Well this series ended on a gigantic "Fuck you"...

It was basically all so Delta could be born to be an old faggot that works his life to justify his paradox existence (which makes little sense). There is no imaginable other reason for him to do this. Hell, they could have went with that, he had to live so a paradox doesn't fuck up spacetime but no, it's just too complicated to explain lol.

Oh hey, Sigma's child with a paradox surrounding them? Kinda sounds like a certain character that was promised within the last game to somehow make an appearance but didn't. Shit like non-clone Dio were also hinted by the makers but that ended up being complete bullshit.

You can in the Perceptive Ending. Though it's more of an easter egg and doesn't serve any purpose.

Am I the only one that absolutely HATED the whole "all of a sudden there is an old guy"

Like where the fuck did he come from? He was never introduced until suddenly "OH HEY LOOK IT'S DELTA" That pissed me off.

He is never properly introduced but there are hints of him throughout the game, like in Q Teams scenes theres a shadow at the bottom of the screen, indicating that there's Delta somewhere there, Eric during the execution who asks about the "old man in the wheelchair", the fact that evryone lived in Dcom but when Q team is trapped they dont know about Sean.
Now, I do hate the fact that Delta is a thing because it feels to convenient for the plot but he is not an actual asspull.

How about why there's a bracelet on Sean and not Delta if they're supposed to think that "Q" is the one playing the game with them?

Delta has a bracelet

At least they'll port VLR to the PC and I can hope to play with the english voices this time.

Still doesn't justify why Sean has one. Or why they let Sean call the shots.

BROTHER DID NOTHING WRONG

He uses the term histories though.

The teams are not supposed to ever see each other. Q team think they are the only team with four members and all the other teams believe every team consists of three members.
Nonary Game: Nine people; Decision Game (Deca): Ten people.
In one scene, Eric says they can't let Q make the decision "for obvious reasons." He was actually nodding at the old man, whom he believes to be blind and deaf.
Every time Sean makes a decision, Mira and Eric get mad at him for doing it because he was not supposed to make it (except for the one time where Mira knocks out Eric).

I could list even more, but suffice to say, there is tons of foreshadowing for the twist if you go back and pay attention.

It's true there was foreshadowing. However I have a huge problem with the twist for a completely different reason - it wasted a much better idea. Instead of one brainjacking fag, the twist should have been that the player has an active role, that being of the one pulling the strings. That would have been a meta twist, you know, the thing this fucking series is known for. Sean's even turning to the camera to announce the truth. Makes me think Delta being Q was a last-second change.

That wouldn't have been a twist. That would have been EXPECTED after you had a conversation with Akane in VLR. I was fully expecting a guilt trip toward the end, instead I got Delta doing everything, Kyle and myself doing nothing at all.

The Player should have being "?"
You know, the guy that Akane talks to at the end of VLR

Wasn't this officially what was supposed to happen, and why the player had an active role in the Epilogue of VLR?

Or did Delta somehow manage to MINDU HACKU back in time even though he couldn't?

Oh wait
I forgot
VLR WAS POINTLESS NOW
NOTHING MAKES SENSE
SPIKEY CHUN CAN DIE! YOU RUINED 999 AND EVEN DANGANRONPAUL

I think the game was actually hinting at you being the one compelling characters to make the decisions that go against their consciences (the "?" they referenced in VLR).
An argument that speaks for this is that you can still influence decisions even in timelines where Delta is dead.

That's exactly who he was.
But then they fouled up

see

Except that in the true end they literally flat out say it was DERUTA and his MAINDU HACKU powers.

I don't remember that. At what point exactly?

YOU'RE IN MANUFACTURING AND THIS EPIC MEME MASTER SLAPS A BOMB ON YOUR GF'S ASS
WHAT DO YOU DO?

I personally think the plot would've been better if the player themselves was actually Zero
That's what I thought the twist was when Sean turned to the camera
I was going to guess that the player was Zero who was ? at the end of VLR and was blick winkling everyone into making choices to get the desired timeline

Here:
youtu.be/RMkz0z6TMjE?t=2h31m28s

Skip to about 2:20:00

But the specific moment is 2:31:28

Of course I still remember that he can control people with his ability, but does he ever say he used the ability to force decisions upon them?

