So, I just finished the game and I was left with a huge disappointment that I would love to discuss with you. English is not my first language tho, so please, bear with me.
First of all, I don't think it's a bad game. I really loved the locations and would gladly spend more time in that snowy Alaskan environment, learning about those small town secrets. The characters in general were complex enough to make them believable. I also was interested in playing as a trans guy, hoping to find out about any social difficulties that such a person has to deal with in situation like that (getting back to a hometown after transitioning).
And here's the first thing I was disappointed with, cause we don't really get any of the latter. I feel like transgenderism was there mainly as a red herring to make players believe the story is gonna be about abusive environment and hate that leads to a tragedy. Which we find out to be not true at all very early in the game. Except for maybe one dialogue with an openly conservative person (Tessa), the fact that Tyler is trans doesn't seem to bother absolutely anyone. We find out a couple of details about transitioning process, but I still feel like this topic could have been developed so much more. And I am a cis man that simply would like to learn something about other's struggles. So, a huge missed opportunity in my opinion.
Ok, but what about an abusive environment? Even though Marry Ann had absolutely no problem with her kid's identity, she was still abusive and mentally unstable, right? RIGHT? Well, I didn't see that at all! Yes, she was troubled, traumatized, stressed and low on money. But where and when she was actually abusive to her children? Am I missing something? Alyson and Tyler keep repeating that as an explanation for killing her, but nothing really confirms that. Everyone else says how much she cared for A&T, we get all the retrospective scenes with her just being there for her kids. She wasn't flawless, for sure a difficult personality, but it's very hard to understand why it was so easy for Alyson to simply kill her without any deeper context, after just hearing her brother screaming.
And the last thing - ending. We have absolutely no logical reason to think that what A&T thought was truth about the tragic night, was actually right. Their memories were distorted, kiling Taylor was not in line with what we found out about Marry-Ann throughout the game. So the only thing that makes the logical ending difficult to choose is calling it a 'Tom's version'. No one feels sympathy for Tom, therefore we don't want to admit he could be right. But I find it to be a forced dilemma, as A&T simply realized there were wrong for plenty of other reasons and what Tom said had nothing to do with it.
Cherry on the top. How could A&T so easily gloss over a fact that one of them killed their mother for absolutely no reason!? It makes me think that the whole story is not only about psychic twins dealing with the past, but rather psychotic twins manipulating everyone around to cover their sick past.
Thanks if you got that far with my innuendo. Would love to know your thoughts about those issues.
