Today in San Francisco, director Kotaro Uchikoshi and the rest of the team behind Zero Escape 3: Zero Time Dilemma revealed a bunch of new details for the upcoming adventure game. Which is crazy-exciting news for those of us who have played and fallen in love with 999 and Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward.
Kirk was in the audience, and he passed along a bunch of notes, which I’ve interpreted and wrote up for your pleasure. They’re generally spoiler-free, but we’ll be talking about the gameplay mechanics — fair warning!
First, a new trailer:
Some info:
The demo we watched started with Sigma locked to a chair while Zero monologued at him. Phi was next to him locked inside an incinerator. Diana stood between them and had to make the choice.
The cutscenes are in 3D, with a moving camera and actual in-game objects. The gun next to Sigma’s chair has 3 live rounds and three blanks. If Diana pulls the trigger it will shut down the incinerator whether or not the bullet is live, but she has a 50/50 chance of killing Sigma. In 3 minutes, the incinerator will start and kill Phi. If Diana pulls the trigger, the door will open but Sigma has a 50/50 chance of dying.
They decided to pull the trigger and told us it’s completely random what happens – they actually don’t know how it would turn out. The game calculates the odds each time. In this case, the bullet is a blank, Sigma lives and Phi is also saved from the incinerator. They say some of the choices throughout the game will have randomness like that. “When he says he doesn’t know how it’s gonna end, he means it.”
They ran the scene again and this time Sigma died from a live bullet. They swear it really is random.
I’m sold. And going to do my best not to learn anything else about Zero Time Dilemma until it’s in my damn hands.
Comments
5 responses to “Everything We Just Learned About Zero Escape 3: Zero Time Dilemma”
I am so looking forward to this game. Played the first two at the start of last year and absolutely loved them.
I played 999 at the same time Bioshock Infinite came out.
Those games were in actual fact very thematically similar to me, I just couldn’t shake the feeling.
I spent about six months on VLR, great game but I need a proper rundown of its story and how it all ended up, any good breakdowns out there?
999:
I liked this better, but the red herrings and seemingly useless plot points were a bit of a nuisanceVLR:
I just can’t fathom why Sigma/the player character wouldn’t have looked in mirror the whole time to see he was actually old. Or am I mis-remmebering?VLR:
iirc, there wasn’t actually a mirror anywhere in the game, except for the main office at the end where your character finally sees himself.i am SOOOO excited for this. if you havent played 999 and VLR PLAY THEM. incredible stories and the twists will make your jaw drop. i cant express how great the storyline is. it’s like LOST but with answers that are actually satisfying.
Never played 999, but I’ve put a crazy amount of time into VLR and loved it but dropped off because there is just so much to it. Do you need to do every single option in that game? I came so close to finishing it I thought, but ran into a wall (or something to do with lions I think?) and just haven’t been able to push myself to play through it more. Zero 3 is getting me kinda pumped though – especially with the VO aspect.