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Post by Rune Lai on Mar 7, 2016 17:35:47 GMT -5
Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Rec Room Door - Betray
When we head for the voting elevators K stops Sigma and asks him to Ally. K points out that Betraying will not earn Sigma escape since he's at 5 points. For Sigma it will take two more rounds to escape regardless of which choice he makes, so they should both Ally. When Sigma points out that K is at 6 points and a successful Betrayal would get him 9, K says that he is not interested in escaping and leaving everyone else behind so much as having a buffer of points to ensure that he is not trapped here.
I don't trust K though, even though I think he's mostly a good person. He always picks Betray unless it will kill someone (or the other party is incapacitated and incapable of Betraying) and Sigma is not in danger of dying.
So I vote Betray, and surprise surprise, K does too. He's rather disappointed that Sigma did not choose Ally, but concedes that Sigma made the correct decision.
Meanwhile Dio is pissed that Clover didn't Ally, even though anyone who hangs around Dio knows he's a jackass and not to be trusted. For our third group, Tenmyouji Betrayed Luna since she can't suffer any more than she has. This takes him up to 4 points and the missing Quark up to 9.
At this point everyone breaks up to look for Quark before the next set of doors open. Because they think another two murders have happened on top of the old woman (and that Quark may be dead or in danger too) everyone pairs off. Sigma and K take the Infirmary and Treatment Center, Tenmyouji and Clover the Lounge and Pantry, and Phi and Dio the Crew Quarters and Rec Room.
In the Infirmary Sigma and K doublecheck the old woman and discover that her hand and lower arm have been spattered with blood, but there is a clean strip where her wrist is... the same width as the bracelets they wear. They realize that she must have been a participant in the Nonary Game, and that when she died someone must have taken the bracelet from her. The murderer might even have cleaned it off so they could wear it.
I immediately think of Dio who snuck in here and probably should not be playing the Nonary Game. We had used luminol in the Rec Room puzzle solving though, so Sigma decides they'll need to get everyone to meet in the Rec Room and spray their bracelets to see who took the old woman's.
On our way through the Green Door to the Treatment Center we find the intersection has two open doors and one of them leads to another puzzle room called the GAULEM Bay that I've never been to before and I can't even fathom the purpose of it, but the fact there are two open doors is very strange, and someone has solved this room because the safe has been opened!
In the Treatment Center Sigma and K find Quark in one of the treatment pods and decide to leave him there since he was probably put inside by someone, maybe even Zero Sr, to treat an illness. Oddly enough, his bracelet has been removed and we don't know how or why. The pod is left closed but unlocked so if Quark wakes up he can leave on his own.
Sigma and K then meet Dio and Phi in front of the white doors to the third round, but Clover and Tenmyouji don't show up. While waiting Sigma takes everyone to the Rec Room and sprays their bracelets with luminol, which reveals Dio has the bloody bracelet (of course!). He admits to being the old woman's murderer, but insists he didn't kill Alice and Luna (who were likely Radical-6 victims but we don't see the full effects of the virus on this playthrough). Still, because he's a murderer regardless of whether it's one victim or three we shut him up in a treatment pod and lock it so he can't get out.
Clover and Tenmyouji still haven't returned so Phi remains by the white doors in case they show up while Sigma and K look for them. The possibility is brought up that the player who is Zero should be able to open doors and move around outside of the game rules (explaining why a second room beyond the Green Door is open), and it's thought that it's possible Clover and Tenmyouji have already passed through the white doors even though they wouldn't otherwise be able to open them without their third person.
Tenmyouji and Clover aren't in the Pantry, the second place they were supposed to look, so we go to the Lounge, which was supposed to be the first place, but we don't find them there either. Worse, K says he's feeling under the weather and I fear that he might have come down with Radical-6.
He says some memories have been coming back to him though and shares that he grew up in a facility that may have resembled this one. He only had a father and didn't know this was unusual because for years his father was the only other person he knew, until he became a teenager and an older woman moved to the facility to help his father with his research. She became like a surrogate mother to him and encouraged him to join in the project, which he later learned he was intended to be a part of, as a backup for his father.
Even though their faces aren't angled to the camera, flashback images make it clear that the murdered elderly woman is the one K had known, and his father appears to be the older man who claimed to be Zero in the hologram in the Director's Office. K says she and his father had known each other when they were young and that she expected to die for the project that she felt would bring about a better world. She also mentioned that there is someone she loved but couldn't marry even though she would have liked to.
After this, K asks to lay down for a while and Sigma leaves him in the Lounge to continue his search. This causes him to run into Phi who came looking for them. They go back into the Lounge so she can check on the resting K and then they hear something outside. When they return to the hallway they see someone has taken the elevator down to Floor B, so they give chase.
They don't find anyone, but when they check on Dio and Quark they find out that Dio has been murdered; the oxygen supply in his pod was set to 0% and he asphyxiated. Sigma and Phi run back and rouse K who gets up, alarmed at the news. They're also running out of time until the third set of doors open.
Sigma heads down to the doors to wait while K and Phi run to the Treatment Center to get Dio's bracelet. The way grouping is supposed to work with the white doors means that the teams are set. Sigma is grouped with Alice and Luna. Since they're dead he can simply hold on to their bracelets to go through alone, but K and Phi are grouped with Dio. They can't do anything for Tenmyouji and Clover now, but Quark, without his bracelet, is safe.
Phi and K return with bad news though. Dio's bracelet has been smashed, rendering it useless. The doors open and Sigma panics, trying to think of a way to save their lives, since if they don't go through the doors they'll be penalized.
At this point there was a lock, but because I had gotten Clover's ending before, I know that the injection gun from the Treatment Center has neostigmine in it to counteract the tubocurarine, and Dio has been holding on to that gun! With five minutes remaining, Sigma runs for the injection gun and brings it back, but not before all three of them are hit by the first injection, the anesthetic.
Sigma, being the guy he is, doesn't even think about his own self-preservation. He injects Phi because she's (to him) the only option. K is in a full body suit of armor. But he does notice that the lock on the back of K's head has been tampered with, which means that at some point K had unlocked it. Sigma remembers the GAULEM Bay and that someone had been in there.
When confronted about it K admits that he was able to get out of his suit, and when pressed further, also admits that he was the one who killed Dio. When he got his memory back he remembered who the woman was and he had to kill the man who murdered her. K climbed out of his suit, leaving it in the Lounge for Sigma and Phi to look at, and took another route to the elevator to get around them and back without being noticed.
