So I've just finished, and I'm kinda in the "Well I knew the story was gonna go off the deep end"-kinda mentality - I just didn't like how insanely head-bashingly philosophical it all got, especially from Kate. I was expecting to see her go over her research, first contact, theories on what the light is etc.

She says herself she's a scientist and maybe like her 'other half' that provides solace is the Pattern itself - the ultimate scientific discovery? - but it all felt a bit rushed by comparison to the others.

Anyway no, the bit that was weird for me was during Lizzie's segment, when you return to the Main Hall and get the Rachel/baby scene. Up until this point the 'loop' of gameplay was 'seek out a sequence of memories, then trigger their final moments', something I thought tied into each character you were following at the time. Like, you can see all the conversations that happened with Frank, because I'm following Frank's light, same with Wendy's, Stephen's etc. You get a couple additional parts, but for the most part during a character's respective chapter, that's who you're learning about.

For the Lizzie segment though, we started seeing a few interactions she wasn't aware of, between Rachel and Rhys, to which we then get the end of Rachel's life with the baby - something Lizzie was nowhere near. I know it's to later give you the payoff that she's in the station without Stephen, but honestly, I worried and went straight to Youtube to watch a playthrough, because I was SURE I'd missed something.

The game was already very ambiguous - and I'd previously walked too far past Frank's intended endpoint, missed it as I 'triggered' Lizzie's intro , then went back to collect more memories - so I was convinced I was seeing the end of Rachel's story without the rest of it.

How have you found the extremely open-ended nature of the exploration, would you have made it a tad more linear?

Looking around online it seems I did see everything I was supposed to in the order intended, but man, that one bit just made me not know what was going on - a feeling that set off a chain reaction of "I don't like how the story's getting less tight..." that was then solidified at the end.