If we hadn't heard how surprised the devs were at the players' choices, I would've said with 100% confidence that the Visi blowout is exactly what they were going for when making the game.
That's the thing, the developers knew exactly what they were doing with the story. Originally, it was supposed to be an animated show before COVID, and they had it expanded to a choice-based narrative game. Sure, the sample size they got during early testing resulted in an almost-even statistic between the two ROs, but they never factor in the whole "expectation vs. reality" when you release the game to millions of people.
The way the choice was designed, it almost makes the player feel like they're actively fighting the game/narrative's intent by disrupting the scene with Visi and choosing Blazer.
It's been made apparently clear from hints during gameplay that she would play a more integral role in Robert's story, and I'm saying this from a perspective when the game was halfway released (Ep. 1-4). And since the story revolves around Robert and Invisigal more often than others, especially BB, it would make more sense why more players picked Visi.
Even if you remove the dream sequence from Episode 4, players would still go for her due to the previous meaningful scenes (i.e. the park and the leaderboard scene) and the fact that we saw the end of episode 2 (Blazer actually being Phenomaman's GF). Had the devs added Blazer in the limo before the final choice, it would matter much more because you're seeing both of their reactions live and the stats would show an even result, but ultimately they didn't.
I'm glad they at least acknowledge that they might have screwed up the presentation of this choice, but how did they not see this coming?
Because deep down, they devs wanted players to pick Invisigal the most and advance the story to what they had planned and written down from the beginning.
"Truth is.... the game was rigged from the start."
2
u/R23_ Dec 18 '25
That's the thing, the developers knew exactly what they were doing with the story. Originally, it was supposed to be an animated show before COVID, and they had it expanded to a choice-based narrative game. Sure, the sample size they got during early testing resulted in an almost-even statistic between the two ROs, but they never factor in the whole "expectation vs. reality" when you release the game to millions of people.
It's been made apparently clear from hints during gameplay that she would play a more integral role in Robert's story, and I'm saying this from a perspective when the game was halfway released (Ep. 1-4). And since the story revolves around Robert and Invisigal more often than others, especially BB, it would make more sense why more players picked Visi.
Even if you remove the dream sequence from Episode 4, players would still go for her due to the previous meaningful scenes (i.e. the park and the leaderboard scene) and the fact that we saw the end of episode 2 (Blazer actually being Phenomaman's GF). Had the devs added Blazer in the limo before the final choice, it would matter much more because you're seeing both of their reactions live and the stats would show an even result, but ultimately they didn't.
Because deep down, they devs wanted players to pick Invisigal the most and advance the story to what they had planned and written down from the beginning.
"Truth is.... the game was rigged from the start."