Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-05-04 10:22 am
rionaleonhart) wrote2018-05-04 10:22 am
Entry tags:
You Live What You've Learned.
I seem to have gone from 'I can't really get engaged with any fiction' to 'I'm trying to play EVERY VIDEOGAME simultaneously'. Zero Time Dilemma was heavily discounted on the PlayStation Store, so I've bought it!
Zero Time Dilemma is the third game in the Zero Escape series, following Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward (the Zero Escape series isn't much better than Kingdom Hearts on the naming front). It's a puzzling series of games about people who are locked up together and get weird lectures on philosophical concepts and then die repeatedly. I've played the first two, but I haven't talked much about them here.
Here are my early notes on Zero Time Dilemma! The game is very weirdly structured in a way that makes it hard to warn about spoilers, but I'm going to spoil the early C-Team scene 'Suspicion'. (It lets you hop between different characters and play assorted scenes out of order, but I've mainly been sticking with C-Team because it's the team I like the most.)
I can’t believe I got an ending ten minutes into the game. The credits took five minutes. That’s fifty percent of the gameplay time it took to reach them. (The very first thing that happened in the game: the villain went, 'I'm going to flip a coin, and if you call it correctly I'll let you go.' I guessed right. He let me go. The end. Roll credits.)
I thought at first that the 'play these scenes in any order' mechanic was just because the characters kept having their memories erased, so, whether you choose the scene right after the last one or the one five hours later, you'll know as much as the characters do. That's part of it, but I've realised now the scenes are also in different timelines. It wouldn't be a Zero Escape game without confusing time shenanigans.
The escape rooms are occasionally pretty dire. The worst offender is the pantry, for two reasons:
- it scattered a load of arms and legs around the room and had Akane and Carlos go 'oh, this is a right arm! this is a left leg!' and then went 'now work out this left-right-up-down button code!' and the limbs had nothing to do with it.
- in looking up the button code for the above reason, I got spoiled for who the limbs belonged to.
On the plus side, the 'they're not fake body parts' reveal was startling enough to startle me even when I experienced it on GameFAQs, rather than in the actual game as intended.
The game asked me 'who killed him?' and I entered the dog's name and got the response 'how would a dog do it?' Look, I'm trying my best! The camera kept lingering significantly on the dog when they were wondering who did it! I'll admit it's perhaps not likely that a small dog could dismember someone and then use their limbs to set up a puzzle, but I was working with what I'd been given.
Carlos and Akane had some pretty cute interactions in the pantry, so I'm sorry there's (as of yet?) no timeline in which they both survive past it.
I'm going to end up shipping Carlos and Akane. I shouldn't. Junpei's right there. But it's going to happen. I can feel it.
I like Carlos a lot, actually! Strong family connections, inclined to friendly teasing, good-hearted, with enough potential darkness under pressure to keep things interesting. At one point he flips out and convinces himself he's murdered someone and tries to decapitate himself with an axe.
I also like that he didn't go 'gasp, no, I'm straight' when Junpei tried to get under his skin. (I have no idea what Carlos's sexuality is, so it's possible this is just because he isn't straight, but I was definitely expecting a no-homo response and was pleased not to get one.)
Carlos: I'd like to know more about you too.
Junpei: What's that, Carlos? Does that mean you're interested in me...?
Carlos: No. My focus is my little sister. Got no time for a love life.
It's a shame this game lacks the 'will the opponent ally or betray?' tension of Virtue's Last Reward (which was basically The Prisoner's Dilemma: The Videogame). The life-or-death decisions don't really have any weight when you know exactly what the other teams are going to do, on account of being the other teams.
Zero Time Dilemma is the third game in the Zero Escape series, following Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward (the Zero Escape series isn't much better than Kingdom Hearts on the naming front). It's a puzzling series of games about people who are locked up together and get weird lectures on philosophical concepts and then die repeatedly. I've played the first two, but I haven't talked much about them here.
