Zero Escape Trilogy

Over the past few weeks, I've played through the entirety of the Zero Escape Trilogy.  This consists of 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors (aka 999), Virtue's Last Reward, and Zero Time Dilemma.  These are visual novel/puzzle games originally released on the DS and 3DS.  While the first game, at least, made use of the double screens as a plot point, I'm not sure if the other two did.  Either way, I played all three on PC.  

The first two games are bundled as Zero Escape: The Nonary Games, while the latter is sold as Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma.  I got that first one in the Steam summer sale, for £9.51.  The normal price is £23.79.  I played for 49 hours in total, so it was 19p per hour of entertainment for me, and would have been around 49p per hour at full price.  I figure I might happily pay 99p or more for a book I can read in 2 hours, so about 50p per hour is worth it.  I bought Zero Time Dilemma at the normal price of £12.39 and so far I've played it for 21.4 hours, making it 58p per hour.  I feel like this was worth it, even though this game was the weakest of the series, because I couldn't not finish the trilogy.  Plus, even though I've finished the game, I do want to watch some scenes again with the knowledge I've gained from seeing the ending(s), so even if I don't do a full replay, my actual play time will be higher.

In 999, the basic premise is that you, Junpei, have been kidnapped by a maniac calling themselves Zero. Zero, for some reason, wants you to play a game to escape.  Yes, the creator of this series is a fan of the Saw movies, why do you ask?  

The game in question is the Nonary Game.  Basically, all of the players have a bracelet with a number from 1-9 on it.  The players must move through numbered doors, solve the puzzles behind them, and eventually make their way to (and through) the 9 door (Spoiler: Yes, I know it's a q.  I don't want to say anything untruthful in this post but I also don't want to give away the twist by typing a q.  I tried doing a superscript and making that one letter larger but it just doesn't work).  The twist is in the rules.  3-5 players must pass through the numbered doors - again, numbered up to 9, like the bracelets - and the digital root of the sum of their bracelets must be the number of the door.  A digital root - explained early in the game  - is what you get if you keep adding the digits of a number together until you reach a single digit.  For example, to get the digital root of 725, you add 7 + 2 + 5 to get 14, then add 1 + 4 to get 5, which is the digital root.  This gimmick forces different characters to pair up together throughout the game, often in configurations they would not prefer.  This is nice, it's interesting.  The only way to discover the secrets of all the characters is to make different decisions in different run throughs, to team up with different people under different circumstances.

This is actually the case, broadly speaking.  The dissertation I'm supposed to be working on is based on this premise.

While I compared the game to Saw earlier, the puzzle rooms aren't actually deadly.  The deadly part has to do with the doors.  Basically, those entering a door need to scan in, enter, then scan at a second machine inside the room.  If all those who scanned in don't scan out (out is the wrong word, but close enough), then anyone who entered through the door will die by having a bomb explode inside them.  The fear comes from, firstly, if Zero, who set up the game, is willing to do that then what else might they do?  And, secondly, the fear of not being able to exit through the 9 door, since it's subject to the same rules as the others. How will 9 people get through 1 door?

Gameplay is split into two segments.  There's the visual novel part, where you watch the characters interact and occasionally make a choice to direct the story, and the puzzle room part.  I really enjoyed the puzzles in this game.  I found they generally made sense with a bit of lateral thinking, rather than being built on moon logic.  I also found that, when I thought of something, the characters did too.  For example, if I found an item and thought "Oh!  I bet the solution involves combining this item with that item and attaching it to that thing!" then I would be able to attach this to that and put it on the thing.  I wouldn't have to click around until I found some arbitrary colour text that made the characters realise what the solution was and let me actually do it.  Plus, for me, the puzzles were generally at the right level to get the "huh? Ah!  Aha! Haha" sequence of emotions, which is very satisfying.  

'Solving' the game involves another puzzle, that of picking the golden route through the game.  This is also quite enjoyable.  The PC version has a flowchart screen where you can see which scenes a character has seen.  The flowchart even notes if you've triggered certain things which change which ending you see.  You can hop around to different places, rather than having to play through entire swatches of the game again.  I enjoyed this meta-puzzle as well.  Part of the fun of the game is that you gather information from lots of places, so you, the player, need to put it all together to figure out what's going and what your best options are.  This interface makes it really easy to see what you might have missed and go back and fill in the gaps.  Apparently that was missing from the original DS version.

