Zero Escape (999/VLR/ZTD)

Yeah, both Junpei and Akane being present is weird. I'd like to theorise why, but given how insane VLR got near the end it could be almost literally anything. Zero Escape is pretty big on the timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly interpretation so it can probably be handwaved with 'alternate timeline' of some kind

Not sure about Junpei.
I think it was already said in VLR that he was there, I remember him attesting to the fact, so it's actually no suprise.
On the other hand, in VLR it felt like he was unable to find Akane since the end of 999, so it's strange seeing they actually had another meet-up without any previous allusions to it, but maybe I am overanalyzing here.

Maybe Uchikoshi was being a jester and meant something like 'I only meant THAT Sigma :^)'

I'm standing by Uchikoshi's "they never met again". The person that Junpei met in VLR and now just isn't her anymore. It's been awhile, but I seem to remember his reaction being more one of annoyance than surprise when she got in touch with him before VLR.

goddamn it. This will be eternally disappointing to me. They had the perfect belligerent sexual tension thing going on the whole game although I suppose it's actually kind of creepy now that I think about it what with [SERIOUS VLR SPOILERS AHEAD] Sigma being an octogenarian and all

and yes to anyone watching this thread like a hawk I did fuck up spoiler tags twice

No, it definitely is weird that they're both present.
Also, if Junpei and Sigma went through an adventure together before, wouldn't old Junpei recognise old Sigma? Actually, does Junpei indicate he recognises Sigma at any point in VLR? I can't remember.

I see no point in spoilers here.
If you haven't finished both games you probably shouldn't hang out in such a thread in the first place.

Well, he may have realized she was not 'the' Akane only after his arrival. She still meant something to him, it's clear. He was searching for her, then Zero got in touch with him saying he has a chance of meeting her, he says fuck everything and goes to the Moon.
So yeah, it was only after the Nonary Game there that he bacame disillusioned.

That's a good point. No, he didn't.
However, remeber that they are split into 3 distinct teams this time. It's possible that they don't interact directly at all.

Also, I just noticed how they are in pairs.
Team C has Junpei x Akane.
Team D has Phi x Sigma (even though Uchi said they're not a pair, still)
Team Q has Mira x Eric (Eric says something like 'Mira is my angel' in the second trailer, so there's something going on there too).

Im gonna avoid spoilers and not play it for awhile
I wanna replay 999 and vlr but not in the mood for that recently

Well, with 999 you only need 2 ending so it'll be done in two days.
I get you with VLR. You can always just rea up the sysopsis, though. Most of the time spent in VLR is flavour and not that much actually needs summarizing for ZTD, I think.

I still just replayed them, though.

Can somebody tell me why Phi is so autistic?
To this day I still dont know why she introduced herself saying that she wasnt a caiman or batman.

High tier:
K, Clover (999), Akane (999), Snake
Mid tier:
Ace, Junpei (999), Sigma, Santa, Luna, Lotus, Seven
Low tier:
Phi, Dio, Junpei(VLR), Clover (VLR), Alice, Akane (VLR), Quark, 9th man

(999 generally had a better cast of characters. Though it's been a while since I played the games, and my memories might be a bit hazy.)
(Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.)

999 was better overall, I blame the fucking nips for convincing spike-chunsoft to water down the sequel.
I just worry a little that they're going too far to the other extreme this time. Everything we've seen feels a little chuunibyou.

Autism

Yea 999 not so much of a problem
But VLR all paths are so intwine

I disagree about Dio and Tenmiyouji.
I think they were sublime in their exectution, no small part thanks to the amazing English dub.

If only ZTE's dub would be that good.
But no, we can't have that. We can only have Ashley Burch.

Well, Japanese voices it is.

I love how ZTD's cast looks. After the sci-fi-y weird stuff it's great to go back to the style of 999.
In fact, looking back-to-back, ZTD seems even more grounded than 999.

god bless his kind soul

Not even gay but I kinda wanna fuck Carlos

What the fuck, are we seriously getting Ashley Burch? Which character is she?

Fuuuuck no
I just googled and apparently she might be Diana.

