This intrigues me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. The one part I hated about the epilogue is that Ethan got back to his sickening happy-go-lucky dad-of-the-year routine. It annoyed me in the prologue, it annoyed me in the ending. So if he gets an ending that sucks, good! I dislike that guy.
And I do agree. Watched from one angle, there are a few very nice subtle hints at the Origami Killer's identity. However, it also requires that you overlook a few things. I'll spell them out here, since we're getting into more detail.
*The game claims he's 48 years old in a news report in the epilogue. This is wildly inaccurate. Scott's year of birth is 1967, same as his twin brother John. This makes him 44 years old in the game's events.
*No way Scott Shelby looks anywhere near 44 years old. The designers have purposefully made him look at least 55, if not 60, simply because if he looked 43, he'd be in the running as a candidate for murderer.
*If we believe the news report claim that he is 48, that would make him four years older than his brother. Let's assume for a minute that the "twin" thing is just a misunderstanding for Madison, and a sentimental thing for Scott. That makes him 14 in the flashback cutscenes. No way is that a fourteen year old kid, based both on appearance and how they act. I'm forced to conclude they lie about his age in the latter news report to somehow make it more consistent with Scott's in-game appearance.
*The Butterfly test. Obviously, it's been arranged by someone at least as athletic as Ethan, or it'd be impossible to get all that broken glass through the tunnel. Scott Shelby is overweight, an asmathic, and wouldn't stand a chance to arrange this test.
*The sheer funds necessary to arrange all these tests for Ethan are never addressed. Sure, we could speculate on how Scott, on the meager pension of a retired police officer, can afford all this stuff. But I don't think we should have to; it doesn't make sense, so it should've been explained.
*Whenever you actually see the Origami Killer on-screen before the reveal, it takes a huge leap of faith to believe that's actually Scott. While the Origami Killer has a slightly stocky frame, he's certainly not overweight by any means of the word. Scott is. Besides, Scott's asthma, which the game designers use heavily at the start of the game to provoke sympathy, seems like a problem in the situations he gets into.
*I swear that Kid Scott has been designed to look as much as a child version of Lt. Blake as humanly possible. Take a look at that kid and tell me he doesn't look like him, I dare you!
I could list for a while more, but I don't think I will. Overall, the whole reveal with Scott is both dishonest and full of plot holes, which made me go "ah-wuuuu?" when it was revealed. It's sad, because they wouldn't have had to do a -lot- of changes to fix this. Let us know his age early on, in a subtle way. Make Scott a little less overweight. Give us an impression that he's living comfortably in private, or at least some idea that he has more money than you'd expect him to. All that'd be a start. Cause, the thing is, you're right. In some ways, they -are- absolutely brilliant. They wouldn't have had the need to resort to petty misdirection like this, because the mystery would stand on its own. I'm pretty sure 95% of the people playing the game wouldn't want it to be Scott, and would leap to accuse Blake.
With all that said, I did enjoy the game. It just annoys me that the big reveal wasn't pulled off as well as the game deserved. In my humble opinion, of course.