K also says that he remembers he has something to tell Sigma and gives him a numerical key to the second gate involving a two-headed lion eating the sun. Sigma is upset because he doesn't understand the point of trying to remember something if he's going to die in a few minutes, so he pulls off K's helmet to see what he looks like and… he sees his own face.
K Ending.
And holy crap does this open a can of worms! Is K a clone of Sigma, or might Sigma be a clone of someone else? If K's memories had been tampered with to induce amnesia, could Sigma be suffering from a more limited version of the same (and hence while he doesn't remember getting cyborg arms)? I don't even have a speculation to offer on this point. It's just so far out of left field.
Also, if K is Dio's killer, why did he smash the bracelet? Or did someone else do it? Where the heck did Clover and Tenmyouji go?
I do like that K's personality is quite different from Sigma's. Even if they turn out to be clones, environment shapes a lot about what a person's like.
Now for latest speculation recap:
Confirmed: - Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who - The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next - Phi can branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma - Zero and the bomber are not the same person - Dio is the bomber - Sigma is a cyborg with mechanic arms
All but confirmed: - The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 - Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999
- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love - Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark) - After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt
Personal suspicions, unconfirmed: - Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names - Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game - This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment where the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead until it is observed and reality collapses to a single possibility. Everything Sigma has done currently exists simultaneously. - Zero wants everyone to succeed (like 999, the game is designed so that no one has to be left behind, but they can be if the players are greedy and do not trust each other) - Zero is intentionally allowing the bomber to do his/her thing since the game does not stop even when the bombs are found - The AB test Dio refers to is the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition - Luna is assisting Zero, due to the fact she has instructions to relay information to Sigma under specific conditions that will only work if he's able to carry the information from one timeline to another - At minimum Sigma and Clover are the cold sleepers, because:
- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago - The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep - If Alice is not a cold sleeper, by process of elimination the third one is probably Phi (Tenmyouji and Quark being in the future relative to Clover, Alice having Ice-9, K not having/needing a memory of the date, Dio and Luna for having reasons to hide things)
- The elderly murdered woman (Akane) is Zero
- The old woman had a bracelet which meant she intended to participate (which Akane had done before) - The old woman's last name is Kurashiki - If Tenmyouji is Junpei they're bothy the same age now
Largely Discredited: - If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too) - Alice was in cold sleep (she says she doesn't actually have Ice-9 in her body to go into cold sleep without a machine, but since the info came from Clover I'll put this here for now) - The game is not taking place on Earth since Phi is able to jump really high, which she has actually done twice now, (because when they go outside in Dio's Ending they see the moon under a lunar eclipse) - Luna is Zero. She says she has instructions to relate information to Sigma, and if she was Zero, she shouldn't be reporting to someone else. - K or Phi is Zero (discounting now that the old lady is pretty much sure to be Akane and she was planning to die all along as part of her plan) - This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (K's flashback with the old woman makes it clear Akane expects to die).
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Post by Rune Lai on Mar 8, 2016 16:49:43 GMT -5
Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Rec Room Door - Ally
For the lulz I rewind and Ally with K knowing that he's going to Betray me. From all previous bad endings I know that K will skip out at 9 points, so I expect he'll do so again and he does not disappoint. He says with three people murdered it's clearly not safe to stick around, so he's leaving, but he'll send help as soon as he can.
K might look like Sigma, but he's not Sigma. Jerk.
Bad ending.
Escape Round 2 - Green Door - GAULEM Bay
I rewind to the second round door choice and this time head to whatever the heck the GAULEM Bay is with Sigma and Alice grouping with Luna. The first thing I notice is that the room's a little different from when I visited last time. For one thing, there's a big endoskeleton looking robot on the platform by the safe!
For a moment I wonder that if this is a robot building facility, then K might be a robot (since we already know Sigma is not). But that wouldn't make sense because 1) K appears to still be vulnerable to the bracelet, which he shouldn't be if he's not powered by a heart and lungs, and 2) K remembers having a childhood and in his flashback he mentions not only his actions at various ages (which including mealtimes), but what he had noticed wasn't normal about how he was raised. I'm pretty sure if K had been born as a full sized robot or upgraded to new bodies he would have mentioned that as something else that was unusual.
I have a phobia when it comes to skeletons, so I found this room extremely creepy and difficult to play through, which was not helped by lowering rows of skeleton robots from the ceiling and then having to power them on (Terminators!) and stare into their glowing red eyes to figure out the key to solving the final puzzle to escape, which, by the way, I had to set to Easy. This probably would not have been necessary if not for my phobia since I would have more closely inspected their glowing red eyes instead of merely jotting down which eyeballs were red and which weren't. *shiver*
Fortunately, there are still moments of levity as the characters themselves comment on being surrounded by creepy skeleton robots, what they're intended for, and why is that one robot wearing boxers.
I get the regular escape password first, but stick around a few minutes more to puzzle out the bonus password since I don't want to replay this room. Fortunately it's an easy alternate solution to the final puzzle and allows me to access the safe, which is actually built into the raised platform the first robot is laying on. We power on the platform as part of opening the safe.
Inside we find the usual stuff plus the rules about at least one of the three members of a group needing to participate in the Ambidex Game to avoid punishment (which don't always show up), but also a funny cylindrical object that appears to be a key of some sort, which is odd because we already solved this room so it's not part of the puzzle. I realize that this must be the key to unlocking K's suit and he must have been the one to solve this room in my last playthrough, though I still don't know how he got in here in the first place.
As we get ready to leave, we're stopped by a voice and discover that the robot lying on the platform has sat up. He's quite chatty and the Cockney accent does a lot to make him less intimidating. He says that he's a GAULEM, a sort of automated machine that behaves in a humanlike fashion and works subordinately, but also autonomously, beneath Zero III. G-LOM, as he tells the group to call him, describes his relationship to Zero as one of a hand or a foot. He can receive direct orders, but a lot of times he can act on his own without direct commands (like how a person doesn't think about every muscle movement while walking so much as they just walk).
He also takes an odd conversation detour to talk about the Chinese room, which is a real world thought experiment on the nature of artificial intelligence and posits that it might not be much different from human intelligence.
