ending discussion (for people who completed the game)

[Leon Wolf]

So I've completed the game fully I'm lost at something here. The game ends on a cliff hanger and then I found the notes on about some of the Carlos and the others but no info on Sigma Phi and Diana. I play the second game it gave me hope to see a happy ending for both Sigma and Phi but this game tells me nothing. I can go on and say to myself they continued living togather after this game but I like the game to tell me that. I mean the game kind of dropped an interesting twist about Sigma and Phi I won't say. Then there's the thing about Sigma we know from the last game suppost to come in during this one. But Sigma refers to himself as the older aged verson so we don't see anything of the young Sigma. Then there's the info about Kyle. I love the game the story was awesome but I have to many question need answering. Someone wanna help me here.

[Ashura Mazah]

The Ending was a bit dissapointing for me, not because of the cliffhanger, but the lack of an epilogue. You get the notes but that's not much. VLR had a kick ass epilogue though unfortunetly the reprecaucions of said epilogue didn't pan out in ZTD as I hoped. I guess they just didn't have the budget to make it.

There is a problem I see though. When Young Sigma travels back from the moon base he's in the Radical 6 Pandemic universe, always. That means that there's an equal or higher ammount of Radical 6 Pandemic universes to Your Sigmas traveling back in time. Unless you create a Time Paradox there is no way a Sigma from a Radical 6 Pandemic universe will move to the ZTD Ending universe, so Old Sigma is probably there to stay unless a completely different universe Sigma barges in.
He's probably taking some time off and living with Diana while being in contact with Junpei and Akane and helping out however he can. Phi might be with them, she might be not. She is kind of a free spirit.

[Nipz]

Akane and Junpei have a future together!!

[Nipz]

I think the author left the ending open ended to leave to your own interpretations. I enjoy it. We can write fan fic about it.

[Leon Wolf]

Oh ya thats what i'm thinking too. I just like the game to tell me I would of like an epilougue but thats the way I am. Don't get me wrong I love the game it's great.

[*]

It's definitely my least favorite one in the series. Simply going by story/characters alone, 999 > VLR > ZTD.

I still like the game quite a bit, it's definitely more good than disappointing, and has a few truly excellent moments. While the animations are terrible and some of the voice acting is weak, some of the voice acting is great, and the music and puzzles are IMO the best in the series.

But this plot didn't live up to the hype.

Not enough time went into explaining Phi. Do we ever learn how she has strong legs/jumping abilities, a question that was raised at the very beginning of VLR? Do we just assume being placed in the Transporter as a newborn, plus a combination of epigenetics gave her that power? Come on.

The Decision Game aspects are generally really cool, and I really liked the Monty Hall Problem and the Radical-6 injection, but they weren't totally earth shattering. There were also a lot less cool philosophy/♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in this game compared to the others. Phi's talk about consciousness in the hemispheres and Akane's talk about murdering yourself from another history were astonishing, but there simply wasn't enough of it in this game compared to the previous ones.

So much time devoted to Radical-6, Free the Soul and Brother/Left in the last game, and the delivery for it here was unsatisfying and somewhat wanting.

What probably bothers me the most is, not that there was no real satisfying closure with older characters (even if Snake/Clover/Alice/Seven/etc. can be given simple explanations of their current situation, they deserve better and more), but the transporter. Seriously? You're just gonna introduce Aliens now? Without any sort of exposition except for their alphabet and how the machine works? This is as bad as Kojima in his later games. Nanomachines. I mean, I'm fine with people just being espers and having that power. But randomly introducing that machine felt like a deus ex machina and lazy writing.

The ending was mostly bleh. The friendship speech at the end was cliche and cringey, and Delta's whole "I did it to inspire you and give you determination" was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid. Not seeing Carlos' decision with the gun was cool, but that scene seemed really immature and a bit cartoonish. Not exactly what you would call some of the best storytelling in gaming. VLR and 999 were complex and convoluted for incredible payoff, at least. Having a plan that elaborate because your method of saving the world is to give hope to people is something out of a bad anime.

