ZTD analytical rant/review .(Ver: 2) (spoilers and salt)

[bilguun alix]

Months of hyping, years of waiting and we got ZTD. One of the most disappointing finale in a series ever. And not just disappointing but inconsistent, badly written piece of fiction.

Sure the previous games had their own problems but this time they failed and when I said failed I mean they literally shat on everythingthe series was building for. Now of course bashing ZTD has become a trend nowadays and the only entertaining thing about ZTD has become the memes. But I think looking back on it and analyzing it’s mistake is very important for the ZE fans and especially the fans who want to learn thing or two about writing.

So with no further a due let us begin.

 

Motivation of the mastermind makes no sense:

 

Character motivation is one of the most important parts of a fiction. If the motivation doesn’t make sense the whole plot is essentially meaningless and stupid.

In order to kill the terrorist and save the world Delta released radical six. And this motivation alone is enough to ruin the series. The reason this feels so stupid is because Delta has the ability to mind hack. Someone who can MIND READ can’t track down a single person. Even if Delta didn’t have time he could have just warned Sigma and Phi instead of kidnapping them. They would use their shifting ability to find the terrorist and save the world so what’s the problem? But not just Sigma and Phi. Carlos, Diana, Akane and Junpei are also espers. It was even revealed that Akane and Junpei could download information from the morphogenetic field. Carlos and Diana also has some weird ability that allows them to get information from other people. The gang is just way too overpowered to the point there is no obstacle anymore. And this is why I also wished that uchikoshi would restrict time travel. Time travel without any restriction can easily ruin conflict. Jumping through time is such a casual thing nowadays it lost all of it’s cool factor and only works as a cheap way out of everything.. Not to mention Delta had many many other very useful assets besides the shifters. The transporter machine that can clone him to other timelines, the quantum computer that can generate timelines and calculate timeline branching and help Sean remember stuff from other timelines. He also has Sean robots, the entire control over free the soul. But even if he didn’t have these assets him knowing about a terrorist who wants to destroy the world but not knowing who is highly unlikely. There is also the possibility of the terrorist deciding not to destroy the world. There is no solid proof that the terrorist would destroy the earth without making any other timelines. And since ZE series runs on multiverse even if Delta saw the future through mind hacking the story could easily branch off to the timeline where the terrorist decides not to do it meaning that delta killed 6 billion people for nothing.

Another reason for making the decision game was that he and Phi would be born. Which is again a terrible flaw in logic because according to the multiverse theory (the same theory that works for the ZE series) there are infinite timelines. Which means even if you don’t do anything you won’t perish because when you are using the multiverse theory there is no such thing as a paradox. Among the infinite timelines there must be a timeline where Sigma and Diana got married, gave birth to Phi and Delta, turns out that their children have super powers and they send their children to the past via the transporter. There was no need for a decision game. 999 worked on different time travel mechanics.

Another one of Delta’s C O M P L E X M O T I V E S was that he gave the Zero escape gangs the determination to find the terrorist. Which was pretty useless because the entire gang was already determined. Sigma prepared for this for 45 years. It was Akane’s fault for not telling Sigma about the decision game that they fell into this mess.

 

“The bootstrap paradox”

 

In ZTD there are some paradoxes of this kind. Where did Phi’s name and the brooch originated from? Baby Phi was named Phi because Sigma knew about future Phi. The brooch was there because…reasons? This whole paradox makes the sentence on the brooch to be pointless. And the brooch should age between each jump but it clearly doesn’t. The bootstrap paradox is something I hate about time travel stories. It forces something to be in a certain way without having any kind of meaning or origin. I call it fatalism bullshit.

 

“The prologue”

 

Yes I’m even going to talk about the prologue file since it’s part of the story. First of all about getting information from the future. Why would any version of her bother to send her information if the multiverse exists? And secondly if they did send information why did it have to be so vague? And since when can akane send information to herself? If she could have done that then why did old Akane bother to train Sigma and Phi. Just use her ability to send the needed information to save the world to young sigma and phi or herself. In the end Uchikoshi just wrote himself into a corner with VLR ( he didn’t have a good reason as to why Akane kidnaped Sigma) so he just excused it with this.

Sigma’s actions immensely disappointed me due to his irrational behavior and idiotic deductions. He spent 45 years training for this moment and that’s the best he can do? I thought he would be searching for radical 6 relentlessly, using dirty and clever schemes to inspect the other participants and suspects them of being brother or carrying radical 6. But all I got was:

“Get off me! It might be in the case!”

