The 3rd Birthday/Headscratchers

• Ok, so Hyde explains most of the game more-or-less satisfactorily in the ending, but seems to leave out one tiny detail: Why the Christ do a bunch of cops randomly show up and kill everyone at the wedding in the first place???
  • Three words: Stable Time Loop. In slightly more words, the SWAT team was from a present day that the Twisted had invaded, seeking to cut them off at the source (believed to be Eve, after she fragmented Aya's consciousness via Overdiving to save her - meaning a double count of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero is in order). Hyde forcing Eve!Aya back into Eve's body at Time Zero somehow averts this, by A: dicking with the past to make it so Eve never Overdived into Aya, B: thus preventing Aya's destruction from creating the Twisted, and C: thus removing the reason for the High Ones to exist. Well, except for his willingness to prolong the Twisted/High One war by forcing a now-cognizant Eve to ascend, but Aya put a stop to that. So no Twisted, no High Ones, apparently no Aya dying (between the Secret Ending and Aya ordering Eve to aim at her sternum, which is surprisingly hard to penetrate with a pistol), the game retcons itself, and Square is left with their choice of nubile gunbunnies to have more Body Horror misadventures with.
    • Except in the ending that's not Aya either. That's the older Eve you've been playing. In addition I don't recall any Twisted emerging at all in 2010, so the SWAT team once again has no reason to pop up. What the hell Square?
    • This troper figures that the easiest explanation is that The troopers were sent by the goverment to assassinate Aya, Eve, and Kyle If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense...The goverment would have very plausible reasons to want all three dead. Aya was directly involved with the Manhattan incident and carries mutated Mitochondria. Even though her mitochondria have supposedly formed a symbiotic relationship with her cells, there's no telling what might happen with her in the future, plus she was already inadvertendtly linked to a second threat to the world when the crazy group from game 2 stole her DNA and used it as part of their plan for Mitochondria induced Instrumentality. Eve is an illegal clone that shouldn't exist, and her abilities are a complete wild card. And Kyle was originally a deep undercover goverment agent who decided to go AWOL at the end of game 2, and took who knows how many secrets with him. In a nutshell, all three characters could easily be seen as a liability as long as they're alive, and the goverment would want to eliminate them to prevent any further threats to national security and safety. Which makes it very ironic when we realize that it was the soldiers' attack that *caused* the twisted and high ones to be born in the first place.
    • I say the shadow government guys from the second game in SWAT uniforms. They were trying to kidnap Eve to recover their investment, and to eliminate the people who took down the Neo-Ark. It failed. Epically.
    • I have theory that's super crazy, yet more logical than The Government Killing the sole weapon against another EVE attack or a Shadow Government going for petty revenge instead of making a new Eve Hear me out... KINGDOM HEARTS
• When Aya jumps into a person's body, do they actually shape-shift or is that just for our...ahem...benefit? And if it's the former, why don't the soldiers react to their comrades suddenly turning into someone else?
  • The latter...which opens up its own can of worms for why they don't react to a fellow soldier whipping out nonstandard equipment, let alone Liberation hijinks.
    • For the Liberation stuff, I think they would probably say something like "Man, that was badass!" and go along with it. Never question anything that can help you not die.
      • Its very possible that the Military and the SWAT team were informed of Aya's abilities. She's not exactly a secret weapon.
  • For more evidence backing up what the previous troper said, after Aya Overdives out of the Babel in Chapter 2, it just shows the SWAT Officer that she took over. Strangely, the (very male) SWAT Officer has Aya's voice...but that may also simply be for our benefit.
  • Actually, the game is rather inconsistent about this. In some scenes it is played as if Aya's host body stays the same and only the player sees her as Aya, but in other scenes, characters seem to be able to recognise her despite her supposedly looking like a SWAT guy at the time. It also makes no sense how Aya's outfit affects her defence or becomes damaged if her host is wearing standard military grade body armour. Though at the same time, you'd think if a guy suddenly turned into an insanely hot chick and started tearing up the Twisted, that his teammates would notice.
    • Only the High Ones see her as Aya
• What's up with the first two episodes? Episode 1 to 3 all start at the same time with similar events. But how do these resets happen? My current going theory is that at the death of each High One, Aya!Eve Overdives back to the 24th, but her body, in a new timeline. Potentially unintentional on her part. Yet, this doesn't explain how the timelines change so much for specific people, but little for other things. Related, how does Hyde know the term High One? It was Maeda that thought of it. Sure Aya says it to him, but he doesn't even seem confused.
