[Renall]

The main problems with the original project, as I see it:

• Too Complex & Unfocused: The time system would've been a mess and controlling any sort of coherent narrative without artificially handicapping the player would've meant it didn't meet the desired freedom of it. If you can get anywhere and do anything, up to and including never having Erika meet another human being on the island, how do you account for all that other stuff that's happening? Which means...
• Not Enough Narrative Coherency: I like what I do to have themes and purposes and a storyline, and there was no way to really guarantee that actually happening. This worked to the detriment of the overall plan, which was to have a fairly standard mystery. Which means...
• It Was Too Easy: When you have more or less complete investigative freedom it's incredibly trivial to figure out whodunnit. A player could basically ignore finding out the answers but if they bothered seeking them the narrative wasn't complex enough or the setup for things elaborate enough to permit anything truly perplexing. Additionally, this being a bog-standard mystery, everyone would've kinda just reverted to their archetypes, which is a problem because it leads to...
• Unengaging Characterization: I mean, I like the characters in Umineko, especially the family. I do. But you get 4 episodes to see how they behave in a normal murder-mystery situation already. You can certainly try to flesh out people who are neglected a bit (and I did), but since so many characters would be moving around and doing different stuff it wouldn't always be the case that the player would even interact with them, so a lot of that could end up missed entirely. The whole mystery angle only works in its more simplified form past Legend because of the magic and meta narratives, which is a problem because...
• No Magic/Meta Narrative: The goal was to be pretty down-to-earth and limit Erika's efforts to the board. That sounds neat and all but Erika as a character is all about meta-knowledge, meta-grudges, and dragging a lot of her out-of-gameboard personality and desire into the gameboard. You can't do that easily when you don't have any of those things. Plus the magic/meta characters are quirky and fun, which can add some levity to the board (think about how much more fun ep4 gets once Kinzo shows up and declares himself a wizard). I could forgive this if it was funny, but...
• It Wasn't Funny: Self-explanatory really. The whole point of writing Erika into anything is that she's a fun, offbeat, sometimes-villainous wild card who is a ripe ground for comedic sociopathy and witty exchanges. As nothing more than a player avatar, she's as boring as anyone. I tried to bring out the humor but having to account for nearly every possibility made it implausible. I mean, how funny is Erika dicking around for 48 hours not talking to anyone? I thought I could manage it but I don't think anyone really can. It's especially difficult to make puzzles funny unless logic can be twisted a bit, and without magic/meta scenes it's very difficult to do that without violating the suspension of disbelief.

I came up with a number of ways to fix this:

• An act structure adds coherency and allows for the development of an overall narrative, and allows Erika's personality to stand out by having her direct the player through her own goals with the player helping rather than just saying "OK, here I am" and letting the player do whatever they wanted with her, even if it's something Erika wouldn't probably do.
• Altering the setting resets things for both Erika and the player. Assumptions based on canon are not necessarily correct, but their relationships to canon still matter so familiarity is not punished by saying "Well it's Rokkenjima but [random thing] has been arbitrarily altered." A new setting means new rules and everyone can go into it understanding that.
• The characters are stronger in light of both of these things because I'm not constrained to writing them as they have already been written about multiple times. The act structure also channels Erika through dialogue with certain people, allowing both her and they to be better realized.
• There's now a meta/magic narrative. In fact, at the moment it's basically half the structure of the game design, and lets me do a lot of wacky or experimental or stuff and have offbeat puzzles that would make no sense in a "realistic" context, while still having them relate to the overall story.
• It's already much, much funnier than it was, and Erika is much more comfortable to write for in this context. There were a few vaguely chuckle-worthy bits in the stuff I'd worked on before and I just wasn't feeling it. I've managed to come up with what I think are a number of much better reversals, insult exchanges, and intentionally comedic descriptions of things. More to the point, they're everywhere rather than just cropping up in rare moments of dialogue or the occasional aside scene.