genre, but in that nearly every bad ending either gives you insight into a character, gives you a clue to the game's mysteries, or is relatively short and punishing you for making a stupid choice (usually trusting someone you obviously shouldn't, betraying when it would obviously piss people off, or letting someone hit the points to escape).
|
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2022 13:42
|
|
|
also I know it's not the answer but I can't help but want to put in "ad astra abyssosque"
|
|
#
¿
Aug 31, 2022 13:43
|
|
|
If Yoshiki saw the watch as a child, then he likely saw it when someone jumped realities and also back in time (IIRC the parents only finished the watch recently), which suggests that some variation of "Kimiko's mother got murdery when she discovered that people could warp in from other realities" is in fact that backstory of the main timeline (except unlike the timeline we saw, Jordan's parents survived and escaped).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 22, 2022 13:57
|
|
|
I don't quite get the point of having this game happen early every time. Is there going to be a timeline where it doesn't and that changes things? Doesn't seem likely since any major changes seem like they'd have to happen during or after Vampire Children given the game's structure. So why not just make the game start now normally? If anything, it's odd that in this one case Dai's punishment is just "get on with it" whereas basically every other time it's death.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
dervival posted:isn't Yoshiki only your best friend by through being your only friend It occurs to me that the way Jordan is written is sort of weird and a missed chance. As far as we've been told, they've been raised with only their parents around to socialize with. So really, having any friend should be a novel experience, and you could potentially actually sell a goofball like Yoshiki as Jordan's best and maybe only friend, and play up his death, or how that affects Jordan's relationship with Kimiko who also has a kind of emotional dependence on him.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2022 20:12
|
|
|
I totally understand burning out on this; add one more to a vote of "I'd love to find out what happens", even if it's to complain that it's bad. I think at the very least if you return to this you can skip hangout scenes; even with the likable characters, there just isn't that much interesting going on. That said Zodiac Trial is pretty interested so far so I won't complain about more of your focus going there.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 18, 2022 15:52
|
|
|
Barring some revelations about the structure coming in the summaries, I think it's safe to say at this point: this game was always doomed. Even setting aside the writing (the problems of which are more about priorities than quality), structurally I don't think this game was ever going to work. It's biggest clear influence is Virtue's Last Reward: you have a branching story based on the results of the major setpiece decisions (the games here, the Nonary Game voting in VLR), with it being set up as a puzzle the pieces of which you are gaining across multiple timelines and eventually putting everything together to finally reach a satisfying conclusion. It's a decent setup, and if there's one thing QS isn't lacking it's a neat premise, but the problem is there doesn't seem to be enough plot and revelations for the number branches the game has. So, the natural solution would be to cut down on the branches, right? Except the game also needs to be a dating sim, and is split across two different protagonists, so you can't, because you need a branch for each of those, and then some dead ends along the branches. Which maybe wouldn't be a problem, but here we run into the writing problems: there's not enough depth to any of the characters to warrant exploring them, and none of them grow or change in the course of their routes. Which is odd to me, because I suspect the game's other major influence is Dangan Ronpa, what with a sadistic antagonist running a murder game with a special focus put on uniquely executing the losers of said game in various awful ways. But DR generally gets the character interactions--most of the cast has more going on with them, and the growth and development of the survivors is a major focus of the story. And that's where these influences clash. Multiple routes means you can't develop the characters in meaningful ways because any development will get undone when you explore another route, you can only uncover things you didn't know about the characters. It might've been possible to make this work, but it would have taken some fantastic writing and well-fleshed out characters, and that wasn't going to happen from a group that, say, wants Japanese voice acting seemingly solely because their main influences are Japanese games. In a less ambitious, better structured game, the writing would have been passable--it has its moments! It can genuinely be fun and charming at times, and occasionally very poignant. I hold of one of the Shizuka scenes as a particularly good example, where she laments that she was so obsessive about gaming that she couldn't just take an evening to enjoy her best friend's favorite movie with him. If that had been the kind of writing throughout the game, and if branches had been pared down to just ones that were essential, we could've had a hit. As it is, though, everything's spread too thin, the game comes across as tedious, the kind where you'd be skipping even new dialogue to try and get to anything meaningful, and that's not great for a sci-fi mystery deathgame visual novel. Sorry for the lengthy post, but just wanted to show that in spite of it not working out this game did provoke some amount of thought about it (if not in the way it probably intended).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2022 17:40
