Wednesday, April 09, 2014

999: completed!

It was the good ending - I had managed to fulfil all the requirements through the story (more by luck than judgement, I fear), so I found out about the experiments of the past, the identity of Zero, the way that bracelets worked, and the truth behind the multiple doors marked with a 9.  If you're going to play this yourself, don't read any further.

There were many questions left unanswered.  Of course, the whole game ends on a cliffhanger note - where are June and Santa, what was Lotus doing by the side of the road, will the timeline heal itself to allow Akane to live?  Was Akane there the whole time through the story, or was she just imagined?  When she felt faint, was that because Junpei was facing puzzles that might have led to him being unable to get to the incinerator?

Some of the mathematics towards the end of the true ending were a bit of a stretch, as well.  Suddenly moving to base-27 and then converting that to a digital root was very odd.  Revealing that June's bracelet was number nine means that there were two number nine bracelets and no number six - but a convenient O which is six as a digital root.  It felt that after playing the game according to the rules, everything was being broken at the end.

Still, an intriguing game, which shows how videogames can present a story in a way that film or books cannot.

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