That's not how etymology works

What else was the point of even bringing it up?

Exactly

For reference for everyone else, user is talking about: youtu.be/5vs5Y8SDzNE?t=38m45s

That was the point of him bringing it up and of the suicide-proxy demonstration.

I am sure that I have seen it, a pic of eric tipping the shotgun, anyone has it?

got you fam

To assert his power over them.

Like I have already said, why would you still be able to make the decisions for the characters even in timelines where he is dead?
Also, I am pretty confident that the point is that you are "?" and you make them make the decisions.

You mean his power to force decisions upon them?

Because bad writing, user.

Let's not pull a Umineko here. There's nothing extra complex to understand, layered deep within the story, hidden in what is unsaid by the excellent author– it's just bad writing.

Thanks, user, you are a sweetheart

The games are by far not perfect, but he explicitly established "?" at the end of VLR, and this is a good way to make sense of, what others claim to be the omission of that concept.
Zero explicitly gives a message saying he is already dead in one timeline and Zero never outright says he influenced any of the decisions.

I think it's best to wait for the Q&A. Uchikoshi has been pretty honest about his plans and his thoughts during development in the previous ones.

I agree that most of the plotholes are due to bad writing. However, there is probably some deeper meanings to some events, like Delta killing the dog, or the time machine. I think it's a fake one, or at least not made by aliens; the pseudo-egyptian hieroglyphs feel like a throwback to 999 / VLR with Alice.

In any case, I want to give Uchikoshi the benefit of the doubt after Remember11, which I thought was brillantly written.

I think killing the dog was just a joke.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story

Accidental Sage.

Finishing this game was a chore

It may as well have been, that doesn't change its function in the plot as deus ex machina. Whether or not the super-durable magical material in the cards is alien or terrestrial doesn't change that it's a plot device pulled out of thin air to save the characters from a certain situation.

...

So, did Mira butcher Junpei or the disposable Seans did that? because that doesnt seemed like her MO.

Mira killed him. Not to excuse bad writing again, but it's plausible that Zero was the one who dismembered him after he was already dead.

I'm gonna play the devil advocate here, even though I'm leaning more toward your side.

Is a time machine in a game about guys travelling through conciousness and space time really that much of a deus ex machina? Uchikoshi did the Ever17 gimmick in VLR (and to some extent the Never7 one in 999) : there is no way he wasn't gonna go with some time travel bullshit. Especially since he likes to play with players expectations.

I don't know dude. I'm probably just overthinking it.

Sure it is. Why need a machine for time travel when there are characters capable of doing it without any mechanical assistance? He wrote himself into a corner with the implications about Phi being Sigma's daughter, and then had to band-aid it with some explanation as to why she could physically end up in the past when all other time travel thus far has been on a psychic level.

Same thing goes for the two infant copies of Delta and Phi who starved to death in the Dcom base after their other copies were sent through the machine back to 1917 or whatever year it was, or the copy of Phi who was left in the machine in 1917 after they sent her other copy forward into the future. Fabricated out of thin air and then dropped by the wayside as it's convenient, like so many parts of the plot in this game.

Of course it is.
The series wasn't about time machines, or aliens, or copying and pasting individuals into a different time.
This is the first time any of these things are mentioned, no further explanation is given, and the device is used to great effect as well to save the day.
That's kind of exactly what a deus ex machina is.

I guess it can be overlooked to some extent, but Kyle's absence really can't.
Dialogue is pretty interesting when you replace "morphogenetic field" with "blick winkel", so I'm willing to at least assume that you're the acting party here and Delta just doesn't get it, but where's the MVP of the test site?

Sigma loves him very much, you don't just think he'd leave him behind, do you?

...

why are you surprised, oc here is rarer than unicorns

It is pretty good OC

On an unrelated note, why is Akane so dumb in this game?

Because dumb people make a plot better.