|
|
|
One of the weirdest sticking points of the game is how blasé everyone is about the death game. If the crew was all staying isolated from each other as, say, a defense mechanism due to the neverending death games, ramping up the distrust and paranoia as things went on, it would make sense that in each route we are largely only interacting with one person whose trust we've gained. But the crew never seems to try and do anything about it, the consensus being to try and go about as normal as best they can and just hope Dai stops, I guess. No one questions why it's still going on after one death when it supposedly triggered by a resource crisis, no one tries to figure literally anything about what's going on, everyone just goes along with it.Tenebrais posted:You might be interested in Gnosia, which does a lot of this concept better. There's a stalled out LP of it if you wanted to get a feel for it - it's essentially a game of Mafia with a consistent cast but randomly-assigned roles so it plays out differently each time. The characters all have a variety of scenes that can trigger when you meet the right conditions to reveal more about who they are. It's not the deepest set of relationships in the world but it plays out a lot better than QS does in my eyes, and I think it helps that it has a lot less writing. You get the special scenes to learn more about who they are and they feel impactful partly because you just don't see very many of them and most of the time you spend with them is in the actual gameplay. And it gets away with that because there's actual gameplay; the games are fully simulated rather than just being set up for one of three or so specific outcomes. That, and for the sake of pacing Gnosia really doesn't belabour the deaths. They're treated as casually as deaths in a game of Mafia generally are. I've actually played and finished Gnosia. It's really good! And yeah, it definitely has a less is more writing style, with a bigger cast that is mostly characterized through the half-dozen or so events that they star in and their behavior and lines in the procedural gameplay. It does make the deaths less impactful, but that works with the time loop nature of the game. It's much more about the mystery of what everyone's deal is and what is going on than it is about the outcomes of any individual game.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2022 19:42
|
|
|
Podima posted:Oh gosh it didn't dawn on me until now, but of course that's where all the one-off character designs from dead ends came from. I didn't mention it in my big effort post because it was speculation, but yeah I suspect a lot of this game's problems come from kickstarter stretch goal bloat.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2022 14:53
|
|
|
Thoughts as I read the update: Honestly in a game that is this tame and sexless when it comes to the relationship aspect I'm not even that bothered by the fact that Jordan had to go in just a towel, it's not like anything would come of it. In a better written game, this would be the result of a crew that lives in close proximity and is used to minimal privacy, and therefore not really bothered by seeing each other in various states of undress. But here it's probably just another failed comedy bit. The alternate universe stuff is probably the biggest wasted potential, as the ones that ARE plot relevant are probably the most interesting parts of the game. In particular, meeting Kimiko's mom--and getting killed by her in an attempt to prevent the spread of dimension hopping--is a high point that seems pretty dang important. Given the name of the game, I'm beginning to suspect the "true" ending involves somehow preventing the pocketwatch(es) from ever getting used in the first place, probably by ensuring we're never born or some such nonsense. I will charitably assume that the dream sequences are showing content/routes that were cut from the game (maybe at one point the actual games changed on the different routes, or between the male and female leads). I will then uncharitably say that they probably should've made those work instead of giving us the cookie-cutter routes we got. Presumably whenever we get a "everyone was mysteriously killed" ending it's the other Kimiko at work. If it weren't for the fact that in one of them Dai is clearly unaware of there being a second Kimiko, I'd suggest maybe the conflict between needing to protect Kimiko and expel the outsider is causing the whole deletion game thing. That would've been a good twist. I'm guessing the "good" ending variations only change a couple lines and there's a single CG that just changes out which character you're with.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2022 19:39
|
|
|
