I have a bad feeling about all those new "changes". Try to change something good in the middle of development never works.
Well, the game is linear now. What was the problem? In a good sense. Linearity is one of the things made this game really good: story, relationships and dialogues were the main focus. Small decissions are clever and lead to different paths, specially with sister, a character that kept me intrigued like no other in this kind of videogames. Don´t understand why some developers want their games to be the bigger and more complex possible. It is unnecesary.
A game like this doesn´t need a sandbox style. I wish to be wrong, but I am suspecting an unfortunate failure. Let´s see...