Virtue's Last Reward has some recurring characters from 999, but takes place in a different location with a slightly different premise.  This time, the poison-injecting bracelets specify colours and whether a player is solo or part of a pair.  Once again, you have to go through doors, but this time the teams must combine their colours to match the colour of the chromatic doors.  Again, this mechanic forces the characters to team up in ways they otherwise wouldn't choose to, which is a great mechanic for creating narrative tension and letting you discover different things about different people.  Once again, the meta-puzzle is to figure out the entire plot by taking information from different routes, and, again, a flowchart screen is available to make that easier.  One difference from the first game is that, in VLR, each decision you make pushes you onto a different route.  In 999, a dialogue decision could change your ending, but this wouldn't actually push you onto a different route of the flowchart until later.  These decisions were marked with key symbols on the flowchart so you could tell if they were 'on' or 'off'.

This nonary game - run by Zero III - is a little more deadly than the first one.  The characters are repeatedly forced to play through The Prisoner's Dilemma, gaining or losing points until they either reach 0 - which is death - or until they have enough points to open and exit through the number 9 door.  If you're unfamiliar, the Prisoner's Dilemma is a classic example of the sort of game studied in Game Theory, that is, the mathematical study of strategic interaction between rational agents.  Basically, what decisions do perfectly rational beings make when forced into conflict?

In the Prisoner's Dilemma, the two agents are criminals who've been caught and are being held pending trial.  The prosecutors don't have enough evidence to convict both prisoners of their main crime.  Instead, they only have sufficient evidence to convict them both of a lesser crime, with a lesser sentence.  So, they offer each prisoner a deal.  The prisoner can give evidence against their collaborator, claiming the other prisoner was entirely to blame, in exchange for going free themselves (betray).  Alternatively, they can maintain their silence and take the sentence for the lesser crime (ally).  BUT, if they pick ally and the other prisoner chooses to betray, the first prisoner gets a much longer sentence while the betrayer goes free.  With some arbitrary numbers thrown in, you get the matrix of possibilities below.

Overall, the best result is if both ally.  The total number of years spent in prison is 2.  If one betrays, they go three and the other gets three years, which is better for the individual but worse for the pair.  The problem is that if B suspects that A will betray - or vice versa - then their best move is to betray in defence, and vice versa.  The best defence and the best outcome for the individual comes from choosing to betray, but, knowing that, no player would pick ally because they know the other player will betray.  So, both betray and spend more time in prison.  The best option for the individual leads to the worst outcome both overall and for the individual.

VLR uses this by having each team of three choose to ally or betray one another at regular intervals, in something called the AmbiDex game.  Because each team consists of two paired players and one solo player, there are still only two votes being cast.  The problem is that the Prisoner's Dilemma has a few assumptions that VLR violates.  Firstly, the assumption is that there will be no repercussions for betraying, apart from the risk of the longer prison sentence.  The betrayer won't gain a reputation, their collaborator won't later seek vengeance, etc.  That just isn't how human beings actually work.  We have a deep urge to correct those who behave anti-socially - by glaring, tutting, calling them out on twitter, etc - and that doesn't magically turn off, even if it makes the sums easier if it does.  This is not actually a flaw.  A character does explain the resemblance to the Prisoner's Dilemma without mentioning the violation of this assumption, but it's clear that the game makers themselves know it from how they have the characters respond to different decisions.  It's a feature, not a bug.

What is a flaw, in my eyes, is that...Well, firstly, because of the numbers given in the AmbiDex game, players need to play 2-3 times before they can open the exit door and leave.  If you choose betray in the first round, it becomes that much harder to win, because no one will trust you for the second.  So the optimum strategy should actually be to ally for the first round, not betray as in the classic Prisoner's Dilemma.  But, if you ally in the first round, then the best case scenario becomes playing at least two more rounds.  To get the points you need, you'll need your opponent to ally both times.  If that happens, then you'll have the points you need after the third round whatever you pick.  And since you need to play at least three rounds if you chose to ally in the first one, then you'll need your opponent to trust you until the third game, at least.  So you need to ally in the second, to make it easier for them to trust you and choose to ally in the third.  In short, the optimum strategy is to ally in the first two rounds.