G-LOM admits that he knows a lot about the group, having accessed information about them through the mainframe he shares with Zero III, and also explains that he's been here for several years, having gone in to get his back serviced, and his internal batteries are shot. He currently has power because he's connected to the platform by a cable (his fellows are not, which is why he's the only one who can talk right now). He also says that usually he and his fellows are covered in artificial biological tissue (ABT) rendering them near indistinguishable from humans. In fact, he begins to insinuate that one of the nine players is a robot when the announcer voice cuts in and deactivates him.
I think if I had played this route first and not found the bonus material on the cybernetic arms I could very easily have concluded that Sigma is the robot. I've started wondering about K again though. His backstory makes him seem human, and he did collapse from the anesthetic, but being a robot would be another way he could have been made to look like Sigma. Why anyone would do that, I don't know.
Luna is another candidate as I remember some of the weird comments she's made and I already suspect she's working with Zero, but she's been killed before and I don't know if that's possible if she's a robot.
But there is another Ambidex Game to go to, because once again Dio doesn't wait!
Sigma, Alice, and Luna return to the warehouse to chew out Dio for putting Tenmyouji, Quark, and Clover in a lurch where they'll be penalized if they don't return in time, and Dio says that he wouldn't have opened the doors if he'd known about the additional rules, which were not in his room. (I don't know if this is true, since timelines where I've found that slip of paper never had a third Ambidex round.)
While arguing, Tenmyouji and Clover show up. Quark has once again disappeared. Everyone splits up to look for him and just before he runs off with Phi, Sigma notices Alice looking at something by the rightmost elevator booth. Clover says she'll join everyone shortly but she wants to talk to Alice first.
Sigma and Phi look for Quark in the Pantry, which was behind the Red Door this time. She confesses she taste tested a lot of the food and it seems to be all right. The water seems to be okay too. Apparently she made Dio try all of it before consuming any of it herself (I would have liked to have seen that conversation). Her mention of eating twice-pulled pork reminds Sigma of the Chinese room story her heard from G-LOM and he tells Phi about the sentence G-LOM had been saying when he was cut off in the middle.
Phi wonders since he had been cut off right at the word "middle" she wonders if it has something to do with the Chinese room since "Middle Kingdom" is another name for China. They're interrupted though by the discovery of Alice's body.
Unlike other branches behind the Magenta Door, this time it is only Alice dead in the Crew Quarters. Luna is still alive. I'm not sure why it's different this time. Dio is the one who found the body, but killing her would have rendered no immediate benefit for him since he wouldn't have been playing against her. He says that if they should look at anyone, they should look at the last person who talked with her, which was Clover.
Clover takes this very badly and says she'll find the killer and make them pay before running out on everyone. Tenmyouji chases after her, and Sigma starts to go too, but is stopped by K who points out that it's futile. There are only two possibilities: Clover killed Alice, in which case talking to her won't gain anything, or Clover didn't kill Alice, in which case she can't trust anyone so she has no reason to talk with Sigma anyway.
Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-GAULEM Bay Door - Ally
Because of the timer, everyone heads back to vote and find out that two of the doors are already closed so Tenmyouji and Clover must be inside. Luna, who had grouped with Sigma and Alice, asks if Sigma will vote Ally again, and there's really no reason not to. This is Luna, and I can trust her. She always votes Ally.
Dio, Phi, and K have a problem though. Dio and K are both at 6 points and Phi is at 5 (like Sigma). If Dio votes Betray and K Allies then Dio will escape. If K votes Betray and Dio and Phi Ally then K will escape. Luna suggests they both Betray, but Phi points out that that's unconstructive since it brings them no closer to escaping. Phi asks K if he would Ally if she could guarantee an Ally for her pair. K says he would consider it, but isn't sure how she can do that.
Phi then starts to speak to Dio, only to suddenly react to something by the number 9 door. He turns to look, which is enough time for her to run in a booth and lock him out. The game will not acknowledge pairs registering separate votes (he tries using a second elevator) so Dio is screwed.
I vote Ally as promised and when the results come out, Sigma and Alice mutually Allied with Luna, Phi and Dio mutually Allied with K, and Tenmyouji and Quark Betrayed an Allied Clover.
K was fine Allying with Phi knowing that it was not in her interest to Betray him. If she had picked Betray there was no way to gain from that since only Dio could escape, guaranteeing that Ally was the best choice for her. K could have Betrayed, but says he feels a connection with her so he decided not to and chose Ally.
The result is that only the missing Quark (because of Tenmyouji's Betray) has the 9 points to leave. Clover doesn't take the Betrayal easily, asking if everything Tenmyouji said was a lie, and if so, how could he know so much about the previous game. When he says he's not lying she asks if he's Zero. He says he's not and goes to look for Quark.
Clover and Dio head off through different doors to leave the group as well. K, Sigma, Phi, and Luna notice that their bracelets have changed, and Sigma and Phi will be paired together again for the next round (yay!). The four agree to meet back in the warehouse in forty minutes after checking everyone else's bracelets. They go visit Alice's body to get her bracelet and find Clover there. She says that Alice figured something out and now she has too, so she knows who the killer is. Clover won't say who though because Sigma and Phi could be working with them so she runs off. They also find a bloody handkerchief on Alice's body with the shape of a knife impressed in the stain.
We find Dio in front of the white doors, passing the time away, and not caring about Quark. Then we find Tenmyouji in the Rec Room where he sprays Sigma and Phi's bracelets with luminol. He doesn't explain why he's looking for blood, but clearly he's realized that someone took the bracelet off the old woman and that person is the murderer. He also says that he joined the game because Zero offered him a bargain, but won't tell us what it was. He fears Quark is being held as a hostage for his cooperation, which is why he wants to get him out.
When we return to the warehouse no one is there, so Sigma and Phi look around to see what Alice might have found, and they discover a bloodstain on the wall of the rightmost elevator. They also realize that the room layout from the angle they're standing at is a little different from when they first climbed outside of their individual booth. There's also a ceiling crane (which has always been in the background but not commented on).
After some detective work with another bloodstain it's clear that the old woman was probably killed outside of the elevator and then carried into Luna's elevator (she was alone on the far right) and then Luna's elevator moved to the far left, which is why we thought it was K and Clover's elevator when we first found the body. The bloody handkerchief was probably used to clean the knife and then was thrown between the elevators that contained Luna and Dio and Quark (those two being paired next door).