“What might be? You’re not making sense!”

“The very thing that will kill six bil—dammit!”

45 years of training and he is still a fucking moron. And there is no foreshadowing or mention of Delta. Sigma and Phi not suspecting delta even though he clearly fits the description is just bad writing.

Akane and Junpei’s conversation made me realize how interesting, engaging, emotional Akane and Junpei’s relationship would have been if the author wasn’t such a cop out.

 

“Setting of the decision game”

 

Aside from having a really bad reasons for existing the decision game had potential. Unlike the previous games there are three playable POVs. In other words most of the characters will have plenty of screen time and we would be able to see things from multiple perspective.

Unfortunately the players are divided into 3 groups. This limits character interaction between three people and makes it impossible for a well handled murder mystery. I would love it if there were occasionally teamwork fragment where different teams meet each other but there weren’t any.

Another thing I absolutely hated was the amnesia drugs. Since when did time specific drugs become a thing in zero escape? Seven and K lost their entire memories because of the overdose of sophoril. It made sense. But now we have memory erasers? The amnesia drugs also made character development impossible. A super fucked up event happens that require them to change but memory eraser and they forget about everything.

 

“Fragments”

 

Now I will go in depth as to why the story sucked as well as share my opinion on each fragment. The fragment system makes the game surprisingly easy to review.

 

"Beggining"

 

I loved it when Junpei started roasting Akane and having a secret grudge against her. But what i hated was that they tried to hide the fact that Akane and Sigma were zeros of the previous game. When i hyped the game before it began i was sure there were going to be some confession moment where Akane and Sigma admit that they have done horrible things. But nooo, it would reveal the twists of the other games so we are going to predent they are pure and innocent and destroy any kind of chance for theme exploration. I know that they were trying to appeal to the new comers but to hell with the new comers. ZTD would have never seen the light of day if us fans haven’t been supporting the series all this time. Jumping to the finale of a series without experiencing the previous ones are the newcomers fault. Waiting all this time hyping the game yet getting a story that doesn’t even resemble the previous games is just unacceptable.

Another thing that really bugged me was that Sigma and Phi would never jump. Just jump to the past and capture Zero before he commits his crimes for the love of god.

And one of the most retarded plot twists i have ever seen in my life was Delta being one of the particapants. First of all hiding information from the players is just wrong. It’s not a fair mystery and don’t say stuff like it was foreshadowed or anything. The foreshadowing was very vague . Not to mention the whole plot twist didn’t even need to be there in the first place. Heck this twist is followed with a straight up plot holes such as Delta dying many times because he was with Q team instead of hiding himself in a safe place and mind hacking them. The only reason this plot twist is here is because Uchikoshi thinks it is best to hide the mastermind among the particapants. But what good is hiding the participant if it doesn’t make a fair mystery or help to flesh out the mastermind in any way.

Besides if Delta is truly there then why doesn’t Eric say something like “ why are there 4 of us. Why wasn’t Sean’s name mentioned” or “ is this old man really deaf and blind? If so why is he following us?” or why won’t they talk about him in general.

And now I will talk about the fragments.

 

C team

 

“Suspicion”

Oh how much I hate this fragment. The first thing that pissed me off in this fragment was how Akane said she might have influenced junpei to become emo. What do you mean might have? You were the one who endangered his life to save your own skin, acted nice and cute only to betray him.

And they find junpei’s head because EDGE. The one who killed him is Mira. And the reason she killed him is… complex? And why the hell would Delta even allow her to do that. And then Akane went ape shit with the chainsaw. And I fucking hate this. First of all I highly doubt a calculative person who rules an underground organization and also ran a killing game would act like this. The most frequent defense for this is the blind ZTD tards saying “akane was never in a situation like this before” or “she wasn’t in full control” which is complete bullshit. Unless you are a retard you wouldn’t act like this. This defensive logic pretty much points out that akane is only good at seeing and copying things and freaks out when her super powers aren’t giving her the answer to everything.This discredits her heavily. And if a character is too stupid to think for herself then I don’t give a shit about them cause they are literally too stupid to care.

And let’s not forget that Akane herself endangered Junpei’s life and managed to kill him in alternate universes and didn’t even flinch when doing it and YET when someone other than her kills him she goes “NO ONE CAN KILL JUMPY EXCEPT MEEE”.

