The consequences of infinite decisions
With such a complicated setup, Zero Time Dilemma must tell a really complicated story to back it up. And this is true. In between their decision making and puzzle solving, our characters wax on and on about complex ideas like time-travel, probability, alternate universes in which they made a different decision, and the complete and utter annihilation of the human race.
Oh yeah, as an extra layer underlying our characters’ predicament, they hold the fate of 6 billion people in their hands… and they don’t know why.
Four of these characters appeared in the previous games, but they were all fresh to me. Each starts as a blank slate, and you’ll definitely pick out a few who are your early favorites and those who you want to see get the chop.
From there, the story becomes more infectious once they start to reveal their inner secrets and personalities. Time travelers from the future who want to stop human extinction, childhood friends who survived a previous “Decision Game,” lovers who have darker secrets than they let on, and yes, that mysterious kid with a fishbowl on his head.
The deeper you dive, the more and more you want to learn. About these people. About the world. About the outcomes of the game. About how the human race comes to an end. Your favorites will change. You might want them all to survive! You’ll be devastated to see a favorite perish, and there is nothing you can do to stop it besides pray for a better fate in another timeline.
An off-putting, frustrating first hour immediately vanishes once the bigger picture becomes more apparent. And, believe it or not, only one character has a lame backstory of epic eye-rolling proportions. The rest are genuinely good characters.
Eight out of nine is not bad.
Of course, any game that relies so heavily on storytelling and cutscenes, roughly three quarters of the game, needs to be able properly tell a story through its presentation. This is bound to be divisive among gamers. Zero Time Dilemma’s character models are crude with the deadest eyes you’ll ever see, but they ultimately work. Excellent use of “cinematic” techniques like slow pans that build tension, camera angles for mood, and those important cuts that cover up the models’ limitations, are more than able to carry cutscenes that can last anywhere up to half an hour.
And don’t get me wrong on the crude character models. I am a fan and grew to like them pretty quickly, but I wasn’t joking about our cast looking like a group of fast-fashion models after a spring clearance sale. Even better than the in-game, mouth flap models though are the pre-rendered cutscenes that look like they sprang in from an early SEGA Saturn game. Ugh, they’re absolutely hideous, and I loved every moment they were on the screen!
The voice acting is okay, about what you can expect from a normal localization. You’ll either turn to the Japanese audio track or stick with the English as both are of equal quality. They both create a lot of empathy for the characters, moments where you’ll be cheering or genuinely sad about one of the many awful fates that can befall them.
Comparisons to the Saw film series are inevitable, but don’t let that stop you. Zero Time Dilemma actually has a refined purpose underneath its sick and twisted delivery.
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