Is cbob completely out of the picture? I know that he was not doing so well, but I thought he was still part of the team.
I think Marty wrote somewhere that cbob is taking care of his problems (in which way I don't know and recall); although the dialogues still feel like there's a dash of cbob inside them, a quippy and snarky note that Marty cannot quite (accurately) strike imo. Perhaps both of them are still in contact, who knows, as long as the writing, game, and ending, keeps up the quality it upheld for the last few updates, I am fine with whatever. I really liked the last two updates, the ending of the last update especially. I never expected the game to outreach book 2 or 3 anyway but as long as it somehow approximates it, I am down for it. But that's prolly just my subjective & unsolicited opinion. As much as I love Avatar and this project specially, I feel like they should move on after the long time they spent on this project, maybe only rework book 1, but not more.