It's really not all bad, though. The Delta twist, while not given enough time and not as shocking or well thought out as 999 and VLR's main twist, was extremely good and really gave me a shock. I just feel the budget and circumstances of this game and its release harmed it, and I don't mean the graphics. The writing feels half-baked, phoned in, and rushed at times, despite being great and on par with the last 2 games in other places.

I highly doubt this was Uchikoshi's ideal vision. With more time/money/staff, this game probably would have been improved. I understand it was this or nothing, and I'm grateful it came out at all, but this is not a game I can overall look to as an example of brilliant storytelling like I can with 999 and VLR. It's still quite good, but just disappoints me on about as many levels as it impresses me when compared to the last games.

[Ashura Mazah]

^ Totally agree with pretty much everything, especially the Aliens. I can buy moon bases, healing pods, alternate realities, robots, santient AIs... But Aliens were a bit much since there was no prior establishment as far as I remember.

I can't help to wonder what the game would look like in an alternate universe where they had double the budget, or decided not to go with the "cinematic" aproach to pander to western audiences and stuck to a more clasic visual novel presentation style.

[Rox]

Well, Phi's jumping power, as seen in Virtue's Last Reward... is because they're on the moon. Gravity's lower there, so she's jumping much higher than she should. They just don't see her floating like that because of Radical-6.

But, yeah, while it was interesting, the whole idea of the Transporter and it being alien in origin was quite out of nowhere. That and we never learned about Ice-9 or ALL-ICE. And it's obvious that the transporter is going to be used to send a copy of Alice and Clover into the past, though I'd like to know which one they end up in.

[Phoenix-san]

My biggest concer with the game was... WHY NO CLOVER IN THE GAME?! D: T_T

And lack of great epilogue/ending. It was nice how they closed radical6 theme and left the room for possible sequel (with that religious fanatic is just about to cause even larger calamity than r6, ze4 maybe?). 999 and VLR felt VERY rewarding and satisfying in the end, ZTD much less in that aspect. I was actually shocked by such sudden ending without any kind of epilogue (until i discovered notes, but none about Diana, Sigma and Phi) :(

Also clunky animation.. seriously, i dont really think graphics important in the story-driven games but that was that bad i just had to notice it. I wish this game would be proper visual novel like 999 rather than full of clumsy cutscenes.

I also remember statement that "ZTD will explain what happened with other 999 characters"... yeah, it explained, in exactly one line "Lotus raising kids, Santa helping Akane in Crashkeys, Ace in prison probably". I was like "Are you kiddin me, thats it? 20s dialogue?" Explained indeed.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

Originally posted by Phoenix-san:

Also clunky animation.. seriously, i dont really think graphics important in the story-driven games but that was that bad i just had to notice it. I wish this game would be proper visual novel like 999 rather than full of clumsy cutscenes.

Honestly, the game is helped by the animations. There are a lot of things that happened that a visual novel style would hinder.

[Zorlond]

The ending was TERRIBLE.

Delta's entire inclusion, not from within the story, but from the initial design of the plot, was a horrible decision. You've likely heard of 'deus ex machina', right? Delta is 'Nihil a Deo'. God from NOTHING. I'm not talking about time paradoxes here, I want that to be abundantly clear. Pen to paper, writing down Delta's existence for the sake of the story. That is the issue I have with him. It's an even worse writing mechanism than deus ex machina is.

Seriously, an old man in a wheelchair that is 'blind and deaf'? There is no logical reason he would not have been kept in a hospital or similar assisted living. There's no way for such a person to even use a motorized wheelchair let alone know he's in one. It's idiotic that everyone else would have completely ignored his existence like that. Someone would have questioned it, someone would have pointed him out. Someone would have done something to make his presence known.

So he comes out of nowhere, starts throwing around exposition dumps like a kid after a Halloween binge, creates a false dilemma, then conveniently solves it himself. Whoever wrote this obviously lacks the creative skill to deal with a situation as complex as multiple timelines. They couldn't find an ending without Delta, and couldn't get him into the story without doing a rediculous hatchet job on it.