And her suspicion towards Carlos is completely nonsensical. If Carlos had killed junpei then he should have also killed Akane too since it was very clear that he had the chance. And it bothers me so much that both of them are ignoring the possibility that Zero might have just screwed the rules even though that’s the most logical deduction most people would come up with in this situation. And the way the author is trying to present this as tragic and dramatic is laughable. Akane and Carlos deserved to die because of their stupidity. This entire fragment is a cringey, idiotic, forced drama.

“First come first saved”

Finally a reference to 999. But the problem is that we couldn’t get any info about Santa cause Junpei forgot to get an answer for his question and just rambled on about the other characters. And if the developers were trying to avoid spoilers then why didn’t they refer to ace as Hongou and Lotus as Hazuki? And then we get a extremely rushed backstory of Junpei and how he became edgy. But even in the little information he gave us there are tons of flaw. Why would an underground organization hire a normal highschool boy with no special skills? And the simple fact that his character development is not related to the events of the nonary game is just off putting. And how the hell did he gain the reputation he needed in ONE YEAR. He then fought the free the soul and destroyed their base?!?! Are we even talking about the same person here? Junpei could be lying about all of this since we never saw these events happening. He might have been trying to act cool in front of Akane (now that I think about it makes perfect sense). If any of you are going to be a writer in the future don’t do this bullcrap with time skips.

“Junpei… One year…and you’ve changed so much… and that has nothing to with me at all” - Akane Kurashiki 2016

As for the decision game I hate the fact that delta’s bullshit mind hack was involved in this. If junpei pushed the button by his own free will then Akane would argue with him afterwards meaning that it would create a nice drama and Junpei might have to bring up Akane’s death game and her actions in the past to defend himself. But screw theme exploration am I right?

“poison”

Okay, what the hell is this bullshit? The producers knew that they have limited budget, very restricted time and they spent an entire fragment on something so uninteresting and unimportant. The way delta just handed the fate of D team to C team is just straight up unfair. I guess it’s because of the pretentious “life is unfair” philosophy but life would be less unfair if Delta wasn’t such a huge prick. The decision game was kid’s play and it doesn’t create a meaningful dilemma. This fragment was a waste of time.

“The Antrophic principle”

Oh I got so excited when Junpei talked about how Akane changed first. Too bad it was never expanded. And also what’s up with this nonsense probability based decision games? And this is also one of my gripes about the story. It never used the decision games at it’s full potential. If the decision games were used to reveal the dark nature of the characters or to fuck up their brain then it would be so much entertaining and would lead to an actual character development (and would be negated because amnesia drugs). But this decision game is just about rolling a dice if you didn’t get 1/216 you die. Aside from how racist the decision game was (why did C team only get this bullshit) it became a pillar for science bantering the series is popular of. And the banter was about something so obvious and the conclusion to the conversation was “We live in the world god has abandoned”. No shit Sherlock. And also drunk jumpy is amazing

“Monty hall”

One of the most dumb things I noticed when replaying this was the that fact that C team didn’t even need to solve the puzzle in this fragment and the one in “antrophic principle”. If they just waited for 90 minutes to run out then they would be knocked by the gas. It’s bad but still better than dying.
I also loved Junpei’s jokes. He is inconsistent but he is the most entertaining of the bunch.
The decision game wasn’t that bad but it doesn’t create a dilemma. The choice is obvious. Give the mask to akane cause male chauvinism. And akane just exists through the X door without trying to contact D team first.

“Ambidex”

There is just so many things wrong in this fragment.

First of all i really hate the fact that the AB games played out like this. I hated it in VLR and i hate it even more in this. If you choose ally junpei chooses betray and if you choose betray junpei chooses ally. Dude even with multiple timelines we have a thing called personality. I really wish that Junpei would choose betray no matter what. It makes sense that he's going to kill off everyone just to get into Akane's pants. It would be less bullshit and leaves room for theme exploration. But nooo junpei is going to change his vote because he has no personality. And whoever thought that yandere Akane was a good thing is an idiot. Akane the mastermind who emotionlessly killed three people for her revenge and endangered her boyfriend to save her ass is now a mindless yandere. She didn't even think things through. And there is some really convenient stuff like Akane being knocked out right before the AB game and regaining consciousness right in time to kill Carlos with a fire extinguisher. And it’s not ironic nor clever. It’s just pure cringe.

Carlos can see through timelines because apparently being an esper is so easy nowadays you just get into a burning building to achieve super human abilities. And no it doesn’t make sense in the slightest. If a burning building is able to awake Carlos’s powers then the whole training with radical 6 while making Sigma absorb other esper’s strength was a pointless. Heck why did Akane train Sigma instead of Carlos. It’s obvious who is the stronger esper here. And there is no explanation as to why Carlos or Sigma or any of the character possess such strong ability genetically.