That is somehow both more and less work put into each ending than I thought. If you're going to make a separate CG for each, maybe put a little effort into the background so it's not just kissing in a plain hallway? Also very few of the endings even care about everything that happened, and no one cares about why it happened, but the crew being completed uninterested in figuring out their own situation is par for the course at this point. Also, it's sort of weird that they chose the non-love routes to involve Jordan getting rejected. Who you end up with isn't a matter of choice since it seems to based on the outcome of the deletion games, and even then none of those are very clear without looking it up or trial and error. It just feels like they're trying to make fun of the player for going for a romantic ending with someone who isn't interested, but there's not really any indication of what their sexuality is beforehand, or even if Jordan is supposed to be growing feelings or not. It feels weirdly punishing, especially when a lot of the "platonic" endings are "and then Jordan hung around them for the rest of their life because it was the next best thing" rather than getting over it and moving on. But then again at this point I'd be surprised if this game could write any of these relationships with grace. So, seeing as the Kimiko routes will presumably have some plot reveals, I want to go over what we know going into them: --Kimiko's mother created Dai as a response to an incident years ago involving a crisis, Jordan's parents and the timeline hopping research they were doing. She ordered the watches destroyed and the parents executed, but they escaped, continued their research and had Jordan. There may be versions of them also doing some dimension hopping. --The stopwatch in question can jump timelines, but apparently can only function near a black hole. It generally takes the user to a parallel timeline at roughly the same time, but this isn't always the case. There are a few cases where it has taken us to other instances of the deletion game happening, leaving the possibility of male and female Jordan meeting. The stopwatch requires another stopwatch present to jump to, however, if the game is clever the bad endings where Jordan gives the stopwatch to someone before being executed could be relevant. (I do not expect the game to be clever at this point.) --Dai was purportedly activated by Jordan's arrival, as the crew would not have enough supplies to support another person. However, the deletion game continues even after a death, leaving this rationale suspect. In fact, in no timeline we've seen does it run a course to a natural ending; everything gets derailed during vampire children, or Jordan jumps timelines. Dai's purpose is apparently to protect Kimiko, and she shuts down if Kimiko dies. As there's no result we've seen where Kimiko loses the game, Dai may be cheating to ensure she doesn't. --There is another Kimiko on board in at least one of the timelines (I can't be bothered to go look up which); they kill Jordan in a vent in one ending, and presumably kill the entire crew BUT Jordan in a different one. Neither Dai nor Ai seem aware of them, which is odd given they are supposedly monitoring the whole ship at all times. Here's the biggest issue I see going into the final routes: the deletion game makes no goddamn sense. It's stated purpose is as a fair way to decide who lives and dies if there's a resource crisis. If we accept Kimiko's mother went off the deep end as a result of the one she faced in her time, then sure, make a homicidal AI that enjoys killing as a way to decide who dies. Why not. But again, the "resource crisis" seems fake--the game continues after deaths that should by all means ensure there's enough resources, so we have to assume that it's an excuse and it's true purpose is something else. But if that's the case, why a death game? Any purpose involving, say, destroying the watch, killing Jordan and their parents, stopping incursions from other timelines, etc., seems like it would be hampered by, say, killing off a bunch of the crew, not to mention putting Kimiko at risk when Ai and Dai are supposed to be protecting her. And we have been given no reason to think Dai went "rogue" somehow; as far as we've seen, she's acting entirely in the capacity she was programmed to, including shutting down when she has failed. So we have to assume the deletion game was part of the programming, or at least "randomly kill off crew" was, but again, that seems to go against any motive hinted at thus far. tl;dr: the deletion game seems to be completely arbitrary to the actual plot of the game ZCKaiser fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Nov 9, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Nov 9, 2022 15:15
|
|
|
That's...not what I was suspecting, but is sort of interesting. Kimiko's mother prioritized Kimiko living longer over the mission, so once active Dai started doing anything and everything to ensure she lived as long as possible, even if it meant sabotaging the mission. Obviously wasn't programmed to consider her mental health, happiness, etc. Kinda bummed that it didn't have anything directly to do with Jordan though, given the revealed history of Kimiko's mother being aware of the pocketwatch and deciding it was a danger. As is par for the course, the reveal of the second Kimiko and the other timeline could have been really interesting but as she only shows up in a couple of bad endings it sort of lacks any real depth to it. Imagine if there were more subtle hints, like characters being a bit confused by Kimiko, as though they weren't expecting to see her somewhere because they just saw her. Or Dai claiming to act on the captain's orders but Kimiko claiming she never gave that order. The reveal of a threat that's been acting behind the scenes the whole time would've been more interesting than "and this is why these two bad endings happened."
|
|
#
¿
Dec 2, 2022 15:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 04:26 |
|
|
You know, even as low as the bar has been set for the finale, I somehow did not expect it to be so lazy as to have someone warp in and literally both solve and explain the entire plot. Really, that's the core issue with this game; it's bad, but not in a way that's especially interesting. It's bad because it's copying tropes from better games and didn't have the time, budget, and/or skill to pull it off, so everything just comes off as kinda half-assed rather than a total dumpster fire.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 27, 2022 18:28
|
|