"Once again, I gaze upon this stately ladder" - Zero Escape Series!

i waited, and was rewarded by the price of Zero Time Dilemma dropping from $40 to $22!

Spoiler: ZTD

i like the character designs so far! & the outfits, too.

the fragmented nature of the story segments is interesting! keeping track of it is definitely going to be a puzzle lmao.

 

so i haven't been liveblogging here because i'm actually using my dreamwidth now and i ended up liveblogging ZTD there (link is to my zero escape tag) instead

but i just wanted to check in here and say

Spoiler: ZTD spoilers

that i got fucking bamboozled, in the "accidentally shipped something that turned out to be incest" way. i mean, i wasn't even shipping it that hard, but i was at least thinking about it, and now i'm just like... uh... hmm...

bonus points,

Spoiler: Specific ZTD spoilers

Spoiler: also, biological incest (duh)

the ship in question was Diana/Phi/Sigma. i've never been bamboozled so hard before.

and the worst part is, just earlier today i nominated said ship in an upcoming fic exchange. "the deadline's coming up, so i'll just nominate some zero escape ships that i think might catch my interest when i'm done with the game!" i said. "it'll be fine!" i said.

OTL

side note,

Spoiler: specific ZTD spoilers

the whole "sending babies back in time with a specific item that has no discernible origin outside of its own time loop" thing? big homestuck vibes. not to mention the doomed/unfair timeline stuff. the "turns out these shippable characters are actually biologically related" thing is just the cherry on top.

 

An examination of the differences between the three games by focusing on a particular common motif

Spoiler: spoilers for individual games will be marked

The third-act reveal about the location the protagonists were in actually being an entirely different location.

Spoiler: 999

Expectation: the characters are on a giant cruise ship that is currently sinking!

Reveal: the characters are in an exact replica of the cruise ship, built in the desert for Mad Science purposes.

Justification: the characters had to believe they were in real danger to make their psychic powers work better/at all.

Spoiler: VLD

Expectation: the characters are inside a pressure-regulated survival bunker to shield them from a pandemic going on outside

Reveal: the characters are in a secret science base on the Moon, also it is the future and the pandemic has already run its course

Justification: not letting the characters catch on to the fact they're in the future, and that some of them have been cryogenically frozen for a long time

Spoiler: ZTD

Expectation: the characters are in a bunker with three distinct "wings" branching off from a central elevator shaft

Reveal: there was only ever one "wing" all along, they were just awake in shifts and different teams had access to different rooms

Justification: .....budget cuts..?