The fact this feat could be done without stopping the game likely means that Zero is involved, but what I'm trying to figure out now is why? I know Dio killed the old woman, and while throwing the body in Luna's elevator would certainly take the suspicion off him, what could be gained by moving Luna's elevator (and how could he do it)? Because the handkerchief was discarded between his elevator and hers I wonder if he's not responsible for moving the elevator, because the bloody evidence would otherwise have remained hidden.
This makes it look like Luna could be Zero in this case, but I'm pretty sure she's not from the other info I found. And in any case, K shortly runs up and reveals that Luna's dead. She was injected with something, so she still dies in this timeline. Just at a later point.
They take her bracelet and meet up with Dio at the next set of doors and they're out of time. The doors open and Tenmyouji, Quark, and Clover have not shown up, meaning that they'll be penalized for not entering the doors. Sigma and Phi are reluctant to enter without them (they have the dead Luna as their third), but K prevents them from being stupid and dying for no reason by pushing them through the door hard enough to wind them so they can't run back out before the countdown ends.
K and Dio (with the dead Alice's bracelet) would form another group of three and presumably will have made it to another white door, though I don't see before the scene ends.
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Post by Rune Lai on Mar 12, 2016 1:50:56 GMT -5
Escape Round 3 - White Door - Security
Finally! I get to see what's behind another of the white doors. The Security room puzzle isn't too difficult except for one bit at the end that dropping the difficulty to Easy did nothing to remedy, so I ultimately figured it out on my own, but didn't get the credit for it.
Phi figures out how to open up some files on the security system. Since it has live feed videos of what's currently happening in different parts of the facility (currently looking empty in all rooms we can see) it stands to reason that it should also have recordings of previous camera observations.
Most records turn out to be deleted, but after some digging we find G-LOM's records. Even though his body has been deactivated, G-LOM had made it clear that his intelligence (his brain, as it were) resides in the main computer. Sigma feels woozy at this point, and briefly experiences the symptoms of Radical-6 (though he doesn't know it) so Phi suggests he lay down. After what he thinks are several minutes pass (but probably a lot more since Radical-6 slows down the infected person's perception), he starts to feel better.
Phi then shows him the camera feed from the Crew Quarters after Alice was found dead. Clover and Luna enter, Clover yells at Luna, and then they disappear out of view near the back wall. Only Clover leaves and she seems upset. Shortly after, Dio arrives, and he leaves quickly. Finally K shows up, disappears beneath the camera's view (and doing CPR to Luna if his story is to be believed), and then leaves to get Sigma and Phi.
From the evidence, it is likely that Clover killed Luna, because if she found the same evidence that we did, then she knew that the old woman was originally in Luna's elevator, and if Luna was Zero then she could have moved the elevator to hide her guilt. The murderer of the woman is likely the murderer of Alice.
Phi also brings up that Dio did not seem to expect Luna to be joining them at the white doors. If Luna was alive (and K later killed her), then he would have asked about her. If he killed her, then he would likely ask about her because he would want to avoid revealing that he knows about her death. The fact he made no objection to her absence means that he probably had nothing to do with it.
When we exit the Security room and return to the warehouse I'm shocked that no one has opened the Ambidex Game doors already, since that's Dio's schtick. Sigma and Phi go looking for everyone and stumble across a shock in the Infirmary. Clover and Tenmyouji are handcuffed to a pipe, which prevented them from joining everyone at the white doors. They're also dead, the lethal injections having taken place as a penalty for not entering the doors. (Holy crap! So that's why they disappear after the second Ambidex round in all the Magenta Door timelines.)
We also find Quark's bracelet with them; identifiable for being the only one to have 9 points. There is something written on Clover's thigh that says 016, which Phi thinks she's seen before. The luminol that was in Tenmyouji's pocket is also gone.
Realizing that if someone intended to use it, they would have to go to the Rec Room to turn off the lights. Sigma and Phi head there. In the Rec Room they find Dio speared through the stomach hard enough to pin him to the wall, and K is lying on the floor with an axe between his shoulder blades. Searching them, Sigma finds that Dio had taken the funny key from Alice's dead body and discovers it fits in K's suit, but the suit appears to have been damaged and powered down from the attack so it won't open even though the key fits. They also turn off the lights to see what the luminol was being used for and see that the underside of Dio's bracelet lights up.
They can't quite figure out what happened here, since six of the nine players are now dead with only Quark unaccounted for. (Seriously! What's with the body count?!) The severity of the wounds makes it unlikely that Quark is the killer and Sigma and Phi have been together the entire time since they left Security. (Not entirely true, since Sigma was woozy under the influence of Radical-6 and Phi could conceivably have snuck out then, but he admits it's not likely.)
Then to their shock, the announcer's voice calls out that the Ambidex Gates are now open. The game's not over! Thinking that Quark must have taken the key cards from K and Dio, they run back to the warehouse... and find it empty.
Phi suggest they look around for clues and visit the room that K and Dio had investigated, which turns out to be the Director's Office. Sigma sees the computer with the two headed lion swallowing the sun and realizes what he has to do.
Unfortunately from a gameplay perspective, Sigma does not barf out the strings of letters and numbers like he usually does, so I have to break here and replay the endings where I got the keys to the first and second gates. I write them down in the in-game memo pad and enter them in short order. When Phi asks Sigma how he knew the login information, he says that he doesn't know. He just did. She's irritated by that, especially when he brings up how she knew his name in the elevator (which I'm starting to wonder about since Sigma has no reason to ever jump back that far), but lets it go.
In the computer we find out that there is still one active GAULEM in the facility, and it's Luna! It occurs to Sigma and Phi that Luna is probably the one that opened the door and Phi says that Luna could also have been the one to kill Dio and K. The tubocurarine is just a muscle relaxant so it wouldn't do any harm to a robot.
Ambidex Game Round 3 - Post-Security Door - Ally
Sigma and Phi run back to vote before the deadline, but find they can't close the elevator doors due to the fact they're carrying Luna's bracelet, making them an illegal pair, so Sigma drops the bracelet outside. As the doors close, they catch a glimpse of Luna, standing across the warehouse, watching them.
Phi immediately tells Sigma that they have to Betray because Luna's going to pick up her bracelet and vote. If Luna's a robot then she's part of the game, and she'll Betray them to keep them from leaving. But Sigma remembers Luna tells him how much she trusts him, and I know that she always votes Ally. I can't imagine her changing now.