There are more factors, which makes it a little bit more complicated than that.  Firstly, whether you can trust the people you're playing against.  Secondly, the cost of losing.  Thirdly, the cost of delaying your escape until the third round rather than the second.

I'm going to ignore that first one, because whether you can - or should - trust the other characters is a big part of the game overall.  As for the second point...well, the cost of losing is dying.  That can happen, at the earliest, after the second game.  That's an incentive both to betray - to protect yourself - and not to betray - because, all else being equal, most people would prefer not to kill total strangers.  If you trust that the person you're playing against is not a total psychopath - big if - then I think the best strategy is still to ally in the first round.  You'll be closer to death, but you won't die, and if the other person recognises that you'll need to trust them in future rounds and they would prefer that you live than that you die (like most reasonable people), then they'll pick ally.  And if they ally, since you also need them to trust you in future rounds (whether or not you care if they die) then your best option is also to ally.

As for the second point...the cost of escaping on the third round is delaying your escape by 3 hours (Spoiler: Yes, I know...).  But, the cost of escaping on the second round is that you leave at least some of the other players behind, since they couldn't possibly have enough points to get through the door at that point (not least because you betrayed some of them).  If you don't want to do that, it might be worth delaying your escape for three hours and one more chromatic door, not least because, again, the puzzle rooms themselves aren't deadly.  The characters do gain information about the other threats in the game after the first round, but that information shouldn't affect the first AmbiDex game.  The fear of what Zero III might do - considering you've already been kidnapped, anesthetised into unconsciousness, and threatened with death - might be a motivating factor to get out slightly earlier, but, again, at the cost of many other players.

What if you did want to kill other players?  Well, if you betray them in the first round, they'll choose betray in the second game as a defensive measure.  In this game, betraying means you don't lose any points, so, worst case scenario, they won't die.  Best case scenario, they'll gain some points and be safer in the next round.   Killing them this way just doesn't seem like an effective strategy to me.  If someone already betrayed them then you can kill them by getting them to choose ally while you choose betray, but that will require them to believe you're trustworthy.  Which will be easier if you chose ally in the first round.  But, killing someone this way means you won't get out yourself, since you won't have enough points if you allied in the first round.  You'll need someone to pick ally in at least one more round, which will be harder if they just watched you kill someone.  Alternatively, you could leave your target behind while you escape through the door.  To me, it seems like the most effective way of doing that would be to ally in the first two games, then betray in the third game and get through the door, leaving them behind.

In short, it seems pretty weak to me that some characters choose betray in the first round.  Ally seems like the best way for everyone to reach their goals, whether they're in conflict with the other characters or not.  Even if you assume one of the other players is a psychopath, you'd also have to assume they're an idiot to assume they'd pick betray in the first round.

That said...humans aren't rational actors.  They are not the mathematically precise agents from the models, who always have correct information and weight it properly.   They're mistaken about something, or they don't understand the odds, or whatever.  A few characters claim to have chosen betray because "it's obviously the best choice" which indicates they have only a superficial understanding of the Prisoner's Dilemma and that this situation is not the Prisoner's Dilemma, it's an iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.  Which, I guess, is probably realistic for most people.  Still, having some people betray early on seems like a superficial way to create drama, to me ,which weakens the concept of the entire game.

She's going to die, you sick bitch.

The other thing I disliked about this game is the character models.  Okay, the director has a thing for scantily clad, large-breasted woman.  Fine.  One character in the first game fits that description but, okay, she dances as a hobby, presumably she was abducted on her way to or from a belly-dancing class and didn't have a chance to change.  I can live with that.  It's a bit disturbing when, in one of the bad endings, a character's corpse is posed - by the artist, not the killer - to coquettishly show off her short skirt, and I kind of hate it, but the rest of the game is good enough that I can put up with it.  In this game though...well, one character is literally just wearing a thick necklace which is apparently glued to her nipples.  That's it, that's all she has to cover her breasts.  Another is wearing what appears to be a fur-lined bikini, clearly inspired by a teenage Pebbles Flintstone and ugh, really?  Can you just jerk off in your own time instead of subjecting the rest of us to this nonsense?

