Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is a 2012 adventure game developed by Chunsoft. It is the second installment in the Zero Escape series, and was originally released for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. The story follows the player character Sigma, who is abducted and forced along with eight other individuals to play the Nonary Game, which puts its participants in a life-or-death situation. As the story progresses, the characters unravel the secrets behind the Nonary Game.
The gameplay alternates between two types of sections: Escape sections, where the player completes puzzles in escape-the-room scenarios; and Novel sections, where the player reads the game's narrative through visual novel segments, and makes decisions that influence the story toward one of twenty-four different endings. The player is given access to a flowchart, which allows them to revisit any previously completed section, and choose a different option to cause the story to proceed in another direction.
The game was developed as a result of the unexpected critical success that its predecessor, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, received in North America. Game director Kotaro Uchikoshi wrote the script, which was then localized by Aksys Games and Rising Star Games for North America and Europe respectively. Virtue's Last Reward was released to positive reviews. Critics praised the story and characters but were divided in their opinions of the Escape sections. The game was a commercial failure in Japan, which led to the temporary cancellation of its sequel. Development on the sequel eventually resumed, and Zero Time Dilemma was released in 2016. In March 2017, Virtue's Last Reward was bundled with an enhanced port of its predecessor and released together as Zero Escape: The Nonary Games for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Microsoft Windows.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Virtue's Last Reward is divided into two types of sections: Novel and Escape. In Novel sections, the player advances through the storyline and converses with non-playable characters through visual novel segments. These sections require little interaction from the player other than reading the dialogue and text that appear on the screen. During Novel sections, the player may be presented with decision options that affect the course of the game. One recurring decision option is a prisoner's dilemma-type choice where the player must choose to "ally" or "betray" the characters they are pitted against, with different results depending on what choices the two parties make.
In between Novel sections are Escape sections, which occur when the player arrives in a room from which they need to find a means of escape. These are presented from a first-person perspective, with the player able to move between predetermined positions in each room. To escape, the player is tasked with finding various items and solving puzzles, reminiscent of escape-the-room games. At some points, the player may need to combine objects to create the necessary tool to complete a puzzle. The puzzles include various brain teasers, such as Lights Out and sliding puzzles. In each Escape room, a safe can be found, which can be opened with two passwords. One of these passwords gives the player the key needed to escape from the room, while the other grants access to a hidden folder that provides the player with supplementary backstory or other information. The player receives hints to the puzzle solutions from the game's characters; further, more direct, hints are received if the player changes the puzzle's difficulty level from "hard" to "easy".
The player has access to a flowchart that allows them to revisit or "jump" to any previously completed Novel or Escape section without replaying the game from the beginning. This allows the player to transition to an earlier branching point in the story and choose a different option that causes the story to progress in another direction. For example, the player can jump to a previous decision and ally with their opponent instead of betraying them, and vice versa. While there are 24 endings available, many endings are inaccessible initially and must be unlocked by experiencing events or learning information in other plotlines. For example, if a particular plotline cannot progress because a required password is unknown, the player must jump to another plotline and learn the password there before returning to the original one.
Plot Characters and setting Virtue's Last Reward features nine main characters who are kidnapped by an unknown individual called Zero. The player character Sigma (Kosuke Toriumi/Troy Baker) is joined by Phi (Chiaki Omagawa/Karen Strassman), a girl with a "no-nonsense attitude"; Dio (Yoshimasa Hosoya/Liam O'Brien), a rude and insensitive man; Tenmyouji (Rokuro Naya/Dave B. Mitchell), an elderly man; Quark (Rie Kugimiya/Erin Fitzgerald), an energetic young boy; Luna (Mamiko Noto/Laura Bailey), a kind and quiet woman; Clover (Yukari Tamura/Wendee Lee), an unpredictable girl who appeared in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors; Alice (Atsuko Tanaka/Tara Platt), a commanding and focused woman of half-Egyptian/half-American heritage; and K (Daisuke Ono/Travis Willingham), an amnesiac man who wears an irremovable, full-body suit of armor. Zero III (TARAKO/Cindy Robinson), an artificial intelligence who appears in the form of a CGI rabbit, controls the Nonary Game. Zero III is nicknamed "Zero Jr." by the participants to distinguish the entity from the human Zero, who is in turn nicknamed "Zero Sr."
The game is set in an abandoned warehouse-like facility containing rooms filled with puzzles, where Zero forces the characters to participate in the Nonary Game. The characters are affixed with bracelets that display a point value that is initially set at three. During the game they participate in rounds of the Ambidex Game, in which they have to choose to "ally" or "betray" the other characters. The choices made affect the players' bracelet points: if two opponents both choose "ally", each gains two points; if the two opponents both choose "betray", no change occurs; and if one opponent chooses "betray" while the other chooses "ally", the opponent who chose "betray" gains three points while the other opponent loses two points. Participants who gain at least nine points can escape, while those who reach zero points are executed.
