Spike Chunsoft & Telling Unhinged Stories

I think one of the biggest issues with ZTD is that it is SUCH a tonal shift from the other two games. It is so so so uncomfortable to play, instead of a mystery/survival game, it feels more like something out of the Saw franchise in the absolute worst way. To get to the true ending you have to kill people and watch some genuinely horrific cutscenes of the characters dying slowly and painfully, and it made me feel genuinely sick to play at some points. Also the twist with Phi being Sigmas daughter is so so so so so so bad. I hate that so much. Everything else would be forgivable considering the circumstances in which it had to be made (the dev team got seriously screwed over). Plus a lot of the puzzles were better done than some in VLR and the music is great. But oh my god the tonal shift was so jarring and horrible.

I love AISF, but the Date's incessant horniness is so insufferable and the copaganda is intense. But wow, the rest of the game is awesome even with the awful implications of the world building and how obnoxious the main character is.

AINI (and i say this lovingly) is a hot mess. The copaganda is even worse, even thought the horniness is turned down to a much more manageable level. The twist doesn't work quite as well, i thought it would have been much more impactful if the cyclops killer had been Ryuki's twin and if both of them had been part of the experiments, which would help explain Ryuki's gamebreaking abilities and the cyclops killers fixation on him. But i forgive all its sins because the character interactions are so fun and well writtenXD

For the ZTD Steam description thing... to play devil's advocate, it's STILL not lying!

Nine participants awaken - that's everyone that isn't Delta. Delta is already AWAKE, as he's taken the mantle of Zero in that situation. So he wouldn't need to awaken as Q, so, uh, yeah that's 9 participants that do wake up at the start. Heh :P

The 11037 clue from Danganronpa's first case becomes funnier if you happened to play Ace Attorney first, since 99% of the time when a body has a name or message written next to it in that series, it's a fake clue planted by the killer. I was immediately thinking "okay it can't be Leon, that's the classic death message fakeout" and then the longer the case went on without anyone making the connection between his name and the numbers, the more I started to suspect that no, they were indeed actually playing it completely straight

I know I’m 8 months late for this, just found your channel through the Inescapable video but I just wanted to talk about ZTD and why it’s so bad and forced in multiple ways in terms of the story. And that’s because the creators had no choice but to rush everything.

After VLR, there was no funding or backing to create any more Zero Escape games, as it very much felt like the story was being set up for more than just a trilogy, maybe a game about Free the Soul and the Myrmadons and a game specifically about Radical-6. The only reason we got ZTD is because of Project Blue Bird, a revival project by the fans so that they can donate money to bring the game back. Even then, there wasn’t enough funding and the developers knew that so they had no choice but to tie up as many loose ends as possible, no matter how sloppy it may be. This leading to several Deus Ex Machinas, the main 3 of Delta, The alien transporters, and the unnamed religious fanatic.

The religious fanatic was never once mentioned, not even given a face or name in ZTD, and now he’s suddenly the reason why Radical-6 even exists in the first place, the root of the events of VLR, and the reason why there is a final good ending to the series (his existence bringing the cast together in order to prevent either them or radical-6 from being released) . The transporters being the answer of who’s Phi’s mother (the one who gave her the broach), why Delta exists, why we have Junpei and Akane in the VLR timeline when they’re very much executed which that timeline itself felt contrived. And Delta being the reason why characters make out-of-character decisions, why Free the Soul exists, the other reason why Radical-6 exists, why Akane has their robes at the end of VLR (Btw fuck Akane, they did perfect work on what Uchikoshi describes himself as intentionally the ‘worst heroine in existence’) and basically being a god by having Delta have the foresight for so many events such as him being dead in a timeline while Junpei and Akane are alive and finding the transporters hidden from them where that prerecorded message was left.

Because they knew they wouldn’t get the funding for anymore games they had to pile everything into 1 game and answer as many questions as possible and making ZTD a schlocky and convoluted mess. Which in the end, makes me feel incredibly sad that we couldn’t get more VLR quality games and probably better if not for a tiny budget and general lack of support.

