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Zero Time Dilemma: release dates, first trailer, screenshots, details

Zero Time DilemmaRevealed back in July 2015, Zero Time Dilemma is the third entry in the Zero Escape series. It will be out (much) sooner than you were expecting: June 28th in North America (retail + digital) and Europe (digital), and June 30th in Japan. Aksys Games initially said “Summer”, and they were not lying… the game comes out during the very first week of Summer!

Aksys Games revealed the very first trailer for the game, featuring English voice acting. If you’re looking for the Japanese version of the trailer, head after the break!

We also have additional details about the game, complementing those revealed via Famitsu last week. First, it’s been confirmed the story will be told entirely via cinematics, no more wall of texts (in fact, it seems you can play through the whole game without reading anything during the story sections, which are fully voiced).

When USGamer talked with Kotaro Uchikoshi (Director, Scenario writer), he cited Telltale’s The Walking Dead as inspiration for the game. He explained that Spike-Chunsoft wanted universal appeal for the game, as Japan alone isn’t a big enough market anymore to justify development costs of adventure games.

The game is stil divided in three parts (just like Virtue’s Last Reward):

  • novel section
  • room escape section (with puzzles)
  • “high-stakes moral decision”.

US Gamer gives an example of “high-stakes moral decision”: one character is in an incinerator, and another is in a chair with a revolver pointed at their head. Said revolve is loaded with three live bullets, and three blanks. The door to the incinerator can be opened, but you need to fire the gun to do so… and risk killing someone. You have to makes those decisions as time ticks down, and apparently, the outcome of such choices is randomised.

It looks like there’s three possible outcomes for the decisions. For the one above, they are:

  • gun fired, but blank shot
  • gun fired, and bullet shot
  • gun not fired

Zero Time Dilemma features a “Floating Fragment” system, with various story fragments: you choose which ones to play based on an image and a vague description. Each fragment supposedly lasts 1h30 (not real time), as all participants are injected with a special drug that knock them out and erase their memories every 90 minutes.

When you complete a fragment, it’s placed on a chronological flowchart: this allows you to piece things together as you progress through the story, and complete more fragments. The thing is: even the characters themselves don’t know where they are on the timeline. The story is told is a very fragmented and episodic way.

Here’s some screenshots for the game (those are quite obviously from the PS Vita version of the game):

Head after the break for the Japanese version of the reveal trailer!

Here it is:

Zero Time Dilemma (3DS) comes out on June 28th in Europe and North America, and June 30th in Japan.

Lite_Agent

Founder and main writer for Perfectly Nintendo. Tried really hard to find something funny and witty to put here, but had to admit defeat.

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