| noname2200 said: Three of the six paths in 999 can be skipped without missing anything at all, and the submarine ending's new content is quite limited and easily skippable as well. Two of the endings (axe and coffin) are essentially middle fingers to the player |
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Hiku said: You're right about the endings not focusing on Zero though. But did the 999 endings? If you recall, the culprit isn't neccisarily Zero. Not sure if there were any more hints about who Zero was in the 999 endings than there were in the VLR endings. Could you point them out? |
The coffing ending is essentially what you get in almost every path of VLR when you are missing something, tho it's a good thing they changed this from being an actual ending. But while most of the endings in 999 arn't necessary for you to get the true ending, they are actually game overs that show you the consequences of the wrong choices you made and to make you think about an alternate ending or about the culprit by giving you subtle hints.
For example: What if you did give Clover the bookmark would she still turn into Jack Torrence? Maybe she won't and she might lead you to a better ending? And in both the knife and submarine ending Lotus is killed and is missing her bracelet. Who killed Lotus? Who would benefit the most by taking her and Mr. number 9's bracelet? When Junpei is getting this close to figuring things out, it's too late, he's stabbed in the back and drowns. You never find out who the killer is and that's the end of the game. This is not a continuation or brief moment to travel back in time, this is You Failed, Game Over, Try Again. This means that every path in the game gives you a different end to the game and only 1 end/game over is needed for the true end. In VLR every good end is basically the safe end from 999 which you need to get the true end and to give you this huge plot twist, so the endings in this game are more like continuations instead of endings. Since Sigma and Phi travel through multiple timelines, in the end, none of the endings have ever happened but they did happen because Sigma remembers them and Akane is aware of that... I guess.
With 999's bad endings in mind, you start doing the math, 9(dead) + 8(dead) + 1(alive) = 18, 1+8 = 9. That there makes the person with the number 1 bracelet highly suspicious of working with or being Zero and what about this ice-9 maybe i should talk about that in this path this time. With that in mind you restart the game by taking the same/different path and making the same/different choices. So we can view these bad endings basically as game overs with different outcomes which is what 999 handled a lot better than VLR did imo. Most of the game overs in VLR basically give you the same ending but with a different individual each time escaping and locking you up, and if i recall only Phi's bad end was needed plus maybe another one? When you try to escape yourself it's still a game over because Sigma is such a mastermind but can't even outrun an old guy like Tenmiouji.