Some context for why ZTD is the way it is: VLR and the 3rd ZE game were actually written simultaneously, but after VLR was a commercial failure in japan, the 3rd game was cancelled. Years later, a crowdfunding campaign was ran to fund the 3rd game, but Uchi threw out the original script and started from scratch, but as he was both head writer and director, with inexperienced writers under him, and a massive time crunch (i believe they barely had a year to make ZTD) the script ended up as a complete mess, not to mention the asinine puzzles and jank animation.

im really surprised to hear such a positive assessment of nirvana initiative. true its strength is very much within not shackling itself to the previous game's gimmicks, but that seemed more like a simple product of the first game not Having a strong gimmick aside from the things that facilitated the body swapping twist. so aside from that possible strength, it seriously fails to live up to the previous game's strength of mystery with the timeline twist. in terms of set up, pay off and execution the body swapping was masterful, but the timeline twist was so contrived i think its just as bad as the Q reveal. For the player to SLOG through hours of a mystery that doesnt make sense and to be told that THEIR perspective of it was arbitrarily incorrect? thats not clever! theres no meaning in the story being presented to the player this way except to confuse, and unlike twists in these other games, there no character intention behind it. its just the game reminding you its a game and that it can lie to you about the story its presenting to you. in a way thats actually... also worse than the v3 ending. that story at least wanted to convey that on its own terms its more than just fiction, and its a theme. for nirvana initiative its like 'the world is a simulation!!' and youre like 'i know. its a video game.' And then it shows you that twist and says 'see?? its all just arbitrary and designed!' and again youre like 'yes? and now i dont have any reason to trust the info THIS game gives me. so i will go enjoy a better designed simulation.' Seriously, if it were not for ZTD i would say its the worst entry on this list.

With regards to V3’s ending, I don’t interpret it as a meta “take that” to the audience in the sense that they’re bad for enjoying the series. I think it’s more a criticism of what the series risked becoming, a deconstruction of the “franchise zombie” phenomenon, where something just goes on too long.

Think about it, Danganronpa in universe has had 53 seasons!!! Not even The Simpsons has gone on that long, and its decline due to just going on too long is well documented at this point. It also makes the more outlandish plot points resonate much harder; Kirumi being a substitute prime minister? A meteor shower apocalypse? Throwing in random connections to the original arc? It reeks of writers throwing random shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Coupled with how there hasn’t been a new game in the franchise since then baring a spin-off which feels more like a “here’s everyone living happily ever after as a reward for their suffering” type deal, I feel like the team just wanted to try and end things before they could go down the endless sequelitis hole that the in universe team got stuck in.

listen Zero Time Dilemma is confusing and weird and by no means a good game. however.
Mira looks LITERALLY IDENTICAL to one of my OCs which means I am legally obligated to love her and sink time into this game even though she's categorically the worst. i support women's wrongs when those women are or look like one of my children.

ZTD has the most ass pulls but unfortunately that's the only way they could've tied up the story since they wrote themselves into a corner. Wish they would've made some sort of sequel instead

So for the first trial I never realized that it spelled Leon but looking back it was extremely obvious looking back

One thing that I feel wasn't talked about as a strength of Rain Code and ultimately why I really want to see more is how well it developed the setting. The characters and individual chapters could definitely feel a bit watered down at times but the meta narrative was excellent in my opinion due to how well the setting was developed and how I felt myself care about it over the course of the story.

No Crystar mention? I'm sad

Out of those 4 series I have played only DR and ZE games. IMHO the problem with telling unhinged stories is that the writer is constantly dancing on the edge of the blade when it comes to not breaking the reader's suspension of disbelief.