The other problem with this character model is that she defaults to smiling or doing a flirty little wink.  Neither expression is appropriate for the vast majority of the game.  The character will pull other faces - shock, sadness, etc - but will then revert back to smiling at the end of the line.  Which means when asking about, for example, how deadly the game is, or the amount of danger her closest friend (in the game) is in, she'll be doing a little smile to herself.  Like a complete sociopath.  Despite the fact that this is clearly not the impression the game-makers intended to give us in those scenes.

Again, can you just jerk off to fictional characters in your own time, instead of having them make flirty faces at the camera?

The third game, Zero Time Dilemma (ZTD from now on, because I cba to type that every time) does have another large-breasted, scantily clad character, but she's the most covered of all of the large-breasted scantily clad women so far, so that feels like a relief.

ZTD maintains several traditions from the previous two games - people being captured by a maniac calling themselves Zero and forced to solve puzzles - but also breaks a few of them.  The first one, which seems small, is that the scenes are acted out more.  The previous two games were both voice-acted, but the player chose when lines would advance.  In this game, the scenes just play.  Like I said, that seems small, but another thing this game changes is that you don't start with a puzzle.  It takes a while to get to the first puzzle room and, until then, your only choice is which series of scenes to watch next.  After about an hour, in which I'd needed to touch the gamepad only a handful of times, I turned to my fiancé and said "This game seems fun, I hope they let me play soon".  I suppose it was lucky that it continued playing when it was in the background, so I could work on my dissertation during the long scenes, but most people don't buy games based on being able to have them playing as background noise.  

This game did have more violence than the previous games and the puzzles were actually risky or deadly.  A lot of the gore is just off-camera or the injuries aren't actually shown on the character models, so you don't see much more than you did in the earlier games, there's just a lot more implied.  That's not really a flaw or a selling point, it just is what it is.

Another change, which I think does weaken the game, is that you can jump between different characters.  This means that, unlike in the second game, you don't need to try to figure out their motivations and what they're likely to pick, and they can't surprise you with their choices.  The rationale for this is explained at the end, and it does become more powerful, but that doesn't help in the first few hours when you're basically watching an interactive movie (which is less interactive than Bandersnatch or Kimmy vs the Reverend).

The puzzles were also weaker in this game while also being more frustrating.  Even when you have enough information to figure out a solution - or at least something you want to try - the characters are too dumb to let you until they've seen an arbitrary bit of colour text or until you click on exactly the right pixel.  And then there are moments like when the characters realise you need to take every key from a harpsichord and the game makes you click on every single key individually.  Oh my god.  They've got the idea, just have the characters grab all of them.  And then, when you need to put those keys back down elsewhere, you need to put them all down individually, while clicking on exactly the right pixel.  It's tedious.  Being able to read and click on the slot labelled 'G' instead of 'C' isn't part of the puzzle and it doesn't add anything.

There are still a few interesting puzzles.  My favourite was working out which symbols stood for the numbers 0-12, using only  a higher/lower game and some algebra.  I enjoyed working that out.  I also enjoyed the game based on the Monty Hall problem.  If you're unfamiliar with that, the Monty Hall problem comes from a gameshow, hosted by Monty Hall.  The player is presented with three doors.  Behind one is a car, while goats are behind the other two.  The player picks a door, say, door A.  Monty Hall then opens one of the two remaining doors to show a goat, and asks the player if they now want to stick to their original choice or switch to the remaining closed door.  It's a common mistake to think that your odds of choosing correctly have now gone from 1/3 to 1/2.  They haven't.  The question is posed to make you think about the statistics wrong and come to the wrong conclusion.  The actual answer is that you have 1/3 chance of winning the car if you stick with the door you have and 2/3 chance of winning the car if you switch to the last remaining door.  

How this works is; when you pick door A, B, or C, there is 1/3 a chance you've chosen the Car and 2/3 of a chance that you didn't, the Car is still behind one of the remaining doors.  There's is a 100% chance that there's a least one goat behind the other door.  So, you've picked door A, which has 1/3 chance of hiding a Car.  You've left doors B and C.  Behind doors B and C there is definitely at least one goat.  There is also a 1/3 chance that B hides the car and a 1/3 chance that C hides the car, adding up to a 2/3 chance that you picked the wrong door in the first place.  When Monty opens door B to show you a goat, what new information has he given you?  There's still a 1/3 chance the car is behind door A, and there is still a 2/3 chance the Car is behind doors B or C.  There was always a 100% chance that B or C hid a goat, and now you know where it is.  Which means the 2/3 chance of the car being behind door B or C is now all on door C.  

