Zero Escape
Zero Escape, formerly released in Japan as Kyokugen Dasshutsu (Japanese: 極限脱出, lit. "Extreme Escape"), is a series of adventure games directed and written by Kotaro Uchikoshi. The first two entries in the series, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2012), were developed by Spike Chunsoft (formerly Chunsoft), while the third entry, Zero Time Dilemma (2016), was developed by Chime. Zero Escape is published by Spike Chunsoft in Japan, while Aksys Games and Rising Star Games have published the games for North America and Europe respectively.
This article is about the series. For the first game in the series to be branded "Zero Escape", see Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward.Zero Escape
Spike Chunsoft, Chime
- JP/WW: Spike Chunsoft
- NA/EU: Aksys Games
- EU: Rising Star Games[a]
- Kinu Nishimura
- Rui Tomono
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
December 10, 2009
Zero Time Dilemma
June 28, 2016
Each game in the series follows a group of nine individuals, who are kidnapped and held captive by a person code-named "Zero", and are forced to play a game of life and death to escape. The gameplay is divided into two types of sections: Novel sections, where the story is presented, and Escape sections, where the player solves escape-the-room puzzles. In the first two games, the Novel sections are presented in a visual novel format, whereas the third uses animated cutscenes. The stories branch based on player choices, and include multiple endings.
In addition to Uchikoshi, the development team includes character designers Kinu Nishimura and Rui Tomono, and music composer Shinji Hosoe. The series was originally conceived when Chunsoft wanted Uchikoshi to write visual novels for a wider audience; he came up with the idea of combining the story with story-integrated puzzles. While Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was initially planned as a stand-alone title, its success in the international market led to the development of two sequels, intended to be paired as a set; however, as both Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward were commercial failures in Japan, the third game was put on hold in 2014, only to resume the development for Zero Time Dilemma the following year, due to fan demand and the hiatus becoming big news. Critics have been positive to the series, praising its narrative for being experimental and for pushing boundaries for what can be done with video game narratives.[1][2][3]
Localization[edit]
The series is localized by Aksys Games;[65] Chunsoft was first introduced to Aksys through Spike, when Chunsoft was looking for a company that could publish the first game in the United States.[42] During Aksys' evaluation period of it, many people at the company did not believe in the game and turned it down; as many of the people who evaluate games at Aksys do not speak Japanese, it was difficult for them to determine whether a game was good or not. Eventually, they decided to localize it, which was considered a big risk for the company. They worked by the philosophy of keeping true to the spirit of the original Japanese version, opting to make dialogue sound like what a native speaker would say rather than strictly adhering to the Japanese wording. Ben Bateman, the editor of the first two games' localizations, did this by looking at the writing from a wider view, examining it line by line or scene by scene, rather than word by word or sentence by sentence, and thinking about how to convey the same idea in English. Most parts of the games that include a joke in the localization also have a joke in the Japanese versions, but a different one; Bateman did try to make similar types of jokes with similar contents and ideas. He was given mostly free rein in what he could change or add to the writing, as long as it did not disrupt the plot.[65]
The biggest challenge with localizing the series was to keep track of everything, as the games feature branching paths, and the characters learn different things in different branches, affecting word choices and attitudes. While a lot of this had been taken care of by Spike Chunsoft, many parts of the game required different word choices in English depending on if a character knew of a particular thing or not; in these cases, the localization team had to track the story backwards. During the projects, Aksys Games would do email correspondence with Spike Chunsoft, to make sure that they conveyed the message of the games as intended.[65] The title Zero Escape was decided on during the localization of the second game, when the localization team wanted to create a "branding umbrella" for both games. They chose the title based on what they thought defines the first two games and is common to both of them, concluding that it was the character Zero and how both games involve "a dangerous escape"; the title also has the double meaning of "you have zero chance to escape".[66] The title was later used as part of the Japanese title for Zero Time Dilemma,[67] and replaced the previous Japanese title Kyokugen Dasshutsu for the re-release of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue's Last Reward.[68]
For the first game, a big challenge was getting the localization done in time; Nobara Nakayama, the game's translator, worked on it for 30 days, and the editing process took two months. Because of this, Bateman had to do most of the work "on the fly". Nakayama had started playing the game prior to starting work on the localization, but did not finish playing it until she was more than halfway through translating it; after learning that the plot hinged on a Japanese pun, they had to halt the localization, discuss it with Uchikoshi, come up with a solution, and go through the whole game to make sure that it still made sense. The second game took around three months to translate and four months to edit. A big challenge in localizing it was catching the several subtle hints to the game's ending that appear throughout the story.[65] Unlike the previous two Zero Escape titles, the North American version of the third game was produced alongside the Japanese version.[55]