Here are my early notes on Zero Time Dilemma! The game is very weirdly structured in a way that makes it hard to warn about spoilers, but I'm going to spoil the early C-Team scene 'Suspicion'. (It lets you hop between different characters and play assorted scenes out of order, but I've mainly been sticking with C-Team because it's the team I like the most.)
I can’t believe I got an ending ten minutes into the game. The credits took five minutes. That’s fifty percent of the gameplay time it took to reach them. (The very first thing that happened in the game: the villain went, 'I'm going to flip a coin, and if you call it correctly I'll let you go.' I guessed right. He let me go. The end. Roll credits.)
I thought at first that the 'play these scenes in any order' mechanic was just because the characters kept having their memories erased, so, whether you choose the scene right after the last one or the one five hours later, you'll know as much as the characters do. That's part of it, but I've realised now the scenes are also in different timelines. It wouldn't be a Zero Escape game without confusing time shenanigans.
The escape rooms are occasionally pretty dire. The worst offender is the pantry, for two reasons:
- it scattered a load of arms and legs around the room and had Akane and Carlos go 'oh, this is a right arm! this is a left leg!' and then went 'now work out this left-right-up-down button code!' and the limbs had nothing to do with it.
- in looking up the button code for the above reason, I got spoiled for who the limbs belonged to.
On the plus side, the 'they're not fake body parts' reveal was startling enough to startle me even when I experienced it on GameFAQs, rather than in the actual game as intended.
The game asked me 'who killed him?' and I entered the dog's name and got the response 'how would a dog do it?' Look, I'm trying my best! The camera kept lingering significantly on the dog when they were wondering who did it! I'll admit it's perhaps not likely that a small dog could dismember someone and then use their limbs to set up a puzzle, but I was working with what I'd been given.
Carlos and Akane had some pretty cute interactions in the pantry, so I'm sorry there's (as of yet?) no timeline in which they both survive past it.
I'm going to end up shipping Carlos and Akane. I shouldn't. Junpei's right there. But it's going to happen. I can feel it.
I like Carlos a lot, actually! Strong family connections, inclined to friendly teasing, good-hearted, with enough potential darkness under pressure to keep things interesting. At one point he flips out and convinces himself he's murdered someone and tries to decapitate himself with an axe.
I also like that he didn't go 'gasp, no, I'm straight' when Junpei tried to get under his skin. (I have no idea what Carlos's sexuality is, so it's possible this is just because he isn't straight, but I was definitely expecting a no-homo response and was pleased not to get one.)
Carlos: I'd like to know more about you too.
Junpei: What's that, Carlos? Does that mean you're interested in me...?
Carlos: No. My focus is my little sister. Got no time for a love life.
It's a shame this game lacks the 'will the opponent ally or betray?' tension of Virtue's Last Reward (which was basically The Prisoner's Dilemma: The Videogame). The life-or-death decisions don't really have any weight when you know exactly what the other teams are going to do, on account of being the other teams.
no subject
Ooh! (I'm cheap for non-linear narratives and stories that are deliberately filtered through the POV character's perspective in terms of what you know.)
That's part of it, but I've realised now the scenes are also in different timelines.
OOH!!
it scattered a load of arms and legs around the room and had Akane and Carlos go 'oh, this is a right arm! this is a left leg!' and then went 'now work out this left-right-up-down button code!' and the limbs had nothing to do with it.
That's hilarious!
The game asked me 'who killed him?' and I entered the dog's name and got the response 'how would a dog do it?'
Sentient evil mastermind dog created an elaborate robot trap and programmed the robots to self-disassemble at the end (with the final robot putting away the pieces of the others and then going to a junkyard to disassemble itself so the pile of robot parts wouldn't look too suspicious), so no one would ever find proof?
I like Carlos a lot, actually! Strong family connections, inclined to friendly teasing, good-hearted, with enough potential darkness under pressure to keep things interesting. At one point he flips out and convinces himself he's murdered someone and tries to decapitate himself with an axe.