To put it another way, when you're at the point of choosing whether to switch doors, there are four potential scenarios you might be in:

• You pick the right door in the first place (1/3 of a chance).  Monty Hall opens WrongDoor1 to show you a goat (1/2 a chance of opening WrongDoor1 instead of 2).   There's a 1/6 chance you're in this scenario and should stick with the door you originally picked.
• You pick the right door in the first place (1/3 of a chance).  Monty Hall opens WrongDoor2 to show you a goat (1/2 a chance of opening WrongDoor2 instead of 1).   There's a 1/6 chance you're in this scenario and should stick with the door you originally picked.
• You chose WrongDoor1 (1/3 chance).  Monty Hall opens WrongDoor2 to show you a goat (100% chance, or 1/1).  Remember, Monthy Hall is not picking randomly.  He will never open the right door to show you a car.  There's a 1/3 chance you're in this scenario and will benefit by switching doors.
• You chose WrongDoor2 (1/3 chance) and Monty Hall opens WrongDoor1 (1/1 chance).  There's a 1/3 chance you're in this scenario and will benefit by switching doors.

In short, there is a 1/6 + 1/6 = 1/3 chance you picked the right door in the first place, and a 2/3 chance you didn't.  If you didn't, and Monty Hall removes one of the goat doors, you will win by switching.

ZTD has you play a version of this, but with more than 3 doors.  Increasing the number of doors makes the problem more intuitive, so it should be easier to guess that switching gives you better odds.  One interesting thing about this game - which I really liked - is that some right answers, including this one, are random.  So you might still lose even if you switch.  It only increases your odds of winning, it doesn't guarantee it.  There's are a few more puzzles with random solutions, like one where you need to test out 8 potential antidotes in one round of testing with only 3 people.  The right antidote will make your tongue numb.  I would have liked to work out the set-up for finding the answer myself, but the game doesn't let you.  It just gives you the set-up and results and has you pick the right answer.

Unlike the previous games, this one sometimes lets you type in your choices instead of just choosing them from a list.  This sounds good on paper, but it's just not implemented that well.  At one point, for example, a possible answer is some variation on "I don't know".  To be fair, the game-makers did make the effort to make various forms of "don't know" acceptable.   But, as a player, there's no indication that not knowing is an option.  You'd expect to input the answer in the form of a name.  I can't see putting in "don't know" except out of frustration or as a joke, and I certainly wouldn't expect it to work.  There are some hints for some of the boxes, but these can be read as a translation error or just badly written when the game makers were actually going for "exact words".  

Then there are passwords you don't even realise you've seen.  Now, this only happened to me once, but it meant that I had absolutely no idea how to continue or see any content I hadn't already watched until I looked at a guide and discovered that I had, in fact, already seen the answer.  This was annoying because, firstly, as far as I recall, the characters didn't actually say the password, which was a date, it just popped up on screen at the start of the screen.  Secondly, there's no reason to believe that the characters present actually knew what the date was.  They had been kidnapped, given anaesthesia to knock them out and induce amnesia countless times (literally countless, since they couldn't remember) and had no contact with the outside world.  Sure, one character says he's been counting the days, but, firstly, he couldn't have known if the day he'd started from was the right one and, secondly, it would be so easy to lose count in these circumstances.  In short, the precise date just didn't seem very important, despite being the exact information I needed to continue.  Also, because you don't need to touch the gamepad to advance the text, I wasn't even looking at the screen the first time it showed up.  So that was annoying.  Checking guides for this game is risky because they're hard to write without spoilers, and also lots of people like to just tell you the answer instead of telling you how to find the answer.  I don't want to be told what it is, I just want a hint.

So, this game just felt a bit weak compared to the previous ones.  While it did have some recurring characters, it didn't answer some questions - like what happened to specific people from 999 - and it did create something of a sequel hook, so perhaps there'll be a fourth installment.