Take for example Trigger Happy Havoc- before the reveal I figured out that Junko was alive and she was the mastermind, but I was curious how the writer would handle that. And up until this point, I was happy to go along with all anime nonsense like for example Byakuya's family..._everything_ because while unhinged I could conceptually get how that would fit in the worldbuilding presented so far. Then the reveal came and Junko confirmed that she pretty much dominoed massacre in one school into a post-apocalyptic scenario. I had to put down the controller and ask WTF at this point. Because if Junko said she was a member of the group that orchestrated the massacre and many other events I could accept that. But saying that one teenager causing a massacre in a school caused a societal collapse was a push too far. The writer overplayed his hand and instead of enjoying the unhinged story I was retroactively questioning everything that came before that moment.

I ended up finishing THH with a bad taste in my mouth and moved on to DR2:GD and while I enjoyed it to a point the game further explaining what Junko did pre-THH just made me roll my eyes so much. At no point I really got into the story and ended up speed-reading through lots of dialogue just so I could enjoy investigations and trials. I imagine I would enjoy DRV3 way more (even with how unnecessarily overcomplicated the plot of the last part of the game was) if I wasn't dreading yet another jumpscare from freaking Junko Enoshima.

I feel like the twist with Sean wouldve made a lot more sense if he were another clone of Left (Dio) from VLR. Left os already Delta's little brother who died, so i feel like Sean's existence is redundant to that. Plus, showing Sean/Left as this scared little innocent child automatically shows that Dio wasnt born evil, he was brainwashed/manipulated at a young age to be so by the Big Brother cult

Gonna start off by saying I loved this video! Just about every opinion for each game (that I played) I agreed with or gained new insight on and overall it was an interesting hearing your thoughts and experiences on all these games! I do have the opinions of one game I completely disagree with that I wanna talk about, and that's AINI.

Honestly, AINI for me could be described in two words: "Missed Potential"
Reason I say this is that while I agree a lot of the twists and story beats it goes for are very interesting on paper and can be genuinely engaging in the moment of playing it, the whole time I was playing it a lot of the choices made I assumed would have some great payoff to them, but by the completely unserious end followed by a dance number to a far worse song than AI's I realised that none of the payoff I was hoping for got delivered in a narratively satisfying way.

[SPOILER WARNING FOR NIRVANA INITIATIVE]

I think the biggest example of this is the big twist regarding the timeline. Honestly, its an extremely cool twist on paper and I love how it completely shakes up the player's understanding of what's happening and also allows for some cool replayability where you might see all the hints sprinkled around on the second playthrough, however the delivery of this twist is extremely unsatisfying in retrospect for one reason: why is this twist simply handed to you in full through "Mama" (or rather, Frayer(?) speaking through Mama)? We have our resident unreliable narrator who's been setup from the beginning in Ryuki, why isn't it delivered through his perspective?


By having the twist be talked at you, the player, by Mama/Frayer, it ruins a lot of potential impact it could have potentially had. Imagine if Ryuki slowly came to realise himself that the time of events wasn't how it seemed and the reveal happened as character's questioned his understanding of the timeline. Instead, the twist is not for the characters but for the players. Its artificial and serves no purpose besides shocking us playing the game, yet it could have been an amazing moment for Ryuki's character!

Maybe there's some galaxy brain Uchikoshi BS going on here with this twist that I simply can't comprehend or missed, or maybe there's some interlocking reference to VLR/ZTD here (those and RAIN being the only games in here I haven't played yet and know nothing about), but as far as I'm concerned it feels like they had the perfect opportunity to make this twist narratively satisfying in a way that personally effects one of our main characters, but instead its a twist that feels cool for a brief moment before you realise it feels kinda pointless in the grand scheme of things. If anything, this twist just kinda feels like Uchikoshi trying to one-up his previous twists but tripping over his own feet in an attempt to do so, but maybe that's just me.