I wouldn't mind if it was a new character but this is nothing like the Akane in 999 or VLR

Was she ever portrayed as smart? I remember her being dumb as a brick in 999. She knows some science fact, but in both "games" she organized, there was someone else to help her. In Santa case for the "second" first nonary games, he planned it by himself (presumably in the timeline where Akana dies). In the AB game, she's again helped by Santa and a Sigma with full knowledge of the game (don't ask me how it went on the initial timeline, I have no clue). Copying it wouldn't be too hard. I can't remember her field of expertise. Biology?

I think an equally good or even better question is why Junpei is a prick.

Why is Junpei so uncharacteristically a douche in this game?

Even oldman Teny from VLR was more in-character and he had more of a reason to be different because of decades of bitterness and a planet nuking.

Also, check it out

Edgy Jumpei is explained though, his shit ass job and the traumatic expiriences that he lived as a private investigator

Is it just me, or does it feel like Junpei and Akane were originally supposed to be Snake and Clover?

Also, I just realized that the Teleporter was implied back in VLR.

Kyle wasn't meant to be a spare for the events of VLR, but rather a way to restart the events of VLR if Sigma dies during or before the events of ZTD, and Radical 6 still gets released. Kyle could be sent to that possible future to replace Sigma, thereby keeping the time loop moving.

That would imply that Akana has the Machine and she doesn't, Brother has it.
Unless, she did went to that Free the Soul meet and did join then

i wanna get into these games, should i just get 999 & VLR and skip this one?

I think that we/delta are not making a making a decision a majority of the time. There are only a few instances where a character comments on how they feel there arm or whatever was being controlled by an outside force. For example, diana during the ending where she kills the other teams during a acid shower and then they go on a talk about mind controlling parasites. I don't think people ever talk about having there arm strangely move in timelines where delta is dead.

I think that the player being part of the last game or that we were always there, was the original twist. There is hints of it, in the fact that since this game takes place over three people, an ordinary shifter would not be enough and the player was needed to move info between the three groups. The snail symbolism went nowhere, and I think it was originally meant to be us. The problem was that everyone was expecting this "twist" in some form or another and they had to drop it because a twist you expect is pointless. The secret ending in vlr was a huge mistake.

Well, the order is 999 -→ VRL -→ ZTD
If you want to play all of them that is.
ZTD is not terrible but not great either, it is just not as good as the first 2 entries.

I assume they were working together at that point, whether Akane fully knows it or not.

In fact, they would of needed to coordinate or else Left would of never been sent to the moon. Since destroying the base would of caused Brother to never exist, the only reason he would send Left was under Akane's plan.

If you connect the dots of the Outbrake and True Ending VLR, it implies that Akane joined Free The Soul. So, it was all part of Brother's Plan all along

Yep. Therefore, she had access to the Teleporter.

Oh yeah i remember Clover and Alice saying that Akane i think told them that there was a way for them to return to 2028 despite being normal people.

Schroedinger's

Cat

I hate this phrase so much
Even Steins;Gate made fun of it

And yet VLR relied on it to an insane degree

Zero Time Dilemma is pretty good and has a lot of great moments, but in terms of revelations, it falls flat compared to Virtue's Last Reward.

I think 999 is a little bit overrated. VLR made my jaw drop at almost every ending, but they sadly were forced to tone down the violence and atmosphere compared to the first game. I still think it's the best in the trilogy.
Zero Time Dilemma brings back the violence and turns it up a notch. A lot of people don't like some of the twists, but I it gave me the eeriest feelings of the three games, even if the payoff wasn't as great as I expected.

Wow, Vivian James is actually in a video game. Kudos. And I thought that piece of shit mascot was going to be relegated to the ashtray of history within a month of her conception.

No, that's just human Luna

About the only good thing in this game is that we finally get Luna back.

I'm not going to pretend to remember the scenes because Q team was shitty but-

-I'm expected to believe nobody mentions moving Delta's ass around?
-Nobody thinks anything of him being excluded from graphs and shit like the 3x3 doll picture (or likewise Sean if Delta is supposed to be representative).
-Delta wouldn't be anyone's first person to kill in the Three-Way Standoff segment? Really?
-Delta can never be referred to by his supposed identity of Q.
-Nobody wants to ask where he is when he's missing.

