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(+3)

I don't want to spoil anything, but there are moments where the story's current state of incompleteness can become a misleading element on its own — more than we would want.

It's safe to say that all the recruitable staff members have some meat to their stories. There's stuff to be discovered there, if you ask the right questions and dig around in the right direction. In the case of Robert I can say that our intention was to have at least one person showing up at the hotel who, deep down, is just a mythical enjoying his vacations. He works as a prosecutor in a hell and you can imagine that's a very stressful job. The prospect of spending a month in a very different location where he can read and laze about is interesting, and if he learns too much about the hotel his inner Law academic is awakened. Any self-respecting lawyer would want to write a paper or two about the contractual shenanigans in the Bedrock.

He has no reason to lie about anything. He is, in fact, quite honest, sincere and compassionate. He's also a red herring in comparison to Hermes, who's the real source of mystery when the two show up at the hotel. But, you know, he hasn't had the time or chance to give the player character his whole life story. If you asked and he trusts you he probably would say a lot.

So... I don't want to spoil anything, but what I want to say is that Robert's story (and twists) are not based on misdirection. Robert is exactly what and who he says he is. The cards are on the table and none of them are lies. Not all of the cards are visible right now, of course, but the game has enough information that people could make reasonably precise guesses.

We might add a lore drop in an upcoming update that adds some more information too. I wish we could have put it in 0.5 but, well, we ran out of time.

(+1)

I think you've written him perfectly in that direction, so long as you're not being tricky here yourself. I genuinely love Robert for all those reasons.

That all came through 100%, don't worry if you can't get it out until 0.6 or beyond, Mino. You should be taking a break, seriously. Like I said, Robert's story falls apart if it's misdirection and everything I've seen from your writing and my many, many posts on it show that you are extremely thoughtful. A lot of writers tend to freak out when people make connections they didn't want them to, whereas you're giddy people are enjoying and sharing in your work. That's why I specifically said it's quite possible a lack of intended content isn't there and it could change someone's perspective, but it's not the impression I had. That's why I put air quotes into "of note" as by default it's suspicious but considering the information we have it's instead fairly mundane. This was in my very first post here:

I'll give a special shoutout to Robert and what his backstory adds to the mythos. Robert kicks ass.

Whereas Kota wasn't mentioned and I had (now rectified) neutral opinions of the MC, as things that were specific to that route were taken as the same for every route.

I have a feeling you're not just responding to me and instead the idea I presented for anyone reading, but just in case, the tone with "it's not impossible" should be more incredulous than I conveyed. 

i suppose i was the one to raise doubt over robert, but i was merely throwing ideas in the air not to be seriously considered. who knew a little joke could spark this conversation

Heh, Robert was only a red herring for me in a sense that he's a big and intellectual demon who is a hottie. (Pun not intended but totally appropriate).

This topic does make me wonder if one of the themes of Minotaur Hotel, whether intentional or not, how much trust one puts into the social contracts. (Really appropriate term now that I think of it.) While we don't expect everyone to tell us their whole lives story upfront and as honestly from their perspective, we do have an expectation of honest that even the smallest and basic amount of information exchanged is the truth. We see this a few times with names such as with P and Jean but we also see it openly challenged a few times by Asterion, albeit playfully most of the time. Why is Asterion under any obligation to outright tell the MC the whole truth and nothing but the truth unless he's forced by his contract? And even then, he is able to find loopholes to withhold information as he pleases. There's also the story about the pyrite crucifix which reveals a lot about how cunning Asterion is with being able to bend truths which I highly enjoyed.

This narrative makes me question this aspect of our social contract in humans though one does also have to be careful not to fall too hard the other direction and start to question every single thing presented. There is a mystery to the narrative but I haven't been giving a reason to suspect that we have an unreliable narrator (though I do question if the narrator outside of the Hinterlands chapters is just a narrator or an in universe omniscient character) so I don't tend to question every single word presented in that sense. I also don't quite question what the characters present of themselves unless I'm given a reason to (the mysterious vibe and some of the things Jean says or doesn't seem to say makes me question his identity for example.) In addition, just because a character doesn't present the whole truth doesn't mean their actively being deceptive, they could just not have the whole truth themselves. (Something I suspect when it comes to Asterion and the topic of his sentence.)

I'm not sure if I got my thoughts across but I feel like if I go one, I'd just be rambling. 

TL;DR: Questioning the humanity's social contract one of the themes? I trust Robert to top him or bottom for him without getting burned. 🙃