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(+2)

The biggest reason why you can't get everyone in one go is that if there was a way to do that, then everyone would look up a guide on how to do it and they'd stop making choices themselves. That's an issue I had with the Persona games, you can do all the social links in one playthrough but doing so requires sticking to a very strict guide and at that point you're on autopilot. You stop playing the game the way it was intended. 

We try to keep everything balanced so that there isn't an optimal background, or a best guest to choose to manage the lounge, what side quests you choose in 0.5 and so on, and even when you get the "best solution" to how to deal with argos, for example, there's always a trade-off or consequence tied to it, so that even if you know what's coming it's still a meaningful decision. 

To answer your other question, yes, MH was originally a quest on an image board where Minoanon would make a post advancing the story and the other anons would reply what the Mc did next, or throw ideas for characters. It's very rough by nature of being written post by post and making shit up as it goes, and full of spoilers of course. I think it's a neat idea to add info on the wiki about how characters changed when jumping from one medium to the other (Luke was a quadruped, good luck showing that on a visual novel format) but I wouldn't recommend reading the original quest because it kind of diminishes the experience. Argos wasn't even in it, and he's an absolutely integral character to this iteration of the story. 

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That's a really good way to look at how to make sure your players don't just end up sticking to one way to play the game when you've given them a wide range of choices from. I think you're on the right track when making choices come off as neutral as possible and avoiding them as "the good or bad, nice or mean, right or wrong" choice. It encourages the player to make the choices they want to, using whatever reason they want without falling to that tired binary or just plain want to explore the choices that are possible. It's an odd concept to imagine, by removing choices and outcomes, you unintuitively create more variety among your players' playthroughs and increase their freedom to make the choices they want rather than the choices they may feel compelled to make because it's "the right one."

I'm enjoying going through this game blind on my primary file and sticking to things that may seem like "mistakes." Argos is a good example. I sort of noticed the clause to challenged but figured that even the wording there didn't make sense or supersede the rules of the land so I instead challenged clause that gave him an hour to clear out his farm if the contracted is broken and his stuff would disappear. I wanted to kill him with kindness and wanted to give him more time (that's probably my animal welfare career talking) and hope that treating him nicely would confuse him. Learning later that I was correct in my initial observation and my choice made may allow Argos to enter the hotel made me intrigued to see if this would later cause trouble or maybe get the chance to kill him with kindness and have him stay as a guest for a few days while treating him so nicely that I scared him away or something.

And speaking of Argos, I can't imagine MH without him! He brings a bit of a lingering menace to break up, the best way I can put this, the sense of wonder one can get lost in discovering more about the magical hotel and positive relationship building with Asterion to snap us back to the reality of the situation and remind us that this is place was meant to be a dark place with a dark purpose. Every time I see the text describing a flute, I can't help but think "oh crap, it's Argos." And while I'm reminded of my shitpost meme of a quadruped griffin with a thong pasted on him, it would have been odd to explain how Luke can do the things he does with on all fours. He'd either have to prop himself up and use his front legs all the time or be very talented with his beak (heh).