Also Eric and Mira are just shitty and pointless themselves, they serve no purpose but to get Eric pissy and being the faggot who won't leave everyone alone with the shotgun. Eric's tragic backstory goes nowhere does nothing significant for his character (from the concept art I expected him to be an outright creepy weasle of a motherfucker but he just has pointless fits). Mira is a psychopath who not only gets appropriately punished but is given free reign for no discernible reason (nobody ever has to stop her from doing shit). -and neither are SHIFTers for reasons not adequately explained (as if there's a real plot in the end anyway).

I said it before but they had your character act like he didn't understand his decisions in VLR too (even though they all make sense and are believable to for the character making them). Mind-hacking is irrelevant for game to try and gripe at you for actually taking active roles. Decisions only amount to "muh snails!" apparently.

Because they don't bother. Everyone's usually just in some shit situation so they just leave him there since he really doesn't matter.
I'd say it's more questionable that Sean was excluded (I'd imagine it's that Q's square simply has nothing in it.)
He was, you did it. Other than that, I'd say the bigger threat in the room are the armed individuals rather than the blind, deaf cripple.
He was.
When are you even talking about?

Eric and Mira can eat a bag of fucking dicks though.

No returning character acted in-character. Sigma should be a fucking genius yet he's the one who argues that they need to push the "Do Not Press" button. I sighed every time one of them said something along the lines of "Curse you Zero!". -and neither Akane or Sigma is ever pressed on being Zero once themselves. I don't doubt that they try their best to make any given game playable to a dumb shmuck who wants to play them out of order but that's not an excuse. Akane isn't retardedly sweet and innocent, she's fucked people over in countless timelines twice over and having Jumpei for a third round of suffering doesn't seem far off.

The number of people aware of that fact is fairly limited, but I got a definite chuckle at the end when Delta talked about "Boy, the world would be pretty full of murderers if we counted other timelines" with the closeup of Akane's face.

Junpei definitely alluded to Akane's past several times.

Only good thing I liked about this was artstyle and character models.

Sadly the animation was outsourced to some Chinese sweatshop or something from what I hear.

So I have it downloaded since it's out but haven't had the time to play it.
Should I just delete it and pretend 999 was the last one or should I power through it ?
I haven't played VLR.

Play VLR. It's amazing.
Then play ZTD, preferably shortly after VLR and pretend it's its epilogue.
I think you should be satisfied.

you absolutely need to play VLR beforehand in order to appreciate ZTD

Pretend? 999 is a closed story with conclusion and self-consistency.
I AM IN DENIAL

That said, you can enjoy it if you want, see if there's something you can dig, but 999 is better if it's its own game.

VLR is GARBAGE
ZTD IS WORSE

VLR is a joke with a singular punchline:
SCHRODINGER'S CAT
ZTD retcons VLR almost entirely

999 is the best of the three, obviously.

I don't think you know what a retcon is.

Free the Soul

Free The Soul was very clandestine in VLR. We knew only the very superficial justifications for their actions.
Would you really have preferred it had they just been evil for no reason or did you expect a better reason?

So when Junpei and Akane were cloned (hurrr) into a different timeline, what happened to the originals that were with Carlos while he waited for the space time cloning machine to get back up and running again?

Also artificially hiding that Delta was with Q-team was dumb.

This was easily the most fucking stupid decision in this whole clusterfuck, even more so than the garbage animations and the shitty "non-linear" design that makes the game feel repetitive and clunky as fuck

They are dead. They were executed together with the real Carlos. The only problem that arises in this scenario is that there should be a spare Carlos in every timeline after that.

Another thing that confuses me about the stupid fucking cloning machine is that since because of it two of the same people can be in the same timeline, how the fuck does shifting play into that? Why does the real Carlos on Force Quit get information from clone Carlos?

The same way teams got memories from other teams.

Still stupid.

The whole game is stupid. If I were Carlos I would have just shot Delta the very moment he said Decision Game in the ending.

If Delta is concieved only in one of the histories (and was copied only to one other history) AND he cannot SHIFT or do anything of the sort, then how does he exist in all the other histories in the first place?

...

