The concept of time travel and being able to change the events of the past is one of the most popular plotlines in science fiction, with the consequences for changing the events ranging from moderately beneficial to catastrophic. The possibility of a better future was the focus of Steins;Gate, a visual novel adventure game released in Japan in 2009 for PC by 5pb, who are also known for their work on the recent video game visual novel adaption of the Psycho Pass anime. The game received an English translation for consoles back in 2013, and now three years later, Steins;Gate 0 has followed its predecessor, arriving for PlayStation 4 and PC just in time for the holidays.
In an interesting twist, Steins;Gate 0 directly follows on from the bad ending of the original game. After failing to save Kurisu Makise from her fated death and becoming involved in her demise himself, a young scientist named Rintaro Okabe returns to the future as a broken man. Giving up on his research, Okabe returns to his life as a university student, until he learns of two mysterious new projects. One of them is known as the Amadeus System, which allows the user to create a fully sentient artificial intelligence based on someone’s memories. The other is a system which allows someone to make a backup of a person’s brain, to help treat memory diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Dementia. Like the previous Steins;Gate, the sequel delves into the moralities of using unknown sciences, and creates an emotional story filled with twists and turns. One of the particular highlights was when the group realises the true purpose of why their memories are being collected, and how it could potentially bring about another world conflict.
