Someone should make a game about actual landladies and tenants, non ironically, but hamming up all the tropes well, fourth wall be damned.
...I just realised the spider thing was kinda a replacement for the drugs moment in the original, and that's me facepalming myself for not noticing the retconned connection. I'm hoping we still have a drugs moment like that. I mean, the interactions with Katie and Donna's story line were the two things that carried the old game for me. Katie can still have all that whatever her pixels are called.
This is the thing, incest isn't Ocean's problem here, otherwise, Willi would have no blood relatives. Leia being his sister (and the assumption she is an LI, because of their past etc) is the single most problematic item on the list. If you keep that, what does it matter that Katie is a sister too, or that Helen is his mom, Kat his cousin? I mean Lucas, Uncle Joe and Dylan will never be incest paths for me on any one of my playthroughs, because that's just me.
Finally acknowledging Leia as a sister is great, not because I'm into incest but because it removes the unnecessary ambiguity of having two separate interpretations of their relationship. That's going to clear up the interactions, make the script more sensible. We've already experienced how hard it is to deal with Nika and Nami - we need a clear narrative, or a clear reason in the story that allows the ambiguity.
So if Helen is not Willi and Leia's mom, we have a bunch of scenarios that could easily play out:
- porn tropes with raising best friends children after a car accident. Please no.
- They're adopted from birth and know they're adopted. Hence the tension with Katie. They still call Helen mom. The statement that Leia is Willi's only relative did not say they're not adopted etc. Nothing needs to change other than a few lines of text, just like the patch used to do. For all functional intents Willi sees Helen as his mother. Only some text needs changing for this to happen.
- They're adopted from birth and don't know they're adopted. This would be my preferred option, as there's so many ways those reveals could play out ....but Ocean's already given the reveal away, so this option is borked now. I could just imagine start of ch 4 where Leia and Willi are talking, Leia reveals that Helen isn't their mom, and that kickstarts some plot point. Oh well. Only some text needs changing for this to happen.
- Helen is Wollust's super halfway house matron extraordinaire! She looks after all strays! This is a terrible dodge for no reason considering there's still Willi and Leia's relationship, so this dodge is completely unnecessary, and ultimately meaningless. Far more work, for no reason.
- Last option - Ocean's borked all incest, and Leia's no longer an LI, while Katie and Helen are. This makes no sense though, as the tension with Leia is far too central to the story. Far more work. The fact that Ocean thinks some will be delighted that Leia is Willi's confirmed sister (in a normal AVN world) would mean that LI action is inbound. If Ocean made Leia Willi's sister and removed all LI potential, I can't imagine anyone would be happy about the situation.
Lastly, why has Ocean been so vague with the devlogs? Probably because since he lost the patreon, he's been deciding how to future proof WiaB. He knows he can't mention rework, so maybe he's just doing it without telling?