Ugh. if this game hadn't taken 20 hours to complete I damn well would have gotten a refund. And no, that's not an idle threat, nor something I do a lot. Hell, I've never even used Steam's refund policy even ONCE. And yet, this game I would have happily refunded. No alternate timeline. No Decision Game. One outcome. Refunded. Blam. Go ahead and pretend that's a result you wanted, I'm done.

[Battler Ushiromiya]

Originally posted by Zorlond:

The ending was TERRIBLE.

Delta's entire inclusion, not from within the story, but from the initial design of the plot, was a horrible decision. You've likely heard of 'deus ex machina', right? Delta is 'Nihil a Deo'. God from NOTHING. I'm not talking about time paradoxes here, I want that to be abundantly clear. Pen to paper, writing down Delta's existence for the sake of the story. That is the issue I have with him. It's an even worse writing mechanism than deus ex machina is.

Seriously, an old man in a wheelchair that is 'blind and deaf'? There is no logical reason he would not have been kept in a hospital or similar assisted living. There's no way for such a person to even use a motorized wheelchair let alone know he's in one. It's idiotic that everyone else would have completely ignored his existence like that. Someone would have questioned it, someone would have pointed him out. Someone would have done something to make his presence known.

So he comes out of nowhere, starts throwing around exposition dumps like a kid after a Halloween binge, creates a false dilemma, then conveniently solves it himself. Whoever wrote this obviously lacks the creative skill to deal with a situation as complex as multiple timelines. They couldn't find an ending without Delta, and couldn't get him into the story without doing a rediculous hatchet job on it.

Ugh. if this game hadn't taken 20 hours to complete I damn well would have gotten a refund. And no, that's not an idle threat, nor something I do a lot. Hell, I've never even used Steam's refund policy even ONCE. And yet, this game I would have happily refunded. No alternate timeline. No Decision Game. One outcome. Refunded. Blam. Go ahead and pretend that's a result you wanted, I'm done.

You never played 999 or VLR, did you?

[Jericho Suda]

Delta popping out of nowhere was pretty bad no matter what. It's probably the cinematic camera that ruins it.
But imo the worst thing is that the end gives zero (duh) credibility to Delta's motivations except "I made you stronger huehuehue", nor advancing the plot of the serie.

[sergamar23]

Originally posted by Zorlond:

The ending was TERRIBLE.
Seriously, an old man in a wheelchair that is 'blind and deaf'? There is no logical reason he would not have been kept in a hospital or similar assisted living. There's no way for such a person to even use a motorized wheelchair let alone know he's in one. It's idiotic that everyone else would have completely ignored his existence like that. Someone would have questioned it, someone would have pointed him out. Someone would have done something to make his presence known.

When Q team is chosing whether to push the button or not in FCFS, Eric talks about him. Also, the shadow of his wheelchair can be seen a lot of times, Uchikoshi just played with the angle of the camera, but Delta is always there with Q team. I agree that it is a bit farfetched, but we must accept that bit of trick to enjoy the story, like in VLR Sigma's bionic eye
About the lack of creative skill, tell me a game that beats Zero Escape saga in terms of time travelling and multiple timelines.

[Keshop]

One thing I didn't like about the game was the unlikable characters.. Eric and Mira. Eric simply had a childish mentality and his background story was pretty much meaningless. Mira's only virtue at all was she was a serial killer, would she have worked as a character otherwise? No? pretty much that is my point. Seriously were they supposed to replace Clover and Alice?

Also one thing I don't really get with the queue thing:
For the x-passes; in the Q:
There were 3 spots in the screen yet they KNEW they were four. How did that pass of as logical again?

[Miral]

Originally posted by Keshop:

Also one thing I don't really get with the queue thing:
For the x-passes; in the Q:
There were 3 spots in the screen yet they KNEW they were four. How did that pass of as logical again?

They probably just assumed that Sean didn't count, first because he was a kid, and secondly for other reasons. Most of the other cases are convenient misdirection -- when some action is attributed to Q, you assume it was the kid who did it because you don't know better. It's interesting to re-watch those scenes after you do.