I got several other issues as well ranging from Mizuki/Bibi (I personally dislike Bibi's inclusion in this story and how little is resolved with her character), Kizuna feeling pointless, the Amame twist feeling anticlimactic, Lien's stalker behaviour being rewarded instead of discouraged etc. I could honestly go on and on over various big and little complaints I piled up as I thought about AINI more, but I'd be writing a full-on essay if I did LOL

Despite all its flaws though, AINI was a fun game that included some amazing elements (e.g., Ryuki/Tama is my favourite duo and his path up until the twist is mostly really good and the gameplay is a direct improvement of AI) but overall feels like it missed way too many golden opportunities it set up for itself and couldn't stick the landing.
All of this is my opinion ofc, I understand there are loads of people who enjoy this game, I just sadly couldn't enjoy it as an overall package due to how unsatisfying it all felt by the end.

ALRIGHT FINE YOU TALKED ME INTO PLAYING THE SOMNIUM FILES BLIND, JEEZ. I'll come back and finish this in a few weeks.

I have sooo many feelings about Danganronpa v3. I'm like...genuinely mad sometimes about how perfectly it foreshadows its big twists. Never even mind the bait and switch protagonist (which I was mad about as a female player who wanted to have a girl to play) and the entire ending (which I thought could have made more sense if it went harder).

I remember playing the game and almost giving up on it because of how absolutely ridiculous many of the characters' backstories were....and then finding out that was intentional, to show how the franchise had deteriorated by season 53. If you set out to fail and succeed, what have you done? Was it a good idea to intentionally make bad art? Is that good art?

Re: the ending, I maintain that it doesn't make any sense to tell them "you don't exist because we wiped your memories". They still have people out in the world who knew the old them, knowing what happened could and should motivate them to get out and learn about who they used to be. "You don't exist because you're an AI hologram in a hard-light projection field inside this school, you literally can't leave" would have messed with their heads SO WELL and made so much more sense than trying to justify even 5-10 seasons' worth of Real Ultimate Fiction. (How many people REALLY could you find willing to volunteer to probably die for...the chance to be on TV? No actual reward? Dying in memory/personality even if they survive?)

I disagree with case 1 of Danganronpa being Lackluster. I was floored by it myself, as it subverted a lot of tropes. With Sayaka being heavily coded towards being your sidekick/love interest, and Leon, to me anyway, felt like the hotheaded guy who’d become your best friend. Then it all gets flipped on its head, which felt like the game telling me that nothing will go as expected. (Also I was so in shock about Sayaka’s death that I just took 11037 at face value and didn’t look close enough to tell it was letters, and later on actively refused to acknowledge it was Leon and struggled to get it)

I think the reason V3’s ending falls flat is because people take it at face value when it’s not meant to be. A major theme of the entire game was lies, so why wouldn’t the ending, itself, be a lie? It’s meant to be debated, as finding a genuine answer is kind of impossible. Even the final villain’s reasoning for saying the original stories are fake is flawed. She’s the ultimate cosplayer, and she demonstrates that she can swap outfits in seconds perfectly. Who’s to say she couldn’t just make it look like she has hives to convince us she can’t play real people? This would even fit with the twist after twist aspect, trying to confuse the player about which story is real, or maybe they’re all fake even. I honestly find that interestkng