I vote Ally, and Sigma and Phi emerge from the elevator to check out the results. The other six are penalized for not voting (not that it matters since they're all dead except for Quark, and Quark is no longer wearing his bracelet) and we see that Luna never voted so she defaulted to Ally. Her bracelet is still on the floor.
Sigma and Phi are both at 9 now, which means they can leave, but they don't, because they need to find Quark. They locate him in the now opened Treatment Center, and take him to the number 9 door. When they step through, Sigma quickly hands Quark to Phi and runs back inside the facility. Phi is horrified and realizes that Sigma is throwing away his chance at escape in order to find Luna.
Now that the game is over, all the doors are unlocked and Sigma finds Luna in the Gardens, where they had spoken together in another timeline. From his words she understands that they had met here before in a history she doesn't know, but she is aware that he has the ability to move through timelines, and they sit on the bench to talk to each other again.
Sigma tells her that he doesn't think she killed anyone, and she confirms all his suspicions. Dio killed the old woman. Alice committed suicide due to Radical-6. Clover "killed" Luna, but it was an accident. Clover had run to the Infirmary to get the AED to revive Luna, and bumped into Dio as he was fleeing the Crew Quarters. Since he didn't want her going back there to see he had been searching Alice's body and removed the knife she used to kill herself (which was the knife Dio used to kill the old woman and Alice had found it in her earlier search), he fought with Clover. Tenmyouji interrupted and Dio beat them both, handcuffing them to the pipe under the sink. Then K, suspecting Dio of murdering the old woman, had used the luminol on Dio's bracelet and Dio attempted to kill him while his back was turned to flip the light switch. Thus K got an axe in the back and was mortally wounded, but still had enough strength in him to get the lance and stab Dio through the stomach.
Luna also admits that she found Quark unconscious and was the one who put him in the treatment pod. Zero III opened the door for her. Zero III is also the one who operated the crane to move her elevator with the dead body.
She tells Sigma that she was following orders from the old woman where she had to participate in the game as a normal human and not reveal her identity. The old woman told her about Dio, how he would be lured here to infiltrate the game, and that he would kill the first person to emerge from the elevators and take their bracelet so he could replace them. Luna was to take the body of that first victim and place it in her elevator, though she was not told why. She was shocked to discover that the old woman herself would be the first to emerge. Luna also reveals that all the participants of the game were infected with Radical-6 as part of the project.
When asked, Luna says that even though she took orders from the old woman, the woman was not Zero. She also took orders from another man, and that person is Zero. This actually makes a kind of sense. Since Akane was the Zero of 999, and we have a Zero III, it stands to reasons that there is a Zero II and Zero II is the current mastermind.
Luna said she wanted to save the old woman, but couldn't. Zero III had deactivated her body, so she could only watch from the mainframe. It's clear that even if she is a robot guided by an AI, she is genuinely distraught that so many people have died as a part of this project.
Sigma tries to comfort her and when he holds her he discovers that her hair is falling out and her face is beginning to split. Luna tells him that the muscle relaxant has weakened the muscle fibers that hold her ABT in place, but to his credit, Sigma doesn't pull away. (And I have to say that Luna's deterioration is handled very sensitively to avoid squicking out the viewer even when it gets to the point that her robot eye socket becomes visible. I just wanted to frigging give her a hug. I was playing this part at 2am with tears streaming down my face.)
When Sigma tells her that it's not her fault, she couldn't do anything, Luna says that it's not true. She did two things wrong. She was not supposed to reactivate after her "death" from Clover's injection, because humans don't come back from the dead, but she hacked Zero III to do it. If she had really wanted to, she could have at any time prevented the deaths in the game, including the very first one with the old woman, but she didn't because that would have violated her orders. And secondly, because a rogue GAULEM that does not follow orders is dangerous, she will be deactivated as soon as Zero III recovers, which will be soon.
Luna "dies" in Sigma's arms with her final word calling him "Doctor…"
Luna Ending.
Suddenly I understand why she called Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics an ideal rather than a reality in the other timeline. If she had to follow the rules as a fundamental part of her being, then no one would have died, but because she wasn't built that way she had to exist with regrets of not being able to help.
Well, we have lots of info now, since it's not possible to get this ending without having seen Dio's (to know the encryption key), Alice's (to know Dio is the bomber), Sigma's (to get the key to the first gate from Luna), Clover's (to know neostigmine will save someone), and K's (to get the key to the second gate).
We still don't know who Zero is, but the number of candidates is substantially thinning. It's not K or Luna (because they are subordinate parties to the game), not Dio (he's there to stop Zero), and not Tenmyouji (who announces that he knows who Zero is in his ending). Quark is probably safe to rule out, leaving Alice, Clover, Phi, and Sigma with no clear reason to be eliminated from suspicion, though Alice and Clover probably aren't Zero. If the old man in the hologram really is Zero and not a stand-in, there's really only one candidate left.
At this point I only have one story lock remaining and no more primary story branches to take; just three bad endings judging from the flowchart. I don't like it, but I think I have to Betray Phi in order to continue.
