Zero Escape is basically a visual novel series, and Virtue's Last Reward (ZE 2) ended on a cliffhanger, and then ZE3's development got put into hiatus before we knew anything about it.
(This was because the series bombed in Japan, and curiously enough we only got VLR because 999 did well in the west. A lot of VLR's marketing was geared towards getting the Japanese audience into the series as well- VLR had an OVA, promo telephone cards (for some reason), and a pervy flash game to promote it.)
But most importantly, it had a discernibly milder tone and atmosphere compared to 999. This comes into play later, and in fact caused its own relatively small divisions within the ZE community- some people still claim VLR was an unworthy sequel to 999 and a terrible game (and there are legitimate reasons for that, even though VLR was my favorite game for years.) Or perhaps what came to be known as the "Zero Escape fanbase" is simply the people who liked VLR enough to care about it.
Anyhoot, VLR released in 2012 to general acclaim in the west (IIRC it was Gamespot's Handheld GOTY). It ended on
one hell of a cliffhanger, the sort of stuff that kept people on edge for KH3, Shenmue 3 and the like for
years. Basically, you weren't confused about anything that happened in VLR proper, but a lot of character revelations and crucial plot threads were going into ZE3.
Then in February 2014 (I remember because that's the exact time I played through VLR), Zero Escape 3 was put into hiatus.
There was a fandom outcry- one as big as one from such a small fandom could be. Fan projects, photo collages sent to Uchikoshi (series writer/director), a fan movement -Operation Bluebird- that grew to around 20K people. I created a Twitter account around this time to keep up with the ZE fandom. This campaigning kept up for about a year and a half- in March 2015, Aksys (localizer) started a teaser on 4infinity.co - showing only some cryptic words hidden in the website source and the digits "0303". Obvious in retrospect (ZERO. THREE.), it sent the ZE fandom into a frenzy. Other words and clues appeared throughout weeks, then months- it was a teaser for Anime Expo 2015, which was in July (if memory serves). 0303 stood for "03 months and 03 weeks". For details on #4infinity, check the GAF thread (google it).
I'll post the Zero Escape 3 announcement video, because to this day it brings legitimate tears to my eyes:
The hype, the tension, the hilarious fuck-up that was the livestream of that panel- it's all there. The screams at 0:22 tell you all you need to know. To this day, seeing that moment get livetweeted is one of the happiest moments of my
life.
I mean that.
---
The reason I tell you all this is because all this leads up to Zero Escape 3 itself- one day I'll note down all the things leading up to the game's release (Summer 2016, as teased), from the day they revealed the name and the logo to the preorder watches controversy to leaked 3DS copies of the game to the Famitsu articles mere months before release (a release, indeed, in many ways).
That unity in excitement held for a long time, at least until a week or so after the game's release.
But for many of us, ZTD was not the ZE3 we expected.
It was, as said before,
no longer a visual novel- and trust me, the reason that mattered is not because we were so attached to reading. But ZTD was still a game that was made on a shoestring budget, that a lot of plot baggage to resolve, and was presumably developed in a very short time.
And yet, most likely to increase its appeal for series outsiders,
now it was in full animated 3D. For a game that released on the 3DS and Vita.
With limited space and graphical capabilities. On a small budget. About a complicated, multi-layered story.
On 3DS, Zero Time Dilemma looks like this:
It really, really didn't work well.
Instead of VLR's 30-40 hour romp, we got a 17 hour game with far less text to it.
And it had to wrap up everything VLR spent twice its length to set up. Satisfactorily, at that.
Tall order, isn't it?
I can't be objective after this point.
--
The game handwaved just about everything it had to answer about VLR's plot. It introduced stupid, forgettable plot devices and mechanics, and since 5 of its characters were returning from previous games, its new cast didn't have enough time to develop, either.
As if to compensate for VLR's "tameness", ZTD goes off the fucking charts with gore and violence. Chainsaws, explosions, gas, other things.
Not to mention the worst plot device I've perhaps ever seen in a story like this: The 9 main characters are separated into groups of 3, half an hour into the game. For about 90% of the game, they have almost no contact with each other whatsoever. The characters almost don't develop at all, character interactions get tiring, it bores you.
The main reveals are underwhelming, certain things do not make sense, characters (both returning and new) behave erratically, music direction abuses poignant tracks from ZE1 and ZE2 to the point of ruining them.
And all of it ends on an extremely cliché note.
Uchikoshi said somewhere that he grew bored or stuck with the ZE3 narrative he had in mind and rewrote the game from scratch.
Sometimes I think about that deleted draft of ZTD and wonder what could have been.
---
For some people, the reveals were satisfactory, the characters were well developed, and the messages of the story were meaningful.
I am sincerely happy for people who think so.
But for me, it just didn't work. I burned through ZTD in three days, felt numb, and realized that I would never love the video game series that has perhaps shaped the rest of my life the same way again.
At the end of the day, only one thing made it into ZTD proper which still gets to me in the depths of my heart:
