Information in the canon vs side paths:
Fundamentally, if the canon path has all the information from the side paths, then there's no point in doing the side paths. The suggestion to pull some of the side path scenes into the canon really would have just removed those side paths and made the game more linear. Agency or story--they're in violent opposition. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never tried to write a story game with agency before.
That said, it's possible that I didn't balance it ideally. For the most part, I wrote the side paths first and the canon last. I think, because I wrote it that way, I subconsciously assumed that people will play it that way (if I did, that was a silly assumption). I know that in my last testing playthroughs of the canon path I said to myself, "Wait a minute. If someone plays this path first, they won't understand what that means." I had to go back and make some changes to clean those areas up.
Characters:
Funny story around Theresa. I briefly considered writing a game with Theresa as the protagonist, but realized that it would be seriously hard to have choices in a dating game with a woman who always knew if you were lying. One thing that writers always struggle with is giving information that is subtle but that their readers can still get. I put small hints as to Theresa's power in the bonus scene of DwE, but they were probably too small for anyone to catch. So, in the post-credits scene of RfJ I practically put in a neon sign that said "power!" and pointed it at Theresa. Many people still didn't see it. This isn't a poor reflection on them. It just points out the challenge writers face with their diverse audiences.
I don't know if you're all familiar with Eric Clapton, the musician, but he has a live acoustic album in which he plays acoustic versions of his normal rock songs. In one of the songs, he starts by saying, "See if you can spot this one." On the first few chords, some people start clapping. When he starts singing, "What will you do if you get lonely..." more people start clapping. And when he gets to the chorus, "Layla..." the rest of the people clap. That's a perfect example of this. How do I make what you need to know clear when some people understand a throw away line in a bonus and others read an exposition brain dump and don't fully get it? Another one, if you're a patron and you've read all of the short stories (some haven't been released publicly), then it's possible for you to know who Tora (the cat) really is. I suspect Mortze is the only one who knows. And I just had a conversation with an amazing guy who "gets" my characters almost better than I do, but he didn't understand the significance of a bunch of the things that happened in Dream Master. I'm not disappointed by these things. I'm just bringing them up to point out why you sometimes need an actual brain dump at the end to make absolutely sure people understand what's happening. The people who clapped after the first 3 chords in Acoustic Layla knew all the details given in the brain dump at the end before they started playing Saving Chloe.
Morland:
Favorites who didn't appear:
I'll just say that I'm a little worried about "The Avengers: Infinity War" with it's cast of like 64 heroes. It's going to be a challenge for them to tell a compelling story about any of them when that many need to get screen time. Getting more characters into Saving Chole and making them significant would have been tough.
Tlaero