Let's talk Virtue's Last Reward (Spoilers)

[osed125]

badgenome said:

osed125 said:

Ok that makes sense. By thinking the game nonary game was the first one I got myself confused with the arms thing, if the game has indeed been played multiple times then it all makes sense now. 

Still need to know about what happened the very first time the mars projects events occurred, but that will be the sequel's job.

I don't think that's quite right, either. It hasn't been played multiple times before. Everything only happens once in any given timeline. But Phi and Sigma as espers (perhaps as a specific type of esper, because Clover for instance doesn't seem to be able to do this) can "remember" things from alternate timelines. In other words, they remember things that didn't happen to them. That is, to that version of them, because if we believe Akane's diagram, the "true" Sigma's consciousness makes only a few jumps at specific points.

My main question probably doesn't have an answer as of yet, which is, what happened to Sigma before all this mess. What made Sigma plan the nonary game in the first place? He was probably influenced by Akane, which as an esper, probably knew all the events that would happen in the future.

After that the rest is very clear, the events of the game happened and the first switch was made between old and young Sigma, and this is when old Sigma loses his arms in the Nevada test site.