[SPOILERS] Question about the "true" ending.

[Xbob42]

Well, a question and some comments, I guess?

First, is the Ryuki diverge where you just kind of meet up with the Mizukis at the stadium and are like "I feel like we fought here" really it? There's nothing beyond that? I know you unlock the Nirvana Spell which I only knew what to do with once I looked it up (and apparently the first game had something similar? I never found or noticed it.) and which... did not really provide answers. It was basically an unfamiliar website with an already solved ARG that was confusing, and the dialogue the spell unlocked was... cryptic, at best.

So, I mainly ask because I was expecting a lot more once I got the nil number. It was literally all I was thinking about as I was going through the resolution ending and epilogue, which felt "fake" so I was just waiting to get to the juicy stuff. I mean, they were entertaining and over-the-top (and actually kind of off-putting, these games are SO bad at fight scenes, I know there's a lot of tonal whiplash in these games but it feels like they want to make something deadly serious and just the dumbest schlock at the same time but they mix like oil and water at times) -- but then I got to the juicy stuff, which is EXACTLY kind of paranoid, supernatural, pseudoscience ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I love from Uchikoshi. Different timelines influencing ♥♥♥♥, the world being fake, finally getting to tug on that thread, that's the exact atmosphere I've been always chasing ever since I first played 999. Hell, I didn't even know ZTD was controversial until seeing a lot of comparisons just recently, that's how much I like his silly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

But it felt like what should've opened up the treasure trove of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I love in these games just was a note that said "huh, that was weird huh? see you next time!"

I actually felt like this with the first game too, except the timeline info crossing was actually the resolution. Here's it's like a little bit of extra weirdness to an awkward "Everything's fine!" timeline, and the actual resolution was just... normal ("normal" for these games) stuff for the most part.

I'm really hoping someone's going to reply and say "oh no bro you missed X and there's like 2 hours of content left" but it *really* doesn't seem that way.

I feel like this game (and AI1 to an extent) did a really good job of introducing and building upon the concepts they want to explore, just like 999 did all those years ago. Moksha, alternative universes/timelines, breaking the world by doing things a potential creator wouldn't expect, but both did very little to deliver on it. In 999 for example, all of the endings had meaning that played into the true ending, and it was an incredible reveal that completely re-contextualized the rest of the game, and they built to it non-stop with a very, I want to say "cozy" conspiratorial tone, a really good atmosphere for that type of story.

Here, the ending doesn't really do that. The flowchart reveal is a bit earlier than that and honestly with them having to make a second Mizuki to make it work (and her having the exact same everything despite the timelines taking place 6 years apart...) was just kind of confusing and distracting, rather than amazing. At least to me. Look, I know it's hard to recapture the kind of reveal that made those first games so good (even if they have to bend further and further each time to get the reveals to fit, it's gotta be damn hard) but even if I don't fully buy into whatever insane Uchikoshi nonsense is going on, at least go for it! Go deep into i! Don't make the ending with all the good stuff I actually want some weird bad branch that doesn't accomplish anything.

Finally, when you go back and choose to not let Ryuki in on all the info from 6 years into the future, Tokiko mentions something to the effect of "maybe that, too, is part of your frayer business" -- paraphrasing, here. This led me to believe there was more to find out. But I can't find anything. Was the Nirvana spell it?

I was really hoping we'd at least get a side timeline where humanity DOES reach Moksha, that could've been insanely interesting.

[Llyes]

Nah, that about sums it up. All the significant plot threads are left dangling once again:
-Who are the third party voices we keep hearing that by all indications are from outside the simulation, and why was the timeline explanation from one of them when it would've made more sense for it to come from Tokiko?
-What significance do blue eyes have that they show up right before the reverse psynch and in Tokiko's somnium, and what on earth is a reverse psynch in the first place?
-Why does Boss seem complicit in both the nirvana initiative and the new cyclops killings,
and if so, was our perception of Bibi warped to make her seem more like Mizuki or was Bibi really wearing the uniform of a school she never attended making Bibi complicit as well?
-The ARG doesn't seem similar to how anything works in the game but does it have any relevance at all?

As you said it's 999 all over again, and I just hope Uchikoshi doesn't pull another VLR and dump all these plot threads down the drain again in the sequel

Oh, and everything seems to indicate to me that there was never any plan to lead humanity to moksha at all. The virus was only ever used to:
-Make the mob doctor tell us where the rehearsal was
-Make it so Ryuki couldn't recognize Amame
-Make a small army fight past their limits
-Possibly make a few people dance in the street and/or hurt themselves, but there's never any indication this is anything but rumor from the very unreliable Iris crew
It seems like there was never any plan to release the virus at all, as the Tearer in the stadium video was Tokiko who was just setting up the circumstances to deliver the nil number. Which seems to have come from outside the simulation since it's plastered across your screen? It's all a bit of a mess.