Sigma – Zero Escape Volume 2: Virtue’s Last Reward
Best described as Saw by way of some really wired anime writers, Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward is a cerebral exploration of what trust and consequences mean. The narrative branches of a choose your own adventure visual novel become not only worked into the story with timeline jumping, but a key point of the entire plot. The 9 people trapped inside the warehouse, participating in the Ambidex Nonary Game turn out to be there for the benefit of humanity, as the game was engineered to train one person to make use of their timeline jumping abilities. Sigma, the player character, turns out to not be the college kid you thought, but the mad scientist that held the cast hostage in the first place. While it was all for the good of humanity, let’s just say that some of the more grizzly endings that the characters face are canonically, still very much applicable.