So it's time to update the speculation recap:
Confirmed: - Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number, but we still don't know who - The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next - Phi can branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma - Zero and the bomber are not the same person - Dio is the bomber - Sigma is a cyborg with mechanic arms - Zero is intentionally allowing the bomber to do his/her thing (in fact, Dio was even lured here) - Luna is assisting Zero
All but confirmed: - The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 - Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999
- He has a photo of Akane who is described as his first love - Tenmyouji trusts Clover more than anyone else in the game (except possibly Quark) - After Clover finds out who he really is, she implicitly trusts him and does not want him or his family hurt
Personal suspicions, unconfirmed: - Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names - Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game - This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment where the cat is both simultaneously alive and dead until it is observed and reality collapses to a single possibility. Everything Sigma has done currently exists simultaneously. - Zero wants everyone to succeed (like 999, the game is designed so that no one has to be left behind, but they can be if the players are greedy and do not trust each other) - The AB test Dio refers to is the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition - At minimum Sigma and Clover are the cold sleepers, because:
- Sigma is the POV character and we have the date of his kidnapping, which is only a year after 999 takes place, so if Junpei and Tenmyouji are the same person, his kidnapping was decades ago - The only way to explain the age discrepancy between Tenmyouji/Junpei and Clover is through cold sleep - If Alice is not a cold sleeper, by process of elimination the third one is probably Phi (Tenmyouji and Quark being in the future relative to Clover, Alice having Ice-9, K not having/needing a memory of the date, Dio and Luna for having reasons to hide things)
- Sigma, or some version of him, is Zero
- Luna's final word calls him "Doctor" which means she knows him in another context that he does not - K was intended to be old man Zero's backup and K looks just like Sigma - Sigma is the right age that if he was not in cold sleep he could be the old man (which means the player Sigma is probably a clone or something)
Largely Discredited: - If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too) - Alice was in cold sleep (she says she doesn't actually have Ice-9 in her body to go into cold sleep without a machine, but since the info came from Clover I'll put this here for now) - The game is not taking place on Earth since Phi is able to jump really high, which she has actually done twice now, (because when they go outside in Dio's Ending they see the moon under a lunar eclipse) - Luna is Zero. She says she has instructions to relate information to Sigma, and if she was Zero, she shouldn't be reporting to someone else. - K or Phi is Zero (discounting now that the old lady is pretty much sure to be Akane and she was planning to die all along as part of her plan) - This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (K's flashback with the old woman makes it clear Akane expects to die). - The elderly murdered woman (Akane) is Zero (Luna confirms that Zero is someone else)
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Post by Rune Lai on Mar 12, 2016 22:06:57 GMT -5
Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-GAULEM Bay Door - Betray
Since I don't want to Betray Phi right away and I'm pretty sure that's the thing I need to do in order to proceed through the next lock, I rewind to the second Ambidex Game after going through the Magenta and then Green Doors. I'm playing against Luna, who I had been sobbing over when before going to bed the night before.
I feel like a complete jerk, but I hit Betray, and when we get out Luna doesn't take it very well since Sigma broke his promise and can't even give her a good explanation for why he did it. She runs off.
The fight between Clover and Tenmyouji still happens and Dio wanders off. We go looking for the next set of Chromatic Doors, and then Sigma runs into Tenmyouji with the unconscious Quark. Tenmyouji won't say where he found Quark, though it's pretty obvious to me that Luna led him to the Treatment Center, and Tenmyouji opens the number 9 door to get Quark outside, knowing that he's going to die on the way because he himself doesn't have 9 points.
Tenmyouji also hits Sigma in the gut so he can't stop him before walking out. Bad ending.
Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Security Door - Betray
Now I skip over to the Ambidex Game right after Sigma and Phi discover that Luna is a robot and started the Ambidex Game's third round. Phi's advocating for Betray because she thinks Luna is trying to trap them so they'll never leave. Of course, I know that's not true, but I wonder what'll happen since Sigma and Phi will exceed 9 points on winning.
I pick Betray and the results come out. Everyone's already dead except for Sigma, Phi, and Quark (and Quark only because he's no longer wearing his bracelet). Sigma and Phi search for him, but the Treatment Center isn't open this time and while they're searching the Pantry they get the alert that the number 9 door has been opened and will remain open for 9 seconds.
They aren't able to get back to the warehouse in time to go out the door, but they do head back and confirm that the door has opened and closed. Zero III then pops up to let them know that Luna and Quark have left. Quark had 9 points (thanks to Tenymouji's earlier Betrayal of Clover) and Luna wasn't wearing a bracelet so she just walked out. Game Over.
Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Control Room Door - Betray
Finally I come to the final choice I haven't taken, Betraying Phi. Even though I really like Luna, somehow Betraying Phi feels worse, possibly because Luna doesn't remember the Betrayals, but Phi, being another reality hopper, does.
She's crushed when Sigma chooses Betray and internally he admits he has no idea why he did it other than a feeling that he just wanted to know what would have happened if he did. This puts Sigma at 9 points, but Phi and the others quickly overpower him just to make sure he doesn't try to escape.
Phi says that she'll make him pay and also quotes Latin at him, which translates into something like "Even Jupiter cannot find a lost opportunity." Basically, it means that once you miss your chance you can't do it over again. Or can you?
Bad ending.
Ambidex Game Round 2 - Post-Control Room Door Redux - Ally
I return to the timeline where Phi Betrays Sigma in retaliation for a previous Betray he didn't remember. Now that he has Betrayed the dialogue plays out differently. He remembers and is apologetic about his Betrayal. When Phi is about to ditch everyone and go out the number 9 door, he quotes her Latin back at her, telling her that if she leaves now, she'll be doing it without all the answers they've been searching for; why they've been kidnapped, why they're playing this game, etc.
This is enough to calm Phi down and she grudgingly admits that she and Sigma are even now. They've each Betrayed each other once. The rest of the group has no idea what they're talking about though, and the two of them evade the questions.
When the rest of the group goes to check up on the unconscious Alice and Quark (suffering from Radical-6), Sigma and Phi head off alone together to look for more clues as to what's really going on, and also to talk, since it's very clear now that both of them having been jumping back and forth through realities, though Sigma seems to weather the jumps better than she does. He remembers more.
Schrodinger's Cat comes up again, this time with a more thorough explanation, and Sigma brings up the possibility that they are inside the box (my guess!), but Phi turns it around suggests that maybe they're the ones outside and the rest of the world is in the box. (!)
They also discover the 02 bomb is in the Control Room this time, probably because Dio did not have access to the Laboratory.
When they return to the Infirmary Phi demands to search everyone in a rehash of the other timeline where she wants to find out who the bomber is, but there's no To Be Continued this time as Sigma immediately calls out Dio. Things proceed as before. Tenymouji bluffs Dio, Dio gets separated from the detonator, activating the bombs' countdown, and Dio is sedated by Luna to stop him from trying to commit suicide.
This time though, Sigma and Phi are fully cognizant of the fact they can reality jump, so Phi gets everyone else to head to the next set of doors, carrying the unconscious along with them, while she and Sigma take care of the bombs.
They first head to the Crew Quarters, carrying the input device that Zero left them in the Control Room, and she yells at Sigma to go jump and get the code, but he can't do it on command. He tries to remember the code and like the computer login in the Director's Office, he doesn't auto remember this one. When I fail to input the code there is a brief cut scene of Phi thanking Sigma for trying (the vision he gets near the beginning of this particular timeline when they're shut in the voting elevator early), then it's Game Over.
I quickly jump to all the bomb timelines and jot down all four codes. Then I restart my activation run. 03 is taken care of in the Crew Quarters. 02 is handled in the Control Room. We get 01 in the Gardens and by then there are only four minutes left. But we remember that there is a fourth bomb, and we have no idea where it is. Sigma has never seen it in any of his jumps.