I'm surprised how much you hate Zero Time Dilemma. Don't get me wrong, it's my least favorite story of the 3 and belongs as the worst of the 3, but I still really liked most of it. I feel like they went about saying "life's not fair" in a pretty fair way, rigging randomness in the players' favor for the gun and the dice and more shows that it's unfair for the characters in the story than the player, you don't need to roll the dice 1000 times, just 3 times, if it were me making the game it wouldn't need to be a 99.9% fail rate thing and it'd take 2 tries like the gun, but I understand the point is that the characters theoretically did need to roll it that many times, and I feel the purpose of those events in the story actually make sense. Delta has to have both instances happen in order for his plan to recreate the timeline of VLR and another timeline that leads to them all surviving and I think the idea of randomness causing a timeline split and being necessary for a plan to work to be an interesting concept that I've never seen done elsewhere and is mostly well executed in this game in my opinion.
I will say I already liked the 4 and 1/2 returning characters to begin with, Akane's 10 minute rants at inopportune times made me laugh and I quote "do you know about morphogenetic fields?" sometimes, so the only thing that bothered me in this game was her interactions with Junpei because he's a moody butthead all game for no reason, but in my opinion Carlos made of for Junpei being his worst self in this game, so I enjoyed C group overall
I don't think I need to explain Phi and Sigma because you didn't say you didn't like them, but Diana was the character I was most curious about going in so I was automatically invested in D group
And Q group I found Mira annoying, Eric is the worst, and "Q" is exists... I literally played as much of the game as possible without playing as group Q because I had zero motivation to get to know these annoying randos. The excuse to include Mira and Eric was trash too and giving them the power to SHIFT last minute was dumb, I personally assumed Carlos was picked because Delta saw he had potential to tap into "the field" because there's not really another reason for him specifically to have been picked if I recall, and Dianna is known to have given birth to 2 kids who can, and VLR tells us that having a bunch of ESPers together boosts their powers which explains Junpei and Akane as well as how everyone else learned so fast. but back to group Q, they singlehandedly make me hesitant to recommend someone who's played the first 2 games to spend $20 on the 3rd.
I wasn't a fan of the real Q, but honestly it was the most interesting thing to happen to group Q and I find the idea of someone being responsible for the set up of their own parents giving birth to them to be an interesting parallel to 999's idea of Akane being responsible for the set up of Akane herself being saved by Junpei even if it doesn't make as much sense because he can't SHIFT or communicate with the future and just masterminds an insane plan in 1 go, but my suspension of disbelief goes pretty far in the moment while watching a story unfold.
I feel like Delta is hinted at in just about as many times as Sigma being old was, but I don't think it was executed as well, but it's pretty hard to mention a 4th person in the room without calling suspicion to it and for that I will say they did a passable job.
My biggest plot related issue is the number of paradoxes they create in this game. They don't even feel intentional because I don't remember them ever bringing up the boot-strap paradox and it happens like you said like 6 times or something. I can take Delta coming from nothing, but Phi's brooch made me so annoyed because I legit wanted to know where it came from and it came from herself which came from herself, which came from herself.
The reason I don't think any change to the story or characters would have made me like ZTD more than 999 and VLR is due to the actual structure of the story. I specifically went by group in chronological order of what I had unlocked so I could follow their storylines the best I could and it was 13 hours of either seemingly unconnected cutscenes or puzzle rooms (which were the only thing keeping me going for team Q) until the last 7 hours or so where there was like an hour or 2 of cutscenes where I finally understood what was happening, a puzzle room, then 5 straight hours of just watching the plot happen. I acknowledge I went through it the "wrong way" but if a non linear story causes there to be so many confusing ways to get through it there should be a little more structure. If I could wipe my memory of the game and know 1 thing, it'd be to go off the flowchart instead.
If I had to come up with a way to make the story progression better it'd probably just be getting rid of the memory wiping thing altogether outside of the first scene because it kinda needs it and then force you to play events in order, because there's no reason to be able to play as group D when both group C and Q have their events play out before D even wakes up. I think that would likely make it a lot easier to follow and a lot harder to get lost in what's going on if they really wanted this form of non linear story telling.
Honestly I think the biggest reason I was able to enjoy this game was that I'm willing to suspend my disbelief pretty far for a fictional story, especially in Sci-Fi, and this story pushes a little too far even for me at some points (particularly the end) but it isn't a game I regret buying and playing, I enjoyed it at the time, got my money's worth of playtime, and I liked... most of the twists... some more than others, and that's enough for me personally.
also Sean is never referred to as Q, only fillers for a name like "kid" until Sean is revealed to be his name. that was actually one of the few things I thought was interesting in team Q, that the only reason you're lead to believe his name is Q is the framing

ALL OF IT IN ONE VIDEO??? YOU'RE A MAD MAN THATS SO AWESOME i'm happy you covered rain code it's hard to find people talking about it analytically.

It seems like every game, especially Danganronpa, from Spike Chunsoft, especially the mystery ones, seem to be required to be required to be somehow weird in a Sam & Max sense without the comedy but always has these WTF moments that either catch you by surprise in the general sense or make you think the main creator head behind the game needs psychological help.

For me, I played Danganronpa v3 when it first released on vita. And I was absolutely starched to the characters. The first chapter was incredible. I was genuinely devastated when Kaede was found guilty. The art was incredible, I loved everything about it. But I hated the ending so much it ended up making the game feel worse than trigger happy havoc for me. The ending ruined it for me so much that when I replay the Danganronpa games, I get hesitant when going to v3 and end up not replaying it because I just don’t want to get invested again for that ending. The ending just feels like a slap in the face to anybody who has actively played the previous games, or hell, the anime, which I hate but I digress. I can get why if it was your first one, it might be harder to dislike. But it was just such a waste in my opinion.

I started this video a week or so ago and AI the somnium files sounded so good that I paused the video and watched a whole play through and then came back here. I’m so glad I did, what an amazing game.

I've been following AI since the first game's release, and somehow ONLY NOW do I realize that Iris is not just a name for a plant, but also an eyeball part continuing with the imagery. Why did I not... "see" this beforehand?
(Edit: clarity)

I don't think I'll ever forgive V3 for it's ending, but the first trial was genuinely one of the craziest, most awe-inspiring things I've ever experienced in a game. Maybe that's why the bad parts hurts so much, the good parts were so, so, SO good.

i played ZTD got to the ending where Mira's back story is revealed. and quit because it was simply the dumbest piece of writing i had ever heard... honestly super glad i stopped there

Someone has probably already said this but the first case is undermined by the english letters cause they are way more obvious to a native english speakers

I like this guy but I have to watch at .75x speed because he talks so fucking fast, my poor ADHD brain cannot physically understand what he is saying.

In ZTD, when I saw there was an additional path from the standoff in the library, I kept coming back to it every time a new name was mentioned in every fragment. From the dog, to a random coworker of Diana, to Eric's mom, I kept trying. Eventually, I heard the name Delta for the first time and tried it and got that scene, but I still had absolutely no idea what was going on because I didn't know that Sean wasn't Q.

to be totally from this danganronpa seems just as bad the third zero escape game. them having the main character plot an entire murder without you knowing, the first character to die actually being the mastermind making all speculation useless, all the weird hajime stuff etc etc. it sounds past insane into a little ridiculous to me 😭

I still remember losing my shit when Raincode mentioned how the pink blood was plot relevant. It also made me realize how Raincode was really pushing for Danganronpa fans to play. I felt like if you took someone who hasn’t played any of the games and have them play Raincode, the twist wouldn’t be as powerful as it was like when I played it. Nothing against it though. I still love the game despite the flaws it does have I admit.

It’s interesting to see such a differing opinion on 999. I adore the game for the same reason why you dislike it.

Mama is VERRRRRRRY Delta, she speaks extemporaneously behind that counter like her life depends on it

I loved VLR passionately when I first played it. I can't remember zero time dilemma being as bad as you made it seem but I definitely remember being dissatisfied with how it brought everything together. Damn you made me really want to replay the series. I enjoyed your take on the series very much. Kudos!