Jesus, now I suddenly realise how Rise fans feel

Burch is in everything now
its fucking terrible

Welcome to the worst possible timeline.

same
Akane is also hot as fuck here for some reason

Nah man
zeroescape.wikia.com/wiki/Diana

God damnit, why? How can such an obnoxious retard manage to get this much into gaming just by being a leech? Shes just an idiot that made somewhat gaming related videos.
Fuck it, I was gonna play it in english, but gonna stick to moon now.

I think Diana sounded okay.
Phi will probably be the same actor, so no worries here.
Sigma is kinda neutral, hard to say. Q is a kid, they always suck, although Quark was bearable.
My biggest worries are Carlos, Eric and Mira. Although Carlos may turn out good if he doesn't overplay it. Akane seems to be overdoing it too.

Curious, since further googling seems to indicate that nothing's really been fully confirmed. I think both Burch and Riegel are speculation based on the trailer voices. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

False alarm, at least for now.

Have you seen Phi? Damn, I wanna fuck that autist, specially since shes showing those delicious legs.

It's good to see a thread on the Zero Escape series. Expecting 999 to be delivered tomorrow so I can play through the series again in preparation for ZTD.
But let's cut to the chase, who is cutest Zero Escape and why is it Phi?

More importantly, however, I've been meaning to setup a QnA/AMA with Kotaro Uchikoshi. Specifically for Holla Forums. Would people be interested in that?
I can't promise anything, but that I will do my best.

Who are you that would make that even remotely achievable?

Yes please. We've already had Japanese friends here, I think having Uchi is a good choice.

I see why everyone's so obessed with Phi, but this never really was my type. Not into shorthair-glasses type, even though most guys are.
But man, that Akane… Especially those legs. The only thing is that she doesn't really look like Akane at all in this new style.

will the story twist be as japanese/retarded as the one in 999? time-dimensional-travelling-telepathy?

While you aren't capable of that, it would be nice, especially since he did another interview recently.
With Destructoid.
Destructoid, being the fine publication that they are, omitted ALL of the serious questions and answers, and only published the things Uchikoshi joked about, with the headline "Zero Time Dilemma's creator likes to joke about being a failure in bed."

If you didn't like the twist in 999, you'll probably like VLR/ZTD even less, so don't bother

Uchikoshi is very much in love with his fans. When Operation Bluebird started he was in direct contact with several Anons (myself included), on twitter he occasionally asks fans to play games with him and, as far as I know, the person running the Operation Bluebird facebook/twitter and Uchikoshi are friends. I would be surprised if he wouldn't jump at the chance to talk with fans. (Aside from being busy, but that's exactly why I chose this month.)
Also, I'll make sure there will be translators present.

Did you read the article? The jokes were from another article for a Nintendo magazine, but were scrapped from that article for being too salacious and instead posted in said Destructoid article.

Mark got several people to do an AMA by literally asking: "Want to do an AMA on my website?".
Nothing happens until you swing the bat!

Let me think, did I give Destructoid hits?
No. No, I did not. Please die.

That sounds really cool then, if it's doable

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...

I'm not reading the thread because obvious spoiler bonanza, but seeing as ZTD is releasing on PC this series popped up on my radar.

I have a hacked 3DS and a DS flashcart. I don't trust reviews so lay it on me straight: is it worth starting this series if I've never seen or heard anything about it before? For some background I liked Ace Attorney but I otherwise don't usually play many VNs.

didn't mean to quote

It's better if you don't know anything at all going in.
And yeah, it's worth it, and if you like AA, you're probably gonna love this one.

store.steampowered.com/app/311240

Steam page is up

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One question: is the United States localization solid or is it NISA-tier?

So, stating the obvious here, the girl in the middle of ZTD is supposed to be the base of designing Luna's gaulem, right? I'm excited to see how that transfers over, though it's already strange enough how the people characters present are possible. From the trailer there will be some kind of theme of memory loss it seems, I'm guessing we'll be seeing that as an excuse of paradoxes. I'm willing to be the masked man is some pre-existing character too (and just who seems to fit right into that role?).