Something about a special test done on him by Russians, I think

Or he space-alien-supratimecloned himself into other timelines

Yes, actually. Simplicity is better than retroactive complexity

Also, remember Junpei's monologue about bikers in VLR? That was great and showed an interesting paradox (whether it even makes sense to change anything and if you somehow ARE able to overwrite timelines — should you?)
It was implied that MAYBE there still was some way to resolve everything, which was interesting (also Alice/Clover not causing a paradox).
In fact, ZTD itself asks this question in the files.
And in the end… it answers nothing.
So, if you only create timelines, what was the ultimate point of the AB Project? They really did not change anything for their darker future at all.

Delta is the player. That's why the players can make decisions that the characters, especially Diana, would never make normally.

No he isn't.
The player is ? in VLR
Delta is just Delta

There is no good evidence to support that. The player is Delta.

Kotaro Uchikoshi's word means more to me than your shitty theory.

My shitty theory? It's the "theory" of everyone in the thread besides you and the other guy because it's explicitly revealed in the ending. Until you get your precious interview, there's no evidence to support it besides your headcanon.

OK, well enjoy your theory that contradicts established plot points ('?' is the player, Delta cannot shift)

That is only an established plot point in Virtue's Last Reward, not the other two games.

And he never does. In the ending he explains that he has knowledge of other timelines because he MIND HACKed the other characters and saw their memories.

So you think that somehow Delta, in every variable timeline, made the exact decisions that would lead to the end result?

What the player experiences as an outside presence making the decisions for the characters is actually a Delta in that particular timeline making that particular decision?

So really every decision is itself another timeline…somehow.

It's ROUGH but I guess I can see that almost.

You do have to understand, though, that while your theory here will help you enjoy the game, it's not actually what was written.

You can enjoy the game and rewrite shoddy writing in your head to experience it better and enjoy it (it's how I enjoy Fate/Extra's Nero despite the atrocious DINDU NUFFINS of her backstory and how I enjoy Devil Survivor 1 by pretending the other paths don't exist and/or the 8th Day thing doesn't exist).

Enjoy it how you want, mate, but don't come to others like me and other anons saying your theory is actually what happened rather than how you prefer to interpret it.

Objectively speaking, Delta is not the player, VLR is retconned like mad, great opportunities are dropped/ruined, most of the cast acts wildly out of character in many areas, and clone-alien-time swapping is moronic.

ZTD is garbage, but if you prefer to see it otherwise then hey, that's cool. I wish I cared enough to do so but it's such a backstab to anyone who ran through VLR in its entirety (let alone anyone who was paying attention to 999's mechanics and plot threads, which VLR retconned too) that I just won't bother anymore.

Everyone keeps saying Ever17 and Remember11 are amazing. Maybe so.
The Danganronpa and Zero Escape series show only a writer incapable of following up mostly solid first games with anything but retcons, nonsense and ass-pulls.

I want the writer from Remember11 and Ever17. The writer we got out of today's SpikeyChun is a hack.

MIND

HACK

If I was rewriting shoddy writing in my head while I was playing the game so I could enjoy it better, I would be saying that the main player is "?". I wish I could make up something as stupid as the player being Delta, but that's what the game explicitly says at the end. This is not a theory.

I am not seeing it otherwise. ZTD is garbage.

MINDU HACKU only works for a moment and doesn't work across timelines.

So Delta isn't MINDU HACKUING across timelines, he's MINDU HACKUING within each timeline. The only time we see Delta explicitly confirmed to be dead is at the very end of a timeline, before the characters jump to another timeline where Delta is still alive. There's no place where a character made a decision against their will while Delta was dead.

Hahaha I really want a game called MINDU HACKU now

But fair enough, then

Delta doesn't always outlive the characters who make decisions, he states himself there are timelines where he's dead (presumably from the Q Team Execution). The game tries to make a parallel between the player and him to some degree obviously but it's not anywhere 100% (putting aside how nobody liked the fucker). Even if that was the intention they have screw-ups involving the twists in the other two games too.

Again, only in one timeline does that happen, and it's at the very end of that timeline.

That's the only time you see it happen but when they won't show him you can't confirm his being alive.

Also there's letting Eric kill everyone before the reveal too but that's besides the point.