I want to say that I'm surprised you put those two sentences together, but that would be lying.
no subject
HILARIOUS DISMEMBERMENT. (Also on the hilarious-dismemberment front: earlier in the game, the characters were arguing about whether it would be possible for one of them to fit through a vent. 'Let's just cut off [future dismemberment victim]'s arm so he can get through,' Akane said.)
Sentient evil mastermind dog created an elaborate robot trap and programmed the robots to self-disassemble at the end (with the final robot putting away the pieces of the others and then going to a junkyard to disassemble itself so the pile of robot parts wouldn't look too suspicious), so no one would ever find proof?
I knew it (and you've also definitely given too much thought to your perfect-crime elaborate robot murder trap).
There are two different timelines branching off from the 'who did the murder?' guess. In one Carlos concludes he must have done it himself and forgotten, and he kills himself with the axe so he can't be a danger to anyone else. In the other he concludes it must have been Akane, and he kills her. In his defence, she's coming at him with a chainsaw at the time. BEAUTIFUL ROMANCE, I'VE CHOSEN A GREAT PAIRING HERE.
no subject
Yeah, if I team up with a dog that knows how to make advanced robots, everyone had better watch out.
One or two minor barriers to them ending up together, yes.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2018-05-04 06:28 pm (UTC)(link)I had a bit of a “I’m stressed and hiding from everything for no particular reason!” moment earlier in the year, and I do keep meaning to go back and reply to some of your entries – forewarning you in case you wonder why you’re getting reply warnings to stuff from like two months ago. (I am also trying to write some degree of Kokichi and Joshua scene, as one of a small number of people who would know both characters, but they’re both very slippery to write!).
I love Zero Time Dilemma! I enjoyed the non-linear narrative a lot, and I liked all the different teams. It does make the game feel different, since I guess you’re dealing more with relationships among splintered groups of the nine people instead of everyone all at once, but it mostly worked for me. The game is very controversial, though. I’ll say no more on that front, but curious to see how you take it.
'I'm going to flip a coin, and if you call it correctly I'll let you go.' I guessed right. He let me go. The end. Roll credits.)
Look, Zero is a man of his word. What a gent!
I have a notebook somewhere with all my notes on Zero Time Dilemma. I should get it out to see if there’s anything worth sharing. One particular puzzle had like 3 or 4 pages of notes (probably why people don’t like the puzzle in that room even though I rather enjoyed it). xD (Not the pantry, though.) I did most of them myself which I’m proud of, with the exception of maybe two puzzles, because they were terrible and hideous.
How are you finding Junpei? His personality is a little different, no?
The game asked me 'who killed him?' and I entered the dog's name and got the response 'how would a dog do it?'
I love all the unique responses they put in for stuff like that, instead of the standard boring “ERROR” type message.
The life-or-death decisions don't really have any weight when you know exactly what the other teams are going to do, on account of being the other teams.
But do you know what they’re going to do in the timeline you’re in? Do you even know which timeline you’re in without checking the flow chart?
(Speaking of the flow chart, don’t look it up online or you’ll end up potentially experiencing spoilers. You know how Zero Escape loves messing with its flow chart.)
If you reach a point where you seem to be totally unable to progress any more with the game, and you’re worried about finding spoilers if you look it up, let me know and I’ll explain what to do. (It’s to do with the way the game unlocks certain fragments/reads certain decisions in a way that you may not have realised.)
I look forward to your insights on the other characters, both new and returning.
Have you played the re-released version of 999, btw, with voice acting? It’s pretty good!
-timydamonkey
no subject
I am also trying to write some degree of Kokichi and Joshua scene
INCREDIBLE. I'd love to see it, if it comes together!
Junpei's definitely less fun this time around, but Carlos and Akane still get enough points between them for C-Team to be my favourite team overall. He's better than Eric, at least! Plus his presence means I can picture him watching in furious indignation (and possibly reluctant arousal) while Carlos and Akane make out, which entertains me.
I haven't played 999 with voice acting, no! I hope it does Snake justice.