And the whole resonance nonsense contradict VLR heavily. If espers could shift in groups and they strengthen each other why didn’t Akane collect all of the espers from the remaining 2 billion people and shift to the past to save the world? Resonance makes the killing game in VLR look stupid.
And junpei how the hell do you know about the dice rolls. IT'S A DIFFERENT TIMELINE. And don’t you guys dare tell me it was because of the morphogenetic field. If they had access to the field then why don’t they use the field to gather the X passes instead of shifting and killing their other versions.
Akane why don’t you realize that you murdered all of D team when you activated that bomb. And you are also killing the dice roll versions of yourself. Just playing the decision game was the better option. Why are you doing this?

And those idiots. Just jump to the timeline before the start of the game and warn everyone else so you can capture zero. Or wait even BETTER. Jump way back to your childhood so that Akane can save her mother and father so that she would never be abducted by Gentarou. Carlos can also save his parents too. Why don't these idiots understand they have self aware time travel? And yes they can do that. In VLR Sigma was able to jump back about 36 hours ( 14 hours in radical 6 time ) into the past without the memories and soon after he mastered it he went back 45 years into the past and when he got old he jumped 45 years into the past again and inhabited his body. And in ZTD sigma can’t remember his jumps cause of the amnesia while Akane and Carlos can which suggests that Akane and Carlos are stronger than him. And junpei can jump thanks to the asspull resonance effect.

And that god damn meat shield plan. How in the world did that work? That minigun can break through bones and meat just like it broke through that thick wooden bar. And I seriously doubt the bullets didn’t hit Akane through the gap between Carlos and Junpei body cause their body doesn’t cover her fully. Akane can now Shift whenever she wants. Screw the rules the plot is demanding it.

God nooo. Everything about the ring scene was wrong. This isn’t what I was hyping for. They resolved absolutely nothing of their relationship. Akane murdered 3 people, straight up lied to junpei, risked many people’s lives. And he never questions it my god. Wasn’t the whole reason you were putting your proposal to Akane at halt was because you wanted to know more about akane or test her? Or was it because you were just a pussy? And Junpei just chose the worst possible moment to propose which is after akane saw their dead bodies and having an argument with him. Literally anytime other than this would have been fine. Their relationship has become a shallow, gullible , unrealistic bullshit. I can’t believe I was hyping this relationship for 5 f-ing years.

And also what’s up with the Q bot? Zero never said that they shouldn’t use their shifting ability and isn’t this kind of contradictory to Delta’s motive since he is trying to lead them to J team execution timeline? If they die beforehand VLR won’t be created. And Carlos why the hell is shifting your best option? You do realize that Q bot will destroy Akane and Junpei while your away. Ahh well nothing actually matters in the context of multiverse anyway.

And with that I have covered every C team fragment. I’ll post the continuation of the review of this timeline in the next version of the review/rant. So until then goodbye folks and plz comment if I missed some criticism.

Edited January 26, 2017 by bilguun alix

[Okarin]

Yeah, pretty much.

The game disappointed me terribly, even though I still finished it and more or less enjoyed it.

Its greatest contribution to my life was precisely the acknowledgement of the Anthropic Principle, that got me thinking. No matter how bad an Uchikoshi game is, you always learn some fun fact (like Pigmalion Effect in Ever 17).

[Soulless Watcher]

I get the feeling that ZTD was made more to sedate the fans than to finish the series, there was something just kinda off about the whole thing. Like, I was reading the summary of a much larger script with large chunks written over with fanfiction. 

Honestly though I probably enjoyed it more than the previous entries in the series the previous installments had their moments, but I feel like they dragged on waaay too long. 

[Funyarinpa]

Spoilers for all of the Zero Escape trilogy follow.

