Personally i wouldn't get hung up on his words like this. It has already been established that there is some barrier between what he means and what he writes. One has to take the bigger message from his replies and not focus on the technicalities of the language used. That always tends to mislead.
But in this case it's clear that there are too many characters, considering there's no big team working in the game, independently if L&P really wanted to say 'too many' or not. There's clearly a lack of experience and planification from the beginning of the game, plus the L&P's obsession with increasing render quality, sacrificing the speed development and the future of the game.
With a better planning, L&P would have done something like the website Lesson of Passion does: they usually launch a game with a main story involving few characters and when the game is finished they launch an expansion with more characters and storylines (I'm not talking about quality of the games, just the procedure). Just think in all these secondary characters that L&P has created and only have had few scenes: the moving workers, the sports teacher, Bennet, Larry, the museum guys, Nathalie, Zack, Vicky and DeShawn, Emma, family friends, the hairdresser and her daughter, etc. He spent a lot of time creating those scenes and now all those people seem relegated, with no storylines in the near future.
Would have not been better finishing a game with the main characters and few secondary characters and storylines (Aiden, Sam, Julia, Patricia, Amber, Alyssa) and after the game was finished make an expansion with all the other secondary characters storylines included? Instead of having a game that probably will not be finished?