I guess I'm late to this but hey. It was kinda wild watching this video because in general I'm in complete agreement with the broad conclusions about what games are more good and more bad than others and yet still want to argue a ton of single individual points. Here are some:

DRv3: It plays a very dangerous game in which the sheer quantity of contrivance is supposed to be a clue; this is a series that has gone on too long , that had a breakout hit and a well-received sequel but is in danger of becoming all people actually want , spending 50 seasons building up silly gimmicks, outlandish character traits, obligatory cliches and circular lore. I never read it as really being particularly hostile to the player, more that it asks, increasingly openly, whether we're really not satiated by now, whether it really can hold up through so many repetitions, whether we actually want to do it again. It's not a broadside against Danganronpa, it's just the end of it. The idea it's as wrong to want more Danganronpa games IRL as to want the in-universe show to go on seems a stretch; the non-fictional fictional characters are just a metaphor. The show's over (whether Rain Code being so plainly derived from Danganronpa conflicts with this intention is... up for debate). It is, of course, therefore fascinating to hear from people who started with v3, especially if they did so after hearing of its disconnection from the others.

ZTD: The game suffers enormously under a horrific amount of bullshit but the arbitrariness of the decisions made isn't one of them IMO. Many are open about how unfair they are (thanks Zero) and more importantly their unfairness is contextualised; the given example of the three dice roll is explicitly there to tie in to the cited Anthropic Principle, to drive home that much of what's happening only needs to give rise to the possibilities of outcomes that each could tie in to what will later need to be true. I don't know about your case but the results of the votes are accounted for correctly but use an odd single-state system that combined with the unclear nature of the fragments can sometimes lead to unexpected results, but also, as you note, the fragments being experienced out of order and context and by people with no memory is part of the theory. The Delta twist is extremely stupid and not really earned or meaningful but it's accompanied by another that is all of those things; the door of truth and the true timeline reveal, arguably a precursor for Nirvana Initiative's trick. I'm absolutely not here to not be at least kind of a hater on ZTD because it is nothing if not extremely nonsensical but there's a theory at work there.

AI:NI: The twist is pretty great, all things considered, especially with respect to how it changes perceptions on a replay (the game is also stuffed with details that make replays hilarious, especially the very first four theories Mizuki can float when she discovers the body in the intro). There's really only one actual problem with it: it doesn't matter to any of the characters. It's revealed to the player directly, through Mama, who then immediately forgets it, and it plays no role in the eventual resolution of... anything. There's an interpretation that Ryuki might himself be experiencing events a little out of order as part of his breakdown but I'm not convinced; I think if that was intended it would have been exposited.

Don't get me wrong it's a great video. I just. Argue these things.

I literally did the same thing with Alice. I initially betrayed her, and then allied the second time. It kind of blew my mind, tbh.

IIRC, when it came to the revolver decision, it’s not actually predetermined. At least, not for everyone. I can’t remember where I read this, but I was told it was based on the timing. Like if the last second (I think millisecond) was even or odd. What I do know is that for some people, it took multiple retires to get the live bullet. I also heard it was coded to switch after 3 bad attempts, but I can’t be 100% of that. But I do remember many people having a hard time getting both choices. Normally, they had trouble getting the love bullet. That said, it has been a while since I played it. And I only played it all the way through once, so…

As somebody who enjoys writing unhinged characters: Yes! beta readers are VITAL for pointing out things that don´t make sense and cutting huge chunks of my story that don´t go anywhere! :3

You- you play as Sigma? XD

Junpei, Akane, get behind me! He doesn’t get you like do-/j

It’s really funny to me how I actually really really enjoyed Zero Time Dilemma. It’s absolutely unhinged, and I like it purely because of that. VLR is my favourite game from the series though, it’s just such an amazing game.

It's really funny to me when people discuss v3 and why it's so controversial among dr fans and everyone writes off "the characters" and it's always just pointed at the ending, when to me the reason that it's my least favorite danganronpa game is strictly because of the characters. The rest of the story was kind of all over the place too, sure, but in general the game just felt like "too much" and it created a very different atmosphere from the previous games that really made me feel less attached. It was a loud cast with a loud story told with loud themes and it made all the drama they were trying to create fall completely flat. When each character is so individually dramatic and telling their own extravagant story, it distracts from the overarching narrative and makes all the drama feel less important, since everything going on around it is just as chaotic and dramatic