Randomness in Zero Time Dilemma
In Zero Time Dilemma, there are many probabilistic choices which need to be made, or so it seems. Are all of these decision outcomes actually random, or are some of these forced (or even, say, forced on first playthrough and random thereafter)?
To keep this spoiler-free, here are some examples I have in mind written in a nondescript way:
- The very first scene
- Control room
- Trash disposal room
- Rec room
3 Answers
Of the various scenes that look random:
- The Coin Flip is not random. You always win the first time.
- There is a reason for this, but it's a spoiler.
- The Control Room is random.
- It follows the rules of an actual Monty Hall problem; switching means you have a 90% chance of being right, staying means you have a 10% chance of being right.
- However, it is annoyingly possible to choose "correctly" and continue along the opposite path that you intended.
- The Infirmary is random.
- There is recorded dialog for several different variations. You just need to figure it out based on which characters tongues turn numb.
- The Trash Disposal room is random.
- You have a 50% chance.
- It is possibly to continue to get unlucky. I saw someone on Reddit post that it took them 10 tries to get one of the choices.
- The Rec Room is random, but not really.
- The dice results on the first two rolls are always random
- The third roll always succeeds. The reason for this being that it'd probably be really annoying to have to play through this hundreds of times.
- The Decontamination room is not random.
- The other teams default to not pressing the button.
- Unlike the 13:30 Vote outcome, only what the current team does matters.
- The 13:30 Votes are not random.
- Each Fragment is set in a timeline with one of the 4 possible vote outcomes.
- You generally find out which timeline during the Fragment, usually towards the end.
- The X-Passes displayed when a person dies isn't random.
- It's fixed to the timeline it takes place in.
It seems to go on a case-by-case basis:
- This poll confirms that the first scene's seemingly random choice is rigged.
- Haven't found any posts related to the Control Room decision, but given that an event with a probability of 1/10 happened on the first time I attempted it, chances are high that it's rigged too.
- In the case of the trash disposal room, this post suggests it's totally random, even the first time. I, myself, got the 'best' result on my first time. I'd like for anyone to confirm in the comments if they got anything else.
- I remember reading that everyone, myself included, was getting a rather improbable outcome (less than 0.05%) on their third attempt at the Rec Room decision, but I can't find the post where I read that. If it's true, then that one's rigged as well.
The first scene is rigged so that everyone gets it right the first time. The control room and trash disposal room are truly random (as mentioned in the Cinema files you get for completing certain parts of the story), and the game room is random for the first two decisions and rigged on the third (as hinted by Akane after the third "decision").