Then he gets a flash of insight and remembers where Dio had hidden his knife and the bloodstained handkerchief in another timeline. In this one, Luna's elevator room was never moved, and they find the 00 bomb wedged in between Dio's starting elevator and Luna's. Sigma deactivates the final bomb, and after a brief moment of relief, he and Phi head down to the white Chromatic Doors to meet up with everyone else. Though relieved to still be alive, they have another round of the game to play.
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Post by Rune Lai on Mar 13, 2016 17:33:34 GMT -5
Escape Round 3 - White Door - Q
The Q room is a callback to the final door of 999, but after solving the escape we learn that it's actually short for "quantum" and it's the nervous center of the entire facility. After the solve, we need to enter a username and password in a computer (I used Kurashiki and Jumpydoll from the old woman's ID card in Quark's ending) and a hologram of the old woman appears. She introduces herself as Akane Kurashiki.
Akane explains that the AB project was to create a set of circumstances that would nurture and develop the ability to swap consciousnesses through time/space in two people, Sigma and Phi, to send them into the past. At first this confuses me since I'm pretty sure they're actually in the future right now. She also goes on to say that she's sure they have a lot of questions, so they should come find her. Like Schrodinger's Cat, her fate has not yet been decided.
The safe in the Q room gives us vials of Axelavir for Quark and Alice, so everyone meets up in the Infirmary to look after them. Dio, still unconscious (poor K had to drag an unconscious Dio and Alice through his escape room by himself), is handcuffed to the sink so he can't escape or do anything. Then we decide to take care of the voting to bring everyone up to 9.
The mood is good this time. Everyone united against the bomb threat. Everyone trusts each other. Of the nine people it's agreed that K will vote for his group of three, Luna will vote for hers (she was with Clover and Quark), and then Sigma and Phi debate which between the two of them should vote for their group with Tenmyouji. While in front of the elevator bank, Sigma and Phi realize that they never found Akane's body in this timeline. She is currently in a state of being both alive and dead, and the box has yet to be opened to decide her fate, so where is she?
The game cuts to a "To Be Continued," boggling my mind, and then I get a message that a new entry has been added to the flow chart. I make the jump, which is before the beginning of the game!
Sigma wakes up in the elevator and Phi is there. At first the conversation runs the same, but then she asks him to remember, and everything comes rushing back. They check their watches, which confirm their starting 3 points and that they're a pair. The timer that tells them when the first set of Chromatic Doors will open also gives them two hours. They realize that they're awake a full hour before they were before, and quickly escape the elevator. I like that you don't need to redo the escape puzzles because Sigma remembers the safe password from before.
The two of them get outside in time to see Dio about to kill Akane, and Phi drop kicks him from behind, knocking him out cold. Akane is happy to see them and explains that to get the AB project to work successfully they needed an element of danger, a fear of death, to kickstart their abilities to jump through time and across different timelines. That's why she was willing to die and let others die in the other timelines in order to empower the Sigma and Phi of the timeline that would eventually make it through successfully. Akane takes Dio's knife away from him and ties a key around Sigma's ankle so he won't lose it. She says he'll want to use it to meet someone in the future.
She also tells him a Latin phrase that translates into something like "What you are, I was. What I am, you will be."
Akane then informs them that they'll be jumping back to the future soon, so she's going to put Dio in his elevator and them back in theirs so they can wake up properly with no memory of having come outside, which she says would be very unpleasant for the timeline. Akane promises that she will still be with them and they will meet again.
Ambidex Game Round 3 - Post-Q Door - Ally
Sigma and Phi wake up to find themselves in the Infirmary. They've been out for a couple hours and Tenmyouji voted for their trio. Quark and Alice are awake and okay again, so everyone (minus Dio, who they decide can be picked up by authorities later) heads out the number 9 door. The Nonary Game is over. Yay! Happy times.
They ride up the cargo elevator, suit up and go through the PEC chamber, and emerge into what appears to be a desert with a blood red moon. Alice and Clover immediate conclude it's the lunar eclipse of Dec 31st, 2028, but Tenmyouji corrects them. Now that the game is over, he no longer feels obligated to keep quiet.
It's now January in the year 2074, and that's a solar eclipse they're seeing. Everyone is currently on the moon. As to why the Earth looks red, it's because it's horribly polluted and the atmospheric dirt is so bad only that the red light is making it through the visible spectrum.
Tenmyouji explains how Radical-6 escaped a Mars simulation site in 2028 and the population was rapidly infected with bodies piling up in the streets. Then in April 2029 the eighteen antimatter reactors on Earth went off to scour the surface of the planet, killing the majority of the human population with the goal of also containing the disease. Tenmyouji suspects that some of the people involved were already infected, which is why they were inclined to make such a suicidal decision.
Alice points out that they can't possibly be on the moon because otherwise they should feel lighter, and the gravity should be different. To demonstrate she picks up a rock and drops it.
At this point Luna steps in and says that even though she's cured of Radical-6, she still has some lingering symptoms. Everyone in the group has been infected, so all of them are moving and perceiving the world at a slower speed than the non-infected. To someone on the moon, the slower fall of objects matches the slower speed of cognition, so everything seems relatively normal. And it wasn't as if the fact their bodies were completely oblivious to the change in gravity.
This is how Phi was able to jump so high, and this is why in one of the early exploration conversation people like Clover and Phi admitted to feeling like they were floating (and Luna, who is a robot in the know, encouraged them to think of it as a side effect of being knocked out).
Sigma realizes that they still don't know where Akane is so he heads back inside the facility and everyone else comes along too, each for their own reasons. They ride the elevator back down, and even though the number 9 door no longer opens, there is another floor with an elevator door that does so people who've left can come back. (And it just feels so like Akane to not leave anyone behind if possible.) This takes us to the same room with the white Chromatic Doors.
Sigma realizes that the Latin phrase Akane gave him matches the one on the tombstone in the Gardens and it has a keyhole in it. The key around his ankle opens the lock and a treatment pod emerges with someone inside in cold sleep.
Once the person inside it thaws and they're able to open the lid, they find not Akane (who I didn't think it would be--I was betting on Zero), but a copy of Sigma. Sigma flashes back to when he unmasked K and doesn't know why K should be in there.
