Zero Time Dilemma

Pop culture criticism would have you believe that the third entry in a trilogy often tends to be the weakest, and while something like this is obviously just about as subjective and determined by taste as humanly possible, there are a number of generally excepted examples of this ranging from The Godfather Part III to Spider-Man 3. Games are no exception from this stigma, with recent titles like Batman: Arkham Knight and Mass Effect 3 receiving chillier receptions than either of the two (or in the former's case, "three") previous entries. And while in the end, like most things, the reality lies somewhere in the middle and there is no hard and fast rule, Zero Time Dilemma appears from the get-go to be trying as hard as it possibly can to reinforce this idea by botching it at pretty much every level.

A quick refresher on the Zero Escape series: each of the games up to this point - 999 and Virtue's Last Reward - have been visual novel/puzzle game hybrids that featured nine people (and it is always nine people) trapped in a location with no hope of rescue unless they take part in a complex series of 'escape the room' challenges while also trying not to give into their more base instincts of survival by eliminating the other 'competitors'. Although mostly made up a different cast of characters on a game-to-game basis, there has been an over-aching narrative that has been building up to this, the third and supposedly final entry, despite being set, chronologically, between the previous two games. Unlike both earlier games, there's not one protagonist whose story the player follows from start to finish, but instead three, and it's there that the game begins to fall apart.

I'm not saying having multiple protagonists is a bad thing, far from it. I might even say I prefer to get multiple perspectives on the same scenario (I've always been kinder on Halo 2 for that reason as an example, but that's another issue entirely). The issues I have come with the reason there are multiple protagonists: the nine people have been separated into three groups of three, each with their own leader. Team C is lead by Carlos, with returning characters Akane and Junpei in tow, Team D is lead by Dianna, with returning Sigma and Phi accompanying her, and Team Q is entirely comprised of new characters with Eric and Mira lead by the mysterious, amnesiac boy known only as Q. The problem with this is that each team of three, for the majority of the game, only interact with the members of their group. One of the strengths of the characters and their writing in the earlier games was the way that the different paths you went down would change up what characters were grouped with who every time, never letting one combination of opinions and attitudes become stale. The first time Mira and Eric have a stupid argument isn't made any better the tenth time it happens.

And on top of this... they're all just so bad. There's barely a likeable character in the bunch, and the quality of dialogue they have both in the cinematic story scenes and in the puzzles themselves is astoundingly poor. I frequently found myself wonder how - how - this was the final draft of the script? This isn't helped by the voice work, either. Recognizable voice actors (if not by name, at least by voice), like Matthew Mercer, D. C. Douglas, Keith Silverstein, and others turn in shockingly wooden and uninspired performances that, at the very least, match up with the janky looking character animation. To say that I eventually got over the look of the game in motion might be one of the nicest things I can say about it, and that ain't good.

I'm focusing a lot on the story and presentation, not just because I believe they're the most important parts of the series, but because they are also the most obviously disappointing parts of this game. However, the actual hands-on "game" part of the content is also important, even if only to serve the narrative. To be honest, the puzzles are simply fine, some of them are a little obtuse and out there, some of them are more in line with the first two games, but it evens out in the end. The biggest let-down on the gameplay side of things is in it's choices. Unlike, say, the AB Game of Virtue's Last Reward, where every binary choice had weight and changed the tone of your party's circumstances, the choices of this "Decision Game" are often there in a way that suggests someone looked at this and said "The player should probably have to make a choice here, or something, I don't know...". Some of them even required you to do it multiple times until you got a result you wanted, like rolling three of a kind on three dice, or selecting which arbitrary box might have the arbitrary gas mask for the arbitrary poison that is now filling the room. It all feels tacked on to adhere to the multiple timelines story that has been building over the course of the series, but it no longer feels organic or earned.

And then there's the conclusion, if you can call it that. Perhaps the reason that the closing installment of a trilogy tends to be held under more scrutiny is that it not only has to wrap up it's own story, but must also contain an overall closing to the parts that came before, and Zero Time Dilemma opts to sidestep this problem by not really doing that at all. To put it briefly, there are multiple twists that feel random and stupid, including the reveal of who "Zero" has been this whole time, and even as the credits roll, countless threads carried forward from the first two games - let alone from this one - are left with no resolution, or are not even addressed entirely. The most insulting part of this comes from Zero himself, who explains the things he has done by saying he has "complex motives" about a half dozen different times without explaining why they're complex, or what those motives even are. Like, that's it. Those two words are meant to cover every question you have and you'll like it!

At some point it's unfair to even bring this up, because the game should stand up on it's own (and rest assured, it doesn't!), but there was lengthy FAQ compiled after Virtue's Last Reward where series creator and writer Kotaro Uchikoshi commented on the lingering plot threads and questions by explicitly stating these answers would come in the form of a then not guaranteed third game, and almost none of those answers are present in the final product. Zero Time Dilemma is bad on it's own, but for someone today, tomorrow, next week, next year, or whenever who might play through all three games in the series in close proximity, the disappointment of all the work done in world and mystery building from the second game into the third would be absolutely crushing.

Boy, this game... boy... it's all just a mess. Zero Time Dilemma feels like it was made by completely different people than those in charge of the first two Zero Escape games, people who only thought they understood what made those games so special when in fact they did not. But that is unfortunately not the case. There is such a profound gulf between expectations and the result it's hard to put into words. And maybe that's on me at the end of the day, but I don't want to let Chime, Spike Chunsoft, Aksys Games, or anyone involved with it off the hook. Zero Time Dilemma is so perfectly everything I didn't want it to be, it should almost be commended for how completely it turned me off of itself. There really is nothing quite like the real thing as far as closure, so a fan of the series would probably want to see how it ends just to say that they did. And really, how many other people besides fans of the series are going to play this anyway? All I'm saying is, keep those expectations grounded.