Anyone who's been visiting Fuwanovel since at least 2015 must have seen my love for Zero Escape in one post or another, be it incoherent rambling at anything even tangentially related with Zero Escape, an introduction thread or any recommendations (before the subforum for it existed), or just some heartfelt (but probably hilariously pretentious from the outset) writeup on the series written for whatever reason. I talked about Zero Escape... a lot. I first came across 999 when I was about fourteen, and when VLR became my favorite video game and story ever in the February of 2014 (roughly a couple months after playing 999), I was utterly hooked. It led me to somehow find out about Ever17... which led me to Fuwanovel's torrent page for E17, which still existed at the time. There was a button linking to some forums on the upper right part of the page. I clicked it on a whim, and now you know what part of the website to blame for the roughly 4000 shitposts I have proliferated throughout good old Fuwa in three short years. But the easily excitable shitposter Funya's oh-so-dramatic backstory is a tale for another day. The gist is, Zero Escape captivated me during my formative years and shaped my interests, my tastes, my thoughts, my friends, and most importantly of all, my imagination. If you've ever fanboyed over something silly in your youth for months on end, you'd probably understand why exactly I was so hung up on VLR's cliffhanger ending (not to knock it, I felt that it was brilliant for explaining both what was going on and creating enough interesting plot threads to be magnificent material for a sequel). Day in and day out, I thought about who Phi could be, the identity of Brother and Left, and how exactly Radical-6 came to be. I posted about Zero Escape for sometimes hours on end. I actually started to actively use Twitter so that I could discuss Zero Escape more. I played more video games and got into visual novels, seeking to feel the captivation and catharsis I felt with this series once again. And feel that I did, from Tearaway to Thomas Was Alone to YU-NO, I found many amazing experiences. But Zero Escape was still number one. 

Come March 18th, 2015. Aksys posted a cryptic link to some website. 4infinity.co. Just 0-3-0-3 shown on a black background. As it turned out, it was counting months and weeks in base 4 (which means counting like this: 0,1,2,3,10,11,12, 13, 20... the countdown was counting down from 33), which meant that it'd take almost 4 months before we'd be seeing the reveal behind this teaser website. And those months were some of the most exciting times of my life, from the wildest bits of speculation to looking for anagrams in the words that started to pop up weekly to seeing the counter go down ever so slowly. And the vast majority was looking into this teaser to ascertain that it really could be the game we all were waiting for, Zero Escape 3. I'm pretty sure that the hype would die down long before the counter did for practically any other franchise. That's just how hyped much of the fanbase was for a new Zero Escape being a possibility. I spent a few hours every day just poring over discussion of the teaser, which was really barebones in retrospect (to the point where suspicion held well into the last weeks that there was an ARG we were missing). Zero Escape was on my mind even more than before. When Zero Escape 3 was revealed only with a single voiced line lifted from VLR and "ESCAPING SUMMER 2016"  during Anime Expo '15, the stream for which NEVER worked and RPGSite gained 400 followers on Twitter in one night just for livetweeting the conference, practically everyone was ECSTATIC. Zero Escape 3 got into Twitter's worldwide trending topics and stayed there for several hours. Hell, go and rewatch the video of the moment of reveal released afterwards, the cheers (and Uchikoshi's wonderfully broken English pronunciation) still give me goosebumps. From there on, there was no holding back the hype train: By November, we got a name and logo confirmation; by March, we knew how the cast looked like; by April, we knew the setting and the new premise. By mid-July, first impressions were done rolling in but the people who preordered the watch edition the night the game was announced hadn't even seen their orders shipped.

Not even the atrocious screens, the Fragment system, or the Teams from the Famitsu previews really managed to alert anyone to the steaming pile of infested dog shit that was about to be lobbed over the fanbase's heads. Reviews before release were promising, even the outlets who were not really known for liking VNs gave it quite positive reviews. Five stars flew around, one review claimed it was the best story in a video game. /v/ was crying out for someone to dump the 3DS copy for days on end and people were telling others to stop arguing since ZE3 was coming around after all and that was something beyond the usual 4chan drudgery. Some loved ZTD, but it slowly became apparent that the game was MAJORLY divisive overall. That's cause for worry in a franchise like ZE where the ones still hanging on were mostly people who loved the series with all their hearts. 

I played Zero Time Dilemma only by mid-August. 

It was the most insulting, most disappointing and the most infuriating game I have ever played. 

It still is.

Fuck Zero Time Dilemma, fuck its dismissal of 999 and VLR, fuck its new characters, fuck its portrayal of old characters, fuck its atrocious presentation, fuck its terrible plot twists, fuck its cutscene format, fuck the Fragment system, fuck the Teams, fuck Delta, fuck its setting, fuck its backstory, fuck its endings, fuck its 90% recycled soundtrack, fuck its storylines, fuck its payoff, fuck its atmosphere, fuck how it retroactively ruins VLR.

This is a sentence I dreaded I would have to type for over two and a half years.

Fuck Zero Time Dilemma.

 

[Albedo]

Relevant: https://vid.me/Nfyn