Story In 2028, Sigma is abducted and placed inside an elevator with Phi. Zero III appears on a monitor and informs them that they are participants in the Nonary Game and that they must escape the elevator before it falls. Upon escaping, they find themselves in a warehouse-like facility with Dio, Quark, Tenmyouji, Luna, Alice, K, and Clover. Zero III informs the group that nine individual bracelet points are necessary to escape the facility, and points can only be earned by participating in the Ambidex Game.
The story begins branching into different timelines that can be experienced in any order, depending on the choices made by the player. While completing the first set of puzzle rooms, the participants learn of a pandemic caused by Radical-6, a virus that slows down its victims' cognition and drives them to suicide. Depending on the given timeline, the characters also discover either the murdered body of an old woman or antimatter bombs. The other participants' backstories are explored: Luna is a humanoid robot, tasked with maintaining the Nonary Game; K was raised by Zero Sr. inside of the facility; Tenmyouji willingly joined the game, together with his adopted grandson Quark, after being promised a chance to find a certain woman; Alice and Clover are government secret agents tasked with stopping the religious cult Free the Soul; and Dio is a member of Free the Soul.
In a Schrödinger's cat-like situation, prior to the start of the Nonary Game, Dio either murdered the old woman and took her place in the game, or failed to do so but was still placed into the game by her and later planted the bombs. In the timeline leading to the game's ultimate ending, Sigma defuses the bombs, while Dio is restrained and incapacitated. The remaining participants proceed to the next set of puzzle rooms. As Sigma, Phi, and Tenmyouji complete their room, they uncover a holographic message of the old woman, Akane Kurashiki, whom Tenmyouji – revealed to be the player character Junpei from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors – was seeking. Akane and Zero Sr. had developed the AB project, a project that encompassed the Nonary Game and the Ambidex Game, to train Sigma and Phi to transport their consciousnesses through time. This occurs shortly thereafter, and Phi subdues Dio before he can kill Akane. Akane explains that the game's dangerous elements were necessary to speed up one's brain to transport one's consciousness through time, and each participant was infected with Radical-6 to amplify this increase. The Nonary Game was designed so Sigma and Phi could experience multiple timelines and retain what they learn in each one. Sigma and Phi's consciousnesses are then returned to the present, where they find everyone has cooperated to acquire enough points to escape.
The group leaves the facility and emerges on the Moon's surface. The year is 2074 and most of humanity was killed by Radical-6 after it was unleashed by Free the Soul from a Mars mission test site in 2028. They re-enter the facility and discover a cold sleep pod. K explains that each person was brought to the facility to recreate the events that Zero Sr. and Akane had previously experienced. Clover, Alice, and Phi were abducted in 2028 and placed in cold sleep until the Nonary Game began. The pod opens to reveal a clone of Sigma, and K reveals he is actually Akane in disguise; in the timelines where Akane was killed, the armor was instead occupied by Sigma's clone, Kyle.
Akane explains that Sigma, after his abduction in 2028, had his consciousness transported into his elder self's body in 2074, while his elder self's consciousness was transported into the younger Sigma's body in 2028. The goal of the AB project was to enable the elder Sigma to prevent the Radical-6 outbreak in 2028 with his future knowledge; Dio sought to stop the project. Akane makes Phi and Sigma's consciousnesses jump to 2029, after the outbreak. Sigma, as Zero Sr., spends the next 45 years developing the AB project together with Akane, while Phi is kept in cold sleep. Sigma creates Kyle as a spare, in case his own body gets damaged. Immediately before the start of the Nonary Game in 2074, Sigma and Phi jump back to 2028 to infiltrate the Mars mission test site.
Another Time
A bonus, non-canonical metafictional ending unlocked by the player finding every available file in the game.
Kyle speaks to the participants who are left behind in the facility. Tenmyouji and Quark plan to go back to Earth, while Alice and Clover plan to remain in the facility having nothing to return to on Earth. They all express disdain for their current circumstances that Sigma forced them into. Kyle eventually realises through conversation with Phi and Akane he is not actually Kyle, but rather an all-knowing, omnipotent entity who is unbound by the limitations of their world (the player of Virtue's Last Reward). The entity swapped their consciousness with Kyle, sending Kyle's consciousness into their body in 2028, to be with Sigma and Phi. Akane tells the entity that they are going to now go back to the past and join Sigma and Phi at the Mars Mission Test Site.
Development