Both 999's and VLR's localizations were amazing, especially VLR. VLR also had stellar VA.
ZTD is translated by the same team AFAIK, so there is no need to worry. The VA, on the other hand, seems much worse than it was in VLR, but the game has Japanese VA if it's really so bad.

Call me crazy but I didn't like VLR's voice-acting but sort of want to give this game's a chance.

Also it should be noted that even without knowing Japanese you can tell some things were by no means straight translations. Like in dramatic scenes with audio a character calling out someone's name multiple times is changed into some other emotional phrases. -and then, while not exactly a translation problem, there were those few files in VLR that got screwed up because the dipshit who programmed them in didn't add another page to turn so you could see the rest of the text. Kinda the same thing with that dumb (not even necessary) part with Alice and the numbers though. Yeah… hopefully they've got their shit together and there isn't a save-breaking bug this time either.

That's how actualy translations are supposed to work, though. You always try to find some equivalent which won't sound stupid in the target language and that equivalent is sometimes very different.
Straight translations is what only newbies do, you're supposed to translate ideas and emotions, not words.

I read about it too, thank you. Anyway, just got VLR since a Vita is all I have for these games.

So, Will I finally be able to save luna? Why did Junpei became a faggot? What happend to Clover and Alice, did they got Schrodinger'ed back the present?

No user, if the world is to be saved then your waifu will never have existed.

Well, Junpei probablt became a faggot because Akane cucked him in 999.

I rather have Luna than save the world

Abandoned yes but as far as I know she never "cheated" on him. Honestly, I agree with Tenmyouji

Agree on what?

At the end of game, Tenmyouji says that what Akane is doing is wrong. Sure the tragedy is shit but what about those who came after it? Humanity survived, we moved on, we overcame the disaster. Akane might have abandoned Junpei but she never moved on.

However, you could also argue that she is not really human anymore and human morality and logic doesn't apply to her, or rather that she has her own, which is nigh impossible for us to comprehend. By this point, she is bascially a million-year-old immortal God.

**She is a human, user, a very powerfull human yes but in the end a human.
She ages and can be killed just like us, she can jump to another timeline but about it**

She's relived reality countless of times. Her body may age, but her mind is thousands of years old and everytime she 'dies' she just jumps.
She also has a power of premonition without jumping, so not only she can avoid dying and get info from other timelines, but also get info from the future and basically know everything that happens beforehand, as well as her past.
After you've lived through thousand of years and 'died' millions of years, you probably don't see this stuff as mortals do.

Eh, I am pretty sure the people she killed did not wanted to die.
She is playing God, I stand by my choice, Let it go, Akane

Mr.Uchikoshi I'm QnA.

Tell me about Q, why does he wear the mask?

Didn't want, yes, but didn't particularly care for either (except for wanting revenge on the 4 creators of the Nonary Game).

I….
I can't go back, not after that.
I know almost nothing about the story of VLR and it kills me inside, but I just can't sit though 36 hours of shit I've seen and puzzles I've done. ;_;

Watch a longplay.
Or redo it. I mean, you can skip all the text now (even if without fast-forward) and know all the puzzles.
You'll probably be done with most of it in 10 hours or less.

I'm sure you can find roughly where you were on Youtube despite the design of the game. If you were so close to the end the variations to confuse you become a bit limited. Still that's some bad luck, especially if it all isn't fresh in your memory. What a huge pain in the ass not to be able to save in the damn puzzle rooms in fear of losing all your progress.

VLRs story doesn't really matter, it's all just a setup for the third game which will undoubtedly retcon it all anyway.

There were reminders in every single VLR thread back on halfchan when the game was new reminding everyone not to fucking save in puzzle rooms.

You'd have to be a goddamn idiot to actually do it when everyone is constantly telling you not to.

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I learned that the hard way on my run through in VLR.

I just sucked it up and blasted through the puzzles again.

No but you see it's ok to spend decades working on horrible murder games if you see yourself do it in the future because the people who are alive right now don't matter compared to the potential people you could save later, except it's actually before because it's time travel, but not really, and we made our explanation bullshit enough that it'd be impossible for us to fail anyway because fuck cohesive linearity.