Another person who overthinks an adult game.
Welcome, fellow researcher!
Hah, yeah. For me, it's mostly because I'm ironically playing most games of this nature more because of the narrative and characterizations than because of the sex scenes (if all I wanted was the sex, there's an infinite amount of porn on the Internet). So I kind of process the experience more like the way I would playing games like Fallout: New Vegas, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. ie, overthink everything, put myself in the main character's headspace, try to solve every mystery, etc.
Sure, most adult games are never going to have all that deep a plot, but it means when you find the games that DO, you're more inclined to appreciate them and engage with them.
Plus, being able to discuss the story of a game while the game is still in development has an added perk - there's always the chance that the developer might hear one of your theories and go "Man, that's way cooler than what I had planned, I'm totally stealing that idea."
Let's start with your most radical idea. My money would be more on Rachel than the mc. It just makes more sense. But I shall one up you! Ellie!
Oh, not going to lie, both of those ideas occurred to me as well.
As did Johnson. He's pretty protective of us, and seems to understand what sort of home life we had/why we were a bad kid. Maybe he took matters into his own hands to try and help...
If anything, Rachel's comment about how it would be really bad if Ward keeps looking into the old case too much implies there's definitely more involved than anyone is willing to admit. Someone's guilty of
something, and some sort of cover-up definitely seems to have happened.
I never thought of Rachel burning down the house. I'm more inclined to blame the crazy guy from the news report.
Yeah, but the news report doesn't happen until later on. I was starting to suspect her before that. When that news report came on, I was just like "Okay, maybe I can't blame you for
that, Rachel."
Of course, crazy guy has ties to the mind-altering drug subplot (even if it was just meant as a throwaway joke), so we can't discount sinister connections
just yet...
(When one paranoid door closes, another opens!)
The only one I'm not sure how she fits into the greater "family" is Stephanie.
Considering the scene where you find out that she's the one who actually hired you, that she did so in spite of you not being the person most qualified for the job, and she's clearly uncomfortable telling you the real reason why, there's definitely something up with her as well. She's essentially the entire reason why you came back to town at all - so if she's connected to Rachel, Maggy, or Rachel and Maggy together, she'd be key to manipulating you back into the house.
Conversely, we may find out that she's just someone else from your past that has unfinished business with you (the way Katherine seems to be), which will come into play later. Like you went to school with her or something.
Ironically, she's the other person I've sort of skipped scenes for. During the day when you can meet Hanna at the cafe/visit Ellie at school (and learn that Jada was suspended)/go to work to see Steph and experience so sexual tension, I actually went directly to the cafe, then straight back home, and continued on in the plot (I didn't even realize I missed two scenes until I went back later to check something unrelated).
And just for reference, if you miss Ellie being alone at school, you can't ask Jada about it on the motorcycle, you don't find out she was suspended, and you don't get the sex scene with her that night (she just goes directly to Ellie's room). Then the next day you just wake up with in bed with Ellie instead of both of them. (Either that, or the game screwed up when I played though.
)
The pills... I came to the conclusion that they were just a tool to provide sexy scenes with Rachel until she can get seriously involved with the mc.
I'm still not sure unless Rec actively confirms it. If we get a scene where Rachel is like "Hey, remember when you told me I should stop taking the pills? Well I'm much happier now that you're here so I don't need them anymore and I'm not going to take them anymore", then I'll kind of accept the idea that they were just a plot tool.
But considering they're still in play, they seem at least somewhat addictive (she's a bit panicky when she realizes you have her drugs and she
needs to take one), and there's still implications that they might be more than they seem, I can't entirely rule out that there might be more to them than just convenient tools to provide plot exposition/justify burgeoning taboo romance.
I'm more worried about Ellie. I hope she just ran away from home and the police found her and brought her home.
Yeah, someone running away, disappearing for an extended period of time, and then showing up again completely mute and unwilling to ever explain where they were and what happened to them has
connotations. I'm kind of dreading the inevitable revelation.
I mean, we're playing a game called Bad Memories. It feels inevitable that we're going to unearth a lot of repressed, buried trauma (though maybe, ideally, it winds up being cathartic for everyone involved and a "happily ever after" is at least possible, rather than leaving everyone and everything a broken, ruined, sobbing mess). The suspense and the ugliness we might uncover is at least part of the morbid appeal.
Though considering how much we've deliberately tried to forget (ie, the stuff that's coming back to us in our dream memories), it's entirely possible that what actually happened to Ellie is