The strangest part though is how everyone else reacts, because they have no idea who this person is. When Sigma asks them how they could possibly miss the resemblance, K takes off his armor and reveals himself as Akane (!). As promised, she was with them during their journey. She explains that the project wasn't just about sending someone's consciousness to the past, but also bringing someone from the past to the future. Sigma was never in cold sleep, and when his future self went to the past, his past self went to the future.
Shocked, Sigma looks into the pool in the Gardens and sees his reflection for the first time as the sixty-nine year old Dr. Sigma Klim instead of the twenty-two year old he remembers being. Throughout the game, Sigma's face is not shown except in flashbacks, and I thought it was an annoying artistic thing because even though the game is primarily in first person, the cut scenes are not, and now I realize it's been because the player can't be allowed to have information that Sigma does not.
I remember things like discovering a mirror in the Infirmary, but not being able to use it because it's covered in crud. I remember Sigma poking fun of Phi for looking like a kid when she's twenty. I remember her retaliation asking Sigma if he took drugs to manage to look the way he does at twenty-two. (No wonder when he's got wrinkles and gray hair!) Though Sigma's body is certainly older, the change in gravity and the effects of Radical-6 are apparently enough to mask that he isn't quite as fit as he was when he was younger.
Akane informs Sigma that eventually, though not yet obviously, he will become a brilliant doctor and he will set up the AB program to grant himself and Phi the ability to jump back into past versions of themselves and stop Radical-6 from ever getting out into the world. Sigma, the older version of himself, is Zero. The Nonary Game was rigged to make him and Phi jump back and forth over and over again through many decisions, many timelines, until they could do it without losing any memory of what happened and easily carry information from one to the other.
Now that that's done, the only thing left to do is to send them on their way, and slingshot their consciousnesses forty-seven years into the past. Akane draws a knife, the one she took from Dio, and reminds them that a matter of life and death is the strongest way to trigger a jump, and she lunges at Phi.
Sigma gets in the way though and is conscious of Akane falling on him, and that even when she lands, he seems to be hit with the butt of the knife rather than the tip. Then the credits roll.
Phi Ending.
After the credits, one last entry in the flowchart appears. Sigma wakes up on the day when the antimatter reactors go off, April 2029. The world outside seems in terrible shape and he's greeted by a figure wearing Zero's gas mask who removes it to reveal a younger Akane. She informs him that preparations have been made to take him and his cargo to the moon. There are three treatment pods, and inside of them are Clover, Alice, and Phi.
Akane tells him that Phi volunteered for this, but the Phi mind currently residing in the pod is not the one he knows from 2074. That Phi has jumped all the way back to December 25, 2028, and he'll go there eventually as the older Sigma. Sigma asks why he couldn't have gone into cryogenic sleep like Phi, and Akane tells him it's because he's the architect of the Ambidex version of the Nonary Game. He has to build the game, clone himself to make K, and set everything up so that he can later call his past self to the future.
The future Sigma Akane knew has already gone through the Mars simulation facility, and they don't have all the details of what went wrong there, how Radical-6 got in, how it escaped, but this time they'll have a chance to stop it. She also reveals that that's where Sigma lost his arms and right eye, trying to save someone's life, and Sigma looks down to realize that his arms are mechanical, and there is no ABT covering them this time.
Sigma listens and looks at what's happening outside though, and realizes that if he has a chance to stop all of this, he has to.
And I can see why people who've played Virtue's Last Reward were so disappointed when the third in the series was cancelled. While it's a whole story on its own, and it's not a cliffhanger, it's clear that not everything is done. Fortunately, I waited to buy this, so Zero Time Dilemma will be waiting for me later this year!
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Now to round up what I called and did not call on my speculations:
Confirmed: - Multiple people were put into cold sleep, probably three in number - The three way intersections with only one opening door is to control which room the players visit next - Phi can branch into other realities with different choices like Sigma - Zero and the bomber are not the same person - Dio is the bomber - Sigma is a cyborg with mechanic arms - Zero is intentionally allowing the bomber to do his/her thing (in fact, Dio was even lured here) - Luna is assisting Zero - The elderly murdered woman found after the first set of Chromatic Door puzzles is Akane from 999 - Tenmyouji is Junpei from 999 - Alice, Phi, and Clover are the cold sleepers, though I had previously removed Alice due to Tenmyouji's Ice-9 discussion - Sigma, or some version of him, is Zero (fell into some version of him) - The game is not taking place on Earth since Phi is able to jump really high, which she has actually done twice now (previously discredited when I saw the "moon" but turned out to be the truth)
Never confirmed/unconfirmed: - Sigma and Phi have a connection due to being the only characters with Greek letters for names - This entire Nonary Game is taking place inside the "box" of the Schrodinger's Cat quantum mechanics experiment (yes and no, there's boxes within boxes, but there is no collapse to a singular reality) - Zero wants everyone to succeed (like 999, the game is designed so that no one has to be left behind, but they can be if the players are greedy and do not trust each other) - The AB test Dio refers to is the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition (yes and no, it's more that the game is being played to generate a specific outcome) - This Nonary Game involves Akane trying to save herself again (while she was willing to die, she left steps specifically to ensure her own survival in at least one timeline)
Largely Discredited: - If Sigma was in cold sleep and Phi was not, she could be a relative that knows him through photographs, explaining how she knows his name (incredibly unlikely as she clearly is aware of other realities too) - Sigma was in cold sleep (I would have thought this impossible to not have happened, but I was wrong) - Luna is Zero. She says she has instructions to relate information to Sigma, and if she was Zero, she shouldn't be reporting to someone else. - K or Phi is Zero (discounting now that the old lady is pretty much sure to be Akane and she was planning to die all along as part of her plan) - The elderly murdered woman (Akane) is Zero (Luna confirms that Zero is someone else) - Tenmyouji knows the reason behind the current Nonary Game
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Post by Rune Lai on Mar 13, 2016 17:35:55 GMT -5
And that's all there is! According to Google docs I wrote 71 pages of notes on this. Just... wow... And there are another two pages where I recorded who was in each group at every story branch, because sometimes while writing I realized it would be helpful to know who was where and with who.
Zero Time Dilemma's coming out this summer, if the schedule holds. I'm really looking forward to it!
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Post by Rune Lai on Jul 7, 2016 0:09:19 GMT -5
Just reviving this thread because I'm playing Zero Time Dilemma, and holy **** I've found out the connection between Sigma and Phi!
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