  • Edited because upon playing a new game it occurs to me I was way off.
    • At the end of Chapter 5, Hyde explains that every time a High One is killed, Space-Time is altered, regardless of when they are killed. As to him knowing the term 'High Ones', its possible that the piece of Eve inside him allows some form of mental link to Eve-Aya?
• This troper has been wondering this for a while. Why exactly is Aya's Heroic Sacrifice at the end of the game even necessary at all?? the Twisted and High ones were originally created when Eve forcibly overdived into Aya after the soldiers attacked. But...the arrival of Hyde and Aya/Eve from the future intervenes before this can occur, effectively preventing the creation of the Twisted and High Ones simply by the act of returning in the first place. So why was it necissary for Aya and Eve to then switch bodies again, and have Eve kill Aya in Eve's body? The birth of the Twisted/High ones has already been prevented, why did Eve's body/Aya have to die??
  • It's still necessary since Eve overdiving into Aya still happened. Aya's spirit will still be destroyed and create the Twisted while Eve's body will still breakdown and create the High Ones. Aya swaps bodies with Eve because she knows her spirit and Eve's body must be destroyed in order to fix everything.
  • But that's not Aya's soul. It's The older Eve. Aya's soul was already destroyed before they switched bodies again. So how does Eve bodyswapping with herself fix anything?
    • Ohhh. I get it now. okay, it actually is the 'real' Aya's soul in the ending. I assumed that Eve's soul (the one you've been playing as) entered Time Zero in Aya's body and shot Hyde, so there were two Eve's, but that isn't right. You enter Time Zero during the part where the pillar of energy shoots out of Aya's body. Eve's soul is back in her own body, and Hyde explains to her what really happened. Then when he tries to absorb Eve, Aya's soul returns to Time Zero and kills him. How did she do this when her soul had been destroyed? Simple. Aya's soul was scattered across time and became the Twisted. The Twisted created the Babels as a means to return to Time Zero and become whole again- and thats exactly what happened. Once Hyde opened the door to Zero, the fragments of Aya's soul were able to return to the moment when she died and change things. Thats what she meant when she said "well, it's already been destroyed". Killing herself was nessecary because it was the only way to close the time loop. Of course, since Eve's body only degenerated when her soul jumped into Aya, and she was now returned to her original body, killing Eve's body was entirely unnecessary, unless Aya wanted to make damn sure the High Ones were never created. Which strikes me as a bit of a dick move. Also, it raises the question...
      • Because Eve's body was rendered unstable by her first overdive, so she would still break down.
• Why, if we are really playing as Eve the whole time, does her overdive state/consciousness/soul look like Aya, and not her own body? I suppose the obvious explanation is that it would blow the twist ending, but it makes very little sense in-story.
  • Its likely due to the fact Eve thinks she is Aya, so her soul would change to that of Aya's appearance. This may be linked to the idea of the mind being part of the soul.
• Why was the Berserker laser introduced so late? The entire game you've been running from Reapers, and then it turns out there is a weapon that can hurt them that just wasn't available. Fine. But why didn't Delta Force or any of the Coalition Troops have one? It would have made more sense to show it once (against the worms, perhaps?) then for it to be in one scene with no buildup. Also, why didn't we see the Twisted attack CTI? That would have made a great level. The space between chapters 3 and 4 is just too big.
  • Simple. They haven't invented it yet. If the Reaper's shell is really hard as they say, it would take quite a while of research and development before they find a way to penetrate it. And even if they did invent it by Chapter 4, it would be useless to worms, given that the laser still does abysmal damage to a soft-bodied Reaper.
• What happened at the end of Red Fog? Cray was Russo? Huh? Then he got absorbed by an orb that looked like his daughter? Huh? It made no sense and they were too busy skipping ahead to explain.
  • According to the CTI files, Cray was turning into a High One. Aya OD Killed him, causing an alteration of the timeline, and Blank and Hyde's memory rewrite. Cray probably saw the Eve anomaly as Isabella, probably reflecting his relationship to her as a spitting image of her daughter.(Which would make sense; the soldiers that have no relation to Eve saw her with a face of a twisted, and Aya and Kyle saw the anomaly as Eve)
• What is the significance of this game's title, exactly? Does it refer to the amount of time passed between the game's events and when Eve became Aya?